Shadowrun: Modern

[Jennkryst]

A thing that makes it more than just Cyberpunk + Magic (I presume when you say magic, you just mean on the PC-side.. players who can throw balls of lighting at problems) is a combination of the metaplot, the lore, and the threats. As magic continues to rise, more and more bad shit keeps showing up.

[deadculture]

What turns me off of Shadowrun is the elves, dwarves, that stuff. If the fantasy limited itself to the spiritual fighting the technological, perhaps one of the chiaroscuro themes of cyberpunk I really enjoy thinking about, then I would definitely consider playing.

For instance: taking the Adept class, with its martial arts emphasis and spirituality, so much at odds with a materialistic, capital-first world.

[Thenomain]

@Seraphim73 said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Tim Bradstreet

RIP. He really was the face of Shadowrun for so long.

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edit:

@Jennkryst said in Shadowrun: Modern:

(I presume when you say magic, you just mean on the PC-side.. players who can throw balls of lighting at problems)

No, I'm starting from scratch, so I mean the setting.

I should note: I'm looking to re-invent the setting, maybe the theme, and maybe, at the very end, system. This is a world-building exercise for me that has become slightly more serious as time goes on.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Thenomain
For me it is about scale of PC power. If you look at the main characters of a Gibson novel they are still very mortal, there is the feeling that while they can accomplish great things they are still ordinary people. CP2020 felt this way to me as well. Shadowrun even at straight from c-gen level has the feel of being more then ordinary, maybe not the baddest ass around but a cut above the majority of the faceless population.
and to second @Lithium I loved the depth of the history when Earthdawn was still part of the some continuity.

[faraday]

If you talk about Shadowrun the RPG then the defining points for me are:

• The Team. Even when the team is an ad-hoc one thrown together for one mission (common in the GenCon circuit) or a dysfunctional team where they're fighting each other as much as the opposition, it's still a team approach where everyone plays a role.
• The Run. Playing SR for me has always been like acting out your favorite heist movie. That's the best part.
• The Theme. Most SR games are built around the central theme of barely-scraping-by 'runners eeking out a living in the underbelly of polite society. As someone else said - it's being under the bootheel of The Man or, alternately, sticking it to him.

But as I've mentioned on other threads, I'm a huge fan of the fiction. I also helped to write some of the sourcebooks that expanded the game beyond the traditional 'runner tropes. So I see SR as being more than just the RPG... it's about the world.

It's hard to pinpoint a specific thing about the world that makes it SR, because for me it's like... the whole package. The fantasy elements are obviously a big thing that makes it unique. Dragons. Megacorps. (Someone said we have that today, but we really don't - nowhere near on the same scale of power.) Docwagon. Lone Star. Stuffer Shack. The Native American Nations (I realize their approach isn't very PC these days, it's still a defining feature of SR for me). The international scene, with Denver and Aztlan and the Tir.

It's just an extremely colorful world with a lot of great hooks. I tried Cyberpunk at one point and never got hooked on the world in the same way.

[Thenomain]

So Far:

• High Magic
• Borderline hero-level characters
• Theme dripping all over everything like someone in Ohio with bad allergies
• Dragons (nnngggghhhhhhh...)

Contested:

• Noir

I agree with what Faraday says about being able to escape the box of "It's All About the Run, You're All Shadowrunners" touched here and mentioned at length in the thread this ultimately comes from.

But the genre that Shadowrun comes from is seeped in Noir. It's evolved since then, but the question is: If not Noir, then what?

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I'm using the following definition of Noir: a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.

Emphasis mine.

What parts of Noir is critical to Shadowrun? Which parts need to be chucked in the fire?

[ThatGuyThere]

I often forget the whole runner part of ShadowRun, honestly none of the campaigns I have played in have really been about a group of traditional runner. The first I played in back in first edition was basically a gang protecting their turf and from there we have done many things. the current campaign is probably the closest to a standard runner group but honestly we are closer to the A-Team then a runner group since we tend to spend about as much time checking out the job to make sure they are worth doing then we do doing the job. Of course when ever we have spare IC time or cash we use it to go after the corp all the PC has a bg reason to hate.
Shadowrun is very Noir without ever looking Noir if that makes any sense. Maybe call it Neon Noir.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

I'm using the following definition of Noir: a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.
What parts of Noir is critical to Shadowrun? Which parts need to be chucked in the fire?

Moral ambiguity: Yes. Very much this.

Cynicism: It fits, but I don't see it as essential. If anything, there's a sort of cheeky edge to SR that lightens it up a little bit, but I think it comes down to the slant of your individual campaign. Our characters through the years were never particularly cynical.

Fatalism: Nope.

Crime film or fiction: I think we hashed this to bits in the other thread. The traditional RPG runner group is a bunch of mercenary criminals, but it doesn't have to be. Shadowrun is an entire world with lots of non-criminal stuff going on in it.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Shadowrun is an entire world with lots of non-criminal stuff going on in it.

Part of what I think of as core Cyberpunk is that if you are living well in the world, you are living by someone else's rules. To be an individual is to break some of those rules, legal or otherwise.

Where else would "moral ambiguity" be able to enter?

[deadculture]

@Thenomain Noir is typical and intrinsic to Cyberpunk. Not so much Shadowrun, as magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities. On the other hand, I recognize what attracts me to the cyberpunk genre is what pushes people away. I like the gritty, bitter pill of cynicism that cyberpunk fiction prescribes. I am not so much for suspending my disbelief for elves and trolls and shit.

