cerri-glok:

I suppose if I’m going to re-blog gaming things, then maybe I should actually talk about them…

One of the things I’m most annoyed about Shadowrun is the lack of, well, help. The Shadowrun core 4A book - while an absolutely beautiful book - also suffers from having lots of rules for many things…

corruptionpoints:

I’ve always been fascinated with Shadowrun. In my few attempts to socially engineer a group to actively engage in it, I’ve been met with disappointment. Shadowrun symbolizes something for me that I’ve always wanted to actively engage and explore into, being a somewhat sci-fi game of criminals and spies, battling against corporations. It also happens to have giant nail-bats as feasible weapons, which are too amazing to disregard, and the “Edge” system of having that X factor that brings a character through is dynamically interesting, from narrative possibilities to gameplay options.

For a lot of these concepts, there has always been Dark Heresy to fill in for my tastes; the corporate espionage, the tactical investigation, the nail bats, and so on. Inherently the games are different, of course, but there are some similarities that I could substitute myself into for the sake of intellectual stimulation.

Shadowrun has something that I’ve found a lot of games typically avoid, however, and is also something I’ve wanted to explore as a storytelling device. Shadowrun, unabashedly and blatantly, carries large undertones and overtones of extreme racism.

It feels contrite to add the following disclaimer, but I will to eliminate any and all suspicion. I do not endorse racism in any context, nor do I agree with the ideas of prejudicial treatment. I’ve spent enough of my life judged for the activities I find entertaining, I can’t even imagine the pain that comes with being judged for simply existing.

That being said, and the unfortunate fact, is that racism exists, whether it is unfortunately in our real world or the more magical, mystical, and fictional worlds of Shadowrun. The game goes as far to give a compendium of words that can be used as racial slurs against other players/NPCs.

Is there room in a game for this kind of realism? Is there a method of approaching this to create a more realistic and believable world, or does it not have a place in a setting for entertainment?

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I think a lot of why people are so frustrating to try to DM for these days is that I keep getting people who want to use the RPG to live out some sort of power fantasy— “Oh, look at me and how awesome I am, I kill people with crits,” etcetera, etcetera. I spent a good while trying to hammer this into a sliding scale, but I don’t know where “using an RPG to tell a story” and “using an RPG as a simulation to see how well you’d do in a given situation” would fall in relation to each other.

dearmisterfantasist:

So recently some friends and I started a game of Shadowrun 4th Edition. I’ve completely fallen in love with it. The setting, the rules (and I don’t normally like games with tons of rules)—the way that things can be completely different in the game world, use the SAME EXACT RULES and this is…

Reblogged for quality. The easiest way of getting characters to explore their morality is through the lovely world of Consequences (tm). Do they kill people indiscriminately? Have family members start coming back for revenge, or hiring runner teams to make them pay. Or have the child of the person they just killed walk out of the shop and ask what happened to daddy. That’s a really great (if slightly sadistic) way to make players realize their actions have consequences.

shadow-jackal:

Well. How can you tell a man wrote something for Shadowrun? Besides talk of see through bodysuits? Let’s create armored evening gowns.

WTF. Did the person who wrote the fashion write up in Arsenal ever even touch a couture evening gown before? What about looking at one on the frigging…

It is kind of odd that they go to so much trouble with sizing in vehicles and then completely ignore metahuman sizing in clothing. I think there might be an optional rule for it, but don’t quote me on that; I don’t have Arsenal in front of me at the moment. At the same time, from a game design perspective, it’s kind of nice to have something where you don’t have to remember yet another cost modifier for the troll, even if it makes precious little sense.

More than anything, what I hate about Shadowrun is how the females are always shown with no small amount of cleavage exposed (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ATTITUDE) when any criminal worth her salt would, you know, be covering that up with gratuitous amounts of armor, but that’s a different rant. And, for that matter, in a world where protecting your shins with ceramic plates increases your resistance to getting shot in the chest, maybe I’m thinking about this too much.

I think the problem game-design-wise with giving everybody armor underneath their clothes is that it really takes a lot of the point of having all these cool clothes away. What’s the point of choosing an Aces High jacket over a longcoat if both are equally as useless? Hell, what’s the point of blowing nuyen on cosmetic items at all if you can just get the best armored underwear available and wear that around everywhere? (Then again, to play the devil’s advocate to my devil’s advocate, without some houseruling PPP and the infamous form-fitting body armor do pretty much exactly that.)

Where was I going with this again? I don’t remember. The point here is: this is A Good Post, but I think they did a fair bit of what they did out of game design decisions, not just ignorance (although I’d be lying if I said I suspected that ignorance wasn’t at least partially involved). Giving everyone body armor underneath their clothes, while realistic, takes the vast majority of the point out of even having all these clothing styles.

SWP #14: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is not appropriate source material for a run.