I think the main goal of the setting should be to explain how shadowrunners continue to exist (Runner's Companion did a good job of explaining data balkanization and the glut of information, as well as hackers planting false information - I think the bit about RFID's in candy bars was imbecilic, though). With a world where large parts of it, including former first world nations, are like crime-ridden, corrupt third world nations; where other parts of it are wildlands populated by fantastical beasts; and where the pockets of civilization have unreliable databases and multiple corporations (and a few other players) working against each other. They have lost track of this sometimes, both early on (with the Tirs and JIS being police states all but impossible to run in) and later (emphasizing omnipresent surveillance to the point that the very existence of shadowrunners does not seem viable - or seems like too much work for what is supposed to be a fun game).

I don't think that keeping the setting trapped in the 80's is a good idea, though, even for pink mohawk-style players (who are just as likely to not like having cyberdecks reintroduced). The setting needs to continue to evolve, with less contrive mini-apocalypses and more logical development of the existing factions and plots. I think the real world needs to influence this development, but not to the extent of re-writing Shadowrun's history - Shadowrun should be considered not only a near-future setting, but a near-future alternate reality setting.

Double Post.

They would loose all the audience who have no concept of horror, dystopia and despair.....

Who by the way is the majority of the potential media consumers.
Besides, roleplaying games are designed as empty canvases where palying groups propose an abstract to their game motives and build their story.
There is nothing stopping a person from designing a perfectly acceptable game world and playing within it and defining the rules of that world how they wish...

Mass appeal sells a game;
But uniqueness, creativity and support of thoes efforts by the published ruleset makes it legendary...

It wasn't the Wi-Fi issues with SR4 that had me wondering "WTF happened to Shadowrun", but the Transhumanism and "Hug-A-Ghoul" attempts. Despite including current-day profanity, it felt more... Child-Friendly than old skool Shadowrun.

Wi-Fi was present in 3E (reading Sprawl Survival Guide just now). Ghoul rights fighters existed even before that.
As for transhumanism, what exactly changed in the fourth about it?

Yeah, if you switch out the current-day profanity for the 6th World profanity it would simply be the standard evolution of what a decade would bring.

Didn't have a problem with Wi-Fi. In fact, I even gave a good reason why SR1 had only cel phone technology going around in SR2050 (Infrastructure rebuilding.).

The Ghoul-Rights fights were around for awhile in Shadowrun, I freely admit and even admire. But it just seemed to pushed forward into the "Ghouls are people too", including all Ghouls, including the feral ones. Might just be my imagination.

Transhumanism, well, it just seemed that things were moving away from Cyberpunk and going towards shiny-happy thoughts and taking the dys out of dystopia. Again, might just be me.

I think there was a meta-plot thingie where infected turned more feral - I think the pro-vampire/ghoul thing was getting to much for some of the writers.

I haven't found Shadowrun less dystopic - it never really was, which I actually found to be one of its strengths. Look at SR1 and see how things like Lone Star cops and security guards were humanized in their descriptions, rather than being one-dimensional jackbooted thugs. What I do miss is some of that wild west feel that the setting used to have - the surveillance state aspect of the game is too prominent, now. I miss shenanigans like that old picture of those gangers joy-riding a Lone Star APC with a hapless Lone Star officer tied upside-down to the hood.

I've been having a think on this one and I think I've spotted where a few things have shifted than can easily be utilised to keep that "old SR universe" feeling we keep talking of.

Now, bare in mind I've never touched SR4 after an initial attempt to like it. So I could be wrong here.

It seems that what we have is not so much now the "future" of the 2000's instead of the 80's which in itself imparts a different flavour. But what we have is a setting that is now often Percieved through the Corporate or Glitterazi lense (even if it's not written from that angle). Why do I say this? Because everything "works" things fit together in certain ways and if something goes awry its fixed pretty quick because heavens forbid the contract is ever screwed up. That's how a lot of the sixth world is shown to be, or alluded to as (even when the odd commentary to the opposite is thrown in.)

