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citybeatnik posted:Penisulare I really hope they have a pronunciation guide for this
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 00:50 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 12:20 |
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Xand_Man posted:I really hope they have a pronunciation guide for this "Easy, it's Penis-lair, BECAUSE IT'S FULL OF DICKS."- Everyone else in the Shadowrun setting, probably
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 00:53 |
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Magnetic North posted:The will always bothered me, and I only now realize why. There's stuff like, "To the owner of a Datsun Sunspire that was crushed under a large piece of plascrete on Ballemer Street in Seattle on March 11th, 2041, I leave my 1929 Rolls Royce. Sorry, I had an itch that day" and it's like: you could have made that amends when you were loving alive, rear end in a top hat. I imagine copping to it while he was alive would interfere with his election campaign.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 02:03 |
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Wait why did they autopsy the dragon at all? Like, did they have a reason in specific or was it just one of those things you do because when else are you going to have the chance? You know, like taking a cop’s license plate just cause you were there and the car was there but the cop wasn’t.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 02:40 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait why did they autopsy the dragon at all? Sometimes you gotta make a statement.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 02:52 |
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Cyberpunk can be very weird in both good and bad ways about class and racial commentary because in theory it's about highlighting gleefully the horrible bits of capitalism and everything that comes with it, though not always intentionally. Especially given the 80s roots of the genre.Halloween Jack posted:What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state--Karl Marx? They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. Am reminded that Kremlinology was supposedly a whole field and I've mostly heard it spoken of as basically capitalist astrology.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 05:08 |
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SirPhoebos posted:I think this describes my feelings on Cyberpunk settings and what is appropriate for megacorps to actually control vs influence. To me, a cyberpunk corporation needs to at least pretend it's still beholden to national governments even if in reality those governments are wrapped around their fingers, because the underlying story tension is "how much control do they really have". Once corporations start doing poo poo like lobbing nukes at their competition, it ceases being Cyberpunk and is now a grimdark pastiche. In cyberpunk fiction, it's pretty rare to see megacorps exerting explicit control. Shadowrun and CP:2020/2077/Red feature that because of the outsized influence Walter Jon Williams' Hard Wired has on their settings. And I think a lot of people assume it's a big part of cyberpunk in general because of how Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash is an entry into the genre for them. But megacorps never replace governments in Gibson's novels or Pat Cadigan's. There's the big evil PMC in Shirley's Eclipse trilogy, but the whole plot revolves around them operating under government sanction. They do replace governments in Shiner's Frontera, but that's because they're the only organizations left in that world. They also replace governments in Sterling's Islands in the Net, but that novel's central joke is they're just other governments and they mostly get overthrown. Megacorps make good villains, which is why they are prominent in games, but they're more often obstacles or just facts of life in the fiction those games are based one. Cyberpunk is anticapitalist for sure, but it's not anticapitalist in the sense that it's about overthrowing the institutions or systems of capitalism. It's more about surviving within or among the cracks of those institutions and systems. I think this is an important point that distinguishes cyberpunk from other dystopian SF. Like a cyberpunk version of 1984 wouldn't follow a member of the party like Winston; it would instead follow a small cast of proles while they run a score on some cigarettes or something. They'd get caught up in organized crime. They'd get a glimpse of how the system really works. They'd end up happy to go on living their lives. And maybe they'd meet a database pretending to be some mythical being as the only way it can relate to humans. Focusing on evil megacorps and their exploitation shouldn't detract from how wonderfully weird cyberpunk can and should get.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 05:47 |
