I wouldn't put it just on the few swear words that SR4, and SR in general might garner such a rating. The concepts of organ legging and cannibalism likely wouldn't endear this book to them. Or to me considering a blanket approval for youth below, i don't know, maybe sixteen. Some may also take issue with how narcotics and other "mood enhancers" are discussed, which is not substantially different that previous SR books.

I'm not normally one to think that kids aren't people, or that shielding from the big bad world is the best idea, but i have a hard time envisioning a 14-year-old mature enough that i could give them this book to in good conscience. I'm sure they exist, and it wouldn't be the end of all if a 14 year old picked it up. After all many hear started playing at that age. I just have trouble mentally picturing who they might be.

YMMV of course since this is a morales issue.

It does kind of amaze me how wound up folks are getting over the F-words in "Buzzkill." Maybe it's just that I don't have kids and don't think that the world should be sanitized for kids (that's a parent's job: figuring out what kinds of things he or she wants the kids to see and being diligent about following up), but I guess I just don't see the big deal. It's a word. I never liked the "fake" swearwords in SR--I just couldn't find it believable that in less than 100 years people would stop using words that have been used for a long time previously and switch over to their bloodless counterparts, but as a freelancer I was perfectly happy with taking direction and using whatever slang set that went with the game.

For this story, I was instructed to use "real world" slang instead of "frag" and "drek" and "hoop." Does that mean that Rob told me to pour on the F-bombs? Nope. I just felt that this was the way the character would talk, and let him speak accordingly. I figured if the editors found it objectionable they'd cut it down or eliminate it and go back to "frag," but that didn't happen.

Shadowrun is a game primarily aimed IMO at older teens and twenty- and thirtysomethings. It's not a game for twelve-year-olds. Does that mean that twelve-year-olds can't (or shouldn't) enjoy it? Of course not. But it's not designed for their sensibilities. It's a game about criminals in a dystopian future. It's up to parents to decide whether this is okay or not.

Not ragging on you at all, Shadow (though I would have liked to have seen your review of the story) Your post just represented the convergence of someone mentioning this and my having the free time necessary to respond to it.

Winterhawk, I would like to say thank you for taking the time to post. Its great to hear from the author! And I didn't take it as you ragging on me

Its not about sanitization so much as it is about my state of mind. I don't watch porn, rated R movies, or listen to music that is really negative. Why? Beyond certain spiritual reasons (I wont go into it here DSF'ers seem to have a problem with religion) I feel, though it is just a word, it is a very negative word. Like other words I don't say. And I know there out there, but I choose not to immerse myself in them.

I'll tell you this, I read the story up to that point, and from what I saw I really liked. Especially the main character, he was my kind of dude. I hope you have a long and glorious career writing fiction, I really do.

Hey, I completely respect that. There are things I don't read and words I don't say too (though, sadly, the F word isn't one of them anymore) . I just feel like characters living in the kind of world that Shadowrun is supposed to represent would use real-world language. And if you'll notice, not everybody in the story used profanity--but it did fit with the characters who did, IMO.

If you stopped reading because of the profanity, I hope I can convince you to read further and just ignore the F-words--it really is basically a "good guys win" story, though with a dystopian Shadowrun spin to it.

Just pretend they're saying "Frag."

I forgot to comment on this. Going to have to call bullshit.

Each of those pieces of fiction are relevent to the chapter. The one at the start of Life on the Edge describes a typical 2070 'runner social setting. The one at the start of Creating A Shadowrunner is an example background for the why someone became a 'runner. The Skills chapter is prefaced by an example of a team with very different skill/language sets, and how out of water someone is without a given skill is. And so on.

P.S. That font doth surely suck though.

I hate clogging up this thread even more (this is, after all, Shadow's review), but the AR stuff was already adequately described in the Wireless World section, with examples and full detailed descriptions in the sidebars. The first-page fiction means one more page per chapter of redundant fluff. Note that all books need some fluff... I'm saying that the beginning-of-the-chapter stuff is not necessary and could be use for, oh, I don't know... more gear, clarified rules, and optional rules page specific to each chapter.

If you are talking about the beginning story by winterhawk11, then I apologize.

To be honest, AR seems like something to help the game appeal to a new generation of gamers that have been steeped in the would of FPS games.
Doesn't it feel like AR is like a game hud at times?
"Ok, so my Ammo-count is on the lower lefthand side of my FoV, and my biomonitor readout is next to that. An image of my current smartlinked weapon is sitting just above the ammo display, and the signals from my teammates commlinks are overlaid upon a map one of my contacts scrounged up for us. But I can't just shake the feeling that I might respawn at the front door if I die."

I'll cast my vote on Technomancers for that award.

The rules have nothing to do with it (i.e. they are pretty similar between Hackers and Technomancers, and they work fine). Technomancers as part of the setting have been deliberately obfuscated with a lot of hand-waving, such that they are better off being NPC plot elements than something playable as a PC. Even the fluff that is there is weak... System Failure strongly implies that many are folks who were stuck on the Matrix when it crashed, but I can hardly believe that all of them were 'trode users without even the most basic of implants. If the same section in System Failure said something about "the subject's cyberware being spontaneously rejected and had to be removed" then we'd be getting somewhere.

I was refering to the wireless transmitter part but oh well.

It all depends on how you want to have them be in your game, just like otaku.

Why would they have Datajacks? They don't need them to connect to the AR world or the matrix. And that is the problem people have with them, they're vaguely magical but not, nature.

The initial technomancers are implied to have been some of the folks who were online during the second crash, or surviving Otaku. Most, if not all of these people would have some cyberware.

In the 5 years since then, there have been more people developing technomancer abilities spontaneously - this is where the cyber-free archetypes are being pulled from.

But there is no indication in SR4 that these so-called "post-Crash technomancers" even exist. From the references in the book, the technomancers are described as literally being the people who were stuck in the Matrix during the Crash 2.0, and the otaku who have changed since then. There are no references to post-Crash technomancers emerging spontaneously. I double-checked SR4 just to be sure. Even in the flavor text on p70, the "latent technomancer" Carrie was caught in the Crash 2.0 in the East Coast Stock Exchange as a Matrix investor.

I'm not going to deny that it would be a great explanation. But that's not an explanation that is given in SR4. Maybe in Unwired, they'll say that such technomancers occur spontaneously, but so far it isn't in canon.

EDIT: I'm pretty much guilty of cluttering up this thread and taking it way off-topic. Further discussion of technomancers in the appropriate forum here, folks:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...pic=9941&st=225

Not explicitly stated, but strongly implies that:
a) yes, there's a bit of a ret-con for otaku & cyberware
b) the wording ("have emerged" and "since") implies people becoming technomancers is an ongoing occurance, or at least a one-shot event with a very random and stretched out onset time.


Though I agree that this needs to be spelled out much clearer when they get the chance.

Remarkably enough, a few days ago (possibly close to when the above was posted), a friend and I were discussing the same thing.

Neither of us have seen SR4.

He was going on about how he "really" wanted to see Shadowrun done, and it involved corps regularly using the technology available to them, like that seen in the movie Minority Report, to hunt down anyone who opposed them. He stated he felt runners having lifestyles with homes was crazy (because the corps would just show up and haul you away if you stayed in one spot), and he wanted to see a more Cyberpunk-like atmosphere where people were living on the street and their bikes, cars, and occasional RV.

I told him that was an acceptable way to do things, but just not how canon Shadowrun had gotten done.

Little did I know . . .