Ok, this idea was probably brought before by someone else, but the search function brought nothing ressembling this...What would the world of shadowrun look like in the dawn of the 4th millenium?

If my calculations are correct, this period of time would bring the magic rating to a level similar to the magic level present in Earthdawn, only just before the scourge instead of after it. (The Mana Curve follows a 5000 years cycle. Thus, the magical part of the curve would last 2500 years, with the mana peak being after 1250 years of the beginning of the magical era. 2988 would be 977 years after the awakening, thus 273 years before the mana peak. Earthdawn setting starts 204 years after the mana peak (called scourge). That would mean both settings would have a similar mana level)

Now, how is the 4th milleniunm? I have ideas i want to share, and your suggestions are welcome. Right now, for simplicity's sake, I'll make a rough timeline between 2070 and 2988.

2070: Shadowrun current events
2091: Unexpectedly, what appeared to be small and cute awakened animals called the fairies are recongnized as a sentient species when scientists finally deciphered the songs they made as a language. Since then, they were gradually accepted and many were given SINs, although they remain a fundamentaly mischevious species.
2113: The plagues that threathened the Sixth World showed no sign of rest. Bug spirits were reproducing at an alarming rate. New kinds of spirits from even more alien metaplanes were sighted on a regular basis and a dangerous cult was formed: The Spawns of Verjigorm. Their goal is the anihilation of all living form.
2150: Unable to face all the dangers of the awakened earth, metahumans have a desperate plan for survival. Hide in a place where magic doesn't exist and where the magical threats may not follow them: space. Hundreds of millions of metahumans fled to space, leaving a desolate, war-torn, polluted and ravaged planet behind them. The fate of the ones left behind is unknown...but they are either dead, or worse...
2173: Luna City is a sprawling metropolis, the asteroid belt is filled with space stations and the megacorporations are mining the great gas giant and their moons and rings...when something wrong occured. What appeared to be a perfect plan, was in fact, an ellaborate trap. The space wasn't a magical void after all, but a mana webb of a kind nobody knew about. Spirits and magical entities far more dangerous than anything metahumanity had to face back on earth swarmed the space dwellers. Horrors with unknown names, so alien no metahumans could bear their sight and kept their sanity destroyed Luna City and all but a few of the megacorporation stations, the belt is almost turn into rubble and the survivors are hiding in fear in the remaining stations, small enough to go unnoticed. Metahumanity is down by 99.5% of its population.
2341: The horrors are still hunting the remaining metahumans when the first sign of hope appears. A new alien species, known as the adaptoids are encountered. In fact, the first adatoids were travellers who stumbled across the solar system by accident. They offered help and ressources, as well as friendship against the horrors. The adaptoids were nothing compared to other metahumans. They literraly survived in open space. Their metabolism was made to live in space. In fact, the air and water needed for metahumans to survive was dangerous. Fortunatly, their metabolism is able to adapt to almost any kind of foreign environment, although sometimes not fast enough to prevent injury.
2346: Shortly after the adaptoid first contact, one of the most important discovery of all metahumanity was made by an orc scavanger living in one of the saturn's space station: true air. While the remaining space stations had to rely on life support, these functions were aging and breaking more and more often, putting the lives of the remaining metahumans at risk. (and the adaptoid were not of any help, since they lack any life support system at all) This discovery, a single mineral-like ore that seemed to create air out of nothing was a blessing. Soon after, true water, true fire, true earth and true wood were found too...All was in place for the creation of metahumanity's spaceship.
2352: Using true elements, as well as the scavangers' help, metahumans were able to create ships using beasts. From DNA samples and equipment from the ruins of megacorporation station, they created beasts large enough to accept a fair number of cyber-implants. This mix of living tissus and mechanical devices allowed them to create transports capable of housing metahumans as well of limited space travel. (the speed was limited, but fast enough to come and go across the solar system.
2380: The adaptoid population was growing in the solar system from immigration.
