The Shadowrun Situation

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:31 am

Then why link the two?

And I think those last proposals shown demonstrate how much ED infects SR.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 1:22 am

...Why link the two? Because they were linked when Earthdawn was created?

TheFlatline wrote:The complaint is that "ancient magic wins out over everything else, period" is a cliche and is a tired one on top of that.

Which has absolutely bupkis to do with Earthdawn being linked to Shadowrun.

-Crissa

(I feel like I'm abusing my spellchecker having bupkis in it. Hehe)

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:48 am

Fuchs wrote:Then why link the two?

FASA didn't have you when they made that decision. Without you, they were lost. Why didn't you help them? Why? Why?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:52 am

Fucks wrote:
Fuchs wrote:Then why link the two?
FASA didn't have you when they made that decision. Without you, they were lost. Why didn't you help them? Why? Why? :bash:

While your point is solid and valid, it's being doing via a sock puppet with nine posts to its name.

-Crissa

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 7:22 am

TheFlatline wrote:How about the artifacts *are* super powerful, but the megacorps get ahold of them, and in an amazing feat of bureaucratic ineptitude, they get sent to some R&D lab, where some scientist puke extracts all the magical power out of them and uses it to power the world's most accurate clock. The dragons, immortal elves, and other powers that be freak out, but it's too late. We'll always know precisely what time it is though.

I know you are not being serious, but even sidelining artifacts is a big no in my book. What I would be fine with is ancient artifacts that amplify the power of an individual. Bigger, better, stronger, faster. And I am fine with dragons and immortal elves chasing those artifacts because they are interested in personal combat power.

I am not ok with ancient artifacts mattering on a global level, let alone deciding the fate the world. One central part of the Shadowrun setting is that no matter how badass the players are, ultimately the fate of the world is decided by men in suits. No one is irreplaceable, no one is invulnerable and the power lies with companies, bureaucracies and governments, not individuals. This is one of the fundamental differences between Shadowrun and most fantasy games, where the players can actually decide the fate of a kingdom. In Shadowrun you can decide your own fate and, if you are lucky, that of your friends and family. But ultimately your actions do not matter. This is a central part of the genre. And ancient super artifacts, immortal elves and saving the world fucks this part right in the ass.

I don't even care whether it is immortal elves from another setting that Ancient History happens to like, artifacts some brain-addled game designer thought were cool or whatever. That shit is bad for the setting and also tells everyone but the mage that they will never be a special snowflake. Fuck that.

You know what I would like to see? An ancient horror rising, only to get railgunned right down. A mage discovering an ancient artifact, only to find out that it does not help him against getting hacked and his accounts drained. Others have already said it and I am totally with them. We have come so far in the last century already that, even with some of the setbacks that happened according to the storyline, modern technology must seem like magic to, say, a dragon. I mean, seriously, mind-controlling some wires and fiber to move stuff around that is too small to see so halfway around the globe a sniper drone puts a supersonic round in the eye of some guy? Oh, and that drone happens to be transparent, has no heat signature to speak of and floats around at an altitude of several hundreds of meters? And that is disposable stuff? Nothing at all sophisticated or even expensive about it? Are you kidding me? Anyone who is still used to being able to fireball of flamebreath ignorant peasants and the occasional knight or swordmaster should either be dead or cowering in a hole in the ground, too terrified to move. Basically anyone at all can totally fuck you over. Mages can snipe at you through optical fiber or level a city, gun bunnies can fire a dozen rounds at you from each weapon, in a single pass or can just kill you before you even get to notice them, riggers can swarm you with drones or drop a nice freight plane on your house, deckers can kill you the moment you enter the matrix or just drain your accounts and get you hunted as a terrorist. Those are all just individuals fucking with you. Starting characters at that. If a government or corporation is ever angry at you, your only chance lies in hiding and running.

But no, we get plot artifacts and special magic elves. Frankly, that shit is insulting.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 7:26 am

That's my point, Crissa: Earthdawn was created and sold as "Shadowrun's Past". But the fluff behind that (higher level of magic, more advanced magic, yadda yadda) doesn't match with the actual mechanics. Can't match, since if you'd actually had stronger, more advanced magic, the ED world would look far, far differently, and the aimed for game experience wouldn't be the same.

