[Nath]

I like the presence of Immortal Elves and ancient all-knowing dragons, because you have no hope of understandung them, much less beating them. And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never habe any hope at all.

This is when you quote Gilbert Keith Chesterton:
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

[Patrick Goodman]

And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never habe any hope at all.

I want hopelessness, I'll watch the evening news.

[ArkangelWinter]

And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never habe any hope at all.

I want hopelessness, I'll watch the evening news.

To each their own. I try my best to run my games where no matter how good my players are, they always live in fear, always feel like nothing they do changes anything. Because that's what real-world operatives go through. That way, when by some miracle they do something worthwhile, it's an even biggee deal because they know even the tiniest ray of hope is amazing. And its never "saved the world" good; more like "made sure orphan Timmy got his heart transplant" good

[Patrick Goodman]

We clearly play very different games for very different reasons.

[lurkeroutthere]

Sichr thank you for trundling out the hoary old "you are not playing my version of SR so you should find a different game" argument. Please collect your internet to the left and come again. Suffice to say that Shadowrun is a big enough universe I can and have comfortably ran and played in it for years without Ghostwalker ever coming up, good bad or indifferent. I do miss using Denver because as someone who lives in Omaha it's one of our closest detailed sprawls and I'm a far sight more familiar with Denver then I am Seattle (although the latter has gotten better).

I'll take the moment for the slight topic change as were at an impasse anyway. I will mostly close out my discussions that I hope sometime very soon a Great Dragon buys the farm by metahuman hands, preferably by purely technological hands. No immortal elves, no other dragons or drakes, no ancient spirit pacts, just some form of kinnetic energy or other method of mundane death. I also would like a confirmed kill as opposed to "go down in a toxic wasteland and come back" Shadowrun has been going for 20 years now and I for one would like to see a little more Cernak and at little less hand wringing. I would like said dragon to be Ghostwalker because he of all the dragons seems to have no point other then to be the special child of the dragon set. I'm ok with if being anyone else including Golden Snout who would get my prize for "favorite dragon". I'm not asking for PC involvement, I will agree and wholeheartedly support that when you have the PC's be the top of the foodchain it breaks immersion something fierce. Having said that the Dragons are not the only frighteningly powerful individuals in the world.

Now I do have some honest questions for ArkangelWinter, James Meiers, and anyone else who shares that worldview.

Do you actually run games?
How often and for how many do you run?
Is there any level of change that your players would be capable of in your story, a gang, a block, a city, a corp, a nation? Or does status quo just grind down to infinity.
Do you tell people when they sit down "This is my shadowrun game, nothing you do matters." up front.

Now in the interest of full disclosure i will answer my own questions.
Yes I do, I am my groups primary GM and have been in most incarnations of gaming groups
I usually run once a week for 4-8 people. My current gaming group has been going in some incarnation or another for about 8 years now.
My players are capable with proper planing and enough karma and money under their belts of changing the world although often in ways the world at large will never know or thank them for. Harlequins back is a fairly good example of some of the style of changes my players can make if they are brave and dedicated. Others have gone on to "retire" into positions of power and influence people who affect the world in subtle ways for good or ill.
For my part I often tell people. "You may well change the world for a better, it is unlikely though that you will live to see such changes come to full fruition." I find often that if players can't have a good life and a sunset ride for their characters they'll quite contently take a good death.

[Sichr]

Sichr thank you for trundling out the hoary old "you are not playing my version of SR so you should find a different game" argument. Please collect your internet to the left and come again. Suffice to say that Shadowrun is a big enough universe I can and have comfortably ran and played in it for years without Ghostwalker ever coming up, good bad or indifferent.

