[X] My Assistant

[ornot]

To be clear, Ex Pacis doesn't hate the Matrix. Their goal was to bring down the existing Matrix and replace it with one of their own making. Which really goes back to Pax's all-consuming fear of Fading; it's believed that she thought that remaking the Matrix would stop that process.

She may have been right.

Considering that TMs no longer face Fading brought about by ageing, it looks like it worked.

[Demonseed Elite]

He means Winternight, they hate the Matrix. And it seems strange that a group with a fundamental hatred of the matrix and technology teams up with "worshippers" of that technology.

Ah, okay, that makes more sense!

[darthmord]

The callous and off-hand destruction of Tehran in the fluff. That's about it. For the most part I've liked Shadowrun.

I didn't mind that. It merely drove home the concept that you don't piss off an vengeful great dragon by declaring a religious war / jihad against him and metahumanity.

If I were that dragon, I'd be rightfully pissed as well.

[Fuchs]

I didn't mind that. It merely drove home the concept that you don't piss off an vengeful great dragon by declaring a religious war / jihad against him and metahumanity.

If I were that dragon, I'd be rightfully pissed as well.

And that illustrates why I consider the IE/GD worship SR's greatest failure. Said Dragon should have had to use pawns and armies, not himself, to destroy Teheran. Even GDs should fear the military in Shadowrun, we're not playing D&D.

[ornot]

And that illustrates why I consider the IE/GD worship SR's greatest failure. Said Dragon should have had to use pawns and armies, not himself, to destroy Teheran. Even GDs should fear the military in Shadowrun, we're not playing D&D.

I agree that a GD should not fly about smiting things willy nilly; and they should be killable by military means if they're stupid. However, I don't think that the military should be the ultimate force of destruction either. While we aren't playing DnD, we aren't playing W40k either.

[Particle_Beam]

Meh, it was early 2011, and it was the Shadowrun-iranian islamists with poor weapons and shaddy houses who are nothing like their real-world counterpart 2009, that got wrecked by a Great Dragon. Sounds believable, as none of them had any idea how to battle magic, and I guess Aden will have used some spirits and a little bit of Invisibility (perhaps even Improved Invisibility) to make Teheran burn.

The fictional Iran in Shadowrun had crappy armies and crappy technology, just like the fictional USA in Shadowrun had barely an army left after withdrawing from all their bases around the world. Or the Japanese (with all their fantasy (porn) cartoons depicting sexy elves, cute dwarves, and other stuff that they really like) becoming the most hateful anti-metahumanists who put people with pointy ears in concentration camps, and forgo democracy and return to militaristic imperialism, as if the Diet never really existed.

After 1999, or perhaps even earlier, the Shadowrun world is totally different from the real world, where some nations have weird ecological disasters, a weaker army, or still exist while in the real world, they don't. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Aside from that, there was a Great Dragon who got shot down by airplanes in Germany, wasn't it?

So it balances out.

One Great Dragon trashes a poorly equipped army in a hazard-prone city in a surprise attack, another Great Dragon drops dead after trying to take over a modern country that retaliates with air fighters and missiles. Afterwards, one Great Dragon tries to legally become president of some corporation and turns it into number 1 worldwide.

Up till that, I'm okay with the Great Dragons and their roles in Shadowrun (quite powerful against poorly equipped sods with no experience against magical fire lizards, quite dead against anything above that).

It's Ghost Walker who stands out and disrupts the above-mentioned power cycle. Three modern armies who experienced the Awakening more than 50 years ago, and were nervously twitching their fingers, should one of the other nations sector try something funny, were stationed there. .
But then comes the self-proclaimed puppet master, destroying Aztlan sector, trashing around CAS and UCAS sector, and then claiming rulership over all of Denver, and everybody's totally okay with that.

Hmm....

[Fuchs]

I agree that a GD should not fly about smiting things willy nilly; and they should be killable by military means if they're stupid. However, I don't think that the military should be the ultimate force of destruction either. While we aren't playing DnD, we aren't playing W40k either.

