Whatever Happened...., to Tir Tairngire? Options

[Malicant]

If they were allowed to use it, it would be like a slap to the face of most GDs. So it's safe to asume Dunkie once again messed with people for the lulz.

[Ryu]

It's only more open for us in SR if they fucking resolve the situation, or at least get us up to date. As it is, it's just a gaping hole that no one can really use unless they throw canon out the window and make up all their own stuff (which they could just as easily do anywhere else, any-when else, for any other reason).

Yes yes. I was aiming more at the intention for the change. Since Demonseeds answers regarding that situation I´m aware that our situation is not the hardest here. Someone wrote all that stuff and has not seen it published (Holostreets was announced at GenCon 2005, according to the official website). But because of the delay (and to-be-expected critizism "out of principle"), the workload of getting Holostreets live did certainly not decrease. Noone profits by further delaying SoLA, so I shall assume noone does so on purpose (See it this way: CGL bound itself to publishing SoLA by writing about the results. Go figure.).

[Demonseed Elite]

On unresolved storylines, I think it's important to keep in mind that towards the end of SR3, many of us were brainstorming and writing storylines with zero knowledge that Fourth Edition and a five-year time leap was in the works. I just want to put it in perspective: I was mostly done with my System Failure writing when I learned that Fourth Edition was happening. Through most of my writing of that book, I had no idea it was going to be the last SR3 book and that five years would be vanishing after it. I had to rewrite the entire Hello World section because I had it nearly finished when I learned about SR4 and technomancers, and they suddenly wanted me to use it to start the introduction of technomancers to the setting.

There were a number of storylines that the writers had every intent of continuing and resolving, before we learned of the five-year gap. Since then, the writers have had to look back on those storylines and try to figure out how to resolve them now and when it can be done.

[Synner]

I asked Rob a similar question, about the backstory behind Lugh Surehands fall from power. He said it was in a novel by Mulvihill, and that the novel was "in limbo". Have not seen or heard anything about it since.

There seems to have been some misunderstanding here. Mike Mulvihill's unpublished (and as far as I know uncompleted) SR novel "Hidden Agendas" actually explained the hows and whys of Lofwyr abandonning the Council of Princes and giving his seat to Hestaby... and not Lure Surehand's fall from power.

It's only more open for us in SR if they fucking resolve the situation, or at least get us up to date. As it is, it's just a gaping hole that no one can really use unless they throw canon out the window and make up all their own stuff (which they could just as easily do anywhere else, any-when else, for any other reason).

We do intend to revisit the Tir in the future and we want to ensure when we do we'll make it something worthwhile. Looking at our production schedule there are at least a couple of books it could feature in but until then we'll only be providing glimpses of the 207x situation.

Since Demonseeds answers regarding that situation I´m aware that our situation is not the hardest here. Someone wrote all that stuff and has not seen it published (Holostreets was announced at GenCon 2005, according to the official website). But because of the delay (and to-be-expected critizism "out of principle"), the workload of getting Holostreets live did certainly not decrease. Noone profits by further delaying SoLA, so I shall assume noone does so on purpose (See it this way: CGL bound itself to publishing SoLA by writing about the results. Go figure.).

It continues to be IMR and Catalyst's intention (and interest) to publish SoLA, just as we intend to go ahead with the Holostreets subscription service and a number of other projects announced at GenCon. Unfortunately, obstacles blocking progress on those projects have arisen. We are doing our best to overcome them, but resolving them simply isn't in our hands at present—and has not been for a while. When we are confident we can go ahead, you'll certainly all hear about it.

A lot of talented people worked on SoLA (some of our regulars and many locals brimming with cool ideas) and I think the book is on par with the best of the "Shadows of" series, if not better in places. I wrote the chapters/sections on Argentina and the Yucatan and they feature some of my personal favorite writing to date. As my first oficial developer gig (stepping in when the previous developer had to drop out), it is also a project near and dear to my heart and one I am very committed to seeing published (and made "canon").

For those that might be wondering, SoLA is set before System Failure chronologically and a few threads seeded in the book have appeared and will continue to appear in SR4 supplements, these include but are not limited to: the openning of the Nicaragua Canal, the rise of the Genesis Consortium, the updated Ghost Cartels, the resolution of the Yucatan Rebellion, the border tensions between Aztlan, Amazonia and Argentina, amongst others.

[Kyoto Kid]

Surehand ran to Amazonia. You can read all about it in Shadows of Latin America. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

...right, I'm no IE in RL so I won't even hold my breath on that one.

Anyways, If there are any SR dev's listening, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE US INFORMATION!

...especially before I start working on my next campaign... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Don't be so quick to count the 'Princes' out. I have a feeling they still have a trick or two up their sleeves.

Nah! I just think there's too much Power at stake in the Tir for them to give it up so easily. They'll be back, either together or individually.

...and by then the Short One wil be waiting and ready...
http://games.sub-standard.com/Motivational...es/LO5R-Cut.jpg

(couldn't find a link to the Dice Pools - Nothing Says Firepower like rolling 18 Dice with a Minigun. MP which would have been oh so much more appropriate).

[JBlades]

OT: Rhiannon is a celtic goddess who took a mortal partner (and suffered substantial pain for it). Maybe the torch is a symbolic encouragement for Lugh to keep fighting for the mortal elves/other metahumans? I did not find anything suggesting the torch is a special symbol for Rhiannon, but "carry on the torch" would generally work, right?

Hey Ryu,
Common mistake, but it's actually "torc" as in armband or necklace rather than "torch". Uncle Ancient has a little section on it here. Good info on Rhiannon and possible purpose/reasons for the bequest. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ryu]

Yeah, thats what comes from automatically compensating for "minor mistakes". It was no mistake, but I would had have to look up torc, had I believed that possible.

[martindv]

One does not try to be incompetent. It just happens. As it has in the case of Holostreets.

But let me ask. Have you ever read a book or watched a movie/TV show that has something happen, probably something really important to the plot, and they gloss over it until the end when you get a flashback? The most immediate examples to come to mind are The Big Hit and Wild Things.

That is not suspense. That is bad writing. And that is what happened in the case of Tir Tairngire twice. Once in SoNA. Once in System Failure. And a considerable number of things involving Shadows of Latin America. As a plot device, it is not useful to the purpose of aiding in storytelling (which is all the non-rules books do, after all) to do this. And yet that is how changes to Tir Tairngire were made in SoNA (OBTW, there's been an insurgency for almost a decade. Sorry we forgot to mention it. LOLZ!!!), and this is what happened with it in System Failure. Going back and showing how Lou Diamond Phillips jumped out of an exploding minivan, er... Lugh Surehand was chased out of the nation he ruled is now useless as a plot device. Unless someone is playing a retro campaign or just playing really, really slowly it no longer matters. To try and explain it is a waste of wordcount just like it was a waste of screen time to stop the movie so we can see Kevin Bacon shooting Denise Richards in the tit like half an hour after they teased the scene and then moved on to the repercussions and the next act. In the Rinelle case, there were numerous books that came out between Tir Tairngire and SoNA where it could have been mentioned "hey, there's an insurgency going on" and not just "hey, secret things are happening. hehehe" that showed up from Dunkelzahn's assassination through New Seattle (where it might have been useful to mention), to Year of the Comet onward.

But it happened. It mostly happened under someone else's watch. So while I think it is a really poor act of writing and plotting, it's come and gone and the current developers aren't to blame. The situation with the Tir in System Failure is a bit more difficult because it was one of a thousand major plot events going on all over the world, followed by a vaguely-described five-year plot leap which also had to introduce a whole bunch of new stuff. And it was part of a larger plot (and I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it's related to the New Revolution since that's where it was mentioned in the book) that still bugs me for reasons that include me only being able to believe such a plot in the current GI Joe comic because COBRA has cloaking devices and holographic projectors and God knows what else that no one else does.

