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I didn't say there wasn't any cybernetic stuff in Neuromancer et al, just that there's plenty of both.
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Apr 13, 2013 20:04
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MRC48B posted:Was Peter Riviera's hologram stuff cyber? I can't imagine how it could possibly be bioware. I believe the projector replaced most of one of his lungs, along with a drug dispenser of some kind.
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Apr 13, 2013 21:50
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PunkBoy posted:Get rid of everything related to the Horrors as well and things will be gravy for me. They basically have, in a very hamfisted way. At least "gone" in the sense that in our natural lifetimes they will not be a threat in the SR universe barring some insanely complicated and powerful magical doings.
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Apr 13, 2013 21:50
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Martello posted:Horrors? A mix of Cthulhu and frat boy rapists that come to our world during peak mana to utterly destroy everything while getting their jollies off on us, then return home to wait for the next age of magic. They are stronger than anything else out there on the whole, and there's pretty much nothing anyone can do to meaningfully stop them. The best anyone has managed is to hide or slightly mitigate the damage. Man, dragon, god...they want to kill or corrupt you, they probably will. Lots of Shadowrun plots and novels have subtly or not so subtly hinted at their presence, or actively included them as a major element. Basically Aztlan blood magic and the Great Ghost Dance have created some truly insane mana spikes that could be used for the Horrors to come into our world early, which would....not be good. At all. They make insect spirits and sheddim look like girl scouts. This plot line largely [But not totally] died with Dunkelzhan, who scarified himself to smooth out the mana spikes and keep us on the natural timetable, the one that gives us centuries if not more to prepare. Some people like the Horrors in the setting, some people hate them, some people just don't really care.
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Apr 13, 2013 22:01
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Basically back when Shadowrun was owned by FASA there were a number of subtle and not-so-subtle crossovers between it and their fantasy RPG Earthdawn, and the official canon position is that Earthdawn was the far past of the world that would eventually become Shadowrun's Sixth World when magic came back. The Horrors were the big bads of Earthdawn and a lot of background metaplot in Shadowrun was paid to "oh no the Horrors might return" but then that all got resolved by other metaplot and novel stuff and nobody really cared so. Things like bug spirits, Dunkelzahn, immortal elves (remember them?), and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment are/were all tied into Earthdawn.
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Apr 14, 2013 00:05
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I knew about the Earthdawn stuff, especially the immortal elves (Harlequin et al) but I didn't know about the Horrors and I didn't know bug spirits and Dunkelzahn were connected to Earthdawn.
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Apr 14, 2013 03:48
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Martello posted:I knew about the Earthdawn stuff, especially the immortal elves (Harlequin et al) but I didn't know about the Horrors and I didn't know bug spirits and Dunkelzahn were connected to Earthdawn. The bug spirits were called brought up in an Earthdawn sourcebook where they were called Invae, and they were treated there as a not-all-that-apocalyptic threat if I recall correctly as opposed to in Shadowrun where it was one of the defining metaplot "holy poo poo" moments. But Earthdawn was having to deal with no-poo poo Horrors knocking on the door, so it's all relative I guess. Also in Earthdawn one of the dragons known as Mountainshadow talks about how he has this servant that works for him called Darktooth which, in German, is what "Dunkelzahn" means, and Mountainshadow has a pretty similar personality to the Big D so it's strongly implied that they're one and the same. One of the paracritter books has some shadowtalk discussing dragons and people are theorizing that instead of dying off during low points in the mana cycle dragons would just hibernate and I'm pretty sure that's the official canon answer as well, so Mountainshadow slept through the Fifth Age and woke up in the Sixth and decided to go by Dunkelzahn instead.
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Apr 14, 2013 07:40
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Can we talk for a second about Dunkelzhan? If there's any other character or aspect of the entire Shadowrun setting that better captures it's brilliant absurdity, I'm at a loss. I mean, first off the dude was  PRESIDENT DRAGON . Then he pulled a Christ on us. Sure he's tied into some heavy meta-plotting but whenever I try to explain Shadowrun he's in my second sentence. "It's a cyberpunk future where magic came back so there's elves with robot arms and poo poo. Also the president was a dragon for a while." Literally nothing about Shadowrun makes me happier than the fact that (what's left of America and Canada) elected a loving DRAGON president. I mean... did he even need Air Force One? Does anyone else feel the same way or think he was too much of a plot machine or whatever?
