It started nice, but the end is too obvious, too boring.

So, AH...who the hell is Renny?

oh wait I know who Renny is... or I can guess... checking in System Failure... ..... ehm. IDK.. but I read his name somewhere. Guess confused with Ronin, the one guy in Deus Bot net who sparked the intependant bot party

It's also a throwback to older editions of Shadowrun. That was the history chapter heading in 2nd edition, IIRC. Possibly 1st edition as well. Don't think they copied it over to 4th ed. But it's a phrase I first became familiar with while playing Shadowrun, and it's permanetntly linked to such in my brain.

Heh.

Go read the 1st edition Virtual Realities. That's where Renny starts off his career at.

And I will say, I'm a bit bummed that the Untethered Life isn't seeing print, mainly because AH name dropped a certain Ork Decker... It would have been his first official SR4 sighting. Guess I'll just have to use him in Missions instead

Bull

That's a very long shot from 1st and 2nd Edition

And for those of us who can't get ther hands on that particular piece of antediluvian parchment?

Did that not go up on the Battleshop/Drivethru RPG recently?

Nope, just the 3rd Ed Matrix.

soooo who is renny? anyone got the whole story on him? Perhaps he is still a future big player... just like the Big D

Keep the .... hope.

Because you know, good (as in not evil) characters can't stay dead.
Next thing you know, he'll be teaming up with resurrected Matador and Hatchet-man...

Love that intro story. It was what hooked me up to shadowrun when I was kid.

As do I. Even now I periodically re-read it in my slightly battered copy of Virtual Realities. If I can get some time tonight I'll try and post a complete synopsis of the story.


/Paul

Renny... *sigh*, that brings back some memories. I too have a copy of Virtual Realities. Been a while since I read it.

As I recall, it was a story about a child who was raised entirely within the Matrix. He was taught how to manipulate the Matrix, to do things in the Matrix. Ultimately, he ended up being better at using it than his caretakers/jailers suspected.

He also befriended a decker (part of the staff) who taught him about things not part of the official curriculum.

It's very much in the same vein as the Man & Machine story with Hatchetman & Priest but deals with the Matrix and Deckers.

Quality writing all in all. If you are a sentimental sort, it certainly brings back a lot of memories.

<- Sentimental to a fault

I haven't had a chance to look at Corp Guide yet, but I might be the lone dissenting voice. I was actually appreciative to see some new names in the Shadowtalk, and moving away from the old. While the ties to Renny and the return of Captain Chaos are are interesting view backwards, I'm actually more of the (minority, probably) opinion that the view should be focused a bit more forward.

So here is my question, is Icarus Renny (from the whole Lucifer piece of fiction from Matrix 2.0)?

-M&P

That was my take on him, yeah.

To answer my own question:

In Virtual Realities, there is a short story (okay, it's half the book) in which a decker by the name of Lucifer runs into Renny in the Matrix. As I recall, Renny is a kid being experimented on by Dr. Halberstom (sp?) who has been raised in the Matrix. If I remember correctly, Lucifer gets Renny extracted before he (Lucifer) is killed.

This is all from memory, as someone borrowed my Virtual Realities book, and it is one of the only books missing from my collection.

BTW, who wrote that piece of fiction?

-M&P

Thanks AH.

Chris Kubasik. Required reading for all my deckers.

Renny is Icarus? Wow.

What happened to the adult Otaku from Psychotrope, while we're at this topic?

Well, most of them - Bloodyguts, Dark Father, etc. - were killed during System Failure.

I kinda agree with Dread Moores.
I don't have a problem with old characters. I'm fine with Damien Knight still being CEO. It makes sense and there are little reason to have him replaced for now.
I don't have a problem with old plots/characters surfacing when it makes sense. I'm fine with Halberstam working on different related projects and resurfacing from time to time.

I do, however, have a problem with two things:
- Easter egg abuse or facts thrown in just to tell old players "*wink* look how I know about some obscure facts from a book released 15 years ago *wink*" or just to insert a reference to some long forgotten character/plot that nobody cares about. One is okay but when a chapter is full of them (mixed with references to pop-culture) it starts getting on my nerves.
- Unability to go forward. The end of Fuchi, the death of Captain Chaos, these are two great events: they have a big impact (both in game and on the reader) and they show that nobody's safe from harm. Bringing back Captain Chaos would be like bringing back Fuchi, "it was pretty bad but we got better eventually". It'd feel like a comedy show where the state is exactly the same at the beginning and at the end of the episode.

An example of these two points combined is Theresa Montgomery as the new Ares magic R&D director. (If she really is the Theresa Montgomery, sister of Dirk Montgomery). I don't mind Ares having an insect spirit at the head of their Magic R&D. I do mind Ares choosing a former BTL-addict, sister of a Shadowrunner and I do mind the choice of putting an old character just as an easter egg for the few players who've read one of two out-of-print (at least back when the book came out) Shadowrun novels instead of having a new character, with subtle hints that could lead to her being an insect spirit so that new GM could use that and old player could be surprised when upon discovering it.

Thankfully it has been kept under control, but it still made me feel sometimes (on the top of my head the Seattle section of Runner Havens and the 'On The Run' plot) like the author was a fan trying to max his reference count rather than someone trying to create new and interesting things.

