This document contains the list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for the mailing list ShadowRN, devoted to discussions of the role-playing game Shadowrun and its various spin-offs. Full instructions on how to subscribe as well as related information is provided within.
You will note that this FAQ does not contain information about the Shadowrun game specifically. This FAQ is dedicated to the list itself and serves as an introduction to the community created by list-discussion.
Thanks for your interest,
Virtually,
The ShadowRN Listowner
Gurth <gurth@xs4all.nl> "Fearless Leader"
Version something.3 (29 May 2018, based on version 1.10 of 01-13-94)
Compiled by the former fearless leader: Robert Hayden; modified and updated by the current fearless leader: Gurth (and with thanks to Damion Milliken for suggestions)
ShadowRN is a discussion list for the role-playing game Shadowrun, which was first published by FASA Corporation, then by FanPro, and currently by Catalyst Game Labs. Discussion can cover all four editions of the game as well as house rules, and is not limited to a specific version or edition. The list is also open to discussion about derived or related games, such as the various Shadowrun computer games or the Shadowrun Trading Card Game, as well as subjects related to the setting or the game of Shadowrun in a broad sense.
The game of Shadowrun takes place in Seattle some 60 to 70 years in the future. Cybernetics, virtual reality, and biotechnology are available to the public. Furthermore, magic exists and is controlled by mages and shamans, and mythical beings once again roam the land. Megacorporations, with the power of small nations, rule the politics and hold the ultimate stranglehold on the underclass. Surviving in the world of Shadowrun takes as much courage as it does skill.
And perhaps just a little luck.
A mailing list is a discussion group whose members stays in contact using e-mail. Such a list consists of a list server, which is a computer program that "listens" to a certain e-mail address—in this case, <shadowrn@understairs.nl>. When any of the listmembers sends an e-mail message to that address, the list server receives it and automatically sends it on to all the mailing list's members.
In order to be a member of a mailing list, all you need is an e-mail program (also known as a "mailer"), such as Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook, Pegasus Mail, Pine, or similar.
To subscribe, go to the website https://mailman.firedrake.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shadowrn, enter your e-mail address, and click the Subscribe button.
In a little while you should get e-mail confirming your unsubscription request.
To post to ShadowRN, you send your posting via e-mail to ShadowRN@firedrake.org
To unsubscribe, go to the website https://mailman.firedrake.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shadowrn, enter your e-mail address, and click the Unsubscribe or edit options button.
This will take you to a web page where you can choose to remove yourself from the mailing list. If you do, you will no longer receive any more messages.
To change options about your subscribtion, you must go to the website https://mailman.firedrake.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/shadowrn, enter your e-mail address, and click the Unsubscribe or edit options button.
This will take you to a web page where you can select various options for your subscription, such as whether you want to receive each message separately or all in one as a daily digest, whether you want to receive your own messages back, and more.
99% of the time, the reason you are deleted from the list (by the listowner) is because for some reason mail is bouncing off of your account.
Usually this is caused by one of two reasons. Either A) your account is filled and can't hold any more or B) for some reason your account is not available (either the machine or your account is down). When this happens, it causes an error message to be sent back to the list. The list software attempts to detect error messages and route them to the listowner. Sometimes, though, the error is not detected by the listserv software and the error gets reported to the list. This causes the error message to get sent our to all subscribers, including the person who is bouncing mail. This leads to a loop that really messes things up.
Thus, standard procedure when an error message is reported it to delete the subscription of the person causing the error.
Once the problem has been fixed (you are back on the net or have room), you are, of course, free to join the list again.
Another reason is because you have sent spam to the list. Sending spam will result in immediate deletion of your account!
Mail has an annoying characteristic in that, while most of the time it is instantaneous, there are times when it can take up to two weeks to go from one computer to another that is located a few meters away (much like snail mail, eh?).
If mail suddenly suddenly stops coming, wait at least 24 hours before you contact the listowner. Very likely, a system is down somewhere between you and the list, and as soon as that comes back up, you will get all of the old messages.
