My first impression: The book wants to wanted to alternate between "dry CIA Factbook" and "light-hearted Shadowtalk", which is a nice idea for a document supposedly compiled from different sources in Wikipedia style. But the result also alternates to "there is nothing noteworthy in this article" and "where did the fourth wall go?" Besides these "meta" concerns, the information content itself does not seem to be obviously erroneous, but...


Two wit, this is the entire entry on the Czech Republic

A population number and some recent political issue is not a different tone from other entries, it's just nothing.


And then there are the dwarf-Jews...first, the fourth wall gets bulldozed to tell us that dwarfs are an analogy for Jews (because $REASONS) in the least subtle way possible:


Then, we are told that there is a secret cabal of dwarfs through the ages -- to their credit, the writers(s) realized that this is slightly unfortunate to write right after identifying dwarfs with the group at the center of every conspiracy theory, but instead of just dropping the subject, the reaction was to smash the ruins of the fourth wall even further so the writer's voice can clarify that this conspiracy is 'far from the “let’s rule the world” illuminati'.

Anyway, a bunch of dwarfs are secretly building a kaer. How does the IC writer know about that? The same way they know about the function of JackBNimble, in other words, they shouldn't.

Interesting.

I don't have the book, but these are useful observations.

In terms of structure, as you say, such a mish-mash makes sense, but I'll also cut them some slack on holes in their narrative. A page on every country in the world as of right now would be a 200 page book before you cover anything else.

I suspect that the dwarf/jew thing is more a matter of clumsy wording, than a bad In Character idea. Basically, as I read the excerpt, they're saying that dwarves suffer from prejudices and slanders similar to those traditionally aimed at jews. Then, a different authorial voice provides some out-of-character information (which I'd probably ignore in-game anyway).

Since when? That's NEVER been mentioned before, and is just a repeat of tired 4chan tropes.
Furthermore, the missing delineation between in-character and author voice is atrocious.

The part on dwarves looks like the author trying to backpedal on what has been published in Run Faster. Run Faster went way further in comparing dwarves to jewish people, while never openly acknowledging it. When I say further, I mean it has the "dim masses" targeting dwarf-owned shop in search for gold, and sometimes finding it.


And since Run Faster did not break the fourth wall and/or acknowledge the reference to jews, you could not tell if it was stupidly antisemitic ("such people exists in the real world and I use them as an inspiration for Shadowrun setting"), violently antisemitic ("the people who think like me will understand this thinly-veiled reference and know I'm with them"), dumbly unimaginative ("I modelled racism against dwarves after actual racism to make the setting more realistic"), or desesperately trying to be edgy ("wouldn't be cool if we could play SR adventure based on 1920s Germany?").

Hell, I couldn't even completely rule out that it may have been written by someone who was so offended by the "old" metaphor that was sometimes discussed on the Internet - where poor, disenfranchised orks were black people, tech-savvy dwarves were asian people, while elves, with their own ancestral language, their own districts, their own nation, and their actual millenia-old conspiracy, were the jewish people - that it wrote that part specifically to make it canon that its beloved Tolkien elves should not be compared to jews.

I always found it quite obvious that Shadowrun, if anything, obviously set Elves as "Jews".

- Elves have their own ethno-state funded to the detriment of natives, claim it according to ancient stories, and treat said natives like crap
- Elves have secret, ancient traditions everyone is suspicious of
- Elves have a reputation for elitism, arrogance and dishonesty
- Elves are Elves first, and citizens second, and flock to Elf supremacist organizations out of Elvishness (this was very prevalent in early SR)
- Elves are extremely at odds with the "Black" equivalent despite similar problems for historical reasons
- The Night of Rage always drew a comparison to the Kristallnacht for me, at least. It could be a reference to anti-black progroms in the US, too, though.
- Never trust an Elf is a book title.

It should be said that, given that everyone but Tom Dowd on the original core team was Jewish, this probably is more like an in-joke and/or a tie-in to Shadowrun's race commentary than intended t be read as antisemite dog-whistling. The pretty thinly veiled criticism of Israel also works to convince me this was more liberal American Jewish commentary than dogwhistling. Also, given that Shadowrun is full of such underlying social commentary, that never really was a problem for me, from Orks (and Trolls) as a metaphor for US Blacks to Lofwyr as the living embodyment of the Leviathan, to Policlubs and other references to the 1920s, including neofascist Japan and its extermination policy against lower races.

