I bet you haven’t …I bet you probably don’t even know who I am. Or remember me. Or are actively trying to repress the memories.

So allow me to introduce myself: I’m Adhoc and this profile has been dormant for so long, that some may have thought that it was dead. In which case: can I be your pet technomatic shedim?

I was active on this forum for a period around 2004, where I was dragged into writing the Denmark-chapter for Shadows Of Europe. My last post is actually from 2010 - 5 years ago.

My real life name is Anders Højsted, and I - still - live in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Over the last few years my group of roleplaying perps have been focusing on D&D3, 3.5, Pathfinder & World of Darkness and let the Sixth World slip. We haven't been to Seattle since 3rd edition.

But times are changing and we are changing with them, so we've picked up Shadowrun again - this time the 5th edition. I'm the master of the campaign, the players are group of very old friends and very new ones. We're all in our thirties or fourties and are struggling to find time to play - family, work and other obligations tends to get in the way of good, fun dicerolling mayhem. So far we're playing every forthnight.

The campaign is called "A New Horizon"; the characters are a ragtag team of runners, who have been hired by Horizon to clear out the Vermont Knolls on Los Angeles for an expansion of Horizons corporate enclave. Ther original idea was to take morally upright runners and then slowly corrupt them though more and more henious acts, but the players circumvented it by creating morally corrupt corporate henchmen, so that idea died faster then a orc at Alamos 20K barbeque.

Instead the focus is now on the intersection between the shadowrunning world & the entertainment industry and on the contrast between shadowrunning and modern management practices (aka upbeat, postive and effin annoying). As a result the team is torn between shooting their manager for being a over-positive twat and not doing it because he is about to land them as very lucrative Simsense contract. It's all fun and games.

I'll be posting in here about the campaign - my post will be marked [ANH], so you can avoid them at will.

Oh....I'm considering writing for SR again. Should I?

Break a neck,
Anders/Adhoc

Welcome back

The soyscotch is just under the counter so pour yourself a drink.

The campaign sounds like fun and will look forward to hear more on it.

As for writing, if you have some ideas why not? Several of the smaller e-books for 4th/5th that have come out are nice bite sized pieces focusing on certain topics so is a good way to get projects out.

p.s. your underworld link in signature does not seem to work for me, not sure if that is your end or mine.

Thanks for the drink - that taste hasn't improved since last I was here....

I'll keep you updated on the campaign. So far they've:
- killed two trolls in combat
- poisoned the DIY-watersupply for around 10.000 people
- assasineted the main mechanics (key personell) for said watersupply
- been hired as main characters for a Quentin Tarantino-style simsense documentary program about runners (aka themselves).

Next up: ad hoc crowd "control" for water delivery.

About writing: it's a bit daunting to start again - there is a ton of stuff that I need to read up on.

However, you are right: I could focus on small bits - I have some ideas for some missions set in Scandinavia/Berlin. There is some great artifacts here that can be used as mcguffins for adventures:

The Sunwagon (bronze age)
Guld Horns (iron age)
The Gundestrup-kettle (iron age)

And I'd like to revive the fey from Paranormal Critters Of Europe. Shadowrun's elves are based on Tolkien's elves, who were based on the old faeries legends from Notherne Europe/Scandinavia. The magic level in SR has increased dramatically since 3rd edition, which makes it relevant to introduce them. And they were very nasty critters....

The link in my signature is dead - the offtopic "Lounge"-area exploded last time I was here and someone set up Underworld for people to have offtopic discussions. It's closed now. I have no idea where people are at now.

A.

I knew this day would come. The Danes have returned to pillage us!

Hide your beer! Hide your butter! Hide your now-Norwegian North Sea oil reserves! I'll try to round up moose from Sweden to drive them off, but crossing the Øresund will take time! In the meantime, head for the hills - literally! They're not used to mountainous terrain, and will tire quickly!

~Umi

I'm sure it isn't that bad Umidori. I mean the Danes are a nice, peaceful people. I'm sure some research will back that claim up. Let's see now...wikipedia...uh huh. Vikings? Ummm actually maybe you aren't reacting enough. I can send you some Canadian Moose to help with the defense. Just ... try ... to ... hold on.

