The first book was decent, the second book had promise....the rest should be purged with extreme prejudice.

Picked this up as soon as I saw it existed, and didn't regret it. As an aside - it does have a single spell in the crunch section -- one which I approve of. I'd have liked a little more actually. I'm looking forward to parageology as well, and that there's going to be an elven book definitely has my interest.

One thing I'd like to see however, is a supplement on the other Tir, and a 4E rendition of the Wheel. The little bit presented in 3E and 4E so far doesn't really explain much, and I'd really like to see greater detail provided. Not everyone has access to the 1E books.

And Montreal! FINALLY! Now all we need is Toronto and Vancouver! Seriously, Vancouver 2074...

Cool, glad you enjoyed it, Tashiro. I snuck that spell in there because it's one that always made sense for me where sneakier paramilitary groups are concerned (who wants to glow?), and I figured a Tir book was as good a place as any for me to wedge it into canon.

A Tir na nOg book is another thing I'd certainly like to get my paws on someday, but Tir Tairngire was a setting I really, really, wanted to write (partially for the reasons I mentioned earlier in this thread, just given how the TIr had been handled in the last several years, and especially given how close it is to Seattle). I certainly have some ideas I think are cool, where the Emerald Isle is concerned, but I'm just gonna have to see how the production schedule looks in the future, and if/when I think I can work in another product pitch.

Here's a fan supplement you called The Neo-Anarchists Guide To Everything Else. It was written for 1st edition, but is definitely worth checking out It has a wonderful Locations chapter that includes a great write-up on North Bay, Ontario (including great usage of the NORAD base located there).

I've used TT a number of times. I once had the PCs break into TT to raid a corporate building there to extract two 'pleasure girl' elves - and it was one of the harder runs the group did. What they didn't realize until after the extraction was the two elven girls had hired the PCs, and were paying out of their 'master's bank account - which one of the girls had drained. The next run for the PCs was protecting the twins from their former master.

My wife's current character is an expatriot who left her rich family to become a mechanic and miss fix-it in the slums of the city I'm using -- far, far from TT. I usually use the TT as a background for certain PC or NPCs, and the group tends to 'poo poo' the idea of there being an 'ancient elven culture / language / whatever' specifically because of the TT.

Recently, I introduced Dwarvish into my campaign as a language (which is currently, mistakingly, called 'Atlantian') But yeah, anything TT is good. If the Other Tir is done, I hope to see an updated design of the morph-seeking rifle. When I was young, I mistook what that meant (I thought it was simply 99% accurate) -- explaining it has target identification and won't fire on a non-target and such would help a lot to explaining the rifle's capabilities.

Well, it also had 2 more power level than other sniper rifles (16S, 18S with ExEx), making it arguably the best choice in rifles, unless you have access to the German Brennpunkt ADL, which features a sniper rifle that, with ExEx, does 18D, and is a semi-legal hunting rifle to boot (why no, officer, I'm just off to hunt, it's not like this is an assault cannon or something). But yeah, it should see an upgrade, now that technology has caught up with it.

Yeah, the Tir makes for great background fodder (so sayeth the background of, uh, more of my characters than not, really!), but I'm hoping Land of Promise and Elven Blood give GMs the chance to roll up their sleeves and throw folks into the setting for actual gameplay. EB will hopefully get some appetites whetted and give folks enough stats to fiddle with and adventures to tweak to their liking, but LoP is the one that updates the setting for "big deal" type of stuff -- catches us up to the in-game present day for politics, that sort of thing.

My biggest wish with these couple of products is to just drag the Tir out of being almost entirely a background blurb, and haul it up under the spotlight for folks to sling dice and have fun with. Or sling dice and feel terrified with. Or sling dice and get rich with. Or...well, whatever.

I think you are forgetting what you were working on in the first place. Having fun with... Oregon ? Really ?

Did not regret buying this at all. Don't know if it's been reported, but in the gear sections it says "SM30" for the "XM30" twice.

Also, more Grimmy please.

Cool, glad you're enjoying it, Marwynn. Sorry for any little typos -- I can't pin 'em all on editors, since I made the errors in the first place I'll take responsibility.

QUOTED FOR WISDOM

Ahem.

Wak, you've got me a little worried that you'll have a Grimmy tattoo by the time you can show up to a GenCon some year. I'm glad folks like the little guy, but I honestly have no idea how I could make him show up in many other sourcebooks even if I wanted to (and talked The Powers That Be into it). At most we might have Spelly the Spellbook, his Celtic cousin, in some "the other Tir" book.

Or Grimmy fanfic.

bibliophilia-fanfic . . you know you thought it!

