Greets,

I just wrote a little vignette for CanRay's ghettopunk game. It was a spontanious piece of work, but high-lights one of the problems I have with writing Shadowrun. What really makes Shadowrun, well Shadowrun.

I mean the vignette I wrote can be taken and placed into almost any setting. Whether 1870, 1970, or 2070. Obviously there are no SUVs in 1870, but that is simply a question of change. There are no Stuffer Shacks in 1970, but there are diners.

The problem I see is that with poverty there are few if any real changes. The flop houses of the 1870s, turn into the ghettos of the 1970s, which in turn take on the form of Z-zones in the 2070s.

I guess the question I have, is what makes Shadowrun fiction, well Shadowrun and not modern fiction with pointy ears and tusks. I mean I can turn it so that blacks become trolls, hispanics are orcs and WASPs are elves. Nothing changes, just the forehead aliens.

Shadowrun's not strictly about poverty though, is it?

No, but it's about the haves and the have nots. Where the have nots are a large demographic to the have nots.

What changes is the shear scope of it all, in the Sixth World everywhere is a shit hole, if you coudl find Camalot you'd discover that King Auther had fried his brain with BTLs, the Knights were nothing more than brutish thugs and Merlin can't really be called human anymore since an Eldritch Horror from beyond ate his soul and is wearing his skin like a poorly fitted suit.

Also there is the fact that no matter how poor you are, there are ways to augument your abilities to stay alive and in the game, but in doing so you are causing actual real and measurable damage to your very soul, how much of your humanity are you willing to trade in order to stay alive? Hell at what point is life no longer worth living?

It's true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's the year 2071, and we still have poverty, and pollution, and racism. Chances are these things will always be with us. What Shadowrun does have that is unique is twenty years of fluff contributing to the setting and backstory.

Alright, what about the inverse? What makes the super rich of the 1870s as in Gone with the Wind, different from the 2070s golden kids?

I like to think that it's that they are just as much part of the machine as the people at the bottom. I like to think that it's because for all his power, Damien Knight could be the victim of an unseen power play, or could see his company's stock plummet and be voted out.

I think your power brokers of the 1870s had a bit more direct control over events and their lives. But then, maybe not. Maybe there really isn't any difference, and that's what makes it such an awesome genre/setting. Maybe it really is just that there are elves and trolls.

But on the world in general, you do have those few main biggies. Extraterritoriality and corp armies.

Take reality, crank the cynicism Through the Fucking Roof™, emphasize lack of control, and pour on the acid rain.

That's the beauty of it. Nothing sets the people apart. The props and scenery change, but the top echelon of the haves are no different than they were in Rome or Egypt. The details of how they waste away their days might change a little bit, but the important parts of who they are never will. They're bored, they either secretly or overtly hate each other, and they pursue an ever increasingly appalling level of debauchery to sate a craving for excitement that will overpower the numbness that comes from having the world at their fingertips.

I think you can abstract almost any setting into the base elements of human conflict.

Surely. Most media and creative output is just interpretation and reflection of the human condition. Hell, all of it is. It's what we do.

That's also part of the beauty of it. The badly written stories aren't universal. The bad stuff is just juvenile worship of the details of the setting, more concerned with selling how cool a game world is than with actually telling a story universal enough to allow for a connection to the characters.

While I agree with the general tenor of the answers so far to Chrysalis' dilemma, I think there are two other aspects of Shadowrun-as-child-of-today that make it thunderingly interesting for me to play and read.

First, the absolute wonder of the multiverse has magnified along with the despair. I know the cyberpunk genre is all dark and gritty, but Shadowrun places that grittyness in accessible juxtaposition with the awesomeness and beauty of the worlds in which metahumanity exists. Both the grit and the sparkle are intensified because of this juxtaposition.

Second, the other elements of the universe have taken on a much more active agency in their own affairs and those of metahumanity. Dragons and Mother Nature are no longer metaphors, they are alive and chewing on our asses.

And all of this is extrapolated from my own world in as believable a way as can be done in a role playing game. That's what Shadowrun is to me.

