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Witness
OK then.
Who wants to go and live in Earthdawn era? You've got the scourge, horrors, never-ending warfare, a fascist uber-empire etc, but on the other hand you might get to kick ass with your 'Blizzard Sphere' or your 'Leaping Tiger Downstrike'.
nezumi
I would love the chance to live there for a set amount of time, perhaps a year. But more than that? No thanks.
James McMurray
Yes and No to the Earthdawn. One one hand you get everyone on the planet knowing some form of magic. But on the other hand there's no Umbrella Corp to work for that can mostly protect you from the horrors of the outside world. If I were to live in a Caern most of the time and could be reasonably certain of safety I'd do it in aheartbeat. Otherwise I'd probably still do it if I didn't have a family.
Grinder
Not everyone in the ED world is magically acitve (an adept), but if you're referring to the shitload of common magical items you're right smile.gif

I would like to live there, especially in a wild border country like Cara Fahd - i love Claw Ridge biggrin.gif Important is to be an adept, that would make life much much easier there.
Witness
I'd like to go and live on the Event Horizon. I dig Neptune, and that magic metal ball thing was da bomb.
wink.gif
Grinder
Nah, no elven chicks biggrin.gif
James McMurray
Presumably I'd be a PC, and so I'd have a class and some circle abilities. I'd probably advance a circle once every 5-10 years though, since I'm not out killing stuff for XP.
Grinder
Ok, I see smile.gif Just bi living your life you gain some Legend Points over the years, so your advancement in lower cirlce would be faster then one every 5-10 years.
James McMurray
I'm nowhere near any ED books so I just grabbed numbers at random. If it's faster then that, sweet! smile.gif
Grinder
Always a pleasure to make people happy. smile.gif

Btw, the "gain some Legend Points by just living your life" is a semi-offical rule, created by what we germans call "gesunder menschenverstand". Wait, "logical sense" or sth. like that.
mfb
QUOTE (Milton)
What is the difference to nowadays corporate euro-america?

the same difference there is between walking down the street alone at night in a small town, and doing the same thing in a bad neighborhood in NYC. there's still a chance something bad could happen to you, in the small town--but the chances skyrocket, if you're in NYC.
Grinder
Is NYC still so worse? I plan a trip to the Big Apple in September.
PBTHHHHT
At this point, DC might be worse. nyahnyah.gif
mfb
never actually been to NYC. i'm sure there are parts of it that are bad enough to do the job.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Grinder)
Is NYC still so worse? I plan a trip to the Big Apple in September.

Eh, NYC isn't really scary anymore. Back in the 80s and prior the crime rate was higher, but since then the economy has been improving and crime is way down. I used to live there; in fact, I grew up there. My opinion is that now the city is safer than ever. I would think that it's pretty safe to wander around most areas of it even in the wee hours of the morning. I mean, of course, it's not 100% guaranteed that nothing bad would happen to you but my feeling is that as far as major cities go it's quite safe.
nezumi
QUOTE (PBTHHHHT)
At this point, DC might be worse. nyahnyah.gif

Just because we've started wearing flak jackets to work is no reason to assume DC is anything but a safe, clean, lovGUN FIRE!!!

*ducks behind a historic monument*
Shrike30
Anyone who thinks SR is just like today, except with cooler toys, hotter women, and magic, has not been reading the same books I have.

Come on, people... there's entire parts of the city you don't go near because the guys on the corner look at you and see 10,000 nuyen.gif in body parts just walking around waiting to get picked up. There's ghouls living in the sewers that occasionally come up and kill sleeping families in their homes. That guy you're standing next to on the subway might have a bomb implanted in his skull that will go off if he calls the wrong commlink. And I can't remember the last time I saw a biker gang rolling down 405 shooting up semis for their cargo, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't recently.

Real life isn't ideal by any means. SR is fucking horrible. I think i'll stick with playing in SR, and living in this world, hopefully steering it a bit towards being a better place.
mfb
what Shrike30 said.
emo samurai
Why would former mercs get sweet consulting jobs after quitting?
Supercilious
Seeing as my dream job is private security contractor (see: mercenary) I think living in the SR world would be pretty much perfect.

