| From: | Alex van der Kleut <sommers@*****.UMICH.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: FASA's On/Off Course? |
| Date: | Tue, 5 May 1998 12:18:45 -0400 |
>> I am asking the question of exactly what the subject says. Is FASA
drifting
>> on/off course in it's storyline. I am not implementing a Spoiler
Warning of
>> any kind, so just in case anyone may think this is a "sensitive topic",
you
>> have been warned. NO BOOK is sacred in this post.
>> There are possibilities that at least some of the IE's may be getting
"removed
>> the game activities".
Some of them have been. At the end of Technobable the Leonardo elf gets
neutralized by Lowfyr. He was trying to build his own little caer down in
Africa and had it stomped upon. He also had his magic cut off, although I
don't remember if that was permament or if he was killed also.
>> The Horrors are gone (good/bad/indifferent) thanks to a Dragon's Sacrifice.
Not all of them are gone. First, Harly says at the end that some of them
DID get through when the bridge was completed for a little while. Maybe not
the most powerful, but at the very least some of the real go-getters:)
Also, at the end of the last Dragonheart book, Dunkelzahn is going and
evening out the divide. That implies that there are more to even out. Off
of the top of my head I can remember the one in Hawaii, mentioned in the
Nigel Findley Hawaii book. IIRC Harelquin and Dirk Pitt stopped them, but
the "mana spike" would have still been there. Also in Worlds without End
Aina caused one near Crater Lake that allowed others through. And I'm sure
that there are more, smaller ones that were created by mana spikes.
>IMO the Horrors where worth keeping... It looks like they want to get
>more into the tech side of things and move away from the mystical which
>is not the direction I would like to see SR move into...
I think that they're worth keeping too, but they were coming too fast. Even
the best runner characters, initiated out to 6-7 level (181 karma without
ordeals or groups!), they don't seem very powerful comapred to a good
Earthdawn horror. They've made allowances to have smaller (and possibly
bigger) Horrors around without worrying about a full scale invasion.
As for the direction in general, I like the way that a lot of these
seemingly different events come together from different writers. Everything
in BitB boils down to two events: Big D's will and Leonardo from Black
Madonna. The will is obvious, with Fuchi screwing around. But that little
bit at the end of BM set up the whole Renraku getting really big without me
really marking it. And it happend, what 2-3 years ago real time? There
might have been a fight because of Lanier going over to R from F, but
Leonardo giving R all that tech and getting them market share was the
catalyst.
I've like the background world since the beginning because it was so
unique. But one of the things that they missed out, I thought, was a
continuously changing world. Thin khow much our world has changed in the
past 5-10 years. Quite a lot, and it seems to go faster and faster. Then
ask yourself how much SR changed between 2050 and 2055. Not an awful lot,
besides some extra toys. More detail came out (FoF, Lone Star, Tirs), but
the status quo stayed even.
Then Bug City came out, and things started changing. After that, I think
the world had become more dynamic, the way the world is. I thought that the
2057 election was good, because it was a fundamantal shift. And I really
like the Target: concept, because it looks like it'll come out as a kind of
snapshot of the worls and where its going.
Sommers