Nah, if I spend money, it needs to have a good reason. The only tattoo I'll ever get is gonna be across my chest in great big letters. It'll read:

"Dear embalmer,
please try CPR
one more time."

First impressions:
Weird cover. 24 total pages including cover and Dumpshock stuff. Price seemed reasonable and I'm a sucker for Tir Tairngire material (I wrote their chapter in Shadows of North America).

I skipped the intro fiction. In a book this size I actually feel a bit insulted by the 4 pages this takes up. Maybe it's awe-inspiring, I'll find out later.

Holy shit /dev/grrl is a terrible viewpoint character when she is used as anything but a "Hey, recap some old material for new readers" device.

GREAT update to the Tir! Really ties together a lot of loose elements since Shadows of North America, nice use of old and new(ish) plot threads, and has a logical explanation for the current conditions without being lame as hell. It's a pity the book isn't longer, and that it doesn't discuss geography in any way (or Crater Lake).

Larry Zincan the Immortal Ork

Larry Zincan is still High Prince? He was made a Council of Princes member in 2036, so was at leasty in his 20s then. So let's assume he was a young pup posted to his position at 20. That makes him a minimum of 61 years old. He's already well beyond standard life expectancy (35-45 in SR20A) but at least this gets an explicit call-out and even helps sell the explanation given! Thumbs up on handling this very well.

Rex
Go Rex!

Ghosts
The text seemed to conflate the ghosts into a single pool, but only a small number were actually paladins of Surehand. In fact there appears to be some confusion within the text itself as to how things shook out for the Maraerth ke'Tolo.

Demographics

Well this was interesting (to me, at least). Tir Tairngire has suffered a rather massive hit since 2054 (original Tir Tairngire)! The demographics are positively grim.

Population:
2054 - 5.61M
2062 - 5M
2074 - 5M (well, lost another 9,000 people but I rounded)

Only 0.6M lost, right? Well that's bad. Really bad. Especially given the lifespan of elves this implies that fecundicity is in the shitter pretty hardcore.

Economy:
But their economy seems to be on the right track, albeit not yet at their pre-crisis levels (See below). Poverty levels are way down. Educational levels are up. Per capita income is up (not sure what inflation is like in Shadowrun ...)
Per Capita Income:
2054 - $55K
2062 - $25K (yeah, it was that bad)
2074 - $42K

Population:
Notice the emigration of the elf population. Where did they go?!?
2054 - 85% (4.77M elves)
2064 - 81% (4.05M elves)
2074 - 78% (3.9M elves)

Okay, CGL has pulled the last rabbit out of the hat I think to make me purchase one of their products. They made me buy Shadowrun 2050 by combining the easy-to-learn and streamlined 4A rules with my beloved 2050s era setting. They made me buy Clutch of Dragons because, well, dragons. Now they've pulled the Tir Tairngire card.

I'm not going to get a chance to look at this between work and prepping for my 2054-set 3rd Edition adventure, so I'm curious...as a Shadowrun canon-whore almost to the point of making a Nigel Findley altar in my closet, tell me something (especially those of you who have seen my opinion of Shadowrun 2050)...Exactly how drunk do I need to be while reading this book to not break any laws due to grognard nerd-rage? Difficulty: I was LIVID when I read the "conclusion" to the decade-plus-long plot thread involving Tir Tairngire and the Rinelle ke'Tesrae as a sentence long footnote in the How It Came to Pass chapter of SR4. Higher difficulty: The only reason I googled Rinelle keTesrae was to make sure I was spelling it right.

I don't know, I used her quite well in Safehouses, I think. At least, no one complained about that part of Safehouses.He could have Goblinized, which gives him a human lifespan.

Bull is dead in Ork years, after all, and he's posting often on JackPoint despite getting a bomb to the face.

If it helps any, the price point was already fixed before I decided to put some fiction together. Think of it as free instead of as eating up 4 precious pages of book, maybe you'll like it more.


Awesome, thanks (and not just because your work was one of my reference materials)! I would've made it longer if I could've, but my pitch was for a fairly compact e-book and -- even before I got a wild hair and threw in some intro fic -- it was getting longer than my initial proposal.


He's got one year left in office, and he strikes me as the sort who's...who's...stubbornly holding on, until his job is done, I guess? As High Prince he's certainly got access to the medicine (mundane and otherwise) to keep kickin', I'd think, and no matter what he's out of office in 2075 (term limits and all that). I just picture him as clinging to life until he's done working, and then is likely to kind of fade once he's out of office (like lots of other retirees).

QUOTE

Did'ja like the tie? I fought for the tie.

