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sunnyside
What I'm talking about here is the more punkish elements of the genre. Pink mohawks, fashion changing by the minute, style over substance, rebelious characters trying to change the system. That sort of thing.

The first question is does any of that actually belong is SR? Take the novels. There isn't a punk type character in any of the ones I read ( that was back in the FASA days, I doubt they've gotten punker since). Now the characters weren't the annoying cold blooded pro cliche. But they were three dimensional characters with, honestly, ordinary fashion sense. T-shirts, jeans and armored jackets making a good showing. And the most outlandish hairdo I remember was an ordinary mullet, and I think those were popular in real life when the book was written.

Really nothing very punkish about any of them personality wise either. Nor punkish rebellious goals.



The next question is if you think punk elements should be in the game how can you actually make them work? Take CP2020. They tried to make that game punk. They tried hard. About half the "classes" were very different than SR archtypes. We're talking about rockerboys, medias, corporates, and even cops. And the system would often force you to start off with a girlfriend, an ex that hates you and occasionally drunk dials, and MADE you have a fashion sense that featured, say, pink mohawks and mesh shirts. All depending on how you rolled.

And what did people do? They made combat characters, broke into the corp building, stole the prototype, and escaped in their helicopter.

They even made a sourcebook called "Listen up you primitive screwheads" which was basically yelling at the GMs for making adventures like that and dropping the "punk" thing.

How could you really do better in SR, which isn't really designed for it? Practical very specific advise please. I don't know if I want to go full punk, but I'd like to infuse a little more. Having chars get fashion stuff that they can conceal/take off during a run is about as punk as I generally go. Though the associated clubbing is fun and may get a couple karma or more likely contacts slid their way. I think that's more than most.
Platinum
What you encourage and how people experience the game is definitely up to the GM. In the last few years, Shadowrun went Emo. That's right, it's a sad, wrist slashing little teenager with lots of tears, emotion and no drive, but yet still yearns for attention. So it does desperate things to harm itself so people will at least notice it is here.

So that being said.... I personally love the angst, lawlessness, and outlandish neon spiked hair and chains, xenophobic corps from a japanese takeover, but that doesn't sell anymore. My generation is busy with jobs and kids. So shadowrun now is trying to appeal to confused sexuality and no drive to do anything about it. It's much easier to spin PR then to herd an abandoned market.

So what are the odds that shadowrun go back to punk? About the same as Shadows of latin america being released on holostreets.
ShadowDragon8685
The best way to make Shadowrun more punk is to make the corps not give a fuck. If you get off their property alive, they're too apathetic to give chase.

Make investigation and consequences of Shadowruns a thing of the past, and characters will feel freer to go around with pink mohawks and cunning hats.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Platinum)
In the last few years, Shadowrun went Emo.

I'm really not sure you appreciate just how unintentionally funny that comment is.

(Emo, for the reference, is a variant on hardcore punk. It is very, very far from where Shadowrun has gone in a long time.)

~J
Platinum
Emo is punk without angst or drive. All the emotion and rage but no motivation to do anything about it.
hyzmarca
I feel that there is something extremely perverse in making Punk so mainstream that it it can be seen everywhere but has lost the true soul of rebellion. "I'm a noncomformist, just like everybody else."

In other words, imagine a corporate board meeting with very rich and very stuck-up guys in 10,000 nuyen.gif business suits all sporting three-foot-tall rainbow mohawks.
TheMadDutchman
I was never that much into punk, but I'm not anit-punk. If someone wants to wear a pink mohawk or rally against a cause I'm all for it.

This is where my post is going to move more into a "how do you SR" area.
My Shadowrun is more gangsta. Blaring beats and rage against the system. People so oppressed and angry that they feel ready and willing to throw it all away peddling drugs on the streets and solving even the smallest problem w/ violence.

The big difference is apprearance. The guy who might have a pink mohawk and a leather jacket in your game is more likely to be sporting a couple gold chains, a grill, and some lugz in mine.

I think the big thing is that a lot of GMs let the social strife really slip through the cracks in their games. Even I'm guilty of that. One of the things I'm working on to keep that from happening in my upcoming game is to help keep the mood of the game up. I'm planning to bring in social strife and political and religious movements.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Platinum)
So that being said.... I personally love the angst, lawlessness, and outlandish neon spiked hair and chains, xenophobic corps from a japanese takeover, but that doesn't sell anymore. My generation is busy with jobs and kids. So shadowrun now is trying to appeal to confused sexuality and no drive to do anything about it. It's much easier to spin PR then to herd an abandoned market.

This is like a corn nugget of wisdom baked to a perfect golden brown. I'd sig it if it weren't so long.
mfb
it depends on what you mean by 'punk'. 80s punk? no. modern punk? piercings, tats, eyeliner, chains, heavy boots? yes.
Kagetenshi
'80s punk belongs as well. Better yet, cybertechnology can make it easier--imagine a cyber-mohawk that can flatten against your skull and change colour at a thought.

~J
mfb
mohawks are timeless punk.
eidolon
Kage, problem is that "emo" as a reference to the form of music is not how "emo" is used today. Doesn't matter how many times people try to reverse that, today emo means this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4nRNYG_xM2U

And Platinum, your post was poetry.

Daddy's Little Ninja
I think it depends on what you want to have your character be like. SR was the first RPG I played so my characters had a level of sameness at first. M<ore experienced players did have some characters who were corporate and soem who were street punks. The street level characters, interacting with the more 'respectable' members led to some interesting interaction.
Snow_Fox
She's right. I had a game not with my usual gorup where I was more corperate and another runner was pure street and we bitched at each other so strongly other people htought we were going to really get into a cat fight. We just looked at them and laughed as the others started easing away from us- to get out of the line of fire- and we both said, "guys, we're in character, chill."
sunnyside
Hurm. So I guess for a lot of people Thug is the new Punk. That makes sense as Punk is probably hard for a lot of the younger set to grasp. Of course with the gangsta mentality you loose the whole "cause" thing. Which, actually, is rather scary in real life.

Ah well I gotz mad connections in India.

Xirces
I think the biggest problem is that everyone who /was/ punk is now all grown up and actually has a life to lead. SR is a product of the eighties, as am I. I grew up with images of the rebel "punk" - including the piercings, the tats and the mohawk - which even by that time were pretty corporate - even if it wasn't admitted.

I also remember at the start of the nineties when "indie" music was popular - y'know "indie" standing for "independent" and being churned out by the big labels. Every generation thinks that it is being rebellious and "cool" and trying to find something to differentiate them from their parents and frankly it doesn't work. Look back to the fifties and the behaviour of the "Brat Pack" smile.gif

The mainstream grows to encompass all other forms of expression - derivatives of heavy rock and metal hit the charts one week, rap and hip hop the next. Damien Hirst is a /popular/ artist. Just about every magazine or newspaper on the shelves is pornographic - if you look through your grandparent's eyes.

The mass media co-opts the underground and makes it acceptable because it gets more difficult to shock so the next thrill is always needed. That will continue and that is why punk is dead. On the flip side, there are very few barriers any more, but the result is an increasing homogenisation of culture.

People who want to change the world do so from Parliament and the board room - to get to those points you have to be mainstream enough on the outside - if that means hiding the inner rebel to get there, so be it.
mfb
granted, but i think recognizing that is one of the key differences between cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk. in classic cyberpunk, those in power are too arrogant to bother subverting the underground scene.
Daddy's Little Ninja
I was born in '79. For me 'punk' means a violent thug with colorful body augmentation (hair, piercings, studs,) who seems nihlistic and likes ultra violent rock music. The image created as a reaction to disco music and that culture and typified by the Sex Pistols and some guys on the train in An American Werewolf in London.

That having been said, I am now grown and married with a child. So at the risk of making some of you feel old, we are talking history here.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Daddy's Little Ninja)
I was born in '79. For me 'punk' means a violent thug with colorful body augmentation (hair, piercings, studs,) who seems nihlistic and likes ultra violent rock music. The image created as a reaction to disco music and that culture and typified by the Sex Pistols and some guys on the train in An American Werewolf in London.

