[Mirikon]

You people seem to forget that Ghostwalker was just another part of the whole world going batshit crazy in 2063.

Year of the Comet events happen between January, 2061 and April, 2062. Ghostwalker first attack in Denver is on December 24th, 2061, and the council hands him full control on January 27th, 2062.

Mea culpa.

[lurkeroutthere]

RE: Mary Sue Mostly a fair cop, Ghostwalker is not a Mary Sue in the traditional sense, he is however the winner of the very special dragon award. He's Sirrug that sticks around to gloat. Anything that gets written about him is basically about how all powerful he is. How the other dragons are so wary about him, how their all fascinated by him, blah blah blah blah.

Ok here's the thing, you have to pick a point to argue from, either Denver is important or it isn't. It's not "sort of important" it's not "kind of important" it's the lynchpin for a treaty city that all the forces maintain troops in. Ghostwalker shows up and invalidates the threaty by giving the Azzies section of the city away. That's fine if the treaty is now invalid and all that's keeping the North American nations from each others throats is a closer form of dente that's fine. They could all either go home or significantly reduce their presence in the city. Sectionalized Denver would cost more to garrison then it would ever reap in tax revenue. Now maybe it has strategic value (if it's a smuggler base it likely does, recalling some cold war planing docs I read through it was marked out as important).

What doesn't make sense is treaty gets invalidated all the council players turn over their troops to GW to command. It might be more effective sure, but the same nationalistic pride that should have prevented them from wanting to just cash their chips and pull those troops back home (to deal with a huge amount of local craziness from YOTC) instead wants them  to line up to provide him an honor guard.

Likewise I don't really buy the notion that ghostwalker improves on the Denver setting, The omn-aware, omni-powerful, super dragon worth spying around. Remember his pro-small business policies mean he essentially thumbs his nose at the corporate court. You can't spy on something like that, it's effectively an Omega-Order level problem, that "oh my gosh we can't do anything about it, he's ghost walker".

In short ghost walker isn't someone you spy on, he's not someone you weedle with, or negotiate with, he's a pitbul that said to everyone else in the universe. "This is how it's going to be." And despite that their response to naked agression should have been either reprisal or disengagement (because remember the treaty is now effectively invalid), they all capitulated.

Ghostwalker breaks Shadowrun.

[Black]

Not sure how a change in governement in one city invalidates the entire treaty.  The Dragon is only city government.  Maybe a variation..  Most treaty nations don't even have a sector in Denver.  No lose to them and most a too small to argue with a Dragon for no gain.

The sectors had no actual (official) military presence per se, and bringing in outside forces against a dragon requires a full commitment of military and magical resources, resources some of these nations do not posses (others though possess plenty) and then risk getting into a conflict with the other nations.  The better answer was to wait and see.  By the time they could have martialed real forces, it was over...

Also, these nations are fairly reluctant to get into anything bigger then  border skirmishes.  When was the last time UCAS even fought a real war?  Compared to USA today, UCAS is really isolationist and non-reactive.  Could be because the government tends to be even more unstable, politically, the today, losing a war doesnt rate well with the voters (or the corporate sponsors).

I actually think it makes sense to give the city to a neutral party.  The troops you mention are closer to a UN peace keeping force then anything else, for the most part, and sectors are still controled, on a day to day basis, by their own national governments.

The only surprising part, and this maybe because of what else was going on, is that the Azzies took it as well as they did.  But then again, Denver is far from Aztlan and moving strong enough military forces accross PCC territory is bound to result in a major conflict...

And what does the Corporate Council care, except for Aztechnology?  One of their members is Lowfyr, and is it in his interest to have the CC take action against a fellow Great... and set a precident?  And no one else cares.  The corps weren't kicked out of Denver, they operate fine... except Aztechnology and they are more enemies then friends on the Corporate Council.

And this ignores what happend behind the scenes... after all Nadja was the voice for Big D and the GW comes along.  And by the time the its all announced, GW has already sorted things out with the impacted nations behind the scenes. 

I dont really see the issue.  Has no real impact on my game that a Great runs Denver, or a Great runs a mega corp, or a Great was, for about an hour, President of UCAS.  My guys are shadowrunners, not nation builders.  They work for the mover and shakers, and GW is just another player in the great game.  oh.. and his credit is good.

