I don't think "Being a Criminal" hits the nail on the head. There are many types of criminal. Not to belittle First Edition but in first, we were Robin Hood. Somewhere around Second Ed, we saved the Rod Damned world. Maybe that was too far, but it certain wasn't heartless , thoughtless, or one fraggin dimensional.

Sure, Glyph, the main book now has a villian^H^H^H^H^H^H errr Toxic^H^H^H^H^H^H radical eco shaman. And yes the game will let you play whatever you want. However, that's not all fine and good when what adventures published don't let the players act on good.

There is a Mission where the characters are the tools used in the death of a young child. The adventure allows no deviation from this point.
In Ghost Cartels there is nothing for the characters to do but contribute to the plague on humanity. The train tracks ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H adventure offers a great view of the disaster as it happens.

The main book is open, sure fine and dandy. The examples presented getting more and more violent and heartless. Trend lines count.

However, its not an "all time" low to me. My group and I can play however we want, we can trash trashworthy adventures and move on. And yes, we do play "Hero Criminals". Something akin to Firefly or Serenity. Criminals with a heart who don't take crappy jobs and won't do the absolute wrong thing.

When this subject comes up, its a great laugh for many of you. However, I encourage everyone not to respond quickly. Take a deep look at material published before 1996 and then after.

Now to stir more controversy, and perhaps cause a flippant response such as "Shenanigans", I present an All Time Low.

All Time Low: Shadowrunning becoming a publicly used term. There have always been people performing acts outside the norm, and they have never needed new fangled fancy names. Criminal fits nicely, as they do break the law.

BlueMax
/"I'm going to Pistol whip the next person to say Shenanigans"
//"AH, whats the name of that restaurant Blue Max likes to eat at with all the Goofy Drek and the Mozzarella sticks?"

Lowest point in Shadowrun?

The fact that, in all probability, I will always look at my copies of Shadows of North America, Shadows of Europe, and Shadows of Asia, sitting on the shelf, and feel like there's an empty space where a fourth book should be.

Shadows of Antarctica?

Shadows of Seychelles.

Shadows of Lower Austria!

Shadows of LAos!

Shadows of Nowaja Semlja! You don't want to go there...

The Dissonance - suddenly we had Jedis in the matrix. "I sense that the dissonance is strong in you, young Pax."

No, thank you. In my campaign the Deep Resonance is a neutral force (or state of being). "Dissonance" is just propaganda every group of 'mancers stick at stuff they don't like.

With the SURGE rules applying to critters, I thought it was canon.

Well, add certain bioware to centaur, and you are pretty close neh?

I am not continuing this debate here.



For that exact reason.

Though you could look at the date and see that my post was well before the original thread was closed.

And the rest of your post goes unread.

Because you're the one crapping all of another thread with this.

That thread is merely one of several reasons used as an example for why I have an extreme distaste for humanity (yes, that's right, the species).

I have to agree with the lowpoint, in recent memory, being SuRGE. I mean really, parts of it were pretty interesting, but most of it was just... eh. Especially the random rolling of SuRGE-related happenings. Random rolling? What is this, That Other Game?

Another bone than sticks in my craw is the sudden main-streaming, in the metaplot, of Shadowrunners, especially in the whole LA scene. In my vision of it, Shadowrunners are criminals who, I don't know, stick to the shadows. The metaplot seems to say that shadowrunning is as common as having a NORMAL job. But maybe that's just me.

That having been said, I think that everything that SR4 has been doing is right on track. The feel of the game (except for that little bit above) is right and the sourcebooks and materials have been top-notch. I think that right now in SR it's sort of a new renaissance, and that's a really nice high-point.

The Los Angeles runner scene is pretty atypical. L.A. has found a way to commercialize the runner subculture the same way it commercializes every single other subculture.

I've generally found that the best way to return the 80s mindset is to put Howard Jones, Thomas Dolby, and the Human League on infinite loop. It might not actually fit with the book setting, but I don't give a dang - my world is full of people with trenchcoats and day-glo orange hypermullets.

Part of the problem is that the timeline kept being advanced by huge lumps. During the 80s, you had a climate where technology was expensive, ugly, unreliable, and available only to the very wealthy, the very powerful, or the very dangerous. During the 90s, technology started to become universal. During the naughties, we don't even think about it anymore - it's a case of "shoes, coat, iPod, scarf, gloves".




I haven't looked much at the SURGE rules, but I'd use 'em to create mutants freaks, likely caused by corporate toxic waste "accidents".

Anyone here ever read the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm when they were kids? A character like the Eye has massive utility...providing he's not blinded by ordinary noon daylight.