What if not the military should be the ultimate force of destruction? Since the military (of corp or country) can be manipulated, and often has to rely on information and data gathered by other means to strike, I really do not see what would be an argument against making military means top dog in firepower.

As a tangent, a Shadowrun world where Dragons awoke and found themselves in a world where they were very vulnerable to humans, not top predator anymore, and had to adjust, and had to "go Dunkelzahn/Lowfwyr", meaning adapt to a media world, and becoming something akin to idols (magic authority, author/artist, history authority, pop/media star, politician, corp exec, cult leader) in order to secure their existence, and exert power through humans, not as flying battleships, would be very nice. They could still be driving forces in the 6th world, but their days of ruling the sky and the battlefield would be in the past. And Shadowrun is almost there, all it needs is to adjust a few pieces of the metaplot, like Denver's take over (rewrite it to some political master move, not stupid assaults) and Teheran (could have been wrecked by dragon cultists, or internal strive fostered by the dragon, or some bomber strike of their own air force, diverted or influenced by the Dragon, and similar incidents.

[Blade]

When Shadowrun was officially about chaotic-good superheroes who saved the world and/or took a central part in all of the world's most important events.

[Fuchs]

When Shadowrun was officially about chaotic-good superheroes who saved the world and/or took a central part in all of the world's most important events.

"Harlequin's Back" then?

[paws2sky]

3rd Edition: I thought I'd love it. When I read it, it seemed to fix all the things that had been burning us out on SR2. Yet somehow it failed. Every session I ran of it made me hate 3rd edition more and more. And the worst part is, I still don't know why...

SURGE: While I was down the awakening of new metavariants, like the minotaur, the random SURGElings were too much.

Big D for President: Yeah... I'm sorry, I liked D as a media-savvy sage-like figure. I didn't even mind his running for president. I just wouldn't has allowed him to win. I would have changed it so he died before election day.

Tehran's destruction: I really had very little knowledge of Iran until (quite) recently. After having seen some relatively unbiased documentaries and doing a little independent research on the subject... the destruction of Tehran seems to be a bit... I don't know. Sloppy? Callous? Knee-jerk?

Bug City: I just can't get into the whole Bug City plot. Which is funny considering how much I liked/feared Universal Brotehrhood and Queen Euphoria.

-paws

[ornot]

I think we are broadly thinking along the same lines Fuchs.

The things that would prevent armies from being the ultimate forces of destruction would be the same kinds of things that there are today. The sheer difficulty of bringing that force to bear on anything in particular, coupled with the necessity to answer to other people or organisations. I like to think of the 6th World as being a shifting network of alliances engaged in cold war with each other, where outright war is an impossibility. Wars are fought over negotiating tables, and in the shadows, and your best defence is paranoia.

[Nath]

Wasn't YOTC published in 2003? When the big famous series would have been Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex and Naruto?

For the record, Year of the Comet was released in 2001, at the end of the FASA-FanPro transition hiatus. Some of the authors may have started writing their part as early as 1998 or 1999.

[ravensmuse]

IIRC, Shadowrun and the real world split history-wise in the 80s.

Thought I'd throw that out there.

[Draco18s]

IIRC, Shadowrun and the real world split history-wise in the 80s.

Thought I'd throw that out there.

The official date-of-split is 1991, with the breakup of the USSR (in SR it doesn't happen until 2030).
Due to the fact that it's a major world event, and any discrepancies earlier than that are relatively small.

[Demonseed Elite]

I've never had an issue with the destruction of Tehran by Aden. I mean, it was 2020 when he razed Tehran. Most military forces did not have much of an active magical defense at that point and even less so a military that had explicitly persecuted metahumanity. And as has been mentioned, it's doubtful that Aden just flew in unprepared; he probably had a small legion of spirits with him as well as prepared spells.

Which is all very different from the Ghostwalker attack on Denver, where a dragon who was clearly unprepared (he'd just escaped from the Deep Metaplanes) took on a city with established magical defenses and state of the art military assets.

