Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Shadowrun Tropes
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Pages: 1, 2
TheWanderingJewels
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Shadowrun

sadly....I can't really disagree with any of the tropes
WinterScale
Absolutely true.
kjones
They're pretty much spot on... what's the problem? Tropes Are Not Bad, remember?
Stahlseele
Sad but true.
Also, little warning may have been nice:
TVTROPES.ORG CAN DESTROY YOUR LIVES LIKE GOING ON WIKIPEDIA, ENTERING A SINGLE DC/MARVEL CHARACTER AND SIMPLY FOLLOWING LINKS!
Rasumichin
Clicking a link to tvtropes : like getting rickrolled, but you're also trapped all day.
Darkeus
I almost got trapped.

I must say, i agree with everything!
Draco18s
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2010, 06:05 PM) *
Sad but true.
Also, little warning may have been nice:
TVTROPES.ORG CAN DESTROY YOUR LIVES LIKE GOING ON WIKIPEDIA, ENTERING A SINGLE DC/MARVEL CHARACTER AND SIMPLY FOLLOWING LINKS!


I believe they have an article on that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main...illRuinYourLife
Jhaiisiin
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2010, 03:05 PM) *
Sad but true.
Also, little warning may have been nice:
TVTROPES.ORG CAN DESTROY YOUR LIVES LIKE GOING ON WIKIPEDIA, ENTERING A SINGLE DC/MARVEL CHARACTER AND SIMPLY FOLLOWING LINKS!

I have to say I actually did that. I wanted more background on a particular DC character, and a few hours later I was dealing with Marvel super hero teams. I had to stop and go "WTF? How did I change companies?" Somewhere, somehow there had been a crossover, I'm sure.

I have started using a new term, called "WikiBrain." It's when someone says something, and you say "Oh that reminds me" and follow with something seemingly unrelated, but through multiple wiki-style jumps, it makes perfect sense. For some reason, I do it all the damned time. My fiance has gotten to the point that she doesn't even ask "WTF" any more, and simply goes "Okay, lead me through it. How'd you get from ____ to _____."
Werewindlefr
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2010, 06:05 PM) *
Sad but true.

Not sad.
Also, the TV tropes 40k page destroyed my life forever.
wind_in_the_stones
Does anybody really play that cybernetics eats your soul? The emotionless thug that a sub-1 essence brings?
Stahlseele
QUOTE (Jhaiisiin @ Apr 22 2010, 01:36 AM) *
I have to say I actually did that. I wanted more background on a particular DC character, and a few hours later I was dealing with Marvel super hero teams. I had to stop and go "WTF? How did I change companies?" Somewhere, somehow there had been a crossover, I'm sure.

I have started using a new term, called "WikiBrain." It's when someone says something, and you say "Oh that reminds me" and follow with something seemingly unrelated, but through multiple wiki-style jumps, it makes perfect sense. For some reason, I do it all the damned time. My fiance has gotten to the point that she doesn't even ask "WTF" any more, and simply goes "Okay, lead me through it. How'd you get from ____ to _____."

Reminds me of most of the women and girls i know/knew . .

QUOTE (wind_in_the_stones @ Apr 22 2010, 06:46 AM) *
Does anybody really play that cybernetics eats your soul? The emotionless thug that a sub-1 essence brings?

If i am feeling like it, sure.
Else i play the the cocky, arrogant, better than you in just round about everything kind of thug.
Body 15 and STR15 will do that to people i believe ^^
Banaticus
Doesn't everyone play that cyberware "eats your soul"? Cyberware reduces your essence. When you lose all essence, you are dead, unless you are made into a cyberzombie, in which case you're usually pretty emotionless, until you go psycho.
Bull
Shadowrun never found a good model for it, so never really dealt with it, but the Cyberpunk Genre as a whole has the "trope" that the more of your body you replace, the less human you become. So while someone with 5 Essence may not really notice much, by the time you dip down to 1 or less, you become more and more emotionless and less "human". THe whole man vs machine thing. Generally this was called Cyberpsychosis. It was a bigger focus in Cyberpunk 2020.

