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ProfessorCirno posted:So, I got a question: What's going on with Horizon? They basically took a zillion hits to their image, both in and out of the shadows. In the shadows it's well known that they never gave a poo poo about technomancers and only sold the "We are a kinder, gentler megacorp!" line to get technos to join them. They had no intention of ever really helping them, and when that got found out and technos got a bit angry they started killing them and blamed the entire thing on the technos themselves. It worked, to some degree, in the public eye. What didn't work for them was the entire business in the Aztlan/Amazonia War, where they tried to use their super l33t awesome PR abilities to gently caress over Aztlan. You know, the most evil country on the planet. Sadly they forgot that Aztlan is actually insanely competent where it matters, and can turn around any situation, no matter how dire. The end result is that Horizon looked like dishonest bastards that invented stories and staged atrocities picking on poor, innocent Aztlan, and Aztlan came out looking almost like heroes that defended humanity from a rampaging dragon. So they pretty much lost all claim to moral superiority on any level even *in* the public eye and really cemented their place as the most useless and powerless megacorp. They couldn't even make *Aztlan* look bad. In an imperialist war. What the gently caress is the point of a PR corporation that can't make the actual sacrifice human beings to eldritch horrors country look bad?
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Aug 4, 2013 17:31
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Kai Tave posted:Currently the shopping complex is on fire, a panicked mob of proud firearm owners have had a brutal shootout with panicking security forces and there are probably at least a dozen fatalities, the data-hub is filling up with dangerous hyperfreon gas after a tased security nerd collided with some OSHA non-compliant coolant ducts, we have a rescued sasquatch in tow after freeing it from a live-fire weapons testing range where we liberated a prototype assault rifle and a stock of vicious corrosive chemical rounds, and we have two HRT teams inbound by helicopter, one of which is likely to be eaten by the devil rats we released from the testing range's cages before gluing door shut behind us. I don't know how you think we'll ever act as a team while you keep downplaying my casualty count. A dozen!? I've killed at least three times that many people already. Hell, there's ten dead guards, plus all the shoppers they killed, plus everyone hurt in the stampede away from everyone that got set on fire.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:48
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Boogaleeboo posted:They basically took a zillion hits to their image, both in and out of the shadows. In the shadows it's well known that they never gave a poo poo about technomancers and only sold the "We are a kinder, gentler megacorp!" line to get technos to join them. They had no intention of ever really helping them, and when that got found out and technos got a bit angry they started killing them and blamed the entire thing on the technos themselves. It worked, to some degree, in the public eye. What didn't work for them was the entire business in the Aztlan/Amazonia War, where they tried to use their super l33t awesome PR abilities to gently caress over Aztlan. You know, the most evil country on the planet. Sadly they forgot that Aztlan is actually insanely competent where it matters, and can turn around any situation, no matter how dire. The end result is that Horizon looked like dishonest bastards that invented stories and staged atrocities picking on poor, innocent Aztlan, and Aztlan came out looking almost like heroes that defended humanity from a rampaging dragon. Huh, that's quite the thing. Which book(s) is this in?
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Aug 4, 2013 19:02
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Mystic Mongol posted:I don't know how you think we'll ever act as a team while you keep downplaying my casualty count. A dozen!? I've killed at least three times that many people already. Hell, there's ten dead guards, plus all the shoppers they killed, plus everyone hurt in the stampede away from everyone that got set on fire. Speaking of being terrible at PR. The whole thing with Horizon seems kind of dumb and a bit of a waste to be honest, like the writers didn't really know what to do with them. I never figured that the setting would benefit from a "good megacorporation" so I always assumed they would be as dirty as the rest, but it would have been nice to have a sinister PR/social engineering corporation that was actually good at their job. It would have made an interesting change from the usual corporate approach of "solve our problems with judicious kidnapping and murder" and presented a different sort of threat for player to deal with, but when you can't make Aztechnology look bad it really undermines any sort of sense of competence you might have.
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Aug 4, 2013 22:29
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Well, I'm sure they'll bounce back. Hey, maybe they need some Runners to take out witnesses, or plant false evidence blaming it on, oh, let's say... Wuxing. Or maybe it's exactly what they want you to think? Keep a close eye on any rising star media AA corps ready to be Facebook to Horizon's MySpace. I suggest naming them Blue Ant.
