..all I remember is what I read from the limited amount 1st ed stuff. Don't tell me that those blasted IEs went & mucked with that too.

We won't tell you, then.
Uh, wait - too late.

Aside from the races, there's not that much overt Tolkien in SR. (I'm not a huge fan of Tolkien, I read most of the Lord of the Rings in high school, I saw the movies, that's about it. I have friends that can discuss the Silmarillion ad infinitum, but I've never been that interested. Not a knock against Tolkien, just identifying my bias.) If anything, the racial stereotypes come out of Tolkien, but those are basically just identifiers of in-game racism. (And Tolkien took a lot of his stuff from legends and myth, going back to my theory they there's nothing new under the sun.) Also, there was some Tolkien influence in SR originally (it pretty much was fantasy at the time SR was written), and ED grew out of SR, but ED isn't Tolkienish Fantasy-- at least it never seemed so to me. (Having identified my bias above as someone who hasn't read a lot of Tolkien or a lot of ED, I might be missing something there.)

There's a lot of Lovecraft in the Horrors (and a lot of the Alien Movies in the Insect Spirits), and you can say that Tolkien and Lovecraft were recipients of fever dreams of past ages and interpreted them as best they could, or you could say the game designers were ripping off popular sources; either works for me. Almost everything in rpg's is derivative. But the Paranormal Animals guides aren't a list of creatures from Tolkien, and the magical traditions don't come solely or even primarily out of fantasy. (And fantasy, as a genre, tends to be mined from the same real world sources.) SR derived from myths, and ED derived from SR.

That was one of the original ideas of SR, that our myths and legends had been inspired by actual things in previous high mana cycles. The record was imperfect, but when magic returned to the world it redefined in history (as well as the present) what was impossible. Adding ED seemed like an unecessary step, essentially saying, "Its possible that all the magic and myth in history is factual. And also, here's a completely new set of magic and myths no one knows about."

I think its an easier claim to make that the SR metaplots are harder to separate from ED than the system, since ED was developed as the backstory to the metaplots that were developing in SR. But even so, the metaplots aren't the game.

Indirectly and partially, that was my point.
There are quite some games based more directly on legends, and most of them come from WW.

Sure. The game is pure perspective.

Well, there is GURPS Cthulhupunk...

Which means that most likely we won't have a dragon running for president, either.
Of course, 4000 BC is around the time of biblical Eden, so there was some pretty weird stuff going on... according to legend.

...the schedule for Tungsten Rod production has now gone to 24/7.

Pele's Wrath on Standby mode...

...I so disbelieve in magic, I so disbelieve in magic, I so disbelieve in magic...

*Zap!*

Hell and tarnation! That Manabolt still hurts...

@CBB, I'm totally with you there.

i don't think that's a cornerstone at all. it's a theory that only really began to show circumstantial rules support in Dot6W, and gained a bit more circumstantial support in SOTA:64. it's more accurate to say that belief's influence or lack of influence on magic in SR is a point of hot debate, both in-game and, to some extent, out of game.

It's been implicit in the system since long before that. SR has always had crazy people developing weird, inexplicable powers, borne largely out of their own demented faith. Its never been my favorite aspect of the SR universe, but been there for a long time.

But my larger point is that by us gamers, Magic is treated like a hard science, because we're gamers and there's a lot of numbers involved and by-and-large you know what you can and can't do. We look in the rulebook and we find out exactly how things work, getting a specific GM ruling if we need it. As players, we don't have to deal with ambiguity.

In game, its pretty much all ambiguity.

That's a simple answer... belief defines the magic. If you believe that magic works a certain way, then it does.

When the collective belief establishes a certain form, then that form is used and others fall to the wayside due to lack of teachers, interest, etc.

Mages is the 4th world used magic differently. Mages in the 6th use it differently too. Each world had their main version of magic. The other versions were probably there, but just no in great use / visibility.

Think magical traditions and much of the commentary about Psionics...

...If only believing that it doesn't work would give you immunity to magic, that would be so choice.

...ow, that still hurts! Stop tossing those manabolts at me...

You know Filtering was carried over from SR3, right?

You can get 4 dice for the Magic Resistance quality, but you have to pay for it like everybody else. (Belief can influence reality, but its a game and it still costs points.)

@HappyDaze: I have a similar problem with the IE's and Great Dragons, in that their intelligence seems far too human for my taste. If something is really that smart, it should be somewhat unknowable to us mere mortals; instead of coming off as really smart people, they should be different. (There's a bit of a built in limitation there, in that an npc can only be as smart as the GM or the writer, plus or minus whatever cheating can get you, but I feel it still falls short of capturing an ancient, immortal being.)

@et al: When I first read the Tir Tairngire book, I really liked it. As a sourcebook it was okay, but as a window into suspicion and paranoia of the IE conspiracy, I thought it was fantastic. I got creeped out reading it. It alluded to a lot of stuff, but it never came right out and said anything definitively. That's a much more effective was to produce dread, because nothing you write can really top the reader's imagination of the unknown. Going back and finding out exactly what happened makes the Tir book a great deal less effective in that regard. (This is my problem with the Call of Cthulhu games as well, which tend to take the mind-numbingly terrifying creatures of which the mortal mind cannot conceive and make them 32 HD monsters, with pictures.)

As to the original poll, I have to object to the phrase "generic or homebrew fantasy world", simply because I don't think there is a need to define anything about the 4th world beyond saying it was history, with an unknown number of myths and legends actually being possible, partially true. Jesus could have been a magician (as in Spike Baby Messiah, which if nothing else might make a good band name), and Thor might have been a Force 20 Free Spirit. Or they might have been space aliens. Or they might be tarted up versions of relatively mundane people. My point being, I don't have to stat out prehistory for an SR game.

