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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: The Reverend <mdb0213@******.TAMU.EDU>
Subject: Moddies, Daddies, Effinger, and Gangs.
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 09:20:25 -0600
]>Finally: has anyone on here used Followers? How'd it work? I see it being
]>overbalancing, but this is conjecture.
]
]I forget, do gangs count as that? If so, I used them, and following the
]lead of a friend in a similar position, had my gang distract the enemy
]gang in the Dreamchipper module.

Good idea. I've seen gangs used, but sporadically. I'm still curious about
Followers, though. Gangs I can see buying after character generation
(i.e. bribes, or role-playing), but *somewhere* it says that after the game
begins, getting them "are the things urban legends are made of."

Another thing, semi-SR related: who here has read any of George Alec Effinger's
works? (And, no, I don't mean the short stories he publishes in certain (ahem)
"Gentleman's Magazines":) Personally, I laughed when I first read
Dream-Chipper. A BIG rip off of the ideas of "When Gravity Fails"! Not only
did they bring "daddies" into the SR universe, but they brought in Khan, for
Pete's sake!! Fortunately, the module wasn't as derivative as I had feared...
but I kept expecting Bond to show up. :)

Has anyone here brought daddies into the SR world? And how do they work (I
don't mean how well the tech works)? Do they add anything to the game? Has
it made things interesting? What do your characters think about chipping in,
say, Nero Wolfe? *grin*


Rev
---
The Reverend "They called me the Reverend when I entered the church unstained"
Fear the Information Revolution...for it has reached the hands of the strange.
PGP 2.2 Public Key Block available upon request
Message no. 2
From: Matt Smith <MRSMITH@***.CC.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Moddies, Daddies, Effinger, and Gangs.
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 11:59:21 EST
I've never actually used Effinger's ideas in a Shadowrun game. They work
fine in R.Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020, though.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that moddies would make a good plot
device for an adventure series, but would clutter up more an already
otherwise cluttered universe if you intended to incorporate them as an
everyday feature.

Matt Smith
mrsmith@***.cc.uga.edu
Message no. 3
From: Ed Matuskey <MATUSKEY@***.EDU>
Subject: Re: Moddies, Daddies, Effinger, and Gangs.
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 20:52:45 -0800
Before I begin, a couple definitions for the Effinger impaired:

Moddy: basically a personality chip. Plug in one of these, and you
actually become whoever is encoded on it. Not oly do you act like
them, you think like them as well. Examples given are James Bond,
Gengis Kahn, and various archetypes: Bad-ass, Idiot, and Ideal
Enforcement Officer (Top Cop).

Daddy: enhancers, also in chip form. These come in a wide variety,
ranging from personality enhancers (like wit or charm), capable of
being used with your favorite modddy; to knowledge softs, allowing you
to learn and understand a topic instantly (then lose it when the daddy
is pulled); to varous physical boosts, allowing you to ignore pain,
or thirst/hunger/call of nature, sleep, drugs, sound, etc. Once, the
hero plugs in the daddy that allows him to ignore stuff, and walks
across a desert, carrying anohter man, taking no food or water for
days. He kept going until his body wouldn't move any more--he still
felt finde, just dizzy, more or less.

Now, my SR evaluation:

Moddies: we've only seen genuine moddies in the Dreamchipper scenario
(BTW, I didn't find this adventure nearly as plageristic as the other
guy (Reverend?) did; yes, they had Kahn, but the idea of encoding a
personality onto a chip is nothing new. Read Neuromancer, for starters).
BTL chips come close, their only problem being that they don't last
very long, and are addictive.
For a game: I'd say "no", for the following reasons: moddies will either
be too effective, or not effective at all. When you slot a moddy, you
become the person, including all their skills and abilities (minus
superpowers: give R&D a little more time on that one). Skillwires
can give you access to skills you don't know, but olny a few at a time.
How many things can Games James Bond do well? Sherlock Holmes? Kahn
Singh? However, if you take away the skills, and just leave the
background and personality, yo have a neat toy, but little else. It
might be fun to have a players using one of these things, but so many
PC's are borrowed from popular culture that it would be hard to tell
the difference.

Daddies: again, I'd have to say no. Skill chips can already do some
of the taksks described, and bioware can do others. However, daddies
are much cheaper than the latter, and interchangeable with the former,
so why put themn in? Again, too cheap and easy to get.

IMHO, SR tech simply hasn't gone down this route: it's not incapable, just
not done. The trend has been towards more invasive methods. If a corp
decides to monkey with sim-chips, or skillwires, however, SR could very
easily develop Effinger technology. But I woulnd't allow it to anyone
but nasyt (arg!) nasty NPCs, for the reasons stated above. PCs have
enough toys to play with without giving them ones that are easier,
cheaper, and more effective to play with. Make them spend their money
and essence and body index.

I do reccomend Mr. Effinger's series, containing "Exiles Kiss," "A Fire
In the Sun," and "When Gravity Fails," in reverse order. It is a very
cyberpunkish world he describes, but one quite different from the more
traditional Sterling/Gibson POV. And the sexual culture will jolt even
the most jaded of you at least a little bit.

I give it a thumb up.

-Ed

"They must have at least a dozen machine guns in there."
"You're right, we'd better both go." --Running Scared
Message no. 4
From: The Deb Decker <RJR96326@****.UTULSA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Moddies, Daddies, Effinger, and Gangs.
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 17:09:43 -0600
>And the sexual culture will jolt even
>the most jaded of you at least a little bit.

Oh, you mean like half the sideline female characters being transsexual
dancers/prostitutes in a devoutly muslim city's ghetto? Yraj, I culled a
couple of plot twists of my own from that book (Gravity-haven't read the others).

>I give it a thumb up.

Only one thumb? Did a vending machine eat the other one? :)

J Roberson

Further Reading

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