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Aug 4, 2013 22:39
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Kai Tave posted:The whole thing with Horizon seems kind of dumb and a bit of a waste to be honest, like the writers didn't really know what to do with them. I never figured that the setting would benefit from a "good megacorporation" so I always assumed they would be as dirty as the rest, but it would have been nice to have a sinister PR/social engineering corporation that was actually good at their job. It would have made an interesting change from the usual corporate approach of "solve our problems with judicious kidnapping and murder" and presented a different sort of threat for player to deal with, but when you can't make Aztechnology look bad it really undermines any sort of sense of competence you might have. The problem, beyond the aforementioned nobody having the slightest clue what to do with them and their entire purpose to exist seeming to rely on name dropping Dawkins and saying 'meme', is that in a dystopia nobody cares what you think. PR is, fundamentally, not a field of pursuit that would gain one power and influence. A certain stock level is fine, as far as things go, but an entire triple A based on it? No. All the megas already have functionally total powers of indoctrination over their citizens unless something goes *really* badly, and the masses beyond the megas are generally irrelevant. They'll buy whatever you sell, the end. There are like 5 bigger and badder AAs that by all rights should be killing every man woman and child in Horizon right now in a fight for their space in the AAAs. Zeta-ImpChem would quite literally send troops out in baby skin suits to secure that position. Triple A's die. It's happened quite a few times. Unless they have something massively interesting for them planned, it may be time to shuffle them off the board. e: And poo poo, that reminds me. Bobfly posted:Huh, that's quite the thing. Which book(s) is this in? Storm Front and The Twilight Horizon. Mulva fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 4, 2013 23:30
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I just think it would have been neat to see Aztech finally have to deal with some fallout for all their poo poo. Like, all the megacorps are basically evil to greater or lesser degrees but Aztech is literally a corporation run by cartoon supervillains who sacrifice people in blood rituals to bring about the dark spirit apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I think they're a neat addition to the setting and all, but they seem to benefit from a bit too much plot armor in regards to their over-the-top evilness and I think it could have been fun to see them try and deal with a backlash of bad PR and a stern eye from the Corporate Court. Imagine the rebranding efforts alone. Horizon as a PR-focused corp seems kind of "well what's the point," but a corporation focused on things like psychology, marketing, social media, and stuff like that has some legs to it. Even in the grim cyberfuture marketing is still a pretty big deal given how there's still a lot of competition among the megas even if the free market isn't all that free. Shadowrun's a dystopic setting but not to the point where the corporations don't care about that stuff. Horizon as the corp in the background, selling their services to anyone who wants to pay and nudging things along from behind the scenes, sitting on vast storehouses of consumer information that even the other AAAs don't have indexed as well, using state-of-the-art predictive modeling software to always seem to know when the Next Big Thing is about to happen...plus brainwashing, psychological torture experiments, vivisecting technomancers, that sort of stuff.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:07
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Kai Tave posted:I just think it would have been neat to see Aztech finally have to deal with some fallout for all their poo poo. Like, all the megacorps are basically evil to greater or lesser degrees but Aztech is literally a corporation run by cartoon supervillains who sacrifice people in blood rituals to bring about the dark spirit apocalypse. Don't get me wrong, I think they're a neat addition to the setting and all, but they seem to benefit from a bit too much plot armor in regards to their over-the-top evilness and I think it could have been fun to see them try and deal with a backlash of bad PR and a stern eye from the Corporate Court. Imagine the rebranding efforts alone. I'm down for more megacorps that use means that would be legal in the present day and pose real puzzles with regards to how their methods of control can be deemed unethical. Like, if Horizon just used probabilistic analysis of trends to determine with 99.46% confidence that the new idea their execs want to push goes viral, that would be simultaneously creepy and cool and raise complicated questions about free will. I get that not everyone playing Shadowrun wants to explore that stuff, but at a bare minimum I'd like to see more contrast with the megacorps like Aztech which is just a mishmash of the Cthulhu Mythos and the villains from Robocop. I'm not super deep into Shadowrun lore, but the main feeling I get is that megacorps are pretty much universally autocratic and terrible. Maybe have a game as runners-turned-sararimen dedicated to supporting the lesser of two evils.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:51
