Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: firebug on <04-09-17/0125:39>
-
A friend of mine heard some neat stuff about Paris in Shadowrun, and so we went and found a copy of Shadows of Europe to read.
We were both really caught off-guard at how focused on being not Shadowrun it is. Like it is just constantly how it's pushed away most of the cyberpunk elements in the setting, like corporate influence, strong distaste for any noticeable cybernetics, etc. Like, I get that there'd be things like almost no Native American influence, obviously. But there's a lot of "different for the sake of being different from the rest of Shadowrun" which just seems bizarre.
Anyone else find this all really weird?
-
I'll just say that it was a fan-made project by European Shadowrun players that made it through the pitch and development process to become a real product.
-
I'll just say that it was a fan-made project by European Shadowrun players that made it through the pitch and development process to become a real product.
That explains a lot, like the flat-out refusal to follow along with the overall metaplots, it seems.
-
That explains a lot, like the flat-out refusal to follow along with the overall metaplots, it seems.
What do you mean?
-
SoE was one of the best supplements cause it doesn't have so much america-oriented tropes. I really wish that someday CGL hire frelancers outside of USA cause newest editions has better mechanic, but explore same places, tropes and ideas which is boring for someone who has played few years in "Shadowrun".
-
As one of Shadows of Europe authors, I happen to have an opinion of the subject. Note that what follows is not neccessarily the thoughts that were behind SoE - first because a number of other people had their input as well, and also because I also have given this a lot of afterthoughts since. If I was to write the book nowadays and alone, it would certainly be very different.
The first thing is that wordcount was one big constraint. It was a deliberate choice to have each chapter focus on what makes the country deviates from the Shadowrun standard. So you don't get constant reminder that the ten largest megacorporations worldwide have a presence in most countries, that the Matrix is pretty much the same everywhere, that orks and trolls face racism, that magic and cyberware appliances are common enough. That gets mention only when it's not. Ultimately, the book may effectively read like one long collection of signs that all read "This is different here."
The very concept of "Shadows of" sourcebooks requires each country to differ in some way. Which is not that easy. Once you settled that the book is not going to enter into the specifics of parliamentary dynamics, military order of battle or major cities precise street layouts, European countries tend to be strikingly similar. And that's not specific to Europe. Take a look for instance at Athaskan, Aleut, Tsimshian and Algonkin-Manitou to see how they differ. As locations, they're very similar. I don't think SR ever brought anything that would make running a R&D lab in Winnipeg different from running one in Anchorage. Those countries just happen to have different ongoing plots. And there can be a fine line between writing a location with plots and a mere list of generic plot hooks that could take place just anywhere else. A good location should actually allow the GM to take any generic plot hook and make it different by the sole fact it will took place there.
All of that can be problematic in a cyberpunk setting where globalization is a key concept. By itself, the cyberpunk genre is fairly closed. It's about large megalopolis with global corporations, widespread violence and ethnic criminal syndicates. You had Seattle as the enclave sprawl, Denver as the divided sprawl, San Francisco as the occupied sprawl and Manhattan as a the panopticon sprawl. Right. Now those tropes already got used, how ones makes a cyberpunk version of Baltimore, London or Moscow is nowhere near trivial, let alone Memphis, Cardiff or Archangelsk. Among other things, it worth noting that urban violence has a different feel in countries where firearms circulation is much more restricted than in North America.
Shadowrun does add hermetic mages, shamans, and dragons. Hermetism is just as globalized. Shamans and dragons, on the other hand, are defined by coming from another place or another epoch that is not cyberpunk. Shadowrun amerindian shamans - or elven nations, for that matter - come into the setting with a good third of North America that is completely alien to the cyberpunk genre. It's not random chance that earlier Shadowrun sourcebooks covered only a set of UCAS, CAS and Californian cities while the Native American Nations and Tir Tairngire were covered as countries. It's really difficult to give the cyberpunk treatment to a nation as a whole. In no small part because what makes a nation is the local culture and the local government, two things the cyberpunk seeks to erase.
