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Birdy
No, not as a game system or game universe. But the classic "Cyberpunk" idea of "the desperate few against the system" always worked better in novels than in role playing. Most scenarios start with "you are contacted by your fixer" instead of the classical "circumstances force you into a certain action".

While the sourcebooks, the germans even more than the US ones in my option, still stress this "struggle against the evil corporations and the corrupt political minions" (laudable even IRL) the adventures and most scenario descriptions on the boards show a different view.

So maybe it's time for a new approach to "Shadowrunning", one less inspired by "Neuromancer", "Snowcrash" and "Hardwired" and more by "Oceans Eleven", "Foolproof" and "Top Job". Let the players be professional criminals, maybe even a team. Or freelance security consultants like "Bugs" Or even agents of the "This watcher will self-destruct in 10 seconds" variety.

The question is:

+ What new rules are needed (Equipment, Money pools etc)

+ What problems come out of this?

+ How "legit" (SIN etc) can the characters get?

Any comments?


Birdy
BitBasher
Er, since Shadowrun was never really "classic cyberpunk" I don't think I see the issue here.
Birdy
QUOTE (BitBasher)
Er, since Shadowrun was never really "classic cyberpunk" I don't think I see the issue here.

It was in the sense of the "mission", that "runners against the system" that you find in the early novels and the fluff of the sourcebooks.

Cyberpunk is more than "sticking metal in ones body" - i.e "Soylent green" is Cyberpunk.

Birdy
FlakJacket
Didn't we have this conversation literally just a couple of months back or something?
Omega Skip
Heck, who cares if we discuss the same things over and over and over again! biggrin.gif


As for special rules: The only thing that would be really needed would be character creation modifications, especially with regards to
  • Contacts at creation
  • Availability of some equipment
  • Starting Ressources and special loans
  • Modifications on social edges and flaws
Of course, as members of a bigger organization, the characters will have access to some important people who may or may not owe them a favor. Which of course leads to some special equipment being available (which gives you as a GM a very convenient way to influence the playing style in a subtle way - drastically lower the prices on 007 spyware and raise the penalties for excessive cyberware, for example).

But, to compensate for the wicked cool toys that the runners now have, the starting ressources should be tweaked accordingly: One possible way to do this would be to say that they don't receive one large sum of money at creation, but instead are payed a higher-than-average monthly "salary". In other words, the runners start off with less, but earn more on the average mission. Again, modify this to your own needs. You can even turn it the other way around, have them start off with more and earn less per run if you want to create an "armed to the teeth suicide squad" that has to take significantly bigger risks to earn their money.

Also, because the characters are part of an uncharacteristically well-formed social group, some modifications of social flaws and edges may be in order.

And of course, magic and awakened characters need to be considered as well: Is magic an integral part of the organisation (lower the build point cost of magical characteristics, increase the availability of decidedly mundane equipment), about average (no change), or is the organization even distrustful of magic (increase build point cost, decrease availability of mundane equipment)?

These are just my thoughts, I'm sure someone else will come up with some more interesting ideas to get you started. Anyone?
GrinderTheTroll
We've always played "us against them" by pitting runners against corps. that seem to have unlimited funds, gear and an army of loyal followers, I guess I don't feel the same way about the game changing in that respect.

I think that alot of this has to do with maturity of the player base more than anything. 14 years ago, SR was a different game to me than it is today. I never worried about the samll details like I do today. I consistantly strive to eliminate loose ends for my stories and feel compelled to keep the "fiction" as it where, to a minimum with a focus on real-life or perhaps, more "believeable" scenarios and situations.

Take a look at the archtypes in SR1 compared to SR3. The very focus (and artwork) strays away towards a more "gritty" feel and demenor. You are now "professionals" as opposed to "the minority".

I don't share you read on it, but I think there is some truth in what you are saying.
Birdy
QUOTE (GrinderTheTroll @ Nov 15 2004, 06:45 PM)
We've always played "us against them" by pitting runners against corps. that seem to have unlimited funds, gear and an army of loyal followers, I guess I don't feel the same way about the game changing in that respect.

I think that alot of this has to do with maturity of the player base more than anything.  14 years ago, SR was a different game to me than it is today.  I never worried about the samll details like I do today.  I consistantly strive to eliminate loose ends for my stories and feel compelled to keep the "fiction" as it where, to a minimum with a focus on real-life or perhaps, more "believeable" scenarios and situations.

Take a look at the archtypes in SR1 compared to SR3.  The very focus (and artwork) strays away towards a more "gritty" feel and demenor.  You are now "professionals" as opposed to "the minority".

I don't share you read on it, but I think there is some truth in what you are saying.

Actualy I don't think it is "the game changing". The "Fixer call" have been a staple back in "Queen Euphoria" and similar works. The difference between "Fluff text" and "Adventure outline" was always there, it just got smaller with 3rd Ed. Not a bad think IMHO.

And yes, the older one get's the more the story shifts. And the smaller the focus seems to get. No more "world shacking events" just plain "survive and live well".

I just would like ideas how to handle it. Omegas ideas for "big corp agents" are one angel on it. I would like to see ideas on the "Ocean's Eleven" (Professional criminals) one too


Birdy
Demonseed Elite
Cyberpunk is dead.

Which isn't to say you can't play a Cyberpunk style of Shadowrun if you want to, but the literary movement of Cyberpunk is basically over. It was a literary response to social pressures and feelings of the times when it emerged, which don't really match feelings that exist in the present today.

And while Shadowrun has evolved with literary traditions, it isn't really evolving into the "caper movie." It's been evolving more into the transhumanist genre over time.
Birdy
QUOTE (Demonseed Elite)
Cyberpunk is dead.

Which isn't to say you can't play a Cyberpunk style of Shadowrun if you want to, but the literary movement of Cyberpunk is basically over. It was a literary response to social pressures and feelings of the times when it emerged, which don't really match feelings that exist in the present today.

And while Shadowrun has evolved with literary traditions, it isn't really evolving into the "caper movie." It's been evolving more into the transhumanist genre over time.

I own Transhuman space and I'd say that SR goes down a different road. One less hopeful and far bleaker

It still is Cyberpunk in the sense of the distopian world where nature and humanity goes down the drain in service of the all-mighty euro/dollar/nuyen. It is in the tradition of Blade Runner and Soylent Green. Cyberpunk is more than Gibson and more than "Mowhawk and Attitude".

Recently used the "Co Dominion Universe" for a Cyberpunk 2020 game. Basically no Cyberware but one of the darkest and grittiest games we played in a long time. The faceless system vs. the individual and all. (Players are gangers about to move up to organised crime)

What has shifted is the role of the protagonist. Classical CP-novel characters don't work well in teams. Players are more a "small cog in the system" than a "small sabot in the gears"


Birdy
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (Birdy)
I just would like ideas how to handle it. Omegas ideas for "big corp agents" are one angel on it. I would like to see ideas on the "Ocean's Eleven" (Professional criminals) one too

Lots of planning on the part of the GM. Requires alot from both the players and GM and to be quite honest, I don't know if the "Ocean's 11" scenario would be possible without alot of given conditions and information. This is more of a struggle when the players want to go after something as opposed to a fixer call.

I recently considered pooling all my players skills and then crafting scenarios around their skillsets so they get to use them often. But players have ways of going around what is planned sometimes.
bitrunner
in defense of "caper" films like "Ocean's 11", they DO show how to go about a shadowrun in the proper way - legwork, lots and lots of preparation and more legwork, setting up alternate plans in case plan A goes bad, getting in and out without getting caught, or better yet, having no one know you were there until long after you're gone, not getting distracted, hiring people that are specialized for different roles, etc...

basically, when the "uninitiated" ask me what Shadowrun is all about, I start by using the common knowledge of movies like this and others films to describe the parts of the game-verse.
GrinderTheTroll
QUOTE (bitrunner)
in defense of "caper" films like "Ocean's 11", they DO show how to go about a shadowrun in the proper way - legwork, lots and lots of preparation and more legwork, setting up alternate plans in case plan A goes bad, getting in and out without getting caught, or better yet, having no one know you were there until long after you're gone, not getting distracted, hiring people that are specialized for different roles, etc...

basically, when the "uninitiated" ask me what Shadowrun is all about, I start by using the common knowledge of movies like this and others films to describe the parts of the game-verse.

Hehe, as do I. I am thinking the sheer mechanics required by runners and GM are alot considering the payout, I wouldn't want to give it away or make it too hard.

I think all that planning would bore my players to tears.
Mercer
The Ocean's Eleven style run (an impossible mission overcome by an unexpected solution) tends not to work well in tabletop games. It's harder to set up "reveals" for the audience when they are also the main characters in the story. What is a very tense Ocean's Eleven style movie is a pretty relaxed game where the players feel like the run is going pretty much according to plan throughout.

Heist movies benefit from scripting, which is something we can't do as much of in games. In the heist movie, what is possible is determined by the screenwriter or the director, based on the dramatic needs of the story. In a game, what the players do is decided by them, and their success and failure is determined by the rules and the dice. Its not hard to imagine what would have happened in the Ocean's Eleven movie if any one of the criminals had botched any of the multitude of rolls at any point during their incredibly complicated plan. It would have been a very different movie if Brad Pitt and George Clooney had to pull out assault rifles and stage a running gun battle across the casino floor to get to freedom, as Julia Roberts fires clip after clip at Andy Garcia, who iss on top of the elevator throwing grenades. (Not a better or worse movie per se, just different.)
Ol' Scratch
I don't quite get the whole "Shadowrun is dead because cyberpunk is dead" mentality. Shadowrun was never a cyberpunk game. It has elements found in cyberpunk, but the Shadowrun genre -- and especially the purpose of shadowrunners -- is not cyberpunkish in and of itself. It can incorporate characters similar to those found in cyberpunk, but again, that's not the summation of the setting or the game.

If you want to focus on another aspect found in the setting -- "caper"-type runs -- it's fully capable of handling that, too. No special rules are really required; any special gear needed for a particular caper can be acquired through a fixer or similar contact. In fact, that's the entire point of having a fixer. You don't have to start the game with every piece of equipment you will ever need.
CircuitBoyBlue
Amen to that. Of course, not getting caught would bore all the players in my group to tears as well. Part of the reason our characters are so un-slick is because the players have good ideas, they just don't want to use them, because they'd rather get into a good old-fashioned punch up with some corporate security guards. Of course, the characters don't share this point of view, but they are slaves to our will, because we brought them into this world and only our whim keeps them here.

As for the cyberpunk aspect of the game being dead, it's only dead if you want it to be. My group doesn't feel that the game's nearly gritty enough these days, and so we just ignore everything that's come out that we disagree with (in our case, nearly everything since Super Tuesday, which some may say is gritty, but there's no arguing with the fact that it's not OUR kind of grit). We never got bored with the "your fixer calls you" runs, because we never really fell into that trap. Most of our "runs" aren't so much your typical run as they are a desperate attempt to get access to heat (the type that keeps you alive in the winter, not in a firefight), water, electricity, or other essentials that they need to function. Our group doesn't even HAVE a fixer it can trust. If you want to get out of the "your fixer calls" trap, just don't have the fixer call. Sooner or later, the characters will start trying to find their own fun to get into. And that's always fun because the GM gets a really good feel for what the characters are really like, and can then create "runs" that really suit their interests, which most likely won't require contrived fixer calls to initiate.
Dashifen
I agree with the Doctor. I've been running caper type runs for three years now with now problems other than, as Mercer described above, a tendancy for players to feel complacent as they succeed with their plans. 'Course that only lasts until somone fails a necessary test or an Unexpected Event ™ happens.
lorthazar
Always had a mix bag of operations. Our group could handle everything from the 'stealth runs' to the 'expend some assets runs'. We always used the right firepower for the mission as well as doing extensive research, legwork, and planning. Sure we had more fun in combat but hey sometimes the cred takes precedence. Not that we always charged. When we played Missing Blood one of us truly fouled a roll and my runners best friend got geeked becuase of it. that night the UB headquarters found out what a ShadowWar was. Not a single bug survivor. Cost topped out at 20 times what we had been payed, but our reps were on the line. that started a long serries of our runners versus the bugs. The bugs lost every time, but it was always tense.

DrJest
Time to get controversial...

Shadowrun is not now and never was primarily a cyberpunk game. The inclusion of cyberpunk elements into the game notwithstanding.

Shadowrun was, and is, an epic manga techno-fantasy game, primary emphasis on the fantasy.

Magic and technology side by side? Ancient hidden mysteries? Immortals moving mortals like pawns on a chessboard?

Sounds like manga/anime to me.
lorthazar
Actually sounds Illuminatai to me, but hey I just play here.
DrJest
Funny you should mention that, now I've been working on this submission to FanPro... nyahnyah.gif
Dashifen
I've always seen it as epic techno-fantasy (not necessarily manga -- for that you can enjoy BESM). The emphasis on techno or fantasy, I think, is driven primarily by what characters the players make and my choices as a GM. I make the choice to tone down magic if the players have no mage. I don't remove it from the game, but maybe I only toss around moderate stunbolts (or balls) rather than the deadly ones I use when mages should know better and have spell defense up. Flip the coin and I usually stage back techno aspects if I'm running a primarily mage game because those cybersam-5d6-in-combat types will own a mage group if they don't get it in the first phase as it will have three or four more actions than the team can hope to have without liberal use of improved reflexes which I house ruled to be less effect anyway devil.gif .
Mercer
Its mainly a question of emphasis. I tend to run cyberpunk/low fantasy style games. Immortal Elves are (for all intents and purposes) a paranoid media creation, and the runners are about as likely to have dealings with Lofwyr as I am to meet Tom Hanks. (I should point out here that statistically, I have a very low probability to meet Mr. Hanks. If I lived in his building or something, I'd have picked someone else. Maybe Brian Dennehey. I've always enjoyed his work.)

But, thats just one type of game. Almost any type of game can be run, and as Doc Funk pointed out earlier, the system will support it.
Shadow
Shaowrun has always been about 'us' versus 'them'. I just think the 'them' has changed over the years. SR was spwaned in the late 80's when corprate America seemed to be taking ove rthe world. The idea that corperations could become all powerful was comman. Now days though, less so. But it is still us vs them.
Enigma
Shadowrun can be as cyberpunk as any GM wants, because one of the massive advantages of SR is the depth of the game world and the thought that has gone into it. One of the failings of CP2020 was it was so incredibly two dimensional - corporations bad, rock music good, solos cool, arasaka evil and so on. I remember in the developer's say bit of the latest corporations book someone actually discussing "we didn't want it to be as simple as SK mysterious, Aztechnology evil, Ares good and so on".

