I'm trying! Just ask Peter and Jason, I pestered 'em about being able to write one all weekend.

A lot of Kellen Colt's issues is that she was an "Everyman" Shadowrunner, able to do a little bit of everything, and came off as too "Mary Sue"ish in my mind because of that. She was a Mage that learned Decking/Hacking that learned Espionage that learned... You get the idea.

The other character that went this route was Twist (Sam Verner, former Wageslave), who was all those things as well, and sucked at all of them (Except for being a Shaman, but he burned out, and it was only in the last book of his trilogy that he was any good really), and he ended up be remembered only as a Shadowrunner with weird morals (He only killed one person. As long as you don't consider HMHVV-Infected individuals people, and it was a clear case of self-defense as well.). A lot of folks have issues with him as well, but he's too much of a butt monkey to go the other route.

Both trilogies appear to have been designed to profile and demonstrate the "Iconic" characters of Shadowrun at the time.

I actually like Sam Verner because he was a little bit of everything and kind of sucked at all of it. He was like a really badly written character on paper.

Kind of sucked? He did suck at everything. Hell the guy died, what, three times?

...

He got better.

Huh. Thought that didn`t happen in SR?

That was a Monthy Python Reference. A Felony worth flogging him for on most gaming tables. Not that he'd get to play, anyway, seeing how he has to GM time and time again ^^

Even in real life, there's death and there's death. And then there's reported as dead.

Also, part of being a shaman is having had to die. I had Pup the Dog Shaman shot in the forehead and dropped out of a helicopter. Twist suffered a similar fate, without the face-shooty or helicopter bit.That too, but with my groups it's considered par for the course rather than a torturous situation.

Yes, well, Puns are usually more of an offense, but monthy python is a close second ^^

p. 66 of Archology Shutdown.

His icon is the guy on the right. Incidentally, Puck's description of his icon(silver hair and eyes) was the only thing that existed for a long while, and so it became generally accepted that it was how he looked like in real life, too.

Yeah, and it's not like people on the internet Matrix never lied about their looks...

You mean that hot 5'2" Chick with the big hooters?

...

Aw man.

Yep... That would be the one...

What's odd is that that Puck, unlike every other Matrix user, has an icon that looks almost exactly like his real life form.
Fastjack can look like a giant jackhammer and Pax has her weird winged thing, yet Puck looks like a skinny kid with silver hair and eyes and, according to Legends and Corporate Guide, is a skinny kid with silver hair and eyes.

On the Matrix, everyone should lie about their looks a little, or at least their icon should be a metaphorical interpretation of their self interpretation, yet Puck is exactly as he seems; which is totally antithetical to his character.

If his icon was a silver hair waif and his real life body was a chubby, pale Eastender, that would be one thing; yet something got lost in the translation in one of the modern Sixth World's most notorious characters.

FastJack insinuated in "Into The Shadows" that one icon he uses with friends might be how he looks.

Likely it's his personal view of himself that was created during his formative years, as it's too young (He didn't look 50.). Alternatively, it could be a fake-out to make people think that's how he looks/looked and appears/appeared quite differently. He's tricky that way.

I think that he might be himself because he views The Matrix as 'more real' than reality. He is himself, in his natural environment.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

True, but that doesn't negate the thesis that is Fastjack. He's learned and wizened enough to be able to be himself, even if just a little bit.

The only interpretation of Puck is exactly as he seems, which seems against the thesis of one trying to escape his past. If anything, his icon should have changed dramatically as he switched from otaku to technomancer.

The probable reason for this is that the writer of this blurb didn't want to delve too deep into a tertiary character. My beef is that I see Puck as a Falstaff rather than a Soldier #2.

No pic on 66. One on 69 with four icons in it, is that the one?

Fastjack used to look like a blurry silhouette back in ... Matrix II, I believe?
Also, technos looking like themselves in VR seems to be a popular idea, at least half the techno chars I've met subscribed to it.

FastJack has many avatars. That's the one he uses the most.

Oh, btw, while we're on old matrix books and equally old matrix cowboys - where the hell is Smiling Bandit? I miss the guy.

He's around, the occasional guest on the JackPoint. Don't know why he isn't a regular, but likely due to his lifestyle and personal interests making it ineffective to be a partner in the system.

Yeah, he was in Street Legends, too, I believe - in Haze's bio.
Then again, he's one of the most old-school hackers, plus a brilliant scientific mind. Unless he left running behind (and his comment, if I recall correctly, away from the books right now, suggests otherwise), there's just no reason for him to to contribute more. Or there's something going on with him, like being involved with the artefacts hunt (which would make sense, I'd say).