Still, there's some room to work with. National corporations based on existing ones, local crime syndicates, and dragons, critters and magical traditions based on local lores. But introducing new corporations, new dragons and new magic for each and every country was frowned upon.
Regarding France specifically, it was felt that being against whatever come from North America (corporate extraterritoriality) or Great Britain (cyberware) should be a central element of French identity. The celtic angle was already taken by both United Kingdom and Tir na nOg, the various connection to Africa were also significant element in Portugal and Spain, the Mediterranean crime scene was (obviously) primarily Italian... As a side note, French restrictions on megacorporations were supposed to be mostly administrative hassle that comes nowhere near CAS' ERLA investigations or Pueblo or Tir Tairngire sanctions and outright ban against some megacorporations.
That explains a lot, like the flat-out refusal to follow along with the overall metaplots, it seems.
I wouldn't call that a refusal, because that would assume there were any overall metaplots to start with. Shadows of Europe was designed between 2001 and 2003. The "overall plot" at that point, was Year of the Comet and FASA shutting down. YotC was about events in Denver, Japan, California, Yucatan, Philippines... The only thing that could possibly connect to Europe were SURGE and shedim because they were occuring worldwide. Yes, SoE did not follow up on those, but neither did Shadows of North America or Shadows of Asia (in no small part because SURGE was considered a minor event, and because playing shedim straight would completely disrupt the setting). By the time Threats 2 was released and (re)introduced new plots, SoE was well on its way (causing some late rewriting regarding templars for instance).
-
That clears up a lot for me, thank you. It's entirely likely my friend was unfairly paraphrasing some parts of it, but it really did catch me off-guard that France was written to be as far from cyberpunk as possible, which just struck me as a really confusing choice.
-
As a player whose game is set in Europe, the SOE supplement has been invaluable to us. Not that I'm crazy about every country's description, but it's way easier to modify something described than to have nothing at all to go on.
I have especially enjoyed the sections about European magic and Corps, and have enjoyed the same in SOA as well, another supplement that I have used extensively as GM.
I'm glad these supplements were made and no one says that you have to use everything in them, but the alternative would have been utterly boring.
Now we just need updated versions of SOE, SOA, SONA, SOLA and a Shadows of Africa...... ;D
-
SoE was one of the best supplements cause it doesn't have so much america-oriented tropes. I really wish that someday CGL hire frelancers outside of USA cause newest editions has better mechanic, but explore same places, tropes and ideas which is boring for someone who has played few years in "Shadowrun".
Amen. as a Hungarian, I quite enjoyed reading it a several months ago, the factions, the politics, the plot hooks, the very European problems. I'm glad it did its slightly different thing rather than being totally 'mericanized standard SR.
-
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
I was partly surprised by the fact that in say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Shadowrun: Dragonfall, they don't feel the need to push away cyberpunk elements to make it different. Dragonfall's anarchist Berlin is really cool, and definitely different from the default setting of Seattle, while still being very cyberpunk. SR:HK combines the cyberpunk dystopia with Chinese mythology so goddamn well it's awesome.
-
Dragonfall's anarchist Berlin is really cool
We'll always have Dragonfall.
-
@Nath As someone who not only thinks about the setting but also what it takes to write/create the setting, I appreciate your behind-the-scenes perspective and your reflections on the creation of a sourcebook.
-
Regarding France specifically, it was felt that being against whatever come from North America (corporate extraterritoriality) or Great Britain (cyberware) should be a central element of French identity. The celtic angle was already taken by both United Kingdom and Tir na nOg, the various connection to Africa were also significant element in Portugal and Spain, the Mediterranean crime scene was (obviously) primarily Italian... As a side note, French restrictions on megacorporations were supposed to be mostly administrative hassle that comes nowhere near CAS' ERLA investigations or Pueblo or Tir Tairngire sanctions and outright ban against some megacorporations.
