The Neo-Anarchist Streetpedia, It's out Options

[Nstol_wisper]

Which likely makes my point of, It's now the subject as much as how it is handled.
The RPG community needs a game like Shadowrun which gives people a chance to express their opinions on how to handle sensetive topics.
Particularly the last 100 to 200 years of human history.....

[Jaid]

Which likely makes my point of, It's now the subject as much as how it is handled.
The RPG community needs a game like Shadowrun which gives people a chance to express their opinions on how to handle sensetive topics.
Particularly the last 100 to 200 years of human history.....

it really doesn't, though. there are tons of RPGs out there. shadowrun doesn't need to bear the entire burden of social responsibility, and it CERTAINLY doesn't need to include any examples of spectacularly poor handling of sensitive subjects. again: handled well, this could be interesting. something like "the descendants of a jewish family have found out that their family records were never destroyed and are in a concentration camp" (not necessarily auschwitz) could potentially be handled well.

"an arms dealer specializing in anti-ghost equipment opened a path into auschwitz so you can kill the ghosts of holocaust victims and collect magical nazi torture implements as loot" has almost no way to be handled tastefully. it is not needed at all.

[hermit]

I don't think there's many bigger, longer-running systems that have not tried, to varying degrees of failure or relative success, to deal with these, from V:tM's atrocious Nazi fanwank to ... well, actually I can't really think of a positive example right now.

And I disagree. You don't need RPGs to pick apart well-known and well-understood historical atrocities any more than you need PBS: the game and a special DLC rape camp campaign. There's enough places and situations to discuss that, but an RPG supplement probably is not among them.

[Jaid]

I don't think there's many bigger, longer-running systems that have not tried, to varying degrees of failure or relative success, to deal with these, from V:tM's atrocious Nazi fanwank to ... well, actually I can't really think of a positive example right now.

And I disagree. You don't need RPGs to pick apart well-known and well-understood historical atrocities any more than you need PBS: the game and a special DLC rape camp campaign. There's enough places and situations to discuss that, but an RPG supplement probably is not among them.

i wouldn't say it necessarily needs to be done, or that it needs to be an RPG, but putting people into situations where they are encouraged to put themselves into someone else's shoes and deal with difficult real life problems can be a good thing... if it's done well. helping people understand things, even things that are well-understood by some, is a good thing... and if this scenario was doing that, i'd be more in favour of it. after all, while i would say most of the western world are familiar with the fact that the nazis were trying to kill jews, i don't think it is nearly as well understood by many that homosexuals, the mentally ill, and gypsies were also targeted, or that it wasn't just a matter of attempting to kill the people but also to destroy the culture, their history, their language, everything about them.

i think there's plenty of room to do something good and worthwhile in an RPG regarding unpleasant subjects, although that is not a good example of how to do it. a game like "this war of mine", for example, puts people into a situation where they are confronted with at least some small measure of the realities of what war means for the regular people stuck in the middle. that doesn't necessarily NEED to be done, nor does it NEED to be done in game format, but there is something to be said about a medium that is interactive, where "we" have to make those tough decisions, where "we" have to second-guess ourselves, rather than watching someone else make those decisions from a position where we face none of the risk or uncertainty. no matter how "well understood" it might be intellectually, games that put you into a role have a lot more power to help you understood it *emotionally* as well.

it might not need to be done in a role-playing game. but it can be done far more powerfully in a role-playing game than in many other media. it just needs to be handled with a great deal of care and respect.

i can definitely agree that the section in war did not handle the subject well. but it *could* have handled the subject of the holocaust/concentration camps well, and done something valuable. it didn't. it wasn't even close. it is baffling how anyone could have looked at that and thought it was a good way to handle a very sensitive issue that requires a lot of respect for the seriousness of the matter. and the fact that someone *did* look at it and thought it was appropriate is EXACTLY why handling this sort of subject matter well can be a good thing, because no matter how well understood YOU think the subject is, we can plainly see that SOME people still need to improve their understanding of it.

