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Author Topic: The definitive Shadowrun  (Read 7434 times)

Mishihari

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« Reply #45 on: June 29, 2020, 04:21:37 AM »
As to the OP, for Shadowrun I'm more of a reader than a player, but I really enjoyed the setting and aesthetic of 1E.  I even enjoyed the game-fiction books, which is highly unusual for me.  A lot of the later stuff I saw, not sure which editions(s) was not as engaging.

Omega

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« Reply #46 on: June 29, 2020, 12:13:49 PM »
Quote from: Itachi;1136846
Don't know about that, Omega. The average Seattle citizen is a SINless


That is Seattle, a melting pot of of corporate evils and crime and monsters and all the rest. Chicago is actually exponentially worse as its become a walled off bug hive by 3rd ed. But move away from the trouble spots and things often mellow out a little, or alot till you get to the next knot of trouble. I think thats part of why I like Shadowrun more than CP2020. It presents a slightly more upbeat cyberpunk landscape. Whereas Marvels 2099 cyberpunk setting is practically the diametric opposite. Pretty bleak and hopeless. oddly enough Nights Edge for CP2020 is at times fairly upbeat despite the horrors going on in the shadows. And at others its pretty bleak.

Omega

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« Reply #47 on: June 29, 2020, 12:18:59 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1136849
Changes depending on author or supplement. One thing I noted consistently is just how poorly Shadowrun visualizes its worlds through images and text. There are only vague impressions.
Or not even ultra poorly but contradictorily.


I think its more that the world of Shadowrun is not just a one-note setting. Its got alot of nuance and variety. And alot of upbeat to counter the downbeat. I mean the very background is all about the people resisting the corps, and winning. Sure the corps havent stopped. But at every turn theres someone somewhere eventually thwarting them.

Itachi

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« Reply #48 on: June 29, 2020, 01:00:19 PM »
Quote from: Omega;1136954
I think its more that the world of Shadowrun is not just a one-note setting. Its got alot of nuance and variety. And alot of upbeat to counter the downbeat.
Yeah this is true.

 
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I mean the very background is all about the people resisting the corps, and winning.
But this is not. :p

The world is ruled by the big 10 corps. The corporate council is the UN equivalent. The central world bank is controlled by them. And the people who have a good life is owned by them. The corps won.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 01:02:35 PM by Itachi »

Shrieking Banshee

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« Reply #49 on: June 29, 2020, 01:30:30 PM »
Quote from: Itachi;1136957
But this is not. :p
Again-inconsistent worldbuilding and theming. Sometimes the corps just wield a lot of influence and still care about the nations they are in, at other times they have their own armies and armadas for no reason. At times being a 'wage slave' is just a pejorative, at other times it's literal.
When people can't agree on the same read information that tells me it's not very consistent or portrayed well.
At times the corps have all the information and can track anything and anybody down, at other times they hire people that don't wear face masks and somehow that's not more compromising than using your own employees.

Spike

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« Reply #50 on: June 29, 2020, 03:04:14 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1136535
I always have trouble coming up with plots or things I find interesting in cyberpunk settings without ending the cyberpunk. I'm not super interested in endless mercenary jobs, and changing the world would just be grimy miserable domestic terrorism with no real positive outcome.

To a certain extent in stories that motivate me, I want something to protect or something to change to the better. And the only sort of stories of that in Shadowrun require very uncyberpunky stories (IE the Videogames).



If I may interject:

This is an interestingly misguided sentiment.   If you read a fair amount of Cyberpunk literature you'll note that they inevitably end with a drastic, setting altering event, with an uncertain future implied, a change of the status quo.  While the genre is actually older than Neuromancer, that seminal work ends with digital gods breeding, fulfilling one of the few previously impossible (for digital) demands of Life, reproduction.  The Solid Light trilogy ends with a copy of the Idoru climbing out of every single one of the nano-fabricators in the world (which, in setting, included basically every single 7-11), and each case this is made possible by the actions of what could be called 'Player Characters', allowing for the distinction between mediums.

So from a purely cyberpunk aesthetic, you are spot on in wanting to play a game that actually ends the Cyberpunk. Congrats on getting the core conceit of the setting: Cyberpunk is by nature transitional, a period of decay before a rebirth, if I can be a bit poetic.

