ED metaplot, What do you think? Options

[Steampunk]

Most of the people who hate the metaplot hate it because of the way the dragons and elves were presented, not because there was a metaplot.

In this case, they have three possibilities...

1. Live with it.
2. Ignore the metaplot completely
3. Modify it

I don't really see a problem with this. If you don't like what happend to Dunkelzahn, modify it. Let him be killed by a tactical nuke or something like this. As the real explanation is never "revealed" to the public, this shouldn't be a problem... I always tend to see every rule and every setting as an suggestion, not something written in stone... I normaly prefer to stay close to the original, because that makes it simpler to prevent being unable to use further supplements, but if you don't like a specific plotline... Change it.

[Fuchs]

I just assumed that IE's have the same stats as regular elves, they just don't die of natural causes. So of course, the ones that live to be 4,000 years old are going to have acquired a hell of a lot of Karma and are going to have some wicked skills, but that just means anyone who wants to kill one needs a bigger gun.

In Harlequin 1 the devs stated explcitely that Harlequin and Ehran had no stats since the PCs wouldn't be able to battle them, but would be easily dealt with instead should they go up agaisnt them.

If IEs were normal elves with all the other limits - especially hard caps on skills and stats - it would be quite a different thing. But then they'd be killable, and would probably be killed when facing a skilled team of runners.

[Ol' Scratch]

Since there's nothing in Shadowrun that you can't kill, so your players could always go after one of the Great Dragons. That was the thing with D&D, any monster or NPC that had stats, someone would make a character or party that was capable of killing it, no matter how high powered the stats were. So go ahead and run a game where your players assassinate Great Dragons or Immortal Elves.

Characters such as Damien Knight and most other megacorporation CEOs are simply metahumans with no phenomenal skill aside from a shrewd mind and bottomless expense account. It's doubtful if their person stats were much better than that of a Mr. Johnson contact. Yet, somehow, they manage to survive and influence the world just fine. Golly. It must just be a fluke.

[Fuchs]

In this case, they have three possibilities...

1. Live with it.
2. Ignore the metaplot completely
3. Modify it

I don't really see a problem with this. If you don't like what happend to Dunkelzahn, modify it. Let him be killed by a tactical nuke or something like this. As the real explanation is never "revealed" to the public, this shouldn't be a problem... I always tend to see every rule and every setting as an suggestion, not something written in stone... I normaly prefer to stay close to the original, because that makes it simpler to prevent being unable to use further supplements, but if you don't like a specific plotline... Change it.

Why, if it can be writetn in a way that no one has to ignore it, but can decide how much of it is true, and what's fiction? In other words, don't reveal the real explanation at all, and keep it to rumor, and most will be happy because it's far easier to ignore rumor than game information.

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

Why, if it can be writetn in a way that no one has to ignore it, but can decide how much of it is true, and what's fiction? In other words, don't reveal the real explanation at all, and keep it to rumor, and most will be happy because it's far easier to ignore rumor than game information.

This sounds like a case of the "bend the world to a way that suits me" mentality...

[Steampunk]

Problem is, you can't do this with everything, as people tend to want to know what happens. Learning secrets is part of the fun and for this, you have to define the answer - and probably there will be people, who don't like the answer. Personally, I could have lived without the Dragonheart books, but absolutely NO answer wouldn't have been a good idea, imho. There are some secrets which can stay unexplained, but doing this with all secrets will frustrate many players. You can't go on forever making up secrets but never define their explanations - and of course, this will prevent you from ever continue a single plotline, as you would have (at least for yourself) to define an explanation for the secret - and this explanation will perhaps contradict some players' explanation...
Of course, I have to add, that I prefer novels that show "normal" Shadowrunners, etc. over novels that show how Mary und Marty Sue rescue the world. There have been too many of the later, imho.

[crizh]

Please tell me hat is there in D&D that PC can't kill.

Almost nothing.

Which is precisely the point, IE's could be given stat's but stupid players/GMs would end up killing them regardless of how powerful you make them. So the designers elected to avoid this problem by not providing stat's and saying "if you attack this you die, endof"

I could easily stat up some example low-end IE's which would be effectively invulnerable to sensible PC's.

This is part of the setting that I like.

Monolithic Megacorps on one hand and untouchable Demi-gods on the other.

In a world where people like this exist that is what they would be like. This is part of the fun of role-playing, experiencing these sort of unbeatable foes and coming to terms with the emotions and psychological pain such situations cause.

Dystopian.

That is part of what Shadowrun is all about.

[which all gives me an idea, see me in Welcome to the Shadows.]

[Wesley Street]

We don't have gods walking the earth.

Ares and all the other powerful Megacorps are gods. If I were to assassinate each and every member of the Walton family, Wal-Mart would still survive. If that isn't immortality I don't know what is. And "Public Awareness" is a very obvious game mechanic that prevents any PC from rising to a level where he could take on the head of a megacorp with his bare hands. Tactical nukes and personal armies weren't given stats in Arsenal for very obvious reasons. To one degree or another, Shadowrunners are employees, never the boss, and only stupid employees get greedy enough to think they can overthrow the status quo all by their lonesome. And if that status quo includes Immortal Elves and Great Dragons, so be it.

