Thanks for the link Synner. For those wondering this is the cover of Shockwaves. Unfortunately, some of the interior art from Shockwaves isn't up (pity).

Don

OK, I know I've been a bit abstract in my discussion, so I'll give it a shot.

Threats 2 is ok; hit or miss on most of the stuff. The ones that bother me, really, are the ones concerning Deus. The more Deus has been used, the more demystified Artificial Intelligence has become. I know, eventually, someone was going to have to use A.I.; I more or less enjoyed the Renarku Arcology: Shutdown. But as soon as I knew WHY Deus was doing things, I was let down. It was more entertaining when it was an unknown quantity.

Shadows of North America is exactly the kind of product I'm inclined to like, because I often enjoy runners who hop the globe. But as one of my players likes to point out to me, you don't really NEED any setting other than Seattle. As much as I often enjoy the location guides, they often don't provide significant enough flavor and differences to use as anything but a gimmick for a little while. Eventually, most runs kind of drift back into a more generic-Seattle feel.

Target:Wastelands bored me. I didn't see anything that was really bad in it, and indeed it's probably chock full of ideas to develop shadowruns on. But many of the settings, despite being kind of neat, take the game away from the gritty streets.

Wake of the Comet was pretty acceptable as far as adventures go, although I'm inclined to like adventures books that are either in the style of Blood in the Boardroom, or are one single longer adventure, rather than three adventures piled together.

Suvival of the Fittest, on the other hand, is representative of everything that can be wrong about a Shadowrun adventure. Hobnobbing with a bunch of great dragons sounds like a fun idea, but like my problems with Deus, it totally demystifies them. I much preferred the old Lofwyr-style dragons, whose influence a runner might feel, but they'd certainly never MEET him. Further, when you take into consideration ALL the shadowrun adventures ever printed, this is really just part of a larger problem, because a good number of them involve dealing directly with celebrities. If you ran ALL of them in succession, your shadowrunner team would have worked for three major rockstars and one movie star, been framed for the murder of a presidential candidate, chatted with Richard Villiers and Miles Lanier, gotten wrapped up in the affairs of a couple immortals, saved the world from invasion by demons...

Don't get me wrong. I loved Harlequin's Back, even though it really had nothing to do with Shadowrun at all. But taken in summation, I think there's something not quite right when the runners are hanging out with powerful beings on a regular basis. Again, damages the street-level milieu. Dragons of the Sixth world, thankfully, was a bit more reasonable.

My problems with the Sprawl Survival Guide are ones I've addressed before: I simply think the game has strayed from its roots in 1980s cyberpunk, and drifted into a less-dystopian view of the future. I think Shadowrun flavor is now being informed by modern movies and comic books, rather than by cyberpunk. It's moved into Postcyberpunk.

And I'm merely stating the truth when I say that the release schedule also impacts my interest in Shadowrun. When I wait a year between products, and worse, the products aren't even REALLY exciting me, my interest wanes. That period at the beginning of SR 3.0, when we were waiting months and months between core rulebook releases, seriously drained my enthusiasm for the game.

I guess I'll do this one by one, but I need to preface it with the fact that I've been doing what the new crowd keeps complaining that I should do, and I haven't bought any books that I don't think will have an appeal for me, so I could be entirely wrong about my impressions of these books. But if I am, then FanPro needs to work better on getting the good word out and not giving die-hards like me the impression that there's nothing left for us.

SoNA: Seems like it's probably a good book. I liked things better when each location got its own sourcebook, rather than getting squeezed in with a lot of other locations, because that lent itself to some really in-depth flavor material, but I can see how that's not really economically feasible. If my game were reconcilable with modern canon, I would buy this book.

Threats 2: Not really sure what this one is. If I'm not mistaken, Threats 1 was the book that introduced Horrors, which I hated, because I generally hate Earthdawn crossovers, because unless they were come up with by my group, not everybody is ever entirely ok with them. Hopefully this one is better, but I haven't heard anything about it, really.

Target: Wastelands: Again, interesting locations should get their own sourcebook, but I can see how that might not happen. At any rate, it's probably better than the adventure/sourcebooks that were used in 1st to cover the NAN (and Hawaii and Australia, if I'm not mistaken). Those were bad, because they were hard to sift through for sourcebook type material, and I don't want to run the stupid adventure.