Just remember the old theme that graced the covers of SR1 & SR2... the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That's the nature of the dystopia. No matter how much you try to make it better, it stays the same. The King is dead. Long live the King.

Honestly, I'm quite okay with that.

If you don't know the metaplot, it's all sort of cryptic and interesting. Not everyone goes to Dumpshock or has seen the Ancient Files. I have six new players who have no idea and I can't wait until they follow the hints I've dropped and make it the AH's site.

Groups of new players see the refs and know something is going on. If they don't figure it out, they make something up and their personal metagame is enriched. For those of us that know and catch the refs, we get to enjoy the richness of a 20 year old setting and hopefully competent writers who are able to capitalize on that history to continue it's growth.

Once it stops feeling like Shadowrun and starts reading like Family Guy, I'll agree with you about references.

Now it's gonna bug me. What book was that quote from. (Looking through older core's now but not seeing it.) "Hello, world. Welcome back and play nice." Or something along those line.. Don't recall the shadowtalker ever posting anywhere else either.

"Good morning world. Welcome back. Play nice." -Saeletra

Appeared on a message board during the awakening in 2012 by a entity calling itself Saeletra. No one has figured out what it means.

EDIT:Jinx, Blade

Talking about MIA/KIA people. Could someone tell me WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO PUCK?
Thank you very much

As far as I know Netcat is worried as well. No one seems to know. Will likely get resolved in an upcoming book.

Was this in a book or did I read it somewhere else? Anyone ever remember another reference involving Saeletra?

heck, i keep seeing its correctness in human history over and over. We are still battling the same internal issues that the romans had to deal with.

Denver Boxed Set. Also, Seattle 2072, p.25.

...what?

Brandie actually covered about the same material I did in her intro to Mitsuhama in Corp Guide.

what i would want to see there is that the players change, but the problems stay mostly the same as the players, while new in appearance still carry some flaw inherent to their "design".

the romans had just as much problems with politics and democratic systems degenerating to a oligarchy as we have today. And so the oligarchs may change, but the problem stays the same. Observe how fuchi disintegrated, but part of it lives on via villiers, that then go on to novatech and now neonet. The guy is like those late night shopping tv sales people that get closed down by regulators ever so often, but thanks to a legal loophole can pas the blame and be back up and running under a new company name, but with the same product and people a week later.

May I direct your attention to the giant "REFERENCE" section of the article.

Corp Guide has a piece of fiction on him.

I rarely get to play Shadowrun. Even when I wasn't getting ramped up to run a game and hitting here frequently, I still pull out the old sourcebooks and read them like fiction. That's one of the things I've missed most about the new edition is all the focus on getting rulebooks out (Augmented, Street Magic, etc.), there were a couple of years at least with nothing other than Emergence. Even the worldbooks (Running Wild, Feral Cities) were too crammed with info for new players to do more than give Cliff's Notes of plotlines that took years and multiple books to play out in 2nd/3rd ed. I haven't looked at Dawn of the Artifacts yet, but I'm just really missing a lot of the stuff...same thing seems to be happening with the new world and corporate guide...it's not a Shadowrun sourcebook, it's Cliff's Notes to the SR universe.

Biggest problem I've had? Tir Tairngire. That plot was bubbling for over a DECADE, from the original sourcebook, several novels, bits and pieces all over the place, up to Dragons of the Sixth World and Shadows of North America...then it gets a single line in the friggin' BBB timeline and a few mentions and that's IT that I've been able to find! What the hell?! Moving forward isn't the problem, it's ignoring the past while doing it.

What "article"?

The one linked in the quote:



Or do I have to (yet again) petition dumpshock to make links more obvious?

Sorry Draco I read the link.
One of us is just not understanding.
Probably me I'd been known to not see the nose on my face somtimes.
Just curious if the name Saeletra has ever cropped up again in canon SR? (Have my suspicions on who it could be.)

ok, you see at the bottom of the article where it says:

Reference

* Denver: The City of Shadows (74-75)

that means the original information is in that book, on pages 74-75.

Can't recall it ever being used besides in the Denver excerpt(and seattle 2072) referenced in the wiki. My guess to who it is? One of the Earthdawn Passions or something. But I know very little Earthdawn.

It hasn't otherwise we'd know about it.

Did the writers actually do anything with that, aside from that one story piece in the core book? Game, set, match i think it was?

That was one of my favorite things from the Tir Tairnegire book where someone mentions the Passions and Laughing Man basically starts ROFLing over the fact that the guy, pretty much repeating something weird he overheard randomly, signed his own death warrant for speaking about it in public.

I'm sad that with Earthdawn license being in another company's hand, that the ED/SR links cannot be followed up on officially.

I personally think ED/SR should be with the same company and BattleTech with a different company. ED/SR have a shared universe and similar themes, while BattleTech is basically straight sci-fi wargaming that's got a storyline and RP system tacked on as an excuse for giant war machines to blow each other up. That's a problem with how WizKids gave out the licenses originally and Topps just carried on from there.

You read my mind. Shadowrun and Battletech seriously need some time apart.