Do Great Dragons and Immortal Elves really run the show?, Really? Options

[Fuchs]

When the devs speak of the developing metaplots, we're talking about stuff like Emergence and the upcoming Ghost Cartels, maybe the something about Horizon, or the new AIs, possibly the follow-up on the New Revolution story, or the coup in Tir Tairngire. Those are the metaplots that have been featured to one extent or another in SR4 books. As I have said above we might very well revisit the IEs and GDs in future metaplots, but if we do so in sourcebooks it'll be closer to the original Harlequin than Survival of the Fittest.

Some clarifications or examples back then would have been nice then. "Metaplot" has that "it changes the setting" quality" ring to it, in my experience. I'd call those "plot hooks" and "campaign outlines", since they don't change the world.

(Call me old school, but I do like some nice "win or lose, the big picture doesn't change. Not even the little picture, but for your runner, it's a question of life or death" plots. Nothing changing cities or countries or the world, nothing introducing new stuff, just a few megacorps doing business as usual, with the originality coming from the details of each run, not the new stuff introduced.)

[Cardul]

Some clarifications or examples back then would have been nice then. "Metaplot" has that "it changes the setting" quality" ring to it, in my experience. I'd call those "plot hooks" and "campaign outlines", since they don't change the world.

Yeah, realy, I would cal it Meta-Setting, rather then Metaplot. But, then again, don't you still say that the Japanese still send all meta's to Yomi because that is part of teh Metaplot with Japan from Year of the Comet, that Fuchi is still part of the Triple A's and that Horizon doesn't exist? There is no space-based corp influence, and LA is still a happy place without the Deep Lacuna and other stuff from the Twins?

[Fuchs]

Yeah, realy, I would cal it Meta-Setting, rather then Metaplot. But, then again, don't you still say that the Japanese still send all meta's to Yomi because that is part of teh Metaplot with Japan from Year of the Comet, that Fuchi is still part of the Triple A's and that Horizon doesn't exist? There is no space-based corp influence, and LA is still a happy place without the Deep Lacuna and other stuff from the Twins?

Japan is as racist as ever in my campaign. Fuchi was split in Corp War, so that's in. No one ever was in L.A. in my campaigns, so that question never has come up so far. (I do like the setting from Corp Enclaves, but I'll reserve judgement until the PbP campaign I am playing in has run its course). Horizon can be in or not, hasn't come up so far in our mafia-focused game. Gunderson, Novatech and Ares are important corps in the campaign.
Space isn't really of consequence, no runner in my campaign is likely to meddle with it, but I see no reason corps wouldn't have space-based ressources.

[Malicant]

I think I made it clear enough that I dislike such "and he was so prepared already, no one could do anything" plots, so of course I'll not use them in my campaign. And the call about hostages can go either way, same for the threat to Seattle. So, neither action nor inaction is inherently more logical.

I guess you do. Since in the real world, especially in the military field, you make your moves way before you even consider beeing prepared. Like WWII, when the small guy we all know made his move and nobody seemed to be prepared for it but him. Weird. He took agood chuck of Europe before he started making serious mistakes.

So, a "prepared and no one noticed and can do something about it" is quite plausible. Infantry cleaning a fortified arcology in a week is not.

You may stay in your bubble reality for all it's worth, but seriously, don't back your claims with "the devs don't think stuff through".

(Call me old school, but I do like some nice "win or lose, the big picture doesn't change. Not even the little picture, but for your runner, it's a question of life or death" plots. Nothing changing cities or countries or the world, nothing introducing new stuff, just a few megacorps doing business as usual, with the originality coming from the details of each run, not the new stuff introduced.)

Ah, the fear of change. Explains everything, actually.

[Fuchs]

Germany made the biggest mistake when it started the war, it had no chance of winning in the long run. Its industrial capacity alone was not enough. Its navy was not ready, and the airforce was lacking strategic bombers. Artillery too, and mechanisation was lacking, the later never really catching up during the war. Tanks too were not top notch - the backbone in 1939 were the Czech designs they recently got when the allies let them carve up that country, the PzKw III and IV were not yet our in large numbers (and still using the 3,7 mm and the short 7,5 mm cannons), and the PzKw II inferiour to other armies' models, the PzKw I nothing but tinfoil-armored MG carriers.