That said, given some of the authors' stated beliefs, I'm with "violently antisemitic" as a working hypothesis, depending on who wrote this piece. Doubly so the Streetpedia piece. Unsurprising if this is something they picked up from 4chan.

The Czech Republic seems to be some kind of metaphor about immigrants in Europe (though the author apparently has no idea what half the words they wrote mean), but ... I am a bit lost at what it wants to tell us. The government wanted to kick all the immigrants out, so they granted everyone asylum because citizens helped the immigrants who were never mentioned before fill out the forms? Somehow? Immigrants who ... were already there since the Crash? I mean, what? Didn't the NEEC have a New Schengen accord anyway?

These are also the people who defended having a run that consisted of killing ghosts of Jewish people at a concentration camp to steal a magical scalpel that not-Megele used in experiments. Which, aside from being edgelord BS and not appropriate for Shadowrun, was also a fiarly impressive lack of understanding of how Shadowrun spirits work.

Nath covered the "since when" pretty well, so I won't replough that ground.

I agree that Shadowrun's treatment of bigotry has always been a bit ham-fisted, but at least they acknowledged that it would be a probable outcome.

I think that we basically agree that it's poorly worded and poorly edited, and that the editorial staff really fell down on this one in a big way. It's as if they (mostly) know how to use a spell checker, but lose their way when it comes to reading for content. But we all know standards on that have been terrible for a while.

Oh, I' aware. My point was not that someone might be antisemitic or not. It's just the mind-boggling idiocy that someone apparently felt the need to incorporate entirely new fluff that no one ever needed or asked for, based on troll posts directly from 4chan.
Admittedly, I was not aware yet of that blurb from Run Faster that Nath so kindly provided to educate myself that this has been going on one book longer than I could even imagine, but that just shows that the situation is worse than I thought.
To my mind, one of the strengths of Shadowrun's background in comparison to other fantasy RPGs is that your race doesn't define your culture (usually). Sure, there are a few Elven nations, a troll nation and even a ghoul nation, but in general, your culture's first defined by where you grew up (or rather in which surroundings), and only second by your race. Of course for everyday racism, race still comes first and it'll probably be relieving and liberating to find common ground with other members of that race, but that's nowhere near what Nath's quote describes, and certainly not on "we build our own country with blackjack and hookers" levels.

I'm not mad, just disappointed.


Not sure that's a good example. The Night of Rage was an outburst of violence against all meta races, not specifically Elven.

Never read this. How is it different for any of the other metahuman cultures? Even with the elven states, also because there is more than one, I had the impression that their cultural pull is limited.

Hence why I wrote it might just as well refer to progroms in the US. However, the nationwide, coordinated nature, the backing by human supremacists and the implication of all security forces available (including makeshift concentration camps and plans of deportation) in the progrom are unlike how racist massacres in the US, which were, to my knowledge, always localized, went down. That is Kristallnacht (or, if you will, Bartholomy's night) territorry.

the government didn't want to deal with the refugees. the population wanted to welcome them with open arms. it really isn't that hard to understand.

i mean, i'm not gonna suggest there isn't stupid crap in the new books, but we don't need to invent problems that don't exist... we can stick to the ones that actually do exist.

That doesn't work like the author seems to think it does.

Also, the author clearly has no idea what political asylum is and how it differs from other types of immigration. And finally, what did those refugees do since 2064? Which is 16 in-game years? Where were they? Why kick them out now, all of a sudden? This makes no sense. It seems whoever wrote this also had no idea how the in-world timeline is organized. So yeah, stupid crap.

if the government decides they don't want to give you political asylum any more and none of their population care enough to complain, i bet it doesn't look different enough that they couldn't kick them out of the country. in a political system other than democracy, the population caring might not matter. heck, in real life democracy, it still might not prevent anything happening.

given we're talking about probably the first major piece of information on the country since... well, i'm not sure we even *had* anything on it before, this doesn't even need to be super recent. but it could be, if the government recently got tired of these refugees (or, given we know it's a parliamentary system, if the government changed and the new government doesn't like them) in a fictional future with fictional laws that don't necessarily follow our own (i mean, we know some pretty major legal divergence from real life happened starting in what, 1997 when corporate extraterritoriality started becoming a thing? not to mention, let's be honest here, i'm betting you know VERY little about the modern real life Czechoslovakian legal system which the 2070s version of magical cyberpunk Czechoslovakia's laws might have evolved from). if they recently decided to put that deadline in place, the refugees may very well have never bothered getting citizen status because they didn't need it until recently. in the face of massive protests, the government allowed extra time for those refugees to become citizens (possibly thinking there was no way they'd be able to make the deadline, which would explain why help on that front might be so important).

