That's the problem with eBay. On the one hand, you can find a lot of stuff for all the odder hobbies there. On the other hand, so can everyone else in the world who has that hobby.

Compare to the real world, where you may get a huge bargain on something through being the only one in a hundred miles who wants it, or alternately not even have a chance because there isn't one for sale within five hundred miles.

~J

Sorry but SR technologie is not that advanced. Forget the idea that the Crash really killed knowledge. In example no crash can kill the printed version of the "Tanenbaums" I have on my shelf. The crash won't affect most scientists and engineers working in IT and similar areas (Matrix access comes later) They lost infrastructure and maybe the last two years of research (There's that thing called off-side storage for backup media...)

I do own books from the Transhuman Space line, and I find it extremely interesting as a possible near-ish future. Adding magic into that setting would distort it beyond recognition though, so I would not suggest it. It would kill some of the associated enjoyment by destroying its pretense of being "hard" science-fiction.


Adding full-blown creatable artificial-intelligences, mature nano & gene tech and such ... does not distort Shadowrun very much at all in my opinion.

Thinking about it, I am curious as to why there are not rules for a 'runner writing up a SK or even an AI; it is a pure software problem as their hardtech is more than equal to the task as evidenced by the fact that they have people doing it by accident already (in terms of AIs). And with sufficient time (as with any program), resources (a computer shop and optical-chip-burner) and knowledge (appropriate knowledge skills) -- they should be able to do it. After all if you can do it by accident, you can determine how to do it on purpose.

The fun part about the ASIST interface, is that it works both ways. What is to stop someone from using a simrig of some kind to 'scan' someone in a high-gain resolution and then run that data inside an emulator on the matrix? Other than an arbitrary limitation for ... no, this is not even genre compliance as a lot of cyberpunk has uploading. No idea why they do not allow this one.

...

But this is stuff that is plausable for them to have developed and for them to use, yet it breaks certain meta-game assumptions of the Shadowrun setting and is ignored... *sighs*


Feel free to ignore me. I am just posting random-ish comments in a stream-of-thought format. Admittedly, I am also attempting to discern why Shadowrun holds a fascination for me when so much of the canon setting feels inadequate, incomplete or intentionally ignorant...

I think Cynic project is right, albeit making his point in a very sarcastic way. In the SR timeline, there are several things that mess up scientific research in most fields:

2003-2009; Several disasters require a shifting of funds away from research and into rebuilding.
2010: VITAS. Claims 25% of the earth's population in one year (Starts in india wre alot of top researchers are coming from)
2011: UGE - tons of research funds would have been redirected to this phenomena, as well as the drastic changes in weather patterns, natural disasters around the world, and more nuclear meltdowns.
2012-2018: Severe rearranging of the north american countries would complicate things like research grants, global economy. During all of this magic pops up, forcing nations and corporations alike to divert resources to researching this potentially hazardous force, as well as the new types of animals appearing.
2021: Goblinization, woith following riots.
2022: VITAS again, 10% of planets population dies.
2026-2029: Computer research takes a new turn with the advent of cyberterminals.
2029-2031: Crash of '29. Taking two years to clean up, this would put a severe dent in alot of research, especially since there were probably alot of books and research data that never made it to paper and were lost, although alot of it would be recovered in 31 when the virus was gone and it was 'safe' to connect computers again.
2030-2037: More rearranging in the world, wars, Corporate Court taking over Global Finances. Rearranging of power from govewrnments to corporations (splitting and distributing research data, probably to the benefit of some and deteriment of others).

As evident of the timeline, there was never a real stop in research, but in my opinion the events of 2005 through 2040 should be enough to severely change which research would actually get grants during these times. And it doesn't matter how much you know in any field of research if you don't have financial back-up to put it into practice. Nanotech research, while a possible godsend in many areas, would reasonably be slowed in the face of more pressing needs like fighting VITAS, figuring out why people and animals start mutating everywhere, fighting severe natural disasters and pollution problems, redefining computer systems after '29 Crash. Wireless technology likewise would take a severe blow by the crash, since it suddenly became very unsafe to use computers linked to the internet/matrix. It's not inconceivable that it scared people away from wireless technology, especially with the introduction of datajacks - after all, if you know the computer network is potentially vulnerable to more crashes, would you want to plug it into your head with a wireless connection? It stayed on with phones and similar technology, where it was 'safe', but it took up to 30 years for it to be re-introduced in other areas.
I can agre that in some areas SR technology is lagging too much, but from what I have seen the developers are focusing on that now and 'fixing' it. All in all I don't think the SR tech is unreasonably behind or ahead in any level, given the history between now and then.

Alice got "uploaded" before her death.

It's true. The novels are a tricky bit when it comes to canon.

Personally, as a freelancer, I always found the novels to be a real pain in the ass when it came to canon. I sometimes think the novel writers were given a bit too much free reign with the canon.

