Heh, if you don't watch out, you're going to rewrite half of the shadowrun world ^^

Half of it needs to be rewritten?

I think we're intent on rewriting half of the shadowrun world as is. If we're not careful, every last country will be a living, breathing thing.

When it comes to south America..
What the hell happened to Peru, Chile, and Argentina? They get nothing, no write up, no love.. it's like they don't eve exist.

Well, not yet.

Yeah, given the crap CGL has been putting out, maybe I should be glad noone's destroyed those countries too.

That no one will care about

~J, of the opinion that the world consists of Seattle and Denver and that's the way it ought to be

Peru: SoLA by José Barbe and Hugo Medina, SWA by Ancient History
Argentina: SoLA by Synner

I care.

Doc Chase: Shadowrun Carebear!
*runs for his life*

In Shadowrun, the Care Bear Stare involves eye lasers and a spambox full of ghoul porn.

The Two-Ghoul Splatter Platter can be canon. We can do it. We have the technology.

I think I need to stat out a SURGEd drop bear...

Chaotic World spell with a geas of 'show target your stomach'?

There is one city too many there.

The world only consists of Seattle and that's the way it ought to be.

Being one of those who complained about the crappy German wording of the dreaded "Vogelhund", I stand corrected and somewhat ashamed, as this word and vehicle was NOT introduced by WAR! AT ALL, but has been around for some time:

http://www.gods-inc.de/macavity/IsleOfShad...l-vogelhund.jpg
http://www.gods-inc.de/macavity/IsleOfShad...cles/tanks.html

Seems to be the same case as Auschwitz, a setting that was introduced way earlier, too.

Mind you: That's no excuse for everything that was RIGHTFULLY criticized – but really: we, too, have to get our facts straight

Lesson to be learned: In ancient times, before web 2.0, stuff like that just happened and everyone was Meh! about it (or they would have been Meh! about it if that termhad been invented then). I vaguely recall shrugging my head and rolling my eyes, and be done with it. Ah, those days...

No, as the issue with that setting in War! is that it is both utterly disrespectful and factually wrong about history, both RL and SR.

@Rotbart: I'm not arguing against that. However, the Auschwitz setting before that was crap, too. That's what I meant.

In the interests of fairness, I should additionally note that miserable naming is a long-standing Shadowrun tradition now—the excellent Corporate Download has several howlers amongst the Japanese corporations: "Ganbare Aerospace" ("Keep-it-up aerospace", or "Perservere aerospace"), "Wakatta Software" ("Understood software"), and "Ressha Corporation" ("Train corporation").

Of course, Corporate Download gets away with it because it is overall, as mentioned, excellent (well, that and the fact that the howlers are tucked away in the lists of subsidiaries). That makes up for a lot.

~J

Seriously? I mean, Renraku, sure, but that's the kind of dumb name I can bet a real corporation would have, especially one that started as a telecom and networking company. But those are dumb as hell. I can't believe I missed those... I guess that's what comes of having read Corporate Download before I started taking Japanese in college.

"too"? No – they don't compare, at all.
"crap"? Not really, either.

This one probably dates back to the good old Seattle Sourcebook, page 8, with the "Ressah Maglev Bullet Train" between San Francisco and Seattle.

As I tried to explain elsewhere: The old Auschwitz setting was crap that had zero relevance for the SR universe in the long run and pretty much brought its own resolution along: The Sylvertrines locking it up and thus keeping it in the area of a historical side note that still served best as the reference for high level background count. This new Auschwitz is - the part about taste and moral aside for now - loaded with universe changing implications:

1. Magic has obviously risen to a point where artifacts with magical properties have come into existance without the use of magical skills or so far common restrictions imposed on the most "SotA"-enchantments (no dual nature)
2. There's a highly magically active entity (single person or group) around that was willing (and in need?) to bring down the spirit barrier maintained by the Sylvestrines (to bring something in there or out of there that is hindered by the barrier ... ie. a spirit). Such a dangerous and powerfull entity should be detailed better (best prior to WAR! in a fitting book about new magical threats) due to its overarching importance to the game's metaplot ... but it's just left to the individual GM to come up with that.
3. The mere knowledge about such special artifacts is enough to let various megas focussing on this new holy grail of magic: Items with persistent magical properties that are otherwise unaffected by magic. Some of the megas would just resort to recreating the situations that supposedly created the items, while others would just send waves of troops (shadowrunners and official corp forces alike) to secure as many items as possible before starting with the actual research.