QUOTE

Yes, but the ones that weren't paladins of Surehand were then sent hunting him. In several books since the coup, it's been described that he's getting chased all over the globe and there's all this Ghost-on-Ghost violence (which I picture as very Bourne-esque, myself) that's thinning the ranks. So the ones that were loyal to Surehand went with him and have been trying to defend him or continue to carry out his wishes, and the ones that weren't -- or at least the best of the ones that weren't -- are doing the hunting.

Which, conveniently enough, means the Tir is...well...a little more playable. In addition to fitting in with the fluff as it's been presented to us since Surehand's disappearance, it waters down the over-the-top-Ghostiness of the old Tir, if GMs want it to. There's no hard figures of how many Ghosts have gone where, so now it's up to a given GM to have a bunch of uber-elite top-notch high-Initiate adept murdermachines floating around...or, if they don't want to, to go with the stats given for Tir Ghosts in the core SR4A book, instead (and by handwaving away most of the top-tier Ghosts, it kind of excuses those low-ish stats).

QUOTE

I mostly did that because so many books have been talking about the rivers of refugees pouring out of the Tir for year after year. Their population is on an upswing (I figure they dipped to their lowest several years ago, if it matters), but the way so much source material went on and on about all these elves fleeing, I wanted them to take a hit.

Which also, because those books specifically talk about elven refugees, helps to rock the boat back home with a spike in orkish population, for instance (and some of the violence that's accompanied that).

Anyways! Hopefully I've explained a few things, shared my thinking, etc, etc. I also hope folks aren't taking my replies as arguments or anything like that, I'm just...just...artificially inflating the word count of Land of Promise by explaining all the thoughts I had when writing it, I guess? Ah well. Hopefully it's helping stuff make sense, at least.

The main reason I was able to pitch this book was my own nerd-rage at how the Tir was handled for several years. So, well, the very reason it was written, from start to finish, was to try and remedy that very situation. To re-stock the Council of Princes, to update their politics (which had been ignored for years), to make the fluff match what new crunch we did have (like the not-terribly-scary Tir Ghost stats I already mentioned), and to drag the whole country, kicking and screaming, into 2074.

May I remind people that leonization exists? Age isn't something you really need to worry about for... quite some time. I'm sure a Tir prince can afford leonization. Seriously, this is transhumanism. I'm sure some people are going to have lifespans in the 300+ years, without being elves.

So, he's the Fidel Castro of the Sixth World?

If he hadn't, I would have been in there fighting, too. I'm a sucker for Elfland.

Who knows?

Maybe one day we'll get to hammer out a whole Tir sourcebook. Mmm, Tir sourcebook...

More likely a DTF of a bunch of PDFs of locations.

Land of Promise, Montreal 2074, The Toronto Barrens...

There are no Barrens in Toronto. The whole city is safe and clean and fun. Even the sewers smell good.

Heh, right. The sewers smell good because you're used to the smell of the rest of the city, and they smell great in comparison!

Should be a nice, feral city by 2074!

Bull is not quite dead in Ork Years. But he's pushing it.

However, yeah. There's some material from first edition that addressed that orks who were goblinized lived a human lifespan vs natural born orks who lived the shorter, accelerated lifespan. Never trust An Elf goes into this, with Kham meeting up with his grandfather Harry, who is mayor of the Ork Underground, and Harry laments the fact that his daughter (and Kham's mother) looks far older than he does.

This actually gets addressed officially for the first time in a project I'm working on, if I can find the time to finish it.

Bull

Hey, who said you can post? Back to work on that!!!

I actually think whoever write Corporate Guide chapter on Evo was already trying to address that issue.

In the Toronto Metroplex I've used in the past, the city is alive and thriving as an entertainment and commerce hub of the UCAS (as laid out by Shadows of North America and Sixth World Almanac, but criminally ignored by Attitude). There are, however, the Scarberian Barrens (because Scarborough is a wasteland in any reality). As well, there is a nasty rivalry, bordering on a Cold War, with the Hammerton Industrial Megaplex. (I wrote it up when Hamilton was still primarily a blue-collar town.) I swear, one of these I'll actually find the time to finish my write-up of Toronto and its environs.

That would be interesting... a guidebook for each of the races, which gives a quick rundown on the race, their physiology, and anything 'cultural' that shows up in different regions, to show how they might act and such.

It'll be kind of cool when the dwarven language shows up officially. I have it starting to creep in within my campaign thanks to a PC's gremlins flaw kicking in and having his commlink suddenly switch to dwarven. They call it 'atlantean' at the moment, but...

They went to Seattle to become PC.


Besides, with magic it was possible even in 12.000 BC. See Thera sourcebook.