Having said that, grit is something any GM can put into a game. I work in the criminal justice system so it's easier for me, but you can make a game plain nasty very easily - incorporate a realistic brothel or two, make sure to emphasise the despair and desperation of the drug culture, put some flashy dudes on top of it making money off the addicted, the hopeless and the desperately addicted and you have a fairly gritty game.

I enjoy that the simplistic elements of the cyberpunk genre (struggling against the massive faceless conglomerate) are replaced in shadowrun with a more 'shades of grey' approach, however I have always preferred the smarter "heist" type run. Unfortunately, two of my three players are afraid of doing anything risky so I'm pretty much running a one player game with comic relief at the moment. However, I live in hope.
hobgoblin
cyberpunk is hard, very hard, to nail down. one part is about us vs them or selling out. another is about the definition of life (when have i removed so much of me that im less man then machine? and what about those "drones" that eat "big bro" propaganda raw? are they not biological machines?). its allso about the feeling that whatever you do you dont change anyones life in a meaningful way (maybe you can afford better food or clotheing but what about the nameless hordes?). the corps still makes money and dumps waste, and so on. its a future where your only thought is survival, and the only surefire way to do that is to sell your body and soul to a amoral entity.

there is a element of 1984 in there to, as either you pack your bags and move to the controled areas where every move you make is monitored and logged by your employers. or you go live in the dumps where its survival of the fittest, and the cyberenhanced (or bio or drugs or whatever) predators rule.

you have to look towards urban warzones, with shelled out ruins, bulletholes in the walls, nailed shut windows, gangs with blades and cheap automatic firearms. cops and similar security rolling around in armored vehicles, packing heavy armor and automatic firearms. this is the barrens. downtown and the high ranking areas may look safter at day, but at night the gangs roam in force. if you go outside of the relativly safe club streets and looks like you have more money then muscle your asking for a visit by some punks in gang colors. or they maybe beat up a guy and rape his girl just for the hell of it.

its a world where cops have lost control, corps protect their own assets and the rest just have to survive somehow.
Stumps
QUOTE
No, not as a game system or game universe. But the classic "Cyberpunk" idea of "the desperate few against the system" always worked better in novels than in role playing. Most scenarios start with "you are contacted by your fixer" instead of the classical "circumstances force you into a certain action".


Cyberpunk:
n:
Fast-paced science fiction involving a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.

That sounds like SR to me.
Now I know that dictionaries miss the cultural attachments to phrases.
Cyberpunk, culturally was very much an issue of one that was fueled by a fear of corporate take-over at a histarical level.
The "cyber" was not just what was being fought against as well, it was what was being used to fight the system.
A "cyber(netic) punk" would be one who was a punk that was in part, cybernetically inhanced.
Basically, a cyberpunk is pretty much the '80's punk super hero.
A cyebrnetically inhanced punk who now has the ability to physically take on the system and fight all of their evil in physical form.

Like all super-heros, it's silly.

Now as to this part of what you were saying:
QUOTE
So maybe it's time for a new approach to "Shadowrunning", one less inspired by "Neuromancer", "Snowcrash" and "Hardwired" and more by "Oceans Eleven", "Foolproof" and "Top Job". Let the players be professional criminals, maybe even a team. Or freelance security consultants like "Bugs" Or even agents of the "This watcher will self-destruct in 10 seconds" variety.

The question is:

  + What new rules are needed (Equipment, Money pools etc)

  + What problems come out of this?

  + How "legit" (SIN etc) can the characters get?

Any comments?

Just one. Fields of Fire.
That sourcebook was the first sourcebook that put forth the systems in which a mercinary team of runners who so chose to run in a seriously professional manner could do so.

There are no further rules needed at all. It's already been handeled, and SR saw this angle comming and added it into it's volume like smart marketers do.
lacemaker
Having read first edition SR before reading any "other" cyberpunk material, the cyberpunk elements felt really, really bolted on. There were these vague allusions to archetypes who had worked for the crops until they discovered how evil they were, but no real explanation of what that "evil" really was. The historical material and campaign setting basically deal with political forces, and don't establish any kind of "downtroden working classes vs the capitalists" ethic at all - it's like the writers thought it ought to be in there but no one really devoted any time (or pages) to actually generating that feel. First edition SR, up to and including the first couple of supplements, is very much a magical caper movie type system. You have the meet, negotiate the deal, break in, it goes wrong and you have a flashy fight trying to get away and then you sell the loot.
jezryaldar
It would have been a very different movie if Brad Pitt and George Clooney had to pull out assault rifles and stage a running gun battle across the casino floor to get to freedom, as Julia Roberts fires clip after clip at Andy Garcia, who iss on top of the elevator throwing grenades.

I want to see that movie.. that would be absolutely hysterical.

