 Emergence Review, Is it good? |
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 Aug 27 2007, 11:15 PM
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#26
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869  |
I'd like to take a moment to criticize that. :D So you're saying that only Isaac Asimov is allowed to speak up, the rest of us should just pay our $35 and shut the hell up? Yes we do need to speak up and risk being labeled a critic because if you buy the PDF you're SOL because they don't give you your money back if it sucks. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:16 PM
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#27
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:17 PM
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#28
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
So you've seen personally seen loved ones die and hundreds of thousands lose their lives and livelihoods because those evil, malicious virii and hackers out there... You've also lived with the fact exactly how that happened is still beyond the grasp of even the best computer specialists and techs - because, you know, they couldn't do it even if they tried and they certainly couldn't stop it last time. And you know that these people, if they even are people, are unstable and crazy enough to trigger something like that. Hell, their own powers apparently drive them insane.
Nope, don't think I ever said that. The difference is that people have had 60 years to come to terms with Magic and when magic emerged things were almost as bad (though not quite as bad since the media and the corps didn't take the reigns of the situation and weren't fearful of the potential threat emerging as they are in 2070). They've also been told this isn't magic. And for all intents and purposes it isn't, a baseline technomancers is able to do things that no magician has ever been able to in all of the recorded history of thaumaturgy.
All of which is mastered by a skilled select few and costs thousands of nuyen in hardware and software to produce - where as these technomancers can do it with their minds alone, they can do it intuitively, they might be even doing it without knowing, hell their sprites might do it for them without them even knowing its being done. To use the X-men comparison that's been bandied around its like saying people won't be scared of individuals capable of firing beams of coherent light from their eyes because the end effect is the same as firing a big gun that anyone can buy. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:20 PM
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#29
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
In context of the 2070's? Yep. Happened back in the 20's, didn't it? Back when Technomancers weren't around at all, in fact! Even after 50 years, experts still don't fully know how that crazy virus got to be so superpowerful...
As opposed to all those stable magicians and alien entities involved with the Universal Brotherhood, or who took out an entire major UCAS city, killing, torturing, experimenting on, and infecting with God knows what? |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:20 PM
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#30
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
Um, didn't you just make Funk's point? Mages CAN do all that and more. And the masses don't need to be told lies, they've actually seen mages do it on TV. And yet mages are not hunted, technomancers are. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:25 PM
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#31
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
Keep in mind that a large part of the public's perception of technomancers has to do with how they were exposed; people would look at Al Quaeda differently if they tried to discredit political leaders with embarrassing photos instead of terrorize a nation with coordinated mass murder.
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Aug 27 2007, 11:28 PM
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#32
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
So in the entire timeline of Shadowrun, no magician, cybersam, or hacker has ever killed lots of people? No group of magicians has ever conjured volcanos or brought plagues of demons to earth?
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Aug 27 2007, 11:29 PM
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#33
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 325 Joined: 9-December 06 From: the Maaatlock-Expressway! Member No.: 10,326 |
But magicians also had 60 years to show the world that they are, while still powerful and generally awesome, not ALL-powerful and also not all crazy ghost-dancers (who,at their peak, still need to commit ritual suicide by the hundreds to blow up one or two volcanos), while TMs are this years new big scary thing and for all you know, one of these ... things might just be able to blow up a power plant just by thinking hard at it. IN FACT, HE MIGHT BE DOING IT RIGHT NOW! Plotting the downfall of all you hold dear! OH NOES! Technomancers are the Al Quaida of the 2070's.
EDIT: while i was typing away with my big sluggish fingers, AH made the exact same comparison... scary... Let's mob up and burn something! |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:30 PM
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#34
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
But mages CAN blow up a power plant just by thinking hard at it. People don't need to be lied to about it, they've seen it on TV.
