In this case, they have three possibilities...

1. Live with it.
2. Ignore the metaplot completely
3. Modify it

I don't really see a problem with this. If you don't like what happend to Dunkelzahn, modify it. Let him be killed by a tactical nuke or something like this. As the real explanation is never "revealed" to the public, this shouldn't be a problem... I always tend to see every rule and every setting as an suggestion, not something written in stone... I normaly prefer to stay close to the original, because that makes it simpler to prevent being unable to use further supplements, but if you don't like a specific plotline... Change it.

In Harlequin 1 the devs stated explcitely that Harlequin and Ehran had no stats since the PCs wouldn't be able to battle them, but would be easily dealt with instead should they go up agaisnt them.

If IEs were normal elves with all the other limits - especially hard caps on skills and stats - it would be quite a different thing. But then they'd be killable, and would probably be killed when facing a skilled team of runners.

Characters such as Damien Knight and most other megacorporation CEOs are simply metahumans with no phenomenal skill aside from a shrewd mind and bottomless expense account. It's doubtful if their person stats were much better than that of a Mr. Johnson contact. Yet, somehow, they manage to survive and influence the world just fine. Golly. It must just be a fluke.

Why, if it can be writetn in a way that no one has to ignore it, but can decide how much of it is true, and what's fiction? In other words, don't reveal the real explanation at all, and keep it to rumor, and most will be happy because it's far easier to ignore rumor than game information.

This sounds like a case of the "bend the world to a way that suits me" mentality...

Problem is, you can't do this with everything, as people tend to want to know what happens. Learning secrets is part of the fun and for this, you have to define the answer - and probably there will be people, who don't like the answer. Personally, I could have lived without the Dragonheart books, but absolutely NO answer wouldn't have been a good idea, imho. There are some secrets which can stay unexplained, but doing this with all secrets will frustrate many players. You can't go on forever making up secrets but never define their explanations - and of course, this will prevent you from ever continue a single plotline, as you would have (at least for yourself) to define an explanation for the secret - and this explanation will perhaps contradict some players' explanation...
Of course, I have to add, that I prefer novels that show "normal" Shadowrunners, etc. over novels that show how Mary und Marty Sue rescue the world. There have been too many of the later, imho.

Almost nothing.

Which is precisely the point, IE's could be given stat's but stupid players/GMs would end up killing them regardless of how powerful you make them. So the designers elected to avoid this problem by not providing stat's and saying "if you attack this you die, endof"

I could easily stat up some example low-end IE's which would be effectively invulnerable to sensible PC's.

This is part of the setting that I like.

Monolithic Megacorps on one hand and untouchable Demi-gods on the other.

In a world where people like this exist that is what they would be like. This is part of the fun of role-playing, experiencing these sort of unbeatable foes and coming to terms with the emotions and psychological pain such situations cause.

Dystopian.

That is part of what Shadowrun is all about.

[which all gives me an idea, see me in Welcome to the Shadows.]

Ares and all the other powerful Megacorps are gods. If I were to assassinate each and every member of the Walton family, Wal-Mart would still survive. If that isn't immortality I don't know what is. And "Public Awareness" is a very obvious game mechanic that prevents any PC from rising to a level where he could take on the head of a megacorp with his bare hands. Tactical nukes and personal armies weren't given stats in Arsenal for very obvious reasons. To one degree or another, Shadowrunners are employees, never the boss, and only stupid employees get greedy enough to think they can overthrow the status quo all by their lonesome. And if that status quo includes Immortal Elves and Great Dragons, so be it.

I went through Ancient History's site and looked at all the Earthdawn/Shadowrun connections. They're either tenuous (like orichalcum, Aithne Oakforest), superficial (faerie courts are common in all fantasy settings as are dragons and monsters) or in-jokes. If one wanted to make the argument now (and I say this with no knowledge of what Dawn of the Artifacts is going to entail other than what was revealed in the chat [they will be using "artifacts" mentioned in previous Shadowrun canon]) that ED isn't SR's "secret history", it would be pretty darned easy to. That's totally up to the GM and it doesn't conflict with anything that's been published by FASA, FanPro or Catalyst.

If you have a direct example of where the words "Theran Empire", "obsidmen", "The Horrors" or other obvious ED material has appeared in a SR sourcebook, and not under a weak pseudonym like "The Enemy", I'd like to know. As far as I'm concerned the Fourth Age was a mysterious age of magic and doesn't tie into Earthdawn. Which is owned by Redbrick anyway so this whole conversation is rather moot to me. Unless we're talking about a DC/Marvel Superhero style-crossover (which would be a first in the world of RPGs), Catalyst is going to be limited in what they can do with ED material and I'd be (delightfully) shocked to see it mentioned by name.

