 Smartlink precursor?, Potential 1st gen SL |
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 Apr 30 2004, 08:05 PM
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#1
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,102 Joined: 23-March 04 From: The Grizzly Grunion, in a VIP room. Member No.: 6,191  |
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Apr 30 2004, 08:08 PM
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#2
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Technomancer Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,638 Joined: 2-October 02 From: Champaign, IL Member No.: 3,374 |
Awesome.
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Apr 30 2004, 08:08 PM
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#3
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Chicago Survivor Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 5,079 Joined: 28-January 04 From: Canton, GA Member No.: 6,033 |
Looks more like the precursor to the display headset and the image link
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Apr 30 2004, 09:36 PM
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#4
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 973 Joined: 3-October 03 Member No.: 5,677 |
...It's Snow Crash...In real life...
...Kickass... |
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Apr 30 2004, 09:39 PM
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#5
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Avatar of Mediocrity Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 725 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Seattle, WA (err, UCAS) Member No.: 277 |
Nice. Time to get me one for snowboarding, and write a little script that draws targeting boxes around anyone on the hill below me. :)
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Apr 30 2004, 11:57 PM
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#6
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 596 Joined: 18-February 03 Member No.: 4,112 |
I figure by the time we get to 2050, we'll have vaulted over the Shadowrun level of technology in a big way.
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May 1 2004, 12:02 AM
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#7
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,102 Joined: 23-March 04 From: The Grizzly Grunion, in a VIP room. Member No.: 6,191 |
Don't get too cocky. We still have the Crash to get through.
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May 1 2004, 12:03 AM
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#8
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Target Group: Members Posts: 27 Joined: 20-January 03 Member No.: 3,936 |
Yeah, but you as a GM - do you ever try to account for changes like this in game? |
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May 1 2004, 02:20 AM
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#9
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 973 Joined: 3-October 03 Member No.: 5,677 |
I just realized something... ...Great Depression. Everything goes nuts. 1929... ...Crash of '29. Everything goes nuts. 2029... |
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May 1 2004, 04:08 AM
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#10
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 29-April 04 Member No.: 6,291 |
Yeah, a lot of the really cheesy references in the SR history kind of annoy me. My least favorite aspect of SR is the history. Other games have airtight histories that are all intuitive while still giving surprises and not NEAR as many Deux Ex Machinas as the Shadowrun timeline has.
But yeah, about this first-gen SL. All they have to do now is put cameras on guns and a gyro somewhere on the soldier for angle measurement, then write the VERY small amount of software needed for bullet trajectories, and we'll have Smartgoggles. |
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May 1 2004, 01:21 PM
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#11
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
Like which games? I always find problems with histories for game settings. |
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May 1 2004, 03:53 PM
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#12
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 101 Joined: 5-March 03 From: Wouldn't you like to know? Member No.: 4,203 |
It just goes to show that the past is doomed to repeat itself. I personally like the parallels the SR time line makes. To each thier own I guess. |
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May 1 2004, 06:24 PM
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#13
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 29-April 04 Member No.: 6,291 |
I hope I don't get too many cringes from this, but the WW games, if you take them secular, have really good histories, extensive as you want them to be, and packed with tidbits. Especially Mage. |
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May 1 2004, 09:11 PM
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#14
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 309 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,548 |
And do you want to know why? Because it's all real (or "real" myths, depending on your worldview). WW had to spend a few months in a library. FASA had to pull 60 years out of their collective asses.
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May 1 2004, 09:37 PM
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#15
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 407 Joined: 22-March 04 Member No.: 6,183 |
Hear, Hear. Then they made up a story about a secret society of (insert WW game here) that no one knows about.
Yep. mages, werewolves, vampires, wraiths, etc. all exist. It's just that every damn one of 'em is reeeal good at hiding. |
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May 2 2004, 01:22 AM
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#16
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
Looking at the various Gehenna sourcebooks, there seems to be about 3-4 different canon interpretations of canon histories in WW (including Mage), indicating that WW kept things airtight by being vague, fuzzy, and general. Shadowrun named names, set dates, and gave a much firmer story. This is much more susceptible to errors that WW's approach. |
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May 2 2004, 09:39 AM
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#17
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 29-April 04 Member No.: 6,291 |
I simply find Mage history much more believable. Sure, you can tout, "Of COURSE it's believable, it's REAL HISTORY". But that's not really the case. Mage, along with some other (in my opinion, lesser) WW games, created a system and a concept (i.e. Mages controlling reality in THESE ways with THESE rules), then went back over history and made EVERYTHING consistent with these rules. That's not two hours in a library, that's two years of history designing, and it's airtight. Sure, it's not entirely made up, and based on real events, but when it comes to running a game, I'll take "airtight, but derivative" history over "100% creative, but slipshod and full-of-holes" history anyday. It's why I stopped running Shadowrun. It's not my kind of history.
