Posts made by deadculture

@mietze What if they just left after an hour and a half? That is showboating? Oh, also, they posed leaving, stealing people away, etc. So that's showboating. All right.

@mietze Who showboated, out of curiosity?

@DnvnQuinn I think you should give it a try nevertheless. The Haven people are having a good time. It's not an exclusive game. People try to be inclusive. Sometimes it's hard to know who to approach to get oneself involved, yes, but with some RP effort it can work out.

See: @Sunny's former character, who got into the Dauphine's good graces by saving her from a poisoning, became Duchesse, and was very much poised to involve herself in many plots had she simply asked what she could do.

@Sunny Well, then I'm gonna be telling you here, this, right now: that ain't true. They blew up on someone. It wasn't fair, and it most certainly wasn't fucking all right to do so. What happened between you and Asherat, is not what I am talking about.

@Sunny I think you know that's not true. At least one of the two people who quit with you blew up at someone in a very unfair way.

@Echx Player of the character who nearly died recovering that book (because I took 3 lethal in addition to the 2 I had from combat, with a total health box of 7) here.

I can confirm I did all of these things, because my character's career was built upon the predicament that he is good at investigating and having hunches.

We spent 7 months off-grid, and there was this other party who spent 14 months. They didn't succeed, and I'm sadabout that, but I am buddies with the player of Corbeau who explained to me why they didn't succeed. Yeah, not everyone could get involved with the plot because by the time the ritual was being done, it was already influx. Nevermind some players' brilliant idea of trying to black-ops assassinate the Vralian leader or whatever.

You still alive?

Someone touched on character rosters, and throwaway characters: I think the lower level rosters should only and yes, only be used when you want to try and accomplish something (as long as it's a game that lets you accomplish something and not, for instance, Firan) that you'd lose too much in doing with your main character.

Say, your main is a big wig noble with psychic powers and some combat skills, but you want to try a guy that has an evidently short life but with the ability to accomplish some great things in the meantime. You find a character in the roster that lines up with that. You go ahead and play him and spin that plotline you want, knowing you're probably not gonna succeed in the end game but you still do something cool, even if it's just to use the character's faction motives to try and attempt to assassinate the Emperor or something.

@Lithium Uh, okay. But your rebuttal has not touched on the nuance I outlined at all. Plus I wrote the difference between Street Samurai and Solo, and it appears that it also went right over your head. Their codes of conduct also differ greatly. Molly has one, Turner has another.

I also have to quote myself here:

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

... whereas Turner seems to get himself jobs thanks to contacts in corporations here and there. He tries to honor his contracts, but evidently in the span of the novel he starred, that didn't turn out so well.

He got jobs thanks to contacts in corporations. I didn't say he doesn't do jobs for individuals. He probably absolutely does, but that corporate contacts bring him his business.

@Thenomain I love cyberpunk. It is the dystopia I embrace in learning more about, as opposed to Brave New World and 1984.

@Lithium I think the tropes are very different. You see that Molly's jobs tend to be less formal (in that there's no severance package, no corporations but people hiring her) whereas Turner seems to get himself jobs thanks to contacts in corporations here and there. He tries to honor his contracts, but evidently in the span of the novel he starred, that didn't turn out so well.

Also the choice in weapons and training reflects that. Turner is a mercenary, but he has military training and background. Molly has knowledge and training from the streets.

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@ThatGuyThere said in Shadowrun: Modern:

I think a huge reason of why Seattle is grunge.

A huge reason of "Why Seattle?" is the authors lived there.

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@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

It is true that Case, Bobby and the solo whose name escapes me right now were all white

Molly Millions, aka Blondie, aka Debbie Harry.

Shame on you for not remembering this bit of trivia from the 80s.

Molly was a Street Samurai/razorgirl. There was the dude that rescued Angie in [redacted].

@The-Tree-of-Woe said in Shadowrun: Modern:

I would say the primary thing that separates Shadowrun from Cyberpunk aside from the Genre Mashup is that Cyberpunk is in a big way about isolationist loners, exceptional individuals (usually white men, if memory serves, but you can say that about a lot of Sci-Fi) weighed down by a monolithic, oppressive system, and looking to defy the Powers That Be, to varying degrees of success.

Shadowrun has the same element of being an exceptional individual pushed to the margins of society, but is ultimately about finding others on the ropes just like you, and coming together - maybe for revenge, maybe for answers, maybe because you can't let your friend go alone, maybe just for the nuyen to get the hell out of the sprawl.