Also note that the listowner won't be able to help at all in terms of mail not arriving. All he can do is to verify that you are indeed subscribed, anything beyond that is under the control of someone else.
By nature of the topic of this list (cyberpunk fiction and role-playing), it should be warned that discussions often contain violent, sexual or adult themes, as well as anarchistic political discussions. The responsibility (blame?) for each posting falls entirely into the hands of the original poster. The listowner and administration assume no liability for the contents of postings.
While the topic of this list is specifically related to Shadowrun, it has been determined that the topic encompasses far more than the specific rules within the published game books. Part of the all-important part of any role-paying game is the atmosphere that the players find themselves in. Often, this cannot be adaquately explained within the written rules.
To this end, there is a very liberal posting policy with regards to topics. This is to allow everyday babble and observations to create a virtual society of sorts on the list, and to give all who participate in an opportunity to explore that society.
Thus, you will often see postings that are only vaguely related to Shadowrun being posted. While there are no hard-set rules with regards to what off-topic postings are permitted, it should be reminded that we all come here because of our interest in Shadowrun, so postings should at the very least be of interest to all, and be within the umbrella of being source material for the Shadowrun society.
Officially, the following actions will take place with regards to off-topic postings.
Persons who repeatedly violate the rules and disrupt the use of the list by others will be be dealt on a case-by-case basis, but action can include (but is not limited to): temporary removal from the list (for example, six months), permanent removal from the list or notification to the violator's sysadmin or service provider.
The New Hacker's Dictionary defined the Flame as:
Flaming is highly discouraged on the ShadowRN list, because in the end it only only wastes everyone's time, bandwidth and quota, and seldom if ever leads to any resolution of problems. If a discussion reaches the point where people are calling everyone names or insulting, a warning will be issused from the listowner saying something along the lines of "take it to private e-mail". If the flamers continue to flood the list with their hate-mail, they will be deleted from the list.
One of the other problems is that often someone "insults"" someone in a satirical way. This is something that happens quite often in the real world, but the real world has the benefit of body-language and tone-of-voice to show that it is only polite joking. In order to make sure that your humorous flame isn't taken seriously, make sure you include a smiley or some other indication to show that you are only joking.
Compiled by: Doctor Doom; edited for more current times by Gurth.
The lingua franca of ShadowRN is English, and so posts should be made in this language. However, ShadowRN has listmembers from all over the world, and English is not the native language of all of them. For this reason, members are expected to be lenient about grammar and spelling mistakes, odd-seeming phrases that are probably direct translations of expressions in another language, etc.
In the interest of ease of reading, messages sent to the ShadowRN list should use normal spelling and not use excessive abbreviations or "leet-speak". In other words, write "you are" instead of "u r", "to" rather than "2", and so on. On the other hand, the use of common Internet abbreviations is not discouraged; here is a list of typical ones you might encounter:
The sound a wet carp makes when someone is struck with it; also the act of striking someone with a wet carp.
The term was first used in the latter part of the year the list became operational, when our Fearless Leader, Robert Hayden, was experiencing considerable problems with his mailer, such that all were receiving several copies of EVERY posting he dispatched.
Howls of discontent were heard across the node. Tempers were raised. Flames were exchanged.
On Thursday, 22 October 1992 (21:03:17 CET), Hayden, in an attempt to soothe the raising ire of the other members as well as offer an apology, infused a bit of levity in his requesting pardon for the inconvenience, to wit:
You can thwap me with a wet carp if it will make you feel better.
And thus the concept was born. Immediately many list members latched upon this rather novel idea. The first actual THWAP was invoked by Doctor Doom on 22 October 1992, 15:31:00 CST, rapidly followed by Harlequin and Flare. A legend was begun…
Since then, its has been used so frequently that the idea took on a life of its own, and it is now a legitimate term, even if only jargon. Thwaps are generally brought to bear upon especially bizarre, silly, or munchkinous ideas, although their invocation usually indicates a degree of levity and good-spiritedness. Thwaps are not meant for spite—that purpose is served by flames.
Logs of all messages posted to the ShadowRN list before October 2007 are available here.
