The Shadowrun Situation

[Fucks]

It's not in the core book, you mean?

[Stahlseele]

that and it seems because of something from storm front it probably won't be in anything else either . .

[Fucks]

[Rawbeard]

Did storm front do some magic that makes nanotech not work, how nuclear weapons are implied not to work either?

What was storm front anyway?

[vagrant]

A piss-poor wrapup of 4e's metaplots, with apparently a few half-decent parts. I never actually read it, mind, but I've heard enough from people I respect to feel confident my time is better spent elsewhere.

[Seerow]

Did storm front do some magic that makes nanotech not work, how nuclear weapons are implied not to work either?

To my understanding, no explanation was given, just anything involving nanites seem to have randomly melted into slag.

One running theory is it's linked to the Dissonance/Technomancy somehow.

[Username17]

What was storm front anyway?

Storm Front is a plot book that is basically about continuing the plotlines they had up in the air. It's like a metaplot book where they don't even really pretend to have a game changing metaplot. It's just part 2 of the plot lines they launched in War! and Conspiracy Theories. If you were really generous, you could say it was like System Failure, but for wrapping up loose ends in SR4 instead of wrapping up loose ends in SR3. But it was written by the current crop of fuckups, who blatantly don't even know what was going on in SR4 and so the only things they are "wrapping up" are bullshit pieces of bullshit Jason Hardy shat out after the embezzlement scandal.

Basically, it's a litany of shitty things that happen because people do unbelievably stupid shit and lots of major and minor NPCs and plotlines are "resolved" by having them blown up for essentially no reason.

-Username17

[Antumbra]

Did storm front do some magic that makes nanotech not work, how nuclear weapons are implied not to work either?

To my understanding, no explanation was given, just anything involving nanites seem to have randomly melted into slag.

One running theory is it's linked to the Dissonance/Technomancy somehow.

If that's really the case - I haven't read the SR5 corebook myself yet - I wonder if anyone involved in that decision spared a single thought as to what that would do the the economy and world.

Even restricted to only the "micro/nanorobotics" side of nanotechnology, the loss could be crippling.

What happens to:
People with nanohives?
Cyber and bioware that has integrated nanotech?
Thousands of facilities that surely use nanorobotics?
Obsolete production lines that retooled for now-useless nanotech?
Research and development laboratories?
Hospitals and cyberdoctors?
Food production and sanitation?

It could potentially be a Crash 3, but with the hardware failing rather than the Matrix - arguably much worse - the only limit to it after how completely nanotech is fucked is how integrated that nanotechnology is with the setting, but the very nature of it means that the answer is "as much as possible".

Well, all that said as it's a part of the backslide it will probably just happen to be very carefully targeted at personal nanoware. Geneware may well follow suit. Which will still kill a lot of people at the highest levels, barring magic (after all, the only way to remove slagged neural nanoware is with more nanoware - not all of it can be plausibly filtered away by the body).

And then there's the character conversion problem.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah somebody just did not think about consequences again.

As for character conversion:
Not supposed to work anyway.
Most samurai and otherwise augmented people will keel over dead from essence loss.

[sabs]

I know that GodZilla takes over Denver was a stupid plot. But I really really hate that they just blew him up with 0 repercussions, because.. reasons.

[Stahlseele]

huh?
they did?
when?
how?
i thought he went toe to toe with King Arthur (Harlekin wearing his armor and wielding the Sword Excalibur) and won against him?

[sabs]

I thought I read he got killed, and denver is now all dragon free?
Am I confusing 2 different dragons?

[Nath]

Alamais got killed in Northern Italy by Lofwyr-led dragon and metahuman forces.

Ghostwalker fought against Harlequin in Denver downtown, but their fight halted all of a sudden when they learnt two Force 15 Shadow spirits moved from Colombia to Denver after allying themselves with Aztechnology.

[phlapjackage]

Honestly, no nanotech doesn't bother me that much. Sure I'd love to see some nanotech rules. But until the devs show they can master basic areas like matrix rules, I don't expect to see working nanotech rules...in fact, I'm happier not to see them.

[TheFlatline]

yeah, cyberware-scanners are a big problem in SR4 . .
i don't have heard any mentioning of them and RFID-Tags in SR5 as of yet, now that you mention it O.o

Son of Infinity Mirror uses RFIDs.

Whoever that Abtruse is, he needs an enema, though you could probably fit what was left of him into a matchbox afterwards.