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Apr 14, 2013 16:37
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Nah, I love Dunkelzahn too. And this is the guy who always wants to play magic-free Shadowrun. Dunkelzahn is just so self-aware and awesome, with his incredibly complicated machinations and his absurd will and so on. Speaking of which, where can you get a copy of his will? It's not available for download as a PDF at BattleShop.
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Apr 14, 2013 16:40
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Digital Osmosis posted:Can we talk for a second about Dunkelzhan? If there's any other character or aspect of the entire Shadowrun setting that better captures it's brilliant absurdity, I'm at a loss. I mean, first off the dude was PRESIDENT DRAGON just seems natural in the hosed UCAS where casual racisms and the fear of another catastrophic magic event ARE what most of the political debate is about. "I sure want us to elect a dragon. He would prevent other countries to gently caress with us with their magic and my son is an ork so he will probably do something against discrimination in the education system."
Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Apr 14, 2013 |
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Apr 14, 2013 16:51
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Martello posted:Nah, I love Dunkelzahn too. And this is the guy who always wants to play magic-free Shadowrun. Dunkelzahn is just so self-aware and awesome, with his incredibly complicated machinations and his absurd will and so on. Speaking of which, where can you get a copy of his will? It's not available for download as a PDF at BattleShop. Here is the entire annotated will: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/bug-city-express/wikis/dunkelzahn%E2%80%99s-will
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Apr 14, 2013 16:51
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Bigass Moth posted:Here is the entire annotated will: Thanks for posting this. I never read it and it's fascinating if extremely long.
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Apr 14, 2013 19:13
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Minorities posted:Thanks for posting this. I never read it and it's fascinating if extremely long. D's will is my first piece of evidence when trying to argue against the ultra-mercenary-no-morals approach to Shadowrun.
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Apr 14, 2013 21:35
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The quintessential cyberpunk protagonist is generally amoral or a loser, and pushed by circumstances to the line of what they consider acceptable. Finding that line, they rebel and try to make a difference. The degree to which they do in the end is up for grabs, but the entire *point* is that it's cyberpunk, not cyber loving outsourcing. If you are selling out to the oppressive status quo that keeps everyone down for a living and are fine with that, you aren't the protagonist. You are the guy the protagonist kills. Everyone has to pay the bills, but eventually you have to look yourself in the mirrorshades too.
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Apr 14, 2013 22:40
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I'll admit that while I'm sure it seemed like a good idea on paper, I'm still a little peeved that metaplot demanded that Dunkelzahn sacrifice himself before he could take office. The whole election thing was neat what with people actually sending in votes to FASA (not that there was much of a chance they were going to chose anybody else because hey, President motherfucking Dragon) and Dunkelzahn was one of the Earthdawn holdovers that wasn't actually annoying as hell (Harlequin)...and then they go ahead and
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Apr 15, 2013 00:51
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Kai Tave posted:The whole election thing was neat what with people actually sending in votes to FASA (not that there was much of a chance they were going to chose anybody else because hey, President motherfucking Dragon) We should be all thankful there was no 4chan back then, or we would've faced the reign of President Slamm-O!.
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Apr 15, 2013 01:21
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Kai Tave posted:I'm still a little peeved that metaplot demanded that Dunkelzahn sacrifice himself before he could take office.
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Apr 15, 2013 01:23
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404GoonNotFound posted:We should be all thankful there was no 4chan back then, or we would've faced the reign of President Slamm-O!. It wasn't a literal write-in candidate system, there were...I think six choices? One of which was Dunkelzahn, four of which were people nobody cared about, and one of which was Kenneth Brackhaven. So if 4chan had existed then it would have probably been President Brackhaven of the Totally-Not-Humanis-Policlub-We-Swear Party.
