[PMárk]

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.

[PMárk]

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

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?

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.

[Nath]

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).

[Crimsondude]

The authors also had the extra challenge of offering a vision of France that would remain kinda compatible with the atrocious, uncanonical France sourcebook 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.

[PMárk]

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!

[Senko]

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.

[Marzhin]

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.

[RowanTheFox]

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?

[Crimsondude]

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.

[Sascha Morlok]

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.

[lokii]

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.

[Sascha Morlok]

Fun Fact: In the Introduction of the Germany Sourcebook it's said that the german original has a higher canon status than the translation.

[Nath]

The authors also had the extra challenge of offering a vision of France that would remain kinda compatible with the atrocious, uncanonical France sourcebook 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."

[Marzhin]

Thanks for all the details, Nath

[lokii]

@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.