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Street Legends Review

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Patrick Goodman

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« Reply #165 on: <10-07-11/1103:54> »
Oooops. Arriving late for this party. Sorry. First time around, I think I avoided a lot in here just because of the vitriol that was flowing. Now I'm looking for reactions to my contribution.

But for the love of God, Dawkins or whatever you call out to whenever you just can't take any more of the lunacy, could you at least have legendary, iconic NPC's designed by someone that knows the frakking rules.
Left out most of your rant. Still avoiding the vitriol where I can.

Did I do all right, in your estimation, on my stat block for Martin de Vries?
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Patrick Goodman

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« Reply #166 on: <10-07-11/1106:52> »
More old shit that I'm just now getting to....

RE Ares, it's nice to see that this old storyline is apparently picking up steam. We're certainly in for a big shakeup if Ares' bug dealings ever come to a head...although I must admit that I'm wary of how  well CGL would handle such a major event, given their current problems even with some bread-and-butter stuff...
Can you give me some specifics on this kind of thing? What problems, etc., you see? You can PM me if you prefer. It's just that I'm working on a couple of potentially big things, and I'd like to know if people think I'm the weak link.
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Nath

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« Reply #167 on: <10-19-11/1603:54> »
Finally read Street Legends.

I knew from the start I wasn't going to love that one. As a gamemaster, I don't need new shadowrunner characters. The basis of the game is that players' characters are the shadowrunners. Most of the time, when they encounter other runner, they''ll have opposite objectives and it's going turn into a fight. In such case, I don't see the point in knowing how their career started and how baddass they are, and it will end up with either the NPC stats being too high from my PC, or their legendary status proven unmerited. At least, my PC earned their karma and raised their stats the hard way. Also, my impression as that the authors did not envisioned at all their characters as opponents, except maybe for a small numbers of them (Haze, Shamandar, Puck...). Most sound like they're the cool guy on the good side.
Fixers could have been more interesting to me, but, halas, a lot of them are first and foremost described through their early career as shadowrunners. It tells us how they behave, or behaved, in the field, not how they work as fixers (something the short story I Am Legion does, though I'm still a bit unsure on how convenient it really is to look like one of the most famous person in the world).

The big names, like Lofwyr, Hestaby, Villiers, along with the less-known or new ones, use the "street legends" theme as an excuse to advance plots. Lot of interesting things going on here : Lofwyr and Hestaby at war, Aina Dupré dead and Nadja Daviar back... Jonathan Blake may become the next Seattle governor or president of the UCAS, and introducing the character ahead of time will make it a lot better.

Now, my usual row of specific comments ;)

- Is Frosty a Lugh Surehand fangirl ? Save for Tir Tairngire black ops team habit of showing up in whatever shadowrunners are involved into, Shadowrun background never gave me the impression of Tir Tairngire head of state being anything close to "one of the most powerful, influential, and important leaders of the modern world."

- Lofwyr must have ordered the assassination of Hestaby sidekick because the hit-man used a "german-made sniper rifle"? Seriously? I mean, Walther MA-2100 and HK PSG Enforcer are standard issue sniper rifles in SR4. Had he been carrying an Ares Predator, it would prove Damien Knight sided with Lofwyr?
If you asked me, I would retcon it into "a custom-made sniper rifle, a signature work of German armorer Dietrich Färber (or whatever name), known to work with S-K Prime services" (but maybe that was actually what the author had in mind).

- Lofwyr has a knowledge skill for each of the AAA, save... Saeder-Krupp. He must also default for anything relating to a AA megacorporation. While it made perfect sense for dragons to have different, higher attributes maximums, they also have skills well above the theoretical limit at 7 (in Hestaby's case, 17 in Ritual Spellcasting).

- Tess van Hama write-up reads odd. If you read the text without the Jackpointer comments, as it should originally have appeared on Jackpoint, Rigger X actually never states the "high-ranking Mitsuhama executive" that fathered her must be Taiga or Toshiro Mitsuhama, and so speaks about the Mitsuhama family fortune without any explanation.

- I Am Legion short story outs Jonathan Blake as tied to Wuxing, something that doesn't appear at all in his write-up.

- Jonathan Blake write-up says he bought Centurion Security. It seems like this is the same Centurion that was in SOTA:64 and Vice. Except that is never was described as Seattle-based or a Cross Applied Technologies subsidiary (SOTA:64 actually described Centurion as "one of the most first major European private police corps" ; no Seattle sourcebooks mentioned it either). Since Jonathan Blake is likely to return and Seattle will be the primary theater of operations, I guess that's the reason to retcon the corp into a Seattle-based one. As for the Cross connection, maybe there's an deliberate intent to tie it to Seraphim and/or Ares Macrotechnology.

