I really think they should have followed up on the immortal elves and dragons bit. Does anyone besides me think that thread didn't even die with a whimper? It's something I like to debate with friends I thought I would solicit other opinions. Blackwulf

Well, it's not totally written out or anything. They are just focusing on a different angle (modern tech instead of ancient magic). I prefer the magic side as well, but to each their own.

I think the shift happened back when Earthdawn's license was purchased by another company from Shadowrun.

Personally, I prefer the ancient mysterious magic stuff than nanobots and AR. Hell, I WORK for a wifi provider now...I want to blow things up with my mind and take part in Machiavellian plots millenia old, not worry about finding the right SSID and fiddling with firewall settings...especially not when I spent eight or more hours on the phone talking people through finding the right SSID and fiddling with firewall settings...

Plus, the Tir/Dragon/Bugs/Horrors/etc. stuff always made the best reading in Shadowrun books...only tech-based book which was remotely as good as those was Renraku Archology Shutdown and that was only tangentially related to modern tech and more a sci-fi retelling of the Saw films before the Saw films were even made.

Considering that the Dawn of the Artifacts series of adventures involves being hired by Frosty and involves hunting down 4th World artifacts... I'd say the plotlines not exactly dead...

Bull

Considering the followup was axed because all three authors involved vamoosed, I'd say it's deader than it's been for quite a while.

Ya know, A.H., you're becoming a bitter old man.

Becoming?

Get off my 4th world artifact-strewn lawn!

Former High-Prince Lugh Surehand is hiding in Seattle as a male prostitute planning on retaking the Tir with his own army of spirit-melded elven assassins awakened from a kaer he had placed in the area for just such an eventuality.

I'd like to see more exploration of the ancient past, horrors, bug spirits, and other magic stuff (on the tech end I'd like to see some space action). I'm running an Earthdawn game now with plans to run a Shadowrun game with theme crossovers. The artifacts adventures were one thing I'd likely run... hopefully they will be finished one day.

Started reading all 40+ Shadowrun novels... so many of them dealt with a magic theme (but I'm only 11 books in). The side effect of reading all those books is that I'm more interested in Shadowrun than Earthdawn.

???

Is it 4th or 6th world slang ? dont know it.

It's 5th World slang. Vamoose means to run away or escape. "Quick! The cops are coming, vamoose!" as an example.

Must come from Spanish. Vamos = let's go.

I personally feel Shadowrun is dead the moment it kicks the 4th world legacy/dawn of 6th world magic theme for Yet-Another-Transhumanist-Themed-RPG. I personally don't see the appeal in transhumanism as taken to the extremes it often is in Shadowrun, that only makes the setting more bland and indistinguishable from all the other SciFi/CP stuff out there. Not a good choice in a market where you want to be seen, not overlooked.

As for DotA, and the follow-up, and maybe even the fallout from GC book .... they may or may not be revived. Though, a new Harlequin will never be produced, neither will a new Tir book ever be written. Shame, really. As I have said often, SR at it'S core never was about the tech, the tech alw<ys was taking the background. The center of the metaplot was the legacy/dawn idea.

That's really too bad to know.

It is sad to know that you will have to forfeit any sourcebook from now on.. as there is no way I would shut out the Tirs from my game world...

Well. Broad Strokes. Works for Star Wars fans, should work for us, too. Just pretend much of 4th edition's timeline relevant to the Tirs never happened, like many over there do with anything Karen Traviss touched.

YEAH... just do what I do everytime I watch Episode I, squint my eyes and imagine Anakin is actually the 15 years old he is supposed to be and close them while singing when I see Kweigan take the needle...

Actually 'vamos' works the same for spanish and portuguese. But in this case, I believe the slang came from spanish people since they are the majority of immigrants on U.S

Earthdawn was developed out of FASA's background notes from Shadowrun. The two are intertwined, and if you take that away shadowrun loses alot of its edge and uniqueness. Personally I cannot wait for the first time a horror shows up in some deep dark lab run by one of the AAA's. It's gonna make Aliens look like a walk in the park. I've been curiously waiting to see what was going to happen. The Corporate race for building Kaers. Corporations and Countries vying for resources. The wars, the shadowrun possibilities. It's going to be quite epic.

Of course, I positively adore Earthdawn, and have been working threadmagic into my Shadowrun games. So I maybe a bit biased

Lucky you. I however am burned. Every time I see Vader take his helmet off in Ep. 5, I fully expect to hear the muted sounds of Linkin Park's "In The End" coming from the internal speakers.

