Why Shadowrun?

I like cyberpunk games, but I don't "get" Shadowrun. Why would you add Tolkienesque fantasy elements into dystopian sci-fi? What does it add to it? What's the appeal?

>In case anyone wondered, I'm genuinely interested in the views of Shadowrun fans on this matter.

Some people want hackers and wizards in the same group, and the troll should have a gun larger than the dwarf's enormous pink mohawk.

I like genre mixing and am baffled by the idea others don't just as much as you are baffled as to why they do.

Is the near future dystopia important part of it, or would you as likely play a space fantasy mix with spaceship elves and techno wizards?

Which Tolkienesque fantasy elements are you talking about? I'm not calling anything out, but just curious what specifically you mean by that.

Because CEOs being literal dragons is a charming concept.

Dwarves, trolls, elves and orks are apparently all Tolkienesque now. Despite them all being essentially magically-mutated humans in the setting, and Tolkien's trolls being the furthest thing from a protagonist race you can fucking get.

I'd just play 40k then.

At least the playable races include dwarves, elves, orcs and dragons cohabitating the same world as visioned by Tolkien first. Players form fellowships as in Tolkien books. Maybe some other shared tropes, I'm not fluent in Shadowrun.

The elves desperately wish they were Tolkien, but they're not as good at fucking things up as Feanor.

Also,

owns.

Traveller D&D is a rather different acquired taste, but a good one. It's not Cyberpunk D&D though. I mean, it can be, and you can definitely overlap them, but you can overlap basically anything if you try hard enough - I remember one old Traveller thread discussing Ars Magica But The Wizard's Tower Is A Type C, roaming the frontier and arguing with local wizards while doing research for their next paper.

Adds more variety and choice to chargen, also allows for some quite heavy/dark themes of racism without intersecting too much with real life shit.

I have to ask, is there anything wrong with it? I don't see why it would really turn anyone off the setting.

Some people want their purestrain cyberpunk, which is also cool and good.

1) you can't play as dragons. They're OP as fuck
2) they're not separate races but all subspecies of humanity. With the exception of immortal elves and or'zet there are no separate cultures
3) Tolkien wasnt the first. Mythology was
4) You dont form a fellowship to destroy an ancient evil, you're career criminals who work together to survive and most of the time you barely tolerate each other.Using your logic every roleplaying game ever is ripping off tolkien.
5) at least read some more before you start claiming x about y

Sure okay, but that's like saying you don't "get" vanilla ice cream when you only like chocolate. It's just a different flavour, what don't you understand?

Why? You can't play with mixed parties of space elves and space orcs in 40k, like you can in Shadowrun, as I understand.

You can if you're playing rogue trader or dark heresy.

>Tolkien wasnt the first.
Could you please name an earlier source, where tall haughty elves and short powerful dwarves appeared together?

As I've understood, previous folklore elves were a varied bunch more alike to the D&D gnomes, as anything close to the Tolkien elves?

+1 for dark themes like racism. It gives the world a gloominess that I appreciate alot.

So you wouldn't like to play Dungeon romps with fantasy races in Space fantasy?
But do want to play them in the cyberpunk genre? Could you please elaborate further why this?

Norse shit. Norse sources described Ljósálfar (Light Elves) as being 'fairer to look upon than the sun.' They are also close to divinity. Norse shit also has stumpies.
Once again, I can do that with rogue trader. I'm sure theres also more generic space opera crossovers out there to use. The cyberpunk stuff makes its more unique.

In british folklore elves were also human sized and real fucking cunts.

So basically if you're playing Good 40K.

Not that rogue trader. This rogue trader

Does that Rogue Trader have Abdul Goldberg?

> Why would you add Tolkienesque fantasy elements into dystopian sci-fi?
Because regular cyberpunk is boring.
> What does it add to it?
Wizards, magic, dragons, catgirls, the CEO of a major corporation eats people instead of firing them for ripping him off because he's a fucking dragon.
> What's the appeal?
Fucking cybered-up street samurai battling CorpSec grunts alongside elf mages and a troll with a cannon bigger than the elf, or a fuckoff huge axe.