Just... move on. If he comes back, he comes back. If shady stuff is going on, which was pretty much announced in Runner Havens, then deal with it as it happens. But it's like going back to SoLA: it's a waste of time. The material so far has done an adequate job of compensating for a lack of the book when it comes to the Genesis Consortium and some other things. It can't be that important if Catalyst is publishing a Ghost Cartel campaign book while SoLA is in someone else's hands with a release date quickly approaching infinity. Just move on and pretend it never happened, is all I can say. Because by the time it does come out, one way or another, it stands a good chance of being made as irrelevant as TT is now in SR4 campaigns.

Going back to fill in blanks (especially for a region mostly ignored already for twenty years) is a waste of paper, and it's more likely to create such underwhelming disappointments like the explanation of the Crash of '29 in the novels than to be of use to people who just want the books to do what they are supposed to do: aid in storytelling, not undermining our own stories in-between. Otherwise, there's no point in buying the book.

Synner mentioned Portland for Cities of Intrigue or whatever. Then so be it. But focus on what is happening, not what has. And try and keep the backdoor retcons to a minimum.

[FrankTrollman]

I'm sorry, but this entire argument is absurd. For perspective, I live in the Czech Republic. Over the last hundred years, this country has been overthrown six times. And in those six separate regime changes, it has literally never taken more than a month. This is a country with 10 million people in it, and fifteen years ago it had almost twice as many.

Let's take a walk down memory lane for a moment:

In 1919: The Allies had all but won WWI, and Austria-Hungary was on the losing end. Masaryk took his proposal of an independent Czechoslovakia to Philadelphia and the proposal was accepted less than a week later. The entire country literally did not exist (and had never existed) and then came into being a week after somebody gave a powerpoint demonstration about how it would be a good idea.

In 1936: Hitler was agitating for concessions, and the Munich agreement ceded the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia to the Reich. Nazi allies in the slovak area took to the streets as soon as the news got to them, and the Reich's Protectorate of Slovakia came into existence within three days.

In 1945: The Red Army had beaten the Nazis north and south and the Axis was losing land as fast as the Allies could physically move into it. Opportunistic Bohemians took the opportunity granted them to begin direct attacks on SS positions. A month later the Fascist regime was a memory and the independent state of Czechoslovakia was holding elections.

In 1968: The Czechoslovak peoples had put together a list of demands and structural reforms that they wanted enacted. Prague Spring was in full force. And the Warsaw Pact decided that the requested reforms were unacceptable. So they moved in tanks and troopers to the Prague Airport secretly under cover of darkness. When the sun rose there were Soviet tanks in the main square. The city surrendered before noon.

In 1989: Empowered by Glasnost, the Velvet Revolution seceded the nation from the Soviet sphere of influence. Less than a month from declaration they had full control of the country.

In 1992: Prime Minister Klaus makes a secret deal with the Slovakian Fascist party in December and the country is divided into Czech Republic and Slovakia at the beginning of the new year in defiance of the will of the voters.

---

That's how small countries go down. Quickly. Surprisingly. And when it's over, you are left scratching your head and wondering how long this has been building. The country I personally live in has done this a half dozen times. In the next hundred years it will be overthrown a non-zero number of times. And I really honestly don't think it will involve a multi-year insurgency at any point.

-Frank

[martindv]

So the answer is to give control of North America to superpowers than couldn't care less? Well, that would be the Corporate Court except that it does have a stake in maintaining the status quo and not upsetting profits.

I really don't see what that has to do with anything based in the actual reality of Shadowrun.

[FrankTrollman]

Martindv, what did that have to do with anything? Czech Republic was, a hundred years ago entirely within Austria-Hungary. And the regions inside it were called Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, and Galacia. Neither "Czechia" nor "Slovakia" were at that time recognized even as regions.

