Thanks for the answer, hermit!
But what are their relationships with the Eastern European governments and power players? Or is that not revealed in the book?

Not in that book; I'll check other german-only books. Pegasus is very careful with writing for anyplace other than Germany, Switzerland and Austria, because they're afraid their stuff will just get trampled. Sorry.

oh, well, lucky for them they didn't just have all of those troops worldwide get handwaved into non-existence then ?(apparently to the point where they have less impact worldwide than a unit of 3,000 marines...)

wait...



dangit.

never mind.

They'll not directly translate stormfront, btw; they'll lob a "summary" of "important developments" into a pdf book with info from other things they never translated, like the hook books, according to the recent Shadowrun workshop at German NordCon.

In a reflection of that, I'm really reluctant to do anything for Germany (And Switzerland and Austria) because I know Pegasus is actively doing stuf fthere and I don't want to trample on it.

Mind you, there was a long, *long* discussion on the pros and cons of certain dragons dying in the Civil War. *cough*

As for the FMC's ship, the 884 meter bit is an error and should be feet/272 meters. Feel free to pencil that into your copy of the book.

Beyond that, well, I can't say. Not my plot. (There was some back n forth about it between myself and the writer, mind, in regards to Sirrurg going Godzilla and all that.) I'd personally suggest that lots of what was stated was a communication issue by an unreliable narrator and that the truth is somewhat less impressive. Everything out of that region was crazy garbled by magci, a certain blue gas, and the usual vagarities of war. Several Shadowrunners didn't make it out of there with the same umber of parts that they went in, and some didn't make it out at all.

Probably more detail later on, when the region's touched on again.

(I'm reminded of a spot in Storm Front, where I eyeballed a line about nationalism, since it was written with only the new Japanese Imperial State as a focus and how it might be read to condemn just them in a sort of racist brush. I blew it out larger, ducking the easy Godwin, looked at it, and went, "Great, everyone will get it!" ... then started getting blowback about how all of these empires were bad but, since I didn't call out the US, that it was fine and dandy for US imperialism but not anyone else. Gotta say, didn't see *that* read in my tealeaves and I had to step in here and let everyone know that, now, it was a blanket condemnation, but "But it's OK if you're an American." Of course, in teh same book, I took the guy talking about my home state and made him a huge jerk to make sure I didn't get Mary Sue juice anywhere on me... and then got assaulted for treating that mindset 'contemptuously'. Some days, you can't win.)

Well, there's a new explanation for Bogota!'s writing issues.

The entire thing is written by an unreliable narrator. Hence why much of it doesn't make sense, and ingame and out of game data blends in spots.

Every book in shadowrun that's a ShadowLand/JackPoint post is unreliable narrator. It's printed in-universe.

I mean, seriously, if someone put out a book written by Plan 9 would anyone even believe a word of it, despite the fact that we know, Metagaming, that every point he makes is actually right?

Of course not, although usually they don't let the Jackpointers write the rules sections.

I would be inclined to say "Mary Sue" often has more to do with content rather than form.

Sourcebooks ought to be about interesting things. Problems arise when authors systematically misinterpret "interesting" to mean "significant" and "significant" to mean "important". Sourcebooks then end up always being about the best something, which often require to first remove the previous best something in that particular field to make room for the new development.

Another issue is both authors and their audience have trouble understanding a situation that involve more than a dozen of interacting protagonists. There is thus a temptation to definitively remove players from the picture instead of simply acknowledging they're just not going to be involved in that particular plot.

In this regard, any author who get a character to replace another one previously introduced by another author is quite likely to receive the Mary Sue label. To introduce a new character only means the author consider it to be interesting. To swap two characters by introducing one and removing another one at the same time suggest the author consider the former to be more interesting than the latter. The problem is, the author often only establishes the new character as more important and more significant than his predecessor, not realizing it may not be enough for the audience to consider it also as more interesting.

It was previously supposed to be an unreliable-but-knowledgeable narrator.

When Frosty says the likely explanation for Telestrian Industries campaign contributions to two Tir Tairngire princes is an Illuminates of the New Dawn infiltration (Dirty Tricks, page 153), and no one on Jackpoint call her out, "unreliable narrator" starts being a tad short as an excuse for silliness.

If I'm not mistaken they don't really do a lot with either Switzerland or Austria. There is also the desperate rest of Europe begging for attention ... unless of course it's the wrong kind, the GeMiTo-kind then we are very, very displeased. So, no pressure, right?

That might solve it for you personally. But I believe the issue is with the intent of stated "facts". Because usually what is written down is factual, unless it is vague or explicitly cast into doubt. So it might be later revised by showing the old information to be unreliable, but I would argue that happens rather seldom or at least only to a tiny fraction of all stated facts.

I believe there are counter examples.

