Storm Front is out!, Leading to SR5! Options

[Fatum]

Can't you see it's the usual circular logic? Lowfyr is the greatest of the Greats, because he holds the title of Loremaster, which allows him to boss dragons around. The title of Loremaster allows to boss dragons around, because
Lowfyr holds it and he's the greatest of the Great.

And yeah, Storm Front speaks of Loremaster as a position of power, like "being the Loremaster he decided to do something about it", that sort of thing.

[Grinder]

Ooook, the discussion about the Lofwyr/ Alamaise-plot gets repetitive, so please don't birng up the same stuff over and over again.

[Fatum]

Actually, we just hit a new topic: pre-established fluff on how the dragon society works!

[binarywraith]

Or people who want to start/get back with Shadowrun 5E and heard that this is a transition book.

Man, if that was the goal, swing and a miss.

[RHat]

Actually, we just hit a new topic: pre-established fluff on how the dragon society works!

Notably, there's a line in Clutch about traditions Lofwyr fully intends to uphold; this is mentioned in direct connection to his role as Loremaster.

Which raises the question: Has anything established the limits of what the position is?

[Nath]

Notably, there's a line in Clutch about traditions Lofwyr fully intends to uphold; this is mentioned in direct connection to his role as Loremaster.

Which raises the question: Has anything established the limits of what the position is?

Survival of the Fittest, Introduction, Campaign Background, page 12
Dragons maintained collections of these "memory crystals" for recording their experience, knowledge and thoughts over the years. Since they were among the greatest treasures of dragonkind, they were highly prized and fought over following the death of their owner. This led to the creation of the role of Loremaster among the great dragons, thus recognizing the dragon who held the greatest store of knowledge and wisdom gathered by a combination of strength and cunning. The Loremaster was universally recognized as an authority on draconic traditions. Though the Loremaster's word was not law (for no dragon bowed easily to another), it carried great weight.

I choose that one excerpt because it's not a dragon talking to a metahuman scribe (like Earthdawn Book of Dragons), nor it is a Draco Foundation briefing based on how Dunkelzahn viewed things (like Dragons of the Sixth World). It's Game Information, for only the Gamemaster to read before playing Survival of the Fittest. It was intended to be an actual truth.

[lokii]

One might add, that since Lofwyr was just given the position, holding the title may carry much less prestige in the eyes of other great dragons, weakening the authority it normally conveys. And it certainly wouldn't help if the canonical ending of Survival of the Fittest is, that Hestaby won and Lofwyr remained Loremaster by her choice.

[Critias]

Whew. ^^ A story?

Nnnnnope. It was another mini-chapter, if that narrows it down.

[hermit]

The Artful Dodger?

[Patrick Goodman]

Nice and comprehensive. Thanks for the time.

Art is, otherwise, consistently high quality, and two pieces deserve special kudos; more on that in the appropriate section of the review.

I haven't found these mentioned yet, but there's a lot to go yet. For the sake of discussion, which two pieces are they? I'm sure I'll find them somewhere in all the spoiler tags, but just in case....

I'm not sure what happened with the layout, but "The Shadow Network" was supposed to be a large chapter comprised of several smaller pieces, which apparently turned into chapters themselves. "First Among Equals," "Sleeping With the Enemy," and "The Artful Dodger" were supposed to be sub-chapters for "The Shadow Network." As I said, I don't know what happened there.

Review (Chapters 9 and 10) 8/10 and 9/10

[ Spoiler ]

Sleeping with the Enemy adds to the anti-Twilight DeVries storyline, where DeVries now is officially outed as a vampire, and to Asamondo, which is shrunk back to plausible size. It also makes life more miserable for the Infected, so maybe SR5 will have a change of mind from the ultra-soft take on them in SR4. I'd really appreciate that myself, but tastes vary.

Writing-wise, this is among the best in the book, has good flow and decent structure, and is generally fun to read. Some details grate, but cannot entirely be laid at the author's feet. I'm not happy with the New World Order take on the UN, but that's Loose Alliances fault; I'm also not entirely happy about the inconclusiveness with the Mealtime Killer stuff, but alas, there seem to be products in the pipeline dealing with that, so I withhold judgment here. It's a bit of a letdown is that this chapter, like denver, seems to set up future releases rather than tie up previous ones. I can understand why, but I'd still like the full picture. Teasing isn't nice. Still, by itself, solid writing and enjoyable.

I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'm sorry if some of it seems a tease. It's not what I'd intended, but it's how things worked out.