All kidding aside, I have to agree with several of the above posts. The most success I have had with running this game was the caper style. I played in a game where the GM attempted the gritty street side, and for me it just didnt work. I think it is more personal preference. In the group I play with currently, 3 of us have GM'ed and each one has stressed the fact that you cant walk around with your SMG blazing or the game will be short lived for that character. As for planning, you bet, I think I go thru 2 weeks worth of prep work thinking thru every angle I can to make sure that I know the ins and outs as well as the NPC's, who they are, what they want (therefore who will turn and when ect). So far, my plots are multi threaded, multi layered but at the core, they are people who have strengths and weaknesses.

As to special rules, I can see only one really to give you more of a cyberpunk feel. Make magic non existent, or only thru some kind of telepathic state. Then everyone is a borg of some sort (bio ware for fixes ect). Change up some of the history (like the indians for example) and really fry the government. In SR, I always got the feeling that the government was still there, the megas just ignored them for all intensive purposes. Much like the medieval church (cant try a priest in civil courts) but if you could get the rope around his neck fast enough and far enough away... well .. oppps.
Ol' Scratch
You should be put down execution style for using that shade of blue, for you have now officially blinded me. Feh.
Jason Farlander
Arrgh! My eyes! It BURNS!
Voran
I think I've commented a few times in other threads on SR that in some ways I really wondered when they were going to encorporate combat hardsuits ala Bubblegum Crisis into the SR line. Not that I see that specifically happening, but probably because I agree with some other posters that SR, especially in recent times, seems more along the lines of anime to me. Probably because about the time SR first came out, I was really starting to get into anime. Along the way since them, they seem to mesh well. A little mix of Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis, Silent Moebius, Akira, riding bean, crying freeman, etc etc. All seemed to fit with the feel I was getting off SR.

Other opinions, naturally, may vary.
Sabosect
Personally, I think Shadowrun is fine as is.

What we have is a system that can allow for cyberpunk, for things such as Cowboy Bebop where you know the heroes are doomed from the start, and even Ocean's 11 and quite possibly a lot of scifi shows. To be honest, I find you can even do Halo with this game if you wanted to. How many games out there are that adaptive and that capable of covering multiple genres?
Mercer
I can't say how much of SR is anime, as I've never watched much anime. It occurs to me similarly that I can't really say how much of it is "pure" cyberpunk, since I never read any cyberpunk. I was aware of Neuromancer and Snow Crash and many of the other classic cyberpunk novels in much the same way I am aware of Minnesota; I know its there, I just have never been curious enough to see what its all about.

I ran across this article a couple of days ago looking for stuff on Latin America in Shadowrun, and even though it has nothing to do with Latin America I still thought it was interesting. http://slashdot.org/features/00/06/04/1525259.shtm

And this one I really liked, even though its for Cyberpunk and the stat blocks don't help me. But then, I like movies so maybe its a foregone conclusion that I'll like articles about movies and gaming. http://www.talsorian.com/articles.shtml#Cy...yberpunk%202020

Beyond that, I'm always interested in expanding my SR horizons. Its actually been awhile since I've run a regular shadowrun game. The last three I ran were a Lone-Star mini-series, an African merc campaign, and a homebrewed alternate history Shadowrun set in WW2.

Paul
The problem here is, of course, all of this is subjective. Your cyperppunk might be my Adventure! game. Maybe my horror is your cheap comedy.

The game is versatile enough to allow for any number of styles of playing it. I say it is what you make of it. That said the Doc has me covered here-he'll say it better than I'd dream of, and he's been at as long as I have if I remember rightly.
Stumps
Mercer...I almost want to strangle you for those links.
I read both of them.
The first one was simply using SR as a glorified fueling for their own chest inflation in a very mistaken and wrong manner.

The second one, cyberpunk2020 article 24, had so little to do with cyberpunk that it strained the brain to try and keep up with the ramblings of the authors supposed "0"s and "1"s.
His reasonings for several things in that article are completely perversed and wholey based on nothing more than assumption.
What "1" means and what "0" means.
Second, this author looks way too much into things. His cruch for analysis is the movie, The One, which fueled his ongoing metaphores of 0's and 1's and how the cyberpunk is a 0 who just wants nothing, they just want it all to be over no matter if they make it or not. The 1 aparantly is his idea of a selfish man who want to be unbalanced but in control where the 0 cares nothing for control and only wants everything to cease, including his own self.

How the hell this author can spend that much time writing about a movie in regards to cyberpunk regarding 1's and 0's and the philosphy therein is well beyond me.

I'll simply stick to saying that cyberpunk is simple.

If you have a guy who hates the system and he's living in a future that's comformist to some degree that the rest of the population has bought into but thinks that the guy is crazy for hating. And this guy feels that it is his duty for the "freedoms of mankind" to make his "truth" known to the "deceived", no matter what his end may be...
Then you have cyberpunk.

And just for the record. I almost NEVER see this one given credit in these conversations about cyberpunk.
Anyone remember Logan's Run?
(1976) (for comparison, soylent green: 1973)
bitrunner
QUOTE
Anyone remember Logan's Run?


yep, it's one of the examples i use to describe an arcology...

it also came up one time as an example of where SR could go if FASA had continued along the ED crossover line, with S-K and everyone building their own corporate arcologies for people to live in until the magic level had become safer again (much like the radiation level in Logan's Run) and then exiting out of the city to explore their new world...
Skeptical Clown
QUOTE (DrJest)
Time to get controversial...

