I know this is a doozy topic and I apologize if this has been discussed ad naseum but as this game, and it's storyline, is over 20 years ago it has shown some age. Certainly the most prominent being the Matrix and it's evolution (going from Neuromancer-based to the mobile/AR based network which seems as a natural extention of our own internet) but there are certainly some aspects that I'm sure people throw out based on their "homebrews." For example I keep the NAN nations (I know some here despise them) but I dumped the CAS as its inclusion is rather baffling. I've also significantly reduced the presence of the Japanacorps, which is also a side effect of having started up in the 1990s.

Still, my question is if, you could start from the beginning and rewrite Shadowrun's timeline from the start, what would you include or not? Or, better yet, what would you deem "essential?" HEre are mine:

VITAS
Great Ghost Dance
At least one Matrix crash
Corporate Court/ZOG
Rise of Aztechnology
Balkanization of the world
The rise and fall of the Demigod AIs
The Tirs
Goblinization/Awakening
Amazonia/Yucatan
Novatech/NeoNet/Fuchi drama

Maybe some others as they come at me but I'm interested in hearing what you guys have to say.

This was discussed a lot of times before and it always comes down to personal tastes. Some people think some things are completely silly and drop it and others just don't bother.

I for one can live with most of the "ancient history" of Shadowrun (the stuff that happened before 2050) but some of the more recent events really leave me puzzled (War!, I'm looking at you).

I'd include Big D's whole thing (with or without the Dragonheart trilogy, I don't give a damn) as his will is freaking awesome.

I'd erase Burnout from the timeline.

Oh, no doubt. Dunkelzahn might not have been the first dragon to wake up but surely he was the one who influenced the metahuman society the most.
And yes, his Will is made of pure win.

Whenever I get too frustrated I remember that it's a history book and much like Paul Revere's ride and people thinking the world was flat when Columbus left on his voyage, it's probably mostly bunk anyway.

To me, the history of Shadowrun isn't what actually happened, it's what people THINK happened.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." - Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

----------

(For an explanation of the above, try "Lies my Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen or "Assume the Position With Mr. Wuhl" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJNVgCHLR-k as a starting place.)

Which is why, I personally, don't mind the Dragonheart trilogy. If it is what really happened, only about four people* (three of whom are dead) know that it's the truth and thus not canon.
If it's fiction in its entirety, then it's not canon.

Regardless of which view you pick, none of the game's NPCs will ever make reference to it.

*In-canon people, not us the readers.

I'd get rid of the dumb clusterfuck that was used to make the transition from sR3 to SR4 and replace it with something that fits the setting and has more consequences . .
All Out World Wide Corp War.

What I'd drop:

Japancorp focus
Dragons
IEs
Horrors
goblinization fluff (change it to something else)
balkanization and stupid meta-countries

What I'd keep:
corps
shadows
running
gunning

What I'd add:
globalization
Nestlé the most evil megacorp in the world!!!

How about calling that Cyberpunk 2020?


Then you might want a lawyer's opinion before sending anything to print... It was already changed to Nestla for an INS scenario involving a mission in Africa and how corporations make mothers with no access to clean water dependent on milk powder.

I agree with these up to a limit. I'd keep the fantasy stuff since I like it (to an extent) and it's basically SR's unique selling proposition.

I rather like the japanacorps' 80's flavor, but I wouldn't make them as dominant.
Keep dragons but make them less godlike and not involved in everything.
I don't care for the Earthdawn crossover, so I'd keep IEs as more of an urban legend and dial down the conspiracy slant.
Same for the horrors, although I'd keep them as mysterious malevolent spirits without the large-scale invasion threat.

Other things I'd do:
#1 Dial down extraterritoriality. Instead I'd like a more varied approach to it with designated extraterritorial business zones (like SoNA says for Quebec), preferential treatment treaties between individual states and corps and so on...
#2 Have the megacorps focus more on specific industrial sectors instead of being all-round conglomerates.
Also: Make the AAAs less dominant. More prominent non-American/Japanese corps. Tying in with the dragon downscaling: Make SK less dominant in the Eurozone.
#3 Tying in with #1: Have a select few corps actually owned by their home countries, for ex a Russian oil/gas giant or a French defence conglomerate. Basically corp/government entanglement like in the Aztech/Aztlan case, only the other way round.
#4 Tone down balkanization. Keep a somewhat functional European Union* throughout the timeline. Probably omit CAS secession.

*I rather like CP2020's take on the EEC as an outwardly nice place.

Core elements I think I'd keep in any case:

The Awakening
First Matrix crash
Aztechnology
The Richard Villiers/Fuchi/Novatech/NeoNet storyline (simply because Villiers is IMHO the most magnificent bastard in the 6th World)
Insect spirit menace

Things I'm not too keen on:
Metavariants. I'd probably keep most of them, but drop the more outrageous ones. Especially those with animal features, like hooved satyrs and those monkey-dwarves.
The Earthdawn crossover

Maybe the Haruman, but Satyrs have long been entwined in Roman Mythology, and if you got rid of them, why not get rid of Minotaurs, too, since they are extremely localized?

Or oni (limited to Japan) or Yeti (limited to mountainous regious, particularly ones that are permfrozen) or the ones with shiva arms (that I forget the name of, limited to India)?

All of the metavarients are limited to a very specific location, even satyrs.

Honestly, I don't know for sure. Perhaps because I can rationalize minotaurs as trolls with facial features that remind people of bulls instead of an actual bull's head, since they are already the metatype deviating most from the standard human shape.

I guess I also do not need every mythological being there is to come to live in my SR setting. I guess one could interpret pre-awakening legends actually being memories of the previous magical age, but some of the legends would have been distorted over time so that not every real-world legend would get a 6th World counterpart.

Yes, but most have a wider range then one small Island in the middle of the Mediteranean

I'm not quite sure about that. Doesn't Runner's Companion state that metavariants can emerge anywhere where there's a population from the original area, like onis among Japanese-Americans or minotaurs among Greek-Americans?

This is true. ish. Some of the legendary beings haven't existed in legend for that long, and still get stats. Vampires (as far as I know from someone else's mention somewhere. Sorry, no quote) didn't exist in the previous age, and there was mention, on the Ancient Files, I think, of a Nosferatu from the late 1800's.

Technically, it was "The Minotaur", was only one dude, not a race anyway. The King of Crete was called Minos, so the word Minotaur literally means "Bull of Minos". The Minotaur was the love-child of the King and a beautiful white bull that Posiden gave to him. Really bizarre.

Actually, it was the lovechild of the king's wife, who had an apparition build to enable the bull to mount her.

Keep everything up to 2061, rewrite SURGE to be less sex kittehs and more like Wild Cards, and kill Ghostwalker in a follow-up book, keeping it ambiguous if the horrors-tainted dragon really was Dunkelzahn or not. Keep the Shutdown, Winternight and the works. Keep the WMI, downwrite the second crash to less of an apocalyptic event, leave out Horizon and make and ditch everything written in the metaplot since Emergence. Instead of the Rinelles overthrow, have them fail and maintain the Tir as a slowly decaying, increasingly paranoid and walled-instate, for a future book (maybe have them raise their own veil, more along the line of Tibet's, with only very select channels for entry and exit; sucha claustrophobic setting offers a lot of possibilities that another McCorp state simply does not). Also, have war break out within the CAS, after the President being exposed as an Aztech puppet, and have Aztlan invade the CAS (and win). Have Texas break away from the union and become a desperate battleground as it drags Ares into the war (and the focus of a book about Texas and the war there). Keep the Tempo story, maybe, but have Amazonia attack Aztlan because it feels Atztlan is sufficiently weakened by it's war with the CAS. Then have Aztlan try and gather the artifacts, and the Artifacts story be about preventing that from happening (ending with Ancient's High Magic book idea instead of Dragonballs).

And publish SoLA. And change the German setting entirely to something along the lines of CP2020's take, putting more emphasis on the Fourth Reich vibes Tom Dowd initially had in mind, with Germany dominating an otherwise broken continental Europe, Lofwyr running Germany, and the Euro Reconstruction running through the 50s, ending in the formation of an EEC-ish federation in the early 60s.