[ Spoiler ]

I'm working on getting Sail Away, Sweet Sister finished, honest to God, and that will deal more with the fallout from the Mealtime Killer plot, set a few things up, and knock a few others down. I wanted to get it finished a long time ago, when there was still some warmth from Another Rainy Night, but the universe apparently saw what I was up to and mocked my efforts roundly.

Martin de Vries found time to write another book while he was in publicity/roving hunter mode with the last one; I'm not certain if being outed as a vampire will affect the new book positively or negatively, though The House of Saint Bela took a short-term hit in the light of the Houston incident. We'll see how that shakes out, but I'd love to do more with him. He's fun to write.

I can't speak to SR5 beyond what's been mentioned already; NDA. I can say that it's my intention to try and firm up the tone for the Infected without necessarily borking things entirely.

[ Spoiler ]

The Artful Dodger also is well written and offers some interesting insights. One is that at least one Techno believes Paragons are actual 1st Gen AI, bringing them in line with both my theory on them (heh) and the second Sprawl trilogy book's (Neuromancer's successor, Biochips) take on the Matrix after the Singularity of Wintermute/Neuromancer. At least this story seems to follow some inner logic for now, and the Matrix maybe is demagicized. I'm all for that, I absolutely loathed 4e's magical take on Mancers and the Matrix. It also picks up The dodger's story, who has been dropped in 4E almost entirely because the generic Matrix was the new cool or something, so nice to see he's back.

Also, props for some info on Tir na nÓg. That neck of the woods has been quite neglected by SR4, too.

That was a thing of beauty, wasn't it? One of my favorite pieces in the book.

Chapters 12 & 13: Fractures/The Cracks Inside 8/10

[ Spoiler ]

Also, whoever did the art in Fractures and saluting Slamm-O deserves a special heads-up, because that art is awesome. The good-byes are nice, too, and all in all, this may be one of the best parts of StormFront. If all of it had been like that, it'd be a decent, even nice, book.

Oh, there's the art you liked a lot. Yeah, those two are great.

... with the Africa writeup in the Almanac that might just as well have been labeled 'here be black people'.

I jacked around a little with Africa, and I even killed someone there, but I didn't notice anyone's skin color. Most of my characters are, more or less literally, gray.

I do tend to be a little bit America-centric, I admit, but I try to spread it around. I mean, one of my (adopted) characters is Dutch (and as I mentioned, he's turning out to be a blast to write). I'm going to get to play around now with an African queen sometime in the future. Much of the big research for HMHVV is somewhere in what used to be Germany; some of it's in England, too.

I can't answer for the rest of the game, but I know that I someitmes contribute to this issue, and I'm sorry if I help make things unpleasant for you in that regard. I do try to remember that there's other countries out there.

[CanRay]

I jacked around a little with Africa, and I even killed someone there, but I didn't notice anyone's skin color. Most of my characters are, more or less literally, gray.

Most of mine tend to be ambiguously brown. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Except for the Irish. No one wants the Irish.

[Critias]

The Artful Dodger?

There we go.

Not that my "guess what Crit wrote" mini-game actually helped to distract people from arguing and whatnot (like I'd hoped)...but yeah. Dodger and the Tir update were my contributions to SF.

[CanRay]

That's because Mini-Games are annoying as hell, and I hope they won't be added into Shadowrun anytime soon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Faelan]

@Pepsi Jedi: I won't have time to respond to your post for several days, but the biggest problem I have with everything you are saying is the use of the piece of writing that is being criticized as its own defense. Because something is presented in the latest book then it must be good, and it must be so. Sure going forward it obviously will be so since they hold the license for now, but suggesting that this is somehow in line with previous books is in fact ludicrous. Of course I found most of your post ludicrous, I particularly liked the out of context quotes, constant lol's, and the intentional disregard for what was being said so you could tell us how wonderful the book is, and how wonderful being Loremaster is and how powerful the Loremaster is in dragon society. I recommend you go back to the source material, in this case Dragons which was the only book put out on the subject by FASA. Until then I have to lol at what was written, and lol about the holes in your argument.

[Pepsi Jedi]

@Pepsi Jedi: I won't have time to respond to your post for several days, but the biggest problem I have with everything you are saying is the use of the piece of writing that is being criticized as its own defense. Because something is presented in the latest book then it must be good, and it must be so. Sure going forward it obviously will be so since they hold the license for now, but suggesting that this is somehow in line with previous books is in fact ludicrous. Of course I found most of your post ludicrous, I particularly liked the out of context quotes, constant lol's, and the intentional disregard for what was being said so you could tell us how wonderful the book is, and how wonderful being Loremaster is and how powerful the Loremaster is in dragon society. I recommend you go back to the source material, in this case Dragons which was the only book put out on the subject by FASA. Until then I have to lol at what was written, and lol about the holes in your argument.

