As far as the continuity with Earthdawn is still a thing, no, I don't think it could be considered as something "natural." There was a precedent with Yuichotol spirit, that at the time did not seem to be the norm.

Since The Clutch of Dragons tells us Lofwyr tried to destroy the spirit of Ghostwalker's mate and fragmented it several thousand years before the Sixth Age, it kinda hints at what got out when the dragons did "revisit the matter."

I can't speak for them, but if somone kills my giant roided out brother whom I was at war with and who was doing his level best to slaughter me for my (Admitedly Zealot like asshole) Ideals..... just before he kills ME... I'm not going to jump up and scream "ALL YOU ARE GOING TO DIE FOR SAVING MY LIFE AND KILLING THE GUY ABOUT TO KILL ME!!!!"

Now Dragons are weird. He might have gotten offended for 'kill stealing' as he wanted to Kill Lo himself, but still it's not totally bumfrak insane to think that if someone killed the guy getting ready to kill YOU, you might actually be grateful.



It does show a wide swath of seeming power levels for the greats. I wouldn't call it 'as of late' but 'in general'. With dragons everything's a bit weird. I do agree with how.... secreative they are on dragon stuff, that the dribs and drabs we get, each little bit furthering our 'knowledge' on dragons can be perceived badly. As with any complex topic, information we get today may directly contradict what we THOUGHT we knew for fact.. .when in reality that subject reacts to -new- situations differently than we thought it would.



But is that it? Was it because he was in metahuman form? or just boom? Why was the great dragon taken out with the jets, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo so so sooo much weaker than Sirrung? Does Lofwyr hit SOO hard that just going HTH for 45 min with Al was the equivalent of 3+ hours of full army, navy and airforce bombardment and chem weapons thrown at Sirrung?

Or are their abilitys just wildly different and any 'stats' we have for them silly on the face of it?

"And you can all visit me in Dragon Heaven. Just watch out for the gate guard, he's apparently a real jerk."

First thing: Dunkelzahn didn't die easily in his human form because he was in his human form. Nor did he just die from a bomb.
He died from suicide through unknown means to imbue the dragon heart artifact with a higher magic rating than would otherwise have been possible. He also took care to reduce the blast radius in order to minimize casualties.

2nd: Feuerschwinge had just awakened in February 2012 and had begun to terrorize the Harz region in Germany. She was vulnerable because she had just awakened and had never dealt with modern fighter jets nor any kind of high tech. It's probably a safe bet to say that she hadn't yet been able to summon a load of spirits and her long-term magical defenses weren't yet up. It was a surveying of the land near her place of awakening, realizing that puny mortals were all around and needed a lesson. Then giant metal bees and a crash in a polluted radioactive wasteland, while Lofwyr and Nebelherr prevented her mate Kaltenstein from coming to her help. So there's that.

I will not comment anymore than has been said on the matters of the duels between Alamaise and Lofwyr and the Aztlan army zergling rush.

And his name is Sirrurg. 3 R, no N. Sorry, pet peeve

I generally call him asshat, or worse. On any given day I can misspell anyone's name. Funky Dragon names... well. You're lucky I didn't add a q!

Imagine you're Alamais. Some humans (who you consider to be infinitely below you) not only interfere in draconic affairs, but also kill a Great Dragon (and your brother). And they might try to frame you to boot.
Anyhow, I fail to see how killing Lofwyr, even if successful, would justify the risk of openly attacking a Great Dragon before three others and numerous lesser ones.

Again, it's in battle with Al, with Al about to die. Dragons are weird but if a dude was two shakes shy of ending my life and someone kills him, and saves my life. I don't put them instantly to the sword.

As for the risk, Lo is the most powerful Dragon on earth, both (Seemingly) In physical power and he owns the biggest Mega of all. The other dragons trying to split up his hoard would take forever and more than a few of them would likely die from that as well. I can see them 'taking their shot' at taking out number one.

They're zealots of their own kind. Eeeeevil mage types. *Shrugs* Zealots do stupid stuff. Look how many millions if not hundreds of millions of people have died through out history over religion and stuff.

I'm not saying their plan was smart. lol I wouldn't mess with him. But you can, if you look at it from a zealot point of view, how they got from A to B to C to (Soon DEAD).