Generally change some small things in the timeline, refer to the Native uprising and the US' war on it as War on Terror, stuff like that. Sytyle-wise, though, get more in line with Deus Ex 3 than Ghost in the shell. Because Post-Cyberpunk is so 2000s. And the hell keep out all the nerdy oh-so-witty 2000s internet culture terms.

I'm pretty sure a ghost* didn't built it, I'm pretty sure an apparatus was built.

*apparition = appearing to be seen, i.e. a ghostly figure.

Nobody has yet mentionned China, which SR has so far written off through balkanization (save the late addition of Wuxing). India is also mostly absent. Maybe making those the new future superpowers will also look dated in ten years. So I'd rather ut an emphasis on how megacorporations are global in nature and how they meddle different cultures (like, having a Japanese on Aztechnology board, or a Brit on Wuxing).

In Shadows of Europe, the French state owned 10% of defense conglomerate Esprit Industries (and 15% of Aérospatiale, itself another shareholder of Esprit) because we felt even in a cyberpunk universe, state meddling in corporate affairs was a requirement for typical French flavor. We also kept the percentage low enough for the people who would think governments are a thing of the past. That was before Esprit became a subsidiary of Aztechnology in Corporate Guide.

It will. Both countries are heading headlong into dire situations demographically and will not have the wealth to maybe weather that soemwhat, like Europe has. Which is why I would just keep Japan as the coming superpower. at least that has a certain retro cool, instead of just following the day's trend (which will look terribly dated in a few years). But it should be much better explained and examined.

In SR, VITAS broke India, and Lung broke China.


Yeah, that should really be retconned (as should most that Hardy inserted into the setting). But treatment of France in SR has generally been rather ignorant and from an Anglo-biased point of view.

Yes, the various Eurocorps in SoE were definitely a step in the right direction. Although I haven't really kept up with the European part of the SR setting. Mostly due to my aversion to FanPro Germany's AGS material, which seemed as if they wanted to cram three times the weird stuff the North American setting has into a country 1/70th the size of North America.

That brings me to another thing I'd throw out: Aristocrat rule in France. I've got nothing against nobles holding positions of power, but I'd rather have them as a traditionalist subset of a broader elite than the ruling class. A noble title might open doors, but you'd better have a grande école degree to climb the stairs. And of course there'd have to be squabbles between Orléanists, Legitimists and Bonapartists among the nobles.

Hmm . . dare i say one could do two strikes with one dragon?
Have Ghostwalker completely flip out and completely destroy denver, then have dunkelzahn sacrifice ghostwalker to power the dragon heart?

Two Dragons, One (REALLY BIG!) Cup?

IRL, Japan is way ahead in robotics, and also still has a monopoly on some refinning technique used in compact electric batteries. What they missed what the Internet revolution.
In Shadowrun, it worth noting how Renraku Holdings bought the East European corporation Keruba International and its then-unused data storage technology patents in 2029, and Fuchi Industrial Electronics cut a deal with Richard Villiers to get the Portal cyberdeck technology in 2034 IIRC. Basically, the 2029 Crash puts an end to the open Internet in US hands, created in Silicon Valley (I know internet technology were created elsewhere, it's just an image), and a few years later comes the Matrix designed in Chiba.

I'd say SR background actually provides a few keys to explain Japan position, but most authors and gamemasters simply don't know or don't care. One of the few good things to get out of Black Madonna (maybe the only thing, now I think about it) is at the beginning, in Renraku arcology in Chiba, and just for one thing : even in 2057, the head of Renraku Computer Systems computer security and his best engineer both have East European sounding names. And yet, quite a few GM would still have every Renraku employees in Seattle with Japanese names.

Save for a small number of mentions in Shadowrun 1st and 2nd core, London SB and Germany SB, nearly all the French background was written by French authors. With my own French bias, I rather see a Anglo bias on how France fails to appear in Cyberpirated chapter on the Ivory Coast

How about the Anglo bias against Quebec.

...

Not saying it isn't accurate, just wondering if we got some Quebecois writers?

