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Future of Shadowrun

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Nomad Zophiel

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« Reply #30 on: <12-07-10/1824:43> »
Might be interesting to see an SR: The Early Years book released at the end of 2012. It might make an interesting setting. Magic is just starting to come back, elves and dwarves are still considered to be suffering from UGE etc. Might make for an interestingly fresh take on the things SR takes for granted.

Doc Chaos

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« Reply #31 on: <12-08-10/0453:53> »
Hahaha, just wait, SR5 will be exactly that with a complete "reboot" of the series ;D
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Wolfboy

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« Reply #32 on: <12-08-10/1108:44> »
doc, its no fun when you get to live it instead of play it.....ok, maybe it will be fun, oh to hell with it your right its gonna be a blast
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inca1980

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« Reply #33 on: <12-08-10/1152:07> »
I doubt they'll reboot it like that....I mean then they'd have to do that every couple of years to keep Cannon aligned with RL lol.  We're just gonna have to accept that slowly SR and a lot of other sci-fi becomes a parallel universe.

MJBurrage

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« Reply #34 on: <12-08-10/1236:26> »
Star Trek has not actually been set in our future since the fall of the Soviet Union.  The trekkies know this and the average fans don't care since it is not usually stressed in the story telling.

As I said above, the same thing is the correct approach for a Shadowrun film. Present a future that could be ours, and gloss over (without retconning) the differences between SR's past and our present. If it is done correctly, the long time fans are happy that their are no blatant contradictions, and the film fans don't even know it was an issue.

FastJack

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« Reply #35 on: <12-08-10/1331:01> »
Both Shadowrun's and BattleTech's timelines diverge from our own right after the first games were released. I'd have to track it down later, but I posted that in Shadowrun, Bill Clinton didn't run for nor win the presidency in '92. This is where Shadowrun diverges. I'll have to check my BattleTech sourcebooks, but they diverge earlier, since Gorbachev's successor was assassinated, which lead to the rebirth of the Soviet state.

Bull

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« Reply #36 on: <12-08-10/1533:55> »
In theory, the SR timeline diverges in '88 or '89.  Though realistically, it should diverge even earlier than that to set up certain events that happen in the early 90's.  If I were forced to write the "history" of Shadowrun, I'd probably have a few subtle differences around 1970 or so, and lead on up through into the '90s with the major ones that start defining the world of Shadowrun.

That said, SR's history has had a few retcons over the years, to incorporate events from the "real world".  IIRC, someone slipped a Twin Towers, 9/11 reference into one of the early FanPro books, as an example.  It doesn't really invalidate anything, since I don't think the Neo-Anarchists Guide to North America touched on the World Trade Center one way or another, so it doesn't invalidate earlier material...  But at the same token, it was also slightly unnecessary, since we could easily explained away the lack of the WTC in Season 3 of Missions and the the Manhattan eBook by saying "The quake detsroyed them".  Or they were torn down and rebuilt by Ares.  Or whatever.

Personally, I think SHadowrun needs a hard break in '89.  I'm not a fan of trying to force real world changes into Shadowrun.  It's a different world.  Things have progressed a LOT differently due to the Crashes, VITAS, the megacorp structure, the multitude of wars, civil and other wise...  One of the things that always makes me want to bang my head against the table is anytime someone busts out "But it happened like X in the real world..."  I mean, yes, obviously you want to look at real life as a template, but you don't need to be bound to that, and regardless you have to look at it through the lens of Shadowrun's world.

Smartphopnes, Wireless, miniaturized computers, etc...  Sure, they exist today.  Why did they take so long to materialize in Shadowrun (other than the real life explanation that they hadn't been invented yet, and the writers back in the 80s and 90's didn't think of it)?  Simple...  Corporate Greed.  When 10 companies control 99% of the worlds economy, there's much less of a need for competition.  And without serious competition, you don't have the constant advances you do now.  Why make things smaller and more powerful, when you can keep them larger and less powerful, sell them at inflated prices, and your manufacturing costs are almost nothing?  THat;s maximizing your profit margin right there.