That said, there are plans, updated and modified, for many situations in modern military. It's not as if the US today just starts planning when the president says "do it yesterday!".

MOUT operations are something the UCAS trains for in my campaign, and they were helped a lot by Renraku in that operation.

As far as cleaning out a location goes - a week is enough given the force disparity. But if it makes you happy, make it 2 or 3 weeks until final resistance was broken. Nothing I'll lose sleep over.

[Synner]

Metaplots are by definition "meta" stories that unfold over a significant number of source books, adventures, and possibly even multiple campaigns (such as the Bug metaplot, the Harlequins, the Deus storyline, Corp War, etc). Some of them are world-shaking (ie. Bugs, Dunklezahn's death, System Failure), others are pretty localized (ie. MobWar, the election campaign, Renraku Arcology) or discreet (ie. Bugs up to Bug City, Harlequin). The most recent ones (ie. System Failure, Emergence) are a mix of both: major events with street-level impact and personal ramifications.

[Daddy's Litt...]

I think they can have influence but they do not want to. They see our world as just the latest fad in humnity but they are still playing the same game they always did. Some, like Harlequin or Dunkelzahn seem to like humanity more. But others like the dragons in Denver or Mt Shasta seem to see us as they did millenia ago. children to be ruled over by fuedal lords who play their own games.

[Jhaiisiin]

Wow. Okay, so Fuchs, whether you intended to or not, you basically stated that you don't like anything that changes the setting, at all. You want events that have absolutely no impact on anything. Man, you'd hate the games my group runs. But to each their own. I hope your static setting is sufficient for your enjoyoment. Me? I'd rather see things change, progress, evolve, and have a hand in shaping those events. Being more than Joe Nobody is part of why I play these games. I'm Joe Nobody in real life, so no sense in roleplaying myself in a game. That'd be silly.

[Grinder]

To everyone his own. It's good to know how Fuchs likes to run his games, in that makes some of his positions more understanable.

[Malicant]

I just wish he would stop portraying our standpoint as wrong.

[Grinder]

One step at a time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Fuchs]

Wow. Okay, so Fuchs, whether you intended to or not, you basically stated that you don't like anything that changes the setting, at all. You want events that have absolutely no impact on anything. Man, you'd hate the games my group runs. But to each their own. I hope your static setting is sufficient for your enjoyoment. Me? I'd rather see things change, progress, evolve, and have a hand in shaping those events. Being more than Joe Nobody is part of why I play these games. I'm Joe Nobody in real life, so no sense in roleplaying myself in a game. That'd be silly.

I like some changes. Corp War was nice. Horizon and L.A. might turn out to add fun to my game as well. However, I was a bit burned by the Dunkelzahn's election campaign. In the end, if I wanted to stay with canon, nothing my group had done would have mattered - it would have even be retconned to keep following canon. We pretty much threw following canon completely away back then.

For changes influenced by runners, I prefer to use runs my runners actually can influence the consequences of, not shows where their actions don't matter because the outcome is predeterminded by the devs. Actually having a hand in shaping an event for real, not the illusion thereof.

That of course means kicking canon out sooner or later, since the odds of me duplicating canon decisions each adventure one after the other are nil. And if that happens anyway, why not start right away, and run with plots that are more fun, and more tailored to the group in question?

When the former group of mostly military players was involved and we were playing a high-level campaign, we had the CAS taking back some of Texas' occupied areas from Aztlan. The runners were instrumental in creating tension and incidents at the CFS/Aztlan border to draw troops away from the CAS/Aztlan border. Later they helped suppress the Philipine rebellion. When the group disbanded, they had been involved in securing a corp for a billionaire, and started to act as that execs personal troubleshooters, paving the way of the corp to rise in power and influence. Might have even gotten the corp to AA status if we'd have continued the campaign.