*Groan*

For the record, the aristocrats rules in France originally came from a single sentence in London SB. Since it's been carried out in the French-only France sourcebook and, after much discussion among French freelancers, in Shadows of Europe, the French community has been divided, between those who hate the idea and those who merely dislike and cope with it. In SoE, we started downplaying it and added one big conspiracy to help explaining how it came to happen, involving no less than the French chapter of the Black Lodge and divination powers SR rules and setting otherwise make impossible.

Anyway, the reboot already happened on French authors' behalf, with the French-only campaign Mauvais Présage [Bad Omen] in SOX ending with public revelations on how the nobility overthrew the Fifth Republic and took over the country. Those events are also mentionned in the Sixth World Almanac.

But still, Lone Star taking over the Gendarmerie... Just for the opportunity of having a Texas Ranger and a Québecois "Mountie" working together, with a Cajun police officer acting as a translator. That would make a great trid show.

i'll admit, i should have to have seen that one coming from him, the way i set it up . .

Indeed.
That said, there's probably art of it somewhere already.

*Headdesk* And an Acadian Pimp as an informant.The shortest distance between two puns is a straightline.

The descriptions in those books certainly are biased, especially London and the core books (*cough* nobility in France *cough*).

And I was more thinking of the mention of "France being forced to privatise to make it's economy more profitable" - one of these American myths, that people who do a thing are less cost effective than people who do a thing and charge money for it, which doesn't even work for them, let alone anyplace else.


That's because usually, people in Africa are less upset if invaded by France, because they're used to it by now, so it doesn't generate much in terms of media outrage. And people pretty much fail to notice. I read, btw, a while ago, that France had ordered a village in Somalia to be bombed in retailiation for some pirate attack, is that true? Because I only read about it once and then never again.


Yeah, much like the aristocrat resurgence in East Germany (of all places), this was a less than wise move, esopecially in a country which is so strongly socialist.


Ah, that's still on my to-translate-and-read list. Where do the French authors intend to take the setting then?

Crud...

Well...

One more thing I would drop: Essence. Essence was crap from the get-go. It's really like doping in sports: By now it would be best to just allow EVERYTHING (at least everything that doesn't change your sex). So, basically, let people get all the metal they want, the balancing factor is called money.

I would tend to agree you have to make sure it keeps messing with magic, but... really only magic.

And then what I would add if this were just a small retcon, just to correct balance issues of the current version:

Make EVERYONE awaken. What's wrong with that? There are video games where basically everyone can do magic. SR could also have that. Give everyone a magical quality for free, from the tier 1 runner to the dumpster diver bum. That would correct so many problems....

For the cyber side you could use similar rules to cyber limbs. Make all cyber have a capacity rating and cyber limbs add to your bodies capacity along with allowing some cyber that only fits in them. Mundanes could have more capacity then Awakened and for every point (or two) of capacity an Awakened uses it causes a negative modifier to all magical stuff they do.

How about "Forced to privatise because states are broke after giving away all their money to the banks"? Any resemblance to actual persons...

A much better way to put it, but the book (Almanach) said differently, IIRC.

Never heard about it (and I'm working for the ministry of defense). It maybe referred to operation: Thalatine. In april 2008, Somali pirates hijacked the Ponant, a luxury yacht belonging to French shipping company CMA-CGM. French special forces delivered the $2 millions ransom the company agreed to pay. In the hour following the hostages release, four helicopters taking off from Djibouti base tried to intercept the pirates on the ground, as they were leaving the port. But there wasn't any bombing, as they stopped one car out of town with a .50 sniper riffle. However, the pirates had split, and the operation only allowed to capture six of them and retrieve $100,000 (if it was a movie or an SR adventure, I would have the actual amount being much higher, with the SF stealing a part and/or CMA-CGM agreeing some money was to disappear to become a black ops slush fund).

Another McCorp state? Really, I don't know where it will go next, but I can't deny that's how it looked so far. In Mauvais Présage, French air force suppports the PC action by bombing Ares and Ruhrmetall facilities and units in the SOX area to delay reinforcement, and the French government gets slapped because Lofwyr wants it that way. Then, in Enclaves Corporatistes (the french version of Corporate Enclaves), there's a part on Lille, in northern France, and how the government handed control of the area to the corporations as a part of an economic package that axed French corporate scene specificities.