Well, the swedes and norwegians were vikings as well, so if anything this is going to be an internal Wintermute-showdown (probably about the default language on the internal newsletter).

Don't worry about an invasion - we have enough beer and oil for ourselves.

And we've taken to fighting out wars in the Middle East instead - it's warmer and they don't serve us rotten fish

BTW: AFAIK Denmark & Sweden is the two nations who have had the most wars with each other. Then again, they were all short - more like summercampaigns.

Not like the French & British who went to war for a bleeding century.

A.

Bleeding being the operative term there.

Looks up from his Lurkers Den

Welcome back, chummer.

Slinks back into the darkness


The Eggman

So, what are your thoughts on SR5? Most Dumpshockers have an irrational hatred towards it.

Some of us have a rational hatred, be honest.

For some of us its a mixed response

+1

seems to be them onth for it. I just stopped by after who knows how long out of the forum.

SR5 for me was a big let down. THe limits didn't fix anything, wi-fi for the same bonuses that weren't wi-fi in previous editions was a let down, bricking was a bad idea, and um my book fell apart in my first reading.

Is that irrational? I don't think so....

Just curious did you remember to read only [Mental Limit] pages at a time, up to [Physical Limit] times a day and made sure to leave the book's wifi on because it does state:

SR5 Core Book
Wifi Bonus: Electrostatic-controlled glue retains pages.

You have to remember they designed it for the gamer who likes to take out pages and resort them into folders or print up errated pages and reinsert these into the Core book.

and some of us who've been playing for years refer books that don't self destruct in five minutes. There's no point in having an expensive, and they are, hard cover book that will come apart by design.

Kinda like how there's no point in having expensive cyberware and gear that will make you electronically insecure by design?

~Umi

We haven't played for that long with it, so I can't give you a very substantial analysis of it. These are my intial impressions.

The universe:
The universe is changed a lot. I "left" Shadowrun around 2006 when Year Of The Comet & Threats was coming out and things were changing already back then. YoTC introduced a shitload of new supernatural stuff – the world became a lot more magical. At the same time Dunkelzahn died and the Horrors appeared. Before this, the world consisted of three “world”: the physical, the astral and the matrix. All of the sudden the whole world was expanded with all the metaplanes.

Now we have alchera (that sunk LA? A magical phenomenon that levelled a city?), metaplanes like in D&D and mundane access to them. SR is going from Cyberpunk to High Fantasy and the ‘borgs are left rusting on the sidewalk .

And ancient artifacts are being hunted for the magical properties? Do you know how much of that old shit we have in Europe? We can’t dig a hole without finding something.

Then all the stuff with the AIs, the Otaku and the Technomancers was introduced. Magic & “Matrix” all of the sudden became a lot more complex and (potentially) interesting. The physical world was left behind – SR5 sammies are pretty much the same as SR3 sammies. But a SR3 mage or a SR3 decker is very unlike a SR5 mage or a technomancer.

Dragons were always this danger lurking in the shadows behind the Shadows and only something you came in touch if you royally fucked up on a job. But now they have a fullblown civil war amongst themselves where they are levelling cities and killing thousand of civilians? WTF?

Crazy world – it’s a helluwa lot more chaotic then the one I left behind.

The system:
It’s so so. Shadowrun have an inherent problem: you can only use d6.

People have been trying to simulate a realistic reality with a system with inherent low granularity. This creates complexity. At the same time, people have to be able to run the system, so complexity is an issue. It’s a conflict between realism, complexity and playability/usability.

The systems tries to handle it with a lot more stats then before and with a lot more flexibility in choice. You can ignore a lot of stuff and the Limits-cap also keeps dicerolling down. Unfortunally you can circumvent this cap with Edge – which unbalances the system.

In conclusion: it’s complicated, (properly) unbalanced and bulky – as Shadowrun has always been.

However:
The artwork quality in the books are great  and it is soo much fun playing it with today’s online ressources (Google Maps etc.).

It doesn't help that they used a binding method really only good for 200-250 pages on a book closer to 400 pages.



-k

Well, hallo there! Long time, No ...forum?!??!??!

How you doin?

Maybe I should ask Minna if she wants to join us in here....

A.