Is it the underground sourcebook, plus a general book on orks and ork things? I hope it is.


Indeed, and how their deviant physilogy makes for unique cultural flavors. Elves, for instance, might surgically age themselves to impress other elves by claiming they are actually spikes and shook hands with Napolen, Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Also, I figure metahumans never, ever use the lights in their apartments if they have windows and city ambient light (elves and orks have eyes that see as well as cats in the dark, though (going by SR1) they will not see much color then; orks and trolls have infrared vision). This could also mean new unique metahuman art and signs, like infrared-emmitting paint used to convey seekrit messages among dwarf and troll enclaves/gangs.

Actually, that's a brilliant idea. The fact they have alternate vision, and how this impacts them and their societies, plus the metavariants and such. All of that would be awesome to look at with a critical eye.

The only problem with "race" sourcebooks in Shadowrun is that, unlike D&D, the various races have only been around for at most 63 years. That's hardly enough time to have a real culture uniting them, especially since they're spread out all over the world. The only exceptions are the three Elven nations solely because they had IEs at the helm to shape their culture into one resembling the more ancient one.

The only way it would work is if it were broken up by region/major national culture. This is what Japanese elves/dwarves/trolls/orks are like, this is what UCAS elves/dwarves/trolls/orks are like, this is what NAN elves/dwarves/trolls/orks are like, this is what Chinese etc. etc. I mean look at the elves alone. They're flat out drawn along the lines of the geographic culture. Tir Tairngire is what I'd expect from a nation run by elves from Tolkien or D&D transplanted to the modern world. Tir nA nOg is more of what I'd expect of the Sidhe, which is drawn directly from old Irish mythology.

One thing I would really like to see, though, is a CD released of their music. There's got to be enough of us Shadowrun fans out there with a smattering of musical talent to pull off a compilation. I'm getting tired of digging through my CD collection for Minor Threat, Anal Cunt, The Exploited, etc. to play when the orksploitation band is on stage, and I'm always torn with who I should pull out for Maria Mercurial (my current go-to band is Go Betty Go). Would elves be dominating the pop genre due to their innate charisma and otherworldly aura? Would dwarves tend toward prog rock or drum and base? Considering how popular goth-inspired industrial and synthrock is these days (bands like Birthday Massacre, HIM, etc.), would there be a 2070s market for goth music by actual undead? What sort of music would ghouls get into as a culture? I mean we're all just humans here in a relatively stable society (especially compared to the Sixth World) and we've got a friggin' a capella metal band out there and there are so many extremely geeky people doing gangsta rap about 80s Nintendo games that there's an entire genre of music called "nerdcore". What's the Shadowrun world going to have?

EDIT: Please note this is not a plea to bring back the Rocker archetype. I still stand by to this day that any Rocker in my game gets killed in the most horrible way I can come up with, and I have an annual Halloween horror movie marathon that runs 24/7 the entire month of October with no repeats just from my personal collection.

Well, Rumors have it there is a subterranean dorf kingdom under germany at least . .

My idea certainly isn't something like the race books from D&D. Far from it. I'd like to see something more akin to a sociological study of how metahumans and their new features that deviate far from the standard human body plan create new twists on existing cultures, create new problems, solve others, ect. As I wrote, elves aging their appearance, as opposed to everyone obsessing about youth - if everyone looks like a pristine teenager until they'Re 300 years old, where is the point in a youth-obsessed culture? Beauty ideals only work if they're hardly ever met. Or invisible graffitti used by metahuman counter-culture types - nothing like writing "fuck you pigs" fat on the front of a police station and every troll and dwarf passing by laughing their asses off while the cops wonder what the hell they'Re missing. Or a human postman sueing an elven-run and -inhabited tenement management company after he tripped and fell badly because, unlike elves, he cannot see a thing in the place's corridors (while elves see perfectly fine by mandatory small marker lights for emergency exits). Or a debate about the assumptioon whether or not orks are "meant by nature" to be nocturnal underground dwellers by favor of their phsyiology, because they seem so adapted to light, hosting a human metaanthropologist who is incredibly full of subliminal racism. A Pentagon assesment of optimal use of metahumans in the different branches of the military. A treatise about what metaposers THINK life as a metahuman is like, and an essay by an ork and/or an elf why that is totally off. How being highly sexualised and proposed the most desirable metatype impacts elves' lives. How orks and trolls struggle with their short childhood and how that impacts their role in society (an orc will be physically mature in junior high). That sort of stuff I am looking for, not "High elves, they are very high, also elves, have pretty castles and all get these boni and traits: [blah] (also sad story of their fall from power inf avor of upcoming humans)".