[Thenomain]

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities

While I did +1 because of this right here, I still wonder: What replaces it? Is it the chance that things can change? Does this require an oppressive world to change? Is Shadowrun (to coin a term I heard recently) "post-Cyberpunk"?

[deadculture]

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities

While I did +1 because of this right here, I still wonder: What replaces it? Is it the chance that things can change? Does this require an oppressive world to change? Is Shadowrun (to coin a term I heard recently) "post-Cyberpunk"?

Post-Cyberpunk is basically an existentialist conclusion to the nihilism in Cyberpunk. You see that by contrasting the ending of Snow Crash with the ending of the entire Sprawl trilogy, and then contrast the same Sprawl trilogy with the Bridge trilogy, by the same author, years later. CP's message is desolation, loneliness, grim realization, whereas post-Cyberpunk has that glimmer of hope at the end of tunnel, that things might turn alright, after all.

I think Shadowrun sort of transcends the actual thematics of Cyberpunk by adding the fantastical element, I think it's that magic defies reason, and because it does, the inevitable grim conclusion of the reality before magic (and this includes even the most cynical understandings of medicine, physics and chemistry as we know it) is no longer applicable, so people can be whoever they want, whatever they want, provided they are gifted to do so and can believe. It's a little more idealistic than 'pure' cyberpunk, which also means it loses a lot of the noir element.

[faraday]

@Thenomain Morality and legality are not always in alignment. Corporations make the laws in SR, but what they do is by no means always just - often far from it. And even a corporate or mercenary 'runner team, while not being the SINless criminals that traditional 'runners are, often operate extra-legally.

I just don't think of SR as "noir", though I can certainly see how one could run a noir-themed SR campaign if you made it clear to the players what angle you were going for.

I agree with @deadculture that the magical/fantasy elements probably account for the lighter, more optimistic bent compared to pure Cyberpunk. I also think that this is the most game-breaking piece of the world, and the primary reason why I've never attempted to run a SR MUSH.

[Arkandel]

It's the mark of a woefully bad setting that there's only one interpretation of how things are or ought to be, only one particular theme and it occupies a very specific, well defined niche.

Shadowrun is not a woefully bad setting. It's perfectly fine for more than one person to look at it and see different, valid views of how it should work.

[Coin]

@faraday said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Thenomain Morality and legality are not always in alignment. Corporations make the laws in SR, but what they do is by no means always just - often far from it. And even a corporate or mercenary 'runner team, while not being the SINless criminals that traditional 'runners are, often operate extra-legally.

Legality is matter of power, not justice.

[TwoGunBob]

Cynicism in Shadowrun became something of a joke. I mean it was an oft surprising moment when a run wasn't ending in a double cross or a double double cross. I think this may have been symptomatic of game masters thinking their players would be surprised by how clever they were in the double cross and just generally weren't. "Mr. Johnson was a stooge of a dragon? Do tell... sigh..."
Now I never played of SR mu*'s because of their reputation so this is all experience over small scale tabletop groups around Texas in the 90's with a small sampling of game masters. Although it did seem that CP2020 players thought themselves as the sirius gamers of the cyberpunk genre whereas they seemed to me to be a little too caught up in the cyberpunkiness to have fun.

[ThatGuyThere]

That runs a bit counter to my experience again only tabletop never MU*, I don't think we ever had a run that ended in a true double cross, there has often been shadiness on the sides but in the end each party lived up to the letter of the agreement though not necessarily the spirit.
Not to say things were always pleasant, we had a Johnson put out contracts on us in the current campaign after we completed the mission and he paid us. And he was justified we did exactly what he told us to just in a manner that completely hosed what his intent was.

[Thenomain]

My tabletop experiences were always "harsh, but fair".

I believe the intro adventure, Maria Mercurial, ended on a hopeful note unless you really purposefully screwed things up.

All three Shadowrun Returns games were moderately straightforward.

I have more to say on Hope & Magic, mostly that while I agree with the sentiment I don't know if "hope" feels like the right term. I need to come up with better words to describe this. "On the cusp of Heroism" comes close, but I don't see magic as being something that will bring hope to the world.

Also, I need to re read the Bridge series. I got to Idoru and felt done with it, but also felt that Idoru was a book between Snow Crash and Diamond Age.

[ThugHeaven]

Wow a Shadowrun discussion. I'm at work, but I agree with a lot of what was said.

The noir element to me is the fact that you can't stop the megacorps. Whatever their evil plan is, you only stopped it for the moment. You just built a firebreak, but you know the fire is going to go around it. And that's if you were doing heroic deeds.

You could very well just be a part of the plan, just a cog in the wheel. The world keeps on spinning.

[Lithium]

The cynicism and grit of Shadow Run depends entirely upon what type of character you want to play and what the theme of the game being ran is.

Play a bunch of gang bangers with low resources and then try to survive in the Redmond Barrens or most any other sprawl for example and you'll see how grit and grimdark ShadowRun can be.

Many 'Runners are already a stage above the darkest it can get, but they can fall. If they end up screwing up the run and not paid then are hunted by two corporations and have nowhere to go except into the sprawl and crawl into a hole, try and not die... yeah it can get pretty bad.

To me Magic is just another type of 'Tech' in ShadowRun. Yeah it's rare, but so are Panther Assault Cannons. Supernatural threats, bounties, and metacritter guard dogs are all just part of what makes ShadowRun what it is, but it doesn't necessarilly make things more pleasant overall.

So part of this really @Thenomain you have to /decide/ what you want the overarching theme for /your/ ShadowRun to be, and then to make it that.

Because as it's written, ShadowRun can be practically /anything/.