Well put! Earthdawn, Shadowrun and soon a game called Equinox (set in the 8th world) all deal with the same universe, even if the time of the setting and rules are alot different. I like the fact these games are based on an alternative version of our own world, there will be alot of similarities. But I feel these games offer a more rich and detailed game setting then most other games based in a fictional world built from scratch.

I love the futuristic dystopia, with metahuman racism, layered with amazing magic (the magic in SR become more interesting if you know ED, in that game the teory of magic is more explained and the metaplanes described in more detail). I also love the fact that in this futuristic cyber punk world you have the feeling that all these ancient ledgends of the old magic cycle are just around the corner, waiting to be rediscovered. When they are, metakind (is that even a word?) will learn so much more then just the layout of a few 6000 year old ruins. Their worst fears will be realized when the knowledge of the arrival of horrors will become known to more then the dragons and the immortal elves. The immortal elves are the only link to the ED world I'm a bit sceptical about though, a bit to much soap opera going on there. Plus immortal, all powerful elves are a bit stereotypical, wouldn't you say?. I look forward to more 4th world artifacts beeing discovered and potentially finding atlantis (thera) again, and much much more.

Well part of what makes shadowrun for me is the magic. You say WASPs are elves, how about your WASP goes to bed and wakes up a Troll, that’s shadowrun to me. How about your WASP is kidnapped and wakes up as a real WASP right down to the mandibles. Or the poor down trodden street urchin who gets kicked about daily suddenly is touched by magic rather than the pervert at the end of the street and starts slinging fireballs at the next drek head that pisses him off. Then add technology into the mix with all the different ways that has of messing with the metahuman, and presto that’s shadowrun for me.

Shadowrun fiction is different by the technology. But not the technology itself. A great writer said "Don'T write about technology, write about how it affects people.".

It isn't true that the toys get shinier but the way people play with them stays the same. Because of simsense, people can live out fantasies. What do you need a spouse for? People go through the motions of getting married and having children, but when everyone gets home their solace is not each other, it's each's private fantasy. Every girls gets a boob job while still in high school, makes her face just right, etc. What do boys learn about girls, other than only looks matter. What effect do you think that has, long term? Anyone that sticks to the system, living as a comparatively well paid corporate drone, gets enough money to blow it all on pharmaceuticals and minor surgery to keep themselves looking fresh and clean, while the poor suffer from acid rain, smog and the general toxic air around them, leaving a clear demarcation: the rich look healthy, the poor look shriveled and 20 years older. How can you get over such a physically apparent class demarcation?

The lazy thing to do in Shadowrun is to assume it's today with better toys. Society is profoundly different.

I think that's just your perspective. There are numerous topics, themes, subcultures, etc, that exist which are unique to the setting. Granted many of the issues have modern day context (racism, prejudice, fear, etc) but that's what enables a reader to emphathize with the characters.

Have tried to describe how ubiquituous powerful personal computing is? That even SINless get access to public data terminals with access to information far beyond what we have today? What about AR? Magic? The size and grandier of the megacorps? I just don't think you're stretching your imagination.

- J.

Hi Peter and flowswithdrek,

Wise words indeed. I think that I need to place that juxtaposition between the despair and the joy. I need to bring in the supernatural instead of focusing on the humdrum.

I agree that new technology causes us to think different and behave differently, we are by far more aware of our surroundings globally than we were before. But I find that people now, seek the same things that make up their happiness as they did before, they want the good car, the big belly, the money and the wilful ignorance.

The wilful ignorance makes for people who refuse to deal with the world-at-hand. They do not educate themselves and see no reason to challenge their world view. They want the world to change in only minor ways.

How about those who seek out the upsets in life? The ones who want to become vessels from the metaplanes, want to become wasps. Hoping to change. How are they different, from the man who is so upset with life that he walks over to the train tracks and lies down on the rails so the train will sheer off his leg?

Maybe I am not stretching my imagination, but would people really be interested in reading about how different VR makes the world? Where people live in it as if they were living in a real world. It is not science fiction for me, but science actual.

How does Shadowrun magic differ from D&D? How to make it so that it is an unknown element. It is not a hidden science, but has through the power of dumpshock taken on the veneer of science. What does magic bring to the world, which causes the reader to stop and ponder.

