Shadowrun: Modern

[Lotherio]

No one has said it, so I'll throw it out there.

Shadowrun was cyberpunk with fantasy to me. What made it 'Shadowrun' (trademark) was the connection to Earthdawn.

It was Earth moving into 6th age, while players know the story of 4th age. They knew magic came/went in the ages. They all knew there was this really big story there, something happened in the 4th age, the horrors never truly left, and they thought there may be answers in the 6th age. It left it open for 5th age stories, which could be any modern dark fantasy genre; the horrors were still there.

It had a great history. All the shadow running, bucking the system, sticking it to the man, was great, but it was part of the whole continuity.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium said in Shadowrun: Modern:

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.

Somehow my reply to this didn't make it through, so an abridged version of that post:

Yes, and I have my views, but I want in part to challenge those views, in part to make something that would be more likely to be accepted (note the "more likely," please; I'm not trying to make friends with everyone in this crazy playground), and to re-introduce the discussion this came from but without the implication that some people are wrong.

This thread is specifically not about what I want. It's not about what anyone "wants". It's about what people see.

[Lotherio]

Oh, if its what I want to see in Shadowrun: Modern .... T'skrang awakened ....

[Lithium]

@Thenomain Absolutely cool. Was just trying to point out that ShadowRun can be so many different things to different people that you either need to leave it all in to try and retain the 'feel' to everyone, or you need to limit the scope yourself so the game works for you.

I didn't mean any disrespect, trying to be helpful

I'd like to see your take on such a game Theno.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium

No offense taken. This thread has absolutely changed how I want to do things.

[deadculture]

@Thenomain If you do make a Shadowrun game, will you make the chargen/code for it available?

[Thenomain]

@deadculture

I have absolutely no idea what I'd do for system.

[Coin]

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Thenomain If you do make a Shadowrun game, will you make the chargen/code for it available?

Yes. He would. Because he's Theno, and it's in his nature to share.

[Jennkryst]

While magic DOES open up the possibility of hope and shit in a typical Cyberpunk setting, one should note that magic does not have all the answers. You cannot rez someone from the dead. You cannot teleport. You cannot grow back the holes in your soul that come from essence loss (though new editions provide a tech for this, it bothers me). Some right horrible fucking shit happens to folks that magic not only cannot solve, but actually CAUSED. So we remain a dark place, but with more bad times with a small glimmer of light.

[OrcRiot]

There's not much touching on the racism here, though speciesm is more accurate. Color, gender, sexual orientation doesn't matter in this world. But your species does. Unless your special enough to have gone through the change into a elf, your mistrusted and you probably live in squalor. Woe be to you if your one of the deformed races.

So yeah, while you're a great big Ork with dermal plating and a rocket launcher. You're also not welcome anywhere except the slums. The POPO will watch you more carefully, you can't even get into the rich areas through normal means, you can't get the jobs others can, you're sub-human. You're basically an animal to most.

[Thenomain]

@DnvnQuinn

Who me? Push racism/specesism to its limit? I kid; the original game did heavily imply this, but here's one of the things I want to do:

Take whatever your genetic makeup is. Choose a metahuman trope from one of them. Dwarves? How about Biloko? Troll or Oni? How about something besides frickin' Elves? (Which are mostly Scandinavian et al. anyway)

While doing scant pre-research on this, I had a vision of Shadowrun with no metahumans, just humans. The vision was pretty glorious, but I don't think that would quite be Shadowrun, but I want a world that breaks out of Tolkeinrun. I want to push culture, creed, neighborhood, and the personal as a grand opposition to any future without choice.

[deadculture]

@Thenomain I think a Shadowrun without metahumans would be pretty fucking great. You're looking into a Cyberpunk possibility. I know that @somasatori and I would be more than happy to assist. We're both avid fans of the literary genre.

[OrcRiot]

Well a world without metahumans is basically...Cyberpunk 2020. The rules are so close anyways.

[Thenomain]

@DnvnQuinn said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Well a world without metahumans is basically...Cyberpunk 2020.

I disagree. It could just as easily be Cast a Deadly Spell in the 2100s instead of the 1940s. Or it could be a take on Gibson's Bridge series instead. Or his "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", which is beautifully about people. (Hell, everything in Burning Chrome is.)

I imagine CP2020's magic would be more psychic anyhow, pushing it more toward space opera and science fiction. I have read one or two magazine articles about adding magic to CP2020, but it was very 90s. Very 90s.

The rules are so close anyways.

What rules? I'm world-building. Rules will come later. Much later.

[Coin]

I think the stigma of elvers/dwarves/orcs being "Tolkien"-heavy is going away, slowly, and we can help.

Make your elves/dwarves/orcs super modern. Strip away their usual behavioral tropes. Look also to other types of the same: lots of Nordic dwarves were neither short nor stocky, and while Dunsany (and later Tolkien to much greater effect) popularized the tall, noble elven race, there are lots of legends abnout elves being short, lithe, and trickstery (like the elves in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, or Legend). Orcs, being largely a Tolkien creation, have little basis in myth, but trolls can range from rock-skinned things that petrify in the sunlight to large, hairy beasts that haunt bridges and request weird tolls. Maybe in your version of Shadowrun, every Troll has the compulsion to pick an intersection--and charge a toll; maybe those intersections don't need to be physical, and people can get creative...

I don't know. If you want to break the mold, you can.-

[Arkandel]

@Coin Maybe it's my own RPG coming-of-age but my non-Tolkienesque races all came from Dark Sun.

Them dwarves on Athas aren't short and if you meet a tribe of halflings it's a good idea to start running. Even their magic rules were amazing and fit the world really well.

The whole setting... sigh.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Coin Maybe it's my own RPG coming-of-age but my non-Tolkienesque races all came from Dark Sun.

Them dwarves on Athas aren't short and if you meet a tribe of halflings it's a good idea to start running. Even their magic rules were amazing and fit the world really well.

The whole setting... sigh.

Doesn't really matter where you get them from; if you want non-Tolkien-esque races, you need to actively promote the differences, is all I'm saying.

[Thenomain]

@Coin

I want my races to be solidly based on myth, and it fits the regionalism and personal worldview that I think is modern to our current state of mind.

[faraday]

Without the Shadowrun metahumans it wouldn't really be Shadowrun to me. It's one of the core pillars of the game, along with the Matrix and Magic. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be a fun game to play. Just wouldn't be Shadowrun.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Which is why I'm not going to axe them, it just would pretty damn awesome even without them.

What I want, instead, is to push that aspect even higher, make a statement about modern day gender and race issues. Even without that, I think we're ready for more de-Tolkeinized settings, and let regional cultures reign a little stronger. Those Megacorps could use the pressure.

Hopefully people can see why I didn't start with my plans until I got a good survey response. We nerds are distracted by minutiae and take any chance at going down the rat-hole into distraction du jour.

I am sincerely thinking about axing the Shadowrun-style dragons, because Dragon CEOs my ass. Dragon President of the United States super-powerful Marty Stu damned dragons no way in hell.

I never liked the Conspiracy Theory side of Shadowrun. I could be alone in that.