Usually, SR treats metahumans like taller, stokier, smellier or prettier humans, while in fact, they should see the world - literally - very differently indeed.

Well Shadowrun Metahumans are still metahumans, after all. Of course there are areas where metahuman physiology may influence the way a metahuman goes about their daily life, like elves and orks using low lighting or the aforementioned infrared signs for trolls and dwarves. But I'd be very wary of any "metatype racial-cultural determinism" or ridiculous fantasy anatomy stuff (like the WH40K fluff of eldar having no body fat at all) ending up in such a book. I feel that you'd be better of leaving the effects of metaphysiology up to the creativity of the individual gaming group and what they want to make out of the stuff that we already have.

And some effects of metahuman physiology will also matched by the effects of cyberware. Any human cop with half-decent cybereyes or IR goggles will also be able to read the super-secret dwarf gang signs.

I think that problem is, again, because the various races are only 63 years old even at the latest edition of the game (excluding IEs and spike babies), there just hasn't been time for that sort of thing to permeate itself. You might have that problem of the mailman tripping in the dark in one of the Tirs, but not in the UCAS because an all-elf building would violate all sorts of laws. You might see the beginnings of that sort of segregation (again, see the Tirs as well as the Ork Underground) at this point, but it would take at least a century or more before that sort of thing would take hold on a large scale.

You've heard of this thing called cyberware (eyes)?

Actually, you bring up a good point. A long, hard look at how cybernetics and bioware affect (meta)humanity would also be good. It would be good to be given some examples of what someone's commlink might have on it, software-wise, and what having headware might do, or bodyware.

Sure, but not every Nowm has either.


Yup. But not everyone has cybereyes. Cop templates usually do not. And how cybernetics affect people is another things, as Tashiro says, that I would like to see given a writeup.


Thats because Eldar are space aliens from space, not metahumans (they retconned that).

forget cybereyes.
as of SR4, a good pair of contact lenses or sun-glasses do the same . .

That sounds like a rather small kingdom...

It's more of a dwarf fortress, really.

a bit more magic in this dorf fortress

Maybe the average Cop template doesn't have IR-capable cybereyes. It still seems plausible to me to assume that a metroplex police station will have a few officers with them. And IMHO they certainly will have IR goggles/glasses and IR-capable surveillance gear, precisely because to deal with such sixth-world issues. And we haven't even considered that some officers might actually be trolls or dwarves.


Maybe. I actually don't follow WH40K much. That was just meant as an illustrative way of contending that if you have non-anatomists/physiologists writing fluff texts about fictional-race anatomy, you risk getting weird/nonsensical bits that don't add anything meaningful for actual play.

Just a heads up, Tir Tairngire fans, but...we got 'em to push up the release date of Elven Blood!

And as soon as money pops into my bank account, Elven Blood is mine!
Edit: Wait, it's missions? :\ Aw nerps, I thought it was something more related to a sourcebook. Hmm, I'll need to consider this more carefully then. Could someone sell me on the book?

Land of Promise was actually a product that was designed to support the Elven Blood missions. Originally it was going to be a short update that was included with it, but Critias got... enthusiastic, and eventually we realized it would be better as a standalone product.

Anyway, Elven Blood is a collection of 5 Convention Missions adventures that form a short campaign. The campaign starts off in Seattle with "Ancient Pawns", and adventrue that is a sequel of sorts to the old FASA module "Elven Fire" and gets the players involved with a shakeup in the Ancients gang leadership. From there, they're hired to head down to Portland on a smuggling run, and then once there they end up working for a face that may be familiar to long time runners.

It's 96 pages, black & white, for $6.99.

Bull

FWIW, it very much is related to the sourcebook. Land of Promise was initially going to be the intro fic to the four Tir adventures, really, but once I got my foot in the door, I just kept typing until they made it a solo e-book. I also asked them to toss Ancient Pawns (my adventure from last year) into the adventure pack, because it was elfy and still hadn't been released.

But, yes, the two products very much were written side-by-side, and were meant to go together. Many of the basic NPC stats from LoP, in fact, are some of the grunts you'll go up against throughout the Elven Blood adventures (and some of the Princes from LoP show up in EB)...it's all criss-crossed and goes together, which is why we were able to get them both released at (almost) the same time.

That's cool and all - I used to buy all the Shadowrun adventures for my group back in the day - but these days I'm mostly running my own stuff. What I'm curious about is that is there any fluff or crunch in Elven Blood which I could use even if I'm not using the adventures? I was hoping Elven Blood was going to be a long, hard look at the elves and what's happening behind the scenes, but adventures don't carry much traction with the group. :\