From: 900667c@dragon.acadiau.ca (Gerald Cameron)
Subject: Re: ShadowRun HEROIC??? (was Re: Burn, GURPS...)
Organization: Acadia University
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 00:51:04 GMT

cwagner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Christian Wagner) writes:

>In article <C1CMt9.1q5@news.cso.uiuc.edu> dv52151@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (RedSwordTarga) writes:
>>cwagner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Christian Wagner) writes:

><chuckles at the wonderful SR pseudo-slang> Tell me, Axly, would you play a
>character like Slick Henry (from _Mona Lisa Overdrive_) in SR? Someone with no
>cybercrap, no ultra-skills, no real advantages to speak of except being an
>interesting character?

>Wonder-schmucks like Cowboy and Molly have a place in cyberpunk, yes, but in
>SR, -everyone- is like Cowboy, or Molly, or Case. Due to the very nature of

You mean the same way that in xDnD everyone is Merlin or Sir Galahad?  This
isn't a problem with SR, it's a characteristic of RPGs.  People play these
because they want to be heroes, and not small potatoes, either.

>the game, you -can't- play an interesting character, because the game is

Why not?  There's lots of time for character development in SR if you work with
meets with contatcs a bit, let alone what can happen in the story itself with
an imaginative GM.  Actually, if you want to you can do a lot of stuff with
moral subtexts and stuff with the background as presented.

I do grant that the rulebook takes a somewhat too action oriented look at the
game, so new role-players are apt to fall into the trap you describe, but the
same can be said of a lot of RPGs.

>That's what I meant. In, for example, GURPS, or ever Cyberpunk 2020, or even
>-Hero- for Christ's sake, an -unskilled- person can unload a 12-gague at PB
>range and there is a chance (which varies from game system to game system) that
>the target will be dead.

>This cannot happen in SR; the -only- way to boost the damage of a weapon is to
>be skilled with it. That 10S shotgun cannot kill, -period-, unless one is
>skilled with it, and that is utter and complete bullshit.

Oh come on.  Who wants to play a game where you're liable to get geeked by some
normal shmuck who just got POed because you knocked over his convenience store?
All RPG's are slanted towards heroic action, including cyberpunk ones.

>>>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'.....
>>Huh? The system has no bearing on what you have the characters do. If you
>>don't like SR adventures by FASA, write your own stuff where you do things
>>that you find interesting. This sounds more like a bitch about one
>>particular campaign than a constructive comment about a game system.
><ahem> This isn't the system I'm bitching about here. It's the background and
>the attitude of the game itself, an attitude which is shared by a lot of SR's
>players.

The background's fine.  All sorts of possibilities for political intrique and
stuff, but I do agree with you that the attitude of the rules themselves get
away from this too much.


>and which doesn't deal with that bastard plot device, having the characters get
>hired to go blow away someone/steal something/extract someone/etc etc. It's
>barely an RPG in my book, closer to a &#@! tactical simulation.

A chacun son gout (apologies for my bad spelling).  Maybe you just haven't been
talking to the right people, though.  In order for a campaign to emphasize
role-playing, you've got to have a GM and players who want it to be emphasized.
What kind of campaigns do these people run with other systems?

P.S.  Apologies for the incomplete sig.  I just got this account, and I'm
working on it.