 Emergence Review, Is it good? |
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 Aug 28 2007, 09:47 PM
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#126
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869  |
Maybe you should say something nice about me first? :D
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Aug 28 2007, 09:52 PM
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#127
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Shadow Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 3,737 Joined: 2-June 06 From: Secret Tunnels under the UK (South West) Member No.: 8,636 |
It's what I have come to call with my group "The President Was A What?" syndrome, There's a huge backstory to the Shadowrun seting and it's richer for it. But there's very little of this collected and available for players new to Shadowrun 4th Edition. Things like the last crash are massive events that are incredibly easy for a new GM to not pick up on, let alone the players. Bug spirits, native american nations, AI's and revolutions. What Buster is saying, and quite understandably I think, is that for a new group that has never played the previous editions, the last crash is a minor reference in chapter one and wont have much impact for them or lead them to see the events of Emergence as arising naturally without a lot of GM shoe-horning. It's something I am very concious of with a group of new to Shadowrun players. There's a related problem I call "Can I buy a Unicorn" syndrome, which is where, without all the careful and slow development that led up to each piece of whackiness, players simply take all the crazy elements of the setting such as Dragon Presidents and marauding half ant people and go straight into High Fantasy mode. Hence 'Can I buy a Unicorn?' It requires a GM awareness of the problem to reign it in, but it can also affect GMs. At any rate, Buster has a fair point in saying that the background that is critical to Emergence making any sense, really needs to have more of a presence in the same edition in which it takes place. That which took place in 3rd edition is remote to many of us. -K. |
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Aug 28 2007, 09:58 PM
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#128
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
You could buy a unicorn, but it would have to be from a poacher. Those things are a protected endangered species, y'know.
I don't think you need to know every detail about what went down during the Crash 2.0 to appreciate any of the material in Emergence, however. |
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Aug 28 2007, 09:58 PM
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#129
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Shadow Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 3,737 Joined: 2-June 06 From: Secret Tunnels under the UK (South West) Member No.: 8,636 |
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I've also been critical of Emergence here. It is up to the usual 4th edition quality in presentation and writing. The prose chapter introductions are exceptional. For pieces of artwork, I also think the full piece on page 7 is excellent. The book is not what I want but it is fine at what it wants to be, i.e. 100 pages of Shadowtalk with adventure frameworks placed throughout. The PDF is not expensive. I would have bought it whatever it was with the SR4 logo on the front. -K. |
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Aug 28 2007, 10:06 PM
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#130
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Hoppelhäschen 5000 Group: Members Posts: 5,807 Joined: 3-January 04 Member No.: 5,951 |
But you need to understand the second Crash... which the history section of SR4 doesn't lead to. It provides details (partly unnecessary), but leaves out the secondary effects of the breakdown in infrastructure... and thus, the Bigger Picture. As far as the main book is concerned, it was just 'Rinse & Reboot'. |
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Aug 28 2007, 11:13 PM
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#131
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,245 Joined: 27-April 07 From: Running the streets of Southeast Virginia Member No.: 11,548 |
That sums up most of my complaints behind Emergence and how it ties into SR4. The BBB treats Crash 2.0 as a casual affair. Emergence made a much bigger deal of it. Toss that into the mix of differing release dates and you get a main rule book which white washes a significant & major event followed by a book that rightfully should have come out BEFORE the main rule book or at least had the BBB give the Crash 2.0 a much more important slant. Did I like the work put into Emergence? Yes. I liked the shadow-chatter. I liked how Netcat took the tongue of Clockwork. But as a book fitting into the SR4 setting... it's not so good. It's not a good fit at all, IMO. |
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Aug 29 2007, 12:27 AM
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#132
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,883 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,386 |
Yeah, the BBB was kind of like "Deus and some AI other got in a... you know what? Screw it. The important thing is we gotz teh wireless now!" Makes it a little hard to emphasize the drama and major changes that really took place in the Crash 2.0 to new players without making them feel like they're getting beaten over the head with utterly random bullshit. Frankly, I feel like they really ought to be pimping System Failure right alongside all the SR4 content.