Rogue Trader is precious. It should be archived for the ages so we can all laugh at what GW could get away with publishing back in the day.

ugh, this and /awg/ has me looking at certain things on ebay again.

and really, $15 or so isn't that bad for a single specialist figure when you look at modern prices.

> is there anything wrong with it? I don't see why it would really turn anyone off the setting.

Nothing wrong per se. But why would you do something with tech if you can just magic it? Or vice versa, I don't know which is easier & cheaper in Shadowrun. Magic AND imaginary tech in the same setting seems redundant.

Magic is deep, cyber is wide. Compare the street sams; one is a razorboy, the other is an adept.
The adept will have dicepools out the ass; built right he'll shit out 15-18 dice and have +4d6 initiative. He'll rip motherfuckers to shreds. But he will never be able to get off the track he's on easily. He's an ultra specialist.
The razorboy on the otherhand will be shitting out 14-15 dice or so, but with cyberware you have access to a lot of neat little tricks, shit like extendo hands, rocket skates, headware that eliminates the penalty for dual wielding and internal air tanks/smugging compartments to name a few. You'll also be tough as fuck thanks to platelet factories, pain editors, bone density, orthoskin etc.
Of course thats just ignoring the existence of mages. Who make illusions and summon spirits and shit, which no cyber guy can ever do. But once again, its deep. A mage can dip into a secondary spec sure but he'll always be a mage first. And due to how essence works he'll be extremely reluctant to get basic quality of life gear like datajacks.

>why would you do something with tech if you can just magic it?
This is a weird question. Magic and cyber are at odds with each other, things you can do with one really can't be done with the other.

>We want D&D audience to feel safe and familiar

To me, as an outsider they seem like the same thing: You can kill something with magic or you can kill it with tech. You can steal something with tech, or you can steal it with magic.

Thank you to I can see some differences. but a complete novice looking to get into playing something can't be expected to seel what separates magic from tech in Shadowrun.

Magic cant access the matrix, tech boys cant rip open the astral plane. They dont compete they work together.

Because it's fun, my guy

>Being interesting in new setting because it has familiarities is wrong.
>"Wah! Too many D&D nerds in my Shadowrun secret club! Wah!"

>You can kill something with magic or you can kill it with tech
This is silly, if you boiled all RPGs down like this everything would seem dumb. "Oh you can kill something with ranged, or you can kill something with melee!"

>You can steal something with tech, or you can steal it with magic
Wrong. The last mission we did required both, in fact.

>but a complete novice looking to get into playing something can't be expected to seel what separates magic from tech
It's called reading the fluff.

Might wanna tone down the bai-

Never mind, someone actually fell for it.

Wrath and Glory says they're building whole premades off such parties

Isn't overwhelming levels of xenophobia a central theme in 40k? Aren't Eldar literally going to die, (or get killed) before co-operation with the space orcs?
Are there any official references to co-operation like your normal D&D or Shadowrun party?
I think you are just shitting me.

Go and read about rogue traders and radical inquisitors. Rogue Traders are space conquistadors who when outside of the Imperium speak with the voice of the Emperor himself. Their job is to deal with xenos on a regular basis acting as scouts, traders, explorers and colonizers. There are many rogue traders in the fluff with xenos mercs under their command. You can make playable kroot and orks in the rpg.

And radical Inquisitors dont give a single fuck

Eisenhorn and Ravenor both gave fucks.

Well good on them but they're not ever Inquisitor.

...

user I'm not going to do your research for you. Go and read up on the Inquisition subfactions and some other Inquisitors. I already gave you plenty on rogue traders.

Are you retarded? You're seriously saying Eisenhorn and Ravenor are not Inquisitors?

>so much time has elapsed since the 1970s that period jokes about Jews and Muslims cooperating completely fly over the heads of modern players.

>It's called reading the fluff.
I created this thread for that purpose.
My players have expressed some interest in Shadowrun. I, as the forever GM, am pondering what kind of themes I can use in Shadowrun that would be difficult to tell in my own homesalad of cp2020.

A good point was made about racism, but I didn't shy away from it in my non-magic cyberpunk either.