Wake of the Comet: I honestly have little idea what this is about. If its what introduces SURGE, I'm not a big fan of that. And like everyone says, all I have to do is not include it in my game, which I think means not buying this book.

SotA 2063: Not entirely sure about this one, but again, when canon as a whole has become basically irreconcilable with my game, I'm doubtful that this book has much use to a game set in 2051.

Survival of the Fittest: I'd never heard of this until this thread started up. From what I hear, it's all metaplot, and like we've covered, metaplot has no place in my games. Also, I'd be afraid to introduce something that produces this much vitriol into one of my games.

Dragons of the Sixth World: This is a tricky one that I might buy if I ever scrape up the cash and find myself in a more gamer-friendly city. It will have no place in my game because I hate canon metaplot, though. I prefer big subjects like Dragons, Elves, Russia, etc. to be left up to individual groups to see their take on it. Back before there was much canon information on them, I remember seeing a bunch of fan sites that had indvidual groups' ideas for what the Japanese Imperial state was like, and a lot of them had great ideas. I did the same thing with Russia before there was any canon information about it past the Eurowars. I would have preferred a similar approach to Dragons, whereby a few basic tidbits were given, but the vast majority of information out there was fan-produced so individual GMs felt freer to make their own stories about dragons. I know everyone's going to tell me that if I don't like canon dragons, I shouldn't use them. That's all I'm saying; I don't use them, and therefore this book is of little to no use to me.

Sprawl Survival Guide: I don't have any beef with this book. It sounds pretty righteous.

But as far as helping you with writing goes, I'm not sure I can help you that much. My problems were actually created mostly during 2nd edition, which I don't fault the current writers for. My game is incompatible with modern SR for a couple reasons. First, certain elephants in the room were ignored for long enough that my group filled in the gaps itself. For instance, there had always been precious little information about the Middle East and Russia, and so my group came up with very detailed descriptions of these places that don't jive with the recent canon descriptions of them at all. Right off the bat, anything that mentions Russia or Yamatetsu in canon is unusable by my group. Also, we have our own plots going with regards to Dragons and any sort of Earthdawn crossover, which also don't jive with canon, because we have only a vague notion of ED beyond the main book. The other thing that doesn't let us go with modern canon is the fact that we liked some things too much to let go of. For instance, we liked having Fuchi around. That instantly makes a lot of the mentions about almost anything corp related unusable. We also hated the story arc about Dunk getting assassinated, and so we ignored it completely and militantly, and right now one of our players is working on rules and descriptions for his feudal domain near Lake Louise.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, Synner. A lot of my problems are things that I don't think can be fixed by anyone by my group, and that involves us not really buying many sourcebooks.

As to the people that keep telling us "old-timers" to stop telling them not to enjoy their game, I don't think any of us DID tell you that. We're just telling you why the game WE enjoy is different than the gam YOU enjoy. The comments about people packing up their stuff and going home have been directed at US. More power to anyone who likes where canon is going now. I'm just trying to point out why that's not really what I'm into, and why I can't really see myself ever coming back to canon.

That was bound to happen. Time passes in the game world and people want resolution to their metaplots no matter what they say. No matter how its pulled off it'll never please everyone, but that's a fact of life. The day Maegera was introduced in Secrets of Power people started asking for more information on AIs. You can't really blame FASA or FanPro for trying to give the fans what they want.

Personally I like the whole cycle from Psychotrope through to Threats2 and am pleased it was left open for further development.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I think that playing in the same sprawl exclusively is nowhere near as interesting as opening up the game to culture shock and different environments. It boils down to playing style. One of the reasons I loved working on SoE all these years was that the European theatre is so similar yet so different from North Am and one of the aspects is that its more transnational. Runners are less tied down to a single sprawl but play the market on a national and even international level.

Another one where I'll agree to disagree. Yes, this book moves away from the sprawls but then again this isn't Cyberpunk2020. The Sixth World is transnational and globalized while at the same time being neo-feudalistic and vibrantly diverse. As far back as I can remember people have been asking for more details on space and the Middle East for instance.

I too prefer the track adventure style of Mob War and Blood in the Boardroom. Unfortunately a significant percentage of the buying audience/fanbase prefers the material detailed in traditional adventure format. Knowing sales for single adventures are down across the board, FanPro elected to put out the triple pack format which has a better chance of pleasing fans than a hit or miss single adventure.

