[X] My Assistant

[Sendaz]

I don't know, I think there's tremendous room for hilarity here. You could make all kinds of jokes about top heavy government inefficiency and bureaucracy and then there's a lot of emo bureaucrats because they're in fact a bunch of teenagers, or something like that.

Like, you could do Tir so that they're so image conscious that everyone's afraid of them or buys into their image, but behind the scenes it's worse than the US federal government.

Sounds like the making of the next hit Teen Drama on Fox (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Wounded Ronin]

here you go
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55019

i'll actually link this too:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53716

Thanks!

[Stahlseele]

No Problem.
The Den is pretty acidic an environment, but that's part of it's charme.

[Fatum]

I feel you're kind of missing the point here, folks. Are the Tirs and the NAN based on faulty premises? Maybe - do you really care? The whole cyberpunk pretty much is. The thing is, all that old-fashioned ridiculous stuff gives you something to make the setting special. "What's special about California Republic?" "It's captured by a rebel hardliner Japanese general". "What's special about Imperial Japan?" "It's a nationalist metaphobic state, home to traditionalist yakuza rings and japanacorps". "What's special about Azt?" "It's a corporation heavily involved with Blood Magic - they want to summon the end times to be the only ones to survive".
As the setting changed (maybe towards being more realistic, this is beyond the point), that feeling of being special went away, to be replaced with nothing. "What's special about California Republic?" "Nothing much, it's just a state in the West of North America". "What's special about Japan?" "Nothing much, it's just a state in the Far East". "What's special about Azt?" "Nothing much, it's just a megacorp like any other - a bit more direct about its conquests, maybe".

Putting it simply, I don't want the setting to be "realistic". I want it to be vibrant, unique, and engaging, while trying not to ruin the verisimilitude too much. If having Awakened Nations requires a bunch of Native Americans to capture a launch site and launch a nuke and 140 millions of Yakuts living past the habitation belt, so be it. Same as I don't particularly care how a dungeon sustains its monster population when there are no adventurers around. There's an explanation, even a lazy one? Fine. There isn't? Fine, too.

That's why the problem is not the metaplot itself. The Bug City line resolved, and Chicago is rebuilding; the superAIs killed each other? I'm fine with that development, but give me something else to spark my imagination, something to make me hold my breath. Sengir is right - the pipeline that produced such unique events and subsettings is basically dead. And it's not for the lack of wiggling space in the setting itself.

[Sponge]

Putting it simply, I don't want the setting to be "realistic". I want it to be vibrant, unique, and engaging, while trying not to ruin the verisimilitude too much. If having Awakened Nations requires a bunch of Native Americans to capture a launch site and launch a nuke and 140 millions of Yakuts living past the habitation belt, so be it.

So what exactly is preventing you from having all that in your game?

[RHat]

You know, thinking about it, part of your issue might be the way that a lot of stuff was wholly self-contained in SR4. If you look at Twilight Horizon, for example, that stuff could easily have stretched across multiple books worth of metaplot development. That, frankly, would have been interesting, because you had all sort of crazy technomancer and spirit stuff going on around that time.

Things like the nanoplot are pretty clearly going in a different direction - that's already been in Storm Front and the subject of Splintered State, plus there's Stolen Souls coming around at some point to really delve into that. There's supposed to be something going on with Boston as an ongoing thing for SRO, as well.

And as for the setting changing to be more "realistic", I don't think that's the case - it's just that some of the things that weren't realistic in the first place were sorta anchored to the time that they were conceived, and over time they've become unmoored. Things like that need to be dealt with for the health of the setting.

[Whipstitch]

Replacing it with nothing is certainly a bad idea. Hell, I said as much in my first post. It doesn't mean that the previous shit was well thought out enough to serve as a good foundation for further books, however, and I think that notion came home to roost. It's not even that unusual or exceptional of an occurrence--keeping things interesting for the better part of a couple decades is really hard to do, and just like everything else in this world Shadowrun was never perfect.

[RHat]

Replacing it with nothing is certainly a bad idea. Hell, I said as much in my first post. It doesn't mean that the previous shit was well thought out enough to serve as a good foundation for further books, however, and I think that notion came home to roost.

Yeah, and that's the trick. It can be pretty damned difficult to do triage on the dated shit while at the same time bringing along interesting stuff to build from - especially if you're aiming to make it interesting stuff that will appeal to the old players you want to keep and the new players you want to bring in. The balance of that is damned hard enough when that's ALL you're trying to do.