And that is not accounting for the novels, which, apart from occasional brilliance, are among the worst things that have ever been written.


I just hope Wildfire will not be too offended then ... and sadly, that rules out cyber-enhanced horrors as next generation combat biodrones. Too bad. That's one of my favourite ideas of CthulhuTech.

Last two DotA's still slated for release. Were they being rewritten or did they always have "other" authors?
Are they going to let things fizzle out after 4? New idea to end them? Rework of the finale? It's a shame, on that other forum mister Trollman pretty much gave away the body of what was planned it's a damn shame that story won't be told as it was intended.

You have a link ?

I would gladly pay for the draft if the author take back their intellectual property...

ON RPG Forums, in middle of the mess that started over Catalysts troubles, I didn't save a link bu the basically describe future releases on the table, what they were intended to be and what he assumed they'd become. Also voiced his opinion on the way and order things were being done and mentioned a project that was dropped.

Can't speak for whatever Frank posted, but I was talking about the book set after DotA, to finish it up.

What RPG forums ? I know several of them

RPG.net

My real wonder is:

Does Man+Cyber+bioware have what it takes to survive the Horror wave? Without caerns.
Or is meta-humanity doomed.

There could be so much interesting stuff there.

Well, unless somebody tries to speed up the mana cycle AGAIN you will have to wait a little longer

Yes, because Aztechnology learned their lesson.


SURE.

Although whose to say what the Magic cycle looks like. For all we know we're deeper in the magic cycle than we think.

And we know that the Magic Cycle in the 4th world was /all/ messed up. The 5th World is roughly 10,000 years old(which is again twice as long as a 5000 year cycle supposedly is). Every indication is that the cycle is not a steady timeclock you can set your watch to.

We actually don't know how the 4th world ended up. Did the magic stay steady and then go back up? or did it stay steady and then after a while go back down until it all vanished. Did elves and orks, and trolls start having human children? What happened to the T'skrang?

Was the emergence of magic really only 70 years ago? Or are we actually a couple of hundred years into the cycle, but it's just that now the magic level hit a high enough point to allow for goblinization.

Dragons basically hid in magic cocoons that protected them from the loss of magic in the world.
I know the books suggest that Immortal elves were running aruond the whole time, but in my mind they should have been hiding in cocoons or caers that trapped enough magic for them to survive the whole time.

Was goblinization due to genetic markers for Orcs and Trolls being mixed into human population, and when the magic became high enough their "features" reasserted themselves. Kinda like red-hair

And Aztechnology tried to create a bridge, and they got stuffed. But we don't know that they didn't hasten the scale.

Look at the magic in Shadowrun. It's incredibly powerful. Not as powerful as the Adepts of Earthdawn, but they're certainly getting there.

It's kaers - and there is a long long thread about that topic.

In short: No.

In long: No way.

Would you like some cotton for your ears?

You could have just not posted, and contributed the same to the discussion.

Search for "Can we beatt the Horrors?" and leave the discussion about the mankind's chances in the coming Scourge out of this thread.

No, because we've been there, done that. I really likethe metaplot, but endlessly repeating the mana spike game is just as bad as overdoing immortal elves


Harlequin's Back says without tampering we should have another 2500 years or so. And as far as my (limited) ED knowledge goes, magic already had been part of the world for as long as people remembered when the Scourge came.

As I recall this cycle has been irregular so I suspect the horrors could turn up early. 2nd who can say all the horrors left which also might shift the balance. Of course I have always thought the whole backstory metaplot thing was part of what distinguished shadowrun from alot of rather generic cyberpunk. Of course I am no fan of transhumanism the only way the human race would accept some of that is over someones cold dead body ours or theirs. Credit were credit is due fasa did some brilliant and interlocked backstories (shadowrun, battletech, earthdawn rengade legion) and I always thought the shadowrun earthdawn link very amusing and some times brilliant. Blackwulf

And remember kids, threadnecromancy can be as bad as necromancy.
Leave the deads as they are. DEAD.

The Invae showed up WAY early, which is how they were able to get a foothold even with the IEs and dragons around keeping an eye out for them. TT managed to keep the UB out, but the fact that bugs showed up so early really confused them from what I recall. In fact, it was one of the things that let Dunkelzahn realize what Aztechnology/Aztlan were doing in time to stop them.

They have a horror gate on crater lake. I bet that worries them a lot more than the Invae.

That happened long after UB, around 2054 I believe.

