Some clarifications or examples back then would have been nice then. "Metaplot" has that "it changes the setting" quality" ring to it, in my experience. I'd call those "plot hooks" and "campaign outlines", since they don't change the world.

(Call me old school, but I do like some nice "win or lose, the big picture doesn't change. Not even the little picture, but for your runner, it's a question of life or death" plots. Nothing changing cities or countries or the world, nothing introducing new stuff, just a few megacorps doing business as usual, with the originality coming from the details of each run, not the new stuff introduced.)

Yeah, realy, I would cal it Meta-Setting, rather then Metaplot. But, then again, don't you still say that the Japanese still send all meta's to Yomi because that is part of teh Metaplot with Japan from Year of the Comet, that Fuchi is still part of the Triple A's and that Horizon doesn't exist? There is no space-based corp influence, and LA is still a happy place without the Deep Lacuna and other stuff from the Twins?

Japan is as racist as ever in my campaign. Fuchi was split in Corp War, so that's in. No one ever was in L.A. in my campaigns, so that question never has come up so far. (I do like the setting from Corp Enclaves, but I'll reserve judgement until the PbP campaign I am playing in has run its course). Horizon can be in or not, hasn't come up so far in our mafia-focused game. Gunderson, Novatech and Ares are important corps in the campaign.
Space isn't really of consequence, no runner in my campaign is likely to meddle with it, but I see no reason corps wouldn't have space-based ressources.

I guess you do. Since in the real world, especially in the military field, you make your moves way before you even consider beeing prepared. Like WWII, when the small guy we all know made his move and nobody seemed to be prepared for it but him. Weird. He took agood chuck of Europe before he started making serious mistakes.

So, a "prepared and no one noticed and can do something about it" is quite plausible. Infantry cleaning a fortified arcology in a week is not.

You may stay in your bubble reality for all it's worth, but seriously, don't back your claims with "the devs don't think stuff through".


Ah, the fear of change. Explains everything, actually.

Germany made the biggest mistake when it started the war, it had no chance of winning in the long run. Its industrial capacity alone was not enough. Its navy was not ready, and the airforce was lacking strategic bombers. Artillery too, and mechanisation was lacking, the later never really catching up during the war. Tanks too were not top notch - the backbone in 1939 were the Czech designs they recently got when the allies let them carve up that country, the PzKw III and IV were not yet our in large numbers (and still using the 3,7 mm and the short 7,5 mm cannons), and the PzKw II inferiour to other armies' models, the PzKw I nothing but tinfoil-armored MG carriers.

That said, there are plans, updated and modified, for many situations in modern military. It's not as if the US today just starts planning when the president says "do it yesterday!".

MOUT operations are something the UCAS trains for in my campaign, and they were helped a lot by Renraku in that operation.

As far as cleaning out a location goes - a week is enough given the force disparity. But if it makes you happy, make it 2 or 3 weeks until final resistance was broken. Nothing I'll lose sleep over.

Metaplots are by definition "meta" stories that unfold over a significant number of source books, adventures, and possibly even multiple campaigns (such as the Bug metaplot, the Harlequins, the Deus storyline, Corp War, etc). Some of them are world-shaking (ie. Bugs, Dunklezahn's death, System Failure), others are pretty localized (ie. MobWar, the election campaign, Renraku Arcology) or discreet (ie. Bugs up to Bug City, Harlequin). The most recent ones (ie. System Failure, Emergence) are a mix of both: major events with street-level impact and personal ramifications.

I think they can have influence but they do not want to. They see our world as just the latest fad in humnity but they are still playing the same game they always did. Some, like Harlequin or Dunkelzahn seem to like humanity more. But others like the dragons in Denver or Mt Shasta seem to see us as they did millenia ago. children to be ruled over by fuedal lords who play their own games.

Wow. Okay, so Fuchs, whether you intended to or not, you basically stated that you don't like anything that changes the setting, at all. You want events that have absolutely no impact on anything. Man, you'd hate the games my group runs. But to each their own. I hope your static setting is sufficient for your enjoyoment. Me? I'd rather see things change, progress, evolve, and have a hand in shaping those events. Being more than Joe Nobody is part of why I play these games. I'm Joe Nobody in real life, so no sense in roleplaying myself in a game. That'd be silly.

To everyone his own. It's good to know how Fuchs likes to run his games, in that makes some of his positions more understanable.

I just wish he would stop portraying our standpoint as wrong.

One step at a time.

I like some changes. Corp War was nice. Horizon and L.A. might turn out to add fun to my game as well. However, I was a bit burned by the Dunkelzahn's election campaign. In the end, if I wanted to stay with canon, nothing my group had done would have mattered - it would have even be retconned to keep following canon. We pretty much threw following canon completely away back then.