The authors also had the extra challenge of offering a vision of France that would remain kinda compatible with the atrocious, uncanonical France sourcebook (http://www.legrog.org/jeux/shadowrun/annees-2053-2060/france-fr) published by Descartes years before, but at the same time being truer to Shadowrun that this book was. Stuff like the mist covering Britanny for instance are based on ideas from the France book, but done better. As bad as France was, many French players had used for their games, due to the lack of alternative, canonical info, so the authors of SoE had to salvage at least some parts of it whenever possible.
Black Book Editions also added some extra content tothe French versions of the SR4 books that developed France in Shadowrun further: Runner Havens has a chapter about Marseille, plagued by organized crime and the Lofwyr-Spinrad conflict. Corporate Enclaves has Lille, which has been bought off by the megacorps and turned into their own country within France. And Feral Cities has Clermont-Ferrand, ravaged by volcanic eruptions both in the real world and the astral. There's also the SOX book, co-developed by German and French authors, which offers a pretty cool campaign dealing with some dark secrets of French politics (IIRC the German version of the book has another, German-centric campaign).
-
Amen. as a Hungarian, I quite enjoyed reading it a several months ago, the factions, the politics, the plot hooks, the very European problems. I'm glad it did its slightly different thing rather than being totally 'mericanized standard SR.
Did you ever have a look at the Hungarian sourcebook? Shadowhelix: ÁrnyékMagyarország (http://shadowhelix.pegasus.de/Quelle,_hu:_%C3%81rny%C3%A9kMagyarorsz%C3%A1g)
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
You didn't know American culture has a bad reputation in Europe? :D
-
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
You didn't know American culture has a bad reputation in Europe? :D
Oh, it's not just Europe. Believe me, it isn't. The entirety of the Anglosphere that isn't America (that is to say Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK) has cultural protectionism laws related to broadcasting, as does Mexico. Guess whose foreign media they're all trying to keep off their airwaves?
-
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
I was partly surprised by the fact that in say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Shadowrun: Dragonfall, they don't feel the need to push away cyberpunk elements to make it different. Dragonfall's anarchist Berlin is really cool, and definitely different from the default setting of Seattle, while still being very cyberpunk. SR:HK combines the cyberpunk dystopia with Chinese mythology so goddamn well it's awesome.
It's a tricky question. I'd ask back, is there any one possible interpretation of a genre? If the cyberpunk genre was based on American cultural phenomenons, then all cyberpunk must be like that? Isn't there room for slightly different kinds of it? For me, SoE didn't stick out from SR, just showed a different kind of cultural environment.
Besides, the cyberpunk elements were here, totally, just as in the mentioned games (honestly, I read the book and played the games at the same time and didn't have any jarring contrast). Corps? Check. 'Wares? Check. Politics/corporate wars/organized crime? All check. Blighted wastelands? Oh, so much check. All are there. That some countries and regions take the more restrictive way on things like allowing megacorps in, favoring local AA corps, or accentuating magic? I think that's fairly plausible, looking at Europe and adds diversity to the setting.
-
Amen. as a Hungarian, I quite enjoyed reading it a several months ago, the factions, the politics, the plot hooks, the very European problems. I'm glad it did its slightly different thing rather than being totally 'mericanized standard SR.
Did you ever have a look at the Hungarian sourcebook? Shadowhelix: ÁrnyékMagyarország (http://shadowhelix.pegasus.de/Quelle,_hu:_%C3%81rny%C3%A9kMagyarorsz%C3%A1g)
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
You didn't know American culture has a bad reputation in Europe? :D
Don't have the book (yet), but we1re playing in Budapest and our GM uses it heavily.
Honestly, I don't want to badmouth American culture. It's just... My favorite games, which are based on the real world (WoD and SR) was always so USA-centric (understandably, since they originated there, but still) that it's just great to have material for my continent/region , especially when it's taking into account the diffeerent cultural and political landscape. :)
-
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
It's not so simple.