I'd agree with you to a certain extent, especially with the claim that it has been a trend in Shadowrun since the very beginning. The two reservations I have are the obvious ones:
a) A lot of people like to feel they are involved in the developing metaplot(s) of the Sixth World. They like to feel they can make a difference occassionally and that life isn't just pulling runs waiting for the next time the Johnson screws you over.
b) Like every adventure so far in SR (with the possible exception of Harley's Back) SotF is scaleable (pardon the pun) to your players tastes. A lot depends on how you want it to play out. Personally I saved the dragons until the very last adventures and used drakes, spirits and other agents instead. Sure it means editing the campaign but thats GM perrogative anyway.

DotSW was out to provide material for all levels of play and show how pervasive the great dragons' influence over the Sixth World really is (almost as much as the megacorps). Though I think it was handled admirably well I saw a lot of complaints about the Aden and Lofwyr chapters not giving much away about the dragons themselves and for focusing instead on their shadowplays and their pawns actions.

Well, its a trend that I don't see stopping. Pure cyberpunk was much a product of the 80's and its mostly gone. Quite simply the future isn't what it used to be. Even Gibson's doing something else these days. Stephenson spawned nanopunk. Sterling tried posthumanism and political extrapolation.

However, that being said, the fundamental elements of cyberpunk are still integral to a lot of what's been introduced recently in SR. The world is still run by the megacorps, the outlook of average joe is still as bland and bleak as it always was, there are still secret cabals peddling their agendas, the shadows are much the same just trying to keep up with SOTA, culture has evolved a bit from the Eighties-inspired nova rock of Shadowbeat (it has been 10 years in game time afterall) but that's only natural. If anything the world is getting darker as things seem to spiral into the chaos of overwhelming diversity.

As has been said elsewhere on these boards numerous times FanPro is making a huge effort to get releases back on track and has a number of books on the queue for release. Though I expect some delays, if past problems beyond FanPro's control don't repeat, there should be a book out every 3-4 months for the next year or so.

Don't worry, in your own way you have. Just so I get this straight. You've been complaining about the direction Shadowrun has been going down for the last 5 pages but, from what your post implies, you haven't actually read the any (?) of the books released under FanPro?

Don't get me wrong, that's your perrogative. But being that I'm one of those fanboys with "a fan site" of original ideas who just got a whole lot of those ideas published by FanPro in the form of Shadows of Europe I can see some serious flaws in your logic. I too was tired of waiting for official material on my neck-of-the-woods and together with 30+ other local fanboys decided to do something about it. Guess what? FanPro bought the concept and now the book is out.

The biggest issue is you seem not to distinguish what is metaplot and what is background. I can understand you wanting to avoid material that overlaps with your own background, that's perfectly fine. I can also understand wanting to avoid metaplot driven books (like Super Tuesday, Bug City, Renraku Arcology: Shutdown, Brainscan, etc) but what about books where the metaplot plays a minimal role?

Books like the original Threats (which actually didn't introduce Horrors) featured Horror pawn Obscuro (and not any true Horrors) in one chapter out of 13. Or a book like SONA of course covers Tir Tairngire and Seattle and includes updates to ongoing metaplots, but not only are those two chapters in the whole book and the metaplot elements aren't even all there is to those two chapters!

Let's look over the list I posted, in an effort to clarify and inform:

• Threats 2 - 12 "new" threats or twists on old ones. In general most are much easier to integrate with low-level games than the ones in the original Threats plus they run the gamut from purely magical pests for mages to bugs and major corporations buddying up. Bugs and two new threats dealing with the fallout from the Deus/Arcology story are the major "metaplot" elements.
• Shadows of North America - The nations of North America detailed and updated to 2062.
• Target: Wastelands - Extreme environments detailed from Space to the Arctic. No metaplot worth mentioning.
• Wake of the Comet - a set of three adventures centered around what is known as the Comet Probe Race during the second pass of Halley's Comet. SURGE was introduced in the Year of the Comet sb (which also featured about 20 different other developments which people have not commented on because I assume they liked). No real metaplot development.
• State of the Art: 2063 - Introduces new setting material and updates rules for 3rd edition for Genetech, Mercenaries and Corporate Security. Also introduces new magical rules for everyone and includes a fluff year-in-review section called Culture Shock. No metaplot worth mentioning.
• Survival of the Fittest - Campaign. Metaplot heavy but ultimately has few direct ramifications beyond the inner circle of great dragons and their agendas. What ramifications there are are mostly relegated to DotSW which details the new status quo in much the same way as Corp Download did for corps.
• Dragons of the Sixth World - 10 major dragons, 15 lesser ones and the Draco foundation, plus what is known of their agendas, pawn and domains. Metaplot plays a role but the book goes far, far beyond metaplot and has hooks galore for all levels of play and lots of interesting trivia to boot.
• Sprawl Survival Guide - The lifestyle sourcebook and introduction to everyday reality in the sprawls of 2064.

