Quote from: jeff37923;1008068Exploring racism by using stand-ins like orcs and elves in Shadowrun just reminds me of the stupid idea that orcs in fantasy gaming are actually representative of African natives to be killed by evil colonials.

That's stupid because it is ignoring that orcs are put into fantasy gaming as designated enemies (oftentimes to remove the morale issues of going around killing other 'people'). It's pointing at the handwave and saying 'why are you handwaving this?' when the answer is 'Duh. Because we want guilt-free enemies to kill.'

Orcs and elves in Shadowrun aren't designated enemies. Whether they are good proxies for discussing race issues is another question. I do think as a group of all-white teenagers, me and my friends were able to have a no-elves-allowed nightclub in a Shadowrun game where we undoubtedly never would have explored the idea of including a no-blacks nightclub in a more realistic TP scenario (and thank gods for that, I cringe at what ham-handed thing we might have come up with). I guess the question I might ask is, so what? Do we actually accomplish anything by exploring race through that proxy dynamic?

Quote from: jeff37923;1008068OK, but I don't think that racism explored that way is part of the cyberpunk genre. A core tenant of the cyberpunk genre is how people use technology. For Cyberpunk 2020, what good is dividing people up by race when cheap bodysculpting and skin pigmentation changers can make anyone look like any race they choose, even fantasy races can be chosen as a "race" and the person getting the body modifications can then become that "race" for however long it suits them.  Identity politics takes on a whole new dimension thanks to technology.

Exploring racism by using stand-ins like orcs and elves in Shadowrun just reminds me of the stupid idea that orcs in fantasy gaming are actually representative of African natives to be killed by evil colonials.

Spike's somewhat correct in that he's got the effect right, but in his bias, he's missing the actual Cyberpunk elements using a strawman of racism which isn't really as much of Cyberpunk element, although it is present in some of the writers, especially with regards to the Japanese (they reservationed the Ainu, what do you think they do to Orks and Trolls).

I have to head to work so I can't break it down now, but here's a taste from the last time we went down this road:

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Dehumanization of technology - Cyberpunk has humanity score, and people can go crazy from too much cyber.  But you can have Full Conversion Borgs, so the cyber level can get pretty high.  Oddly enough, it's the fantasy element of Shadowrun that actually models dehumanization better through Essence.  You have a set amount you can lose, and even a little has a dramatic effect.  It makes you harder to heal.  It makes it harder to cast magic.  When viewed from the astral, your cyber is dead spots in your aura.  It's literally dehumanizing.  They both did a great job of cyber as consumer culture, with ads, mall clinics, etc...

Corporate Rule - They both do a good job of this, and both had their "Corporate War" elements.  I think Shadowrun detailed it more with the Corporate Court, the AAA megacorps aka The Big Eight, and the big difference, the Extraterritoriality aspect that made the buildings of the AAAs basically embassys where they're own law was in effect.

Art and the Punk aesthetic - This one hands down goes to Shadowrun.  The cover of Cyberpunk 2020 is cool, no doubt about it, you got a Bladerunner-like scene in the background, a cool solo in the frontground, corp chick behind.  But, it's clean.  The solo's wearing Gibson battlegear and a t-shirt but his hair looks good.  These are beautiful people.  The cover for Shadowrun is three punks in a filthy alley.  They have alternative hairstyles, tattoos, leather and denim.  For all the talk of the focus on Shadowrun being focused on Heat style runs, I think Cyberpunk actually strayed more toward Heat and Shadowrun more toward "Pink Mohawk" in the games I saw in 90s SoCal.

Artifical Intelligence - Cyberpunk 2020 has nothing to match the menace and horror of Deus, an AI that poses potentially, a threat to all of humanity.  Even worse, Deus doesn't ape Skynet, and get free into the Matrix and take over the world, no Deus is locked away in the largest and richest Arcology (tying in with Corporate Rule) and the horror isn't being vaporized by a Terminator, but being taken to one of Deus' experimentation labs.

