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RedMagus posted: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. The last big gasp of the metaplot actually answered the question of why the toxic hellscape hadn't triggered magic apocalypse yet, and they did a pretty job of demonstrating they did, in fact, have that one planned. The Great Wyrm Dunkelzahn was the first nonhuman president. Was overwhelmingly popular! And at his inauguration, he was assassinated. This kinda ripped the heart out of the nation! The conspiracy theories started almost instantly, and then went into absolute overdrive when Dunkelzahn's Will got read. Incidentally, if you're running a Shadowrun campaign, Dunkelzahn's Will makes a great list of plot hooks. Intro to it reads "This "will" concept humans have developed seems to be a way to reward allies and punish enemies even from beyond the grave. I am honestly kind of embarrassed we didn't come up with it first. So, anyway, here's the list: one, most of my hoard goes into the Draco Foundation, an organization tasked to carry out the terms of my will, two:" etc etc. The one that made literally everyone go "WHAT THE gently caress" was Bequest 32: "The Draco Foundation will grant one wish to any person who can prove they shook hands with John F. Kennedy. He seemed like a decent person." You learn precisely what the gently caress in an intensely railroady official adventure. Extremely long story short: it's one of the pieces of ritual magic so old we have forgotten it's ritual magic: Sacrifice The King To Bring Back The Sun. At a moment that the hopes and dreams of an appreciable fraction of metahumanity were tied up in him, Dunkelzahn took the express route to the Astral Plane (Apply C4 directly to the forehead) and took all that hope with him, to be used as heavy weaponry against the incoming monstrosities. Dragons around the world are still aggressively debating how the gently caress he pulled that off. In one notable event, two of them got into an argument on ShadowNet about it, which was concluded by [long sequence of nonsense characters]@skadmin saying "you idiot children have given away more in the last ten minutes than he did in ten years of that insipid talk show." So sleep tight, children: somewhere in the Deep Astral, a Dragon-President-God fights entities of unfathomable horror so you don't have to. Also, his mortal representatives will offer several hundred thousand nuyen if you can track down the Maltese Falcon. One of his bequests was getting the Falcon itself to the guy who showed him the film the first time, and predictably, the team that recovered it had difficulties delivering it.
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Jul 31, 2017 18:26
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<WH40k parallels intensify>
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Jul 31, 2017 18:29
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Superficially at best, though. Here, one dead super-powerful being fights chaos on his own terms, one requires human sacrifice numbering in the tens of thousands a day to do it. That's a relevant distinction in terms of tone. so I don't particularly buy it. Hope is a concept that more or less doesn't exist in 40k, whereas it's a fundamental part of SR, I think.
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Jul 31, 2017 18:42
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The reason the Shadowrun universe is vastly superior to the 40K universe is that in Shadowrun it was done, it happened, and the few people who know it was done are mostly just jealous they couldn't pull off the same trick. Anyway, moving on, what's the latest quarterly report. No what are you stupid we're not going to publicize this, it'd cause the stock market to panic. There is hope. It's not much, and the corporate apex predators are just as capable of commodifying it as they are anything else, but it exists. You will do little things to make the world a better place, and odds are good nobody will ever know. But they will happen, and if you're lucky, some of them will even endure. And if you're -really- lucky, you'll be able to make some nuyen doing them!
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Jul 31, 2017 18:54
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Ze Pollack posted:Dunkelzahn's Will If I recall correctly his will also included things like loving with all the immortal elves that were pretending to be mortal and also hunting down one dude in particular.
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Jul 31, 2017 19:10
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citybeatnik posted:If I recall correctly his will also included things like loving with all the immortal elves that were pretending to be mortal and also hunting down one dude in particular. Yeah, Dunkelzahn's Will has some really interesting bits. Dunkelzahn sure was a character. Dunkelzahn's Will posted:After much research and hundreds of bags of burned Nuke-and-Pop, I leave 20 million nuyen to the holder of the patent for the twentieth-century process that produced popcorn capable of being popped over an open flame (this dragon’s method of choice). I believe it was called Speedy Pop, or Quick Pop, or something similar. The patent holder must use this money to renew the patent and resume production.
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Jul 31, 2017 19:38
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Psion posted:so I don't particularly buy it. Hope is a concept that more or less doesn't exist in 40k, whereas it's a fundamental part of SR, I think. Punk as a genre is built on wrapping the smallest spark of hope you can find in the most oppressively bleak blanket of despair possible, and then at a critical story moment detonating that hope so that if only for a brief moment it illuminates everything and reminds people that there's still stuff worth fighting for.