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Kai Tave posted:Horizon as a PR-focused corp seems kind of "well what's the point," but a corporation focused on things like psychology, marketing, social media, and stuff like that has some legs to it. Not in this setting. Seriously, like 50% of the planet that matters [I.E. has a SIN] flat out doesn't have a choice. In anything. They are corporate citizens, they buy the corporate brands, they watch the corporate network, they go to the corporate school, they marry a corporate wife, and their corporate kids do it all over again. Then you have fields that just don't have meaningful fight in them. All megas [Except Horizon really] are heavily diversified, sure, but they aren't *all* big players in all fields. Not everyone has a space presence, not everyone has a meaningful arms and security division, not everyone has a magical division, stuff like that. Then you add things like regional differences [I don't care if Horizon PR is powered by blood magic, Anglo-Saxon Corp taking ground in Japan? Not bloody likely], entrenched AAs, poo poo like that....there just isn't a *room* to move through opinion and marketing. You want to make space, you do it through violence and dirty dealing. Hence the entire ecological niche of shadowrunners in the first place. If someone like Horizon could *ever* have a place, it would never have lead to where the setting is today. quote:using state-of-the-art predictive modeling software to always seem to know when the Next Big Thing is about to happen Less meaningful in a setting where people can see the future well enough to make a profit on it [Or to do things like see the Crash coming]. Predictive modeling requires some information to work off of. Psychic powers require sweet gently caress all but power. It's a tool, but it's not a tool that would make you a AAA. It's one of the conceits of the setting really. The people in charge are both the shadowy Authority of the rich and powerful you get in regular dystopias, and also they are really big loving dragons that can level a city with magic without breathing heavy. Horizon just doesn't have a niche that is sharp enough to justify three As.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:01
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Megacorps in Shadowrun are all basically terrible, yeah, but they operate on a sliding scale of terrible ranging from Aztechnology's "we literally kill puppies for satan, come on Horror apocalypse, blood magic woooooo" to Renraku's "we will kill you and your family and your pets in order to send a message but, y'know, we aren't Aztech" to Ares' "we're bastards but mainly we just make guns and poo poo, and also we nuked a bunch of bug spirits so that should count for something (until the writers decided to hand us the idiot ball anyway...)" I just like the idea of a megacorp that rose to the level of a triple-A without actually making anything in the traditional sense. Like, Ares manufactures weapons and aerospace stuff (okay technically all the megacorps are big enough to make anything, but they all have areas of expertise), Shiawase is big on energy and power generation, Novatech does computers...but then you have Horizon, and Horizon probably makes some stuff, but by and large they deal in intangibles. Information and the exploitation thereof, predictive modeling, consumer psychology, media manipulation...basically Google but (more) evil. Done right they could be simultaneously less threatening (because they aren't as in-your-face as the other megas) and suitably ominous (because they're a triple-A megacorporation which isn't something you get to be by playing nicey-nice, what's their trick, what are they hiding).
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Aug 5, 2013 01:01
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I'm still reading through the 5e book, but the thing that intro story, with the Ares Bug Shaman, the request for recordings makes it seem less like an Idiot Ball thing and more like an Internal Affairs thing/Rooting out Moles, trying to figure out which of your agents (or sections) is loyal and which ones have been compromised.  Very Cold War, as fits the 'American Megacorp', but with more, you know, giant bugs. The other thing is from that story, aren't Desolation Angels Mantis Spirits? And hey, there's a niche for Horizon; they are so good at the psychology, they can deprogram or interrogate Bug Shamans. Or social editing programs to make sure that the expired Bug Shamans never existed and were in no way affiliated with Ares. That's it! Horizon is the source of new Shadowrunners. I mean, they're always talking about how you need vast resources and skills to burn someone's SIN, so...the shadowy people and organizations who burn your SIN? Haven't you ever wondered who they are, how they do what they do, how they manage to stay in business? They might not know it, but they work for Horizon. All of them. And they have enough favors owed and blackmail material that everyone's afraid what's going to happen if they drop out of AAA or get liquidated.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:36
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The problem with that is that the double AAs don't give a gently caress. What can Horizon do, burn some AAAs? Boo hoo, that's more space for AAs. And there are plenty of AAs that could be AAAs by size and diversity. It's just that there are only so many spaces to go around on the CC. Besides, Horizon just got burned for faking stories. What are they going to do, cry that people are up to some dirty poo poo while they are being slaughtered? Every other source will say "They are lying again" and keep killing them.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:52
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That's not the point, the point is kind of a MAD option, in that Horizon can't actually spend it, but the other AAAs are too afraid to actually let Horizon drop, and thus, they help fend off any attacks. And the trick with blackmail is to make sure they're not attached to it. But hey, even if I'm talking out of the wrong side of my hoop on that one, frak it, two out of three ain't bad, chummer.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:02