Rich vs. Poor - The Redmond and Puyallup Barrens of Seattle, the Shattergraves of Chicago, the Rox in Boston.  Cyberpunk has it's Mad Max vibe with the Nomad lands, and Night City has it's slums, but Shadowrun has places where shit got so bad people are pushing into Morlock territory.  Again, the magic aspect lets it push this a little harder, with virus-affected ghouls, toxic shamans, etc... Also in adventures where the runners encounter the rich and famous,

The Dehumanized want to feel human - Sex, Drugs, Simsense.  Cyberpunk has it, a lot of it.  Shadowrun takes it to the level we actually would, ie. omnipresent, everywhere and the focus of some adventures.

So while Cyberpunk 2020 might be closer to the actual settings of some of the mirrorshades writers, I think Shadowrun, by differing from those settings more actually allows them to hit the tropes and channel the spirit better.

Basically by using fantasy elements, Shadowrun obviously violates the trappings of Cyberpunk, but channels the spirit of Cyberpunk better (pun intended).

Will give a more detailed example later (probably cyberware/essence/dehumanization).

Quote from: JeremyR;1007603More coherent, believable universe

Look at the Shadowrun map of North America again.  That map alone is more fantastic than magic, elves, and orks.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1008079Look at the Shadowrun map of North America again.  That map alone is more fantastic than magic, elves, and orks.

Yes, but I feel like the idea that something like that could happen made more sense in a late-Cold-War, pre-9/11 world.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1007928I did.  Both of them, and you know what I noticed in the books?  Scope.

Cyberpunk 20202 typically focused on small, personal situations, or a single city, whereas Shadowrun gave a wide overview of politics first.

So CP2020 started small and tried to go big (With mixed success, the British and Eastern books were mostly crap), while Shadowrun went big and then tried to narrow itself down to places like Seattle, Denver and the like, but usually ended up focusing at the national to state level,

This was the impression I get as well. But I think that both can cover all those factors right out of the box. One just happens to detail A more while the other details B more. You just have to fill in the blanks.

Basic SR without any of the supplements paints a overall open ended picture. You learn more of whats happened up to now rather than whats going on now. Which I rather like as it gives you enough background to go whichever direction. But oddly it talks alot about the political, corporate and racial situations. But very little about the actual, you know, shadowrunning.

Whereas CP2020 feels about the opposite. Alot more detail at the personal level.

Quote from: S'mon;1008013With Cyberpunk 2020 predating Political Correctness, and Pondsmith's lack of racial hangups or animosity, I feel CP2020 has a sort of innocence or naivete about it that makes the setting rather preferable to the real world of 2017. It has a really strong '80s vibe (even more than Neuromancer) - it's a dystopian vision but written in a better time and place. A bit like Streets of Fire, it's fundamentally optimistic.

It's funny you mention this. Because living in LA at the time - I injected all that racial pathos into my CP2020 games without blinking an eye. I think it also depends on the vibe of where you play. Night City is Santa Cruz - northern CA, where Pondsmith was living thereabouts. So racial issues there were far less prominent than down south. So I naturally adjusted my game accordingly by assumption.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1008066I need to check out Interface Zero, I really should. Shame it's Savage Worlds (not that I can talk, I got the damm Deluxe book in my collection, but hey, I prefer hardcovers, whaddya gonna do?).

