I didn't like the A-Team movie because it was slow and the acting was unacceptably bad, even for the A-Team. None of the actors had the charisma or screen presence of the original cast. A movie cannot sail on pink mohawk and Jessica Biel's ass alone. I did say that I wanted to like the A Team. I loved the show as a kid.

But, as with GI Joe, and Transformers, Hollywood has taken those beloved icons of my childhood, bent them over a counter, and done unspeakable things to them.

Wait, G.I. Joe was pretty good I thought!

O_o

Hey, thought it was decent. Different strokes.

Yeah, it wasn't bad... Good popcorn movie...

I did not like GiJoe since it went towards GiJoe sigma six, but I liked the transformers movies. Having recently watched the cartoons including the movies before the 2nd transformers movie helped a lot. There were a lot of story elements I would have missed if my mind was not fresh with the source material.

1st one was pretty good... again, a fun popcorn movie... Have yet to see the 2nd one though...

All you need to know about Transformers 2 (spoilered review)

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/bonus_...faqs.php?page=1

If you don't see the first 2 seasons of the cartoon with the cartoon movies it will be disjointed and make little sense. Thankfully my friends have kids so I got to see most of it with them and I netflixed what I missed on my own. I also bought the DVDs of the seasons.(Gi Joe as well, and yes I still love it.)

Your the one missing everyone elses point...

The Rocker IS THE TRADITIONAL sense, the buckaroo banzai comment I made was a joke to just show that the fiction of the time supports that style. Was Sam a Rocker? No, but he wasn't a professional either (which is what Synner was getting at) Yet he is the first example of a "typical" Shadowrunner in the fiction. If you look outside of Neuromancer to other Gibson work the Rocker type is also supported (Heck look at Ice-Ts character in Johnny Neumonic). Now does it make sense that Shadowrunners are Pink Mohawk characters, NO! but thats not the point, its a game not reality and is based on the fiction of the era. The Ronin style play may make more sense but its not traditional 1/50th

[edit] I can't even think of a Shadowrunner in the novels who was a professional in the ex millitary merc sense. (I have not read them all)

Um no, not it is not. It's been a while since I watched Johnny Mnemonic, so my recollection of Ice-T's character is only vague, but I do know that the film was quite a bit different than the Gibson story. And iirc, none of the Lo-Teks would be anything more than flavor NPCs, so it still remains unclear where you're going with this. Johnny and Molly were the protagonists, much like the PCs should be in any RPG.

Of course, one thing you guys continue to miss, and my fault for not head into wall bashing it like I did other things, was that the Shadowrun game evolved as the concept became more well defined. The original idea was "Let's steal Gibson's ideas and mix them with Tolkein to make a game. People love elves and magic and they seem to like Gibson! We could totally make money if we put elves and magic into Neuromancer." It took them a while to truly refine the idea and make it into something that made some semblance of sense (woot, alliteration).

You are right, the game isn't reality, but if there is one thing that Shadowrun tried to do was to rework and redefine the back story of the Shadowrun game to be more "realistic". The Shadowrun of 1989 was an embryonic idea. "High tech criminals steal stuff for money, oh, and magic." By the early 90s it had matured. Look at the Corporate Security Handbook. Now that is about as defining of the Shadowrun universe as it gets, and that was 1995.

The first examples of Shadowrunners were Ghost, Sally, and Dodger. And while the concept may still have been fuzzy at that point, it was very clear from that story that all three were supposed to be professionals. It's been forever since I read the NDWaD trilogy and honestly no idea where they even are amongst the boxes of books I have, but my memory of that series was that he hooked up with traditional runners (Sally and Dodger, actually, iirc).

And I don't know which books you read, and certainly there are several of them with non-traditional characters, but most of them were professional types. Many were prior military/corp. Mel Odom's Argent comes to mind as a progtagonist, or Ryan Mercury. Plenty of other characters featured in the novels were very off the shelf shadowrunner types. Pink mohawk is mostly a player creation, and has very little commonality with the established fluff or game background of Shadowrun past its nascent phases.


