[Mystic]

I hope they don't go to SR5 too quickly.  I would hate to see CGL do what WotC did with D&D (releasing 3e and then 3.5e only a couple of years later).  I really think what needs to happen is CGL needs to focus more on marketing of SR and BT to get them back where they use to be in the overall RPG industry.  Maybe throw some money at polishing the product, but they shouldn't just give up on SR4 yet, that would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. 

As I said, we have no plans to release a fifth edition in 2011. SR4 premiered in 2005, which means it will be at very least 6 years between editions.

Jason H.

Oh good, because after several years of absence, I started getting back into the Shadows last June with the main book, and now just got Arsenal, Street Magic, Runner's Companion, and Runner's Havens a couple weeks ago. I dont know if my wallet and or sanity could handle it!

[tbrminsanity]

Well he did say not in 2011 HOWEVER the world will of course be changed on December 22 2011 as such in 2012 to keep the game moveing in the right direction they will need to make Shadowrun 5th Edition.

(for anyone who doesn't get it yet yes i'm jokeing)

Yeah SR5 will be known as "Oh frak, they were right all along, it is the Awakening!!!"

[FastJack]

See, I'm going to tack those 6 years onto the release date of the SR4A, so I'll be looking for SR5 in 2015.

[inca1980]

SR4A just came out and SR5 would just be anti-climactic and jumping the gun.  There should definitely be an event/book for the ending of the Mayan calendar though!!  I agree with Fastjack though, the focus should be on marketing what already exists.  Focus should be MMORG/RPG...and a movie.  I was watching the 6th Harry Potter last night, and I've never been a fan, but still, the magic fights are soooo SR!  Especially the whole spirit summoning, the stun-bolts.....all these different aspects which exit in SR.  Add to that Deus Ex style cyber gun battles and stealth and I feel you got a whole aesthetic which the public could get their minds around and it would freakin work!  Especially if it focuses on the global, non-eurocentric elements which Shadowrun brings to the table.  All other Sci-fi is super euro-centric....SR has that going for it that it has always been from day 1 an inherently non-eurocentric world-view. 

[Kot]

I second the Deus-Ex part. That game was Shadowrun-ish more than Cbyerpunk-ish from the first one. And i really liked the way it promoted non-lethal combat methods and revolved around humanity's reactions to high-tech, augumentations, and the consequences of their use. And Invisible War was partially taking place in Seattle, and there was the destruction of Chicago, so...

[Mystic]

I have always been a proponent of making an SR movie. But while a live-action SR movie is possible, I do belive one of the best mediums would be to make not a movie but an animated movie and or series. Heck, make it an anime move, done by a studio like Madhouse, Bones, or Gonzo. Look at Ghost in the Shell: SAC. All it needed was magic and it WOULD be SR.

[inca1980]

That would be cool but I'm just not all that into anime.  Anime just doesn't have the gravitas that I would want from an SR movie.  Sure i've seen anime's that have made me cry (Grave of the Fireflies....omg just get teary thinking about that movie) but I want the SR movie to be for American audiences and they don't go to the theaters to see Anime.  A CGI movie would work, and even if they did a live action movie, to do it well it would have to be practically a CGI movie anyways.  I think if they really worked the noir aspect of SR, they would have a great hook.  I just hope that it wouldn't turn out too comic-bookish.  Something.  Something that had subtlety  and with an over-arching message....high-concept if you will.

 I feel the best message SR has to bring to the table is this:  Even in a world steeped in magic and technology where the amount of power an individual being can have is un-imaginable, the exact same power structures (corporations) which keep us down today are just as strong if not stronger and simply adapt to be able to exert their dominance.  I mean, corporations have only been around in human history for a few 100 years.....the gist of the movie has to revolve around why are there still corporations in-charge in a world where a single man can summon insanely powerful spirits to do his bidding or where dragons exist.  Wouldn't dragons just simply take over the world?  Why wouldn't society slide quickly into a more fuedal type system with the most powerful beings at the top?  Or is corporate rule just a consumer society's version of feudalism?   SR has dragons and free spirits as board-members of many companies...this would have to be explained.  An SR movie would be redundant and just a pretty crappy movie if it didn't answer these fundamental questions.  Cyberpunk doesn't have to answer these questions because there is no magic in cyberpunk.  Shadowrun still would have that dark hopelessness since the corps always come out on top, but it would have more room than cyberpunk for the creative and "magical" side of the human spirit.  

[FastJack]

Actually, I think SR is a bit more hopeful than most dystopian cyberpunk stories. The magic and such give a little bit of light in the darkness than you get in most of the "cog in the machine" cyberpunk concepts.

[inca1980]

I agree completely, and I don't feel SR should be really a dystopia....that's so cold-war.  Look how badly Terminator 3 did....on top of it being a bad movie....I feel that dystopias don't resonate well now-adays.  Take the game "Fallout"...that's a dystopia, but it's a video-game where you're focused on the details of staying alive and it's really about life....one's own personal individual quality of life......traditional dystopia's are more about society and whether or not society will survive and whether or not we can rebuild it.  Today we only care about if we can hold on to our own personal humanity and the humanity of the ones who are close to us and essentially try and keep a rose alive in a desert.  If society fails, well that's too bad.  That's my take....now for the rest of the post which you interrupted Fastjack !!