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I actually really liked Horizon. I like the idea of a corp who doesn't use the same playbook the other AAA's do - and that's what lets them become a AAA. I like the idea of a corp who doesn't work by strongarming local governments but instead sleazes their way inside so that the top officials of the NAN and Tir and god knows who else all have Horizon at the top of their call list. I like the idea of a AAA who legitimately thinks they're the moral good guys and that only drives them to do more terrible things. I like the idea of a AAA who actually realizes that the better their perception outside of their own corporation, the more people will want to use their product, stick their name ON their products, or, in extreme cases, will reach out to Horizon for extraction. The idea that Horizon is pointless because "nobody has a choice" makes me scratch my head. Did you miss that one of the points of Shadowrun is that the corporations are all pushing each other for power in a world of torn nations? Countries still exists! Hell, Seattle is proof that people drat well still have choices! The idea that nobody ever has choices removes Runners, because it means corporations can never jockey for power amongst themselves. The whole point of Horizon is that the big dumb always grim and evil AAA's don't need to be literally every single AAA. As Kai said, I like the idea of one AAA being more or less Evil Creepy Google. And that was Horizon's thing - they weren't as grim evil as some of the other corps, they weren't doing blood magic or chopping off the tops of technomancer heads, but they were creepy and sleazy. They're the LA image corp. MCT is kidnapping or buying technomancers to vivisect because, hey, we're a major computer company, it helps to know how they work. Horizon skips that and several other steps and arrives solely at "No, we don't need to know how they work, we just need them to work for us and nobody else." Horizon is just super long term planning, which is what helps make them so creepy and sleazy. Intentionally poisoning international relations and corporate relations against technomancers secrelty while drumming up their own public image of being technomancer friendly openly - all for the same of "owning" the technomancer population psychologically? That's super loving sleazy! And it also super fits in Shadowrun! I mean, we HAVE a AAA for evil warlocks in Aztec. We HAVE the GUNS, BULLETS, AND MURICA corp. We have the dragon corp. What would making Horizon just another "We make a ton of poo poo, also we're evil" corp add? Having Horizon be the creepy ones fit perfectly, and it presented a threat that Shadowrun had always ignored, and it's a really effective threat. You fear Renraku because their Red Samurai will destroy anything that trespasses, and because they have dedicated files to every time you did a Run against them. You fear Aztec because they are literal blood warlocks poisoning the planet. You fear Tir Ghosts and NAN Wildcats and UCAS SEALs because they're the best spec-ops teams out there. You fear Horizon's Dawkins Group because what if they're your best friends and you never knew it? What Horizon gives to Shadowrun is pure paranoia. Their elite team is decent enough at killing, but what they specialize in is information and espionage. Horizon has a niche that nobody else was going into. I've been using the word "creepy" a lot because that's how Horizon ends up. Runners know that AAA levels by just being nice, and yet Horizon seems to be all happiness and good vibrations - which makes them that much more unsettling. Horizon is the corp where the wage slaves are all smiles about their job, going on corporate outings and talking up the corporate culture, and you know something has to be below the surface. They're the corp where people hire you to extract them into Horizon. They're also the corp where, if a Run against Horizon labs or offices go bad, all of a sudden all those nice, smiling, friendly people get firearms and self defense training injected straight into their skillwire, and now the entire building is made of gunmen. Where you get a hit set on you and not one person personally made that decision - it was simply brought out as will of group think. That's really creepy! At least when a Mr Johnson betrays you, you know it's that guy who did it.
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Aug 5, 2013 10:47
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Seriously, look what's happening here; Cirno is agreeing with something I said in a Shadowrun discussion. That's what we've come to. Another point that Cirno brings up, and it's a good one, is that for being the sinister capitalistic cabals that run the world the megacorps are like half noteworthy but scant elevator pitches and half "wait, what do they do again?" Literally all I can remember about Saeder-Krupp just off the top of my head is that a dragon runs it. I mean yeah, that's a neat detail and all, but...that's about it really. I don't even know what the gently caress Zeta ImpChem's deal is or why I should care about them over Horizon. Trying to make a megacorporation that colored outside the usual lines is far from the worst thing the SR4 writers ever tried.
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Aug 5, 2013 11:10
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So I found this thing on some forum, is it a more or less complete listing of all AAA and AA corporations? http://theshadowrun.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=time&action=display&thread=346
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Aug 5, 2013 11:55
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Kai Tave posted:Literally all I can remember about Saeder-Krupp just off the top of my head is that a dragon runs it. S-K does kind of deserve being kicked down to an AA or A rating to make room for something else, because S-K is Loftwyr, and S-K is only as interesting as Loftwyr is, and Loftwyr just isn't very interesting. He is easily the boringest dragon, and S-K is the boringest corporation.