Plus with things like VITAS and the wars that happened, it's easy to say that certain advances were simply never made.  WHat happens when the first guy to engineer the smartphone dies of VITAS, or was killed by rampaging Amerinds, or was locked up in a concentration camp?  What happens when Microsoft and Apple lose their entire database to the Crash virus (WHich also conveniently corrupted their entire backup system as well).  And when half the programmers and developers who worked on those programs are dead due to various issues, who's going to be rebuilding all of this?

It doesn't all make sense, but it's there...  We roll with it.  It's a part of the fiction, and it's a part of the groundwork that the world of Shadowrun is built on.

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FastJack

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« Reply #37 on: <12-08-10/1551:29> »
I usually shoot for the '92 hard break with the presidential election since most of the history written in older sourcebooks was kept vague until then. (They didn't say Bush Sr. was elected or anything about Desert Storm, but they didn't say anything that denied it either.)

And I agree with the Twin Towers ret-con. It's nice that they took time to acknowledge the tragedy, but it really had no impact on the Shadowrun universe.

Crimsondude

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« Reply #38 on: <12-08-10/1904:47> »
The first hard break that I know of comes in 1986. But really, it's a fictional world. If I wanted Ralph Nader to be President in 1984 there is nothing canon stopping me AFAIK.

Nomad Zophiel

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« Reply #39 on: <12-08-10/1943:46> »
I think the first break comes somewhere in the thousands of years BC. We have pretty good archaeological evidence that there wasn't a pre-Egyptian civilization made of several different sentient humanoid races living underground to hide from great cosmic evils. And I have my doubts that DaVinci had immortal elf friends in the real world.  ;D

Mystic

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« Reply #40 on: <12-08-10/1953:59> »
The thing I keep telling people, both fans and non-fans alike, is that sometimes to enjoy any fiction that has some basis in the real world is that one has to have a healty dose of what I call "suspension of disbelief". In other words, don't sweat that things are either exactly "real", realistic, or that something may be just plain goofy. Go along with the story and enjoy it for what it is, not what it isn't.

If you want reality, watch so-called "reality" TV. Me, I want to get away from it, that's why I enjoy stuff like this.
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Frostriese

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« Reply #41 on: <12-08-10/2127:37> »
Actually, I think SR is a bit more hopeful than most dystopian cyberpunk stories. The magic and such give a little bit of light in the darkness than you get in most of the "cog in the machine" cyberpunk concepts.

4th edition thats certainly true, but in earlier editions - well, so to say the earlier you go the more cyberpunk and hence the more dystopian Shadowrun was. 4th edition is rather post-cyberpunk, anyway, not the real deal anymore, so  to say. And those 4e sourcebooks do have a certain techno-optimistic vibe...

Patrick Goodman

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« Reply #42 on: <12-08-10/2131:45> »
We're too busy with the dragon breeding program for that at the moment.
I thought that was supposed to be under wraps....
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Bull

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« Reply #43 on: <12-09-10/0010:27> »
We're too busy with the dragon breeding program for that at the moment.
I thought that was supposed to be under wraps....

I keep telling you guys...  What you do in the privacy of your own homes is none of our business... ANd I don't want to hear about it.  :)

Crimsondude

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« Reply #44 on: <12-09-10/0206:48> »
Actually, I think SR is a bit more hopeful than most dystopian cyberpunk stories. The magic and such give a little bit of light in the darkness than you get in most of the "cog in the machine" cyberpunk concepts.

4th edition thats certainly true, but in earlier editions - well, so to say the earlier you go the more cyberpunk and hence the more dystopian Shadowrun was. 4th edition is rather post-cyberpunk, anyway, not the real deal anymore, so  to say. And those 4e sourcebooks do have a certain techno-optimistic vibe...
I would beg to differ. The thing about the neo-A's and the tone of cyberpunk and punk itself premised in part on the idea that you could still change the world.

Like punk the neo-anarchists lost. They lost HARD.

The tone of post-cp and arguably SR as it stands is definitely one where you cannot change anything. The corps took over and co-opted even the opposition. You know, like RL. Token gestures and the facade of hope and optimism does not actually make it so. I mean, really, how swell is it to be richer and live longer if your life just now belongs to the corps for longer?