...in my book suspense is up there with intrigue and the two go hand in hand very well together. It is how I was able to freak out the team's decker in my campaign to where he had the character jack & run before actually meeting up with any of the really bad IC I had waiting.

From this aspect I agree the TT sorucebook was successful. As the central setting for a campaign I feel it fell short as the government and authorities came off having to much of a jackboot mentality. A runner gets caught, and if not deposited on the north bank of the Columbia without her memories of the last couple three days, she is the prey for the next hunt. Not very conducive for PC growth. I ended my Portland campaign after about a month RL time (weekly sessions) when I came to the conclusion the runners really couldn't get away with a quarter of the things they did before the book came out.

Back on the suspense angle, yes the fluff was scary (the TT government was an influence for my design of the Serbian dictatorship in my RiS campaign). In subsequent scenarios I ran, the PCs would have preferred breaking into a high security Ares compound for less pay than take a job involving the TT.

but it's not implicit. it's hinted at, yes, but the question of whether those crazies actually invented new forms of magic through their own beliefs, or if they just happened on some hidden, previously-unknown aspect that was already there--that question has always been left open.

I was using "implicit" as "suggested or to be understood though not plainly expressed; implied: distinguished from EXPLICIT." So as not to turn it into a semantic argument about the other definitions of implicit (such as, "an absolute or unconditional understanding"); it is implied within the system that belief influences reality, although never explicitly stated. (Except apparently in Harlequin's Back, which I'll admit I've never read. I've never been particularly impressed with SR modules for a variety of reasons we don't have to get into here.)

Belief just doesn't mean you want to believe it (or every sam would have unbeatable magic resistance), you have to believe it deep within your lizard brain. You have to believe it the way a schizophrenic believes in the voices he hears, you have to believe it in a way that is almost impossible for a rational person to achieve, because any doubt no matter how buried or subconscious will betray you. That's why only batshit crazy people get to break the rules. I'm not saying its one of my favorite aspects of the game, but its how I justify it.

Many of us did exactly that. Even more of us took the tact of ignoring Earth Dawn completely. *gah* it was a horrible 3 weeks in which we played ED. Afterwards we all did a collective WTF and went back to Shadowrun. Who cares about ED... that's what Viagra is for.

This is actually what I've been holding onto for several years as an "exit plan" for IEs. If I absolutely have to pull a plug and prove to all the players that IEs don't exist without breaking everything else apart and making a mockery of the fact that they all did Harlequin and Harlequin's back, I figure I can just say it was all the schizophrenic delusions of one elf imprinting themselves on reality. Evidence of other IEs was just planted there by Harlequin's subconscious mind to support his mental illness. It's a long way to go, but I like it TONS better than having carryovers from ED.

Hey, beats porting Earthdawn to Shadowrun rules. But I think a fair middle ground is to play sort of a cyberpunk type game with a gritty take on the effects of metahumans and magic on a dystopian future... Wait a minute, that's what Shadowrun is, unless you think Earthdawn is intrinsic to it. But nobody I know thinks that. Not one player in any of my groups, ever, or anyone that I've ever talked to about Shadowrun (outside DS, of course), has ever expressed any love for Earthdawn tie-ins. I've sadly only played ED once, and it looks like a neat system, and I'd like to play it again sometime; I think we all agree that's not really the point. The point is that the ED tie-ins have been botched at every step of the way, and make almost everyone want to puke. If wanting to puke was essential to play Shadowrun, my players would probably beg me to run Mage instead. But apparently, I've managed to run Shadowrun since 2nd ed. without saturating it with ED, and nobody's felt mocked yet. Go figure.

Sounds like a generic system to me.

...that could qualify the Short One (#68) to have resistance

Ummm, well, actually, that hadn't occurred to me. For some inexplicable reason, the Filtering/Spell Matrix idea hadn't crystallized right in my head until Street Magic. The wonders of figuring out how my brain works, or doesn't.

I think in game mechanics we can accurately measure the strength with which people hold on to their beliefs about how magic works (or doesn't) via there willpower score. Thus any sammy with a firm unshakable belief that magic doesn't exist, would have night unbeatable magic resistance with is willpower score in the low twenties. (my interpretation of lizard brain belief level). However most mortals are confronted quite often with the fact that magic doesn't work the way they think it does. This happens whenever anyone with a different paradigm uses magic (cause they do so in a different way; imagine a hermetic observing a shaman creating a formula: "But where are the equations??? you can't cast magic without equations.") I propose that characters with high willpower are better able to handle drain because they have a greater, more unshakable confidence that they are doing things "the right way." Thinking that you might be doing things the wrong way, causes one to have less precise control over the mana, hence greater drain.

Just my ideas about how this works within the framework the game has already provided.

the problem with that interpretation is that there are plenty of magical effects that are not resisted with Will.

yes, that's what i'm arguing with--i don't believe that magic in SR is necessarily based on belief. belief can shape how a given mage interacts with magic, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that things will come true if you believe them hard enough. that might be true, but it also might not be. the question of whether or not belief creates magic, or just shapes it, is one that is left open. the example that comes to mind is the Dragon totem, as presented in Dot6W (or maybe it was YotC). the head of that Dunkelzahn cult went from not being a magician to being a shaman of the Dragon totem--a totem nobody'd seen before. it's implied that he might have created the Dragon totem simply by believing in it hard enough--but it's also suggested that maybe the Dragon totem existed all along, and he just discovered it.

basically, you're saying that it's understood--but unsaid--that magic is based on belief, in SR. i disagree; i think the game presents that as one possibility, but that it's only a possibility. i don't think there's any behind-the-scenes silent understanding that this is how magic works.