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Apr 15, 2013 01:35
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I would really love to get in to this game. I played the poo poo out of the SNES game (Before I even knew there was any other version) but this game looks pretty overwhelming to get in to. I have little to no experience with pen & paper RPG's and in my girlfriend's words "Shadowrun is complicated as gently caress!" I am trying to find people at my local game store that are in to this game, but so far everyone only seems to be in to D&D, but I imagine there has to be a few people that frequent the store that are in to it.
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Apr 15, 2013 01:36
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Didn't they admit somewhere that the mail in voting campaign was a failure? They got something like 10 votes in total.
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Apr 15, 2013 02:09
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Boogaleeboo posted:The quintessential cyberpunk protagonist is generally amoral or a loser, and pushed by circumstances to the line of what they consider acceptable. Finding that line, they rebel and try to make a difference. The degree to which they do in the end is up for grabs, but the entire *point* is that it's cyberpunk, not cyber loving outsourcing. If you are selling out to the oppressive status quo that keeps everyone down for a living and are fine with that, you aren't the protagonist. You are the guy the protagonist kills. I agree with pretty much all of this, and it's really my biggest disappointment with SR4 - not the rules, as hilariously weird as they can be (see: grenades and rockets) but that the overall feel of the game has changed. At the risk of sounding like that guy, it sold out. Not the game, mind you. But the Runners themselves. It's all very organized and professional and, well...it's all very corporate now.
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Apr 15, 2013 02:36
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ProfessorCirno posted:I agree with pretty much all of this, and it's really my biggest disappointment with SR4 - not the rules, as hilariously weird as they can be (see: grenades and rockets) but that the overall feel of the game has changed. At the risk of sounding like that guy, it sold out. Not the game, mind you. But the Runners themselves. It's all very organized and professional and, well...it's all very corporate now. No, the game itself sold out as well when they started making it possible to have anime cat girls and AI as player characters. I'm all for expanding to new audiences, but for about a decade there Shadowrun had no vision of where it should be taken (and a couple of truly awful line developers between the mid 90s-today.) The game system can be as pro or street as you want it to be.
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Apr 15, 2013 03:07
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I have no quarrel with the idea of furries being caught in the acid rain or runners being solicited to extract the mother of a three-eyed Elf before she's burned at the stake for violation of Tir racial purity law, but all of the bright and shiny poo poo can just gently caress right off. Technomancers are okay. Not good, just okay. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Apr 15, 2013 |
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Apr 15, 2013 06:10
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In my games of Shadowrun, it usually came down to one of two things. "We do bad things to Worse people, because hopefully the next person will be 1% less bad." -- Usually started when they got the attention of a gang (well usually they piss off a gang, who then tries to get revenge, gets the poo poo blown out of them and keeps coming back bigger and badder, only to get blown the poo poo out of them again (like a bloody gang version of Team Rocket from that anime, y'know?). In between dealing with the latest "Oh we pissed off a gang and they want us dead? Haul out the Panzer Assault Cannon and the modified truck.. we're going Halloweener hunting" (Complete with Elmer Fudd laugh), they do bad things to corps who deserve them. (usually just for being corps) And then there's the other type. The type where I end up at the end of the game looking at the plot and going "Wha happened?".. for example, they were hired to raid the digital storage of one of the Hollywood film studios.. It seems one of their chicas was on the verge of being extracted and didn't want her latest movie going out before it did the same thing to her career that the Iceberg did to the Titanic.).. Now, grim professionals would extract the file and nothing else. Mercenaries might take a couple of the newer movies and offer their friends special preorder copies, or shop it to other studios to make knock offs of it before release.. Oh no, not my group. They went in, interfaced with this massive machine (since of course, it was isolated from the Matrix for just this reason), and replaced their entire collection (worth tens of millions of nuyen, very hard to replace for collector's editions and the like, you know, the ORIGINAL footage) with Troll on Dwarf pornography and an old 2d TV show one of the characters liked (Benny Hill), making sure it would be copied out to all the backup sites and overwrite their copies. They then left.. um.. let's say.. personal souvenirs, fresh and steaming from all of them in the CEO's office. Mission accomplished, mind you. Completely professional. They did the equivalent of a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.. and then at the last minute they attach the scalpel to a power drill and start swinging it wildly.
