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Poil posted:Amazon turned down a lollipop? Foreshadowing for the fact that we were the real villain all along. TheMcD posted:I think there's a couple of bits and pieces that also point towards the "Sam's liver came from his mother" connection, though it might not be noticeable if you don't know about it already. The one I remember is this one: That's true, I just feel like the whole thing is presented a little too suddenly and confidently by the player character. Like they had already been given the definite solution to the whole puzzle while the player was merely handed the last remaining pieces. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jul 27, 2017 |
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Jul 27, 2017 19:39
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Just caught up to the lp, wanted to drop in and say that I'm greatly enjoying it! It also reminded me that I got this game right at launch, and it's been sitting in my steam library with like an hour of play time ever since.
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Jul 28, 2017 20:14
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I wonder how this campaign would play out in pen and paper. Mostly mechanically because I am a terrible player.
Poil fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jul 28, 2017 |
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Jul 28, 2017 20:47
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Poil posted:I wonder how this campaign would play out in pen and paper. Mostly mechanically because I am a terrible player. I expect the aircraft hanger would be a crater, and the hospital would be %70 demolished.
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Jul 28, 2017 23:16
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Groetgaffel posted:Just caught up to the lp, wanted to drop in and say that I'm greatly enjoying it! Every now and then I definitely find myself feeling like someone more competent and entertaining should probably be doing this, so that means a lot. Welcome! And I can easily see this game getting stuck in that "I'll get around to that properly at some point" -limbo that's particularly popular with RPGs and other longer games.
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Jul 29, 2017 00:45
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Yeah, given how astral echoes work I wonder how all of Seattle hasn't already turned itself into a festering pit of murder-spite.
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Jul 29, 2017 04:29
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Kanfy posted:Every now and then I definitely find myself feeling like someone more competent and entertaining should probably be doing this, so that means a lot. Welcome! oh, you're doing a great job, really enjoying your breezy style. I never finished this, got to the last few rooms and dropped it for dragon fall, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I missed.
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Jul 29, 2017 12:23
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sebmojo posted:I never finished this, got to the last few rooms and dropped it for dragon fall, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I missed.
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Jul 29, 2017 13:42
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Glazius posted:Yeah, given how astral echoes work I wonder how all of Seattle hasn't already turned itself into a festering pit of murder-spite. ...yeah, about that
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Jul 29, 2017 20:58
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Glazius posted:Yeah, given how astral echoes work I wonder how all of Seattle hasn't already turned itself into a festering pit of murder-spite. If I remember correctly there are hints in the setting that the world has so much negative energy swirling around that existence is almost certainly doomed once ambient magic levels get high enough to allow in the horrors from deeper metaplanes. Though this was back when Shadowrun and Earthdawn were more closely connected (and owned by the same company).
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Jul 29, 2017 21:24
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Glazius posted:Yeah, given how astral echoes work I wonder how all of Seattle hasn't already turned itself into a festering pit of murder-spite. "Turned itself into?"
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Jul 29, 2017 21:28
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I dont know posted:If I remember correctly there are hints in the setting that the world has so much negative energy swirling around that existence is almost certainly doomed once ambient magic levels get high enough to allow in the horrors from deeper metaplanes. Though this was back when Shadowrun and Earthdawn were more closely connected (and owned by the same company).
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Jul 29, 2017 22:14
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Shadowrun would be much better as a straight cyberpunk setting, with mutation induced races and some future techno magic. The ridiculous mythos behind everything does nothing but undermine the core aesthetic and make the game more tedious. And I think this very game will illustrate my point for me in the upcoming updates.
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Jul 29, 2017 22:20
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steinrokkan posted:Shadowrun would be much better as a straight cyberpunk setting, with mutation induced races and some future techno magic. The ridiculous mythos behind everything does nothing but undermine the core aesthetic and make the game more tedious. And I think this very game will illustrate my point for me in the upcoming updates. Then it would be more or less Gamma World. So no. Shadowrun wouldn't be it's unique little niche without those "ridiculous" mythos.
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Jul 29, 2017 22:46
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I've never heard of Gamma World, so as far as I'm concerned, Shadowrun would still be Shadowrun without the terrible fantasy ballast dragging it down.
