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Also any good lore reading books?
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Mar 17, 2013 00:54
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Quornes posted:I seem to remember in one of the books FastJack mentions he has Puck working security for JackPoint. Well that's nice. All we need now is for Clockwork's cave to get a nice infestation of insect spirits.
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Mar 17, 2013 01:10
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PunkBoy posted:Man, not FastJack! She actually hires the PCs to help find & extract him in one of the recent missions books, IIRC.
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Mar 17, 2013 01:11
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I am curious if NetCat ever found Puck. She and Pistons had a lead in Conspiracy Theories, but it turned out to be a trap by that rear end in a top hat Clockwork.
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Quornes posted:I seem to remember in one of the books FastJack mentions he has Puck working security for JackPoint. I think that was before he was nabbed by Mitsuhama (?).
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Mar 17, 2013 01:38
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PunkBoy posted:Man, not FastJack! Puck was rescued, but is still an rear end in a top hat, he was working with Harlequin and ended up spilling the Nexus's deep dark secrets as part of battling Ghostwalker's control of Denver (Nexus being under GW's protection in return for access to secrets)? The Nexus ops want his technomancer bits on a pointy stick for this. Clockwork is also still an rear end in a top hat, he makes a run on FastJack and publishes his private notes for all to see on JackPoint (which is the beginning of the section on the Matrix possessions)
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Mar 17, 2013 04:32
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PunkBoy posted:I think that was before he was nabbed by Mitsuhama (?). I think you're talking about Dodger, who is still looking for Maegera and has been convinced to work on the new "Secure Matrix" project by offers to help him find his "lost Lady"
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Mar 17, 2013 04:33
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Which novels is all of this in, I haven't read any of them and only played the Genesis game, I've run like 1 game I GM'd, and even then I only recognize FastJack from the Source Book.
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Mar 17, 2013 05:12
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Most of the stuff I'm reporting on is in the just released on PDF (and soon in Print) book, Storm Front.
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Mar 17, 2013 05:49
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SirFozzie posted:Most of the stuff I'm reporting on is in the just released on PDF (and soon in Print) book, Storm Front. Why does every climax edition-ending book have to be titled that? That was one of the titles for the CP2020 ending campaign books.
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Mar 17, 2013 05:53
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last one which was the bridge between third and fourth (and featured the technomancers) was called Emergence.. From Emergence, to Storm Front.. what's the lead in book for sixth edition "Nuclear War?"
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Mar 17, 2013 06:01
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I don't know what any of this poo poo means. My understanding of the "personalities" is more or less limited to the in character blurbs from the actual game books of SR4.' What is a Harlequin or a Nexus or a Ghostwhatever.
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Mar 17, 2013 13:06
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Turtlicious posted:Also any good lore reading books? Shadowrun fiction/supplemental sourcebook reading has been pretty awful since the mid 90s.
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Mar 17, 2013 13:52
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ProfessorCirno posted:I don't know what any of this poo poo means. My understanding of the "personalities" is more or less limited to the in character blurbs from the actual game books of SR4.' Harlequin=Immortal Elf (There are a few Elves who've survived from the previous age of magic (a game called Earthdawn). As his name suggests, he's fond of wearing the old style Harlequin getup (facepaint, etcetera). Basically, he's the doomed hero. He is the embodiment of chaos and duty at the same time. He doesn't want to "save the world", but time and time again, he's been forced into that role. A lot of folks hate him because he's walking metaplot. In a game where mages with an initiation rating of 6 or higher are likely supreme badasses, it's estimated that he's got an initiation rating somewhere in the high double digits. (combined with his chaotic and enigmatic nature, you can understand why most runners (and/or players) who've had to deal with him want to drop a building on his head. The Denver Nexus = Basically, if it's not in the Denver Nexus, it's probably not online, and never has been. Imagine one of the greatest nodes of the Internet, and then multiply it by about 500. A lot of runners send "dead drop" information there, useful, not useful and all the way in between. It's Denver's local shadow node (If the Matrix is the Internet, imagine a shadow node to be a site that you can only reach if you know certain people. It doesn't show up in google, and even if you enter the information, if you don't know how to reach it, you won't get there). In past time frames, they hosted several "tribes" of otaku (those who could jack into the Matrix without a deck (which was a must at the time), and make the Matrix dance to their tune), and they also protected technomancers. Ghostwalker= Brother to Dunkelzahn, (a dragon who wanted to lead metahumanity to the knowledge of the SixthwWorld). Was considered lost in past times, but found a way back into this world (ironically, through a rift in astral space that was caused by an explosion that apparently claimed Dunkelzahn's life)). When he came back, he immediately flew to Denver (which is divided up amongst six nations, it's the city where the treaty between the Native American Nations and what was then the United States was hammered out, and like Berlin in WWII, was split up between the parties).. kicked one nation out (Atzlan.. he has a major hate on for Atzlan.. with good reason, mind you), and told the other five they could continue to control the city, but they reported to HIM now.... and had enough power to make it stick. Recently, Ghostwalker and Harlequin fought a war because of an action that Ghostwalker took, that reunited him with his love, Zebulon (the great spirit of Denver), but cost the life of Aina Dupree, another immortal Elf and a past love of Harlequin who even when they were on bad terms, Aina was the only person he could trust with everything. Edit: Here's a good site for you to look up things that will give you a bit of information on things: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/ SirFozzie fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 17, 2013 14:17
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There's also this primer: http://harebrained-schemes.com/shadowrun/primer/ It was made in reaction to Shadowrun Return's popularity, but it does give a good overview of the state of things. I don't think it covers quite everything that's happened in the PnP game though.