The truth of the Sixth World (and certainly the one I run) is less shiny. Almost everything that happens at a mass consumer level is going to be done as cheaply as possible. Omnipresent Big Brother? Yeah it's kind of there, but it doesn't really work, because it's mostly an advertising tool and marketing data collector than any security facility. Even when it does do the anti criminal aspect there's still all that extraterritorial jurisdiction happening, corporate squabbles intersecting the Law Agencies and Security services. Those cameras probably don't work all if the time (just like some real life CCTV systems I've seen over the years) and even when they do, well, priority response proceedures for KE and the Star etc may or may not include an immediate (or even quick) response and depending on situation, people involved and so forth, follow up may be lacking. Because the truth is under the shiny chrome covers, the massively enticing media campaigns and the safe and certified communities of corp culture, a lot of the time it all Doesn't work, not altogether and not at the same time.

The System looks Pretty, it looks SOTA and everyone is told how impregnable and perfect it is and for the most part people believe it. They are told they are in a free and apply world where their Rights and Liberties are protected by a System that sees all and that this is a good thing and because they've grown up with it, been indoctrinated with it they've never really challenged it.
The System is imperfect. Omniescient is a goal not a reality. There are Loopholes, Blindspots, Cracks and Flaws waiting to be exploited because most of the time (like 99.9%) the System works well enough. It does okay and any big flaws are rapidly brushed aside in a media blip and maybe a little effort spent in an overhaul and investigation. But that's a far cry from impregnable. There are those who survive outside the System or exploit the odd flaw to get away with things, these are the SINless or the Gangs that prowl the Streets and Highways, they tend to get by because the System doesn't typically care about them or their activities (unless they stray into the better security areas, or the month's arrest quota needs topping up or the Corp needs some Metahuman test subjects that no one will miss). So to the people that live IN the System the system still works most of the time.

Then you have those who do more than "survive" they actively thrive in the flaws of the System. They use it's corruption, greed, vices of the people and just plain failings or vulnerabilities of the tech to prosper in the Sixth World (re: Organised Crime groups etc). They almost become Part of the System while breaking most of its rules and getting away with it while sacrificing the occasional pawn (or pinning it on a rival scapegoat). These groups thrive in this way of extorted power and often bloody rivalry covered by a civil veneer that is markedly to the Corporations they exist within and without the System of.

Finally you have those talented few, numbering something like .01% of any major population, probably less. They don't just survive (though plenty start that way) and sometimes they don't thrive. But what they do is rare. They utterly exploit every failing the System has. They operate, learn and grow in the imperfections of that perfect world the Megas tell their wageslaves they live in. They turn any aspect of the Sixth World into an advantage they can use (or they die) and the brighter the Media Glow the deeper the Shadows. These are the Shadowrunners....

Being recognized as a person is not what it used to be, anyway...you know, SINless squatters are also people.

If there is a real world development process applied the goal would be two things and only thoes two;

Sell as many units as possible.
Producea newer version as often as possible.

The setting is wide enough for anyone to fill a story twists and turns, intregue and segways to other plots. What you don't want is a system that every two years or so, obsoletes your efforts to build a playable game framework....

Plus, I see plenty of people supporting D&D pathfinder, 3rd.ed, 4th ed, and now 5th ed.....

Does the mass production style make thoes games more enjoyable and the chatacters more enjoyable than Shadowrun? It must since I rarely see support for anything else around the playing tables.....

Game of Thrones? Really??

This is actually already SR4 as written, pretty much.

Glad that I wasn't the only one who thought that.

Cool enough then I suppose. It's just how I have always seen things. The original SR4 material I was exposed to was just bland to me compared to the style of SR2-3. Sr5 hasn't had the chance to develope the it's style yet, but I hope it's more of what I've postulated.

I actually didn't like the jump to an all-wifi matrix. Leaving aside the many rule issues, the Shadowrun Matrix was a bold, iconic view of the future. Like Star Trek, it might not age well, but it was a classic. But all of a sudden, that classic view of the future was replaced with a boring view of the present. We weren't given any really cool future tech to play with, we were given advanced cellphones and google glasses.

Well, isn't this kinda the point? A horrible disease turns people into abominations, and now you have to decide if you can just kill them like monsters, etc.

While I agree with you that the Fourth did a lot to move away from dystopia (which was kinda the point of my original post), I just don't really see what transhumanism as an ideology of surpassing the limitations of the human form has to do with it.
Otherwise, sure, you're right, 4e massively reduced the focus on the dregs of society, and all but removed the characteristic feelings of day to day hopelessness, fight against the system and community associated.


