The Shadowrun Situation

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:22 pm

Loki wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:Yes, well, who better to correct our borders than ourselves eh?
I'm sure that's what Hitler thought .... I know, I know, again with the Godwin! :mrgreen:

leave it to the german ^^
our next crusade for the distribution of the metric system over the imperial system will be done by our financial/economical progress in the EU/Europe ^^

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:22 pm

Maybe. But that was in bad taste anyway. And remember - this is an international forum, so i didn't know who you are. And i didn't have any context to work with.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:23 pm

Fuck you. Accept that the joke didn't come across as good, intelligent or funny.
Next topic would be "jokes" about jews, hm?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:26 pm

Is there a way to mulligan that whole discussion?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:38 pm

fectin wrote:Is there a way to mulligan that whole discussion?

what does "to mulligan" mean? O.o

Loki · Post by **Loki** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:41 pm

Kot wrote:Maybe. But that was in bad taste anyway. And remember - this is an international forum, so i didn't know who you are. And i didn't have any context to work with.

You might be right I usually don't tell World War 2 themed jokes around people from other countries. So damn you Stahlseele for giving me this "Steilvorlage" and someone familiar to pounce on.

Fucks wrote:Fuck you. Accept that the joke didn't come across as good, intelligent or funny.
Next topic would be "jokes" about jews, hm?

Oh, I'm accepting how Kot felt about it. I was just really surprised. Also there are lots of good Jewish jokes and good jokes about Jews. It's the intersection of Jewish and Nazi jokes that inevitably will be tasteless. Certainly don't expect me to go there.

fectin wrote:Is there a way to mulligan that whole discussion?

That means to remove it, right? Why it's a testament to German-Polish misunderstandings years into the European peace process. A good reminder of the feelings still involved.

Well, I really only registered to provide information on Mariánské Lázně/Marienbad so we can wrap this discussion from my side.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:57 pm

I can understand sensativity being a bit high after having War! dropped on us, but really? With all the barrels of dicks around here you've got to expect the worst.

At least he didn't call it official and charge you $18 for the joke.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:18 pm

Meh. Let's just dig the ax, and get back on topic? Though on the other hand, let's don't that. It's a silly place.
War! sucks badly enough for fans to make their own alternate version. That's pretty much enough.

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:21 pm

At least he didn't call it official and charge you $18 for the joke.

It at least was a fast, efficient joke with a clear punchline. That's more than one can say about War!. And how sad is that.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:34 pm

The Sixth World Almanac is a very low quality product. Not as low quality as War!, but shockingly low quality. The maps are rips out of Google with borders that do not match descriptions in a majority of cases. Using those maps is basically worthless.

But um... sure. Let's use those German maps.

Mariánské Lázně/Marienbad is shown in this map: "http://shadowhelix.de/Datei:Karte_Süddeutscher_Bund.png" (sorry for the format, the umlaut kills the link)

Wat?

OK, I understand how that might be so small as to warrant naming it after a golf course. Czech Republic in those maps appears to have picked up twenty kilometers of German forest. Maybe less, it's hard to tell. You know what? I really fucking hate the German freelancers sometimes.

So having added Wunseidel and Tirschenreuth, and Waldnaab... they decided to name it... Marienbad? That area has an actual name, it's been an independent country before. That's the Palatinate. The region would be called Oberpfalz. It has a name in Czech too. Horní Falc.

Honestly, the fact that they are using the wrong name for the town isn't even the fourth biggest problem with this. The idea that the town is the name for the region at all is completely laughable.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:41 pm

hermit wrote:
At least he didn't call it official and charge you $18 for the joke.
It at least was a fast, efficient joke with a clear punchline. That's more than one can say about War!. And how sad is that.

you two made my day, thank you for giving me a good laugh ^^

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:42 pm

So having added Wunseidel and Tirschenreuth, and Waldnaab... they decided to name it... Marienbad? That area has an actual name, it's been an independent country before. That's the Palatinate. The region would be called Oberpfalz. It has a name in Czech too. Horní Falc.

Honestly, the fact that they are using the wrong name for the town isn't even the fourth biggest problem with this. The idea that the town is the name for the region at all is completely laughable.

Germany SB used to be my most hated SR book before War!. It'S shitty all over and full of nonsense like this (Saxony reverting to monarchy, RIGHT. I could easily see it going towards Fourth Minireich, and attacking Czechia just for the hell of it, but monarchy? Most Saxons don't even know the country used to be one! Really, sometimes). And do not get me started on a theocracy springing up in a country where fully half of the population are atheists. Or on the incredibly lame clichés about Nazi southern Germans and cool, laid back northerners ... the flood in Hamburg behaving as outrageously weird as the flood in LA ... the magicans working in the Berlin subway system which suffers from occasional spontaneous attacks by free earth elementals. Or the BErlin setting in general, which literally starts with "we know this makes no sense, but somehow it does work that way, really".

With the Germany SB, you really have a crap rpoduct. And STILL it is infinitly better than war because it has editing, structure, and format.

Loki · Post by **Loki** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:58 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Honestly, the fact that they are using the wrong name for the town isn't even the fourth biggest problem with this. The idea that the town is the name for the region at all is completely laughable.

The Council of Marienbad was a silly setting anyway. The concept was something like pick a small area, golf course size sounds about right, give it a grandiose name like "Western Branch of the Greater Mongolian Empire", give it a colorful NPC leader with a grandiose title like "Martin Splendid Khan" and it will fit comfortably into the Council along with all the other craziness that was going on there. The list of small "states" read something like 5 kingdoms, 6 duchies, 2 republics and so on. Kinda fun, but nothing you could honestly take serious.

hermit wrote:Or on the incredibly lame clichés about Nazi southern Germans and cool, laid back northerners

As a northerner I cannot completely disagree with this assessment though, was probably written by people from the upper half of the country.