As a stand alone game, ED works. It would also work as Shadowrun's past, if you accept that key magic mechanics and laws changed extensively. But it doesn't work as "Shadowrun's past where magic was more powerful", since mechanically, ED's magic is not more powerful, but weaker across the book. When Shadowrun plots and campaigns circle around "powerful magical artifacts of an age gone, with wonders we cannot equal", having that past actually be a typical "magic balanced for fantasy combat" game is a bad idea.

Not that it was a good idea to begin with to reproduce the really, really tired "oh, an artifact from the (insert standard fallen magical civilization) threatens the world if it falls into the wrong hands! Fair hero, it's your task to prevent this!" clichee in Shadowrun. Even if you have to do such plots, there's numerous modern threats to pick from instead, neatly avoiding the problem of saddling the world with the Tolkien nostalgia about old times having had greater men.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 8:16 am

Fuchs wrote:As a stand alone game, ED works. It would also work as Shadowrun's past, if you accept that key magic mechanics and laws changed extensively. But it doesn't work as "Shadowrun's past where magic was more powerful", since mechanically, ED's magic is not more powerful, but weaker across the book.

1) The folks in Earthdawn are using magic in a world where the overall level of magic is diminishing, whereas in the world of Shadowrun, it is rapidly rising and may already have surpassed the level necessary to draw the attention of the Horrors.

2) Magicians in Earthdawn have to use Spell Patterns in order to cast spells without their heads exploding, while the folks in Shadowrun can throw raw magic around all the live long day.

3) You're assuming that something didn't happen to either diminish the power of the Scourge or mitigate their ability to detect the rising magical power of the Earth in-between the Fourth Age and the Sixth Age. Maybe all of these ancient artifacts that play such a prominent role in SR adventures have something to do with this?

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 8:42 am

1. The magic level is still supposed to be stronger than in SR, just past the scourge's peak.

2. As already said - even foregoing all the scourge protection stuff, casting raw, is slower and weaker than SR's starting magic.

3. Nothing like that is mentioned, but if it was, then one should not claim ED's magic was more powerful.

And for heaven's sake: If you don't want two systems compared with each other, don't link them. That should be common sense. If ED is not supposed to be compared to Shadowrun, don't make it Shadowrun's past.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:12 am

I was under the impression magic in Earthdawn was weaker (raw power), due to an generally weaker mana spike.

So while in SR the magic is still on the rise, its allready more powerfull than in Earthdawn.
But some of the things possible in ED arent possible in SR, because the timetable isnt / the planes arent progressed far enough.

Dont ask me, where I got that impression.

(Hope my writing is readable...)

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 1:55 pm

Fuchs: If Earthdown had 0.1 second rounds, would that make it's magic stronger? Personally, casting time differences don't seem that important to me (unless the difference grows ridiculously large). Overall restrictions and capabilities are much important to me. In the face of line of sight vs range restrictions, flat-out limits to magic like no raising the dead in Shadowrun and capabilities like Teleportation are much more important to me when comparing settings, because those are by necessity reflected in the fluff. Casting times and numerical values on the other hand may well have been adjusted for balancing reasons. Comparing them seems pretty useless to me.

Ancient History: Dismissing Fuchs' arguments with "your opinion doesn't matter" is bullshit. He does have valid points, and telling him to shut the fuck up does not make them go away. From what has been posted so far in this thread, Shadowrun does not seem to have weaker magic than Earthdawn, "ancient artifacts from a time of high magic" is a tired cliche and yes, science is a damn powerful tool that, from the little fluff I know from Earthdawn, simply did not exist back then.

Look at the past years. Humanity developed, refined and deployed a planet-wide information network in just 10 years, with another 10 years spent on building millions of services on top of it that were not even conceivable just twenty years ago. How long did it take to run highways across the USA? Railroads? How long did it take to just get water to a single city during the reign of Rome? By any measure I can find, as a species, our technology and knowledge is not only advancing, but advancing at an ever greater rate. Shadowrun is established at having a world wide matrix, accessible via direct brain interfaces, numerous research institutes in fields as diverse advanced cyberware, cloning, robotics, viruses, metallurgy, thaumaturgy and nanotechnology. There is every reason to believe that, even given several devastating events, half a dozen or more breakthroughs on par with or exceeding the spread of the internet have occurred in the Shadowrun setting.