again: there are real problems to complain about. this two paragraph write-up failing to accurately provide every tiny detail of the history of a country which has received VERY little attention in previous products? that isn't one of them. let's focus on the real stupid crap they do, and not complain that they didn't give us an in-depth write-up of every tiny little detail of the past 100 years of shadowrun-czech history in this product when there was no reason to expect anything more than a brief description of recent events that someone could build from would ever be necessary, which is what we got.

you want to complain that edge is a stupid mechanic to use for every single source of advantage that could be gained ever? be my guest. it infuriates you that armour does not, in fact, protect you from damage and may actually instead allow you to be better at shooting people in the head or perform complex gymnastics routines that protective gear should actually make more difficult? by all means, express your rage to the world. you think it is stupid that no melee weapons use strength to determine damage with the exception of unarmed combat for some unfathomable means? go nuts.

there is plenty of real actual stupid crap to complain about in shadowrun products. we don't need to invent things that they can use to justify ignoring our feedback when we complain about the problems the game actually has (not that i expect them to fix any of those things, i rather expect choosing not to have an open playtest thoroughly scuttled any chances of being able to do anything about anything no matter how much the fans think those things are stupid).

Different folks find different things grating

Yep. Fluff is pretty important to any former-FASA property. It's one of the things they did well.

They also weren't afraid of making mechanics interesting and complex, but that's not always good. It's just tough to figure out what can actually be simplified without ruining it.

Czechia was first decribed with 9 pages in Shadows of Europe (2063 IG, 2004 IRL), updated with two pages in The Sixth World Almanac (2072 IG, 2010 IRL). The Marienbad Council (formerly part of Germany that joined the Czech Republic in 2063) was also featured with two pages in War! (2073 IG, 2011 IRL). The refugees issue was first introduced in 6WA, so The Neo-anarchist Streepedia is mostly providing closure here.


The War! section on Marienbad is noteworthy for featuring a mercenary bragging about how he planted rumors that romani were spreading sickness, which, as far as fiction goes, is not exactly clearing your record when you bring that up in the same chapter that features killing jewish ghosts to recover a magical nazi scalpel.


The 1999 SCOTUS decision only covered the use of lethal force by corporate employees to protect corporate property and prevent radioactive hazard. Corporate extraterritoriality is brought by a SCOTUS decision in 2001.

Right, I had forgotten about Marienbad as a safe haven. Thanks.

Hello! First post!

With no into thread I thought I'd say Hello to everyone here.

I do have The Neo-Anarchist Streetpedia( it's great ) and I'd be happy to join any future discussions about it.

Welcome to the Madhouse!

Leave your armor jacket by the door, there is some SynthScotch behind the counter.

Thank You!

I thought that I would use the lag between editions to build some playing resources.
I'm pretty impressed with the Streetpedia being released first.
Sixth World is the first edtion to put out such a comprehensive book so early, No?

Or so late, depending how you look at it. Though actually, though, a similar book was published between 3rd and 4th, but German only.

I remember 3rd not having a whole lot of supplements early. I wasn't playing yet, I got interested at the end of 4th editions cycle.
But I remember that sourcebook being a big deal. Almost killed the game due to US publishing policy.
But the the fanbase made alot of noise and saved it.

It was just around but not quite 10 years after the AD&D sue crap. So that whole thing was something to watch with interest.

To me it sounds more like the author(s) backpedaling on what they themselves just wrote: "Wait a second, Jews and a big ancient conspiracy? Whoopsie, that's not good".

I mean, good they noticed, but maybe the solution could have been to just drop that damn analogy, for which there is no good reason, instead of trying to fix things with more "hey, author here". Also, all of that was just to include something that should have been shadowtalk at the "dwarf" entry...which does not exist.


...and it basically spells out the "rootless cosmopolitan" canard. That was just a bit too much on the nose.

I felt the handling of the African continent had been not great up until 5e.
But at least there is more writen about how they play into the big picture.
The similarities betwwen Africa say the Amazonia region including everything near them are starting to show.
Making the game's focus less themed.... An Island called Seattle. Finally.