The ShadowRN list has had other addresses in the past, references to some of which can still be found on the net. The current list is a continuation of the one initially hosted at HEARN.nic.SURFnet.nl (until about 1996), then at listproc.iTRiBE.net (until 8 February 1999), followed by jackpoint.org (until approximately 8 January 2000), and it was last hosted at dumpshock.com (technically until late October 2007, but in practice until early May 2007). Due to various reasons it has been moved to understairs.nl, becoming operational on 27 October 2007. On 29 May 2018, it moved to firedrake.org because of daily message limits imposed by the previous host.
Please send only plain-text messages to the ShadowRN list. Many modern mailers are set up to send formatted messages using HTML or some other method to "beautify" messages by including fonts, images, etc. Listmembers should not use these "features" when sending e-mail to the ShadowRN list, because the only mail format every mailer is guaranteed to understand is plain text.
Much the same goes for attachments: do not send attachments with your messages to ShadowRN. Not everyone has a fast internet connection or unlimited download quota, so if you have a file you want to share with the rest of the list, it will be better to put it up for download at a web or FTP site instead of sending it to everyone.
When replying to a message sent to the list, include the relevant parts in your reply so everyone knows exactly what you are replying to, but delete the parts that are not important to your reply (including, but not limited to, the original poster's signature). This is mainly to avoid excessively long posts that only contain replies to certain parts of the original message, and thereby waste both bandwidth and disk space all around.
Clearly indicate the original text of the message you are quoting. All good mailers can do this automatically by prepending each line with a >-mark. If your mailer does not follow this practice, check its preferences or options.
Top-replying is not allowed! This is because top-replying means others will essentially be reading a conversation in reverse, as they will see the reply before they see the original remark or question.
Thus, the following practice should not be used:
No, it's a first-edition book so you'll need to change just about everything. ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Joe <joeblow@renraku.co.jp> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2060, 20:52:15 +0200 Can I use the Street Samurai Catalog with SR4?
Instead, reply like this:
On Fri, 15 Oct 2060, 20:52:15 +0200, Joe wrote: > Can I use the Street Samurai Catalog with SR4? No, it's a first-edition book so you'll need to change just about everything.
A lot of the time, the topic of a thread will change from the original, to something else entirely. For example, a thread may start about cars in Shadowrun, but after a while is about lifestyle costs. In such a case, please change the subject line for messages you post in reply to the thread. It's best to do this by giving a new subject, and placing the old one in brackets behind it, preceded by "was:", like so:
Subject: Lifestyle costs (was: Re: Cars in Shadowrun)
Once the thread has been going for a while under its new title, you can also choose to remove the "was:" part.
Similarly, a thread often goes off topic, for example a thread about Shadowrun cars becoming about real-world cars. When you make a post that will take the thread off topic, put "[OT]" in front of the subject line, and possibly combine it with the topic drift method show anbove, like this:
Subject: [OT] Real-world cars (was: Re: Cars in Shadowrun)
The ShadowRN list is also available in a digest version. Normally, you will receive each message sent to the list as a separate message; if you subscribe to the digest, you will instead receive one large message every so often containing several different posts. Note that the digest is not sent out at regular intervals—that is, you will not necessarily receive a message every day. Instead, the digest is sent out any time when the total size of sent messages since the last digest has exceeded 40 kilobytes. If there is a lot of list traffic, that may mean you get several digests per day.
To subscribe to the digest version, follow the normal subscription procedure, then log onto the subscriber's page and set the option to receive the list in digest form.
Most mail readers allow you to have your incoming mail pass through a filter. This filter will allow you to sort or delete mail based on subject or sender or many other parameters. The exact requirements vary with each mail reader program, so no specifics can be given here. However, look through your mailer's preferences or options to find filters or rules that you can set.
To sort your ShadowRN mail, you want to sort by who the mail is addressed to, as the list server maintains the From line as being the person that wrote the posting. All messages from ShadowRN will have shadowrn@understairs.nl as the To line.
As an added tip, it works better to filter on shadowrn@ than on the full address, because this way you will likely not have to change your filter rules should the list move to a new address.