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Aug 5, 2013 12:08
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Who makes deals with dragons anyway?
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Aug 5, 2013 13:48
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I thought SK was basically, boring, but crazy powerful. Not everyone needs a shtick. I'm more curious about #10, actually. Wuxing the Mystical Chinese megacorp. There's not a lot about them, is there? Heh, do they have some sort of Lo Pan equivalent to Aztechnology blood magic? Are their sites guarded by hopping zombies or bunraku equivalents?
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Aug 5, 2013 14:40
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Rockopolis posted:I thought SK was basically, boring, but crazy powerful. Not everyone needs a shtick. Wuxing is kinda funny; there was a lot of fuss and they made sort of a thing about building them up as a corp that was going to start making some major waves, they got a bunch of artifacts from Dunks, and then...nothing happened. They were either forgotten or the crew that was building them up left Shadowrun, probably during the whole..."Troubles."
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Aug 5, 2013 14:47
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Rockopolis posted:I thought SK was basically, boring, but crazy powerful. Not everyone needs a shtick. I disagree. Around these parts, you come up with a gimmick, then apply character building rules to it. I was allowed to play the decker who speaks only in lolcats for exactly seven minutes.  Apparently "I can has job?" was the line.
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Aug 5, 2013 14:53
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I happen to like Lofwyr and S-K, but while they appear to only merit AA status, I guess they have enough shady assets to stay on top of the game. Corporate Intrigues had a really good bit on why AAAs sometimes appear vague and understrength, but actually have enough economic leverage and political capital to destroy any one of their competitors.
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Aug 5, 2013 15:04
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ProfessorCirno posted:Wuxing is kinda funny; there was a lot of fuss and they made sort of a thing about building them up as a corp that was going to start making some major waves, they got a bunch of artifacts from Dunks, and then...nothing happened. They were either forgotten or the crew that was building them up left Shadowrun, probably during the whole..."Troubles." That's a shame. Man, I need to finish up the China History podcast and go run, like a China campaign or something. Little Trouble in Big China? 
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Aug 5, 2013 15:10
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Corporate Intrigue is an great supplement, and I loved the chapter on Horizon. I have a feeling Horizon is going to be a major part of our group's next campaign, since my character's girlfriend is a Horizon-sponsored Idoru. She came into his life at his lowest point of a period of depression (ie it was the session's plot point), but now who knows if it was coincidence or not? 
PunkBoy fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 15:50
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Right now, I'm just looking forward to the updated settings books. One day someone will actually set a game on a space colony or a job in an undersea lab, and it will be THE BEST.
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Aug 5, 2013 16:34
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Rockopolis posted:I thought SK was basically, boring, but crazy powerful. Not everyone needs a shtick. SK does have a schtick, and it's being the biggest griefy fucks in setting. See, Renraku will respond with disproportionate force because it suits their reputation as terrifying samurai killers, but SK will respond disproportionately because they're super pissed that you crossed them. Another problem: No corporation has more infighting that the Germans do. So any run against a SK facility is actually pretty likely to be just one branch manager trying to make a second look bad--which means that they KNOW you were the one that torched that lab. The fact they told you to, the fact they paid you to, doesn't matter. You crossed SK! Now you're on their poo poo list. Fortunately they've already got an in with you, which is that they have a Johnson you do jobs for. So now you have a new job, to eliminate a target (which they warn ahead of time) or to kill a paracritter (which is immune to bullets) or to steal a prototype (which they've packed with explosives). They'll keep sending you out on runs they think are too hard for you, over and over, until you die. They'll send you on runs up against other groups they want dead. They'll send three teams against the same target and only pay the one that gets the kill. And so their enemies inevitably die off without SK having to send out a kill team or risk their own assets. Also God forbid you actually get on Lofwyr's personal poo poo list, which is enormous because he constantly hires Shadowrunners to rid him of troublesome subordinates and then decides he needs to avenge their deaths. He'll find out who you fence your paydata to, steal a list of his friends and relatives, slap new letterhead on top so it looks like a list of, say, Azzie spies working in Seattle, and then plant that poo poo somewhere you'll find it on your next run. Bam, you find a list of spies. Whoah, time to sell that sweet rear end paydata! Suddenly some shadow broker has a two bit thief with a list of everyone he loves, asking for money for it. One hail of gunfire later, and another enemy of the great dragon disappears. What a box of cocks.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:05
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Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? Is "everybody is a bad person, almost certainly including you" part of the appeal of the game? Because I thought the genre in general has moved more towards "things are bad but still possibly salvagable" as the prevailing mood.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:49
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The gigantic megacorporations that seek to consume the world in pursuit of obscene profits are not the good guys.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:49
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Yeah, I always thought it was "the good guys are fighting a slow retreat as hyper-capitalism eats the earth a la that one Pearl Jam video with the metal worms".
