 Shadow of the überplot, Is it necessary to break from canon? |
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 Nov 9 2003, 04:39 AM
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#26
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Great Dragon  Group: Members Posts: 7,116 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,449  |
Personally, I think a GM can use, or discard, however much of the uberplot is needed for the campaign. There should be some things that the players will find it difficult, or even impossible, to change. But that should be because they tried to do something out of their league, or before they were ready for it, or without enough planning. I have no problem with players biting off more than they can chew and getting swatted like bugs.
But don't have it happen because the precious uberplot got threatened and you had to break out the plot hammer! As soon as you say "This guy is too important to have stats" or "No matter what you do, you can never kill this NPC before the sequel adventure", then you've stopped playing a game and began "storytime with the GM". The PCs are cybernetic killing machines, sorcerers who bend the laws of reality to call down awesome power, deckers who can ferret out any secret. They should be able to make even the "big boys" sweat. |
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Nov 9 2003, 04:51 AM
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#27
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
There are two playstyles: those in which players are powerful, relative to the rest of the world, and are thus capable of doing important things.
The other, my preferred, is where the players are pretty ordinary, a bit less than human in most cases, and really can't do shit unless they get amazingly lucky. These two styles will not reconcile with each other, so be aware that both exist. ~J |
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Nov 9 2003, 01:27 PM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 254 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,768 |
Of course. But I still keep wondering why the automatic reaction of most people here is to revile the first style. It's not synonymous with "munchkin" - you can have characters who do important things and are nothing special from a rules standpoint. In fact, many characters I see described over on the "Welcome to the Shadows" ongoing games fit squarely into my definition of munchkin death machines, and yet don't leave any profound mark upon the worlds they play in. It's also not just a matter of accomplishing things in the setting or not. Even if some things are impossible in the setting, Shadowrun GMs here and elsewhere seem extremely reluctant to use "uberplots" different from Fanpro Canon. For example, a while ago I posted a message both here and in ShadowRN asking for ideas on "alternate" Shadowrun Immortals. I still wanted a setting with big, powerful people who somehow knew the great magics of yore, but I didn't want them to be immortal elves, because, IMHO, they suck. I was looking for things like, for example, one guy being a reincarnated Atlantean God-King who remembered his past lives, and another being a human mage who was whisked bodily into astral space and spent a few subjective centuries learning the magic of other worlds. Instead, I got a ton of posts on how to include boring, old, canon Immortal Elves in the setting. |
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Nov 9 2003, 03:36 PM
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#29
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,548 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
You're right, Bira, you can have a high powered campaign without being a number masher or a munchkin (as long as relative power between each player and challenges is preserved). I'd also say that you're more than welcome to (in fact, I would encourage you to) change the uberplot as much as you like. Do what is fun.
My personal reason why I have no intention of ever even really approaching the uberplot is two fold. For one, as Kagenteshi pointed out, it's a very different gaming style when you feel like you really are on the level of any other average Joe. For my last game, I had all the characters use the BP method and only gave them 70 points to work with. It gives you a more realistic feel and makes you sweat more, I think, and I feel like that sort of game is something SR excels at. Second, I'm deathly afraid of what has happened to the Other Game where, within a few years of game time, players are slaying gods and swimming up waterfalls. A big part of any RPG is characters get better with practice, and if the characters are already making Harlequin feel physically threatened, how strong will they be in a year or two? And what will be left to make them sweat? (You could, of course, release horrors on them then...) I figure we might as well keep them a lot smaller so, no matter what, they always know there are plenty of much bigger things in the ocean. |
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Nov 9 2003, 11:44 PM
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#30
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 7,116 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,449 |
Okaaay... But be aware that if you are running runners as "average Joes", then you are running a campaign very different from the basic rules. Under the standard character creation systems (Priority and 120 points), you would have to almost purposely gimp your character to create an "average Joe". Now, there are still plenty of things tougher than a starting shadowrunner - but I would definitely not describe them as average, any more than I would compare their work - breaking into corporate installations and committing other highly specialized acts of sabotage, corporate espionage, and precision mercenary work - with that of ordinarly street thugs. Don't think I dislike that style - I'm having a blast running my little 40-pointer, Rat... but I don't consider it a "standard" campaign. In most campaigns, whether the PCs can affect the metaplot is not that likely to even come up... but if it does, I would rather deal with it using the rules than arbitrarily saying "You can't do that." |
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Nov 9 2003, 11:54 PM
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#31
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
It isn't so much that they aren't more powerful than your average joe, as that they aren't an order of magnitude more powerful than your average joe like a real mover and shaker in the world would be.