2397: A long-range exploration beast discovered in the Oort Cloud (an asteroid belt far away from the sun, past pluton) a giant tree! It appeared to be a space-capable ship crafted from a city-sized tree. Inside, they found a new alien race. They were all placed in statis except for a single one of them, which appeared to be immortal, who controlled the whole ship. It appeared they were waiting to be discovered. They called themselves the T'Skrang. According to their story, they were sent into space by dwarves scholar several millenium ago in order to protect all the knowledge from the age of legend. The T'Skrangs were the only one, the dwarves said, that could master the tree's control and to survive the prolonged magical statis, even when the whole earth would turn mundane. Why is so, nobody knows. Inside the ship, as well and thousands of "frozen" T'Skrangs, they found tomes written in a Dwarven script 4000 years old...
2460: The first dwarven tomes were translated. They contain tales and legends of individuals who fought against the horrors 5000 years ago. Hidden in these tales were teachings about how to master new forms of magic and powers. They were called, according to the T'Skrangs, Disciplines and the practionners of these Disciplines were Adepts...From these tomes, metahumans learned, again, how to master the awakened world.
2700: New T'Skrang tree ships were discovered.
2743: A new alien race is discovered in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. From the very rocks the asteroids were formed emerged entity made entirely of stone. They call themselves the Elders, although they say some of their kind felt on earth some time ago (probably millenia) and called themselves Obsidiman...
2749: A group of individual, calling themselves the Theran Syndicate is starting to gather many metahumans to his cause: reclaiming the planet Earth still swarmed by many magical threats. They were quite successful and all their members showed incredible skills in many disciplines. They even showed talents unknown by anybody else.
2814: After several skirmishes and full scale attacks, the Theran Syndicate annouced that earth was safe again, but instead of inviting all the metahumans back, they sealed it off with massive magical energy, an armada of dual-natured sattelites and other protection. They closed themselves from space, and the horrors...
2846: The Beastman are accepted as a sentient species. Unexpectedly, some of the beasts, now used for any technological use (from firearms to mining tools) showed signs of sapience. They were self-aware and many asked for freedom. They were granted, since all the help possible was needed to fight the horrors, still hunting metahumans.
2891: The megacorporations are revived, although in a new form. As the situation in space was improving, people started to gather in larger communities, soon reaching a sizable population. It was a matter of time before nations emerged. From the ashes of the old megacorporation, new nations were born around the gaz giants. Luna City and the Belt community was the other "nations" not linked to any particular old megacorporations.
2899: Finally, after several decades of travel, a long range exploration vessel reached the solar system of Sirius, a few light years away...The two suns were theorized to be too much for any planet to develop a lifeform, but the theory was wrong. They found the Sirians...A highly developped species with a brand new space capable fleet, but with a mana level close to nothing, as if the mana curve on their planet was different than earth's...They, too, had serious problems with the horrors, though, since they dwelled in space, and the relationship was friendly...Many Sirians asked to travel to the solar system, and with their help, they managed to upgrade the speed of the beasts to substanstially reduce the time needed to travel between the two solar systems (the light-speed barrier wasn't broken, though, and travel was still long)
2950: As new dwarven tomes were discovered, and new disciplines mastered, t hope was slowly going back to the metahumans' heart. Unfortunatly, the power of the horrors were still growing more and more powerful and rival nations were starting to struggle for territory and ressources.
2988: Space is still a harsh place to live, the gas giant nations are fighting a war against two enemies: rival nations and horrors. Luna City is trying to contact earth by all possible means as well as surviving the horrors's assault and the belt communities led by councils of Elder, are struggling to find enough true elements to suit their needs...The survival of metahumanity is still uncertain, but it is time for heroes to come forth and make their own legend.


So, what do you think? (and yes, I've been working on that for a long time)

Um, full of holes and unbelieavable come to mind. Now, that may sound pretty negative, but a) you're covering a huge chunk of time, so without a seriously fastidious approach you're going to have holes and b) belieavability isn't necessarely required, depending on where you want to go with this. While they both deal with magic, Earthdawn doesn't necessarely go for that much belieavability, while Shadowrun does. So it depends on it you're going for a fantasy feel or a cyberpunkish feel.

