Shadowrun War! "Arbeit Macht Frei!"

[Jeff Wilder]

Am I missing where it says you have to "defeat" the unquiet spirits? All it says is that in order to survive the horror, you have to somehow deal with their presence. The existence of the scalpel is simply an example of the kind of artifacts that can be created by, and found at, the site of this kind of horror.

Shadowrun isn't like D&D ... generally speaking, shadowrunners don't raid "dungeons," looking for "treasure." This isn't a description of a site or item for that purpose. What the GM uses the site -- and the item -- for is, like all such descriptions in Shadowrun, up to the GM.

There's nothing disrespectful in the description, overt or implied. "Disrespectful" would be doing a sourcebook about the area and pretending that the atrocities that occurred never occurred. (And, BTW, the idea that sites of death camps have horrific background counts and unquiet, tormented spirits goes all the way back to SR1. It's certainly not new to this book.) A lousy GM can take this excerpt and turn it into a jaw-droppingly offensive mess; a good GM can take it and make it into something else.

And so it goes.

There are a lot of reasons to be contemptuous of this book, from what I've read (I do not, and will not own it, and given what's going on with CGL, I'm guessing my SR purchasing days are over), but this excerpt isn't one of them.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

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.

This should be restated.

Frank Trollman is a former freelancer for SR4 who...let's just say he burned he is bridges, put them into a machine that could burn things that were already burned, and then burned the machine as it burned the already burnt bridges.

He's openly stated that he wants the entire system to die and for everyone involved to go out of business.

Noooot exactly a neutral reviewer.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

...For better treatment of this sensitive topic, you may want to check Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah by White Wolf Game Studio.

Regards,
Ruemere

Are you kidding me.

 

[ruemere]

Are you kidding me.

For the record: I acknowledge that my views are not necessarily similar to yours.

Nope. It's been a long time since I have read it over the course of single convention night - I admit I was actually riding a wave of anti-WWGS propaganda at that time and so my reading meant to confirm my already negative opinion, and found to my surprise the book to be fitting its genre without being offensive.

My issue with the aforementioned Shadowrun book is that it approaches the subject with the concept of "epic bad place" and mandatory "treasure" entry.
It is trivializing the place.
In reality, KL Auschwitz is a tranquil cemetery-like place, which makes the tragedy all the more profound and difficult to imagine.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

My issue with the aforementioned Shadowrun book is that it approaches the subject with the concept of "epic bad place" and mandatory "treasure" entry.
It is trivializing the place.
In reality, KL Auschwitz is a tranquil cemetery-like place, which makes the tragedy all the more profound and difficult to imagine.

Bear in mind that, as Jeff Wilder alluded to earlier, previous SR material regarding assensing has used Auschwitz as an example of A Place You Do Not Want To Look At On The Astral Plane; the example observer sees the pastoral setting, looks astrally, and runs screaming.

This really shouldn't be that surprising, as it's used to illustrate the concept that emotion can and does permanently affect the magical nature of an area. They also use fictional examples, such as the Native American Re-Education Camps, but the use of real-world examples is far more reinforcing.

So I don't think it's a bad thing to mention it, especially when they're in the area (though the Sixth World Gazetteer, to my knowledge, doesn't mention it...but that gives like 2-4 pages to about 50 countries). And there might be valid reasons for a group of runners to go in there; certainly, a place where the unquiet dead are known to be is a place almost no one's going to go, and as such a good place to put something that a ruthless corporate type wouldn't want to ever be found.

The scalpel, though, that's in kinda poor taste.

Brad

 

[Tuft]

IMHO, if anything this shows how, well, "cardboard" kill-and-get-their-stuff gaming can be.

I strongly suspect that if it had been e.g. the site of an ancient massacre of elves, complete with elven ghosts hiding ancient evil necromantic artifacts of elf-slaying, nobody would bat an eye, and some would even go to work with glee.

But those elven ghosts would be no less fictional than the ghosts in the Shadowrun example, and the characters in their world ought to react at the site in the same way we would at Auschwitz - but do you really think they would, with the draw of phat loot?

I find it most telling that the simple mention of first the ghosts, and then the scalpel, immediately brings "kill the ghosts to get the scalpel" scenario to people's mind...

 

[Momeeche]

Frank Trollman is a former freelancer for SR4 who.

He's got the right name then.

 

[humble minion]

To be honest the whole section smells to me more of sheer ineptitude on the part of the writer rather than any sort of agenda. It's just very, very poorly written, and because of that it's really hard to decide whether the intent behind it is actually offensive or not.