IIRC, Otaku often had idealized versions of themselves as their icon, same as magicians on the astral.

Personal self-view can be a weird, weird thing.

That it can. Some people don't have a single ideolized veiw, or have one that remains constant, even if their reality changes around them.

Not meaning to attack you, but if you truly want to minimize Essence impact of implants, check out Augmentation.


Is it one of these fics that has a link? Because I'd appreciate that link if it is found online.


Depends entirely on the murder. If you smacked down a cop, or someone 'equal', you're a tough guy. If you murdered a child, you're the punching bowl of the pedos (otherwise the lowest of the low), at least as I understand it.

My point is, the Jackpointers seem strangely okay with Puck (the 207s equivalent to Dr Mengele) around, and with Kane (who deals in sex slaves, which is a business that requires a lot of rape by itself), and those raise hardly an eyebrow. But Haze's condemnation by Pistons seemed to be mostly nodded off. That felt odd in comparison. I personally wouldn't mind if they'd hate Haze for what he did and does, but for their tolerance for people who did far worse things, even by very tolerant standards.

And ruining peoples' lives is a shadowrunner's daily business. Yeah, that poor woman committed suicide. In attitude, Riser did the exact same thing to some actress or something, and was congratulated. Okay, Attitude being the mess it is, it's not the best source to draw on, but some coherence would be nice there. And I am writing this in general, not directed at you, because as a freelancer that is not your job and I am aware of that (though, Jason? It's yours).


Not in the least. Info on Frosty is mainly found in the Harlequin adventures. She is a whole different kind of person than Kellan (whose novels aren't smong my favourites, though).


Count me one of them.

Firstly, he is an over the top sue. He has an icon that does things an Icon cannot do because he is such a special snowflake, he meets every important person in SR1/2 and is on rather good footing with them (seriously, Lofwyr praised him), and he killed two people: Wyllis HydeWhyte the Toxyc Shyman and some poor guard at Renraku who was just doing his job. Thast guilt weighed heavily on his good christian soul and made him a pacifist (and angst page upon page). Oh yes, and he is the only person (including dragons) to ever single-handedly have fought a Passion and won. Ah, did I mention that while doing this he runs a Great Ghost Dance because he is so fucking special he learns that too?

Second, he does things that should, by the rules, the intention of the rules, and the fluff, have cost him his magic. See, Dog s, above all, aithful. If Dog just ditches a person because he finds a better squeeze, a person Dog professed to love and did love, the Totem gets angry and pulls his boni. Seriously, it's in the rules up to SR4. Misbehave and daddy gives you the pddle or takes your toys away. Sam does this not once, not twice, but thrice. And Dog gives him Uber Magic that can kill Passions instead.

Thirdly, his characterisation is hideusly incoherent. So he is a Good Christian WASP as that fascist Charette likes them, and at the same time worships heathen spirits. Oh, AND he doesn't even believe in magic! And while he is a pacifist, he totally does not oppose others do the killing (and maiming, and torture) for him, which goes agaisnt the entire idea of pacifism.

charette novels are good enough action pron for adolescents, but read as an adult, I can't help but wonder whether he wove all this antisemite and white supremacist crap in knowingly or unknowingly.

Here you go. The story is a day in the life of Rory circa about 2037, and a sample of my writing circa about 2001.

I was digging around for a POV character to write my Spy Games sections with, just as Jason put out a call for new Jackpointers, and thought of him. So Rory got dusted off, I fleshed out a rough background that brought him closer to the modern day (figuring a corporate, rather than national, spy would allow for more globe-spanning adventures), and got to work. He caught on with some of the freelancers and fans, so I thought of him again (instead of my gut reaction, which was to propose Green Lucifer) for Street Legends.

Is that a new layout at the other forums?

Hm, nice one. The self-aware terrorist (and the man between all fronts, shunned by elves and racist Inlaws alike). Is the blue eyes/green eyes thing mant to indicare he changes the eyes' color? Anyway, I like Thorn as a character. Wish he would get to write more of the upcoming equipment sections instead of the infamous duo that does it right now.

Yeah, Rory changes eye color pretty often (along with skin tone, hair color, etc). When younger, I liked to kind of picture him doing it by accident from time to time (to suit his mood).

And thanks for the compliment, but he's not really the big gear discussion type of guy. He's chimed in on a few of the recent gear pdfs as a shadowtalker, but for the most part he just doesn't care about it that much. Like I tried to show in Spy Games, in his old age he's gotten crotchety about fancy new toys. To him it's the spy that makes the gear, not the gear that makes the spy (and the same holds true for runners).