In the current campaign, the runner work for a mafia boss in Miami. They are slowly (and sporadically) helping the mobster to become the sole mafia don in Miami, and once that is done they might get involved in powerplays further away. And what they manage to change will not be retconned, but last.

Together with the other campaigns, slowly a world is growing which was - in some ways - shaped and changed by the players.

Static? From a global point of view maybe. But from the player point of view, it's a setting where there are all sorts of bits they were involved in over the course of the years.

So, you could say I simply prefer my own, and my players' changes, to those the devs think of - usually.

[Fuchs]

I just wish he would stop portraying our standpoint as wrong.

I could say the same about you.

[Jhaiisiin]

Fair enough. I'll admit my group has deviated rather strongly from Canon, already. Lofwyr is dead in our game world, which of course had far-reaching consequences, and as a result, we've had to alter some information that's come out since then to match our setting. I figure most any GM/group has to do that at some point. On this subject, I have no problem, and you're being perfectly reasonable on it.

Your original posts however gave the impression you didn't like your players/games having any impact on anything at all. I see your clarification, and it's obvious you didn't quite intend it that way.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Holy crap, Fuchs, it feels good to know someone else threw canon out when Dunklezahn ran for prez. I've never read the Super Tuesday module, but even as a 15 year old, I knew that Super Tuesday isn't the general election, and that offended me.

Anyway, I also don't like events that change the game world, and I think I have a pretty good reason: my group rotates GMs. Whoever has a good idea for a run, runs it, and their character sits that one out to avoid conflict of interest. And since we have a different GM every week, everybody tries not to do anything globally that's going to possibly pre-empt what the next GM's thinking.

[Fuchs]

As a young fool at the time, I naively thought that FASA was actually being honest when they asked players to vote in the election campaign books. I was curious who would win when I attended GenCon back then, and it felt good to have the chance to determine what character would be elected UCAS president. I expected Dunkelzahn to win, but I didn't expect FASA to rig the whole thing - and the "boom, now buy this new book, obviously prepared long in advance, so if you thought you could actually shape the setting by voting, feel like a fool, fool!" ploy hammered that home.

Since then, I didn't really care much anymore about what ideas FASA and the rest came up with. They did not care about what the players thought, so why should I hold them in higher esteem? And once free from the "it's official, it must be good" mentality, I noticed that under closer scrutinity, not much from the official material post Dunkelzahn's death actually helped my game - on the contrary.

[Synner]

Don't know where you got your info, but the way I heard it from people who worked with FASA at the time, Dunklezahn actually won by a wide margin in the FASA vote in (all the 80 something people who bothered to mail their votes in...). That this was the expected outcome makes it no less valid.

[Malicant]

I could say the same about you.

I never said your view is wrong. I just defended SR canon as depicted in the various book I know of.

[Fuchs]

Don't know where you got your info, but Dunklezahn actually won by a wide margin in the FASA mail vote in - all 80 something people who bothered to mail in...

Yes, he won, as was to be expected. But from what I know of production processes taking months, the book detailing his testament was already being written when the votes were still coming in, so the outcome was pre-determinded.

[Malicant]

His death was not linked to the election. Your argument fails.

[Ryu]

Dunkie killing himself for the greater good after not becomeing the new president would have been even more cheesy. His spirit ending up inside a cyberzombie would certainly qualify as "And what is this human? thing? supposed to.. Uh oh." moment, but it does not rescue the novel.

[Fuchs]

While I don't have the book with me, I do think it talked about his election in the book. I'll check when I am home.

[Fuchs]

His death was not linked to the election. Your argument fails.

This back cover page says differently, it calls him "the newly elected president".

[Grinder]

He was killed during the whole introduction-stuff, but not because he had been the president of the UCAS.

[Fuchs]

Yes, but from what I remember, we could send in votes up to the start of the Gencon 96. At that time, the cover declaring him newly elected was already printed. I'll check back home if I can find a date in the campaign book.