Now, I know the vast majority of things in Shadowrun has become electronical so things will read the news to you, trideo is all vistual, the trix is majorly visual. However, there are some who have R/W skills for their languages. What sort of uses would you use that for? I mean, gridguide is going to give you directions to where you want to go, a lot of systems are voice activated or have iconic representations. So, why would reading ever come into play?

In other games, I've used reading skills to read the secret memo on the desk of the corporate exec you're talking to or writing skills to make a forged document. However, Shadowrun isn't either of those.

What originally brought this up was that I started watching 7 Days again. In it, one of the characters is seen reading books upside down sometimes. It is a sign of dyslexia, but I figure he does it because as he was military trained and part of the naval intelligence, he was likely taught in a way to read things on people's desks and so forth.

I suppose you could have people writing into datapads (or speaking into them and the pad displaying it in writing), or even have the plexies like they have in Andromeda, or the clear screens like in the Minority Report. However, then we're assuming people know how to read. Probably everyone with a SIN can read, or at least those who have gone to school. Maybe some of the sinless can read, being taught by other people or managing to get things like a Speak and Spell working. There was an article about that sort of thing, putting the cyberpunk in Shadowrun. Kind of old news for some stuff today, since the site is mostly SR2 stuff, but could be interesting. Cyberstyle for those with no style.

According to Changeling (the 5th SR novel) most folks in 2050 are iconerate - able to recognize icons etc as you mentioned but functionally illiterate. Why the rules don't reflect this only the devs know...

Well it's another thing to bone your characters with. They're in a bar and the barman slips them a note saying "The redhead in the corner has a gun and is going to kill you, chummer" and you sit there, scratching your head and bang!

There is some debate on this in other threads (feel free to search). In SR4 it's a lot easier to be illiterate because, as hyzamarca pointed out, we have stuff to read FOR you. That doesn't exist in SR3. Presumably in SR3, there's a symbol for just about everything, but quickly the symbology becomes more complex than just English, so I don't know how that'd work. I can understand complete illiteracy being more common, but among people with a 6 intelligence who are professional hermetic mages or skilled in repairing complex military helicopters, I imagine literacy is basically a job requirement (and at a level beyond 3).

Take it as you wish. In my game, r/w skill is equal to the main language skill, unless you take a flaw otherwise.

A lot of people who post on DSF today, would still be around at 2050 or even at 2070, giving advanced medical care (if we can afford it). We certainly can read (and write), and I see no reason why we would forget how .

I can believe there will be a lot of people who can't properly read, but a fair amount will know how.

A lot of people who post on DSF today will be dead by 2025 from the two waves of VITAS. Dumpshockers are probably not where the majority of the casualties will be, but remember, the first wave took 25% of the world population and the second wave took 10% of the people who were left, plus some births.

~J

I tended to look at it another way. A friend of mine who was in management at state agency said that he didn't read when he got home, meaning leisure reading, because he read all day long. I think that is how it would be in the corporate world. People can still read and probably do much of the day. When they get home, they aren't going to want to read so they watch the trid, movies or whatever.

I also think most other people that have had some schooling are also literate. Take the above example about the bar. Passing a note along with a drink would be very subtle and would get the message across. Sure they could send an AR message or something, but suppose their AR isn't up?

Here's another example. For a time I worked in management at a small factory. Instructions would be passed along in writing, thing like work orders and such. This usually wasn't a problem since there was a format we had to follow with it so writing ability had little affect. The problem we did have was that a worker was illiterate or very dyslexic, I'm was never sure. He always had someone read the orders to him and he would get the work done. Now, you can see how that would be a problem if may workers were like that. You might be able to use video or verbal communications, but record would be harder to keep and mistakes would be likely. Basically, it is much simpler to be able to pass around written instructions and reports than to have to pass it along verbally to each and every person.

Mainland Australia is never specifically mentioned, but Tasmania is heavily affected according to T:AL, so it's reasonable to expect that the rest of the place got the usual treatment.

~J

VITAS proliferated in Tasmania because of rampant incest.

I always found the idea that people became functionally illiterate to be a ridiculous spectre of the 1989 edition of Shadowrun, when they were trying to envision their japanaphobia fears personafied. I think it's safe to say that with the way things are going, literacy will be a requirement if only by default - all of our computers now require you to be literate. I can't see a computer system that can provide functionality for someone who can't understand displayed language coming along, really. The majority of people can still read, things will be made for those who can read, so those who are newly born will still have reason to learn to read.

It's slightly over the top, but not unbelievably so. Think of the MSN generation, due to emoticons and internet/phone language, there are people (and not necessarily just lower class people) who have a lower standard of literacy. The fact that a text-based communication system can reduce literacy is pretty odd, now think of if our electronic communication was done simply by thought, eg. The Matrix?

Doesn't seem so implausible to me. You can easily read-write in shadowrun, as you get automatic half-points in your language anyway, and if you want a better r/w skill then just pay the tiny knowledge point cost.

Iconerate, love that word! Which surely ties into the whole Japanese 9and indeed oriental) thing with the original conceptions. Just look at how Japanese and other eastern languages are written. It is icons with deep meanings over strings of shorter words...

Yep, but its still Iconography that works in a way us western types are not so comfortable with. That said we probably have several thousand ourselves and we dont realise it.

Languages, certainly. But what does an X mean? A circle with a line slashed through it? Red octagon? Yellow inverted triangle with exclamation mark? Picture of a man on a door? Picture of a woman on a door? Circle with an arc and two dots inside? I'm not going to make an argument about how extensive it is, because I don't have time, but we've certainly got quite a bit of iconography.

(Some of above-listed symbols may only apply in US)

~J

"It's a book!"
"Well, what's that?"
"It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should have one."
"Stuff it!"

That show was way, WAY ahead of it's time.


-karma