 I want Grit!, SR4 is not Cyberpunk as I know it. |
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 Dec 30 2005, 04:40 AM
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#1
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 560 Joined: 21-December 04 Member No.: 6,893  |
Maybe it's just me, but Shadowrun seems to have become much less cyberpunk. The world's got wireless all over the place, the corporations are commiting relatively small evils, and there are less things than ever to jump out and say "BOO!".
I think Shadowrun should go the route of Ghost in the Shell; the entire world sort of fits together, but the poorer areas are giant, shambling masses constructed of one building on top of another. The world is generally peaceful; relatively few have guns. And all the corps are at each other's throats. Alternately, they could return some "grittiness" to the SR genre. I want the feeling of Blade Runner or Neuromancer, not the feeling of D&D with Uzis. So, does anyone have any tips? |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:42 AM
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#2
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 388 Joined: 24-October 05 Member No.: 7,885 |
I think you run with the wrong gms if it has the feel you describe.
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Dec 30 2005, 04:45 AM
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#3
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,589 Joined: 28-November 05 Member No.: 8,019 |
Use horrible, awful experiments by the megacorps. Have the megacorps take larger steps towards securing key personnel.
As for your main point, I don't think Shadowrun is really un-gritty at all. Even the Sprawl trilogy had non-plug in ways of hooking onto the internet near the end. There are still gigantic amounts of slums and powerful, sadistic gangs. And I don't think Gibson ever featured blood mages. As for the spiritual and emotional effects, that's completely up to the GM. |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:52 AM
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#4
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Target Group: Members Posts: 88 Joined: 28-December 05 From: Québec Member No.: 8,110 |
funny thing. I have the COMPLETLY opposite feeling.
Where SR3 left it was all international runs and humongusly huge players. I feel SR4 just gave that turn where SR come meet cyberpunk again, and that is a feeling shared with those I have been playing to show them the new edition. Humanity have lost it to the machines/corps/spam |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:55 AM
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#5
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 560 Joined: 21-December 04 Member No.: 6,893 |
Not a bad idea. I'm running a game in the very near future, and although this is a new game full of newbie players, I think throwing something nasty and corp-sponsored at them is in order. Any ideas? Also, I almost forgot about Blood Magic. Fun stuff. Makes me happy I'm the GM, too. |
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Dec 30 2005, 05:01 AM
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#6
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,589 Joined: 28-November 05 Member No.: 8,019 |
Try to make everything as depressing and unreal as possible in your flavor text. That's what I loved about Neuromancer; Gibson just rushed by all the slang expecting you to keep up. Describe how the sky is the color of a television tuned to a dead channel; talk about the programmers on the subway licking holographic tatoos of vaginas. Insert little details; those were the parts of the book that really interested me. It's a matter of flavor more than a matter of having crazy people on motorcycles killing mutant bunnies.
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Dec 30 2005, 05:05 AM
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#7
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
In the shadows of the Sixth World, it's easier to buy a gun than get a hot bath. The streets are full of people that fell through the cracks of society, the downtrodden and the forgotten. Left to their own, they prey upon one another in a desperate bid to escape.
You're different. The street is home to you, your natural environment. You play in the daily hustle of street biz, but you stand apart from it. Magic, 'ware, skills, reputation. These are your currency, your edge. The only things you value or respect. The only things that keep you from being like everyone else. |
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Dec 30 2005, 06:07 AM
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#8
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 126 Joined: 20-December 05 Member No.: 8,088 |
Grittiness can be easily injected with totally crappy weather All The Time.
And corpses. Lots and lots of dead bodies to be found as often as we find gum on the sidewalk today, showing the utter cheapness of life in the Sprawl. |
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Dec 30 2005, 06:16 AM
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#9
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 388 Joined: 24-October 05 Member No.: 7,885 |
it is seatlle, it rains how much of the year there?
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Dec 30 2005, 06:23 AM
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#10
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Resident Legionnaire Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,136 Joined: 8-August 04 From: Usually Work Member No.: 6,550 |
I use this one...it works. |
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Dec 30 2005, 06:31 AM
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#11
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,283 Joined: 17-May 05 Member No.: 7,398 |
Do that too often, and if any of the PCs have any Tanamous contacts, they'll start walking around with wheelbarrows. ;) |
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Dec 30 2005, 06:52 AM
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#12
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 560 Joined: 21-December 04 Member No.: 6,893 |
I was looking at the Horrors, and I've been thinking about how to properly GM them. Oscuro is scary enough...and he's obviously quite afraid of something already on this side of the bridge. Although I don't intend to be including Horrors in this campaign anytime soon, it does give some interesting example of how to keep things suitably depressing and creepy.