You're the same dude who attacks his own goddamn hirelings for being metahuman, remember?

Haha, what?

Nice you see you admitting their plan wasn't reasonable by a sane man's measures.

Tsimshian gets an update in Dirty Tricks, as do the Sioux (And there's plot there that might be ongoing) ... The Manitou uprising got crushed, but there's not been much follow-up behind that. The Ute are an onging pain in the PCC's ass (See also the Rio Gambit), and might be part of how Azzies forces got into Denver ... we'll see more about that in the future. The PCC, in general, is having hiccups from too much 'food', Horizon's still not digested inside it, and now Denver's gone loco, teh Azzies drove in for a sorta invasion, the CAS is mad at everybody, and, oh hey, Celedyr is probably going to do something Dragony.

So, yeah, lots of stuff to catch up on and prep for the future. There's all kinds of border wars that could flare up, cultures to figure out, and, in general, lots of work to do. I look forward to when we can dig in to this plate full of goodies!

I get it. He's a Zealot. Still. If they saved his life and defeated the guy about to kill him, I'd say there's some chance that he wouldn't instantly go off on his Zealot stupid streak



If the black lodge killed Lofwyr, the other dragons are gonna wanna claim and split up his hoard. He owns the largest megacorp on earth. There's gonna be some fights over who gets what, where in some more dragons may end up dead.



Naa. Most Zealots, of most any stripe aren't really sane.

I rather suspect that they'll turn out to have something more serious at their disposal, or something backing them... They seem too smart to make that kind of play without allowing for the possibility that their first strike would fail. Plus, it's supposed to be about 3 books worth of content, so clearly it's not going to be as simple as we'd expect.

Zealots and idiots and great dragons killing each other all over, yaaay.

When your crazy, and you've got nothing to lose, ANYTHING could seem possible...

Well to be fair, some of the Dragons, adult and Great WERE idiot Zealots.

Glad we agree that writing sucked.

... Seriously? That writing sucked because we haven't yet seen what their contingency plans are?

(Also, we only know that they THINK it was the Black Lodge. That could well be an elaborate frame-up.)

Rationalise it all you want.

So, speculating that they have contingency plans we haven't seen yet (a perfectly logical assumption) is somehow rationalizing? I do not think you correctly understand the term.

Speculating it is not the bad writing we see at face value but an elaborate plan by the authors is, indeed, rationalisation (more specifically, ad hoc hypothesization).

First, there's nothing elaborate about "the Black Lodge has contingency plans, so rather than getting immediately rocked the conflict will fill out 3 adventure books" (fun fact, we already know that there's at least three volumes of "Malevolent Ends", the first of which is subtitled "Hunt the Black Lodge").

Second, don't link to fragging Wikipedia to defend your point. It's just sad.

Third, a rationalization is a defence mechanism that is applied to an individual's own behaviours or thoughts that are, for some particular reason, unacceptable. It is utterly ludicrous to suggest that "bad writing" is triggering a defence mechanism in a third party - that's just not how these things work.

Fourth, don't go pretending that a bad form of rhetoric is a subset of a psychological defense mechanism. It's making your point seem weaker.

And in general, don't go trying to cite definitions at someone who has a better understanding of the subject matter than you do.

hermit, RHat: move that discussion to PM. Thank you.

My apologies, should not have let myself become uncivil.

So what sort of Loremaster does everyone expect Celedyr to be?

Difficult to answer, since it is unclear how much of the old information about Celedyr figures into the new writing. Someone the "Dragons of the Sixth World" describes the following way:
Maybe shouldn't be Loremaster in the first place. It would have been much better not to inform us about the new Loremaster and maybe even just hint that Lofwyr might have stepped down.

Really, I just hope they take some time off from writing dragon plots and that the next person taking a stab at it goes back and reviews the discrepancies between former and recent treatment of the subject. Maybe someone should write a white paper.

Really, really, I think dragon society plots should not be attempted for several years. This supposedly static social system (from the perspective of mortals, anyway) cannot show so much dynamism. You can do plenty of interaction between single dragons or dragons and humans, follow-up on Hestaby, look at new dragons joining the ranks of the greats maybe. But if the next Loremaster change, great dragon death or a radical shift in their society occurs within two years or something, we'll jump the dragon on this plotline. That's why Hestaby's speech sounded incredibly radical to me, such drastic change in the relationship between dragons and humans was years off, as Storm Front incidentally proves. That's why she looked to me like great dragon who forgot to be one.