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Mar 17, 2013 14:55
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 I hope FastJack narrates this one as well. I really liked the way the history in the source book was written, because I really got the "feel" that some grizzled Shadowrunner was talking and telling me about the bullshit he had seen. It was very surreal, and much more immersive then DnD "Encyclopedia Dungeonomics."
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Mar 17, 2013 16:12
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I've been looking at the Storm Front thread on rpg.net and I have to say I'm really surprised how strongly people feel about the Jackpoint characters. I always just thought of them as exposition delivery methods but, geez, some people are flipping their poo poo.
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Mar 18, 2013 04:33
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Swagger Dagger posted:I've been looking at the Storm Front thread on rpg.net and I have to say I'm really surprised how strongly people feel about the Jackpoint characters. I always just thought of them as exposition delivery methods but, geez, some people are flipping their poo poo. Sad to say, characters stop being shallow and become fan favorites the very instant they start dating one another.
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Mar 18, 2013 04:53
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I dunno, man, there's always a few characters who's little blurbs I enjoy reading in the books. Netcat and Red Anya and Snopes are the ones that immediately come to mind, just because there always seems to be a little something 'extra' in there. That said, if Snopes were to suddenly use Netcat to nuke Red Anya, I doubt I'd really care all that much. They're neat characters and all, but it's not like I'm truly attached to them.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:40
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I was a fan of NetCat and Slamm-O! before they got together.  I always found it hilarious that Slamm-O! had to call in his father for backup on his first run. Generally I find most of the JackPoint users to be pretty interesting, and it's fun to learn about their histories and see their interactions with each other. But yeah, I don't have a big attachment to them. At least not to the extent of the people in that discussion.
PunkBoy fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 07:16
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I actually really like the users from my perspective of just reading the actual game books and not the novels or whatever, and I rather liked seeing stuff happen "in-world" through the game books like NetCat revealing herself as a technomancer. I guess if you're into the fiction it's just that but more so, but the enjoyment of the JackPoint users for me is how these different personalities help shape the actual game mechanics or in-game fluff, not how they act in a long story. Like a full book of these guys would, I think, probably make me get a bit tired of them, whereas short snippets of them freaking out because poo poo is going down in Hong Kong and suddenly one of them is a technomancer and another is openly betraying her is fun. Probably because they're short snippets, they never outstay their welcome - they're clipped and to the point while letting their personalities shine. At most you get the fluff parts of book as it would be given by then, but again, this adds flavor of "some hardened veteran of the streets is tellin' me this poo poo." I guess I think making big changes to the individual users is too much for my tastes. I know it's kinda dumb, but from my perspective taking them and turning them into actual in-universe movers and shakers ruins it a bit.