I think you have too narrow a definition of dystopia. Wageslaves are mostly decent people, too, this is kinda the point - the society is built in such a way that normal people are forced to participate in horrible things.

I feel that it was something of either a failure of imagination or a failure at communication.

Because when I think AR I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmjqudbf_RE

What SR described, I felt, was akin to "you have a constant connection to the matrix overlaid in your vision and there's like spam zones, and they're like bad and stuff."

AR has all the potential of being just as much of a classic view of the future in a similar manner to the way Gibson portrayed cyberspace, but different in ways so that it could accentuate current modern day fears of corporatization, social networks, virtual lives and the consequences of always being connected, privacy and surveillance concerns, big data or any thing else the developers wanted to explore. The metaphor for what AR could represent was not fully explored... so it ended up just being a button for the PCs to push to get information. Which... sucks.

The advantage of using Gibson's cyberspace is that Gibson already did all the heavy working on how to evoke cyberspace. AR needed that same groundwork laid because it's a new concept and couldn't just rest on what had came before, but I felt it never got it.

To be fair, Wi-Fi was not global and all-encompassing. Wired systems are still out there.

In 4e, most serious systems are still wired. A few can have much more than one host, too.
Matrix backbone is all wires, too.

Yes Indeed... Pretty much how we see it too.

I do not know what 4th edition rulebook you read (I never read the anniversary edition) but when I read 4th the default assumption was that everything was now suddenly wi-fi (which is not incredibly futuristic or realistic).

As for the setting changes. A theme of cyberpunk is that as society focuses on things other than itself, then society decays and crime and prejudice become more prevalent. In Transhumanism it is the opposite, as bodies become customizable then our physical differences and prejudices are supposed to disappear.

The other part that bothers me is the loss of high fantasy motifs. Cyberpunk is amoral or morally shades of grey, but High Fantasy is very black and white. In 1st through 3rd this was represented in spiritual ideals such as Totemic principles and Karma rewards for good moral choices on the "white" side versus "black" threats such as Horrors, Toxic spirits, blood magic, vampiric cabals, and insect totems. 4th edition kind of wiped all that out. Now you have the amoral or shades of grey and you are all just cogs in the machine with no hope of changing it.

You don't have to play the black vs. white fantasy plots, but a lot of players liked it.

See, I have never seen High Fantasy Morality being prevalent, even in the Editions of Shadowrun you espouse as such. Shadowrun has always been amoral to me, with thousands of shades of Grey. Which his VERY Cyperpunk.

SR5 actually mentiones in the rules that GM's should dock Karma for "evil" choices made by characters and dock money for "good" choices made by characters as far as i remember . .

Dock money for Moral Choices and Karma for Immoral Choices. Truly? That is just stupid on so many levels. *shakes head*

I blame D&D and its pigeonholed alignment system, rather than high fantasy itself, for black-and-white morality. Conan the barbarian was a complex, grey-hat character if there ever was one. Even Lord of the Rings had moral ambiguity and complexity, with distrust between dwarves and elves, characters like Boromir who do bad things but redeem themselves, good characters like Saruman or Denethor who tragically fall but still retain some of their nobility, distrust between the elves and the dwarves even in the face of a common threat, a sympathetic villain in gollum, a hero who has feet of clay in the end, despite being one of the more morally upright characters, in Frodo, and so on.

Shadowrun has always seemed to emphasize a more noir morality - not in a sense of everything being muddled gray, but in the sense that people may try to do good things, but often wind up doing bad things, or having to choose the lesser of two evils, or having to make significant sacrifices to do the right thing, or even succumbing to their flaws and weaknesses in the end. But I don't think the game is amoral (although it can be played that way, just as it can be played with a more Manichean view of good and evil). Characters still have, and struggle with, morality, they just don't all conveniently fit into "good" and "evil" categories.

Specifically the following suggestions if you had not seen it already


It depends, the GM may say that the 'good' run might pay out less cashwise since odds favour they are working for a party who can not pay a lot, the aforementioned little guy who they decided to take the job for more because it was the right thing to do then because of the paycheck.
To compensate such good deeds and crap pay he grants increased karma.

Likewise the hard core jobs do tend to pay out more and since you are operating with less restrictions one could argue it probably was not as hard a job compared to a job requiring more restraint, hence more cash but less Karma.