You can't deny that the cyberpunk genre itself first and foremost came from US authors: William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling... There is also a significant Japanese contribution, led by Masamune Shirow and Katsuhiro Otomo. European, not so much, once you credit Ridley Scott and Paul Verhoeven for Blade Runner and Robocop movies. And both take place in US cities.
That's not to say there aren't some great European cyberpunk authors around (I say, if you ever get the chance, read Travis French comics by Duval & Quet), but none became major references in the genre so far.
The cyberpunk default setting is an American one. With American urban layout and American society regarding immigration, firearms, business, technology, and so on. And there were a number of brilliant writers who helped putting it together and refine it. Europe, or Africa or Middle East for that matter, don't have so much material to start with.
It's a bit like having a game based on Arthurian Legends and pointing out the North African sourcebook refusal to have castles and druids.
The difference between North America and Europe are not as superficial as one may believe, and sometimes it hits right on major issues for the cyberpunk genre. Ever since Shadowrun came out, French people can't but completely miss the point about SIN, because identity documents already are mandatory there and the administration attributes a "Physical Persons Directory Registering Number" upon birth (on the other hand, you cannot imagine how bleak, grim and dystopian "all food is flavored soja" can be to a French audience). The other way around, the place of Japan in the cyberpunk genre resonates very differently in the US than it does in Europe. Even countries that actually fought against the Japanese during WW2 remember it as a (quite obviously) secondary issue, and the existential trauma the US went through when Japanese competitors started taking over national companies, which is at the root of the cyberpunk genre, never occurred to Europeans who had seen their own companies taken over by US competitors for several decades before that.
I was partly surprised by the fact that in say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Shadowrun: Dragonfall, they don't feel the need to push away cyberpunk elements to make it different. Dragonfall's anarchist Berlin is really cool, and definitely different from the default setting of Seattle, while still being very cyberpunk. SR:HK combines the cyberpunk dystopia with Chinese mythology so goddamn well it's awesome.
Describing a city and describing a country are really two different things when it comes to cyberpunk.
One could put together a cyberpunk version of Paris, Madrid or Vienna without breaking a sweat. Corporate skyscrapers, some lawless suburbs, one local Chinatown (or any other variations), and for the Shadowrun vibe, orks gangs and odd astral phenomenon around an old monument. You can fill dozens of page with that (and Shadowrun already did).
The problem with the "Shadows of" format is that no city was to get more than a full page. It is a lot less trivial to define what "cyberpunk treatment" you could give to institutions and local culture.
You can certainly debate whether sourcebooks should be designed as country guides or city guides, considering how successive Shadowrun line developers gave different answers to this question (1st and 2nd edition tried both, 3rd went for countries, 4th and 5th for cities).
-
The authors also had the extra challenge of offering a vision of France that would remain kinda compatible with the atrocious, uncanonical France sourcebook (http://www.legrog.org/jeux/shadowrun/annees-2053-2060/france-fr) published by Descartes years before, but at the same time being truer to Shadowrun that this book was.
I never understood why. I barely acknowledge Shadows of Latin America even exists, and only because I wanted to see what Jay wrote about the Tigersharks.
-
Is sticking to the big parts of the cyberpunk genre really "Americanizing" the game? That seems needlessly nationalistic...
It's not so simple.
You can't deny that the cyberpunk genre itself first and foremost came from US authors: William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling... There is also a significant Japanese contribution, led by Masamune Shirow and Katsuhiro Otomo. European, not so much, once you credit Ridley Scott and Paul Verhoeven for Blade Runner and Robocop movies. And both take place in US cities.
That's not to say there aren't some great European cyberpunk authors around (I say, if you ever get the chance, read Travis French comics by Duval & Quet), but none became major references in the genre so far.
