Do they? I think that between fact-finding and lectures, he's kept in a cryogenic vat. Otherwise he'd outwrite all the authors on Earth, and the entire publishing business would grind to a halt.

I'm not a Neal Stephenson fan at all, nosiree. Unbiased commentary on the literary deity that is Neal Stephenson, 24/7, that's the Wireknight promise.

Better yet: they let Warren Ellis roam the streets, go to conventions and go to pubs, where he smokes, drinks whiskey, and writes or sends out emails to his mailing list via his Treo. And inevitably, either those messages have something utterly fantastic to say about the future (usually of comics, music, or art in some form, especially paired with technology), or he's doing his level best to make you want to insert a Brillo pad into your cerebral cortex to wipe out the images he's evoked.

He's well worth paying attention to, at least for the former if you don't feel masochistic enough to enjoy the latter. A few examples of things he's spoken of:

• Taste tribes.
• SENT, the wireless phonecam art show.
• podcasting. (Summary: needs an iPod, a "playlist" of your work in any media, and an RSS feed.)
• Telepathine (www.telepathine.net -- check it out, you'll see.)
• MySpace/Mperia ... and using them to discover new music.
• groupblogging
• BitTorrent -> BlogTorrent

And so on. Most of these are current events, yes. Stuff you can do and see now. But it's also just exactly the sort of stuff you might expect from "the future," and likely fits very well into the slipstream genre DE was talking about. (I confess I didn't read a word about slipstream. I'm just picking up on context, because I'm pretty busy.)

You know, until someone defined that on the Adept thread I was really confused. To me, "furry" is a manga or anime technique that draws anthropomorphic animals and makes them sexually attractive to a human viewpoint - eg, the cat sisters in Dominion Tank Police. You can imagine my confusion when someone said that was how Shadowrun was going...

Dig out your copy of Cybertechnology. The fictional stuff in there - Hatchetman's reminicenses - cover that really rather well. I especially liked his comments about getting cybereyes, and the feeling they gave of life as a trideo show.

Absolutely. Come on, guys, we all rag on Bill Gates whenever Micro$oft do anything we don't like (which is pretty often, let's face it).

Two words: Desolation Jones

Iirc Ellis also created my favourite Marvel character of all time, Pete Wisdom. Go Ellis

Yah! That's what I mean, it more reflects how we see things today. Today, corporations have faces and personalities. Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Jack Welsh, Steve Jobs, etc, etc.

Used to be, back in the ancient 80s, we were afraid of the faceless corporations. The Sonys and Mitsubishis, who no one knew who the hell was running them. They had some faceless Americans running an American subsidiary that answered to a boogeyman Japanese board somewhere (exaggeration, yes, but that was the fear).

Shadowrun is just adapting to our current attitudes. That does mean it is drifting from traditional cyberpunk, because traditional cyberpunk is now rooted in past ideas. But the writers are inspired by what they are living now and the readers and players find a common ground and an empathy with something that is a exaggeration and twist on how they see the world today.

or the kitty cat porn star in YotC. i think SR was heading towards some sort of anime apocalypse, starting with YotC, but everything that's come out since YotC seems to be reversing that almost-trend. for which i am eternally grateful.

Sorry but wether the pigs have a "well known face" or not does not matter. A good corper is defined as:

a) Has a rope around the neck
b) Has stopped kicking

Does not matter that the corp has a face. It is still "the evil corp" against the "good proletarians". Compared to the 80s the world has taken a nosedive towards the worse and is closer to the basic ideas of Cyberpunk than ever. It's still us against the pigs, still the struggle for the survival of what makes us human.

Do a good thing, kick a corper

Birdy

Yeah, well have you read SURGE? I am sure you have. You can easily see whenn combined with the Balance Tail, and a few other things (Say the art in the Tir section of SoNA) how easy it was for me to see the writers/developers are heavily influenced by Anime/Manga-too much at times in my opinion.

The plot and writing style of thegame took a turn for the worse in my opinion for a while. I think it's getting way better, by the by. SSG, DoTSW-the new stuff is realy leaps and bounds above what came out after RAS. (Which I liked)

I understand the need for resolution in the game world, but a lot of stuff was pretty jerky, and sort of mystfying to me. Bug City just sort of stops, a problem they are dealing with a little better these days. Aztlan is just misunderstood, and the Tir isn't really a threat. (I love Ken, but I think letting him have the Tir was a huge mistake. Not because he is bad writer, or untalented-because he and I disagree on the direction the game should go, especially where IE's and the ED connection is concerned.)

Absolutely. I think that's what made the game spectacular. The section in front of Fields of Fire by Matador, the pages in Awakenings that were solely dedicated to just the sixth world. That's the lifes blood of the game as far as I am concerned. Karl Wu's section in Shadowtech on the human body-he managed to interest in me in dry science alone. That's good.

I know the current crop of writers can do this-SSG is proof. So is DoTSW, and SOE. I want that to continue. Some people would say the game never lost that, and to a point I have to concede that. But I will say that for a while there I was pretty noplussed with what I was buying.

I think that's certainly a valid point. Look how much money the E network makes.

I agree with you there. There are passages in some of the books where the Sixth World really just speaks through a single voice on a single topic. And it's great. I like that. I'd like to see more of that. Shadowtalk isn't a bad thing, but it's short and to the point and scattered and doesn't have much of a voice. It should be for placing little tidbits, not trying to convey the setting.

I admit I am pretty divided on the issue. Basically the question for me is at what point does realism stop being cool? I mean we are playing a fantasy science fiction game, not recreating the Civil War here. I feel that some level of realism adds to the experience-in my own game it enhances our fun.