I only consider SR game material as canon. The old novels from ROC publishing are a wreck and contradict themselves.

EDIT: Corrected my piss-poor grammar.

Ya know... I started playing back in SR1 (yes, back when we had that thing called staging which really blew chunks). Not once during the time I actively played SR1 & SR2 did I feel as though IE, GDs, and the like were being shoved down my throat. Hell, most of the scenarios I picked up for SR didn't even mention them.

I certainly don't remember seeing or reading anything that said the major historical figures were IEs. None of the source books I own state that (to my recollection).

How much / many of your claims can actually be backed up by canon examples?

Sorry, I simply fall into the camp that believes it adds depth and mystique. Does it come into play in everyday life? Nope. Does it affect my run for Mr. Johnson? *VERY* unlikely.

As for Dunkie's death... that was told in a novel, not a sourcebook. Was that novel determined to be canon? If so, by whom?

Which novels are canon and which are not is a whole different argument and I don't think it's ever been resolved. Peter Taylor did say that the upcoming SR novels published by Catalyst will be considered canon.

I agree!

I also love that word 'godlings'. Seems many want to throw it around with an extreme dose of derision.

One thing some folks in this thread are forgetting is the megacorporations are an entities themselves, godlings. If a megacorporation were to bring its fully resources to bear on your elimination, you are already dead. No one told you yet.

The kevetching about IEs and GDs is really being blown out of proportion. Especially the "DM's pet" & "Mary Sue" snide comments. These same people aren't bitching about the megas as being lacking stats. You certainly can't kill S-K or Ares.

So why is it okay to bitch about Harlequinn and yet give a pass to an entity that is far more powerful and dynamic than him?

Then I really, really hope that they have a closer look at the books than the guys from FanPro, who had some really ridiculus novels. And sorry darthmord, but the thought "Oh, Hello Mary Sue!" came to me more than one time when reading some of the novels - especially when authors started breaking the SR rules...

FASA's were pretty ridiculous as well. The difference between then and now is that FASA and FanPro were publishing through a third-party, ROC (a Penguin subsidiary), whereas Catalyst will be publishing in-house. So the same editors and developers who watch over the game line will (I believe) have a hand in editing the novels.

Because one is made up of a million and more people, the other is One. Single. NPC.

If you don't see the difference, you might be better off playing exalted as a commoner.

Which act like one single being.

Uh... did you check the canon sources? Corps do not act like a single being. Infighting, plots, intrigues, and so on. What game have you been playing again?

I've been playing the same game as you and the power difference between an Immortal Elf and a megacorporation is petty semantics. Corporations (and fictional megacorporations) act as One. Single. Being. Real life corporations are legally considered to be living persons. Have been so since Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. That's why you can sue a corporation but not an individual stock holder.

When corporations don't act like one single being they fall apart. Yes, in Shadowrun, there's corporate infighting in the lower rungs. But each megacorp still moves, overall, as one entity. Two VPs acting like petty children isn't going to affect power-mongers like Damien Knight and his backers. When a piece of the corporate entity misbehaves, it gets cut off like a hangnail.

You obviously didn't read the sourcebooks. And it's pointless to argue with an IE fanboy stuck on his "IEs make the world go round" fixation.

But we haven't been playing the same game at all - not if you honestly rate a few pointy eared mary sues on the same level as the megacorps.

Something Positive

didn't fuchie IE more or less die? O.o
also, there's the Omega Order . . you just have to make it seem believable, that SK deserves to be omegaed . .

And again, there's a significant difference between a country or megacorp, composed of millions of people, and a single NPC.

It's usually D&D where the level 30 fighter or wizard kills the entire army of the kingdom all by himself. If we get that in Shadowrun then the world really is reduced to D&D with cyberware,

Well... did you re-read your postings in this thread? It's not like you appear to be open-minded - no insult, just feedback.

Well, I posted several times: Keep it vague, keep it rumors, so everyone can weigh and focus on the IEs as much or as little as they want. I don't want game information dealing with IE antics, hard rules and info stating their involvement, and especially not rules to the extent of "can't be killed, nya nya nya, it's a god!". With vague info, and options, both sides can have their cake and eat it.

Isn't that open-minded enough?

My impression of your postings was more like: "IEs are stupid, Dragons are stupid, I don't like 'em and don't want 'em in my game!". Speaking of different perception.

Not really.

