Drunken Review: Shadowrun 5

bigity · Post by **bigity** » Mon May 18, 2020 1:25 pm

I hope I'm not out of line here too much, but damn it's good to see some of the familiar folks from the old Dumpshock forums way back when.

pragma · Post by **pragma** » Tue May 19, 2020 1:14 am

Agreed! I came for the old DS zeitgeist and stayed for the incisive commentary.

Also, being too out of line is a challenge around these parts

Ignimortis · Post by **Ignimortis** » Thu May 28, 2020 3:44 am

Longes wrote:With the ongoing quarantine I sought out a new game to play, which happened to be Shadowrun 5e. This led to me reading "Kill Code", a 2018 Matrix supplement for SR5e. And the things I saw there filled me with a burning desire to share. So here I am.

Back when SR5 released, the devs were really happy to throw around "everything is in the cloud" as magic buzzwords around the Matrix. Everyone pointed and laughed saying that the devs don't understand what "in the cloud" means. Kill Code's solution to this was to play a "no u" card.

As revealed in Kill Code, SR5 matrix is magic. Not "Magic" magic, but Resonance magic. Between SR4 and SR5 some corporate badman has captured 100 Technomancers and plugged them into a machine that forces them to generate a gestalt network. This network is the SR5 Matrix. The technomancers died in the process, but the network continues to exist, anchored to Resonance and Dissonance realms.

SR5 Matrix is 100% hardware and energy independent. The jackpointers in the book believe that the Matrix will continue to exist even if every single electronic device on earth goes silent.

The Hosts that SR5 Matrix is heavily tied to rules-wise are organically grown from the technomagic Foundation of the Matrix, and no one really understands how any of it works. I also don't understand what the Hosts even mean in this edition, as they seemingly stand in for both internet websites and internal systems, and it's all just very muddled and confused.

Furthermore, since Matrix is technomagic, there are Wild Hosts out on the internet - Hosts that organically grew from the Matrix with no metahuman input. Kill Code doesn't really explain why you care and what loot these could possibly have.

In conclusion... I'm just baffled and confused. Over five editions Shadowrun went from Matrix as a gibsonian proto-internet to Matrix as a strange alien dimension where we just happened to store our porn. All while the role of the Matrix remained to be a minigame for the decker to turn off cameras. It's a strange ouroboros of headassery that I'd be more sad about if SR6 didn't conclusively destroy the franchise.

I mean, it's what happened to the Matrix in later Gibson books, in a sense. Doesn't mean I like it, though - but at least it gives me an excuse to run a campaign to utterly ruin it, because they actually did give you antagonists whose purpose seems to be "ok, we're taking this Matrix and fucking off with it, and there's nothing you can really do about it", i.e. the Null Sect.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu May 28, 2020 1:31 pm

SR6 scrapped all of this. Matrix has been overhauled again, and the first campaign book for SR6 is "30 Nights", where Toronto is hit by an EMP that takes down the Matrix, all electronics and most of the cyberware.

What do you mean "MagicRun"?

Ignimortis · Post by **Ignimortis** » Fri May 29, 2020 9:00 am

Longes wrote:SR6 scrapped all of this. Matrix has been overhauled again, and the first campaign book for SR6 is "30 Nights", where Toronto is hit by an EMP that takes down the Matrix, all electronics and most of the cyberware.

What do you mean "MagicRun"?

Oh yeah, I remember that too. It's been said that Hardy is very much a magic lover, and so the second edition in a row we're getting magic buffs and mundane nerfs.

Frankly, the only reason I'm sticking with 5e over 4e is sunk cost - i.e., how much homebrew and rules rewrites I'll have to adjust and change for 4e if I ever make the switch.

saithorthepyro · Post by **saithorthepyro** » Sun Jul 12, 2020 12:21 am

So Shadowrun released a new gear book for Krime weapons called the Krime Katalog, and perhaps in a sign of how much 6e has failed to attract an audience, it is dual-statted for both 5e and 6e. It also suffers from the same godawful editing with some weapons not even saying what type they are. Also there's an aluminum fishing boat practically better than every other current boat in the game of the same size. Also a break action autocannon shotgun that deals 17p AP -6, for only 3.5k Nyuen. It is availability 20 but goddamn will that paste most things it's hits. Also a really confusing system for using two grenades at once.

Trill · Post by **Trill** » Sun Jul 12, 2020 8:45 am

Word of Freelancer is that it just got delayed in 5e and so they decided to slap some 6e statblocks on it and release it

saithorthepyro · Post by **saithorthepyro** » Tue Jul 14, 2020 1:17 am

It's been what, eleven months since the planned release of 6e, nine since the actual release? The only fact I'd say was on the side of it being a late 5e book is that they still don't have a magic buffing book out yet and probably would want that prioritized first.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Wed Jul 15, 2020 12:54 am

I am afraid to ask, but what is Krime?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:39 am

Bad Engrish is what it is.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Wed Jul 15, 2020 8:13 am

Rawbeard wrote:I am afraid to ask, but what is Krime?

In-universe, it's a marketing technique to sell to trogs (trolls/orks) by playing up the fact that they're all supposed to speak some variant of American Black English.

It's supposed to be the name of the manufacturer but it's easy to tell what the writers are doing.

Krime Cannon
Krime Stopper
(Source: Gun H(e)aven 2 from SR4)

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 1:50 pm

Not sure where 'spell things with a k instead of c' in the US comes from, but it was used to brutify germans

Trill · Post by **Trill** » Thu Jul 16, 2020 2:37 pm

Ogrebattle, Kultur is the german word for Culture

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Jul 17, 2020 6:08 am

Will now google translate to German whenever I got orkspeak to write

saithorthepyro · Post by **saithorthepyro** » Fri Jul 17, 2020 6:58 pm

Krime’s a company specifically to Orcs and Trolls, and there’s some semi-decent lore, but their main contribution is increasingly ridiculous and goofy weapons like a Hammer with a built in four barrel shotgun among other things. Actual mechanical uses tend to be rathe crap half the time sadly. They’re also based in Spain but afaik they still haven’t updated any of Spain’s lore.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:01 pm

Is that more or less stupid than a rocket-hammer a la Battle Angel Alita?

I just can't even tell anymore.

saithorthepyro · Post by **saithorthepyro** » Sat Jul 18, 2020 3:48 am

Probably not as dumb? It's designed to break down doors when you hit them with the hammer, so it's not that stupid in that they just put four shotguns on a hammer for no reason at all.