And after a hundred years of politicking by locals and foreign powers there are six different countries which own various parts of Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, and Galacia (Czech Republic, Austria, Republic of Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine). The borders of nations are completely arbitrary. The existence of various nations is completely arbitrary. The oldest country on the planet as of the beginning of 2008 stopped existing within a few days of this year's inception (The Kingdom of Nepal is no more, long live the Republic of Nepal). The oldest country on the planet now is the United kingdom. The second oldest country on the planet is the United States.

Countries fall all the time. It's normal. And extended battles with insurgencies that last for years is the exception, not the rule. For every Iraq and Vietnam there are a half dozen Grenadas. For every Civil War there are a dozen Velvet Revolutions.

The actual overthrow of the Tir really was just some people staging a big protest at the capitol and the ruling Oligarchs realizing that they didn't have the support of the army. Then they packed their suit case full of money and split. That sort of thing happens all the time. It nearly happened in China. The first time the central commity sent in the army to slaughter the people at the Square the army refused to fire. They had to send in a Mongolian army unit with less compunctions about slaughtering Han Chinese before they got their massacre going. If that hadn't worked, the government would have been out on its ass.

---

The disconnect here you are having with history is that you seem to think that you can predict where it is going month to month or even year to year. And that's not true.

Or to put it another way: if you're a super intelligent immortal elf and a passive observer can predict that the Tir government is going to fall, you're probably smart enough to split right then so that you don't get smacked in the ensuing chaos. There is flat no reason for there to be a lot of "lead up" to the Tirs falling before they do.

For heaven's sake, Tir na nOg only has about 3 million people in it. Overthrowing the government would be like having a social movement get all the open seats on the city council of Sacremento.

-Frank

[Ian Argent]

Thanks for that history lesson, Frank (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Americans are too used to the low-grade "civil" wars that go on all the time south of our border, burning for years before one side or the other changes who's in the jungles and who's in the cities. But that is indeed a historical anomaly, arising out of some fairly unique historical happenstances. Likewise the ongoing mess in the Balkans is essentially a religious/tribal conflict that has been ongoing since at least the fall of the Byzantines, if not before, not a revolutionary attempt to change the government.

Take 1989-1992 in Eastern Europe. While there were "underground" movements in most of these countries; not one of the "revolutions" took more than a week to resolve, and most of them happened with less than a case of ammo expended. That's the model of revolution that I would EXPECT the Tir to go through. If I was required to pick a nation that would go through a 1918-style revolution I would pick Aztlan, myself, but only if the CAS -Aztlan war heats up and the Azzies start to lose. Other than that - communication is too ubiquitous for anyone to not know that the consent of the ruled has been lost - and it's time to sign up on the winning side (and say you were always secretly on that side, eh?)

[Critias]

So, the Czech Republic is an unstable third-world shithole (or whatever your point was), so no sourcebooks should ever tell us what went down in the Tir and who's running the show now?

I feel like I'm missing about four steps of conversation somewhere in between what seem to be your two points.

[Naysayer]

I believe the point is more like
"You don't really need a full-blown write-up of about five years of a civil-war style revolution, when what's most likely to have happened took no more than five minutes and a flash-mob".

Amirite?

[Critias]

So, fine. Tell us about the five minutes and the flash-mob.

[FrankTrollman]

The Czech Republic isn't a third world shit hole. It's in the middle of Europe, has the second oldest university in Europe, has a high standard of living, is a member of the European Uninion, has a strong and internationally recognized currency, and so on and so forth. It's a significant and industrialized country. It gave us Mendel, Tesla, and Kafka. And it gets kicked over in a hurry a half dozen times in the last hundred years. That's the point. The point is that Czech Republic has more respect, more pull, more money, more industry, and more history in its left nut than Tir Tairngire ever had. And it still vanished repeatedly in the blink of an eye.