Why? Notoriety isn't limited to positive values - in fact, some characters will start with negative values due to qualities. And you can trade in two Points of Street Cred to reduce Notoriety by one.
As PA is based on the the sum of Street Cred and Notoriety, that allows you to always balance you PA to zero.

Megacorps are monolithic entities often controlled by a handful of people and sometimes just a single person. While there is infighting, plotting, and intrigue, this tends to be local and isolated within the organization. At the highest organizational level, a megacorp can, indeed, be treated as a single person, particularly one like Ares and SK, which have high-profile strong and charismatic CEOs running their day-to-day operations with a large degree of impunity.



FASA. Earthdawn is still owned by FASA. They License it to Redbrick and Living Room Games.



Which is just silly. Tactical nukes are potentially invaluable shadowrunning tools.

nukes, okay, maybe a bit too drastic and too much attention . .
biological and chemical weapons/warfare? perfect!
just make it a 2 component poison, both components being transmitted through air or water, do a run to plant enough of component a in the ventialtion system of an arcology one day, do another run to put in the other component into the water system, bingo, dead men walking . .
yes, i know of course, that there's bound to be filtering stuff somewhere in there . . but if you can get around that, you're all set . . imagine someone doing that before deus says "MINE!" and when he closes up and the people in there start to get to the poisoned water reservoirs, all of his drones(ok, and everybody else too) simply drop dead suddenly o.O

That's entirely accurate. But I don't say "I don't want them in YOUR game." All I am saying is "write the new stuff in a way that they are more vague, so both those who like, and those who hate them have an equally easy time to adapt.

I do not think that's asking too much. At the very least it's more open minded than "We want IEs to be uber and everywhere, as canon facts, you can ignore them if you want. You shouldn't be playing Shadowrun anyway".

Well, there you go. Don't bother to counter me with any facts, just throw childish insults at me because I happen to disagree and am poking holes in your logic.

Just so you know... I've never used an IE in a single game. But when people whinge on about game concepts like IEs or technomancers I simply must point out the lunacy.

If you want to keep using the term Mary Sue it might be helpful to understand what it means. Here, I'll provide you with one from dictionary.com:



Now, tell me in what way are IEs Mary Sues other than their major roles in the plot?


I just went back through this thread. No one said that. You're overreacting.


Well... yeah. As I understand it the basic idea is that you will eventually win (Street Cred) more than you lose (Notoriety) and your Public Awareness will rise. I think we're on the same page.


Oops, I forgot that WizKids sold it back to FASA. Thanks for the correction!


That sure would end the game early. I'll keep that in mind the next time I get a headache and want to go to bed.

Addignore is a wonderful tool to deal with hypocrits.

And I'm being a hypocrite how?

EDIT:You know what? Forget it. This isn't even a discussion anymore. Another thread falls into the Dumpshock sewer.

The potential applications of a sub-kiloton dial-a-yield weapon are enormous. Technically, a nuke should be equivalent to a certain weight of TNT (Rating 4) so it shouldn't be too difficult to stat one.

Personally I fall into the camp that doesn't like the offical ED-Shadowrun metaplot, hate the canon IEs, and thinks Ghostwalker should have gotten his ass handed to him.

Now with that said I love the IDEA of a Fourth World that was ravaged by unknowable Horrors from the deepest reaches of the Astral. Hell, I would even like the idea of Fourth World Era personalities surviving into the Sixth World by either sleeping through the Fifth Age ala dragons or fueling the local Mana Levels with twisted rituals that almost make the Horrors seem decent in comparision. (In fact I tend to use tie-ins with this vague "Disney Atlantis meets CoC" Fourth World more often then I probably should.)

But if you introduce it in an adventure it had better damn well have stats and sidelines detailing how best to handle what happens if the players geek it.

While I don't agree with Fuchs' tone which as I'm sure has only slipped because of the increasingly heated argument, I agree with many of his sentiments.
I don't mind GDs in my games though. I could even stand IEs if they were just done less "in your face". It's more the whole concept of "IEs are behind anything and everything humanity ever achieved" attitude that dominated the fluff in later 2nd ed and some 3rd ed publications. The comparison to oWoD vampire conspiracy has been mentioned and I'd agree to that.
That's why I indeed always left the ED crossover out of my games. I like the style, 4th has kept concerning the crossover until now. We have been given certain nods and references, but haven't been slapped across the face with a giant fourth world reminder.