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Jul 29, 2017 22:49
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The cyberpunk/fantasy setting is really unique though. I'm counting on Cyberpunk 2077 to get me my 'pure' cyberpunk fix, whenever that comes out.
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Jul 29, 2017 22:53
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steinrokkan posted:Shadowrun would be much better as a straight cyberpunk setting, with mutation induced races and some future techno magic. The ridiculous mythos behind everything does nothing but undermine the core aesthetic and make the game more tedious. And I think this very game will illustrate my point for me in the upcoming updates. I sort of agree with you but I also like the stupid mashup that is Shadowrun. I do think that it's generally better when the fantasy elements are more low key.
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Jul 29, 2017 23:14
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The next two games completely annihilate that thesis. We've already got cyberpunk stuff out there; Shadowrun only exists in the first place for the express purpose of being both things at once.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:39
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The immortals from the last age of magic metaplot annoys me, but the general fantasy-cyberpunk mishmash is cool, and they're mainly just annoying for the Mary Sue elfwank thing rather than the fantasy aspects.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:42
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Magic works when it's part of the punk architecture that the rest of the story is subject to; what doesn't work so well is when magic is used to ignore those conceits. Stuff like megacorps researching new spells, or trying to figure out why elves live so long so they can apply it to humans is cool. Shannon using magic to investigate what the gently caress is going on to point the way to the correct target is cool. Hell, even stuff like the magically returned races getting hosed over by institutional and cultural racism is, from a punk storytelling standpoint, cool. I think it's Dragonfall that first addresses the idea that even elves, despite ostensibly being the super awesome Mary-sue race that's loved by everyone, wind up getting stalked by weirdos who want to be them, because the cultures they live in don't value them as people, just eye candy.
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Jul 30, 2017 00:52
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I think they are specifically complaining about the connection to a setting called earth dawn, which is dumb. Basically when to much magic comes back, things called Horrors arrive from another dimension and kill everyone, Cthulhu Style. To survive the people of earth need to build magical fallout shelters and seal themselves underground in ritually protected domes before the the Stars are Right and Not-Cthulhu kills everyone. The dragons know this is going to happen as they were around for last time. Yeah, the entire setting is secretly Faux Cthulhu Mythos via one of the dumbest 90s metaplots/setting cross overs. It is aggressively dumb as it has literally nothing to do with the themes of the rest of the setting. Edit: now the two properties are owned by difference companies this has mostly been thrown overboard Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jul 30, 2017 |
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Jul 30, 2017 01:36
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Even that works to a degree, specifically if you use it as a global warming analogy (because of course the megcorps are going to do something to aggravate the situation by researching too recklessly), but it needs to be treated as an avertable catastrophe so that the plucky band of misfits can set things right by blowing up the right suit for a proper punk ending. It being an inevitable thing does gently caress the setting though, because if everyone's going to die anyway then there's not much point to resisting the rampant excesses of power-mad capitalists. In fact, one of these games does an excellent job of doing exactly that, but even that might be too much of a spoiler, so I'll delete this line if someone asks me to.
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Jul 30, 2017 02:17
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Keeshhound posted:Even that works to a degree, specifically if you use it as a global warming analogy (because of course the megcorps are going to do something to aggravate the situation by researching too recklessly), but it needs to be treated as an avertable catastrophe so that the plucky band of misfits can set things right by blowing up the right suit for a proper punk ending. It being an inevitable thing does gently caress the setting though, because if everyone's going to die anyway then there's not much point to resisting the rampant excesses of power-mad capitalists. Technology has never been this advanced before, nor populations this large. It's just possible that metahumanity might be able to deal with the emergent Horrors by shooting them right in the face.
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Jul 30, 2017 02:49
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The Lone Badger posted:Technology has never been this advanced before, nor populations this large. It's just possible that metahumanity might be able to deal with the emergent Horrors by shooting them right in the face. I'm not imagining the horrors emerging... And being locked in some megacorp's basement as a power source. Yes, it gives the workers mega-cancer and makes the whole city have nightmares, but it ups efficiency .3%!