Where you go wrong, in my humble opinion, is in somehow feeling that Shadowrun will not allow you to do this.. somehow. An RPG, ANY RPG is nothing more than a toolbox. If you give me a carpenter's toolbox and some wood, you can insist I make shelves, but you can't really stop me from making a cabinet, can you?   This is so fundamental to tabletop RPGs, that I feel lesser for even having to tell it to you. What, exactly, about the books prevents you from making your own shadowrun stories where your 'runners'... change the world?  I've owned Shadowrun since its initial release (minus about two or three months), in... I want to say 1989... and not once in the three decades since has an armed man from FASA, FanPro or Catalyst shown up at my house (not even when I lived 'in the neighborhood', so to speak), to tell me I was playing it wrong.

More: While Shadowrun does have a default campaign 'style' right out of the box, it lacks any sort of inherent mechanics to reinforce that style.  There are no weird rule workarounds necessary if your players, in session one or session thirty, decide to turn the setting assumption on its head and go down to sign up to be permanent employees of Aztechnology, or for that matter if they dig up an actual politician and begin working in the shadows to revitalize the old nation-state against the oppressive mega-corporations, nor if they simply head into the Barrens (Pick one) and simply start carving out a State of their own as warlords, and turn the game into a weird Sim-City Simulator.  

Like most classic RPGs, and a fair number of modern ones, Shadowrun gives you rules to make a person, to know what they can do and what they can't do in the simulated reality of the Game World. It gives you reasonably exhaustive lists of things they can buy, make or steal.  And that is it. What you do with those rules is no more closed than any other game, and is somewhat more open than many.
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Shrieking Banshee

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« Reply #51 on: June 29, 2020, 03:12:19 PM »
Quote from: Spike;1136973
Where you go wrong, in my humble opinion, is in somehow feeling that Shadowrun will not allow you to do this.. somehow.

I agree. My belief was Shadowrun was a game that didn't WANT you to be able to change the world. It wanted to be a setting where it was all throwaway side content to endless mercenary missions.

Its a case I felt from the writing, implications, and reading the adventures given for inspiration when I felt I was at a lack of direction. It spoke to you having to always be a pawn at which point the corporation goes 'Just as Planned'. I read Dark Sun modules for inspiration and was inspired and intrigued, but I read Shadowrun adventures for inspiration but was bored and Sullen.

Having heard others opinions and read more stuff, I think this ties into the setting falling in love too much with its own high-level antagonists and metaplots, and lacking clear writing direction. Apparently I'm not the ONLY one who thought endless scum battles beneath a polluted sky was the way to go.

Spike

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« Reply #52 on: June 29, 2020, 03:25:04 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1136976
I agree. My belief was Shadowrun was a game that didn't WANT you to be able to change the world. It wanted to be a setting where it was all throwaway side content to endless mercenary missions.

Its a case I felt from the writing, implications, and reading the adventures given for inspiration when I felt I was at a lack of direction. It spoke to you having to always be a pawn at which point the corporation goes 'Just as Planned'. I read Dark Sun modules for inspiration and was inspired and intrigued, but I read Shadowrun adventures for inspiration but was bored and Sullen.

Having heard others opinions and read more stuff, I think this ties into the setting falling in love too much with its own high-level antagonists and metaplots, and lacking clear writing direction. Apparently I'm not the ONLY one who thought endless scum battles beneath a polluted sky was the way to go.

Who cares what the 'game' wants? Its a fucking book, man. I'm not worried about hurting its feelings in the slightest, why are you?

But let me buck that up a bit more.  Why shouldn't the setting present itself as eternal and predestined, immune from the vissisitudes of individual action? The real world presents itself in that way all the time, and yet the real world is changed, often by individuals, all the time.  Its dystopian, it should look bad, and the powerful should look untouchable. What of it? It would be a pretty crappy dystopia if it was Hopeful!

But I get it. You are complaining about Tone. You don't like pistachio ice-cream. I get that. What I don't get is this: If you are so opposed to Shadowrun on the basis of Tone, why the hell are you almost literally one-half of all the posts in this thread explicitely about Shadowrun?  I mean: I don't like Fate, but for me that means I don't even bother to open threads that tell me they are about Fate, much less comment in them about how I don't like Fate.  Seems kinda... ludicrous.
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KingCheops

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« Reply #53 on: June 29, 2020, 05:50:00 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1136976
I agree. My belief was Shadowrun was a game that didn't WANT you to be able to change the world. It wanted to be a setting where it was all throwaway side content to endless mercenary missions.

Well as I've said Brainscan is very much my favorite SR campaign I've ever run and that has setting changing consequences.  There were a few others like the Harlequin series, Universal Brotherhood, and probably others I can't remember.

