There is of course the wisdom of old ages, but primarily I think you got the cart before the horse: Only people with foresight, the ability to adapt etc. would have made it into the 6th world. Any other immortal would have found plenty of opportunity to die from something else than age or Black Death over the millennia.

Soooo...
Survival of the fttest?

Immortal elves are—according to the rules—Immune to Age, Disease, Pathogens, & Poisons. That does not make them smart, carfty, or more capable in general. It does give them a better chance to to live long enough to develop survival skills.

Being born an immortal elf does not mean you will live for thousands of years and rack up enough magical power to max all the skills listed in the rules. If a young immortal elf is not crafty enough, than someone will take them out.

The immortal elves of note are those at the intersection of a Venn diagram, both unaging and crafty enough to survive. There were probably hundreds (if not thousands) of immortal elves born in the Fourth World, the dozen or so craftiest still survive. That level of survival instinct is truly beyond my imagining, and yet they have it. So I say again, that if players are able to get the drop on them than the GM just did not play them well enough.

So could a mortal fencer get good enough to win a stand-up duel against an immortal? sure. Would a shot to the head kill an immortal if it hits? sure. But the immortals have survived over 5000 years of others trying. The odds of a player in any Shadowrun game played by the rules being the one to finally get through all the planning and precautions are zero.

It also makes it really, really difficult to get drunk. Which, when you consider some of the days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries some of these folks have had...

I'm pretty sure the IE's and GD's reaction to Bug Spirits was something along the lines of "Not them again!" The magic, tech, and nanites I'd be surprised if some of them didn't have a hand in their invention.

Yep. Social Darwinism is a sinister direction, but I think in this case it's a good explanation.

I wouldn't say it's zero, but it's surely an incredibly small chance. Never say "no, you can't under any circumstances" to your players - and hell, I can think of a dozen scenarios for an IE to risk his life, or even sacrifice it.
Consider, for example, Frosty - she's not all that powerful, and at least two IEs are incredibly invested in her...

So, what you're saying is that a player character should never get close to one of these, either through electronic, physical, or astral means. Stats are meaningless because in your campaign your characters will never actually encounter any of these beings. And that's fine. Gods don't die when they don't fight mortals.

However, that means that others didn't have a hand. For any given immortal, while they may have had their fingers in many pies, I'd be hard pressed to name one that had his fingers in all of them. "The dragon himself (Dunkelzahn) seems fascinated by the concept of virtual reality, its applications and implications." The word "fascinated" to me indicates "surprise" and anything that can surprise you in Shadowrun can hold something that can kill you. These may be beings that kept up with changes for thousands of years, but things are changing quickly now, faster then ever before, and if they're changing more quickly than an immortal can follow, that immortal is risking death.

Can we get back to a discussion about the style/ format of the new sourcebooks? Less to no metaplot, but NPCs, locations, and adventure seeds only?

Please explain how VR can kill Dunkelzahn

If things are changing too fast for an immortal to keep up, they're changing far too fast for mortals to keep up.


I don't remember all that many statblocks in the recent books, so in what comes to styles, we'll just have to see.

Probably not as much metaplot as some would like, but I've seen some of the character writeups and some of the fiction. Metaplot is dealt with. The writeup I'm doing doesn't touch on a lot of the bigger metaplot, but there's bits and pieces of it in there. It's looking pretty cool so far, from where I sit, but I'm also on record as saying I like things cinematic and I like big names in my games, even if they are only dropping by on their way to doing something else. I'm not afraid of cameos.

And I'm kind of enjoying the IE discussion, though I suppose it should go find a thread of its own....

Give 'em stats and they can be killed. - Reminds me of my Star Wars group back then. When our Jedi Knight was starting to develop better stats than Luke Skywalker we had to enforce some caps on his Force skills.

While he's at it, maybe he can explain how "fascinate" necessarily equates with "surprise." There's very little overlap there.

