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Weird, in my own playthrough I remember having a much more in-depth conversation with Alice. Maybe I'm misremembering, or it's later in the game.
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Jul 26, 2020 03:32
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:I'll be honest, I really don't think the Venn diagram of "people reading this thread" and "people who haven't played dragonfall" and "people who have an interest in shadowrun outside of this thread" has a huge intersection... These shadowrun LPs have basically been my introduction to the universe. So my answer is I get the feeling Firewing was only mostly dead. So either they're trying to come back as some sort of radioactive dracolich (note to self, use this is D&D) or someone is trying to bring them back. Whether or not it's accurate, I like the idea of a mostly dead dragon building a network of influence and power to bring about its own resurrection.
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Jul 26, 2020 03:32
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Fighting Trousers posted:It seemed to me that the intimation was that Alice didn't so much 'survive' the Crash Virus as she became some sort of Matrix consciousness. Or am I misreading? Servetus posted:That was my impression as well. I thought she was a Matrix ghost. You guys are right, I misremembered a bit of the lore. Makes the whole ex-wife thing of President Haeffner make more sense too.
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Jul 26, 2020 05:20
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Cythereal posted:I'm kinda curious: for Shadowrun fans who don't know Dragonfall, what do you think is going on at this point in the story? As one of the few, I think Firewing is a toxic spirit. Dead, but not quite. There's enough paranormal stories of a nuclear blast severing a creature's spirit from its body that it's feasible here. I'm not ruling out the nuclear dracolich option, but I think an entirely spiritual opponent would be a cool idea. Also, the current levels of escalation and complete lack of other tells puts this at a very low priority, but it's also possible "Firewing" is just the name of yet another global conspiracy with huge amounts of capital to throw at problems. Again, absolutely no evidence for this, and I trust the writers enough to figure they wouldn't pull that kind of twist. But it is the kind of twist I might pull on my players, long after dropping a veiled hint or two.
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Jul 26, 2020 05:45
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Dareon posted:Wait. ...What's your stance on earning rare achievements?
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Jul 26, 2020 11:34
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Kanfy posted:...What's your stance on earning rare achievements? Please no. It’s a rare achievement for a very good reason and one I will never aim to earn despite my heavy completionist tendencies, and it looks like most of the playerbase agrees. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 12:06
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GhostStalker posted:*snip* And if that wasn't enough, she's got a nemesis in the form of Thomas Roxborough- big-time Aztech/Universal-Omnitech shareholder, Crash Virus progenitor, mysterious satellite denizen, and sentient pile of goo.
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Jul 26, 2020 15:45
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Kanfy posted:...What's your stance on earning rare achievements? However, I'm assuming you have a save file just before going to visit Alice.
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Jul 26, 2020 16:00
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Kanfy posted:...What's your stance on earning rare achievements? I dunno. Why do you ask, Mr. Araki?
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Jul 26, 2020 21:38
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Like some others, my knowledge of Shadowrun begins and ends with these threads. As to what's going on... this thread has been going for a while, and it's been an eventful year (in the real world) to say the least. So I'm sure there's lots of stuff I've forgotten by now. For a while I was thinking that the 'Feuerschwinge as antagonist' bit was a smokescreen for some other nefarious plot. There just isn't a lot of evidence directly linking her to... anything, really. She hasn't made any kind of appearance or communicated directly, only proxies linked by circumstantial evidence. Maybe our antagonists were just using the legend to mislead and intimidate people. Like in a Scooby-Doo cartoon or something. But the fact that the most badass spymaster in Germany is running spooked makes me wonder if maybe there isn't a dragon involved after all- it just seems like there's not a lot that can scare someone like that. But there's a lot of pieces missing still, so it's hard to tell.
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Jul 27, 2020 05:08
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Wait, I thought the bombing was a cover-up for Big D to have his 40k Big E moment of worldsaving?
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Jul 27, 2020 07:09
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BrotherJayne posted:Wait, I thought the bombing was a cover-up for Big D to have his 40k Big E moment of worldsaving? It was. But no one in universe knows that save for maybe the other Great Dragons and the Immortal Elves. Maybe the Black Lodge knows as well. They aren’t gonna tell anyone though, since for the most part, the corps and governments don’t know the Horrors are on the way at all.
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Jul 27, 2020 07:18
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GhostStalker posted:It was. But no one in universe knows that save for maybe the other Great Dragons and the Immortal Elves. Maybe the Black Lodge knows as well. They aren’t gonna tell anyone though, since for the most part, the corps and governments don’t know the Horrors are on the way at all. You know there’s at least one corps that would sell metahumanity out to the Horrors in a heartbeat if they did.
