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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raduin711" data-source="post: 7901876" data-attributes="member: 15303">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:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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 It feels really outdated.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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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