disposable society, basically you have to buy new armor after every fight.  keeps the npcs in business

In reply to Siran (msg # 220):

My comment was not about Mega-Damage. It is about my amazement that Kevin Sembieda allowed anyone else to put his primary game in any other system.
During the early 2000s d20 boom, Palladium would have been one of the best companies to jump on the d20 bandwagon. They would have made money hand over fist left and right, but Kevin has some incredibly stupid ideas of how IPs work. He won't allow recording devices if he's speaking at a con because he thinks everything he says is his personal IP.

Quick question, if anyone knows the answer:

In the Puyallup section of Seattle 2072 a place called Graham Cracker City is listed as a location but I can't find any further info on it. What is it exactly?  Anyone know?

It's a neighborhood within the district of Puyallup. It's not as common or as familiar as Tarislar or Carbonado. Very little has been written about overall though besides its security rating of E. There may be something in the original 1e CRB or the Seattle Sourcebook for 1e but I don't have mine handy to check.

Hello everybody, glad to join the community.

In reply to Shaman (msg # 224):

When I saw that "Graham Cracker City" the first thing I thought of was, "It's a hacker (decker) hangout!" :)

Both 'cracker' and GCC, which is a compiler. (technically GNU Compiler Collection).

I appreciate the help.  I haven't found anything on it and I have an adventure for my home group that passes through a homebrew version of GCC and I didn't want to contradict anything in canon. Makes me wonder if it showed up in one of the many SR videos games?

I don't think it has turned up anywhere significant. Which makes it a great place to do what you like without impacting any canon stuff

Welcome!

In reply to witchdoctor (msg # 227):

It is your world, in your game.  If you want to tweak the cannon, then dont feel compelled to not do a story line because cannon.

If you want to preserve cannon, then tell the story the way you want, and "fix" it by the BBEG escapes at the last minute, had a protection spell, was actually an imposter, the data was corrupted, the data was made up, it was all a rouse from the beginning.

Have fun and tell a good story.

In reply to witchdoctor (msg # 227):

Here's the great thing about running campaigns. You just have to be internally consistent and keep note of what changes you make.
My Forgotten Realms and Shadowrun deviate from canon as I don't acknowledge the garbage that was 4E D&D and what they did to Toril along with the century time jump. In Shadowrun, I don't care for the meta of SR6 at all, so it won't happen in my games, but I have my own lesser meta plots and their fallout from previous campaigns.

One major example is the Halloweeners get an all new decimation because they made the mistake of seeing a cowboy, a literal one as he was a Changeling Minotaur that looks like a classic Greek Minotaur who was a Texas Ranger, and shot up A Real Barn Burner and Flo's Yellow Rose Seattle. Thanks to warning from Bodacious, the staff at the Yellow Rose cleared out the patrons and the 'Weeners walked into a firefight that only one survived. This little incident pissed off the owner who hired local Seattle talent to deal with the 'Weeners, and war crimes were committed. The tunnels that the 'Weeners used to get from Redmond to Downtown were destroyed along with a couple sections of road in Bellvue, The Lantern House was burned to the ground after everyone inside was slaughtered, several of Nightmare's lieutenants were killed, and Nightmare went into hiding and currently has the undivided attention of the man that founded and runs the Black Ops division of the Texas Rangers, The Shadow Rangers. Eugene wants Nightmare alive so they can have a chat before he's is given a .454 Casull lobotomy. To say the 'Weeners are in disarray and a shadow of their former selves is an understatement.
I just haven't been able to run that part of the saga yet.

In an unrelated bit, one of the runners that did the above was thrown under the bus to a Tir Paladin and blew up Flo's Yellow Rose Seattle. He's someone else Eugene wants a conversation with. That's another plot thread I need to work on.

I have another plot thread of a Troll Adept that became UCAS' Own Personal Trainer disappearing more than a year ago and not being seen since.

All of these plots are just based on old games I played in or campaigns I've run.

In reply to rallenc82 (msg # 225):

Welcome to the group.

What Jobe00 states about being internally consistent within your own canon is important. As well, you need to be certain to share those points with any players who are joining the campaign if they are major points that would be known.

In one campaign I was part of as a player, a co-gm, and for a couple of my games that I run have some major changes. One is Ghostwalker is dead and Denver has been divided up again among several factions after it was invaded by the NAN upon the dragon's death.

A biological weapon keyed to HMHVV was released across the world killing most of those afflicted by it. Because of that Asmando was invaded and is no more.

The big three AIs still exist in some form but this is less well known.

What is kept from the fluff of 6e will be very select but as my campaigns are on hold I haven't had to make those decisions yet.

I agree about having internally consistent canon.  I was just curious if I was missing something from a sourcebook I don't have...

The game in question is set in 2052.  I tweaked the timeline a bit and expanded on some of the political events of the late 20th/early 21st century for clarity.  The game is a more low-key, gritty street level game ported over to the Chronicles of Darkness system.  The characters are currently out on the Mowich Lava Flats tracking someone down for Mr. Johnson.
The GCC is serving as a home base in the search.  It's an old government refugee camp hold-over from the relocation after the Ghost Dance War that's been repurposed into a research & trade outpost for the Lava Flats.  Filled with scientists, prospectors, smugglers and other assorted scum, it's like a ShadowRun Mos Eisley.  It picked up the nickname Graham Cracker City party from it's original monicker, Government Camp C, and the fact that the pre-fab construction materials that made up the "temporary" housing was a waffled dun-colored plastic that vaguely resembled a graham cracker from a distance.

