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

[Zen Shooter01]

To get back to Emergence...

Fuck, am I glad to see real swear words!

Frag, drek, and slot were always dumb, dumb, dumb. Yes, turns of phrase come and go, but the four letter Anglo-Saxon vocabulary has been with us for centuries, and is good for centuries more. There's no reason to think shit will have gone out of style in 2070.

[Dashifen]

Good point, Zen. I understand why the colloquialisms were used in the past (probably for PC and decency reasons) but I always found them jarring. I didn't even notice the swear words in SR4 when it came out -- my brain just accepted them and moved on. 'Course, I curse like a sailor when I want to, so perhaps I'm desensitized.

</hijack>

[Moon-Hawk]

[Spike]

Just wanted to point out that the 'stalker cell phones' article places them just a little ways outside of Seattle.

Shadowrun Lives!








Or something.

[Sterling]

Spike dwarves are not as surprising as say, spike elves. We have midgets and dwarves in our society right now.

A midget (which is now an offensive term, my apologies to any little persons reading this forum) is an individual who is significantly smaller than average but the body proportions are correct.

A dwarf is someone significantly smaller than average whose proportions are not average. They have longer arms in proportion to their legs, etc. So technically spike dwarves have been around for a long time. They just aren't as blatant as the (typically) tall, thin, and pale people with the pointy ears.

As for Doctor Halberstam, I'm glad to see he's back, as there's probably no other (fictional) person in Shadowrun I've ever hated more than that fragger. Ever since Virtual Realities, the concept of his research has always offended me at a gut level, and I look forward to the fact that if Emergence is played out as suggested, he'll die many many gruesome deaths.

My review of Emergence is glowingly positive. They present a fictional world event that somewhat mirrors our current real life situation. After some very world-shaking incidents, we have to realize that some members of a group do not necessarily represent that entire group. And the fiction portion of it is a fantastically good read. The way they chose to introduce Technomancers is very well done, but my only complaint is that they should have done a little more 'prepping' in the main book for this take on Technomancers. The brief reread of the main book I've done doesn't mention the distrust and downright paranoia that technomancers have hanging over their heads. In defense of the writers, I did smack my forehead and go 'well DUH, of course they're feared!' when Emergence set up their introduction to the SR universe.

Clockwork's behavior just reminded me that even the victims of prejudice can be bigots as well.

I'm not going to rehash my thoughts on the Humanis Policlub's portrayal in Emergence. I understand people have different interpretations of their behavior based on the canon and the information provided, that interpretation's the only thing that matters when it comes to the way you choose to run your games. I still see them as the 'jolly human-first people with the burning desire to kick the drek out of metahumans if they think nobody's looking', but that's only my opinion.

I would like to point out they did mention how magic's been around for 60 years and people are still uneasy in dealing with it. Now take the matrix, something more dear to 2070 life than computers and the net are right now, and then try to imagine a new 'threat' to it so soon after a major crash. Yeah, the backlash is going to be brutal, and I totally kick myself for not seeing that coming.

For my final thought, consider me firmly against the dropping of the 2050 slang like drek, slot, slitch, frag, etc. I thought that was a great addition to the whole 'feel' of the game. They even mentioned that the 'old (aka modern)' cursewords were considered quaint by 2050+ society. It's fine if the books drop it, but you can bet your hoop my players and I will keep using the fictional words. There's a lot to be said for theming.

[bibliophile20]

Well, after reading Emergence, I've started having some fun with it in a rather direct fashion. Essentially, I had two players (a third is joining us this week), a hacker and a black ops type;
(HatterMadness, no looking beneath that spoiler!)

[ Spoiler ]

during our last session, they had extracted a Shiawase scientist and his family and were on their way to the delivery point when they stumbled into a car trap set by a local go-gang. Unfortunately for all concerned, the go-gang had been a little too successful in their trapping--they had already bitten off more than they could chew with another van that had stumbled into the trap and were in the midst of a firefight with the occupants. So when the PCs arrive, both sides open fire on them, figuring that they're the other side's backup. My players, being fresh and unwounded, blow away the remainder of both sides. During the last few rounds of the fight, a figure darts away from the other van and makes a run for it, catching a stray round in the head for its trouble; the black ops PC makes a wonderful Perception test and sees this. So, after they're done mopping up, he goes over to check the figure; it's a young woman, unconscious, but still alive; he carries her back to their van and also checks the bodies and records their faces in his commlink's memory for later checking to see who they are. After delivering the scientist, they took the girl to their street doc contact.

At that point, we had to end the session due to the time, but this is what they're going to find out:

The girl's name is Aelita Stones (+5 Karma to whomever can tell me which show my sisters hooked me on without checking Wikipedia) and she's a low-level Lone Star citizen-employee, 23 years old... whose SIN is now flagged as deceased; apparently there was a nasty fire earlier at her apartment. To add to the confusion on the part of the characters, when they get around to checking who the others at the firefight were, they were a runner team with a decent rep that specialized in high-level covert extractions--scientists, corp execs, magicians, etc. Overkill for a low-level corp citizen.

But it gets better. :vegm: When she wakes up... she doesn't remember anything, not even her name.

So, as this bit is in this thread, you can probably guess what the deal is by now--Aelita is a technomancer (as my campaign is set in 2068, they're still well under the radar) and the extraction team was delivering her to MCT. Thanks to a combination of excessive Fading from when she was trying to get away from the extraction team, the drugs they gave her to keep her quiet and the bullet graze to the head, she now has amnesia.

