I was just reading about SR4, and getting annoyed at various parts. However, I am a sucker for metaplot, and I was reading about "The Matrix Crash" it says:

The year is 2070, 5 years since the matrix crash.

My campaign is currently in 2065... Doh! Should I incorporate the matrix crash into my game or should I ignore it? Preferably I would like to keep some continuity for when the new edition is out. Obviously the canon story for it will be totally different to anything I end up running.

What should I do?

Wait 'till the book that covers the Matrix crash comes out?

That's not particularly helpful. Edit: Although don't get me wrong, I appreciate the suggestion.

Considering it's halfway through 2065 and the runners spend months at a time in hospital, I can see that after a few sessions it'll be the next year.

Crash it your self. Just because it crashes, doesn't mean the PCs are going to know who was responsible. The matrix is the basis of most information exchange. If it goes down , it could be quite a while until the who's and how's get sorted out.

This was the solution I had thought, I'll give it a try!

thanks.

My suggestion would keep running your games as-is. If you're playing in 2066 by the time you get around to having the System Failure events happen, well, that's totally cool, since the events from 2065-2070 won't be hyper-detailed.

why not?

I'm hoping for a good amount. I understand it's not going to be a HUGE amount, but still, just 5 years in the current time line covers a lot of stuff. Is this mostly space constraints since (I can only assume) those 5 years are covered in the core book?

Adam beat me to it. So your crash happens to happen a few years late and everyone picks themselves up off the floor a bit faster afterwards, who's to know the difference?

~J

Thanks for the info, looks like I'll be picking up the System Failure book eventually then

Keep in mind that there's five years worth of spread to dicker with too. Just have everything that happenned in the book's 2065 happen in your 2066, and so on, compressing a little so everything works out all right in the end.

Wave your hands and declare that it's 2064. Do you think any of your PCs are going to get up and leave the table because the chronology of your game, through no fault of your own, doesn't exactly line up in scientific fashion?

that's a quick way to wait out a jail term!

Bullet Raven: You don't go back anywhere. Your campaign goes on exactly as before, except that you changed a 5 to a 4. It won't affect a thing.

Another option is to stop playing Shadowrun until 4th comes out, and say, "Picking up where we left off, the matrix crashed, etc., etc., here we are now, five years later."

So, whats the TN penalty for making the system shock events take place a few years Later than Canon?

I'm pretty sure that the Game Police have better things to do than knocking down doors and beating those who don't adhere to the System Failure perfectly.

*Sits in his bunker, cleaning and loading his variable TNs*

~J

all of the Gaming Police were killed, however, due to their inability to use combat pool. zing!

Do the Dallas trick. "...and the car bomb goes off unexpectedly and kills you all. Suddenly, you wake up in a chemical vat with a trode rig attached to your head. 'The year is now 2064, not 2066 as you thought. You have spent the last three years in an experimental rehabilitation program Lone Star is using to analyze the behavior patterns of shadowrunners. We're getting you out of here!'"

The Abstruse One