[QUOTE=Rats808;47899384]Ah, yes, the St. Louis Arch, said by some to be a magical gateway to the world of the...[looks at scribbles on his hand] Cardinials. We've never figured out the incantation required to activate it, though.[/QUOTE]
not exactly ancient, and nobody cares about it
The general idea is that the more people care and have cared about some object or place, the more magical it is. [i]Especially[/i] if it's religiously or mystically important.
Pyramids? magic
Indian burial grounds? magic
Jerusalem? all magical.
Stonehenge? That's some serious fukkin magic. Do [b]not[/b] fuck with Stonehenge
[QUOTE=M.Ciaster;47896731]
[img]http://puu.sh/ifuVX/91011f5579.png[/img][/QUOTE]
Still the best rulebook there is, it makes it brutally clear the game is balls to the wall, don't-give-a-shit style.
[QUOTE=elowin;47899544]not exactly ancient, and nobody cares about it
The general idea is that the more people care and have cared about some object or place, the more magical it is. [I]Especially[/I] if it's religiously or mystically important.
Pyramids? magic
Indian burial grounds? magic
Jerusalem? all magical.
Stonehenge? That's some serious fukkin magic. Do [B]not[/B] fuck with Stonehenge[/QUOTE]
Would that mean [sp2]weed[/sp2] is some seriously magical herb?
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;47900459]Would that mean [sp2]weed[/sp2] is some seriously magical herb?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it actually does. Deepweed is pretty radical.
[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47900047]Still the best rulebook there is, it makes it brutally clear the game is balls to the wall, don't-give-a-shit style.[/QUOTE]
The GM advice is awful though, it basically boils down to "Kill the players, but slowly, crush their resolve first."
[QUOTE=Rents;47900630]The GM advice is awful though, it basically boils down to "Kill the players, but slowly, crush their resolve first."[/QUOTE]
You mean that [i]isn't[/i] good advice?
[QUOTE=Rents;47900630]The GM advice is awful though, it basically boils down to "Kill the players, but slowly, crush their resolve first."[/QUOTE]
Best part is when Cyberpunk 2077 (the videogame) releases they will release the new rulebook on the same day.
[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;47901276]Best part is when Cyberpunk 2077 (the videogame) releases they will release the new rulebook on the same day.[/QUOTE]
maybe it will have rules that are not shit
maybe
[QUOTE=Rents;47900630]The GM advice is awful though, it basically boils down to "Kill the players, but slowly, crush their resolve first."[/QUOTE]
As far as I know, most of the GM advice is usually misinterpreted. Writers love their hyperboles so when they say put a claymore in your player's bed, they don't actually mean you should be doing that.
The book tells you that they recognize the game has very little in the way of balance and that it's mostly intentional, because that's the cyberpunk way. They let you do whatever you want and get whatever you want to be a cybered-up killing machine but they also tell you that nothing in Night City is what it seems and that cybered-up killing machines usually attract attention.
The point is that the players live in a world and must abide by that world's rules. So sure, you can carry around a grenade launcher through the city, but the players are probably going to have half the NCPD on their ass if they do, and the GM is supposed to communicate these risks to the player.
It's kind of a terrible philosophy but it's a cyberpunk philosophy where the players have to ride the [I]edge[/I] of society, breaking the rules to score big but also have to keep in mind that by doing this you are probably pissing someone off, and are thus going to probably be killed in a gruesome fashion.
[editline]7th June 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=elowin;47902022]maybe it will have rules that are not shit
maybe[/QUOTE]
Rules aren't changing because they don't really need changing (except for maybe netrunning but those will always slow games down no matter how you change them).
Pondsmith stands by 2020 saying it's the way he intended it best and the only improvement it really needs is a skimmed down skill list, which I agree with. Very few systems do a good job of what they are intended for and Cyberpunk is one of them.
[QUOTE=cdr248;47902024]As far as I know, most of the GM advice is usually misinterpreted. Writers love their hyperboles so when they say put a claymore in your player's bed, they don't actually mean you should be doing that.
The book tells you that they recognize the game has very little in the way of balance and that it's mostly intentional, because that's the cyberpunk way. They let you do whatever you want and get whatever you want to be a cybered-up killing machine but they also tell you that nothing in Night City is what it seems and that cybered-up killing machines usually attract attention.
The point is that the players live in a world and must abide by that world's rules. So sure, you can carry around a grenade launcher through the city, but the players are probably going to have half the NCPD on their ass if they do, and the GM is supposed to communicate these risks to the player.
It's kind of a terrible philosophy but it's a cyberpunk philosophy where the players have to ride the [I]edge[/I] of society, breaking the rules to score big but also have to keep in mind that by doing this you are probably pissing someone off, and are thus going to probably be killed in a gruesome fashion.
[editline]7th June 2015[/editline]
Rules aren't changing because they don't really need changing (except for maybe netrunning but those will always slow games down no matter how you change them).