Having played from Fantasy to Far Future, I can honestly say that history repeats itself indefinetly...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The people who are the "Haves" use "Law and Order" (In whatever form) to keep themselves as "Haves".

The "Have Nots" are the people who weren't born to the "Haves". The idea that you can BECOME a "Have" if you were born a "Have Not" is an exceptionally new idea in the history of Mankind. And you better believe that the "Haves" are NOT happy with that. Damned Nouveau Riche.

Shadowrun (And Cyberpunk in general) borrows heavily from "Film Noir", "Punk", and a few other genras that escape me right now due to just getting home. I even pay homage to that with my first story, with the "Detective" having a "Hot Dame" come with a problem.

Of course, the "Detective" is heavily cybered up, and the "Hot Dame" is a Free Spirit.

As I said above, the more things change...

There is something interesting I find in Shadowrun when I have sparks of an idea picture to write about for my own personal enjoyment: In a world so dark and dire, wouldn't the most elusive thing be love, joy, and kindness? Of all the things in Shadowrun, how it gets distilled down makes one of the most intriguing elements to me is that there are Runners called Hooders, Pros, Pinks, Gangers, etc. The rage against the machine and those who don't mind being the grease and cogs that has to be the most bizarre part of the magical, technological, corporate corrupt world of SR4A 2072. Shadowrunners are friggin cool.

For one, the way they go about exploiting people. Tactics have changed. Some things you used to be able to openly get away with now have to carried out in the shadows. New ways have been discovered and refined.

On the subject of writing on the whole, my writing courses did not allow the students to write in a genre, so that the student wouldn't lean on the crutches of the genre and would learn how to tell a story. So what I learned is yes, most stories can be set in many places. What makes shadowrun special is the differences from regular places. I imagine it very dystopian, where capitalism and exploitation have run wild. There is a huge gap between the haves and the have nots, and if you think you're in the middle, there are really several hands dipping in your pockets to fleece you - see my opening about exploiting people.

Imagine seeing a Help Wanted sign with a phone number at a nice looking place to work. One calls the number and finds it is a Temp agency and that is the only way the company hires. (Two or 3 layers removed, the same corp might just control both businesses, but even if anyone should learn of this, the corp would say one business knows how to do"x", whatever you are trying to get a job doing, and the Temp comp. knows personnel. So they are both in business geared to their strengths.) However, when one hires on, they find the going rate of pay they were quoted forgot to include Taxes, withholding for Insurance and dues and retirement and, etc., and they kind of forgot about the money one had to pay the Temp service to get the opportunity to be hired, like background checks, drug checks, licensing, permits, and outright bribes known as documentation fees, or the percentage that the Temp service is going to take every paycheck until you are hired on by the original company, which won't want to because then it costs them more if in nothing else unemployment compensation cotributions. Just think about all the scams there are for desperate people when looking for a way to support themslves. Think about all the deductions to paychecks there could be. Then figure there's 3 times as many people for every job than there is now and how much people would put up with to keep a job. Dystopia.

I'm not even getting into the resentment from new races living longer and having longer productive lives, thus keeping their job longer, and advancing further than a normal human could in a normal lifespan. I was born following the last of the "baby boomers" and it is funny seeing jobs that were available as I grew older and the experience they wanted. I can relate to future humans on my point. (Even personal ads seemed to always skip my age group.)

Throw in some decaying infrastructure from broke governments, and you have ore dystopia.

If you think Shadowrun is just like today only in the future with cyber and magic and some new races, I don't think you really get Shadowrun.

I think some general things will remain the same (haves vs. have-nots), but the specifics will change.

The poor will be exploited in different ways - things like undocumented workers all being fitted with cheap skillwires and then having the skills they need broadcast into their brains. Bunraku puppets. Tamanous flesh farms. The toxic castles (pollution-spewing factories in the barrens).

The bread and circuses will change - people can put on their VR glasses and make their hovel look like the Ritz, or have a virtual pet wagging its tail when they get home. The water supply might have drugs to keep the populace placid and controllable.

The Barrens will change things - developed countries will have levels of poverty previously only seen in third world countries.

Magic and technology both change things, in that technology has escaped from its ivory tower, and magic can arise anywhere, in anyone. Neither will overturn the status quo, but boy will they ever shake it up a lot.

