[X] My Assistant

[sk8bcn]

Well, I always assumed that way before Ryumio awoke, the setting was already changing, with, perhaps 10% of the American population being of Native-Americans instead of the actual 1% and there being not only native-americans but other people who shared the belief of protecting the land fighting the American Government agains the Resource War.
Then again, and I agree that this was possibly an oversight of the writers was to describe how the climate and geography of the world changed when para-critters became an actual thing.
I mean, what kind of vermin control can you have against a 15 feet tall armadillo on steroids? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
VITAS, war and hunger made a damn good job in culling human population.
Anyway, just my two (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) on the whole thing.

I'd love writters to smash up a bit the NAN and get a good part of it re-integrated to UCAS or CAS. Because, honestly, I'm reading NAN Part 1 and 2 atm, and godamn, it sucks and makes no sense.

And i really understand the pain in the ass for a written to continue such background developments with those basis.

(unless that writter wrote WAR, he must be confortable with stupid settings)

[Sponge]

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.

What a long way we've come since AD&D 1st Ed.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Well, some of the poorest or or failing Native-American Nations got integrated into others (Ute was merged into Pueblo, I think?)

And I'm ok with the NaN for starters. Hell, Magic was an unknown quantity back then and largely disbelieved by the American Government. I do find silly the whole secession thing of North vs South and perhaps that division was indeed what prevented the U.S of taking control of much of the land they had lost during the civil war.

[Warlordtheft]

Well, some of the poorest or or failing Native-American Nations got integrated into others (Ute was merged into Pueblo, I think?)

And I'm ok with the NaN for starters. Hell, Magic was an unknown quantity back then and largely disbelieved by the American Government. I do find silly the whole secession thing of North vs South and perhaps that division was indeed what prevented the U.S of taking control of much of the land they had lost during the civil war.

Yes Peublo annexed the Ute nation, Tsishman (spelling) was annexed by the Salish (or occupied after MCT left the country a giant strip mine). The Sioux are anti-UCAS, though they will work with the Other NAN. The former Canadaian provencies in the NAN are pretty much low population in RL anyway (a canadian can check me on this but isn't like 70+% of the population within 100 miles of the US border.

I always liked the NAN--they seem to have been ignored in SR4 though. I think Shadows of North America explained it best. As long as you had an once of Indian blood, we're married to an indian, we're hispanic, and in some places if you were Meta you'd be allowed to stay as well (cascade crow, sinsearch for example). Once you did that and take into account that these states are not the most heavily populated in the US (alot of it is federally owned land) it might make sense for the US in the face of magically induced weather disasters to just say screw it we're done its yours.

Could the UCAS take it back? Maybe, but genocide is bad PR and the other choice (a long term guerrila war) disuade the UCAS from going down that route. The CAS split is kind of emblematic of that, when it happened the UCAS just shrugged and let it happen. They were done fighting for the old USA, so what is loss of another portion of the country that we care little about and have little in common with.

Cal Free was just California looking at its situation and thought (wrongly) that joining the secessionist club would be better for them as well. Again, the UCAS just shrugged and decided at the time it was not worth the effort.


Does it make sense from our 2014 perspective? Not really, but by 2014 SR, international corporations had extraterritorality as well. One could even see these early mega corps purposely dividing the US to gain power.

[Fatum]

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.

That describes literally dozens of nations in SR.

It also has partially-submerged cities and P2.0, which is like facebook taken to the extreme - California runners actually record their crimes.

Partially submerged cities and the underwater labyrinth are at least something of note to distinguish it.
P2.0 just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, imo.

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.

That describes literally dozens of nations in SR.

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.

Blood magic is severely out of fashion in AZT. Which makes it just another megacorp - they're all trying to sleaze into nation-state governments, run horrible experiments, and have good PR. Except for Horizon, of course - they're the good guys!

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.

It is culturally different, but not as different as the aforementioned nations. And not different enough to significantly affect the urban lifestyle.

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.

SR has been "cleared out" for more than an edition now. "CFS and Tir have a fight, CFS wins" was not exactly the high point of storytelling, but it involved two nations with their own very different character and Great Dragon politics.

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.

The setting is vast. What's stopping from building up in the areas already cleared of what you think as outdated?

That's because it's not our job to write the setting. Writers are supposed to do that.

Yes, my "tearing down" comment related precisely to what the writers produce. And not just the current War!-writers, too.

