From: | lists@*******.com (Wordman) |
---|---|
Subject: | Correcting Shadowrun |
Date: | Mon, 13 Sep 2004 22:28:44 -0400 |
thread. Among these was one that I'm finding myself thinking about. A
number of people mentioned that the game felt dated, with an 1980's
cyberpunky feel. On reflection, I think this is true, but it need not
be so.
Shadowrun has always been a cyberpunk game first. If I understand the
history, it was intended at first to be a more "pure" cyberpunk game,
with no magic at all. I remember hearing a legend that this changed
during a late night drinking session, when someone drunkenly proclaimed
"I want elves on Harley-Davidsons, dammit!" Whatever the truth, it
seems clear that the cyberpunk aspects of the game game first, with
magic tacked on afterward.
Since no one can agree on what it means, I'm using "cyberpunk" here to
mean some collection of the following concepts:
1) Integration of flesh and machine.
2) Corporations (particularly Japanese corporations) more powerful than
governments.
3) Ubiquitous use of virtual reality within a global computer network.
4) Technology advancing faster than society's ability to deal with it.
With the events of the corporate war, FASA moved away from some of the
Japanocentric corporations, which might be viewed as a way to "update"
the feel of SR. If is was intended as such, from comments here on the
list, it didn't fully succeed.
I suggest the following as a way of correcting this "outdated" image
(and am interesting in hearing what other ideas people have for this).
The method I suggest here is not a dramatic re-issue, world shaping
event or change in focus, but rather just a change in what the game
designers think Shadowrun is about when they design future books. IMO,
just this change in thought process will (over a time) give the game a
more modern feel nearly by osmosis.
Stop thinking of SR as a cyberpunk game, and instead consider what
makes Shadowrun truly compelling to most of its audience: it's about
magic in a modern setting.
As written, the Awakening hasn't had much impact on the world. No,
really. Sure, there have been dragon presidents, insects possessing
people and the occasional astral rift, but mostly, the feel of this SR
world could be characterized as "well, it's a lot like modern day...
oh, and some people can do magic." Even events like the Ghost Dance,
while it did have far-reaching political consequences, didn't really
play out much differently than they would have if, instead of magic,
the Native Americans suddenly found themselves with powerful
conventional weapons.
Were the Awakening to happen in our reality, it's effects would be felt
significantly more profoundly than they are in the SR universe. The
fact of a minority of people being able to channel a tremendous amount
of energy and routinely violate laws of physics would color
.everything. that happened in the world to a far greater degree than,
say, a lot of people having mechanical arms or sliding through computer
systems with their mind would. Many of these effects would be barely
perceptible, but they would be there.
Example: if you lived in the U.S. northeast last winter, you got hit by
a several nasty blizzards and probably heard at least one news story
about snow removal. In an awakened world, the cost of moving snow out
of Manhattan alone would make it worthwhile for some governments, some
businesses and possibly some affluent citizens to invest in a magical
solution to snow removal. As an average citizen, you might not even
notice that your streets were cleaned by magic instead of trucks, but
your tax dollars would still have funded it. And this is just one minor
little aspect of life out of hundreds. One of the net results is that
magicians, already some of the most powerful beings on the planet,
rapidly become some of the wealthiest as well. What do they do with
that money?
Given the example, it's pretty clear that magic would have a pretty
profound impact on the corporate world, at least at the top of the food
chain; however, with the exception of Aztechnology and Wuxing, magic
has extraordinarily little impact on the canon history of any of these
corporations. As the game is written, you'd get the impression that
some of the smartest businessmen in the world saw magic and said "you
know, we could use that to make our buildings more secure" and then
thought no more about it.
The way magic interacts with modern politics, finance and societies are
what makes Shadowrun interesting and set it apart from other games.
Make it the center of design thinking. Things like cyber, the matrix
and rigging are still just as important, but hacking out your own
internal organs and replacing them with machines becomes a .rational.
thing for mundanes to do in order to stay ahead of their magical
competition. Certain plot lines become more important. You can easily
see a growing schism between the awakened and mundanes. You can see
magicians choosing to act in stealth from behind the scenes to prevent
such a schism. Etc.
Shadowrun is the only game I can think of that mixes magic and
modernity in such a way that the public knows that magic exists and is
real. Games like Mage and Unknown Armies can tell compelling stories
because, while magic exists, it is secret from most people. Shadowrun
can tell completely different but equally compelling stories because
its magic is public.
Wordman
http://www.divnull.com/lward/srun/