[Fatum]

So what exactly is preventing you from having all that in your game?

So what exactly is making me buy SR books, if I have to houserule half the crunch, and write my own global-level fluff? Or if I have to stick with the old fluff?

Yeah, and that's the trick. It can be pretty damned difficult to do triage on the dated shit while at the same time bringing along interesting stuff to build from - especially if you're aiming to make it interesting stuff that will appeal to the old players you want to keep and the new players you want to bring in. The balance of that is damned hard enough when that's ALL you're trying to do.

There are whole continents that have been barely described. There's no need to stick to only addressing legacy silliness (and sadly, in addition to addressing the silliness, necessary as that might be, the setting has seen a few sane ideas shot down, like Great Dragons working behind the scene in secret).

[kzt]

Modern Japan is a very different place from Modern Chicago or London, without being run by mass murdering racist militarists who rule the pacific with an Iron Fist ™, or by nature worshiping lovers of all humanity. SR tends to use cheap and vastly overinflated stereotypes and those just don't hold together over time.

[RHat]

There are whole continents that have been barely described. There's no need to stick to only addressing legacy silliness (and sadly, in addition to addressing the silliness, necessary as that might be, the setting has seen a few sane ideas shot down, like Great Dragons working behind the scene in secret).

Whether you rebuild on the ashes or on new ground, it's still a LOT to do at once. Really, the former seems easier than the latter.

[Fatum]

Modern Japan is a very different place from Modern Chicago or London, without being run by mass murdering racist militarists who rule the pacific with an Iron Fist ™, or by nature worshiping lovers of all humanity.

Really? If you were transported from Tokyo to London to Chicago to Tokyo, you wouldn't even have to change your habits significantly. Same as any city of the broadly defined European civilization.
Pyongyang or Delhi or Hô Chi Minh would be noticeably different, but those are run by mass murdering racist militarists or other such interesting people.

SR tends to use cheap and vastly overinflated stereotypes and those just don't hold together over time.

Roleplaying games being larger-than-life? That's unheard of!

Whether you rebuild on the ashes or on new ground, it's still a LOT to do at once. Really, the former seems easier than the latter.

I'm seeing a lot of tearing stuff down, but I'm not exactly seeing anything built in its place.

[Glyph]

As the setting changed (maybe towards being more realistic, this is beyond the point), that feeling of being special went away, to be replaced with nothing. "What's special about California Republic?" "Nothing much, it's just a state in the West of North America". "What's special about Japan?" "Nothing much, it's just a state in the Far East". "What's special about Azt?" "Nothing much, it's just a megacorp like any other - a bit more direct about its conquests, maybe".

I don't know, I would describe those setting a bit less mundanely. The California Republic was formerly ruled by the JIS with an iron fist, and now dealing with a power vacuum that a lot of vying factions are trying to fill. It also has partially-submerged cities and P2.0, which is like facebook taken to the extreme - California runners actually record their crimes. Japan is still a hub of economic and military power that exerts a strong influence on the world, but they are less of a faceless monolithic threat, and more a mess of vying factions like the rest of the Sixth World. I actually liked their writeup in Corporate Enclaves. It is a place where you need to pay attention to concepts like giri and honor, but it is a place that runners from Seattle can actually visit, and find work there. Aztechnology is still what it has always been - a corrupt company born from the Sinola Cartel, the puppetmasters of Aztlan, who practice blood magic and are festooned with trappings of Aztec mysticism, while at the same time they rule a far-flung empire of subsidiaries and have such good PR that the man on the street would poo-poo the notion of them having human sacrifices on top of one of their pyramid-like buildings.

[Wounded Ronin]

See, this is why I advocate for just playing 80s run for fun in terms of the setting and flair, while refining and focusing on a satisfying firefight mechanic.

That way we don't need to hire demographers to speculate about what would "realistically" happen if a nation of Native American hipsters with real magic powers decided to revolt and form their own nation-state in the wake of the collapse of the USA.

[kzt]

Really? If you were transported from Tokyo to London to Chicago to Tokyo, you wouldn't even have to change your habits significantly. Same as any city of the broadly defined European civilization.
Pyongyang or Delhi or Hô Chi Minh would be noticeably different, but those are run by mass murdering racist militarists or other such interesting people.

If you don't think Japan is culturally very different than The US or UK then I don't think this is a conversation worth having.