So this crap is not just about bad taste and laughable price tags on magical atrifacts, it's all about where the game universe is going ...

This leaves us with the question: Which pile of crap as bigger and which one is smellier than the other?

As it was corresponding to the overall shape of the Sixth world and mechanically sound, this is may be your opinion, but hardly a fact.

As you put it:
So while it may not have acted as a "setting" for typical shadowruns themselves, it was a historic site developed to SR perspective and still acting as a reminder. So contributing to immersion, constituting relevance.
Since the time spans involved (2011 – 2035 – 2061+, SoE p. 229) it also had a long term effect on the area, that continues:

There is no resolution in SoE, with the Sylvestrines starting to fail despite efforts (SoE p. 119) and obviously, in War! canon, there is no resolution either.

It was "crap" in terms of introducing spirits in way that made the "mechanically sound" aspect debatable ...



But it didn't shape the gaming universe in an ongoing way ... As you said: A historic site that contributed to immersion, but wouldn't necessarily change the gaming universe in the long run due to implications behind the newly established facts in SoE.



But one that you could just forget about from the universe's perspective.



It continues now that the author chose to "press on" ...



A solution (the barrier) on a meta level that allows to simply forget about Auschwitz beyond the immersion aspect is something different than an ingame resolution for the plot as such. We're talking different things here quite obviously.



No, a resolution clearly isn't given in WAR! either ... What's worse: More cans of worms have been opened and if it weren't for the bad taste issue there'd be (and functionall are) several reasons now for actually shifting rather heavy focus on said area. So that makes it a different kind of "crap", but doesn't relief the SoE entry of its own bad ramifications

Possession by unique spirits was featured as early as Prime Runners and Spectres could have the possession power, as well as free spirits powers. With astral gateway, this allows them to posess about anybody, even in in SR3.
So both preexisting canon and corresponding rules allowed for the things described.
There is no need for every description to change the world, as you imply. In fact, that would be pretty detrimental in this case.

"forget" about Auschwitz?
Not quite, it was specifically unresolved in SoE:
Again: SoE specifically notes that the barrier is not a "solution" anymore, see SoE p. 119.

"bad ramifications"? The worst that can be said about the SoE description is that it did not act as a "world changer" or "adventure themepark". The latter is exactly what's so wrong with the part from War!…

Still the nature of these spirits / spectres to a certain extend didn't quite fit with the general, more fluff oriented aspects of spirit existance.



Where did I imply that every description should change the world? What I wrote clearly says right here that WAR! actually does change the world whereas the previous incarnation of Auschwirtz didn't ... or at least not to an extend that made it relevant for the gaming universe.



~Gosh~ I wonder why I even bothered to mention that the long term consequences of the WAR! section are totally different ... pretty clear that I'm unaware that changing the world by such "trivial" things can be very detrimental? ...



Yes ... Each GM, each Player and even the meta plot could have forgotten about Auschwitz after SoE simply because there weren't any implications of major world turning events in there, yet there were minor ones. You yourself said that it merely was a historical place that helped with immersion. So regardless of how crappy one can see the SoE section or how tasteless the SoE stuff could be perceivee, the WAR! section is totally different right there. Since your conclusion at the end of the posting is pretty much the same as mine before, I can't quite understand why you're even trying to argue with me here and why the hell you're even suggesting that I implied things that I nowhere stated?

You have had better days RvD ...



And the resolution mattered to whom? You? Me? The (gaming) universe as a whole?



And that's the point where - to me - it rightfully deserved the "crappy" label, since right there it shares the problem of potentially causing world changing effects and opening up the "bad taste" area, albeit not as drastic as the ones that come with WAR!. SoE still had the great advantage that you could still handwave the whole issue.



The worst I can say is that the SoE parts already had the potential as hook for world changing events (since there were undisclosed powers at work that weakened the barrier, that would actually need the resolution you mentioned twice now, thus opening the potential for the whole "bad taste" area in the first place). The ramifications about spirits and their existance - despite canon precedence cases - weren't good either.