Cyberpunk is about isolated examplars - Shadowrun is about individuals isolated by society who find something meaningful in one another - one of the core precepts of Shadowrunning as defined by the first generation of Shadowrunners being "Find Your Own Truth."

Uh.

Raven (Snow Crash villain and loner) -> Inuit
Virek's henchman -> Mexican
Hiro (3Jane's ninja) -> Asian
Maelcum (The guy who did the Straylight Run for Chase) -> Jamaican
Hiro (Protagonist, Snow Crash) -> Asian/Black

Cyberpunk itself puts a lot less stock on your race and a lot more stock on the loneliness of the setting. It is true that Case, Bobby and the solo whose name escapes me right now were all white, but to say that most of the loner characters are white men is ... unwise, to say the least. If your concept of diversity is skin-deep, I don't think you'll find much of a problem in cyberpunk tropes.

There are ways of making a game set in Europe in a cyberpunk setting feel less American, and that is just to insert heavy elements of their local culture in it. For instance, if you set a game in Neo-Marseilles or what have you, they could still be speaking Provencal after whatever leveled the original Marseilles caused a certain resurgence in Aquitanian separatism/nationalism to resurface.

Or, perhaps, if you set it in Salamanca, or Granada, certain historical and cultural elements in both of those cities (which are located in Leon and Granada, unsurprisingly) offer a different flavor than 'American sprawling city du jour'. Nevertheless, none of that would make for what truly makes cyberpunk enjoyable, and it's the sort of tasteless uniformity that all the corporations impose, all 'round the globe.

I think it is entirely possible to make the fantasy element of magic be the rulebreaker without fantastical creatures, @Thenomain -- it won't take much work, either. It could be your elven decker could be changed into a human decker who somehow casts illusion spells and those fuck up the ICEs that are supposed to keep you from the secure system you just broke into. It could be your character once thought of becoming a Solo, but suddenly something happened and instead they acquired body-enhancement magics and that made them far more effective in their natural form than any cybernetic implants would complement them with.

Others may say what they will, but the meta-human element of Shadowrun when it comes to orcs, elves, etc., only doesn't break cyberpunk immersion (as I call it) when you're really into the setting. After sometime, though, for people who like cyberpunk for itself, it sort of makes them hesitant. Then again, there could be a sort of happy medium there. The more soaked in magic you find yourself in, the less human you become, as the same would apply to cybernetics and over-use of them. After all, when a man is more machine components than man, is he really a human anymore?

@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.

@ThatGuyThere

I'm with TGT there. 7th Sea 1st > 7th Sea 2nd because, in many ways, they've taken away individual heroics for group-based heroics. If you want to play a Jackie Chan movie with lots of bad guys getting beaten up by some dude with high Panache, 7S2 is for you. If you want The Duellists, 7th Sea 1 is the right fit.

@Pandora Well, no, it doesn't. And I do agree with that point of yours; it was a point of contention in another thread -- that the consensus is highly sought after here and agreement tends to be more rewarding than disagreement (even when more politely worded).

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

@ixokai said in The Shame Game:

@Pandora said in The Shame Game:

The Shame Game on MSB is pretty amusing as long as you don't take it too seriously. I participated in a thread in the Hog Pit and through nothing but trying to explain my points of view wound up at like -124 reputation. Having a differing opinion on MSB is something to be ashamed of then?

I really don't get why people care that this internet number goes up or down, or it their post's number goes up or down, but evidentially this internet number matters to people.

It's funny she mentioned that, though, most of my reputation points are either from making puns at someone else's expense but more substantially from constructive statements I may have made about a topic or another.

The Hog Pit is to fling shit. If you do not think that it suits your views of the board, then do not peruse it. Mildly constructive is for when you actually want to build something (whether that's a game idea, knowledge or merely advice) out of nothing. I prefer Mildly Constructive over the Hog Pit, myself. However, you joined the Pitcrew, so evidently you like the shitflinging.

I for one am having a much more satisfactory experience of MU Soapbox without it.

I think those mandatory things you mentioned are good. Also simplicity of commands, whereas the code might, say, automatically find a relevant object to reload a gun with, if you give it a name, instead of having to pinpoint which of the six equally named objects it'll take. I guess it's anti-aliasing, the name? Not sure.

And yeah, I would definitely love to run a MOO without the limitations of Lambda as we know them, plus capabilities for automated combat that don't end up lagging the game in a slog (looking at MUX and Firan for that last example).