And yes, Harley, Ehran, Alachia etc. are Mary Sues and I will donate 10.000¥ to Seattle metahuman rights associations in the name of Peter Taylor for everyone of them who dies in the upcoming anniversary arc with a 50.000¥ bonus if Leonardo will be forced to eat his magic cyberdeck beforehand.

The Earthdawn stuff really doesn't mess up the game that much, since it is mostly a bunch of coy hints and insider references. You can more or less roll your eyes and ignore it.

The IE's and Great Dragons, however, were Mary Sues, and I am glad they have been relegated to the background where they belong. If you trot something out to the foreground of the story, it should lose its plot immunity.

As far as corporations keeping runners alive on sufferance, I really don't think so. Yeah, they could get rid of runners if they all decided to do so. But they won't stop using runners, because other corps use runners. They aren't large and in charge, they are caught in the classic prisoner's dilemma.

If you read cyberpunk books, you will see gritty antiheroes faced with tough choices and no-win situations, but you will also see people changing the world. I mean, Hardwired is basically about someone deciding to make a moral stand, and taking on a megacorporation. I'm not saying runners should have it easy, but I distrust "You can't change anything" games, because they are usually GM railroading and overall dickery, justified as it being the "theme".

Once again, another thread has degraded into a childish rant by a user who thinks "I don't like this aspect. I demand the creators to change the game to my specifications!"

Again, nobody has answered why if you don't like what the authors are doing, why don't you play some generic system and make your own world? It's not your world or setting to declare what's right and what's stupid. It's theirs, and we play in it because we like what they've done. Being that they are the gods of this realm, we accept what they write as truth because for all intents and purposes it is.

Now, one more time, if you really don't like these things, why don't you just make up your own stuff? Why should the devs bend the game to your ideas?

You're presenting a straw man argument that has no basis in anything that anyone has posted here. No one has said a single thing about wanting the devs to change the game to their liking.

People have expressed a dislike for how immortal elves and great dragons were presented. Your response to this has been the continual reiteration of a false dilemma, where people who play the game must either accept everything in the metaplot without question, or else create their own game world.

That's not how it works, though. Most GMs use the parts of the metaplot that they like, and ignore or change the rest of it. And they will complain about the rules they don't like, the plots they don't like, and the editorial decisions they don't like. That's one of the things this board is here for.

Simple, I play Shadowrun because I generally like the ruleset, enjoy reading the majority of the fluff to some extent or another, and DO make up allot of my own stuff.

As for why the devs should change the Sixth World to match my preferences, once again, it is simple, they write books to make money and so should do their best to appeal to the Shadowrun Fanbase. I happen to believe that the fanbase at large tends to agree with me more than with you.

... Could be wrong though ...

Immortal Elves and Great Dragons have been part of Shadowrun since day one, it would not be Shadowrun without them.

The game has never said that they do not have stats, nor that they cannot be killed, simply that giving us the stats is pointless since it is beyond the scope of the game for players to take them on in that fashion.

Outside of a handful of modules in which IEs and GDs were the primary focus, I do not see how any of them overshadow the megacorps as power players in the Sixth World.

Admittedly there is quite a bit more focus on them in the novels, but that does not make them Mary Sues it makes them the primary characters of the novels, which have always had little to do with how any of my groups play the game.

In other worlds I am a fan of the metaplot, and the ED/4th World connection as background, but it does not really effect street level games at all. I also like that their has been the occasional adventure that lets high level characters move up from the street if the group decides to.

I wonder if we could get a "Dumpshock Sewer" forum for the mods to just dump threads that degrade too far into and unmoderated hell. I think it would be among the more popular forums here.

In the 1st edition rulebook, it has been a while since I've looked at it admittedly, I don't recall reading one thing about the godlike Great Dragons or the Immortal Elves. Now, there were elves and dragons for sure. There just were not any of the uber "they've done everything cool in history EVAR" versions as are being discussed here.

So, no. You are quite incorrect in your claim that these things have "been there since day one". And it was, indeed, Shadowrun before they were ever mentioned in the suppliments.

Humans and the Cycle of Magic was written by the games creators and released with the First Edition.

There were Great Dragons in the first edition book, and the existence of Sperethiel strongly implied that there were pre-existing speakers.

So the first edition version, as was printed along with the first printing of the main book, has no direct reference to the speaker being immortal, having talked to the pharaohs or to DaVinci. It was written as if by an elven scholar who had found out all sorts of cool information that would be largely disbelieved, would be unverifiable, and basically (at the time) be considered the ramblings of a nutter by the historic and scientific community at large. Also, mentioning the first Great Dragon, which at that moment was kind of like mentioning dragons at all because they were all deemed as "great" because they were fucking dragons for crying out loud, and lacks any real significance then when compared to the current timeline where the powers of these beings has been metaplotted into "I break entire countries and stuff, yo".