Mortals aren't keeping up. They're getting killed by it. Huge numbers of them are afraid of everything out there that they don't understand. Many of them are trying to kill what they don't understand before what they don't understand kills them.


from your link to fascinate: "unique power, personal charm, unusual nature, or some other special quality"
from your link to surprise: "as through unexpectedness" (unexpected occurs a lot in that set of definations).
If you can't see a link between unexpected and unique, unusual, and special, then I can't help you find one. It's your problem, not mine.

As far as killing Dunkelzahn, it appears someone beat your runners to it. All that took was an explosion. And all his years of experience taught him one lesson you're not getting. Dragons need to have a will for when they die.

No one killed Dunkelzahn. Where have you been, bro?

@Critias, Patrick Goodman: Are you guys actually allowed to tell us whether Street Legends will feature any IE's, at least from the standpoint of their being IE's? I.e. (no pun intended) suppose one of the characters covered is Prince Lugh Surehand. Would Surehand in this example be featured as a powerful NPC because he is an Immortal Elf, and focus on that as such, or would he be featured more because of his political importance in Tir Tairngire?

You do enjoy reaching, don't you?

I can be fascinated by a lot of things that don't surprise me. I'm finding fascination right now in the actions of my son, whose having a ball with some oversize Legos. This is not surprising at all, but it's quite fascinating. Dunkie found a lot of things fascinating (including humanity), but I never saw that he was surprised by most of it.

You're new here, aren't you? That wasn't a simple explosion. You've clearly got a great deal to catch up on; you should really go find some of the novels and start doing just that.

In the meantime...you're not making a very solid case for immortals not keeping up.

My bad. I skipped the novels completely. In the meantime, if you want the immortals to be Mary Sues, go ahead. I don't see it as my job to convince you, just my job to explain how I see things and why.

No, probably not a good idea to go there.

That said, most of the IEs aren't a big deal because they're IEs...they're a big deal because of the stuff they do in the world. To use your example, is Lugh Surehand more impressive because he's 10,000 years old, or because of his political history in the Sixth World?

So CREEEED is indeed (a) Harlekin?

Early manifesting Technomancers killed President Dunkelzahn! That's why they should all be rounded up and slaughtered!

For the children!

...

Ew, I need a shower now.

Don't care about or want stats, but backgrounds/histories on major players (not just runners) would be a possible good read, world/lore-filling out kind of thing.

Regional 'legends' should be covered in location books.

Now, while the IEs did all integrate fairly well, I have to say that, working retail and trying to explain to people born circa WWII about internet use, viruses, and how to connect a printer to their computer is ... challenging.

I suppose part of the magical ceremony that makes 'em immortal also makes 'em immune to "brain stagation". Maybe they have a spirit that they use as an auxillary memory device?

"Hey, Spirit of Man Charlie ... hold this."
"Sure thing boss! What is it?"
"My memories that run from 3200 BC to 80 BC ... those were some DULL years!"
"I'll be quite careful with them, sir." *poof*

Try working tech support for those people and having to deal with Windows ME and Wireless USB Dongles.

Now, if you excuse me, my corner is calling me.

@Lurker: This keeps bugging me. You keep blaming White Wolf and their WoD for immortal elves, which is utter nonsense. For christ sake, it was in the Lord of the Rings novels. Possibly novels by other authors before that. That's the 1950's crapping all over your Shadowrun, not friggin' WW. If you're going to toss inane blame about, at least target correctly.

@CanRay: Ugh, don't remind me of that stuff. Windows ME, aka Windows Crayola Edition... and gods was it horrible.

Mary Sues...I was wondering when that was going to come back into the conversation. The IEs aren't Mary Sues for anyone currently writing for Shadowrun; they were there a long time before any of us started writing for the game. That's a baseless, and frankly silly, assertion.

That said...I don't need any Mary Sues. I had one put into the game for me years ago, and I finally got the chance to kill him. Don't have any plans on putting another one back in with this project.

Still looks to be on the schedule; other than that, no clue.

You can find them at the main supply depot down the street. Get one with a padded seat, trust me.

I'm waiting for the "Rocking Chair and Shotgun" sale bonanza that's been promised.