This is what I was trying to say. I guess that it just comes down to go how these elements are influenced by the world around us.

- J.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
A lot of fiction written 50 years ago could be set in today's world without many changes, especially for the poor. As I said in another topic, if you take a Noir story and replace "Negro" with "Troll", "Hispanic" with "Ork" and the rich WASP with elves, you'd get something that could as well be a Shadowrun story. (Incidentally, this is also because most Noir stories are set in a societal context that has much in common with Shadowrun's)

Then there are elements that can only be in a Shadowrun story. As some said, the effect of magic and tech on people have lead to some behavior and situations that can only happen in the Sixth World. But even then in a lot of cases, as Glyph says, it's more the specifics than the themes that will be affected. Some new themes can still be introduced: the themes that transhumanism brings are harder to integrate in a 1870. Even if some of them can be linked to the industrial revolution, there's still a big difference between using a machine and being a machine.

And then there's also the "caricature" aspect of Cyberpunk: in a lot of cases, Cyberpunk is pushing things to the extreme. It's something hard to do without being ridiculous or disbelief-suspending, but, in my opinion, it's something you have to do to make something feel Cyberpunk.

But all things considered, in my opinion, it's not a problem if the story could be set in any other time: a good story is still a good story. To me a Noir story with the aforementioned replacements would feel more like Shadowrun (and I'd enjoy it more) than World Without End which uses elements that are specific to Shadowrun but feels more like 'Fantasy in the future' than 'Shadowrun' (yes, I'm aware that it's the end of a Earthdawn series).

In Shadowrun, the rich are richer and the poor are poorer. But also note that what this means has vastly expanded as well. If you're rich, you can have your body more or less customized to be exactly what you want. Your mind can be augmented with bioware and cyberware to give you every advantage even as a non-combatant. Make enough money and you can live a longer, healthier life. And we're not talking "exercise and diet" statistical gains. No, this is Léonization and gaining centuries if you have the nuyen. And all that's leaving out the genetic tweaks you can leave to your offspring, who start out even more ahead of the game.

The gap is too large and the walls are too high to just cross without a miracle... or modern siege equipment.

How is this different? Strip away the fantasy and cyberpunk trappings, and it isn't. It's just a fantastic mirror held up to the present. That's what most fiction is.

To me, Shadowrun is being about down in the gutter. Doing evil things to get by, because everyone else does evil things too. In my mind, everything in shadowrun is dark and usually filthy. Though the movie is horrible, I view the environment of shadowrun as the setting of Johnny Numonic, everything was dark, dirty, and smoke-filled. Even the rich mobsters in the movie don't really have a nice, brightly lit place to hang.

Another thing that you should take into account are businesses. Essentially, they can get away with anything. Human experiments, price-gouging, litterally they can screw over anyone and everyone, because they are sovergn entities and THEY MAKE THE RULES. Sure, they have to abide by local governments, when operating within them (a.k.a. Ares has to obey all UCAS laws when in the UCAS) but on their own soil, they can do whatever they like. It's like the robber-barrons of the 1930s.

Essentially, the world is effed up big time. You have to paranoid, or dead. You have to be smart, or you will become a virtual (or actual) slave. Everything and everyone will take you for everything you are worth, and very, very few people will help you out. And all the while the air is so polluted it's toxic, everyone lives in a filthy apartment, and there are ten gangs willing to shiv you as soon as you step out the door.

I may paint a very stark picture, and sure it isn't always like that, but getting into that mindset will help you understand how to write shadowrun stuff.

Shadowrun's Sixth World, not unlike any other fictional universe, is entirely what you make of it. Sure, it can be deconstructed back down into the basic building blocks of human conflict, like anything else can, but the trick is probably to look at it as the sum of all its neat little parts.

-milk.

I would strongly recommend watching Slumdog Millionare. Its a god-awful movie (and about as Indian as a cheeseburger,) but it is a very good example of the "Haves" versus the "Have Nots." Repo Man is another good one - it shows a world where everyone is so jaded that magic and thuggery no longer even elicit a response.