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Mar 18, 2013 08:24
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I cannot even believe they brought Harlequin back for any reason, holy poo poo. The whole "immortal elf" thin in 2E was so dumb. Like, I dunno, I can take or leave the Earthdawn connections...I know some people really dig them, I'm not averse to them but I don't really miss them when they aren't around...but Harlequin was just the perfect example of a particularly stupid kind of NPC, the all-powerful dickhead whose purpose is to show up and badger your players into playing through the new module that your GM payed $20 for so by god we're going to be playing it Steve, stop bitching. Shadowtalk has always been a neat part of Shadowrun, and the way they integrated it into a lot of the setting info was definitely a pretty cool signature of the game. I agree with Cirno that I think once you start moving beyond snippets here and there that it begins to wear out its welcome. I dunno, I definitely think Shadowrun could benefit from a new edition, but at this point I don't have a whole lot of faith that 5E will be very good. Most of the people who seemed to really know what they were doing and had been working on SR for a while left when Catalyst had their financial meltdown and the output they've been putting out lately hasn't instilled me with a lot of confidence...sloppy, badly edited, uninspiring and boring and occasionally just bad. Perhaps I'm being overly negative and they'll surprise me with some amazing grand-slam but for now 
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Mar 18, 2013 08:33
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Swagger Dagger posted:I've been looking at the Storm Front thread on rpg.net and I have to say I'm really surprised how strongly people feel about the Jackpoint characters. I always just thought of them as exposition delivery methods but, geez, some people are flipping their poo poo. I prefer the old days of lots of a few regulars and a ton of random users, so I'm with you there. Shadowtalk feels like a soap opera now. Kai Tave posted:I dunno, I definitely think Shadowrun could benefit from a new edition, but at this point I don't have a whole lot of faith that 5E will be very good. Most of the people who seemed to really know what they were doing and had been working on SR for a while left when Catalyst had their financial meltdown and the output they've been putting out lately hasn't instilled me with a lot of confidence...sloppy, badly edited, uninspiring and boring and occasionally just bad. Perhaps I'm being overly negative and they'll surprise me with some amazing grand-slam but for now No doubt. If you ever visit Dumpshock (ugh....) you'll see hundreds of sperglords who would drop everything in their lives if asked to edit SR material, but somehow every book released is sloppy and inconsistently written. The overall writing has improved quite a bit since SR3, but the editing is beyond awful and it seems like Catalyst doesn't care. I mean they never even released an errata to Augmentation which had glaring mistakes and contradictions. You shouldn't have to consult a fan forum to find out what the rules actually are. Bigass Moth fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 11:52
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Bigass Moth posted:No doubt. If you ever visit Dumpshock (ugh....) you'll see hundreds of sperglords who would drop everything in their lives if asked to edit SR material, but somehow every book released is sloppy and inconsistently written. The overall writing has improved quite a bit since SR3, but the editing is beyond awful and it seems like Catalyst doesn't care. I mean they never even released an errata to Augmentation which had glaring mistakes and contradictions. You shouldn't have to consult a fan forum to find out what the rules actually are. Honestly, I think part of the problem is that Catalyst, even back before the Crisis of Perfidy, would hire drat near anybody. I mean poo poo, they hired Frank Trollman to do...something for them, I don't think it was all that much, but the fact is that Catalyst has never really seemed to care that much, that a lot of what was good about SR4 came from the old guard, people who had been working on Shadowrun for a good while and were passionate about it, familiar with the material, and knew how to get poo poo done and done right (not flawlessly, hell no, but better than what we're getting now). Then the implosion happened and most of those folks are gone baby gone and now Catalyst is left trying to get a new roster put back together and to be frank, I think maybe at this point the issue may simply be that rather than some new writers or a team of amateur proofreaders what Shadowrun needs is maybe a new publisher.
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Mar 18, 2013 12:14
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Not going to happen, CGL just signed a multi year deal renewal with Topps. And I think the books have been ok, not great, but not as bad as folks think.
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Mar 18, 2013 12:43
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Probably the worst thing that's happened is letting the writers write about their own characters in weird fanfiction ways instead of being abstract and more broad. For example, I'm sick of reading about how Bull the decker is some really cool tough guy when in our reality I know what he really looks like and it is far from the fantasy. It was bad enough when Stephen Kenson lived out his homoerotic fetish fantasies through the Talon books, but making these personal characters into the "most important" shadowrunners is pandering and pathetic. To be fair, this has always sort of been the case. I think Dodger was one of the dev's characters, but even he was never portrayed as much more than a guy in the right place at the right time for a lot of his stories.
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Mar 18, 2013 13:12
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Actually, speaking of Augmentation, was Hatchetman ever not in the process of being zombified? I picked up an old...second edition (I think) copy of Augmentation, where the fluff is Hatchetman's musings on getting borged up. Like, did he have other appearances before that?