HH you just didnt get it. What I told you was to develop your own timeline and setting, because powers that shape the world quite often influences the current events players have to deal with...Tempo wars, War, Artifacts, Horizon etc etc. So if you want to kill GW in your game, you are free to do it by any means ncessary. But from that point you wont be able to follow further developement of the setting where GW inevitably ends to play some major role in some major event.
Some 18 years ago when I saw the 2nd ed for the first time, the core book translated to czech was the only book I had. No internet. Not even Grimoire to know how to Initiate magic characters. Also...No cannon, no setting, only vague knowledge that comes later as I get connected to SR universe via Paolo Maruci Archive or Blackjacks corner. Still, I was lost among the shattered pattern that was told to me only in fragments..
And we were having lots of fun, playing shadowrun, enjoying it and having our own timeline to maybe 2080 when we were split because everyone moved to another part of the country/EU. This days, when we are all a bit older, back from studies, having enought time to meet at some neutral land maybe once a month, we follow canon, play in the current setting with large exploitable knowledge of events, relationships, politics, interrests etc. And we are enjoying that also, without any need to railroad stories...just with the respect to powers that be...like you respoect mountains and oceans...they just shape the world, maybe actively, but you can hardly get rid of them...

[Wakshaani]

So, why is Ghostwalker still alive?

The big reason is that, for all his power, he's currently in a hostage situation, where six nations (Well, four now, really) have citizens in his city, with him at the center of it, and any big activity taken against him could be the spark that ignites war. The Sioux don't trust the UCAS, the PCC absorbed the Ute, the Azzies are gone, the CAS is on friendly terms with the UCAS (But there was that coup attempt a while back) and is friendly with teh PCC, the PCC tries to balance things, and it's all just a mess.

What happens if the UCAS drops a nuke on Ghostwalker, eradicating most of the city in the same move? How well does that sit with teh NAN or PCC or, heck, eve the CAS? Thro shot's a tad mroe feasable, but there's still collateral damage and less chance of hitting. MISSING him in such an attack is bad news.

The Azzies would *love* to get him, but, again, blowing up Denver's no good and, now, they have all of the PCC between them and the city and Horizon is chomping their hindquarters at every turn, PLUS they're fighting Amazonia. CAS certainly won't let them fly over for a different angle, so, they can't get at the city aside from small shadow teams, which, let's be honest, can't do much in the firepower department unless you want to break out a suitcase nuke and there, once again, we get an outbreak of war. To use a modern comparison, it'd be like Iran trying to attack Saudia Arabia, but Iraq is in betwen the two and has utterly no intention of letting armies trot through it to get their war on.

Now, all that said? I'd lay good odds that there are *plans* to deal with him, that there are *hopes* that he can be taken down, and probably diplomatic channels are buzzing with such talk, but assorted politicians need to cover their hinder before running in and killing thouands, if not tens of thousands, of civillians, which could be their own or those of recently-hostile foreign powers. There are probably task forces and special subcomittes and so on, and Damien Knight is contracted by the UCAS to draw up some cool battle plans that will be sealed in a safe for if the president ever orders 'Operation Whitewash' or whatever it gets called.

Right now, business still operates there. Deals are made, negotiations go through, brokering happens, people get food and buy things ... you just have a guy on top of teh castle going, "As long as you call me king, we're solid", and he has bombs strapped to people's chests and a detonator. Crazyman lets stuff get done, they're nod along and pay him lip service, but if he starts blowing up people, well, if they're gonna die *anyway*...

That's my reaidng, anyway.

[Xzylvador]

Wow lurker, that's quite a leap there.

How exactly did you turn "You don't want to mess with the most powerful, wealthy and influential (not to mention immortal) beings in recorded history." into "This is my Shadowrun game, nothing you do matters."?

Seriously, if you're not capable of seeing a difference between those two statements, I doubt you'll be able to understand our point of view no matter how anyone tries to explain it.

Your own example actually illustrates my point of view more than yours in my opinion. While the stuff done by the PCs in Harlequin's Back -or the Artefacts campaign, or Drug Cartels, etc- does affect the world, they're just pawns in a game being played far above them. I don't mean to say that their actions don't matter, but let's be frank here. Do you honestly believe that if they'd refused the job and told Harley to "stick it where the sun don't shine, just hand over the credstick and we'll let you walk away unharmed", they'd have stood a chance? Or would they have just dropped dead then and there and Harley'd have found a different group of people to use as pawns?

Shadowrunners -by definition- are the disposable and replaceable people that get hired to do the jobs the rich & powerful don't want to get their hands dirty on.
This doesn't mean their lives are meaningless. I'm sure every one of them has a reason to be 'running and a goal they want to achieve. And a very few of them might just live long enough to get there... but it won't be the ones who decided that they're tough enough to fight in the big leagues.