The idea of a rock opera about a dystopian future where corporations send out agents to repossess organs from people who can't pay their bills is really, really cool. Unfortunately, that movie just plain sucked. The music was awful and the acting was worse. /threadjack.


-milk.

It's worth watching once, in my opinion - it's a B-movie, but kind of a fun one.

Hi Chrysalis,

I would say Shadowrun magic differs from D&D quite a lot. Now I haven’t played D&D since it was a child, but magic in D&D was just something that was cool, unexplained, and gave a mage memory loss every time he cast a spell causing him to have to relearn it while he cooked his eggs in the morning which was very annoying.

In Shadowrun magic shapes everything around you, it flows from the living earth, it is affected by emotion and can be seen and felt on the astral plane, in fact some may use emotion to control magic, or use magic to control emotion. In Shadowrun magic can touch anyone unexpectedly whether you’re a have or have not and not necessarily for the best.

As others have said you can boil almost everything in human society to the haves and have not’s. But you can do that with most of nature, wolves have the alpha male that eats first and leaves what it doesn’t want for others. Trees in the forest grow tall, cutting off all light to the weaker struggling ones below etc. You don’t have to just write about the have and have not’s. How about just a story about the guys that have it all? Or at least think they have it all.

Another thing that makes Shadowrun for me is that humans are no longer guaranteed a top spot at the dinner table, they are only at the top of the food chain now because of their vast numbers and technological edge. There is plenty out their in the awakened world that will have a human for a snack before dinner and those that would seek to enslave or destroy humanity.

As a writing exercise

How about writing your self a short story set today where the plot flows from A to B to C etc, when you’re happy it’s a good story, then throw it into Shadowrun and then ask your self how Shadowrun would change this story. Would the characters interact in the same way ? Would the outcome of the story even be the same if you started from A and tried to get to B in the world of Shadowrun? How would the dystopia, the magic, the technology affect the story? Try that and see where the magic that is Shadowrun takes you!

i was wondering who wold bring up the old saying from SR2's opening story...

btw, if one look at human history, one will see that while the titles change, the features of the office stays the same.

bankers and stock brokers are the new priests, billionaires the new aristocracy, yet the ways they interact seems very very similar ones one go into details...

at best, the change is that rather then working the land that someone else owns, one work the machinery of some factory or similar that someone else owns...

Maybe I'm wrong here, but isn't it because Shadowrun is so similar to our current world that the game is so easy to relate to? I mean everyone here can pretty easily, and readily relate to the ideas and themes presented in Shadowrun. The same isn't always true of many other games. I know a lot of players in my group have difficulties relating to D&D because the just can't compare their life experience to the themes and idea presented in D&D. Sure they've all seen Conan the Barbarian, but the concept of being some sword wielding Arnold type is kind of alien to them.

The world doesn't really ever change, just the people in it. There will always be those with power and those without. Even if we go to the Shiny Happy Trek Future, there will be those who use their 'power' to get the lesser people to do things while they sit back and relax. Delegation, perhaps, or maybe it's just another term for slavery.

But as for how to write, it's about what you make it. First and foremost, I don't know how many of you remember the idea of Narrative Conflict. This is one definition I like as it shows not only seven types and pretty well breaks them apart, it also gives some great examples.

It's all about how your focus is. People who like Shadowrun nice and gritty and guttertrash, probably Man Versus Environment (also known in some circles as Man Versus Society), while other people will approach their Shadowrun more in the Man versus Self, to explain how each person resolves their issues, like why they did the upgrades they did and why they took to running.

If you're looking about what makes the setting different. It's not the what's, it's the why's, its the conflicts that we have. I look at Star Trek, which I mentioned earlier, and when it was first set, I was considering how to decide what the Alien races were supposed to be. I may be wrong, and I am not pulling my thinking up as my mind is focusing on work elsewhere, but I believe that the Klingons were to be the Japanese, full of honor and all those rituals, while the Romulans would be more like the Russians or perhaps the Germans (if you want a World War sort of paralell), and then the stories in the show was all about similar issues as we face so that we could relate to them, but were also a more idealism about how we could all get along.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this!

i have found that speculative fiction, and especially cyberpunk, is (should be?) about contemporary society and contemporary problems, and in the guise of cyberpunk this is most commonly a relation to contemporary technology.