- The connection between Jonathon Reed and Nadja Daviar, Jonathon Reed and the New Revolution, and Nadja Daviar and Reality, Inc. had my brain spinning all around in a way it hasn't been since Dunkelzahn's Secrets I think.

Crimsondude

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« Reply #168 on: <10-19-11/1711:10> »
That was the idea.


As for I Am Legion, I didn't have room to focus on the downsides as much as I'd have liked without compromising the beats I needed to hit.

Nath

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« Reply #169 on: <10-20-11/1833:20> »
One more comment/fun fact. In I Am Legion, as Thorn compares Nadja Daviar and Corinna fake DC accent, he concludes Corinna is a native English speaker, while Daviar is not. But that Corinna stats in Artifacts Unbound shows French as her native language ;)

By the way, in real life, "Division Action" name has been in use for about five years in the early eighties. For thirty years prior to that, and the twenty-five years that passed since, the name of the DGSE black ops unit has been "Service Action". I guess the Division Action name stuck because of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.

Crimsondude

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« Reply #170 on: <10-20-11/1853:42> »
She's also married. Rory got a lot of things about both women wrong.  ;)

Anyway, DA rose from the dead. Damn bureaucrats. I'm not sure how much she's going to be in Conspiracy Theories, but I like her. Not as much as Natalia, but a close second.
« Last Edit: <10-20-11/1858:18> by James Meiers »

Critias

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« Reply #171 on: <10-21-11/0009:07> »
She's also married. Rory got a lot of things about both women wrong.  ;)
Or, rather, as I prefer to think of it, Rory got right the things they let him get right.  Remember, he's first and foremost a Warrior Adept.  A killer.  The extra stuff he's got is just that; extra.  His social and stealth skills exist to get him into, and out of violent situations.  He's a murderer that can get by as a face to do his main job better, not the other way around.

He pieced together enough to impress Nadja, and that was enough for things to progress.  He passed the test.  He didn't have to be spot on, he just had to show he wasn't just a brutal thug without anything between his pointy ears. 
« Last Edit: <10-21-11/1458:05> by Critias »

CanRay

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« Reply #172 on: <10-21-11/0027:05> »
Brutal Thug Elves?

What's next, Rocket Surgeon Trolls?
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Patrick Goodman

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« Reply #173 on: <10-21-11/0914:39> »
Don't tempt fate, Ray.... ;)
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CanRay

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« Reply #174 on: <10-21-11/1155:55> »
Fate, never?

Freelancers and the crew of CGL?  Always.  ;D
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Crimsondude

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« Reply #175 on: <10-21-11/1336:19> »
Yeah, and look what happened. We have shedim commandos now.

jonathanc

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« Reply #176 on: <10-27-11/1439:27> »
Was anyone else left wondering WTF Kellan Colt was doing in this book? I read the book trilogy and thought it was pretty alright (I even loaned it to new players to give them a taste of the setting), but she wasn't even the most legendary person in her crew (wasn't G-Dogg, or that big troll mage guy more famous than her?). She's never been mentioned in any Shadowrun product that I know of, outside of those three novels.

FastJack

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« Reply #177 on: <10-27-11/1546:55> »
Was anyone else left wondering WTF Kellan Colt was doing in this book? I read the book trilogy and thought it was pretty alright (I even loaned it to new players to give them a taste of the setting), but she wasn't even the most legendary person in her crew (wasn't G-Dogg, or that big troll mage guy more famous than her?). She's never been mentioned in any Shadowrun product that I know of, outside of those three novels.
Check out Bull's response further up the thread.

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« Reply #178 on: <10-27-11/1653:46> »
Was anyone else left wondering WTF Kellan Colt was doing in this book? I read the book trilogy and thought it was pretty alright (I even loaned it to new players to give them a taste of the setting), but she wasn't even the most legendary person in her crew (wasn't G-Dogg, or that big troll mage guy more famous than her?). She's never been mentioned in any Shadowrun product that I know of, outside of those three novels.
Check out Bull's response further up the thread.
Thanks for the link; I remember when the novels first came out there was a lot of hate for them, but I defended them for more or less the reasons Bull listed. I'm still bemused by her presence in Street Legends, but oh well. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to get officiial stats on G-Dogg.

Critias

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« Reply #179 on: <10-29-11/2319:02> »
Basically she was in SL because part of the appeal of the book was "hey, I know that guy/gal/chick/dragon!"  It's not JUST there to advance the metaplot and present top-tier characters, but also just as a fun way to show folks the stats of characters they know, regardless of the source.  Kellan was nominally the main character of a full trilogy of books (and some of the most recent ones, no less!), so that seemed worth a couple pages.  She's also something of a "stepping off point" for campaigns wanting to use SL, because she's (obviously) closer to a starting character than most of the other characters in there.  She might be a little more usable than some of the bigger, nastier, types.