I do not play the game because I hate the idea of living in such a world, I play it because it appeals to my fantasies.
Snow_Fox
just a few more years kids, and we might not have a choice
ShieldT
I voted yes, because there's a lot more ways to unlock people's potential and there are nifty paracritters running around (albeit many of them are vicious).

Heh, I'm one of those strange people who are actually hoping that something will happen when the Mayan Calnedar actually changes over in 2011/2012. Do I believe that something will happen? Not so much, more like I'll be very disappointed if nothing happens, shrug it off and get on with my life.

I'd much rather live in an Awakened version of this world than Shadowrun, any day.
SL James
I get giddy whenever there are mass casualty events. That doesn't mean I want to live in a world where it's more likely to happen to me.
emo samurai
Does anybody think that the Awakening is all that it'll take to screw the world up?
James McMurray
Who needs an awakening? All magic returning would do is make the screwups different than they'll be if we keep going the way we're going.
Witness
QUOTE (emo samurai @ Jul 18 2006, 01:48 PM)
Does anybody think that the Awakening is all that it'll take to screw the world up?

Yes. Like I said earlier, I think the Awakening would seriously screw the world up. Or, more to the point, would screw people up.
Magic = Bad. It's bad even when it doesn't exist. I've met people who freak out about all the bad luck they will have because they've just broken a mirror. I've had relationships go awry because a girlfriend really believed her horoscope. When I was younger I myself made some terrible decisions based on superstitious beliefs. The world today is plagued by con-artists who play on human fallibility.
Make magic real and nobody can tell what's real anymore. I think that in itself could be catastrophic, not to mention the fear and paranoia that would rip every community apart.
emo samurai
The thing is, though, once magic becomes real, it becomes verifiable. All it takes is a mage doing an astral scan to point out that somebody's a fraud, and once people start making fireballs and healing people, horoscopes won't matter unless somebody's doing shit with the zodiac, like more powerful ritual magic and stuff. The petty frauds will look like frauds next to the real thing, once the real thing exists.
James McMurray
There will be thousands more con men then there are Houdinis. And most of those will never think about going to The Barrens, much less actually doing it.
Witness
QUOTE (emo samurai)
The thing is, though, once magic becomes real, it becomes verifiable. All it takes is a mage doing an astral scan to point out that somebody's a fraud, and once people start making fireballs and healing people, horoscopes won't matter unless somebody's doing shit with the zodiac, like more powerful ritual magic and stuff. The petty frauds will look like frauds next to the real thing, once the real thing exists.

I see your point, but if magic is understood then it's physics / technology. I tend to think of SR magic as being rather poorly understood, and commonly misunderstood. Yes the hermetics work on their theories, but even Ehran gets stumped by things that don't fit with those theories.
emo samurai
The point is, people will do things with magic, obvious things. It doesn't even need to be theories, there will be "luck," and then there will be a levitating car.
Kalvan
It may be poorly understood, but it's not that misunderstood. If nothing happens, then nothing happens.

After all, in Shadowrun, Krillian Photography actually works as advertised.
Kalvan
That said, no, I don't want to live in the world of Shadowrun. It's too depressing on too many levels.
torzzzzz
I could get some cybor legs and get rid of theas dam broken one's
I reccon it would be a hard life to start with but hay ain't it already??
Can you imagen it all that excitement and interesting things to do, i mean don't like a part of your body or broke something.... don't worry just get some cybor ware and you would be fine.

ok the pollution and bullet dodging might be a problem but you could get over it, and wow magic well don't need to say much about that apart form awsom!

torz x spin.gif
Chrome Shadow
No, no, no, sometimes yes...
Merlyn
I said YES. There are several reasons for this.

1) For the vast majority of people in the SR world, life is no more dangerous than it is now. A lot of the objections I have read here seem to come from the perspective of players. In other words, we know how the world is stated and we see the inequalities/dangers of areas of it. Now forget all that. Imagine you are 21, just out of university (or college for our colonial cousins smile.gif ) and looking for a job. A mega-corp approaches you and offers you a job. What do you say? You say yes. Why? Because that is the what you do. You get a job, you work and, hopefully enjoy life. How is that different to now?

2) Meta-humans. How cool would it be to live in a world that contained meta-humans? Not just elf-babes, but the whole lot!

3) Cyber-ware and Bio-ware. No longer are our bodies slaves to fate! Lost an arm? No problem! Sure it costs money, but what doesn't?