Imo Lofwyr 2.0
From all the great dragons he seems to be most similar to Lofwyr which likely is also why he reccomended him.
That and everyone else not being a good choice.

- Ghostwalker is disliked and was heavily opposed.
- Choosing either Lung or Ryumyo will upset the balance of power between them.
- Arleesh doesn't want.
- Schwarzkopf is too desinterested with politics (Might be a good trait for the loremaster actually but certainly not what Lofwyr has in mind).
- Masaru is too young.
- The rest is too closely aligned with either Hestaby or Alamais.

The sea dragon for loremaster! *trollface*
Hey... Atleast she's neutral, except for that whole egg affair.

They could have Dunky's ghost, Captain Chaos, and the Corporate Court as backup, and they'd still be fucked. If someone looks like they could actually try and kill Lofwyr, he can and will bring down the entire weight of SK and all his personal alliances on them, and the most they could do is hope there's room on Zurich Orbital to hide whoever manages to actually get out of the manasphere alive.

People continuously fail to understand the sheer scale of AAA megacorps, let alone the kind of resources that a dragon who has one of the largest as part of his hoard has at his talontips.

God, I keep remembering how bad of a Shadowrunner I would actually be if I was one in real life. Listening to all of the death, devestation, and senseless genocide that goes on in this book makes me want to do something. My inner self and gut reaction is to try and do something about all of that. In fact, my main character's mentality would be the same. Problem is, the only thing that really matters in the long run is how one can make money off of all of this. It's one of the reasons I run games most of the time instead of play them. I let other people be heartless money-grabbers as my proxies, I guess.

I'm getting a little concerned about the state of massive powers, I guess. It's like the write-up from the Voices on the Field part pointed out (which is funny, because I thought someone was actually taking what I was thinking, since it's my main character's name up there). The power displayed at both the battle against Sirrug and the Great Dragon Civil War pales anything we can do in comparison. It's insane the level of magic that is thrown around on the battlefields. Watching what goes on during the battle makes you feel weak and insignificant. More then that. I makes you feel like you've got no chance in hell if something like that were to happen to you. Seriously, I thought the same thing. The world I live in after an event like that is no longer the world I'm a part of. And there's no way I can even live in the one I'm now currently in.

I mean, I get what the meta for the campaign is. I'm not a super-OMG-9000-POWERLEVEL character trying to fire massive bolts of energy from my fingertips. I'm a normal-ass dude with some magical powers trying to get a pay check and make sure the electricity is on for another few months. And I've never liked the idea of stating out characters like Harley and Lofwyr. That breaks so many things about the setting, it hurts. But my personal goal has always been to see how far I can take my magic and how powerful I can get. Not to use that power, but just to see and test it. And, to some extent, help protect those that don't have power enough to help themselves. It just all comes crashing down when spirits and spells fly all over the place with no real chance of me standing up to them.

By, meh...my two cents for now. Loved the write-up of Dodge, by the way, Critias! I want to see him back in action, cause I loved him so much pre-Crash 2.0. He's just a dawwww character now. ^.^

An interesting thought about feeling weak. Of course, to wear the shoe on the other, uh. Claw. How do you think some of the dragons feel, what with a Great dead and another darn near killed?

But I digress.

I want a chance to take this conversation in a different direction. There've been people who enjoy teh book, people who don't, but a big question I always have is ... is it inspirational? That is, are there sections that you look through and go, "Oh man, I want this in my game?" or "I want to make a character like this guy," or whatever.

Have many people been glancing at the Seattle sections and going, "Man, food shortages and civil unrest? I want to see how my group deals with that?" Has anyone gone, "Okay, this chapter's not for me, but this one thing here? THAT, I can use."

In short ... what kinds of 'runs are you pulling from the pages? Background noise? News clipings?

It's a weird question, but.

Eh, what about nukes, Thor sats and the Great Ghost Dance? WMDs have always been present in the setting, and not only present but actually unleashed.

Now imagine a spell named "Redirect Orbital Weapons".