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Jul 30, 2017 03:13
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chiasaur11 posted:I'm not imagining the horrors emerging... That seems very much in line with the setting.
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Jul 30, 2017 03:49
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The Lone Badger posted:Technology has never been this advanced before, nor populations this large. It's just possible that metahumanity might be able to deal with the emergent Horrors by shooting them right in the face. That's more or less what I was trying to say; you can have eldritch horror in a punk setting as long as the eldritch horrors are a subservient horror to the monstrosity of people being commodified by imbalanced systems. In lovecraft, people get sacrificed by cultists who are so broken by existential horror that they can only think to accelerate the apocalypse to minimize their own suffering. In punk, people get sacrificed because capitalism already calculated that a human life is worth $70,563.448, and the horror is willing to beat that price.
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Jul 30, 2017 03:58
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Groetgaffel posted:I don't know anything about Shadowrun beyond what's been said in this thread, but this makes it sound like it's counting down to the Warp from 40k. Kinda like if the influence of the Warp ebbed and flowed cyclically between "none" and "that one scene from Event Horizon".
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Jul 30, 2017 04:40
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Also "Can metahumanity in the 6th age beat the horrors?" was one of the longest running, most tedious nerdwank discussion topics on the old Dumpshock forums, which is saying something given what that place was like.
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Jul 30, 2017 04:42
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chiasaur11 posted:I'm not imagining the horrors emerging... GunnerJ posted:Kinda like if the influence of the Warp ebbed and flowed cyclically between "none" and "that one scene from Event Horizon".
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Jul 30, 2017 04:55
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I dont know posted:If I remember correctly there are hints in the setting that the world has so much negative energy swirling around that existence is almost certainly doomed once ambient magic levels get high enough to allow in the horrors from deeper metaplanes. Though this was back when Shadowrun and Earthdawn were more closely connected (and owned by the same company). steinrokkan posted:Shadowrun would be much better as a straight cyberpunk setting, with mutation induced races and some future techno magic. The ridiculous mythos behind everything does nothing but undermine the core aesthetic and make the game more tedious. And I think this very game will illustrate my point for me in the upcoming updates. Cthulhu Dreams posted:I think they are specifically complaining about the connection to a setting called earth dawn, which is dumb. I mean, since I've been reading setting and background books from 3rd Ed on, I never saw much of it. I wouldn't even know about it except for discussions of the deep metaplot things that obsessive Shadowrun fans who had been playing since 1st Ed and were more familiar with the Earthdawn link kept bringing up when I did my first deep dive into SR lore and history on forums and wikis and stuff like that. Things like the Immortal Elves and Harlequin and all that fantasy weirdness that didn't merge all that well with the cyberpunk setting more so than the standard fantasy stuff that fit decently well. The Great Dragons were kinda involved too, apparently but only as an aside in the deep background while also trying to grow their hoards and accumulating power and wealth and influence and all that kind of stereotypical dragon stuff. The only lore things I remember connected to it in the later SR metaplot stuff were some of the in story really out there rumors around Dunkelzhan's assassination (I don't think the reasons for that ever truly came out in the wider Shadow community in universe, except to the aforementioned Immortal Elves and people connected to them), stuff regarding blood and toxic spirits (and the poo poo that Aztechology gets for employing shamans that utilize them), and the whole Insect spirit plot, which is more important metaplot wise, to my understanding. Important enough to keep getting mentions in later editions, along with the toxic spirit stuff (because gently caress Aztechnology). Also in this game, and I assume we're gonna get a ton of effortposts from Shadowrun regulars in this thread, myself included, when the plot comes due regarding them here. Maybe shedim too, I forget if they're connected to the horrors. So yeah, they aren't really mentioned nowadays except in the really loving deep metaplot, if at all, and when they do show up, their connection is only hinted at wrt the more pressing plot stuff that they might be involved with regarding the everyday lives of runners and the corps. Even in the higher global levels of the metaplot, involving big name runners and Corp warfare and politics and things like the Dragon civil war, they never really get mentioned. They can pretty much be ignored by the current editions, unless the current devs decide to bring them back up again, which is really loving unlikely, since again, Earthdawn is pretty much dead and Catalyst likely doesn't own the rights to it. The merger of fantasy and cyberpunk is what makes Shadowrun unique, and while the deep metaplot thing regarding horrors is dumb, wholesale removing the fantasy side makes it not Shadowrun anymore. Sure, I was originally into SR for the cyberpunk side, which is how my friend introduced it to me in high school, but he also said that the fantasy side was an integral part of it as well, and having gotten quite a bit more familiar with the setting, I'm inclined to agree with him. The Immortal Elf stuff is dumb though, and I'm glad they don't show up as often anymore, though I guess I haven't kept up on the Tir Tangire Council of Princes drama things that seemed to involve them in 4th. The Great Dragons work decently well as background setting, they just do dragon things and seem to fit well into the corporate (or organized crime syndicate) head role, while having their own mysterious magical related motivations that never really come to the fore.