[hermit]

Of course it is possible to implement problematic and/or unpleasant topics in RPGs. I do think video games that engage the player individually are better suited for that (like Frostpunk, like Papers, Please, for instance), but I agree, it can be done. However, due to the detachment from the player, the need to speak to different styles and groups and players, the barrier to design this to not fall into any of the numerous pitfalls for such a supplement (banalization, fetishization, glorification, abuse as an "edgy" subject for edgyness' sake, or blatant agreement with the subject in question). And the SR supplement in WAR fell into all of these.

In fact, as an add-on to an existing setting, it seems extremely hard to me to du such a problematic context justice.

[Jaid]

i certainly agree that that excerpt from war did an absolutely awful job of handling the subject.

i simply disagree that difficulty means it cannot or should not be done in general. (i would, however, be willing to agree that it cannot and should not be done by the current team in charge of shadowrun, however, based on the fact that they did it anyways and it was a spectacular failure)

[Sendaz]

But getting back to the Streetpedia itself, there are quite a few updates, which is handy as the new history is spread out over several books and it's often very small paragraphs touching on the subject in question.

Seems the CAS, acting under the guise of settling the pirates in the region's hash, have retaken South Florida and reunited the state.

We for one look forward to the Return of Florida Man on CAS-TV. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Sengir]

The RPG community needs a game like Shadowrun which gives people a chance to express their opinions on how to handle sensetive topics.

I'm not exactly sure why the RPG community would require a game for that discussion.

But even if we take that as a given, but anyway, the Arbeit macht frei chapter was not a discussion or an invitation into one. It was somebody seriously thinking that telling people to kill holocaust victims once over was a good idea.

[Nstol_wisper]

One thing I'd like to see if just for flavor, is more detailed plots inside the militaries of the UCAS and CAS.
Death From Above xx

That's a potential sourcebook like the streetpedia by itself.

[hermit]

There have been more than enough of those. Personally, I don't need another WAR, Free Marine Corps, or more CAS fanwank. I'd like more coverage of the CAS as such though, maybe even an update on the Miami setting (shadowboxer is the only viable source and it's both 20 years old and .... Shadowboxer) despite the remurification. Not that the writers of this or previous publishers ever actually did anything with it, of course.

[binarywraith]

I don't think there's many bigger, longer-running systems that have not tried, to varying degrees of failure or relative success, to deal with these, from V:tM's atrocious Nazi fanwank to ... well, actually I can't really think of a positive example right now.

And I disagree. You don't need RPGs to pick apart well-known and well-understood historical atrocities any more than you need PBS: the game and a special DLC rape camp campaign. There's enough places and situations to discuss that, but an RPG supplement probably is not among them.

Charnel Houses of Europe stands out because it is one of the only TTRPG takes that are tasteful, and even then White Wolf of the same era fucked up in a lot of other places, like having openly neo-nazi werewolves.

[hermit]

Never bothered to have a look at Charnel Houses, because WW has a certain history of rightward edgelordness. Guess I'll hazard a look then.

[Nstol_wisper]

I went looking for references to JackPoint in the Steetpedia.
The last line of the entry..."If you're using JackPoint right now to read this, we're honered." makes it sound like they put the info in the streetpedia out.
Do you think this is a JackPoint book too?

[Nstol_wisper]

There have been more than enough of those. Personally, I don't need another WAR, Free Marine Corps, or more CAS fanwank. I'd like more coverage of the CAS as such though, maybe even an update on the Miami setting (shadowboxer is the only viable source and it's both 20 years old and .... Shadowboxer) despite the remurification. Not that the writers of this or previous publishers ever actually did anything with it, of course.

I saw a strong potential for a military plot about which side, UCAS, CAS,......which of them supported who, Amazonia, Aztlan, why and what were their Actions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/scatter.gif)

[Nath]

They did War! and several adventures set in Bogota and "The Triumph of Aztlan" chapter in Storm Front. They did Mil Spec Tech and Mil Spec Tech 2 and Euro War Antiques. They also did that adventure about the Kitty Hawk CAS aircraft carrier commanding officer hding a fake artifact in his cabin for the sole reason that the author wanted to write an adventure set onboard the Kitty Hawk in Artifacts Unbound and that other one with UCAS shedim special forces.