Wakshaani, let me be frank, I guess.
The book is trying desperately to give plothooks for runners (for instance, with the whole runner army debacle, and the further looting of Hestaby's hoard), but I don't find those inspirational. A few chapters (like the one on Infected and the one on Dodger and the one on mysterious infection to a lesser extent) are purely background info which are hard to use in your campaign unless you're specifically addressing the related metaplot arcs, or find yourself willing to build a far-reaching plot based on whatever material is currently available, using those chapters as the hidden motivation behind the scenes.
Finally, some chapters (like the one on War, or the Seattle one) I just find bland in their petty politicking, with messed-up build-up from previous books leading to a rather uninspiring resolution. However, I harbour a long-standing distrust for games with runners getting involved in politics, whether those are state, corporate, or any other, since I don't really enjoy playing at higher power levels, so ymmv. But for me, Storm Front is a purely fluff book, and not a particularly good one at that.

Why not "redirect great ghost dance magic" while you're at inventing spells with a drain greater than a tank's damage track?

It's a spell for dragons. I imagine they could manage the Drain, or their incredible Magic scores wouldn't so much matter.

You'd think that dragons would have better options, but yeah, sure, they might be able to pull it off.
How is this of any consolation to a runner who's still left comparatively powerless?

Even more interesting, given that it is only barely theoretically possible for a PC to reach the levels necessary to cast such a thing, why in the hell would you spend design time and printing space on putting it into a book?

Same issue I have with statblocks for God-NPCs like Harley. Players don't need a statted out version of him. He can do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and that's space and time that could have been devoted to something that is actually useful within a game. Or proofreading.

I agree. Harle, or the Greats. None of them need stats. They do what the GM Says they can do or are needed to do to push the story forward.

They don't, but Thor shots, nukes, cruise missiles, destroyers, tanks and division-level heavy howitzers do?

Thor shots? Nope. Nukes? Nope. Cruise missiles.... Nope. Destroyers? ... maybe speed. Tanks.. ehhh.... yeah. Howitzers? Ehhh.. No. Not really.

Again all these things, with the exception of maybe tanks are "tools" or set pieces for the GM, Same as great dragons. You really don't need to know how much damage a nuke does. You're either close enough to die in a white flash or you're not. Your GM will tell you. Same for the rest.

A tank... ehhhh. Maybe. You could actually take out a tank with out going ----stupid---- level strong, and a tank, while quite strong, isn't going to take out a city all by it's lonesome.

Or you live in the zone I did during most of my life that happened in the Cold War, where death was a long, slow process that probably would have been (thankfully) hastened by starvation.

Nukes are not nice things, and neither is radiation.

All that stuff is statted up in the recent CGL books.
And no, you're not punching through a tank's armour, see the armour piercing capabilities research at the bottom of the page referenced in my signature.

Isn't that covered in one of the books? Target Wastelands or Hazard pay or something?

*Points to the Mil Tech Spec books.... plural.* You can get through tank armor. It's just not easy.

Technically a guy with a rocket launcher can take out a tank with about 15 minutes of training. If nothing else you can take out it's locomotion and then disable it at leisure.

I've suggested looking at the actual math, haven't I.
Nothing short of cruise missiles is capable of punching through a Stonewall's armour. Even a Thor shot either evaporates it outright or leaves it undented.

You're back around to "You don't need stats" for the big big stuff.

Also, claiming faults in the rules for reasoning that you can't do something we know very well you can, is using the rules against the game. It's considered cheating at many tables.

Yet we have them. They are just a bit, well, lacking.

The rules that don't represent the intuitively obvious interactions from the real world are usually considered subpar.

Back to topic.

Thank you! *jot jot* Valuable information.

Anyone else?

Most of the events in there are not really good for running oportunities. The events are either too high powered for runners to be really a part of it (unless you hate your players) or the running opportunities presented are so obvious that you do not really need the book for it.
Fatum covered it pretty well except that if you have a mind for politics the Seattle chapter can be a gold mine.

I try very, very hard to pretend WAR! does not exist as a book.

Okay. By section, then a review of plot hooks.