You act as if we have hard set rules for Dragon behavior. We don't. We have partial pieces spread out over 20+ Years of material. Each book we get DOES give us more information. Your argument is "Well a previous book didn't cover this, but it's for some reason 'more right' than the new book that does cover it.

Please tell me why the book you like, is more canon than the book that's covering things now?

Please tell me why it's more sacred when it comes to the 'truth' about dragons.

The new book gives 'more' information into Dragons and Dragon society. We see them acting in ways they may, or may not have before, but it's how they're acting now. Dragons aren't 100% stagnant. We've got one running a Megacorp after all. Gotta say they'd never done that before this cycle started. Yet some how it's ok for a Dragon to be in charge of a Mega corp, but it's not ok for them to change how they act? It's ok for another great to be into cyber research, but not ok for other things that happen in this book? You talk about dragons as if they're all the same, but we know one Mega runs SK, we know another Mega runs Matrix departments in another mega. We know one (Adult, I don't think great) Dragon goes around the world partying, switching genders and getting laid. We know another one claims, for her self 70%+ of the planet.

You like to use the word ludicrous alot. Yes I laughed at it. You said it was ludicrous for a dragon to do what a great dragon says to. I laughed. When the creature in question is literally able to kill two adult dragons by pointing at them and calling down lasers from heaven, it's funny to think you're not going to do what they say, if they give you a direct order.

(And yes, P did go against GW, but it wasn't a direct order disobeyed. Nor did he laugh. He managed to teleport AZ's people out of the way. (Yeah it wasn't a straight teleport but the results are the same) And for that, he was punished. )

My question still stands.

"Honestly. What are they going to do. Say "get bent Lofwyr"? lol Then. POOF dead dragon. In the chapter Lung quite literaly vaporized two dragons by pointing his scaly finger. POOF. And yet you think it's crazy for them not to do what they're told?"

that's Ludicrous?

Yes. I laughed at your thought that Adult dragons would tell a Great "no" some how escape them, then run to other great dragons, taddle on them, and expect the 'other' great dragons to lesson their own power, by saying "no Mr Adult dragon. You don't have to do what we great dragons say". --That-- was ludicrous.

An admission of weakness, to order those below you? Really?

More over, all your views, are based only on reviews of others. You've announced that you won't be spending your money on this "offal." So even the very strong views you have on the product and what's going on, are all based on second hand knowledge of the goings on in question.

So yes.. that's funny too. Piles of excrement and offal. Such strong views and thoughts. When you haven't even bought the pdf and read it yourself. You don't find that funny? Such judgement based on second hand views?

[lokii]

I recommend you go back to the source material, in this case Dragons which was the only book put out on the subject by FASA. Until then I have to lol at what was written, and lol about the holes in your argument.

The officially released free PDF version from FASA (1999) can be found here, if someone is interested: http://shadowrun.fr/article/earthdawn-dragons

Thanks for all the discussion of Storm Front, I have a pretty good picture of what to expect now. Unfortunately my worries were not allayed at all.

[RHat]

You act as if we have hard set rules for Dragon behavior. We don't. We have partial pieces spread out over 20+ Years of material. Each book we get DOES give us more information. Your argument is "Well a previous book didn't cover this, but it's for some reason 'more right' than the new book that does cover it.

Please tell me why the book you like, is more canon than the book that's covering things now?

You're entirely missing his point. By referencing back to Storm Front to prove the validity of Storm Front, you make a circular argument, and therefore your argument is intrinsically invalid

Additionally, precedence is relevant.

However, the quote has been provided that defines the limit of the Loremaster's power - it doesn't actually exist, or at the very least it fluctuates. The Loremaster's word isn't law, but it "carries great weight". So, technically, he can be refused. In practical terms, that's not going to happen unless he's started to lose the respect of the office. Think of it as a political capital sort of thing - Lofwyr spent his in the civil war and in taking down Alamais, so he had to step down.

[lokii]

The Loremaster's word isn't law, but it "carries great weight". So, technically, he can be refused. In practical terms, that's not going to happen unless he's started to lose the respect of the office. Think of it as a political capital sort of thing - Lofwyr spent his in the civil war and in taking down Alamais, so he had to step down.

