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<blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8469812" data-attributes="member: 7028554">I still think the original Shadowrun setting is one of the most thoughtful and &quot;realistic&quot; in RPGs, in the sense that it dove into issues of racism and inequality, and where even stuff like magic is quickly appropriated and abused by corporations. In hindsight a lot of the stuff about shamans and indigenous peoples in general is a little cringey, but I think even most of that holds up well. It never falls into &quot;noble savage&quot; stereotypes, and doesn't present one version of magic as being inherently better or more ethical than others (I guess with the exception of blood magic, but even that got sort of recontextualized by 5th edition). And I liked that they followed up the more familiar racism against metahumans with the more off-the-wall discrimination toward people who develop random mutations after Haley's comet swings back around. I feel like we're hijacking a thread about Cyberpunk Red to talk about Shadowrun, but I'm always here for that.Yeah I think, in an RPG context, cyberpunk describes a really narrow genre. So narrow that, as in this thread, we can't even discuss Cyberpunk 2020 and Red without it drifting into Shadowrun, games that all have basically the same aesthetic and merc-based play mode. I feel like it's really just a very specific subgenre that imprinted on a lot of us at a young age (I say as someone who remembers where he was when first cracking open Neuromancer and When Gravity Fails, two insanely formative books for me)&nbsp;Not that anyone shouldn't play games in that subgenre. It's just not, to me, a very versatile one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Grendel_Khan, post: 8469812, member: 7028554"] I still think the original Shadowrun setting is one of the most thoughtful and "realistic" in RPGs, in the sense that it dove into issues of racism and inequality, and where even stuff like magic is quickly appropriated and abused by corporations. In hindsight a lot of the stuff about shamans and indigenous peoples in general is a little cringey, but I think even most of that holds up well. It never falls into "noble savage" stereotypes, and doesn't present one version of magic as being inherently better or more ethical than others (I guess with the exception of blood magic, but even that got sort of recontextualized by 5th edition). And I liked that they followed up the more familiar racism against metahumans with the more off-the-wall discrimination toward people who develop random mutations after Haley's comet swings back around. I feel like we're hijacking a thread about Cyberpunk Red to talk about Shadowrun, but I'm always here for that. Yeah I think, in an RPG context, cyberpunk describes a really narrow genre. So narrow that, as in this thread, we can't even discuss Cyberpunk 2020 and Red without it drifting into Shadowrun, games that all have basically the same aesthetic and merc-based play mode. I feel like it's really just a very specific subgenre that imprinted on a lot of us at a young age (I say as someone who remembers where he was when first cracking open Neuromancer and When Gravity Fails, two insanely formative books for me) Not that anyone shouldn't play games in that subgenre. It's just not, to me, a very versatile one. [/QUOTE]

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