Why do you find it implausible that any of them concern magic? Shadowrun, by canon, already has mundane technology capable of restraining astral travel and eating magic. Magic can be detected and revealed. Everyone can do this, if they can burn the cash. With literally tens of thousands working on magical research I would be astounded if they did not figure out something that the people in the Earthdawn setting did not figure out, even in a couple thousand of years. Heck, it is not like they figured out how to make railroads, guns or electronics in that timeframe, which is evidently doable and probably even to be expected.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:39 pm

Murtak wrote: Ancient History: Dismissing Fuchs' arguments with "your opinion doesn't matter" is bullshit. He does have valid points, and telling him to shut the fuck up does not make them go away. From what has been posted so far in this thread, Shadowrun does not seem to have weaker magic than Earthdawn, "ancient artifacts from a time of high magic" is a tired cliche and yes, science is a damn powerful tool that, from the little fluff I know from Earthdawn, simply did not exist back then.

If Fuchs' entire argument was just that relatively SR magicians were more versatile or powerful than ED magicians, I'd agree. Fuchs isn't making that point though, he's just pissed off about Earthdawn "infecting" Shadowrun, and he can't grasp why the designers of the games didn't decide to use the same system for both. Just because something doesn't make sense to Fuchs does not mean Fuchs is correct, or that his opinion is in any way relevant. The systems are incompatible, any comparison between them is going to be relative. The only real comparison that can be made is with the shared background material, which Fuchs hates, and the shared background material says that at least some of the magic from Earthdawn is considered more powerful and advanced than current-era Shadowrun magic. He doesn't have to like it, but I'm tired of him fucking whining about it, and how IEs and "ancient magical artifacts" are ruining the game - there just aren't that fucking many, and most of them only show up for the length of an adventure, or are mentioned in passing.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:40 pm

Murtak wrote:Fuchs: If Earthdown had 0.1 second rounds, would that make it's magic stronger? Personally, casting time differences don't seem that important to me (unless the difference grows ridiculously large). Overall restrictions and capabilities are much important to me. In the face of line of sight vs range restrictions, flat-out limits to magic like no raising the dead in Shadowrun and capabilities like Teleportation are much more important to me when comparing settings, because those are by necessity reflected in the fluff. Casting times and numerical values on the other hand may well have been adjusted for balancing reasons. Comparing them seems pretty useless to me.

I go with numerical values since those give a common ground to compare spells. If in 10 seconds my SR mage can cast 3 spells at line of sight while my ED wizard can cast one spell at 100 yards, that's a heck of a difference.

If an SR mage can pick up a telescope and start nuking a base kilometers away and his ED counterparts have to get into point blank range for bows to cast at a castle, that's a significant difference.

And my point is that if you pick restrictions for balance reasons you should not link the damn system to another system. The very idea of having a magic system balanced for medieval fantasy combat in the same universe as a magic system balanced for modern/SciFi combat is stupid if at the same time you try to claim that medieval magic is also stronger and more advanced.

If you need a magic system for a 4th world where magic is stronger than SR, make it so. Make the ED heroes much, much, stronger - the PCs are all adepts anyway. Of course that means that any mundane opposition including entire armies of soldiers would be inexistent in ED. It means that most of the Tolkien stuff would be beneath the heroes notice, including travelling adventures and survival in hostile enviroments. Combat would only happen between magical powerhorses, with the heroes battling Great Dragons, Horrors, and similar threats. Not struggling against paranormal animals SR corps use as security guards.

Make it so a Fireball in ED has the power of a FAE. Make the archer adept a human-sized railgun. Make the swordmaster able to cut reality with his sword, or become a t'skrang-sized tornado of blades, cutting through anything in his path including stone and solid metal. Make the illusionist able to create illusions so powerful they gain live, and affect history retroactively.

That's the stuff of "magic SR can only dream of". Not the D&D low to (maybe) mid level imitation they actually did.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:47 pm

Ancient History wrote:
Murtak wrote: Ancient History: Dismissing Fuchs' arguments with "your opinion doesn't matter" is bullshit. He does have valid points, and telling him to shut the fuck up does not make them go away. From what has been posted so far in this thread, Shadowrun does not seem to have weaker magic than Earthdawn, "ancient artifacts from a time of high magic" is a tired cliche and yes, science is a damn powerful tool that, from the little fluff I know from Earthdawn, simply did not exist back then.
If Fuchs' entire argument was just that relatively SR magicians were more versatile or powerful than ED magicians, I'd agree. Fuchs isn't making that point though, he's just pissed off about Earthdawn "infecting" Shadowrun, and he can't grasp why the designers of the games didn't decide to use the same system for both. Just because something doesn't make sense to Fuchs does not mean Fuchs is correct, or that his opinion is in any way relevant. The systems are incompatible, any comparison between them is going to be relative. The only real comparison that can be made is with the shared background material, which Fuchs hates, and the shared background material says that at least some of the magic from Earthdawn is considered more powerful and advanced than current-era Shadowrun magic. He doesn't have to like it, but I'm tired of him fucking whining about it, and how IEs and "ancient magical artifacts" are ruining the game - there just aren't that fucking many, and most of them only show up for the length of an adventure, or are mentioned in passing.