Mind you, I'm still not trying to tell anyone how to play the game.

My problem is with your use of the word "traditional" as you yourself stated the orginal idea of some Gibson some Tolkein. That is the tradition, what it evolved into is not the tradition. So if you look at the early fiction you have Stripper Assasins and Rockers taking down the corporations. (And if we want to look at Gibson, look at Mona Lisa Overdrive)

For the novels I have read the trillogy, anything by Nigel, Burning Chrome (title might be wrong it was a bug hunt in Chicago by mr Dowd), Never Trust and Elf, and a few others. Mostly 2e and prior. Nothing from 3e.

Gibson didn't write Shadowrun. He wrote the Sprawl trilogy FASA ripped off when they conceptualized their game. The traditional shadowrunner is entirely a creation of the Shadowrun universe, nothing else. Everything else is just inspiration. If anything, for someone who claims 2e is the definitive Shadowrun, you should understand the quick evolution of the game. There was no rocker archetype in 2e for very good and specific reasons. They kept every other archetype from 1e except the burned out mage (and the Ork Merc who was recast as a dwarf), and even added a couple new ones. The Rocker wasn't dropped to conserve space. Go back and look at the sourcebooks from 2e and tell me what you find. Corp Sec, Cybertechnology, NAGtRL, Fields of Fire, etc. And then go and read all the commentary and flavor text. A major, and distinct tone to those books. Gone were many of the clowns from the older books. I mean, as amusing as Wedge's (iirc) comments about 1,000 rounds of explosive ammunition keeping his neighbors quiet were, it was very obvious FASA was trying to make sure the real shadowrunners were painted as professionals, and the "legit" ones clowned on the wannabes all the time for being just that. The pink mohawk comments were almost universally met with derision.

That's the tradition. Not Cyberpunk 2020, not Gibson, not Bubblegum Crisis, not Ghost in the Shell, etc. You can happily bring elements from those stories into your game. The game police aren't going to break your door down. But they aren't Shadowrun...

I calls em like I seees em

At least when it happened in Battletech, there was a legal reason.

BlueMax

Revisionism doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. The Rocker wasn't erased from the books. The archetype was simply excised from the game when the creators realized it served no purpose and didn't belong. This is where the creators realized where they had gone wrong, where they could improve, and made changes. It's a simple fact of the gaming industry, game design, and writing in general.

In fact, if anything, the Battletech analogy only proves the point. FASA killed all the mechs it took from Harmony Gold's intellectual property and removed them because they had to. The Rocker was removed entirely by choice. This wasn't some kind of mystery to me when I was fourteen or so picking up SR2. It's quite amusing this is bewildering to you guys now. Unless you're thirteen. In which case I apologize.

You're totally right, Shadowrun became very pro in 2e. Sourcebooks were filled with scorn for sammies with white mohawks polishing their spurs during meetings and such. To break into an installation, you had to have all sorts of drills, electronic kits, sequencers and whatnot.

I personally didn't like the icecold pro style much. Mirrorshades, yes, but ex-spies and ex-soldiers who became shadowrunners did so because they lost their jobs - they were too greedy or too hot-tempered and got booted. Faces were dominating pimps or sleazy con men moving up - smart enough to have survived the competition and kept out of jail, but certainly not people who had endured a decade of agency training and disciplining. 24 is a cool show but Jack Bauer is a one-dimensional and ultimately boring character, while John Travolta's character in Taking of Pelham 123 has a ton of flavor and personality while still being a pro.

Kruger, you seem to know an awful lot about the intentions of the developers of Shadowrun. Were you involved in the product development at some point? It would be really interesting to hear the stories associated with the decisions to change the game, especially from someone who helped with the process.