To represent an unreliable narrator, the authors should have worked with shadowtalkers. They're supposedly world-class professionals, if it's something widely off-target that's written in the file, why isn't any of them pointing it out?
Hell, shadowtalkers are a great way to underscore unreliability of the text even without directly contradicting it. For instance, main text goes "hurr that particular corp/merc unit/item is so good!", shadowtalkers blast it with "lol fanboi", and it is immediately clear that it might not really be all that great as presented.
Instead, we get Kane shouting "Semper Fi" in the comments.

To be fair, Kane's endorsement is a double canister broadside to anyone's credibility.

You sure? Because for a couple books now, he's been written up as THE standard of coolness.

Kane probably paid off the writers for that or promised them tickets to the show.

Kane's cool?
He's goofy and over the top. Sure, some of the stuff he does is cool. Even outrageous.

But mostly, he's kind of a dick. Almost like Eldrad (nsfw).

Eldrad is a different kind of dick. Eldrad is LN (N at worst), Kane is CN (N at best), basically.

Kane is just the poster child for Pink Mohawk. If we need something insane or outrageous or unthinkable done, we pull out Kane.

Just like /derp/grrl was used (too much) for the, "Duh, I never heard of that in my Corporate-Safe Education" comments requiring exposition.

is this what spurred the 'well, lets grow her up a bit and make her more serious?' bit? Who's idea was that, anyway?

Partly.

It was time, to say the least, for her to grow up and take part. Bull did a bang-up job on that, and we've been happy to follow along this brave new trail.

Of coruse, now we lack someone to ask the easy questions...

Pitch: MooDragon gains sentience with an eGhost and is now asking all kinds of fun stuff!

I've felt this is a problem ever since the switch from Shadowland to Jackpoint. Not being an open system means that anyone posting there has to be at least relatively cool, or FJ would have brainburned them. Makes for a lot less chances to put in unreliable narration in the comments.

Especially if the writing desperatly needs unreliable narrators so rough edges can be smoothed out, do put it diplomatically.

Yup not a fan of JackPoint myself either

It has long made the garbage a lot harder to handwave away. The myriad opposing views in Shadowland always gave the GM a good reason to dismiss things he didn't like from his game.

Yeah, and it didn't have omniscient shadowtalkers who know EVERYTHING in their area of expertise, and much more besides, but had those tiny shadowtalker sideplots going on.

Oh, man. How I miss the comments on the MP Laser and MP Laser 3.

In defense of the Jackpoint concept I would point out, that it started as a circle of interested professionals sharing information. True a Fastjack vetted user base raises the bar for contribution quality but it doesn't imply the jackpointers are omniscient and/or generally forthcoming. Frosty was close to the big secrets of the Sixth World, but she didn't actually talk about them, she gave little hints meant as in-jokes for the reader. I assume the intention of having a smaller cast was to be able to flash the individual voices out.

So for me the issue is how that was done. And here it is towards the tail end of Fourth Edition that we get a collective of dragon whisperers or jackpointers as street legends or Bull as Proposition 23 figurehead. Mind you I never liked the idea of shadowrunner infamy let alone fame... I wouldn't say the content became more about jackpointers' exploits in the Sixth World than what was actually going on, but I think it is fair to say it became too much about them. Consequently the celebrity status is now diluted with less important voices. But I would argue this the result of the choices in commentator portrayal rather than a failing of the concept.

Speaking of Fastjack......
I really hope the writers (Critias and company, I'm looking at you!) use the Fastjack Situation in presented in storm front - where he's possessed by some sort of entity trying to take over his mind - as a chance to write a mission series to save fastjack.

Okay, so, fastjack owns. He's been around forever, and some people I know love the guy so much they cried when they heard "the war writers" were "killing off fastjack". Sure, that's not all the story, but its the short version that people share and summarize.

I want to see Fastjack's plight become a new sort of Brainscan/Harlequin Adventures- High risk, high reward, a personal stake for the players involved. Where they have a chance to play THROUGH the metaplot for 5th, instead of just reading about it in a book handed down from On High. By putting fastjack in peril, you've created a situation rife with emotional potential, which is a base for great storytelling.
Making a really sweet series of modules to cure/treat/investigate the greatest hacker who ever lived, while also shedding light on this new e-ghost-possession situation would be fricken sweet.

If it was handled RIGHT? It would also go a LONG way to redeeming the sort of ..... bad name CGL has earned recently with plot decisions and handling legendary characters in adventures(frosty), showing that you can still set up a situation and then deliver the goods.

You need to capitalize those words!

But really, the FMC sounds like what FORMER Marines who start getting nostalgic and put on their double-thick rose-colored BCGs think about the Marine Corps. You know, the guy who bitched every day about "getting the green weenie" and now has an entire room of his house covered in pictures, Marine Corps flags, and a sword he bought AFTER he got out.

When you're active duty you sound more like a cynical Dumpshock poster

Truth...

Everything else in this thread can go hang, give me context for this video...now.

Jason didn't think it'd sell out at Origins in, like, fifteen minutes or whatever. It did. So then he had to sing the Street Samurai archetype text. Everybody lost.

Traveller 5 got funded and released, so this is certainly true.