Oh, it's very nice, EP. I see SR going more like a mix of EP and CthulhuTech for the future, though, so it'S not too transhuman in the way SR would be.

The question about dropping sales figures at WW's end is if those drops are an effect of nWoD or if that same drop (or an even steeper one) would have happened anyway. This ain't the 90s no more. Vampires are glittering now. And it's not like tabletop RPGs were getting more and more popular.

We have threads for Eclipse Phase and Word of Darkness - please use them for discussing both games.

You know it's free, right? If you want to pick it up, pick it up, then when funds are better later, pay for it then. It's cool, Adam knows you're good for it.

Regarding restarting SR... I would be very curious how many people dropped off from SR3/SR4, how many stayed on, and how many new people jumped on board. While I don't think it's an exact match, it would be very telling. Frankly, I'm not totally against the idea of doing a full reboot of SR (so says the guy who plays SR3). I don't think people played SR for the metaplot, and they don't play SR4 for the mechanics. The most common issue I hear brought up is that of flavor - 80s, cyberpunk, transhumanism, pink mohawk, black trenchcoat. The most metaplot I hear brought up is past missions, like Bugs and the Arc. Those come and go. The fact that there was a corp called Fuchi a long time ago isn't a huge selling point. Since I don't feel like SR4 is keeping the flavor I enjoy (and they already lost the mechanics), a reboot would be fine by me, as long as it's done well. Put together Smith, Tinker & Boyle and I'll pre-order it right now.

My opinion is that if SR got a reboot, the SR3 people would probably just stay SR3, as they like what they have. Maybe they would check out an SR5, but highly doubtful they would switch over completely. I think the majority of the SR4 people would just jump over to the new game, as I don't really feel that anyone is really a die-hard SR4 fan. Its the latest incarnation and it can be fun, but no one is going to hang around when a new SR version comes out.

Having read a bunch of SR3 sourcebooks i downloaded. SR3 diehards make me scratch their heads.. SR3 is nowhere near as good or entertaining as SR1/2.

I've said it before on here, but SR4 is the first edition of Shadowrun that I felt that I could play just as much as I could read. So there's that.

I'm also a fan of the metaplot developments, and I'm not really crazy over the more 'street level' feel of the game, but hey - that's cool. I can build that stuff up on my own. I'd like to see more stuff like Year of the Comet, or the Bugs, or anything, but with the advent of 4th Edition, that seems to have fallen to the wayside for...wars thanks to trees. Uh...(okay, I'm not starting, swear).

I'd be curious to see what a revamp would change, though; what parts of the current SR canon do the original authors not dig? That's what I would be curious about.

Nezumi: I know that it's free, and I have the .pdf. What I'm saying is, I'd like to be actually purchase the book, so I can encourage the authors to continue their work. I'm still working on getting my friends into the idea of it

The quality of world-building was in decline, though I'd take issue with "nowhere near", at least during the first half or so of the edition. The rules, though, had a number of much-needed tweaks and fixes and are a clear improvement (though they could still use more work—hence SR3R).

~J

And though I'm a 4e diehard, I thought there was a fine amount of world building done in third edition. Shadows of Europe, Year of the Comet, Dragons of the Sixth World, Brainscan, the State of the Art books, and yeah, even System Failure.

I firmly believe games should have a good background story. What I do not want is furthering of a metaplot in most instances. Give me a start dart and a fully fleshed out coherent logical background. And if you are going to do a metaplot then have a nice thread to give an idea of the metaplot. What I do not want is a drip, drip of metaplot or where it interferes with a continuing line. The seattle sourcebook did a good job of giving several directions of what could happen over the next few years. This is what I want to see in the books with a occasional updates in the history.

If a game series has a good backstory, I'll buy the books even if I don't use them, just to read them like I would a novel.

I have almost the entire collection of Old Skool Deadlands books because of the universe.

To those of you talking about buying it for the back-story - how many would require a continuous backstory? i.e., SR5 holds all of the backstory from SR1-4 to still be true and canon, vs. a new backstory, probably from a new point of historical divergence?

I would not buy 'Shadowrun reimagined", plain and simple. Because I have no faith in current RPG authors to make it worthwhile, and because I have no interest in a world that is just like shadowrun except the background, which is what drew my interest to begin with.

What we would get would in all likelyhood be like Cyberpunk 3. Which SUCKS. None of the originality of Shadowrun would remain and it'd be one transhuman/near future magic setting among how many now, 10? Entirely bland and uninteresting for me.

If the RPG authors made a new background, they suck, but if they continue with the current background, they're okay?

