I've seen a subject where Franck Trollman said that if the horrors would come back in Shadowrun, they lose (into the OSSR he and AncientHistory did about the Tirs).

He put down raw numbers about population, number of mages, weapons.

However, while totally theorical of course (since it's fictionnal anyways), I wouldn't have such faith.

The stupidest of horrors may have a hard time, yes. And that's still debatable because :

A- they corrupt the astral space to a point where mage cannot even astrally perceive without suffering pain (and risk beeing marked).
B- the ones who manifest from the astral space can disrupt your tactics greatly (how to shoot missiles when your opponent appear at close combat range).

But they may lose. However :

Now consider that the really intelligent one can take control of you, corrupt you from distance and stuff with an horror mark. Give them one, one goal: nourrish from people's pain and terror.
Now corrupt people that can launch mass-damage weapons and mankind could be very close to extinction. Add to that chaos that you can manipulate the events to raise tension between nations and things go even worse.


I wouldn't bet on a win of mankind.


(still it's a useless post )

We've never had anything resembling stats for the Horrors, so no way to know.

Not in shadowrun, but there's some thing existing in Earth Down (though not the same system, I admit)

Seems odd, I would imagine ED had many more adepts (includes mages) pre-Scourge than the 6th world does now.

Post-Scourge, there are still tons of adepts around because the mana levels are 'stuck'.

Yes we have—they've been statted in several editions of Earthdawn. That doesn't permit a precise comparison for a variety of reasons, but ED Horror stats can be compared to ED metahuman stats, and the difference between ED Horror and ED metahuman stats can be compared to the difference between ED metahuman stats relative to the difference between those same metahumans in SR.


I'm not sure I've seen the argument that you're talking about (I'll have to dig it up), but I would concur—most "Horrors are screwed" arguments I've seen depend heavily on assumptions about how unified metahumanity would be and how quickly they would recognize threats. In particular, I don't think I've seen any compelling argument about how the Horrors whose powers would be magnified, some exponentially, by the environment of the Sixth World (Bone Crown in particular).


Keep in mind the total populations. Powerful Awakened seem much more common per capita in Earthdawn (keeping in mind that ED Adepts probably correspond more to mid-grade Initiates rather than standard SR awakened), but the Sixth World has an awful lot of capita.

~J

We have one Horror stated in one of the paranormal creatures books. A Wraith I think.

Didn't Dunkelzahn or some other immortal estimate that metahumanity still needs a few centuries before it is ready to face the Horrors?

PP 456-506 EarthDawn 3rd edition Gamemaster's Compendium.

IDK about Dunkelzahn, but I know Lofwyr has had a few things to say on the issue. Most recently, to my knowledge, in the video game Sahdowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch.

Which has absolutely NOTHING to do with Shadowrun. *shrug*

It's the prequel series, and is compatible, albeit not directly. If you're going to be such a purist as to exclude it, then horrors don't belong in your game anyway.

compatable is arguable, while the fluff is similar the mechanics strayed quite a bit at times so it makes comparing ED & SR sort of like arguing SW vs ST sometimes.

I personally wish SR magic worked more like ED, but we all have our whims.


As for survival, it depends a lot on just how hot it gets. ED lore speaks of tides of creatures stripping the land bare (think tyranids with mojo tossed on top for good measure, though with some limits as they don't kill the world entirely) and this was just the lunkheads.

VS singular/smaller forces humanity could probably give the Horrors a good showing, but when the walls of reality themselves start to bleed and the waves from the endless sea comes crashing through, it could make for warm times.

The comforting thought is that the Horrors really can't come back proper until the mana levels are in excess of what they were in Earthdawn - and that means pretty much everyone and everything is magical at that point.

The Dragons are clearly aware of the threat posed by even a "mini-Scourge", and if I'm not mistaken they already dealt with one - the Insect Spirits of the Universal Brotherhood are lesser kin to the full Horrors. For all that it's easy to treat the Dragons as being senseless power-hording monsters, it may in fact be that their plans for exploiting Humanity are to slowly shape and prepare it for a coming Scourge, so that this time the dragons won't have to all go sleepy-by again while the mortal races huddle in inadequate cairns.

