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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: jzealey@***.edu.au (James Zealey)
Subject: Science Fiction
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:54:41 +1000
> Subject:
> science fiction (was: holoprojectors)
> From:
> "Markus Widmer" <markus.widmer@******.at>
> Date:
> Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:08:56 +0200
> To:
> "Shadowrun Discussion" <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
>
> I agree with Gurth here. Shadowrun is very low on typical science
> fiction set-pieces such as androids, laser guns, cloning, aliens and
> space travel. On the tech side, there is mainly the datajack and the
> matrix, rigging and cyberware. Any other than that, the SR-world isn't
> much different from our world. This, I think, is due to the fact that
> magic has returned and it has changed a few things.
>
> However, I think that robots and androids as well as gentech were
> unduely overlooked by the designers of shadowrun. I don't think it's
> logical that all the robots we have in 2063 are more or less advanced
> drones. After all, we're much closer to developing a decent humanoid
> robot today than to designing the datajack.
>
> Opinions?
>
> Markus
>
Robots do well in places where humans cannot or do not want to work.
Typically, humans cannot or do not want to work in these situations
because the humanoid form is ill adjusted to the situation. Hence, it's
unlikely that humanoid robots will become any form of staple outside of
entertainment purposes.
Message no. 2
From: Jeffrey.T.Dougherty@********.edu (Jeffrey T Dougherty)
Subject: Science Fiction
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:30:23 -0400 (EDT)
I think that history has shown that predicting which inventions will be
"easier" than others in the future is fairly futile. If you had asked a
scientist from the 1960s, from whichever discipline, he would probably
have told you that we would have cured all disease through antibiotics and
vaccines long before we had a computer capable of fitting onto a single
desktop and holding billions of pieces of information. Ask someone from
the 1980s, and he'd probably tell you that we'd have permanent space
stations long before any kind of "global computer network" that would
allow people to exchange information throughout the world- ARPANET existed
then, but it was limited to a few military and major educational sites.

With that in mind, you pick the future that fits your setting.
Shadowrun's developers wanted a corporate class that featured a ton of
wage slaves pecking away at their keyboards to emphasize the soullessness
of the megacorps- so no highly advanced expert systems that would take all
of those away. They wanted people working at maintainence jobs like
janitor and garbageman, because that makes for more interesting
infiltrations- so no cheap robots. They wanted chromed samurai out of
Neuromancer- so bioware can't be too advanced, or people are going to get
custom cells instead of chrome. And so it goes.

Personally, I tend to accept the world as it is, despite what I consider
to be some errors in terms of what's developed and what isn't. Like
everything else, the tech that is and isn't available contributes to the
feel of the world, a feel I enjoy. I tend to run my games "low-tech", if
only because if I pop up hologram computers and the like it starts feeling
too much like Star Trek to both my players and me, which is pretty much
the opposite of the mood you want to create in Shadowrun.

Just my 2 nuyen.

Jeff D.

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