So what happened in the end?, CGL, state of Dumpshock, etc. Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Switch to: Outline Standard Switch to: Linear+

[knasser]

I haven't been here for at least two years. More I think.

When I left, the place was a giant conflagration with people being banned, damage control from CGL representatives after Loren Coleman had been found embezzling funds and freelancers were not getting paid and withholding copyright... I walked in disgust when CGL retained the Shadowrun licence.

Now I'm being pestered to run Shadowrun again by some friends so I decided to look in and see what the place looks like these days. It's quiet here. Never seen it so quiet - especially given there was a new edition recently. Place feels dead. I know CGL were heavily promoting their own company forums for Shadowrun over Dumpshock. Did that place eventually take over? What happened with the licence? Is LLC still running things over there and how many of the original writers of SR4 are now working on SR5 or did it become a major staff overhaul as it was looking like for a while?

What, in short, is the state of things these days? Any of the old timers still functioning?

[Stahlseele]

It being quiet here may have something to do with it being almost christmas.
But yes, it has slowed down a bit compared to when you have been here last.


No, the official Board did not take over from dumpshock as far as i cann tell.
The License is sadly still with CGL.
Yeah, LLC still is in it over there.
And i think about half or so of the originals stopped working for CGL or at least on shadowrun.

Yeah, several of the old timers are still here and some even still there working on SR5.
Bull for example, if he's old timer enough for you.

[knasser]

It being quiet here may have something to do with it being almost christmas.
But yes, it has slowed down a bit compared to when you have been here last.


No, the official Board did not take over from dumpshock as far as i cann tell.
The License is sadly still with CGL.
Yeah, LLC still is in it over there.
And i think about half or so of the originals stopped working for CGL or at least on shadowrun.

Yeah, several of the old timers are still here and some even still there working on SR5.
Bull for example, if he's old timer enough for you.

Huh. I would have thought Christmas might make it busier. People off work, no longer at Uni., that sort of thing. But I've been through the recent threads. I see very few of the regular old names (yourself, obviously). That's a real shame about CGL. When I left, they were frantically throwing out PDFs of any material old or new, that they had to hand. War was the last thing they brought out when I left. I was here just long enough to read some of the initial horrified reactions. The quality control on it was awful.

Yes, I remember Bull. He was starting to fill some of the void left by those departing from CGL, I think. Which concerned me at the time because I remember Bull always bemoaning how SR4 wasn't cyberpunk enough. As if that entire genre shouldn't be buried and left to rot being a product of anti-technology fear entirely at odds with how current generations view technology (i.e. a cool thing to be embraced). He was always complaining how SR4 had ditched the 'dehumanisation of technology' or something.

Any others still about? Raise your hand! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Elfenlied]

Yes, I remember Bull. He was starting to fill some of the void left by those departing from CGL, I think. Which concerned me at the time because I remember Bull always bemoaning how SR4 wasn't cyberpunk enough. As if that entire genre shouldn't be buried and left to rot being a product of anti-technology fear entirely at odds with how current generations view technology (i.e. a cool thing to be embraced). He was always complaining how SR4 had ditched the 'dehumanisation of technology' or something.

He did get decking reintroduced with SR5 and handwaved away nanotech and most technological progress made in SR4. For better or for worse, I guess.

[knasser]

He did get decking reintroduced with SR5 and handwaved away nanotech and most technological progress made in SR4. For better or for worse, I guess.

Huh. That was always his wish. When you say "decking reintroduced" do you just mean a return to the terminology of using "Decking" in place of "Hacking" or is it, as I fear you mean, a return to people walking around with great big slabs of "cyberdeck"? Please tell me at least that there is still wireless technology and commlinks in the game? An Eighties view of the future is just going to look stupid next to what we already have today.

[Glyph]

Commlinks are still there, but you need expensive cyberdecks to do serious hacking - deckers are their own "character class" again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

Wireless is still there, but unfortunately, they implemented it very poorly. Rather than playing up communications networks and tactical comms, where wireless hacking would make sense, they came up with a lot of senseless wireless "bonuses" to coerce people into leaving themselves exposed to hacking attacks. If you have wireless turned off, then apparently your wired reflexes and reaction enhancers cannot work together. If you have it enabled, then hackers can "brick" your cyberware, not only deactivating but also permanently damaging it.

[Elfenlied]

Huh. That was always his wish. When you say "decking reintroduced" do you just mean a return to the terminology of using "Decking" in place of "Hacking" or is it, as I fear you mean, a return to people walking around with great big slabs of "cyberdeck"? Please tell me at least that there is still wireless technology and commlinks in the game? An Eighties view of the future is just going to look stupid next to what we already have today.