Also, I've found that some of the most fun characters to play are those who violate stereotypes. Catgirls are generally not expected to be 6'5" 275 pound bodybuilders with the ability to punch through reinforced concrete.



A "mutietown" might be very interesting indeed, especially considering the large percentage of SURGEd individuals with magic. It's generally a bad idea to mess with people who can round up a posse of initiated spellcasters at a few minutes' notice.



Is this in any way related to reefer madness? It's the only way I came up with to parse this phrase.

You don't get around Cat-girls much eh? *snickers* ^^

OMG, awesome book. I wonder if I still have it around...

We have that. It's in Chicago.

If you understand... why are you posting this as an example? oO

Have you considered selling a "Gargantuan PDF Collection of out-of-print goodness?" For $30, you could sell $0.04 worth of bandwidth full of books I can't buy any more.

The only other alternatives are piracy and buying used off eBay, and if you could offer an alternative that lacked the potential bundled malware of the former and secondhand chee-tohs stains of the latter, it would be awesome.

No, not out of print. I mean in Feral Cities. We have a little community of changelings run by the white sheep of an ancient political dynasty that goes by the handle Muppet.

It was an example of something I don't mind.

We're working on getting the remaining OOP books online. The original plan for getting them scanned and OCRed wasn't working out for a couple reasons, but we have a new arrangement that, once the ball gets fully rolling, should wrap everything up quite neatly.

Tops on my list would be Cybertechnology and the Lone Star sourcebook.

If you make that happen, i will have to buy all of them o.O

Wow. I have to admit that I've never thought of that before.


Aisha Clan-Clan from Outlaw Star is a good example of this.


I need Feral Cities so bad.


I'm surprised no one jumped on this. This comes from Velveeta Cheese, a brand over here in America.

Please expedite this! I'm willing to let the money burn a hole in my pocket to re-obtain a bunch of items that I lost in a house fire (1st printing of the old Street Samurai Catalog, non-redacted version along with a bunch of 1st & 2nd edition books).

Funny story, there are actually three distinct versions of the Street Samurai Catalog printed in English.

Do tell. I have the 1st ed. and the censored 2nd ed. editions, what's the third?

There's the original gray-cover 1st edition SSC (1989, complete) and then there are two black-cover revised-for-2nd edition SSCs (1992, no Firepower™ ammo or IPE grenades).

The difference in the latter is how the expurgated items are concealed. One version has huge black letters saying:
BANNED!
THIS ITEM
PURGED IN SHADOWRUN II!
Which completely conceals the artwork, stats, shadowcomments, everything on the page.

The second, and I believe rarer, version has a solid black box concealing the stats/shadowtalk area, with the same text as above (though not sized), leaving the artwork for the entries visible.

Both of the revised copies are noted as "Corrected third printing." so I honestly don't know why the variation. 's a mystery.

.....I've never heard that one, and I live near a Kraft factory.



I want one of these now.

Man, I used to have 3. I thought everyone had this copy...?

OK, new Low-Point, Shadowrun censoring frigging equipment? O.o
And then coming up with Mr.Dong and PamelA 2070?

I have a copy with the BANNED! but I didn't know about the third printing. Huh.

IIRC, wasn't it banned because they'd made that stuff obselete with the 2nd ed corebook? Like, they'd changed the damage code or something?

Neither did I, and I thought I had everything for Shadowrun


One of the items banned was FirePower ammo, which upped Heavy Pistol damage from 4M2 to 6M2 (IIRC), but with SR2 all heavy pistol damage was now 9M, and there was no need for FirePower ammo.

Another was a special trigger, so pistols could shoot twich for each action. But with SR2 free, simple and complex actions was introduced, and since it was a simple action to shoot a pistol, the special trigger was not needed any more.

I can't remember what the last item was.

Lars

Curiosity got the better of me. Items in the SS Catalog that were banned:

Firepower ammo
Expanded clips
IPE Grenades

All were dropped in some part to a change the damage codes. In the change from 1st to 2nd the clips became the standard so it was duplicative .

The reactive trigger was in the comments on the APII, in the SR2, the entire comment was removed.

Interesting - the German Strassensamurai-Katalog (1993) is a mixture of those: It has the 1st Edition grey cover with the first 2nd Edition censoring option. The items are printed over with
STOP!
GEGENSTAND
IN SHADOWRUN II
GESTRICHEN
with text and artwork still partially visible in the background.

IPE grenades were later re-introduced simply as grenades with higher damage codes in Fields of Fire (alongside the "works the same but does more damage" Ex-Explosive ammo).

Yeah, as far as an all time low goes, that should still qualify. "See? This could have been another piece of gear you could actually have used." Thanks not for reminding me.