While I'll freely and gleefully use my PC's tactics against them all the live-long day, a bag of icon wrapped RFIDs hardly seems like rules-laywering and breaking the spirit of the game- it seems to me like something someone in-character would totally do based on how the Matrix works. Invoking rule zero as some kind of appropriate solution here to completely defeat the purpose of a program like wrapper, and THEN intentionally fucking your players over? Does this guy *actually* GM?

That's exactly the kind of attitude that destroys creativity in players and ultimately is the death knell of games. But considering how railroad Shadowrun officially is supposed to be, that doesn't surprise me that this cockmunch would discourage creative, in-character solutions to a legitimate problem.

Edit: The easiest solution to this version of the hall of mirrors is really to just say that at a hardware level RFIDs broadcast a unique, instantly identifiable signal. RFIDs don't need to interact with the Matrix, why they even put out Matrix signals is beyond me and reflects the utter stupidity of the designers. Seriously, RFIDs should be one way broadcasts and use an entirely different communication standard- as they do NOW, and your cyberdeck or cell phone or whatever has a fucking .05 nuyen RFID receiver in it. So you can *never* confuse an RFID, even a hidden one, with a matrix node or piece of cyberware or whatever the fuck needs to talk to the matrix.

Problem solved. Using real world technology and real world logic. No need for Rule Zero or buttfucking your players or even getting angry.

[sabs]

Honestly, no nanotech doesn't bother me that much. Sure I'd love to see some nanotech rules. But until the devs show they can master basic areas like matrix rules, I don't expect to see working nanotech rules...in fact, I'm happier not to see them.

Oh so Horrors showed up. Gotcha.
Wait, Harlequin can fight a Great Dragon to a stand still?
Holy Marie Sue Batman!

[kzt]

Problem solved. Using real world technology and real world logic. No need for Rule Zero or buttfucking your players or even getting angry.

Use of logic is prohibited in MagicRun rules.

[Username17]

The easiest solution to this version of the hall of mirrors is really to just say that at a hardware level RFIDs broadcast a unique, instantly identifiable signal. RFIDs don't need to interact with the Matrix, why they even put out Matrix signals is beyond me and reflects the utter stupidity of the designers. Seriously, RFIDs should be one way broadcasts and use an entirely different communication standard- as they do NOW, and your cyberdeck or cell phone or whatever has a fucking .05 nuyen RFID receiver in it. So you can *never* confuse an RFID, even a hidden one, with a matrix node or piece of cyberware or whatever the fuck needs to talk to the matrix.

Not really a solution. The Infinity Mirror doesn't happen because Stealth Tags exist, that just happens to be the easiest and cheapest way to wear your Infinity Mirror. The truth is, you could use anything, because Infinity Mirror is hard coded into the way they wrote up the Matrix.

Every item is a matrix capable device, and that's important because they have a bunch of bullshit bonuses they want you to worry about if your equipment isn't hooked to the Matrix. And if someone wants to fuck with your equipment, they have to poke your matrix capable items one at a time. So if you have twenty things, then your opponent only has a 1 in 20 chance of guessing the right "thing". If you have forty things, than the chance is 1 in 40. That's simply how it "works".

So if you just have a lot of stuff, such as backup pistols, binoculars, chemical seals, spray paint, finger cuffs, skin flutes, glass cutters, sticky tape, and color changing shoes, and you set all that shit to run in the same hidden mode, you're for all practical purposes immune to hacking in any reasonable combat time frame. Simply "having Shadowrunner equipment" by itself makes people fucking with you via the Matrix into a bewildering and terrible ordeal that will last longer than the mission to actually get to the creamy center.

RFID tags just push the rules from "stupid and unusable" to "so obviously a parody that you won't even try".

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

Well, I did say "this version" of the hall of mirrors. You're right though otherwise. Which goes back to my argument that this granular of Matrix rules buttfucks the setting without the decency of a reach-around. You can't half-ass 100 year futurism with modern day *perceived* paradigms. Build up a bulletproof system and technobable your fluff to fit into the setting. Then you don't have shit like this because your system says "no that can't be done" by the rules instead of by Rule Zero.

RFID tags just make it cheap and easy to be stupidly effective. And the devs' ruling is to basically cheat (The GM can decide his NPC is going to scan all the things and filter them using metagaming knowledge and then act on it), and then accuse the intelligent player of cheating.

That actually rather makes me angry- it's the very, very, very worst trope of this hobby- unjustified ego of an individual fucking over creativity because it threatens his masturbatory theater.