There can be big differences between the writers and especially between the line developers.  It also does try to be a kitchen sink in at least the first 2 editions where it wanted to accommodate all playstyles as opposed to later when the scope started to narrow somewhat.  Think of it as SR is to Cyberpunk+magic as FR is to D&D.

Shrieking Banshee

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« Reply #54 on: June 29, 2020, 05:56:45 PM »
Quote from: Spike;1136981
Who cares what the 'game' wants? Its a fucking book, man. I'm not worried about hurting its feelings in the slightest, why are you?
Tonality and implication. I could use Athas as the setting for a lovebug jamboree but that's making it somewhat complicated for myself when I could just use a lovebug setting. Tone sets direction and extrapolation of setting.
In part because I also like discussing stuff with people over the internet.
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But let me buck that up a bit more.  Why shouldn't the setting present itself as eternal and predestined, immune from the vissisitudes of individual action?
Not saying it should or shouldn't, but it ties into this next spot:

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But I get it. You are complaining about Tone. You don't like pistachio ice-cream. I get that. What I don't get is this: If you are so opposed to Shadowrun on the basis of Tone, why the hell are you almost literally one-half of all the posts in this thread explicitely about Shadowrun?
Because I found it interesting but I never really figured out what I could do with it. So I engaged in discussion with people that did to help me understand what I could do with it. Its tone and the way it was written made it difficult for me to come up with ideas.

Thinking of Robocop, or Huntdown, or similar stuff got me more in the zone then what I found in the books themselves.

Spike

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« Reply #55 on: June 29, 2020, 06:31:41 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1137016
Tonality and implication. I could use Athas as the setting for a lovebug jamboree but that's making it somewhat complicated for myself when I could just use a lovebug setting. Tone sets direction and extrapolation of setting.
In part because I also like discussing stuff with people over the internet.


Fair enough, but I think this is agree to disagree territory, at the risk of sounding trite.  In my own opinion, the tone of the presented setting is merely a useful tool, and one easily discarded in favor of what I would rather do. Without changing a single fact of Arthas I could easily see running a 'love bug' sort of setting, focusing entirely on... what did they call it? Life-giver magic and simply not, as a GM, bringing in the darker aspects of the setting, such as cannibal halflings. Sure, they exist, out there, somewhere... doing... cannibalism, but that's not what the campaign is focused on, THAT is focused on using life-giver magic to turn this one little corner of the desert into a pleasant oasis...



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Because I found it interesting but I never really figured out what I could do with it. So I engaged in discussion with people that did to help me understand what I could do with it. Its tone and the way it was written made it difficult for me to come up with ideas.

Thinking of Robocop, or Huntdown, or similar stuff got me more in the zone then what I found in the books themselves.


But your problem is the Medium, rather than the tone or the message. Robocop, while a movie, is much like a book. It comes to an end, and when it does, it leaves the setting changed... uncertain but brighter (perhaps ruined a bit by sequelitus, but I've never seen the sequels to Robocop...).

An RPG, any RPG*, only gives you the beginning, it gives you the setting. What you do with it is entirely up to you... and again: A dystopian system with an oppressive and unjust regime (In this case Megacorps) SHOULD feel a bit grim, and a bit hopeless... so long as the RULES don't reinforce it (and Shadowrun's rules tend to make transhuman supermen of one variety or another...), or it fails at presentation.   Is the issue a question of Pre-pack adventures?  Of course those aren't going to fundamentally and irrevocably slaughter the golden goose of the setting, and you shouldn't expect them to in any RPG.



* Yes, I am aware that many modern RPGs are now coming, not just with Metaplots, but actually coded in story arcs to be followed. This is nothing more than a catagory error on the part of the designers, as even in those cases, once the books hit hte table, the campaign, and its direction, are always the beginning of something new.
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Shrieking Banshee

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« Reply #56 on: June 29, 2020, 07:10:12 PM »
Quote from: Spike;1137023
In my own opinion, the tone of the presented setting is merely a useful tool, and one easily discarded in favor of what I would rather do.


True and I was having trouble figuring out what I would want to do with the setting. I looked at existing adventures and was dissuaded. The core setting as it was presented left me confused as to what to do with it.

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But your problem is the Medium, rather than the tone or the message.

Disagree. Usually, I would not be interested in post-apocalyptic stuff. Movies, books, games. You name it. No interest. But the artwork and the presentation of Darksun made it really interesting.