So now tell me: Why are we having this discussion? Just because you don't share my POV on the SoE entry being crappy as well, although I clearly said that it's a totally different level of crappiness to me? If that's the case you could have resorted to private message or a different thread, because right here you're opening a totally irrelevant side discussion although - in regards to the topic at hand: WAR! - we're in total agreement that the WAR! section acts as major world changer (for example on the levels I outlined before) and bad taste example (the "adventure thempark" hook about killing spirits to get their treasures).

~sigh~

It's not just a theme park killing spirits.
It's a theme park killing spirits that are the ghosts of genocide victims.

It would be like Opening up a Stomp the Zombie Theme park in Rwanda.

The description in SoE conforms to the ghosts and unique spirits as outlined in MitS.

Relevancy to the game universe in the form of a description does neither require change nor does the description in SoE doesn't contain change.

Of course, the Order of Sylvester did not vanish from the sixth world, so there is no indication that there will be "long term consequences" for the scenario in War! at all.

That does not mean that a description of such a place is not needed.

No, I said that even if that would be the case, it would constitute relevancy.

I disagree with your assessments that the description in SoE is "crap" or has "bad ramifications": It does not contradict canon nor SR3 magic rules, it is neither factually wrong and it does not turn the area into either a disrespectful "dungeon" nor does it set it the current state of affairs in stone and prohibits play in such area.

There is no resolution in SoE, so it can't "matter" to anyone.

So you consider it "crappy" because SoE might impose ethical dilemma on people that need to stop ghosts to save lives? Because that's not what I would label as "crappy".

Uh… no, there are no such powers – the ghosts grew stronger in the wake of the comet (which did a lot weirder things), thus bypassing the barrier and priests. SoE does not specify the barrier as failing – it even stats it pretty decent.

Uhm… such ghost occurrence is all over the sixth world, in fact SoE specifically mentions ghost occurrence due to the euro wars. It's nothing special to Auschwitz.

The wrong premises (barrier failing, spirits not conforming to rules) made me wonder about your conclusion ("crap").

But if your only issue is pretty much that people would have to stop the ghost of an inmate on a rampage for vengeance in SoE, then I agree this a whole different ballpark than shooting and enslaving them for profit like in War!.

They actually started out as a Slovakian armaments company named Izom Armaments.

Uhhh... They started out as Renraku Holdings, founded by Aneki, as far as I recall? They're a Japanese corporation who got their seat on the Corporate Court by absorbing Keruba International. Where did you read they started as a Slovakian arms firm?

Slovenian, and they were Keruba International. Izom is a subsidiary.


Depends on whether you consider the "start" to be the real substantive company or the holding company (just Renraku; it's a holding company, but not named Renraku Holdings) that bought it and gave it its name and CEO.

~J

Edit because Kage edited his post first.

Eh. I'd say buying out another corporation doesn't turn you into that corporation; you're still your own corporate entity, and they're theirs, regardless of who's getting paid. I'd say the difinitive "start point" would be when Renraku renamed itself Renraku Computer Systems in the 2030s or whatever. I'd still consider Ford to be a car company, even if they (for some strange reason) bought Kraft foods.


Aneki's immediate actions upon acquiring Keruba was to use them to leverage Renraku into the electronics, computer, and networking businesses. Or so I recall from Corporate Download, which admittedly is a little hazy. I seem to recall Aneki's interest in Keruba was basically in using them as a stepping stone to threaten Fuchi and MCT on their home turf, rather than directly challenge SK or Ares.

Would you say that in the case of, say, the Apple acquisition of NeXT?


The important thing here is that Renraku wasn't anything; it existed for the purpose of owning Keruba (and possibly some other companies). Corporate Download suggests that it was originally a standard corporate raiding, with the intention being to sell off the pieces, but that Aneki changed his mind for unknown reasons and hung onto it.

~J

Well, Apple/NeXT is a little strange, since Apple and NeXT were already in functionally the same business spheres. So that's cheating! Either way: Renraku seems a sensible name for a company that - at some point or other - became a computer/networking company.