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Aug 29 2007, 12:53 AM
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#133
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
Late to the party on this one, sorry. Synner, most of what you suggest can also be attributed to Arabic males after 9/11. We don't know what terrorists can do, we don't know where they'll strike; and unlike technomancers, they really are out to get us. So, where's the pogroms and rampant genocide of Arabic men? What, not even close to happening? Gee Whiz, go figure. Even when associated with the most traumatic event in recent history, identified as turban-wearing nutjobs out to eat your children, described as able to suicide-bomb anywhere and everywhere (and *has* hit us in one of the most secure installations in the country), allegedly linked to sinister religious practices... There *STILL* isn't a genocide campaign against them. Immediately after 9/11, there wasn't a single report of a Mosque being defaced in the Pacific Northwest. I don't think there was more than a few, if any, across the whole country. The age of bigotry is long gone; humanity as a whole has moved on. Even after major traumas like 9/11, we still don't go on shouting slogans of hatred and fear. What kind of person revels in tales of genocide and hatred? As for the rest of the book: It isn't an adventure book, like Brainscan. It isn't even a campaign book, like Year of the Comet or Mob War! Both those books carried at least a few new rules, a few new things for shadowrunners to actually do. All Emergence amounts to is pure prejudicicial fluff. My recommendation is to take a pass on this book, unless you really want a hideously unbelieveable story about the new Otaku. |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:00 AM
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#134
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Not that the rest is unexpected but...
<Choke>... Wow. Just wow. That's a first. Me speechless. You seriously believe that I take it? |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:20 AM
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#135
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
Wow, that must be hard. A lot of the SR4 rules don't seem to me to make any sense unless you know how SR3 works and can assume that it works the same. People in my group assume Rob only playtests with fanatic fans who know the books forward and backwards and just don't notice the vast gaping holes in the rules because they assumed it just worked like SR3 unless it clearly said otherwise. I'd really like if people doing new versions of games would playtest them with people who don't already think they understand the game inside and out and see what they make of the rules without someone explaining how it worked "back in my day." |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:27 AM
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#136
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
So you have evidence to refute it? Please provide a date and place and number of people killed and why. |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:36 AM
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#137
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
I think you misunderstand, Syn was (correctly) pointing out that people still have gut-level responses of hatred and fear. Hell, look at the "War on Terror."
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Aug 29 2007, 01:37 AM
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#138
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MechRigger Delux Group: Retired Admins Posts: 1,151 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Hanger 18, WPAFB Member No.: 1,657 |
I think the word you were grasping at was setting, or fiction; not rules. It was a plot book, not a rule book. And yeah, there is quite a bit that is more understandable the further back you've read, but it is strogly implied as to what happened.. and in some cases, that's good enough as it show the kind of questions that the world not in tune with what really happened in the crash would be asking. |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:42 AM
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#139
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
First, I suggest you reread what I quoted and my reply. So that there is no confusion, here it is again:
Keep in mind that's a pretty far-reaching statement Cain is making, and that neither he nor I mentioned deaths. After you've done that, feel free to tell me where you would like me to start, if there's a specific timeframe limitation (say since 9/11 or since the 1960s or whatever), and whether or not you want to limit the list to people "shouting slogans of haterd and fear," "bigotry"-spawned incidents, or actual bloodshed and deaths. Just to give you food for thought, I could just provide this link, or this one, or maybe this. These are only recent stuff, you could also look at this for the bit about 2005 anti-Muslim hate crimes (which do not include "racial or workplace discrimination," another beast altogether under US law). Also note these were the hate crimes reported to CAIR (though I find the double pipe bombing of the Cincinatti area mosque quite illuminating). According to Associated Press, there were over 200 incidents of anti-Islamic violence, including 8 cases of arson against mosques in the US alone last year. (Also keep in mind I'm not even trying hard here and