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 5:13 pm

EVERYONE hates the first Germany SB*. Maybe even the ones who wrote it (I wouldn't know). Luckily, as the ingame years pass, the setting is becoming increasingly less stupid, and even enjoyable.

However, please remember: The Germany SB was FIRST EDITION. And there were a lot of ... strange ... things happening in 1st edition times...

*seriously. In all those years I have never met anyone willing to defend the book. Certain parts of it are OK (Hamburg, Rhein-Ruhr ... there may be more, but I haven't read the book in years and my former home region (Saarland) was turned to nuclear sludge ... which IS an improvement, actually)), others are ...............

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 5:47 pm

Not that your current home had it better ... Berlin was ... well, it was so bad it prompted you to write your own Berlin, and then you got much of that published. That's how bad Berlin in the first GSB was.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:27 pm

Well, the new Berlin Sourcebook is . . well . . different to say the least.
Haven't had the chance to do more than thumb through it yet <.<

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:31 pm

Actually, I was very surprised. It pretty much fixed the setting to be usable. It's the best possible result they could make from this turd. A very, very stark contrast to War!.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:37 pm

didn't say it was bad . . and the turn around for both halves of the book was a nice touch . .

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:46 pm

Yes. I was sceptical when I read it, but it actually works pretty well.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:21 pm

i'll probably give it a read in some days, as i'll have some free time then . .
sad how i get bored as soon as i have more than 1 free day from work <.<

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:22 pm

Thanks. I'm glad you are enjoying it (or at least not retching). I am pretty happy with the result myself.

In and of itself, I "liked" the "Anarchist Berlin" scenario even in its old form. I am a fan of "Escape from (insert city here)" and other scenarios where everything went to hell, and enjoyed living in Westberlin in the eighties IMMENSELY -- and that SR Berlin reminded me a little of the rundown city I then learned to love.

What I did NOT like was the way Anarchist Berlin was introduced, treated and written. What could have been a very sinister and disturbing setting was treated/written like a joke (green bards and cannibalistic restaurants, my ass. And mages that guard the subway from attacks by toxic spirits. Yeah, sure).

If Berlin somehow "just went feral" in the aftermath of the Eurowars, that would have made KINDA more sense (let VITAS strike hard, let the Neosowjets and several waves of refugees hit the city, let Brandenburg plunge into a barren no-man's-land (check) and let Germany's economy and political system collapse by (name any crisis between 2000 and 2050) and you're good to go ... (actually, I would have liked a scenario that would have placed Berlin right at the border between Germany and Poland, or even IN Poland!)...

As matters stood when I got back into SR (after a long time of playing CP2020), Berlin was neither this nor that. It wasn't a city in anarchy anymore, it was split by a WALL (good God...) and apparently bent to become "just another corporate city". Much as I sympathize with hating the "anarchy" venue (how it supposedly came to pass, how it was supposed to work (not), I and others felt that abandoning that anarchist venue altogether would make Berlin obsolete as a setting.

Of course, there are worse things than rendering any of the initial German SB settings obsolete and dropping it, but ... while tossing around ideas and getting to SERIOUSLY discussing how that city MAY be working, we came up with some pretty good ideas.

It was an interesting process, getting from "OK we know 'anarchy' worked in that city for many years, because the books tell us so, now we have to figure out HOW instead of just babbling about 'that's what the former publisher wanted, deal with it'".

Of course, there have been compromises, too, and there are parts that I am less happy about than others, but all in all I think we did a solid job.

Plus, I like the relatively high level of "direct playability" of the book (I always viewed NC SB as a kind of benchmark).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:33 pm

Hmm, Berlin and the Wall on the Border to Poland . . could be something like a european Seattle . . not bad actually O.o

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:54 pm

Forget. The. Wall. PLEASE.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:57 pm

Well, the Music was good . .
Untill the Hoff started to sing, then it fell ^^

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 9:06 pm

Raben_aas wrote:What I did NOT like was the way Anarchist Berlin was introduced, treated and written. What could have been a very sinister and disturbing setting was treated/written like a joke (green bards and cannibalistic restaurants, my ass. And mages that guard the subway from attacks by toxic spirits. Yeah, sure).

If Berlin somehow "just went feral" in the aftermath of the Eurowars, that would have made KINDA more sense (let VITAS strike hard, let the Neosowjets and several waves of refugees hit the city, let Brandenburg plunge into a barren no-man's-land (check) and let Germany's economy and political system collapse by (name any crisis between 2000 and 2050) and you're good to go ... (actually, I would have liked a scenario that would have placed Berlin right at the border between Germany and Poland, or even IN Poland!)...

That would have been okay. How it played out? Totally shitty. And WHAT it was? Not a gloomy setting that would have been innovative in a time before chicago and all the other feral cities. Instead, it was an exercise of pure dorkiness. And the fixes in Walzer, Punks und Schwarzes Ice actually made it WORSE.

Of course, there have been compromises, too, and there are parts that I am less happy about than others, but all in all I think we did a solid job.

Plus, I like the relatively high level of "direct playability" of the book (I always viewed NC SB as a kind of benchmark).

Best thing about it is, I feel, the immersiveness and the detail and ... well, love that was worked in there. It's not a sterile travel guide like many books in 3E and 4E were, but it feels loke an actual living city. I have been missing this sicne the very old city books, Seattle, London.

I also really dig the maps and settings you provide. It's not a travel guide, it ... has something like soul. And it comes together in a very good way, I think. You couldn't have made more of that setting.