A lot of early shadowrun fictions talked about it, and there have been a couple half-hearted rules attempts (social modifiers for being cybered) over the years, but basically, since it was strictly an Roleplaying thing rather than a rules thing, there was no way to properly enforce it without getting wonky. So no one ever did.

And in the later editions of the game, it's pretty much vanished altogether, which is a shame. I think the homogenization of the system and the world is one of the huge flaws that 4th edition has.

Bull
Bull
Also, generally speaking the more cyber my characters have, the less social they tend to be. I don;t quite go the "Emotionless cyborg" route, but they do tend to be a bit more psychotic on the whole. My mages, deckers, and adepts have all been much more personable, now that I think about it...

Bull
Delta
QUOTE (Werewindlefr @ Apr 22 2010, 12:42 AM) *
Not sad.
Also, the TV tropes 40k page destroyed my life forever.


The WH40K Tropes page is the most evil place on the most evil site on the whole web! Scientifically proven fact!
FriendoftheDork
Shadowrun

The database hates you right now. The entry might exist or it might not exist. We would clear this mystery up for you, if we could get to the database. We tried to look it up, but the database puked up an error.

frown.gif I want to ruin my life with Shadowrun!
KCKitsune
Honestly, I don't like the "Get Cyber, lose your soul" shtick.

Essence, IMNSHO, reflects your souls connection to your body. When you reduce Essence, your soul has less connections to your body. When your Essence hits zero, you die, there is nothing holding your soul in your body.
FriendoftheDork
Finally got to load (damn dumpshockers and their DoS attack) wink.gif

Lots of minor errors there, but the worst is the "Guns are useless vs supernatural."... Utter BS. Most spirits and other supernatural creatures go down easily S&S or APDS... or just being a good shot.

My own PC used to take down Horrors with 14-17 Hardened armor using an assault rifle with APDS. More Dakka is key.

Oh and the more Dakka section is kinda bad, the Weapon's Specialist isn't supposed to CARRY all that, those are just posessions, and she sucks in the use of all those weapons anyway.
Ol' Scratch
QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Apr 22 2010, 05:16 AM) *
Honestly, I don't like the "Get Cyber, lose your soul" shtick.

Essence, IMNSHO, reflects your souls connection to your body. When you reduce Essence, your soul has less connections to your body. When your Essence hits zero, you die, there is nothing holding your soul in your body.

That's what that there fancy word "semantics" is used for.

"No, you're not losing your soul. You're just losing connection with your soul! It's not the same thing at all, and certainly not when you're just giving a general overview of it. True story. No, really. Quit looking at me like that."
nezumi
QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Apr 22 2010, 06:16 AM) *
Honestly, I don't like the "Get Cyber, lose your soul" shtick.


I like Kage's understanding better... essence loss is weakness leaving your body.
Draco18s
QUOTE (nezumi @ Apr 22 2010, 09:15 AM) *
I like Kage's understanding better... essence loss is weakness leaving your body.


Whatever the interpretation, the Trope is still called Cybernetics Eats Your Soul.
LurkerOutThere
I'm always a smidge confused by why people think that Cybertechnology should have a dehumanizing affect when the ability to turn your opponents into goo with your mind is by comparison the sign of being a well adjusted person. The concept that "Cyberpunk always had it, if your not doing it your not roleplaying correctly" always bugs the crap out of me in the context of a world where you have people with no cybernetic modifications doing the exact same thing. For all intents and purposes an adept with 6 magic has all the same "inhuman" capability as someone with essence below 1, but there's no "Proper Way" to play an adept.

So yea, I find "Cybertech eats your soul" to be a lazy and overused trope that for some reason people have an affection for.
Ol' Scratch
Soul/Spirit != Conscience.
nezumi
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Apr 22 2010, 08:26 AM) *
I'm always a smidge confused by why people think that Cybertechnology should have a dehumanizing affect when the ability to turn your opponents into goo with your mind is by comparison the sign of being a well adjusted person.


Actually, in SR3R we are actively pursuing that, by trying to create a 'magic psychosis' equivalent smile.gif
Draco18s
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Apr 22 2010, 09:26 AM) *
So yea, I find "Cybertech eats your soul" to be a lazy and overused trope that for some reason people have an affection for.