Interface Zero is *superb*, system aside. It inserts a *lot* of cyberpunk tropes, some of which are redundant, some of which I *feel* are even nods in execution to Shadowrun (the animal gene hackers are basically distinct species now and inhabit that "fantasy-as-accessible-metaphor" CRKrueger mentioned. Ironically I disagreed, but after giving it some thought - I think I do agree, insofar as such things ARE part of CP2020, but they're not assumed to be widespread. In fact the more I think about it, they seem to be purely cosmetic so they come off as a fad. Whereas in Interface Zero, it's a real thing. Obviously in Shadowrun you don't even have a choice, by the conceits of the setting. Either way, I feel Interface Zero does capture that vibe and worth a purchase. I'm not sure there is any edition of the 2.0 game that ISN'T hardback. I love mine to death.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1008066What I would like to see is more of a focus on Lifestyle. I'm a millennial and proud of it and the thing that I really don't get is that lack of focus on it. That would really resonate with me personally but I think on a whole for my generation too. We worry about that kind of shit and we really do want a better lifestyle for ourselves. We grew up in that sweet spot between the "job for life" nostalgia of Gen X (which cyberpunk drills into and subverts, obvs) and "convenience factor" entitlement of Gen Z.

As a Gen-X'er I have some perspectives of my own...

CP2020  as a game is a very Gen-X thing. Cyberpunk dystopia as a genre is really the prognostications of very young Baby Boomers on the skirts of Gen-X looking further ahead - it was the world they, the Boomer generation, were unwittingly laying the foundation for and all of it was bad. They were wrong about a lot of stuff. But they were right about the most obvious things. Some were more correct than anyone could have imagined. I, and I'm sure others here, were on the BBS's back in the early 80's and along comes Gibson talking about the Web and I was like... "People reading news on their portable PC's? That's *never* going to happen. Civilians will never want to own a PC. That's for us weirdos.... now if only I could download  this Playboy centerfold faster than 3-days." That small difference of age matters. Likewise I'll say the same thing to you. While you believe you're born to the digital age... the ramifications of the digital-age have long been in discussion for *decades* by Gen-X who like the generation before us will make accurate predictions about the obvious and some will be hyper-accurate. But without fail - we'll be wrong about a LOT of stuff. The Millennials will do the same. So the cycle goes.

But I'm with you in terms of lifestyle information. It's important because the assumptions of CP2020 and the genre are that most people are poor as fuck. But what does that mean in CP2020? Well the core book skims that, but "Home of the Brave" really does get into the nuts and bolts of everyday life. It's ugly. Being as old as I am now, with the work and life experience I've had, I have a hard time running a cyberpunk game that isn't too soul-crushing in terms making the dystopian oppression feel real. But I do that to the tolerance level of my players (partially) - in order to make the idea of being professional criminals/revolutionaries etc seem like a good alternative.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1008066I mean, dude, I grew up Low, I'm Middle now (entirely through my own effort and ambition) I want at least High and I'm gunin' for Luxury.

That really is the heart of running a good cyberpunk game. Regardless of the system. The conceits are very social-class oriented with lots of bullets flying between them. When I GM CP2020, I want my players to feel the best and worst aspects of those various social-stratas they climb by tooth, nail, and gunfire, up through so they get the fullness of setting. Of course it has to be fun too. But that means you, as a GM, need to have a clear path of options that will allow PC's to make those big plays to move up and feel rewarded for it. Or you know... die trying.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1008066We see we grew up when the digital revolution was happening, we lived the changes that Shadowrun tries to future-past-speak in its narrative, we saw how life was and we can clearly see what life could be. 'Cept we're in the position to change shit because we don't have the hangups of the former and we have the experience that the latter doesn't have. We know that we can change our place and we genuinely as a entire generation believe that we should and fuck anyone who tries to tell us we can't or who doesn't understand why we would.

Oh such optimism! I would love to disabuse you of such notions in the most fun ways! hahah

Quote from: CRKrueger;1008074Spike's somewhat correct in that he's got the effect right, but in his bias, he's missing the actual Cyberpunk elements using a strawman of racism which isn't really as much of Cyberpunk element, although it is present in some of the writers, especially with regards to the Japanese (they reservationed the Ainu, what do you think they do to Orks and Trolls).

.

Ok, so either I'm confused or you think that I'm the one claiming that racism is a cyberpunk element?