I suggest you give some of those books or upcoming books like Loose Alliances a try, you might be surprised to find they're actually right up your alley. As someone mentioned recently elsewhere on Dumpshock, the current trend is for a profusion of less world-shaking metaplots running simultaneously. Stuff like Saito, the anti-Lofwyr conspiracy, the New American Revolution, the Network, the Otaku/Deep Resonance, the Shedim, etc...These are easier to integrate and/or ignore because they are (currently) relatively self-contained.

It's good to have people who make a product, but that doesn't mean they know what's best for the art/product/whatever either.

Please no one take that as a slam against the current SR writers, I've just experienced too many times where a game I've enjoyed got ruined by some sort of "vision" that the plebs "just couldn't understand"

In fact I truely enjoy where SR is headed, as soon as they ditched the rockers with neon green hair and embraced the fusion of cyberpunk and fantasy as a unique texture to the game all it's own, I was hooked. SR's background is one of the most creative I've seen, perhaps not revolutionary, but it still stands tall as one of the better RPG's.

Actually that's a good example of what I mean. All you would need to do is put the live Dunkie at the head of the Draco Foundation, tweak the information relating to the board of directors, and voila 95% of the rest of DotSW stands untouched. You'll also need to have Dunklezahn secretly step down as Loremaster, inexplicably against tradition hand the title and respective symbol to Lofwyr and hand some consolation gifts to the other greats (the ones that were in the will). This is behind the scenes stuff, so it's irrelevant to the world in general and can likely be retrofitted to your campaign. With those two simple and minor tweaks the power struggle at the core of SotF and more importantly the information on the new status quo and background in DotSW stands almost as is. If necessary you can even axe the Foundation without too much trouble (or affecting much else) or simply change the date of its founding.

Unless of course you don't want to use any of that information anyway.

What I'm trying to say is it is extremely easy to pick and choose what to use from recent books and the vast majority of the "offending" material can be easily excised for other explanations with minimal effort, leaving all the juiciness there to be used.

Yeah... I really liked America before the War of Terror. September Eleventh just sucked. In fact I'd like it better the way it was before the War of Drugs. And what was that Disco crap? I mean honestly, who writes that stuff.

It wouldn't be as big a problem if it stayed as the metaplot in the background. Anytime runners "officially" have any involvement whatsoever with the metaplot -- such as with Harlequinn's Back, the Renraku Arcology, or Survival of the Fittest -- that opens up scenarios where the end result is almost guaranteed to be different than whatever they cook up with in canon. They all but beg individual groups to radically alter the metaplot, yet expect them to keep up with it at the same time.

I have no problem with the metaplot. I like it. It gives me a lot to work off of in my individual games without directly interacting with it. But when you're playing the character who determines which dragon becomes the next Loremaster, play a direct hand in stopping the Horrors from arriving prematurely, or engage Deus first hand... you can't help but alter the metaplot to some extent.

Or in otherwords: "After playing the official module we published, did you decide Hestaby or even one of the other Great Dragons was the one who was going to get the crystal? Tough. It was Lowfyr -- deal with it, suckers."

And that's the problem.

If they stuck with the street-level aspect of the game for actual gaming material and then left the metaplot for background material or the novels, there would be a minimal chance of any conflicts between the two (at least for those who didn't go out of their way to interact with it). But as it stands, they give you a choice between a cake and a pie and, if you decided to eat the cake, it doesn't really matter because you actually ended up eating the pie and there's nothing you can do about it without ignoring or completely rewriting anything to the contrary in all future publications.

