I've been thinking alot about this lately, and so has the rest of Dumpshock it seems. If you were going to reboot Shadownrun, how would you do it? Think of it like a Manga, or a Marvel Ultimate title. Keep the themes (Japanese domination, Magic, Native American influence, Deckers, etc. ), but bring it into the 21st centuary. Try to keep as much of the flavor as possable but twist the themes to fit the current generation. For example in my world the SIN would take on a much more dominate role, witout one you could not buy anything in a leagel store. Maybe rewrite the NAN background a bit, maybe deemphasize the Mayan 2012 aspect. I would push the awakening back by about 20-30 years possably give it another catylist, maybe the discovery of the Akashick reords at the base of the Sphinx.

To the writers (Both offical and non), How would you reboot this great IP to capture todays teenagers without alienating completely longtime fans?

Czar Eggbert

Short answer, I don't think you can.

agreed, especially if your trying to make it "hip" for a age group that just spells disaster, either you like shadowrun in it´s current form or you don´t, seams a good IP enought if it spawned 3 games ( 4 if your count the "shadowrun" game for the PC/Xbox 360, personally I don´t)

I would have to agree with that sentiment.

that said - there's a couple 'old' storylines I wouldn't mind seeing return in some form or another. Like....an exploration of the issues within both of the elven nations for example. I'd like to see some level of existential threat from the Horrors somehow show back up in the game (full disclosure - i'm a rabid Call of Cthulthu fan). I'd really like to get an update on the various/sundry corporate intrigues for 2072. Also, I'd like to see more details on europe, the middle east and North America. Did the Ordo Maximus ever go away, or are they still trying to make daywalking Blade style super vampires a reality? what about the various draconic intrigues that have been hinted at time and again? plenty of stuff there to play with. Or maybe a Threats 3 book/PDF could be posted.

I'm not really looking for a reboot of the game, i'm looking for updates on the geopolitical/magical situation around the world. it doesn't even have to be comprehensive, just an update of the world from where the last fanpro book(s) left off would do quite nicely.

Any reboot would require getting rid of the japanese stuff and adding stuff about climate change.

and since we all know all Japanese stuff=awesome we know that won´t happen :3

Oooh !!

Interesting idea...

I guess you need to determine the core ideas of SR, and go from there.

Interesting that there seems to be so many threads about SR, but looking at older versions, variants, etc.

Hmmm...
...I might set up a forum, seperate from Dumpshock, for people who want to explore such things...

I'm not to sure of getting rid of the Japanese influence, just look at Japan and robotics. Add in that the ASIST technology comes from Japan and you get Japan back on top.

As for climate change, that already has a current hook with the Great Ghost Dance and the Back to Nature Magic. This could be the Native American, Aborigonal push that leads to the GGD. I never liked the whole concentration camps thing.

CE

PS I just relized I am the ULTIMATE lurker. 7 years 7 Posts!

Well... one thing that can be done is getting rid of the NAN influences. Also, the Balkinization of the US could be removed. It would make more sense that way...

Anyways, in another way, you can consider SR 4.0 as a "reboot" of the franchise.

yeah more suitable to make the US a hellish wasteland, because the way the US has been acting these later decades if they don't shape up that´s where they are gonna end up.

Shadowrun doesn't function with strong states, because otherwise their would be a recongiseable worlld as we know it (without, I might add, serious criminals for hire pretty much everywhere), so you need to do something about the EU, China and America.

What happened to China in canon SR? I don't remember anything "bad" happening to them.

That's actually the case.

Bye
Thanee

Got balcanized too. One of the smaller sections is actually ruled by a class that consists entirely of magicians.

It reverted to pre 1935 china, i.e. the warlords.

Also, as for a Reboot.
I had written up an idea for an alternative way to bring the change from 3rd ed to 4th ed about.
Not a Second Matrix Crash 2.0, but something that's been looming over all of our heads the complete 20 Years of Shadowrun.
World Wide Corp War utilizing the Matrix as one of the main means of attack and defense alike.