So, what do you say when the last four official adventures from CGL deal with IEs and artifacts from ED? When we just had two docs revealed here, corruption master and HG, centered around IEs and ED?

And my whole point is that if the systems are not compatible, don't link the shit. Don't share the background if the system's not the same - especially not if NPCs and monsters from one are supposed to appear in the other system.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:56 pm

I say that Loren L. Coleman is a fucking hack, since he came up with the idea, and that he also believes it would sell. Because LLC doesn't give a damn about Shadowrun, he only cares how much money he can wring from it.

The DotA, if you'd bothered to read them, are pretty shit. You haven't seen the last ones yet probably, but unlike Harlequin or Harlequin's Back, DotA is not a complete story. It's a team of runners jetting around the world to pick up some artifacts because they're being paid to do so; there's no actual plot as to why they're picking them up or what their boss is going to do with them because that plotline - shown in the documents at different stages - was so fucking bad it was dropped before DotA was being written, and yet they started writing them anyway. I had to fucking campaign to get an ending that didn't completely suck balls nailed onto the end of those adventures in the form of Harlequin's Gambit, and my leaving basically sunk that book because I took half of it with me and now the line developer's being a prick about it.

Fuck me, if you want to point at magic and conspiracy being where it has no need of being, look at fucking Ghost Cartels.

I think a major point of ED was that it was not supposed to have an actual crossover with SR - ever. They share setting material but that's it. It's not like oWoD where you could collect books from four or five different fucking gamelines and make some horrible abomination like a kinfolk medium ghoul mage whose best buddies are a faerie and a mummy. They didn't want to show what Dunkelzahn's stats were like ten thousand years ago and in 2055 so your characters could fight him twice. I like to think it freed up the creative teams so that they could go their own way and develop their own games - the didn't want Vampire and Dark Ages Vampire, they wanted Shadowrun and Earthdawn. The connections are fun to trace, but that's generally the limit of where they went with it when FASA finally closed its doors.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:16 pm

They had a novel trilogy where two books were set in ED and the third in SR. If they didn't want a crossover they sure did a shitty job in avoiding it.

But by having IEs and GDs show up in both worlds, they did exactly that crossover. By placing SR at the start of a mana cycle, and placing ED just past the peak of the earlier mana cycle, they did that crossover. By using common ground - animals that appear in both ED and SR - they did that crossover.

You can't share a background, and not have a crossover, at least a virtual one, where people who play both systems start to compare the characters.

Because while some may be content in tracking shared links, more gamers ask themselves (and others) "and how would my character fare against that monster/NPC?" Especially if there are campaigns and novels centered around preventing an early scourge. The devs themselves pushed the question "and how would Shadowrun fight the horrors" into the players' minds.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:19 pm

Ancient History wrote:If Fuchs' entire argument was just that relatively SR magicians were more versatile or powerful than ED magicians, I'd agree. Fuchs isn't making that point though, he's just pissed off about Earthdawn "infecting" Shadowrun, and he can't grasp why the designers of the games didn't decide to use the same system for both.

I am pissed off by immortal elves and artifact wankery too, for at least somewhat similar reasons. I don't get his hate for not using the exact same system and I don't know why he insists on numerical comparisons, but in general I agree with him.

Ancient History wrote:Just because something doesn't make sense to Fuchs does not mean Fuchs is correct, or that his opinion is in any way relevant.

Fine, but "shut up, idiot" is not going to convince Fuchs, or me, or anyone at all. Refute his arguments (and Frank's and mine for that matter), but until you do you are just posting meaningless bullshit of the "because I told you so" variety.

Or in other words: Just because you think immortal elves are an enrichment for the Shadowrun setting does mean you are correct or that your opinion is relevant. But unlike you, I am going to tell you why your opinion is bullshit.