Given I played in and ran the SRM Season 4 missions dealing with the Underground, the Seattle chapter was full of information relevant to my campaign (it is very specific there, but for a Missions player like me, it was rewarding; ymmv). I will certainly use the fallout from Missions and the Underground. Background noise certainly, runs certainly. More of this. I will also use Tir Tairngire, I think. Always been interested in the Telestrians.

The Japanese Megas teaming up ... well, I planned to use Shiawase more anyway, since the entry in Corp Guide which I reread recently actually is pretty damn nice. Issues I mentioned aside, I might pick up on this. Also, the inheritance issues. I'll probably deal with Shiawase in Europe differently, should this come up. Otherwise, good for backdrop, I might use. Certainly background noise, probably am offshore adventure with a mess of corp politics.

I'm unsure how to deal with the Matrix changes and Morbus Schletz. Might pick this up, might not. It has potential at least. As NetCat is a recurring NPC, I might use her a bit, which nescessiates some fallout from the changes at Jackpoint. It was a much better read than anticipated, though (props, Mr. Schletz). Not certain about use in-game; I think I'll wait and see. We're in 2072 in-game, so there's ample time on our campaign timeline.

The dragon war will not happen like this in my game, period. I'll either just entirely ignore it or massively retcon it. Sirrurgodzilla will be considered KIA, and the Boriquen related food shortages will be milder, because, don't you know, agriculture happens outside the Carribean! Ghostwalker and Harley seem out of place in my campaign too, so it'll likely not happen on-screen either. In fact, the only thing I might pick up from either Ghostwalker, Aztlan or Alamaise is the FMC as recurring amoral mercenary cannon fodder. Maybe a villain with FMC background, I dunno. Something like that. You can call that inspirational, I guess, though maybe not as the author intended.

Ares' Excalibur debacle might be background noise as an in-joke. Nothing more. I might even change it to be about a phone, since Apple issues seem at the heart of the writeup. Really, the mind boggles.

The plot hooks ... I was pretty unimpressed by, honestly. With Ghostwalker, Alamaise and Aztlan, they felt extemely forced and plain insulting for players participating. Yeah, I know, it's an attempt to get PCs "involved in historical events", but that actually is a debacle unless the PCs do something really important, and they do in neither plot hook (though they usually are extremely suicidal). Instead, what they end up as is "Oh, gawk at IMPORTNAT NPC doing IMPORTANT things while I show you how UNIMPORTANT you are, players!", which is something a GM should avoid at all cost. some things just need to be narrated as setting fiction. You cannot make a runner plot out of everything. You just need to balance, which also means less focus on setting NPC of power and more on, well, the setting when writing.

So not gonna use those. I know my players feel offended by Harlequin in Harlequin II already, and those plots take plaing extra to super-powered NPC to a whole new level. Plus, Alamaise clearly hasn't understood how "paying people" works. 5K for sap from several Sangre del Diabolo trees? 15K for fighting the entire Peace Force of Portland in a running battle? 25K for raiding a dragon horde (sic)?. That won't even cover travel cost. There's also plausibility and setting issues there (Denver/Gridlock: nanotech doesn't work that way!). The Plot Hooks with Ares add insult to injury because the same adventures are already available - they're called Sacrificial Limb and Corporate Intrigue (parts thereof). What the hell. That wins the lazy writing price. The only plot hooks I might use are the Seattle stuff - as follow-ups to Missions.

Game Info on Morbus Schletz, Dodger and the New Matrix, and Tir Tairngire would have been nice, and in fact would have lent themselves better to plot hooks than watching important NPC doing important things while being unimportant. Missed chances there. Generally, I'd like to see less focus on big NPC and NPC in general and more on stories.

That said, the stat blocks and super NPC are extremely superfluous. I can always copypaste them myself, I don't need space in a book that could be spent on decent writing wasted on them. SR4 suffers from NPC stat overflow anyway. It's like nobody knows how to stat NPC anymore. All in all, I get very little mileage out of the Game Info section - lots of stuff I'd need if I wanted to pick up the plots is not there - stats for the Falcon TAC-C and the Excalibur, for instance - and a lot of what is there is useless to me. Please, limit Game Info to relevant things, and no more stat block copypastes. Instead, focus on books with more decent, proofed, and peer-reviewed writing - and no glaring editing deficiencies like Shadow Network.