My 2¥ regarding the article (my game night was canceled, was going to be my first time a a player in SR in over 25 years, so I expect to be a bit cranky):
It starts off good, "one of the most iconic RPGs of all time," well, I'm feeling nerdically fluffed and the author continues with "it's really the brilliant blend of urban fantasy and cyberpunk tropes...original and compelling" and then levels off into some laymen background. Then some personal anectodes on how much fun the author has playing Shadowrun. Sweet!
Then it gets silly. "What I've always found hilarious about Shadowrun is how hard a time it's had keeping up with the real world... There was a period when the game's then-current edition still required characters to physically "jack in" to the network via ports installed in their brains, while smartphones that we actually had in our pockets could do vastly more."
This is at false equivalency a worst or a poorly conceptualized comparison at best. The false equivalency is comparing biomedical technology allowing for a brain-to-computer interface with the browsing capabilities of a smartphone. But if the author meant to compare the computing power of decks with that of smartphones then he just failed.
Additionally, 2nd Edition came out approximately 2 years before IBM's prototype Simon phone and ~3 before AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator; predecessors of PDAs and smartphones. And 3rd edition came out roughly 7 years before the term "CrackBerry," and 8 years before the iPhone.
One would expect a writer to understand that given production timelines for tens of 100+ page books by multiple authors, organizing story arcs spanning those books, over many many years that perhaps "keeping up with the real world" isn't the first priority for a fictional setting telling its own tale... but this is the age of drek-deep journalism so my expectation of any research to back up opinion in an article such as this is way to high.
This amazingly idiotic paragraph concludes with "And while Shadowrun's dystopian vision of corporate overlords and brutal security forces aren't mirrored perfectly by reality, it's easy to hear the echoes." Is this supposed to fall under the canopy of what the author has "always found hilarious about Shadowrun" or is this some random tacked on sentence to further wine and cry that a fictional corpus of work isn't real?
Next we're placated with "So everyone loves Shadowrun's setting." Oh frag off! Half the guys I played with in high school hated the magic side to Shadowrun and I hear it from other players now and again. I love Shadowrun's setting. It started to sound like the author did until he started talking about how hilarious he thought it was for not being real. So again the author is constructing a false argument, a duality of the setting is loved by all but the rules are not...failing to grasp that he's talking about the shadows at this point and there's a hell of a lot of fragging grayscale here, chummer. Journalistic integrity would demand the author to acknowledge that some love both, others hate both, others lie somewhere in between, but the author clearly left his at the door before slapping into his keyboard value bereft statements.
Next we're treated with 7 sentences covering the core rules. And then we're told where the "game stumbles" .... at simulating "complex subsystems" which is "a muddle of situational rules and pointless descriptions of multi-layered networks" where the example that's given is "several pages are spent trying to explain computer networks - you've got your own personal network made up of the devices you own, but there are also devices that are separate, just nodes on the greater network. Then there are specific corporate networks you might want to hack into. Then there are the networks you use to connect to their networks, essentially ISPs." Oh, sorry reality is so complex, wait, wasn't the author just complaining about how Shadowrun has a hard time keeping up with reality? But what makes his example an example of "pointless"? Where are the situational rules in his example? Are the core rules changed when dealing with computer networks? Are there situational rules to actions, like performing a Search, between doing so in a hacked in corporate network or when just on an ISP? His example is only a description of a complex (is it?) subsystem within the game without any actual information about what or where the "muddle" is.
Then, at the end of that paragraph, he just switches gears to vomit out coagulating crap about how "No one knows" how "riggers and drivers work." I thought being able to read was a requirement for writing articles. Or how about some stats? Like, how many of the "experienced Shadowrun players" that he interviewed about rigger and driving rules had "a hard time explaining" them? Can he prove they were having a hard time explaining the rules or was he just too excited to let loose the rant that he had "been saving up...literally [for] years" to actually listen to anyone except the devil rat of inanity scraping about his sloppy brain?
Second to last paragraph and he recognizes that people are going to call him an idiot for "not understanding this stuff"...no, just for his lazy writing of this article. The drek-ton of irony is at the end of this paragraph where he bemoans, "some level of abstraction is called for in the name of fun, surely."
Well..."To simulate [vehicle-only scenes], the Chase Combat rules abstract a great deal..." (SR5, pg 203.) Damn right it does, read a fragging rule book before you snarf up half-thoughts on your audience you fomorian knuckle-typist!
[Note: I'm sure, or at least find it highly probable, that the author is a nice metahuman and while my criticisms of the article itself I stand by, any and all personal attacks are purely argumentum ad hominem and meant to characterize my rant against his rant in a tongue-in-cheek light.]
