[Shadowrun/Cyberpunk] What's with the technomancer hate?

[Chamomile]

Has anyone else noticed that the spambots have been learning how to spell, lately?

[Concise Locket]

Some of the books I thought were out most terrible (Runner's Companion, Seattle 2072, and Unwired) were loved by fans, some of the books I thought were our best (Street Magic, Vice) were met with "mehs." Such is life.

I agree on RC and Unwired, but what did you dislike about Seattle 2072? Too much of a throwback to the original Seattle Sourcebook? From what I remember I thought it looked nice, it was easy to read, easy to reference, and provided a thorough overview of SR's default locale.

[sabs]

I liked Unwired, because I love playing hackers, and itgave me back nexus/cyberdecks. I also really liked the idea behind being able to write your own code. I just hated the actual rules. But there was really alot of crap inside it.

The agents, and botnet stuff just made the hacker game too cumbersome, and some of it was just stupid. Trying to bring 2000's virus stuff into the matrix was just irritating.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Has anyone else noticed that the spambots have been learning how to spell, lately?

Maybe we hurt a technomancer's feelings?

[Blade]

Vice wasn't too bad per se. It just suffered from the fact that Shadowrun's underworld has never made any sense and has never been approached correctly.

So it had nice anecdotes, nice small-time crime stuff, but it wasn't the "guide to the criminal world" it ought to be.

[Concise Locket]

Vice was both the spiritual and format successor to the Underworld Sourcebook. It didn't break any new ground but it didn't mess anything up either, with the exception of a couple of minor inconsistencies between editions. The Met should have been referred to as "rozzers" (London Sourcebook) at least once.

Street Magic was solid. I GM'd the hell out of Emergence. I literally used every plot seed and micro adventure presented in the campaign I ran.

[Rawbeard]

What I find stupid is the idea that TMs would be identified easily enough to actually be hunted in an age where everyone carries a small commlink and can have that built into their head.

The whole "hacking without a cumbersome cyberdeck" shtick was already open for everyone.

They adressed that by declaring everyone with an internal commlink got treated as technomancers, because that is way more plausible than people believing technomancers where just people with internal decks. You know, the usual "we need this to happen" hack writing.

[Ancient History]

Some of the books I thought were out most terrible (Runner's Companion, Seattle 2072, and Unwired) were loved by fans, some of the books I thought were our best (Street Magic, Vice) were met with "mehs." Such is life.

I agree on RC and Unwired, but what did you dislike about Seattle 2072? Too much of a throwback to the original Seattle Sourcebook? From what I remember I thought it looked nice, it was easy to read, easy to reference, and provided a thorough overview of SR's default locale.

Part of it is bitterness. When we first made a proposal for a Seattle location book at the beginning of 4th edition, we wanted a full book - instead, we got about a little less than a third of a book. And people hated us for it in Runner Havens, because it wasn't The Seattle Sourcebook 2.0. So when the time finally rolled around and they decided people wanted a big, full Seattle sourcebook, they went straight to Steve Kenson - we got passed over, just like Spells & Chrome. And SK basically did a bland rehash of New Seattle and ignored as much of Runner Havens as he wanted to, and people loved it. I ended up doing a few small fiction pieces in the book, mostly because SK didn't want to, and ironically I even ended up giving some of the art directions in the book because nobody else fucking did. Whoo.

Vice was both the spiritual and format successor to the Underworld Sourcebook. It didn't break any new ground but it didn't mess anything up either, with the exception of a couple of minor inconsistencies between editions.

And this is the other side of the shit I dealt with. In Runner Havens we were reviled for not serving warmed-over pap in sufficient quantity; in Vice everyone assumed they had already read the fucking book. I had to deal with some of the same arguments "Oh, it's just all the old stuff regurgitated" for Street Magic. The thing is, Vice, whether you love it or hate it, is not the spiritual successor to the Underworld sourcebook, because the old Underworld book is a bunch of fucking cartoon characters playing Godfather and Yojimbo. It wasn't perfect, but Vice did more to update and redefine the major organized crime in Shadowrun than anything since Mob War.

I'm still a bit emotional about it, but I wrote a large chunk of Vice and the casual brush-off still annoys me.

