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Halloween Jack posted:And hey, I see that there was Shadowrun discussion some pages back. I went back to look at some Shadowrun books, mainly because of all the hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077. I wondered why Shadowrun became bigger and more popular. I do think the way it D&Difies the cyberpunk genre was part of it, but I think maybe a bigger part was just that it was launched by a bigger company with more money for high production values. Maybe I'm only saying that because I mainly went back to those books to look at the art. Production values and good fluff were what made Shadowrun 1e a hit. It was probably the best looking core book of the year, and the design still holds up. The D&D-ification of cyberpunk was really well received; orcs, elves, and trolls made it an easy step from D&D for a lot of people. Compare that to CP2020 with black & white interiors of so-so design with a setting based on the nerdiest books around at the time and it's easy to see why people got hype for SR. FASA also backed it up with a steady stream of splatbooks and people were willing to houserule the hell out of it to keep the bricks of dice rolling. e. This  or this ? 
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May 19, 2020 03:11
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Just seeing that cover reminds me that my nerd-riddled boy scout troop stole that skull for our neckerchief patches. Oh and tie dyed them, because we were the cool troop, not the stuffy troop. Jesus.
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May 19, 2020 03:15
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Personally, I think it comes down to Shadowrun just being pound for pound more fun as an RPG setting. I mean, Shadowrun has a dragon ex-president that got got assassinated via magical black hole who left behind a cheeky will full of adventure hooks. Whats Cyberpunk got on that?
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May 19, 2020 04:06
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Haystack posted:Personally, I think it comes down to Shadowrun just being pound for pound more fun as an RPG setting. I mean, Shadowrun has a dragon ex-president that got got assassinated via magical black hole who left behind a cheeky will full of adventure hooks. Whats Cyberpunk got on that? That one edition where the art is all photographs of carefully dressed action dolls.
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May 19, 2020 04:08
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Does Cyberpunk have a manga? I think not.
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May 19, 2020 04:11
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theironjef posted:That one edition where the art is all photographs of carefully dressed action dolls. 
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May 19, 2020 04:15
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Waffleman_ posted:Does Cyberpunk have a manga? I think not. Does Shadowrun? Please share!
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May 19, 2020 04:23
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    Welcome to the dark future.
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May 19, 2020 04:23
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mllaneza posted:Production values and good fluff were what made Shadowrun 1e a hit. It was probably the best looking core book of the year, and the design still holds up. The D&D-ification of cyberpunk was really well received; orcs, elves, and trolls made it an easy step from D&D for a lot of people. Compare that to CP2020 with black & white interiors of so-so design with a setting based on the nerdiest books around at the time and it's easy to see why people got hype for SR. FASA also backed it up with a steady stream of splatbooks and people were willing to houserule the hell out of it to keep the bricks of dice rolling. And let's be honest Shadowrun is clunky by modern standards, but by 1989 standards I'd argue it's relatively elegant Haystack posted:Personally, I think it comes down to Shadowrun just being pound for pound more fun as an RPG setting. I mean, Shadowrun has a dragon ex-president that got got assassinated via magical black hole who left behind a cheeky will full of adventure hooks. Whats Cyberpunk got on that? True, plus combining Cyberpunk and D&D tropes together generally means that your average Shadowrun party at least in theory would all have something cool to do theironjef posted:That one edition where the art is all photographs of carefully dressed action dolls. I still think that idea could work, just needs better execution
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May 19, 2020 04:46
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Helical Nightmares posted:Does Shadowrun? https://mangadex.org/title/21022/shadowrun It's not the whole thing translated, but E: Alternative link because Mangadex ain't loading it well http://fanfox.net/manga/shadowrun/ Waffleman_ fucked around with this message at 04:54 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 04:50
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Haystack posted:Personally, I think it comes down to Shadowrun just being pound for pound more fun as an RPG setting. I mean, Shadowrun has a dragon ex-president that got got assassinated via magical black hole who left behind a cheeky will full of adventure hooks. Whats Cyberpunk got on that?
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May 19, 2020 05:36
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The thing that really sold it for us was the gun books and the snarky BBS comments under each one - i am sure there's still a copy of the street samurai catalog 1e floating around with one of my school buddies with all our extra comments written in underneath
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May 19, 2020 06:09
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Haystack posted:I mean, Shadowrun has a dragon ex-president that got got assassinated via magical black hole who left behind a cheeky will full of adventure hooks. Whats Cyberpunk got on that?
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May 19, 2020 06:30
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There was also a japan-only Shadowrun game on SEGA CD.