Pondsmith stands by 2020 saying it's the way he intended it best and the only improvement it really needs is a skimmed down skill list, which I agree with. Very few systems do a good job of what they are intended for and Cyberpunk is one of them.[/QUOTE]
My only real issue with CP2020 is how hilariously out of date its tech is. You can get an inbuilt tape casette recorder that has room for like... an hour of audio?
[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;47902086]My only real issue with CP2020 is how hilariously out of date its tech is. You can get an inbuilt tape casette recorder that has room for like... an hour of audio?[/QUOTE]
Well that's what you get when you play a sci fi game from the 90s that hasn't been updated since. You can easily homebrew stuff to make it more hi-tech since most of the stuff is fluff anyway.
I personally love it though, adds a kind of charm to the game, like the old ass IBM navigation computers in Alien.
We'd have netrunners by now if the dotcom bubble hadn't burst.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4A02WH4583[/url]
You don't fuck with data tapes son
[sp]yes you read that right THREE TERABYTES[/sp]
-i stand corrected-
[QUOTE=cdr248;47902763]3 terabytes for 150 bucks sounds like it's bound to fail or be slow as fuck[/QUOTE]
Nope, LTO tapes are pretty reliable, and pretty damn fast.
Also, it's 3TB for the [I]tape[/I]. The tape [I]drives[/I] are about $2000 for a basic model.
[QUOTE=cdr248;47902763]3 terabytes for 150 bucks sounds like it's bound to fail or be slow as fuck[/QUOTE]
Tapes are pretty popular as a physical backup option with businesses, since you can store quite a bit of data on them in a fairly small space. I've also read they're relatively fast and reliable, but I don't deal with them personally beyond making sure they aren't on fire.
Not that it matters when a bunch of dudes in trench coats blow your fucking data center up.
So my GM allowed this on our 5e campaing
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwT0tzdmFjeXBHY1U/view[/url]
I'm deciding between that and open hand for my monasteric tradition
[QUOTE=leonthefox;47903527]So my GM allowed this on our 5e campaing
[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdYIcfHauwT0tzdmFjeXBHY1U/view[/url]
I'm deciding between that and open hand for my monasteric tradition[/QUOTE]
Open hand is still better, honestly, since it's STILL an ungodly ki sink. At least there's more options with that one.
On a similar note, what has people's experience with Legends of the Wulin been, if anyone has played it at all?
[QUOTE=elowin;47897501]Not Canada, the United Canadian American States. It's both USA and Canada, minus the southern states, and all the parts claimed by the native tribes. And Denver because fucking dragons.
[sp]and he technically didn't really get assassinated, but that's a sekrit hush hush[/sp][/QUOTE]
The UCAS reminds me that a lot of Shadowrun has really poor fact-checking. Such as Newfoundland was absorbed into Maine.
It's laughable for a lot of reasons, mostly the fact that Newfoundlanders would NEVER allow it, considering they used to be their own country, and are very proud of their province. This quote...
[quote]In 2019, the Premier of Newfoundland, acting as spokeswoman, approached the state of Maine and asked to be annexed. Maine had seen this coming for some time, and agreed.[/quote]
Is hilarious if you've EVER met a Newfie. The idea that they would ask to be annexed... holy hell... maybe New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but Newfoundland, never.
Maybe that's the joke? That or yeah maybe the fact checking dept. fucked bad.
[QUOTE=draugur;47904121]Maybe that's the joke? That or yeah maybe the fact checking dept. fucked bad.[/QUOTE]
Possibly... but I found another quote thats just as ridiculous, if not moreso...
[quote]On December 11, the Republic of Quebec sends official invitations to the United States (particularly the northeastern section) and the Maritime provinces to join the Republic. All but Labrador, the mainland portion of Newfoundland, refuse.[/quote]
It really seems like they just looked at the border of quebec and was like "Why is labrador separate, it shouldn't be separate!" and just decided to merge them together. Like if you looked at the Spain Portugal border and were like "uch, no" and just got rid of Portugal all together.
As a Newfie myself, I can absolutely confirm that we would never ask to be annexed (Especially by Maine, fuck Maine).
[QUOTE=Funktastic Dog;47904152]It really seems like they just looked at the border of quebec and was like "Why is labrador separate, it shouldn't be separate!" and just decided to merge them together. Like if you looked at the Spain Portugal border and were like "uch, no" and just got rid of Portugal all together.[/QUOTE]
And speaking of Europe, SR fucked that up marvelously, too. Ireland is united because HURR DURR. Basque State is separate from Spain and France on pretense that the rebel militia was basically replaced by an army made up exclusively out of corporate troops. The Balkans are absolute garbage, because their data hasn't been changed since 1993, so they marked down a bunch of shitty borders and threw in everything and the kitchen sink, while simultaneously completely avoiding any details about the region. Ukraine is actually kind of powerful, and for some reason [I]annexed Moldova and half of Romania.[/I] And Poland is a civil war state that's been unresolved kind of.
