Personally I have adopted the SR4 use of real swear words but have kept the old SR3 terms like Chummer and Omae. For characters who were established before the crash I'll still have them use some of the old slang (like Decker) because they're used to it. I've even had high-grade initiates drop the Name-Giver bomb.

Anyway, just interested.

Personally, I use a good combination of both. Frag and chummer stick out from my fun with the old genesis game, and that is also a good part of the reason I laps into saying Decker from time to time. I however also use the SR4 lingo as well as current modern lingo. For me things can be both wicked awesome and wiz and someone can be just another dude or just some omae. IMHO its sorta like even though I was born in the 80's things can still be groovy and my lack of involvement in the hair metal or much of the 80's scene still lets me use rad, awesome, righteous, wicked, sick, tubular, and far out. Slang is slang, and as long as others understand it then it works.

You can have my Hoi, Chummer when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

*walking by*

"Oooo, dead body."

*looks around, removes docwagon bracelet and takes wallet/watch/etc...*

*drags body off to organ legger*

Well in my games, a 'Hacker' might be someone who uses a combat axe and a Decker is who you hire to slice some IC.

*hits the matrix and steals lorechaser's SIN, credit cards, and the rest of his identity and financial holdings*

And that chummers, is why you never pass out in the barrens. You'll get fragged and robbed in ways you never realized were possible

when discussing on dumpshock, i usually don't use the old slang. about the only new "slang" i use is hacker, and that's just for the purpose of discussion. i much prefer the old slang, personally.

Personally, I always thought most of the old slang was a bit ridiculous. I mean, decker made sense, what with cyberdecks and all, but 'drek'? The only person I've ever actually heard use the word 'drek' was a middle-aged Jewish lawyer. It just doesn't work to me. I always figured it was just some kind of ridiculous self-censorship. God forbid the readers (who are not likely to be kids anyway) should glimpse the words shit or fuck. I just figure that the classics never go away. Fuck is a damn fine cuss word. And i can never call something "wiz" with a straight face. I just can't do it.

My game runs not unlike reality, in that the way you talk is a reflection of you, your upbringing, etc. A humorous result of that (to me) is that old Shadowrun slang exists. But it is outdated, used by "old" folks who can't keep up with the times. It gets you snickered at, because culture has continued to evolve, and it left those words behind.

So yeah, there is definitely variety in the way people speak. But "frag" will never take the place of "fuck". It just doesn't have the impact.

Our group is mixed to the point that frag and fuck routinely appear in the same conversation, used by the same character. This is largely due to the fact that myself and one other member of the group came in with old school SR, and the rest are newbies. We tried to hammer into the newbies that frag, drek, etc were the "proper" ways to swear in SR, then SR4 comes along and frags everything up.

i've never been able to bring myself to use frag, chummer, hoop, or even hoi. here's how i look at it: if i were playing a roleplaying game set in ancient Rome, my character might speak Latin and Greek, but i'd play him in English. in order to impart the desired emotional loading to my 206x character's words, i use 200x slang and assume that there's some OOC-to-IC translation taking place.

Sadly, I really can't use SR slangs as I don't play the game in english. As many knows translating something to other language many times ruins the original meaning of the word. Although I use some japanese, french, germanese, spanish and (of course) english words in my phrases but they don't usually are any of the SR slang words.

For me, the slang is a mindset. It's a quick touchstone to say "This isn't modern day." It also makes a nice way for a person that is nervous about rp to get in to it - they can simply pepper their speech with SRisms, and get more comfortable.

Of course, when we play fantasy games, I hit people that try to use Thee and Thou, so I'm kinda mixed up inside.

I just find it fun to use some of the old slang to keep the feel. To me I suppose it is as much a part of the setting as the company names like Ares and NeoNet. It just helps establish that right roleplay feel for me, but all in all I think its entirely a matter of personal opinion.

I use the old slang. This isn't CP3.0, it's Shadowrun. Shadowrun shouldn't sound like a hip-hop artist or the WinXP users manual.

I think I used the old SR slang more than any of the other guys in our group ever did. Just an occasional word here and there to spice things up a bit. As far as I know, no one ever got lost in translation with the "chummer" and such. But we didn't play it like robots just spouting the slang section of the BBB. If a real or made-up cuss word ended up in the conversation, it was just taken in stride, as long as everyone had an idea what had just been said.

Heh, I like using the older slang in real life. Occasionally I'll run into someone who gets my reference, usually not.