If the authors suck, the authors suck, regardless as to what they're building off of. I don't see how restarting the background has any bearing on this.

hermit, I understand where you are coming from, but that is a rather large body of work to force upon new players in order to play a game. When I played SR1 back in high school, I had very little idea about all the metaplot. There were megacorps, there was cyber, matrix and magic, riggers and street samurai and spirits. There were multiple races that came about due to a genetic mutation. There were critters. And shadowrunners were hired to do shit and be expendable assets. That was the only background I had back then and it was more than enough to run around Seattle and have a lot of fun gaming.

After a long layoff, I came back, as my interest was piqued by seeing an announcement about SR4. I looked it up, bought the book and my players bought into wanting to play based on the same basic background I had for SR1, with the only difference being the matrix was now wireless and there were Technomancers (which I immediately banned from gameplay).

Once we started playing, I found my what to DSF and read references to Year of the Comet, Bug City, Dragon President, blah blah blah. Now, as a GM, I was curious about a lot of this stuff and got more information on it, but my players enjoyed the game without any single piece of this metaplot coming to light in our games.

To me, and forgive me for my cancerous reference, but Shadowrun metaplot is no more rich than say, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Greyhawk, etc. Its all DnD with some differences, but its all one game. With Shadowrun, the game i.e. mechanics, is married to the metaplot/setting. That is fine, but for any newbie or many others that are just interested in playing a game in the now, I don't think the metaplot or the story staying consistent matters. Obviously it matters to all of those that have invested time and money in learning it all, but that pool of people is likely not going to increase sales as much as the former would.

It seems to me the base is already kind of split between SR4 and SR3. There is obviously a risk of splitting it even more with an SR5, but to the decision makers, this is a business and businesses take risks.

Recently, I've been thinking that SR4 should end on a "end-game" situation (which doesn't have to be a world-shattering event, it could be a new scientific breakthrough or a society change) that would completely change the way Shadowrun is played.

And then SR5 could let the players use the existing setting between the 2040s and the end of SR4. The global tone and setting would be roughly the same with small variations so that different groups could choose what suit them best while still playing the same game. New elements could still be added in the holes outside existing material (between 2065 and 2070, things that happened outside Seattle/UCAS before 2055)

SR4 is great in this respect because it tried from the outset to keep things street level. All that metaplot is happening, but its so high above your head that it doesn't matter. You get to do all that stuff you did in SR1.

However, if you know the story you can go ahead and incorporate it. As GM you can kill yourself trying to keep everything lined up to the history, but I find that it only ever comes up when I bring it up. And then it acts as this interesting bit my players get to work out the mysteries of. If I don't know the mystery, they don't run the adventure. Not a big deal.

But the metaplot still has to be there, it's just not Shadowrun without it. The interesting thing is you can play the game, that can be Shadowrun, and you never deal with the metaplot once. It's the nice thing about having a setting and mechanics that are tied to each other rather than a mechanical platform and modular settings.

Exactly, otaku. Shadowrun isn't Shadowrun if it tries to rid itself of the metaplot.

I had a big post all plotted out in my head, but now I'm under a time constraint so I'll make it quick: the problem isn't so much metaplot. Otaku is right in that Shadowrun is *mostly* street-level, but all of the high end big time stuff means that there are more jobs on the ground than just "corporate espionage". It gives things background - places where, if it's mentioned again in another book, players can pat themselves on the back and say, "yeah, that was us."

What needs to happen is that there needs to be somewhere we can reference plot material that's written officially by the company and relatively "deep". We've got the Sixth World Wiki, but that's fanbased, and most players don't know about it. And yes, I plan on adding my own two cents to the Wiki, swear. Just gotta find the time.

Argh, I have more, but it'll have to wait...

If they rebooted the series, they'd have a serious, SERIOUS uphill battle to make it work properly to the point that the fans would be happy, and would still lose a number of die hard fans.

It's POSSIBLE (Look at the recent Battlestar Galactica TV show!), but very rarely properly done.

Not so much a matter of "If they don't change it they're good, if they change it they suck", it's just repetition in history of reboots sucking. And, even if they don't change it, they can still make it suck by not keeping up the quality of the previous work.

I think the only way I'd be happy with a reboot is if they retconned back to about 2050 or 2060. I love the old metaplot, Big D, the crash of '29, the Archology Shutdown...

Its the newer stuff I haven't been so thrilled with (or at least, not as thrilled). Actually, I have no idea what's going on in the metaplot these days...that might be some indication...