Back in my day the rocking chairs always had padded seats...

God, "Mary Sue", the ultimate argument. Except Mary Sue is by definition a writer's self-insert which is unreasonably powerful for the system. Immortal Elves fulfil neither criterion, not any more than Great Dragons or corporate movers and shakers.
Yeah, they might not be the pinnacle of writer's ability, and there's no reason to use them in your campaign, but they make a lot of sense on the whole Earthdawn=>Shadowrun history scale, and make a fine example of secret magical stuff to liven up the system.

Grinder, I've never lied to you before and I'm not about to start now: I can't speak to Conspiracy Theories or Corporate Intrigue, because I haven't seen any of the drafts (not even sure that any have been turned in, but I'm not the guy they come to, so take that for what it's worth)...but I can say that Artifacts Unbound moves the metaplot forward bigtime.

Here's the deal: Primer Runners had a lot of characters that no one had ever heard of, and almost none of them have been heard from since...and that's just fine with most of the rest of the world, me included. Seriously. Without going to the book, name three characters that appear in there.

Street Legends > Prime Runners. You've heard of most of these people, and people have wanted to know more about them for a long time. I'm pretty damned enthusiastic about this book, more enthused than I've been for a Shadowrun book in a long time. Yes, I'm biased; I'm writing for it. Even if I weren't, though, this book would light me up.

Luckily, as GMs and book-owners we have a magic wand that can undo all the damage that Catalyst has done. It is called a black sharpie. If you don't want Lofwyr to have stats, take that magic wand and strike across those blasphemous statistics. By the god-like power of your hand and the Sharpie corporation combined... he is once again invincible.

Seriously, if you dont like something don't use it. Maybe someone wants to run a campaign where their runners have to fight Lofwyr and Harlequin in a steel cage, Catalyst is giving them some stats, it isn't like this is a video game and you're locked into it.

On the one hand, we find out about all these folks we've wanted to know more about for a long time!

On the other hand, yes, if you stat them, they will try to kill them. S-K Ketchup, "It goes great with crunchy things!"

On the other-other hand, maybe we'd be better off not knowing. Remember what happened when we found more things about Richard Villiers...

On the other-other-other hand, this *IS* the JackPoint, how accurate the information is can be hotly debated. Misinformation is a key to a lot of things after all, and even high-end Shadowrunners like the Shadowtalkers can be mislead, misinformed, and just plain unable to see past their own prejudices. (If you don't believe me, ask Clockwork to hug a Technomancer. ... Or any of them to get a Corporate Job. Slamm-0! would be a good suggestion, now that he has a kid to take care of.).

On the other-other-other hand... ... ... Damn, ran out of hands.

Ok, cool. The advertisement doesn't tell that, though.

Isn't that in the same lines as: "I'm from the Government, I'm here to help"?

Fluff is IC, most often it could be false to a degree. Stats are OOC, they're always correct as supplied.
You can't just say "those stats for assault rifles look suspiciously similar, FastJack must have goofd up damn hackers know nothing of our sammie killy things" etc.

..yeah. See, that's my one problem. THe unkillable is going to be a bit underwhelming - and no longer unkillable. Rhonabwy has 25 magic. Frosty, potentially, over about 40 years of activity (with a good tutor) has.. 16, being roughly an eighth grade initiate.

I'd say that although stats are OOC and should be correct as supplied, I hope that the writers or developers would not include disclaimer-type statements like "GMs should alter these stats to suit their campaign" because that would IMO detract from putting those stats in the book in the first place - for something like this, it is all or nothing.

For my part, I would truly like to see how powerful a plot device would be when statted up. Ultimate NPCs being statless, I accept as a necessary evil. But given this book are about Street Legends, I'd love to see such Ultimate NPCs statted up, if only to see what are the capabilities a being thousands of years old can achieve.

I am glad that the writers and devs finally throwdown and put stats to paper for the characters that so far remain nebulous quantities. We know that Fastjack and Smiling Bandit are top class hackers, perhaps now we will know how much better Fastjack really is, even if it is simply a single hair's difference in dice pools. Maybe we will know that Lowfyr could pwn Harlequin, but on a good day, Harley could make Lowfyr wish he never crawled out of his shell.