"Mind you, I'm still not trying to tell anyone how to play the game."
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"...The game police aren't going to break your door down. But they aren't Shadowrun..."
"Again, for the third time, highly specialized campaign types that fall outside the realm of the core game type. "
"Or, maybe just some of you have only ever played in incredibly B-movie style campaigns."

These seem to be mutually exclusive.

If you look at some of the archtypes in SR2 you will see that they are "semi pro".

A detective, a bodyguard (which was the toughest archtype in the book), street ganger, tribal mage, etc. It's people that aren't professionals but would wind up being drawn into the shadows. If you look at 2XS, Dirk was a detective that was drawn into the shadows. he's an ex cop. Not tough, not alot of ware. He hires a team of professionals. the hard core, so really there are examples of both. Typically min/maxers will play an ex merc, or ex military person, and roleplayers will go for something with more colour like a ganger, detective, or pimp.

How about this. You are both right. No one is getting anywhere with this at the moment.

Personally I love the rocker's in a story, but would have a hard time playing one. I am a recovering min/maxer.

Kruger, you are the only one insulting people here.

Hey man..it is a cool concept character. He had his band (a very loyal but resource poor group contact), yes he played on a regular basis (day-time flaw), sure he was a thrill seeker (flaw), and yes he did very well on the few missions he was played in. His goal was to destroy the humanis scumbags (prejudiced-violently), and was not afraid to bust some heads over it.

He had lots of character and it worked-sure he wasn't tossing 20+ dice in combat but he could toss enough to be effective.

If only there as a book that had lesbian strippers on a Shadowrun team, that would totally invalidate this whole professionalism argument.

BlueMax
/NTTAWWT

So basically Kruger you ignore more than half the books on this list plus anything from 1e as part of Shadowrun "tradition" because the characters aren't professional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shadowrun_books#Novels

I have a feeling you haven't even read half those books, because if you had, you'd know how foolish what you just said was, lol.

And no, not anything from 1e. Learn to read and comprehend. If you're going to continue to be stupid, I have to maintain talking to you like you're a child, and nobody likes that. Oh, and try to figure out what professional means. It doesn't mean the character has to be ex-military or something, and I never once made any reference to any such exclusivity. You guys are once again putting words into my mouth and devising concepts in your own imagination to attribute to me. Try and work with what's been put into print. It isn't hard. Just requires a little reading. Fortunately the forum saves all of the posts.

Actually, I think I know the book you're talking about, and there were two lesbians (are homosexuals not allowed in the world of Shadowrun you bigot?) and the stripper wasn't a shadowrunner, she simply fell in with the runners by chance.

Nice blanket statement. Stupid, but very encompassing. Bravo. Actually, min/maxers don't care about story, just stats. In fact, if anything, min/maxers are much more likely to go pink mohawk than a role-player. A good role-player will create a three dimensional character that makes sense for the story and background he is part of.

Are you confused about what the term mutually exclusive means? Because I'm pretty sure you are. Where did I say that games outside the core material of Shadowrun shouldn't be played? You see, there is a distinct difference between the world of Shadowrun, and shadowrunners.

No. Others are just the only ones feeling offended. Nobody here has come up with a good enough argument to make any of their biting commentary against me effective. I mean, it's hard to have your feelings hurt by someone who can't even present a challenge. I've been exactingly clear with my language. Almost to the point of breaking it down Barney style. If you feel offended by that, I feel sorry for you. But I cannot make anyone smarter. That is their cross to bear, just as having to explain simple concepts over and over is mine.

Scuse me, the one were Stripers Cub gets kidnapped and the one Book with Martin DeVriess. Just pointing out . . wha the frag do i remember such bullshit? x.x

You are the only one using stupid, unable to comprehend, etc. Can a mod shut this troll up for a few days?
It is plain to see that you just aren't willing to look at things from a different perspective and that you are too brilliant to understand what we are saying or that 5 people agree on a point that only you vehemently disagree with.