So I guess some people saw a potentiel to it, and ran with it.

[Nstol_wisper]

They did War! and several adventures set in Bogota and "The Triumph of Aztlan" chapter in Storm Front. They did Mil Spec Tech[i] and [i]Mil Spec Tech 2 and Euro War Antiques. They also did that adventure about the Kitty Hawk CAS aircraft carrier commanding officer hding a fake artifact in his cabin for the sole reason that the author wanted to write an adventure set onboard the Kitty Hawk in Artifacts Unbound and that other one with UCAS shedim special forces.

So I guess some people saw a potentiel to it, and ran with it.

More current plots about the War and the UCAS and CAS I say.
We know how the Corps feel. But the wouldn't the militaries mentioned have had at least some small operations in the Amazonia Aztlan war hoping to tip the balance? It was not mentioned much. And it looked like a great place to introduce some new characters.
UCAS and CAS could easily fall on opposing sides of the issue.

[binarywraith]

No thanks.

War is a terrible place for shadowrunners. No money to be made, and expecting patriotism out of neo-anarchist street punks is laughable.

[hermit]

They did War! and several adventures set in Bogota and "The Triumph of Aztlan" chapter in Storm Front. They did Mil Spec Tech[i] and [i]Mil Spec Tech 2 and Euro War Antiques. They also did that adventure about the Kitty Hawk CAS aircraft carrier commanding officer hding a fake artifact in his cabin for the sole reason that the author wanted to write an adventure set onboard the Kitty Hawk in Artifacts Unbound and that other one with UCAS shedim special forces.

So I guess some people saw a potentiel to it, and ran with it.

There's also the One Step Ahead adventure sketch in Corporate Intrigue, where Lofwyr has the runners infiltrate a nuclear submarine and two (2) aircraft carriers to enable Krupp to spy on the CAS, Ares and UCAS. Miraculously, the plot does not end with disposal of the runners (when I ran it, they got to choose between magically altered memories or a four-week chemical/PAB mindwipe).

More current plots about the War and the UCAS and CAS I say.
We know how the Corps feel. But the wouldn't the militaries mentioned have had at least some small operations in the Amazonia Aztlan war hoping to tip the balance? It was not mentioned much. And it looked like a great place to introduce some new characters.
UCAS and CAS could easily fall on opposing sides of the issue.

That's a campaign that would need special characters. It has been done before - 2nd, 3rd and 4th Edition companions had special rules and ideas for non-runner campaigns, and there even has been an adventure supplement in 2nd dedicated to such campaigns (including the memorably insane UCAS sterilized mage girl academy on a black site in Athabascan plot).

However, for shadowrunners? a non-starter. Typical runners don't work well in the authoritarian, top-down, machistic and in case of the UCAS, CAS and Aztlan, borderline to fully fascist structures of an army. Also, pay is shit; runners have much better options and higher expectations than the meager wages the armies of the 6th world can offer. Plus, the army likes their troopers standardized - and not special-sized, special-equipped and with augmentations from all over the place, complicating resupply, miantainance and maintaining combat readyness greatly. Besides, try to fit trolls into APCs when they'Re designed with humans to orks in mind.

Bottom line: runners don't fit well with the army.

A way to integrate runners into a military-centered campaign would be to either have the team organize as a small PMC (which would require a bunch of goon and logistics NPC), and hiring with a company or similar unit as "special ressources" as a poor man's black ops squad (this would probably work well for the CAS forces, as they seem semiprivate, state-bound militias with little in terms of centralized command structure anyway). Or just play a mercenary campaign, with merc contracts instead of Johnsons.

[binarywraith]

Yeah, the last thing a military wants is the equivalent of a black-ops specialist squad that is also mercenary and completely unreliable when it comes to blindly obeying orders.

[Nstol_wisper]

Yeah, the last thing a military wants is the equivalent of a black-ops specialist squad that is also mercenary and completely unreliable when it comes to blindly obeying orders.

And so let art imitate life..... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Ironic and funny!