QUOTE (sunnyside @ Jan 23 2012, 05:31 PM)
You should take that as a sign you need to go see and/or read it.
That seemed like a reasonable conclusion, so I gave it a shot. Saying too much will certainly get me birched, so I'll stick with saying it wasn't really to my tastes.
If I were going to show someone some media to teach them what cyberpunk was, I'd show them Blade Runner and The Matrix [it was
based on Shadowrun; it's the closest thing to a Shadowrun movie you're likely to get]. I'd warn them it wasn't going to be any good and then show them Johnny Mnemonic. If I were going to show someone what stylized professional freelance crime was like, I'd show them Firefly and Oceans 11 and Snatch and Heat and Ronin and whatever other heist/crime I could find. I'd warn them it wasn't going to be any good and then show them Leverage.
But those things aren't Shadowrun. You don't add those things up and get Shadowrun. The best way to experience Shadowrun, from what I've seen, is to pick up the main book and start reading [if you're a reader] or sit down at a table and start playing [if you're a doer]. Our group is made up almost entirely of non-roleplayers, so we've introduced dozens of people to Shadowrun and roleplaying, and our best experiences have been with immersion: just give them Shadowrun, and let them draw their own conclusions, have their own experiences. [A lesson we learn with great difficulty as parents, as well!]
Like, a lot of people like to reminisce at the table with new people. ["Oh, that's nothing! You should have seen this one time when..."] We try to suppress that, because then their perceptions of the game are seen through this lens of someone else's experiences. And I don't mean, like, it's some sort of draconian rule; it's a game, for crying out loud. It's just a goal we have: let them come to it with nothing but themselves. No other movies they've seen, no history of cyberpunk, no Queensr˙che listening assignments. [Although, seriously, can you legally
play Shadowrun without having listened to
Rage for Order?] Just the main book, if that. [I recommend the 2nd edition main book, but you should really ignore the crazy shit that comes out of my mouth; I've been thinking about a 1st edition game.]
You and I think it's hokey, because we've seen it a dozen times before, but you can do a worse job of introducing new players and non-roleplayers to Shadowrun than to just sit them down at a table and say, "You wake up. You know the alphabet, and how to count. You know what a human being is, and a car, and a toaster. Things beyond that are vague. It's cold where you are, and you can hear gunfire."
One of the best ways to learn the game, although it's time-consuming, is just to make characters. They'll ask so many questions during that process that the world will come out in dribs and drabs, and they'll have something to hold on to as they start playing. They'll understand the system better, and get an idea of the layout of the books. We didn't do this enough, and as a result, our players are, I think, a little scared of our books.
Another excellent introduction is pre-made characters, with archetypical personalities and capabilities, a bare-bones explanation of the setting and how it differs from 2012, and then just start playing. This is what we usually do nowadays, and it seems to work fine. I prefer one of the previous methods, if we have time, but as everyone's gotten older, that's gotten less practical. [During several periods in my life, I've been fortunate enough to play
daily. Not so much, anymore.]
QUOTE (sunnyside @ Jan 23 2012, 05:31 PM)
Yeah, maybe the end of that little history bit I wrote should be something like, "and then Shadowrun went beyond genre and flavor. You have a cyberlimb and a gun, have some fun and don't think about it ".
The tl;dr version of everything else I've gone on and on about: my recommendation would be that the
entirety of your history be something like, "Shadowrun is beyond genre or flavor. You have a cyberlimb and a gun, have some fun and don't think about it."