intertextuality does me great service here, where i reference another of chrysalis's threads (i'm glad to see you're posting here again, btw, *cough*) and describe the SR universe as such:

"mankind relegates the minutiae of their everyday lives to their iphones"

part of the reason the game appeals to me so much is that, contemporary-shuya, in the world of SR4, would probably be a shadowrunner, or at least part of the shadow-fringe-society. i was not part of the cell-phone boom in america almost a decade ago when it took off, but when i lived in japan my keitai (that's japanese for cell, and one of those innocuous words that means more to me in a second language than its equivalent does in my native one) never left my sight. it was so weird for me to be physically separated from people but be able to interact with them anyway, and DAMN did i get the hang of that thing fast (i can pound out a text message on a 12-button keypad in japanese way faster than i can in english).

anyways when i came back to america from japan, i ended up (eventually, and now still) living out in the woods, cut off from mainstream society, no cell... most of my best friends i cannot get in contact with but once every couple weeks... i am poor (at least in terms of disposable income), i've busked and spanged and flown signs and dumpster dived when i needed to get by on a level beyond my isolated rural life (i just took a "vacation" to new mexico a couple months ago with literally _no_money_ to start with, and had a blast for anyone who cares). i'm not "in," i'm not "with it," i don't feel like... and when i HAVE TO interact with the rest of the world, i end up doing it as an outsider, or else as an infiltrator who has to do whatever i can to make it seem like going to the store and purchasing things is actually an every-day activity for me (it is not, for the record). using a PAYPHONE in this day and age to try to get a hold of someone is practically an exercise in futility.

your problems writing Shadowrun probably echo many of my own - i feel like i am just talking about myself or people i know. if a major focus is the disparity between the haves and have-nots, it doesn't matter WHEN or WHERE your story is set, because while the OBJECTS that the have-nots do not have change, the condition of not-having them NEVER does.

that last paragraph makes me feel like i am trying to read a poor (lol pun) translation of zen buddhist (street samurai?) writings, but i hope it somehow articulates how i feel about the issues of the poor in an ever-technologically-advancing society. by virtue of the fact that i have a computer to access and DSL and stuff like that, i am not REALLY a have-not, at least not totally... maybe the "haves and the have-lesses" or the "haves and the want-mores" or the "haves and can't-haves" could be better ways to think about it?

i am reminded of a The Far Side comic that shows a man piloting his hover-car with a cup of coffee on the roof of it, captioned something to the effect of, "technology changes, people stay the same."

your ability to hammer out text in japanese was probably helped somewhat by the written language, no?

Repo Man is not the same as Repo! The Genetic Opera. You're thinking of the latter, but the former was referenced. Mind you, I see the latter as more relevant too. In fact, 'ware repo men stalking a heavily augmented character to take back what he owes would make a great recurring campaign element. And somehow the resolution would have to be a pound of flesh (or chrome) but not one drop of blood (or hydraulic fluid).

Of course, this being the Sixth World, that's just a job for extensive magic and possibly a quick bit of nanowork. But still!

Oh man, yeah. I totally spaced that.

-milk.

This might help you out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

Also, check out the tv show Max Headroom.

I think I can do that. I have no problems writing a cyberpunk story or a near future story, it is when amgic is brough into it. The bewildering variety. But I have a story in my mind. Taking myself, what would I want to be like if I was in 2072 and a Shadowrunner.

I remember reading almost 20 years ago, I think this was Heinlein's way of writing.

Take the ordinary and make it amazing.
Take the amazing, and make it ordinary.

We live in a world were the ordinary people are terrified of hackers, understand computer viruses as a strange form of voodoo, and believe that computer games will kill their children. They think that 4Chan is an evil empire of terrorist hackers bent on world destruction, and that ideas like cloaking devices are pure science fiction.
In this same world, I sit writing this post on a computer the size of a large hardback book, with more processing power than the entirety of NASA had when they sent a man to the moon. Inside of this computer is a device that uses a coherent beam of focused light to reshape a metal plate sandwiched between two sheets of plastic, in order to store a digital recording of a movie (or several hundred hours of music). Having watched said movie, I'll probably throw the magical disk away, or use it as a coaster.
People take for granted that they are in constant communication with everyone they know, or that a device on their car's dashboard can communicate with small moons launched into space on the back of giant rocket ships just to direct them to the corner shop to buy milk, but they still marvel at the fact that I can record television directly to my computer, or that the contents of just one tiny shelf in our store could contain the US Library of Congress 10 times over.

