Bad Jennifer! No cookie!

That's quite disturbing. As long as the character don't glitter and glow like the characters from Twilight, I can live with it;)

The miracles of modern pharmacology really are amazing.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "chemical romance".

Um...is that not enhanced pheremones, some cosmetic implants, and a Panther Assault Cannon?

i am surprised elminster did not get retconned into that prestigue class that could cast both arcane and divine...
/thread-jack

Jeenifer, I like it.

What do I have to do to get it published? How much cheese and whine?

You're talking Romance of the Three Kingdoms, right? >_>

I totally aggree and add:
- "an advanced Techbook" with AV-Vehicles,personal Flying Suites (Like those Flying Squirrel Suites oder personal jetpacks or sth. like that) and other Near Future Tech. Can be included in the SR-In-Space-Book
- a Guide to "other Play Styles" Lowlife,High Risk,Secret Agent,Doc-Wagon,Conagents,Special Ops, or even "Shadowrun in the 2020's"(NAN Vs USA or Echo Mirage) for example

HokaHey
Medicineman

Jason knows some of my opinion anyways from some talks at Gen Con and stuff, but I'll repeat it here...

I want to see Shadowrun go back to being Shadowrun. Gritty, urban, cyberpunk, with lots of attitude and flair. The game has gotten to polished, too high tech.

The best comparison I can give is that Shadowrun used to be Star Wars (Classic Trilogy). There was high tech, but it was by and large dirty, well used, and clunky. The only ones with the shiny new stuff were the corps, the evil overlords living it up in high rise buildings while the runners and most of humanity lived in the squalor of the streets.

Now? Shadowrun is Star Trek. And hell, not even really classic Trek, but nuTrek, all shiny and reflective and sparkly and full of lens flares. Things are easy, things are clean, things are a little bit boring.

There's still some of the old game lurking in the corners. I love Shadowrun, I'm in for the long haul, but seriously, while I love a lot of the new mechanics and the new game of SHaodwrun, go back and read your first and second edition material. The entire tone and feel of the game has shifted so much. And adding in power armor and other craziness isn't going to help that in the least.

If I wanted power armor and space and really high tech, I'd be playing one of a billion other sci-fi games. I'm playing a Fantasy-Cyberpunk blend for a reason, and the game needs to retain that.

Bull

Bull,
Wonderful words with which I agree.

Thank you,
BlueMax

PS your mafia need anything?

Bull, you said it so well. I miss the Cyberpunk feel to Shadowrun but I couldn't articulate it. RFIDs, AR Spam, this is not very cyberpunk to me. It strikes me as very anime and while I liked Big Eyes, Small Mouth I am not looking for Anime in my Shadowrun.

I can understand your thoughts on the Book, but let me take you down a different path. I think the RFIDs and AR spam are more a product of the designers perspective looking forward from today rather than trying to stay within the scope of a product that was developed 20 years ago;. I mean our group back in the early 90s played Tac Com's (out of 2nd ed FOF) as wireless. We felt it would be crazy not to advance the technology. The tech in the game needed an upgrade badly. Wireless is the route it would go.

I think too there might be more acceptance of Anime in general in our culture now (not saying that it makes it okay to be in my Shadowrun) given the way cartoons over the past 5-7 years have progressed. It probably comes a lot from who and what influenced the artists and writers at CGL. Films like Akira (1988) and series like Armitage III (1994) the original devs didn't grow up with as these new developers have. They might have gone out and saw them, but not grown up with them.

When I think of Shadowrun, if I had to do a word association, I'd say: Grit.

To me a good Shadowrun game puts a bad taste in your mouth. Like there's something palatable about playing in Seattle or Chicago and New York, and if people miss that I feel bad for them. As for the AR spam and RFID's, I don't let it get in the way. I like the dirty feel of the 6th world, and I think CBL has done much to enhance those attributes too, which help offset some of the Anime feel that 4th has taken on.

Damn double posts.

While I don't think debating the need to rewrite Shadowrun to fit the times is something that is ever a good idea, I think we can talk about what needs to be considered when you write for Shadowrun, either for your home or for others.

* Whatever is offered, has to be fun. Avoid requiring minutia. Write it for those who want to track it but don't make simple things take hours to accomplish.
* The world must be fantastic. The world must differentiate itself from our own. The terrible VITAS plagues, the forming of the NAN, the reshuffling of the human population, these were all changes needed to give Shadowrun its own life.
* Shadowrun must be its own world and not just a mirror of ours.
* Basic human conflicts drive plot.

Fun trumps accuracy, Fantasy trumps realism, Different is better than knockoff and we can never escape our Humanity ( sorry Transhumanists)

BlueMax

In essence: More Pink Mohawks, less Trenchcoats and Mirrorshades(which is boring to play or run...)

What? Transhumanism is not about escaping our humanity; it's about evolving it.

Dag nabit. I even asked the review board if I should qualify that statement.

My editor is sooo fired.
"Life is pain, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something"

BlueMax
/written while on anti-inflammatories
// got sold something.