~J |
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Nov 10 2003, 12:19 AM
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#32
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 348 Joined: 20-June 03 Member No.: 4,782 |
Guess what. We affect everything. We create small vibrations. Miniscule insignificant vibrations. Like using the internet. You are sending small unnoticeable vibrations into the lives of people that work for the internet companies. You add numbers to statistics. You pull a micro fragment of the plant's power supply to fuel your computer. You make small insults and stupid typos. Someone may laugh at that stupid typo. Someone may get upset at you and break something they didn't intend to. Bush was elected from my insignificant vote. Small vibrations. hundreds upon thousands of small vibrations put out by a single person. Multiplied by the millions upon millions of people in this world. It is not the big headlines that change this world, it is the hordes of nobodies that change the headlines. Behind every event, there is a history, and that history was created by billions of lives. Take the 9/11 disastor for example. Was it just a group of terrorists and a long list of casualties that was involved in that event? NO. The entire world was involved in that event. The vibrations eventually concentrated together onto that group of terrorists and exploded outward sending a shockwave back to the rest of the world that sill feels it's effects to this day. |
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Nov 10 2003, 12:22 AM
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#33
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
Relative power:
Atlanta Police Department Officer Shirley Franklin, Mayor of Atlanta Navy SEAL operator Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Make the relative comparisons as you will. -Siege |
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Nov 10 2003, 12:46 AM
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#34
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Yep. It's true. You also don't notice the effects of these vibrations, and rarely can recognize them as involving you. It ought to be the same in Shadowrun, too, IMO. ~J |
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| Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_* |
Nov 10 2003, 01:33 AM
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#35
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Guests |
That isn't what I meant. It is unknown what our action mean in an absolute sense. If there is a Truth, I don't know what it is. I don't much care, either. What does matter, to me and my characters, anyway is that what we do does have meaning within our perspectives, regardless of the absolute value of such things. Absolutes aren't even part of the equation. All the great PCs I've seen basically live this same way--the world has personal meaning which we affect constantly, and any absolute effect is beyond our comprehension. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether the CP genre was based on some sense of nihilism, or really how some philosophy like postmodernism plays into it. I think it's a pretty narrow interpretation of a world where literally anything is possible when it comes down to the table-top environment. Places like SL (or at least parts of it) make things slightly more difficult because there is less of an opportunity to alter the metaplot, but there is still a great deal of room for omissions and, I'll just call them "things that could have happened." But then again, some of the metaplot was essentially created on SL. The fact is that the metaplot is a nice guideline, but there are going to be multiple groups that save the world only to have the official credit go to someone else (Cause that never happens IRL...) just because of the very dynamic that Harlequinn or HB, RA:S, BS, etc. were printed in multiples of one, and to confuse things more--In some cases some people run BS as it's printed, others play with an author's desired ending, and most will make god-awful numbers of changes to fit their own campaigns. Realistically the world will be saved by every group that "wins" a published adventure, and there is always the possibility that none is actually the team that really succeeded because the mechanics of SR allow for that possibility. Or the official answer involves giving credit where it isn't due, and life sucks that way, but it happens. And there are runners out there who are incredibly powerful and can affect elements of the metaplot if they want to in their games, and may choose not to (I know of at least two) for their own reasons. Finally, and this is the last I will ever say on this topic--I think that this nihilistic bullshit some of you are spouting is just ridiculous. It's isolating, frustrating, self-defeating, self-contradictory and horribly inconsistent. And I take great pain in seeing people spout it off like it's the holy Truth because it took away three years of what in retrospect were the best years of my life until I realized that it is a self-defeating, inherently inconsistent and contradictory ideology--which, ironically, it is--that sucked away at my very being. Nietzsche was an arrogant, isolated, angry bastard who should be forgotten in the dustbin of history. |
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Nov 10 2003, 01:37 AM
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#36
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Beetle Eater Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 4,797 Joined: 3-June 02 From: Oblivion City Member No.: 2,826 |
Can you name any other thing about Shadowrun that is consistent with reality? |
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Nov 10 2003, 01:43 AM
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#37
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Sure. If you start shooting, odds are something went wrong.