All tropes can be overused. Too many Xanatos Gambits tend to make the show confusing, no matter how well written they are. And while the Xanatos Roulette and the Thirty Xanatos Pileup are not necessarily bad, they too occur because of the overuse of the Gambit. Too many Crowning Moments Of Awesome take up room where plot could go, or make the audience pay less attention to the relatively boring plot bits, making the story more shallow. The Crowning Moment Of Awesome is supposed to be a singular moment for a character and the Rule Of Cool can make up for weak points in a story, but rarely does it work as the story.
AngelisStorm
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2010, 06:05 PM) *
Sad but true.
Also, little warning may have been nice:
TVTROPES.ORG CAN DESTROY YOUR LIVES LIKE GOING ON WIKIPEDIA, ENTERING A SINGLE DC/MARVEL CHARACTER AND SIMPLY FOLLOWING LINKS!


So true. I just came back. (...hours later...)
Stahlseele
See?
I told you so!
Why does nobody listen to me?
I have been known to be occassionally right after all <.< . .
BookWyrm
You can either allow the Tropes to ruin your SR experience(s), or not. I chose not. Granted, they point out things that I wouldn't have otherwise noted....or for that matter, cared about, but then there will always be people who will be dissatisfied in everything, no matter what happens. If that person finds certain things not to their liking, that's their problem. I like Shadowrun. I'm going to go keep on liking Shadowrun, until I feel like I'm burned out on it, and only then will I stop.

The Tropes article on SR was amusing, and I'm leaving it at that.

Thank you, remember to tip your waitress, and good running.
IceKatze
hi hi

It was alright, but they need to add tropes for:

• It is matrix time: everyone else, lets go get pizza.
• Don't understand vehicle combat? "shots fired, everyone stop and get out."

At least in regards to 3rd edition.
ClemulusRex
Shadowrun's Essence loss has a degree of internal logic to the game world and is a useful implementation of the trope for the sake of game-balance.

In broader terms, I don't think I really like the trope much. There was an issue of the comic book Transmetropolitan that basically attacked the Cybernetics Eats Your Soul trope head on. In it a techno-fetishist gets his consciousness transferred into a floating cloud of nano-particles and joins a colony of similar beings. At the end of the issue the Spider, the comic's protagonist, asks the question "when does someone stop being human?" His answer: "Never." To me, that attitude is infinitely more Cyber Punk than that offered by the CEYS trope. Also for that reason, I have no problem ignoring the Cyberpsychosis schtick.

And, by the way, clicking on the initial link was my first exposure to tvtropes.org and it pretty much melted my brain. I kept getting off onto tangents (I, too, ended up on the 40k page) and trying to reel myself back to just the Shadowrun entry only to get sucked down yet another path. Some of it was just me trying to learn the terminology so I could understand what a trope meant when it was referenced. For instance, I now know what in the hell people mean when they say "YMMV" around here... I lost about three hours, I think.
Draco18s
QUOTE (ClemulusRex @ Apr 23 2010, 05:08 AM) *
I lost about three hours, I think.


http://xkcd.com/609/
AKWeaponsSpecialist
QUOTE (Draco18s @ Apr 23 2010, 06:53 AM) *

Ah, yes; the Wiki Walk can be rather fun.
Draco18s
QUOTE (AKWeaponsSpecialist @ Apr 23 2010, 11:23 AM) *
Ah, yes; the Wiki Walk can be rather fun.


Oh ***. I ended up on YouTube making a Search Story.
ClemulusRex
QUOTE (AKWeaponsSpecialist @ Apr 23 2010, 04:23 PM) *
Ah, yes; the Wiki Walk can be rather fun.


Sheez. I've done the Wiki Walk before, but this was just ridiculous! Like I said, I think it was just compounded by me needing to click on links in order to just learn a lot of the terminology as a first-time reader of the page. Granted, it was fun to a point, but eventually I needed to spend an Edge point to re-roll my failed Will resistance, or it was going to steal my soul faster than any cyberware could.
KarmaInferno
One thing I've noticed: How sucked in you get depends entirely on how media-savvy you are.

