" To me I see this gargantuan ball of yarn of real world stuff that can be spun into the game and played upon. Honestly I thought the reason had something to do with why mythbusters cant ever do their RFID show. Well that and what happened to GURPS Cyperpunk in the 1990's with the whole secret service raiding a role playing game maker over a book.
Is that what you're angry about? You do realize that Shadowrun is fiction, right?
If you want to run an illuminated Shadowrun campaign (making it more illuminated than it is), there are options for that. I don't think that the Missions series is designed to go running with Plan 9.
What I mean is that Shadowrun itself already does a good job of doing this. The only reason why Shadowrun isn't as controversial as GURPS Cyberpunk is because it mixed Tolkienesque fantasy with it's game world. Shadowrun has made a lot of 'predictions' of what it would be like to live in a 1984, a Neuromancer, or Brave New World -- type setting. Besides, Steve Jackson Games was indicted and did win their criminal court case over the book (the Gov. thought that it actually instructions on hacking).
What the game is centered on is Man vs. Society. Not the best of society, but the worst of society. If you look at the links on Business Insider, you'll find links to the earning inequality in America (I read it, it's a Classical Liberal take on what happened). For the most part, the world of Shadowrun (2050 to 2073), if you take away the technology and Tolkienesque element, describes America in 2012. In 1989, this game came out and made stark predictions that we didn't realize that would come true since it is all covered with an element of fantasy.
All of those secret groups, you want the Missions team to write about them? I don't think that will be wise. I think the Missions team would have a better time of it if they just present the Missions as they have been doing. If you want people to wake up, you don't need a RPG game to do that. And for the most part, a lot of people are waking up.
After all, we in the fiction business do write lies. We write unrealism in our products for a reason. I think Shadowrun had to come out like it did. It came out at precisely the right time in 1989. It had precisely the right authors to author and give shape to it. It's speculative fiction, but it's mostly true now. So, the authors did take the real world, saw the trends as to where we are headed, and created a game with a fantasy element and it became successful.
If you want more Shadowrun adventures to deal with the Real World in 2012, more power to you. There's nothing stopping you from creating such adventures for your group. But the number one goal for any company is to make money. Catalyst Game Labs is no exception to this, and as long as the majority wants something like how the Missions are written now, then that's what they will produce. If you would like more realistic variety in the Missions products, then you are doing the right thing and creating awareness. But remember, Catalyst Game Labs is a company and it's number one goal is to make money, and if they can do it solving a problem and producing a product that people enjoy; well more power to them.
If people enjoy the Missions as they are written now, then hey I am all for Catalyst Game Labs writing the game and earning they need to be in business. As long as they keep their products top notch and in production, I see no reason for them to not be successful. I think Shadowrun, in terms of milleu, is realistic enough. I may be idealistic and think that "Intellectual Property" laws has outlived their usefulness because we have the most perfect Copying Machine money can buy, but I know that there are people who earn money from producing Shadowrun right now and sometimes you need to realize that Realistic isn't always best.
(since I was smited, I might as well put down my full feelings about this topic).
