Emergence Review, (Some spoilers. Kept to a few, but...) Options

[Ancient History]

[Talia Invierno]

Haven't yet read it, so no spoiler tags needed.

I'm a GM too. Certainly I use canned adventure, but then I rewrite large chunks of it to pull in environment (macro and micro), flavour, and always twisting in the PCs' personal interests and goals into the greater network. Good canned adventure that doesn't require any rewriting is relatively easy to find on the Internet, especially if you don't mind translating game systems and are willing to gloss the in-between time. (In fact I took major notes off a simple on-web adventure on the weekend -- and ended up running it as a one-off without once referencing those notes. Just having seen them and thought about them turned out to be enough.) It's the general idea and maps that I want, especially on those really tired days.

Thus I continually seek out environmental books, although I found all too few of them in the SR3 release. Ironically, everything people are saying about Emergence is making me want to get it -- almost exactly for the same reasons that those people seeking a straightforward adventure find it weak.

[Talia Invierno]

Yay, ninja'ed again!

[Zen Shooter01]

MFB: I don't want to use spoiler tags, because this is a thread about Emergence. What's the point of being coy? If someone doesn't want to know about the book, they shouldn't read a thread about it.

Ancient History: I'm not saying that the players shouldn't read the shadowtalk, I'm saying that it's meant more for the GM than players. It's GMs who buy plot books, after all. It's meant mostly to convey tone and theme, not raw information. If raw information was the priority, the writers would have used a textbook format.

And I'm not saying that the format is a complete failure - just not as good as it could have been.

I understand that spreading rules everywhere is not good game design. The point of my remark was that the scars on 4th - from the changeover and what-have-you - are very evident when this book introduces major metaplot elements, but we won't see the mechanics for handling those elements for six months to a year.

AH and Talia: Yes, I've read Tir Tairngire and Aztlan. And Sprawl Sites, The Grimoire, Paterson's Guide to Paranormal Animals of Europe, and Native American Nations Vol. I & II, to name a few. I remember the ram skull ads in Dragon that read, "Where Man Meets Magic And Machine. Coming Soon."

[Talia Invierno]

But the medium is also a part of the message. How something is conveyed is at least as important as what is conveyed.

[Zolhex]

Zen Shooter01 So in your opinion as a GM I should get the book read everything then forget it all when I get the chance to play??????

One thing to think about is that alot of those who GM also play now for me I get to play rarely but I do manage it from time to time so with your thought that this book is mainly for GM's would make me unable to play once I have read it cause then I know too much.

I think I'll stick to the theory (at least as much as I remember to) to think ok as a GM I know that as a player I don't.

[ThreeGee]

[Zen Shooter01]

Casazil: I'm not saying players should be forbidden from reading Emergence, I'm saying that plot books are aimed at the GM more than the players. They provide background for the campaign the GM is writing.

Someone who intends to be a player might want to hold off reading this book until their campaign has moved beyond its events, to preserve surprise. But that's not absolutely necessary, because knowing how the Sojourner crisis turns out isn't much help to a PC caught in a stampede out of the sprawl. Knowing that not all technomancers are evil isn't useful to someone caught in a technomancer terrorist attack.

ThreeGee: Yes, thanks for pointing out that this format has been used before. But this book has very long sections of shadowtalk which are primarily shadowtalkers interacting with, debating, and kidnapping each other. In previous books, the shadowtalk was briefer, and the shadowtalkers commented more on the original "post" than they talked to each other. The game information sections, by contrast, are lighter than in previous books.

I'm not new to Shadowrun. I bought a Big Blue Book when the Big Blue Book was new, and all there was.

[Demonseed Elite]

ThreeGee and ZenShooter are both right, basically. The basic format has been used before, but Emergence does have a heavier use of shadowtalk than similar books have in the past. The comparison to Universal Brotherhood is a solid one, but instead of shadowtalk, the majority of the in-character fiction in that book came from single-perspective entries.

[Talia Invierno]

I miss the broad, teasing kinds of books which don't outright tell you what to do with them, but I've read enough threads (such as this one) to know why they were no longer considered desirable. I had started to think that there was no more room in corporate publishing for anything that didn't give fact and only fact. We would have lost thereby, and never recognised what we were losing.

Maybe this pattern always happens when books begin to be farmed out to fandom to write, market-targeted to a fandom that wants facts and facts only and sees much of the rest as disjointed and unnecessary -- but written piecemeal besides, with several isolated specifics that never feels like a linked whole.

I stand firmly on the other side of the desirable, the side that doesn't believe in spoiler protection and a one-time use (until the players have read, and are then considered to know too much to use again), the side that can suspend belief and even knowledge in the interest of a deeply fleshed-out storyline, contributed to by both players and GM, that doesn't end each time with each isolated run.

But I do know that I might be very much alone in this. The market tells me so.

[knasser]

[knasser]

[Ancient History]

I didn't skip them, I just disagree. I believe you may be limiting yourself unnecessarily in your interpretation. I still don't understand what exactly you want "easily referenced," as you haven't given any pointers.

[PlatonicPimp]

It's a PDF, mate. You can search the document. Hell, if you have the right software you can bookmark pages, copy and rearrange pages, select and paste text. I don't know what more you need for referenceability than a search function. Build THAT into a paperback.

[knasser]

By easily referenced I meant that the information is in an organised and concise form. I don't want to read through a couple of pages of dialogue and press-cuttings to learn what is going on. I want the actual number of sentences necessary to convey that information to me.