About the subjective thing. Personally, I can swallow seven different accurate accounts of history faster than I can one apparently completely accurate account. The victors write the books, and the losers write books discovered a thousand years later, and it completely makes sense that there's more than one history. Hell, if we were to add a dash of realism to SR history, the FIRST thing I'd do is say the Captain Chaos doesn't have his shit together, and left a lot of stuff out. It'd make it more interesting that way. I understand I'm gonna get some flak for this (this is a SR forum, not a Mage forum) and let me just say that SR is a very fine game in a genre that I like more than Mage, which is cyberpunk. I love playing SR and the game, as its status quo in 2060-63, is very cool and very playable. I just happen to have a problem with the history. |
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May 2 2004, 02:03 PM
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#18
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,428 Joined: 9-June 02 Member No.: 2,860 |
As it happens, I have a few problems with SR's history, too, beginning with the formation of NAN and the wonderful, exploding nuclear reactors. However, I don't share your favorable opinion of Mage. You can get away with epic claims of consistency and believability if you use Mage's vague-n-fuzzy approach to writing histories. Writing histories in the format of "this was reported to happen," or "the scraps of this document suggest..." allows all sorts of deniability and built-in retcons. "Yeah, the Book of Nod might appear inconsistent with the latest Mage Sourcebook, but remember, the Book of Nod is not necessarily perfectly accurate." Kind of a cheesy way to get 'believability.' |
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May 2 2004, 02:16 PM
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#19
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,598 Joined: 15-March 03 From: Hong Kong Member No.: 4,253 |
If you take most ofthe things that appear in WW books as 'documents from within the world" and what 'some guy in that world said'. It it very easy to believe that they will disagree. Take a look at some of the 'spin' applied to news about... well most anything. People will always disagree on what happened. There are plenty of people on the 'net who think we faked the Moon landing. But I don't see you saying that the history of the moon landing is 'full of holes' because of this.
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May 2 2004, 03:50 PM
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#20
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,616 Joined: 15-March 04 Member No.: 6,158 |
Perhaps, but one thing is for certain: It gives a lot more leeway for individual GMs to tailor their games. I also find it very believeable for most of the reasons Crusher Bob listed above. In Shadowrun, few people are supposed to know the truth about anything, yet as players and GMs, we alledgedly do regarding most things. *We* know the truth behind Dunkelzahn's assassination and the Renraku Arcology shutdown. But few people in the gameworld do. Is it really that odd that White Wolf decided to approach their histories from the gameworld perspective instead of the completley out of character one that Shadowrun chose to do? Find just about any two historians or archaeologists, and they'll doubtlessly find something to disagree about. No one knows the full, complete truth about anything they weren't there to personally witness. They may think they do, and if they write a paper on it, they may even be able to infect you with their confidence. But the moment some new evidence shows up, all that confidence either faulters or leaves the first historian bitterly arguing so as not to make him feel like his life work was a waste. For me, that's far more believable. And as a GM, that's far more fun for me, too. |
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May 2 2004, 05:10 PM
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#21
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 29-April 04 Member No.: 6,291 |
And sure, it's perfectly reasonable, and I suggest, to have your SR characters having a different view on history. Hell, most SRers without SINs growing up in anything from the Sprawl to the Barrens probably don't have the best education. It's a valid option in SR too, I know. My main beef is that it is completely unmentioned in SR, but friggin' encouraged in Mage.
Secondly, about the consistency stuff. No two different game lines agree with each other. Really, and truly, they are mutually exclusive. A Werewolf can play in a Mage game, but the GM's gonna have to decide who's wrong. I think it makes a much better game. If White Wolf didn't make the game histories inconsistent, it would be a lot like taking out huge chunks of the cyberware and magic sections of SR3 and putting in rules for getting corporate jobs and how different corporations pay, and how nice living in an Arcology is. It's a betrayal of the game's themes! Mage is about Mage, not about Werewolf. Just like Shadowrun is about Shadowrun, not Cyberpunk or Call of Cthulhu. The inconsistencies and warped telling of history in the entirety of the Mage books makes for a very good game dynamic, with different Traditions disagreeing on the cause of a few events. The events all happen, or are left out, no history ever changes big events, but like any history where the results are tabulated by humans, it's colored, as it should be, by PO and the mindset of the historian. It simply makes sense that this passive group believing in the right for all humans to live would have a different slant on the war, than this other group who believes they are the enactors of Karma and reincarnation (read: sometimes-assassins). |
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May 2 2004, 06:31 PM
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#22
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 309 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,548 |
This is the thing...first of all, all of Mage's history takes place over/under/next to our history, nothing beyond. SR's history goes 60 years ahead of ours. That, right there, is going to make it all a bit tougher.
Second, WW doesn't write history, they write "history options." When you can pick and choose from about ten different ways for one thing to play out, of course it'll seem more solid. |
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May 2 2004, 06:34 PM
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#23
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,616 Joined: 15-March 04 Member No.: 6,158 |
It would have been just as interesting to describe the history of the Sixth World in assorted news reports, screamsheet articles, and History Channel segments as it would have been to do it in the matter-of-factly-this-is-what-happened way FASA chose to do it. They didn't have too much trouble doing that with Ghostwalker's appearance (even if they did decide to do both).
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying that White Wolf's approach was just as useful, if not significantly moreso. FASA's is cut-and-dry, it is and that's all there is to it. White Wolf's is open to custom tailoring by individual groups so as to make the gaming experience more fun and dynamic. |
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May 2 2004, 06:38 PM
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#24
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 29-April 04 Member No.: 6,291 |
You've got a contradiction here, or seemingly so. First you say that Mage's history is on top of our history, so it's GOTTA be easier than making up sixty years. Then you say Mage has TEN of these history 'options'. Ok. I'll buy that simply rewriting history once isn't as hard as writing an entirely new history. But creating a very complex web of histories, several of them in fact, that are all true in some sense and all subjective in another sense and all contribute to the metaplot of the game is really friggin' hard. And if you don't believe me, just try it. |
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May 2 2004, 06:44 PM
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#25
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,102 Joined: 23-March 04 From: The Grizzly Grunion, in a VIP room. Member No.: 6,191 |
Yeah, i can see how intricate and complex the Mage writing is. After all, not just ANYONE can think up a FRIGGIN' ALIEN ATTACK. Top notch. |
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