Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Shinobi Killfist on <06-24-19/1815:22>
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Just picked it up on my break. The first section is a description of neo-anarchy. Something I’ve wanted since 2e. 2 pages most of it fluff saying nothing. End of the day no rulers, small communities where you get unanimous agreement. Not a particularly deep philosophy, I had hoped they had read up on a few anarchy philosophies and distilled a few of them into one thing. Oh well.
That being said the rest of the book looks solid for what I wanted. A sum up of where SR is now setting wise. 30 years some years of which I tuned out since I thought the quality was crap and it’s easy to forget or fall behind on lots of this. Dense fluff book, may not cover every subject in perfect detail but well enough you know what is going on. Even if I stick with 5e it’s a solid book.
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Reading through it some more. A couple oddities.
1 only shamans are detailed magic wise. They mention other traditions in passing but only shamans are detailed. I prefer logic traditions even though they’ve been worse 4e on. I hope they get some love in 6e. Though magic as a whole needs to be balanced.
2. Under shamans the writer is a traditionalist shaman and says they only summon spirits native to the environment and never bind.
Now they had shamans like that in the 2nd big magic book whose name I’m blanking on but I wonder if that will be the default in 6e. They did mention though I don’t know if it was core or the QSR no binding. Maybe that’s a shaman thing again.
Also unified magic theory gets some shade thrown in it. I wonder if they are moving away from
That in 6e and creating more distinctions between traditions. I hope they do.
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Sounds pretty cool, I could do with a good fluff book. I know the QSR doens't have summoning/spirits at all, can't imagine they'd remove binding from the game completely though. As much as I do like UMT, it'd be awesome to see more distinction between the types of traditions again beyond just spirit list/links.
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As I look through the book I’d say it’s not something you really read through. It’s more like a companion book.
You know like the book series with 500 characters, ridiculous amounts of lore that no one can keep up on. You get to page 144 of the newest book and they talk about bob and you are like who the fuck is bob. You pull Out the companion lookup bob and go oh yeah bob he mocked the protagonists boyfriend in the first book. Haven’t seen him since.
Here it’s a alphabetical list on events, companies, people, environments etc of the 6th world giving a paragraph or 3 sum up of them. It doesn’t have everything and misses imo some core things. Like it has adepts. It has shamans. But doesn’t really spend time on aspected, mistake adepts, full mages that aren’t shamans. Like instead of shamans a couple paragraphs on magically active in general would be more useful imo. But it covers a lot and if like the unseelie court is mentioned in next book y I can go here and get at least something.
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I was fairly underwhelmed, actually. I was really hoping for something more like the old Loose Alliances book from 3E, where you got a solid rundown on people and factions broken down by subject matter. This was... an (extremely) abridged encyclopedia, done in alphabetical order instead of by group. Yes, that does make it easy to find Aden, but is less useful when you're looking for groups under the Antifas movement to use in an upcoming run. This was pretty disappointing, since I loved Loose Alliances, and that book desperately needs an update.
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I think that’s a fair analysis. I think it works for me because I tuned out most of the fluff in these catalyst years. So it helps me catch up even if I’d like more details.
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To me it was a very badly needed book. I think ot could have been quite a bit better, but I'm glad to have it at all. Like, it may not be a great spoon, but it beats trying to eat soup with a fork (which was about how it felt to try and piece together where we were, lore wise)
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We were very confined by space, but we'd love to do more books like this in the future to cover the vast swathes of game material and the game world that weren't covered. Unfortunately, that depends heavily on sales. ANd more unfortunately, pure fluff books never sell well, since most players don't give a shit and just want another 50 pages of new Heavy Pistols.
"oh look. this one has 10 round capacity instead of 9. and this one costs 50 nuyen less. and this one comes with a built in silencer. oh joy."
*sigh*
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If sales are good enough to get more of them, I'd like to do an annual release of updates, like the old SOTA books. Toss in a little crunch for new guns/cars/whatever debuted that year. It's a lot of work, but, it's also nice to have.
But sales gotta show that there's an interest.
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I would buy SOTA books but would probably prefer digital over dead tree. I love the fluff and would enjoy a travelblog type book of cities but it would need actual maps of the city not the crap we got in 5ed. There have been several good digital books in recent years but each has missed the mark in some way. I have no issue with the money I have spent but each book had some little thing that seamed missing or wrong.
Getting similar fluff in separate books but from a new source or new point of view could be fun as well. How is Amazonian news covered by the Denver data nexus different from coverage in The Smoke or from the German states?
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"oh look. this one has 10 round capacity instead of 9. and this one costs 50 nuyen less. and this one comes with a built in silencer. oh joy."
I must admit I kinda like this stuff...I would absolutely love an equivalent to Janes Defense Weekly for the Sixth World.
That being said, I also love the “fluff” books and really hope the interest/demand with the new edition is strong enough to warrant more releases. The SOTA books were some of my favorites and a great blend of crunch/fluff (IMHO).