Shadowrun is not now and never was primarily a cyberpunk game. The inclusion of cyberpunk elements into the game notwithstanding.

Shadowrun was, and is, an epic manga techno-fantasy game, primary emphasis on the fantasy.

Magic and technology side by side? Ancient hidden mysteries? Immortals moving mortals like pawns on a chessboard?

Sounds like manga/anime to me.

That's what it is NOW. But that's not what it was when it started. Immortals and ancient mysteries were a fairly early addition to the Shadowrun repertoire, but they didn't really become the focus of much of the... well, "metaplot" for lack of a better term, until like the mid-90s. And as tempting as it is for some to attribute anime flavor to Shadowrun, I don't think that was a primary influence in the early days either.

Of course, now Shadowrun is most of the things you describe, and it's kind of silly. But to each his own.
Synner
As usual I beg to differ... or are you forgetting all the early stuff 4th world metaplot links like the very first novel trilogy Secrets of Power, Bottled Demon, Total Eclipse, TNO, Threats, and of course Harlequin?

The Immortals have been part of the Shadowrun metaplot from the very first steps.
Skeptical Clown
Your disagreement hinges on ignoring my use of terms like "focus"; I don't believe that the focus of the game on immortals was as strong in 1990 as it was in 1995. Or, for that matter, in 2004. In 1990 they were suggestive hints at something else; by now, it's kind of hard to suggest anymore.
Dashifen
Plus, like all covnersations we have about gritty cyberpunk vs. fantasy manga, I think it's a strength of the system to show that we can do both things with one system. As others have stated above and before, both styles work within the rules and the gameplay-style should be discussed up front by the players and the GM.
Stumps
And I, while having a grave distaste for the manga flavored SR for my own reasons (would appreciate folks not casting jugement on my preference), have to agree with Dashifen here.
SR is capable of being multi-flavored.
At this point, what it started as is completely pointless.
No one in SR's marketing really cares what it started as any further than an attempt to keep their long term fans who like where it came from.
This % of players will be kept happy while they incorperate newer suggestive feels to the atmosphere in an attempt to keep the atmpsphere alive and fresh feeling while clicking with newer audiances who are of a younger generation than those who grew up in their early teens and 20's throughout the 80's.
It's the shear nature of the product.
Mercer
QUOTE (Stumps)
Mercer...I almost want to strangle you for those links.

Well, thats fair.

The first one I won't try to defend. Its a bizarre article that I cam across looking for SR Latin America links (and since the phrase "latin america" is used once in 5 pages of decker comments at the bottom, I guess it qualifies. At least it wasn't porn. When I was trying to find something on that weird animal they found in Washington... well, suffice to say when you type 'never before seen animal' into any given search engine you'll get a wide range of responses). Parts of it I enjoyed for its general (if misguided) weirdness, parts of it made me cringe a little.

Cyber Cinema Classics, however, I like. Granted, your synopsis of the review of The One is not far off (it does seem odd to use binary as a central metaphor to a movie about Jet Li trying to kill himself 128 times, and succeeding) but overall I found the series of essays enjoyable. It was interesting to see how they started out as basically capsule reviews of movies followed by a block of game stats and went forward every week into increasingly complex dissertations onto the "meaning of cyberpunk". One possibility is that writing a weekly column drove the reviewer insane. There is a link on that site to his master's thesis in cyberpunk cinema. If you ever want a reason to pluck out your eyes and play hacky-sack with them, try that thing.

That said, I enjoyed the thematic breakdown of the twenty-something cyberpunk movies he came up with, including the ones that aren't classic cyberpunk (Sneakers, City of Lost Children, Leon, and so on). As I said, as a game master, I'm always looking for inspiration.
Stumps
Yeah, but what about Flatliners.
Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, and William Baldwin all played as doctors who were trying to see the other side of death by allowing them selves to die while the others monitored how long they were gone and brought them back, sometimes with the good ol fashion paddle style.

Pretty crazy movie, made in 1990. And if that doesn't look like SR artwork...holy crap I don't know what in the hell does.

No techno stuff though frown.gif
Birdy
Me and that funny language:

I don't want to change game mechanics (For that I would choose another system wink.gif )

I was polling for the parameters for "caper" style games or "Mission:Impossible / charlies angels / Bugs / CI-5(original series)" (always the series, never the movies) style games. What Build Point costs, what limits, what special rules. Maybe the experience of some.

FoF (and the Merc chapter in SoTA) are nice but to be honest: If I want to play Merc, I have a number of better systems (Merc:2000/Dark Conspiracy, Gurps) The SR material is good but Merc-campaigns are not what I was looking for, I want to remain urban.