Even the second version is actually from the first year of the game, being part of a catalog about what would be coming out in 1990.

All has been said. Just remains to be seen if the devs keep the game open for a multitude of playstyles, or bury the fluff under IE worship once again.

SR is not just a fantasy for elf fans, and should never be reduced to that.

Mega-Post ahoy!

Apparently Dumpshock didn't like me quoting so many people, so I've coloured the quoted text to discern it from my own ramblings.

quote name='psychophipps'
I would have been completely happy with:
"60 or so years ago a great mystic ritual by a powerful Native American shaman and his followers reopened the gates to magic in the world. When this happened, the magics also started changing segments of the human population into Elves, Orks, Trolls, and Dwarves. Corporations, though trickery and raw finacial power, have attained legal extraterritoriality and run things largely through financial clout and corruption. Dragons, long thought gone, are again scheming their way to the top while long thought dead mages reawaken to a world with new technology and new horizons to resume their machinations. Governments have risen and fallen due to the Native tribes regaining their lands and financial and factional chaos fed by the return of magics to the world.
The characters, a group of individuals who work as deniable assets to the various factions throughout the world, are a group of underground warriors, hackers, mages, and vehicular experts who utilize the best training, magic, and cyberware to maintain their edge on the mean streets of 2070. Their goals vary, but all are willing to risk it all for the street cred, the money, or the power to make a difference in the world of Shadowrun."

Clear, to the point, no metaplot horseshit to wade through and argue about, and plenty of room for the GM to do their thing.

Took me less than 20 minutes.
[/quote]

[Aside to the main discussion]

See, I find this far superior to the 'plot' in the first chapter of the SR4 book. When I read that, my first thought was 'this is bullshit.' I don't know if it was just bad writing on the part of whoever drafted up that brief summary or if it's just that the events of shadowrun don't ring as true as they did 20 years ago, but it all just rang so hollow - especially the crap about the mistreatment of native americans. Your write-up flows more naturally and leaves things ambiguous enough regarding 'how we got here' that there was no jarring feeling of 'but it doesn't work that way.'

[/Aside]

quote name='psychophipps'
Some people here, however, seem to think that the metaplot backstory is written on stone tablets by the finger of GAWD himself and fear His righteous wrath that will make all of their dice, except their d12s, roll badly until all of their characters die the death of a thousand dogs, Amen.
[/quote]

F***ing sigged!

quote name='TKDNinjaInBlack'
see, this was my major point aimed at all those who are complaining about the metaplot, the IEs, the GDs and the good old fashioned ED references. If you want generic, why are you playing Shadowrun? Shouldn't you be falling in love with your own completely free form, player driven, bland sandbox world? Shadowrun is a world with rules and a great deal of perspective. Why wouldn't the 10,000 year old entity have levels of control and knowledge to keep a bunch of runners from offing him or her? I think the common misconception on the side of of those displeased with this is that you're not fully understanding the futile situation of a runner to begin with. Runners don't change the world, they are just the puppets. It's the puppet masters who choose to what plays to make to change the world. I mean come on. Even when dealing with the corporations, most runs are rendered futile. Yeah, your team succeeded in delivering the evil corp device to the news networks and exposed the megacorp for the horrible controlling monsters they are. Too bad all of your hard work causes no revolution and the corp doesn't fall. PR spin and counter shadowruns and corporate maneuvering render everything you did that was earthshaking completely null and void. Would you like to know which events are earth shaking? They are the ones written down in the books because they are noteworthy.

If your players want to play in a realm where their actions and decisions actually matter, you need to play a different cyberpunk game where the idea of behind a megacorp is that it is a bloated and lethargic bureaucratic monolith that while it has influences all the way down to the street, can be manipulated and avoided/twisted to your design. In Shadowrun, your actions don't matter and aren't going to be world changing unless someone or something with great power manipulated everything else for them to be. If megacorps can buy silence and control, what levels of awareness are those IEs and GDs going to have? your runners sure as hell aren't going to do something they don't want you to do. And if you cross them, you're bent over and pretty well screwed. That's the futile life of a runner. You're an errand boy, a chess piece. And maybe, just maybe, you'll be rewarded by living long enough and have a few luxuries for choosing the winning side.
[/quote]

It's a little small-minded of you not to consider that Shadowrun, as a setting, is versatile enough to support more than one style of play. If you want to run a game where your players are constantly getting screwed over by their employers and survive only because they make themselves valuable and insignificant enough that killing them is more trouble than it's worth, go nuts - there's a lot of fun to be had with that. On the other hand, you can also run a game where the runners slowly get involved in the higher level politics, and rather than ending up as pawns, become major players themselves, with far-reaching networks of back-up plans, failsafes, blackmails and etc. to keep the other power-players off their backs while they pursue their own agenda.