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I'd say that being anti-corporate only really matters as a "political" position so long as there's some meaningful non-corp governmental power out there to juxtapose against. Because if it's the only thing out there, who cares? It's the world you live in, and you only have the choice to engage with the world or not.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 06:40 |
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You can just make a game about being terrorists or revolutionaries.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 06:51 |
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Getting out a huge stack of gurps supplements for my new campaign, having everyone in the group agree on making their characters party of a revolutionary communist cell, insisting on using the really granular "realistic" gun rules and taking copious notes the whole time. None of the combat rules see use, the entire campaign grinds to a halt as the players wade through several months of in character debate about lenin
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 08:44 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:You can just make a game about being terrorists or revolutionaries. This was CyberGeneration and it had an interesting idea but lousy execution.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 08:50 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:You can just make a game about being terrorists or revolutionaries.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 09:49 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait why did they autopsy the dragon at all? If I had to guess at the logic then they did it to defile his corpse live in front of the world as revenge for killing their CEO Juan Atzcapotzalco (Yes they're this on the nose with the meso-american stuff in Aztechnology.), provide helpful "hints" if they found any weaknesses for anyone else that wanted to try their hands at taking out a dragon, and most importantly terrify and piss off everyone with even an iota of decency that would want Aztechnology gone. Think of it like the stories of drug cartels actively torturing someone and then leaving the mutilated corpse hung up somewhere to make a statement to other people. Only for an age where they've effectively won the war against law enforcement and countries and have risen mostly above the law and can get away with streaming that poo poo out to anyone. This isn't the first time they have pulled poo poo like that. When they invaded Amazonia (basically Brazil if Brazil resisted global control of megacorps. Also, it had three dragons and a horde of their offspring backing them up.) they got their poo poo pushed in to hilarious effect and completely dropped the whole "Affable mayanicatec overlords" schtick to show what they were really about. From the wiki posted:In early 2072 Aztlan and Amazonia went to war with one another. An Amazonia agent was caught spying on Aztlan, and they used this as justification to start the war. This was probably a move that hearkened back to ORO's expansion in the '20's. The Big A had better weapons and training... Amazonia had better magic, and a dragon. In 2073, Sirrurg the Destroyer resurfaced. He lead an attack against an Aztlaner military base in Cali, Columbia. This attack was composed of a half dozen feathered serpents, a dozen or so wyverns, and a large horde of drakes, spirits, lindworms, and various well-known members of the eco-terrorist groups GreenWar and mercenaries.[2] Also from the wiki posted:Aztlan (and the Big A by association) had egg on their face. And for the next year promised to use cutting edge weaponry to take down the Destroyer. And on October 3, 2074, after months of searching and preparation they managed to do just that. They had found one of Sirrurg's "mini-hordes" outside of Roswell and destroyed everything inside of it to enrage the dragon and lure him from hiding. Two hours later he was spotted flying along the east coast of Aztlan. He was shot down outside of Acapulco, but the fighting raged on for 98 more minutes. Finally, after much bloodshed and losses they managed to bring down the Destroyer. Then suddenly a storm came out of nowhere to obscure the battlefield were Sirrurg fell. Reports claim that two large shapes moved effortlessly through the fog, and once the storm passed Sirrurg's body was no where to be seen.[3] In the aftermath, Aztlan emerged victorious in the Amazonian War, after the brutal climatic Battle of Bogota. The reputation of both Aztlan and Aztechnology was restored and global public opinion was on their side. When I say that shadowrunners know that Aztechnology is a bunch of card carrying villains i'm not kidding. The only way they could be more on the nose about their probable intentions is if they had a dude dressed up as a cyberpunk conquistador sprouting tentacles out one of his arm sockets while dancing in the room of the autopsy while it took place. Tuxedo Catfish posted:lmao okay yeah that actually works pretty well then citybeatnik posted:Aztechnology actually being run by rear end in a top hat Penisulare is at least mildly funny, but I'm still irked that Mesoamerican culture continues to be the designated bad guys. I guess someone realized that having their megacorp big bad above the other immediate big bad's for the myth arc being a bunch of offensive mesoamerican cliches and playing that straight would appeaar racist as hell in the short and long run. Which is weird (and right on the money for this topic) since Shadowrun is also the perpetrator of a lot of on the nose "accidentally racist depiction of ____ people" stuff like in the OWoD's early days. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Dec 15, 2022 |