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Having only been playing for a little over a year, this book was invaluable to me. And while it did, at times, feel like reading an actual encyclopedia, the vast amount of lore has really helped give me a better grasp of things. I would recommend it to newer players who want a more complete picture of the world they are playing in.
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I've always liked the setting, especially how it can wobble along a line between "depressingly grim" and "rollicking hilarity". I did like some of those gazetteers in other books, and now I'm finally going to learn about more of the accumulated inside jokes.
Also, just reading through the manifesto in the beginning, it makes me yearn for opportunities for my hooding-oriented runners to help out communities of grizzled homesteaders.
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I've always liked the setting, especially how it can wobble along a line between "depressingly grim" and "rollicking hilarity". I did like some of those gazetteers in other books, and now I'm finally going to learn about more of the accumulated inside jokes.
Also, just reading through the manifesto in the beginning, it makes me yearn for opportunities for my hooding-oriented runners to help out communities of grizzled homesteaders.
There's a story in Better than Bad that you should read...
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Yep, I liked what I read there, and not just the rules for Instinctive Hack & Blight!
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We were very confined by space, but we'd love to do more books like this in the future to cover the vast swathes of game material and the game world that weren't covered. Unfortunately, that depends heavily on sales. ANd more unfortunately, pure fluff books never sell well, since most players don't give a shit and just want another 50 pages of new Heavy Pistols.
Really? The setting in the best part about Shadowrun in my opinion. Gear porn kinda comes with the territory, but a book with just more variations of similar weapons has no interest at all to me. I could come up with that stuff on my own. It's different if we're talking completely new classes of drones or vehicles, or even weapons for that matter. But more lists of numbers are boring.
But understanding the history of NeoNET, CFD, various long-running plot lines, or simple a better understanding of certain aspects of the world, that's incredibly useful to me.
Although what I'd really like is a book that details corporate security, how to do corporate runs, with some easy to use layouts and defenses easily customised to my needs.
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We were very confined by space, but we'd love to do more books like this in the future to cover the vast swathes of game material and the game world that weren't covered. Unfortunately, that depends heavily on sales. ANd more unfortunately, pure fluff books never sell well, since most players don't give a shit and just want another 50 pages of new Heavy Pistols.
Really? The setting in the best part about Shadowrun in my opinion. Gear porn kinda comes with the territory, but a book with just more variations of similar weapons has no interest at all to me. I could come up with that stuff on my own. It's different if we're talking completely new classes of drones or vehicles, or even weapons for that matter. But more lists of numbers are boring.
But understanding the history of NeoNET, CFD, various long-running plot lines, or simple a better understanding of certain aspects of the world, that's incredibly useful to me.
Although what I'd really like is a book that details corporate security, how to do corporate runs, with some easy to use layouts and defenses easily customised to my needs.
Unfortunately, we love the fluff, but the crunch makes money.
For CorpSec, the old Corporate Security Handbook (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/81561/Shadowrun-Corporate-Security?term=corporate+sec) may have some dated info, and was originally for 2nd edition, but is full of ideas that you could use.
(And that shows why the fluff books don't sell, they are still usable in new editions with minor tweeking.)
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(And that shows why the fluff books don't sell, they are still usable in new editions with minor tweeking.)
I don't get it; having a book you could use across multiple editions seems like it would be wanted? ???
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(And that shows why the fluff books don't sell, they are still usable in new editions with minor tweeking.)
I don't get it; having a book you could use across multiple editions seems like it would be wanted? ???
And purchased once. Crunch books (gear, matrix rules, etc.) need to be republished and sold with every edition. There's only one CorpSec book that's been published, and can be tweeked to use over editions because it's not bound to the rules. With every edition, there's a new Advanced Matrix/Magic/Cyber/Rigger book that's also produced because that is bound to the rules of the edition.
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I literally used an SR1 book for the legal code, and another for some maps of different lifestyles. That shows how long fluff can stand. And shops won't keep old edition stuff in stock.
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..I wish they would have done updated versions of the "Shadows of..." and "Target:..." series. A lot has happened since 2064 Enough to have warranted updates to at least the major world regions (Europe, Asia, North America, South America).
For example, the last I remember about the UK is they still used hard currency for most common transactions. Firearms, even nonlethal ones like tasers, were prohibited. Magic was heavily restricted with all mages having to register (and leave a DNA sample) with the government, and even casting a helpful spell could like Heal or Detox higher than force 3 could get you hauled in for questioning as well as review of your licence. The NDM under Lord Marchmont pretty much had the government under their thumbs. The LCZ (Lambeth Containment Zone) south of the Thames was the city's "barrens". The National Police were not your friendly neighbourhood "bobbies" on the street corner, but well trained a paramilitary organisation which also had a "paranormal" (magic) division. Meanwhile, the Triple O (secret police) were a group you simply never wanted to meet up with. Yes, a real dystopia.
...and justto make life interesting, there was this highly elusive fellow who went by the name of The Pendragon who was stirring the revolutionary pot, keeping the Nats and Lord Protector on a hair trigger.
However in the London Falling Missions arc, the city setting felt much like just another location in the UCAS or CAS than the "not so Jolly Old England" I remember.