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Jul 27, 2020 07:25
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DreamingofRoses posted:You know there’s at least one corps other than Aztech that would sell metahumanity out to the Horrors in a heartbeat if they did. FTFY.
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Jul 27, 2020 07:30
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Are Aztech essentially reaching "sith" levels of dumb with their attitudes? "Surely we can turn a profit from anything, even the extradimensional beings will eventual- OH NO MY TORSO, MY PRECIOUS TORSO"
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Jul 27, 2020 14:33
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It's only dangerous if you're the one paying the price. The Azzies make everyone else pay the price.
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Jul 27, 2020 15:32
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If you asked most Azzies, they'd say all the blood is meant to *prevent* the end of the world. Most Azzies are probably wrong.
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Jul 27, 2020 16:03
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Basically it sounds like when horrible transplanar monsters arrive and eat the world, metahumanity will deserve it
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Jul 27, 2020 16:05
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Metahumanity at large not, the most powerful on the planet (dragons included) might as well start manufacturing the world's biggest bottle of steak sauce for everyone to roll in.
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Jul 27, 2020 16:13
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My understanding of the shadowrun deep lore mostly comes from these and other gaming threads on SA. That said I picked up the sense that when the dragons woke up this cycle some of them quickly realized "holy poo poo what have the humans invented. This world is so full of people and technology. Maybe with this as a starting point when the horrors show up in a thousand years we'll be able to fight them on their level?" But then the abject misery and general negative emotions brought about by the corporate hellscape, coupled with the sheer number of people means the horrors are showing up in decades when it should have taken centuries. Which is why it's was such an oh poo poo moment finding the insect spirits in Seattle that lofwyr showed up personally to check things out?
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Jul 27, 2020 16:28
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Groetgaffel posted:
I stopped playing Dragonfall years ago after getting my poo poo wrecked on the Azzie run (alarm went off, got pincered hard) so everything now is new. And my jaw about hit the floor after this update. I totally agree with everyone saying the big violation here isn't so much BIG BAD IS STRONG as it is the sheer brutal consequences for the Kreusbazar and home-base getting torched while sitting on a subway.
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Jul 27, 2020 17:40
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Paul Amsel
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Josef bugman posted:Are Aztech essentially reaching "sith" levels of dumb with their attitudes? Yeah but it'll do absolute wonders for next quarter's earnings. Anything negative is, like, a year from now so who cares. Shadowrun corps being incredibly loving shortsighted is probably one of the most realistic thing in the setting.
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Jul 27, 2020 17:44
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Soylent Pudding posted:My understanding of the shadowrun deep lore mostly comes from these and other gaming threads on SA. That said I picked up the sense that when the dragons woke up this cycle some of them quickly realized "holy poo poo what have the humans invented. This world is so full of people and technology. Maybe with this as a starting point when the horrors show up in a thousand years we'll be able to fight them on their level?" But then the abject misery and general negative emotions brought about by the corporate hellscape, coupled with the sheer number of people means the horrors are showing up in decades when it should have taken centuries. Which is why it's was such an oh poo poo moment finding the insect spirits in Seattle that lofwyr showed up personally to check things out? Mhm. I do wish that there were some good governmental sort of organisations fighting the corps, even if they weren't doing too well. I get enough constant "we are hosed" energy from the news.
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Jul 27, 2020 19:09
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I think uh...finland is doing ok? Maybe?
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Jul 27, 2020 20:19
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Josef bugman posted:Mhm. A good chunk of South America, if not nearly all of it, is largely ruled by a great dragon who's pretty big on environmental protection and that sort of things. So there's that.
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Jul 27, 2020 20:56
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:A good chunk of South America, if not nearly all of it, is largely ruled by a great dragon who's pretty big on environmental protection and that sort of things. So there's that. It's the dumb fictional environmental protection where you have equal rights with a crocodile.
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Jul 27, 2020 21:01
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Not like, a crocodile spirit, or a newly sapient crocodile. Just like, a regular one.
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Jul 27, 2020 21:02
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Xun posted:I think uh...finland is doing ok? Maybe? New zealand too 
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Jul 27, 2020 21:22
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Personal taste and all, but once you remove the horrors from the equation the setting goes from depressing to just grim I guess.
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Jul 27, 2020 21:45
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Eh, parts of the UCAS are ok and they still technically have a democracy. Sad that the govn't got taken down another peg with the most recent lore, though. Would have really enjoyed watching a government throw some weight around for once - especially since they DO have armies of hundreds of thousands with top level gear at their disposal.