Like you say, it's impossible to remain completly believable when you stretch so far into the future. But this is just a working draft and i would like to hear more about the holes and unbeliavability who mentionned...to try and fix them.

One other problem, the magic cycles are 5,000 years. So the high point in each (or low point in the down cycle I guess) would be at the 2,500 year point. Otherwise, Earthdawn would have taken place just a few hundred years before the birth of Christ, which is within the time of recorded history. ED was before that. The good part though is that you can strecth out your time line a bit more.It's still a cool idea. Troll Space Raiders. Sweet.

Actually, 5000 years cycle means the magical peaks are 5000 years away of each others. The difference between the magical peak and the deepest magical void is 2500 years though. It would mean the latest magical peak was roughly 2500 years before Christ.

I don't know about that. THat would put the end of the cycle around 1500 BC wouldn't it? That's The height of the Egyptian empire. They'd have had to have a bunch of hyroglyphs that look like trolls.

No it's five thousand years between the start of an age and the end, i.e. the last age of magic ended about 3000 BC and was at a peak 2500 years before that. The ultimate trough of the current cycle is around 500BC and the next peak at around 4500 AD.

I to think the idea is very cool, if you do it far enough forward it could become very much Space Opera mixed with fantasy rather than cyberpunk. I'd go for a very high powered style myself drawing some of the more sensible ideas from things like Macross and other sci fi manga for the tech.

Pushing the game that much into the future would not be a good idea i think, for the reasons mentioned by Backgammon. I wonder though, how magical the world would be in 2988 then? Is the timeline still possible? I would really appreciated feedbacks on the timeline itself as well as on the overall idea.

And I already thought about Troll Space Raiders roaming the saturn rings filled with Corportative Mining Stations looking for magical crystals. The Swordmasters would be Solar Cowboys, master of both melee and ranged weapons and herding the would-be starships. Beastmasters are the Technomancer who reached the deep realms of the Matrix, the realm of the collective minds where computers aren't necessary anymore...etc.

It would still be possible, I think just scale back the horrors a bit. Remember though that bug spirits are usually a sign of the coming Scourge, and they came WAY early because of the mana spike caused by the Great Ghost Dance. SO if you want to speed things up a bit in your game, you can. After all, there's new high mana danger zones, like the Wuxing Sky Tower.

Also remember that you don't have to pigeon hole 2989 into making all the adepts follow disciplines. Those are thousands of years old. In the last age, most mages coulnd't cast healing spells, only same heal-ish effects. Now almost every mage can. It's a new age, and eventualyl the styles may formalize in to something like th disciplines. BUt the disciplnies varied by the region you were in. Where as SR , you can share your magical theory with someone half a world away. Makes it more of a melting pot. United Magical Theory for example. So you get to have fun thinknig up all new styles.

Or you can go antoher route and say that old disciplines were rediscovered and embraced. The elves brough it back , or the orks looking in to their old history.

That was pretty much the point of the dwarven tomes. People have rediscovered the old disciplines and adapted them to the new world. It doesn't prevent hybridization and new disciplines, though. For example, the illusionist could become the TetraDisk Jockey, master of sound and lightwaves. The Cavalryman could be the Solar Glider, an intriguing mix between a rigger and a beastmaster. Etc.

Right , sorry, forgot about that. At least Air Sailor would be easy to convert. Nethermancers in space though... that should be interesting.

Fast List of possible future disciplines:

Atmospherial: Master of the void. They can move and fight in space better than under the effect of gravity...

Astromancer: The future version of elementalists...Master of the 4 elemental spirits and elemental based magic.

Gunner: Aka archer in space

Scrounger: Being a civilization who survived by scavenging what is left by the horrors, the talent to magically find interesting stuff and hide is interesting (futuristic thief)

More to come as i think of them.