Hmmm. Big generalization there...

I agree. It's too Politically Correct.

Jeez. If I want to play Twlight the RPG, I'd ask to play in one of your games. Please don't convert Shadowrun into the WOD or some funky get with your feelings Indie game.

1. More streetpunk, less super-tech transhumanism in my Shadowrun. Eclipse Phase is great, but it's a completely different genre. Grit, grime and low-level knifefights need to come back.

2. Better artwork. SR4A is fantastic; the other books have been...less than fantastic. It doesn't have to be gorgeous full colour either. The black-and-white art of Bradstreet, MacDougall, Bergting and Prescott was incredibly evocative. I can't say that about most of the current crop.

3. Anime is an inevitable influence on modern sci-fi, but you can mine things other than sci-fi for Shadowrun ideas. Vachss, Chandler, Hammett, Brunner, Geoff Darrow, Gattaca and Borges can be great sources of inspiration too.

4. The NAN books need to be redone for SR4. In dark, shady tones. The originals were what I consider to be archetypal SR and couldn't be bettered.

ps: yeah, drop the "she" pronoun. It's jarring and comes off as very PC.

It seems to me that what you guys are asking for is purely a matter of how you run your games, not so much how Catalyst makes the fluff. I like gritty, but some of my games go "shiny transhumanist". It's all in how you run it, the locations and NPCs you use, and the art you use to illustrate your gaming sessons. When I want "gritty street" I mostly use "gritty street" art, rundown locations, lowlife NPCs and keep the runs appropriate for "street scum" runners. If I want "shiny transhumanist" I use cleaner looking art, higher class NPCs and locations, and provide runs accordingly. It's up to the GM to set the scene and tone. But, that's just my opinion, and I could be wrong.



I do, however, agree with this ^^^^. This type of PC crap is everywhere these days. I can't read a textbook without every single pronoun being a "she" or "her". This is what happens when you let people pass legislation creating government "diversity and sensitivity comittees" who dictate to publishers how their books have to read in order to be acceptable in the educational system. Please get that PC BS out of my recreational books.

Since I spent some time in the third and fourth editions as a freelancer, what I'd like to see most is a change in the developer/freelancer relationship and creative process. I think when fans look with nostalgia at early Shadowrun, part of that is the result of a core group of writers (Nigel Findley and Tom Dowd especially) who wrote entire books themselves, whose material was deeply infused with their vision of Shadowrun because they were allowed to write large, whole chunks of the game universe. When books are written by committee, the vision inevitably gets watered down and I think that's partially what fans are responding to when they say that current books seem too clean, too plain, and less willing to take risks on crazy ideas and atmosphere.

Of course, to allow the writers an opportunity to write whole books, CGL has to trust its writers. And to keep its writers around as a stable group, so you're not constantly having to swap in new talent or get others to fill in on books, the writers have to trust CGL. And I know I personally felt like there was a complete breakdown of that trust over the course of my writing for FASA, then FanPro, then CGL. It's not purely the studio's fault and it's not purely the writers' fault, it's a combination of both. The studio needs to identify the writers that are trustworthy, responsible, and talented and it needs to make an extra effort to keep that talent around and engaged in the game.

This is actually covered in "The Chicago Manual of Style" in section 5.204. Can someone point out a style guide that actually advises the use of she instead of he? I just have to call bullshit and ask for the books to stop trying to be politically correct. Just follow Chicago, which provides other ways to avoid using he.

Per Chicago (pg. 233):



As for the poster who asked about writers writing whole books., if I remember correctly, the books back then were softcover and very short.

Well, most SR books have been softcover.

Short, though, is interesting.

IIRC, most SR books weigh in at about 128-200 pages. Always in 16-page units, due to a quirk of the publishing industry.

Fields of Fire was 86 pages.

Portfolio of a Dragon was done by 4 people, and is only 112.

Shadowtech is about the same length.

Yes, the books have gotten longer...By half or more.

They've gotten longer in more than page count, too -- the average words per page for a Shadowrun book [and for many, many gaming books] is way up now, too.

Really? That's not really a metric I would necessarily be happy about as a consumer. It just tells me that either the artwork density is decreasing, or shorter words are being used over longer ones.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can think of where that is a good thing is if the font size is being decreased.

Awesome idea.

From a typography POV, it's a little more complicated than that -- but yes, the typeface has shrunk a little bit over the years, the page margins have shrunk a little [although I re-expanded them in SR4A], and other minute adjustments have been made that have increased the text density.

Oh yeah, all the little tricks I used in school to reduce the print area so that I could get the right page length for my papers.

Yes. This is like, the Master Class version of that.

Wow, I just barely touched the many pages of posts. I apologize if I missed something similar earlier.

I would like to see a real videogame version of Shadowrun (not a Sega version of streetfighter, thanks). Maybe something by Bethesda.