So when people say "Why wasn't there more foreshadowing for the Tir going down!? Waaah!" my sympathy is limited. Countries like that don't give a lot of warning before they go down. If you run a kingdom you have to acknowledge at some level that when you get down to it your rule goes as far as your actual sword. And if someone shows up with a bigger sword tomorrow, your kingdom is over.

--

Now as to the question of what you "should get" for Tir Tairngire, that's less clear cut. For the most part whatever happens in the new Star Chamber is in the star chamber and it doesn't matter. No book gives you a play by play of the goings-on in the UCAS House of Representatives, nor should it. There is no reason for any book to ever be published that gives an exact personel writeup of everyone on the council.

Probably the only thing you really "need" is a run down on the current legal position of (meta)humans in the new Tir and the current status of border defense and trade. Everything else you, as a player or a game master, do not need.

-Frank

[Critias]

We don't need any published Shadowrun crap ever. Using words like "need" in relation to a role playing game is absurd. We didn't need the Tir to get a book back in the day, we didn't need the Tir to get updated in SoNA, we didn't need the write ups we already got on every Prince (in both sources), and on and on and on.

But that doesn't mean we don't want it. There's a level of support and information that was given in previous (all obsolete now) books, and since this is just an internet discussion board we're bitching (since that's what the intertubes are for) because that level of support is long fucking gone. Now not only do we not get that level of detail, but we don't get a boot full of piss.

It's not a lack of foreshadowing we're bitching about it. It's that there was a lack of foreshadowing and a lack of follow-up. With enough foreshadowing you could run a better chance of winging it until official stuff got published, and with enough follow-up, well, you're looking at a standard gaming product. As it is, there was a whole lot of neither -- and, since we're all just a bunch of gaming geeks, some of us are bitching about it.

Now, I'm sorry if that makes you think this "whole conversation is absurd" (compared to all the very serious and important conversations going on everywhere else on fucking Dumpshock right now, including all the ones you've taken part in before they hit page 3), but too fucking bad. Maybe the name of the thread being "whatever happened to Tir Tairngire" should've been a clue as to what was being talked about, and maybe you should've realized this wasn't the thread for you to walk into and crap all over.

[Whipstitch]

...I think people need to chill a bit here.

I wasn't surprised that the Tir had a low key regime change at all; I thought the stuff I read about in Shadows of North America made it fairly clear that several of the Powers-That-Be in Tir saw the writing on the wall and that the current regime was on its way out because it's the 20X0s now and there's only so long most people are going to take shit from some guys who can't take care of the economy and favor social stratification in a country where most people are actually educated SINners. I mean, really, the Tir's only around 40 years old and populated by elves; at most people are only a generation removed from life without such an explicit hierarchy, and if you can't keep them happy they're going to start bitching-- they moved there because they were tired of taking shit from humans so why should they take shit from nobles if the nobles can't keep them all fat and rich? So, basically, I couldn't care less about the grittiest details of how it went down, since I'm pretty familiar with the concept of a bloodless regime change, but I would really like some detail on how this looked from the street level and how this has changed day to day life for Runners taking a trip through Portland on a practical level.

[Fuchs]

I wonder at times why people care so much about what is "canon". I have run campaigns for years, and I almost never met anything in a sourcebook that was impossible to use in my campaign, despite me not following canon since, oh, prior to the Dunkelzahn election. Contrary to popular belief, you can easily find a reason for most stuff without the canon reason.

New SINs for SINless? Someone pushed a proposal through in congress because it would help with getting voted in in their own district.

Wireless matrix without a crash? Over the period of 5 years, wireless access became the norm, simply because corps made more money that way and the general public wanted to have that ease of access.

And so on.

[Critias]

I wonder at times why people care so much about what is "canon".