Is the site only dangerous on the astral plane, or in the physical world as well? What influence/impact does the haunting of the camp have on the actual modern living town of Oswiecim which surrounds it on two sides? How on earth are pcs meant to find out about the scalpel, and what would they want it for? Will the PCs REALLY have to fight through the ghosts of death-camp victims? Is the scalpel even in the physical world, and if so, how has it not long since been discovered, when the site has been combed by countless historians, curators, researchers, tourists, and war crimes investigators for decades and pretty much every artifact catalogued?

As written this is a deeply conventional old-school D&D-style kick-down-the-door-and-see-what-we-can-loot dungeon in a setting that really should be relatively free of such things. I mean jeez, there's even what is basically ye olde magic shoppe sitting out the front for use of PCs to tool up for ghost-fightin' before they kick the door in. And there's certainly no mention of laying spirits to rest, learning information, contacting the spirits of ancestors, or any other possible plot- or character-related motivation that the PCs might have for going to the place - it's loot the scalpel or nothing. It's a really bad fit for Shadowrun, quite aside from anything else. The whole place seems to only exist in the game world for the purposes of housing the scalpel, and that's what gets to me the most. I find it nasty and cheap - the lack of research, empathy, and even interest in the history or facts of the site except for 'we can get a cool magic knife here dude!' doesn't paint the writer in a good light. It comes across as really immature and juvenile in approach, actually, when addresssing a subject that needs to be covered with maturity and sensitivity if at all in a gaming book.

Say what you like about White Wolf's Shoah sourcebook, they at least tried to give the reality of the holocaust a bit of respect, though your mileage may vary as to whether they succeeded or not, or even whether it should have been attempted. This book comes across as simply not giving a damn.

 

[Imperialus]

Couple of things I'll point out.

1) There are a lot of people with an axe to grind with CGL right now so that's coming out in the reviews.

2) The writing quality for SR has taken a beating over the past year. They lost a lot of their really good staff and freelancers, I keep buying trying to see them through the rough patch, but it's getting tough.

3) Auchwitz was already detailed in Shadows of Europe years ago. Pretty much the same rundown. No uproar then, not even from the German community which is huge in Shadowrun.

4) A lot of the shadowtalk in SR is rumor, speculation or outright wrong. "Some guy" claims to have figured out a way to make use of artifacts that can be found in the camp. There is also "some lady" on youtube who claims that Obama is an alien who wants to eat us.

5) "Ghosts" in Shadowrun are a weird topic to begin with. Its questionable if they even exist. Most (in game) magical theories surrounding them suggest that "ghosts" are actually spirits (spirits are not tied to any human 'soul' they just exist) who have become imprinted with the emotional signature of an individual, or group of individuals from an area that they inhabit. This doesn't just happen with people though. Places and things can affect a spirit as well. For a parallel example, the spirits who inhabit the astral space around a melted down nuclear reactor are going to be toxic and generally unpleasant to deal with. Likewise the spirits around Auchwitz will be messed right up too.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Is the site only dangerous on the astral plane, or in the physical world as well?

Answered by the Shadowrun crunch, the Shadowrun fluff, and the GM.

What influence/impact does the haunting of the camp have on the actual modern living town of Oswiecim which surrounds it on two sides?

While I'd be interested in that, it's more word-count than Shadowrun sourcebooks invest in their hooks. As such, it's left to other sources.

How on earth are pcs meant to find out about the scalpel, and what would they want it for? Will the PCs REALLY have to fight through the ghosts of death-camp victims? Is the scalpel even in the physical world, and if so, how has it not long since been discovered, when the site has been combed by countless historians, curators, researchers, tourists, and war crimes investigators for decades and pretty much every artifact catalogued?

All questions to be answered by the Shadowrun rules, existing Shadowrun fluff, and the GM.

As written this is a deeply conventional old-school D&D-style kick-down-the-door-and-see-what-we-can-loot dungeon in a setting that really should be relatively free of such things.

No, it's not. Skill of the writing aside, this is the same sort of example "hook" that Shadowrun has been doing for decades. Shadowrun is not a game of door-to-door hack, but it seems like people insist on reading this excerpt through that filter.

As written, this is a Shadowrun scenario hook. Thousands of such hooks have been provided over the 21 years of Shadowrun (including this one in different forms), ranging from half a paragraph to half a page. This is a particularly horrific real-history site. Giving more -- including what you ask for in the paragraphs above -- would seriously risk offending a lot of people. Giving less would be a denial of what occurred and a failure to touch on how such an incomprehensible evil impacts on the Shadowrun rules and universe.

There's nothing wrong with the content of what's written, in the context of a Shadowrun sourcebook.