Just to reiterate, I have nothing against fantasy, we mostly play rather traditional fantasy campaigns with dungeons et al. Just at a loss for the possibilities.

1% of beings in Shadowrun can access magic, and of that 1%, the vast majority are magically weak, have limitations, have burned out their essence, aren't skillful enough to use their full potential, or some combination thereof. Permanent enchantments are few and far between, and most are only helpful to magic users and lumps of expensive material to everyone else.

No I said they're not representative of every Inquisitor because the Inquisition is so fucking varied you could probably find a literal tyranidfucker in their ranks.

>Traveller D&D is a rather different acquired taste, but a good one.

That actually sounds rather interesting. What would be good places to read up on other people's experiences with that mix? Tried googling Traveller D&D with lousy results.

Try "Spelljammer"

you fucking said they are not ever inquisitor.

there are typos that are fine and there are typos that can't be identified as such.

I'm not even the guy you're arguing with and I'm annoyed

Not EVERY inquisitor. Wow I missed one fucking letter and didnt notice it. Thanks grammar gestapo. Your autism has saved yet another thread.

Yes, that one letter changed the entire meaning of your sentence. This is why proofreading is important.

>Just at a loss for the possibilities.
Combine the cyberpunk with the fantasy, then. Maybe the players are hired to help save an elven forest from destruction so someone can pave it and put up a parking lot?
Or the Orc mafia makes them an offer they can't refuse after they run up debts escaping the wrath of the a megacorp.

Traditional orcs are pigmen, Tolkian orcs are corrupted elves. Where does the mighty savage orc come from?

Either you like the aesthetic or you don't.
Anyway, it is being used to inject mysticism into modern/near-future times.
Compare Star Wars and the force.

fpbp

>Is the near future dystopia important part of it
The dystopia is not strictly necessary but street culture adds a lot of elements for mixing. The chrome and neon lights, however, ARE important for the aesthetic.

Some Shadowrun (and general cyberpunk) basics for those not in the know:

Tech and magic are opposed and dont mix. And not just because cybernetic enhancement literally diminishes your "essence". Mages can't interact well with non-living things and tech can't interact well with magic. Magic and technology are both used for security so players often need both technical and magical tools to bypass and defend against said security.

Players are a loose coalition of miscreants bound together by the need for cash and the need to get it outside the strictly monitored world ruled by the megacorps. They can be of almost any ideology and each bring a specific toolset. You need muscle, infiltrators, talkers, mages, hackers, and riggers(drivers/drone pilots) to get the jobs done.

Although some jobs look like a dungeon dive there are some variations. For one, there is always the element of trying to go in quiet or go in fast. Once the alarm is raised it's only a matter of time until a "High-Threat Response" team shows up and the runners want to be long gone by then or risk getting chunky salsa-ed.

Job types range from Data Steals to Assassination to Protection to Target Extraction to Property Destruction and everything in between. A group might be hired just to create a distraction for another group to do their job or to even attack or counter other Shadowrunners. The best employers to get in the way of the Megacorps is other competing corps.

The most important part of the "crime game" is always the leg work. You present the players with an impossible problem and not enough information and they get to try to find out everything they need to know and carefully plan their job. Investigations, stake outs, bribes, stealing blueprints, hacking guard comlinks, scouting out the target. All the prep work can be just as exciting as the mission itself.

warcraft

Wolfy wolfsson and his woolf fang wolf sword would like a word with you.

And some people like both Shadowrun and CP2020.
40K is late, late 80s, mate.

Magic is rare and therefore costly. You can't do everything with magic and that rare magic user would have to learn a spell for that dedicated purpose. Most mages that the PCs encoutner are combat mages or magic detectives, etc. Magic supplements tech, but it does not replace it. Also, you can take your magic with your (almost) wherever you go, it can't be stripped the way tech can. There's probably plenty of more nuances to it.

I've been playing Shadowrun on and off for around 2 years and I have fun with it because I've got a good group, but I still don't get it. I've played entire sessions where magic hasn't come up at all without feeling like i was missing something and forgotten that my character was an elf rather than just a charismatic pretty boy multiple times. You can also fully experience the game as a player without ever reading the rules for magic because there's very little interplay between the tech stuff and the magic stuff in the rules.