A lot of the SR timeline would resonate in this day and age.....and probably the biggest pill to swallow would be the part about NAN....and being as that's central to the awakening, a lot of thought would have to be put into it and fan boys and girls would have to really be extra-understanding.  SR1e came out before casino's were a big thing.  The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was signed in 1988 and over the next 10 years really was a game changer in terms of the economic conditions of many reservations.  A lot of this economic boom for many reservations however masks a lot of social problems that persist and the obstacles that many native youth face.  However, it kind of neutralizes a little bit in people's minds the pressing nature of changing the social order.  I feel that the focus of the timeline would have to be a modified version of the Shiawase decision which frighteningly resembles the "Citizen's United" decision and I feel today's society can identify with that.  

Today's zeitgeist I feel would be ready to see sci-fi where the U.S. is no longer intact because the fear is very real in people's hearts given the level of divisiveness we have in our national discourse and our economic situation.  If it's made clear in the story-telling that corporations hijacked the U.S. and basically make Daniel Howling Coyote's followers and NAN simply people who want their country back, then it would make a lot of sense.  Instead of dividing up along racial lines it should be divided along ideological lines and all the "rebels" who are fighting to split from the U.S. have kind of taken native american culture as a banner to unite around.  This isn't really that far from cannon anyways, there being "pink tribes" and elven tribes. Besides, this would all be a montage anyways....hopefully narrated by Dunkelzahn himself.  The love Dunkelzahn has for his beloved and curious little meta-humans would be apparent.....metahuman's analogous to "hobbits" and Dunkelzahn analogous to "Gandalf".  Then after the world is described, we'd zoom into a typical grimey futuristic street scene and our protagonist is introduced.  It would be great to make him an ork....a poor, young hacker/ganger....and he gets caught up in some major world-scale events. ....man the possibilities are endless and as long as the writers and directors think outside the box and just worry about telling a damn good story, the rest will just fall into place.  Story is going to have to be everything.

[FastJack]

I agree inca. And the main difficulty in a SR movie would be the split from our own timeline. Splitting a timeline is fine for a movie when the split occurs at least 30 years in the future. To properly make a SR movie, you'd have to start it off with a scrawl in the front detailing how, 20 years ago, the world went in a totally different direction and wound up over "here". And there's a reason that alternate history movies aren't very popular with studios--the mass' imagination is fine when you go full on into fantasy/sci-fi, but can't seem to handle minor tweaks in reality.

[MJBurrage]

I would just gloss over the history for a Shadowrun movie. Include enough in the abstract for new fans to understand that it is the 2070s, and that magic has returned alongside advanced tech an corporations.

Since the history is abstract, new fans can read into it what they want' while rabid fanboys—not me of course :-)—won't be shouting about how the film got it all wrong.

IE say magic returned "over 50 years ago" not "magic returned in 2011".  Similarly do not give exact dates for other things that are history, just have dialogue say "decades ago" etc.

I would also generally ignore the pre-crash 2.0 tech, since it would seem anachronistic to those with iPhones. By glossing it over, the new fans can just assume a smooth progression from real 2010s tech to SR 2070s tech while the fans in the know aren't given retcons, just gaps that are in the end inconsequential to a good film story.

[etherial]

Take the game "Fallout"...that's a dystopia, but it's a video-game where you're focused on the details of staying alive and it's really about life....one's own personal individual quality of life......traditional dystopia's are more about society and whether or not society will survive and whether or not we can rebuild it.

Fallout barely scrapes the neighborhood of Dystopia.

an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going "too far" and how humans individually and en masse use technology. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants and a large military-like police force.

Amusingly, Shadowrun is much closer to Dystopian themes than Fallout but didn't make Wikipedia's list.

Classic Dystopian works are 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Harrison Bergeron, and Logan's Run.
More recent ones include Equilibrium, Gattaca, The Island, Minority Report, Serenity, and V for Vendetta.

[inca1980]

Ya, i mean i guess I meant to say that Fallout is on the surface a dystopia, but in reality it isn't.  But the common thread among all the works you mentioned is that they focus on the effects of a dark future on a society....and the falling apart of society of the changing of society is what scared people.  I feel people now-adays are not so much scared by that because they feel like they're actually living in that future now.  So all people really care about now is if little pockets of people can retain their humanity.....even if they have to jettison their cultural or national identity.  There's an interesting article in the NYtimes about the popularity of Zombie movies....and I don't agree with the author on a lot of it....but I feel one reason people like zombie movies so much now is because of that little pocket of humanity that survives....and it's always a diverse group which really just focuses on maintaining it's humanity above all else.  A lot different from a movie like Red Dawn where national identity is what one strives to retain......now it's just about staying "human."  

[inca1980]

I think retcon'ing is the only way to go.  It will help if people really feel that SR 2070's is really our own world in the future rather than some parallel universe.  Ya don't even mention cyber-decks and just assume wireless has always been the way it was.  Not much will get lost in retcon'ing everything before the awakening and then tweaking a few cultural anachronisms.....but a lot will be gained by tying the movie to our own present time.

[Wolfboy]

i kinda agree with Inca in that it would have to be a CGI movie, but i think that if you got the intro just right and had appropriate flashbacks to the happenings in the history, then it would work. Kinda like they do the intro to "Centurion" however i think that they should probably start with an animated series or even (if they could get a decent budget to do it, talk to Sci Fi channel) do a live action/CGI tv series to work up to the movie (like they did with "Serenity"/"Firefly") then it would be a bloody hit.

has to have the right storyline though, something that touches the total of the playable history........EG.....i think i have an idea, give me some time to get it written though