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Aug 27 2007, 11:35 PM
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#35
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
No, because as I've pointed out technomancers are doing similar things to what mages can accomplish and things that cannot be explained by magic, that in fact are completely impossible to do with magic, and that when witnessed by a magician will be certified as not being magic by any accepted definition of the term in 2070. And to repeate myself - if mages were depicted as:
Note mages were indeed hunted, strung up and killed, for a lot less way back in the day and they didn't have the media and a significant portion of the corporations actively working against them. That society has come to understand magic better and live with it doesn't mean it is accepted and not viewed with suspicion. However, society has had 60 years to learn that magic has limits and consequences, that there are countermeasures and responses available to the powers that be, and that ultimately magic is understandable. Technomancers benefit from none of that. They are clearly not mages, their abilities drive them nuts, and no one knows what their true potential is and what it takes to unlock it (to a possibly world devastating effect that 60 years of information tells us no magician could hope reproduce). As Ancient has mentioned the manner in which technomancers emerged, the specific events and the manner they were already being portrayed in the media, further fans the flames of doubt and fear. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:40 PM
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#36
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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 |
EDIT: n/m. I've been through this once already and have no wish to appear as though I have a vendetta against this book. It's Shadowrun 4th Edition and available as a PDF. People might as well just buy it and see if they like it. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:45 PM
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#37
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
Who in the world would care if a terrorist was using magic, "virtuakinetics", nanites, bioweapons, nukes, or opening the Arc of the Covenant? Mages can create, have created, and have the potential to once again create disasters on a huge scale. Just like technomancers. And unlike technomancers, no one has to lie to them about it, they've seen mages do it on TV. And yet technomancers are hunted and mages aren't. It's like Emergence exists in its own universe where everyone has forgotten about ghost dances, insect spirit invasions, and every act of terrorism a mage, adept, gun bunny, or scriptkiddie has perpetrated on the world. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:49 PM
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#38
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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 |
One last thing before I jack out for the night... I've just opened up Emergence for the first time in ages and can't find a quick answer to this. I can't remember why the media is so dedicated to whipping up fear and hatred of technomancers? Anyone?
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Aug 27 2007, 11:49 PM
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#39
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 325 Joined: 9-December 06 From: the Maaatlock-Expressway! Member No.: 10,326 |
Except in Karl Kombatmage sims maybe, when was the last time in SR history that something bigger than say, a car, was openly and publicly blown up by magic? (The late President Dunkelzahn nonwithstanding, as he was a dragon, and those are wierd anyway and if you elect a lizard thensomething funky is just bound to happen). For all I know, that would be around the tme of the GGD. Since then, I'd estimate that far more people have been healed of cancer and gutshots than have been hated to death by magic. AND don't forget that it's still stated that the general population still distrusts magic and magic users. They've just moved on from torch and pitchfork-style distrust to something a little more subtle. Compare McCarthy era USA to post 9/11 USA. back then, being suspected of being a commie would get you in real bad trouble. Now, it's still kinda suspicious, but if something scary happens, it's the guy in the turban you go looking for first the for blame game. |
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Aug 27 2007, 11:54 PM
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#40
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
And the result was a megapower brought to its knees and forced to bargain with the Natives. At the time this was the equivalent of Emergence and the consequences were equally far reaching, however, the dangerous foe was a skulking Indian shaman bent on avenging his people and hiding somewhere in the North American hinterland - not your next door neighbor or the guy in the next cubicle who are slowly being driven insane by AIPS.
