Quote from: JesterRaiin;881509Guilty as charged! Aside of selected WH40k-related works, I didn't enjoy much RPG based fiction. So, I assume that each RPG setting is defined primarily by its official sourcebooks, while additional works of fiction serve as kind of "expanded" vision.

The novels are mostly irrelevant to the setting. That is about allways the case with novels for any game.

The background info for Shadowrun lays out very clearly that everything bad in the setting was initiated and often maintained by humans. In first edition at least all the meta races, orcs, trolls, elves, dwarves, etc, are human. Or more aptly were. And even that was triggered by thoroughly pissed off native americans. And it does all this in just a few pages.

Quote from: Omega;881557The novels are mostly irrelevant to the setting. That is about allways the case with novels for any game.

I see. I recall only a few RPG-based novels I actually enjoyed and they usually treat source material very lightly. The rest was quite painful to read. "Look people, he is using... brace for it... MAGIC MISSILE! Omg, look, Magic Missile, just like in the game!"

Naaaaah.

Quote from: Omega;881557The background info for Shadowrun lays out very clearly that everything bad in the setting was initiated and often maintained by humans. In first edition at least all the meta races, orcs, trolls, elves, dwarves, etc, are human. Or more aptly were. And even that was triggered by thoroughly pissed off native americans. And it does all this in just a few pages.

That meta-humans come from normal humans - no question about it. That humans are responsible for plenty of bad stuff - guilty!

This is, however, meta-knowledge. To the "normal" people living in SR's reality, world isn't as straightforward and easy to explain. They hear about meta-human gangs, they know never to cut a deal with dragons, they read about people - normal people getting killed, disappearing... And they think. The idea that the "natural state of things" was disturbed by those "freaks, dragons, spirits and demons" they see around them is not a conspiracy theory, but a possibility.

This is only... natural. Not correct mind you, but natural. We always want to blame someone or something when we feel we lose control over things.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;881580This is, however, meta-knowledge. To the "normal" people living in SR's reality, world isn't as straightforward and easy to explain. They hear about meta-human gangs, they know never to cut a deal with dragons, they read about people - normal people getting killed, disappearing... And they think. The idea that the "natural state of things" was disturbed by those "freaks, dragons, spirits and demons" they see around them is not a conspiracy theory, but a possibility.

In the SR background at least everyone is still brutally aware that the metas were once people. Some of the other stuff the general populace has no clue. But overall they still know that an elf or an orc is a mutated human.

No one in setting seems to blame the metas for anything other than getting thoroughly pissed off at being slaughtered and kicking out of whatever sector they claim any humans. That may have changed in later editions. But that is irrelevant to the original premise.

QuoteBTW, the fantasy part people don't like - that actually makes Shadowrun better Sci-Fi, but that's a different post.

Not really. The fantasy elements undermine the cyberpunk ethos to the point that you end up with a sort of techno urban fantasy mish-mash that has a tolkeniesque paint job on top.

Oh, and Gibson kinda sums how I feel about Shadowrun as a cyberpunk work:

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_05_01_archive.asp#200265459

Quote from: william gibsonSHADOWRUN: GAG ME WITH A SPOON

No relationship. No permission. Nothing. Nary a word exchanged, ever.

Except that the admixture of cyberspace and, spare me, *elves*, has always been more than I could bear to think about.

I've just been ignoring it for years, and hope to continue to.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ul1MLc-_WnsJ:www.the-peak.ca/1998/10/cyberpunk-on-screen-william-gibson-speaks/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Quote from: william gibsonSo when I see things like ShadowRun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!' Over my dead body!Š But I don't have to bear any aesthetic responsibility for it. I've never earned a nickel, but I wouldn't sue them. It's a fair cop. I'm sure there are people who could sue me, if they were so inclined, for messing with their stuff. So it's just kind of amusing.

BOOM.

it really is something else. even if it were true that it addresses the same themes or tropes that cyberpunk adresses better than cyberpunk itself does, SR is not cyberpunk anymore than steampunk is cyberpunk.

I can't speak authoritatively about SR. But I'm more than able to speak about CP2020.

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...

Models it better? I suppose it's about what kind of conceit you wanna make for your game. Humanity rules in CP2020 (and Interface) assume that if you require cyber-therapy, it's not *just* sitting down on a couch and hashing out your issues. It's full stripping of your cyberware which you've come to identify as part of you, and possible meat-replacement (if you can afford it!) plus weeks of trance-induced AI regulated VR psychotherapy, and then you can get some points back. Of course, most GM's could wave that experience away - I didn't. It could be as bad as the Ludovico Technique (Clockwork Orange) x 10, or whatever. The point is - you give it the meaning you want it to convey in your game. If it's just a bunch of points on paper - /shrug that's on you. That's how you'll treat it. Likewise there is a mechanical hit you take since your Humanity rating directly impacts your Empathy score - which jacks a whole lot of your skills. Again - it depends on what your games are like. If you're playing Murder-Hobo Express - it won't matter much.