Shadowun run is a harsh dystopic environment for sure.

I for one liked the references all located in one sourcebook.
Take for example UCAS and CAS are in one book, you don't have to pick through several books just to get a general vibe of the current culture..
Also I always felt that the current state of the culture in Shadowrun, of a given nation is knid of defined by the surrounding nations. Culture is many contributing factors, so a sourcebook which allows one to take a step back to follow the factors where you may (and RP them) is a good aid.
I wonder what the rest of this edtion will look like with the streetpedia setting the tone?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say 'inconsistent'.

The factors that have led to the editing and errata disaster of 5e have not changed, nor has CGL shown any sign of listening to the frustrations of the fans regarding them.

Also, the second half of 4e.

well, they have an errata team already, so it sounds like at least they're trying to look like they're trying to improve.

...

that said, i have my doubts about the errata team getting anything in before the first printing. and there isn't really a huge difference between not having an errata team and not using an errata team.

Really. Well ...


Let their own words do the talking.

As a rule of thumb, useful descriptions of countries always had to be done by people at least living in the general area. See Shadows of Europe for a prime example.

That is not a reason not to have a sourcebook from here or there.
I'm sure of the fact that it was not a question of willingness on an author's part.
It was more likely licencing and the extra work associated with clearing contributions from other countries.
Seems trivial but several potential sources likely suffered due to the tangle of incompatible licence proceedures.

I myself feel that the companies involved did and still do a great job under the circumstances.

Shadows of Europe is a great sourcebook, and it's a shame that the effort was never repeated, in english, for later editions......

Only for non-Europeans. For everyone from here, it's in the best case amusing, and nowhere near great.

It was, for all I know, much more a case of author's death - Findley's - that stopped a 2nd Edition Africa book.


There's Shadows of Latin America.

The quality of writing in SoE is mixed. Some of it - Portugal, Spain, ScandU, UNL - is pretty nice, largely locally sourced, and usually imported internet fanwork from the webring age. A lot is basically slightly updated summaries - Britain, TNN, Germany. Those rise and fall in usefulness with the original source material (I like Sargent/Gascoigne's work for the most part, and really dislike the old Germany book, even tempered as it was by DidS2, but that's personal preference). A lot of Europe is more or less ignored in SoE - Eastern Europe mainly, where only Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria got any significant coverage. The Balkans, the Black Sea countries, all that's pretty much ignored (at least Ukraine got a writeup in Shadows of Asia, though being a European country geographically). The rest is across the map - Greece is way too X-Men for my tastes, Italy a painful cliché, Poland and Czech Republic at least offer good hooks. LEaving out Hungary, which has had a viable Shadowrun fanbase since the 90s, is quite regrettable, though I think Taylor did try to get someone there nboard back in the day.

It's better, of course, to locally source such writeups, but it'S no guarantee the results are good. Careful research and a measure of respect for the places covered can also go a long way.

I think that might have been for lack of contributions though. They wanted people from a country to write about it.

https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/EuroSB


You mean what was written about it in the short "The Rest of Europe" section? Well, that also briefly discussed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Königberg, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and the Balkans (without stable countries).

I think the full write-up for Greece was left out deliberately because of its potential for the SR-ED-crossover. Hm, I should find that reference and put it on the EuroSB wiki page.

If I remember correctly it actually was about space - Peter Taylor had written an extensive document about the Balkans, especially former Yugoslavia, but they cut it and the file then died in an HDD crash of Taylor'S, presumably lost forever.


That'd indeed be interesting.

Also, by "too X-Men" I meant too much focus on setting-specific things, and too little local flair. The Baltics would deserve a bit more coverage too, and Ukraine got its coverage in SoA, if I am not mistaken.

I expect more sourcebooks from Africa. I have no evidence.
But I have looked at Android: Netrunner and one of final card boosters, if not the final was set in Africa.
And the work done on those looks a bit like the more recent content additions in Shadowrun to me.
For that matter plenty of new sourcebooks, hopefully another for Europe should be expected.
Keep the local flair comming,,,,,,

It wasn't intended as a reason not to have one, just as an explanation why there is none: Local books were typically done by local fans wanting to see their country covered, but RPGs do not seem to have the community in Africa they have elsewhere, or at least that community does not mingle much with the "western" community.