But that's just me.

Take what you can get. Some novels may not be strictly accurate to canon (Nosferatu, for example) but they're damn fine reading (Nosferatu, for example). Some may take too free a rein (Worlds Without End, for example), while others may have just found an unwritten area they could play in and go with it (Worlds Without End, for example).

As far as the Ryan Mercury thing, memory emgram write-overs have been part of canon ever since Shadowbeat. Let's all be content that thus far, Roxy's little scheme to get out has never worked (probably because it's too damn far fetched).

It's not just you, Demonseed....I think the best Shadowrun novels, by and large, have stuck closely to canon -- but then, I think that is more because the people who wrote them were the ones writing the vast majority of the sourcebooks (and thank god for that). Is there any sort of "continuity editor" that read through those and tossed out things that played fast and loose with the game world?

I really don't know what the process is for the novels. By the time I was considering trying to propose one, the whole novel thing dried up with the FASA-to-Wizkids/FanPro thing. I do think that one of the differences may be that sourcebook writers are given a "path" of products to work on that is pre-sketched out, and I think the novels are more proposed from the writers, so there's a bit less control over the path they take. But I really don't know for sure.

I've always preferred the novels that open up the storyline for the players, as opposed to the ones that close them. Burning Bright remains one of my favorite novels, because it really opened up the whole Bug City idea, and then it became a situation in the players' world. A lot of the novels annoy me though because they close off perfectly good storylines. Like I didn't like the Dragonheart Trilogy because it "answered" Dunk's assassination, without player input.

But wasn't the Dragonheart books used to end the whole ED-SR horror crossover thing as well?

It's not like the ED-SR crossover actually ended. Drakes, Ghostwalker, etc. all have ED connections.

The Horror thing was backburnered for now, which I agree with, I just think it could have been done better.

I never read the books, but I gotta say I kinda like the idea of the horrors coming back in a very limited way. Nothing like an invasion but have them slip through and run havoc in the Astral plane. Horrors are just another creature to go bump in the night and SR can never have to many of those.

Although one thing I'd like to see is the bugs come back. Bugs just don't carry the fear and weight in SR that they once did and I think that should change. The greatest thing about the bugs was two fold, everyone no matter the power was afraid of them, and they were truly alien and that it was impossible to understand them even by those who though they did. I don't want an invasion (but pumping lead into a horde of flesh-forms can be FUN) but to have them get a massive upgrade (perhaps they evolved) and have them become the world's boogie man. To me the Sheddim just don't carry the weight and fear that the bugs could, personal preference I guess.

Those two things being said I firmly believe that SR should be about the evils of man (or metaman), corporate power, and the darkness of life in an age where you as in the PC's are struggling to survive (hell, that almost sounds like a movie trailer). SR is, or was cyberpunk and I'd like the focus to stay in that dark hopelessness but that doesn't mean that we can't have terrible things beyond understanding in the shadows awaiting us. That's what I think the bugs and horrors should represent, in different ways, a terror beyond us.

Those things haven't really gone away in SR though. It isn't as explicit, but there are still plenty of things that could be considered Horror-links by a gamemaster who wanted them to be, in his campaign.

The Shedim, imps, the Aleph Society, the mana storms in Australia, the list goes on and on, all of these things could be linked to the Horrors. If that's the way you wanna play them. And the bugs are certainly still a threat out there, they just aren't the main focus of the Shadowrun game line at the moment. They already have been, it's time for the game line to explore other things, while an individual gamemaster can use what's already been released and make a threat out of it if he wants. There are definitely still hives out there, and I doubt all the insect spirits have showed their hands yet.

Sure they could but they could be linked to other things as well. Links are fine but the actual fact of having them is an entirely different thing. I'd like them introduced in a way were nobody in the world realizes what's here, possibly some events that that aren't related (and when I mean nobody, I mean Dragons, IE's and the like) and then they show up in the Game Information section of a book, ready to scare the astral pants off that arrogant mage. That being said I don't expect this to happen for a while, as they are doing other things but I'd like to see it before the next couple of thousand years of game time.

As for the bugs, yes the focus has moved away form them and I don't mind I approve, there are other things out there to explore. However the bugs don't invoke any fear anymore, they are just a threat to use fully automatic weapons on. It feels like the bugs have moved form the scary to the mundane, where a group of guys just go into a hive and blast it apart like it is a giant arcade or shooting galley where the 'winner' isn't the the only guy to come out alive but the guy with the most kills. Sure the game has moved away form the bugs, but it still doesn't mean that the bugs can't become the terror they were.

I not suggesting the metaplot focus on them or even devote books to them, in fact I probably would be against it I'm suggesting little tidbits in various books here and there were they put the fear back into the bugs.