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Jul 30, 2017 05:03
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Who would have guessed that there is an aspect of a setting that can be either good or bad depending on how it's handled?
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Jul 30, 2017 09:03
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Tir Tairngire had a revolution, because the immortals who used it as a puppet state kept being dicks until everybody got sick and tired of their poo poo and threw the bums out. It's still a stratified nation where Elves are more equal than others, but at least there's something like a functioning democracy there now.
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Jul 30, 2017 09:30
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wiegieman posted:Tir Tairngire had a revolution, because the immortals who used it as a puppet state kept being dicks until everybody got sick and tired of their poo poo and threw the bums out. It's still a stratified nation where Elves are more equal than others, but at least there's something like a functioning democracy there now. Isn't the current (elected) High Prince in the Tir a dwarf now? He was like the token dwarf on the old Council of Princes (all the rest were Immortal Elves or their regular elf lackeys; plus a Great Dragon, I want to say Hestaby, who lairs at Mount Shasta and Crater Lake and has claimed that area as her personal domain, and turned back a Tir military force that was attacking CalFree for territory when California was kicked out of the nascent UCAS, then joined the Council to see her own interests done; plus like a Sasquatch or something like that, some weird sentient magical creature), and one of the people who led said revolution when the poo poo got too heavy. The Tir renamed all of the major cities in their territory into something in Sperethial, the special snowflake rediscovered elf language, right? I remember Portland is now Cara'sir or something like that. I remember my first Shadowrun character was an elf whose non runner day job was a Tir border guard. Paid pretty well and gave me free reloads and grenades for runs, within reason, since I could write that off as having fired at border crossers or smugglers or whatever. The Tir Special Forces, I want to say they're called Ghosts, are supposed to be some of the most elite non-Corp forces too. At least Tir Tairngire is doing better than what Ireland became. Oregon always struck me as a bit strange to be an elf homeland, what is now known as Tir na Nog at least has some mythical basis. I think there's a human supremacist terrorist group called the Knights of the Red Branch who are made up of American Irish and those of Irish descent in the diaspora and in exile who want to retake the island for the Irish and kick out the damned elves. I think the IRA was either folded into them or formed the basis of said group. Doesn't help that I think the elves in charge of the Tir there poo poo on both Protestants and Catholics after they took power. The countryside is also hosed up, as magic went wild when it returned there, all of a sudden sprouting magical forests all over the island over old ley lines or whatever, like what happened on Britain as well. Druids were supposed to have taken over religion wise, which always struck me as way too stereotypical fantasy poo poo.
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Jul 30, 2017 10:35
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The high prince is an Ork, actually. Turns out that when you have a general election the guys who continually screwed everybody out of the right to vote won't win. Just keep in mind that there was a lot of ridiculous timelines and authorial contortion to make both Tirs work, mostly to try to do metaplot nonsense with Earthdawn because that was the new hotness at the time. That's been out the window for a while, so reality, or at least verisimilitude, has set in -- like, how does loving Oregon have ultrasecure borders and feared covert death squads, when at the time it was reformed into a separate nation it had a core population with a median age of 20? They don't, unless you're going out of your way to make them writer's pets, so we got the inevitable result of a small group of magically powerful people trying to lord over a nation they had sold to the world (and their immigrant underclass) as a place where anyone could succeed regardless of their metatype.