Decking as in dorks running around with expensive tablets. Wireless still exists, and so do Commlinks, but the latter is just a glorified smartphone that cannot hack. They nerfed a lot of gear, with the option of having the gear perform the way it was pre-nerf by turning it online, such as your Wired Reflexes only stacking with Reaction Enhancers if they are both online. Which, in turn, makes them vulnerable to getting bricked.

SR5 is the grognard appeasement edition, for lack of a better term.

[knasser]

Commlinks are still there, but you need expensive cyberdecks to do serious hacking - deckers are their own "character class" again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

That's a shame. I liked how integrated hacking had become with all team members. Made Hacking less of a solo-thing and it made it more normal. So I'm guessing that even if you have a commlink and are linked to a more powerful computer wirelessly somewhere, you still aren't a proper hacker unless you have the giant slab of plastic swinging at your hip? Sooooo ostentatious. I also liked how easy it made it to be a hacker with a bit of samurai or rigger rolled in. Question - can you still go full VR with just a commlink? Or is this now a feature of a "deck"?

Do they not realise that technological progress is pretty much synonymous in the modern mind with small and discrete? If you see person A with a small device and you see person B with a large device, the modern instinct is to view the latter has technologically backwards, not more powerful. Honestly, this is exactly the sort of thing I feared. Is it rationalized in game how a few years ago everyone had small commlinks and now some people have "decks"? Or is it just a Retcon?

Wireless is still there, but unfortunately, they implemented it very poorly. Rather than playing up communications networks and tactical comms, where wireless hacking would make sense, they came up with a lot of senseless wireless "bonuses" to coerce people into leaving themselves exposed to hacking attacks. If you have wireless turned off, then apparently your wired reflexes and reaction enhancers cannot work together. If you have it enabled, then hackers can "brick" your cyberware, not only deactivating but also permanently damaging it.

That sounds odd. There were some fair reasons to have your cyberware slaved to your commlink in SR4A, but often that would be disabled. Otherwise a hacker might be able to interfere with it. So you can actually do physical damage to cyberware? I take it they were just trying to make Hacking another sort of combat technique, then? How do they rationalize having to choose between your reaction enhancers and wired reflexes working if you turn wireless off? (Assuming I've read that right).

Good to see you all again, btw. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

K.

[knasser]

Decking as in dorks running around with expensive tablets. Wireless still exists, and so do Commlinks, but the latter is just a glorified smartphone that cannot hack. They nerfed a lot of gear, with the option of having the gear perform the way it was pre-nerf by turning it online, such as your Wired Reflexes only stacking with Reaction Enhancers if they are both online. Which, in turn, makes them vulnerable to getting bricked.

SR5 is the grognard appeasement edition, for lack of a better term.

Huh. I see. (We posted at the same time).

Grognard Appeasement Edition.

Speaking as someone who started playing with 1st Ed. I'm not sure how I feel about that. There's a lot in old SR that is just silly today. I'm going to hazard a guess that the tone is a bit more "punk" again.

[Nath]

Is it rationalized in game how a few years ago everyone had small commlinks and now some people have "decks"? Or is it just a Retcon?

The Corporate Court ordered all the Matrix to switch to new protocols to overhaul security on January 1st, 2065. 4th edition hacking software no longer worked from that point, but the people involved in the protocols design (including Fastjack) also designed ways to circumvent them, which required dedicated hardware that is already produced and branded by corporations and called "cyberdecks" (technomancers also adjusted, obviously).

[Stahlseele]

Huh. I see. (We posted at the same time).

Grognard Appeasement Edition.

Speaking as someone who started playing with 1st Ed. I'm not sure how I feel about that. There's a lot in old SR that is just silly today. I'm going to hazard a guess that the tone is a bit more "punk" again.

and then there is this:
https://twitter.com/BullOrkDecker/status/39...2904961/photo/1

[knasser]

The Corporate Court ordered all the Matrix to switch to new protocols to overhaul security on January 1st, 2065. 4th edition hacking software no longer worked from that point, but the people involved in the protocols design (including Fastjack) also designed ways to circumvent them, which required dedicated hardware that is already produced and branded by corporations and called "cyberdecks" (technomancers also adjusted, obviously).

WTF? Brain fused. Too many flaws trying to express themselves at once.

[knasser]

and then there is this:
https://twitter.com/BullOrkDecker/status/39...2904961/photo/1

Shouldn't the Mohawk be pink?

[Stahlseele]

Shouldn't the Mohawk be pink?

EDIT: Sorry - double post.

yep, that's still the same here too ^^

[Ryu]

I haven't been here for at least two years. More I think.

When I left, the place was a giant conflagration with people being banned, damage control from CGL representatives after Loren Coleman had been found embezzling funds and freelancers were not getting paid and withholding copyright... I walked in disgust when CGL retained the Shadowrun licence.