Not exactly. Keruba International, a Slovenian consortium of military manufacturer (seemingly named after local businessman Kerpan Ubavie) was one of the Big Seven. To sum it up, it developed the first truly operational military vectored-thrust vehicles, and invested the money in telecoms and computers, with little results. Their labs made some breakthrough in memory storage technology, but those were not compatible with existing tech. In 2029, Ubavie died in a plane crash. Japanese raider Inazo Aneki created Renraku Holdings with several investors to take over Keruba. He originally wanted to sell it piece by piece, but the death of Ubavie, the economic crisis that followed the Crash and the start of the Eurowars made Keruba market value fall sharply. Then, when corporations like Fuchi started to build the new Matrix, they choose Keruba memory storage technology as the new standard, making Renraku Holdings rich. However, Keruba companies were so heavily plagued with corruption the corporation almost went bankrupt by 2038. Inazo Aneki decided to clean the house, and sold most of Keruba armament companies, while keeping the telecom and computers business and expanding them, first in Japan.

There are no particular information on Izom Armaments, except that the name suggest it's an Eastern European armament company ("izom" means "muscle" in Hungarian, and is also a Slovenian name). It is the only known subsidiary of Renraku with such profile. It would make sense for it to be one of the former core companies of Keruba.

~sigh~



I still see a stronger emphasis in the section that implies that these entities truely ARE the representation of the "souls" of people instead of the more vague standings in MitS.



The failing barrier had relevance for the gaming universe to a limited extend: It made you "want" a resolution to the situation.



Overall effect on the gaming universe? And going by what I have written so far and even in accordance to your own conclusions the answer is quite obviously "yes, WAR! is totally different there".



Really? A new field for research concerning newly introduced magical artifacts with very intersting properties are not bound to have long term consequences?
An (not totally unnamed but unknown) entity that activily brought down the barrier despite the Silvestrines presence does not have any long term consequence towards the general balance of ingame powers?



Nor does it mean that it's needed, at least not without WAR!. With WAR! there now is need for further description on various levels.



Yet it opened the szenario up to a point where there was need for a resolution and already included the "bad taste" trap that it went right into now. And it still contains a description of spirits that - at least to me - actually didn't totally fit with the SR3 outlook on spirits and their true nature. So I guess we have to agree on disagreeing whether or not the Soe entry was "crap" or not and whether it held "bad ramifications" for the SR universe or not.

There is no resolution in SoE, so it can't "matter" to anyone.

How convenient ... Am I now allowed to forget about something that now by your own words didn't really matter to anyone? The fact that it couldn't matter to anyone doesn't change the result in any shape or form.

So you consider it "crappy" because SoE might impose ethical dilemma on people that need to stop ghosts to save lives? Because that's not what I would label as "crappy".

No, I consider it "crappy" pretty much because it imposed said dilemma in addition to suggesting that one would be killing "souls of dead" not ghosts (albeit not as strong as now) and because it opened up the "bad taste" trap the WAR! author fell right into.



Since I currently can only work with my faded memories about SoE that deal with the nature of the spirits mor than with the barrier itself. I now have to ask you: Did SoE specify the barrier as failing or not, because here you claim it didn't while so far (and later on) you did (and do) the opposite.
As for the powers that you claim don't exist: So Ghost overall growing stronger aren't a power by your definition? Undisclosed powers as source might have been the wrong wording, because strictly speaking the comet is part of the reason behind it, but it didn't quite reveal how that change was brought about: Did the spirits spntaniously increase their force? What would be the canonic rule behind that?



I still have the - potentially unfounded - feeling that the SoE depiction of said ghosts made them more special in terms of hinting towards them being actual souls rather than spirits with an unspecified agenda.



Huh? It was you who brought in the barrier failing in regards to SoE. For my conclusion "crap" it's rather irrelevant whether the barrier was fully operational (because that would represent the solution for forgetting about it later on) or it failing to a certain extend due to more or less undisclosed power that made ghosts stronger than before. That it's not operational (because of this not frther explained Tetsuo Shuumatsu and his true agenda) in the WAR! setting is beyond doubt.



Despite my issues with the SoE entry not being that limited, I still don't get why you bothered to start this derailing discussion and then even blaming me about a "wrong premise" that I didn't even introduce and about which you seem to contradict yourself at least in parts as well. ~shrugs~

Can we finally agree to disagree on our individual weighing of how "crappy" or "consistant" the SoE entry was and focus on the real issue: The crap that WAR! made out of it? Because ... that's kind of "the topic"?