Crimsondude, much as I'd love to continue the discussion, we're getting OT. Feel free to carry on over PM if you wish. ~J |
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Nov 10 2003, 04:01 PM
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#38
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 146 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 201 |
I LOVE doing this too. Relatively recently I sent my group on a run from the "Missions" book. Two of three players had read it (having run SR themselves at some point) and were gleefully awaiting Heartbreakers death. And then it never happened. :) They just sat there for a sec and went: "But... he was supposed to die!" To which I responded: "I told you I change everything." Did I give the NPC special treatment? No. All I did was play him as someone of his experience would have behaved. Fairly cautious, and mindful of his mission. One of the characters practically died, but that's because he was stupid/reckless. As to your comments nezumi: I'm afraid I can't even begin to agree with you. Part of the basis of SR is that "normal" or "average" people do not run the shadows, because if they do, they quickly become quite dead. Player characters represent those who are in the biz because they have what it takes to survive life in a meatgrinder. There are sammies who will feed a troll his own foot if he gets in their face. There are riggers who will do illegal drag racing or remote surveilance for extra cash. There are Mages who will help the poor or perform "services" for certain parties. Why do they do this? Because they can. Because it is who they are. Because, by simply standing and refusing to lay down and take it, like the salariman next to them, they make themselves better then "Joe Average." Shadowrunners are not average. They can't be, or they wouldn't be runners. Grim Shear "Write an essay on the comparitive analysis of greco-post-modernistic-contemporary philosophic viewpoints." "Uhh... what?" |
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Nov 10 2003, 04:39 PM
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#39
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,548 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
I do agree that shadowrunners are special, at least in part because of their choice in profession. My point is that my preferred method of gaming involves people who shadowrun because of something special about them, but not something which makes them superhuman. There are certainly average people who drag race or who have had to shoot another human being. My old English teacher apparently has shot people while in Vietnam. I've done work with homeless shelters overseas. Not too far from where I live suburban kids take their expensive cars out to drag race on empty interstates. Are any of us superhuman? No, we're all normal people. Could or would any of us turn to shadowrunning if the conditions were right? Maybe, some more so than others (for instance, if my wife were taken away from me and, as is the case in SR, I was invisible to the real world. I have useful skills and I am not keen on living in the slums.) Would some of us get our butts kicked? Oh yeah, but the ones who live will learn. Would I be able to break into a corporate facility IRL? Honestly, I think I could... It wouldn't be Mission Impossible style, however, and it wouldn't be Ares. Maybe after I have some practice, right?
My biggest complaint about RPGs is they have a tendancy to force characters to lose their humanity. In SR, I enjoy the characters who have a favorite color other than red or black, who brush their teeth at night and run to make ends meet. Just people, not heros or gods, but simply people. |
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Nov 10 2003, 08:48 PM
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#40
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 254 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,768 |
I've heard several times that one of the greatest things about Shadowrun's rule system is that a punk with a gun can still be a threat to even the most hardened veteran. Why should it be any different with the metaplot NPCs? Sure, it takes more than a punk's gun to kill a dragon, but wouldn't it be fun if that 70- BP street rat started searching the corpse of the poor sod he's shot from behind and discovered he's an elf in some sort of clown makeup? If the plot is not untouchable, neither are the NPCs. |
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Nov 10 2003, 08:57 PM
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#41
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
Two thoughts?