The reason for my request was that I agree with the "us vs. the man" element being "bolted on". What works nicely in SR is the "System" with it's power. At least when it is allowed to come out to play (Not often enough). I want "Stainless steel rats" instead of "Neuromancers and Cowboys"


Birdy

P.S: If we get Hardsuits, I insist on a Priss
Mercer
Actually, this goes back to something I've said for years. Every movie is a shadowrun movie. While that is an intentional exaggeration, you can pull from a pretty broad range of source material to run almost any sort of shadowrun game.

Flatliners is a good example because the ghosts already exist in SR. Maybe the next time the sammie takes goes to his physical damage overflow limit and is saved by a quick stabilization, he could be dead for a few seconds, and then after that you can follow the first half of the movie.

But since I like movies and I watch movies, they tend to be more of an influence on my game that "classic" cyberpunk sources.
CircuitBoyBlue
QUOTE (Synner)
As usual I beg to differ... or are you forgetting all the early stuff 4th world metaplot links like the very first novel trilogy Secrets of Power, Bottled Demon, Total Eclipse, TNO, Threats, and of course Harlequin?

The Immortals have been part of the Shadowrun metaplot from the very first steps.

QUOTE


Of course, it's true that the immortals and ED crossovers have been in it from the beginning. But like the clown said, they weren't the focus. In fact, as a very long time shadowrun player, I only recently realized how early they came in, because up until this year I'd never run the Harlequin modules. The ED references were hidden enough that if you're in a group that doesn't buy pre-written adventures, you don't see anything about immortal elves in anything that comes out before 95 or so. Now that I have read a lot of that stuff I see a lot of little clues, but nothing that screamed "there are immortal elves, pay attention to them." When new players have asked about the game world, I've always heard it explained to them in very cyberpunk terms, with not a single mention of immortals, horrors, or anime. I think the focus of the game has shifted, if not the actual content. My group's in sort of a weird situation, because though we've all played for a long time, we've stuck to editions and sourcebooks that came out before 95 and always made up our own adventures, but now that we've played Harlequin and Harlequin's back, we're sort of being forced to confront the IE issue, and I think we're going to resolve it by saying something like "harlequin's a nut that just THINKS he's more than 40 years old, and we have no fragging clue WHAT those things that we dealt with are" (heh, accusations of dementia are a great way to avoid needing a spoiler tag). I, and everyone I know, got into the game because the cyberpunk aspects appealed to us. I don't know a single person who felt like the game was ever marketed to them as being anything like anime when we got into it. Now, I think that may have changed (can't really tell seeing as it's been a good long while since I've been able to physically see a new shadowrun sourcebook rather than just hear about it online), but I think in the beginning, the high fantasy elements like IEs and whatnot were one of those things for the "advanced" shadowrunner, not the newbies who were pretty much kept away from anything like that until they crossed the Harlequin line, at which point I think just about anyone becomes a "veteran" shadowrun player. I don't know how the novels fit into "focus" of the game. It could very well be that the Secrets of Power trilogy shoots everything I say down and makes me an idiot.
Deamon_Knight
I always thought that cyberpunk was based on the effect that ever expanding technology would have on the dynamic of society (this almost certainly demands a future setting). Here, anime paints a good background, specifically Ghost in the Shell. The main character looks for the most part human but can almost level buildings. What effect would that have on a free society? Would the serious police presence / heavy foot of government be avoidable when the power for widespread destruction could easily be put into the hands of an individual.

Another theme that seems common to cyberpunk is the secret society aspect, that different groups are manipulating society in a way invisible to most members of that society.

The classical Gibson decker better represents the interplay of these two forces, technology gives a few the power to confront those who would manipulate society. The deckers become almost like a technological illuminati, or Knights Templar. The corp/decker antagoist/protagonist relationship is dictated by the futuristic setting more than anything else.

The background story of SR actually adresses the secret society aspect FAR more than it ever focused on the effect that technology would have on society. SR relies more upon the balkinization of the nations of earth and the introduction of transnational corp actors to explain the collapse of individualistic society and widespread disorder rather than any effects of technology. The secret forces manipulating society angle is far more developed, and magic only adds to this.

In fact, by far the magic angle is more developed when you consider that it is Magic rather than technology that was the catalyst for all of the most drastic changes in society in the SR universe, all the REALLY pivitol events the GGD and the NAN, Dragons. As you read through "As it Came to Pass" it fast turns from technological machinations to the effects of magic and dosen't turn back. If you view magic as just another sort of "technology", the it becomes apparent that Magic has been the main focus of the story arc, and perhaps it is wrong to consider SR was ever really cyberpunk.
DrJest
When I said SR was anime, I was referring to a combination of styles that is rarely, if ever, seen outside of the genre. The mixture of high technology and mysticism is almost solely the purview of the anime genre; this is why the latter Matrix films are such bones of contention, imho, since the Matrix trilogy is clearly a live-action anime (the Wachowski brothers are heavily into manga and anime). SR is also a mix of high-tech and mysticism, albeit leaning more heavily on the mysticism if you ask me. That, to me, screams anime - not the BESM anime of Bubblegum Crisis, but the more gritty, apocalyptic stuff of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Megazone 23 or Monster City.
Stumps
QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
I always thought that cyberpunk was based on the effect that ever expanding technology would have on the dynamic of society (this almost certainly demands a future setting).