That having been said, I am now grown and married with a child. So at the risk of making some of you feel old, we are talking history here.

I'm only 3 years younger than you. I see punk in pretty much the same way for the purpose of movie and pop culture portrayal, although my mom told me when I was little that the punk movement initially was created by economically disenfranchised youth as an expression of frustration for their poverty and so forth.

Incidentally, au sujet of being old and creaky and stuff you're actually a little ahead of the curve if you're already married and have offspring. I'm under the impression that nowadays lots of professional couples hold off on having kids until their 30s and 40s, which in turn results in the hilarious problem of fertility problems because they waited too long. Ahh well, economic necessity is a harsh mistress, I guess.
mfb
being a '79er as well, that's one concept that i associate with 'punk'. however, i spend many of my days in a local coffee shop, ogling the alt chicks doing work. the people i see there are what i think of as punk.
PlatonicPimp
I was born in 82. For me a punk is a kid with an overinflated assessment of their own badassery who engages in anti-social activity because they need to prove it.

Meanwhile "Punk" is a DIY anarchist movement. I'm not sure how it got the name, except that maybe old people would call them punks for flouting social norms.

Also, I understand there's some kind of music or whatnot. I've never cared enough about music to sort that out.

And not all change comes from the boardroom or the senate. An awful lot oc cahnge comes from the ground up, from people who just do it because that's the world they want to live in. That doesn't require pretending to be mainstream. Now if it's successful, then some politician or corporate stiff will try to co-opt it. Besides, there are some goals that simply cannot be furthered by dressing up and working in the system. A man in a suit may have more luck getting environmental laws passed, but a man in a suit calling for the abolition of suits would seem downright silly.
Snow_Fox
DLN I am going to hurt you. a lot.
You've all hit on variation of what punk was. (no I was not old enough for it but being older than DLN I ave a better idea of what was going on.)part of it was an economically and socially alienated youth who found a way to express their anger in dress and music in a way that shows the later 'grunge' movement as pathetic posers. Unfortunatelyt there was a violent and racist side to it too. Some tried to prove they were more angst ridden and angrier by acting out worst-There was also the back lash against disco that was seen as more classis-needed good clothes for it- and as a place of 'black' culture. ironic since the blacks as a group were similarly oppressed and beaten down and the kings of disco- John Travolta and the Bee Gees were all lilly white, but this shows exactly how the anger could get badly focused.
eidolon
QUOTE (Snow Fox)
part of it was an economically and socially alienated youth who found a way to express their anger in dress and music in a way that shows the later 'grunge' movement as pathetic posers.


Sorry, but this is every generation. The 80's punk kids didn't have anything special about them, nor did the grunge kids of the 90's, nor do the emo kids of today.

It's youth stuck in the middle period between being lied to about how they can do anything they want, and be anything they want, and the acceptance (however reluctantly) of the fact that there comes a point where you have to do something, and it might not be exactly what you wanted to do or thought you would do.

It's called being a teenager. There's no "this group was righteous and this other group is a bunch of posers". There's no hierarchy of who had the hardest time figuring out life and the world around them.

Give me a break. Punk was idealized or misrepresented by the next group, who is idealized or misrepresented by the current group, who will be idealized or misrepresented by the next group. There's a nostalgia we'll always feel toward the group that existed while we were going through it, but don't for a minute mistake that for knowing who "had it right".
Caine Hazen
QUOTE (eidolon)
Give me a break. Punk was idealized or misrepresented by the next group, who is idealized or misrepresented by the current group, who will be idealized or misrepresented by the next group.


biggrin.gif Is this how we ended up with Nu:Emo? Or was that just cause kids couldn't figure it out between punk and goth?

And remember kids, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were your grandparents punks biggrin.gif
Daddy's Little Ninja
QUOTE (eidolon)
QUOTE (Snow Fox)
part of it was an economically and socially alienated youth who found a way to express their anger in dress and music in a way that shows the later 'grunge' movement as pathetic posers.