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Mar 18, 2013 14:26
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Rockopolis posted:Actually, speaking of Augmentation, was Hatchetman ever not in the process of being zombified? I picked up an old...second edition (I think) copy of Augmentation, where the fluff is Hatchetman's musings on getting borged up. Like, did he have other appearances before that? He appeared in a number of combat-related splat books, often commenting on how you could always use a bigger gun and generally being jovial about the whole destruction business… which kind of foreshadows his eventual turning into a bigger gun. Also, the module you're talking about is Cybertechnology for SR2.
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Mar 18, 2013 14:40
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Gotcha, thanks. Heh, I was just thinking that my weird Shadowrun idea is that it could be used to run a game set in the Outlaw Star universe. Cyborgs, magic, bounty hunnters and mercs...?
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Mar 18, 2013 14:48
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I just read the Sixth World Almanac for the first time! A few thoughts: The Shadowrun setting is crazy and unique Using internet comments to flesh out the setting is damned clever All corporate and government interests are corrupt, yet you must do business with them in order to survive/matter I've yet to read the rules or see a game played but I'm pretty enthusiastic about trying to run one now. I'd love a chance to set a series of runs in the Azanian Confederation, mostly because Africa is large and not yet totally strangled but AAA corps. Lots of Z list corps and startups fighting bush wars back and forth while Zulu Elves (this loving setting!) play ecoterrorist and gently caress things up for all parties. 
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Mar 18, 2013 18:01
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Purgey posted:I just read the Sixth World Almanac for the first time! A few thoughts: I was just writing a review on 6th world this morning, but I had a pretty low opinion of it. It felt like a massive example of what not to do for a sourcebook, and an example of all issues that I see with 4th edition sourcebooks. Aside from the usual errors, the whole effort feels like a waste, trying to do too much and generally failing to be in-depth or useful in any of its goals. The history section is meant to be a curated set of articles/excerpts from history, but it feels like amateur fiction hour. 2011 features just about every significant manifestation of first Awakening, and the only piece is some transcript from a Ghost Hunters knockoff show that ends with "Oh poo poo I'm seeing a ghost oh shiiiiiiiit!" The Jackpoint comments are particularly hilarious because it's basically the commentors saying stuff like "Man 2011 was a big year people should read up on it!" They don't get into anything I could imagine interesting for these pieces, stumbling around on the rise of the corporations for multiple pages, when I doubt any reader is having trouble imagining a world where corporations have a lot of power. First appearance of a dragon, though? Mentioned as a bullet point in a timeline. Meanwhile the majority of Jackpoint comments feel like navel-gazing. Everything from "Oh if only they knew what was about to happen!" to bickering over who's a racist...it felt like a bad GBS thread. Also bonus points for some bizarre art of a menacing faux-Antonin Scalia. The Geography section comes off even thinner at times, and seems to only be useful for the comments that sometimes actually generate concrete plot hooks. Some of the city/nation descriptions feel like they were pulled from Wikipedia (Paris stuck out as a great way to say nothing for 3 paragraphs), and they seem to breeze over the meat of what's important for a country- the political forces at play and the key movers & shakers. Egypt was one nice exception to this, although it would have been nice if they mentioned when Egypt became a actual Islamic state. The Azanian writeup in particular stuck out- they say that Azania came into existence when 4 countries decided to merge together and then in the next paragraph notes that the 4 countries were/are very different culturally and otherwise. So why did they get together? There's a lot of xenophobia and prejudice in the Shadowrun world, but these four very different nations just got together because...it was easy to combine that area together? In both cases, it just felt like they bit off way more than they could manage for a world sourcebook, and to an extent in reminds me of the value of keeping the setting small. Yes the entire world has stuff going on- but if you can't write something interesting, you shouldn't bother. Also, the claustrophobia of Seattle fit with the noir aspects of cyberpunk. Jet-setting around the world just gets too pulpy for my tastes.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:48
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Also- at what point did they name the international bank the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaft? Not to get all Minority Issues in Gaming here, but I'd really like to know who thought it would be a good idea to have the initials for the international bank to be ZOG...