No matter what anyone would do, not all the fans would be happy and there would be some fans that would be lost. That's just the nature of change, no matter how good or bad it is. The question really is, would a change get more fans playing and buying books, supporting a single system, or would the change just segment the fanbase even more.

At some point, there's going to be another Shadowrun, whether its new mechanics, further metaplot or some sort of a rehash, repackage of what works best in the past. I don't think there's any question about that. I'm not active in any SR campaign, and only invested lightly in any one version, so I am positioned to go into a new system quite easily. If it sucks and no one wants to play it with me, no biggie. I bought a core book and it sits on my shelf gathering dust. If it is better, then I'm going to get my friends excited about it and play it. But you won't see me going back to anything prior to SR4...there's just no interest there, since I basically missed that bus a long time ago.

Very true.

Anyway, I finally have my envelopes addressed, so now I just need to make a run to the post office. Meant to do it Tuesday when I got off work early due to the weather, but I didn't have the addresses at the time (and I was only two blocks from the post office!).

Between 2005 and 2008, there have been really few metaplot moves, as rulebooks and city sourcebooks (at least, with the cities covered) provided little excuse to make some metaplots advance. Only Corporate Enclaves did saw very small seed about Horizon.

Emergence has actually killed for good the AI and Otaku metaplots, by making the things public and widespread. The purpose of the book, and later of Ghost Cartels, was to have a plot started, played and ended in a single book, instead of having tidbits of information spread over a dozen of releases.
The same thing happened with insect spirits in Bug City. Yes, Target: UCAS and Feral Cities were released after, but they basically describe how life in Chicago is very slowly returning to... maybe not normal, but as normal as things can get, which is seemingly barely more dangerous than Lagos.

Dunkelzahn death in Dunkelzahn's Secrets: Portfolio of a Dragon and the Dragonheart Trilogy was the climax of the "Earthdawn Legacy" metaplot. The Rite of succession in Survival of the Fittest and the Rinelle overthrowing the Tir Tairngire government tied up sort of loose ends. System Failure ended in a single book the Winternight, Art Dankwalther and the Ares/Cross feud metaplots, and left the AI and New Revolution barely alive. The 4th Edition also had General Saito out with a one-liner, Corporate Guide seemingly put an end to Johnny Spinrad attempts to fight off Lofwyr (there was little chance to see it continued anyway, as it was Peter Taylor pet plot), and Sixth World Almanac ended the fight between the Lord Protector and the Pendragon in the UK. In the German and French settings, 3rd ed Shockwellen did the same with Proteus, and French version of 4th ed SOX with the aristocratic conspiracy.

The 4th edition still has the Horizon metaplot, and a South America metaplot that includes the tempo arc and the war. Shiawase and Ares Macrotechnology board infightings, and Ares secret works on insect spirits, may also evolve into full-fledged metaplots at some point. The New Revolution may also return.

I don't count Dawn of the Artifacts as a metaplot, since it has been pretty much self-contained so far.

So in other words, 4E ended all the open metaplots?

That is probably a good thing. NWoD did terribly because it had nothing going for it as far as backstory at least initially. As for myself I would rather see Shadowrun go more along the way exalted did for a metaplot. They laid all the threads and only near the end did they actually play through it. Pick a time, stick with it and then flesh out the world and the rules. Only then move the future forward.

nWoD has "failed" (I don't like using these terms, because until White Wolf opens the books / closes the gameline entirely, we'll never know) mostly because...the games are the same games they were putting out ten, fifteen years ago, only, it's become even more openly biased towards certain sectors of the game market, and they know who buys them. If anything, it's a good example of what happens when you think that making everything go "kapoot" and reboot it so that only the special snowflake parts *you* like stick around and push other people out of the hobby.

Exalted is moreso - they fought for so long, tried to triumph the fact that they were "metaplot free", only to pretty much shoot themselves in the foot when, by adding detail on detail, they actually, *gasp*, provided the dreaded metaplot. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

But we're not here to talk about the Big Pale Puppy's oopsies on the carpet. We're here to talk Shadowrun.

Shadowrun has always been about change. The metaplot reinforces the theme of change that has been in Shadowrun since the very first edition - things change. All the time. Nothing remains static. Nothing should remain staid and old. New things rise and emerge. There is shit out there that no one knows about. And in the middle of it all are normal people, you and me, trying to make sense of it all.