Sorry, but this is every generation. The 80's punk kids didn't have anything special about them, nor did the grunge kids of the 90's, nor do the emo kids of today.

But other groups did not have the reputation for violence that the punk movement did. I think that is the difference. The disaffected youths of grunge were slackers. The disaffect youth of punk were thugs.
Bull
Huh. Nothing to really add to this, other than.. 1979, and some younger...

Damn. I feel old wink.gif

Bull
eidolon
QUOTE (Daddy's Little Ninja)
But other groups did not have the reputation for violence that the punk movement did. I think that is the difference. The disaffected youths of grunge were slackers. The disaffect youth of punk were thugs.

In pop-culture and your mind's eye, maybe.

And I'll also place extra emphasis on the word reputation in your post. Reputation != reality in every case. Namely, the idea that any significant number of "punks" in the 80s were any different than the kids that buy their non-conformity off the racks at Hot Topic today.
nezumi
It seems to me that it was the punks who invented the concept that punching other people in the face is a form of dancing. I'm not aware of anything akin to the mosh pit that arose before punk.
eidolon
"Punks started moshing" is hardly some indicator of how hardcore baddass and more on top of things and "right" and "non-poser" teenagers were in the 80s. Especially considering that moshing has been adopted by so many other sub-groups and musical genres, and hasn't seemed to produce enlightenment yet that I've seen.

"Wow, that dude punched another dude at a Blink-182 show! He's so hardcore. He must really know what's up."

It's the notion that kids that labeled themselves punks in the 80s were somehow the "true subculture" that is stupid as shit, though, not the music or trends that developed from it.
nezumi
I didn't say punks knew anything that no other sub-culture did. I'm simply seconding that they were oftentimes a rather violent group of fellows. In my limited experience they're very friendly, but violent.

I think what makes them interesting is the sense of action with them. I mean we don't see the hippies burning down parts of London, and Woodstock, while certainly interesting, doesn't sound nearly as active as a Sex Pistols concert.

The other thing is punks probably had a lot more reason to fight against the pervading culture of the time (of the early 80's) than any popular sub-culture since, and for that reason alone they can be set on a level similar to that of the hippy movement of the 60's. I mean, how can you sympathize with the modern emo movement of 'my parents won't let me drive their SUV after midnight and the other kids at my public school tease me' compared to the battlecry that Margaret Thatcher is driving our country into a pointless war and taking advantage of the working class in order to make the rich richer?
eidolon
Ah, sorry. Was responding as though your post was a continuance more than a separate issue.

On the note of emos vs. punks, you have to realize that the behavior was a symptom of the overall culture of the time. Punks thought that beating people up and setting fires would change something. When it didn't, you got the slackers that realized that nothing would change and decided it didn't matter much. Now it has gotten diluted to whining about no keys to the SUV. All three were/are just subsets of the overarching disaffected nature of cultures at the time, just different stages and reactions. It's not that there was more to fight about and against then than there is now. It's that there's no will to do it.

Or in less words: people have been feeling oppressed and downtrodden for decades (centuries? millennia?), but over time, the reaction has gone from outwardly directed, to inwardly directed, to nonexistent.

Just my .02 on that bit of it. Sorry for jumping on you over something you weren't really talking about, nez.
nezumi
s'all good, I did figure that out. But I do think that punks will continue to get a little more glory than emos or hippies just because most guys agree that firstly, violence is cooler than sulking, and secondly, girls with purple hair are hotter than girls with black fingernails who mostly like to sulk.

Plus remember, if you lock a punk and an emo in a room (or a punk and a hippy or basically anyone but a punk and another punk or thug), the punk generally wins. And in most of those cases, the audience wins too!
Kagetenshi
Violence is more dynamic than apathy. At the very least, punk was more enlightened in terms of crowd-pleasing.

~J
Fortune
Punk doesn't have a monopoly on violent, anti-social behavior. Before the punks there were the Mods, the Rockers, the Greasers, etc. There will always be a disenfranchised youth culture.
eidolon
QUOTE (Fortune)
There will always be a disenfranchised youth culture.