What, me, hijacking the thread?

And TMs are the new chrome kings?

Yeh, well, Resonance does seem like another kind of magic. Of course it would have to affect that, too. However, if you go ahead and fix some of the number shenanigans TMs can pull, then I don't really see them as that much more powerful than a mundane hacker, which means that one would have look closely into how they are affected.

Look at it this way: In SR3 you need a hugely expensive cyberdeck to keep up with an otaku. And now all you need is an R6 commlink and a pile of pirated software. TMs can do the numbers things with threading, but other than that, I don't think they are on par with magic at all. However, it may be that I am just not experienced enough.

Aristocrat rule struck me as bizarre... Sure, some of those families will be wealthy, and you could certainly have an "Old Money Class" of people secretly hoarding all the power in Europe. It's probably that way right now, if you look beneath the surface.

But this Old Money class of people doesn't really have anything to do with aristocracy per se. There's a lot of people in there who aren't nobility. Aristocracy as a sociopolitical model lost credibility during the French Revolt.

I would ditch the NAN, or at least consolidate them into one, much smaller country. Just, numerically speaking, even with several justifications (camps saving them from VITAS etc) there's not even enough Native Americans to fill a few large cities, let alone the majority of the United States. However, oddly, since they're in the book I keep them in my games. Honestly, logic and numbers can go to hell, where fun is concerned, and I do like the flavor/concept of the NAN.

I've grown to love the NAN.

Once I decided that they didn't judge who was an Indian by their DNA but rather by some Shaman saying who had the "Soul of an Indian", it became a riot. It not only left the door for piles of Indians of all races, but it actually allowed some native Indians to get kicked out of the NAN. It opened up so many possibilities to mess with people.

"You have the soul of a Sioux warrior"
"WHAT? I. am. a. full. blooded. Navaho. What part of this don't you understand?"
"It is not your blood, but your soul that matters. You are a Sioux in spirit."
"Get this through your head Shaman boy. My mother is a Navaho. My father is a Navaho. I've been raised as a Navaho. I am a Navaho. There is nothing about me that isn't 100% friggin Navaho."
"Except your soul. Accept you who are, my Sioux brother."

I love the NAN now.

Just like elsewhere, there are several networks inside the French ruling elite, first and foremost the grandes écoles they studied in and the Freemason lodges. The old aristocracy is certainly not the most powerful network, but it still exists. They're no longer the richest aroud, but they still get the education and the contacts. There are still some social events where money is not enough to get you an invitation. And so you still have people at the top like Dominique de Villepin (former prime minister), Gilles de Robien (former minister), Josselin de Rohan (majority leader in the senate), Jacques de Chateauvieux (head of Bourbon shipping company), Henri de Castries (head of AXA insurrances), Nicolas de Tavernost (head of M6 TV channel)... If they were all part of a conspiracy, I think they could take over the country.

The France sourcebook really went far, with duchies reinstated and political power returned to family lines. Shadows of Europe, and current canon, rather was about how the "conspiracy" discredited those other power networks first, and then had a handful of aristocratic figures looking like heroes, the offsprings of true French blood raised with tradition and honor *play national anthem in the background*, something career politicians and foreign corporate bosses will never understand... yeah, something like that. Now that plot is dead and gone, I ought to post online all that I wrote about it.

What I never decided is what could be the real reason that united the nobility toward this goal in the first place.

I think I would replace the NAN with a broader alliance of native tribes, Mormons and anti-government militias (the Mormons already were NAN allies in current SR canon, but I'd have this being more proeminent), with a lot of local popular support because of federal agencies and armed forces over-reaction, and thus little to none anglos population movement after the Denver Treaty.

Joshua "The Burned Man" Graham?

There is a nice exhibition about the links between blacks and indians at the NMAI:
http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/indivisible/

Even nowadays, there are people who belong to a tribe without a drop of native blood.

My family knows one, he was adopted by a couple living on a reserve. Paler than I am, blond hair, blue eyes, full First Nations status.

EDIT: Another friend of mine is still trying to get his Metis status, and is in the same general physical description, although his hair has darkened a bit.