I, For one, do not particularly like the inter-relations between Shadowrun and Earthdawn... Never have and never will... but that is just me I guess... It never really added anything to my games to have it, and has always been better left out as far as I am concerned.

Keep the Faith

Shadowrun needs magic more than it needs Earthdawn metaplot details. And no, they're not the same thing.

This I can agree with wholeheartedly...

Keep the Faith

Por qué????? =(

I wouldn't mind having something pop out that the dragons/IE know nothing about and get completely screwed over by...

Exactly...Mostly used in the mid to late 1800's in the american west. Most likely from Vamanos. Would have come up from Mexico. But I digress...

Words are kewl! (Especially Slang)

1- Earthdawn adept aren't the more powerfull adept in the world. Supposedly pre-scourge adept and magic were more powerfull.

2- Magical cycle manipulation are stronger in 6th world than they have been in 2nd and 3rd world. Therans and Horrors have developped techniques and construct to maintain a large level of magic avaliable over considerable area. Some of those construct still exist, some can be founded and the technical and magical knowledge about them isn't entirely lost.

3- There are places in Australia and elsewhere that are proof that magic never totally disappear or that at least some magical energy pocket were maintained downcycle.

4- The horrors already come back since SR1 (Wraiths), I think the door is closed nowadays but that smallsized invasion and localised influence could still happen before Mana reach his spike in peculiar area (SOX probably).

5- In the case of an horror comeback, and considering that this time it seems to be an agreement between some dragons and IE not only to take pre-emptive defensive measures but also to develop pro-active offensive actions I am not sure they will have a free reign this time.

- Magical techniques are stronger than in ED. Yes, there is a lot that cant be done yet, but the current mage got a lot more help from manaware that weren't avaliable in ED time, people are more educated, it is easier to transmit knowledge AND the astral space is still safe to use.
- Namegivers population is larger in several magnitude. And so much more efficient in the exact area the horrors were overcompetent in. Combat power of individuals equal to several hundred mens of ED era. Cyberware and Bioware will provide extra resistance to pain and attempt at suggestion/mental control.

Sure, the horrors will try to be extra sly in their attemps this time. They will need to first infiltrate then destroy organised society from the inside if they want to be able to overrun terran defenses.

6- Horrors can only appear through astral by level of magic. Only Earth have a Gaïasphere they could inhabit. Space Arcologies are immune to horrors infiltration. In 1.000 years I dont think that Earth will be very much populated than other part of space. In Fact the Earth population could be so low that the Gaïasphere is impacted and the bridge fail to open.

7- My personnal opinion is that in the next centuries meta-humanity and dragons will device a way to use technology in the astral space, the way manaware is slowly doing. Just imagine what nuclear-devices transformed into astral focus weapons, enchanted self-replicating nano combat drone, or anything else that would be the next logical evolution could do if in the hand of initiated strong magicians. I think the hurry of the horror to bridge the gap and reach Earth early is not without logic. IMO the next scourge will be initiated from this metaplane to the horror's one in a retaliation and destruction attempt.
If you consider the dragon story this is consistent and seems to be their long term goal : find allies and build them as a weapon to use against thoses that try to destroy them.

8- There is several element that seems to proof that the horroï aren't able of technical innovation or progress on their metaplane :
- Constant war and seemingly unlimited breeding capacity wich is very weird indeed.
- Absence of the physical element, no physical matter = no technology.
- They were unable to device way to reach our metaplane while we are able to reach other metaplanes.
- It seems the horroï in their natural habitat are different than what they appear to be when they enter Earth plane. Supposedly some of them only develop consciousness after contact with sentient being. And only develop intelligence after longuer contact even (Yss surely change while consorting Aina, the novels in Talisman are very interesting as describing horrors evolution).

This always forgets the 4th world legacy idea has been around years before Earthdawn was written up.


Because that would be bad on principle. You need to write something cooler up than elves, because elves are gay. Like Horizon. Totally not gay at all. Totally not an authors' pet at all. Totally doesn't come on a "love me because I am better than you" ticket and can never fail, either.

Or portuguese, we also have 'vamos' but in this case, it is easier that came up from Mexico.

Horizon's not that bad. They're just new. Give them a chance to have their evil plans exposed and all that. They'll prove to be an evil cabal of executive marketing spirits, just you watch.

Sadly, that is not what I heared. I heared there is no coherent plan on them being less than HAPPYFUNTASTICLOL at all.

And never before have newcomers been given so much of an authors' pet treatment. Not even Wuxing and Nova have back in the day.