[Draco18s]

I don't know any of the specifics of Ghostwalker's takeover, but I count one of the things that allowed him to so easily gain control was the fact that there were three armies all ready to blow the other two apart, but lacked enough firepower to take them both out without being annihilated by the combined return fire.

Ghostwalker drops in on Atzlan forces and begins tearing holes left and right. The other two look on with eagerness, wanting to get in on some of the fun, but know that:

1) There's a great dragon over there, he might come over here.
2) U/CAS over there might turn on me.
3) Atzlan can still shoot back

The dragon only out-matched one side, but the other two didn't want to jump in for various reasons (say the CAS fires on GW, UCAS takes advantage and fires on the CAS. GW then turns around and starts ripping the CAS army to shreds, and what's left of Atzlan also fires on CAS; end result: no CAS army and a living (if wounded) dragon who returns to beating up on Atzlan forces, or possibly turns on the UCAS forces because they're shooting at him and what's left of Atzlan isn't as big of a threat).

[Malachi]

I've never had an issue with the destruction of Tehran by Aden. I mean, it was 2020 when he razed Tehran. Most military forces did not have much of an active magical defense at that point and even less so a military that had explicitly persecuted metahumanity. And as has been mentioned, it's doubtful that Aden just flew in unprepared; he probably had a small legion of spirits with him as well as prepared spells.

I have a memory of reading somewhere that Aden was aided by "several powerful spirits" in his destruction of Tehran. I probably read it in Dragons of the Sixth World or Survival of the Fittest.

[Wesley Street]

The official date-of-split is 1991, with the breakup of the USSR (in SR it doesn't happen until 2030).
Due to the fact that it's a major world event, and any discrepancies earlier than that are relatively small.

If you want to get really picky, the official date-of-split was a lot earlier than that (discounting Earthdawn):

From Shadows of Asia:

4500 BC Kali Yuga Begins: The age of chaos descends, the last great age before Lord Shiva ends his dance, entropy swallows all and the Wheel begins anew.

[Draco18s]

If you want to get really picky, the official date-of-split was a lot earlier than that

Then sometime after it comes back into line such that all of history for some 6500 years is identical...up until 1991.

[ravensmuse]

We get it Draco, you're right.

I just ask for some sanity when it comes to Ghostwalker bickering. I can kindly link to the thread that's been made before - to sum it up, "he couldn't have!" "yeah huh!" "uh huh!" "yeah huh!"

Seriously, it takes like five minutes in the search bar (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[the_real_elwood]

Man, I don't get why Great Dragons doing crazy things in the metaplot is such a big deal. When you're writing the plot, anyone can do anything. Corps can outmatch government forces on the battlefield, great dragons can raze cities, whatever. The characters do what the plot requires them to do.

But if you really want to fight a great dragon, go grab the stats, make up some runners to do the dirty work, and go to town. No one's gonna stop you.

[Fuchs]

The characters do what the plot requires them to do.

I hate games with that attitude.

[Heath Robinson]

Or the Japanese (with all their fantasy (porn) cartoons depicting sexy elves, cute dwarves, and other stuff that they really like)

That's a joke, right? We can take an in depth look at Japanese fantasy if you want. I swear you're only going to see Elves and so on when it's explicitly borrowing the tropes and styles of Western fantasy. Even then, the most important Western styled fantasy in Japan is either curiously quiet on the existance of Elves and Dwarves, or else they're inimical to human life.

Assuming, of course, that you agree on the fact that Berserk and Slayers are significant cultural artifacts. Slayers; no visible elves or dwarves, most naturally occuring magic is inimical to civilisation. Berserk; nearly all magic is inimical to civilisation either by violent opposition or by requiring morally dangerous deeds to tame.

Vision of Escaflowne. Animalpeople are the only nonhuman civilised species and they integrate into human civilisation. You also see 4 significant nonhuman characters. Merle is the spunky sidekick to the young human prince, we have Dilandau's minder, Jujuka. Then we have Folkken's two catwomen minions. Notice something important? They're all subordinate to human characters.


