| From: | Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: FASA's On/Off Course? |
| Date: | Tue, 5 May 1998 11:08:03 -0800 |
preference is that the Horrors show up in the SR world and get their
collective asses handed to them on a platter by military forces experienced
in integrating technology and magic, the result of a world where research
can be shared across the world in an instant through the Matrix. I don't
want the game to turn into a sudden "everyone bands together to fight
Horrors" (which is the sensible reaction to a massive invasion). I'd
rather just have a few that snuck through for PC's to deal with
individually once in a while. (If it's more than two adventures in a
campaign, then the PC's ought to be explicitly *hunting* the damn things...)
I like the downplaying of the immortal elves. I really disliked
Black Madonna, and prefer to have them as mere players, not massive
forces behind the scenes. Sure, the Tirs and Azania are strongholds
of IEdom, but they're neither the largest nor most powerful countries,
and they're not even very nice places to live unless you're an elf
who agrees with the policies of the regime. I enjoy having immortal
elves in SR as players, but I'm going to ignore all the bits about
them being important historical figures unless they're explicitly
called out in an SR sourcebook. (I tend to ignore novels unless they're
shoehorned in via sourcebook-- physical adepts cannot parry bullets
with katanas in my game, Leonardo da Vinci was a human being that
Ehran the Scribe knew personally, and Queen Elizabeth was *not* Alachia.)
I like the Earthdawn background to the SR world as something very
subtle that the PC's can discover.
At 01:20 5/5/98 EDT, Ereskanti insinuated:
>What is -SR- then?
Shadowrun is a game about shadowrunners. Shadowrunning is usually
a matter of doing illegal deeds for someone who needs them performed by
"deniable assets" that can't be traced to the person hiring the runners.
FASA is providing us with plenty of motivations for shadowruns with Threats
and by stirring things up with Blood in the Boardroom, and plenty of
motivations for going out and doing things without a Johnson via
Dunkelzahn's Secrets. Corporate Shadowfiles is, in my opinion, one
of the best books for spawning shadowruns (though it make take a lot
of work for the PC's to figure out *why* a run is being performed,
if you start with a high-level motivation and then work out the pieces
down to where the runners come in).
>I guess that is what I am wondering. And I mean to have a description go
>beyond the concept of "it's a role playing game". I mean flat out, what is
>it? What is it going to be? What do -WE- the consumer/players of it want it
>to become overall? Are we going to have a vaguely magical cyberpunk game?
>Are we going to have a well defined game with an obvious course of direction
>to take? Are we going to have a list of ideas so vast open to us, that there
>will literally too many things to do?
Shadowrun itself doesn't need a course of direction; it's a role-playing
game. FASA are advancing time in their game, releasing sourcebooks
showing how the history of the Shadowrun world unfolds, rather than just
pumping out more things detailing a static world where it's always 2050,
unlike many other RPG's.
History doesn't tend to have a direction-- it just keeps going, and you
react to it. You can see the chain of events fairly well: Aztlan
leads to Harlequin's Back leads to Dunkelzahn's Secrets leads to
Blood in the Boardroom, and I like seeing these chains of causality.
The direction they're taking is obvious: advance time, and examine how
the world changes as a result of past actions. As long as they take the
time to make sure these changes are consistent, and important events are
not forgotten, I'm pretty happy. I like having a balance between
magic and technology-- the SOTA should be steadily advancing for both
of them.
I *would* like to see more emphasis on consistency. There have been a
number of places where FASA has been in dire need of it. As a
San Francisco Bay Area native, I was appalled by how inaccurate the
map in the Cal Free State sourcebook was, and I've heard they're not
much better for many other places. Rigger 2 needed a lot more playtesting
and consistency checking, and the layout had a lot of problems; I'm
looking forward to an official errata. The SOTA rules in the Shadowrun
Companion seldom make sense (it gets harder to set a broken arm
because the SOTA advanced in a corporate lab? people with wired reflexes
get closer to normal speed when someone invents a faster grade of cyberware?).
Cyberpirates and Rigger 2 break the skill system with Concentrations that
follow different mechanics from the General Skills they Concentrate from.
I would also like to see more details on the rest of the world-- I'm hoping
that Smuggler's Havens will fill in a few things like Siberia and Azania
and Amazonia, and with all the Japanese megacorps, I'm amazed there hasn't
been a Japan sourcebook, or one for eastern Asia.
--
%% Max Rible %% slothman@*****.com %% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "Ham is good... Glowing *tattooed* ham is *bad*!" - the Tick %%