Edit: in my games, originally everyone went deep-cyber. When they saw how I imposed the social-penalties of living like that upon them, and the inevitable crossing of the cyberpsychosis line and how the cops would keep their necessary tabs on them until the eventual dam broke - they rarely went too far in.

There is very little reason to get that cybered up unless you plan on killing a whole lotta people. And those responsible for dealing with that kinda shit, can spot it a mile away.

Essence assumes one thing - that magic is in the world. And that's something I didn't care for in my CP2020. When I played Shadowrun 1e I let a vampire make me into a vampire so I could raise my Essence to 8 - I was a spellcaster. SWEET. My GM didn't think so.

While not apples to apples - I'm not sure I would make the same comparison based on the fact that they ultimately did different things, tho mechanically they kinda have overlap.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Corporate 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.

CP2020 had three entire splatbooks dedicated to several big megacorps. A couple of modules spun off them. A sourcebook for the United States (Home of the Brave) that went into solid deep detail on how the world of CP2020 happened including the interactions between the Corporations and the Government. Which led to an entire boxset (Land of the Free) which detailed a complete campaign set up as part of last great corporate war.

I dunno about Shadowrun... but the Corporate War defined CP2020's products from beginning to the literal end. Did you have to run your game inside it? No - but ignoring it would be like ignoring there's magic in your SR game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Art 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.

No arguments here. However I thought the low-rent painted art and the clean Patrick Nagel line-art was a nice contrast for CP2020. But it didn't compare to SR's stuff.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Artifical 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.

You might have a good point here. I think AI in CP2020 was too scary to really go into. Though some of the third-party modules did. Most of the AI's in CP2020 were gods-on-chains. The idea being no human could defeat one single-handedly in the net, but yet they pretended they could control them. It was something they could have done more with.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Rich 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,

CP2020 had its hellholes. Depends on where you wanted to set things. By default, Night City is like the Waterdeep of CP. But in the Home of the Brave book, and some of their modules, they outlined lots of locations that were plague-ridden, radioactive, and fuuuucked up. But of course, they didn't go into enough detail on those locales and left it up to GM's to do the heavy lifting. It's there - just you gotta do all the legwork. That said, there's plenty to capture the spirit of the class-struggle in Night City alone. Zoning based on income and corporate employment is an easy entry-point to make party-member feel like complete dogshit (for some). When you enforce social acceptance on the very minutiae of daily life - from what you wear, to what you eat and drink, and in some cases like in Los Angeles - the very AIR you breathe places you on the societal radar, it's very much in the spirit of the genre. Yeah CP2020 could have done better in this regard in terms of locale-writeups, but the implications of all that *are* there.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438The 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.

CP2020 has lots of drugs, sex (they just leave it up to you, but it's very much part of the game - including cyber-enhancements: Mr. Studd impant and the Midnight Lady /snicker). Most of the VR stuff was there, they had a few modules based around it. Nothing I'd say was "whoa". Like in SR most of the net-based stuff was left to NPC's but unbeknownst to a lot of CP players, you didn't need to be a netrunner to create programs. I had several players that took programming to help bolster a PC-runner and they created a bunch of cool programs that developed into large-scale adventures in their own right. I always thought the CP2020 netrunning system had a lot going for it, but it suffered in the same way that SR's net-game did, in that it usually left the part out of the loop for too long. I'd overhaul it completely with a modern-rewrite.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438So 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.

Different ropes'n'strokes. The moment magic hits the table, most of the conceits of high-technology go flying out of the window, for me. Not that they can't co-exist.

I think it poses different questions and answers that I believe your proposition points to: if magic in addition to all of the cybertech that runs uniform through both games allow, in your opinion, SR to exemplify the spirit of cyberpunk more than CP2020 which you cede is closer to the written source material - yet that source material doesn't use magic, then the it's not the magic that allows this outcome.