Chapter's 2 and 3 Game Info covers most of it. The media is at the service of the megacorporations and (most of) the corporations want technomancers either under their control or eliminated as a threat (they don't want another Pax emerging). Even Evo and Horizon are initially undecided and go with the flow. The best way to accomplish this, given that technomancers can be anyone anywhere and are at large, is to scare them into submission and give them nowhere to hide. If at the same time the megacorps can scare governments and the masses into sanctioning their pogroms, they'll be able to get exactly what they want - not genocide, but experimentation camps and government sanctioned labs working on figuring out what makes technomancers tick and how to reproduce those abilities (or failing that counter or detroying them). The media campaign both backs technomancers into a corner and influences lawmakers and the public to support the corp agendas - and if it costs a few lives, it's just a few less wild cards out there. |
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Aug 28 2007, 12:07 AM
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#41
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Actually if you reread SR3 material following Bug City and the Shedim emergence you will realize that similar phenomenons and witch hunts did happen in the 50's - and the worldwide bug hunts that followed Chicago were just as impressive as the witchhunts in Emergence. In fact backlashes of this sort were why Tehran was razed. The issue is simple. Technomancers are linked, correctly or not, to the single most traumatic event in recent memory and they roam freely and hidden amongst the population. If left unchecked their powers might, just might, potentially wreck havoc on an a scale unimaginable for any terrorist, mage, adept, script or gunbunny could ever hope to achieve. The scale and scope of the damage of the first and second Crash far outstrips anything the Bugs have and unlike any other disaster or threat that's menaced the Sixth World this one touched almost everyone the world over. Who is to say that the crazed schizophrenic mind of just one technomancer couldn't spawn that degree of devastation again - possibly even unwittingly? Events in Hong Kong seem like evidence that they are able to do just that... |
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Aug 28 2007, 12:22 AM
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#42
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Shooting Target Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,755 Joined: 5-September 06 From: UCAS Member No.: 9,313 |
Much like real life rational has nothing to do with the heart of the matter.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. "What people don't understand they fear and what people fear they try to destory." Human nature really 1 in 4 people really are just sheep waiting for the nightly news (trid,matrix blog) to tell them what to think, what is the "real truth". |
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Aug 28 2007, 12:32 AM
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#43
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
Ratings. That, and it might suit the purposes of the megas that own the news outlets to report it in this fashion. |
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Aug 28 2007, 12:38 AM
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#44
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
Yes. Because the one thing you want to encourage the entire world to switch to your new Matrix protocols and buy your new commlinks (that just HAPPENED to have been mass produced, distributed, and ready to go for this entire fiasco) is to instill trust in both them and the new network in exactly that fashion.
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Aug 28 2007, 12:45 AM
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#45
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,228 Joined: 24-July 07 From: Canada Member No.: 12,350 |
Well it seems Dr. F didn't like Technomancers from the start, so it's obvious that he wouldn't like a plot book about them.
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Aug 28 2007, 12:55 AM
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#46
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
Give the Doc the benefit of the doubt, it's a fair point. However, at the time when the events of Emergence occur the wireless world is practically integral to day-to-day living. Billions of people literally could not live without the Matrix, there would be no money, no food, no power, no government, no GridLink, no trideo. You might get a few people that decide to go off somewhere without the Matrix and "live on nuts and berries and commune with what's left of bloody Nature," but they're the wild fringe. The rest of the world will go through varying periods of mass hysteria and then come to grips with things - one way or another.
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Aug 28 2007, 12:56 AM
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#47
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Immortal Elf Group: Validating Posts: 7,999 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,890 |
I like Technomancers just fine. What I don't like is how they're handling them, and what I really don't like is how they handled them in the past ("kids who burn-out at puberty! Wewt! What a great idea!"). |
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Aug 28 2007, 01:23 AM
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#48
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 524 Joined: 12-April 06 Member No.: 8,455 |
Note that if the GGD had happened in 2011, right after VITAS and before the Awakening (where there were plenty of scares, but also governments claiming to have things under control, Dunk on TV telling people not to panic, etc.), and the GGD had been portrayed as being the result of *anybody* who Awakened... the results would have been more alike.
Instead, people had 5 years to get used to the idea that magic was around, and lots of people dreamed of magic while they were children, so it had a decent shot at developing a positive connotation before the GGD happened. |
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Aug 28 2007, 02:29 AM
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#49
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,246 Joined: 8-June 07 Member No.: 11,869 |
When I was a kid, I was the one who always had to change the channel on the TV, so I grew up wishing I could change the channel without having to get up off the couch. Then they invented the remote control. My childhood fantasy has been fulfilled. Harry Potter's got nothing on me. |
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Aug 28 2007, 02:35 AM
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#50
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 609 Joined: 13-August 07 Member No.: 12,615 |
As far as actually playing Emergence goes, the main options would be:
a TM trying to avoid the dragnet a runner helping/rescuing TMs working for the one or two remaining independent (mostly) news outlets to discover the truth or, if you're really sick, rounding up TMs to deliver them for vivisection |
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