[lurkeroutthere]

Frankly, every time I introduce a new person to my SR group, I make sure they understand that the best parts of the game are what Bira doesnt like. You may become a legrnd, but you will never be the best, because you're mortal and thats life. And no one, not once in 5 billion years, has ever changed the world. SR is truly a world without hope, besides Dunkelzahns legacy, and that is what attracted me to it.

This more or less is directly what i'm speaking to. ArkangelWinter in specific, and several people seem to toss agreement, and please please please correct me if I am reading wrong. They seem to paint an extremely bleak picture, dare I say it an unfun picture, the best you can hope for is saving orphan Timmy. Because somehow they've got it into their heads that that's what's realistic or proper or something. That's my segway, nothing more, nothing less. I'll concede there's a lot of room for play style, I just don't get it which is why I want to ask and understand. Do people actually sit down to play a RPG they know is just completely fixed against them, and not in a humorous way like Paranoia or a traditional way like Cthulu (and sometimes you can "win" Cthulu, or at least the surviving guys can, sanity not guaranteed.

What's always hooked me about Shadowrun is this notion that despite that the world is crap you can pick your level of heroism. You can be just in it to survive and get paid, in it for the thrill, in it for the cause, or you can be any of those who sees something that makes you say "my character would rather die then let this continue, someone pass me the assault cannon and the whiskey please."

I'm not going to really get into a discussion about Harley, suffice to say that a group of runners that is the odd combination of both extrodinarily rash and extrodinarily powerful wanted to jump him i'd make some stuff up rather then "He kills you with his mind cuz he is immortal elf LULZ" now having said that you don't get to be Harlequins age without preparing for betrayal and being stupid powerful, but for mortal flesh and blood non draconic beings, even magically powerful ones, there is a lot of risk at the 6 foot engagement range. Otherwise they'd do everything themselves.

[Xzylvador]

Harley's stats include: Quickened Force 20 armor, Force 20 Combat Sense and Anchored Force 30 Heal and Improved Invisibilty which triggers the second he's hurt, enough karma to cheat death a dozen times and a Force 20 Bound Elemental as bodyguard..
That's not "LULZ, my NPC is under GM protection and you can't touch him! Na na nana nah!"
It's reality in the world Shadowrun is set in.
There's nothing or noone saying your PCs ever have to deal directly with the guys on top of the foodchain, you can run a SR campaign without the players ever having to deal with an IE or Dragon.
But saying they stand a chance to survive and prosper if they decide to mess with the games from up top? I just don't think that's SR.

[Black]

I think Shadowrun supports a wide range of play styles.  You can play it up as being a completely bleak dystopia with no hope or go with a rogues with a heart of gold theme and have the characters able to make a small difference to individuals here and there or have the players as real heroes, making a real difference, saving the city of innocents from terrorists or invading bug spirits etc.  Why pigeon hole the game when there are so many ways to play.

Likewise, regardless of how powerful GW is or any any immortal elf or the Black Lodge or the UCAS president or whatever, they don't have to impact your game if you don't want them to.  My games are a mix of revamped published items and personal stories based on the character's backgrounds and motivations. 

Finally, no one has to adhere to the setting and metaplot.  In many ways, we all make our own way (unless you only play published adventures and they always end up working out exactly as per spec...).  My runners got involved in a coup with the Cascade Orcs and now Pale Shaggy Mountain is no longer the tribal leader.  Instead a toxic shark shaman is.  Minor change, world didn't end.  Unless you run in Denver, for example, your runners may never get involved with Mr GW.  Or you can just remove him in your game.  Nuke the city or something, kill the Great.  Personally, I wouldn't bother, I would just ignore it if I didn't like it, but you can always 'fix' the bits you don't like in your game.

Now Wakshanni (great post by the way) and others have outlined why GW didn't get iced during or after his attack.  For me it makes sense and its consistent. For me, taking out the Great would make less.  I feel that your opinion is the opposite.  Such is life.

Now, my game is set in 2050 (cause I want to take my players through the rich history of Shadowrun), so they won't have to deal with GW for sometime... but when he does arrive, I fully intend for them to be in Denver for the fireworks.  Maybe even run into Hard Exit pre-shadowrunning days .