On the homosexual note, wasn't Talon supposed to be gay?

Actually, the Martin DeVries book is the one I am referring to. Terminus Experiment I think it was. And I never read any of the Striper novels. I didn't much care for the character in the original anthology, so the follow-ons didn't interest me. So you might be right about that. But considering how many times in this thread people have tried to "prove" me wrong and used hilariously bad examples, I'll remain skeptical.

I'd shut the whole thread down, at least for a while, if this shit continues.

I don't have time for Bigotry but including the characters mentioned is classic B movie schtick. Early you said something about B movie campaigns, and well I think this blatant sexual inclusion fits into B movie. See the Fragging cover of the book.

Pandering to 14 year old boys is not allowed in "serious bizness". Though for those of us who do love the B movie side, I appreciate the eye candy.

Kruger, don't call me a bigot simply because I use a keyword. Your other arguments and positions are much better thought out and this is beneath them.

BlueMax

I'm trolling? I made an argument that was solid and has yet to be refuted. You guys are trolling, not me.

I'm going to let you in on something. Five people have agreed on lots of things and been wrong. And actually, people have agreed with me, . All I've ever said was that the Rocker didn't fit the game's concept of a shadowrunner, and that as a result, it was removed from the list of archetypes. It's impossible to argue against that, no matter how hard you guys have tried. Unless someone can explain why the rocker archetype and game concept disappeared after 1992 and was never mentioned again, it's somewhat pointless to try and tell me I'm wrong.

By all means, continue to peg me as a min/maxer, or whatever else you want. It probably makes it easier for you by demonizing me as some kind of negative gamer type. In the end, you'd probably count yourselves grateful if you were privileged enough to play in one of my campaigns since story and characterization are something I feel is important above everything else. Well, unless you wanted to play a Rocker.

Agreed. I apologize for that.

If I remember, that book wasn't very good either. However, being lesbians didn't automatically make them unprofessional or pink mohawk. I mean, at least it gave homosexual characters a positive representation in the genre.

But let's be fair to FASA and ROC. They weren't pandering to fourteen year old boys. They were pandering to sexually frustrated mid teens to early twenties types who play role-playing games. And mediocre writing is a staple of RPG license novels. I mean, look at R.A. Salvatore. He's been writing bad books for twenty years.

Your last paragraph is pure win, as its accuracy is impeccable.

The book was "good" for its type. If your intent is to aim at that target market and sell books, then the Terminus Experiment was a win.

But good for B Movie, is still B movie. I think some Shadowrun is B movie. Not all of it by any stretch of the imagination, but some of it.

Topic for all the other Pink Mohawk threads: Is Pink Mohawk B movie?

BlueMax

And this is where I don't ever talk to you again (baring an apology). Because frankly, I am a professional, I have a nice house, great family, nice car, make buckets of money, went to a great school, all kinds of blessings. I am truly a fortunate man. Yet you continue to insult people and not even read your own comments. I'm out.

If I had to choose one of the SR rule sets, I'd probably go with SR4A. However, my real preference is using GURPS with the Shadowrun setting. I pick and choose from the setting to fit my current campaign.

I had the chance to read some 1e supplements recently, and I think I know what people mean when they say the flavor was different. I didn't see it as "more serious" or "more dystopic" than the one in SR4, though. The Sprawl Sites plot hooks were written with tongue so firmly in cheek that it probably caused a nasty face wound on the author. I mean, yeah, it's a dark future, but it's hilariously dark. SR1 is a cyberpunk dystopia in the same sense that Evil Dead 3 is a horror movie. All the trappings are there, but the intended effect was something else entirely.

My guess is people only started thinking Shadowrun was Serious Business later on. I like both ways of viewing it, and I don't think either of them is inferior to the other.

Well, ok, staying sceptical is what you are supposed to do i guess . .

There are two types of Shaodowrunners presented in the game up to even 4e. Roles and backgrounds.