That is the problem right there. What ever definition of "cartoonish" they are reffering to is rather alien than mine. How am I to comprehend it.


mfb:
Ok and granted you got me. 1.5/19 pages = 7.8 % percent of the Surge section. 0.93% of the whole book.

Yes I understand what you are saying about that portion. They should have picked a better interview to include that the pornstar. Still I do like it when they include a little humor in the books.

That what has me so confused about Surge. That people would throw out a decent supplement just because of 1 1/2 pages. Book. I love the Shadowrun game and metaplot. I couldn't conceve worrying about fate of the series over one 20 page entry. Granted that may have just been the last straw for some, but you could see how it seems a bit strange to me.

Well that explains a lot about my problem. That definition is confusing to me. Since I do not consider animation to refer to bad art and poorly written material. I'd call that poor material not cartoonish.

Or does it refer to the fact that some consider "cartoons" to be badly written and badly animated.

And well Surge. I don't know thats not how I interpreted it.

The issue of how things turn out at the end of any world-shaking adventure or campaign in which the result is left up to the players is always complicated to handle. The author has to balance many players desire to be able to be the little guy who gets to make these decisions, with the ramifications those decisions might have on the metaplot. It's an ungrateful position but one I think is preferable to railroading people into only one possible solution. That being said the campaign does allow for the two most probable outcomes to have the same end result (ie. Hestaby wins or Lofwyr wins). Other outcomes are possible, and knowing players, even likely. However, assuming the written flow of events, both Lofwyr's unrefusable offer and/or honoring the deal with Hestaby condition the probable results (btw - I type this in the unequivocal and depressing knowledge that my players are going to shatter the Jewel... just like they turned on Harley and tried to geek him for being such an ubnoxious know-it-all twat).

As the guy who ended up addressing the issue when he naively pitched for Lofwyr all I can say is, it's an equally ungrateful task to have to follow that up. It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. If it hadn't been included some people would have demanded to know who got it. As is it follows the "most likely" outcome and its only referenced in the Gamemasters section to allow GMs the opportunity to modify it. To paraphrase what all Shadowrun books always say in the introduction: "feel free to modify, add or disregard any and all the material in this book. Ultimately it is your game and its up to you to chose what goes into it".

If you don't like the fact that Lofwyr got the Jewel, disregard that one line in the Game Info section, give the title and Jewel to someone else, and your players may never be the wiser.

In time-honored Dumpshock fashion, can I disagree?

All joking apart though, nopw that discussion has gone beyond generalizations and into specific problems its becoming quite enlightening.

Circuit has presented a rather unique and unusual position IMHO. (Circuit please don't take this as a jab or troll). He's apparently a die-hard fan who hasn't really played with anything that's been introduced in the past 3-4 years but is still involved enough with the game to make a post in a thread called "Shadowrun past its prime". To be honest I probably single him out because I felt it odd that he does so without a concrete idea where Shadowrun development currently stands in relation to the past (both first and second editions). What strikes me as particularly unusual is his all-or-nothing stance given that I know (I believe we all do) quite people who don't follow the canon universe and/or have their own alternative setting but regularly raid the new books for ideas, background and new material to "plug" into their own settings. What seems strange is his reluctance to give anything a chance on the off-chance that there's a metaplot tie-in or "incompatiblity"- specially when in recent material particularly major metaplot development has been restricted to minor sections of the books and as you've said "most of this is small stuff" in the greater scheme.

Don't get me wrong this is his call and I'm certainly not going to tell him otherwise. I've responded in the hopes of clarifying his (to me mystifying) all-or-nothing approach.

On the other hand mfb's and Misfit Toy's (btw - you've now made it into canon ) posts have made some equally valid points on something which is a slightly more common problem with current SR among the fanhood than Circuit's.

No

But let me bow back in to clarify the Dumpshock debate.

A: I think this
B: Well I think that

Repeat till the Awakening. Add some insult and the occasional foul word and there we have it. Anyone remember the infamous Troll vs Elf melee, I know Misfit will, or the Shapeshifter breeding threads?

After having rereposting exit our hero stage left.