# ? Dec 15, 2022 10:56 |
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Oh no I missed Lancerchat! Even with some bits being dropped it is worth talking about some bits of that discussion and where they're actually at. A lot of the criticisms seemed to be based on not having read the paid version of the corebook - where all the big lore is, outside of the few supplements as well as semi-noncanon material. With regards to 'imagining the end of capitalism' - the 'Core Worlds' are in fact, money free. To just take a direct quote: page 397 posted:Union is not motivated by the desire or institutional momentum to accrue currency and capital, and neither are the Metropolitan peoples of the Core 'Diasporan worlds' is really the important phrase in those above two paragraphs. Union's Core Worlds are the shining StarTrek/Culture utopia. The game of Lancer takes place in those worlds that have not yet fully been integrated, having either broken free during the fall of SecComm, or who were never a part of Union in the first place until they've been recontacted. Union's currency of 'manna' basically exists for those worlds to be able to easily trade with each other - as well as intentionally make them dependent on Union and pave the way for proper integration and so forth. The megacorps still exist because SecComm allowed them to exist for the sake of 'efficiency', and by the end of the revolution into ThirdComm they'd switched sides or otherwise ingratiated themselves into the new powers that be. The civil war ended. Harrison Armory's Purview is a corpostate... but it is also Union. SecComm - and by extension, Harrison Armory - has a reputation that is exaggerated. It was less '40k's Imperium of Man' (though it gladly would've called itself that) and more like "Space MURICA". Between SecComm and ThirdComm, the situation for people living in the Core Worlds didn't change so much - it was the Diaspora where all the trouble was. Even in setting, Harrison Armory makes good on its obligations. Its troops really do liberate Diasporan planets from tyrants, and quell reactionary uprisings, and it does colonise those planets and contribute to Union and (mostly) avoids making a fuss. But when it colonises or liberates those planets to add them to the Purview, it sets them up with Purview schools; that teach the Purview curriculum and history. The omninet and local TV probably defaults to Purview channels. The original culture is neglected and the Purview is promoted instead. The point, basically, is that they're as good as a colonising hegemonic culturally imperialistic force can possibly be - and that's still bad. Doesn't stop them making drat fine mechs, and in-canon even Union forces love the HA-Saladin! But as page 10 states, and page 365 details: quote:These manufacturers exist in delicate balance with Union: though the administrators regulate and the suppliers comply, these two philosophies – one of post-capital utopia and the other of permanent and wild growth – rush toward an irreconcilable end. This whole weird scenario of a communist utopia that allows corpostates to do the colonising for it is acknowledged as unsustainable. Something's going to give, and that's what the PCs are for too.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 11:52 |
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Shadowrun also has the dubious honour of having their newest system be so bad that everyone just stopped playing it. It's rare that that happens to "bigger" RPGs.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 12:29 |
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Josef bugman posted:Shadowrun also has the dubious honour of having their newest system be so bad that everyone just stopped playing it. Is that why I never hear about it anymore? Though, it probably doesn't help that some of it's offerings were subpar in recent years. Anyone remember that shooter they put out instead of a real game? About the only successful product I recall were the video game RPG's. Even Exalted 3e just has people that don't like how many issues it has house ruling what they do like to work in 2e to make do. You really gotta gently caress up if people don't even want to have anything to do with your extremely in depth setting any more.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 12:33 |
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Josef bugman posted:Shadowrun also has the dubious honour of having their newest system be so bad that everyone just stopped playing it. Wait, really? After surviving 4e and 5e, it managed to get even worse? (IMHO, 4th Anniversary was okay.)
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 12:34 |
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Magnetic North posted:Wait, really? After surviving 4e and 5e, it managed to get even worse? (IMHO, 4th Anniversary was okay.) I heard they released basically unfinished work with leftover mechanics from 5e hanging around but not interacted with but mucking up the rules. Frankly my biggest issue with 5th edition in a lot of ways was they many mechanics and rules that had no examples given along with them as an intended way for this particular ruleset to work which led to a lot of clumsy grasping by gms to figure out what in the gently caress was actually supposed to go on.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 12:40 |
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Back in ShadowRun 2e, which ran during the heyday of 'rich RPG supplements and sourcebooks that often served as fine primers and introductory textbooks to whatever underlying concept they're about,' the corporate sourcebooks were all very explicit that the megacorps had a vested interest in keeping the political governments around, because, no, they didn't want to deal with all of the headaches of actually governing random populations.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 13:06 |
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Magnetic North posted:Wait, really? After surviving 4e and 5e, it managed to get even worse? (IMHO, 4th Anniversary was okay.) Errata is done by unpaid volunteers. It feels like every part of every publication has been farmed out to a different contractor. When I tried to run Shadowrun Anarchy the game ground to a halt when a drone got shot at since the game did not include any defensive stats for the drone, despite "drone rigger" being a core archetype for a player character. It was clear to me then that the game had not been playtested at all.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 13:07 |
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Shadowrun 6e is bad, but generally the interest in complicated rulesets has fallen off a cliff. The only heavy rulesets to make any splash lately have been Lancer and Pathfinder 2e. I think it's a combination of D&D eating the normie market, lighter games bring good enough for most indie players, and board/video/minis games drawing off attention from the sorts of nerds who like complex systems.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 13:11 |
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Gort posted:Errata is done by unpaid volunteers. It feels like every part of every publication has been farmed out to a different contractor. Feels like the complete lack of hacking support in 4e (which was wild since they changed up so much to make decking into the new hacking), but even more egregious.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 13:13 |
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It baffles me that they let it get this bad, because the very good Shadowrun video games by Harebrained Schemes have a perfectly serviceable game system that you could quite easily make into a decent pen and paper RPG, but instead they decided to do... whatever this is.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 13:25 |
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A lot of old school RPG devs are caught pretty flatfooted by the idea of the audience having... literally any expectations at all and not just basically homebrewing their own game to make up for a broken base system. To be fair, D&D 5e is almost that incoherent.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 14:36 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A lot of old school RPG devs are caught pretty flatfooted by the idea of the audience having... literally any expectations at all and not just basically homebrewing their own game to make up for a broken base system. To be fair, D&D 5e is almost that incoherent. Now, why was Anarchy so bad? Man, I don't know, that poo poo was straight up embarrassing. I think Anarchy did the most work killing interest in SR as a living game, 6th edition was just the nail in the coffin for anyone who gave them a second chance. But as long as Shadowrun continues to be valuable as an IP, I don't think anything is going to change at Catalyst... Or Wizkid will give the game line to someone new, who knows. Shadowrun exists as a brand first and foremost in a way that surpasses even D&D.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:26 |
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Josef bugman posted:Shadowrun also has the dubious honour of having their newest system be so bad that everyone just stopped playing it.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:56 |
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Halloween Jack posted:It would be a weird irony if Shadowrun destroyed itself while Cyberpunk, which always played second fiddle, sticks around because of the IP capitalization and a new tabletop edition that's at least playable. Cyberpunk 2077 is kind of generic edgy garbage though and the only reason it's getting attention is because CDPR spent so much time hyping it up only to make another Witcher 3 ubi-soft tier open world that was buggy as hell. Once that fades i'm not sure anyone will really remember the setting unless they keep putting out memeish laden stuff like the anime. At least Shadowrun has a setting that's interesting. Like, the whole "combine fantasy races and their cultures with cyberpunk dystopias" has a genuinely interesting spin compared to Cyberpunk's generic TnA focused hellscape that any game or setting could pull off. Shadowrun sounds as if it just suffers from garbage development management, and could be genuinely good if someone actually took some interest in putting out a good end product. Cyberpunk 2077 is always going to have to struggle with the setting itself being barebones cyberpunk light on depth in favor of shallow edginess, ironically. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Dec 15, 2022 |
# ? Dec 15, 2022 16:51 |
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That is true. I mean, I don't know about the video game. But having talked to some friends who played CP back-in-the-day, they all agreed that nobody was as hyped for CP's setting as people were for Shadowrun's. Johnny Silverhand and the Arasaka Brainworm don't have the same cache as Harlequin and the Renraku Arcology. Maybe they should get Hugo Weaving to play the CEO of Militech. Shadowrun Anarchy seems like the end result of a "we should design rules for people who don't care about rules" philosophy.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:31 |
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Anarchists?
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:54 |
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The great shame is that the concept of Shadowrun Anarchy was exactly what Shadowrun as a game needed. A new system, built from the ground up, with simplicity and ease-of-play in mind. But the system we got was completely full of holes and not playtested at all.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:58 |
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And then they copied the same incomplete and nonfunctional engine to make Mechwarrior Destiny. Once again, Catalyst could have done better just by swiping from their own licensee with Harebrained Schemes.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 22:05 |
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Archonex posted:Cyberpunk 2077 is kind of generic edgy garbage though and the only reason it's getting attention is because CDPR spent so much time hyping it up only to make another Witcher 3 ubi-soft tier open world that was buggy as hell. Once that fades i'm not sure anyone will really remember the setting unless they keep putting out memeish laden stuff like the anime. That's the thing, though. A buggy triple A video game and a Netflix series are more investment in popularizing the Cyberpunk IP than Shadowrun has seen in decades. And CDPR isn't resting on just that. They've invested the last two years into making CP2077 a stable and decent game. They're about to release a DLC starring Idris Elba. More games and TV shows are in the works. Shadowrun's owners aren't doing anything of the sort. And in 2077's defense, none of its many bugs were as infuriating as the game breaking bug that punished me for doing the cool thing and befriending the vampire lady in Shadowrun: Hong Kong. I'd also suggest that CP's more generic take on the genre can be to its benefit. You can play all sorts of different cyberpunk games with CP: Red's relatively simple and workable system. With Shadowrun, you have to contend with a game system that grows more and more messy with each edition and is only really suited to playing Shadowrun's specific genre mashup. Cyberpunk's setting is shallow and flashy, in keeping with Pondsmith's particular style-over-substance take on the genre, but for all its metaplot and lore, I don't think Shadowrun's setting has that much more depth to it. You can quickly pick up the CP:R rulebook and start running a game for your friends whose only experience with TTRPGs is D&D and only knowledge of the cyberpunk genre is a passing interest in its major works. Shadowrun requires you to learn and make work a system that ranges from overly complex to downright unplayable and that's designed specifically for its own specific genre mashup. There's a reason why "I want to play Shadowrun; what non-Shadowrun rules should I use?" is a perennial point of discussion over in TG.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 22:49 |
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Wait, Mechwarrior Destiny is based on Shadowrun 6E?
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 22:49 |
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Azran posted:Wait, Mechwarrior Destiny is based on Shadowrun 6E? Nah, the Cue system is what was (badly) adapted to power Shadowrun Anarchy and then to Mechwarrior Destiny. It was originally developed for Cosmic Patrol, where I understand it works better.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 22:57 |
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PeterWeller posted:Cyberpunk's setting is shallow and flashy, in keeping with Pondsmith's particular style-over-substance take on the genre So, weird tangent but: I hated basically every inch of Snowcrash and I would call that book style-over-substance. In your seemingly informed opinion: is something like Neuromancer still worth reading if I reacted so negatively so something everyone seems to like?