I went through Ancient History's site and looked at all the Earthdawn/Shadowrun connections. They're either tenuous (like orichalcum, Aithne Oakforest), superficial (faerie courts are common in all fantasy settings as are dragons and monsters) or in-jokes. If one wanted to make the argument now (and I say this with no knowledge of what Dawn of the Artifacts is going to entail other than what was revealed in the chat [they will be using "artifacts" mentioned in previous Shadowrun canon]) that ED isn't SR's "secret history", it would be pretty darned easy to. That's totally up to the GM and it doesn't conflict with anything that's been published by FASA, FanPro or Catalyst.

If you have a direct example of where the words "Theran Empire", "obsidmen", "The Horrors" or other obvious ED material has appeared in a SR sourcebook, and not under a weak pseudonym like "The Enemy", I'd like to know. As far as I'm concerned the Fourth Age was a mysterious age of magic and doesn't tie into Earthdawn. Which is owned by Redbrick anyway so this whole conversation is rather moot to me. Unless we're talking about a DC/Marvel Superhero style-crossover (which would be a first in the world of RPGs), Catalyst is going to be limited in what they can do with ED material and I'd be (delightfully) shocked to see it mentioned by name.

I only consider SR game material as canon. The old novels from ROC publishing are a wreck and contradict themselves.

EDIT: Corrected my piss-poor grammar.

[darthmord]

Someone else in this thread stated it pretty damn near perfect. You only survive the machinations of the godlings because you're so worthless as to be beneath their notice or waste the micro-second it would take to erase you from existence. You survive the machinations of the megacorporations and governments because you're just that damn good. There's a huge difference between the two, both practically and psychologically. And your oh-so-experienced "been playing since SR3!" claim means you weren't there when it was really bad. When damn near everything in the game revolved around the godlings or the "Enemy" (nudge nudge, wink wink, such a subtle reference!) in damn near every published book.

As previously mentioned: Occasionally referencing such beings and hinting at other things? Awesome. Drowning you in the designer's pet uber characters and former PCs-who-are-now-Gods-amongst-mortals? Not so much.

Yes, you can ignore it and carry on normally. But it doesn't remove the fact that they were overbearing and nearly everything in the Sixth World and Fifth World revolved around them. For example, just off the top of my head, Leonardo da Vinci, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Marie Antoinette, and Napoleon were all strongly hinted at as being immortal elves with even more implications to pretty much any and all historical figures of note. Hell, I seem to remember something about the damn holocaust having to do with them. It was belittling, embarrassing, and more often than not, just plain bad.

Metaplots don't need godlings, and they certainly don't need them to be rich and fascinating.

I'd gladly take a game world where a dragon was assassinated by the use of a tactical nuke over one who only died because he wanted to so he could bind with a cyberzombie to save humanity from the forces of evil for all eternity. The former actually, you know, adds to the world AND the game. The latter just makes one roll their eyes.

Ya know... I started playing back in SR1 (yes, back when we had that thing called staging which really blew chunks). Not once during the time I actively played SR1 & SR2 did I feel as though IE, GDs, and the like were being shoved down my throat. Hell, most of the scenarios I picked up for SR didn't even mention them.

I certainly don't remember seeing or reading anything that said the major historical figures were IEs. None of the source books I own state that (to my recollection).

How much / many of your claims can actually be backed up by canon examples?

Sorry, I simply fall into the camp that believes it adds depth and mystique. Does it come into play in everyday life? Nope. Does it affect my run for Mr. Johnson? *VERY* unlikely.

As for Dunkie's death... that was told in a novel, not a sourcebook. Was that novel determined to be canon? If so, by whom?

[Wesley Street]

As for Dunkie's death... that was told in a novel, not a sourcebook. Was that novel determined to be canon? If so, by whom?

Which novels are canon and which are not is a whole different argument and I don't think it's ever been resolved. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) Peter Taylor did say that the upcoming SR novels published by Catalyst will be considered canon.

[darthmord]

Almost nothing.

Which is precisely the point, IE's could be given stat's but stupid players/GMs would end up killing them regardless of how powerful you make them. So the designers elected to avoid this problem by not providing stat's and saying "if you attack this you die, endof"

I could easily stat up some example low-end IE's which would be effectively invulnerable to sensible PC's.

This is part of the setting that I like.

Monolithic Megacorps on one hand and untouchable Demi-gods on the other.

In a world where people like this exist that is what they would be like. This is part of the fun of role-playing, experiencing these sort of unbeatable foes and coming to terms with the emotions and psychological pain such situations cause.

Dystopian.

That is part of what Shadowrun is all about.

[which all gives me an idea, see me in Welcome to the Shadows.]

I agree!

I also love that word 'godlings'. Seems many want to throw it around with an extreme dose of derision.

One thing some folks in this thread are forgetting is the megacorporations are an entities themselves, godlings. If a megacorporation were to bring its fully resources to bear on your elimination, you are already dead. No one told you yet.