Since that is likely a pipe dream, other things I am interested in:

More detail into the resonance realms. My GM does a pretty good job with this, but I would like to see more material to go from.
More tech. Arsenal and Augmentation were both ok in their own way, but there is just so much that does not really exist yet.
Examples, would be the rigger black book from 3rd ed had so much that ended up as a small chapter in SR4 and the Arsenal.

Getting an updated Street Magic PDF with Bookmarks.

From the chat today:

First, its certainly more politically correct than grammatically correct as noted by others above. And second, to reiterate I am not asking for the word "she" to be stricken from every Shadowrun product hence forth. I just dislike the artificial and contrived practice thats become so prevalent in recent years. If the point is not to be politically correct, perhaps someone official could clarify: why the departure from common English? Is this really supposed to make the game more "female friendly"?

CMOS Q&A:



and

My personal opinoins is that it doesn't really matter, so long as it doesn't change back and forth within the same text.

For my part, I write "he", but that's how I was taught in school originally, and it's just habit. I personally like "they" and "Their", but that's so grammatically incorrect it's not even funny

Fowler's King's English has the same argument about they and their versus he and his as the gender neutral option. This is from 1907. So the whole argument is very, very old. Suffice it to say, gender pronouns should be avoided, but how much is up to the stylistics of the piece.

This is more pertinent today with the internet, where gender can be undetermined (including several arguments here on DSF on what gender I am).

If you wish to continue this divergence further do it in a seperate thread or pm me privately.

Let's switch Dumpshock to Hungarian. That language has a gender-neutral third person pronoun.

Seconded!

My Hungarian is pretty good too.

Huh, guess it might just be me and my terrible english skills despite it being my only language (not meant to be sarcastic) but I don't find the use of she instead of he while I have been reading through my SR4A to not in the least bit artificial and contrived either - rather I have been finding it refreshing, since most of my text book readings don't ever use "she" and thus gives my reading of SR4A a flavor I never even knew was there, like its one more indicator of how different SR's world is from my own. Reading through SR4A is more like a story than a dry text feel to it of only giving me game mechanics. That's the best way I can explain it, hopefully it makes some sense why from my point of view it doesn't seem to be Politically Correct, Artificial, or Contrived.

So, agree to disagree? *shrug* I wasn't looking to burn anyone specifically when I brought it up, I just don't grok the dislike for the use of "she" in place of "he" while I read through my SR4A.

It definitely strikes me as "new" - when I was in school, like Bull, I learned that you used the masculine as the default when gender was indeterminate.

Part of the difference in opinion is that I reject the premise that using "he" is, to quote the CMOS, "sexist".

Wow, I just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading all of the posts about pronoun gender. 5 minutes I will never get back.

For the record I don't give a damn which you use, as long as it is somewhat cohesive. I suspect that a small fraction of the players care either. Go forth, and do whatever the hell you were going to do anyway. Of course I suspect that you were going to ignore these posts entirely unless they give you a decent idea. That is the only way to effectively use a forum such as this. Take everything that makes sense, discard everything that does not, and reply as politely as possible to any grammar nazis.


Oh, and make a really cool video game based upon shadowrun.

So the process is: Ask for feedback --> ignore what you don't like --> do what you were going to do anyway. Sounds like effective use of the forum to me...

I mentioned the pronoun she crap because it bothered me. I'm not going to be all passive. I speak up about stuff that bothers me. I don't expect everyone to agree. But the world is fucked up enough all ready from people sitting on the sidelines not speaking up about stuff that bothers them. The book should just spell women as womyn since some feminist reading it might get all offended. I know I all ready got the attention of one of the female freelancers, who wants romance in Shadowrun. What the fuck?

Just give me a raw Shadowrun. If I'm the only one who wants it, so be it. If I'm the only one that wants more gritty street level story lines, so be it. At least I spoke up and said what I want. If I don't get it, well, at least I have no regrets for not speaking up. Regardless, I will just run it that way.

Sounds like most conversations with my girlfriend:)

Romance is a powerful motivator. It may not factor into your day-to-day game, but it obviously does in others, and it can be just as useful a tool as "corporate greed" or any of the other typical motivators and complications.

True dat.

When I quote you like this snipping around it, you even come off as somewhat diplomatic. And I don't think diplomacy means politically correct either so as to not get someone's knickers in a bunch. Hope you don't mind if I disagree with your position on said subject either.

Romance is a friggin sweet character story track when you can get it. Its so varied and jaded it makes for some great SR material ... and that's before you even bring sex into the picture. SR's world sounds like it would be a really challenging place for love to flourish, though the running to bring home bacon for the family has always been an interesting character setup. We don't really touch on how paranoid Runners of all types would date though, eh? It can't all be hookers and blow if the character ever wants some squalling brats with a partner aka family of their own.

If you disagree, you should disagree and not keep it to yourself. I can see some background romance like in SAMCRO or upfront like in New Rose Hotel. But when I think of Shadowrun, I think of an action packed game, not a drama. The romance stuff just comes across as feeling too WOD to me. And I did like the treatment of romance in Wraith because it fit the setting. I just don't see it in Shadowrun besides running hookup services and flesh markets.