For changes influenced by runners, I prefer to use runs my runners actually can influence the consequences of, not shows where their actions don't matter because the outcome is predeterminded by the devs. Actually having a hand in shaping an event for real, not the illusion thereof.

That of course means kicking canon out sooner or later, since the odds of me duplicating canon decisions each adventure one after the other are nil. And if that happens anyway, why not start right away, and run with plots that are more fun, and more tailored to the group in question?

When the former group of mostly military players was involved and we were playing a high-level campaign, we had the CAS taking back some of Texas' occupied areas from Aztlan. The runners were instrumental in creating tension and incidents at the CFS/Aztlan border to draw troops away from the CAS/Aztlan border. Later they helped suppress the Philipine rebellion. When the group disbanded, they had been involved in securing a corp for a billionaire, and started to act as that execs personal troubleshooters, paving the way of the corp to rise in power and influence. Might have even gotten the corp to AA status if we'd have continued the campaign.

In the current campaign, the runner work for a mafia boss in Miami. They are slowly (and sporadically) helping the mobster to become the sole mafia don in Miami, and once that is done they might get involved in powerplays further away. And what they manage to change will not be retconned, but last.

Together with the other campaigns, slowly a world is growing which was - in some ways - shaped and changed by the players.

Static? From a global point of view maybe. But from the player point of view, it's a setting where there are all sorts of bits they were involved in over the course of the years.

So, you could say I simply prefer my own, and my players' changes, to those the devs think of - usually.

I could say the same about you.

Fair enough. I'll admit my group has deviated rather strongly from Canon, already. Lofwyr is dead in our game world, which of course had far-reaching consequences, and as a result, we've had to alter some information that's come out since then to match our setting. I figure most any GM/group has to do that at some point. On this subject, I have no problem, and you're being perfectly reasonable on it.

Your original posts however gave the impression you didn't like your players/games having any impact on anything at all. I see your clarification, and it's obvious you didn't quite intend it that way.

Holy crap, Fuchs, it feels good to know someone else threw canon out when Dunklezahn ran for prez. I've never read the Super Tuesday module, but even as a 15 year old, I knew that Super Tuesday isn't the general election, and that offended me.

Anyway, I also don't like events that change the game world, and I think I have a pretty good reason: my group rotates GMs. Whoever has a good idea for a run, runs it, and their character sits that one out to avoid conflict of interest. And since we have a different GM every week, everybody tries not to do anything globally that's going to possibly pre-empt what the next GM's thinking.

As a young fool at the time, I naively thought that FASA was actually being honest when they asked players to vote in the election campaign books. I was curious who would win when I attended GenCon back then, and it felt good to have the chance to determine what character would be elected UCAS president. I expected Dunkelzahn to win, but I didn't expect FASA to rig the whole thing - and the "boom, now buy this new book, obviously prepared long in advance, so if you thought you could actually shape the setting by voting, feel like a fool, fool!" ploy hammered that home.

Since then, I didn't really care much anymore about what ideas FASA and the rest came up with. They did not care about what the players thought, so why should I hold them in higher esteem? And once free from the "it's official, it must be good" mentality, I noticed that under closer scrutinity, not much from the official material post Dunkelzahn's death actually helped my game - on the contrary.

Don't know where you got your info, but the way I heard it from people who worked with FASA at the time, Dunklezahn actually won by a wide margin in the FASA vote in (all the 80 something people who bothered to mail their votes in...). That this was the expected outcome makes it no less valid.

I never said your view is wrong. I just defended SR canon as depicted in the various book I know of.

Yes, he won, as was to be expected. But from what I know of production processes taking months, the book detailing his testament was already being written when the votes were still coming in, so the outcome was pre-determinded.

His death was not linked to the election. Your argument fails.

Dunkie killing himself for the greater good after not becomeing the new president would have been even more cheesy. His spirit ending up inside a cyberzombie would certainly qualify as "And what is this human? thing? supposed to.. Uh oh." moment, but it does not rescue the novel.

While I don't have the book with me, I do think it talked about his election in the book. I'll check when I am home.

This back cover page says differently, it calls him "the newly elected president".

He was killed during the whole introduction-stuff, but not because he had been the president of the UCAS.

Yes, but from what I remember, we could send in votes up to the start of the Gencon 96. At that time, the cover declaring him newly elected was already printed. I'll check back home if I can find a date in the campaign book.

The Election campaign arc was divided into three books: Super Tuesday, Shadows of the Underworld (which a huge number of people forget), and Dunklezahn's Portfolio (which has his death immediately following the election). The mail in "votes" were included in Super Tuesday and at least one other concurrent (unrelated) release - people had a couple of months to vote after the book release. Production times for a Shadowrun sourcebook tend to range from 4 to 6 months.

People see what they believe. If they believe they were ripped off, they will find eveidence supporting that. Doesn't mean anyone actually ripped them off.

no, you really can't. neither Malicant nor anybody else hijacked four threads to tell you that you were wrong, or an idiot.