Why do you find it so hard to accept that some people enjoy the latter style of game?

quote name='TKDNinjaInBlack'
Well, Magic, and the flow of mana, dragons, critters, IEs and metaplaner horrors are what separate this game from other cyberpunk games.

Every cyberpunk game has megacorporations, chrome and the contrast of gritty street level mixed with 80s new wave flash. So what would Shadowrun be without the extra stuff that it appears users are complaining about? I mean, it'd still have its non-magic history and backstory too, but so do Deus Ex and Cyberpunk2020.
[/quote]

Utterly false. Magic is what sets SR apart from CP2020 or any other dystopian, spur-of-the-sigularity setting. You can literally stip out everything except the magic, the cyber and the megacorps and you'd still fundamentally be playing SR.

quote name='Red_Cap'
And the solution for those who don't want a metaplotted, IE- or GD-affected game is so damn simple: tell your GM not to include them. Run a street-level campaign where its just the runners, the megas, and those pesky Star bastards always trying to shoot your ass.
[/quote]

The problem here is when the GM and the players have different expectations. If some players hate the IE/GD crap, but others are avid fans of the metaplot who expect to see it in their SR games, you cannot please both of them. Wheras if, as Fuchs suggests, IE/GDs had been left as rumours, the GM would be free to handle them however he likes without ruining the fun for his players.

quote name='Red_Cap'
But don't go harping on about how all these grand schemes and immortal, all-powerful beings ruin the game because they don't. They give it character. They give it depth. If it's too deep for you, swim in the shallow end.
[/quote]

That last phrase is what we like to call an 'ad-hominem attack' and it does not lend your argument any credence. Please steer clear of them in future.

Grand schemes put into place by ordinary, power-hungry, intelligent beings that cause globe-spanning repercussions give a setting character and depth. "All-powerful beings" (your own words) whose globe-spanning plots always end in FRAWRESS VICTOLY! cheapen the experience for all involved.

quote name='the_real_elwood'
So go ahead and run a game where your players assassinate Great Dragons or Immortal Elves.
[/quote]

I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing. It would be a great final mission to run, and the storytelling opportunities (from making your players feel like their characters actually matter in a world of suck, to throwing the futility of their actions in their face) are nearly endless.

quote name='Steampunk'
In this case, they have three possibilities...

1. Live with it.
2. Ignore the metaplot completely
3. Modify it

I don't really see a problem with this. If you don't like what happend to Dunkelzahn, modify it. Let him be killed by a tactical nuke or something like this. As the real explanation is never "revealed" to the public, this shouldn't be a problem... I always tend to see every rule and every setting as an suggestion, not something written in stone... I normaly prefer to stay close to the original, because that makes it simpler to prevent being unable to use further supplements, but if you don't like a specific plotline... Change it.
[/quote]

You may view everything in the book as a suggestion, and that's a healthy attitude, but not everyone at the table neccessarily will. See my earlier comment about player expectations. Again, if they'd left IE/GDs as shadowy rumours in the background it would be a lot easier to keep everyone happy.

quote name='hyzmarca'
Megacorps are monolithic entities often controlled by a handful of people and sometimes just a single person. While there is infighting, plotting, and intrigue, this tends to be local and isolated within the organization. At the highest organizational level, a megacorp can, indeed, be treated as a single person, particularly one like Ares and SK, which have high-profile strong and charismatic CEOs running their day-to-day operations with a large degree of impunity.
[/quote]

True, but at the end of the day, you can blackmail that single person, or threaten their assets or stay in hiding, or do any number of things to aviod reprisal from a megacorp, and if the same was true of IE/GDs, I'd have no issue with them. The way they've been handled to date, however, has presented them as being infallible and untouchable, which is stupid. Just because the dragon is smarter than your average bear, doesn't mean there aren't exploitable holes in his schemes and weaknesses in his personal defenses.

quote name='Ravor'
Personally I fall into the camp that doesn't like the offical ED-Shadowrun metaplot, hate the canon IEs, and thinks Ghostwalker should have gotten his ass handed to him.