QFT!
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Fortune @ Jul 31 2007, 05:13 PM)
Punk doesn't have a monopoly on violent, anti-social behavior. Before the punks there were the Mods, the Rockers, the Greasers, etc. There will always be a disenfranchised youth culture.

The Mods were enlightened in the ways of scooters with sixteen mirrors. The Greasers were enlightened in the use of jellyrolls and duck's asses. They all had great things going for them, but they all failed at reaching the pinnacle of enlightenment that was Punk.

This can be clearly seen by the fact that none of the other groups developed the day-glo mohawk. Had they achieved true enlightenment—satori, in contrast to kenshou—they would have shown it in their hair.

~J
Talia Invierno
Wow. Be sick for a few days, and look what you miss.

I've seen a few generations of rebellion pass. (Bull: unless you're a deep baby boomer, you're not yet old. Trust me. devil.gif ) Some contained more substance, some never strayed beyond the appearance of rebellion.

There's many similarities among the generations of rebellion, but some crucial differences also. Consider, for example, that this is the first generation of the casual panhandling teen: something that even the share-and-share-alike communal hippies of the 60's wouldn't have countenanced. It speaks of a very different relationship with the dominant social structures than those which have gone before. That might have begun with the children of the Woodstock generation when they realised that their parents had grown up to become yuppies: perhaps the ultimate betrayal of what popular culture still vaguely holds up as a bright and shining moment in history. Among the largest generation in history, an idealism that was popular and numerous enough to have really made a difference had become a complete sellout. Why bother? beyond the appearance of bothering? What is the point of motivation? when you might as well fast-forward to the burnout?

It was touched on earlier in this thread that rebellion is now mass-marketed. Maybe that started with Nirvana, maybe when Astaire dances and Beatles songs became marketing tools. Now I'm seeing the 60's idealism itself become an active marketing tool -- and its new incarnation, superficial environmentalism. (It tends to break down as soon as it starts to significantly impact on the now-expected lifestyle.) People continue to be surprised that tattoos and even piercings are now more common among the mainstream than the various countercultures. It just seems so -- rebellious -- to get one.

I've linked this before: although for some reason, no point beyond the first one seems to register: that some form of rebellion is a necessary prelude to becoming an adult, and thus is universal across space and time. But our expectations and our environments have changed and thus the nature of rebellion too has changed: I'd argue even to the point of deliberately rejecting adult responsibilities (past the point of themselves becoming parents!) while expecting adult privileges.

This is different. Previous versions of rebellion tried to seize both alike as soon as ability allowed and mold them into one's own image. This version believes so firmly in the leisure environment that it can't conceive of a world without it -- in part because so do its parents (who, still, did not grow up in full expectation thereof). A crucial part of both leisure and determined adolescence is to be sheltered -- as the youngest children are -- from the consequences of one's actions.

There's other linkages -- even the modern rejection of any quality which cannot be quantified (and non-marketing art is among the first on that chopping block), even the corrolation of technology and youth culture, and yet others that could spin quite a few tangents off this thread -- but there's really only a single basic question here (and in asking different variations of it, we ground ourselves at different steps along the social timeline):

What happened to (our version of) motivated, idealistic (or dystopic) rebellion? Why can't the kids today be more like we were?
Wounded Ronin
Facial punching is better than sex! But much like sex, you need to use protection. You can break your hands if you don't wrap and pad.
Snow_Fox
bottom line, punks have a level of violence associated with them. Emo are pathetic whiners and Grunge are slackers but punks have a real affect-if only generated by fear.
PlatonicPimp
Talia's hit the nail on the head.

I think that the emo kids today have a serious problem worth whining about. That is, they have no problems. They're all pampered spoiled brats, and they hate it. They haven't chosen not to grow up, they've never had the opportunity.

Human beings require a certain amount of drama in order to function properly. If we don't get it, we start to go mad, and in doing so, we start creating the drama we crave. Emo's elevate their personal crap to epic level emotional issues because, in the larger context, they wish they really had something that powerful to care about.

