| From: | marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A.) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | SR2,3,4 Setting Progression (or How Developers Ruin a Game) |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Oct 2005 15:16:38 -0400 |
> From: shadowrn-bounces@*****.dumpshock.com
> [mailto:shadowrn-bounces@*****.dumpshock.com] On Behalf Of Ice Heart
> Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 11:06 AM
>
> You could do what I do... stick with older edition rulebooks
> and only buy SR4 books that are purely setting information.
Okay, let me preface all this by saying that I've been playing
Shadowrun since 1989. Yes, my introduction to combat in SR1 was the
food fight in the Stuffer Shack, and our GM ran us through DNA/DOA,
Maria Mercurial, and Dreamchipper through the course of his regular
game. I started GMing SR1 in 1990. I've been a member of this list
since 1992. SR2 came out when I was in college, and while different I
thought it was better in a number of respects. There were a lot of
changes that when taken individually seemed broken, but when taken
together really made for a better game. When SR3 came out shortly after
I got out of grad school, I saw the same progression. A lot of rules
were streamlined, and a number of new and interesting concepts were
brought to the game (like complementary skills, one of my favorites). I
caught a lot of flack from my players for switching to SR3 because a few
important things had changed (like no longer rolling Force dice when
casting spells), but all in all I thought that it was a better system.
It was elegant and had a multidimensional method for calculating
difficulty and degree of success with a single roll, and it modeled an
insane number of real-world situations pretty well.
Everything I've read about the rules mechanics of SR4 so far
seems like it has lost this, but no one is making me buy it. My players
don't want to switch, and for once I agree with them, so we'll stick
with SR3. No big deal.
But I don't think I've ever bought SR3 books purely for source
material, and I certainly won't do so for SR4. Why? Because by and
large the setting source material blows heinous chundering dog pile.
The last setting book that I thought had any even remotely interesting
info was Bug City, and that was pushing it. By the time Super Tuesday
rolled around, I was disgusted. Year of the Comet was a piece of trash
that I thankfully didn't invest any money in before seeing how badly it
sucked. Corporate Download was okay, but drew so heavily on some of the
earlier source material as to make it almost (but not quite) useless. I
wouldn't have bought SOTA 2063 and 2064 if they hadn't had reprinted
updates of SR2 rules I liked and wanted to use, as the source material
contained therein was largely ridiculous. And from what I've seen, SR4
source material continues this downward trend (which one clever poster
has already astutely dubbed as "omg lol one one one").
In other words, it is my opinion that Shadowrun is a great game
if you ignore pretty much every setting sourcebook that was produced
after about 1994 or so. Shadowrun suffers from the same malady that
(IMHO) ruined another interesting game - BattleTech/MechWarrior. In
BattleTech, the status quo was a galaxy divided between five roughly
equal great houses, with all the feuding and infighting one might
imagine. Technology was poorly understood and in some cases impossible
to reproduce. While not exactly easy in the "suspension of disbelief"
category, it was clever and interesting. Then came the Clans.
Suddenly, tech was easy to produce, everyone had it, and the nature of
the game changed dramatically. Add in the "expansions" in source
material based on a set of novels, and the developers were primed to
destroy or alter pretty much everything that a clever GM might have put
together as plot for their campaign.
And I'm a clever GM. When I put together a campagin in any
setting, I have plenty of ideas for what would, could, or should happen.
These ideas range from the local level where the players have a huge
impact to the global level where they are merely observers of larger
events. I don't feel like I *need* a game developer to tell me what's
going to happen in the next year of game time. Describing a location,
sure, I can get all sorts of inspiration from that. Describing the
future of my game? I'll do that for myself, thanks.
Now before you say, "but if you don't like it, you can just
ignore it," I'll gladly say "I do just that." But my point is that by
ignoring the published material, you start deviating from "canon." And
as time goes by, every developer wants to add some ground-shaking new
event or setting that is more ground-shaking and more "kewl" than the
last, meaning that you get farther and farther from "canon" until your
game doesn't even resemble the published game in anything but rules
mechanics...
Until they wre... er, *change* the rules mechanics, that is. I
haven't used the SR timeline since about 2055. No Bug City, Dunkelzahn
is still alive and well (and certainly not the freaking President), and
the Renraku Arcology is still doing business as usual. Halley's Comet
was interesting to astronomers and cults, but that's about it. And I've
always thought that Otaku were lame and have neatly and completely
excised them from my campaign. And now that there isn't even a common
set of rules to discuss, I fear that my involvement in future SR lists
and fora is going to be pretty limited.
I've met some interesting people here and on Shadowland (back in
the day), some of whom turned into good friends in meatspace. So it's
with great regret that I come to the irrevocable conclusion that I'll
probably be hanging up my GridSec hat and signing off soon. I'll still
be playing Shadowrun, but it will bear little to no resemblance to what
the rest of you are playing, and as such I'll have very little to
contribute.
It's like they said in SR2 - Plus ca change...
It's been a fun ride.
Marc Renouf
GridSec "Bad Cop Division"
Long-Time Curmudgeon
Evil GM