Because some of us run games exclusively on-line, with rotating GMs and player bases, yadda yadda yadda, and find house rules and homebrewed setting modifications distasteful as a result. I grew up playing (and continue to play) places where "canon" simply means "fair," and the rules and setting printed in the books are, well, the rules and setting of the games we play. Period.

And then there's simply the question of value. If I run a game that has Hestaby (just pulling a random name out of a random hat) step up as the new High Princess of the Tir after Surehand was sent scampering away, the game grows for a while, several runs with characters (all of whom have serious background ties to the Tir) send them into Portland, things grow in a certain very specific direction... and then a few years from now, a book comes out saying George W. Bush was the High Prince after Surehand split, and oh by the way it was Hussein that was behind the Rebels of the Spire all this time -- I either (1) wasted money on a new sourcebook because I can't use it, meaning the value of the new material is zero to me and mine, or (2) have to throw away my campaign because it doesn't match up to the sourcebook I just paid money for.

So on the one hand I (and others) have the issue of canon material being wholly impartial and accepted/agreed upon by the player/GM (overlapping) base. On the other hand, I've got the stubborn capitalist logic of "If you're not going to use the material that's in the books, why are you paying money for them?"

If you like to do your own thing and run your game your own way, that's cool. If you've got a player base that's fine with that, great. But not everyone does.

[Fuchs]

You can almost always use the new sourcebook anyway. just because the background history may have changed doesn't prevent anyone from adding a little twist ("so, in the last year, hestaby was replaced by GWB") and continue.

And if you have a player base who won't do anything not detailed in official sourcebooks, then you got problems already.

[Critias]

But, again, it just (taken to the extreme) comes down to the "then why bother paying money for the books?" thing.

If all you're going to do is house rule everything (which is a common suggestion around here), and "GM Fiat" everything else (which is an even more common suggestion), and then you're also going to tweak the setting/make it all up yourself...

...at what point do you have any reason to be giving anyone any money for rulebooks and sourcebooks any more? You're changing all the numbers around, randomly allowing/disallowing published rules, and then supplying your own setting. You're a game designer, congrats, all you need is an artist and a publisher!

I've never understood the allure. Maybe it's the wargamer in me, where I've got to deal with tournaments and stuff like that (so my army lists, etc, are always "by the book" legal). *shrugs* But whatever floats your boat. If that's how you like running games, more power to ya. I imagine it can be a lot of fun, if folks are willing to put in the time and effort themselves, and willing to work together (instead of rely on the sourcebooks as agreed-upon setting information, etc, instead).

[Adam]

Oh, good grief. Let's not start this sort of argument. Critias runs and plays in games on Shadowland.org, where adhering to canon is way things are done. That may not be how you like to play, which means you probably shouldn't play there -- but that's how they like it, and how it works for the multiplayer multicampaign system they have going, so criticizing that to support your argument doesn't hold any water. It's like coming into my kitchen and telling me I shouldn't be drinking orange juice, because everyone in your house loves apple juice: good for them. I like orange juice.

[Edit: Damnit, Critias, you beat me to it.]

[Fuchs]

I am not house ruling anything, I am just filling in the blanks. No matter what books you use, you always have to fill in details. Details that may be replaced later when a new book comes out. Placed a MCT corp facility on a certain hill, and next sourcebook, the devs decide the hill is extraterritorial Ares terrain. What do you do?
Or you needed a gang in a certain street, and later that street is described as free of gangs. And so on.

So, I can't really see a problem as big as you describe it. I can't really think you never made up NPCs, or streets or buildings.

[Fortune]

But it isn't just a building or a gang, or even who is in power. We're talking about the entire feel of a country. Its atmosphere, new politics, attitudes toward metahumans, strangers, rich people, etc, etc. I could go on and on about the little details that make up a good campaign. Now, we have no problem making educated guesses at some of these, but they are all subject to the whim of a new sourcebook ... if it ever makes an appearance. Maybe you don't care about the little things, but they are quite important to some of us.