Now, people who really have things to worry about, they don't whine about it. They get up and do something about it. That's what the hippies and anti-war protesters and equal rights activists of the sixties did. And in response, the establishment threw them as many bones as they could, so long as the basic system remained intact. So having "won," the movements stopped fighting the system. Today, the sytem is much more savvy, it knows how to frame the debates, manufacture superficial rebellion, and distract from the real issues. We're left with a counter-culture that's disaffected and resentful, but has nothing concrete to lash out against and a million distractions. Punks became nihilists, most subcultures since have become cynics. At this point the possibility of a mass counter-culture movement is Nil.

Back to shadowrun? In shadowrun, the system has also succeeded in Co-opting everything that threatened it. The return of magic hit hard, and shattered the nations, but the corps adjusted much quicker and seized control directly. The revolutionary magic users that broke the world are now the new entrenched system in a lot of places, and they've integrated everywhere else. In a way, You could compare the turbulent years after the awakening to the sixties, a tiime of tourmoil and change, constantly on the cusp of revolution. This time capital sacrificed the existing nations in order to preserve their power, another case of letting them "win" so long as you didn't lose anything important. Now the awakened are mostly "wage mages", the new yuppies. Even the people who owuld normally be terrorists and freedom fighters have instead become Shadowrunners, tools of the corporate powers. There is no more revolution. There is only Nihilism, cynicism and selling out.

Sucks.
nezumi
I would agree with your first point. Yesterday I was reading an article about how in the 80's and 90's crime was almost twice what it is today, racial segregation was a more substantial problem, so on and so forth. Compared to then, we're doing well in almost every area you care to name. The economy is doing well (for the most part) and relatively stable, crime is down, integration is up, parents are staying home with their kids again... The big problems are people getting out of school without actually learning anything and the THREAT of something bad happening (terrorism, economy downturn, etc.) Life just isn't as interesting and difficult as it was twenty years ago.

I disagree with the second, however. In Shadowrun, the corporations have successfully eliminated the counter culture only in their chosen audience, those people with moneys and SINs. So in that area, yes, everyone is guaranteed a job (although not necessarily a challenge) as far as they are aware (since those who don't get a job and aren't shuffled into some manual labor work generally 'disappear' due to financial pressures), everyone goes through the same, effective schooling, etc. However once you step out of that into the world of people with no money and no SINs, there's nothing there but 'counter culture'. The problem is that they have no outlet in 'society' (i.e. the rich people) so their voices are effectively silenced.

The one major exception is shadowrunners, who are able to go from one world to the other and back again. They know the troubles of the downtrodden, and have the power to make that known to the rest of the world. With the possible exception of religious organizations, I cannot think of any other 'amphibious' job like that.
PlatonicPimp
And compare the eighties to, say, the sixties, when entire groups of people were disenfranchized and revolution was a very real possibility. Then compare that to WW2. Then compare that to the depression. Then compare that to the daily struggle of the pioneers. We romaticize hard times. We look back to when meeting your needs was a struggle, and merely continuing to exist was a kind of victory. The higher a country's standard of living, the higher the suicide rate. Why is that? What it is about luxury, about prosperity, that actually makes people mroe depressed?

Silencing is eliminating. The Sinless don't form a counterculture, they are simply outside the dominant culture. There's potential there, they could form parallel and alternate structures to take care of their own. When that happens, the media tends to lable it a gang or a cult or something and then the cops nuke it. Mostly the sinless exist as a permanent underclass, dependent on the local syndicates just as much as the wage-slave depends on the corps. Same thing, really.
Moon-Hawk
QUOTE (PlatonicPimp)
What it is about luxury, about prosperity, that actually makes people more depressed?

More free time to think?
Kagetenshi
You go up the hierarchy of needs, and the answer to your problem becomes less and less obvious. When you're at risk of getting killed, you focus on not getting killed. Actually succeeding may be difficult, but possible paths to it are obvious and simple. Once you go looking for love/belonging/social, things get complicated. Esteem needs, even more so. So on and soforth.