Realisticly speaking, space battles would be rather fuitle. They would either have 0 fatalities or 100% fatalities on both side without any possibility for a middle ground.
This is because outer space doesn't is a great insulator and space ships produce a great deal of heat. They require very large, fragile, and unarmorable radiators, without which the crew would quickly back to death from their own body heat even if they did shut down all power consuming systems.

If someone hits your ship's radiator there is and there is no good reason not to surrender you will. Without immediate assistance you will all die in a horrible way and limping back to a friendly space station in time is pretty much impossible. One's only hope is the opposing ship or allies if there are any with functional radiators and the capacity to take on extra crew and/or extra waste heat. This would result it a system of warefare where battles are always decided by a single hit to the radiator followed by a surrender.

However, if the other side is suicidal or genocidal then there is no reason not to fight to the death and it would be rather trivial to hit the enemy's radiator, killing them at the cost of killing hastening your own death due to the weapon's waste heat. This would result in a system where battles are not survivable at all. If you kill the other guy's inthe most efficient way possible they'll still have enough time to kill you, assuming similar weapon ranges.


Magic could tip the balance here, since it would be possible to use manipulation spells similar to ice sheet to reduce the temperature of the craft. A spacecraft with a mage on board could survive the destruction of a radiator, at least long enough to repair it.


Also, oene must consider the distances involved. An X-ray laser (impractical but possible using lead lenses) with enough power to make steel explode could easily be accurate out to hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Stealth is a general impossibility in space due to the giant radiators necessary to disperse heat soo anyone with decent infrared optics could reliably kill a target a hundred thousand kilometers away. A weaker X-ray laser coud simply convert the metal in the hull of the ship into deadly radioactive isotopes with short half-lives, killing the crew via radiation poisioning while leaving the vessel intact and usable after a 48 hour decontamination. Slightly more practical Ultraviolet lasers would have superb accuracy and killing power, including the ability to make steel explode, although they wouldn't have the ionizing effects of X-rays.


And then there is ship speed to consider. If you have civilian spacecraft that can reach a nice fraction of c then you have unstopable suicide bombers with the ability to destroy planets.

You may not be able to lose heat through conduction or convection in space, but with a background temperature of about 3 Kelvin black body radiation from your ship means you're a lot more likely to freeze than bake. Fortunately, heat is relatively easy to produce.

See also: This link that has good info on what hyz is talking about.

It's specific to a particular satellite, but the info is applicable.

And yes, that sentence is shorter than the original link.

I don't know the specific spells you're talking about, but when you go to the magic end of the spectrum, it really has much less impetus to make sense.

In other words, if you can work out a way that those spells help to dissapate heat in space, then they help to dissapate heat in space. Realism within the internal "logic" of the game world.

Because when you say "magic", RL physics stops making any difference.

If you can create matter from nothing, impart your heat to that matter, and then remove that matter from your ship it would cool your ship. This could also be used as a means of propulsion if you can throw the matter away fom your ship with enough force.

A living ship would have exactly the same problems as an unliving ship. You can't defeat the first or second laws of thermodynamics, you can only work around them. A ship must burn fuel for power (solar power would count as indirectly burning fuel). There is no other way. Even the best heat recycling system is not 100% efficient. It takes more power to recover waste heat than you'll be able to get out of waste heat.
All work creates waste heat and burning fuel would create even more. As it builds up you must get rid of it somehow. This is true of a car and it is true of the human body. A living ship would probably be even more heat inefficient than some other designs.

Magic, because it works on alternate laws and connects to alternate spaces would be the best way around the heat problem, as well as other problems such as the lightspeed limit and fuel costs.