I'm not getting the whole NAN hatred going on. The NAN don't make particular sense? Does corporate extraterritoriality? What about the concept of shadowrunners? The NAN serve their plot mission - they provide a political counter-balance to the UCAS, the CAS and Atzlan; they serve as an alternative to the techno-dystopia of the default Seattle setting, etc. So I can't see how they're worse than That Other Tir, Bretonia, half the AGS states, Awakened Yakut, etc.

[kzt]

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)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[RHat]

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.

Is it bad that all I'm thinking here is "damn, that would take some pretty serious excavation and one crazy nautical elevator" and "that would be some seriously impressive hydroponics"?

As an aside, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there are some pretty serious places of power in the Andean region...

[Cain]

What a long way we've come since AD&D 1st Ed.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. But speaking as somebody who played D&D during that time, the goal of having fun with friends hasn't changed. If you mean we were expected to do all the worldbuilding ourselves. you miss the fact that there's been published settings as far back as I can remember.

Also, you don't buy Shadowrun for the rules. One of the great innovations of Shadowrun was that it came with an integral setting that was intertwined with the rules. Until then, the tendency had been for generic settings with well-developed rules (or occasionally, the reverse). The idea of integrated rules and setting was fairly revolutionary in its time. Same's true with metaplot: Shadowrun was really the pioneer in that area, and White Wolf copied a lot of what Shadowrun developed.

So yeah: If Shadowrun fails to deliver in the areas it used to be known for, people are going to lose interest.

[sk8bcn]

I'd add to that: I'm able to create my own metaplots but if a game enforce me to do so, I usually won't buy their books anymore.

Let's take an exemple: Let's say I decide to make a plot were Tir invades Seattle and generate a war between UCAS and Tir. And my new Seattle is an invaded one with runners beeing resistants.

Why would I buy a new Seattle Sourcebook?

As soon as I vastly differ from official storyline and vastly shake up the grounds of the game, I stop buying the plotbooks.

That's why I think a RPG-compagny should keep his game-storyline evolving or offering new plots.

[Rasumichin]

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.

The problem here being that recent editions had much less of a focus on fleshing out the setting and metaplot.

I mean, just take a look at the publishing schedule for SR2. It took forever until the 2nd edition of Virtual Realities came out, we didn't get a new edition of the Rigger Black Book until SR3, we just kept using stuff like 1st ed RBB, Shadowtech and PAoNA with pencilled-in SR2 stats because we simply had to.
Meanwhile, FASA kept shelling out fluffy tie-ins to Earthdawn like the Tir and Atztlan books and blew our minds with Bug City which had been built to over years with the Universal Brotherhood arc, Queen Euphoria and several novels.

Compare that with how RPGs work today. Edition cycles are much shorter, and the top priority after a new edition hits is to sell as many crunchy bits as possible. The fluffy parts are something you use inbetween gun and vehicle pdfs to milk the edition a bit more while you prepare the next one.

Not that I blame CGL for handling things this way. Metaplot heavyness definitely makes an RPG less accessible for newcomers who haven't been following the game for the last two decades. Almost all of the stuff in the Tir books was only usable as inside jokes for the GM and never showed up in our games. Running a traditional Bug City campaign with spirits as powerful as they are in 4th ed would be suicidal for anyone except the most experienced characters.
It's understandable they've changed those parts of the setting.
The problem I'm having is more that the way they've handled things comes off as a compromise. I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to just entirely reboot the setting, with the SR timeline diverging from the real world not in 1989, but in 2011 or 2012. Then again, we've seen how a total reboot of the metaplot worked out for WoD, so that's probably unwise from a business perspective.

[Glyph]

I prefer setting books to metaplot books. Settings have useful information and adventure hooks, while metaplot contrivances only disrupt campaigns without really changing the status quo. I would rather see the setting evolve more naturally (a new power player is moving into CalFree, one of the megas is slipping while another one is on the rise, the Vory are making inroads into Denver at the expense of the Yakuza, etc.) than have all of these stupid BIG EVENTS (volcanic eruptions, matrix crashes, etc.), which lose their impact because they are happening all the time.