In game my chars would likely use it as well, as its almost second nature to me at this point. To be fair though, I'm not fully versed in the old style lingo, I sorta use specific ones, or come up with my own meld.

This poll ain't good enough. Some of us use slang from 1st edition, you know.

I mix a little SR slang into NPC dialogue. Just a little so that the players no it's there. After a little while, you can get the players using it, too. Everyone enjoys saying "frag."

Slang is very important to flavor and feel. Shadowrun is gritty and dark. But it also has elves. Fancy pants elves. So, I don't find it to hard to come down from the high horse and use drekhead and fraggin' fragger. It's in the spirit of the game.

On a side note does anyone else dislike the term "Hacker"? My group has started using Commer, and calling non-hacker's Commoners? Goofy but clever, no?

I use Yiddish whenever I need slang guaranteed for players not to know what the Hell I'm talking about.

As far as SR goes, I hate the term "hacker". I understand that it's the term most of the world uses to talk about people who do what they do, and has been in most of the none-SR cyberpunk fiction, but in my game, I hate it. I mean, what do you guys use? Matrix hacker? Vehicle hacker? It's just clumsy to me. Like someone else said, you can have my decker and rigger when you pry them from my cold dead fingers. I look around at the crowd as I unholster my Predator.

I too find myself most often using the terms Decker and Rigger.

I think that the SR world would have a hard time getting rid of them, as embedded in the culture.

CyberHERO slang, CyberICE slang. Never heard those games even existed

Now I'm curious... go ahead, take yer best shot, omae

Cheers,

Max

CyberHERO was the sourcematerial put out for the HERO rules system
And CyberICE was the sourcematerial put out for the ICE rules system


Both were around a good few years ago - I thought them quite good, tho I preferred the CyberHERO stuff and never actually ran them as rules..
..Both had ideas, campaign material, weapons, gangs and locations that I incorporated into the sessions I ran.


Good 'nuff for ya, choomba [<- from Cyberpunk 2020] ??

It's from Night's Pawn on pg. 47. Chase is paying for Cara's room and says, "Count it if you like but get the fuck out of her room." The manager then says something back and then one of his ork toughs walks past and says, "You actually said fuck, how quaint." Chase replied with, "And you formed a complete sentence; get the fuck out."

I thought it was one of the funnier parts of Shadowrun fiction I've read.

That's what book that was in. I've been trying to remember the title of that book forever!

A while back I ran a Traids themed campaign, and my players (since they are all Firefly fans) had a ball with it. I got such gems as:

Fay-fay duh pee-yen

Nee mun doh shr sagwa

Oh, ze zhen shi ge kwai le de jing jun...

Tee wuh duh pee-goo

Ching-wah taso duh liou mahng

and the crowning phrase - Liou koe shway duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh bun ur-tze

It worked out pretty well, mostly because I hadn't seen the series and didn't have a clue what they were saying. Also, most of the NPCs they were dealing with didn't speak Chinese, but all the players did.

When it comes to slang, when I'm on my game as GM, I tend to use lots of it. I tend to use real swear words as well but mix things in.

Also, again if I'm on my game, I tend to have different slang on different characters and change it from time to time. I like the cyberpunk idea of changing fashion and subcultures and the like. Making the players deal with a world different from their own and one in flux. Slang really helps with that.

And it isn't a stretch either. I mean first forum goers presumably typed like normal people. Then a few LOLed. A while later some, apperantly, felt the need to ROTFLOL. And now someone could say OMGWTFBBQ!!!1111!!!!1!one! and you're supposed to understand the origin of the phrase and that it implies a satirical tone etc etc.

Plus I just like in character speech to be distinct. You can pretty much get +1 karma per award out of me if you're RP an accent or particular style of speech and use it a lot. It really enhances the RP experience.

Actually, I mix a lot - using SR3, SR4 and RL slang - additional also some slang from movies (Firefly anyone?). Seems to work - up until now people understood most of the things *g*

Firefly, especially "shiny" seems to have wormed it's way into a lot of our games as well.

I involve a mix of various slang throughout the genre as well as borrowed from other sources. However, I have made a personal vow to kill off the first character to use the words "Hella" or "Pwned" in game. I hate those words.

Ack, the Firefly "Chinese" cracks me up.

(For the record, I love Firefly, and have seen the 'behind the scenes' stuff about them handling it on set and in the show. It's still horribly mangled and funny. )