I'm not an insider so take with a pinch of salt.

The game Equinox was, as far as I know, originally touted as "Shadowrun in the Eighth Age" or something similar. Whatever happened (or didn't) Equinox by "Vagrant Games" is a real "numbers filed off" for Shadowrun in the future. It's basically a love child of the concepts of Shadowrun merged with the premises from Earthdawn.

For those that are not aware of the game, it has some really cool implications that if you're a really Shadowrun-head you might find some gold in.

One of those is that the magical field of a world varies for each world. The cycle of magic is pretty much universal, but not all worlds are cycling lock step. Earth can be in a 6th World-type situation, while another world can be experiencing a 3rd World-no magic thingy.

This variation in the magical field means that metahumans express differently on different worlds. Equinox aggregates this by system, but it also talks about different places within a system where the magical field can produce different results. You're a "beautiful" elf on Earth, but go to another world and you've got fully black eyes and your ears might look more like "vampire" ears (or whatever).

All of this smacks that the universe, like Shadowrun's Earth is full of magical variation, elemental correspondence etc.

Speculate with me. Have fun with it. If it turns your stomach (as I suspect it will with some members [and that's fair enough!]), then turn your eye.

Yah, it was touted when fasa owned both earthdawn and Shadowrun

It has some interesting ideas, and uses a much simpler set of rules

Running Shadowrun with the fu rules would give a different game

You're right. Shadowrun Anarchy (SR) and Age of Legend (ED) all provides examples of such rules sets.

That's not quite what I was getting at here, though.

As some quick examples of what Equinox does that might drive back into Shadowrun, at least assuming the original connection still exists, what about these:

• Mars -- The magical field strength of Mars doesn't seem to correlate with the notion of "mana is life" (and vice versa). What other explanations could there be?
• Magical Field Strength and Aspected Magic - The implication of the various different "races" in Equinox is that variations in the magical field of a "world" can have dramatically different implications in terms of expressions in metahumanity. Reverse this back to Shadowrun and consider if, for example, Obsidimen (ED) are not expressing not just because of the magical field strength but because of the specific elemental correspondence in a given locality that make them possible?

These are just some quick and obvious examples for the purposes of discussion. I'm sure that people that are more steeped in SR (and ED?) will be able to take these concepts and run them into the field of inspiration?

What say you?

Did you read other threads on this topic?

I'm afraid I didn't. Mea culpa.

I'll start searching forthwith.