ok, this is probably as off topic is it can get but i need to offload. admins feel free to do what they want with this...

is it just me or have we had a rush of new people since the release of arsenal (in pdf but still)?

i see bickering over fluff, old topics showing up in new suits, and it all seems to end in a "your moma" contest every single time...

so, is it me getting old, or just my virtual skin wearing thin?

You're just getting old. And so is yo momma!

I've definitely noticed more board traffic lately. I haven't noticed much of a difference in the content, though.

Dumpshock seems like the same place it ever was. I do know that I have been posting a lot more since Arsenal came out, since it totally pumped me back up (and I quit the MMO I was playing). I think getting new blood is always good. And Im loving the new forum style! (though it is sad to see the old one go after SOOOOO many years)

Are you suggesting it's time for a return of the age old argument about whether or not an Ally Spirit can manifest as an Ares Viper Slivergun?

Plus ca Change...

Yep, there is more traffic since Arsenal. Good thing, too. Of course it gives new opinions in age-old discussions.

Forgot to write an answer: Too old depends. Jounger than Fortune?

I was kind of thinking that myself. It does seem like there are a lot of new "targets" lately. Maybe this batch is just more vocal?

older, by at least 5 years iirc...

More like 16 years younger, if the age in your profile is correct.

If that age is correct, you are not to old. Younger than me, even.

hmm, better check that. if i didnt recall the thread where you people discussed age wrong...

off by a year, so i must have recalled that thread wrong, sorry...

Well I can't speak for anyone else (obviously), but I just recently started playing Shadowrun a few months ago. 4th Edition is the first version I've played (although I've known about the game for many years), so most of the "fluff" and setting references tend to go over my head - there's a lot of references to old material and history that I'll never have the chance to read (or, likely, the inclination - if really it matters to my game, it should be published in a 4th edition book, right?). If I bring up old topics, that's just my noobness but I tend to stick to the SR4 rules-oriented stuff.

DS

heh, i suspect that they could make a buck publishing a SR history book. i know i would pick one up just to read the specifics about happenings.

Kind of an amalagamation of past fluff books, modules, & novels condensed in to a couple hundred pages from about 2050 to 207x?

I'm all for it, I nominate Ancient History to be the project manager

yep, something like that. basically a extended version of the opening "how it came to pass".

Thats available until some point in german (Shadowrun - Die sechste Welt) (published 2005). I don´t think that was ever translated.

Being one of those new guys but a long time lurker. I think it's a little early to call it as "The January that never ended".

That being said, you're absolutely right that there has been a spike in, what I think, are stupid and needlessly flamelicious arguments on the boards right now. But it's the internet and I've gotten used to just mentally screening those elements out and rolling on with my bad self.

Dear Doc, you haven't seen any flame wars here, trust me, you will notice.

I personally welcome the newcomers and the Arsenal discussion. I even expected it to be much worse, so I guess they got the book quite right. (IMO, they did, so much could have gone wrong)

Unwired, on the other hand, I am not so confident, we will have to wait and see...


Oh, and I totally offer myself for playtesting again, particularly for Unwired. I promise to write good reports.

Cheers,

Max

Not if I notice first


We have noticed quite a bit of increased activities in some of the forums that used to be sub-forums, especially the GM/Players Registry

Oh I don't think we've had an out and out flame war but there are certainly a few discussions that derailed into pissing matches. That's bound to happen from time to time but it does get a little annoying when civility starts to breakdown.

I'd happily pay money for a super duper "How it came to pass" canonical, definitive (if such a concept exists in SR), history. I'd happily pay in excess of 40 dollars for if it was a nice hardcover coffee table book.

I too would pay for such a tome, but I wonder if it wouldn't lend itself more to an atlas style format?

Also, it makes me wonder how FASA's art book (High Tech and Low Life) sold back in the day. I'm inclined to think it didn't do so well, but thats just based on my experience and not any hard sales data. A book like this seems more utilitarian, but I would worry that its fate would be similar.

I hate forum-seniority wars as much as anyone, but, well… "it ever was"? Did you have a different account before, or are you really extrapolating a lack of change based on slightly more than a year of experience?

(Admittedly, that is debatably enough to judge differences based on the release of Arsenal.)

The other thing is, I can't remember a time when January ever brought significant amounts of new blood not acclimated to the culture. It wasn't the September that Never Ended just because it was September—September was always the time when new people showed up due to getting usenet access at university, and the September that Never Ended was the result of an influx so large that the culture could not absorb it and instead disintegrated. People don't suddenly get Dumpshock access in January, so there's no January to not end.

~J

But can you have sex with it. If so, is it rape since the ally has to obey your command

Oh god... an "Atlas of the Sixth World"? That'd be glorious on so many levels. Maps that show the shifting lines of control over the years would be fun and informative. Little CIA factbook entries about major corporations and so forth. I'd love to see the history but I'd settle for a single reference book that had a brief on all the current going on's (Deeper of course than the core books).