I'm sticking to anti-Muslim bigotry and hate crimes to keep things simple, if you want to open the field to anti--Hispanic and anti-Black incidents, I'm up for that too... ) Just off the stuff on my computer right now I can get post-9/11 figures for ethnic/racial/class motivated violence and protests (conveniently for me bigotry, class and racial tensions are the topic of a recent UN World Development Report on minorities and integration) in New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Madrid, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Roterdam, Shansi, Luanda, Karachi, Agra, Moscow, Paris, Marseille, Tel Aviv, Beirute, Istanbul... note I'm even leaving out the really easy ones like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan... And those are for the real world, not for Shadowrun's dystopic universe where you had food riots in New York at the turn of the century, where the red man brought the great superpower of the West to its knees, where people had their "freak children" killed, where the goblinized were put in camps and put to the torch in the Night of Rage, where magicians and metas were strung up in some countries (and still are), where White supremacist groups carry terror campaigns against the NAN, where an entire nation quarantined their children on an island for decades, where Human Nation sponsors eugenics in the guise of birth control programs... So, right, things are only going to be better, more tolerant and humane in the Sixth World. Sure. |
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Aug 29 2007, 01:49 AM
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#140
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,650 Joined: 21-July 07 Member No.: 12,328 |
I'm not sure I'd agree with you - I think better educated people with better living conditions etc are less likely to hold irrational fears or biases. However, education and conditions in shadow run has gone backwards, creating significant gaps between rich and poor, and huge disenfranchised segments of the population. Disenfranchised people in the world have all sorts of beliefs that I will not comment on the validity of. Examples include: using condoms causes aids, or that evolution is a conspiracy foisted on their religion by the west to discredit key religious figures because Darwin was the son of a pastor. Poor disenfranchised with limited access to education have rioted in the street in paris! All the social factors that produced that riot exist in shadowrun, except multiplied 10 fold. Lots of people are still out there shouting slogans of hatred and fear, and in an environment with lots of reasons to fear and less actual knowledge being possessed by large under classes of people, I don't think the situation would be better than today. |
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Aug 29 2007, 02:24 AM
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#141
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,883 Joined: 16-December 06 Member No.: 10,386 |
Way I figure it, the general shadowrun population can be roughly divided into two demographic groups; ignorant, desperate people, and contented ignorant people living in their very own private Ivory Towers.
[EDIT] Anyway, you'll never convince me that the age of bigotry is over. Prejudice is simply too pervasive and elemental for that; it works in a million little ways. Never forget that the mind is limited to what it has experienced; the second you introduce two people, the assumptions begin full throttle, and color and creed is going to continue to be a part of that. For example, my half-sister and I are both part hispanic, and I can tell you it makes for some colorful if somewhat painful encounters. My sister gets it the worst; she's darker than I am and plenty of people make wildly offbase assumptions about what her ethnicity is. At various points in her life she's been threatened and called racial slurs for being Indian, Native American, Mexican, and after 9-11, Arabian. My own experiences are quite different; I have my father's green eyes so I have to tan a bit before people can tell I'm not quite all 100% white. I get to hear all sorts of wonderfully offensive commentary about hispanics and in some cases my own family members because people don't pick up on my heritage. Honestly, it's enough to make me thankful I'm not black or gay; I don't suffer fools gladly and can hardly even put up with the benign, indirect slights. If I had to put up with half the crap I've seen a black coworker shrug off before, I think I would probably have killed someone by now. I've admittedly only had to put up with penny ante bullshit bigotry; it's mostly benign, and I still get pretty pissed off. I can't imagine what it's like in areas where people struggle daily to survive and live under the shadow of immense economic, political, military and religious conflicts. |
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Aug 29 2007, 03:43 AM
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#142
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 524 Joined: 12-April 06 Member No.: 8,455 |
Getting off of the subject of RL, which is far to dangerous and messy to fiddle with on a topic like this, look at what Joe Metahuman has lived through or read in history books by 2070. From the GGD to the Night of Rage, the bombing of the Sears Tower to the occasional Humanis firebombing, hatred and fear have been part of the setting. That's deliberate--it's *supposed* to be dystopian, it's cyberpunk-with-magic!