If its the later: no, I'm trying to explain someone else's point that I don't actually agree with, though that is not to say you can't put it in there (I'm not a fan of setting genre first in writing, anyway).

If its the former: What? Please explain to me what you think my position is, and how its wrong, because I can't parse this for shit. I am legit lost.

Quote from: tenbones;1008102Oh such optimism! I would love to disabuse you of such notions in the most fun ways! hahah

Yeah it reminds me of when I was in university and classmates went on about how they were going to fix the problems caused by the Baby Boomers. We know how that went...

Quote from: Spike;1008140Ok, so either I'm confused or you think that I'm the one claiming that racism is a cyberpunk element?

If its the later: no, I'm trying to explain someone else's point that I don't actually agree with, though that is not to say you can't put it in there (I'm not a fan of setting genre first in writing, anyway).

If its the former: What? Please explain to me what you think my position is, and how its wrong, because I can't parse this for shit. I am legit lost.

You got the idea right, about the metaphor, but in arguing against the point, you used probably the weakest example possible - discrimination against the awakened.  That's all.

Eh. Off the top of my head that was the most direct and obvious example of using a game metaphor for real world issues.  I'm not sure how thats the weakest, but I suppose from here its all subjective.

Quote from: tenbones;1008096It's funny you mention this. Because living in LA at the time - I injected all that racial pathos into my CP2020 games without blinking an eye. I think it also depends on the vibe of where you play. Night City is Santa Cruz - northern CA, where Pondsmith was living thereabouts. So racial issues there were far less prominent than down south. So I naturally adjusted my game accordingly by assumption.

AIR Gibson's novels don't have race as an element either, except the dominance of the Japanese - everyone seems to be white/culturally white, or Japanese. So I think CP:2020 is true enough to the source material (AIR the main way it's not true to the source is in making heavy duty weapons & cybernetics far far more common, in the books something like a monofilament thread weapon is more like a D&D magic item than standard issue).

I get the impression the 1992 LA riots marked a shift in US culture where this kind of depiction of the future ceased to be plausible.

Quote from: tenbones;1008096It's funny you mention this. Because living in LA at the time - I injected all that racial pathos into my CP2020 games without blinking an eye. I think it also depends on the vibe of where you play. Night City is Santa Cruz - northern CA, where Pondsmith was living thereabouts. So racial issues there were far less prominent than down south. So I naturally adjusted my game accordingly by assumption.

Sounds a little bit more Strange Days style. I could dig that.

I would love to see an update that includes some of the things in that movie, including hip hop as the dominant music style. Change Jhonny Silverhand for someone like Jeriko One.

Quote from: S'mon;1008216AIR Gibson's novels don't have race as an element either, except the dominance of the Japanese - everyone seems to be white/culturally white, or Japanese. So I think CP:2020 is true enough to the source material (AIR the main way it's not true to the source is in making heavy duty weapons & cybernetics far far more common, in the books something like a monofilament thread weapon is more like a D&D magic item than standard issue).

Yeah - but what a cool concept for a weapon!

Quote from: S'mon;1008216I get the impression the 1992 LA riots marked a shift in US culture where this kind of depiction of the future ceased to be plausible.

The Japan Domination Idea didn't end with the riots. It ended when it became clear Japanese economic practices that destroyed their economy meant there was no way in hell it was ever going to happen. I'm not convinced by the time of the riots that whole meme was really a thing anymore. But I would concede post-riots, I can't even remember anyone romanticizing it anywhere but in RPG's.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1008242Sounds a little bit more Strange Days style. I could dig that.

I would love to see an update that includes some of the things in that movie, including hip hop as the dominant music style. Change Jhonny Silverhand for someone like Jeriko One.

Yep. My CP2020 LA is *very* much closer to Strange Days with strong doses of Bladerunner. I tried to go with Mexican culture over the "Asian" aesthetic on the streets. I let the natural cultural enclaves of various locals do the informing and let the game take its course.