Basically, after Micro$uck decided to give out a Cease and desist order to Shadowrun Online, a Shadowrun MMORPG that was close to alpha state by then, i came up with the following.
The runners somehow use the corporation of MicroDeck(yes, they are in there) in general and William B. Gates the 2nd(yes, he is in there too) in special to infiltrate/attack the matrix sectors of 3 or 4 of the big AAA Corporations simultanously. Every time leaving evidence for another 3 or 4 of the big AAA Corporations having done it. But ultimately all traces lead back to MicroDeck. So, all out Matrix War starts. Then of course, it gets physical. The smart runners should have bought into Stock of Arms-Corporations. Then let this more or less shadow war continue for some weeks, until they figure out that it was MicroDeck all along. Watch Microdeck get obliterated and everybody is happy. Use this as the Background for 4th Edition. Not the silly OOOH SCARY GERMAN NAZI TERRORISTS WITH MAGICAL NUKES AND A SECOND CRASH VIRUS AND ALL OF THE AI'S AND THEIR SILLY LITTLE OTAKU-TRIBES FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT FOR ALL OF US UNTILL IT ALL COLLAPSES!

Really remmus? really?

Before I get into the history lesson lets look at the American people's charitable contributions to other countries (its in the hundreds of millions and climbing although in a recession), not to mention the billions the US spends on countries....and here's the history lesson...that have been destabilized by the colonization/decolonization/neo-colonization of European powers.

Yep, our world is shaped the way it is by European colonization, a fact often overlooked, but hey who can read the history books with your thumbs under your noses in disrespect.

Lets look at a few incidents, and/or places

The Arrow incident: for those of you that dont know about this, its the Opium Wars. Seems European Powers wanted Chinese tea, the chinese only dealt in silver and when that started running scarce in Europe they got ingenius, they sold opium to chinese...for yep...silver, oh they grew the opium in another colonized country by the way.

Africa: All colonized by European powers, and its such a tangled mess it's to length to get into here.

The Middle East, now there's a hot topic eh? colonized? parts of it.Exploited by European powers? definately.

Seems when it comes to the US everyone has short memories of the good things we've done, and not all of them for our European allies...Suez canal, US sided with? Europe is the wrong answer.

So please remmus, before you drop remarks about how the US has acted up in these last decades please read a history book and give some small measure of thought as the why the US has had to 'act up'

This is totally the wrong forum to debate US foreign policy.

In all actuality it wasnt so much about US foreign policy as it was a history discourse.

I'm alright with reboots as long as they're there to fix storyline probems. Stuff that didn't make sense, and expand on what needed expanding on.

But the problem with a reboot is that you cheese off your loyal fans for a chance to attract new ones, if that was even your goal to start with. So SR's progression through the years where it constantly reinvents itself is the best compromise.

The NAN, for example, would have been a possibility but I can't buy it being that large. There's the whole Immortal Elf thing I as a 4th Ed play know virtually nothing about from 4th ed sources. A few other inconsistencies and whatnot.

Also, while I like the iPod-grit of the 2070s, I do miss some of the 80s feel, especially when reading of deckers. But that's just me, I'm a fan of BattleTech too and its 80-ness is also transitioning through the art into something distinctively in-universe but modern at the same time.

SR has evolved, and that's something many gameworlds never do. They honour the franchise by building on it instead of starting over.

Meh, either way it probably didn't do any good, you can't teach an idiot new tricks.

This.

SR4 marks some pretty serious changes in tone and setting and significantly (but not enough) updates the view of future technology. The influence of Japan and the NAN has already been de-emphasized. China has been emphasized a bit more. What we now call Global Terrorism has always been in SR, but now it's being phrased in terminology that has come into popular usage in the last eight years. Corporate dominance over national governments has been de-emphasized. I've seen Global Climate Change addressed in the new Running Wild sourcebook. The fluff at the beginning of Unwired talks about a bunch of social phenomena, like citizen journalism, made possible by the internet and miniaturization of communications and computing technology.