Thorn writing a gear book would quickly degenerate into "Blah blah blah ultra heavy pistol blah blah blah full auto capable blah blah eight billion round magazine blah blah blah. Big deal! Who needs all that? When I was 23, I killed seven men with a five-shot holdout. I shot five of them in the brain because I know how to fucking aim, threw the gun at the next one, and strangled the third. YOU DAMNED KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN."

Awesome Indeed...

Agreed. Nice to have an old guy to give direction to those wannabes other then Fast Jack anyway.

He's just a guy that (thanks to kind of being spoiled due to being an adept, and a lucky one at that) doesn't rely on the gadgets to get the job done. He likes guns and armor and fast cars and electronics all as much as the next guy, but to him they're all just tools. He can take 'em or leave 'em.

One thing I'd like to see is Demitech - old, worse tech. Because as is, Shadowrun caters to people playing Ryan Mercury right now. While that might make good business sense, I'd still like to see a decent writeup of older tech.

And yeah, you're right. I'm mostly all for Mika (with frequent bitching from Ma'Fan) and Hard Exit doing the meat of these sections. Or really, ANYONE but Frohicke's bastard son and Action/grrl/. Thorn ould write about McGyvering, older tech, or shadowtalk how this could be used creatively.


No, Thorn needs to write these sections. That reminds me of the good old Warentester who used to narrate the gear sections in 2E/early 3E German-only supplements.


Okay, that reverses my opinion even further. And, uhm, aren't they? Or shouldn't they be, to a professional Runner? All my characters prefer moderately modified weaposn that can be disposed witout any tears shed, same with most other gear (obviously you are more attached to your cybernetics or foci). Reminds me of Sam (DeNeiro's character from Ronin), btw.

Have you checked out many of the recent pdfs? Peter put together This Old Drone, Gun Heaven, and a few similar books specifically with older (but still useful) gear in mind.

And there was the one seado in Deadly Waves that was old tech.

Yup, but I'd like to see that for more general tech too, like matrix gear. I'd like to see a few more commlinks, maybe alternate names for existing models, and more program and cybersuites. Rules/guideliens/stat blocks for sub-par cyber and dated military equipment like battletac. That kind of stuff. TOD and Gun Haven was nice there (The kinks and problems of those releases aside), and some of DW's ships went that direction too, whcih is good. I'd also like to see this for the vehicles most used by charactrers, though - bikes, cars, vans. Ground vehicles. There are more statted cmbat helicopters by now than there are cars. That's just wrong.

so . . you want SOTA Rules back?

No, I want a way to import non-SOTA stuff from previous editions, be it by rules or conversion guidelines with example equipment. Anti-SOTA rules, if you will.

I have spent many, many hours reading Augmentation. If there were any Shadowrun "core" rulebook that I could not say that about, I earnestly hope that I would not have gotten this job. What options in particular are you thinking of dude? (If I were not fine with Lanier having replaced two-thirds of his essence with cyberbits, I would not have let him go into layout that way, but I never object to side conversations.)



<3

None of the other Whites did.
Come to think of it, I can't think of any old school otaku whose icon was identical, or even similar, to themselves. It came with the idea of using the Matrix to escape their terrible, Dickensian lives within their tribes and so created a new reality for themselves.

It just seems odd and, from a literary standpoint, antithetical to the character of Puck.
I have no problem with a technomancer having an icon identical to his real life identity, but if he does there should be a reason why that character strays from the norm. An explanation for such a deviation. It's a neat idea and could be a really cool character.

Puck is not that character.

Ok I might have missed this some where so I apologies in advance. In what book did Nadja Daviar come back in, and now Aina Dupree is dead too?? What, did I miss something in Spy Games, when did all this happen??? Oh no now I've gone cross-eyed. Really when did all this happen??

In the book that was supposed to come out before Street Legends apparently...

Old stuff is fine, but really, we have more than enough of it. Where are the new super-shiny toys the megas are supposed to be throwing our way, huh?!

Oh, like that stuff is hitting the streets any time soon.

Watch Desert Wars and drool over what you can't have.

But I totally can steal a prototype! Or get an early insider-only serial model!

Ooooh. Insider cereal.

Keep feeding them ideas, folks, we'll keep getting things like PDF-Only products that eventually come out in print.

A pdf-only release detailing SR cereal varieties?
I have nothing against it!

Would luv to see a SoTA sourcebook full of cool prototypes experimental tech and magic. Nifty toys to steal for cold cash or personal use.