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Mar 18, 2013 18:58
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Like every game line that's been running for a long time, I find myself being super judicious with what I even consider bringing up to my players in games. I read the majority of sourcebooks that come out but only the war in Bogota and the whole "artifact rush" feature in my games out of the recent events. I'm pretty sure my players don't even know who Hestaby is, for example, and I don't really care, so while it's "happening" in the background it might as well not be. The big plot thread I might pick up for the future is the Ares insect spirit stuff. Bug spirits are pretty sweet.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:09
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DeclaredYuppie posted:Also- at what point did they name the international bank the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaft? Not to get all Minority Issues in Gaming here, but I'd really like to know who thought it would be a good idea to have the initials for the international bank to be ZOG... I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't know what ZOG was. I know I've never heard of it until I looked it up just now and I think I'm fairly well-versed in conspiracy theory horseshit. I know it seems like Zurich and banking point to some sort of "Jewspiracy" thing but I really doubt it. For one thing, there's really no inkling of any other Jewish parallels for the Corporate Court or Zurich-Orbital, and in the fluff it's always referred to as Zurich-Orbital, never as ZOG.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:53
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Martello posted:I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't know what ZOG was. I know I've never heard of it until I looked it up just now and I think I'm fairly well-versed in conspiracy theory horseshit. I know it seems like Zurich and banking point to some sort of "Jewspiracy" thing but I really doubt it. For one thing, there's really no inkling of any other Jewish parallels for the Corporate Court or Zurich-Orbital, and in the fluff it's always referred to as Zurich-Orbital, never as ZOG. Yeah, I don't see any other parallels, and definitely don't think there's some secret antisemitism in Shadowrun.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:56
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Martello posted:I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and say they didn't know what ZOG was. I know I've never heard of it until I looked it up just now and I think I'm fairly well-versed in conspiracy theory horseshit. I know it seems like Zurich and banking point to some sort of "Jewspiracy" thing but I really doubt it. For one thing, there's really no inkling of any other Jewish parallels for the Corporate Court or Zurich-Orbital, and in the fluff it's always referred to as Zurich-Orbital, never as ZOG. I'm pretty sure that FASA and Wiz-Kids knew what that meant, considering how close this comes to ZOG...  The Terran Overlord Government from Renegade Legion Also, I pretty sure there's aliens in Renegade Legion that are called the Zog, who are second-class citizens and slaves to the human-run TOG. Edit: Jesus, I never saw the opposing triangles that make up a "Star of David" in that symbol before 
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Mar 18, 2013 22:06
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I personally find the international scene to be pretty interesting, it's been fun keeping track of all of the countries our team should never go back to. I like to imagine a big map in the hideout just full of X's and cross-outs. I do agree the Almanac was kinda thin in talking about the countries. Other supplements like Corporate Enclaves I thought did a better job on fleshing out locales.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:58
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Young Freud posted:Edit: Jesus, I never saw the opposing triangles that make up a "Star of David" in that symbol before Yeah...I was halfway through this post accusing you of parallelomania and then I took another look at the TOG symbol.  e: in other news, is there a way to "take" a drug in Chummer? As in, calculate the drug effect in the program? Google wasn't any help and I can't see a button for it or anything. Martello fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Mar 19, 2013 |
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Mar 19, 2013 00:59
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I don't see an easy, built-in way. The program doesn't automatically calculate things for you. However, with a character sheet in Career mode, you can add custom status effects ('Improvements'), which you can toggle on and off. As a test, I made a status effect for each of the effects of Novacoke, then grouped them under the heading "Novacoke". I made the effects for a crash, grouped under "Novacoke crash". It can be finicky to get all of the effects to properly turn on and off, and you have to key it all in by hand, and remember to hit the Decrease By One button on your inventory page as well, but it's at least an option.
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Mar 19, 2013 03:36
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Is Shadows of North America worth picking up? How does it compare to 6th World Almanac? I feel like Shadowrun's a weird product in that it seems like the publishers expect you to be familiar with or pick up older edition sourcebooks to get a complete understanding of the setting...
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Mar 19, 2013 04:50
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Does anyone here have a favourite gun from Shadowrun they'd like to see designed as a real working thing? I've been goofing around in some CAD programs recently, and I'm actually working towards becoming a gunsmith here in Canada. The guns are one of the first things that drew me towards Shadowrun, so if I can, I'll make one of my first working designs something the Shadowrun community might like. And before you ask, myself and one of my more computer-inclined buddies are working on a simple smartgun system, so don't worry about that.
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Mar 19, 2013 05:17
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