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May 19, 2020 07:03
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah and FASA did a fantastic job at marketing it, too. The fiction was well-regarded and it just hit the late 80's zeitgeist on the nose. Including Japanese and Native American stereotypes! The interned Native Americans doing the Ghost Dance and it works is completely badass, and still not the coolest thing in the backstory.
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May 19, 2020 08:07
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MonsieurChoc posted:There was also a japan-only Shadowrun game on SEGA CD. Not to mention the Sega Genesis game and the SNES one. The newer Shadowrun returns series gets good after the first game. The metaplot is mixed, some of the things work really well (a group of mysterious Shadowruners helped stop the evil AI in the Archology! It could have been your PCs!) and some things that don't (the recent arc of UCAS getting rid of corporate control after Detroit gets destroyed by bugs. A bunch of cities get hit by massive magic EMPs destroying all technology and killing people with cyberware. They then end up even more under the thumb of the Corps and loose ground to the CAS and Dragons.)
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May 19, 2020 10:48
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theironjef posted:That one edition where the art is all photographs of carefully dressed action dolls. It looks incredibly bad, but I kinda have to admire on some level that a grown man illustrated an entire book with kitbashes from his personal doll collection.
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May 19, 2020 11:15
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I'll take it over the standard badly photoshopped poser models.
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May 19, 2020 12:21
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Ilor posted:Not being an utter loving wankfest? Like, I loved Shadowrun, ran it for literally decades. But the ongoing metaplot was by far the weakest part of that game. And ultimately, it's what made me stop buying books, because their garbage was so far disconnected from my own games that their setting information was completely useless.
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May 19, 2020 13:05
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Shadowrun also got a promo video using real-life actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w
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May 19, 2020 13:44
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Slimnoid posted:Shadowrun also got a promo video using real-life actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w The hair adds to their armor rating!
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May 19, 2020 14:24
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Back in the 90s, I ... really liked the switch from Cyberpunk's resolution system to Shadowrun's. It's been a long long time since I last played Cyberpunk but I remember feeling frustrated that even with a decent skill and a decent attribute, a bad roll on a single d10 meant failure. Shadowrun has more dice in play and therefore has the comfort of a bell curve distribution, with a karma on top of that to help you beat the odds. That's not to say that I'd play either today. The art of game design and my preferences have both evolved.
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May 19, 2020 15:41
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Slimnoid posted:Shadowrun also got a promo video using real-life actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w I like this exchange in the comments down below quote:Adrian D quote:Donna Lucier
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May 19, 2020 16:25
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Damned if "Donna Matrix" isn't a perfect Shadowrun band name.
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May 19, 2020 17:17
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grassy gnoll posted:Damned if "Donna Matrix" isn't a perfect Shadowrun band name. Estranged sister of Dot, aunt of Enzo.
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May 19, 2020 19:05
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Only one of The Donnas made it through the awakening and uploaded their consciousness to the 'net.
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May 19, 2020 19:08
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For those not following con news but still generally interested, Gencon 2020 has been cancelled due to COVID. It is admittedly a very low bar, but it is nice to see our stupid elfgame hobby take the plague more seriously than our even stupider federal government.
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May 19, 2020 19:18
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Desiden posted:For those not following con news but still generally interested, Gencon 2020 has been cancelled due to COVID. I honestly thought it had already been cancelled. poo poo takes all year to prep for, and basically half that time was down the toilet with the remaining half being an animated shrugging gif.
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May 19, 2020 19:23
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Larry Elmore's work on Shadowrun strikes a chord with me in a way that none of his other work ever did. Of course, when I was a kid, AD&D was the stuffy corporate establishment I was rebelling against, and his Forgotten Realms art exemplified it for me. So I was looking at the sample PCs across various editions of Shadowrun, and it struck me how much today's cyberpunk media suffers from trying too hard to be literally "20 minutes into the future." Jokes abound about how the cyberpunk dystopia is already here, and I think the genre seems more, not less, obsolete when it tries to mirror contemporary weapons, armor, vehicles, drones, and computing. Some of today's cyberpunk is too afraid of ridicule to even suggest that business suits will be different 50 years from now. Like, compare this:   To this:   These are also cherry-picked examples; there's wild and colourful art in the new editions, and in some cases I prefer the new art to the old. But you notice a steady increase in plain black coats and boots and unremarkable clothing I can buy from Old Navy right now. Jeff Laubenstein's characters are wearing DIYed punk clothing or urban couture from some culture on another planet. I used to criticize Laubenstein's work on Shadowrun for being out of step with a lot of the other art. I was wrong; dystopia doesn't have to be beige. (I'm not a trained artist, so forgive me if I stumble around terminology, but: one of the things I like about his illos is that because they're freestanding models on a blank background, there's no pretense of a lighting effect that filters the colour palette and makes everything look bland.) The turning point seems to have been 5th edition. It's funny how often new versions of old franchises are like "This ain't your daddy's game! It's actually way more square and boring than your dad!" Nostalgia editions do it out of reverence for the franchise, while attempts to revive the franchise for a new generation of consumers do it in an attempt to be up-to-date and "serious." And for an example from broader pop culture, compare this:  To this:  I guess the abandoned resort where Rick Deckard holed up had an Eddie Bauer in it. Ilor posted:Not being an utter loving wankfest? Like, I loved Shadowrun, ran it for literally decades. But the ongoing metaplot was by far the weakest part of that game. And ultimately, it's what made me stop buying books, because their garbage was so far disconnected from my own games that their setting information was completely useless. Idunno much about Cyberpunk's metaplot, but its wankness is in how earnest it is. You're constantly told that the signature NPCs are extremely cool, and every quote is like "I'm the baddest rear end to ever hold a bullpup autoshotgun in their custom cyberarm, choomba!" It's a different kind of cringe from the oh-woe-is-me wankery of the World of Darkness and its imitators.