[Mirikon]

Actually, Lurker, the treaty was never invalidated by Ghostwalker's actions. The treaty was amended to reflect the new status quo in Denver. And no, Lurker, the countries couldn't just 'disengage'. Remember that cold war mentality I mentioned earlier? Having a piece of Denver is a bit of pride for the treaty cities. Not pride as in "proud to own it" but pride as in "proud to be keeping it from the other guy". That, and the fact that having all their rivals in one place makes it so the treaty nations can use smugglers and other methods to slip spies into those rival nations. Remember, the two most important things about Denver are spies and smugglers. Everything else is just window dressing to those two things. All the armies were there (even though they weren't supposed to be) for much the same reason as there were troops in Berlin during the cold war. Because you don't trust the other nations not to screw you.

Now here we have a great dragon come and claim the area as his own, and offering the remaining treaty cities a chance to stay in the city. Now, you could try and fight, but there are other dragons that just might take that as an attack on all dragonkind. And since you don't know if you even have the firepower or magic to take down one great dragon, let alone all of them (national militaries still remember Aden and Tehran), fighting isn't an option. So you can't fight, you can't run. What's left? Give the dragon what he wants, and try to find a way to lawyer it away from him later. That part in bold? That's the key you're not seeing. They didn't give in to Ghostwalker because he's so awesome. They gave in because it was the best option at the time, and treaties can be renegotiated later on, when you might have some kind of leverage. That is why the treaty negotiations are going on now.

The ZDF is also a wonderful tool for the treaty nations to spy on eachother. You know all those units which are multinational now? All those troops are going around, picking up on the weapons, training, and tactics that their rivals use. Considering that the UCAS and Sioux are always suspecting eachother of about to start up the Ghost Dance War again, and that the PCC and CAS have an alliance against Aztlan, that's valuable intel.

Also, just because Ghostwalker is pro-small business doesn't mean he is thumbing his nose at the Corporate Court. He didn't revoke the Business Accords, or take over extraterritorial land (except for Aztechnology property). In fact, other than Aztechnology and Saeder-Krupp, the other megas got off quite nicely from Ghostwalker taking over (in part because he thumbed his snout at Aztechnology and Saeder-Krupp, two of the corps the rest of the big 10 love to see taken down a peg). And there's also the fact that the Draco Foundation helped negotiate on Ghostwalker's behalf.

Your problem is that you're thinking short term. Nations and megacorps tend to think longer term. And if a great dragon that looks suspiciously like Dunkelzhan claws his way out of the rift the First Wyrm made when he was killed, it just might be a good idea to figure out where he's been all this time. Because, frankly, anything that could keep a dragon jaunting about the metaplanes for five thousand years is probably something that is going to be important.

[Bira]

I think you need to check some info on Aden for example. Or Lofwyr.

Lofwyr is one of the dragons who's quite well integrated into society, despite apparently despising it. He owns a megacorp! Which you can run against! And succeed!Personality-wise, he's almost as boring as Ghostwalker, but he's not untouchable.

Aden is the sort of dragon who has to live in hiding. IIRC, Praxis makes a big deal of the fact that he left his hideout to be at that bunker, and that he had to sneak out because people wouldn't hesitate to nuke him if they found out where he was.

You better go with - dragons are god-like creatures capable of whatever they want to, and the only way to stop great dragon from doing as he pleases is ...to be another great dragon possibly with some aliance.

Which is boring as hell, frankly. Why even include this sort of NPC in the game if they're supposed to be untouchable?

I think Catalyst actually has been getting a little better about this in a few of their most recent books. I quite liked that Ghostwalker simply exited stage left in Artifacts Unbound, which also has PCs stealing something from under the nose of  an immortal elf, and possibly beating her in combat as well. Twilight Horizon has not one, but several runs into the megacorp's central HQ, as well as interactions with powerful spirits who treat the PCs with respect, rather than the scorn the more "established" immortal despots prefer.

To me it seems like trolling/Complaining about nothing. Since for some of them that was the first and only post, they seem to have nothing else to add...well, its the same thing as complaining about wireless etc. Useless. Not fun. Not even reasonable.

Nah, I'm not a troll. It's just that I haven't yet found how to turn e-mail notifications on in this forum, and I can't be bothered to keep checking it manually all the time.

I don't think my complaints are "unreasonable", but if you want "useful" my main suggestion is simply to allow PCs to be awesome already. Remove authorial protection from the NPCs, allow PCs to face them and come out on top, let them get some respect in the setting, change the world, become legends themselves. Recent adventures have been better about this, as I said above - the main problem, I feel, is one of player perception. I respect that people have different styles, but sometimes it seems allowing PCs to have a significant effect on the setting is some sort of taboo.

