QUOTE (Bigity @ Dec 22 2012, 09:11 AM)
See, I disagree here. SR never looked like the world did at any point. It was based of a crazy assed notion that Japan was going to take over the world and 80s trends would remain in place. I don't want a game that mirrors real life. I've never played a RPG and thought, gee, I can mind control people and blow up their brains with mind-waves, why can't I do that in real life? I didn't play SR back in the 80s and 90s because I thought it was realistic. I doubt anyone did, ever.
Not quite what I meant. Good science fiction uses the setting as a framework to reflect aspects of the modern world and raise questions, and near future science fiction will usually extrapolate from where we are to where they think we may go. Shadowrun, IMHO, does this very well, which is why it is one of my favourite roleplaying games (just recently, I had to sell almost all my roleplaying games -- I owned every single nWoD book out there, and sold that off, but I kept all my Shadowrun books, because I loved SR4 more).
And for some reason, your example worked backwards. It isn't 'I can do this in a game, why can't I do this real life?' - it's 'if our world is moving towards allowing for THIS, why can't I do this in Shadowrun?' An amusing thought experiment I had was, 'if Earth ever encountered actual alien races, how many science fiction movies, books, and games would add alien races as a de-facto part of Earth's life?'. Anyway, I'm digressing.
For science fiction to remain relevant, it needs to be able to be relatable to modern times. We're living in a near wireless world now, which has caused a huge shift in our culture. SR4 reflected this, and I think it did it very well, it tapped neatly into the wireless vein and how it alters the world. I don't want a Shadowrun world which remains more or less stagnant as we move ahead. I want a setting which will evolve and shift as
we evolve and shift. I'd feel much the same way about an RPG that started 'in the 80s' to give us an 80s feel, but never, ever moved into the 90s or the turn of the century. Sure, the 80s was fun, but the world moves forward for the characters, and they'll need to move forward with it.
Seriously, Shadowrun's timeline started in the 2050s, and has moved up to the 2070s. In 20 years, technology must have moved forward by serious leaps and bounds - I want to see that reflected. If someone doesn't like the wireless world, they just run the game in the 2050s and keep it there. That's an entire decade you can use.
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Commonplace wireless and a hyper-connected world removes alot of the charm of the setting, IMO. Mages and shamans being identical: same thing. Riggers/hackers. No 'decks. Technology that is better than cyber and doesn't require cutting out a piece of your flesh and soul. And so on.
I fear we'll need to disagree on this. To me, this makes the game seem more alive. It's one thing I hate about 'traditional' fantasy settings -- you have cultures sitting around for hundreds or thousands of years, but not shifting at all from where they started. I'm sorry, that doesn't happen. And in a high-tech setting, such as Shadowrun, evolution should be lightning fast, as new innovations and technologies are created, and Shadowrun's really good for that. If I remember correctly, the first Virtual Realities book (SR1) had wireless cyberdecks, and by SR2, 'memory' for your cyberdeck went from a limited amount to infinite (since everything was stored on the Matrix). As Shadowrun moved forward, you could see technology in the setting moving forward as well, reflecting our innovations and advancements.
Now, as for hermetics / shamans / everything else, I do agree that I was disappointed when the line got blurred, simply because I believe magic is about culture and belief. That being said, I'm fully supportive of a single ruleset to cover all the different aspects (summoning/binding, spirit mentor/totem, etc), what I want is something to cause each one to stand out individually ... something akin to what they dropped into martial arts -- you take tradition X, you get these specific perks that nobody else will get. (The Path of the Wheel is a very, very good example in fact, from Tir N'an Og).
Riggers and Hackers? The only thing I see there is 'skill set'. I'm thinking about how drones are operated in today's world, and the only thing that stands out is that you need to be damn good at flight simulators, but really, once you've got that down pat (which I believe would be your driving skills in Shadowrun), blending the line between hacker and rigger makes sense. Since you need to be able to take over any drone in sight, hacking skills become essential to the rigger for breaking into a vehicle / drone / sentry, taking it over, and piloting it. And if a hacker specializes in hostile takeover of drones and such (which I've seen done in my games), then yeah, more power to them. I'd say they're different archetypes, mostly because of where they want to focus. Most hackers do infiltration and data mining or sabotage, while riggers don't stuff their commlinks full of attack and stealth programs unless they're doing hostile rigging -- if they aren't, they save it for command routines to handle aspects of their vehicles while they command them remotely.
The commlink I think is a natural evolution of the cyberdeck. We have laptops and minicomputers which blow away anything we had 15 years ago, why can't Shadowrun have evolved their technology to be 'personal' in 20 years? In SR3, I was annoyed when I couldn't do basic hacking with a wrist computer, simply because I
knew for a fact that people were hacking from laptops -- and that was back in 2001. I saw a parallel between the 'wrist computer' in Shadowrun versus the 'deck, and the laptop versus the PC. I'm actually glad that SR4 has accepted that your PC is now something worn all the time.
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Now, I full realize there is room enough for cyberpunk-ish SR, and more post-cyberpunk, but I'm not buying post-cyberpunk books. Maybe this edition is feeding off some of the SR2050 book sales? I dunno. Multiple realities would be great, if they can support both concepts. With board games, TCGs, etc, all planned, maybe they have the staff to do it.
The thing is, the timeline in the Shadowrun universe is moving forward. It makes no sense for civilization to suddenly grind to a halt. I'm enjoying the Shadowrun universe because it is alive and evolving, and will allow me to look at things such as transhumanism, post-cyberpunk, and everything that comes from those. To me, Shadowrun is a science fiction genre - cyberpunk played a part in it, but not the only part.
Personally, I want to watch magic evolve, I want to see technology evolve, and I want to see the eventual melding of the two. Thaumatechnology is a big interest of mine, and SR4 really started to dip into that field, which drew me in a lot more. I find Technomancers to be a part of the deal -- technology is the 'new tradition' of the world, and because humanity in the setting sees a 'divide' between magic and technology, those people who 'awaken' have a different filter. That's my theory at least, so we'll see, but I found technomancy to be a refreshing shift in Shadowrun, and it is one of the best examples for me as to why Shadowrun is a great setting -- it doesn't sit on its laurels, and is constantly pushing forward with new ideas.
Heh. I talked myself from being only marginally interested in SR5 to VERY interested in SR5. I'm looking forward to seeing them push the envelope more!