| From: | Twist0059@***.com Twist0059@***.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Jak Koke E-Mail (Concerning the SR Novels) |
| Date: | Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:26:07 EDT |
d.n.m.vannederveen@****.warande.ruu.nl writes:
> >So far I've had adventures concerning the Deep Resonance, Dunk's
> >assassination, the Crash of '29, the Ordo Maximus and Martin DeVries, and
> the
> >Corp War ruined because of the SR novels telling the stories the
> sourcebooks
> >set up. That's how I can say that.
>
> But if the same outcome had been put in a sourcebook, those adventures
> would have been ruined too, wouldn't they? The _resolve_ of Bug City was
> placed in a sourcebook, but could have been very different from yours. Hey,
> maybe in your campaign you were going to let someone else win the election.
> A _sourcebook_ told you who won (and was killed). If there had been no book
> (sourcebook or novel) which had told us who had killed Dunkie, most people
> would have been dissappointed. "Hey, it was a cool idea, but FASA wasn't
> creative enough to surprise us with a good solution, so they just left it
> hanging with that always easy reply: 'We decided to let everyone decide for
> themselves what happened'".
>
> VrGr David
My whole point was that I only want the sourcebooks to give us the game
information. When you have it in a sourcebook, like PoaD, you can make up
any reason you want for the assassination. In a novel, you're handed the
plain, dull facts. The sourcebooks should be advancing the plots of
Shadowrun, not the novels, since the sourcebooks specifically are left with
plot hooks and threads that the GM can weave his players through. The novels
that take from sourcebooks (DHS, Terminus Experiment, Psychotrope) directly
close GM options by forcing an absolute version of events.
Like most GMs I know, I set my timeline to always have a year lag with the
FASA year to be able to run a historically accurate campaign (to incorporate
stuff like the Bug City solution, RA:Shutdown, and PoaD). The problem is
that after those sourcebooks are released, and you merge them with your
campaign, some damn novel comes along taking the ideas that were meant for
the GMs and the players because the writer didn't come up with his own stuff.
Which, yet again, is the reason I say that if you absolutely must release a
novel that tells the story behind a sourcebook, at least release it at the
same fraggin' time. And if that's too difficult, then come up with your own
plots and leave the sourcebooks alone. The novels only exist to serve the
game, and when they get in the way there is no more use for them. Newer
books, RHDF and Forever Drug and Crossroads are at least back in the
tradition of providing stories in the Shadowrun universe. If this trend
continues (hopefully with the Josie Cruise novel), everything should be fine.
If FASA and ROC decide to put out a novel that stitches up the solution to
RA:Shutdown, we'll be right back where we started with yet another DOA novel
and a fresh corpse of an interesting adventure setting in its wake.
-Twist
"Soylent Green is people."