And as an aside, Rule Zero needs a name and understanding change. It shouldn't be The Absolute First Rule but The Rule of Last Resort. And it shouldn't be "the GM is always right" (fuck that) but "Thou shalt do what is necessary to let everyone have fun."

It seems like Abtruse is either juiced into the devs or is a freelancer, and if that's true, there's no fucking way I'm touching a product developed with that kind of player hatred simmering under the surface. That's not even Gygaxian in it's hatred of players, it goes beyond that.

[phlapjackage]

It seems like Abtruse is either juiced into the devs or is a freelancer, and if that's true, there's no fucking way I'm touching a product developed with that kind of player hatred simmering under the surface. That's not even Gygaxian in it's hatred of players, it goes beyond that.

I feel that I've noticed this too in the "big names" in SR these days. It's in comments like Abstruse made, or the way there's apparently now this joke about the rulebook having it's own damage code and should be used to hit players who try to use the rules in unforeseen ways. It feels like a really adversarial relationship thing, like they view the players as enemies who are trying to "beat" the GM.

[Stahlseele]

i'd buy this over the hideous red one at least:
oh fapp god damn it huge pictures x.x

[Neurosis]

THERE ARE SOME THINGS MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO PRINT.

*ahem*

Ok, so actually bringing this somewhat on topic for the first time in LITERALLY years. I've been thinking about this lately and getting more and more depressed so, alternate perspectives are welcome, but let's not distract ourselves with the *quality* of CGL's work on Shadowrun, because our opinion of that really doesn't matter in a business context. At this point I am pretty much entirely certain that, from a pure sales and business perspective, Shadowrun 5 is already a HUGE success. (Sad but true, uninformed masses be dumb.)

It's three years and change later. The net result of Loren L. Coleman being caught virtually red-handed embezzling half a million dollars or more from Catalyst Game Labs/IMR appears to be...absolutely nothing.

Loren L. Coleman is still the supreme overboss of CGL, in fact if not in name. (I think I heard somewhere, quite probably here, that his wife officially runs the business end of the company, but being a strong Mormon patriarch I'd imagine he exercises not inconsiderable influence over her and any other wives he may have.) The legal action against Catalyst/IMR was quashed and neatly settled out of court years ago. No further legal action arose. LLC was not truly demoted, excised from the company, or just plain fired, and now continues to act publicly as the face of IMR/Catalyst Game Labs and the clear top-down director of all Catalyst's product lines. The actual consequences he suffered for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars boil down to virtually nothing, not even a tarnished reputation, for the internet has a whole has forgotten the entire incident. Catalyst is far from dying, and LLC is riding it to new heights of financial success, the reason being that his Mormon bros like Jason Hardy and Randall Bills could not bring themselves to take any action against him, due to their codes of Mormonism and Broship.

~(Sad And Infuriating) Conclusions~

Correct me if I'm wrong time.

After 180 pages of speculation, rage, bitching, and accusations... LLC definitively got away with it, scott, fucking, free. Oooah, take the money and don't even bother to run. No retribution, not even (ha ha) karmic. Case closed.

And we (I?) are left crying in our collective sour grapes.

Fuck.

[Ancient History]

Well, you're wrong. Not only has Coleman not suffered, but this year he was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame. So he's actually be rewarded and recognized for his complete lack of scruples. The bad sleep well.

In other news, I recently discovered he has a blog: http://www.lorenlcoleman.com/

[/edit]And, really, I didn't expect much else from all of this. Coleman is one of the few owners of the company, and he isn't going to oust himself, and neither is his wife or special best friend Randall Bills. Topps chose to renew the license, and in hindsight the reason is simple: that vast majority of Shadowrun fans don't care about what's going on at the corporate level. Most of them can't name any of the writers for the game, or even point out which bits were written by whom. They're loyal to the game, not the company or the people that make it, and they'll happily swallow pretty much any new edition that comes their way with shouts of "Shiny!" and "It must be mine!"

And hey, I understand. Ghost knows I've bought books and never given a thought as to whether the company behind it was taking advantage of the workers or doing shenanigans with the money. So I can't throw stones.

[Neurosis]

Well, you're wrong. Not only has Coleman not suffered, but this year he was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame. So he's actually be rewarded and recognized for his complete lack of scruples. The bad sleep well.

Oh. Robert.

Please just shoot me. In the face. With a fucking grenade launcher.

[Rawbeard]

Do you need a hug?