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Jul 31, 2017 19:44
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Do we know what a typical episode of Wyrm Talk was actually like? (Beyond "a talk show, only with a dragon")
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Jul 31, 2017 19:50
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Xander77 posted:Do we know what a typical episode of Wyrm Talk was actually like? (Beyond "a talk show, only with a dragon")
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Jul 31, 2017 20:02
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Xander77 posted:Do we know what a typical episode of Wyrm Talk was actually like? (Beyond "a talk show, only with a dragon") Ru Paul's Dragon Race.
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Jul 31, 2017 20:10
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megane posted:Ru Paul's Dragon Race.  "If you can't love yourself how the hell are you gonna love someone else?" "With ketchup." 
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Jul 31, 2017 20:16
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Firstly, who is Lars. J. Matthews and what did he do to be a marked man? Secondly, I genuinely smiled that an ancient dragon acknowledged his love for peanut butter cookies and microwave popcorn.
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Jul 31, 2017 21:03
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JustJeff88 posted:Firstly, who is Lars. J. Matthews and what did he do to be a marked man? He was a guy who cut a deal with Big D for protection. Big D dies, this happens. It's a ruse that allows Lars to fake his own death easily and take on a new identity now that his protection's gone He also donates a classic car to a guy who's car he accidentally crushed with a bit of building trying to scratch an itch.
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Jul 31, 2017 21:19
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Ze Pollack posted:Intro to it reads "This "will" concept humans have developed seems to be a way to reward allies and punish enemies even from beyond the grave. I am honestly kind of embarrassed we didn't come up with it first. So, anyway, here's the list: one, most of my hoard goes into the Draco Foundation, an organization tasked to carry out the terms of my will, two:" etc etc. The one that made literally everyone go "WHAT THE gently caress" was Bequest 32: "The Draco Foundation will grant one wish to any person who can prove they shook hands with John F. Kennedy. He seemed like a decent person." Maybe I'm missing something but why is this more 'what the gently caress' than any of the other batshit stuff in his will? Is it the assassinated presidents link?
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Jul 31, 2017 21:24
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Graylien posted:Maybe I'm missing something but why is this more 'what the gently caress' than any of the other batshit stuff in his will? Is it the assassinated presidents link? Imagine that immediately following the assassination of a president it is revealed his will left a couple million dollars to the Lee Harvey Oswald Foundation. "This has to be a subtle message to someone. but who"
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Jul 31, 2017 21:46
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Xander77 posted:Do we know what a typical episode of Wyrm Talk was actually like? (Beyond "a talk show, only with a dragon")
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Jul 31, 2017 22:21
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Ah man, the will is always a good read. Makes me chuckle it does. It also pissed off every dragon, since till then it was customary that Dragons would subsume the dead dragon's horde/assets, based on power and/or pretty much however they could get a slice of the pie. Even the ones that made out of pretty good (like Lofwyr) were bothered by it. mauman fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 00:14
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Dunkelzahn also outed Aztechnology (I mean, officially, everybody already knew) as Blood Magic users.
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Aug 1, 2017 00:38
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wiegieman posted:Dunkelzahn also outed Aztechnology (I mean, officially, everybody already knew) as Blood Magic users. Even set up a (still running) bounty of 1 million nuyen for each live capture of a blood mage. Dangerous work, but good pay if you can pull it off. Pretty good Middle Finger from the grave to Aztec. He also has that set up for Toxic Shamans. Also, this has to be one of my favorites from the will - "To the first party to discover what lies behind the door of room 429 of the Saeder-Krupp offices in Berlin and report their findings to Lofwyr, I leave the Arrow of Red Dragon Slaying." ahhhh Dunkelzahn, you're such a troll. mauman fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 00:46
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wiegieman posted:Dunkelzahn also outed Aztechnology (I mean, officially, everybody already knew) as Blood Magic users. It is unfortunate that such baseless rumors persist, but you can be assured that Aztechnology is committed to the ethical use of magic and strongly condemns the practice of so-called "blood magic", as can be seen from our participation in various cross-corporate initiative designed to improve transparency. Sadly, I must also inform you that if you continue to participate in the spreading of those rumors, we will regrettably have no choice but to involve our legal department. Signed, Your friends at Aztechnology
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Aug 1, 2017 01:16
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RedMagus posted: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. Not really coincidence. Illwinter is pretty upfront about the fact that Dominions heavily Ze Pollack posted:You learn precisely what the gently caress in an intensely railroady official adventure. Extremely long story short: it's one of the pieces of ritual magic so old we have forgotten it's ritual magic: Sacrifice The King To Bring Back The Sun. At a moment that the hopes and dreams of an appreciable fraction of metahumanity were tied up in him, Dunkelzahn took the express route to the Astral Plane (Apply C4 directly to the forehead) and took all that hope with him, to be used as heavy weaponry against the incoming monstrosities. Do you know what adventure that was in? I thought they went into what happened in detail the novels, but deliberately left it vague/ambiguous in the sourcebooks/adventure modules to allow GMs to come up with their own things.