You just have to be very careful how to you do the tidbits, or they become overdone. But there have definitely been mentionings of the bugs, from the Betrayal entry in Threats 2 to the hive mentioned in the Outback in Target: Awakened Lands.

It's hard to link things to Horrors without being explicit about it, because no one in the Sixth World knows what "Horrors" are, unless the IEs or Great Dragons make a reference to them. Gaf, the spirit behind the Aleph Society, could easily be a Horror (free spirit dabbling in burnouts and blood magic?), but unless you get some chatter between the people who have met the Horrors before, on the pages of the book, it's never going to be a hard link.

And we might even be missing some. I totally missed a possible reference in Dragons of the Sixth World to something very, very bad until I went back over some of my Earthdawn books and reread them.

then dont miss the perfect merge fleshform in the suit pretending to be a victim. the problem with bugs is that they are bugs. you can kill them permanently. let the team rescue some people, maybe one or more of them starts giving them jobs. over time you may start to hint that a new hive is in town. then when they go looking they find out that they have been working for it all this time

point is that you have a beast here that can look human, act human but isnt human. and there is allso the fact that they have aura masking last time i checked.

the word is paranoia. if your useing the bugs as frontline soldiers and cannonfodder then your useing them wrong, the hybrid fleshforms are maybe nice for this but leave them guessing. have the team wodner if they realy took out that hive and if the johnson sitting across from them are what he appears to be. paranoia is a big part of cyberpunk and the bugs work in that field. thats what made universial brotherhood so damn cool. a organisation preaching metahuman love and understanding being a from for the biggest network of hives yet. who knows whats behind the tribe out there in the nan territorys? just make sure to not play the card to often, leave them guessing

Yeah the horror thing is probably going to be hard to do, but I think it would be refreshing if they missed something so world altering, espically something like this.

Demonseed Elite
"You just have to be very careful how to you do the tidbits, or they become overdone."

And that is the problem. The fact that the bugs are still mentioned is good, but that is only half of it. I still think the bugs need an upgrade to be more scary, unless I missed that as well.

If you haven't read the "Betrayal" entry in Threats 2, that might interest you. It's only potentially the tip of the iceberg, but a corporate conspiracy breeding insect spirits with para-animals can lead down a dark road (especially since it's unsure who is really in charge, Ares or the insect Queen).

@ hobgoblin
Actually I always thought the biggest flaw of the bugs was the relationship of a summoned Mother/Queen and the shaman. Once both are together the spend valuble time and resources posturing and fighting amongst themselves. That is something I changed in my 'second generation' bugs as I call them.

The problem with the bugs isn't how the GM plays them but how the SR universe plays them off. I use the bugs, and they freak out my players becuse that is why I love the bugs so much.

@ Demonseed Elite
I never read it, it does sound good. The problem is I just got back into SR after a long haitus and the wallet she's a hurting. But that sounds great because it seems like that is a prefect way to 'change' the bugs and put the fear into them.

I'm more interested in natural human overreaction to the insects than having them return as a full fledged threat in the immediate future. Bug hunts that lead into secret police and lynch mobs against innocents. Humanity reasserting its dominance over the insect kingdom with an upswing in bug cuisines and insecticide perfumes. SURGE and Shedim would only feed into the paranoia, the deep human fear of being overrun by aliens whatever their nature; the rise of Magical Control legislation; and so on. Think about Betrayal and how seriously they considered Ares' action to be unthinkable.

What I would like to see

less government power: The government should have more guns than the corps, but less spending power and political throw, esp when the corp court comes into play. The bit in RA:S where the UCAS military got involved was apparentlly precident breaking. Maybe have the corp court try to slap the 'old order of things' back into place?

Corp Coldness: even today corperations will ignore public and national good for a bottom line. In 2064 the only thing an exec should care about is the quarterly report and his career (Not necessary in that order). This is somewhat reflected, but there are too many bleeding heart NPC's when the runners get close to them. (Think ms. johnson in Corporate Punishment)

Fewer magical tricks: Do we really need more metamagic than we already have?

Marginal/cosmetic cyberware: the stuff that would actually sell mass market, like LED skinwatches/displays, still have shadow applications

Low end matrix stuff: Uses for low end cyberterminals. Think about how difficult it is becoming to get arond without a cell phone/e-mail/internet access today, then multiply it by an order of magnitude. Be it by telecom or fairlight, everyone literate would interact with the matrix

More mystery: The PC's who read the books know too much, even if they don't read the adventures. IMHO the greatest adventrue set is Harlequin: at the end of it the pc's are left almost clueless about what happened, just that they were involved in something of epic scale that they have no way to check on

Harlequin III: erhen declares the ritual of revenge on harlequin, and uses the same runners as his pawns

Books in the style of Blood in the boardroom and Mob War. I liked that style

More unpleasentness. For an example, Racism is not nice to write about or GM (I tried once), but it is (in theory) part of the background. put a couple of humanis mooks in positions of REAL power, or have trouble in the orc undergroud spill over, and the concequences

Edit:
My entry into shadowrun was the Lone Wolf novel. It dealt (early on) with the possibility of a gang war between the Cutters and the Ancients. It goes on to mention that the Cutters consider the 88’s triad a small fry threat. possably make an adventure where the runners are allied with one group or the other, (Include both options in one book?) and kick off the festivities

Target: Astral Space: make the astral an unplesent place, with things that want to take over your body and preditory spirits. Don't go overboard, but keep it gritty and risky, not cartoony.