[Cain]

I prefer setting books to metaplot books. Settings have useful information and adventure hooks, while metaplot contrivances only disrupt campaigns without really changing the status quo. I would rather see the setting evolve more naturally (a new power player is moving into CalFree, one of the megas is slipping while another one is on the rise, the Vory are making inroads into Denver at the expense of the Yakuza, etc.) than have all of these stupid BIG EVENTS (volcanic eruptions, matrix crashes, etc.), which lose their impact because they are happening all the time.

While I certainly see your point, the BIG EVENTS are what make things memorable. We're still talking about Dunkelzahn's will, even though it came out 17 years ago (and even longer, in game time). The death of Fuchi, even though it was as much a worldshaker as the will, isn't remembered nearly as much even though it came about through a natural evolution of the storyline.

[Fatum]

There are a few large events that are pretty air-tight - that is, they don't affect the parts of the setting you don't want them to affect. Like the UB plotline, the Far Scholar will, even the superAI showdown. It's not like many campaigns depended on Renraku Arcology staying as it was.

[Nath]

We're still talking about Dunkelzahn's will, even though it came out 17 years ago (and even longer, in game time). The death of Fuchi, even though it was as much a worldshaker as the will, isn't remembered nearly as much even though it came about through a natural evolution of the storyline.

Dunkelzahn's Secrets: Portofolio of a dragon was released in January 1996. So it came out 18 years ago. In game, Dunkelzahn's Will was read on 15 August 2057. Gun H*ven 3 set the last date to 19 December 2075. So 18 years, 4 months and 4 days have passed.

As an event, the will is pretty dull (unlike the assassination). I don't know anyone who played a game set on the day it was read (though I admit I drafted one related to Miles Lanier departure from Fuchi, that I never had the opportunity to play). What it did was conveying a large number of information, hints, and hooks on many other topics out of context to us, gamemasters. I think we remember it primarily because so many events that came after had the label "This event was brought to you by Dunkelzahn's Will™". People even came to believe that the will was the cause for every event that happened in the following years, though some actually aren't, or are so thinly related that people couldn't tell what the chain of events was.

The breakup of Fuchi Industrial Electronics, on the other hand, was supposed to be a major event. But Blood in the Boardroom did not do a very good job to translate the events of the Corporate War into actual game content (which, to be fair, was more difficult than it may look). As far as the book goes, going through Fuchi breakup is fighting a vampire to the control of a black clinic in the middle of Pueblo nowhere. Also, BitB came out while the people already had their hands full with Bug City and Dunkelzahn's Will items, at the same time than Renraku arcology shutdown and the third edition.

[sk8bcn]

I prefer setting books to metaplot books. Settings have useful information and adventure hooks, while metaplot contrivances only disrupt campaigns without really changing the status quo. I would rather see the setting evolve more naturally (a new power player is moving into CalFree, one of the megas is slipping while another one is on the rise, the Vory are making inroads into Denver at the expense of the Yakuza, etc.) than have all of these stupid BIG EVENTS (volcanic eruptions, matrix crashes, etc.), which lose their impact because they are happening all the time.

That's a critic that is more about how they are executed rather than metaplot book/setting book.

If you had a book describing Tir Taingire, a change of governement and what evolves under a number of years, and how to use that for your PC and involves them, to me it's a metaplot book and setting book.

[Neraph]

Meanwhile, FASA kept shelling out fluffy tie-ins to Earthdawn like the Tir and Atztlan books...

I think that's one thing that potentially is slowing the Shadowrun universe down, if not damaging it outright. Making a lot of inside joke-like references to a system that even fewer people have heard about than Shadowrun is just going to make some of the events of SR look dumb. I personally have never seen or heard of the game outside of these message boards, actually, and I had honestly thought that the game had died off because of that.

I mean, it might be "hip" and "cool" to tie in a game to another system, but all that ends up happening is that some of the older gaming-hipsters can speculate about the inside jokes. It does very little for the actual setting.

[sk8bcn]

Tough back then, they had a long term plan with where they wanted their storyline to go.

I mean, we somehow knew/tought they wanted to move to a fight/struggle against the incomming horrors. I don't think it was the ED/Sr ties that mattered but the ability FASA had to instill elements for the future.

[Not of this Worl...]

Sum it up as setting reboots are generally a bad idea. I'm not sure what happened at Fanpro to make them think this was a good idea.

Hopefully CGL makes the 5th edition setting more and more old school till we forget 4th edition ever happened. Otherwise I'll just keep playing Shadowrun Returns and loving that 4th edition never happened.