So, here's the really fun part (my players requested a character-driven campaign, so I'm giving it to them):
How is the hacker character going to react when he finds out that the pretty girl he helped rescue is a technomancer? Rivalry, dislike, "I don't care," I'll protect her if it's the last thing I do," etc.
And, even more fun... the black ops character is essentially on a leash to NeoNET; they have his SIN on file, although it was technically lost in the Crash; if he doesn't do what they want, his biometrics get uploaded to the databases complete with a criminal SIN saying that he's an escaped murderer-rapist-pedophile-litterer-jaywalker-and-any-other-bad-thing-you-can-think-of and should be shot on sight. And since NeoNET is also hunting for TMs... :vegm:

I figure give them four or five sessions to get attached to her before the complications start to hit the fan. As for how... well, she, before the botched extraction, had gotten into the habit of backing her memories up online, so all of her memories are still secreted away in little portions of the 'Trix. Unfortunately, MCT found a few of them (which is what tipped them off to the fact that she was a TM) and is now using those bits as bait, hoping that she'll try to retrieve them before heading into the shadows. They'll have to wait longer than they think they will (as she doesn't remember backing them up, of course), but sooner or later... :vegm:

[fistandantilus4....]

[ Spoiler ]

I think the little "memories as bait" is a great idea. I had a GM before that used amnesiac characters all the time and it drove us nuts. but it looks like you've got a very unique way of doing it in this case that should work nicely.

As an aside, I don't think I've ever seen that many Evil GM faces in a single post.

[bibliophile20]

*bows* Thank you. And, as my players have found out to their dismay, I am a Very Evil GameMaster™, complete with a high-quality Evil GM Cackle™.

[ Spoiler ]

During our last session, I rolled some dice and found that the hacker's backdoor account into the Shiawase system had been found after an hour and a half and gave my Evil GM Cackle™, which earned me an "I hate you" from the black ops player. :vegm:

I do have to say, though, that I can't take complete credit for the idea;

[ Spoiler ]

essentially, I hit upon the idea of an amnesiac TM during the Technomancer Limitations thread a little while back; after I fleshed out the concept a bit and thought of what I was going to name her, I realized that I had unconsciously taken a plot point for a character from a TV show and twisted it a bit to suit my purposes. After that, there was no choice but to name her after the character in question.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Huh?

[Moon-Hawk]

[Ancient History]

<shrug> It's like vampires writing their names backwards or nobles with their trop and yeksihw. Pure ego, the good doctor.

[Moon-Hawk]

Okay. I can accept the ego explanation. That doesn't make it any better that Smiling Bandit didn't seem to pick up on it. I can't imagine why he'd want to cover for him.

[SteamPunkBlues]

Nobody has answered my basic questions: should I buy this book, and/or should I introduce these events into my campaign? Personally, I think the technomancer storyline is pretty strange, not that I have read the book. Everyone in my game assumed that technomancers were simply otaku 2.0, but were confused about why they needed to follow such different rules than hackers. The element of the 4e shadowrun timeline I was most interested in was Orxploitation, and to suddenly switch focus to the technomancers? I would love to read an interview with some of the development team and see what they were thinking in this release.

[Moon-Hawk]

Sorry SteamPunkBlues, I don't have an opinion yet. I will say, I like the term Virtuakinetic WAY more than I like Technomancer.

[Ancient History]

[Wakshaani]

[Talia Invierno]

SotA 2064, wasn't it?

[knasser]

[mfb]

read Emergence. i enjoyed the shadowtalk, though i can see knasser's point--i can't imagine what i'd do with it if i were going to run this. the technomancer scare was executed much better than the SURGE scare, but i don't think i'm sold on it, especially with the lack of reasoned arguments and the fact that the shadowtalk spokesman for the anti-TM sentiments was, as has been pointed out, just a strawman. the big revelations towards the end... eh.

[TW]

[Buster]

I hope they come up with a similar book about magophobia. All it would take is one mage to force someone to kill his family or blow up a building and it'll be Salem 2.0.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Zen Shooter01]

Having read Emergence now, I've got a few things to say.

I see Knasser's point about the shadowtalk - but he's not seeing the point. It's not intended as a handout for the players. It's intended for the GM to provide tone, theme, and inspiration. It's meant to demonstrate the different views clashing in the 6th World but in a dramatic way, not a boring one.

The problem is, it is a boring one. It's a badly executed format.

I am a gamemaster. I need information arrayed in a compact and easy to reference way. I don't need information buried and camouflaged throughout a fiction section so that fact-finding turns into some kind of easter egg hunt. I need the books to be more like textbooks and less like novels. I'm going to read the book once - I'm going to reference it for years.

And Emergence shows the scars on 4th ed. more clearly than anything so far, except the Caracas section of Runner Havens. The BBB came out almost two years ago, and it was 2070 then. Now this book comes out and says that it's 2070 all over again, but a very different 2070. It makes technomancers and AIs THE major metaplot element for the next year, but doesn't give any rules for them - just assurances that the rules are coming in Unwired, a year from now. Would a negative quality for AIPS have killed 'em?

I also think that the Sojourner crisis was underplayed. It should have resulted in a lot more chaos, a much greater catastrophe. How would you react if you learned that a powerful member of a previously unknown species had seized an orbiting weapons platform and was threatening to rain bioweapons onto the earth? Not to mention the corporations and governments who would assume that the incident was some kind of hoax staged by their enemies for unknown ends, and react according to that conclusion.

[mfb]

you might wanna use some spoiler tags.