There are some sections that seem to imply the designers wanted to use the inclusion of magic in a cyberpunk setting to explore how technology and spirituality interact with each other, but the way that's expressed mechanically (getting cyberware decreases your Essence, making you less able to magic) doesn't leave much room for nuance.

Ultimately the game feels like it took two settings, one where the core concept is "what if corporate expansion and exploitation continued to the point where corporations became the unquestionably dominant political and economic forces in the world" and another where the core concept was "what if magic was suddenly and violently (re?) introduced to our modern world, causing incredible political upheaval as people became wizard, elves, and orcs" and clumsily glued them together.

> Maybe the players are hired to help save an irreplaceable forest from destruction so someone can pave it and put up a parking lot?
> Or the mafia makes them an offer they can't refuse after they run up debts escaping the wrath of the a megacorp.

This is the definition of tacked-on and irrelevant fantasy elements

What's so clumsy about it? Magic/fantasy tropes supplement the existing cyberpunk tropes in the setting. Ordinary magic doesn't manipulate bits and bytes and but it manipulates reality on a more macro level than that. What's not to get?

It's poorly written genre trash that ripped most off most of its good ideas from Neuromancer and a lot of other great sources.

>This is the definition of tacked-on and irrelevant posting

Overwatch, but darker.

>I don't *get* something that doesn't appeal to me specifically

What's there to get, my guy? I like it. I don't know why I like it, but I do. I don't really analyze the things I enjoy.

But if you want me to try and explain it, let's give it a shot.

I guess it has something to do with thematic and conceptual variety that comes with fantasy races and magic alongside technology in a dystopian future. I like cyberpunk, but I feel like it gets a bit tedious when all your options are based on reality and speculative technological advancements that leave you on a tech-dependant chargen, with any possible themes of spiritualism, faith, paganism, or anything that isn't inherently related to how shitty humans are left aside entirely because there isn't a context that supports them as thoroughly as other themes.

Not to mention that pure cyberpunk can deal to some tedious tropes of transhumanism, "are androids people?", "are augments bad?" and things that I consider to be our current everyday life except with a higher level of tech. I guess the mysticism that fantasy brings to the table is enough for me to be able to shake things up as a player and game master without resorting to the same shit over and over again, because since the context is different, so are the possibilities you can present.

There's nothing wrong with cyberpunk. In fact, I think most people don't feel the same way that I do about it, but once you've shifted through the same tropes and themes over and over again it gets really stale, and I think fantasy can bring breathe some fresh air into the genre.

Clusmy in the sense that they don't feel fully integrated with each other. We see a lot of how the physical and digital affect each other, a lot of how the physical and the magical affect each other, but very little of how the magical and the digital intersect. I actually like the concept of technomancers a lot because they blend the magical/intuitive with the digital, but in my experience technomancers don't come up much in play.

My tone is maybe a little bit more contrarian than it needs to be; I'm mostly pointing out bits I find weird in a system I generally like

That is what roleplaying mostly is about, rehashing genres and settings, making them accessible to play. Welcome to Veeky Forums.

>magic and tech for the most part don't integrate because magic operates on a macro level, not bits and bytes
>ergo it's tacked on and dumb!
Moron.

>very little of how the magical and the digital intersect.
And that's good. If magic could manipulate bits and bytes, magic users would be OP.

>but in my experience technomancers don't come up much in play.
They were introduced much later. Crucially, technomancers CAN manipulate bits and bytes but they can't do magic on a macro level, again ensuring balance.

If you're skimming the books and still can't find anything magic-related that you could do something interesting with, then I think it's more a problem with you.

Technomancers are also not magic.

they're british. What the fuck did you expect?

...

> Not magic
> Can interact with and hack the matrix without any special equipment because ???
> Can't use this power as well if they take cyberware

I get that fluff-wise technomancer powers don't come from magic, but they're functionally cyber-wizards

You'd best start believing in Tolkienesque fantasy elements and dystopian sci-fi stories, user.

YOU'RE IN ONE

I think Shadowrun simply doesn't care about the social commentary aspect which is the backbone of cyberpunk, it just wants the aesthetic of it. All in all, it's urban fantasy that happens to be cyberpunk and futuristic.