[CanRay]

Hopefully CGL makes the 5th edition setting more and more old school till we forget 4th edition ever happened.

Considering some of the folks currently working on things... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kuma]

I find it very interesting that people are talking at several points in this as if its Cyberpunk that in its death throes, not just Shadowrun. It strikes me as odd: for the first time in decades, you've had several major properties with cyberpunk tie-ins (Cyberpunk 2077, Dues Ex, the shadowrun games). Its not as if cyberpunk is over the heads of the modern youth. We actually have many of the predicted aspects of cyberpunk (massive corps, ipads and such, increasing drug use[though we're not at Vurt options yet], the increased focus on lack of meaning, hell, even the nihilism of modern wub-dub music). If you don't think high school age kids can get into cyberpunk, who do you think Snow Crash was written for?

Anyway, to actually add to the topic: Biggest problem with cyberpunk is that to modernize, it must either come back to its roots(much like shadowrun 5th seems to have, focused on a retrofuturist approach ala steampunk), or it much begin to refocus on its social commentary. Shadowrun was poignant when it focused on racism, class warfare, revolution and the loss of humanity. Some of the issues it takes about are kinda dead: I'm not gonna say racism is dead, but its not as common a threat as 25 years ago. The south is very unlikely to rebel now, really for any reason. Japan isn't the threat it once seemed to be.

Modernize your enemies. China is the new bogey man, so have someone actually put together a competent threat out of Wuxing. What if they ate up massive chunks of Aries? Put together a nation state that can hang with the corps. The last nation state that tried (amazonia) got destroyed. Shake up the big ten (though that seems to be in the works already). Use these issues to confront the fears and threats of modern society. Horizon was a great step towards that, even if they ended up being just mind control people. They're the perfect option to build a facebook profile that knows everything you do, so much you never make a choice. It thinks you really want sushi for dinner, and you become so certain that the machine knows you that it really just runs you, from childhood to the grave. Its not mind control, its social engineering of the highest level.

I don't think its a dying setting, I think the setting lacks new blood in the writing pool. Young isn't always better, but I think becoming less tied into the cyberpunk ritual icons might help. Focus on the new things that have those influences (Portal anyone?), and try to guess what people will love.

Oh, and talking about inside references: Shadowrun isn't accessible because the core book is 60 bucks, and could be used to defend yourself against a drunken version of The Rock. If you've made it past those hurdles, a few in jokes and side references don't mean much. In the same way the 40k games assume some background references are there to be followed, some open plot threads to the 4th age can be excused if its cool enough.

[Blade]

Shadowrun has a long history, and it started in the 80s, with a strong 80s vibe. It has then evolved along the years, with different writers. Some of them kept to the original tone (or what they felt was the original tone) while others tried to adapt the setting to the RL world.

Then some writers got something that was a mix of both, and decided to keep it vague enough to allow both to co-exist (the "pink mohawk and black trenchcoat"). While it allowed everyone to keep their vision of Shadowrun, it also diluted the setting.

So the writers have the choice between forcing their vision and disappointing all those who don't share it, or doing something that won't have too much flavor but should fit everyone.

Neither are good options and that's why I'm pushing for a third: splitting Shadowrun into three lines. One would be 80s cyberpunk (Shadowrun 2050), another would be GiTS post-cyberpunk (Shadowrun 2070) and the third would be more techno-thriller (Shadowrun 2035). In order to please most players, each would probably need to offer both low and high level playstyle.

[Fatum]

Hopefully CGL makes the 5th edition setting more and more old school till we forget 4th edition ever happened. Otherwise I'll just keep playing Shadowrun Returns and loving that 4th edition never happened.

Say, some in-universe genius could spot signal can be transmitted over wires? Which alone would instantly render a huge bunch of iconic art relevant again?

I find it very interesting that people are talking at several points in this as if its Cyberpunk that in its death throes, not just Shadowrun. It strikes me as odd: for the first time in decades, you've had several major properties with cyberpunk tie-ins (Cyberpunk 2077, Dues Ex, the shadowrun games). Its not as if cyberpunk is over the heads of the modern youth. We actually have many of the predicted aspects of cyberpunk (massive corps, ipads and such, increasing drug use[though we're not at Vurt options yet], the increased focus on lack of meaning, hell, even the nihilism of modern wub-dub music). If you don't think high school age kids can get into cyberpunk, who do you think Snow Crash was written for?