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Jul 27, 2020 22:30
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habeasdorkus posted:Eh, parts of the UCAS are ok and they still technically have a democracy. Yeah that was a huge disappointment and honestly has soured me on the setting quite a lot, they went for by far the laziest outcome and totally wasted a potentially very interesting plot development.
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Jul 27, 2020 22:51
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paragon1 posted:It's the dumb fictional environmental protection where you have equal rights with a crocodile. This is probably the same argument that everyone makes in favor, but I know some crocodiles that I like better than some people.
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Jul 27, 2020 22:56
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RabidWeasel posted:Yeah that was a huge disappointment and honestly has soured me on the setting quite a lot, they went for by far the laziest outcome and totally wasted a potentially very interesting plot development. I get the feeling that unless something big changes soon Shadowrun might be slipping ever further out of the RPG zeitgeist. The lore has the potential to be really fun. It's just constrained quite badly by terrible rules and bad decision making.
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Jul 27, 2020 23:20
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Josef bugman posted:I get the feeling that unless something big changes soon Shadowrun might be slipping ever further out of the RPG zeitgeist. The lore has the potential to be really fun. It's just constrained quite badly by terrible rules and bad decision making. They're stuck in the "everything must always be getting worse" mindset a whole lot of fiction is stuck in these days.
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Jul 27, 2020 23:22
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Polaron posted:They're stuck in the "everything must always be getting worse" mindset a whole lot of fiction is stuck in these days. Everything has to keep getting worse and nothing can reach a natural endpoint. It's decay without collapse, even long past the point that, in a more realistic setting, the bottom would have fallen out entirely. It's a popular motif in tabletop settings in general, since it keeps things in a state of constant simmering conflict so you keep having things for players to do. The problem is, it starts to make everything players can do feel pointless, since winning won't fix anything and losing won't really end the setting, because things have to still stay around for more pointless fights in the future.
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Jul 28, 2020 01:15
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chiasaur11 posted:The problem is, it starts to make everything players can do feel pointless, since winning won't fix anything and losing won't really end the setting, because things have to still stay around for more pointless fights in the future. Pretty much, the refusal to have some problems resolve and let new problems come out is tiresome in the extreme.
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Jul 28, 2020 08:46
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The sad irony is, society has pretty much caught up with the original cyberpunk setting (more or less). And you can't actually change things too much or players won't recognise the world. Like, you could crush the corps together and release a module where you run against Horror-infested former corp headquarters, to exfiltrate data and components for building a fleet of giant, Horror-slaying Mecha Suits, but then that's not quite Shadowrun? And after that you would have to change the status quo, construct a whole new, post-collapse society. You could still have adventures there, clearing out stragglers, and running against those that want to return to capitalism or something, but it would be so far removed from people's understanding of society and the world, it might break their immersion (or have the game marked as socialist propaganda).
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Jul 28, 2020 09:56
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I mean, Shadowrun also has the issue of trying to post catch-up with real world technology. The HBS games are set in old school Shadowrun, with rules very much like the old school rules, so the appeal is mostly retro-futuristic nostalgia. I love me some retro-futurism, but it's hard to keep creating that while maintaining continuity in the world.
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Jul 28, 2020 09:57
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean, Shadowrun also has the issue of trying to post catch-up with real world technology. The HBS games are set in old school Shadowrun, with rules very much like the old school rules, so the appeal is mostly retro-futuristic nostalgia. I love me some retro-futurism, but it's hard to keep creating that while maintaining continuity in the world. I still feel like they shouldn't have introduced wifi into the system at all, just leaned in hard to needing big chunky cables everywhere. I'll grant you that hacking a dude's gun/arm/gun-arm in the middle of combat is cool, but you sacrifice aesthetic.
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Jul 28, 2020 10:30
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Lunar Suite posted:The sad irony is, society has pretty much caught up with the original cyberpunk setting (more or less). And you can't actually change things too much or players won't recognise the world. Like, you could crush the corps together and release a module where you run against Horror-infested former corp headquarters, to exfiltrate data and components for building a fleet of giant, Horror-slaying Mecha Suits, but then that's not quite Shadowrun? And after that you would have to change the status quo, construct a whole new, post-collapse society. I mean, the Horrors are so deep in the metaplot that they might never get to them, especially since Catalyst never got the rights for Earthdawn where the Horrors are actually from. Probably gonna be doing more bug spirit poo poo instead for metaplot related stuff and keep the cyberpunk with magic veneer of Shadowrun instead of changing it up and going full post-apocalyptic.
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Jul 28, 2020 11:35
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