That would be nice.

And here i thought we don't do nice ^^

Right. Izom is what they kept. Thanks, Kage and Nath.

-- No, it clearly calls them ghosts both IC and OOC. Of course you get amusing "huh" stuff like concentration camp ghosts possessing people to kill Humanis members (see p. 119, SoE).

"Within the barrier, thousands of appararitions, specters and unique ghosts are contained, waiting to unleash their pain, misery and wrath on any metahumans foolish enough to venture within." (p. 229, SoE).

-- Putting down the spirits of concentration camp victims down like rabid dogs isn't particularly appealing, but alone it makes sense and isn't shocking. It was that combined with the weaksauce "killing trash mobs for phat epic lootz" that pushed it over IMO.

The overall tone, written like this camp, especially the mass killing area, is some kind of wonderous temple of horrors, didn't really help either.

"Anything for a buck."
-- Every Shadowrunner Ever

That's not the problem. The problem is that the description containing phrases in the way of "Auschwitz 2 is a magnificent monument to terror" is game info, or supposed to be.

Matter of Opinion... That is all it is...

Ugh, seriously? Now I'm starting to remember why I put SoE on the Liber Non Grata.

~J

Posts like this aren't not as funny as you may think.

You do, I don't. There was stronger emphasis in SR3 than in SR4 anyway. Nonetheless, that possibility is not excluded even in SR4.
So there is the possibility that academic consensus in SR4 that ghosts are "just" echos of the deceased may as well be wrong, meaning people actually go around shooting and enslaving the victims again in War!.

No. My conclusion concerns ethics and taste, not the gaming universe. People doing those things as described in War! are to be expected in Shadowrun, it's just not something a supplement should cheerily suggest players doing.

You mean like all those before? Old news, in this case badly implemented.

It's a rating 8 barrier… that's a simple hit&run astral demolitions job you hire someone for. Not that it made any sense whatsoever, but that's due to the fact the author thought it was a veil like in TNN or Tibet, not an astral barrier.

Our definitions of "need" obviously differ. To me, the description of Poland in SoE does need a description of Auschwitz to be complete. (It is, after all, the reference for "high end background count")
Nonetheless, the option of doing horribly wrong for profit was not even hinted in SoE – that it wasn't specifically excluded is nothing uncommon for Shadowrun.

The misinformation that the barrier was failing in SoE was not introduced by me. I actively tried to correct it after consulting more than "faded memories" and provided page references.

In SR3, toxic background count directly added to spirit force aligned with it.

There is no "derailing" as the situation in War! can't be discussed without context. This context includes the initial description as well as the differences in magic between editions.
Incidentally, the discussion was started by raben-aas liberally smearing around the label "crap" without any reasons given concerning SoE, then you chiming in.

There is no blame, just correction – whether you "introduced" it or not is irrelevant to that, but you picked it up repeatedly as a fact.

He just missed the main concern about Auschwitz. It's not that it exists, it's how it is described - "magnificent" really shouldn't be used there - and what it's (ab)used for. Also, why the hell is this even in a collection of mercenary hotspots. Makes no sense, other than the author feeling the absolute need to piss on dead jews. And yes, dead jews, no villagers. The text leaves no room for interpretation.

Well… it had the word "war" in the Game Information on Oświęcim in SoE, p. 229:

"After the awakening, many former battlefields and sites of carnage from Europe's many wars became haunted by ghosts. Even the recent Euro Wars left their mark, as witnessed by the specters lingering in the battlefields in Pystina near Warsaw-Lodz. But the most haunted and spiritually corrupt areas by far are those were great massacres occurred, particularly former Nazi concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto."

Combined with concept and the writing style, this complete misunderstanding of the SoE entry as well as RL history makes me think the author of this part of War! got completely drunk, glossed over SoE, stumbled through some Wikipedia links and then wrote down whatever seemed fitting at that moment.

As an aside, I wonder why any German city is still inhabitable of WW2 suffering can have such effects. Think of all the bomb war victims, those murdered in cellar camps, and the brutal cityfighting in the final years of the war.

But anyway, yeah, you may have nailed down the process of writing according to David Hill. Still lost where the hell he got the Wirtz idea from.