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

[Raduin711]

Shadowrun has never done a proper reboot since its creation and while that is admirable, I feel like SR is dragging a lot of baggage behind it. There are aspects of the game that don't really serve the game very well as a whole.

Some of my sticking points are:

• Balkanization. The game kind of gives the impression that everyone just woke up one day and the United States was no more, and we are left with the UCAS, CAS, NAN, and city-states like Seattle. Why? These things would be fought over with wars. Like, I understand that the Native American genocide was a real bummer, and wouldn't it be cute if the south actually did cede from the union in the future world, but we kind of have to do better than "Everything west of Denver belongs to the Native Americans because magic."
• Essence. So there is kind of an interesting question in Transhumanist fiction where "what happens when we replace a person, part by part, with technology. When we have replaced everything, even the brain with technology, what remains of the original person, if anything? Shadowrun's answer seems to be that we are at least in part, our bodies, so that when we give up an arm to cyberization we literally do lose a part of ourselves. I understand that this creates a kind of interesting game mechanic balance between cyberization and magic, but I think it sells transhumanism short and comes off as a little ablist. I think a more realistic cost for cyberization might be experience- it's kind of silly to imagine that our brain could so quickly adapt to your left arm suddenly having a retractable buzz-saw, but your potential for magic just took a nose dive.
• The Matrix. It feels really outdated. Shadowrun imagines that the internet will evolve into a single virtual reality space, but I question what value there is in turning the internet into one big game of Second Life. I understand virtual spaces, but I can't see the whole internet getting the VR treatment. What's more, hacking would probably not look anything like presented in SR. A humanoid rabbit shooting magic missiles at robots is not hacking. It looks cool, and it is something a GM can describe... but it's not hacking. In any event, the idea that things move "at the speed of thought" doesn't really explain why you can hack faster or better in virtual space then in real space. If you can run your programs by just thinking about them in VR, there isn't any reason why you couldn't do it in regular R. You can still have your life and death "I need to jack out!" nosebleed scenarios if you're hacking with your brain without VR... it's when you are hacking with a keyboard and mouse then that becomes less of a threat.
• Three Worlds. This is just bad game design. Astral is more or less kind of junk, so it might as well get the axe (nobody cares what is happening in the Astral unless you are fighting a spirit), and I am not convinced of the value of VR as being so much a world as something you do that consumes all your attention.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I have to agree with those last three points. Three worlds does nothing but split the party, and the less time spent in VR, the better. I'd honestly like hacking to be almost invisible, like firing a gun, so we could just get on with the game. And yeah, the idea of having a prosthetic limb doesn't seem nearly as traumatic as it used to be, so there's no reason why we really need to insist on essence being a balance factor (as long as there's some other balancing factor, such as price or availability).

Personally, I would like to see a vast reduction in the number of stats. As it stands, none of them really does very much, which makes it too easy to dump one with no consequences. Combining Body/Strength, Agility/Reaction, Intuition/Logic, and Charisma/Willpower would make it much easier to differentiate characters by stat spread alone.

 

[Raduin711]

Personally, I would like to see a vast reduction in the number of stats. As it stands, none of them really does very much, which makes it too easy to dump one with no consequences. Combining Body/Strength, Agility/Reaction, Intuition/Logic, and Charisma/Willpower would make it much easier to differentiate characters by stat spread alone.

I would agree with this too. The system tends to encourage min/maxing, which is fine, but the stats and skills are so incrementalized. So you end up with characters that look really weird on paper. I have a super high reaction but no agility... so I tend to fall down really fast? Or I am a master with Rifles, but hand me a pistol and suddenly I have no clue what to do with this... are you sure this is a gun? Where is the stock... I don't get it...

 

[Eltab]

Based on the art, not the mechanics of the game:
When is dawn going to come? It's been dark out forever. A little sunlight for us non-vampires, please!

 

[schneeland]

Hmm ... I have to say that following your points might create an interesting game, but it would probably no longer feel like Shadowrun to me. Now I am old and my Shadowrun experience is very much shaped by 1e and 2e, so it might be different for people who joined with 4e+, but especially (1) and (3) feel like essential parts of the mission-based Cyberpunk genre to me.
I agree, though, that both the essence mechanic and the co-existence of three different layers of reality makes gameplay a bit clunky, so there's probably a good amount of work to do here.

The two sacred cows that I would happily offer to the reboot gods are:

1. The understanding of Shadowrun's timeline as an extension of our real-world timeline. Just commit to SR being an alternate reality that diverged from our timeline at some point
2. The big pile of gun/equipment porn. Most of it is pretty mediocre anyway, so it might as well be cut down to a small set of meaningful choices

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I would think AR would be more likely in the near future. And Jackers could hack that AR to cause people to go to a Chinese restaurant when they wanted Mexican - that's potentially broken right there.

In seriousness though - I like the balkanization end point and find it interesting from a starting setting-wise. But you are right - any portion of the US that wants to secede will be subject to the full might and power of the USican military - and that's no joke (see US Civil War of 1860's). And if magic was involved, then I would think there would be some cities that are smoking arcane craters.

However it can lend itself to some great stories, including espionage between secessionists and unionists.

 

[Umbran]

Based on the art, not the mechanics of the game:
When is dawn going to come? It's been dark out forever. A little sunlight for us non-vampires, please!

Um... it is called *SHADOW*Run. Not "DayInTheSunnyPark Run".

 

[Umbran]

• Balkanization. The game kind of gives the impression that everyone just woke up one day and the United States was no more, and we are left with the UCAS, CAS, NAN, and city-states like Seattle. Why? These things would be fought over with wars. Like, I understand that the Native American genocide was a real bummer, and wouldn't it be cute if the south actually did cede from the union in the future world, but we kind of have to do better than "Everything west of Denver belongs to the Native Americans because magic."

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!

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.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I'd happily swap VR for AR as the core hacker conceit. I do like the Astral, and I think it would get more play if VR was scrapped, but I'd accept its removal as well without too much fuss.

I'm torn on Essence. On one hand, I love the Old Magic vs New Tech vibes, but on the other, I also really like transhumanism. I'd say maybe rework it, but keep it in some form. Shadowrun is cyberpunk, and cyberpunk (to me) is a lot about what people are willing to do to survive. Cutting yourself off from the spiritual world by replacing too much of your natural body with inorganic hardware seems like a natural thematic decision in the setting.
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)?

 

[Eltab]

Um... it is called *SHADOW*Run.

Correct. Also not NightRun.
What are necessary ingredients for shadows? A light source and a solid object.