Again these are just examples and the modifiers are just suggestions for the GM when he is trying to figure out rewards for missions...

The path to Hell is paved with good intentions...

Good Grrls go to Heaven, Bad Grrls go Everywhere Else.

Just Dumb... *sigh*

That is somewhat true for the Core, but you see, even the core ruleset is more than the Core itself. Half the tricks in Unwired won't work without networks of more than one host; wires are mentioned both in it and in Core. Matrix backbone being wired is mentioned a few times in different books, too, I believe.
As for it being neither futuristic nor realistic, heh, well it is both. I mean, we've overwhelmingly moved on from wired connections - more smartphones and pad computers are sold yearly by far than good old full-sized PCs, and most of the stuff sold doesn't even have an RJ-45 jack.

Makes sense. The Johnson doesn't want collateral so he docks you 1k per body you leave. My table and a friend's table have both done this before.

Alternatively you could get a Johnson that wants chaos and gives a 1k bonus per body...


Same. I like to play the character that, in the world of greys, is known to be evil. Nosferatu mystic adept who's tradition is Black Magic and who is an expert at Calling in order to use Inhabitation spirits while attempting to build an Infected army?

That is the reverse, however. That is not a moral choice at that point, it is a mission parameter.



Unlimited Powah...
My evil is a bit more subtle than that, but I do understand the idea.

Actually, when the character finally made it to a table he was the drone rigger support. Tricked out commlink running a TacNet and remote control rigging. Anyone with enough money can serve as a good rigger. I show restraint when exercising my great power.

My Cyberlogician was Rigger Support as well. Though, he actually WAS a good guy (well, not evil anyway... ). Well... he worked for HKSB (as a deep cover shadowrunner) cleaning up the dregs of the Shadowrunning Community anyways - so Good Guy from the Average Citizen's perspective at least.

He was... Light Grey.

That's it... Light Grey.

I just got home from a lecture on multimedia and AR. Yes, it's looking like we're going that way soon, especially since they demonstrated a couple of modern-day applications. However, what made the Shadowrun Matrix iconic was that it wasn't realistic, it was pure sci-fi. No one complains about the lack of cellphones in Star Wars, even though it's supposed to be a scientifically-advanced setting. Same with Star Trek, they still use essentially a 60's tech base.

Shadowrun stood out, back in the day, because it was a bold setting. It made a lot of assumptions, many of which didn't turn out, but were very daring nonetheless. Ever since then, the boldness has trended downhill, in favor of boring modernism.

As for the Alignment mentality: in the early days, it was assumed that shadowrunners were anti-corporate, against-the-man-types, by default. Moving away from this might be more realistic, but it's also less original, and started to make Shadowrun more into a heist setting.

But everyone knows that the force interferes with wireless signals...

That might be because they have communication systems that are way better than cell phones...

Star Wars wasn't sci-fi, it's fantasy. But yeah, I think Cain is right. Shadowrun has transitioned from a strange and distant future to a competitor with D20 Modern. Again, probably why I play SR1-3, then jump to Eclipse Phase.

Space Opera.

Indeed... I would take the Holonet over Cell Phone technology any day, and twice on Aldeberan's Sundays.
Although it is probably just as buggy and prone to signal loss. Baah... Give me a Hard-line. Way more reliable.

Snow Crash is a parody or satire of Cyberpunk rather than a member of the genre proper.

~J

Couldn't agree more. Personally I steer my campaign back towards it's early incarnation as much as possible.

I have not seen you post a thing in literally at least a year. Have you been lurking these forums for all that time just waiting for the chance to say that again?

I found using 1e/2e setting(with a bit of 3e settings; I basically really dig 2050-to about 2065), and 3e rules works best for us. We got the gang members driving the car down the street, the more old-school feeling dystopia, the little bits of hope scattered around, and overall we found this setup works best for us rather than the new heist-feel(not that we never did heists in the old days, sure, we did once in awhile.) We also played plenty of variety in the old days as well. At the end of the day the 1e-2e setting was our favorite, and the stuff that stuck with us, so that's where we run(and the 2e/3e ruleset our favorite of the bunch, despite it's flaws.)

Pure coincidence

I was around in August, though! That's only half a year.

~J