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May 19, 2020 21:20
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Cyberpunk 2020’s weird rear end beatnik commando talk is ridiculous to read but it’s fun as hell to engage with, especially since character creation is much simpler than shadowrun. Unfortunately the system is broken in obvious and probably deliberate ways but that’s basically everything of the era
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May 19, 2020 23:23
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Wrestlepig posted:Cyberpunk 2020’s weird rear end beatnik commando talk is ridiculous to read but it’s fun as hell to engage with, especially since character creation is much simpler than shadowrun. Unfortunately the system is broken in obvious and probably deliberate ways but that’s basically everything of the era While Shadowrun is of course not immune to such things especially in later editions, Cyberpunk always felt really glaringly obvious that if you wanted to do combat you should play a Solo and everything else was just giving yourself a handicap.
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May 19, 2020 23:27
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Absolutely, I think they were trying for solos to be combat monsters but for other aspects of the game to be as important, like having a Media be just as good for social stuff or whatever, but they didn’t land that in the slightest
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May 19, 2020 23:30
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It's an interesting twist on the usual ranking of classes that the designated combat class actually is the best at combat in Cyberpunk.
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May 20, 2020 00:22
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literally the only way "designated combat class" can work is in a rules-light or narrative game where "fight" is just another verb with no special mechanical precedence if you have a combat system, every class should be a combat class
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May 20, 2020 00:25
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Dawgstar posted:While Shadowrun is of course not immune to such things especially in later editions, Cyberpunk always felt really glaringly obvious that if you wanted to do combat you should play a Solo and everything else was just giving yourself a handicap. Edit: also combat was NOT just one tool in the toolkit, AT ALL.
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May 20, 2020 00:26
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To be honest, it’s really gutsy to just name your combat class ‘solo’. Obviously terrible from a gameplay standpoint though.
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May 20, 2020 00:43
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Hey I just realized today is the 8th anniversary of me playing MHRP, the game that would lead to me becoming a pro RPG designer. Happy birthday Sasha 
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May 20, 2020 00:58
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Has anyone ever made a hand-to-hand combat system with some grit that still manages to play fast? I'd look at Apocalypse World - or anything else with high damage values and success-with-consequences. Adding long term consequences of course makes people want to avoid combat while really increasing the grit. The big question is whether you want brutal mechanics because you want people to want combat or you want brutal mechanics because you want people to avoid combat. I also need to playtest the system I'm working on that started as "WFRP 4e is two steps forward and probably at least three steps back and everyone knows the D&D 5e rules. What if I started with the bland D&D 5e engine and a lot of WFRP flavour?" and has mutated as I've been writing it into something with a very distinctive setting although clearly Warhammer inspired, with the mechanics stealing the best ideas from a lot of games (including Popcorn Initiative, the DCC character creation/first session and Pathfinder 2's three action economy - not that it's very different from WFRP's two action economy) - and PC hit points hard-cap at Constitution +6. The intent is certainly fast and gritty while being very trad. Essentially the goal of hit points is to provide a buffer - and every single hit after that is a critical hit that has a chance of long term consequences or possibly even being fatal.
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May 20, 2020 01:25
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:Hey I just realized today is the 8th anniversary of me playing MHRP, the game that would lead to me becoming a pro RPG designer. MHRP is so bittersweet to me; always glad to hear a new good thing that came from it.
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May 20, 2020 01:27
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Desiden posted:For those not following con news but still generally interested, Gencon 2020 has been cancelled due to COVID. I was in the middle of trying to convince a friend that we should go this year because housing should be super open when the news dropped
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May 20, 2020 02:47
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