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Apr 15, 2013 08:05
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ErichZahn posted:I have no quarrel with the idea of furries being caught in the acid rain or runners being solicited to extract the mother of a three-eyed Elf before she's burned at the stake for violation of Tir racial purity law, but all of the bright and shiny poo poo can just gently caress right off. I honestly don't understand this attitude. It's not just you, a few other people are saying pretty much the same thing. The heart of cyberpunk may be in the streets, in a hacker bar, in an abandoned warehouse full of drones in the Rust Belt. But there was always the "bright and shiny" overworld above all that. And really, that's what the stories always ended up being about. The dirty street scum protagonists were always fighting against the bright and shiny corporate fucks with their orbital resorts (Straylight Villa), finding esoteric art for a life-supported ultra-rich bastard (Josef Virek), and so on. The idea of shadowrunners and their quintessential run, the extraction, is straight out of Count Zero with Turner and his extraction of the Maas Neotek scientist in Arizona. Turner is literally called a "street samurai" in the book. Shadowrun started out as "The Sprawl Trilogy, but with elves and dragons," and thank God it's moving beyond that. Some of the new stuff is just catching up with the Sprawl Trilogy anyway. Technomancers are just Angie Mitchell but organically "emerged," AIs of all stripes were already in all three books, and the Bridgelight Trilogy introduced all the weird Japanese anime-world poo poo, as well as that awesome Victorinox Memory Blade. Don't get me wrong - I loving love the Sprawl Trilogy and I love street-level Shadowrun. I'm running a PbP street campaign right now. But cyberpunk or postcyberpunk or whatever it is now doesn't always have to be acid rain, low-light sets, chrome-plated arms (never something you see in Gibson's work anyway), downtrodden hackers robbing corporate databases and former prostitutes with razors in their fingers. Sometimes it can be rockstar-famous smugglers making hovertank runs across the US (Hardwired) human/AI hybrids possessing Orbital tyrants to try to change the world (solipSystem), government black ops units making unsanctioned hits on corrupt officials (Ghost in the Shell: SAC), and the list goes on. I guess what I'm saying is that if you want to make a gritty street-level campaign where your runners constantly struggle against the iron corporate boot, failing more than succeeding, that's fine. But the game also allows for campaigns where your runners have the talent and rep to make orbital extraction runs on tiny Renraku research satellites hidden behind the orbit of a larger Ares habitat, or run security for Japanese idoru traveling the Grand Tour and hob-nobbing with European royalty and Western celebrities. And that's what makes Shadowrun such a great game - you can do whatever the gently caress you want with it. The Sixth World is huge and you can play anywhere you want in it, from the Redmond Barrens to feral Genoa to corp-controlled Neo-Tokyo to Earth's orbit. There are no classes, just archetypes, and if you want to make a pacifist Qabbalist mystic who only uses his golems in self-defense and quotes platitudes from the Torah at his fellow runners all day, you can do it. Just don't expect him to survive very long. e: also, Technomancers are a cool concept (always wanted to see Angie Mitchell-types in Shadowrun) but they need some tweaking to make more viable, and I really wish they came up with a less stupid term for them. The whole whatevermancy thing really gets on my nerves. While it's a mouthful, Virtuakinetic sounds better and makes more sense.
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Apr 15, 2013 16:18
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I maintain the best way to go about doing things is to once more split mages into hermetic and shaman - or "spellslingers" and "summoners" likewise, where both come pre-specialized but can still do the other if not as well - and then make hackers largely work the same. Deckers are your hermetic mages - they have their preset list of programs and they use those programs to turn not just the Matrix, but anywhere the Matrix and the real world interacts with each other, into their own personal playground.
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Apr 15, 2013 16:46
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So SR4 is supposed to look like that awful future predicted by consumer optimism and TED Talks? Huh.
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Apr 15, 2013 17:21
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ErichZahn posted:So SR4 is supposed to look like that awful future predicted by consumer optimism and TED Talks? But if you're obscenely rich then everything will be just fine! 