That's how magic should be in Shadowrun. Ordinary, and amazing. Awe inspiring, terrible, and completely mundane. Mages are these terrifying people who can read your mind, or turn your body into ash with a glance... except for Gary down the hall, who's clearly a perfectly OK guy, and it's not like he messes around with any of that stuff anyway, right?
People barely even comprehend how magic affects their lives. They know, but don't really absorb the idea that spirits patrol their workplace, or that the walls have invisible magical barriers to keep astral peeping toms out.
Trolls are big, and ugly, and kind of scary, but your son has that poster on his wall of Kirk Van-Hauser, a troll ice hockey player, and desperately wants to be like him some day. Your husbands curses a blue streak about the ork gangs downtown, but he'll cheer for an all ork basketball team.
People watch movies on the trid, or slot sims, where magic can ressurrect the dead, or teleport you across the planet, but they don't even realise that car stunt was performed with a mage gently nudging the vehicle into the correct trajectory using levitation.

In the world of Shadowrun, this is magic...just as much as this is.

But if you really want to blow your mind, think about what simsense implies.

Let me throw one out there for you: In 2070, the average male has, at some point, almost certainly slotted a lesbian porn sim. Apply the inverse for women. Guys, try to wrap your head around that one; your character understands, in a very physical sense, how sex feels for a woman. I can't even begin to imagine what that implies for the sexual identity, or the politics of sexuality of an entire generation.

It gets only more complicated when you consider that simsense, like all media, is still subject to editorial mandate; that within this apparent sense of utter veracity of experience there are still layers of falsehood at work. But I'm not even sure what, exactly, those falsehoods would be.

Simsense single handedly redefines our experience of the world. People living in the Sixth World have a level of control over their sensorium that we can't even imagine. They can make the weather feel warmer (but can still freeze to death in the cold without realising it), they can change the flavour of their food, or the feel of their clothes. They can have a face to face conversation with someone on the other side of the world.

I can't even imagine that; not properly. I'm living in Canada right now, missing my friends in England a lot. When I consider that, in the Sixth World, I could just ping one of them, and have them appear, sitting in that office chair across the room, and just chill for a while, chatting and playing video games... it just blows my mind.

Most of this isn't even beyond the reach of the down and outs. Full simsense is expensive, but a second hand commlink is only $50-$75, plus a cracked copy of an OS from dodgy Dave down the street for another $50. Contacts are just another $25 (total of around $150). That opens up all the insane possibilities of AR, and how it completely redefines the world around you. Information pasted on walls, virtual pets, videos playing on the sides of buildings, virtual wallpaper for your crappy slum house, digital pets, your twitter feed in the corner of your eyes at all times.

Imagine having a conversation with someone who's eyes are always fixed down, and a little to the right, scanning the new posts on her social networks. Imagine the haloes, auras, the ever-changing tattoos and the faeries floating around people's heads. Imagine all of that, and realise that magic doesn't fit into the Sixth World; it gets lost in it. Magic is raw, and powerful, and dangerous, but my girlfriend has butterfly wings that grow from the back of her jacket, and shimmer with tiny lights that are actually a million miniature video screens playing a million different channels. My friend Tom can lift a car with his bare hands, and I can communicate with any of my friends instantly using only my thoughts. When I wake up in the morning my coffee machine talks to me, and bedsheets play music videos. Magic can create fireballs and pretty lights, but in my evenings I disappear into virtual worlds where I can smash planets with bare hands, and walk on the surface of the sun. I have been a man and a woman, I have been old and young, I have been starving and affluent, I have been high on every drug imaginable, and I have been T-Total my whole life. I have swum beneath the ice-caps, and I have been dolphins and dinosaurs. I have lived in jungles and deserts and toxic wastelands, and I have flown into the depths of space.

Magic isn't spirits and ghosts and conjurations. Real magic is the things that we take for granted, all the time. Everything else is just trideo.

that deserves a dragon sized cookie

Seconded.