The kevetching about IEs and GDs is really being blown out of proportion. Especially the "DM's pet" & "Mary Sue" snide comments. These same people aren't bitching about the megas as being lacking stats. You certainly can't kill S-K or Ares.

So why is it okay to bitch about Harlequinn and yet give a pass to an entity that is far more powerful and dynamic than him?

[Steampunk]

Which novels are canon and which are not is a whole different argument and I don't think it's ever been resolved. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) Peter Taylor did say that the upcoming SR novels published by Catalyst will be considered canon.

Then I really, really hope that they have a closer look at the books than the guys from FanPro, who had some really ridiculus novels. And sorry darthmord, but the thought "Oh, Hello Mary Sue!" came to me more than one time when reading some of the novels - especially when authors started breaking the SR rules...

[Wesley Street]

FASA's were pretty ridiculous as well. The difference between then and now is that FASA and FanPro were publishing through a third-party, ROC (a Penguin subsidiary), whereas Catalyst will be publishing in-house. So the same editors and developers who watch over the game line will (I believe) have a hand in editing the novels.

[Fuchs]

I agree!

I also love that word 'godlings'. Seems many want to throw it around with an extreme dose of derision.

One thing some folks in this thread are forgetting is the megacorporations are an entities themselves, godlings. If a megacorporation were to bring its fully resources to bear on your elimination, you are already dead. No one told you yet.

The kevetching about IEs and GDs is really being blown out of proportion. Especially the "DM's pet" & "Mary Sue" snide comments. These same people aren't bitching about the megas as being lacking stats. You certainly can't kill S-K or Ares.

So why is it okay to bitch about Harlequinn and yet give a pass to an entity that is far more powerful and dynamic than him?

Because one is made up of a million and more people, the other is One. Single. NPC.

If you don't see the difference, you might be better off playing exalted as a commoner.

[Wesley Street]

Because one is made up of a million and more people, the other is One. Single. NPC. If you don't see the difference, you might be better off playing exalted as a commoner.

Which act like one single being.

[Fuchs]

Which acts like one single being.

Uh... did you check the canon sources? Corps do not act like a single being. Infighting, plots, intrigues, and so on. What game have you been playing again?

[Wesley Street]

Uh... did you check the canon sources? Corps do not act like a single being. Infighting, plots, intrigues, and so on. What game have you been playing again?

I've been playing the same game as you and the power difference between an Immortal Elf and a megacorporation is petty semantics. Corporations (and fictional megacorporations) act as One. Single. Being. Real life corporations are legally considered to be living persons. Have been so since Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. That's why you can sue a corporation but not an individual stock holder.

When corporations don't act like one single being they fall apart. Yes, in Shadowrun, there's corporate infighting in the lower rungs. But each megacorp still moves, overall, as one entity. Two VPs acting like petty children isn't going to affect power-mongers like Damien Knight and his backers. When a piece of the corporate entity misbehaves, it gets cut off like a hangnail.

[Fuchs]

You obviously didn't read the sourcebooks. And it's pointless to argue with an IE fanboy stuck on his "IEs make the world go round" fixation.

But we haven't been playing the same game at all - not if you honestly rate a few pointy eared mary sues on the same level as the megacorps.

[Ryu]

Something Positive

[Stahlseele]

You certainly can't kill S-K or Ares.

didn't fuchie IE more or less die? O.o
also, there's the Omega Order . . you just have to make it seem believable, that SK deserves to be omegaed . .

[Fuchs]

And again, there's a significant difference between a country or megacorp, composed of millions of people, and a single NPC.

It's usually D&D where the level 30 fighter or wizard kills the entire army of the kingdom all by himself. If we get that in Shadowrun then the world really is reduced to D&D with cyberware,

[Grinder]

You obviously didn't read the sourcebooks. And it's pointless to argue with an IE fanboy stuck on his "IEs make the world go round" fixation.

Well... did you re-read your postings in this thread? It's not like you appear to be open-minded - no insult, just feedback.

[Fuchs]

Well, I posted several times: Keep it vague, keep it rumors, so everyone can weigh and focus on the IEs as much or as little as they want. I don't want game information dealing with IE antics, hard rules and info stating their involvement, and especially not rules to the extent of "can't be killed, nya nya nya, it's a god!". With vague info, and options, both sides can have their cake and eat it.

Isn't that open-minded enough?

[Grinder]

My impression of your postings was more like: "IEs are stupid, Dragons are stupid, I don't like 'em and don't want 'em in my game!". Speaking of different perception. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Rotbart van Dain...]

And "Public Awareness" is a very obvious game mechanic that prevents any PC from rising to a level where he could take on the head of a megacorp with his bare hands.

Not really.

Why? Notoriety isn't limited to positive values - in fact, some characters will start with negative values due to qualities. And you can trade in two Points of Street Cred to reduce Notoriety by one.
As PA is based on the the sum of Street Cred and Notoriety, that allows you to always balance you PA to zero.