Shadowrun Plot line, What do we all want to see in SR4? Options

[eidolon]

Yeah, probably. I'm inordinately tired for only having been up since 7 this morning. :silly:

[laughingowl]

Competition between 'players' and I will crack down fairly hard.


Learning/mentoring between players and I will reward.

Competition between 'characters' depends on the game, setting, and what folks want.

Amber , WoD, and the likst just ain't the same with out at least a little inter-player rivalry.

'Nam, Twlight 2000, etc they had better be working (mostly) alot more together then against each other.


As to 'offical' story. I go with one of the ones who posted that:

1) I often do not play in the 'now', either because I have something I want to use, Bug hunt, Shutdown, etc or just because.

2) Rarely will will directly 'overule' cannon. If so it will directly be stated at the begining. HOWEVER, I will also state, that anything they have read is exactly that, something they read/saw/heard on the new, rumor mill, etc.

Big D is presumed dead killed by a a missle. Some people claim that he 'sacrificed' himself to save the world from some big bad thing. IF the people have the appropriate knowledges and/or contacts they may know both of these.

That doesnt mean, Big D, didn't just decide that leading humans to a better world was too much work, to leave them to their own, and isnt off drinking pina colad's on the beach somepalce.

Unless I have directly told you otherwsie at the start. Anything you read in offical things (to include novels) is generally safe to assume the people 'in the know' belive that. Now I might question how your 'character' knows the information if you dont have a reason, but if you do and I havent told you otherwise directly, it is safe to assume that rulebooks, splat books, and novel are all 'real' in so far as that is what the appropriate people belive.

Then again, the USSR had several times the number of ICBMs that we did, and we even saw the parade footage of them..... (so what if two-thirds of them were cardboard :-)


Peace

[Grinder]

[Demonseed Elite]

I know in my writing, I try not to make anyone infallible. I don't care if they are a corporate CEO, a free spirit, a great dragon, or an immortal elf. Everyone has flaws, everyone can make mistakes, and everyone can be bested by someone else. I don't have a problem at all with a human outmaneuvering a great dragon, but you have to remember one thing. Great dragons think longer term. You can definitely win a battle against a dragon, but that dragon might get his revenge on your grandchildren. Assuming he can't just eat you. :)

But another thing I try to avoid is heroic activism. I tend to see Shadowrun as a game more about anti-heroes than heroes. Sure, taking down the big players could be possible, but it shouldn't make for a happy ending. There are consequences to all actions, especially in a world as interconnected as the Sixth World. My players have often made impacts on the world, but they are also left wondering if those changes were worth the price.

As for individual GMs deviating from the metaplot and doing their own thing? Go for it! I do it, myself. I try to write in tons of plot hooks that I never plan to do anything with, just so GMs can take them up if they want to and go crazy with them.

[eidolon]

Thanks for your writer's take on it DE. How much editing does your stuff (and others if you can speak to it) go through before release, and have you ever seen that editing affect tone? I admit that I don't keep up with who writes what, so it may well be that none of your stuff ever left me with that "the Johnson knows everything" feeling. :)

See, personally, the whole GDs think "long term" thing has always stuck in my craw somewhat, even. Why should they? Granted, (and this is according to my limited knowledge of the ED to SR continuum, mostly because it's just another part of the meta that I tend to ignore), they were alive "way back when", but then they were asleep for what, centuries? And they woke up with the rise in mana that brought on the Awakening, right? So at most, they're in their 60's (this time around)? How does that somehow magically confer that they think "long term" any more so than any plotter and schemer does? Long life span? Tell that to Dunk.

That's just the sort of thing that I try to avoid in my games. I know that it's accepted canon and that most people are probably totally cool with stuff like that, it's just that I've never been able to get past how silly it is to me.

As far as the tone of game, it varies from group to group and game to game for me. I've ran games where everyone's left with the thousand yard stare before, and I've ran games where you can almost hear the Ewok theme at the end. :D

[PlatonicPimp]

I've actually run a game where Lofwyr got his. Basically a Major NPC sacrificed himself to get a nano-weapon into lofwyr's digestive tract, which put the major hurt on the dragon.

Of course, He's not dead, just horribly crippled, which makes him all the more fun for me. His physical body is nearly useless, he can't ever take anything into his own claws again, but his mind is still entirely intact and able to manipulate things. But he's no longer seen as infallible, and so is enemies are far more proactive. Makes for fun in my campaign, Your milage may vary. But by my personal timeline, it happened a year after the, so things will have stabalized somewhat by 2070.

Unfortunately, the other main thing I wanted to see in the plot was to see the Renraku Arcology abandoned by everyone (I mean, who would EVER was to rent an apartment there ever again?) and left to the squatters, bringing a peice of the barrens strait into downtown. It seemed logical and dystopian, but the runner havens book had the Arc as a public housing project. Similar, I suppose, but not as fun.

[Wakshaani]

[Mistwalker]

For me, the long term look that GDs and IEs have, is rather simple in concept, but can be harder to do in practice.

They are not in a rush to get things done, they can afford to wait a year, 10 years, 100 years to see their plans come into effect.
They are not rushing to get a big nest egg so that they can retire before they are 55, or such.
If a project that they are working on will take a century to be finished, they do not have to worry about some distant relative not finishing (or botching) the project, as they will be there to completion, and perhaps modify it so that it meets their intent rather than the letter of the project.