And don't even get me started on the non-fringe nations. They're all basically traced over the 1841 map of Europe, except ~cybered up~ and ~magic'd up~. They really need to get somebody to sort that shit out.
Ireland is only united in SR because elves took over and everyone else is either a second class citizen or fucked off to Britain, it's not as silly as the Balkans re-Balkanising.
A re-boot of the Shadows of Asia and Shadows of Europe books would be really nice. Hell, maybe a book that updates every damn continent would be even better.
I feel like when the original writers were coming up with Shadowrun, for areas that weren't their main point of interested (Seattle), they just kind of defaulted to whatever stereotypes they knew of a region without really doing any research.
The American South? They're Confederates again!
Russia? New Soviet State!
Japan? Imperial Japan rises again!
It's a damn miracle that Germany isn't just the Fourth Reich, but they seemed to have bumped back the reference to pre-unification Germanic mini-states - at least until Saeder-Krupt took everything over.
researching the entire world is hard
easier to just say "its like a hundred years in the future, shit happened, shut up"
Considering Shadowrun is mostly street level stuff I can see why they don't focus on global politics much. I'd rather have individual cities and corps really well fluffed out than knowing that the writers went to the trouble of writing out a detailed run down of Serbian Metahuman politics.
Also, nothing stopping GMs from fluffing it out themselves.
[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;47906387]Considering Shadowrun is mostly street level stuff I can see why they don't focus on global politics much. I'd rather have individual cities and corps really well fluffed out than knowing that the writers went to the trouble of writing out a detailed run down of Serbian Metahuman politics.
Also, nothing stopping GMs from fluffing it out themselves.[/QUOTE]
Plus the setting wouldn't be as fun if not for all the stereotyping, to be honest.
Southern USA literally reforming the confederacy is hilarious, come on.
[QUOTE=Pax;47906142]I feel like when the original writers were coming up with Shadowrun, for areas that weren't their main point of interested (Seattle), they just kind of defaulted to whatever stereotypes they knew of a region without really doing any research.
The American South? They're Confederates again!
Russia? New Soviet State!
Japan? Imperial Japan rises again!
It's a damn miracle that Germany isn't just the Fourth Reich, but they seemed to have bumped back the reference to pre-unification Germanic mini-states - at least until Saeder-Krupt took everything over.[/QUOTE]
See, that's why I did so much research for my own near-future fiction (novel and accompanying TCG, no idea which one will be done first). Literally years of research - so much that some of the things I predicted could happen actually [I]did[/I] - I called Libya and Yemen, the starting of ISIS, and almost called Ukraine (I got the cause and timeline wrong).
America did split into dozens of pieces around 2020 in my canon, but it was along modern political lines. The "south" region is modern conservatives - stretching from Virginia to around Texas. They think of [I]themselves[/I] as going back to Federalist times (naming their nation Jefferson), not Confederate times, and their anti-immigration is aimed at Mexico, not Africa. Their politics is two parts Bush, one part Ron Paul - religious conservatives with a good amount of libertarian economics.
New England merged into Canada, with [I]Canada[/I] being the dominant party because New England took so much damage in the civil war when America split apart (NYC got fucking nuked, and Canada was the only one around still willing to help them rebuild). Canada favored the merge because they needed to get their hands on the leftovers of the US military (mainly the Navy) to fight off Russia, who naturally would start moving on the pole once America was out of the picture. Alaska also joined up with Canada for military protection against Russia, so there's one big contiguous country from the Aleutians to Manhattan.
California (and most of the West Coast) also became a separate country, because honestly California is almost its own country anyways, and the rest would fall in line for defense. The American Southwest generally fell under the drug cartels - which IRL are giving the Mexican military quite a bit of trouble, it's reasonable to expect freshly-minted nations with no time to build an army to be unable to stop them. The rest of America split into minor countries, eg. Hawaii is completely independent and also completely irrelevant on the global theater.
The EU turns into a military alliance because a) NATO falls apart with America, so it's mostly just regrouping, and b) because Russia also pushes westward once America dissolved, and a unified military was just a matter of survival.
Russia is aggressive and expansionist, but doesn't really regress back to Soviet politics. There's some anti-capitalist rhetoric but only because their main enemies are capitalist. Otherwise it's basically just what Putin would actually do if America collapsed (it's technically his protege not Putin himself because he's dead by 2024 but whatever).
China also becomes aggressive and expansionist, but not irrational. Overland expansion is blocked - Russia to the north, and India to the south. They could probably win those wars but it would be risky and costly, so instead it's about expanding into the Pacific - and even then, they're stymied by Japan, unwilling to fight an open war that might leave them weak elsewhere.
There are some unrealistic bits - how America collapsed to begin with, how Greece, Kenya, Iraq, and Brazil eventually ended up in the same nation, or how South Africa became an international power. But those can be chalked up to either Protagonists Can Do Awesome Things, or Strong Heroes Need Strong Villains. So I still feel justified with my research.
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