Roles=Street Sam, Mage, Decker
Backgrounds= Tribesman, Gang Member, and Rocker.(only gang member from the original group exists, though bounty hunter, private eye etc are similar to this, though they come packaged with a role as well)

Rockers disappeared in 2e not because they no longer fit a shadowrunning team via the background method of shadowrun entry but because rockers went out of style. SR 1 was the time of the big rock bands, where being rebels and against the man was the main image of many of the bands. SR2 was more the era of grunge bands and whinny emo punks, the rebel against society rock band idea had died down quite a bit.

Basically every reason why a "Rocker" supposedly does not fit for shadowtunning you can say the same thing for Gang Member, bounty hunter, and PI. Yes they have useful tools for a shadowrunning team just like how a rocker provided face type skills to a team. But a bounty hunter hunts bounties, he doesn't go on runs, a PI has a fogged glass door on an office that says Something or other PI, he has a hot secretary and an alcohol problem, he does not go on runs and make extractions etc. A rocker is a band member, they fight the man via music if they don't sell out. They do not go on runs. All of these guys are more contacts than shadowrunners. But one large premise of shadowrun is you are X dude who isn't a shadowrunner, but you get pushed into running via circumstances of your life. Your skill set isn't shadowunner role X it is whatever your last profession was and you will find a way to make those skills work in the shadows, some backgrounds make this easier than others. Heck one reason not to include the rocker is a rocker is basically the face with the artisan skill at 4+ there would be way too much overlap.

Shadowrun is a game about being awesome.

Being a rocker is awesome (almost wrote 'rocket' - also awesome). People like playing rockers. People like playing explosive, loud characters with guitars who get lots of tang. Also awesome.

Ergo, including the rocker as an archetype makes sense. It's what people want to play. So far six people have pointed out that the Rocket is awesome and enjoy playing the rocker in their campaigns. That's cool, include the rocker. Just like how some people say they don't like deckers in their campaigns for whatever reason, that's their choice, but it doesn't mean deckers don't belong - it's just some people emphasize different aspects of the game.

Just so you know...
I've played black trenchcoat, ganger, pink mohawk, stone cold pros, mercs, novices, drug runners and all sorts of other campaigns. Yes, in some of those a rocker makes no sense. But in several of them a rocker fits in perfectly - and unlike the investigator archetype (still in in SR3), the rocker actually rocks.

Now I will give you, much like the Face archetype, the rocker's special characteristics are useless 90% of the time - and that should be addressed. In the face's case, you normally double up with a second job (like mage, since they're both int/cha based). You can do the same with the rocker. Alternatively, you can change the rules to make the rocker more useful in combat. Wounded Ronin's special combat maneuvers do this very well. I haven't had a chance to use them, but they increase the fun of the rocker by a magnitude of 2, at least. If only he could do the same with deckers.

Could you excise the rocker from the game? Obviously yes. But that doesn't mean the rocker is 'useless' - it just means he's a specialty character. You don't take a rigger on an astral quest or a decker into the jungle, nor a rocker on an infiltration job. But that doesn't mean any of those archetypes don't belong to the game, or aren't awesome to play.

I don't buy it. Musicians will always be in style, and grunge rockers were incredibly anti-everything conventional. If anything the rise of grunge and the fall of hair bands would have made the Rocker an even more relevant character to players, needing only a slight revamp of fluff and a new character portrait to make them more edgy.

Face =/= Rocker. Face: Negotiation, Etiquette, Languages. (1e/2e compatible skills) Rocker: Etiquette (Street & Media). Half the archetypes had Etiquette (Street). That didn't make them Faces. Sure, you could easily make a Face with the guitar skill, but the concept behind the two isn't even remotely similar.