For example, the energy content of a fuel is measured in unit energy per unit mass, usually joules/kilogram. The energy required to change velocity can be derived from the equations
KE= mass*(velocity^2).
ΔKE = mass*((vf^2)-(vi^2))

and the fuel required can be dervied from
KE = (energy content per unit mass)*mass
Δfuel mass =mass*((vf^2)-(vi^2))/(energy content per unit fuel mass)
The only problem here is that the fuel mass is a part of the total mass so
Δfuel mass =(ship mass+ total fuel mass)*((vf^2)-(vi^2))/(energy content per unit fuel mass)

This leads to an uncomfortable catch 22. The faster you go and the more massive your ship is the more fuel you need, but fuel adds to your mass so the more fuel you need the more fuel you need. You never really reach a point where you are better off with less fuel, but the more fuel you have the more fuel you need to burn in order to reach the same velocity. For this reason carrying extra fuel is uneconomical but not carrying extra fuel is dangerous.

A Levitation spell could be used to propel a ship without burning fuel. Likewise, an engine of true air and true fire could accelerate a ship by heating and expelling spontaneously created gasses.

A better example would be the Earthdawn teleportation spells, which while difficult could eleminate the need for spacecraft at all. Likewise,shifting a physcal ship the metaplanes via magic and then back to the physical world at another point would allow a vessel to instantly traverse great distances, perhaps even lightyears, and a traveler wouldn't even need a ship so long as the destination is hospitable.

hyzmarca, I gotta ask, what do you do for a living?

Ok, true air engines are trully the engines of the future. They provide partial life-support, heat radiation AND sub-light velocity. Thanks a lot for your help, by the way, I really appreciate your comments.

If i remember correctly from SR3, an astrally projected character cannot go through living material. Thus, a magical beast used as a ship would give the same protection against astral invasion.

Hey. I've managed to put down some rules that would allow a spacerunning experience. You might want to move the topic to a more appropriate forumif i start discussing about rules, though.

In the year 2988, every metahumans start with a Magic rating. There is no mundanes, only unexplored potentials. Magic rating is also higher, with a rating between 3 and 8 instead of 1 and 6 (not including initiation). Aliens (T'Skrangs, Elders, Adaptoids and Sirians) came into contact with magic later than metahumans, thus their magic rating is between 1 and 6. Also, every starting character starts with an initiation rating of 1.

Every character is an adept, a magician, a mystic adept or a technomancer. He must choose, though, a discipline in which to specialize. A discipline limits his abilities compare to 2070 shadowrunners, but gives him special powers.

Magician Powerss.
Magician disciplines focus on a limited number of spirits and spell categories, but gives access to Spell Matrix and Greater Spirit Formulas.

Spell Matrices protect the caster from drain. A spellcaster may attune his spell matrix with a specific spell by meditating during an hour. Only one spell may be attune to a spell matrix. A spellcaster has a total spell matrix rating equal to his initiation times 2. He may divide this rating into several smaller spell matrices if he wants. A spell matrix will negate all drain from the spell as long as he the spell's force is equal or lower than the spell matrix's rating.

Greater Spirit Formulas give a bonus to the rating of all the spirits under the magician's control equal to his initiation rating divided by 2 (rounded up).

MAgician Disciplines

Astromancer (Fire, Wind, Air and Earth spirits only, Combat spells only) aka elementalist
Spacemancer (Combat and Detection spells only) aka Wizard
Vitomancer (Beast, Plant, Man and Guidance spirits only, health spells only) aka shaman
Shadowmancer (possessing shadow, guardian, task and shedim spirits only, Manipulation spells only) aka Nethermancer
Tetra-Disk Jockey (Illusion and Manipulation spells only) aka Illusionist
Hitchhicker (possessing task, guardian, guidance and man spirits only, detection spells only) aka ''I can control your living ship by possessing it''
Demented (All toxic spirits) aka a wizard with a little trouble in his head
Twilightmancer (All bug spirits and illusion spells only) aka ''Impending doom"
Bloodmancer (Blood spirits and health spells)

Personally I'd avoid removing drain just because I like the feel of it. I'm a big ED fan, but I like the drain system better than juggling spell matrices. Just a personal preference.

The hitch hiker sounds like they'd be the new "geek the mage first" target if you go with the living ships. Seriously, a mage that can turn your ship against it's crew. yikes

I'd say technomancers would be better for that actually.