Dr Funfrock,

That statement has just become part of my handout to players new to Shadowrun that helps to explain the sixth world. Very well written.

Shadowrun is Fictionpunk. The minds have their own use for stories.

Don't try too hard to "understand" the setting. Just focus on what's important to you and see if you can express it via Shadowrun. That's where the real spirit of the setting lies (yes, Universal Brotherhood, I'm looking at you - but that shouldn't make you feel special. There are enough examples besides you.)

Unfortunately I'm skipping most of what is in this thread due to time constraints, but I wanted to throw this out there. I am sure I'm repeating shit.

In my mind, storytelling serves two main purposes: To educate and to entertain. We use the oral tradition (and later print, video, and multi-media) in order to educate ourselves. We teach each other how to survive in the world, how we came to be where we are, how the world works, what kind of morals we should uphold in the world, so on and so forth. And we entertain because that is how our brains are wired: We seek out pleasure. An entertaining story that also educates is the most effective vessel of communication in the world. I think this is why I liked District 9 so much.

So with these two base clauses of oral tradition firmly rooted, you then have the elements of storytelling placed over it. Without getting too deep into theory, let's just say that people relate most strongly to characters they can identify with, followed up closely with elements that illicit emotional responses such as fear, disgust, joy, whatever. For this reason, character studies tend to be more popular than straight narrative. Harry Potter is about a teenager who has to cope with living in two worlds at once -- one adult, one juvenile. The Lord of the rings is a study of greed and friendship. The best horror movies all make you identify with the protagonists and make the mindset of the killer as alien as possible. These are incredibly broad stokes, to be sure, but who here can recite Yakko Warner's singing of the Nations of the World? Now how many of you can recite your 7th grade history book? ... Okay, that example was more about emotional response, but hey.

Role playing games, no matter the level of crunch involved, all rely on one driving principle: You are playing a character. It's in the name of the genre, for heaven's sakes! For some, this means just going through and beating the crap out of things. If this is your story, fine, enjoy it. But I find what makes a role playing game truly sing is when the GM brings the characters into focus. This is their story. The GM tells it in collaboration with the players. In fact, this is where I'm coming into trouble as a GM -- I feel like I should be writing down stuff ahead of time, but I can't bring myself to do it as I need to see what the players -do,- and I don't want to artificially screw them. But I digress. Again, the point is to tell one hell of a story about these characters that the players created. In the end, if my players are talking about this game in a few years' time to their chums, then I have succeeded.

Now, you asked what sets Shadowrun apart from every other setting? Nuts and bolts wise, it isn't. You're absolutely right -- you can take a story and plug it into almost any setting and it would work. This is actually an element of post-modernism, for the universality of storytelling has been identified. so then you have to set context. Victorian stories come from a time when the class stratification was incredibly strong, the middle class was emerging and recognizing it had rights, people were feeling marginalized by the industrial revolution, and most people were closet perverts due to all that newfound spare time. (Again, broad generalizations.) Shadowrun is born out of the cyberpunk movement, which in itself is a reflection of 70's and 80's materialism, self centeredness, and the anti-corporation, environmentalist counter-culture that was railing against the Reagan era. In fact, a lot of role playing games were born out of the same mantle: The World of Darkness games, for instance, have always shared strong DNA with FASA's games. This is because these counter-culture movements and the futures they predict are ripe with character studies, because they all put the focus on the individual versus the world. Or group of individuals, whatever. The world of today is an ambiguous shade of gray, and thus mileage comes out of this. That's why these games have not abandoned their roots and changed with the times. Again, it's all about the character.


If you have a story you wish to tell, you can go one of two routes. You can either tell it in an environment that already exists, working it into the customs and expectations that already exist for that world. Or you can set it in one of your own choosing. This is entirely up to you. To use a video game example, Starcraft was originally supposed to be a Warhammer 40k game. But due to a long story I won't repeat, it turned into its own being. Blizzard began to tell its own story, and while they appear quite similar on the surface, the internal driving narrative of the characters is quite different. Therein lies the difference. Setting is just a tool of the narrative. Use it how you wish.


(Rambling enough?)