A Detective may look like a niche character, but if you look at his skillset in 2e, he was good at infiltration and surveillance (Stealth 6), well connected (Corp:3 and Street: 4 with 6 contacts), and a reasonably good fighter, even if he was going to be slow next to a street sam. Pigeonholing them as 1930s film noir-esque characters is just a sign of thinking one dimensionally. While the archetype was probably not often played simply because it wasn't glamorous enough for the typical cyber/fantasy game, it achieved the three basics: Fits the genre. Capable protagonist. Playable skills and gear for a shadowrunner. In a lot of ways, the Face is a closer descendant of this archetype. In fact, if you look at the Face vs the Investigator of SR3, they're essentially the same character, one cybered and one not.

And the Bounty Hunter or Bodyguard is just a street samurai with a different background hook. Certainly personal extractions and recovery as well as close protection are all staples of the Shadowrun world. Without a doubt the Bodyguard of 2e was on par with the samurai archetype. And the "Street samurai" was always such a nebulous term. Even the 1e description conveyed that bodyguards, hired muscle, and other generic street soldier types were all street samurai.

90% of the game is about legwork and interaction. The fighty bits should add tension and drama. If anything, 90% of the time, a street samurai's guns and wired reflexes would be useless, lol.

I'll agree that the Face is going to be typically blended with another archetype, but if anything the Face is almost integral to the game. It was one of those archetype concepts that didn't come around (officially) until SR3, but should have always been there.

But we're still missing the entire point. It was never that you shouldn't ever play a Rocker. It was never that there are no game types where the Rocker is appropriate. It was that the Rocker of 1e, based on the game 1e was trying to portray, was a stupid character concept and showed that at the time FASA hadn't quite nailed down the game concept. I'm really having a hard time figuring out why some of you are so confused by this. Endless posts about how this or that Rocker character was fun in your campaign is irrelevant. I have no idea what your character was like, or what play style your group had. And frankly, I don't care. I'm only commenting on the 1e archetype, the evolution of the game's core concept, and why the Rocker didn't fit in and was thus eliminated.

Kruger,
If we are going to talk about what FASA wanted for Shadowrun Characters, I will say this
Shadowrun was advertised as a game without classes.

Thus, any character is equally valid using the "FASA wanted" ruler.

BlueMax

Because what you are presenting as fact is really just speculation. Unless you where on the design team you can not know why they changed what they changed. Your opinion is not invalid, it just happens to be only an opinion. Tom Dowd posts here at DS (Though not very often.) He would be a person who could speak with authority on this subject.

I both agree and disagree with you though, in what I think to be your point. The rocker was a poor archetype that made for a difficult to use PC, no doubting that. I just do not agree that archetypes have to fall into certain lines to be valid. Some people who wind up in the shadows really do have no business being there. Many of them get killed quickly and some seem to survive despite the odds or lack of relevant skills. In other words, being a poor archetype, or in your word "stupid" does not exclude i from being an archetype that can be used. I just doubt too many people did.

FASA wanted to sell books, lol.

FASA made Shadowrun 1e by mashing a bunch of popular things together. D&D with Cyberpunk. 1e included Rockers. FASA thought: "We should make a book for the Rocker characters and put in some stuff about other entertainment! People will buy that." Shadowbeat really wasn't a big seller. FASA saw that as "Nobody cares about Rockers and niche campaigns for them, they just want to play samurai and wizards. Maybe drive trucks or hack sweet futuristic computers. Let's just concentrate on our game about doing that."

As far as Shadowrun being a game without classes, that is true. However, 1e and 2e especially had very well defined roles, even if there was no level progression like D&D that forced you to be a Fighter, or a Thief, etc.. There's only so much blending you can do before a character is significantly weaker in his multi-roles than specialists are in their one. No archetype is invalid. But certainly the game wasn't designed to play "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy" even though you could quite certainly make him if you wanted to and with a bored enough GM, run a campaign.

You just described Sam Verner. 'nuff said.

