If Shadowrun got the reboot treatment, what sacred cows (mechanics/setting) would you put up for slaughter?

[Bawylie]

Everything but the setting.

And I’d change VR to AR and infosec.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I would like it if they made it matter more to none mages though. Maybe roll Edge and Essence together (with the required balance adjustments)?

Essence affects healing for everyone, which is something, but probably not enough. They can't increase the healing penalty, though, because too many people ignore those rules anyway.

There's also the "problem" that normal people with neither magic nor cyberware are kind of boring. I'm not sure that they really want to encourage that. Or maybe they do, from a setting standpoint?

Personally, I'd really like it if it made sense for a mage to pick up a little cyberware, or for a muggle to only be half-cybered, but the rules really encourage you to pick a path and go all in. I'm not sure what the best way to solve that would be.

 

[Raduin711]

Yes... Um... maybe you need to refresh yourself up on the canon?

The Ghost Dance War started in Shadowrun's 2014, as a guerrilla conflict, with the Native American side increasingly using magic as those powers returned to the world. It ended when Daniel Howling Coyote led the Great Ghost Dance, a magical ritual that caused Mounts Rainier, Hood, St. Helens, and Adams to all volcanically erupt simultaneously in 2017.

So, yeah, there was a war, until one side showed that it was willing to drop the equivalent of small nuclear devices, and the other side gave in. Go figure!

I was aware. Hence my cheeky little quote at the end. Somehow, I don't think the US would cede half it's territory over volcanoes overnight. It has one of the largest militaries in the world... yes, magic was brand new at the time, and that might make the US capitulate to some of the Ghost Dance's demands, but it wasn't long before US colleges discovered their own kind of magic (based on hermeticism for some reason?) which would probably reignite the conflict. Not to mention the Native American population is quite small. It's a little too cut and dry. Same with the secession of the south and the merging with Canada. It's way too quick, nice and neat. The civil war was long, and bloody, and complicated, and we are still carrying around the scars of it today. That said, the ascent of native american culture is really important to the game, I just think the volcanoes thing isn't all that.

The balkanization is pretty necessary for the setting to work - it needs divided powers that don't cooperate for the PCs to have a plausible chance of doing what they do without getting pasted by united authorities.

I think all that is really required for cyberpunk to work is for big corporations to seize power in a big way. Corporate Extraterritoriality is a big part of the setting, but things like the UCAS, CAS, NAN are mostly just window dressing. Whether Seattle is part of the US or a city-state in the middle of the NAN doesn't really seem to impact the game very much. The point is that the government is weakened, and the Megacorps are in charge.

 

[MGibster]

I agree with getting rid of the balkanization. I had an easier time accepting the existence of trolls, dragons, and magic than I did with Native Americans taking over vast swaths of what was once the United States.

 

[Derren]

SR doesn't really need a reboot.
But if you insist on change for the sake of change then look somewhere else than the balkanisation.
Yes, some don't like it, but it makes sense for the setting. The US was fighting someone with unknown capabilities who can to their knowledge make themself invulnerable at will, destroy armies with a snap of their fingers through tornados and had the capability to wipe out cities at will. The concept of drain was unknown at that point and the US was completely unaware how close the natives were at the breaking point as they essentially sustained a gigantic blood magic ritual with a lot of casulties on their side.

So ceding some depopulated (thanks to VITAS) flyover country sounds like a good way out. Especially when you expect to annex them easily later once you reorganized and understood magic. Only that more and more disasters happened, from the CAS secceding, over the first crash to goblinization that it always got delayed until it was no longer feasible.
The rest of the balkanization is fine too.

And please no transhumanism. They tried that before and it was bad. SR is not the setting for it.
It does not need a reboot, but fine tuning. Less powerful magic/spirits compared to cyber and better editing. But sweeping changes are imo unneccesary and contraproductive.

 

[BrokenTwin]

As much as I do enjoy transhumanism, I have to agree with Derren that Shadowrun isn't the setting for it. The struggle/tradeoff of maintaining your (literal) humanity vs equipping/modifying yourself to survive is something that is (to me) a core part of the setting. Having a gun as a functional part of your body is going to change your perspective and ability to relate to "normal" people. The fact that normal in this case includes trolls, elves, and dwarves doesn't really change that.
So I like the idea that bioware causes less Essence loss than cyberware. Basic bioware agumentation (that essentially just restores basic human functionality) should cost zero Essence. Maybe it already does, it's been a while since I've looked at the mechanics.

 

[Derren]

Basic bioware agumentation (that essentially just restores basic human functionality) should cost zero Essence. Maybe it already does, it's been a while since I've looked at the mechanics.

It does, if you can pay for it (most can't), but thats pretty much the case for everything in SR.
To restore limbs without essence loss you need a personal donor clone of yourself (or maybe also a type O replacement limb). Both options are at least gold level DocWagon stuff with a hefty surcharge.
For organs a compatible donor organ is enough, thats what Tamanous deals in.

Imo essence and that regular humans without cyber or awakened abilities are left behind are important aspects of SR/Cyberpunk.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Imo essence and that regular humans without cyber or awakened abilities are left behind are important aspects of SR/Cyberpunk.

As much as I love transhumanist settings, I have to agree that SR is not one of them. Inhumanity in its various forms is a large part of the experience to me.
Does upgrading from a cyber-arm to a bio-arm restore the difference in Essence, or is Essence permanently lost once it's gone? I'd much prefer the former, because it could lead to some great stories where someone heavily cyborged fights to restore their connection to magic by replacing their Essence-draining cyberware with equivolent bioware. And I feel like the ability to get back what you lost is also an important part of the setting.

 

[Derren]

As much as I love transhumanist settings, I have to agree that SR is not one of them. Inhumanity in its various forms is a large part of the experience to me.
Does upgrading from a cyber-arm to a bio-arm restore the difference in Essence, or is Essence permanently lost once it's gone? I'd much prefer the former, because it could lead to some great stories where someone heavily cyborged fights to restore their connection to magic by replacing their Essence-draining cyberware with equivolent bioware. And I feel like the ability to get back what you lost is also an important part of the setting.

No, in all SR editions so far essence was lost permanently even when you removed the cyber later. There was no turning back.
Although some editions had advanced treatments to restore some essence, but they had a 6+ figure price tag and according to the lore they were rumored to involve a modified HMHVV virus.

Regaining essence by just removing the cyberware would imo be not be a good story. Get cyber, earn lots of money, pay for cloned replacement limbs and retire as full human. Not very interesting and not really a struggle.

 

[Umbran]

As much as I love transhumanist settings, I have to agree that SR is not one of them.

Cyberpunk, in general as a genre, is not really transhumanist. Transhumanism as a philosophy and genre is usually about how technology makes life better, and cyberpunk is about how technology makes life worse...