Later today when I get off work, I will haul my bone tired ass to the FLGS and place an pre-order for a dead tree version of this book. The only reason why I haven't done so is because for the last few days when I got off work, the store had closed. This is how much I anticipate this book. I haven't felt so excited since The George announced the Star Wars prequels. Do not fail us, Obi-wan Kenobis.

A hair's difference ahead of what? However you stat him out, he's either not going to make a lot of sense or he's going to be eaten alive by that monstrosity being built in "Hacker Rules, How completely do you implement them?". You can build him to defend against characters built with encephalons and PuSHeD, but what are you going to do about the power creep that comes in future sourcebooks? How will he look when some sourcebook makes technomancers even more powerful?

The dice pool thrown by starting characters grows with every sourcebook. If you want your legends to stay legends, you're going to need to take a pen to their stats after a while.

Still haven't figured out the Multiquoting Mr.Goodman? O.o

Well, I was more thinking about how to scale their power in relation to the PCs than in plot points, but it's good that this is apparently done. Because that's something that Prime Runners pretty much failed in.


That's a mere 250 generations. Not a whole lot of time in evolutionary terms, especially considering there never was any seriously dire evolutionary pressure on our species. Besides, homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis were, probably, genetically compatible beyond the production of mules, so the genetical differences between the two hominid species are pretty thin to begin with.

. They just can't die from an overdose. Apparently. Of course, this is one of the places where fluff and crunch collide, head-on, each moving at 150 mph.


The technology, obviously, because he already knows everything that's 'changing' about magic (and a hell of a lot more). And it changes monthly, not daily.


Seems you are not aware that Dunkelzahn killed himself to become a superspirit and basically save the world, right? He wrote the will and built a couple artifacts because he knew where he was heading. It's not like some mortal had a lucky hit on him or anything.

Agreed. Hessler, for instance, mainly enjoys sipping tea and watching Cricket games. Well, that and playing Merlin to the Pendragon. Most IE actually are about survival first, personal comforts/interests second, and influencing the world a very distant third. The ones who want to play sayajin mostly are the nutcases like Harlekin, Aina or Alachia. The only halfway sane high-profile IE seems to be Surehand.


No, he just channels the Emprah 2.0 occasionally.


Dead Great Dragons? Wow.


Okay. Am curious for what this will be. Asking because it's not mentioned in the upcoming products on the CGL page; but then again, so is Unfriendly Skies.


Sutherland, Tri-D, and ... DeVries? No, DeVries was in Threats, wasn't he?


No, but it might be like a Sims Expansion Package that has tons of totally useless crap and will probably screw with your game big time but that you have to buy because otherwise your DLC Aztec-style sacrifical tables and cubboards will not work properly. Lots of baggage for something little you nonetheless want.

This whole thread is 8 pages too long. Let it die, people.

Does that need much discussion? CGL has decided that writing a story is too much work, so they just take a bunch of random bits and pieces and call it a book. Half of the fun of campaign books is that they provide an actual plot which is enjoyable to read even if you don't run the module.

I'm also curious to how they want to present this release in-universe...hopefully not again as a collection of corp intel, because that just made no bloody sense at all.


PS:

OK, I though this was only introduced after Leonardo got retconned in Technobabel.

Devries was prime runners, but i have to concede I cna't remember many actual names from Prime Runners, some concepts yes but I'm a little short on actual names.

Haven't tried much, and those attempts I've made have shown that it doesn't like me. When I have some more time, I'll deal with it a little more; in the meantime, I'll just keep on keeping on.

In SR2 spells were bought at a certain force and you couldn't cast higher; under those rules his spells were in that force range.

What, and let the Shedim get it? NEVER!

I haven't, as well. How do you do it?

Minding that it's 2 pages long, the optimal length for it would be -6 pages, in your opinion?

Also, suddenly I like the iron cage idea...