Huntdown is a videogame where you're a disposable bounty hunter hunting down gangs causing a ruckus in a post-apocalyptic city-state controlled by a mega-corporation. By the end of the game the Megacorp pretty much announces that this was all a ruse for land acquisition and that you're next in line to be hunted down. However, your employer realizes she's a loose end as well and kinda wishes you luck that she knows she won't have. But it does it with style and pizzazz. It makes even gruntwork seem cool and interesting, and the frantic energy of the setting makes even going into the abandoned subways to deal with gutter trash seem radical and neat. Huntdown is way bleaker then Shadowrun but I left it with more enjoyment than from Shadowrun.

Its a case of framing. Imagine if the D&D Monster manual was 90% only demon lords? And 90% of the adventures or modules or settings were talking about the demon lords plans and how powerful and untouchable they were, and how awesome they are and how the players should never really get a shot at defeating them, and how if they do its only because another demonlord let them.

D&D doesn't expect you to challenge demon lords for 90% of the games. I would be surprised if even 1% of a D&Ds campaign ever reached or tackled dealing with demon lords. But in D&D it makes the lower stuff feel important with a focus on the smaller players. Its because the writers are less interested in the smaller players then the proverbial demon lords. And the proverbial demonlords are even more frustrating because they primarily have plot contrivance on their side then logic or even any source of magical power.

It's like the writers are just writing for themselves. And I felt awkward to interlude into their session of smashing action figures together. While the shadowrun videogames assume a actual person being involved in their writing so it ends up stressing the impact even your low level actions have, and end up undoing many sacred shadowrun cows.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 07:12:21 PM by Shrieking Banshee »

Itachi

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« Reply #57 on: June 29, 2020, 10:39:28 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1137037
Huntdown is a videogame where you're a disposable bounty hunter hunting down gangs causing a ruckus in a post-apocalyptic city-state controlled by a mega-corporation. By the end of the game the Megacorp pretty much announces that this was all a ruse for land acquisition and that you're next in line to be hunted down. However, your employer realizes she's a loose end as well and kinda wishes you luck that she knows she won't have. But it does it with style and pizzazz. It makes even gruntwork seem cool and interesting, and the frantic energy of the setting makes even going into the abandoned subways to deal with gutter trash seem radical and neat. Huntdown is way bleaker then Shadowrun but I left it with more enjoyment than from Shadowrun.
This is just a matter of taste. The first time I put my eyes on Shadowrun (through the SNES videogame back in 1993) I was instantly hooked. It had gangs and voodoo and hackers and Uzis and shamans and corp hit squads, all in a dark and eerie atmosphere reminiscent of Blade Runner. And while I find Dark Sun very cool, I don't find it as exciting as Shadowrun. So, taste.

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D&D doesn't expect you to challenge demon lords for 90% of the games. I would be surprised if even 1% of a D&Ds campaign ever reached or tackled dealing with demon lords. But in D&D it makes the lower stuff feel important with a focus on the smaller players. Its because the writers are less interested in the smaller players then the proverbial demon lords. And the proverbial demonlords are even more frustrating because they primarily have plot contrivance on their side then logic or even any source of magical power.
I think your distaste for Shadowrun may be clouding your judgement here. See, all corebooks from all editions present various types of opposition besides corps - from organized crime to gangs, to local governments, policlubs, small companies and chains stores, rights activist groups, independent operators like fixers and johnsons, etc. And most present sample players in each category (The Ancients, Red Hot Nukes, Yakuza, Seoulpa Rings, Triads, Humanis Policlub, Tamanous, Stuffer Shack, Weapons World, Lone Star, Knight Errant, Metroplex Guard, Tir Ghosts, etc). And if you get any edition of the Seattle sourcebook that number will explode and you'll know how and where each operate.

TL;DR: there are lots of players in this world besides the corps, including small and mid tier, which can be reasonably affected by players without breaking the game or it's genre. My crew busted some gangs out of existence a couple times already (tough we prefer to subdue them into working for us :p ).

Quote from: Spike
* Yes, I am aware that many modern RPGs are now coming, not just with Metaplots, but actually coded in story arcs to be followed. This is nothing more than a catagory error on the part of the designers, as even in those cases, once the books hit hte table, the campaign, and its direction, are always the beginning of something new.
This is far from new, though. Even Shadowrun has it's share of metaplot-tied adventures and modules: Universal Brotherhood, Bug City, Renraku Arcology Shutdown, etc. all give small story arcs for the players to pursue that are later adopted by the setting's canon.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2020, 10:58:49 PM by Itachi »

Spike

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« Reply #58 on: June 29, 2020, 11:14:16 PM »
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1137037
True and I was having trouble figuring out what I would want to do with the setting. I looked at existing adventures and was dissuaded. The core setting as it was presented left me confused as to what to do with it.