The agents, and botnet stuff just made the hacker game too cumbersome, and some of it was just stupid. Trying to bring 2000's virus stuff into the matrix was just irritating.

Yeah, all do apologies on that one. Part of the problem was that we weren't allowed to just scrap the SR4 rules and start over - some of us did ask to do that - and then we had people on board that thought they could just wave their hands and claim "it's magic" to explain why you could or could not do something. There was a lot of metaphorical blood spilt over Unwired, and the resulting product just makes an already-broken system more complex in a lot of ways.

[sabs]

The worse part i think, is that in Unwired you managed to make Technomancers have giant penises.. that never get hard.

The agents, and the nexus rules, and the bot nets made it that a Hacker with some cash, could create an army of 1000's of agents... that were almost as good as sprites, but didn't cost karma, and came in kegs, instead of microbrewed individual bottles. If you didn't play with those rules, then Technomancers made Hackers feel stupid for existing. If you did play with those, then technomancers wondered why the hell they were even there. It really was just a mess.

[kzt]

Yeah, all do apologies on that one. Part of the problem was that we weren't allowed to just scrap the SR4 rules and start over - some of us did ask to do that - and then we had people on board that thought they could just wave their hands and claim "it's magic" to explain why you could or could not do something. There was a lot of metaphorical blood spilt over Unwired, and the resulting product just makes an already-broken system more complex in a lot of ways.

When they released SR4 I suggested at Gencon that they have the various core books just totally replace their section in the base book. So the magic book includes ALL the magic rules, etc. They had no idea why anyone would want that...

[Concise Locket]

And this is the other side of the shit I dealt with. In Runner Havens we were reviled for not serving warmed-over pap in sufficient quantity; in Vice everyone assumed they had already read the fucking book. I had to deal with some of the same arguments "Oh, it's just all the old stuff regurgitated" for Street Magic. The thing is, Vice, whether you love it or hate it, is not the spiritual successor to the Underworld sourcebook, because the old Underworld book is a bunch of fucking cartoon characters playing Godfather and Yojimbo. It wasn't perfect, but Vice did more to update and redefine the major organized crime in Shadowrun than anything since Mob War.

Not sure what you mean here. Street gangs still seem like they stepped off the set of The Warriors and non-Caucasian American organized crime was still ignored (law enforcement has been nailing the Bloods, Crips, et. all with RICO charges since the '90s [Neal Stephenson played up the Crips as the LA Mafia's replacement in Snowcrash]).

Vice was a better read than Underworld but it did just as good of a job in playing up Hollywood stereotypes for effect.

[Ancient History]

Which is what tells me you didn't actually read Vice.

Street gangs you're right about, of course. Nothing to be done about that, it's fucking ingrained in the setting at this point.

[Cyberzombie]

The agents, and botnet stuff just made the hacker game too cumbersome, and some of it was just stupid.

The matrix stuff was already ridiculously cumbersome and borderline unplayable for just a solo hacker. Adding on the agents and botnets made the matrix game completely unplayable.

In Unwired, they should have been looking to reduce the number of rolls and simplify, not add even more participants to an already overcomplex system.

[sabs]

Warriors style gangs is just part of the setting. It's like asking to take out chrome cyberlimbs. It's just too much a part of the genre.

[kzt]

Itsy bitsy Warrior style gangs too.

There were reputed to be over 50,000 members of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago before they tore down the Robert Taylor Homes project, it's said to have dropped to only 30,000 now.

Warriors style gangs is just part of the setting. It's like asking to take out chrome cyberlimbs. It's just too much a part of the genre.

[Concise Locket]

Which is what tells me you didn't actually read Vice..

I read it. I own it. There's more stuff in Vice... the big syndicates got more word count, there was a bit on law enforcement, the Ghost Cartels, Vor, and Red Mafiya got a bump up, and the Koshari finally got some spotlight. And black and other criminals-of-color, who have been just as successful in the urban US of A without the traditional mob's race advantage, were still whitewashed or pushed to the Carrib League or Africa because "there be negros."


The 2nd-to-4th ed. evolution of the book is pretty obvious so the comparison is a reasonable one in my eyes.