[kzt]

See, this is why I advocate for just playing 80s run for fun in terms of the setting and flair, while refining and focusing on a satisfying firefight mechanic.

That way we don't need to hire demographers to speculate about what would "realistically" happen if a nation of Native American hipsters with real magic powers decided to revolt and form their own nation-state in the wake of the collapse of the USA.

Then play SR1. Have fun. The mechanics are totally broken due to thing like nobody involved understanding basic statistics, but it has lots of "flair".

[Curator]

we just need to wait for more books to come out. it's a lot more fun to fill the universe with rich details instead of CFS invades Tir. Tir wins later. they're obviously in a transformation point right now.. they still need to re-write and publish a whole bunch of rules. i'm excited for it.

[Wounded Ronin]

Then play SR1. Have fun. The mechanics are totally broken due to thing like nobody involved understanding basic statistics, but it has lots of "flair".

Well I also enjoy good gameplay. So for me in my ideal world I'd run some kind of SR3R ruleset in the SR1 setting, if that makes sense.

[Sponge]

So what exactly is making me buy SR books, if I have to houserule half the crunch, and write my own global-level fluff? Or if I have to stick with the old fluff?

I've been asking that first question question myself, since I bought SR5, but in the end for me is there's more good than bad in it (and eventually I'll get around to reworking the bad more to my taste).

As for writing my own global-level fluff, that's part of the fun IMO. I like fluff books like SR4's Vice and Corporate Guide, books that have broadly applicable background info that doesn't really change much over time and plenty of plot hook ideas. But you're referring more to the metaplot and scenario books, I stay away from those. (I do own Emergence, but I didn't realize exactly what I was getting at the time.)

[RHat]

I'm seeing a lot of tearing stuff down, but I'm not exactly seeing anything built in its place.

That's sort of my point - I'm not truly surprised by the idea of doing one first, than the other because attempting to build and tear at the same time can become untenable (saying this without commenting on it being good or bad). Storm Front, really, finished up with the tear down.

[kzt]

we just need to wait for more books to come out. it's a lot more fun to fill the universe with rich details instead of CFS invades Tir. Tir wins later. they're obviously in a transformation point right now.. they still need to re-write and publish a whole bunch of rules. i'm excited for it.

We'll see. I'm expecting that CGL thinks we really need more major seaports located hundreds of kilometers inland at 8300 feet in the Andies. Then maybe some huge metaplots due to machinations of the powerful Antarctic Citrus Growers Association and the Islamic Pork Producers, with some shadowruns due to the the centuries long rivalry between the famous whiskey distilleries of Mecca.

[Cain]

I'm seeing a lot of tearing stuff down, but I'm not exactly seeing anything built in its place.

That's because it's not our job to write the setting. Writers are supposed to do that. We're fans, and our job is to have fun. If what the writers are producing isn't fun anymore, we will move on.

[DMiller]

We'll see. I'm expecting that CGL thinks we really need more major seaports located hundreds of kilometers inland at 8300 feet in the Andies. Then maybe some huge metaplots due to machinations of the powerful Antarctic Citrus Growers Association and the Islamic Pork Producers, with some shadowruns due to the the centuries long rivalry between the famous whiskey distilleries of Mecca.

Trust me, the ACGA is no joke. They are an exclusive if reclusive group. Going up against them is bad ju-ju. Anyone who has ever been beaten with a sack full of (frozen) oranges can tell you, it’s no fun. And don’t even get me started on the (frozen) pineapple treatment.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Shortstraw]

Anyone who has ever been beaten with a sack full of oranges can tell you, it’s no fun.

And it won't leave a mark (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) .

[Wounded Ronin]

Thanks!

Reading the review of Book of Erotic Fantasy. Something made me chuckle.

The list of models is really long, and a brief set of internet searches for them reveals that your initial impression upon flipping through the book is correct: the models are indeed just an essentially random collection of the hottest LARPers the authors knew from around the area (that area is Seattle, by the way). This in turn suggests a new possible reason for WotC's law team bringing the hammer down on this project: it is actually made in WotC's literal back yard with a shockingly large group of participants, and it is quite probable that some of the people working on this project were known by some of the people working at WotC.

I always knew Seattle was a special town.

If I ever run a Shadowrun again, the 'runners will be hired to intimidate the Seattle LARPer community to prevent them from posing for a latter day Book of Erotic Fantasy. They'll be hired by WotC who desperately wants plausible deniability. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)