~J
hyzmarca
The 60s happened because of WWII. That war, necessitated the temporary dissolution of sterotypical race and gender roles on a massive scale. Once the war ended and things went back to normal, oppressed people weren't entirely content with the way things were after seeing the way that things could be. They passed these new vaules, forged of to their children, who were born in greater numbers than ever before. This, of course, bred discontent. Discontent combined with the largest youth population ever, thanks to the baby boom, lead to all of the big movements, from Civil Rights, to Women's Rights, to Free Love.

Currently, the biggest obsticle to massive youth rebellion, aside from apparent equality, is a much lower birth rate. There simply aren't as many youth, per capita, today as there was in the 60s.


The real problem with Sinless gang culture is not a tendency for the cops to nuke it. Cops have abandoned entire areas due to fear of gangs (and rightly so). The problem with gangs is selfishness and territoriality, an every gang for itself attitude. This is the same problem with modern gangs.

Today, if all of the armed gangs in a major city got together, they could overthrow the police with ease. They don't for two reasons. The first is a lack of ambition. Most are conditioned to believe that they can't have anything better if they weren't then they would be going to school instead of joining a gang. The second is a hatred and factionalism between the gangs. Each gang defends its own territory agains tother gangs. The thought of an alliance against the government rarely crosses anyone's minds, despite how profitable it would be.

nezumi
PlatonicPimp - I will disagree. I don't believe silence is the same thing as not existing at all.


So here's a question, will games where the primary PC goal is survival (with generally fairly obvious ways to achieve that) be more fulfilling than games with more elaborate goals? Is failure to achieve goals in either sort of game more painful to the player?
PlatonicPimp
No, it won't work that way.

See, the need your players are fufilling when playing the game is socialization and entertainment. Even when their character is struggling to survive, they aren't. Video game designers figured this out after about a decade: If bad things happen to players in a game, they don't associate it with what caused the in game failure, they associate it with the game. If everytime the players go in gun's blazing they get killed, they don't develop different tactics, they stop playing. That's why MMOs reward players with advancement and gold merely for showing up and grinding, and don't let any mistake you make do worse then make you resurrect somewhere inconvienent. It's pavlonian

Applying this to shadowrun, I think this means that you can't really play a game where the characters are contsntly downtrodden, blocked at every turn, treated like shit by the world, you know, a really difficult environment. Yo can have some flaovr of this, but you have to focus on the ass kicking, and you have to hand them measurable rewards and acomplishments, or else they leave. People fight in real life when the alternative seems worse. Players in game can always just walk away from the table.

incidentally, silence is the same thing as not existing in the arena of cultural clash. a silenced culture cannot effect others.
nezumi
I may be the exception, but when I play a game and fail in one method, I do try another until I succeed. It's only after a number of different methods fail or, more importantly, I don't get feedback as to WHY they fail, that I go play another game (or if I play, figure the game out and decide I just don't like that type of game play).

As an aside, I don't believe a silenced cultural group doesn't exist for the simple reason that it is not silenced within itself. It may not exist subjectively based on a particular other group's perspective, but that's like saying people in Africa don't exist because I've never met any. This is certainly not relevant in Shadowrun where, because of Shadowrunners, the voice of the downtrodden IS heard, however quietly.
hyzmarca
I'm going to disagree. The best games have a difficulty curve. The early stages are those where one learns how to play the game, and where one warms up. After that learning period, or that warm up, it is imperative that the game become progressively more difficult in at the proper rate in the proper ways. Frustration sets in when it is impossible of the player to learn the game due to the high starting difficulty and when completing the game relies more on random luck than on player ability.
But, when the game is easy throughout, there is a distinct sense of "what the hell was that sarcastic.gif!!!???.
Ol' Scratch
My personal opinion is that Shadowrun is it's own genre. You can work cyberpunk themes into it with ease, but that's only a fraction of what Shadowrun encompasses -- which is why it's such an amazing and fun setting.

It's not a question of whether or not "punk" belongs in Shadowrun. It's a question of whether or not you want to emphasize the punk that's in Shadowrun, one of the many other themes it emcompasses, or a healthy blend of them all.
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