I could go on in this vein but I think the point is made well enough. SR4 is the reboot. It is the "re-imagining" of the franchise through the lens of the first decade of the 21st century. You can argue about the extent of the reboot, or whether it is a good or a bad thing, but it has already happened.

I heartily approve.

I just run my game in the 2050s.

I guess that counts as a reboot.

All the wireless is there except for Full VR. For that you need a connection to the matrix or a satellite uplink.

The Big but is that no one sends really valuable paydata wirelessly. I can down play genetics and nanobyte technology except as plot devices. And as for Technomancers it is techno what? My group has ran in to one but doesn't know what they are facing.

Works real good.

And I know what is going to happen when (Not that I follow the time line slavishly).


It would be hard to reboot the Sixth World with major changes because the designers had to made certain decisions so that the players could focus on surviving in the 6th World rather than on how it came to be.

The USA, China, and the EU had to be broken up or the Corporations couldn't take over.

They also wanted the magic to be back for at least one or two generations.

That and the break up of the USA had to old news.

And those design decision still stand which is the mark of a good design.

I agree that the NAN would not be as big. They don't have the population even if they took everyone with a drop of Native America blood.

Hence why we don't have any shadowrun fans in china (the books are banned).

Though China as a unified national power has not been retconned into the SR timeline, I think we can view the growing emphasis on Wuxing, Lung, Hong Kong and the Triads as a gradual shift away from Japanese dominance and into a more balanced depiction of Asian political and economic power. At least compared to SR1 which hardly mentioned China except to imply they were seriously f*cked.

Or you could work on alternative settings for the SR rules set and add them as articles to the Dumpshock Data Haven.

Some thoughts on this:

WWI and WWII: Suppose the Awakening happened in 1911?
A mediveal version of shadowrun.
The US survives the SAIM revolt, and conquers Canada and Mexico in the process.
In 2012-Armageddon hapens wiping out 90% of the earth's population and all the nation states disappear. Leaving large tracts of unoccupied land and city states that dot the contryside.

Just like the PC strategy games "Hearts of Iron" are banned there. I think it is "funny", that the warlords period of China is "forgotten", I mean, it is not like Mao Zedong created Comunist China in 10,000 BC...
Also, ain't Tibet now a magic kingdom similar to Amazonia? Who rules over there?

I would have a comet hit in 2012 that starts the awakening. I would have some wireless but not to the 2070 level. Magic would be rare and powerful. Metahumans would be back to 2050 rarity.

For the record - I *intensely* dislike the whole 'global warming' idea as 'central to the game'. Nor do I agree with changing the fundamental political structure of the world setting. I like it as it currently stands - the balance between various political powers, the corporations and various/sundry magical beings. While you could argue that the breakup of the USA into other, lesser powers was kind of hokey (which is sort of true after all), it's a sci-fi trope that's been floating around in various forms for a least 20 years now. All the way from 'old skool' shows like Amerika (a short lived and much suppressed mini-series) up to and including more recent shows like Jericho....so it's obviously a fun tangent to explore. I very much like that aspect of the shadowrun game - it takes the familiar and makes it strange.

i'd like to see more done with the eco-terror groups though. small disenfranchised/fringe groups would latch onto magic as a means to affect political change in a serious way. Everyone from 'back to earth' radical eco-shaman to 'by fire be purged' toxics would be summoning spirits and disrupting modern infrastructure. it'd be interesting to see how corporations deal with that sort of thing. Can you imagine, for example, how Monsanto would handle a real world eco-shaman disrupting their genetically modified corn crops?

Except he could have been talking abut the drought situation in various US states, echoed in drought situations all over the world.

Just don't forget the negative impact of eco-lobbying on native populations.

You misunderstand.

Almost any ideas, gear, characters, plots, etc I have are already being funnelled into my hombrew RPG.
I spent so much time modding SR over the years, that I just gave up and started afresh.

Even if I wanted to, why would I mirror my ideas on Dumpshock, if I have a place for them already ??

I'm talking about setting up a forum for people who want to discuss, rebuild or convert SR - much like the already existing project [the link for which I can't find].