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Apr 15, 2013 17:32
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Did somebody say Cyberpunk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dofacvjRkc
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Apr 16, 2013 03:27
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Hey, I've got a weird question. Eidetic Sense Memory, the adept power, vs laes, the amnesia drug, what happens? Or the spell Edit Memory. Or the brainwashing machine from Heck, what about booze? Can't drink to forget, right? I think it's a cool power, but it definitely seems like one that will profoundly affect you, make you a little off. I bet I can get it to pay for itself and then some with all kinds of disadvantages "because the memory of [traumatic event] will never really fade." I think I just depressed myself  You'd think the whole photo reading thing would make them advance a lot faster, skills wise, especially in the more nerdy pursuits, like hacking, medicine, or demolitions, even if it doesn't extend to things that require muscle memory. Would it extend to those? Umm... You know, if I combined it with, uh... Three Dimensional Memory, Divination, and maybe Psychometry, I'd have the Kwisatz Haderach... The Psyche must flow? Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Apr 16, 2013 |
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Apr 16, 2013 20:22
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Rockopolis posted:I think it's a cool power, but it definitely seems like one that will profoundly affect you, make you a little off. No idea how the interaction would work in game. It's possible however to perfectly recall a situation without the emotional baggage. There have been drug trials for a few years in the real world, I forgot the name of the medicine, but basically the idea is to dissociate the emotional / physical response from the tramua with the memory of the event itself. So a PTSD sufferer would be asked to remember a battle or whatnot, then given the drug. He would remember the battle but not feel the physical and emotional effects of his anxiety - a few more runs of this and he has completly dissociated the memory of the event from the tramua of the event, without getting rid of the intial memory. This is something we can do in real life. As for the second bit quoted, that's getting close to a really fun archetype, the mental adept. Throw in a bunch of levels of "Analytics," maybe "Mind over Matter" so you can shoot and sneak with Logic instead of Agility, boost Logic with Keen Wits from Way of the Adept, maybe toss in Cerebral Boosters, PuSHeD, or cerebral Nanoware, and you get a super-genius who's not useless in a fight and can default crazy high on technical skills (buy one rank in the ones you can't default on.)
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Apr 16, 2013 20:57
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Somebody start a 400BP game please, so that I get to play this character:code:
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Apr 16, 2013 21:14
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Digital Osmosis posted:No idea how the interaction would work in game. It's possible however to perfectly recall a situation without the emotional baggage. There have been drug trials for a few years in the real world, I forgot the name of the medicine, but basically the idea is to dissociate the emotional / physical response from the tramua with the memory of the event itself. So a PTSD sufferer would be asked to remember a battle or whatnot, then given the drug. He would remember the battle but not feel the physical and emotional effects of his anxiety - a few more runs of this and he has completly dissociated the memory of the event from the tramua of the event, without getting rid of the intial memory. This is something we can do in real life. I suppose I can try to say "I can't forget, but I can try to gain perspective."  Then make them an elf.I suppose I should grab Way of the Adept sometime. I heard it wasn't very good, though. I have tried my hand at creating Mentat characters before. I think I managed to get a starting or near starting character, a mildly borged Pixie, up to 15 Logic (after some drugs). I had a whole secret And again...I it's got to be a real challenge to roleplay someone who's so...smart. That's Great Dragon levels of Logic, isn't it? Even your 'relatively wimpy' 11 Logic (without Psyche) kinda boggles the (normal, dull) mind. Still, "Ever hear of Fastjack? Damien Knight? Ehran the Scribe? Morons." EDIT: Maybe a life of crime isn't the greatest idea for someone who has a shred of conscience and can't forget anything...and you really want drive home a grimdark Shadowrun setting, you make them a poor SINless person who's only shot at survival is Shadowrunning. ...I'm not sure the character I'm working on is fit for the campaign I'm trying to join. Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 00:01
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Rockopolis posted:That's fascinating, and hopeful, if a little worrying. If for no other reason than it sounds like something from Metal Gear Solid 4. I know, it sounds like pure science fiction. I heard about it back in the day on an episode of Radiolab but have read a couple of other articles about it. I think this wired article talks about it - I believe the drug from the episode was Propanolol but they say MDMA (ecstasy) works even better, because it gives you an insane high to associate with those memories instead. And as for your other bit, Shadowrunn can be grimdark but not every runner needs to be in it because they don't have any other choice. Most mages could sell out to a corporation in a heartbeat, for example. Maybe your super-genius is just really easily bored. That's basically why Sherlock Holmes lives the absurd, adventurous lifestyle he does.