Agreed; RL is closer to cyberpunk than ever, with omnipresent government surveillance and social inequality deepening. It is just much more a globalised setting than classical cyberpunk, which means the poverty gets exported to the third world nations.

Anyway, to actually add to the topic: Biggest problem with cyberpunk is that to modernize, it must either come back to its roots(much like shadowrun 5th seems to have, focused on a retrofuturist approach ala steampunk), or it much begin to refocus on its social commentary. Shadowrun was poignant when it focused on racism, class warfare, revolution and the loss of humanity. Some of the issues it takes about are kinda dead: I'm not gonna say racism is dead, but its not as common a threat as 25 years ago. The south is very unlikely to rebel now, really for any reason. Japan isn't the threat it once seemed to be.

Now wait a moment, what, was the South ever really likely to rebel? Or is it less likely now, given the recent Texas's joke?

Modernize your enemies. China is the new bogey man, so have someone actually put together a competent threat out of Wuxing. What if they ate up massive chunks of Aries? Put together a nation state that can hang with the corps. The last nation state that tried (amazonia) got destroyed. Shake up the big ten (though that seems to be in the works already). Use these issues to confront the fears and threats of modern society. Horizon was a great step towards that, even if they ended up being just mind control people. They're the perfect option to build a facebook profile that knows everything you do, so much you never make a choice. It thinks you really want sushi for dinner, and you become so certain that the machine knows you that it really just runs you, from childhood to the grave. Its not mind control, its social engineering of the highest level.

Actually, something powerful could emerge from the Chinese states themselves. Even if just a confederation of the moderately strong nations.
The PPC could be used to represent the resurgent China and wider Asia, but that plotline too was driven into the ground.
I'm not sure Horizon is changing much - I mean, megacorps already decide what's best for their wageslaves, and unless we take that absurdist bit with P2.0, the runners have zero reasons to let a corp on to them.

I don't think its a dying setting, I think the setting lacks new blood in the writing pool. Young isn't always better, but I think becoming less tied into the cyberpunk ritual icons might help. Focus on the new things that have those influences (Portal anyone?), and try to guess what people will love.

Surely any setting can be salvaged, even one with a dead core theme, if needed. I was rather talking about the current state of affairs - the iconic cyberpunk setting elements are going, and nothing's being added to replace their value.
Also, what about Portal? Unless you want to add a literal portal gun, corp experiments on metahumans are a thing since the very beginning of the setting.

[Neraph]

Hopefully CGL makes the 5th edition setting more and more old school till we forget 4th edition ever happened. Otherwise I'll just keep playing Shadowrun Returns and loving that 4th edition never happened.

I actually thought SR4 was an excellent move forward. The introduction to wifi was refreshing and kept the setting relevant.

Oh, and talking about inside references: Shadowrun isn't accessible because the core book is 60 bucks, and could be used to defend yourself against a drunken version of The Rock. If you've made it past those hurdles, a few in jokes and side references don't mean much. In the same way the 40k games assume some background references are there to be followed, some open plot threads to the 4th age can be excused if its cool enough.

40k can have all the references it wants - they're all self-contained in the 40k system. The inside jokes that SR is trying to run is bridging the gap between two different games. That's a very big difference.

Actually, something powerful could emerge from the Chinese states themselves. Even if just a confederation of the moderately strong nations.
The PPC could be used to represent the resurgent China and wider Asia, but that plotline too was driven into the ground.
I'm not sure Horizon is changing much - I mean, megacorps already decide what's best for their wageslaves, and unless we take that absurdist bit with P2.0, the runners have zero reasons to let a corp on to them.

Well, you know, they have certain claims. Whether or not they are credible is debatable, but I'm sure if we give them another 50 or so years they may get something right.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I actually thought SR4 was an excellent move forward. The introduction to wifi was refreshing and kept the setting relevant.

I completely agree with that sentiment. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[kzt]

I actually thought SR4 was an excellent move forward. The introduction to wifi was refreshing and kept the setting relevant.

In general, yes. The computer rules didn't work, but they never have worked in any edition. However the issue grows in significance as you can now expect that any new gamer picking up the setting has at least some reasonable idea about how the internet appears to work, and SR computers are something totally out in left field, based on what some dude who had never used a computer wrote on his mechanical typewriter in 1984.