Japanese mythology has names for the things we call Elves, Dwarves, Orks, and Trolls. Yousei, youkai, oni, ayakashi. None of those is seen in favourable light. At best they're not imminently destructive.

Need I point out that these are the roles that fantasy races occupied until the revisionists in fantasy literature recast them as less-than-inimical to humanity for use as the fantasy equivalent of forehead aliens. Traditional British folklore says of the Elves "do not go into the forest at night, and keep a horshoe above your doors to bar them entry". The Norse regarded Dwarves as smiths with few peers, but also as capricious alien beings beholden mostly to ancient agreements with their gods. Orks and Trolls have rarely been viewed positively by anybody.


When figures of myth walk amongst you, the first things you will notice are that the Elves are tricksy sons of bitches that will sell ice to eskimos and buy your coat off your back for the change in its pockets. Orks and Trolls can turn you into mincemeat with barely a scratch, and the Dwarves are stubborn, tough little people that demand an entirely new set of measurements. People always see the worst first, because it stands out. Virtues are forgotten because virtue is expected in society.

There was also serious concern that UGE and goblinisation were signs of serious contagious diseases that permanently disfigured their sufferers. I'm sorry, but you don't take chances with that. Just like you don't take chances with Polio.

For the record, Year of the Comet was released in 2001, at the end of the FASA-FanPro transition hiatus. Some of the authors may have started writing their part as early as 1998 or 1999.

There we go. I wasn't in the RPG scene at the time, and the publish date I got off Amazon was 2003. Still, only a few major series included catgirls at all. They aren't even a characteristic distinctive of Anime. I try to do things properly. Try to understand how frustrating it is to see people make greivous errors and not realise or care.

The thought of that makes me squirm.

[Dhaise]

Around the late Fasa- early Fanpro era, where every event was a big advancement of the metaplot. I didn't mind SURGE, I liked Harlequin's back, I liked Threats 2. I liked the Arcology Shutdown,But I hated every single one of them being some sort of mandatory set peice for every major event in the world. And Immortal Elves. Holy crap I could a lifetime without learning of yet another Immortal Elf brazenly displaying power in front of some group of anonymous runners for a 15 dollar pregen runs conclusion. IE's worked better for me when it was hinted in the fluff and the npc's who talked about them were dismissed as complete crackpots. It was like reading Amatuer fanfic where every new adventure/story tries to top the one before it in scale.
I am so glad the metaplot has taken a step backwards, and the focus is on the world again instead of just a few pet favorites in it.

[Wordman]

Mechanical low: my first combat (in First Edition), where I ambushed someone, shot them dead in the face with a .44 magnum, and did no damage whatsoever. Generally, the mathematics of First Edition was pretty dreadful. Also, all of the pre- (and some of the post-) Fourth Edition matrix rules were horrible.

Writing lows: A tie

• DNA/DOA
• Prime Runners
• Paradise Lost
• the fact that no location book has ever turned out to be as useful as the original Seattle Sourcebook was.

Meta-plot lows: I'm gonna go with Ghostwalker here. Not for the reasons others have given, but because it just didn't seem necessary, interesting or fun, and didn't really seem to have much of a purpose. I also really liked the Dunklezahn arc (the whole concept of his will, for example, wouldn't even have been possible in most other settings), and it seemed like the Ghostwalker twist sort of raped the whole thing.

Fandom lows: Another tie

• Physad vs. Samurai debates ad nauseum
• Edition whining. The 3rd vs. 4th, in particular, is the reason I stopped reading this forum regularly. (The idiocy demonstrated in some of the other threads that I've seen today reinforces this decision.)
• The move of rec.game.frp.cyber (and Usenet in general) away from being a useful tool for roleplayers.
• Being called a racist by a bunch of e-mails over the years, by people (all non-gamers) bitching that my fictional world map calls it the "Sea of Japan".

Personal lows: Year of the Comet, but not for the reasons others have stated. Ultimately led to realizations that made me stop playing SR, for the most part.