~Umi

They don't belong in Shadowrun, that is very true...
As for Prequel - That is a matter of taste, and has not been true for years, now.

The most potent of Horrors feed on pain, misery, and despair. All of those are provided by the way in which meta humans treats one another. The Horrors already won. Dystopia...

as i understand it, insect spirits aren't really related to horrors at all. it's more like "insect spirits require a moderately high mana level, and their presence suggest that the coming of the horrors may not be very far away if the mana levels continue to rise at their current rate".

honestly, i rather suspect that the endless wave of near-mindless consuming beings won't be that big of a deal, over all. they can't be negotiated with, and they leave land pretty unusable and are probably less controllable than most NBC type weapons anyways, so nobody is likely to support them. the barrens will get trashed pretty hard, but apart from that, i rather doubt they'll hold up well to, say, full auto machine guns with suppressive fire and APDS rounds or similar that they'll face if they try to hit anywhere important, and if they weren't even devastating enough to depopulate plant and animal life entirely when the main opposition they could have faced was out of the picture, i doubt they'd do *that* much beyond the first surprising wave.

but i don't think the intelligent ones would be all that easy to deal with, as has been noted by others.

Exactly. Earthdawn != Shadowrun, and the systems are not nearly as compatible as folks are suggesting.

Not to mention that given the rights ownership issues these days, it's an open question if ED is even actually a prequel anymore.

The two worlds were still built to intertwine, and share the same basic conceit of "Ages of Magic".

Now, sure, as game systems they don't directly compare - they're pretty much as different as you can imagine mechanically - but to suggest that the Lore no longer matches up just because of current legal ownership idiocies? That's kinda dumb.

Now, if ED or SR got rebooted somehow and given a new canon to work with? Maybe. But ED doesn't look like it's going to be getting any updates any time soon (why do they even sit on the property then? are they hoping it will eventually become valuable somehow?), and SR doesn't seem ready to reboot itself in the near future either.

So yeah, new players to SR5 don't need to know anything about the Horrors, because the game doesn't deal with them. But from a game universe standpoint? They're still canon, and they're still a major point of the lore, right next to things like the Cycle of Magic and Dragons.

~Umi

Against a finite number of horrors? As has been pointed out, metahumanity's biggest weapon against the dumb horrors is their biggest vulnerability against the smart ones. We rely on a very centralized infrastructure, with lots of points of failure. Comparing our modern day world, a coordinated hit against a few of our power stations is enough to bring 80% of the US to its knees for years. That sort of thing can't beat horrors. Independent, resilient communities could probably manage it, but that's not where Shadowrun is. If they had a few decades of wind-up to transition over, yeah, they could probably weather or even beat that storm.

An infinite number of horrors? Infinity almost always wins. Could metahumanity establish their own caerns and weather it out? Yeah. But you can't really 'beat' infinity.

Earthdawn doesn't really work as a precursor to modern-day earth. All the tie-ins to Shadowrun were nothing but developers making cute little references and in-jokes.

The horrors, hard to say. When magic has risen to the levels that attract them, humanity will have had centuries to develop magic and will still, presumably, have technology - which will also be more advanced, assuming that high mana levels don't mess it up (like nukes in Shadowrun). But will metahumanity be able to present a cohesive front against them? I imagine the Shadowrun world in the distant future will still be fragmented into various power players, as it has been since the beginning of recorded history. And human capability will still have hard limits. Look at how great dragons and immortal elves break the very setting, because of high, uncapped Magic ratings, and then imagine stuff even more powerful. I could see humanity surviving, but winning? Nah.

Why doesn't it work? What about it causes any sorts of problems?

You can't just excise the Earthdawn structure without crippling things. Too much of what is vital to the soul of Shadowrun is directly shared with Earthdawn. Trying to cut out the Earthdawn aspects would cause far more problems than leaving them in ever could.

You can't really have the Sixth Age without having had the Fourth Age. If magic "returned to the world", it by definition must have been here previously. The Dragons were around then, they're still around now - they didn't just appear from nothing. Ditto for the Immortal Elves. The various metatypes of humanity are all essentially identical to their Fourth Age counterparts, minus the obvious cultural disconnects. (Except, of course, when those disconnects have been repaired - such as Dunkelzahn helping to revive Or'zet, and the Immortal Elves reviving Sperethiel.)

Pretty much everything to do with Shadowrun's magic draws from Earthdawn. And Shadowrun is nothing without the Magic. It is the lynchpin concept - "what would the world look like if Magic came back to the world in the modern day and people had to try to reconcile a technological dystopia with supernatural craziness?" So trying to ignore or exclude the Earthdawn aspects of the Shadowrun universe would require completely rewriting that core idea of the world from the ground up.

It's fine that Shadowrun doesn't openly acknowledge the greater Earthdawn structures it is built upon - in fact, for legal reasons it's actually necessary that this be the way of things. But the simple fact is it isn't Shadowrun without the Earthdawn elements.

~Umi

Actually ED is getting a reboot/new edition, but with another company, under the reborn FASA here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/783548...awn-4th-edition

But again as it is a different company handling this, do not expect much in the way of cross-overs.

Why Not? I can run an entire campaign without EVER referencing Earthdawn. I see nothing Vital there at all. Earthdawn is a waste of exposition in my Shadowrun, were I to run it. Why would eliminating Earthdawn cause ANY problems? I just don't see it. Yes, You CAN use the Earthdawn information to make a richer world (since all that exposition has already been done for you), but it is so far from necessary that I cannot believe we are even debating its merits. *shrug*



My 4th Age does not have to include anything from Earthdawn. Not one iota. So Magic existed once before... In my Shadowrun, Magic existed in the 5th Age too, but not at anywhere the current levels of Shadowrun. My Dragons are not beholden to the Whims of Earthdawn, nor would I want them to be, assuming I was running a game. Yes, You have some entertaining tie-ins, should you have both game lines, and there are some entertaining references that can be used as in-jokes, but they are hardly necessary to the Magical Cycles of my World. The 4th Age is not, nor has it EVER been delineated in Shadowrun. There are vague references, and that is all. And those references can be something else entirely, should I want them to be.



I completely disagree. They systems do not work anything like each other, so why should I have to give a nod to Earthdawn at all? I am perfectly capable of explaining Magic in the 6th World without ever having to consult a single Earthdawn book.



And I call BS on this. It is Perfectly Shadowrun without ever needing to acknowledge Earthdawn whatsoever. Shadowrun is a game where Magic Meets Man and Machine. Nothing in that description requires that that Magic be from Earthdawn.

So it's somehow still Shadowrun without Dragons, Immortal Elves, an earlier age of Magic, the metatypes having existed previously, et cetera? Or those things are somehow not directly from Earthdawn?

You seem to be suggesting that you can somehow have all these things in Shadowrun while magically managing to have them not be part of Earthdawn. That in your version of Shadowrun, there was no "Earthdawn Chapter of History", and yet oddly enough everything that would have cropped up as a direct result of that nonexistant "Earthdawn Chapter of History" still actually cropped up anyway through separate unexplained coincidences, or something like that?

No, I'm sorry, that's just stupid.

If nothing else, major Shadowrun characters directly stem from the "Earthdawn chapter of History". Harlequin is a relic of the Fourth Age. He was a Knight of the Crimson Spire, he fought Horrors in the Fourth Age, he fights against their return now in the Sixth, he was an Ambassador to the Blood Wood elves, et cetera. He is a direct link to the world of Earthdawn - he was there to witness it. His great rival, Ehran the Sage, is likewise from the same chapter of history, and is an equally important character in the world of Shadowrun.

Or, heck, the Dragons are also relics of that same age, and they too help the Earthdawn world and the Shadowrun world to intermingle. They dredge up artifacts and codexes, they teach the Earthdawn languages to the mortal races... I mean come the fuck on!

You want to have everything that originates in Earthdawn, but not call it Earthdawn for some bizarre reason? You want to take characters and events and languages and artifacts and places from the Earthdawn lore which have had sweeping impacts on the world of Shadowrun, but just pretend that they're actually somehow separate in any meaningful way?

No, I'm sorry. The two worlds are one - they always have been, they always will be. What you're arguing is like having Frodo Baggins and Bilbo Baggins not be part of the same Middle Earth. It's complete nonsense.

~Umi

The fact is that you can have a previous age of magic without referencing Earthdawn, which is what GMs who have bought the newer editions of Shadowrun and have never even heard of Earthdawn do. I liked it better without the Earthdawn crap shoehorned into it, especially the twinkly Mary-Sue GMPCs like Harlequin.

Earthdawn or not, Horrors are a part of Shadowrun lore.

So that would be... when? 1st Edition? If even then?

I just don't understand your mentality. You want to downplay the Earthdawn aspect at your table? That's more than fine. The Fourth Age was supposed to be mythic, and NPCs like Dragons and Immortal Elves are supposed to be mysterious and tight-lipped about things. It makes perfect sense that very few people in the Sixth Age actually properly understand the nature and history of the world - especially small fry Shadowrunners.

But that doesn't change the fact that Shadowrun takes place in the same world as Earthdawn, that the world's major players who control everything about the dystopian future are the exact same mythical and immortal beings of that past Age of history and magic, and that the universe operates on essentially the same metaphysical rules both in the past and the present.

Can you tell the story of Frodo carrying the ring to Mount Doom without mentioning the Silmarillion or the other works of Tolkien which flesh out the world's origins, lore, and mythos? Absolutely. But can you really choose to pretend that Sauron is just some random Big Bad™ who cropped up coincidentally, instead of being the product of the unique and strange history that led to his corruption? Not without breaking the spirit of the world as it was built. Gloss over it or ignore it if you like - but don't actively state "this never happened", because in terms of the universe, yes it did, and there is evidence of it having happened everywhere.

It's fine if you don't know how Sauron came to actually be Sauron - but you can't just complain "Oh, Sauron is such a lame GMPC villain character - seriously, "The Dark Lord" who threatens to destroy the world? Puh-lease! I liked Middle Earth better before he was shoehorned in as one of the Immortal beings present at the dawn of time and eventually corrupted by the twisted being of Melkor, First of the Ainur..." et cetera...

Harlequin is a key part of Shadowrun. I don't care how much you hate the Immortal Elves, he and his kin and the Dragons are as indespensible to the heart of Shadowrun as Sauron, the Elves, and the Ringbearers are to Middle Earth.

~Umi

Toxic spirits could be a close enough substitute for Horrors. They gain strength by destroying various healthy living conditions, causing pain and suffering. A toxic spirit could comfortable ally with a company that has set up business in a poor country with a lack of environmental regulations, even offering some of the suffering population some relief if they follow it.

I'm Sorry - Where in Shadowrun 5 do they talk about Earthdawn? No where I can locate. *shrug*

How very droll. You know perfectly well they can't actually use the word "Earthdawn" because of the legal situation.

Yet they talk about Dunkelzahn, the other Great Dragons, the Ages of Magic, et cetera, all things which are straight out of Earthdawn, even if they aren't named as such for legal reasons.

So yeah, you could point out that, "Ah! They only talk about some "Sauron" figure in Lord of the Rings - no one mentions this "Mairon" guy, so clearly they aren't related!". Except they're one and the same - the story about Frodo doesn't have to expressly mention Sauron's past for it to still be Sauron's past.

Sure, Frodo and the gang (except Gandalf, of course) have no clue about who or what Sauron really is beyond that he's the Big Bad™ out to conquer the world, but that doesn't change that fact that Sauron is still more than just the Big Bad™. It doesn't undo the history of the world - it doesn't unwrite the canon.

~Umi

Point to me, then, since it is so obviously NOT part of Shadowrun.

Which is so easy to disassociate from Earthdawn it is astonishing we are still talking about it. Yes, Dragons and Magic Exist in Shadowrun. Yes, Magic Cycles. SO WHAT. I do not have to use one iota of Earthdawn crap to run Shadowrun. Not one little bit. Remember, Shadowrun CAME FIRST. Earthdawn is at best a backfiller for Shadowrun. And If I don't like they way they backfilled it, I am in no way compelled to use that Crap. I can use the names they provide and generate my own rationale for how they came about in the history. *shrug*

That is assuming I even need to worry about it in the first place, which is not a forgone conclusion to start with. Who cares what happened 10,000 years ago? the people of the 6th World sure as hell don't. Your arguments are in no way compelling.

When the world is controlled by the machinations of 10,000+ year old Earthdawn figures who are vital to the evolving storyline and plot of the Shadowrun world, you kind of have to care about what happened back then.

I just don't understand why you think you're playing Shadowrun when you're not. If you choose to wholly excise canonical factors of the game universe you don't agree with, you're not playing the same game or taking part in the same world as the rest of us anymore. "Close enough" isn't.

If you really want to play some bizarro world version of the game in which the Big Serpent "Loafweird" runs the German Megacorp "SauerKraut", and neither he nor any of his fellow Big Serpents, nor the ancient lost languages of "Ork'Shite" and "Speakelfyall", nor anything else you can think of, has any actual connection to Earthdawn beyond sheer coincidental resemblance, and where anyone who even conceives of the phrase "Immortal Elf" instantly and violently spontaneously combusts? Go right ahead.

You aren't playing Shadowrun - you're just using the Shadowrun game system to play a custom Cyberpunk & Dragons setting - but hey, if that's what you enjoy, knock yourself out. Nothing wrong with fan fiction.

~Umi

LOL Sauerkraut.

No points to you, as you didn't actually weaken or address Umi's arguments.

If you wanted points, you would have done something to point out the lack of necessity of the history of Middle Earth to the immediacy of the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings story (you really don't need all of the specifics). You could have also compared it to the way the Prequel-Trilogy of Star Wars wasn't needed to set up the Original Trilogy.

Umi does have a point, though, that the original source material was heavily shaped by Earthdawn. You can run a game that doesn't directly mention any names or any things from Earthdawn, but the in-game history and plot is shaped by those elements down to its core. Much like Lord of the Rings, you don't need to know or be personally familiar with all of the (Earthdawn) deep history to function right there in your preferred edition. However, the overarching plot that drives the world, the presence of Sauron and the origins of his motivations, or Anakin's fatherly regret, may not be understood completely without knowing the history behind it, and so may, at times, seem disjointed.

You can pick and choose what you want from any tabletop RPG, but that does not mean that the core setting, core plot, etc. is any less tied to and shaped by its history.

Earthdawn is not canonical in Shadowrun!!! It is an after the fact add on to potentially appease someone who had an itch.
I can have 10,000 year old dragons and elves with machinations, but they do not have to come from the demented ramblings of a doped up writer from another game line.

The original Source Material WAS NOT SHAPED BY EARTHDAWN.
Earthdawn was published after Shadowrun was. THE CORE SETTING WAS NOT EARTHDAWN. Not sure how many times that need be said. *Sheesh*

The "original source material"?

Tell me, what version of Shadowrun are you playing? Is it... First Edition? Second Edition, perhaps? No? It's not? Ah. That's what I thought.

Earthdawn was published after Shadowrun Second Edition. And everything that has been added since then was shaped by Earthdawn. In large part this is because both Shadowrun and Earthdawn were designed by Jordan Weisman and his team. I honestly don't care which was published first, because the two games were officially stated by the original creators to be the same world and universe at different points in time.

By your logic, there are no such things as editing, concepts don't change over time, and game systems always get published in order of immaculate conception, rather than according to business concerns and project feasibility at a given moment in time. All stories are set down wholesale and perfect in indelible stone on the date of their publishing, and anything which comes after is mere disconnected frippery.

To be fair, on some level I kind of get where you're coming from. I personally hate certain works that went beyond the scope of the original pieces I loved - like the god awful Matrix sequels, or the absolutely execrable Star Wars prequels. Yet for as much as I try to pretend those never existed, the mere fact that the Wachowski brothers and George Lucas said that those pieces of garbage are official canon, makes them canon.

I don't have to like it. I don't have to watch them. I don't have to include anything related to them when playing a session of GURPS: The Matrix or Star Wars: Edge of The Empire. But if I'm talking to someone about the Matrix or Star Wars universes, and they bring up the sequels/prequels as a point of Lore discussion, I realize that they have every right to do so, that I am being stubborn and inflexible, and I see myself out of the situation because I know my argument will hold no water with anyone who doesn't share my selfish distaste of those works.

~Umi

TJ is arguing that orks are not 'Earthdawn material'. Umidori is arguing they are.

TJ is arguing that horrors aren't statted in Shadowrun because there's no Shadowrun books with stats. Umidori is arguing that Earthdawn stats stand.

I expect you can both agree that the Shadowrun authors for late 2nd edition until the end of Fan Pro agreed that Earthdawn and Shadowrun are in the same world.

You're not likely to be able to convince each other of anything else, so unless you want the entire remainder of the thread to be about you guys beating your heads against walls, sum up your positions and move on.

TJ, if you're running 4th/5th and saying that none of the Earthdawn crossover stuff applies to your game, why are you even posting in this thread? There are no horrors in 4th/5th. Not only no stats, but no mention. Horrors 'don't exist' in your Shadowrun, so obviously the humans win. If you're running 3rd, all we know is there's an infinity of them. But calculating who would win in a contest including an infinite number of un-statted monsters is pissing in the dark. I expect you recognize that, so conversation ends. I'm not trying to push you out of the thread, but what point are you trying to make? The a priori assumption of the thread is that earthdawn horrors exist and are coming back. If you don't play a game with Earthdawn material, why do you care that other people do, and are discussing it?

I get where you are coming from, but Earthdawn is in fact the canonical past of Shadowrun, whether you like it or not. Shadowrun did not just sprout with no thought about its past, I mean SR1 has mana cycles, just because it was published after does not make it any less the prequel. If you choose to not use it at your table that is your choice, and it is not "wrong fun", however when discussing the matter in a public manner you do need to accept that it is considered the baseline because it has been frequently been stated that it is in fact the past of Shadowrun. If you cannot discuss the setting with that in mind all you are doing is derailing the topic because of your personal preferences.

As to the source material being shaped by Earthdawn, you are absolutely correct it was not shaped by Earthdawn because it was very likely developed at the same time. I know that I don't write stuff in a vacuum. The previous age was very clearly thought about and developed to a sufficient point to provide a framework for the world of Shadowrun to be fully developed and published. This is clear from the beginning with the machination of behind the scenes immortals even hinted at in SR1 if I remember correctly. This was fully developed throughout SR2, 3, and even 4 with the Dawn of the Artifacts arc. So I think that your assertion that Earthdawn is not he past of Shadowrun or has no connection to it holds zero water anywhere except in games you happen to GM. That's fine, so my question is why are you trying to get others to agree with you when it is very clearly a matter of personal preference versus officially stated canon?

I mean the publication history SR1 89-92 was literally just the corebooks, SR2 92+ really develops the setting and ED is published in 93. If you think this was just an itch, you are really reaching.

if earthdawn was developed as shadowrun's fourth world, that makes it no less the fourth world of shadowrun than it would have been if shadowrun was developed as the sixth world of earthdawn.

if either of them were intended to be the same world, it really doesn't matter which one that is; by placing the one in the world of the other, you wind up with the other in the same world as the one.

My Comments started because Umidori stated that "It is not Shadowrun without the Earthdawn Elements."
And I call BS on that since it was OBVIOUSLY Shadowrun for 4 years before Earthdawn was even put into production. So the addition of Earthdawn did not suddenly make it more Shadowrun than Shadowrun (What was it before 1993 exactly, if not Shadowrun). The arguments have flowed from there.

Facts stand... Earthdawn is an Add-on for Shadowrun at BEST. You may like the fluff that was added, and you may even desire it. However, It is no longer even supported and the only remaining bits of Earthdawn is in-joke wankary. Telling people that Shadowrun NEEDS Earthdawn to exist is simply not true... it existed just fine for 4 years prior to the introduction of Earthdawn. *shrug*

Earthdawn and Shadowrun were both developed by FASA. Earthdawn lists itself as the forth world, Shadowrun lists itself as the sixth. (At least the early editions did)
We are living in the fifth world that was supposed to have ended on December 21, 2012. Although I've seen several Trolls, I'm fairly sure that didn't happen.
Discussing the Popol Vuh and the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar that I remember being originally worked into the background of both systems requires a different thread.

One could argue that they are both the same Earth at different points of the time stream, or both just in the same multiverse.

If Earthdawn is in Shadowruns past, what happened to the Kears? There should be some evidence of people living in cave systems for hundreds of years.
It would be convenient if there was a Shadowrun 2nd ed. crossover splat boot listing Obsidiman, T'skrang, and Windlings.

Then I think this thread isn't supposed to be about what is cannon, but helping someone make crossover adventure material.

The same thing that happened to the Orichalcum deposits that magically appeared, or all the wonderful artifacts unearthed by "Dawn of the Artifacts", or Bottled Demon, or ...

But yeah the point is to help out the OP not argue about what does and does not fit into anyones particular game.

What happened to the Kaers? The same thing that happened to a lot of things. For one, they were already buried, by their very construction. What about the Deep Lacuna? Could that be a doorway to a Kaer on N America? Maybe. The fact is, they were buried, and DEEP, for a reason: to keep out magical intruders. It stands to reason that mundane intruders would have a hard time finding them too. I'd be more interested in what happened to their airships and such, or what happened to the lava that is now the Black Sea. The kaers are one of the less mysterious aspects of what has been lost to the ages.

And people ask me, "Mark, how come you never use the canon of the game universe as it is printed?"

Read the above argument and see where I'm coming from. The beauty of using the basic game mechanics and the broad strokes of the overarching game universe means that I can simply act like the stuff I don't care for simply doesn't exist. Immortal Elves running the world behind the scenes like the proverbial Zionist conspiracy? HATED IT! *sounds of a toilet flushing in the background* Harlequin? That motherfucker caught hit by a semi on a crosswalk in my game world, the driver backed up over his punkass to be sure, and ran him over again as he drove off. Deader than Elvis! And you know what? It hasn't stopped me in any way, shape, or form from telling some great stories that any of my players would describe later as, "This great Shadowrun campaign my friend Mark ran..."

Get over yourselves, guys. The minutia of back story of Shadowrun, even previous editions, has absolutely zero bearing on some great games being played and some great stories being told with that crap all being tossed to the curb and/or handwaved off.

+1

Earthdawn may be canonical, in a Highlander 2 kind of way, but a few vague references and such hardly make it essential to playing Shadowrun. For many campaigns, the Earthdawn/Shadowrun link will never really come up. And a lot of campaigns are like psychophipps' campaign; excising, re-writing, or ignoring the more nonsensical or illogical parts of the Shadowrun timeline.

I prefer the highly technical term, "Completely Fucktarded" ™ when describing the SR timeline in many respects, but thanks for backing me up.

One thing that drives me nuts about SR vs Cyberpunk as RPG game worlds is how much SR has copped out humanity. "Well, the SR world is this fucked up place it is because some pointy-earred Methuselahs that can cast a fireball that could wipe out half an army have run things forever and ever through Machiavellian conspiracies...oh, and a few dragons...so yeah..." At least Cyberpunk mans up to it a bit and says, "Our game world is in the FUBAR Zone because humans are a pack of greedy, self-serving gits with minimal thoughts about the next guy, let alone the next generation."

Frankly there effectively isn't any connection in-game, either. There are precisely what, a dozen living creatures total who have any idea of what the Fourth Age was like, if you round up all the Great Dragons and Immortal Elves? None of them are talking about it anyway, so it is a thing that is never relevant to a Shadowrun game in any respect.

Definitely not essential, but it never hurt my games to have that detailed background running in the back of my head providing me with extra layers of crap to mess my players up...but what I really want to ask is, what is this Highlander 2 you speak of?