The cyberpunk default setting is an American one. With American urban layout and American society regarding immigration, firearms, business, technology, and so on. And there were a number of brilliant writers who helped putting it together and refine it. Europe, or Africa or Middle East for that matter, don't have so much material to start with.
It's a bit like having a game based on Arthurian Legends and pointing out the North African sourcebook refusal to have castles and druids.
The difference between North America and Europe are not as superficial as one may believe, and sometimes it hits right on major issues for the cyberpunk genre. Ever since Shadowrun came out, French people can't but completely miss the point about SIN, because identity documents already are mandatory there and the administration attributes a "Physical Persons Directory Registering Number" upon birth (on the other hand, you cannot imagine how bleak, grim and dystopian "all food is flavored soja" can be to a French audience). The other way around, the place of Japan in the cyberpunk genre resonates very differently in the US than it does in Europe. Even countries that actually fought against the Japanese during WW2 remember it as a (quite obviously) secondary issue, and the existential trauma the US went through when Japanese competitors started taking over national companies, which is at the root of the cyberpunk genre, never occurred to Europeans who had seen their own companies taken over by US competitors for several decades before that.
I was partly surprised by the fact that in say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Shadowrun: Dragonfall, they don't feel the need to push away cyberpunk elements to make it different. Dragonfall's anarchist Berlin is really cool, and definitely different from the default setting of Seattle, while still being very cyberpunk. SR:HK combines the cyberpunk dystopia with Chinese mythology so goddamn well it's awesome.
Describing a city and describing a country are really two different things when it comes to cyberpunk.
One could put together a cyberpunk version of Paris, Madrid or Vienna without breaking a sweat. Corporate skyscrapers, some lawless suburbs, one local Chinatown (or any other variations), and for the Shadowrun vibe, orks gangs and odd astral phenomenon around an old monument. You can fill dozens of page with that (and Shadowrun already did).
The problem with the "Shadows of" format is that no city was to get more than a full page. It is a lot less trivial to define what "cyberpunk treatment" you could give to institutions and local culture.
You can certainly debate whether sourcebooks should be designed as country guides or city guides, considering how successive Shadowrun line developers gave different answers to this question (1st and 2nd edition tried both, 3rd went for countries, 4th and 5th for cities).
Great post, thanks!
-
I have to admit personally I welcome andy and all material on other countries, Australia and Japan by preference but any information on the other parts of the world welcomed.
-
I barely acknowledge Shadows of Latin America even exists
But it doesn't. Not officially, anyway. It was never released in gaming stores and bought by players.
The France sourcebook, however, was.
-
I have to admit personally I welcome andy and all material on other countries, Australia and Japan by preference but any information on the other parts of the world welcomed.
While we're at it, can we get Harlequin's Gambit? Pleeeeaaaase?
-
I barely acknowledge Shadows of Latin America even exists
But it doesn't. Not officially, anyway. It was never released in gaming stores and bought by players.
The France sourcebook, however, was.
Yeah, so? The old Japan sourcebooks aren't canon (for good reason). I see no reason to perpetuate the fiction that anything is canon except what is published by the English-language licensee. The exception was when FanPro's German-only material was canon on material produced by FanPro USA.
-
SoE was one of the best supplements cause it doesn't have so much america-oriented tropes. I really wish that someday CGL hire frelancers outside of USA cause newest editions has better mechanic, but explore same places, tropes and ideas which is boring for someone who has played few years in "Shadowrun".
They did. I wrote the Saeder-Krupp chapter for Market Panic, Lars Blumenstein wrote it before me in Corporate Guide, and Jan Helke will write a piece for an upcoming book.
-
I see no reason to perpetuate the fiction that anything is canon except what is published by the English-language licensee.
I wouldn't call it a "fiction". I feel I made this point before. Really anything from any source that is used by Shadowrun authors is potentially canon. Of course it is only canon if it sticks and many things can later be retconned. Now, whether an author should incorporate non-canon sources like a foreign language sourcebook or Shadows of Latin America is a different question but in the end it comes down to choices made by them, their peers and their editor.