I don't get it either, OP. Magical mutation I get, but not why said magical mutation would be exactly some standard fantasy races. In fact, I don't get why there are races at all instead of random mutations, which would make all mutants different. I think it was for marketing purposes ("it's cyberpunk, but you can play an elf!").

Don't worry with the part of the fan base that defends it, though. That's just a standard turf war/choice bias thing. They don't even know how what they would tell you in this thread if shadowrun would have been written with magic but without fantasy races.

>Magical mutation
?
What do you mean by that?

The trolls etc are not trolls because they are of some other species. They are trolls, orcs, dwarves etc because they were magically mutated to be such in a worldwide magical event.

>magically mutated to be such in a worldwide magical event.
they weren't mutated. The genes for them were in them all the time, just not expressed due to lack of mana.
During the fourth world they had their Metahuman forms.
During the fifth world they all had Human forms, due to the Troll, Ork, Dwarf and Elf genes not expressing
During the sixth world they are again in their Metahuman forms.

They aren't mutants, they just couldn't express their metatype without an amount of ambient magic during conception/puberty. If anyone was capable of checking for it, a significant amount of any given troll's human ancestors would also be flagged as trolls.
There actually are "random mutants" known as changelings, but even they are actually different metatypes that have yet to/won't ever express en masse.

Shadowrun isn't actually D&D, but cyberpunk. It's Earthdawn, but having gone through 2 more cycles. They don't have the license to Earthdawn anymore, but they haven't actually changed anything aside from direct references. People are Orcs and Elves because their ancient ancestors were Orcs and Elves before the magic went away and their kids starting being born as baseline humans. Now that the magic has come back, they're consistently being born as Orcs and Elves again.

LOL I have an old version of shadowrun I guess.

OK so the explanation is actually even worse than "it was a marketing thing". They were actually trying to make a modern earthdawn setting. Hahahah

It's not "a modern earthdawn setting". It's literally Earthdawn jumped an arbitrary number of years forwards after the Horrors wiped almost everything out.

its not for every one.
they mostly looked at the times, saw dnd and cyberpunk 2020 and told themselves: why not both?

It is a part of the lore. The Awakening, the return of magic to the world coinciding with the rise of technology.

Dragons and helicopter gunships. What is not to like?

Its more like, “why does Neapolitan icecream exist?”

>LOL I have an old version of shadowrun I guess.

Nope, you just failed to understand the lore, because what you stated was never the case.

Kind of to be expected from a troll, though.

>“why does Neapolitan icecream exist?”
Chocolate ice cream is tasty
Vanilla ice cream is tasty
Strawberry ice cream is tasty
why not combine them?

Neapolitan ice cream can end up just muddling the flavors when you put them together. Sort of like combining a bunch of different colors of paint just gets you brown.

The presense of the dragons keeps the horrors of the further realms from seeping into reality. Still, conjurers can c all forth said abominations if you want.

It came about as a bastard child of necessity and Earthdawn, with an absolutely repulsive amount of plagiarism from Gibson.

Earthdawn was the fantasy RPG published by the creators of Shadowrun before Shadowrun. They tried to shunt a cyberpunk sequel into the same continuity, which is why we have elves with cyberware, and dragon CEOs.

Ideally, they just wanted to launch something "different", with terrible plagiarized design and embarrassing 80s racism.

@56984195
>with an absolutely repulsive amount of plagiarism from Gibson
>Ideally, they just wanted to launch something "different", with terrible plagiarized design and embarrassing 80s racism.
just like Cyberpunk 2020 : ^ )

Yes, so a modern earthdawn setting.

That is why my favorite cyberpunk RPG is shadowrun with all the fantasy nonsense stripped out. I mean, not the magic and stuff, that's cool, but the elves, dragons, and so on.

>They were actually trying to make a modern earthdawn setting.
>earthdawn was made 4 years after shadowrun
???

>Earthdawn was the fantasy RPG published by the creators of Shadowrun before Shadowrun.

>earthdawn was made 4 years after shadowrun

Explain this time loop thing here