Ancient History wrote:The systems are incompatible, any comparison between them is going to be relative. The only real comparison that can be made is with the shared background material, which Fuchs hates, and the shared background material says that at least some of the magic from Earthdawn is considered more powerful and advanced than current-era Shadowrun magic. He doesn't have to like it, but I'm tired of him fucking whining about it, and how IEs and "ancient magical artifacts" are ruining the game - there just aren't that fucking many, and most of them only show up for the length of an adventure, or are mentioned in passing.

And, as I pointed out before, that fluff is logical bullshit and actually poisons the game. From what we already established in this thread, Shadowrun magic is not less advanced than Earthdawn magic - possibly less sophisticated in some areas, but more sophisticated in others, but not less advanced overall. It certainly is more powerful numerically and more powerful as far as starting characters are concerned. More importantly, magic is just another kind of power in a setting that already has muscle, machines and the matrix. Making magic the one force able to bring about (or prevent) the end of the world, the one force that is not counterable with another kind of force and the one force not beholden to corporations and organizations but to individuals does poison the setting. Sure, immortal elves are few in number, yes, the actual number of plot artifacts is low - but the mere existence destroys the settings coherence.

Ironically I am fine with dragons as portrayed in most of the fluff. Lofwyr is not feared because he can defeat and crush you at will. He can not, mostly because he does not know you exist, but also because he fears getting killed in return. He is feared because he owns a megacorporation. Individually, he is harder to kill than a run-of-the-mill CEO, but not by much. And he may be a little more powerful than a human CEO because he has the option of going out and handling some key situations personally, but he can not be everywhere at once and he is also quite vulnerable to ambushes, unfriendly rituals, a bombing run at mach 12 or a thor hammer strike. I can even imagine a dragon devastating a city shortly after the awakening, when no one knows what to do about them or how magic really works. I do however take offense at the way Ghostwalker was supposed to single-handedly win a military conflict. Both by game mechanics and by Shadowrun fluff he should have been curbstomped mere seconds after being targeted for destruction.

And the same goes for immortal elves who are apparently running large parts of the world, despite possessing nothing but mediocre amounts of personal combat prowess. I am fine with some idiots running Tir Na Nog and pretending magic matters on a national scale. I can see them taking over Ireland in the confusion of the awakening and after the fact hanging on by virtue of being isolationist and unimportant. Having them play a major part in any, let alone multiple plots, is bullshit though. Any of them should be toast the very second they make a major foe and still not go into hiding.

As for plot artifacts transcending the limits of magic (TM), that is just a lame and tired excuse for not writing better adventures and/or mechanics to begin with. The setting is richer precisely because magic mechanics are written as natural laws. Allowing artifacts to circumvent them is bullshit. Allowing them to do so, but not allowing a research team to reproduce or at least understand their effects is even worse. Having them actually feature in a standard fantasy world destruction campaign tops even that. I am literally having trouble finding words to describe how utterly fucking stupid plot artifacts are in a world where magic is studied by scientists.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:29 pm

Fuchs wrote:I go with numerical values since those give a common ground to compare spells. If in 10 seconds my SR mage can cast 3 spells at line of sight while my ED wizard can cast one spell at 100 yards, that's a heck of a difference.

If an SR mage can pick up a telescope and start nuking a base kilometers away and his ED counterparts have to get into point blank range for bows to cast at a castle, that's a significant difference.

Sort of. Sure, the number difference is large. But more important, as you already noted, the Shadowrun mage can pick up a telescope. He can pick up a mirror. He can pick up fiber optics and shoot fireballs through walls. Casting two or three spells or even ten spells instead of one is noticeable. Having no numerical limits at all is gamechanging.

Fuchs wrote:And my point is that if you pick restrictions for balance reasons you should not link the damn system to another system. The very idea of having a magic system balanced for medieval fantasy combat in the same universe as a magic system balanced for modern/SciFi combat is stupid if at the same time you try to claim that medieval magic is also stronger and more advanced.

And numerically all that Earthdawn needs to fix the fluff is to add more levels at the top. Suddenly the numbers work out and Earthdawn magic is more powerful. Fundamental restrictions and capabilities are something not addressable by adding more levels though, which is why I think they are more important in assessing what magic is capable of.