The same can be said of any dragon. Or any megacorp CEO. Or any national leader. Or any underworld boss. Not the eating part, usually, but still, if you displease the powerful forces in the world, they can (and will) bring the hammer down on you. I think maybe you're fixating a little too heavily on Ghostwalker, which is keeping you from seeing that this is how most power players in the Sixth (or any) World act. Do you think that doing something to personally raise the ire of Damien Knight is going to be good for your health? Of course not.

PC shadowrunners piss powerful people off all the time. The archetypical run is breaking into a high security corporate research lab, stealing research data worth millions or billions, and handing it over to a rival corp. That's certainly likely to piss off whoever runs the corp you just hit, but the actual in-game consequences are usually getting paid in peanuts and spending some time in that vague, hand-wavey state of "lying low" until the next adventure rolls around. There are published adventures where the players are hired to kill mob bosses, with the worst consequence being that they have to run in a different town for a few months. You get to do a number on Horizon in Twilight Horizon, and while the book warns this will get some heat on the characters, it by no means says this is an inevitable death sentence.

The only places where I've seen concrete examples of this "the hammer will drop"  reasoning is in forums, when some GMs are angry at their players for deviating from their plots. The place where I've seen it written with the most vitriol was in a Dumpshock thread about stealing cars of all places. Someone figured stealing cars and breaking them down for parts paid a lot more than the prescribed rate for those deadly runs, and complained about it. Suggestions for "fixing" the problem mostly involved having the angry GM bring down the police and the local crime syndicates at the same time on top of the enterprising PCs, with as much force as they could muster. Not for stealing billions worth of research from a megacorp. Not for assassinating syndicate bosses. For stealing one lousy Ford Americar a week.

[Critias]

The problem with removing "authorial protection" from NPCs is that it makes, gamers being gamers, every NPC into potentially a one-shot character.  There's tough balance to strike between keeping the setting playable and the PCs the stars, and having any sort of recurring NPCs and metaplot. 

When we can write in big changes (and tie them to an adventure, so that the PCs cause the change), we do.  Trust me, we clamor for the chances to do so.  Heck, I was happy just to have the ability to write an adventure about what team wins the Super Brawl. 

[ArkangelWinter]

Frankly, every time I introduce a new person to my SR group, I make sure they understand that the best parts of the game are what Bira doesnt like. You may become a legrnd, but you will never be the best, because you're mortal and thats life. And no one, not once in 5 billion years, has ever changed the world. SR is truly a world without hope, besides Dunkelzahns legacy, and that is what attracted me to it.

[raggedhalo]

The omn-aware, omni-powerful, super dragon worth spying around.

I think we are reading the material very differently.  Ghostwalker isn't "omni-aware" or "omni-powerful" according to anything published in OOC/rules voice.  There are several books with a common thread of him being distracted and vulnerable, after all.

[Mirikon]

Lofwyr is one of the dragons who's quite well integrated into society, despite apparently despising it. He owns a megacorp! Which you can run against! And succeed!Personality-wise, he's almost as boring as Ghostwalker, but he's not untouchable.

Full stop, here. A run against S-K is NOT the same as a run against Lofwyr personally. Yes, you can succeed against S-K. Yes, there's even a decent chance that they won't hunt you down like dogs, so long as you made an effort to keep collateral damage low, and didn't take anything too important. But that is VERY different from going on a run against Lofwyr himself. The only time in any written adventure people actually do that (AFAIK) is in Survival of the Fittest, where the only reason Lofwyr doesn't kill them on the spot is because the PCs are pawns in a draconic game, and can't be touched except through other pawns. And even then, Lofwyr promises to make their lives a living hell if they actually follow through with the job they've been paid to do.

But S-K is just like any other megacorp. So long as you don't do anything to move yourself to the top of the 'to do' list, you shouldn't have to worry too much about a reprisal team showing up at the door of every alias you've ever used.

Aden is the sort of dragon who has to live in hiding. IIRC, Praxis makes a big deal of the fact that he left his hideout to be at that bunker, and that he had to sneak out because people wouldn't hesitate to nuke him if they found out where he was.

Actually, it is mainly Lofwyr that passage is referring to. Aden has been deliberately poking Lofwyr in the eye in the middle east for decades now, but has remained too subtle and behind the scenes for Lofwyr to justify taking action, like he did with Nachtmeister. As for the UCAS? The UCAS doesn't have any real reason to harm Aden, other than the fact that Lofwyr might bully them into taking action against a 'terrorist'.