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Aug 5, 2013 18:50
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? Maybe not completely "salvageable," but there are definitely ways to do good in the setting. One idea I had for a game was based on Ghost in the Shell, where the players were an elite Lone Star squad trying to do the right thing in a corrupt organization. In fact, 5E suggests that Runs that aren't profitable, but do some good, should reward extra karma.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:57
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people?
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Aug 5, 2013 19:05
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? As always, depends on your style. My personal style is most definitely in the "Most everybody is either a bad person or a dumb sheep except you, so it's time you strapped your gun on and made a difference. If the corps are going to pay you to attack the corp, all the better." It's not that the common populace is bad, they're just hosed and don't know any better. It's up to the PCs to be the ones who make a difference. I've been thinking of running an SR game that cuts though and goes pure heroic. Maybe once SR5 gets a supplement and errata. It's interesting to note that, a I recall, karma previously was not "experience" in the same way it is in SR4 and SR5. Previously, again to my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong), it reflected it's namesake far more. You got karma when you explicitly did good deeds.
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Aug 5, 2013 19:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:As always, depends on your style. My personal style is most definitely in the "Most everybody is either a bad person or a dumb sheep except you, so it's time you strapped your gun on and made a difference. If the corps are going to pay you to attack the corp, all the better." It's not that the common populace is bad, they're just hosed and don't know any better. It's up to the PCs to be the ones who make a difference. Actually, this (karma&XP) is suddenly making me wonder about the possibilities of a Burning Wheel hack for Shadowrun. Also, sounds like a pretty cool idea for a game.
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Aug 5, 2013 19:32
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? I made a stealth-based character for 4th edition (that I never got to play because 5th was announced and released before I had the opportunity) who is a good person, or as good a person you can be when running the shadows. Refusing to kill (stun damage only), helping people, doing volunteer work at shelters (that aren't fronts for organ harvesting or bug spirits), protecting people if possible and so on. Sadly I can't recreate her for 5th edition until the new runners companion is out since it contains the rules for playing as an infected. Don't drink on the job. 
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Aug 5, 2013 19:49
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Oh, god, 3e Karma. You had your Karma, which was XP. Karma pool, which was edge, and good and bad karma, which were the implementations of karma. Plus group karma. And maybe a few other types. I guess maybe they used to make it so that doing good things gave you XP, but that was changed out at some point but the names stuck.
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Aug 5, 2013 19:49
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So is this game actually available? I could find a link to buy the PDF in spite of the Catalyst website screaming PREORDER THIS NOW!
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Aug 5, 2013 21:04
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Davin Valkri posted:Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people? The Shadowrun world is totally salvageable. Aside from some specified toxic wastelands, the world outside the sprawls is actually pretty okay. The rainforests have been regenerating themselves. Clinical immortality has been a thing since 1st edition. Humanity's presence in space has done nothing but grow and grow as the editions roll forward. The Horrors have been stopped before they even began to reign. As far as humanity's future as a species goes, Shadowrun is nothing but optimistic. The megacorps might all be evil, but that's sort of the nature of the beast.
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Aug 5, 2013 21:20
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:So is this game actually available? I could find a link to buy the PDF in spite of the Catalyst website screaming PREORDER THIS NOW! The PDF is available, try DriveThroughRPG. The physical book should be available for purchase this month.
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Aug 5, 2013 22:27
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What's the story with the introductory box? I haven't seen any details on what it contains, and I am interested in a product that could actually introduce new players to the game because it is hard as hell with just one copy of the core rules.
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Aug 5, 2013 23:24
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PeterWeller posted:What's the story with the introductory box? I haven't seen any details on what it contains, and I am interested in a product that could actually introduce new players to the game because it is hard as hell with just one copy of the core rules. "Still being made." They've very tight lipped on it a I believe it's almost ready for release.
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Aug 6, 2013 00:31
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