For example in 3E DnD most blasting spells are very, very weak. by numerical comparison you would conclude that magic is weaker than swords and that DnD magic is weaker than Shadowrun magic (where a decent combat spell can kill multiple grunts easily). But if you compare what magic is capable of (planeshifting/teleport, acquiring unnatural properties via shapechanging, perfect illusions, terrain altering, telepathy, communication and so on) you get a very different picture. You may also note that the power is numeric effects (read: blasting magic) changed a lot from second to third edition DnD. The overall capabilities of magic did not however.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:41 pm

Murtak wrote:And numerically all that Earthdawn needs to fix the fluff is to add more levels at the top. Suddenly the numbers work out and Earthdawn magic is more powerful. Fundamental restrictions and capabilities are something not addressable by adding more levels though, which is why I think they are more important in assessing what magic is capable of.

For example in 3E DnD most blasting spells are very, very weak. by numerical comparison you would conclude that magic is weaker than swords and that DnD magic is weaker than Shadowrun magic (where a decent combat spell can kill multiple grunts easily). But if you compare what magic is capable of (planeshifting/teleport, acquiring unnatural properties via shapechanging, perfect illusions, terrain altering, telepathy, communication and so on) you get a very different picture. You may also note that the power is numeric effects (read: blasting magic) changed a lot from second to third edition DnD. The overall capabilities of magic did not however.

Blasting magic kills grunts easily in 3E - since grunts are level 1 mooks. But D&D never claimed to be in the same universe as Shadowrun. Having D&D have different physics than SR is no problem there.

And even if you add more levels to ED, as long as you can't at least equal SR's magic in key areas such as casting times, range and effect you'll not solve the problem there. You'll open another can of worms though, when suddenly a starting mage in SR, someone who can be killed by any untrained security guard who gets a lucky shot off, commands power equal to a high-level ED character, who is not threatened by a mundane crossbow bolt or three. Especially if said crossbow bolt if shot in SR could still take out the mage.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 5:15 pm

Excuse me, but didn't Great Dragons, Immortal Elves, etc, already exist in Shadowrun before Earthdawn was printed?

-Crissa

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 5:36 pm

[/edit]I had a big long rant here, but re-reading it I honestly can't remember what the fuck I'm arguing about here. Let's assume I was wrong and I'll go fuck off under a rock or something for a little while.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:48 pm

Crissa wrote:Excuse me, but didn't Great Dragons, Immortal Elves, etc, already exist in Shadowrun before Earthdawn was printed?

From what I remember the characters existed, yes. Right at the beginning dragons were explained to have slept through the low mana period in some sort of magical cocoon. Notably not all of them dealt well with the modern world. One of the german dragons woke up, decided to terrorize some peasants and got shotin the head by a couple of tanks. Others adapted well, quickly integrating themselves into important positions in modern society.

The elves also existed from the beginning of the setting, but early on were just normal people with some magical talent and a liking for medieval trappings. Later on it was revealed that they had actually existed since the days of Earthdawn. And still later they show up in tons of novels and adventures, secretly organizing dozens of plots behind the scenes.

Keep in mind that this is just the impression I got. I certainly did not read all of Shadowruns fluff, and what I read I did not read in chronological order.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:53 pm

So basically, they're very talented or 'come from a rich family' minus the family part, because it was just themselves.

-Crissa

K · Post by K » Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:53 pm

Earthdawn was a fine set of rules, but a fail setting. Once I found out they had crap like blood elves, I tuned right out. I mean, I just am not emo enough for S & M elves as a playable race (one of the reasons I hate the Shadar-kai in DnD).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:28 pm

Technically, Earthdawn is what Episode one, two and three are to the original Star Wars Trilogy.
Same Universe, some leftovers. But different Rules.
Basically, if you took maybe my arm.
measured in cm, it's exactly 60cm from shoulder to fingertip.
measured in inches, it's 23,62 inches from shoulder to fingertip.
But it's still my arm, one arm's length.

Jay Levine · Post by **Jay Levine** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:09 pm

Murtak wrote: One central part of the Shadowrun setting is that no matter how badass the players are, ultimately the fate of the world is decided by men in suits. No one is irreplaceable, no one is invulnerable and the power lies with companies, bureaucracies and governments, not individuals.

I'd say that statement is debatable. There is evidence to support it in some Shadowrun material, but there's also evidence against it in Shadowrun material going way back into the early editions. It's one of those basic themes of Shadowrun that they've waffled back and forth on. Look at early books like Harlequin and Harlequin's Back, they were very focused on the runners' impact on the world. And probably half of the Shadowrun novels, at least, don't agree with that statement.

But yes, that's a conflict in the setting. It seems to often want to express that nearly every individual doesn't matter, except possibly the PCs.