I never called anyone an idiot, thank you very much.

Guess the first half of his accusation stands then, given you didn't dispute that at all?

I voted, and as a consequence I received an actual mention (my real name! ) in Dunky's Will, along with a prize pack. I can safely say with all surety of being correct that the Will was not completed until after the voting occurred.

I stand corrected then.

As far as I know this is not a civil courtroom, where you have to dispute a claim. Nor a penal court (where you don't have to dispute a claim anyway).
As far as hijacking goes - I was called on that in one thread, where I stopped at once. Seeing as everyone else posted as well in so-called hijacking, I think that accusation would cover just about everyone here.

not directly, which would normally make it a non-issue. you have called the plans and reactions of metahumanity with regards to dragons idiotic, which by proxy implies that the people who thought up those plans and reactions--that would be us, the people you're arguing with--are idiots, or at least acting like idiots. that's not a problem; it's pretty much unavoidable, and i don't think you intended any offense (nor was any taken). but, you can't go around calling people idiots--even in acceptable, non-offensive ways--and then turn around and claim that you're the one being attacked.


you could make an effort, man. when i find that whatever crusade i've embarked on is spilling over into multiple threads, i generally try to say things like "this thread isn't the place to argue that, let's take it to the one that's dedicated to that topic". to be fair, this thread is pretty much dedicated to the topic you're blowing your top over, but since there wouldn't be an argument at all if you weren't instigating it, i kinda think the onus is on you to manage where the argument takes place.

I could wish though that some people would stop trying to portay my point of view as wrong, which is what I said. I never claimed I was being attacked first. I know what I did, and what I started.

You're right, this is not a courtroom. This is the internets! Courtrooms know mercy

there would be far fewer people portraying your view as wrong, if you hadn't done it first.

I said I could, not that I did. And a few unrelated posts in a recent thread pretty much put the whole thing into perspective for me.

edit: blah, speaking of arguments that go nowhere.

In any case, I won't redo it. It's rather stupid to care much about how the military is painted in Shadowrun if there are real soldiers whose death is laughed at.

You could pop deus with a set of laser/GPS guided bombs. It's not like people didn't know where the computer was located in the building. You just nail drive to get to it. Messy and loud, but it would take minutes and be pretty much unstopable.

at which point the dead man's trigger Deus had on the reactors in the basement would have gone off, bathing the Metroplex in delicious, nutritious radioactive fallout.

Did you miss the part where he is holding the Arc's multiple Reactors as hostage?

Edit: Curses! Foiled by mfb and too many open windows!

you'll get me next time, Gadget!

Was Deus really in a specific part of the building? Could they be sure he hadn't move to somewhere else or spread loaded in some fashion? The other issue were casualities and Ren getting some of their investment back. They could have dusted off and thor rounded the whole arcology from orbit but they didn't because that wouldn't be good business.

And yeah, hostage reactors probably go a long way towards that.

Edit: NM, was already said.

At least initially, Deus was carefully limited exactly to the hardware it was running on in the Arc (but hard to enforce for long on a program that can modify its own code). IIRC, there was also a system set up in place that if Deus did try to use a matrix exit, it would be safely contained for later examination by Renraku. Hence the otaku.

i'm actually not sure the military/Renraku forces would have busted in guns blazing even if Deus hadn't been able to quickly consolidate his hold on the reactors. a hundred thousand hostages is a hell of a deterrent--unless it became obvious that Deus planned to kill them all, SOP for most hostage situations is to try and talk the hostage-taker down.

i'm also not sure how easily they'd have been able to break into the Arco in a reasonable timeframe, regardless. as far back as the Seattle Sourcebook, the Arco was noted as being designed to be a fortress--quite literally. Deus was designed to control all of the Arco's systems, which means his forces would be able to move with near-complet autonomy, while invaders would be stymied at every turn.

And that's the big thing I think some missed. The Arc was a self-sufficient and self-contained modern day castle in downtown Seattle. After dropping the lockdown doors, the place became sealed off from absolutely everything. You would need a full assault to breach the building, and we saw how that went with the runner team that penetrated the building within hours of the lockdown. Deus was *already* fortified and prepared before he even initiated his plan. Sure, he had a couple of oversights (the tram, for instance), but those were one-time mistakes that were corrected the moment he became aware of them.

And the rule for modern warfare is "if you can see it you can hit it, if you can hit it you can kill it." Tank guns will go through 10 meters of concrete or several meters of steel. The "Direct Strike Hard Target Weapon" is expected to go through about 60 meters of reinforced concrete. Somehow I tend to not believe that a hundred story building is hermetically sealed in 200 feet of reinforced concrete. This tends to kind of interfere with the view from the windows, not to mention certain minor structural issues.