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Aug 1, 2017 01:56
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I dont know posted:Do you know what adventure that was in? I thought they went into what happened in detail the novels, but deliberately left it vague/ambiguous in the sourcebooks/adventure modules to allow GMs to come up with their own things. That Guy We Won't Reference Because He's Kind Of A Walking Spoiler's Back.
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Aug 1, 2017 02:24
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Dunkelzahn's Will is basically one of the best pieces of writing in any tabletop RPG, ever. It is absolutely bursting with ideas. You could have a whole campaign just centered around it, if you wanted. And it's hilarious and kind of touching at the same time.
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Aug 1, 2017 03:04
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Graylien posted:Maybe I'm missing something but why is this more 'what the gently caress' than any of the other batshit stuff in his will? Is it the assassinated presidents link? I see it as an implication that Dunkelzahn knew JFK, or something. What did I miss?
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Aug 1, 2017 06:18
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More importantly, is time travel a thing in Shadowrun, or would it be simpler to tear JFK's soul back from the great beyond?
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Aug 1, 2017 07:00
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Ze Pollack posted:That Guy We Won't Reference Because He's Kind Of A Walking Spoiler's Back. Oh god gently caress that guy.
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Aug 1, 2017 09:26
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ZiegeDame posted:More importantly, is time travel a thing in Shadowrun, or would it be simpler to tear JFK's soul back from the great beyond? I don't think time travel is a thing in Shadowrun, even amongst the most powerful Awakened and the Great Dragons, though if they do have that power, it sure isn't well known. Also IIRC, Dunkelzhan's Will is responsible for the fortunes of the CEO of Wuxing, which turned it from a regional Hong Komg and Pacific shipping company into one of the Big Ten AAA Megacorps, with a gift of nuyen and a couple of artifacts (including one that let his wife give birth to a set of now celebrity quintupplets, each named after one of the five Classical Chinese elements, and another that gave the CEO great luck in business). It also gave out an artifact to the CEO of Renraku that helped him recover from an AI that his Corp was experimenting on frying his brain by giving him access to Tibet (which was closed off by a magical wall when the Awakening happened, contributing to the breakup and Balkanization of China), allowing him to return for a confrontation (along with runner backup) with said AI at the climax of the campaign to retake the Seattle Renraku Arcology, which it had taken over with it's technomancer minions (though they were called otaku back then); said CEO essentially sacrificed himself to defeat te AI and Renraku enshrined him as their in-house corporate kami. Also, said campaign to take back the Arcology gave the commander of the Seattle Metroplex Guard (the UCAS joint military unit charged with protecting the metroplex), General Angela Colleton, enough of a national profile that she became the first elected female president of the UCAS and current holder of the title (there was a previous female president, but she only served as the interim one as pro tempore president of the UCAS Senate prior to the electIon of Dunkelzhan because both the president and vice were impeached due to proven accusations of voter fraud). I think he also got the Big Ten megacorp now known as NeoNET, formerly Novatech, started, by setting up a (later shown to be false) feud between Richard Villers and Miles Lanier, two big execs in Fuchi, once one of the AAA megacorps, by giving the latter enough shares in Renraku for a board seat there. Lanier was the head of Fuchi Internal Security, and took that job with Renraku, grabbing Fuchi subsidiaries away from them by using insider knowledge. Villers, his former boss, brought a case against him in the Corporate Court, and eventually won, forcing Lanier to sell his Renraku stock at below market prices. Both Fuchi and Renraku were hurt by this, and the Villers formed a new Corp called Novatech and bought out the remains of Fuchi, along with their Corp Court seat, and hired back Lanier as if nothing had happened. Novatech was later involved in the second Matrix Crash, when their Matrix IPO was invaded by the same AI that took over the Renraku Arcology and tried to use the bandwidth to upload itself fully to take over the Matrix and become a literal god in the machine; after which it merged with a couple of other AA Corps to keep its AAA status, rebranded itself NeoNET, and was instrumental in rolling out the wireless Matrix paradigm and standards. And now they're heavily involved in the Boston lockdown following the spread of the Crash Fragmentation Virus, a nanotech based virus that overwrites your personality and might be the last gasp of the AI that troubled Renraku and Novatech so much. Also, that bequest to Art Dankwalter? The dude was a former accountant for Fuchi that was later fired, and tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get his job back there, running out his money and being strung out on BTLs before Dunkelzhan's Will came out. With his new windfall, he made it his mission to destroy Fuchi (or its successor Novatech) for firing him. He took down a number of AAs as practice in preparation, then went after his main target. He was unsuccessful once again, right before the Second Matrix Crash, and once NeoNET got its poo poo together after and flush with cash from their IPO, went to the Corporate Court, got an Omega Order (basically a Corp Court sanctioned legal kill) on him, and took him out with a Thor shot (literal rod from God fired from an orbital satellite). Too bad, so sad. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Aug 1, 2017 |
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Aug 1, 2017 10:13
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Just to put it into perspective for the non-Shadowrun players, Blood Magic is one of the biggest no-nos in the setting. Once you learn anything about it, I the DM can take your character sheet off you and make you roll a new character while your Blood Mage is turned into an NPC. That Aztechnology uses it a lot is one of the reasons it's one of the most hated corps in the setting, and one of the most feared- if you leave any DNA samples behind you after a run, they can track you through it, and they're usually one of the Megacorps more likely to hunt Runners who work on their turf.
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Aug 1, 2017 13:09
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GoneRampant posted:Just to put it into perspective for the non-Shadowrun players, Blood Magic is one of the biggest no-nos in the setting. Once you learn anything about it, I the DM can take your character sheet off you and make you roll a new character while your Blood Mage is turned into an NPC. What.
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Aug 1, 2017 13:12
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How is that different from a shaman using a sample to reach out and touch someone?
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Aug 1, 2017 13:17
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The fun thing about the Shadowrun/Earthdawn link is that while I don't remember exactly how magic was properly used in Earthdawn, there were procedures for it that let you cast spells safely. There was another quick and dirty way to do it, but it was inefficient and hurt the caster and kind of a thing as a last resort. The way it described this backlash sounds exactly like the Drain system from Shadowrun. So we've figured out "put the meat in the fire, meat gets tasty" but we haven't figured out "oven mitts."GunnerJ posted:What. Remember that thing about "the horrors are coming" and how Dunkelzahn is off fighting them? Blood magic is one of the things that speeds up their arrival. One of the major things that comes up, I forget if it's in one of the books outright or something you have to piece together yourself, is that the timetable for "the horrors are coming" is being vastly sped up. The timetable for "humanity at large can deal with it in some manner" is not being sped up, so the poo poo will hit the fan before we're ready. That is, needless to say, really loving bad. The game sometimes shows you various systems and then clearly and explicitly puts ropes around them and says "this is absolutely not a thing players can do." This includes things like blood magic, toxic shamans, and the process to make a cyberzombie (installing cyberware reduces Essence, you normally can't go below zero, cyberzombies have negative essence and yes the results are horrifying). Anticheese posted:How is that different from a shaman using a sample to reach out and touch someone? The blood sample is a material link. Blood magic could also be called "human sacrifice." It's more complicated than that, but it gets the idea across.
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Aug 1, 2017 14:41
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MechaCrash posted:The game sometimes shows you various systems and then clearly and explicitly puts ropes around them and says "this is absolutely not a thing players can do." This includes things like blood magic, toxic shamans, and the process to make a cyberzombie (installing cyberware reduces Essence, you normally can't go below zero, cyberzombies have negative essence and yes the results are horrifying). Yeah, I guess I just don't remember anything like this in the game rules, but then again I last played Shadowrun TT in 2004 when it was still 3rd edition so  But in general I am kinda leery of rules like this enforcing what should be more of an agreement between players and GM about what kind of game they want to play.
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Aug 1, 2017 14:51
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MechaCrash posted:The blood sample is a material link. Blood magic could also be called "human sacrifice." It's more complicated than that, but it gets the idea across. There's using blood to communicate or transmit magic, and then there's using blood to fuel magic. One of these is like chumming the waters that everyone's swimming in with PCP-laden blood; not gonna be a good day for anyone.