Like otaku said, and I backed up, yes, there have been Big Events in the Shadowrun timeline - and they're usually a good thing, because it's always provided opportunities. The Bugs gave us post-apocalyptic, 28 Days Later shenanigans in Chi-town. Ghostwalker shaking up Denver brought not only a new (imo) angle to Cold War era Berlin, but also brought Azzies back out as some of the biggest bads in the setting. Dunk's presidential campaign and subsequent assassination gave enough material to last, gosh, four, maybe five books, and some of them not even having to do with the Scaled Ones themselves (and luscious brown nipples)!

You wouldn't get that if you give just a little information and then said, "welp! There ya go!" That's not a roleplaying book - that's a board game (hello, 4e D&D). Even giving out some back history is still providing metaplot - it still means that there something in the setting has been established, and that further things using that thing will then need to work off of that backstory, or its dogs and cats living together, you know the drill.

Here's the thing though, the catch in the mix: I don't trust the current publishers (note this) to provide something that is for the good of Shadowrun. I expect to continue to see books and publications which do nothing more than advance the agenda of putting out product solely to make it look as though everything is okay. This is not to denigrate the work that the authors of said product produce! Instead, I mean that care is not going into this product on the editing and publishing end - it's become clear with the last three or four releases from Catalyst, most everything produced post Shadowrun 4a, that they simply do not care. It's product, they can announce it with bells and whistles, put out a cheap .pdf, and say, "job done!" and go back to hanging out with giant robots.

To bring it around town, back to the original subject of the thread, this is why I have agreed to send this letter, and have advocated doing the same on other online communities and my blog. It has nothing to do with hating authors and everything to do with certain individuals that own the Shadowrun trademark that seem to feel it exists solely to produce moneybags. Sorry, I'd like a little bit more passion than that.

This is not the "we hate everything" spiel that certain elements on this board would like people to believe it is. It's not that we hate Shadowrun, or we don't like the authors, or that we just want everything and will complain until we get it. No. It's a complaint about the fact that the publishers of said book seemingly dislike the community of Shadowrun so much that they'd rather start up an entirely new board just to get away from the fact that people have been calling the Emperor on his new clothes since April 2010!

And to bring it back to current topic, Sixth World Atlas should have been the Big Ol' Book O' Metaplot that we should have gotten, especially on the 25th anniversary of the damn game. SWA should have been like die .6 der Welt, the book that the Germans got and we never did. It should have had great summaries on everything that's gone down in Shadowrun history. It should have been written as one big celebration of the world by vaunted folk like Fastjack, Jane-in-the-Box, Orange Queen, Smiling Bandit, all of the folks that we've known and loved for the last twenty-five years! Instead, we got, "here's the world. Some stuff's happened in it." I mean, WTF?

Wow. A little rant-y there. But it felt good.

Pity that, except possibly for the Primaira Varga plot, those are ultiamtly retarded. Especially War! and Horizon.


*sigh*

Denver never had anything in common with Cold War era Berlin save for the very basic idea that it was a city and it was divided into sectors. The whole setout was different, the zone borders a hell of a lot more porous (at least, I can't really remember any mention of five-month application times for a border crossing), and the whole impeding doom atmosphere you nowadays maybe find in Korea, if even, was missing. There was never anyone willing to go to war in and around Denver, and that kind of killed the primary feel of West Berlin as an Island within a sea of hostiles. Neither was Denver a flight point for UCAS, CAS, and Indian anarchists and non-parliamentary opposition types, as West Berlin was (it was the dumping ground for any unrulies in West Germany, since hey, no draft). There was no us versus them mentality, and neither was there this pseudo heroic we live on the front lines of the coming war feel. But really, if you go by the whole division thing, you might as well call Denver Jerusalem. Or Belfast.

Saying Denver hat a West Berlin atmosphere is just failing to understand what West Berlin was like. Denver was a viable, fun and interesting setting on it's own right, but it never was West Berlin anymore than 1E Dog German names were actual German.

End rant.


This.

I'd also like to add that, with the new authors brought in, the company seemingly omits educating them on a setting that needs a good introduction, which gets us tastelessness like the Auschwitz Jew Zombie Massacre. More care in choosing authors, more and longer lists of required reading (or a fluff bible) and more editorial care is necessary, unless this line is run into the ground by people milking it for money to support their giant robots.

fixed for you.

It was also no Belfast or no JErusalem.

No daily bombings, no getting shot if you wore the wrong colored jersey in the wrong neighborhoods.

Denver was more like DC where sometimes you have to go into Maryland or Virginia, but you know.. it's no big deal.

The UCAS/CAS/PCC people didn't hate each other. The way the Catholics and Protestants do in Belfast, or the Israeli and Palestinians do in Jerusalem.