Now I'm being pestered to run Shadowrun again by some friends so I decided to look in and see what the place looks like these days. It's quiet here. Never seen it so quiet - especially given there was a new edition recently. Place feels dead. I know CGL were heavily promoting their own company forums for Shadowrun over Dumpshock. Did that place eventually take over? What happened with the licence? Is LLC still running things over there and how many of the original writers of SR4 are now working on SR5 or did it become a major staff overhaul as it was looking like for a while?

What, in short, is the state of things these days? Any of the old timers still functioning?

It might be me, but DS seems to be A LOT slower the last weeks (I´m looking much less frequently since most rules discussions became irrelevant to me.) I do believe the signal-to-noise ratio has become better. I´d suggest to pick up your old stack of books, visit again (occasionally), and get back to playing.

[Godwyn]

The official forums have taken a lot away from dumpshock. They get a good bit more traffic and posts. Even if several of the regulars there post here as well. New player threads appear far more frequently over there.

[knasser]

The official forums have taken a lot away from dumpshock. They get a good bit more traffic and posts. Even if several of the regulars there post here as well. New player threads appear far more frequently over there.

That's what I figured. A real shame for Dumpshock. There's an epic wealth of material here.

Anyway, I guess my question has been answered now. CGL got away with it, a lot of the people who left never came back. Those who stayed took Shadowrun back to the old days of cyberpunk-archetype-game that they always disliked SR4 for taking away from them. I've been reading a few threads over the last few hours. Seems like 5th is not something that appeals to me. Stylistically and thematically, it's wallowing in the Eighties, a game for old men who don't realize or don't care how dated everything looks.

I even found a post from Cain still raving about his "Mr. Lucky build" and how you can break the Matrix even though he's been proved wrong at least three times to my knowledge on both subjects. He just is temporarily banned or subsides when his thread is locked and now three years later, I'm still finding posts from him in threads about 5th posting the same bitter lies. Quite possibly one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

Anyway, I guess I'm done here. This place is dead and I'm not giving a penny to Catalyst after what they did. I'll tell the players they'll have to accept Dark Heresy or something.

Thanks,

K.

[Stahlseele]

aw, shame to see you go again so soon <.<

[knasser]

aw, shame to see you go again so soon <.<

Well I wish you happy gaming. But as you can tell from the tone of my post, I just find how things turned out depressing and it's clearly going in the wrong direction for my tastes and so all I could really bring to the forum these days would be bitterness and sorrow. A sad reversal from the days of yore. I choose to preserve my legacy instead. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Peace and coolness,

K.

[garner_adam]

For what worth Dark Heresy is actually very fun. My group just went from that to 5th cause some one missed the shenanigans of pink mohawk.

[knasser]

For what worth Dark Heresy is actually very fun. My group just went from that to 5th cause some one missed the shenanigans of pink mohawk.

I ran possibly the most grimdark game any of my players had ever played using DH 1st. I actually managed to grim a couple of them out which was amazing as normally they're quite sociopathic when it comes to RPGs.

Ironically enough, for all my complaining about designing games for "old men", I'm becoming something of a curmudgeon myself. Only the other way around - I also have the same issue with the new edition of DH (it's currently in Beta). The original Beta was innovative and new and played really well in my tests. But there were howls of protests from some of the existing players because it was different and not backwards compatible. They loudly demanded something like Only War. So now the DH2 version that is coming out is essentially Only War: Inquisitor Edition. Everywhere I look, it all seems to be about placating the Old Guard. Which is pretty ironic as I stared Shadowrun with 1st edition and my experience with Warhammer RPGs goes all the way back to the original WHFRP where my elf apprentice died in his first combat at the hands of a goblin with a shortbow.

Every year as I get older, I get grumpier and grumpier about the way things aren't changing how they used to.

SR5 -> SR2/3 being a case in point.

[Stahlseele]

we are all bitter here, but suit yourself.
i had just hoped one of the great old ones would come back.
frank was banned, Ancient History left as well. aside from his farcast thread in other gaming at least . .

[Koekepan]

To be entirely, unrelentingly fair:

Disclaimer: this is not a defence of 5th Edition. I do not own 5th Edition. What I have seen about it largely repels me so far. I hope that they will fix it but I'm not holding my breath.

Let us stipulate for the sake of argument that replacing the human sensorium is somewhere around the data density of IMAX (depending on some fiddly details, around 48 megapixels with around 64 bits of data each, which is around 400 MB per frame) once you include tactile and olfactory information, and that for all this to run so beautifully fast that there is a speed-of-thought advantage, you're running at around the maximum cycle rate of neurons (about 1000 Hz), you need, for full VR, to deliver around 4Tbps of data to the brain.