This is not a case of either you or I being wrong. I am saying what is useful to me in a supplement. And I have been very fair in saying why I don't like certain things so that those people who do want what Emergence is, can see that my comments don't apply to them.

But what people cannot do is tell me what I do or do not find useful. What I have done here is explain how it applies to me.

[Zen Shooter01]

Knasser: You were saying that letting the players read the shadowtalk didn't seem to lead anywhere. By raising that issue, you gave me the impression that you thought the shadowtalk was meant by the book's writers for the players. Apparently, my impression was mistaken.

Ancient History: I offer the Hong Kong incident as an example of what I mean - and don't mean - by easily referenced. I refer to my PDF of Emergence.

If you look at the pdf bookmarks, the words "Hong Kong incident" do not appear. "Technomancer Escapees Devastate Hospital" is the entry in the bookmarks, which implies that only the hospital, and not big pieces of Hong Kong, was damaged.

Use the search function to find "Hong Kong Incident", and the first thing that comes up is the document's table of contents, pointing you to page 46. Pg. 46 is part of a game information section, and it makes glancing references to the Hong Kong incident that presume you have read the fiction section. But the fiction section requires further searching, and as I just mentioned, the phrase doesn't appear in the bookmarks.

When you do find the fiction section, you have to read two full pages to find out what happened in the Hong Kong incident. And that is only the public version of events. To find the truth of the matter, including MCT's real motive and spin doctoring, requires even MORE hunting through the document.

When I say "easily referenced", I want an entry in the book, perhaps in the game information section, that says "Technomancers held prisoner for illegal experimentation by MCT broke out in spectacular fashion during the Hong Kong incident. MCT spun the breakout to demonize technomancers." This is the information I need as the GM. Keep the shadowtalk, I don't mind. But make the book easy to reference, because I'm going to read it once, and reference it for years. It is a reference work, not a novel.

[fistandantilus4....]

[knasser]

[fistandantilus4....]

[Arab_One]

When I pick up a book like Emergence, I do so for two reasons.
1) To be entertained. This it succeeded at. As a book to read and become imersed in the story, it is well written.

2) To use in my game.For me it succeded at this. Now I know alot of you will disagree with me, but its format makes this easier for me, not harder. I believe that a game has to have a "feel" to it, and for a GM to convey that feel , they must first experience it. Reading through Emergence I got a feeling of, "whats going on?" and "Oh my god, it's the Crash again/ poor Technomancers". This means I can now convey that feeling to my players.

Emergence is all about the feeling of doubt, hysteria and outrage. If you simply wrote that down fact-wise, it wouldn't give the proper impression. As an example, watch a documentary on WWII, then watch Saving Private Ryan. Which one givesa you a better impression fo what it was like to be there?

[Blog]

Have not read Emergence but have played a technomancer for many months. I always had my character refer to himself as a "hacker of sorts". Though considering I'm the only one in the group with hacking skills of any sort they dont really care much. They have seen me do some strange things "If you let me have access to your equipment I can make it work better" ; then again the voodoo shaman is probably more creepy at the moment as he wants access to your body to do... voodoo things to it.

I can't really see why the world would suddenly turn against technomancers. Sure they can do some crazy stuff, many of which better then a hacker. But hackers have been around far longer and density wise have been more of a problem. Heck any gutter trash can pickup some of the basic essentials (ie comlink/programs) using their impressive 5-finger discount card.

Therefore I can really only see this witch-hunt for technomancers ending up spilling out and taking a lot of hackers with them. After all how can you detect someone is a technomancer?
1) another technomancer
2) 5 hits on an asensing test [decent mage]
3) Hacker with enough skill and time to watch/study a TM as they do their thing; though considering how everything in the matrix is subject to customization, seeing the differences would be difficult.

So to John Q. Public anyone that does hacking of any sorts might be a TM and therefore needs to be shot/lynched/etc. From this I feel that there will be an effort from both hackers/TM to cover up/hide a lot of the info about this. TMs will have the advantages (again) with the abilities gained from submerging whereas hackers will have a little more difficult time hiding.

I think corps will want TM alive to 'brainwash into good little corporate drones'. Runners will want them on their team; and its a bad rep to sell out your chummers.


Hmmm I suddenly see most TMs getting a DocWagon 'high end' package for the Heavily armed backup support.

[Synner]

I'm going to break my promise and "radio silence" on this thread just to note one thing.

It is important to go into Emergence understanding that you as a gamemaster or player know about a technomancer's actual abilities and their comparative "power level". By now you have a pretty good idea of what they are capable of and how far their powers go.

This is vitally important because most characters, including most PCs, in the Sixth World do not know this. Technomancers are an unknown quantity in every respect - their origins, their "impossible" ability to naturally mimic thousands of nuyen worth of technology, their ability to mentally subvert Matrix technology, their intuitive interaction with the Matrix, their ability to command spontaneous constructs, etc. But most importantly people in the Sixth World have no idea of the limits of those powers (and I daresay not even TM PCs do since Unwired isn't out). Given the circumstances of their public coming out, the associations made in the media, the confusion involving AIPS - and technomancers suddenly become a public menace.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Sure - but Blog's point is: How does Joe Average distinguish Joe Hacker/Businessman from a TM? All of them access the matrix without any visible tool - the first two because they have implanted comlinks, the latter because he is a comlink.

That is the major weak point of the witchhunt part - the lack of stigmata.

[DireRadiant]

[Rotbart van Dain...]