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Jul 30, 2017 19:17
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GhostStalker posted:Isn't the current (elected) High Prince in the Tir a dwarf now? I wanna say it's an Orc. Which would be even more amusing. edit: doh, should have read the previous post first 
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Jul 30, 2017 22:49
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wiegieman posted:The high prince is an Ork, actually. Turns out that when you have a general election the guys who continually screwed everybody out of the right to vote won't win. So is he like one of the most powerful/influential Orks on the planet now, at least nominally? Or is he just a puppet elected official like most political leaders in Shadowrun tend to be? Others I would count as important are Gary Cline, the former movie star and nominal CEO of Horizon; that Ork CEO of Evo, Yuri Shiki(something or other), whose Goblinization prompted his dad, the previous CEO of what was once called Yamametsu, to move the megacorp's HQ from Japan to Vladivostok (which I think is it's own corporate enclave after Russia lost Siberia or something like that) because of the former being racist as gently caress, and prompted said corp to go super meta friendly, at least on the surface (they even have like a free spirit board member, IIRC); and like maybe Bull, because his old runner connections and all that entails.
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Jul 31, 2017 00:00
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GhostStalker posted:So is he like one of the most powerful/influential Orks on the planet now, at least nominally? Or is he just a puppet elected official like most political leaders in Shadowrun tend to be? Well, he's not an out and out puppet like a lot of other Shadowrun government figures tend to be, but the corps creep in and grab influence anywhere they can -- this is, after all, a setting where elections don't matter because it's an extreme take on the real life problem where you now need hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy backers to be a competitive presidential candidate. TT isn't the closed society it used to be anymore either. A big part of why the revolution happened is that their economy crashed, and the idiot wizards in charge who wanted their little racist slice of feudal heaven (just like in the old days, when the peasants cowered before their arcane might and there weren't any of these newfangled "guns" to worry about) couldn't fix it. They had to sign the accords and let the megacorps in and start participating in the global economy (read: do business with the corps or be broke as poo poo because they literally are the economy) because there wasn't any more of that sweet sweet dragon money propping up their bullshit economy. You can't import all the products of an industrial society forever. In general, the CEO of a megacorp is so much more important than most heads of state that he or she doesn't take calls from them outside of business hours.
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Jul 31, 2017 05:31
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I love Shadowrun 
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Jul 31, 2017 05:57
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wiegieman posted:Well, he's not an out and out puppet like a lot of other Shadowrun government figures tend to be, but the corps creep in and grab influence anywhere they can -- this is, after all, a setting where elections don't matter because it's an extreme take on the real life problem where you now need hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy backers to be a competitive presidential candidate. TT isn't the closed society it used to be anymore either. A big part of why the revolution happened is that their economy crashed, and the idiot wizards in charge who wanted their little racist slice of feudal heaven (just like in the old days, when the peasants cowered before their arcane might and there weren't any of these newfangled "guns" to worry about) couldn't fix it. They had to sign the accords and let the megacorps in and start participating in the global economy (read: do business with the corps or be broke as poo poo because they literally are the economy) because there wasn't any more of that sweet sweet dragon money propping up their bullshit economy. You can't import all the products of an industrial society forever. I had forgotten that the Tir had been so closed before, though I guess I really should've expected something like that because of the whole racist Immortal Elves thing and the fact that they policed their borders so drat much. I mean, I remember it was a big thing in the lore when the Tir made an agreement with the Port of Seattle to be their main import/export zone, despite Portland (I'm sorry, Cara'sir) being a really good harbor with good facilities as well. Guess they wanted a remove from outside corporate influence, and it didn't work out too well. I didn't know that they hadn't signed the Business Recognition Accords (the global agreement that gives AAA megacorps their extraterritoriality, policed by the Corporate Court), but I guess not doing so would gently caress your economy pretty badly. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Jul 31, 2017 |
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Jul 31, 2017 07:09
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What's funny is all the talk about the world being so toxic that eventually horrors from outside come in and wipe everyone is pretty identical to what happens in a game of Dominions, from the LPs I've seen.
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