Any beat cop could make Bill Gates feel threatened. Granted, the next morning that cop's gonna find his life turned upside down and inside out. Samurai who are tweaked so hard they vibrate and react to things before they happen might be able to snap an old man in half before he can react. Of course, if they miss and that old man turns them into small puddles of glittering ooze, well... The point? There was a point...oh yeah, relative power. Could any street punk stick a knife in the president of Ares? Sure, provided the punk could get within arms' reach of afore-mentioned president. The street punk has physical power. The CEO and president of a multi-nat corp that deals in military hardware may not be physically strong, but damned if he doesn't have his own squad of near-cyber zombies providing security. Could a PC physically snap Harly in half? Sure - although I haven't seen his stats. Provided Harly doesn't turn him into a small puddle of glittering ooze. Relative power. Thought two: All of my PCs do silly stuff for no apparent reason. Donate medical services during down time, do good deeds and so on. Not necessarily because I'm a good guy, but making connections and earning favors and currying good will is just good business. You would be amazed at how many people don't understand that particular concept. -Siege |
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Nov 10 2003, 09:22 PM
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#42
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Target Group: Members Posts: 78 Joined: 30-October 03 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 5,767 |
Anyone here read comics? I'm sure somepeople can identify with what I am about to say.
Comics have a history and a trend of being written into Canon. Just like gaming books. You get a story... told by one storyteller or a handfull and that becomes "the story of X" and anything that goes back and changes it gets rejected by the fans, and ultimately winds up happening in another universe/timeline... whatever. There are exceptions... like everything else in the world. Anyone remeber the "what if stories" the one shot comics that would go back and change something in the canon drastically and explore the outcome of that change, how it would ripple through the timeline. I loved those comics. I play my games the same way. Cause to me the entire game of roleplaying is just sitting a playing "what if..." So what if Big D was never assasinated? What if Shadowrun had no ties to earthdawn? What if Horrors started pouring into earthdawn in large ammounts? What if UCAS decided to start a nuclear war? What if awakenings stopped? What if they found a cure for vampires? I can only imagine the stories that could come of these things. Ultimately hope is in the minds of the players and in the hands of the GM. |
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Nov 10 2003, 09:36 PM
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#43
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 254 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,768 |
Thing is, many people don't accept that Harlequin can be harmed at all. I'm all right with the fact that doing so is likely to be difficult, but I wouldn't get filled with righteous anger when it does come up. |
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Nov 10 2003, 09:43 PM
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#44
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Traumatizing players since 1992 Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,282 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Las Vegas, NV Member No.: 220 |
There is a difference between "cannot be harmed" and "cannot realistically be harmed by the PC's during their lifetimes".
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Nov 10 2003, 09:48 PM
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#45
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Indeed.
[ Spoiler ] It's just that none of the PCs are ever going to be able to harm him except insofar as my drink is able to suddenly be outside of the cup it happens to be in without having moved there. ~J |
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Nov 10 2003, 09:54 PM
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#46
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,548 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
At risk of sounding stupid, how the heck did you do that spoiler thing??
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Nov 10 2003, 10:54 PM
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#47
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Start it with <spoiler>, end with </spoiler>, replacing <>s with []s.
~J |
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Nov 10 2003, 11:34 PM
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#48
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Traumatizing players since 1992 Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,282 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Las Vegas, NV Member No.: 220 |
You mean you don't drink Quantum Pepsi?
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Nov 10 2003, 11:43 PM
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#49
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Come to think of it, maybe that's where my Jolt has been disappearing to...
~J |
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Nov 11 2003, 12:58 AM
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#50
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 254 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,768 |
No, there isn't. Some untouchable über-NPC harming some other untouchable über-NPC is just more of the same "holy" metaplot. If the players can never conceivably do anything to affect these people in any way, they might as well not be there at all, for all they bring to the game. I ask again, why everyone keeps insisting that these official characters must be kept "pure"? |
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