Look, I don't mean to be excessively glib and dismissive, but honestly, your failure of imagination is entirely personal.  I mean, Shadowrun has to be somewhere in the top five of all time successful video games, which means a whole bunch of people 'got into' the setting and had no problems imagining what to do with it, and I can't for the life of me justify assuming that every single one of them was purely satisfied playing street-mercs that would inevitably be betrayed after every single mission by their employers, the way the writing for the setting seems to put it, so  clearly a significant number of players took that setting and premise and made it their own.

That YOU can't do that is, again, a PERSONAL problem. Its not a problem with the setting, the writing, the edition wars. YOU can't imagine. That's... well, its tragic, doubly so for a gamer, but I suppose it is what it is.  

And you can't really chalk this up to adventure design either. The core premise of the game is 'criminal street mercenaries working as disposable muscle for corporate espionage', and one of the first and biggest adventures involves an entirely personally driven quest to pull someone out of a scientology style cult that is secretly a front for interdimensional bugs possessing cultists as part of their plan to take over the world. Its about as far from the core premise as you can get, demanding very little 'mercenary', 'street' or 'corporate espionage' from any of the characters in order to work as a premise, and to my admitedly hazy memory, doesn't involve the promised betrayal by one's erstatz employer at the end either.  

The very first significant adventure published for this game essentially refutes every single one of your complaints about the setting, as it subverts the expected game play and it involves the player characters being involved in fundamentally altering the setting, hopefully for the better, right out the gate, and the big bad isn't even a megalithic, unstoppable, inexorable megacorporation but an heretofore negligible psuedo-religion that existed, benign and harmless, on the fringes of the setting.



Quote
Disagree. Usually, I would not be interested in post-apocalyptic stuff. Movies, books, games. You name it. No interest. But the artwork and the presentation of Darksun made it really interesting.

Huntdown is a videogame where you're a disposable bounty hunter hunting down gangs causing a ruckus in a post-apocalyptic city-state controlled by a mega-corporation. By the end of the game the Megacorp pretty much announces that this was all a ruse for land acquisition and that you're next in line to be hunted down. However, your employer realizes she's a loose end as well and kinda wishes you luck that she knows she won't have. But it does it with style and pizzazz. It makes even gruntwork seem cool and interesting, and the frantic energy of the setting makes even going into the abandoned subways to deal with gutter trash seem radical and neat. Huntdown is way bleaker then Shadowrun but I left it with more enjoyment than from Shadowrun.

Its a case of framing. Imagine if the D&D Monster manual was 90% only demon lords? And 90% of the adventures or modules or settings were talking about the demon lords plans and how powerful and untouchable they were, and how awesome they are and how the players should never really get a shot at defeating them, and how if they do its only because another demonlord let them.


Except that Shadowrun does none of that. Megacorps have fallen and the truely scary GMPC characters (the greater Dragons) have also fallen. I can't think of a single Shadowrun product that every says you can't take down a Megacorp (A greater dragon, on the other hand, but honestly if you don't/can't handwave those more or less out of existence for the good of a Campaign, I have to wonder... do you even GM, bro?).  Player Characters are, BY DEFAULT, expected to challenge Megacorporations in every single game, as the core conceit. What part of Heavily armed mercenaries doing Corporate Espionage makes you think 'jeeze, they couldn't possibly challenge a megacorp'? that's... a massive non-sequitor.  Heck, you even reference the Shadowrun vidya games positively...  which should also disprove your own god-damn point.  

The setting. ANY SETTING. Is a Starting Point. Not an End Point.  It is entirely your own personal cross to bear that somehow you can only see Shadowrun as the End Point.  

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D&D doesn't expect you to challenge demon lords for 90% of the games. I would be surprised if even 1% of a D&Ds campaign ever reached or tackled dealing with demon lords. But in D&D it makes the lower stuff feel important with a focus on the smaller players. Its because the writers are less interested in the smaller players then the proverbial demon lords. And the proverbial demonlords are even more frustrating because they primarily have plot contrivance on their side then logic or even any source of magical power.


Descent into Avernus Disagrees with all of this. Suggested starting level: 1. Plot? Defeat and possibly redeem a Demon Lord.



