| From: | Rob Hudson r_hudson2@*****.msn.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Shadowrun Novels |
| Date: | Sat, 17 Jul 1999 10:06:13 -0500 |
> It's not 2XS that caused any problems. (That was an excellent book,
wasn't
> it? House of the Sun is even better.) It's books that take away the
> RPG-intended plot threads in the sourcebooks that make trouble for GMs
> wanting to run historically accurate campaigns.
I really haven't noticed this kind of problem in my game - but them I
specifically steer away from things like the large, world-altering plots
that seem so prevalent in the novels. I simply haven't found the need to
involve my players in anything like that to keep them interested. I
occasionally refer to something that happened in one of the books as an
example of things going on around them - for example, while on a run
recently, one of the group's riggers was moving several drones across
Downtown Seattle while trailing an individual the party suspected of being
involved with the disappearance of some genius-level children from poor
backgrounds [they were being taken for illegal brain tissue transplant
research] and encountered the mass combat scenario that takes place at the
end of Michael Stackpole's 'Wolf and Raven.' He made some tough choices
[being a part-time independent news stringer as well as a self-confessed
surveillance addict] and left a drone there to see what transpired while
moving the rest on to the original target. He actually managed to get some
good footage before a Yakuza mage's fire elemental spotted the drone and
took it out - but after screening it for the group later, he decided that
too many people with little-to-no sense of humor were involved and didn't
try to market it. It actually made a nice 'B-Plot' to the regular story.
My actual problem with the novels is actually related to the way that
they're written and plotted more often than not. I agree with the general
opinion that I've seen expressed several times on the thread that the
characters and situations are occasionally too far removed from anything I'm
ever going to run to be of much use, but my real difficulty is the style
that to many of them seem to be written in. I find that I absolutely cannot
stand another Shadowrun novel where the writer sets up some big plot
originated by Dragons/Immortal Elves/Some Other Power Bloc to alter the
structure of the world - and then collapses the whole thing in the last
chapter because they aren't going to be allowed to alter the Shadowrun
Universe in that fashion. I honestly admit to skimming the books now and if
I see a *hint* of that in them - dropping them back on the shelf to be
thereafter ignored. It may be a personal thing, but frankly I'm just tired
unto death of it. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Rob Hudson