It's not for me - it's for others.
To not be encumbered by Dumpshock.
So the ideas don't get lost in the massive amount of repeated text here.

It costs me nothing to do, apart from about 30 mins of effort >shrug<

Except that the "drought" isn't nearly as bad now as it was, sure we ain't out of it yet, but it's getting a hell of alot better.

His/Her post was in response to getting rid of the balkinization of the US in the timeline/setting so, his/her message wasnt vague at all or concerning renewable or non-renewable resources. Now I'm not trying to start any flame wars or get myself banned, which is why instead of posting an emotional adhumin response full of beliefs unconcerned with facts, I instead used documented and historical references to illustrate my point.

edit: However if he/she were referring to race or ethnic conditions within the US I would feel obligated to offer an apology for misunderstanding their intended meaning. And to say, it's getting better day by day in my opinion.

true but often how a country was in it´s past doesn´t determine it´s future, many great powers had a great history but at one point flipped 180 and landed face first in disaster and none is immune to that.

Balkinization is an important part of Cyberpunk.

Strong national governments can keep even multinationals under some control some what at least with in their own borders.
And a Strong national government would not stand for Corporate extraterritoriality for tax reason alone.

So the break up of the USA had to happen.



A few questions do come to mind.

Now would a Blue state like California leave the UCAS after the CAS took most of the red states out of the UCAS?

Would the UCAS give up the most of the West Coast after losing the South?

How many of the active duty Marines would join the CAS?

Would all the Marine veterans from north of the Mason Dixon line allow their tradition to die?

US Marines werent founded in the South, Tun Tavern; Philidephia

You cannot reboot Shadowrun without alienating many of the old school Shadowrun gamers. Looks what happened when 4th edition came out. There is another website full of old school gamers that feel betrayed.

No, Shadowrun cannot be truely rewritten. The NAN is an important part of Seattle's history. And if you kill the Seattle flavor you just alienated me.

I'm surprised that Shadowrun has made it this long. Some of the magic will be lost after 2012 has come and gone. Then it will truely be an alternate timeline game (and, for the record, I hate those games). You know those games where something suppose to have happened in the past that changed the current game world? Shadowrun will be one of those games. It already is, but for me 2012 will truely be the turning point for this game.

Shadowrun is a game stuck very much in the period that it was created. Things are laid out because of the feelings and perceptions of those times.

To reboot the game, in the fashion I believe you are meaning, we have to SCRAP Shadowrun. We need to reimagine it from the current state of the world and attempt to predict the what the future holds 70 years (or whatever years) from now. Unfortunately I don't think that we will get anything close to what we have in Shadowrun.

I guess there's 2 types of reboot...
...A "re-imagining", which rarely goes well - it can give you something good, but it's not what you started with.
...A re-do, from a different perspective, which can work, as you're already accepting that it'll be different.

I said it before, SR v4 could have worked if they'd left SR v1-3 alone and focussed somewhere else - based around NYC, Chicago, etc - just not Seattle.

Part of the problem is that SR v3 and SR v4 both changed the setting and the rules.
SR v2 was actually the only one to update/tweak SR - ergo, they worked out many of the issues, which were only for the rules.

The writers could have just updated the rules, but they didn't.
They could have just updated the setting, but they didn't.

They made too many changes, too quickly.

They didn't make the changes for the sake of SR, they made the changes "just because".

I'm a huge fan of the changes. I wish things were darker but I'm happy with the game. 3rd edition strangled the life out of the game (for me).

I count 4th edition to be a reboot of Shadowrun. It's about as far as you can go without having to rename the game. I know that not all people agree with this, go ask the folks at Shadowlands what they think about SR4. Better yet, don't.

Since its creation Shadowrun has been evolving.
The first edition took place in 2049 and now it's 2072. The world couldn't stay the same all the time. A lot of the changes kept in pace with our world: the Matrix went from phone-lines BBS/Minitel to the Internet, the fashion evolved in parallel to the one in real life and so did a lot of themes (frightening Japanocorps in 1989/2049, dangerous terrorists in 2005/2070).

