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Ross Payton
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After Hours: Shadowrun Street Talk - Bonus episode!

Last week I went down to Florida to consult on an upcoming Kickstarter project, Superhero 2044. Fellow RPG podcaster and fan of RPPR, Richard, lived nearby, so on my downtime, we hung out and recorded a podcast. Richard runs a Shadowrun podcast, A Fistful of Misanthropes, so who better to ask about Shadowrun than an expert GM like him?

Music: 3 AM on a Summer Night 

After Hours: Shadowrun Street Talk - Bonus episode!

Comments

And why would these sinless blackops bother to stay in their parent corp and not sell out to competition or going freelance?

Max Z

Listening to this... couldn't the corporations take some of the SpecOps people from their private armies and remove their SIN cards? Thereby creating their own highly trained, possibly loyal deniable assets? Because without the SIN whatever, the Starbucks SpecOps team looks like Shadowrunners if they get caught, but the corporation still has leverage over them. ("Do the job if you want to get paid - and if you ever want your real identity back again.") It would be ridiculously evil, but the corporations in Shadowrun are already that, and it would seem a lot more reliable than hiring murderhobos.

Ken Ringwald

Oh, I need a link to the RPPR Discord

DiploRaptor(Samuel)

The only RPG setting I've ever seen where playing murderhobos makes perfect sense is Red Markets, so I really want to come up with some similar justification for Shadowrun without ruining the cyberpunk asthetic.

Jane Wayland

Those will be posted after the Kickstarter for Superhero 2044 launches. Stay tuned!

Ross Payton

You mentioned a playtest for Superhero 2044 was that a podcast?

Qcerm

well that's a thing

Ross Payton

It was an RPG with a ska song about it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScSxIMK4TaA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScSxIMK4TaA</a> that's gotta count for something.

Colin Thompson

check here for info <a href="http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,2073.0.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,2073.0.html</a>

Ross Payton

Wait you guys have a discord?

Daniel

Yeah, the Posthuman guys were the driving force behind 4th Ed, and when they left and 5th ed was becoming a thing they sort of rolled back a bunch of the nanotech, transhumanist stuff for a more updated '80s cyberpunk aesthetic

KamenOtaku

So the justification is that the world is corporatist libertarians most of the time and you play Dennis Leary from Demolition Man. There are two levels of VR, cold and hot. Hot VR is the one you can die in because it's an illegal hack that lets you go faster and harder but makes you susceptible to basilisk murder hacks or something. The corporations are profit engines for the super rich. They care about public opinion lest their best workers agree to being kidnapped by a corporation with better PR and benefits. Uhh, we don't talk about how Native Americans are portrayed in Shadowrun because hoo boy is that shit problematic.

Matt

Sprawl is great fun. I've run a game or two of it, as well as a ton of Shadowrun. Shadowrun is an edgelord beer and popcorn game, pretty much.

Matt

Shaun plans to run the Sprawl at some point for RPPR

Ross Payton

boo if anything it needs more transhumanist stuff

Ross Payton

I like the game setting too and zoomed in on individual shadowrunners, it's perfectly fine but on a macro level it makes no sense. I have thoroughly enjoyed every shadowrun game I have played.

Ross Payton

I agree the setting doesn't make much sense, especially compared to something like Eclipse Phase, but I don't think that's detrimental to the game itself. When I played Shadowrun Returns, I cared enough about the characters and got so wrapped up in the themes that details like the economy and legal system didn't seem to matter anymore. I was thoroughly engrossed in the story, especially when it touched on topics like poverty and ties to loved ones. The game has flaws, but it delivered a satisfying and unique experience and that's what a game should do. As far as I'm concerned, Shadowrun can sit alongside stories like superhero comics and pokemon as a setting we all know is absurd, but we don't care because it knows what we want and gives it to us.

Jane Wayland

The setting also has some issues with trying to update the tech/make the computers make more sense only to have the players rail against it . In Fifth Edition it tried to get rid of a lot of the more transhuman elements but does some weird things with the cloud.

Doug Jacobson

Ross' argument about how ridiculous the setting is is why I ended up searching for other cyberpunk games to scratch my itch, including Cyberpunk 2020 (with up to date setting changes). However, throwing huge dice pools is just plain fun.

Trung

Oh Shadowrun!

KamenOtaku


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