Well I'd still say not quite, the Loremaster is not an office with an executive role. It's an honorary title and seems to hold a ceremonial significance. For example from what little can be gleaned from Survival of the Fittest (SotF) the Loremaster seems to begin the "Rite of Opening" of a dragon council. And as Ghostwalker points out the dragon council cannot form without having chosen a Loremaster. But as far as I can tell the council takes decisions by vote. The Loremaster can offer his opinion and advise and I suppose is expected to do so. But whether anybody follows it, seems to be up to them. I think great dragons are far to independent-minded to consider them a voting block that follows the Loremaster's decisions until he loses their trust.

The way I see it, great dragons do as they please most of the time, the dragon council is usually about the things they want to accomplish as a group not primarily a governing body for dragonkind, nontheless violating decisions reached by a council seems to be something of a crime.

As a side note whether great dragons attend a council seems to also be their own decision. From the gathering in SotF Sirrurg, Schwartzkopf, Kaltenstein and more are absent.

And as another:

[ Spoiler ]

That the guy who was involved with one of dragonkind's most sacred possessions burning down to the famous Ashes of the Great Tree is now bestowed the title, shows that these big lizards have a forgiving reptilian heart after all. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[sk8bcn]

@Pepsi Jedi: I won't have time to respond to your post for several days, but the biggest problem I have with everything you are saying is the use of the piece of writing that is being criticized as its own defense. Because something is presented in the latest book then it must be good, and it must be so. Sure going forward it obviously will be so since they hold the license for now, but suggesting that this is somehow in line with previous books is in fact ludicrous. Of course I found most of your post ludicrous, I particularly liked the out of context quotes, constant lol's, and the intentional disregard for what was being said so you could tell us how wonderful the book is, and how wonderful being Loremaster is and how powerful the Loremaster is in dragon society.

I agree.

I'm comming with no CLG fanboyism or hatred background (as I've bought stuff but not readed it yet) but, from an outside perspective, you defend the book as a real fan (no offense meant, it's how I feel when I read you). I mean, it seems like you're ready to make sense in the writing by using any assumption possible, and it also gives the feeling that any explenation will become iron-solid in your eyes if they're given in the book.

While Hermit gives the feeling that he has some hatred against CLG, at least he had some positive critics which made his review more balanced. As a reader, I guess he was harscher than what I would be but some infos are interesting.

[Ixal]

double post

[Ixal]

While Hermit gives the feeling that he has some hatred against CLG, at least he had some positive critics which made his review more balanced. As a reader, I guess he was harscher than what I would be but some infos are interesting.

Just because hermit has some positive things to say doesn't make his "review" any more objective and fair.
He makes things up and then rants about them, either because his hatred for the book made him read it only superficially or he does it consciously to make the book/chapter look worse than it is.
Either way, that part of the review is very bad and subjective.

If dragon society works that way as presented with bullying dragons to help and killing them when they fall out of line or not is a different matter and I leave that to people who read through all editions and Earthdawn.

[bannockburn]

Just because hermit has some positive things to say doesn't make his "review" any more objective.
He makes things up and then rants about them, either because his hatred for the book made him read it only superficially or he does it consciously to make the book/chapter look worse than it is.
Either way, that part of the review is very bad and subjective.

Just putting "review" in quotation marks doesn't make it any less of one.
Reviews are never objective, just as your ranting about a review isn't objective, at all.
You don't like what you read, that's fine, but you're not the moral authority who judges over what is and isn't a review.
Additionally, assuming things about it ('making things up', 'does it consciously', 'to make it worse than it is' and other things from your previous posts) makes you look really invested the wrong way, as well as judgmental.

I disagree with a lot of things that are in the review, because they apparently have been misunderstood or were seen without a context but I honestly believe that his final rating is too high for the state the book is in.

Don't get me wrong, there are parts of the book I like (some are even exceptional), but unfortunately they don't make it any more usable. For me. This is not my SR world anymore, but everyone who likes the direction CGL is going should feel right at home there.

[Ixal]

Just putting "review" in quotation marks doesn't make it any less of one.

In my eyes a review has at least stick to the truth instead of making things up. And while it can never by 100% objective ones personal opinion should be minimized and a professional language should be used with the goal of informing people about the product.
Your definition may vary.

But it seems that you like many others follow the fallacy of thinking that criticizing hermits review automatically mean loving everything in the book.

[bannockburn]

The truth is also variable.
If you misunderstand something, that's another truth than may have been intended by the author. It's not 'making things up'.

And your eyes still aren't the final authority on the matter.

[Grinder]

Ixal: stop it.