It's been twenty years, and some of us are still in love with the 6^th World. We bitch and cry and moan about the holes in the system and balance and logical failings and every other million-and-one things you can find fault with any book, movie or other form of media over time, but we all keep playing and crafting our own little stories from our own little corners of the 6^th World.

Everybody sees the 6th World differently. I know how I see it. My GM sees it similarly, but with a twist. My best friend has a MUCH different spin on how THEY think about it. What is it about the 6^th World that keeps you coming back? What parts do you gravitate towards? What aspects draw you like a person lost in the woods to a warm friendly campfire at night? What does the 6^th World mean to YOU?

(Note: PLEASE do not turn this into a flame thread. If you wish to debate - openly discuss the merrits of your views through dialog and an open mind - feel free to do so. I intend this thread to be a way to share together that which we all have in common: a desire to explore the 6^th World through our personal avatars - our characters.)

Magic, technology, and the chance to blow stuff up in insert real location here??!! What more can you ask?

I have a deja vu... how is this question different from that other thread?

To me the appealing thing about the 6th World is the advent of Corporate Feudalism and the dystopia created by that.

To me it used to be an alternative reality about 60 years in the future ... based upon some technological ideas that were already slightly dated by the time of the game's creation, combined with Fantasy elements.

Now it's more like a copy of our world with some more or less "fantastic" addons and that Fantasy aspect... I guess that's why I'm not that eager to play in the gth world anymore.

The difference between this and the other thread is the other thread is "What is the GAME about?" This seems more like, "What are touchstones in the world itself?"

The Sixth World is:

-Going geode hunting on the slopes of Mt. Rainier, because you want to make a focus, and fighting off a pack of angry Gargoyles.
-Corporate boardrooms looking down on homeless non-people.
-Cyborgs questioning their own humanity...but still cramming that next piece of 'ware in.
-Jet setting criminals rubbing elbows with junkies, corporates, and the mob - because everybody wants their services.
-Mysterious corners of the internet with secrets that could destroy nations.
-Elementals elbow-to-elbow with mini tanks, because they're both guarding the same place.
-A populace so numbed they cannot imagine escaping the rat race.
-Acid rain, toxic smog, fires in 55 gallon drums, pirate trid, and gangs everywhere.

The Sixth World is the story of a dying world that is already pass the point of no return, and the masses are so numb that they can't even bring themselves to care about anything other than their next fix.

And the really sad thing is that the Horrors will actually be doing us a favor when they come.

Fixed

I think the biggest thing that makes the setting special to me is the whole indigenous-empowerment element of the Awakening, especially as personified in the NAN. I mean, granted, our group's played fast and loose with the Ghost Dance War fluff, but as a concept the idea of magic returning power to the colonized cultures of the world and turning the established order on its head is pretty fascinating.

As a noob to the game though a distant admirer for many years the Sixth World is a place in which we can dream up contemporary idealised lifestyles yet add a magic, hope, escape and doom in a way that is both familiar and distant. I mean who can resist playing modern paradigms in a fantasy environment - think Backstreet Boys incarnated by boytoy elves getting mauled by angry skinhead trolls! For The Win!!!!

Hmm...good question....I've been playing SR since 1995 and enjoy it immensely....The 6th world is a world of opportunities for players and pain for the player characters. It's a world of experience and a chance to make a difference. Tolkien & Gibson mashed together.

I like that it is our world and that we can use all the things that we know from day to day life in the game. We know how a mall works, cellphones function, what a gun is and which end of it is that bad one. I wrote the Denmark-chapter for Shadows Of Europe and I like that we know the streets of the city that we play in and how to get from A to B without looking at a map.

The "realism" of the setting also affords for more complicated and intricated plots then non-realistic settings (like D&D & Earthdawn).

But reality is boring and painfull....

I like the cyberpunk in SR; - the "have-not"-neo-anarchists fighting the corporate power. All my characters have - in one way or the other - had problems with the way the system worked. Part of shadowrunning was to hurt the corps - any corp; part of it was to make money.

I like the moral ambiguity of the setting; - that it isn't black & white. Sometimes you're the good guy, sometime you're the bad guy, - more often then you'd care to admit you are both. And the people that you're up against? well, most of them are just doing their job, - which might make them the moral equivalent of Adolf Eichmann; they might also just be the cleaning crew.

I think I like the magic; - although I have issues with the mix of a cyberpunk & fantasy. The magic affords for stranger, more extensive meta-plots and magical (pardon the pun) conspiracies. And some of the magical enemies are just fantastic (esp. shedim, bug spirits and the horrors are brilliant). The themes in fantasy are very transparent and it can be hard to mix them with cyberpunk-themes, but it's brillant when it works.

...and I really like the way that SR affords for a multitude of different characters; I've played faces, wolf shamans, social adepts, - my friends have been pro-wrestlers, corp-mages, street sammies, streetpunks, politically active persons, psychopats, gardeners and anything in between. Shadowrun makes it possible.

A.