From: cwagner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Christian Wagner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: ShadowRun HEROIC??? (was Re: Burn, GURPS...)
Date: 24 Jan 93 15:41:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: geraldo.1judavINN4u2
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
NNTP-Posting-Host: mickey.cc.utexas.edu

In article <wilder.727877466@mik.uky.edu> wilder@nx02.mik.uky.edu (jeff wilder) writes:
>In <1jt6g1INNomv@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> cwagner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Christian Wagner) writes:
>|In article <2425@blue.cis.pitt.edu> seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:
>|>	SR HEROIC?
>|Yeah. All the PC's tend to be mega-killing-machines (or mega-decking-machines,
>|or mega-driving-machines, or mega-spellcasting-machines). 
>Well, maybe all *your* PCs are.

I don't play SR anymore. I stopped because the game system bites and it tends 
to attract old AD&D players. 

>|Cyberpunk isn't about being heroic. It's not about being able to toast anything
>|in existance with your Assault Cannon/Flatline Program/CyberVehicle/KillSpells,
>|it's not about combat, it's about -people-. In ShadowRun, the people get left
>|behind under all the hardware.
>Well, maybe *your* people do.

In the SR games I played, most of the characters were. In the GURPS CP game 
I've been running, we've got some of the best roleplayers I've seen, and some
-damn- interesting characters. (Only two of which, out of six, have any kind
of cyberware at all.)

[System complaints by myself and responses by others deleted]

>Uh, wrong again.  Twice.  (I'm beginning to suspect that this is one of
>those "Role-Playing Purist Snobs," who's got his nose so far up in the air
>(or his own ass) that it's no wonder that he's clueless about the game he's
>denigrating.)

I'm not going to debate SR's game system anymore; see my last post to Axly. 
Since I don't have SRII, I don't feel I'm qualified to comment. They obviously
changed more in the system than I was aware of. 

However, I take exception to the personal attack above. Would you like to be 
called a "Fasa ShadowRun Zombie" or the like? 

[More system gripes deleted]

>Oh, I see.  The RPPS is still talking SRI.  (I guess news of SRII, where most
>of the admittedly many bugs have been fixed, hasn't quite filtered up to
>"Role-Playing Nirvana," yet.)

I didn't like the game system or the background of SRI; skimming through SRII
didn't impress me enough to buy any more SR products. 

(And quit with the #$@! personal attacks. It's not making you look any more
intelligent.)

>Absolutely.  If you don't occasionally like throwing a handful of
>dice, SR isn't for you.  But the revamped system does NOT suffer from
>"creampuff syndrome."

Fine. I'll take your word for it. (I'm still not playing it, due to about 
half-a-dozen other systems bogosities I can't stand.) I'll concentrate on the
reason I don't use the background either.

>|And this brings up my other gripe about Shadowrun; it's almost all $#@! combat
>|or military-style crap. Extractions, assaults, thefts, it's all violent and
>|it gets -OLD- fast. The character creation system is munchkin in the -extreme-,
>|and it's flat-out impossible to integrate some character types and 
>|personalities into an SR campaign, because the whole thing's based around 
>|military-style operations. It's dungeon-crawling, except the dungeons are above
>|ground and the orcs are called 'Security Guards'.....
>Whew.  I dunno who you've been gaming with, but maybe you oughtta take
>this remarkably ignorant gripe up with Mary Kuhner.  Or Lester Ward. Or..
>or me!
>My characters have *lives.*  They have SOs, they come down with colds, they
>occasionally feel the itching of a hard rain.  One of them struggles to
>maintain ties with his childhood gang, though it's becoming painfully obvious
>that he's left them behind.  One of them is an on-again/off-again alcoholic,
>with a crippling self-image problem.  One of them is trying to come to terms
>with the fact that she is beginning to *enjoy* killing people.  We generally
>enter into a minor firefight, maybe once every six hours of playing time.  A
>major firefight (which are generally avoided at all costs, due to the better
>than even chance of a character death) occurs maybe twice a year, gametime.
>It sounds as if your "munchkin/dungeon-crawling" problem lies with you,
>and the folks you game with.

<chuckles> Maybe you ought to come down to the UGS here in Austin and run a 
game session for the local SR players. 

Every time I've watched an SR game, either at the University Gaming Society,
or at a convention, or any of a number of different places, the focus was
always "let's see how many Lone Star we can waste" or "wow, lookit the big
gun", or "let's see how much gear we can load up". The Fasa adventures I've
read seem to re-enforce this. 

I dunno, maybe net.gamers are a different breed. But I've never seen an SR game
get played with any characterization beyond what you see in an X-Force comic or
something. Excuse me for basing my opinions on personal experience.

And none of this has any bearing on the main problem I have with SR; it's (for
lack of a better word) military-style focus. It's all special ops, and 
characters getting hired to do this, or that, or the other. What if you've got
a character who doesn't -like- money or adventure? Or someone who hates -all-
corps? Or any of a number of different character concepts who -don't work- in
SR, because of the the Mr.Johnson concept, and the "Shadowrun".

One of the best CP characters in my campaign is a moderately well-off pawn shop
owner, who deal weapons on the side. Who is halfway inept in combat, but has 
money to invest, contacts to use, and bargaining skills. He's useless in the 
average SR campaign, because 1) He would never get hired by anyone to 
'Shadowrun', and 2) He doesn't -need- to get hired, because he's moderately 
wealthy. One of my NPC's, who I have run as a PC in the past, is a 50+ year
old street doctor, an anarchist who despises corporate America and distains 
wealth, and is too old to go around adventuring. He has the same kinds of 
problems when it comes to SR. 

-- 
    "Well, do you ever get the feeling that the Story's too damn real
                        and in the present tense?"
               Christian Wagner - cwagner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu