matter of perspective i guess. those pointy-eared methuselahs are mostly different from normal humans in that they are powerful, and have lived for a very long time.

in other words, whether you believe it's ancient powerful elves (which are essentially humans) that are screwing the rest of metahumanity over for their own profit without a care, or powerful and non-ancient humans who are gleefully screwing over the rest of metahumanity for their own profit without a care, it doesn't change much. immortal elves are just old powerful people who happen to hate a small portion of the world's population somewhat less than they hate the rest of the world's population.

and while those dragons are admittedly manipulating humanity for their own ends, it's worth noting that they are doing it through thousands or even millions of (meta)human servants, who are just as happy to participate in screwing over everyone else so that they can keep their status of "useful enough to not eat" as they would be if they were working for a human (who would probably just work them to death rather than eating them, but hey, you never know... i'm sure there's plenty of people working for aztechnology who eat other people )

i mean, sure, the dragons are powerful. but they're powerful because they've built an empire of humans who have essentially sided with a giant winged firebreathing lizard rather than their own species because the dragons happen to be rich.

Yeah, the Dragons are pretty much just literal walking metaphors for greed, power, corruption, scheming, and all the rest.

But in a world where Spirits are literally manifestations of faith and belief, that's not really all that weird, is it?

~Umi

It proves nothing for me.

ED date from 93. But Bottled Demon and Harlequin are dated from 1990 and already hints to ED (Bottled Demon hints on horror and Harlequin to Immortal elves).

The published date isn't the time when the idea arises. I do think that the deepening of the 4th age links arose long before 93.

And no the original source was not shaped by ED.

It was shaped by Cyperpunk. Because, AFAIK, Shadowrun was supposed to be a cyberpunk game but Talsonrian edited Cyberpunk before, and because of that, they've added a fantasy component to the game.


The trully original material wasn't shaped by ED. It was a trial to make SR different from ED. But as soon as they started to deepen the backgound, they had in mind to create a setting that was the 4th mythological age of SR.

Whilst I mostly agree, the original material WAS shaped by the notion that there had been a magical world before the 5th world, and whilst that might not have quite been Earthdawn, given how quickly the notions of the Horrors and immortal elves appear, it can't have been a million miles away, either.

I think the real issue here is that Tymeaus (and some others) seems to feel that if ED is considered to be before the SR world, as a general principle, he feels like he would have to follow it, and have to account for it and so on. But that's just not true TJ's game is his own game. If he doesn't want ED to be before it, ED doesn't have to be before it.

Personally I kind of go the opposite way. I feel like ED was actually a more grounded and coherent fantasy setting than SR has become (indeed, it was perhaps the first truly coherent fantasy setting for a mainstream fantasy RPG, laying the foundation for stuff like Exalted or D&D 4E - indeed 4E closely resembles ED in a lot of ways). ED did not have an infinite sprawl of humanoid races, they didn't just add a race "because they felt like it", nor did they easily add new kinds of magic or the like. Whereas SR has added stuff willy-nilly over the years, stuff which is rather sillier than anything in ED, and far less coherent. So I like the idea that ED was before, and actually ban magical stuff and races which *didn't* appear in ED 1E in my games (which means some of the metavariants are right out, as are changelings which aren't basically ED races).

Either way, though, it's fairly clear that when SR blossomed, post-2E, ED was very much a big influence, and only became a bigger one through the '90s.

As for objections like "where are the caerns?", well, you can make the same objection to absolutely anything in the SR world that was supposed to be around 10000 years ago. From an archaeological perspective that is not a long time at all. Human civilization was well underway, bones can be simply preserved from then (no need for fossilization), DNA is frequently recovered, paintings and art are often in good condition and so on. So by the "where are the caerns?" logic one might as well ask "where are the troll skeletons?" "where are the troll sculptures and art?" and so on. I think we have to accept that, whether we use ED or another setting (or no setting) as the 4th world, it isn't our world (I mean, first elf was born in 1987... they had different presidents since the '80s, the idea that the SR world is our world is long over), and probably archaeologist WERE finding caerns, troll/ork/elf/dwarf bones and so on, it's just that they didn't know how to interpret them.

Btw - one thing TJ said is definitely wrong - he claimed no-one in the Sixth World cares about what happened 10000 yeas ago (except maybe a few elves and great dragons). This isn't right. The Atlantean Foundation and a huge number of others are extremely interested in that sort of thing, and "ancient magical relics" recovered by "arcanoarchaeologists" and the like are pretty common macguffins in the recent editions of Shadowrun. So people do care - a lot - enough to kill and send Shadowrunners and so on.

That doesn't mean anyone *has* to use ED as their backstory though.

Again, there's nothing wrong with playing with only the Shadowrun books, or only some of the Shadowrun books, or pieces here and pieces there, or whatever. Excising Earthdawn-specific references is fine, and no one will arrest you for wrongfun.

But then why are you posting in a thread about Earthdawn??

Earthdawn was an after thought borrowing from Shadowrun for a fantasy game setting. You can use it as backgroound material if you choose (all through 2nd and 3rd edition I never did when GMing). While it was officially the background for a few years, it does not have that big of an impact.

I always preferred the illusion that Shadowrun is our world. Its ancient history is merely our own secret history concealed from us by conspirators. The IEs are hiding their manipulation of society over ages of time and the dragons trying to obfuscate so they can catch up to the IEs. They are not interested in revealing the truth unless they have to.

What it is in your game is opinion, not fact and no internet arguments are going to be won on the strength of your opinions.

Personnaly, I do find that using ED references only adds something if you play ED AND SR.

Exemple:

Play an ED scenario about a few remaining minor threat that were the Invaes (compared to horrors) then play the heavy apocalyptic Bug arc in SR.
Let them meet Mountainshadow and meet Dunkelzahn.
Visit the Crying Spires and meet the knight Har'lea'quin then play Harlequin's scenarios.
Fights the horrors in ED and bring back Tallia's Voice in SR.


It was a nice way to put in perspective the 2 games, to make them feed from each others (like it would have worked if Eclipse Phase could have been SR's future).

Now ditch ED, don't buy or play it and ofc, introducing those parts are less fun.

I disagree that introducing those parts are less fun (so, "Of Course" not required). I enjoyed the hell out of them (and don't really care for the Earthdawn Bits, so they were ignored). And they really do not need the Earthdawn "History" to be fun. *shrug*

Oh, I know. You could do a pretentious vampire campaign that starts in Earthdawn and ends up in Shadowrun!

But that's only 3 ages! That's not nearly enough time to fit the proper amount of angst in! I mean, the treachery ALONE will take a fair portion of that time (as with any good vampire group). Backstabbing, spreading rumors, stealing girlfriends boyfriends paramours, never forgiving that time Vicki used up the last of my expensive mascara or the time James wore the EXACT SAME OUTFIT I had been talking about wearing to the concert, ...
...
... what were we talking about again?

My latest invention: The Ministaker. An electric rotary stake launcher capable of fragging more than 2,000 bloodsuckers a minute. Get yours today!

Getting mad at the vampire who went to the Renfaire wearing the same outfit you wore back in the 1400s. DAMMIT THAT WAS YOUR LOOK!

I think we have a fundamental difference in viewpoints here: I consider the ONLY purpose of vampires to be dying as inventively as possible, EG via steamroller.
You seem to view them as having some other aspects to them. I don't get that.

No, steamroller on slowest movement is ironically the BEST possible end! Think about it, so much time to question your existence, and the choices that lead you to such a fate! The drama, the praying for salvation and absolution, and, finally, the breathlessly mouthed "I... don't... blame you... " before the last flicker of life is snuffed from that cursed form. *contented sigh*

Ok then, switching to the Ferris wheel. Not lethal, but not exactly healthy for vampires.

fire them into the sun via rocket. in space, no one can hear your emo.

I like this.
I prefer flamethrowers for their speed, cost effectiveness and the chance to watch vamps do the burny dance, but this project has potential.

I would almost want to do a short story arc of low end Horrors breaking through in the Barrens, and having the arses handed to them ala 'Attack the Block' style because they are the brute sort and just are not used to facing actual resistance like they would get from the gangers/runners/ taser armed hobos (Ask CanRay about this last one )

Unless you play a free spirit in which case you could have been around then.