That said, yes, for newbies who aren't aware of the history of the setting, the chapter-long overview is like reading a modern history book's chapter on the Cold War; it's enough to tell you the facts, but there's far too much information to put in a single chapter to convey the magnitude of it all, or how people felt about it at different points in time. That's where things like this site and the wikis come in handy. They provide context and emotion that simply cannot have sufficient pages devoted to them and still cram in all of the new rules, events, and story. |
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Aug 29 2007, 03:46 AM
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#143
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 472 Joined: 14-June 07 Member No.: 11,909 |
The unfortunate thing is, newcomers won't necessarily read the shadowrun-wikis and this site.
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Aug 29 2007, 03:50 AM
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#144
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
You fouind over 200 Anti-Muslim hate crimes? Funny, the FBI found over 9000 against everyone else
200 out of almost 10,000. Wow, that's a major set of pogroms and genocide campaigns right there. :S The new otaku aren't an organized force out to get everyone, rape them, and eat the ensuing babies. And that much is common knowledge. They might be Boo-Scary and creepy, but that's not nearly the level of hatred that causes genocide. [Edit]Whipstich, you're not the only minority on these boards. Back in the day, like the late 60's, that was *real* prejudice. The occasional slur nowadays is passing ignorance. Compared to what it was within our lifetimes, the age of bigotry is almost eradicated. |
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Aug 29 2007, 04:29 AM
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#145
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,537 Joined: 27-August 06 From: Albuquerque NM Member No.: 9,234 |
For example, the reason why Cook County spent insane oodles of money building a new Cook County Hospital next to the new underutilized UIC Circle hospital was that in the 50-60s, Cook County was the only hospital in Chicago that would treat black people. If you were black and got severely injured and went to any other hospital in Chicago the odds were pretty darn good that you would be ignored until you died. At County they would treat you like you were a human being.
Once upon a time things really were bad. Like the Tulsa Race riot of 1921, in which some 300 people were killed, 35 city blocks were destroyed and about 10,000 people left homeless. I'm sorry, but having you feelings hurt by bad words just doesn't compare to having your town burned to the ground by rioters supported by the national guard. |
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Aug 29 2007, 04:50 AM
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#146
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
Ok I just re-read the entire convoluted history in SR4 and believe me it was quite a chore.
It specifically says that Novatech was blamed for the last Crash! Not technomancers, not even the Winternight shamans. In fact, I searched the entire SR4 book and there is not one place that says that technomancers are even looked at funny, let alone hated and feared to the point of triggering riots and genocide. I'll stand on my original assertion: Emergence is great as a stand alone book or an otherwise alternate universe, but it isn't based on SR4 core. It would have been a good introduction to technomancers if they weren't already in the SR4 core book or if the Crash had just happened yesterday instead of years and years ago. It might even be a good SR3 book, I don't know I've never read SR3, but it isn't SR4. |
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Aug 29 2007, 04:59 AM
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#147
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
How is that ? I see one reference where it specifically says
Unless you're looking somewhere I'm not, I don't see any implication that the general public blamed them for the crash. And "Name was mud" is a lot different from "caused the Crash". |
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Aug 29 2007, 05:03 AM
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#148
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
Tell me where it says that technomancers are even looked at funny, let alone blamed for the crash.
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Aug 29 2007, 05:06 AM
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#149
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Uncle Fisty Group: Admin Posts: 13,891 Joined: 3-January 05 From: Next To Her Member No.: 6,928 |
Didn't say that they were. My understanding was that it went mostly unexplained. It happened, with no convenient scape goat or explanation. Which was why everyone flipped over technomancers. Well, one of the reasons. If you need quotes I can reread Emergance, but I'm not arguing that people blamed technos. I'm saying they didn't blame Novatech.
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Aug 29 2007, 05:08 AM
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#150
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
Tell me where SR4 says that anyone other than Novatech is blamed for the crash.
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