Hey team, any ideas of what you might need in a player concept for a team? Happy to work with you :)

This isn't a Shadowrun game. It's a community where you can meet other players and GMs and hopefully join or start games elsewhere.

Gah, dammit! :D

In reply to witchdoctor (msg # 234):

Something to keep in mind about Shadowrun is that the timeline diverges from reality heavily in 1989 until it was retconned to be divert in minor ways in 1986.

Technology and politics are different because they took different paths from reality. In many ways, Shadowrun was really optimistic.

+1

It is and it isn't.    In many ways, things didn't turn out this way because the government/bureaucracy kept control rather than surrendering power overtly to corporate interests like we see in Shadowrun.  It could be argued that things have certainly moved in that direction, but there's been no real (i.e. foundational) changes in technology since the end of WWII.   As someone put it: It takes the same amount of time to fly from New York to Paris now as it did in the 1950s.....

All our technology improvements are in tinyness. If cars and planes had followed the path of the IT industry we could get from New York to Paris for less than a thimblefull of aviation fuel with a ring of flying in about 1 second.

IT is a pretty foundational change. It has impacted our society in almost everyway. Mobile phones a second huge change. And AI is going to be as impacting as the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution. And that's not in shadowrun: the AIs there are just 'Gods' and 'Spirits' rather than what we are seeing arriving now which is everywhere including your toothbrush (yes my toothbrush has 'AI' in it)

Around 1980 a car mechanic who was trained by victorians could have maintained a 'modern car'. That's gone now. Not sure when the change was... but I guess around the 1990s..

Sure, computers have done a much better job that people at information collection and control.    Yes, we have improved communication technologies.; I'll give you both.    But those changes have been done with primarily (imo) military applications in mind; and I'm sure that you're aware that what we know as the internet was grown out of the ARPANET, which had specific military applications.

As for cars, they still function the same way and the only major change has been to hook a computer up to every part.   Which ultimately leads to higher costs (both in terms of repair and replacement) as well as faster obsolescence.   From what I was told back around when this change started to take place (in the 1990s as you mentioned); the basics of the car still work the same, they're just now designed so that computers micromanage every component

The whole electric car "crisis" only serves to further my point; the technologies needed for a practical (not hybrid) electric car simply were never developed.   And every (any, really) technology we need for a Star Trek like (i.e. Roddenberry) utopia has yet to reach the public domain.    No, I'm not trying to front some sort of conspiracy; I simply feel that we've been 'stage magicianed' into believing the changes that we've seen represent fundamental improvement when they don't.

But back to Shadowrun.  ^_^

Much of what fills the Cyberpunk genre is strongly influenced by Shadowrun.  One only has to look at movies like Johnny Mnemonic to see.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:16, Wed 21 Feb.

When I buy my groceries for my grandmother who is in another country I am not buying a gun or bullets. I can support her from a thousand miles away. Every day I use the internet for most of the day. I communicate with people in ten countries on my various work projects. I use AI to support about half of the tasks that I do. Sure the military wanted reliable communications, but so do lots of other things.

I haven't use money for four years ( literally) until I went to India last month. I didn't even have a purse any more... I didn't know what to do with those folding pieces of paper and what is a coin for? I pay for everything with my watch now.

Obsolescence is getting less. My last laptop lasted eight years. This one is already five years old (and it's still kick ass and it will be a few years before I replace it). I've replaced the battery in my mobile and it's five years old (and still response and awesome)

When I was a child we installed a telephone in the house. To talk to other people we often had to 'agree a time' as they would be in a phone box and we would call the phone box. When I went cycling I took coins with me for the phone box and rehearsed how to 'reverse the charges'. And had to remember where the phone boxes where (not every village had one). Now I can talk to my children with a verbal command to my 'PAN' while I am walking in the alps. And I play with them twice a week for a couple of hours even though they are in different countries.

My point about cars was that they haven't progressed the same. As I say if they had we'd get from New York to Paris is one second. But they are no longer understandable or maintainable to people without the dedicated tools. They are entirely computerised.

I think Johny Mnemonic was influenced by William Gibson and maybe Walter Jon Willaims which is I think the source material that Shadowrun came from too. Take a look at this if you haven't read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_the_Whirlwind It's just 'wow' and massively shadowrun although without magic (and came out before)

Gibson is the God of the Cyberpunk universe and Shadowrun is a world in that universe.

The screenplay for the movie Johnny Mnemonic was written by the guy that wrote the short story of the same name, William Gibson. This is why the absolute badass Molly Millions was replaced by the useless Jane character because Molly is tied more to the Neuromancer novel, so he couldn't use her in Johnny Mnemonic.

I cite Johnny's breakdown and rant about wanting room service, which I can recite verbatim, as the perfect example of a corpo losing it after having to slum it.

One major change in Shadowrun is that wireless technology never happened until after Crash 2.0. Crash 1.0 is why phone booths made a comeback in universe and why you see them in the artwork, and land lines were still a thing until the 2060s.

As for the optimism, according to Shadowbeat, all media is controlled by 15 major corps. That's a lot more than now, and didn't get to a similar number until Horizon came on the scene. Frankly, CGL and to a lesser extent FanPro, retconned things to be less optimistic compared to the real world than the FASA crew had predicted. Of course, you can go look at GURPS Cyberworld by Paul R. Hume, and it's not difficult to see things too far off from that shit show of a setting.