But you know, when I remember my first SR2 games, I realize they weren't so different from my latest SR4, except that we were less mature and our world was a bit more absurd/less realistic. The world, mood and main themes are still the same.

I don't really understand your categories. They seem like the same thing to me. I'm pretty sure the creators of the recent Battlestar Galactica "re-imagining" (as they called it) were perfectly aware that it would be different than the original. A re-imagining is also, by necessity, from a different perspective.

While far from authoritative, let's look at the Wikipedia definitions:




I'd say that SR4 is neither of these things. The New World of Darkness is what I would call a reboot. The changes SR4 introduced in rules and setting are nowhere near that level of magnitude. SR4 is the latest revision in an ongoing evolution of the setting and rules. It's been going for twenty years with a changing set of authors and developers, so of course the creative direction and emphasis is going to shift over time. I said in my earlier post, that no one responded to directly, that SR4 is the reboot. I'm clarifying to say that it's not a reboot, but it's as close as we're likely to get.


I'm puzzled by the alarmist and reactionary attitude on display here. Stating that SR4 "does not work" seems an unfair blanket statement, especially considering how much it still has in common with previous editions. You are exaggerating the magnitude and speed of the changes made to both setting and rules when compared to IPs like the World of Darkness. Finally, the icing on the paranoid cake is to state that "they" made the changes "just because," as if the developers of SR4 were malicious imps making changes willy-nilly with no thought to how they might improve the game. The only reason what you said isn't a personal attack is that you failed to specify exactly who "they" is.

I'm going to assume that this is a case of internet hyperbole and that you aren't nearly as distraught as your post makes it seem like you are. Still, I can't help but wonder how you react to things like your favorite breakfast cereal being discontinued, and the like.

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

I just felt this should be here.

friggin round-eyes..

So? I'm not sure what an article about Indian Lobbiests is supposed to change when we are talking about the fragging NAN.

I just think it's funny that they were relevant as the largest anti-national group in America when the game was being formed, but now they've been completely marginalized. And, everyone here is agreeing that the Native Americans should be marginalized in the game world to reflect this.

I guess a reboot could have Glen Beck leading a back-woods uprising against responsible governance.

Actually, the Balkinization of the United States makes more sense in the current political atmosphere than at the time Shadowrun was written. Take the hyper-polarization of America's two political parties, the rising of the most extreme viewpoints (the "wingnuts" if you will) as dominant within their party, and the mentality that has people toting loaded guns to town hall meetings about health care... with just a little dystopian creative license, an America that tears itself apart may be one of the most believable elements of the Shadowrun future. The process may be different, but the effect similar.

Kay, makes more sense now.

Not sure if this is true or if it is complete and utter bullshit as I suspect but awhile back a rumor was going around that one of the reasons behind the NAN was that one of the devs was dating an Indian at the time.

Umm, you do realize Ghost in the Machine that radical politics, "hyper-polarization", and even baring arms at government functions is hardly anything new or novel? I mean hell, we used to have congressmen brawling and threatening to kill each other while in Congress.

True. But before, you didn't have propaganda networks capable of galvanizing the population nation-wide and the internet medium for mass organization.

You've already had extremists committing murder under the influence of your demagogues, and instead of acting like a wake-up call, it's only lead to more severe partisanship. I'll admit that a red-blue Second American Civil War is quite an unlikely event, but it's hardly outside the scope of believable speculative fiction.

Under MY demagogues? Hell's bells, I'm even sure how to respond to that one so instead of simply telling you to go fuck yourself I'll give you the benefet of a scant doubt and assume you meant the "genretic you" and not Ravor.

As for the rest, the only real difference is in time frames, the newspapers and telegraphs of old were no less "propaganda networks" than CNN and Fox News are today (Or their European counterparts.) and hell if anything I'd say that despite itself the internet actually has a calming affect on the population.

So no, a second "Red/Blue" Civil War is utter and complete bullshit.