Shadowrun War! "Arbeit Macht Frei!"

[MortonStromgal]

Doing a bit of research, I have figured out:

1. It sounds like I need to buy SR 4Ed soon because the company doesntt sound healthy.
2. There is a review- in English!- of War on the German site SR Nexus confirming this idiocy AND details others besides. (No link due to language, but type in a search for this thread's title and you'll find it.)

The company is doing fine, they settled out of court. The company is still run by the same guys responsible for the missing funds, ridiculously late payments, and ignoring court orders. Tops has a person dedicated to oversee the account because of the shinanigans but so far they are hands off. Most of the people who wrote for SR4 are gone replaced with people who admit to having never read or played Shadowrun (not all of them but a fair chunk). Expect more books like this followed by a 5th edition if sales slump.

 

[Nifft]

#1) IME, Europeans are a LOT touchier about Nazis than we are, so the reviewer probably had a more visceral reaction.

#2) It still doesn't change the fact that the supernatural threat to PCs are going to be the unquiet dead of the Jews who died in the Holocaust.

#3) The idea implied isn't to put those spirits to rest by destroying the last vestiges of Nazi supernatural power but to get past the Jewish spirits to GET KEWL GEAR! IOW, it's not about righting a wrong and letting spirits achieve peace, it's about steamrolling them in an attempt to increase personal power, IMHO compounding the abuses they suffered in life.

Quoted for truth.

If the adventure seed would have been written as basically "kill the Nazi undead/sorcerers/evil artifact to free the Jewish ghosts from their agony", I wouldn't be offended even in the slightest way. But destroying the ghosts of innocent Jewish Holocaust victims to get a magic item is offensive.

Maybe they should've just changed the last paragraph to destroying that accursed Fleshfinder to release the victims' spirits from their constant agony. Now THAT have been A LOT more acceptable.

Very sensible thinking here.

- - -

I have a different problem with the text, though. Maybe it's because I came to the Shadowrun game late (with SR4/20A), but it was my impression that ghosts were not necessarily real, and that opinions on the nature of Spirits included "ghosts", but there was no specific "ghost" class of critter confirmed to exist, just Spirits who were kinda ghostly.

With that in mind, one could certainly make the death camps places of VERY bad mojo (since the psychic residue of suffering and death would attract only the worst sort of supernatural nasties), without invoking the ghosts of the camp's victims -- which I prefer also on the basis that IMHO SR should be a game where death is for keeps and nobody gets to know for sure what happens after.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which also lends a bit if weight to the review- in certain sections, he points out that War! reads like it was written by someone unfamiliar with the rules and historical cannon of the game.

 

[Cergorach]

Frank Trollman (which is his real name btw) has a serious problem with the folks that publish Shadowrun, so I would venture to guess that his oppions are very skewd.

I actually don't find the adventure stub offensive. I'm Dutch (next door to Germany), we are confronted with WW2 atrocities on a regular basis, so it's certainly not out of mind.

It's not as if our RPGs are without their questionable moralities, all Rangers have/had Racial Hatred, and all Paladins smite the evil regardless of anything (kobold babies).

I find SR4 a different game from the previous incarnations, I personally like it less.

 

[blargney the second]

My first thought was from the perspective of a player: putting those agonized spirits to rest would be a good thing to do.

I don't think there was anything inherently distasteful in the excerpt quoted above. A talented DM could turn it into a highly evocative adventure that respected the memory of those who were killed.
-blarg

 

[Beginning of the End]

Huh. I was expecting something that was actually offensive in some way. But this basic concept of "mass murders at Auschwitz created horrific item with potent magic" has been kicking around RPG and urban fantasy/horror circles for a long time now.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Beginning of the End Huh. I was expecting something that was actually offensive in some way. But this basic concept of "mass murders at Auschwitz created horrific item with potent magic" has been kicking around RPG and urban fantasy/horror circles for a long time now.

Yes, its not an uncommon idea at all.

What IS unusual- what some at least are reacting to- is that to obtain said item, you have to brave a gauntlet of (preumably) Jewish spirits...something that seems to compound the horror of their deaths. AND- absent the right kind of GM- for no other reason than the accumulation of personal power.

 

[Dragonhelm]

You know, I think that time sometimes makes us forget the atrocities of the past. It's been 65 years since World War II. Many gamers are of a younger demographic who see the war as history only.

Many of us have grandparents who served during that time. In my case, it was my dad who served. He fought in the Pacific against the Japanese. To this day, he carries kamikaze shrapnel in his leg. He saw the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, and was at the other major Pacific battles.

I, personally, find this product to be in poor taste. It is disrespectful, and makes light, of those people who suffered and died in that terrible tragedy.

In my opinion, both the author(s) and the game company (Catalyst?) should offer a public apology.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And I think another factor makes so many Europeans more sensitive to the subtle stuff is that the hatemongers try so hard to be subtle, something our homegrowns haven't mastered yet.

Back in the 1980s, one of my college profs went back to his family's homeland in Austria...got totally into it- even bought a feathered cap & lederhosen. As he was cresting a hill dressed in his new gear, a man passing the other direction reached up and flipped his collar up to reveal SS medals underneath...

I could see this topic handled well- it would have made a perfect John Constantine: Hellraiser plot seed, for instance- and even if John had to defeat unquiet Jewish dead to recover the scalpel, it would be utterly clear that he did so only because he had no other option, that he found it distasteful, and that it would cost him dearly on the spiritual level. And that's a guy who sold his soul to a half-dozen devils at the same time...

None of that moral opprobrium is even hinted at in War!

 

[Momeeche]

I wonder what made it ever seem like a good idea.