Bear in mind these numbers are largely thumb sucks, but are actually reality-biased in terms of what the human input system could handle (although I strongly suspect that the tactile sensorium would challenge the visual for data density), and are based on current knowledge of neural performance.

So. 4 terabits of data per second. Even assuming, entirely gratuitously, that you can somehow squeeze that down, with complex encodings, canonical representations and merciless data compression to 4 gigabits of data per second (this is a ludicrous level of compression, for those unfamiliar with compression of data streams; you'd be insanely lucky to get it to 400Gbps), that is still the kind of data throughput which is problematic in the sheer terms of data capacity of wireless data channels. There's just no way you will stuff that into a single wireless channel with plausible energy/clutter penetration/interference/carcinogenic qualities. This means that anyone trying wireless VR (where VR means simsense, as opposed to a simple headset view) will chew up every available wireless channel in reach. Bear in mind that to supply 4Tbps, you need 4000 independent Gbps channels - good luck doing so in plausible available electromagnetic contexts. Even 4Gbps is hard to deliver wirelessly, assuming multiple users, interference from various other electromagnetic sources and other real-world concerns. 4Gbps with constant bitrate (that a smooth experience requires) is massively unlikely.

I am all there for Moore's Law, and the genius of engineers exploiting quantum effects to increase the density of chips and drives and all the rest of it, but when you're coming up hard against the stark physical, information theoretical limitations of the world, well, it's like the fact that chip designers are actually running up against the speed of an electron in copper, and the speed of a photon in optic fibre.

I'm not saying VR is impossible, or that simsense is impossible, nor am I particularly arguing that VR wouldn't be more potent in some meaningful fashion than a keyboard - although there are serious unanswered questions there. All I'm saying is that wireless VR stretches the limits of credibility to and beyond breaking point, and that it was a mistake in any system where computers do not purportedly work on magic. On that front, 4th Ed made a serious mistake, and should have restricted actual VR hacking to a physical connection, even if allowing for an AR hacking environment wirelessly.

Once you include tactile, olfactory and other data sources in parallel with everything else, the mathematics of it all gets insane. This is, not even counting anything like error correction, redundancy or similar overhead sources.

[knasser]

EDIT: @kokeban - you posted whilst I was writing. Interesting points. Sorry I can't respond now.

we are all bitter here, but suit yourself.
i had just hoped one of the great old ones would come back.
frank was banned, Ancient History left as well. aside from his farcast thread in other gaming at least . .

Alas, the stars are not right. Perhaps in stranger aeons...

I always liked Frank. Was never mutual mind you - don't think he ever forgave me for actually forcing him to concede an argument (twice). But I kind of liked the way he always backed things up and got into fights with the mods. I've met religious fanatics with more compromise in them than Frank Trollman. I liked him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Ancient History - I don't blame him really. Given I don't think there was ever anyone as dedicated to the setting as he was and then to be kicked out of the dev forums for spreading rumours (which turned out to be true) that Catalyst had stopped paying Freelancers! I don't think he would ever be able to come back under the current regime after all that was said and done, and I doubt even his love for the setting could overmaster how galling it would be to ask permission to write again from the people who were the reason he left. Method always insightful, Fistandantilus always too nice to be a mod whilst you could always rely on Bull to dismiss any views other than his own with a quick argument by assertion stating what Shadowrun was actually about. Critias - always talented, always believing that somehow he could change the system from within if he just worked for CGL long enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) So many names, all forgotten now, like tears in the rain.

No, I thank you for the invitation, Stahlsteele. But I'm not yet ready to sit sipping bitter drinks in a dark forum reminiscing. I think it's still afternoon outside, I'm going to go and find some new names. SR5 can sail without me. I wish you a good voyage. But I'll not lift one finger to put a penny in the pockets of CGL who treated my friends so badly. Maybe some other life. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Peace and coolness,

Khadim.

[Sengir]

So I'm guessing that even if you have a commlink and are linked to a more powerful computer wirelessly somewhere, you still aren't a proper hacker unless you have the giant slab of plastic swinging at your hip? Sooooo ostentatious. I also liked how easy it made it to be a hacker with a bit of samurai or rigger rolled in. Question - can you still go full VR with just a commlink? Or is this now a feature of a "deck"?

Decks can be quite small, it's just that you need some kind of ASICs to hack those new matrix protocols. It's back to SR3 in the way that decks and cyberterminals differ in their hardware, but the sizes did not make a return (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

How do they rationalize having to choose between your reaction enhancers and wired reflexes working if you turn wireless off?

Easier than a smuggling compartment opening faster with wireless enabled (even if you open in manually, what matters solely is that the cyber has wireless access). And then there's the wireless baton...