Hey - ignorant American.

My high school history books ended at JFK's assassination. No joke.

So, apologies

While it's not what you intended to say, "the world's F [grade]" is a nice description of the 6WA

"Die 6. Welt" would be the correct title, in German you simply write "n." instead of "nth"


@hermit

Uh yes, the idea FT posted at the gaming den (yes, I read there every now and then) would have been far better...let's copy the idea of self-copying "though virii"
't
And I'm still hoping the upcoming Conspiracies book I read something about (dunno if it was just a proposal or actual plan) will compare better to Threats than WAR! compares to FoF...can't get much worse anyway, so why not be a bit irrational.

It was eleven thirty at night, and I was doing the title off the top of my head. So what

Well, you inadvertently wrote a perfect review

Funny you should say that, considering that Peter had a whole 2 year "Mother RIsing" plot associated with the tempo inceident... but that was dropped later on by other Devs.

What I read was about altzheimer-causing nanoware and programs that fuck your personality up (that would be the 'memeplexes' - I hate that newspeak, but that's basically what that is supposed to be - a rebirth of the subliminal manipualtion bullshit). Got that from AH though.

And yes, that would be better than "making Aztlan stop winning the war by showing an audience who likes blood sports for entertainment some dead villagers on TeeVee". Because, I dunno, in Shadowrun everyone likes the Na'vi. This idea of "pressure through the media" was retarded when they did Emergence, especially considering the entity in question was going to nuke cities, and it doesn't stop being retarded when "the media" and an army of bloogers and morons with facebook accounts suddenly think killing animals is not nice, when otherwise it's saturday evening entertainment. And at least, the above mentioned plot would end the Horizon plot and not make them the SHINY GOOD GUYS yet again.

Well, having mailed my letters out this morning, I just included the misspelled title in mine. So...

Also yes: I just mailed my letters at about $5.60 a piece for a return receipt.

Not to crap on your admittedly awesome rant, but as a long time Exalted player - one that owns pretty much every book they've put out - that's patently false. What they've done is flesh out more of Creation, which rubs some people the wrong way, but they've never advanced *any* metaplot for the game, despite what people have said about 1st Edition Alchemicals or Return of the Scarlet Empress. The reason it's hard and concrete that they've never advanced any metaplot is because no book they've put out has ever built on prior plot. The whole basis of the way they show plot is that everything is constantly on the verge of happening but never does, in print. Metaplot, kind of by definition, requires some kind of timeline and interaction; otherwise it's just setting information.

Or, to put it more succinctly, there's not "grand end" to any of their setting elements or plot hooks other than what your own players pull off.

Hah! I was right! It was a machination of Gaia! *dances around the room*

The Mother =/= Gaia (or at least, not necessarily has to be). Could as well be a malignent spirit in the forest.

Or a wacky Darkspawn faction. Wait...wrong game.

Y'know, my apologies, on two fronts.

One, I'm rather ignorant on current Exalted. I only follow what I can through online communities, and with the revised Lunars, Infernals, and Return of the Scarlet Queen, I assumed. So there's that.

Two, I wanted to get out the "it'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic." It's a great Joker line.

The 25th anniversary of BattleTech?

Exactly, because EVERYONE knows that Shadowrun has only been around for 20 Years...

Jesus, I forgot. Deal with geeks, mess with pedantry

OK, that would at least make some sense. What FT posted was more like "hey, let's steal Snow Crash"...

But a nanotech pandemic still sounds way over the top, because it's simply too big...hello next System Failure. Only good thing would be that it could serve as a pretense to massively cut down the "nanobot" magic.

Excellent post, ravensmuse. That's it exactly.

Topps got my letter; the return receipt came back today signed by one Ethel Owens.

Doesn't mean I got anyone's attention or a response, of course. Just means they got my letter and mailed back the green post cart attached to it.

Not a plague, but harmful byeffects to common use nanotech by Horizon (and their software). More Mad Cow Disease craze than VITAS. At least that's what I got from Ancient's reference to TransMet's Advert Nanos. Wouldn't be the Carbon Plague of Cybergeneration, but it WOULD shake up the world a bit and break Horizon's back.

Which would inject some much needed (post)cyberpunk concepts into a setting that has started leaning too heavily on the magic and fantasy trappings lately.

THAT'S A HORRIBLE IDEA!

People keep saying these things. Is it because the last couple sourcebooks have had magic as the backbone?

Honest curiosity. I've been thinking that the tech stuff has had more legs recently.