A nifty page: http://www.wiredreflexes.com/sr/characters...index.php?id=15 Now, all I need to do is find a copy of HB, and I'm set. |
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Dec 30 2005, 07:01 AM
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#13
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,086 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 364 |
This line's begun to amuse me as time goes on. At the time Gibson wrote it, "tuned to a dead channel" meant video snow, which if it could be said to have any color at all, would be about a 40% grey, taking an average of the light and dark pixels on the screen at any one time, but with the heavy entropy fluctuations that video snow implies. However, a few years down the road, a new standard feature was added to TVs: when it detects a "dead channel" the screen goes a pure tone digitally generated blue. This pretty much became an industry-wide standard, thus giving a whole generation of young readers an entirely different perception of the sky in Gibson's world. |
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Dec 30 2005, 08:30 AM
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#14
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
It's just a shame almost no shadowrunner ever has been depicted in these terms in novels or sourcebooks.
It's a good thing the guy who made rules for creating semiballistics and nuclear aircraft carriers yet completely f-ed up the basic principles of how a diesel engine works isn't still... oh, what? He did? Nuts. And the ones who wrote Loose Alliances? Hm... Yeah, I'm sure it'll really change a lot. Guaranteed. And FYI, it Seattle does not get that much rain, and it's usually annoyingly light; it's just enough to notice and count as "precipitation." Having lived in cities where I didn't see the sky for a week because it was always raining (which will really fuck up your attitude fast) I'd prefer Seattle. It's often overcast, and can seem perpetually wet at certain times of the year, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of other places. |
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Dec 30 2005, 08:57 AM
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#15
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Resident Legionnaire Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,136 Joined: 8-August 04 From: Usually Work Member No.: 6,550 |
How about a little Bruce Sterling for this occasion?
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. We can do just about anything you can imagine to rats. And closing your eyes and refusing to think about this won't make it go away. That is cyberpunk. |
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Dec 30 2005, 08:58 AM
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#16
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Great, I'm a Dragon... Group: Retired Admins Posts: 6,699 Joined: 8-October 03 From: North Germany Member No.: 5,698 |
That had been my first thought too. |
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Dec 30 2005, 11:54 AM
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#17
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 751 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Hamilton.LTG.on.ca Member No.: 2,853 |
It's also how you perceive it too, i've played some games with shitty GM's and the only things that saved it was my imagination.
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Dec 30 2005, 03:58 PM
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#18
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,651 Joined: 23-September 05 From: Marietta, GA Member No.: 7,773 |
My vote falls here as well. Just because the rules are (supposed to be) more user-friendly doesn't mean the world is too. Hey, if your GM is throwing too many pretty magic flowers and happy cyber-puppies in your path, then that just means easier pickin's for your gritty shadowrunner. Take a hardcore Snake Pliskin and drop him into your GM's shiny happy Demolition Man future. That'll show 'em. |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:11 PM
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#19
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,453 Joined: 17-September 04 From: St. Paul Member No.: 6,675 |
And your characters can sell the happy cyber puppies to a chop shop for beer money, if that ain't gritty I don't know what is. |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:20 PM
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#20
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,546 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
Suddenly, ninjas!
Ninjas may not make SR4 more gritty, but they make it better. After all, we all know ninjas are just drop bears in disguise! I recommend liberal doses of them, especially nearby eucalyptus. |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:38 PM
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#21
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 617 Joined: 28-May 03 From: Orlando Member No.: 4,644 |
What about Pirates?!?! There is nothing more gritty than a man walking down the street in bright red overcoat with a black tricorner hat and a feather with one peg leg a hook instead of a hand with a green mangy parrot on one shoulder squawking "pieces of eight, 10 dead men on barrel of Rum!" And the man limping down the street muttering Argh!! :smokin:
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Dec 30 2005, 04:42 PM
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#22
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
He's got a little Captain in him |
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Dec 30 2005, 04:43 PM
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#23
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,589 Joined: 28-November 05 Member No.: 8,019 |
And then have the pirate attacked by a ninja. A CYBER ninja.
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Dec 30 2005, 04:44 PM
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#24
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,589 Joined: 28-November 05 Member No.: 8,019 |
And as for the big happy shiny consumerism with comlinks and AR thing, a theme of cyberpunk is to have consumerism be a sort of false idol, a fake beacon of hope and beauty.
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Dec 30 2005, 05:01 PM
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#25
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 909 Joined: 26-August 05 From: Louisville, KY (Well, Memphis, IN technically but you won't know where that is.) Member No.: 7,626 |
Pirates are retro-cyber. |
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