No. I said that is what I believed that Squire was using for his definition and I never mentioned Tolkien. As far as I can see those were his main beefs. That was the direction he saw SR going. My point is that It has always had it's share of the above and it's a little late in the game to decide it's a continuing trend and now because of that the game sucks.

Did you read the rest of my post? My point is that if you except the basic premise of SR then it's sprit or flavor has not changed. Surge is silly because now we have cat people and that doesn't mix well with the world of troll, elves, orcs, etc. Try saying that to the average joe on the street.

As a final note even if all RPG WERE based on Tolkien and were cartoony, that doesn't make Tolkien cartoony. Co-incidence does not always demonstrate causality.

Thanos

Careful for what you wish for you might just get it.

Personally, I'd rather not. Low-level run ideas? I can come up with those a dime a dozen. Hell, make variants on them and I can probably keep a team stocked for years on a few weeks of work (I've got a notebook full of low-level run ideas from a three-week summer course I took once). It's the big stuff, the stuff that needs to be tied into other stuff, that's the part where it's nice to have some of the work done for you, and done completely. I see no point to a bunch of "run ideas" except as little suggestions in the sourcebooks, and, while I may or may not be representative of the market, I probably wouldn't have any use for a book devoted to the things.

~J

What the hell kind of summer course was this?

I have to agree with this...well survial of the fittest isnt a run for every group, I can come up with a hundred "low-end" runs in not too long.
"The epic stuff" is the ideas that *deserve* a module.

Im not saying street level modules dont have a place..but "the epic stuff"..is the stuff that *needs* the people who are "in the know" to write..or..as said..you can make one and it'll end upconflicting with canon(if you care).

Regardless..I dont see modules like survival as "bad"..just not everyones cup of tea.
But is there really a market for low level runs?

The kind where I have a fair amount of free time, no laptop, and no internet access

~J

Which is basically what I was referring to. Note the earlier quote from me said I'd prefer that over another Survival of the Fittest module, not that that's what I would actually want to see.

A book featuring lots of street-oriented runs with all the insuing stats put together would be fantastic for a GM who doesn't have time or desire to run Machiavellian runs but just wants to get a group of friends together and run a quick game for a night.

A book with a massive index of NPCs (all designed to be challenging to more believable characters, not just SR3 core ones which, while a sad truth, are greatly underpowered to those created using the full spectrum of the rules), strategies used by these types of characters, a hoard of run ideas for using each, and even full fledged runs that retain that street-level vibe if room permits. Suggestions on how to make things challenging for different archetypes or character styles, suggestions on how to tell a story and how to add more atmosphere or mood to a game, and things like that. Even though I don't personally need most of that type of help, such a book would be a great resource... far more than a module that's largely focused at insane-amounts-of-Karma character types near the end of their career would.

Just... anything that keeps the metaplot away and is oriented around starting or near-starting characters.

Granted, but that doesn't really diminish my point at all. I was specifically targetting the idea that players want to be deeply involved in the "happenings" of the Shadowrun world. If players want to do that on their own time, that's fine. More power to 'em. But I think it's a mistake to indulge players in this in official products. Particularly in a game like Shadowrun.

I don't think that "low-level" is meant to mean "simple". I can't pump out low-level games any faster than I can high-level ones, because they all need the same level of complexity and forethought in order to make them interesting.

Not exactly. Regardless of internal complexity, there is an added component with high level games of getting things to match up consistently with the metaplot.

I've taken loads of courses that have given me ideas for street level runs. "Intelligence Community" was maybe the most recent, but also "Minority Politics" or just about any grassroots or urban politics course I've taken has done the trick.

I've also taken a bunch of IR classes that gave me a lot of ideas for a game I used to play that I had made up and was more of an epic-type game, but that's one of those things that works better for that sort of thing than SR. At least in my opinion, IR seems a little less relevant in SR unless you're willing to go around changing the countries in the world, which it doesn't seem like a whole lot of people on this board have mentioned (though I can see it being neat "you screwed the run up, the elves have no homeland now! 5 karma."

I know a few people who have taken a lot of justice classes, I can see potential in that. But to tell the truth, I think it just boils down to if you love SR enough, you're going to see it everywhere, and if you don't see it in your classes, that's just because you're too busy thinking about SR to pay attention to your classes.

In my experience that makes it easier rather than harder. You already have a pool of established organizations, NPCs, settings, and events to draw from.