As for them taking revenge on your grand children, I think that is myth, a complete fabrication. It would not stop someone from doing anything to GDs, because they would not face any consequences. And, what if they didn't have any kids.... Look at our society now, we waste all kinds of resources on all kinds of unnecessary toys, instead of spending a fortune on renewable power sources, the environment, etc... We know that there are and will be trickle down effects to the next generations, but most of us can't seem to get past our "needs".

GDs and IEs do not like being targets, and will, if they can, immediately hurt those that targetted them. But they will most likely put their priority on damage control.
If they can't get immediate revenge, they will find a way, maybe in a month, year, etc.. The next time they need a runner team to die doing a run, they will probably have the team that hurt them hired for the run..... Word will get around that if you successfully do a run against a GD or IE, you are dead and your body just doesn't know it yet.

[ChicagosFinest]

[Wakshaani]

Page 117, RUnner Havens.

(Missed that they do get a handful of "Vacataion Days" a year, where they can leave ... with guards.)

I'd lay good odds that everyone there has RFID implants, to make sure that if anyone slips away, they can be found quickly.

[Mistwalker]

Security RFIDs
And they put them in your teeth. You didn't think all that free dental care was from the kindness in their miniscule hearts, did you?

[Wakshaani]

[Mistwalker]

I would think that the corps and prisons, would vary the place that they put security RFIDs, just so that runners and other criminals do not know exactly where to look.

Hmm, wonder if they have stealth security RFIDs. That would be a nasty idea....

[Demonseed Elite]

[ChicagosFinest]

The emergence of the dragon Calozerca is similiar to the release of a Horror-tainted dragon from the Horrors sourcebook.

This plot was mentioned in D6W. Any leads on where this is going I missed earthdawn so connecting the dots is a little hard

[Fortune]

[lorechaser]

[eidolon]

[Fortune]

[eidolon]

I was about to go find and "quote in" my thoughts on that...but darn you Fortune, you were the one I was discussing it with! :D

[Charon]

That Dragon think long term schtick is often taken too far.

So Dragons plan for the next century? Good for them, but any war is made of dozens of battles and hundred of skirmishes and to win those you have to hustle like everybody else. And to say that it doesn't matter if you lose this battle or that one because you are taking the long view is hogwash. Sure, not every battle is crucial. Sure you have to plan ahead. But you lose too many battle, or you lose the one you couldn't afford to lose, and you may not have a long term prospect.

Imagine the Americans had been crushed at Midway and the Japanese had been able to freely bomb the West Coast during WWII. Think things would have been the same? At worst the US would have lost to Japan and at best they'd have been unable to help on the European front, would have been forced to accept a negociated cease fire instead of an unconditional surrender and then would have been nearly bankrupt, with the West Coast infrastructure needing to be rebuilt and no juicy contract coming from Europe (Either Germany or USSR would have been the victor). And then what happens to postwar economic boom? And then what does 2006 US look like?

So if Roosevelt had been a long term planning Dragon, he'd still have needed to hustle to win that battle at all cost or else his careful agenda for the next century would have been scrapped.

At best, Dragons anticipate the next big move better than most and are able to apply more ressources than most on these crucial turning points. They are therefore much less likely to lose these crucial battle. But if they lose... They're screwed just like any puny mortal and will need to rebuild. A century down the line they may still feel the sting.

If you are a lesser Dragons than Lofwyr, you can end up fighting against a puny human who has more ressources to throw at the battle than you have and then the best you can do is fold like any good poker player who knows he's beat. And to take the poker analogy further ; sometime you can make all the right decisions and still lose ; the nature of the game (both poker and war) means that at some crucial junctions you have to commit ressources before all the facts are in. Or else you lose. But whenever you commit before all the facts are known, you can get screwed by lady luck. So you can make all the right decisions and still get hurt.

And then don't pretend the loss didn't hurt because no matter how good a planner you are, you have to discards many of your potential plans and draw new one. And nothing changes the fact that ten move from this one, you will still be significantly behind where you would have been if you hadn't lost that crucial battle. Even if you are a Great Dragon.

So Bottom Line ; GD can lose. Badly. To puny adversaries. Even if they made all the right decisions based on a thorough analysis of the situation. Their % of wins has to be freaking high but they get in so many struggles in a single year that they are bound to get hurt at least a few time yearly. And its a silly conceit to assume that some magical backup plan will be able to make the loss irrelevant. To assign so much ressources to back up plans would be moronic ; you wouldn't lose nearly so often if you assigned those ressources to the fights you lost in the first place!

[eidolon]

Dang, Charon. Fine way of putting it. Thanks. :)

[Grinder]

[Demonseed Elite]

eidolon, I think you completely missed my point.

[Fortune]

I agree that it can be taken too far, but it does have to be taken into account.

Of course Great Dragons are fallable. Look at Alamais(e) ... he isn't having too easy of a time at the moment, but there was a time when his plans didn't go awry nearly as much, but it was his brother who was somewhat insignificant. And just look at his brother now.

Not every single thing that Dragons plan for will come to fruition. The thing is that they can (usually) live and still prosper through whatever long span of time it might take for some things to fall into place.