Quote
It's like the writers are just writing for themselves. And I felt awkward to interlude into their session of smashing action figures together. While the shadowrun videogames assume a actual person being involved in their writing so it ends up stressing the impact even your low level actions have, and end up undoing many sacred shadowrun cows.


What?

WHAT?

Motherfucker: Do you have any idea at all how many writers have worked on Shadowrun? ALL OF THEM are just... smashing dolls together?   This isn't one man's little passion project setting where he can be the king of the world (Dunklezahn the dragon? Llofwyr the Dragon? Who is this GMPC God Character that runs all of Shadowrun and can't be confronted and defeated, or are you suggesting FASA, the company itself, developed an ego and wrote itself into the setting as some sort of Mary Sue in the form of... all the Megacorporations? ). In fact I could make a point, based on the cover art posted earlier in the thread just how HARD Shadowrun failed at creating signature characters, if that was even their intent.

I mean, the quoted part I'm actually replying to here is actually contradictory, in that you seem to think Shadowrun... what, wrote itself and thus fails to neglect for setting growth or character involvement, while a vidya game that has an actual writer (just one?) somehow is less prone to self insertion mary sue fanfic god characters?  Don't get me wrong, I've played and enjoyed many of the various Shadowrun Vidya Games over the years, but...


Look, maybe I'm not tracking your point here. I'm not trying to strawman, I'm trying to understand your actual complaint.

You seem to be saying, and please do correct me if I'm wrong, that Shadowrun, the RPG (not the Vidya Gaems) is Unplayable, to you, because the setting is fixed and unchangable by Player Character actions due to the existance of powerful, unstoppable God Character Mary Sue Inserts, this time in the bizzarely inhuman form of the Megacorporations themselves?

Never mind that Powerful Megacorporations are a fucking mandatory Genre Trope, hardly unique to Shadowrun.

Never Mind that the great complaint about Shadowrun among many fans for DECADES has been the motherfucking Living Setting Metaplot that explicitely contradicts the idea that the setting is unchangable, or that the Megacorporations are all powerful and Unstoppable.

And it seems like you base ALL of this off of your personal interpretation of the... artwork?  And apparently mind reading the intentions of the designers?


Or is it that Dark Sun had as its first major adventure the already written (and novelized) story of taking down a Dragon God-King, while Shadowrun's infamous Food Fight example adventure doesn't end with bringing down the entire Quikie Mart Corp?  But Dark Sun had Brom, so its cool, right?
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Spike

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The definitive Shadowrun
« Reply #59 on: June 29, 2020, 11:25:25 PM »
Quote from: Itachi;1137076
This is far from new, though. Even Shadowrun has it's share of metaplot-tied adventures and modules: Universal Brotherhood, Bug City, Renraku Arcology Shutdown, etc. all give small story arcs for the players to pursue that are later adopted by the setting's canon.

This is radically different in presentation, impact and form than something like Mutant:Year Zero, which assumes that you will play the game, from Start to Finish, as newly 'cloned' mutants seeking scientific utopia, and instead uncovering the secrets of your creation.  Or, for a somewhat more mainstream offering, the Scion games from White Wolf, which dedicated about half their total page count to the official White Wolf Sanctioned adventure path for Ragnarok.  

Meanwhile, if you chose not to buy or play the Universal Brotherhood Adventure, or include Bug Spirits in your games, then YOUR PERSONAL CANON for Shadowrun, they didn't happen, much as if you run a game of D&D and never play Into the Underdark.

The reason I called those Catagory Errors is because in almost all cases it (Kuro, at least of you get the second book, being an interesting exception), is that the game itself can't (and at least in Mutant: Year Zero Games, to their credit, doesn't try) force you to restrict your games to their story arcs, or even force you to attempt them.   Shrieking Banshee's arguments are so very mystifying to me on a conceptual level, since, in my three decades of gaming, I have never once run a game, nor enjoyed a game, run 'strictly' from an adventure. I've ALWAYS made the games my own, and I've always preferred my GMs to do the same (which is why the increasing trend (possibly local) towards league style play uber alles drives me utterly fucking batty, as does this design emphasis on turning table tops into rancid rotting corpses of video game rpgs.

I roll my eyes when an Author inserts his all powerful GMPC into his game, but its not a deal breaker for me since the single easiest thing for me to do is simply ignore that character's very existence at my table.

I made the reference earlier to a carptenter's tool kit, but I'm getting the weird feeling that SB only understands Flat Pack.
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