There's never enough magic.

However, I'd rather see more creative uses of existing rules and theories than the inclusion of completely new ones. An expansion of the ideas found in Hermetic Schools, more variants amongst the traditions, and stepped metamagic techniques (like an improved version of Anchoring that actually makes it useful) are all examples of what I'm talking about. The more they feed off of real-world mythology and religion, the better.

While I still haven't gotten my copy of SOTA:2064 (grr), one thing I've been waiting a very long time to see are Charms. Sort of inexpensive mini-foci that a magician can give to another character that allow them to do things like extend Spell Defense or cast spells on them even if they are miles away without having to use ritual magic (maybe with a restriction of no more Force or dice than the rating of the Charm itself). It's a pretty popular item found in mythology and literature, but it's one that's all but completely missing in Shadowrun. Not only that, but they'd be invaluable to runners.

Hm. I don't really have a problem with Anchoring. However, the general idea is valid given how many of the new Adept metamagics are variations on Centering. I know of a system someone far smarter than myself wrote that took the existing metamagics and did just that, expanding them into more specific areas which branched off from the original powers. The whole thing would fill its own SB.

Well, Living Focus has IC indicated that it's possible to transfer the sustaining of a spell from the caster, so I'm guessing it's just a matter of time (which will fulfill a legacy of Dunk's will, too).

Cool. One of the parts of SOTA:2064 that I'm been hankerig (did I really just say "hankering?") to see is the Old World Magic section I've heard mention of. I was really disappointed when there wasn't much mentioned of it in Shadows of Europe, especially considering all the inspiration the simple use of the term "street witch" alone gave me. I still can't believe I never thought of that myself. But yeah, I hope it's as groovy as I'm hoping for.

Yeah. If you're really interested in Charms, skip ahead to p.125 when you get it.

Did I mention how much I love this book?

I would like to see stuff on playing more races and how to apply the various strains of HMHVV to different species. Actualy an HMHVV book would be awesome.

That said, dragon stuff and IE stuff and magic stuff is always spiffy. More connections to ED are also keen.

I'd like to see Target: Astral, including (among other things) all things Metaplane.

Yeah, a Metaplanes sourcebook would rock, verily. I'm dying to know if the Elemental Plane of Orphans made it into the Sixth World.

Also, it would be awesome to have more information on HMHVV, but there doesn't seem to be enough about it to warrant a whole new book. I'm thinking SOTA65, or, dare I say it... Threats 3?

You'd have better luck with a SOTA book, especially since it's in the general atmosphere of clarifying and restoring things in the game.

Meh. I haven't read '64 yet, but in general I'm quite cool on the idea of a general migration of the SotA books towards covering things that just flat-out aren't SotA.

~J

I'm sure there's an enterprising writer who can make it SOTA. I mean, hell, the chapter titled Old World Magic was about SOTA magic theory and activity.

HM...

/CD2.0 sneaks off to plot.

AFAIK, Rob wanted a part of Running Wild to be about HMHVV. That's all I can say, having not taking part in the elaboration of the book.

Well I start with saying I've read the first 8 pages and stopped.

Things I'd like to see

1) Flesh out the metatypes - expressly trolls, but orcs and dwarves as well. SR is great in allowing monster type races as PCs, but that is all it seems to do. With a few paragraphs of fluff since 1st Ed almost nothing has been done for them (keebs on the otherhand have several books). Trolls is particular do not fit in a human world, almost everything has a 25% penalty, everything has to be modfied or specially constructed and yet only 1 item is available, the Honda Viking. Flesh them out, if they are poor and nothing fits then they should have massive amounts of manual skills among them populance. Where are the Haines manuals and Botch guides?
2) State of the Ark - the digital world is here now, it will be much nearer to having been around for a century by 206x yet there is no old tech. How, why? Stop producing new shinies and give us the ability to reuse the old gems in new ways.
3) Make B/R work and count for something other than cost savings in rigger downtime.
4) Sort out memory useage, it is IMO the most broken area in SR at the moment.
5) Sort out and define what different senses can actually do. Yea, IR lets you see temperture, but what temperature range/detail, etc

There's probably a bit more, but I'm going to read pages 9-14 before I finish.