I found the system in CP2020, better, faster, and more durable than SR1e (never played the others). I felt the conceits of CP2020 were about as honest to the source material as the game designed back then, on that budget, could get. If I put a magic system in there (and you kinda can if you leverage the Mekton Psionics system) - I don't feel adding trolls, and elves etc. and calling them mutations or whatever you need to justify their presence scientifically necessarily makes it better cyberpunk. To me it's how the GM expresses it in the game. I know fully well I could run a blistering SR game (I plan on doing it someday - if they ever make an edition whose system is well regarded by the "true SR fans" - of whom I'm not a member - but until then, outside of the novelty, I'm not sure I need all that stuff.

When I take on racism, class-struggle, cold-blooded tribalist murder, whatever - in my CP2020 games? I just do it. I don't need fancy metaphors for Troll-shaming (LOL couldn't resist) or whatever as a placeholder. But then I'm like that in all my games. CP2020 doesn't require it. I think SR doesn't either - but then if you accept the conceits of of SR, you don't need to. People WOULD be oppressive against those other races (even though they're human).

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438BTW, the fantasy part people don't like - that actually makes Shadowrun better Sci-Fi, but that's a different post.

Maybe. I'd love to see you make the post. My CP2020 wasn't sci-fi as much as it was just Heat and Crime/Spy stuff with super-tech.

Quote from: CRKrueger;881438Hmm, Pundit's on to something here.  The "spirit" of Cyberpunk.  Obviously that's going to vary quite a bit.  However lets take a look at this.

Dehumanization 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.

BTW, the fantasy part people don't like - that actually makes Shadowrun better Sci-Fi, but that's a different post.

You just articulated my own opinion better than I could.

As I said in the beginning, I think Shadowrun managed to integrated it's fantasy elements with the cyberpunk millieu in a way that actually reinforced it instead of watering it down. Magic is of the "black", feared and prejudiced flavour (voodoo, shamanism, aztec blood rituals), fantasy races are there to heighten the intolerance and prejudice (just look at the the day of Rage and the Ork Underground), and even dragons are there just to seat at megacorp high seats and exploit what's left of humanity in unthinkable ways (it's said Lofwyr is capable of keeping tabs on every and each transaction hapenning in each of the hundreds subsidiaries of it's megacorp at the same time - he reached a form of optimization and exploitation faster than information technology ever could). It's one of the most oppressive settings ever.

BTW, I do have pretty much everything Cyberpunk 2020 including the Atlas stuff plus everything Shadowrun 1-3 on one of my bookshelves and a lot of Cyberpunk made it into my Shadowrun campaign, so I'm not dissing a game I never read or played.

SR1e was really not well done at all ruleswise.

As far as Magic goes, if any Sufficiently Advanced Science is indistinguishable from Magic, then any Magic which is structured, quantifiable, and 100% reproducible is indistinguishable from Science.  Shadowrun didn't put Fantasy in your Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk took over and assimilated your Fantasy.

As far as the different Cyberpunk elements and how hard they get hit.  
There's a lot more to the dystopia then just technology.  Shadowrun doesn't hit those harder due to magic, they hit those harder, period.  Certain areas of the Cyberpunk world are effectively lawless badlands outside the cities.  One of the worst slums in Shadowrun US is in the middle of Los Angeles, walled to keep everyone in just like the rich enclaves are walled to keep everyone out.  You don't even want to know what the corporations are doing in Africa, where there are no limits to what they can experiment on, or who.

When magic is used, it doesn't blunt the technology side, it adds to it and comes at the Cyberpunk themes a different way.  You want to experience helplessness, loss of control and violation?  A mage could not only control your thoughts you make you want to kill your wife, they can control your emotions to make you like it.

Talk about surveillance state, welcome to astral projection.  Talk about right to privacy and right against self-incrimination, welcome to telepathy.

If the average human is a cockroach in Cyberpunk 2020, they're an aphid in Shadowrun.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;881610Oh, and Gibson kinda sums how I feel about Shadowrun as a cyberpunk work:

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/archive/2003_05_01_archive.asp#200265459


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ul1MLc-_WnsJ:www.the-peak.ca/1998/10/cyberpunk-on-screen-william-gibson-speaks/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us


BOOM.

it really is something else. even if it were true that it addresses the same themes or tropes that cyberpunk adresses better than cyberpunk itself does, SR is not cyberpunk anymore than steampunk is cyberpunk.

William Gibson does not have the be all end all authority of what is, and is not Cyberpunk, just as Judas Priest does not have the ball all and end all of what is and is not metal.

I was one of the head developers of Interface Zero 2.0, and I don't have a right to say what is, and is not a cyberpunk game either. Shadowrun bills itself as Cyberpunk, and most of it's fans consider it cyberpunk..

The fact it has elves and magic on top of all the cyberpunk themes does not invalidate those themes and ideas..