QUOTE (Stumps)
...he's living in a future that's comformist to some degree that the rest of the population has bought into


QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
Here, anime paints a good background, specifically Ghost in the Shell. The main character looks for the most part human but can almost level buildings. What effect would that have on a free society? Would the serious police presence / heavy foot of government be avoidable when the power for widespread destruction could easily be put into the hands of an individual.

QUOTE (Stumps)
this guy feels that it is his duty for the "freedoms of mankind" to make his "truth" known to the "deceived", no matter what his end may be...

It doesn't matter what form this "guy" (or girl) comes in. Bladerunner, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, Ghost In A Shell, I, Robot, Akira, etc...

QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
Another theme that seems common to cyberpunk is the secret society aspect, that different groups are manipulating society in a way invisible to most members of that society.

Again...
QUOTE (Stumps)
...he's living in a future that's comformist to some degree that the rest of the population has bought into


QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
The classical Gibson decker better represents the interplay of these two forces, technology gives a few the power to confront those who would manipulate society. The deckers become almost like a technological illuminati, or Knights Templar. The corp/decker antagoist/protagonist relationship is dictated by the futuristic setting more than anything else.

QUOTE (Stumps)
If you have a guy who hates the system...And this guy feels that it is his duty for the "freedoms of mankind" to make his "truth" known to the "deceived", no matter what his end may be...


QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
The background story of SR actually adresses the secret society aspect FAR more than it ever focused on the effect that technology would have on society. SR relies more upon the balkinization of the nations of earth and the introduction of transnational corp actors to explain the collapse of individualistic society and widespread disorder rather than any effects of technology. The secret forces manipulating society angle is far more developed, and magic only adds to this.

Again...
QUOTE (Stumps)
If you have a guy who hates the system...And this guy feels that it is his duty for the "freedoms of mankind" to make his "truth" known to the "deceived", no matter what his end may be...


QUOTE (Deamon_Knight)
In fact, by far the magic angle is more developed when you consider that it is Magic rather than technology that was the catalyst for all of the most drastic changes in society in the SR universe, all the REALLY pivitol events the GGD and the NAN, Dragons. As you read through "As it Came to Pass" it fast turns from technological machinations to the effects of magic and dosen't turn back. If you view magic as just another sort of "technology", the it becomes apparent that Magic has been the main focus of the story arc, and perhaps it is wrong to consider SR was ever really cyberpunk.

No...it's not wrong to consider SR cyberpunk.
It has all the elements needed.

A character who hates the system that's, in his/her mind, pulling a cloak of control over the masses and feels that they can not stand by and watch everyone complacently go along with this system that is really controlled by a "secret" set of people or groups (IE's, Mega-Corps, take your pick) and sets out to fight those who they've deemed "evil" and "wrong" and responsible for this "lie" of control over humanity.

The "Cyber" is an aspect of the name that thrusts the characters into a future that is over-run with technology and new inovations that seem harmless on the surface but, in effect (through the characters revalation), are dangerous controls for the sytem to use as a means of controlling the "lie" over the masses and to keep those quiet who oppose it.
Magic is but another means for both sides to use just like the technology. It is the authors extra "Mrs. Dash" to make a different flare of a "cyberpunk" future.
"What if magic came back in a future where the system has taken over?"

Part of any of these such "futures" is a common theme to have tragic happenings in the history that explain why such control ever became possible as they might seem unbelievable to our present audiance without given a reason to buy into why the mass public would go along with such a thing.
Kind of like the Patriot Act would be a good kick off for such a tail because in the 60's, such an act would be unthinkable without a reason given to believe possible like the 9/11 attack.

Like I said...It's simple...
If you have a guy who hates the system and he's living in a future that's comformist to some degree that the rest of the population has bought into but thinks that the guy is crazy for hating. And this guy feels that it is his duty for the "freedoms of mankind" to make his "truth" known to the "deceived", no matter what his end may be...
Then you have cyberpunk.

And yes, The Matrix is cyberpunk.
Just Jonny
First of all, I always felt that Shadowrun basicly tossed magic in with technology so far as the cyberpunk goes (i.e. it explores the idea of individualism in a dystopian society transformed by technology and magic).

And while certain, cyberpunk, animes are similar to Shadowrun, I think seeing the commonality as anime rather than the cyberpunk is a mistake. While I agree the focus of the game has shifted, I always felt it was going more into the Action Sci-Fi direction. I see a hell of a lot more Shadowrun in movies like Equilibrium, Pitch Black, or the oft-maligned Johnny Mneumonic than in ANY anime I've ever seen. It's possible that if one is already an anime fan, confirmation basis'll make one see it, especially considering how epic it's gotten lately. Not that all animes are epic, it just seems like most are. But frankly, the fluidity of the SR universe is such that it could be used, as has been said before, for damn near anything.
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