But at some point you have to stop and say, look I don't want to be rolling dice for my character doing the dishes, or be reading about Sixth world Troll toilet paper brands.

Aztlan is one of those issues that rides the line. On the one hand, isn't it cool to have this bad guy in the game? I mean isn't cool that we all sort of know, out of character, that Dunkelzahn is the good trying to save us from the Horrors and Aztlan's evil empire? I mean we all pretty much have solid grounding in fantasy, and sci-fi stuff right? And we like good guys. Because in real life it is so subjective. Indifference and apathy make reality so hard to deal with some times, and down right horrific at others, right?

So we turn to the game for whatever reason. Maybe its because like me you have stories to tell, and it inspires you. Maybe like a player of mine, you're short and small; you always wanted to be taller, so you play Trolls and really tall characters all the time. Maybe like another guy I played with you feel you just don't have control over your life, so playing gives contol over something. or maybe its just an outlet for the violent urges you can't have anywhere else.

Sometimes it's stuff like that drives us to say "Look Aztlan isn't realistic." I mean if they are the "bad guys", isn't that awfully judgmental, since it's a value judgement. And the truth has become, in the game that part of Aztlan and Aztechnology is horrific, but most of it is just a Megacorporation now right? the bottom line drove out the end of the world crew, and life goes on.

Its real, but is it fun? I don't know. I mean I like absolutes in my game, in my games bugs are bad, the Catholic Church is good (Heh, I love me.) and Aztechnology is the bad corp that wants to kill the world. My players like it that way-and thatmeans they're having fun, and that means I am succeeding I think.

Rambled enough now, hopefully this comes somewhat close to even answering your question.

It does, yes. And I do agree. I'm a big fan of the "like the real world, but exaggerated" camp. Some realism, but just enough of a touch of the outrageous that it's not the real world. Sometimes I think SR is a bit too dry, too much focused on the real world. Sometimes I think it's a bit too far out there. The best stuff has been somewhere in between.

What Transmetropolitan calls the monoculture. God, I love that series. Required reading for all Shadowrun players!

Wow.

You're, uhhh, a little bitter about how a recent job interview went, huh?

if one side is to accept mcdonalds without resistance, why then should the other side suddenly be allowed to resist the oncomeing cultural import by any means available?

Not all of us bought into the Dunkelzahn the Savior hype...

Nope, happily employed. But I am also rather "left wing" (read: A communist) IRL

Birdy

Bah. I think he's the being most responsible for Aztechnology's rise, and it's most evil shit.

Makes you think who they might put in a position to do something like that...

You evil bastard.

Anyway, I have my reasons for suspecting him. I explained them about a year ago on one of AH's threads about the annotated Aztlan or something, but I'm not going to search. just try "Dunkelzahn" and my userID.

Aside from that, it is my opinion that in SR as in RL if there is any sort of curve, it is not a bell curve, but rather one skewed heavily towards evil. That said, I never said Dunk himself was evil, but rather the opposite. My position rests on the fact/excuse that draconic morals and perceptions are not anything like humans'. But like I said, I wrote it up already. I'm, not about to repeat myself or hijack DE's thread any further.

and the reason why these books are good are that they are alive, not just with facts but with storys that can go either way. only the more recent sota books and some others have the same style (the rest have to sacrefice them for system details).

awakenings is one of my favs to.

but i cant say i have a problem with where the game is going, and there are some nice books out there today allso...

Amen.

I will now take a moment to pimp an article I wrote for The Shadowrun Supplemental which addresses this very issue....

Well, yeah...

Correctly guess who wrote that, and I'll give you a virtual cookie.

Pimpin' aside , Heroism is over rated. So is the good fight. Heroism certainly has a place in the game, but rarely does it show up in our own PC's.

I often think of our games as Post Heroic.

Nope. Me. It's from the paper I wrote for a class called, I kid you not, "Evil."

Skinner is EVIL!

You wrote the Good Fight article? Nice one, mate. I loved the idea of Shadowrun as a superhero setting

Each to their own. I long ago got tired of the "mind-numbing lack of morality" style of play (and that is NOT designed to be a criticism, before anyone jumps in). I prefer being able to take a stand for something now and again.

And that's why quite a lot of people I know are longing for a Target: Magic of some sorts.
Sure, MitS has the rules - but where's the background? (OK, there's this new stuff about hermetics in SOTA, haven't read it yet).
Where are detailed informations on e.g. Voudoun or Wuxing?
Magic and the law? Relations between awakened and mundanes?
More information on astral space and the metaplanes?

Why not do it as was done with cyberspace: rules book (Matrix) + background book (Target:Matrix).

Because we haven't gotten to it yet? There are many book ideas (not just from Rob, but I'm sure from the freelancers as well), but there's only so much we can do at a time. Believe me, the creative well is far from dry.

If you say so. I tend to think otherwise, but that's just me. I believe that there really is good and evil, and that it's not nearly as subjective as some think it is. I think our world needs heroes, and I damn sure think that the Sixth World needs 'em.

Okay, that's a new one. What's that mean, exactly?

Glad you liked it, Doc. I'm planning on doing some more stuff in that vein in my copious unstructured free time....

Ya think...?

IRL? Maybe, but I think the jury may still be out on this one.

In SR, I'd posit that evil is very nicely defined by the Horrors. I'm willing to bet they're not just misunderstood. The (meta)human factions, corps, governments, etc of the world may be merely acting in their own interest, but it would seem the SR world does have an actual anchor at the evil end of the morality scale.

YMMV, of course.