Which is boring as hell, frankly. Why even include this sort of NPC in the game if they're supposed to be untouchable?

Because, no matter how big and bad the players are, there is always a bigger fish.

I think Catalyst actually has been getting a little better about this in a few of their most recent books. I quite liked that Ghostwalker simply exited stage left in Artifacts Unbound, which also has PCs stealing something from under the nose of  an immortal elf, and possibly beating her in combat as well. Twilight Horizon has not one, but several runs into the megacorp's central HQ, as well as interactions with powerful spirits who treat the PCs with respect, rather than the scorn the more "established" immortal despots prefer.

Yes, he exited stage left. After setting off the magical equivalent of a nuke in DeeCee. Also, it should be noted that Jenna is not nearly as powerful as her mother, and she'd been weakened by doing a powerful blood ritual trying to recreate an ancient elven city.

PC shadowrunners piss powerful people off all the time. The archetypical run is breaking into a high security corporate research lab, stealing research data worth millions or billions, and handing it over to a rival corp. That's certainly likely to piss off whoever runs the corp you just hit, but the actual in-game consequences are usually getting paid in peanuts and spending some time in that vague, hand-wavey state of "lying low" until the next adventure rolls around. There are published adventures where the players are hired to kill mob bosses, with the worst consequence being that they have to run in a different town for a few months. You get to do a number on Horizon in Twilight Horizon, and while the book warns this will get some heat on the characters, it by no means says this is an inevitable death sentence.

The only places where I've seen concrete examples of this "the hammer will drop"  reasoning is in forums, when some GMs are angry at their players for deviating from their plots. The place where I've seen it written with the most vitriol was in a Dumpshock thread about stealing cars of all places. Someone figured stealing cars and breaking them down for parts paid a lot more than the prescribed rate for those deadly runs, and complained about it. Suggestions for "fixing" the problem mostly involved having the angry GM bring down the police and the local crime syndicates at the same time on top of the enterprising PCs, with as much force as they could muster. Not for stealing billions worth of research from a megacorp. Not for assassinating syndicate bosses. For stealing one lousy Ford Americar a week.

You're assuming that the megacorps are a single body, so that if you do any run against Horizon, Gary Cline himself hears about it, and decides whether a reprisal is warranted. That's not how it works, Bira. There is a HUGE difference between stealing a container of Ares rifles, and stealing Damien Knight's personal gun collection. One will make Ares annoyed with you, if you leave traces back to you, but isn't usually worth a reprisal unless it happens regularly, they're high end milspec prototypes, or the shipment actually has a suitcase nuke on board. The other will get one of the most powerful people in the world wanting your blood, and willing to shell out cred to make sure it happens. Do a run against the UCAS, and unless you are doing something HORRIBLY wrong, it isn't going to come to President Colloton's attention unless she was nearby when it happened.

[lurkeroutthere]

Personally my issue stands completely seperate from the PC vs NPC issue.

Ghostwalker behaved in a way that should have got him nuked by somebody, the Azzies most likely, any given member of the corporate court as well (he is literally controlling which AAA's come in and out of Denver seizing the assets of the ones he doesn't like. The only other group that tried that Aztlan/Aztechnology got a Omega order slapped on them for that). Now he did that under the guise of advancing small business because small business entrepreneurship was a common buzz at the time Dragons of the Sixth World came out.

Black and Mirikon, the whole reason supposedly Denver exists in it's current state is because of the treaty. If someone unilaterally changes the way the city is administered or gets territory from another party in the treaty unilaterally the treaty is invalid. While that doesn't guarantee war it sure does go a long way to making the whole setup in Denver pointless. You can't say that their holding onto it out of some sense of cold war pride when A) Many of the nations present in the game literally gave up way larger swaths of much more important territory without a blink B) Many of them have only minimal stake in the city it being well removed from their borders C) Then go around and turn over control to the dragon as it's personal fiefdom and D) Provide

Lawyering him later: How? Lawyering implies there are rules and a higher power and leverage and all that stuff. This is Ghostwalker we're talking about, the super cool ultra dragon that dictates terms to national governments and stands beholden to none, who goes Godzilla through major cities and doesn't have the good sense to get the hell out afterwords.

ZDF as an intel tool: Do you honestly believe there arn't a thousand cheaper ways to pick up that knowledge? I think you grossly overstimate the cost benefit to that scenario.