4) Better toys and the Matrix biggrin.gif

Lets look at the downside of living in the SR world. Most of the negatives I have read on this thread all stem from the idea that you are stupid enough to place yourself in that location. Yes there are some very bad areas of the SR world, but then there are some very bad areas of the world right now. The difference is the location of where these areas are. I would still avoid them.

As for corp wage slaving, what do you do right now? How is that different?
Dogsoup
I'm a parapsychology and cryptozoology buff and the world is, sadly, very lacking in those areas.
Birdy
QUOTE (emo samurai)
What if you were a magician?

Buy Predator
Load Predator
Put Predator to head
Pull trigger
Repeat if necessary


Even without Magic&Monsters I would not want to live in the SR world. If I'd degenerate into either a Tolkien Monster (Elf, Dwarf, Ork, Troll...) or a Magic user, I'd rather shoot myself.
James McMurray
You wouldn't want the ability to realign the universe on a whim? Why not?

By the way, Tolkien didn't invent any of those, he just crafted magnificent stories using them. smile.gif
mfb
QUOTE (Merlyn)
For the vast majority of people in the SR world, life is no more dangerous than it is now.

indeed. all those suckers in Chicago should've known better than to live there! and Christmas shopping at the Arc--everyone knew that was a gamble!
James McMurray
One city and one mall is nowhere near a large enough group to invalidate a "vast majority" statement.
mfb
a) sure they do. in the real world, the vast majority of people don't have to worry about bugs eating their entire city, or insane AIs trapping them in a city-sized building and conducting horrible experiments on them. both of those are possibilities in SR, as proven by the fact that they've each already happened once. therefore, the lives of the vast majority of people in SR are measurably more dangerous, because there are at least two more dangerous events that could happen to them.

b) those were just examples. to quote myself:
QUOTE (mfb)
think about Chicago, think about the Night of Rage, think about Denver, think about the brushfire wars that have raged across North America, VITAS, the Arcology, the Crashes, the Ring of Fire... the world of SR is a never-ending stream of catastrophes that make 9/11--an event that caused a sea change in the thought processes of at least one nation--look like a kid blowing off his hand with a firecracker.

the 'vast majority' in SR is demonstratably less vast than the 'vast majority' of today.
James McMurray
I believe the "no more" was not intended to be a precise equation of "SR = now" but a more general "not noticably so." We're just reading them differently is all, but we come to the same conclusion: the vast majority of people in SR live their lives without ever experiencing a life threatening event. The rest is all semantics. smile.gif
Birdy
QUOTE (James McMurray @ Jul 24 2006, 05:30 PM)
You wouldn't want the ability to realign the universe on a whim? Why not?

By the way, Tolkien didn't invent any of those, he just crafted magnificent stories using them. smile.gif

Well, his cardboard versions differ quite a bit from the elder originals. And IMHO the only readable book Tolkien ever wrote is the Oxford English Dictionary. He's a third rate hack with low quality stories that, like Zimmer-Bradley or Rowling, get's hyped way beyond it's place.

As for shit like Magic: No, I would not want it. "Shoot the mage than burn the body" is the minimum.
emo samurai
You're not answering his question. nyahnyah.gif
James McMurray
Cool. Obviously a lot of people disagree with your interpretation of Tolkien, but that's what those pesky human rights are for: to stop us from burning heretics at the stake. wink.gif
FanGirl
QUOTE (mfb)
indeed. all those suckers in Chicago should've known better than to live there! and Christmas shopping at the Arc--everyone knew that was a gamble!

All those suckers in the WTC and the Pentagon should have known better than to go into work that Tuesday morning, too! and flying cross country from Newark or Boston or D.C.--everyone knew that was a gamble! sarcastic.gif
emo samurai
I'm sorry to say this, FanGirl, but your sarcasm detector is dead.
X-Kalibur
QUOTE (emo samurai)
I'm sorry to say this, FanGirl, but your sarcasm detector is dead.

I'm not sure it even existed judging from the above...
FanGirl
No, your mom's sarcasm detector is dead! nyahnyah.gif

EDIT: Seriously though, I thought mfb was making the (sarcastic) point that the SR world is more dangerous than our own. Did I not read enough into it? question.gif
mfb
FanGirl, do the math. count up how many died on 9/11, and then look at how many people died in Bug City.
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