If you primarily use the TV for watching sports, if you see maybe 2-3 movies a year and tend to stop thinking about them 10 minutes after you leave the theater, then TVTropes probably isn't going to have a whle lot of effect on you. You may wonder what all the fuss is about.

If you can have an in-depth discussion over a scene in a sci-fi show you saw five years ago... well, there's probably no hope for you.



-karma
Draco18s
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Apr 23 2010, 04:18 PM) *
One thing I've noticed: How sucked in you get depends entirely on how media-savvy you are.


True, but a lot of the time I read an article on something I am familiar with and see some links to tropes I've never heard of.

Example:
On Fission Mailed there's a link to a trope called But Thou Must. Ok, I think I get it...ooh, of course. You can't not do it. Another link to We Can Rule Together ("Hey, I've seen that in a game, I want to know more"). What's this link? Utopia Justifies The Means. Huh?
*Read*
Oh.
Oh wow. That's (a) cool (trope).
kjones
I went cold turkey on TVTropes a couple months ago. Reading this thread is like waving a bag of smack under a junkie's nose.
crash2029
Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who remembers that in SR the Awakening happened in 2011, not 2012. Other than that, yeah pretty much.
Ol' Scratch
I seem to remember the date varying depending on the source, actually.
Draco18s
QUOTE (crash2029 @ Apr 23 2010, 08:45 PM) *
Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who remembers that in SR the Awakening happened in 2011, not 2012. Other than that, yeah pretty much.


Oh, I do.
crash2029
QUOTE (Dr. Funkenstein @ Apr 23 2010, 08:52 PM) *
I seem to remember the date varying depending on the source, actually.


In all four core rulebooks it was December of 2011.
BookWyrm
If memory serves me correctly, and I don't even have to reach for ANY of the corebooks for this, the Awakening officially is marked as December 24th, 2011; marking the day the Oriental Dragon Lung(?) appeared and buzzed the Tokyo bullettrain. The exact time escapes me at the moment.

Which puts us at 1 year & 7 months away, give or take a few days. wink.gif
Link
QUOTE (BookWyrm @ Apr 25 2010, 01:07 AM) *
If memory serves me correctly, and I don't even have to reach for ANY of the corebooks for this, the Awakening officially is marked as December 24th, 2011; marking the day the Oriental Dragon Lung(?) appeared and buzzed the Tokyo bullettrain. The exact time escapes me at the moment.

Which puts us at 1 year & 7 months away, give or take a few days. wink.gif

Off the top of my head I'd agree except I'd say the dragon was Ryumo (sp?) flying near Mt Fuji. Lung sounds Chinese. I stand to be corrected.
Draco18s
QUOTE (Link @ Apr 24 2010, 08:28 PM) *
Off the top of my head I'd agree except I'd say the dragon was Ryumo (sp?) flying near Mt Fuji. Lung sounds Chinese. I stand to be corrected.


It was Ryumo, yes. I also believe it was during the morning commute.
crash2029
Thank you all, I do feel better now.
Kronk2
QUOTE (BookWyrm @ Apr 24 2010, 07:07 PM) *
If memory serves me correctly, and I don't even have to reach for ANY of the corebooks for this, the Awakening officially is marked as December 24th, 2011; marking the day the Oriental Dragon Lung(?) appeared and buzzed the Tokyo bullettrain. The exact time escapes me at the moment.

Which puts us at 1 year & 7 months away, give or take a few days. wink.gif


I REALLLY want to put up a camera there to record it. ;-D
Blue DragonFly
I hopefully will not be a mage. I want to be a rigger when i grow up!
kanislatrans
QUOTE (BookWyrm @ Apr 24 2010, 08:07 PM) *
If memory serves me correctly, and I don't even have to reach for ANY of the corebooks for this, the Awakening officially is marked as December 24th, 2011; marking the day the Oriental Dragon Lung(?) appeared and buzzed the Tokyo bullettrain. The exact time escapes me at the moment.

Which puts us at 1 year & 7 months away, give or take a few days. wink.gif


You're forgetting, some of us are spike babies. grinbig.gif
BookWyrm
Thanks, gang. I had blanked on the name of the dragon.
Blue DragonFly
Went to TVTropes to look up Shadowrun. Ended up reading about Hotel California.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012