Oh, my answers to your questions (love exams, hope I pass...)

I currently gm a game once a fortnight
Group is currently around 10 people with about 4-7 playing per a session.  I dred the night that everyone can make it...  This group has been playing for about 1 1/2 years (completed Mecurial, half of Harelquin, and currently doing a very revamped DNA DOA).  Previously played/gm in a game for about 6 years with my high school buddies (1st to 3rd edition).
Players can make any difference they want, if they are capable.  That said, the biggest change they have made have been a coup in a NAN nation, the best change was paying for new cybereyes a poor orc mother of five. (admitly they accidently fried her last pair...  but it was nice of them to come back and help her out).  Generally the player characters in my currently game are not motivated by a desire to change the world, but more focused on their own personal goals and ambitions (become a powerful fixer in the local scene, report back to a Great Dragon sponsor, serve the Triad, gain money and power, that sort of thing).
I tell them the world is a bleak distopia.  A signle visit to the barrens shows them that anyway.  I play up the decay and the corruption, the class structures between corp and non-corp, the bias and racism against, well everything.  But I don't tell them they cant make a difference.  If they want to make a difference, that's up to them.

[ArkangelWinter]

Sorry I can't do the whole quote thing on.this phone, but I'll try to answer the questions i've seen:

I've run weekly SR game, sometimes 2, with limitec holiday/work interruption for almost 3 years. There's a total of about 10 people in our extended group. When new players join, I make sure they know that it is a world without hope. The average person they encounter is glad to have food, much less change a thing. I had a player once become head of Denver Vory, and find that he still had so much paperwork and politics to handle that his position of power didnt equate to using it as he saw fit.

Its not the realism, it's the unreallistically bleak world, where everybody's willing to sell out anybody, and even if you, say, topple Aztechnology on Monday, something just as bad is there by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. The more things change...

[Critias]

There's no "badwrongfun" in Shadowrun, guys.  It's a pretty damned diverse setting -- with the inclusion of magic and other fantasy tropes, cyberpunk and that baggage, and the increasing transhumanism, it's in some ways the most diverse setting I can think of -- and it can support an awful lot of groups with an awful lot of different mental pictures.

No one's playing it wrong, fellas, and as long as you and your group are having fun, you're playing it absolutely right.

[Crimsondude]

And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never habe any hope at all.

I want hopelessness, I'll watch the evening news.

It's certainly not to be informed. TV news is worthless.


Anyway, I haven't GMed in years. When I did, my campaigns were bleak as Critias can confirm to the point that the effects of Crash 2.0 was magnitudes worse as background and plot elements to our last campaign. His PC got a big hero moment, but so what? He walked away victorious, but the world would remain FUBAR.

[Mirikon]

To put it bluntly, Lurker, if the Azzies ever knew Ghostwalker was going to pop up somewhere that wasn't a heavily populated area, then yes, they might nuke him. Assuming, of course, that a nuke could actually kill him (and we don't know that for sure, since Dunkelzhan let himself be destroyed by the nuke that created the rift). But any nation or megacorp using weapons of mass destruction in a populated area is going to catch hell, unless there happen to be thousands of bug spirits running all over the place. Even then, Ares still caught a lot of flak for the Cermak blast. And Aztlan/Aztechnology certainly isn't going to nuke denver, and get the NAN, CAS, and UCAS looking to kick their ass. Aztlan could probably take one or two of those, but not all three. Especially not with Amazonia looking for a reason to wipe them off the map. And Amazonia also has a great dragon in charge of it.

And the only mega barred from Denver at present is Aztechnology. Ghostwalker still allows Saeder-Krupp to do business in the city, but he awarded a lot of construction projects to locals instead of S-K. What the Azzies did in nationalizing everything is take the toys from all the other megas, not just the AAAs, but the AAs and As as well, and give them to Aztechnology. That is orders of magnitude different from kicking one mega out of a single sprawl.

Your problem is that you don't look at things in context. You see Ghostwalker blast a few buildings, and kick the Azzies in the pills, and you say "Why didn't they nuke him?" You forget that he is still in the middle of DENVER, and that nukes are not exactly as specific as a sniper rifle.