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Apr 17, 2013 00:55
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Remember, before 4e made them into ~*~cool professionals~*~ only in it for the money, Runners were people who simply could not live a normal corporate lifestyle. Oh, they often had the skills to do it, but they were people who took being SINless and actively chose to remain that way. It ain't about the money. Maybe you just can't live in a cubical. Maybe you can't handle some pencil necked paper pusher telling you what to do. Maybe the hierarchy just makes you sick. Maybe Running is something you do on the side to fund your other, far more illegal activities, be it actual crime, or being an eco-terrorist. Or maybe the whole corporate everything makes you angry, and Running is a semi-legitimate way to shove your foot up every corporate rear end in a top hat you can. The end point was that Runners were not normal people. And the don't want a normal life. So, alternately, maybe a life of crime is the only idea for someone who has a shred of conscience and can't forget anything. You've seen what those CEO motherfuckers have done to the planet, you see what they've done to the streets, and you've seen the vacant and soulless faces of misery on every person you pass by, human or troll. You can't work for them. All you can do is take jobs that hurt them, and hope it hurts them hard.
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Apr 17, 2013 01:48
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Fascinating, and as usual these days, terrifying article, especially if you consider this in terms of the uber-amoral cyberpunk future. Sounds like something Horizon would specialize in, if I didn't remember them as being too nice for this sort of thing. I keep meaning to read through the Nootropics thread over in TCC, I bet it's full of stuff like this. I'm always freaked out by this sort of thing anyway, despite seemingly everyone in Shadowrun being  . "It's not drugs, it's practically medicine! Psyche helps me think better!"Speaking of creepy, your avatar is...  I didn't really think of it in terms of Sherlock Holmes being bored. That's almost as alien to me as being a super genius with perfect recall. ProfessorCirno posted:Remember, before 4e made them into ~*~cool professionals~*~ only in it for the money, Runners were people who simply could not live a normal corporate lifestyle. Oh, they often had the skills to do it, but they were people who took being SINless and actively chose to remain that way. It ain't about the money. Maybe you just can't live in a cubical. Maybe you can't handle some pencil necked paper pusher telling you what to do. Maybe the hierarchy just makes you sick. Maybe Running is something you do on the side to fund your other, far more illegal activities, be it actual crime, or being an eco-terrorist. Or maybe the whole corporate everything makes you angry, and Running is a semi-legitimate way to shove your foot up every corporate rear end in a top hat you can. The end point was that Runners were not normal people. And the don't want a normal life. For me, the marginally less(?) depressing outlook for that is...You're doing all those awful things, for the money, for the power, in the hopes that you will one day be strong enough to change the world. And hey, maybe the Eidetic Sense Memory can keep you from forgetting why you did all those awful things to reach the top. "Never deal with a Dragon? Hah. Chummer, every day is another deal..." I think I may be burning out on Shadowrun again...it seems that every time I try to think of backstories, motivations, whatever, not just "Blank McShadowruner" all I can come up with is .The optimization doesn't really seem to do it for me anymore, either, and when all your backstory points to "Doomed Crusade"... (then again, I suppose if I were better at character optimization, it wouldn't be quite so doomed) Speaking of doomed crusades, I was thinking about throwing in Dryad on top of everything else.
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Apr 17, 2013 02:11
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Rockopolis posted:Fascinating, and as usual these days, terrifying article, especially if you consider this in terms of the uber-amoral cyberpunk future. Sounds like something Horizon would specialize in, if I didn't remember them as being too nice for this sort of thing. Oh, no no no. Horizon makes every effort to look too nice for this sort of thing. From what I remember, that's really their big MO - they're the "good guys" with the quiet, backdoor plan to take over. I forget what it was exactly, but there was something in SR4 about Horizon having some skeletons in the closet that make the other AAAs look outright sane and adjusted. Renraku's elite squad is made of the best trained agents in combat and security they could find, in the best armor money can buy. Horizon's elite squad is made of social adepts. quote:Argh, why can't I be that...eloquent? I don't think my even my thoughts ever come out that clearly, let alone speaking or writing. At the end of the day, you could just make something rather simple and even potentially two dimensional. Like a literal bomb throwing anarchist/hacker with a cyber arm, a chip on his shoulder, and lots of optimism for the future. And the cyberarm that's covered in super 80's neon lights. That spell "This machine kills fascists." "Every time I screw over a corp in any way, I know I'm doing something right." ( Cirno talks about characters he wants to play dot txt ) Really the key is GM communication. Legitimately talk to your GM and say you'd like the chance in game to legitimately do good things or make the setting better even if just in small ways. As an adept this is a big easier, as adepts and mages are somewhat more inclined to hooding and using the nuyen to buy karma by donating it to the people or something similar.
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Apr 17, 2013 02:52
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ProfessorCirno posted:Really the key is GM communication. Legitimately talk to your GM and say you'd like the chance in game to legitimately do good things or make the setting better even if just in small ways. As an adept this is a big easier, as adepts and mages are somewhat more inclined to hooding and using the nuyen to buy karma by donating it to the people or something similar.
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Apr 17, 2013 03:31
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ProfessorCirno posted:but there was something in SR4 about Horizon having some skeletons in the closet that make the other AAAs look outright sane and adjusted. Beyond all the poo poo that's just generally implied [Is their boss even a person, are they run by some sort of AI, are they trying to mind-control everyone, blah blah blah], it's almost flat out stated that they knew that Winternight was going to pull some poo poo and capitalized on it to get power. Further that the only reason that they got AAA status is they managed to recover information in the Crash they are using to blackmail the other megas with. And of course it's also known they experimented on Technos and otherwise exploited their misery to try and get them to join up with Horizon. And a bunch of other poo poo here and there. They are scum, same as any other Corp, and with less of a reason to exist. Seriously, a loving PR corp? Nobody cares what regular people think, they'll do what they are told or die. The entire purpose of the Dawkins Group [The worst name for the worst secret corporate strike group ever. Jesus. Guys who hunt memeplexes? That does not gird the loins and make one charged for conflict] just doesn't apply in the world of Shadowrun. Vast swaths of the population are in corporate enclaves and will never even *see* your PR in the first place. People outside it are largely second class at best, and their opinion doesn't mean poo poo. The people that do matter can as easily be swayed with a bribe or the use of a hooker and a spy cam. It's like bringing one of those 14,000 dollar hunting shotguns to a gang brawl. It's out of place and not very effective. The ultimate sign of this is that, as always, Aztechnology managed to make themselves look like the good guys practically instantly when it counted. It was Aztechnology versus a PR corp in a battle for public opinion and Aztechnology managed to come out looking like the good guys. If you can't make Aztechnology look bad, what is the point of your existence? They literally worship eldritch horrors that want to lay waste to the Earth! HOW THE gently caress CAN YOU FAIL TO MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE THE BAD GUYS?!
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Apr 17, 2013 04:09
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Rockopolis posted:Eidetic Sense Memory, the adept power, vs laes, the amnesia drug, what happens? Or the spell Edit Memory. Or the brainwashing machine from, Heck, what about booze? Can't drink to forget, right? quote:Legitimately talk to your GM and say you'd like the chance in game to legitimately do good things or make the setting better even if just in small ways. More GM need to break away from this kind of setting and try out other possibility like being in the Knight Errant special squad that saves lives, PR, and do good things. Sure, even the "good guys" have their own shade of darkness, but at least provide players the option to be able to change the world even in a small ways through their actions. Like get the current corrupt Knight Errant CEO fired and replace a better one, etc. Nyaa fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Apr 17, 2013 |
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Apr 17, 2013 04:40
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