Which comes back full circle to something I already said:



Character survival is often as much a question of competency as it is of GM charity. Obviously it isn't real life, but given the background material, and knowledge of how real world criminal elements work, it's not hard to put together what would happen to casual shadowrunners if the world of Shadowrun was "real" and not controlled by biased agents like GMs, lol.


I am puzzled though that you quoted the very section where I specifically notated that I wasn't saying the Rocker could never be a playable character, and yet you waste lines suggesting that I said the opposite.

Uh, sure, if Nick Burns had magical powers, a spiritual guide, and the tutelage of a competent spell caster. Nick Burns just provides desktop and network support and degrades people who aren't tech savvy. Kinda the same thing if by the same thing you mean things that are only linked by the flimsiest of circumstances. Kinda like the F-22 and a hang glider are the same thing.

I'd avoid using phrases like "'Nuff said in the future. It isn't working out for you.

I loved SR1 because it introduced me to the game and setting. Liked 2nd and loved 3rd for cleaning up some of what I didn't like about 2nd and it was what I'd spent the most time playing. I like what 4th tried to do by unifying the mechanics so there weren't 3 or 4 different rulesets you needed to learn in order to get the most out of the game in terms of variety. In short: 1<2<3=4... so far.

This post is far too on topic

I never suggested the opposite nor was trying to. I simply stated my opinion. If I suggested anything, it was that you are putting to narrow of a focus on what an archetype should be.

BTW, the above quote is to point out your blatant baiting.

What you are missing is that all of those things happened during the narrative. Sam did not start out that way. Just as an archetype is just the starting point for any character. All of those things could happen to Nick Burns.

And again with the baiting.

I never said otherwise. A face also isn't a decker.



Not sure how you define a 'game type'. However, I have played several campaigns and stand-alones where my rocker character was perfectly appropriate. You're going to have an awfully hard time making a proof that the rocker is never appropriate (although I'd be interested in seeing it).

I'll also say that I never played any of the pregen characters straight from the book, so if you're comparing solely on that (as you did earlier), that could be your problem.

In the end though, I see nothing in any of your posts which address the fundamental point in mine - rockers are fun to play. I don't really need a dedicated book to play rockers, but the archetype is a real hoot. Shadowrun is a game that most of us play for fun. That archetype increases how much I enjoy the game. Ergo, it belongs. I'm sorry you don't enjoy playing the rocker, but we aren't playing KugerRun, so that really isn't relevant to what is 'appropriate' to the system.

Stop crying about baiting when you so "blatantly" did it with me by suggesting I said things I didn't. I'm merely creating effective analogies to facilitate the transfer of the desired information Go fishing or something if you want to clamor on about bait.

The difference is that Sam Verner is a Shaman. Not a tech support wage slave. Being a corporate wage slave is where he started in the novels because telling a story involves character development. A protagonist has to grow and learn, otherwise he, and the story, are uninteresting.

Sam Verner the created player character skips to the part where he's a Dog Shaman, and the opening of the novel where he's just a wage slave with unrealized powers is a half written background story the player has scribbled down somewhere. If the novel just started where the PC would start, it loses all the build-up that's important for the character to develop. That's basic fiction writing.

The point is, the Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy storyline would consist of the PC fixing computers and making fun of the people who didn't know how to do it. Not about his sister getting kidnapped, or him finding out he had magical powers, or anything else. And yet, I could very easily create a character with no skills relevant to doing anything other than driving his electric econobox to work and maybe having a hobby or two. That character would be valid under the rules, and I could write up Sixth World scenarios for him to encounter like angry bosses, or misfiled reports. Still wouldn't be a shadowrunner. Now do you understand?

I'm suddenly reminded of that line from Ripley about what happened while she was away when she's addressing the company inquiry at the beginning of Aliens. You quoted me saying I never said there were no appropriate game types for Rockers and then you ask me to prove the opposite. Are you for real? Now I'm reminded of Billy Bob Thornton's line from Bad Santa when the little fat kid asks him if he was dropped on his own head.