Now with that said I love the IDEA of a Fourth World that was ravaged by unknowable Horrors from the deepest reaches of the Astral. Hell, I would even like the idea of Fourth World Era personalities surviving into the Sixth World by either sleeping through the Fifth Age ala dragons or fueling the local Mana Levels with twisted rituals that almost make the Horrors seem decent in comparision. (In fact I tend to use tie-ins with this vague "Disney Atlantis meets CoC" Fourth World more often then I probably should.)

But if you introduce it in an adventure it had better damn well have stats and sidelines detailing how best to handle what happens if the players geek it.
[/quote]

Amen.

quote name='TKDNinjaInBlack'
Once again, another thread has degraded into a childish rant by a user who thinks "I don't like this aspect. I demand the creators to change the game to my specifications!"

Again, nobody has answered why if you don't like what the authors are doing, why don't you play some generic system and make your own world? It's not your world or setting to declare what's right and what's stupid. It's theirs, and we play in it because we like what they've done. Being that they are the gods of this realm, we accept what they write as truth because for all intents and purposes it is.

Now, one more time, if you really don't like these things, why don't you just make up your own stuff? Why should the devs bend the game to your ideas?
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Why? Because the writers of SR have already done most of the work for me. They have an interesting world (even though I reckon its fictional history is silly would have been better served by being vague), a good ruleset, and an interesting premise (the return of magic to a technological era).

However, it also has some things I'd much rather see it without - in particular the stupidly powerful NPCs with plot armour.

Why don't I make up my own stuff? Because there's some awesome stuff already available, and I thought it was cool enough to pay $60 for.

Why should the devs listen to me? Because I'm the one they have to convince to spend money on their product. It may well be the case that I'm part of a vocal minority, in which case the devs will (and should) ignore me. I suspect, however, that the playerbase at large would like to see a diffferent treatment of IE/GDs, and my suspicions are somewhat confirmed by AH's post upthread, promising a different handling of those elements.

quote name='MJBurrage'
Immortal Elves and Great Dragons have been part of Shadowrun since day one, it would not be Shadowrun without them.

The game has never said that they do not have stats, nor that they cannot be killed, simply that giving us the stats is pointless since it is beyond the scope of the game for players to take them on in that fashion.

Outside of a handful of modules in which IEs and GDs were the primary focus, I do not see how any of them overshadow the megacorps as power players in the Sixth World.
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Actually, it would be shadowrun without them. It might not be SR without dragons that have wide-reaching schemes, but the scripted infallibility that goes hand-in-hand with the term 'Great Dragon' can -and should, in my opinion- be done away with without ruining any of the flavour of SR.

As to them not being killable, see upthread for a mention of a printed module which specifically stated the GMPC 'Immortal Elf' could not be defeated by the PC's. At all. Ever.

As to them overshadowing the megacorps, its stupid stuff like Dunk's will where suddenly the megacorps are acting like dogs, desperately pawing at their master's leg in the hopes that they'd get a treat. As Dr. F said -repeatedly- upthread, it was an event that had massive potential for awesomeness, but it was ruined by poor handling, cheap plot-hooks and mary-suism.

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To adress the original post's point: I have no issue with ties between ED and SR in theory - as a concept it has the potential for awesomeness, though there has been some mishandling of it in the past.

As to the main thrust of the discussion: I've found some of the plot in SR to be somewhat lacking, and if I were to accept the way it's been written my ability to suspend disbelief would be lying dead in a gutter. On the other hand, the SR world - as it stands in 2070 - is awesome, and has serious potential. I think Great Dragons & Immortal Elves should be barely visible in the setting, because anyone who's survived that long would do it by not making enemies, and you do that by not letting people know you're involved. Anonymous tip-offs, intermediaries and mysterious turns of luck should be the only signs of their involvement, because if they ever ended up in the public eye, they would eventually end up dead (enter Dunkelzahn: a GD too eccentric to play from behind the scenes who ends up paying for it - at least, that's how it should have happened) when some megacorp or other GD/IE or nation who's had their toes stepped on one too many times decides to put a stop to things using shadowrunning teams, diversions and a nuke stolen from some other nation's aresenal by a 'terrorist organisation.'

The phrase 'never deal with dragons' should exist because they always have an ulterior motive, not because they have indestructible plot-armour and they'll butt-rape you six ways from sunday without there being a damn thing you can do about it, then fly of gleefully into the sunset knowing they don't have to fear reprisal because an all-pwerful being in the sky known only as jee'em will protect them.