So lets review: You have Denver who at it's most bare is a city held in a cold war Berlin style because that's cool, future dystopia can be shades of the past, that's fine. Everyone adheres's to the treaty because without the treaty there's a very real chance of full on conventional and possibly WMD(conventional and otherwise) war breaking out on the continent. Everyone has to some extent or another a stake is the status quo.

Then one day Ghostwalker the SUPER DRAGON shows up and starts wrecking stuff, except later it's oh he's only wrecking Aztlan and a a few other stuff, and later after the fact it was "oh yea he totally had a deal with all the other nations who distrust each other heavily that he's going to administer things, they are going to provide physical security to his domain and pretty much shut up and color. THey agree to this because they've been handed the idiot ball for this scenario. Aztlan gets the outs because ostensibly their the most hated guy at the table (which is fairly accurate except the PCC and Ute should have more in common with Aztlan historicly then they do with the Yanks or the future Southern Pride.

Now enthroned Ghostwalker more or less suspends the Business Recognition Accords, he completely kicks out or raises one AAA's holdings and prevents another from playing locally, all others that wish to do so must bow and scrape to him as the undisputed master of Denver (RAWR!). Isn't that just so interesting? Isn't it so fascinating? He's super intelligent because everyone on his level power wise by hook or by crook always acts like he's holding all the cards. The only redeeming factor to him is someday someone might decide to shake up the status quo and a bold initiative might see Lofwyr or Damien Knight or anyone else with WMD's say "I bet he hasn't seen one of these before" and drops a thor shot or a cuise missile nuke on him while he's holding court. Yes civilian casualties will be immense but when have corproations ever cared.

Oh well, i can dream, I can dream of a Shadowrun that's not Earthdawn 2070+, where Magic and Tech and most of all metahumanity push the story and not further rounds of Immortal Elves, ancient all knowing dragons, and 4th world artifacts.

[ArkangelWinter]

I like the presence of Immortal Elves and ancient all-knowing dragons, because you have no hope of understandung them, much less beating them. And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never habe any hope at all.

[Crimsondude]

And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never have any hope at all.

:^:

(That's a thumbs-up for your kids out there)

[Sichr]

Lurke: Well, I cannot seee why you end up playing shadowrun if you dont want such things. You have some options:
1) cut yourself completely from setting and cannon, use just rules and give your players whatever you want. That if you are GM.
2) If you are player...find the GM that follows the 1st alternative.
Good luck with that.

For me:
1) There are immortal elves, despite I hate them and I try to avoid them if possible.
2) There are Street Legends (some of them), that deserved their status by nothing else than handwaved stats and a few posts on jackpoint. I still use them and have fun with them, since its up to me to meake them really deserve what they are in the eyes of my players.
3) There are omnipotent dragons, that are here from even creation of life and the first cycle of magic, and one of them is Ghostwalker.
4) There are some other people who are frustrated that world isnt what they want it to be. Both IRL and IC.

I play with 1-3. Trying to avoid 4.

And this topic is getting killed by heated dispute if SR authors are doing right something that was possibly planned from even the first page of shadowrun storyline written in Jordan Weismans notebook some 25 years ago.

Meanwhile...
Great white is Missing in action, from time to time there is a story about his return/reappearance in Denver. Nobody seems to know anything for sure. Nobody is telling us whts is going on in Denver...telling that everything continues the way as GW is present would lead me to some crazy ideas...
like...Was it Ghostwalker, who was planning and scheming, luring Aztech into the War with Amazonia, so Aztechnology is hardly able to make any claims supported by significant military threat...since the main body of their army is deadlocked in Bogota?
I havent heard about Primeira Vaga for a while...wher those came from, and who opened doors for Tempo...obviously someone with very good knowledge of deep metaplanes...
like I say...crazy ideas...

[Xzylvador]

And in my vision of Shadowrun, you should never have any hope at all.

:^:

(That's a thumbs-up for your kids out there)

Oh.

That was a thumb.

(Also, I agree. This is Shadowrun, not some DnD game where you're bound to become powerful enough to not just kill dragons without breaking a sweat, but to take on the GOD of Dragons itself.)

[Netzgeist]

(Also, I agree. This is Shadowrun, not some DnD game where you're bound to become powerful enough to not just kill dragons without breaking a sweat, but to take on the GOD of Dragons itself.)

Xzyl just summed up my view on this discussion. And did it beautifully.