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Aug 1, 2017 15:00
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GunnerJ posted:But in general I am kinda leery of rules like this enforcing what should be more of an agreement between players and GM about what kind of game they want to play. You can always agree as a group to ignore rules like that, but there's nothing wrong with using mechanical rules to reinforce the setting (doing bad thing makes you a crazy power-mad monster, don't do bad thing)
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Aug 1, 2017 15:08
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Keeshhound posted:You can always agree as a group to ignore rules like that, but there's nothing wrong with using mechanical rules to reinforce the setting (doing bad thing makes you a crazy power-mad monster, don't do bad thing) Yeah I was thinking about this for some of these "bad magic" types that actually unavoidably making the character who engages in them insane. That's one thing. But I wasn't sure if blood magic was like that or the rules were just saying "this is too evil for your players to be allowed to do in this gritty cyberpunk game where where they may be conducting what amount to slave raids of prized corporate serfs."
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Aug 1, 2017 15:11
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Blood magic is honestly one of the things that the system does best with as far as thematic bridges. Drawing back from the ridiculous minutiae of the setting, the underlying draw of the shadowrun setting is the mix of magic and punk elements. And one of the key aspects of cyberpunk is Everything Is A Commodity Now. You, and everything about you, are an item on a spreadsheet with a nuyen count attached. Might be some high-level megacorporate tally of how much you will be expected to buy from their new ad campaign, might be some creepy wierdo like Holmes seeing your name, an organ, and the corresponding payout, but you are ultimately nothing more than a series of numbers to the world around you. "But think of the magic of the world!" Yeah, no, dragons took to this world like fish took to water, that should have been a much bigger warning. Anyone looking to magic to save them from commodification has another thing coming. Wage-mages are a thing. Talismonger outlets are a thing. And, ultimately, blood magic is a thing. Magic, ultimately, is weaponized symbolism. And it is no coincidence that one of the most powerful megacorps in the setting runs on the power of blood. Because blood magic -is- the symbology of the Fifth and Sixth world. "Your life, for my power." That spreadsheet tallying your value, it turns out, was missing a row: the potential returns on ripping your still-beating heart from your chest in a ritual to empower the latest project rollout. It's a poor corporate overlord that leaves an asset like that unleveraged. Aztechnology is not the only corporation indulging in blood magic. They're just the only one where it's official policy. The reason you don't get to play a blood mage in Shadowrun is the same reason you don't get to play a comfortable megacorporate executive. This is not a game about the power you get by reconciling yourself to something unspeakable. This is a game about what you do to survive in their shadows. Great news! The crazed sorcerors practicing human sacrifice in remote castles are no longer a thing. Tom in HR has made the 'remote castle' part obsolete.
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Aug 1, 2017 15:53
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But if blood magic weren't conceivably a thing you might try to do in order to survive in the shadows, there wouldn't need to be a rule against it. "Be unbelievably rich and powerful" isn't really even in the same conceptual category as "do a blood ritual" in terms of finding solutions to problems.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:01
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GunnerJ posted:But if blood magic weren't conceivably a thing you might try to do in order to survive in the shadows, there wouldn't need to be a rule against it. "Be unbelievably rich and powerful" isn't really even in the same conceptual category as "do a blood ritual" in terms of finding solutions to problems. Didn't say unbelievably rich and powerful. Just said comfortable. Mike The Middle Manager who dabbles in shadowrunning on the side because his life feels empty is probably a decent character concept too! But you want to play him, you gotta get him fired first. Game requires a certain ground level of powerlessness in order to function.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:18
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GunnerJ posted:But if blood magic weren't conceivably a thing you might try to do in order to survive in the shadows, there wouldn't need to be a rule against it. "Be unbelievably rich and powerful" isn't really even in the same conceptual category as "do a blood ritual" in terms of finding solutions to problems. It kind of comes down to my idiot ramblings about punk as a literary tradition. Punk requires that it's "heros" always be fighting something bigger than them, no matter how morally compromised they might be. Blood magic, within the shadowrun universe is fundamentally an expression of power over someone else; the ability (and deliberate intent) to use their life to fuel your ambitions. If you engage in it you're making the deliberate choice to stop punching at the powerful, and join them in eating the weak. You can, of course, decide that that's the kind of game you want it to be, but the creators of shadowrun were clearly intending for the game's stories to be in the punk tradition of punching up; in the earlier editions karma (your character advancement resorce) was literally something you only got for doing "good" (as it exists in the setting) acts. Being an obedient corporate soldier got you your payday, but swiping medical supplies for the free clinc is what would let you become a stronger character in the game.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:21
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The latest edition has rules and stuff for using blood magic, toxic magic, dark spirits and whatnot. It does recommend that GM's think carefully before allowing a player to pick those options though. Oh, and any mage can use a sample and cast rituals on someone. No blood needed.
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Aug 1, 2017 16:21
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