Last I heard Catalyst had a book of this type lined up for 2009, as part of a 20 years of Sr thing. As well as the atlas/fact book bit it would include some articles about the history of the game itself and it's developement etc.

Excerpts from "Atlas of the Sixth World" the forthcoming supplement for Shadowrun.

"So half the guys wanted to play D&D and the other half wanted to play Cyberpunk 2020, it almost turned into a fist fight. Thankfully someone shouted 'We should just play both at the same time... but without cancer causing rules!' Shadowrun basically grew from there..."

Ah the old flame wars sub forum-AKA the Lounge. Now that was something interesting to read at time. Most of the time it was so anal it made my brain hurt.

Now for all the newbies who truly want to read a great thread goto General Gaming and join the Drop Bear Conspiracy!!

Such a book is impossible, at least if you're talking about an in-character history that is also comprehensive for game information. For example, the Soviet Union originally collapsed in the aftermath of the Euro-wars, then it got retconned to have collapsed twice, then Shadowtalkers start referring to it collapsing and clearly meaning 1991, and in the SR4 core book it's entirely "Russia"—there's no mention of the USSR, not even in the Euro-wars section.

~J

Ah the Lounge .... sometimes I miss thee .... sometimes.

well I cant speak for everyone, but I've been around for a bit, just more vocal now. I was so suprised that I hadnt found DS before I had. SR has always been my favorite game hands down. I think it's because it was really the first game I played with an actual group who knew what they were doing as far as rules back in 91. my only rp before that had been some of us setting around with some weird combo of basic D&D and AD&D rulebooks and trying to make it work w/o someone actually knowing how to play. I haven't gotten to do SR since second ed, but I've gotten each core book, and some of the fluff, and reread some off and on. I had put it in my head that come hell or high water (as my dad used to say) I was going to start running shadowrun for my current RP group. I also want it to not be half-assed, so I am basically trying to know the rules in and out before we play it (especially since only one other person somewhat knows the rules and owns the book).

So that is why I personally have been more vocal lately. I must learn learn learn. I haven't ersonally noted any flaming or bad behavior. Of course that could be I just haven't read those threads. I tend to only read the ones that discuss things I need to know (or realize I want to know). I know I don't have time to catch up on every thread all the time.

I miss Raygun's posts in the usual firearms discussions.

Eh... a guy can dream can't he? I just want shiny pictures.

I don't. It was always the Lounge's fault when I got in trouble (not mine).

You do realize that it'd be a 1 page document... that points at AH's website, right?

Anne Heche?

heh heh
no seriously what site?

Ancient History's website: http://ancientfiles.dumpshock.com/

The forum seems 'busier' to me. I think a lot of it has to do with axing the 4th ed forum and combining it. It's really the only thing I missed about the old boards.

I've been here for a bit, but I finally have a group thats meeting every other week. That and within my group I'm kind of the rules lawyer or at least the one with the best understanding of the rules. Other side is my current character is a Technomancer and as such I spend alot of time delving into the Matrix rules and I post alot in regards to that. I lurked for a long time, but rarely had much to say. Now I feel I'm familiar enough to help out as well (minus the Ares Sliver-Gun incident...). Then there's the fact that I spend alot of time at work browsing here, I'm such a slacker... Except when it comes to gaming, then I go way over and my wife gets slightly annoyed when I spend hours at a time working on an excel character creator for SR4.

Now I just wish I could change my member name so it wasn't so... Chat Roomish? meh I use it on everything because its never taken.

crap, I'm an idiot, and everybody knows about it!

No, Adolf Hitler. He's a huge SR fan. They even let him write some of the shadowtalk in the original TT sourcebook. He doesn't come around the forums much anymore, though, because 4e newcomers kept getting sick of him getting uppity and sending teams of scientists to Tibet to find evidence of ED links. God bless the new blood!

I think the reason Dumpshock has come to life recently is tied to one thing: bringing the board code into the 21st century where the rest of us live. Now we can post without feeling like we need to complain about our arthritis and listen to things with our ear trumpets.

Actually, the old board was awesome, even though it was probably more vulnerable to viruses. It loaded really quickly for me when I was in Micronesia.

If "being smeared in excessive quantities of DHTML and bad colourschemes" is the 21st century, I became an old fogey quickly.

~J

I think you're wrong.

One issue I just noticed today with the new board, is that for some reason it wont display on my Treo. Just a black page. Really annoys me and I dont know what the problem is yet.

Yeah, I was giving him a shot at a little page promotion

I don't know why anyone else is here, but they started over-moderating the Myspace forums, and I said: "screw this; if I want over-moderation, I can go to Dumpshock!"

I have created a topic in the proper forum to discuss this.

One of the reasons I agreed to become a moderator here at Dumpshock was because I have quite the opposite impression.
Of course, now my vote doesn't count because I am a mod... But I feel that the moderation here is a reasonable balance between chaos and a dictatorship...

Oh yeah? Well I feel...your mom.

Zing !!

Not even sure I understand that....