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:11 |
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Neuromancer is really outdated but a lot more heartfelt. Snowcrash is pretty much a satire of 80s cyberpunk, I imagine either bouncing off it or coming to weird conclusions if you go at it without prior genre exposure.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:17 |
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Magnetic North posted:So, weird tangent but: I hated basically every inch of Snowcrash and I would call that book style-over-substance. In your seemingly informed opinion: is something like Neuromancer still worth reading if I reacted so negatively so something everyone seems to like? Yes. Stephenson’s writing is incredibly love it or hate it, and I’m saying that as someone in the love it camp.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:19 |
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Stephenson generally, I've found I have to try and read the first few pages, drop the book, then go back to it and read the whole thing.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:36 |
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Magnetic North posted:So, weird tangent but: I hated basically every inch of Snowcrash and I would call that book style-over-substance. In your seemingly informed opinion: is something like Neuromancer still worth reading if I reacted so negatively so something everyone seems to like? Yes, Neuromancer is definitely worth reading still. I'd argue that all of Gibson's stuff is worth checking out. Snowcrash is really more of a spoof of cyberpunk to humorously frame Stephenson's info dumps about coding and language. I found it entertaining the first time I read it, but it did not reward a second reading. Absurd Alhazred posted:Neuromancer is really outdated but a lot more heartfelt. Snowcrash is pretty much a satire of 80s cyberpunk, I imagine either bouncing off it or coming to weird conclusions if you go at it without prior genre exposure. Neuromancer dates itself with its takes on the technology of the near future, but I think what it's saying more broadly about surviving late capitalism, the meaning of personhood, and the commodification of human bodies is all still very relevant to our current world.
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# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:42 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 12:20 |
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PeterWeller posted:That's the thing, though. A buggy triple A video game and a Netflix series are more investment in popularizing the Cyberpunk IP than Shadowrun has seen in decades. And CDPR isn't resting on just that. They've invested the last two years into making CP2077 a stable and decent game. They're about to release a DLC starring Idris Elba. More games and TV shows are in the works. Shadowrun's owners aren't doing anything of the sort. Again, this doesn't really disagree with what i'm saying. Shadowrun needs better managerial oversight to ensure it's massive gently caress ups and lack of modern publicity don't screw it over. Cyberpunk by contrast only has that attention to begin with because of CDPR's gently caress ups and ridiculous hype alongside the transphobia bullshit that gets extremist right wing culture warriors rocks off. Shadowrun definitely has lots of potential depth to it. The stuff related to the Horrors and Earthdawn, the magic spikes that can be worked as an allegory to rampant global warming or any other form of rampant economics, literally everything to do with the post humanistic stuff that keeps creeping into the games and novels (along with the debate of what a human even is and how this perception is manipulated by people in power - Thais, Rachter, along with any persecuted metahuman archetype and whatnot as an example), the rights of artificial life-forms ala Bladerunner (Deus and co), whether a long approach is better to a short term approach in terms of planning (Elves/dragons versus everyone else), etc, etc. The problem is that later editions don't capitalize on this as much as some of the older lore does. Again, it's a management and design issue. The problem with the "glitz and glam" Pondsmith approach is that at the end of the day, any shallow near-future setting with cybernetic augmentations can do what Cyberpunk 2077 does and has it as a given in the setting. Meanwhile, Shadowrun is trying something more expansive than that and often botches the final product and their handling of the IP. Obviously opinions differ between each person out there, but if I had to choose which one was more interesting and could be expanded on in interesting ways assuming both had public attention and well managed success i'd go for Shadowrun since I can see the sum total of what Cyberpunk 2077 offers just about anywhere that handles Cyberpunk literature, Shadowrun included. It's just deeply ironic that Shadowrun as an IP has been botched so hard despite the wasted potential it has while Cyberpunk 2077, the most watered down interpretation of a cyberpunk setting, is getting a second breath of life at the hands of CDPR's lovely behavior. Also, the vampire lady was cool, you should try it out again if you have still have a save. She'll join your party for the last dungeon if you teach her how to be a proper vampiric crime boss instead of letting her awkwardly going on about thralls and mortal servants and what not like a hilarious Stoker cliche. Ironically, if you go the right path with her she's probably one of the nicest characters in the game too. Which says something about the people you can meet along the way, I guess. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Dec 16, 2022 |
# ? Dec 16, 2022 10:38 |