Further, Gibson owes a lot to Philip K Dick and Robert Heinlen, as well as William S Buroughs...complaining he was "Ripped off" while giving Cyberpunk2020 a pass for the same damn thing, or not going after Snowcrash for using the same concepts simply shows his personal bias.

Quote from: Orphan81;881647William Gibson does not have the be all end all authority of what is, and is not Cyberpunk, just as Judas Priest does not have the ball all and end all of what is and is not metal.

I was one of the head developers of Interface Zero 2.0, and I don't have a right to say what is, and is not a cyberpunk game either. Shadowrun bills itself as Cyberpunk, and most of it's fans consider it cyberpunk..

The fact it has elves and magic on top of all the cyberpunk themes does not invalidate those themes and ideas..

Further, Gibson owes a lot to Philip K Dick and Robert Heinlen, as well as William S Buroughs...complaining he was "Ripped off" while giving Cyberpunk2020 a pass for the same damn thing, or not going after Snowcrash for using the same concepts simply shows his personal opinion.

Fixed that for you. And Gibson admits, in the quoted text, that he owes a lot to others.

That SR has elves and magic makes it different from pure cyberpunk, I'm not sure why that's so hard to accept.

Quote from: Orphan81;881647William Gibson does not have the be all end all authority of what is, and is not Cyberpunk, just as Judas Priest does not have the ball all and end all of what is and is not metal.

If judas priest said that Justin Bieber isn't metal, I'd be inclined to agree with him. I'm inclined to listen to people who help to define a genre.

QuoteI was one of the head developers of Interface Zero 2.0, and I don't have a right to say what is, and is not a cyberpunk game either. Shadowrun bills itself as Cyberpunk, and most of it's fans consider it cyberpunk..

I identify, I mean bill myself, as the emperor of Uranus. D&D 4 bills itself as D&D.

More to the point, I could sit down to write a short story about fairies and gnomes and bill it as cyberpunk. Would it be? So no, your argument must be resting on something else other than quasi identity politics.

The point in quoting Gibson is that the people whose work defined and was formative of the genre carry a weight in their opinions that others who came along later don't-- especially when they insert elements that undermine the basic ethos of the genre. Cyberpunk is firmly in the sci-fi camp, and magic is in the realm of science fantasy at best.

QuoteThe fact it has elves and magic on top of all the cyberpunk themes does not invalidate those themes and ideas..

 It may not, but the sum of all those parts cyberpunk do not make.

I have no idea how I managed to miss this thread this long, but I'm givin' some stuff a read-through and trying to play catch up.  Holler if there's any particular questions/issues I can try to tackle, in the meantime, on the SR side of things (I've got plenty of CP:2020 experience, too, mind, but only as a reader/player/geek).

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;881661It may not, but the sum of all those parts cyberpunk do not make.

So a setting or book that has all the trappings of cyberpunk. But also has mutants and magic. Is somehow invalidated? yeah riiiiight.

I could see this argument if the whole setting were magic. Spell based net and netrunning equivalents, magical prosthetics and enhancements instead of tech. But Shadowrun is about 75% cyberpunk. 15% mutants, and 10% magic. It might not be pure cyberpunk. But its darn close. And lets not forget that in a cyberpunk setting people can surgically or biomod themselves to look like elves, if they wanted. Oh no! Cyberpunk is for the ruined foreverz!

They can't mod themselves to cast magic. If the conceit in SR was that large swaths of people are moding  themselves to look like Tolkien  races, that conceit would be founded on the base conceit that tech allows you to do it. Is that how SR explains the existence of elves and why they came back in that world?

As to the larger point that it isn't cyberpunk, because magic has a prominent place in it, let's just say that you don't call a liger a tiger or a lion. It's called a liger for a reason. SR is sci-fantasy or cyberfantasy. It's not Cyberpunk. SR is a metaphorical mule.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;881739As to the larger point that it isn't cyberpunk, because magic has a prominent place in it, let's just say that you don't call a liger a tiger or a lion. It's called a liger for a reason. SR is sci-fantasy or cyberfantasy. It's not Cyberpunk. SR is a metaphorical mule.

None of you have defined what cyber punk is.  I'm pretty sure i could run the most cyber punk imaginable game right in middle earth.  Either with the human numinorian kings getting their rings and becoming ring wraiths or in Suarmans domain as his mind is turning to wheals and gears.  But maybe not becuase no one has said what the defining charctrristis of the genera are.

I would quite like to read the post about how magic makes shadow run more cyber than 2020 but until we do no point in arguing with what we think he will put in there.