I still have a copy of the proposed outline and several draft versions for the Greece chapter, but I don't remember Rob Boyle reasoning behind dropping it. What was proposed mostly stayed clear off the crossover - maybe he wasn't sure about going that way or the other way round. On the other hand, I think Greece was going to be one of the weakest chapters. It clearly lacked a central plot or theme. With SoE already pushing on the limits with 240 pages and lot of context missing (regarding the Balkans, Turkey...), I guess it made sense to drop it.

Shadows of Europe, derived from the EuroSB project, is the only sourcebook written by locals fans. As far as I remember, only three of Shadows of Asia authors could be considered locals: Jong-Won Kim in Korea, Anthony Bruno in Israel and Palestine and Mikael Brodu in Thailand (though by now Tony and Mike have each spent a solid decade in those countries, when SoA was written they were only freshly in). Major chapters like Russia, India, China and Japan were written by US or European authors. Then the cancelled Shadows of Latin America was somewhere in between.

Though I have absolutly no idea where were US authors living, I'm not sure any of the books covering North American countries fit in the "local fan made" description either (though I still wonder how they picked the cities covered The Neo-anarchist Guide to North America).

London Sourcebook and Tir na nOg were both written by Mark Sargent and Carl Gascoigne which, though they may count as "locals" for the former, were seasoned enough as writers to not be considered as mere "fans". Deutschland in der Schatten and France were written by authors hired by the publishing companies who held Shadowrun rights for their respective countries.

I'd appreciate some clarification on exactly what you mean by this comment.

Found it right here on Dumpshock: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=4228


And "because of Greece's historic peculiarities" should refer to what Ancient History said:

Three Nazis walk into a BAR. They don't get up.

Seriously though, CGL is showing a frustrating lenience towards Nazis on its staff, and has throughout Hardy's rein, starting with WAR. Following up on those big words in reality (by letting them go/blacklisting them), macho chest-drumming aside, would be a good start. That enough clarification for you?

https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/EuroSB

I have updated the wiki. (Glad to see more information about material that was cut. Any chance of publishing these Greece chapter drafts for SoE?)

Other than that we should get back to more Streetpedia appreciation.

I think that maybe they should have covered more AA and lower rated corps?
It would not have taken up much space.

Who said anything about "mere fans"? A fan does not have to be an amateur



DidS and France are obvious cases of people wanting to have their neighborhood represented in a game the play, and wanting it to be at least as cool as the American setting

Maybe if it were just a matter of just having a computer and wanting to write sometning up, and not being a licence or rights issue there would be plenty of source material for any place on the map imaginable?

The year was 2000 and there were plenty of websites around created by people with a computer and the will to write something up.

The result was basically three different versions of Pittsburgh, twice as much for Tokyo, not all of them good, and still nothing about Algeria or Congo. In that regards, license or rights issues do not matter as much as having a line developper in charge with the authority to set a common canon and what to cover.

The EuroSB project was somewhere in between. Actually, its initial goal was to publish material on a website (the opportunity to publish Shadows of Europe came later). The group was acting as an editorial committee, with a significant effort regarding canon continuity with the official line.

A situation very hard to imagine since.
As Companies are very protective of their trademarks. I'm sure with some effort an independent writing project can make the web. But as a popular source material? Without access to the resources as a developer inside the product?
And to support the reasoning of trademarks is the lack of english translations to several Europe source materials. Being very likely an effort to protect their creative production due to incompatable licencing environments.

I looked up some info on Shadows of Europe and I found that a German company called Fan Pro LLC was the distributer who transfered the rights to their part of Shadowrun to Catalyst Around the time 4th edition was released.
Any European content developed under Fan Pro would have likely been help up rather than directly transfered to the new developer.
Which would expalin the lack of source material from that region and/or the lack of official translations for materials that were released around that time and since.

The situation now is not different from the situation then. The scene still is relatively small and relevant people are accessible enough; plus, SR has rules on their site regarding such creative endeavours. The chsange has been more in the audience, less in how IPs are handled in the gaming industry, at least with long-running systems like SR.


Bullshit. They explicitly have the rights to English translations of all sub-licensee publications. CGL just doesn't think there'd be enough of an audience for translated products to be economically viable (enough).

But that does not mean an effort originating in another country has no barriers to assisting in such a collaboration.
But barriers have significantly been reduced over the years, and there has been more and more individual interest.