Resonance Special Powers

A resonance user has a single power, deep resonance. It gives a bonus to his sprite rating and to his known complex forms equal to his initiation grade divided by 2.

Resonance Discipline

Technomancer (Hacking complex forms only and Crack Sprites only)
Solar Seer (Common Use, Knowsofts and Linguasofts complex forms only and Courrier and Data Sprites only)
Solar Glider (Autosofts complex forms only and Fault and Machine Sprites only)

A resonance user may thread any kind of complex forms, but he can only permantly learn a few of them.

In that sense, both the resonance user and the hitchhicker are dangerous for ships.

well if he's combining SR and ED, he can always bring back mystic armor.

I always figured Shadowrun in the future would be more like Cowboy Bebop with a little of Outlaw Star mixed in. Or the perennial favortie Firefly.

But never really thought about far-far future.

I have to say, that's my take on it too. (Well, minus Outlaw Star; I'm not familiar with it.)

And as neat as it would be to see a SR setting for it, I'd just end up running that kind of game in Alternity.

Well, my own idea of Shadowrun in the future is pretty much post-apocalyptical. In the current setting, so much things could go wrong it's (probability-speaking) impossible that nothing goes wrong.

Word. A SR/PA game would rule too.

well, what kind of adventures could happen in an apocalyptical world set in the solar system, with magic, metahumanity and horrors?

But would an apocalypse on Earth really affect the solar system as a whole? Or is it by the extension of humans from a post-apocalyptic Earth into that solar system that would cause an effect?

well, according to my draft timeline, metahumanity suffered so much from metaplanar problems they ahd to abandon their homeworld and to go into space, where magic doesn't exist, only to see magic did exist in space, it was only ''different''.

So they went away from a post-apocalyptical world to find themselves in an even worst place.

I'd have to agree with some of the others about the time line being too far forward. I would put it much more recent or you will loose too much of the flavor of shadowrun. Cowboy beebop is about right.

One thing you might want to consider is an alternate timeline instead of a future timeline. (Okay alternate future timeline but let me explain)

Don't have magic come back at all in 2012. We move out into space and expand out into the solar system. Give it a hundred years or so but little or no cybertech - there is no need for it.
Then magic returns and goes out into the solar system. Maybe the magic sphere covers most of the system so that there are no mana zones past Saturn.

Magic returns and people develop cyberware to compenesate. The cyberware is at about the same level with some modifications. Your ships are reasonably powerful without getting overboard.

That is what I am doing for a game I'm working on.

Well, creating a post-apocalyptical world was necessary if i wanted to use the same tech-level. (No tech-improvment at all, we just lost the way to create them and we have to scavenge them instead.)

But your idea of an alternate timeline is interesting, and made me wonder. What about parrallel realities. In my timeline, the mana level was so high, horrors were able to travel from their metaplane into ours. But a single event may change everything. What if the ghost dance never occured? The mana level would have increased, but a lot slower, giving the time for humanity to adapt.

And what if both possibilities are coexisting. The wasted world would be a nest of horrors with only a few survivors left, and the ''clean'' world would be as you speak, with a low, but safe mana level. The two worlds could interact ina small way, as the horrors would want to go from one world to the other.

What do you think?

If you want Earthdawn in space you need to push the timeline forward a few thousand years more, as has been stated. That's not that much of a problem, though. Just have the horrors ruin everything again, but after man reaches space and on a gallactic scale this time. Survivors have to start over. That way you can get a tech level similar to Shadowrun in the year 5000; in space and with Earthdawn style magic. Remember that Earthdawn was a post-apocalyptic game. A future Earthdawn/Shadowrun could well be too. And also remember that in such a world, NOBODY would likely know that there ever was a time when fantasy creatures were'nt real, (eccept the odd archeologist) and that's what would make it a new setting like Shadowrun is to Earthdawn. That's the point of 5000 year cycles in a storytelling view. It's hard to imagine knowledge of the 21st century being completely gone in the year 3000, but in the year 5000, it's feasable that most records of our existence has vanished.