People bitch about the Uber-NPCs in Forgotten Realms, and they don't have nearly the effect on the setting that the GDs have on SR. For every Elminster or Drizzt in FR, there was a globe-spanning organisation like the Red Wizards that was even more powerful that even they wouldn't dare fuck with. GDs/IEs in shadowrun get away with treating the world and the megacorps as their sandbox and playthings far too often to be believable.

Can I just ask, do the folks complaining about 'Mary-Sue-ism' genuinely believe that a character built on 5000+ karma is killable by PC scale machinations?

It is my contention that at some point, about 3000 karma say, the system will break to such an extent that characters do become effectively immortal.

Wanna help me test this theory?

Or shall we just continue name-callling?

A mary sue is protected by author/plot immunity. That's the defining trait.

Whatever has stats can be killed. Even with 5K karma, a well-designed attack can take you out. It might need ungodly amounts of explosives, nerve gas/poison, sniper shots with heavy weapons, drone swarms, almost-cyberzombie troll melee tanks - most likely a combo of all the above - but even with magic 50 you'll run out of luck and start to glitch.

And, Crizh, do you honestly see anyone surviving a point blank blast from a trailer full of explosives? Or a cargo plane full of fuel dropping on your head?

Yes, I do genuinely believe that any living organism will die if you kill it. I also believe that it doesn't really matter how good you get, someone can still outwit you, or you can have bad luck, or you can miss something critical, or whatever.

If the Immortal Elves and Great Dragons really want to live forever, they should keep their damn heads down, else they're liable to have it blown off - just like any other power-monger.

It certainly shouldn't be commonplace, and if the PCs really want to pit themselves against something with that scale of resources and planning they should probably lose more often than not, but if the PCs put in a similar amount of planning and have access to a similar amount of resources (obviously this would only apply to experienced runners), they should at least have a chance.

Also, to clarify, I don't mind if the PCs have an ice-cube's chance in hell of actually killing the dragon, but they should at least have a decent chance of throwing a spanner in the works if they take the time and effort to (successfully) figure out what's going on.

It's the 'ZOMGZ! Dragunz is too smat to ever not know everthing ahed of time!' / Just as planned! that gets my goat.

Speaking of which, for an example, see DeathNote: Light Yagami's Just as Planned! moment is cool in the context of the book / show, but if your character had to deal with NPCs like him and L, you, as a player, would eventually say 'fuck it, I may as well not do anything.' They're also entirely unrealistic - the whole point of DeathNote is watching the absurd feats those two pull off because 'they're just that smart,' but in reality their plans would have gone down in flames the second a single thing they hadn't accounted for cropped up - which it would have, frequently.

As to taking you up on your challenge, perhaps another day. Saying 'but they've lived thousands of years, of course they have thousands of karma!' doesn't effectively convey the realities of the situation. People change and develop, but the one thing a lot of systems don't account for is forgetting things you used to know. If you don't use a skill long enough - especially non-physical ones - you lose your ability to use it at all; How many people remember their highschool level maths if they take a career path that doesn't make use of it?

Yes, a GD should have a ludicrous number of skills and a knowledge list a mile long, but that doesn't equate to 'built with 3K karma,' because they likely will have attributes they never bothered with, or have let go to pot recently (spending karma to up your strength is all well and good, but they never really go into what happens when you stop lifting heavy things regularly). You'll get a far more realistic depiction of an IE/GD if you just write down his stats as you think they should be: "Hmm, this IE does a lot of wheeling and dealing, so he probably has Cha 8-9 and 6-7 in most of the social skills, he's a master magician, so magic 10-11, 6-7 ranks in all the casting skills, he tends to keep up appearances, so Bod/Str 3-4, he's a little clumsy though, so Agi/Rea 2-3, fairly canny, so Int/Log 4-6, no ranks in combat skills (finds fighting distasteful), a couple ranks in the athletics group, 5 or so in most of the stealth skills, a metric ton of knowledges, and hundreds-of-billions of Nuyen to throw around. Or, I could spend 3K karma... "well, let's see, max out all the attributes... OK, still thousands of karma left, hmm... all active skills... OK, still thousands to spend, damn, um... well, lets spend a full thousand on cash and contacts, and the other thousand on initiating and upping magic to, like, 30. Damn, still have more, oh well, dump it all into knowledge skills."

And even if you used the second method, the second character still isn't completely immune to the 'surprise, you killed my girlfriend with your schemes 40 years ago and left me for dead, but I've been living under an assumed identity and now I have a portable nuclear device and nothing left to lose! Nice meeting you! *boom*

The SR world just resonates so much more when old-fogey elves and hugh-jass dragons are just another player in the worldwide game along with the corps and nations.