After all the EuroSB was initially a fan project, so from a French perspective I find it makes a lot of sense to at least consider working with material already known in your community.
-
Fun Fact: In the Introduction of the Germany Sourcebook it's said that the german original has a higher canon status than the translation.
-
The authors also had the extra challenge of offering a vision of France that would remain kinda compatible with the atrocious, uncanonical France sourcebook (http://www.legrog.org/jeux/shadowrun/annees-2053-2060/france-fr) published by Descartes years before, but at the same time being truer to Shadowrun that this book was. Stuff like the mist covering Britanny for instance are based on ideas from the France book, but done better. As bad as France was, many French players had used for their games, due to the lack of alternative, canonical info, so the authors of SoE had to salvage at least some parts of it whenever possible.
For a complete assessment, the EuroSB project started in late 2000 (rather than 2001 as I wrote previously - I checked my archives), it was a fan project, as stated above, the France sourcebook had been released only three years old, Descartes Editeurs still had the French license (it would keep on releasing translations as late as 2002, before Black Book Editions became the French licensee in 2006) and FASA was still running with Mike Mulvihill as the line developer.
From 144 pages down to 15-16, there are actually not many elements from France that did appear in Shadows of Europe.
- Police and emergency services remained public.
- The Mist covering Brittany (though downgraded from "moving into this part of the world kills you under 12 combat turns" to "something may happen to you late into the night 'round here"
- The eruption of Auvergne volcanoes, with a dragon asleep (also downgraded from "largest dragon in the world at the bottom of a crater, can be seen from space" to "rumors of a large object detected underground").
- The former royals of the Bourbon-Orléans and the Bourbon-Anjou families enjoy position of power (also downgraded, from "granted hereditary cabinet position" to "politically influent").
On the other hand, the corporate scene is very different, and would have been even more different if I had the word count to expand over canon material regarding Ares Global Entertainment or Aztechnology/Dassault.
To be fair, public police force and emergency services would have been at least considered even without France SB. There was a consensus among French and European authors to say that France, of all European countries, should be the place where the megacorporations should face a stubborn political opposition, and that it could generate good plots.
Officially, "French ruling aristocrats" were made canon by The London Sourcebook. We probably could have ignored the "ruling" word without any non-French reader noticing. It wouldn't have been the first time a decade-old sourcebook had been ignored (does anyone remember Charles Nakatomi?).
I learnt only years later that FASA (probably Tom Dowd or Nigel Findley) had handed France authors a short note with a number of items that were requested and ought to be used in later plots (probably Horrors-related), after a planned translation that never happened. So there is a strong possibility the Britanny Mist and possibly the Auvergne dragon actually came from SR then-line developer.
There's also the SOX book, co-developed by German and French authors, which offers a pretty cool campaign dealing with some dark secrets of French politics (IIRC the German version of the book has another, German-centric campaign).
The German campaign "Hoffnungsstrahlen" deals with a Feuerschwinge-connected cult and a nuclear incident inside the ESUS SOX arcology in 2068. Except for the starting point arbitrarily set in Hamburg, it's not that much German-centric, and rather noteworthy for doing what SoE barely started to do (or SoNA and SoA for that matter) and use elements across national chapters' borders.
The two campaigns also differ in that the French campaign deals with table-flipping events like say, Shockwellen or Super Tuesday, that alter large parts of the French background, while the German one is more like "Crazy cult, corporate coverup? Must be tuesday."
-
Thanks for all the details, Nath ;)
-
@Nath: Would you consider writing a short article about the EuroSourcebook project for the Shadowrun wiki on Wikia? I would love to translate it for the Shadowhelix too.
Fun Fact: In the Introduction of the Germany Sourcebook it's said that the german original has a higher canon status than the translation.
If you read German. If you don't read German it has zero canon status. :D