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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-08-14, 11:20 PM (EDT) |
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"Memories of games gone by..."
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I had occasion to be reminded this evening of an incident that occurred in the Shadowrun campaign I played in back in high school. This was in about 1990, so we're talking about the first edition of Shadowrun here, the one where you basically needed all the six-sided dice on the planet. Somewhere around here I still have a giant Ziploc bag full of gaming dice, including all the D6es from a Challenge Yahtzee set I found at a yard sale. Challenge Yahtzee came with 20 or 25 D6es that were about half the size of regular ones, which came in really handy for rolling my Decker's whole Hacking Pool in one throw. The thing I remembered did not actually have anything to do with that, though; it had to do with the moment, late in one marathon Friday-night/Saturday-morning session, when our street samurai mistimed a jump aboard a moving Citymaster. (All dialogue in the anecdote to follow is paraphrased from memory, obviously.) This led to the following exchange between her player (Mike) and our GM (Seann): SEANN OK, roll Quickness. [Ed. note I think? That was the stat you used for what would be a DEX check in D&D, right? It's been a long damn time.] MIKE (an insufficient result) SEANN Nope, you missed the door. MIKE Is there anything else I can grab? SEANN ... the back wheel? MIKE So I'm dead, is what you're saying. SEANN Pretty much, yeah. Wherepon Mike prudently spent a point of Karma to do that roll over again and hopefully keep her from being killed. By now it was maybe two, two-thirty in the morning, the session had gone on longer than we thought it would, and we were all pretty punchy, and for whatever reason Seann just sort of lost control at that point. As soon as Mike did that he declared, SEANN OK! Just before you would've been crushed under the back wheel of the Citymaster, it stops. In fact, everything stops - the rain, the fire [we had blown up a warehouse and were trying to escape], everything. You're lying on the ground under the Citymaster. MIKE (puzzled) Uh... I get up? SEANN Good call. ME Can the rest of us see this? SEANN Oh sure, you guys are all still moving. It's just the world that stopped. [Mike's character's name, which I've forgotten] is climbing out from under the Citymaster. [My own character's name, which I can't remember either], you can see the driver through the window. He's frozen too. Everybody roll Intelligence. ME (highest result - Decker, don't you know) SEANN OK! You're the first one to notice the dwarves. ME ... What. SEANN There's about two dozen of them, you're not sure where they came from. They're wearing white jumpsuits and hardhats. The leader has a clipboard. [Mike's character], he comes up to you and asks, [cartoony Brooklyn accent] "Hey lady - are the one that spent the Karma point?" MIKE (baffled, in- and out-of-character) Uh... yes? SEANN (in character) Right, OK, so whaddaya want us to do? Want us to move the Citymaster back so's you can take another shot at it? MIKE Uh... sure. SEANN (in character) We can do that. [piercing whistle] AWRIGHT, BOYS! Let's get the lady set up for ten seconds ago! At which point, Seann gleefully explained, the dwarves brought in a crane and moved the Citymaster, while another team of them hustled the rest of us back to the spots we were in a second ago and so forth, like stagehands redressing a set for another take. SEANN (in character) OK, yer all set! Good luck, lady! C'mon, boys, let's get outta here!
On her second attempt, Mike's character made the jump and was able to commandeer the Citymaster to facilitate the team's escape, at which point we all decided that we had probably better get to bed and reconvene at a later date to examine the mission's aftermath. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
422 posts |
Mar-09-14, 03:07 AM (EDT) |
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1. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #0
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I have to give some serious props to your friend Seann. That sort of weird post-modern meta storytelling device is de rigeur nowadays, especially if you're reading the right sort of fiction, but back in 1990 it involved thinking considerably outside of the box. >This was in about 1990, so we're talking about the first edition of Shadowrun >here, the one where you basically needed all the six-sided dice on the planet. Hoo boy. If you think Shadowrun involved a lot of dice, 1990 would have been just before White Wolf's various gamelines, and by extension various flavors of the Storyteller system, took off huge. Storyteller as a game system is better than most, I feel, if executed properly, but lord almighty you ended up rolling just... just an insane amount of d10s. And back in the 90s those could be a lot harder to track down than d6s, too. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Verbena
Charter Member
439 posts |
Mar-09-14, 07:55 AM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #1
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>Hoo boy. If you think Shadowrun involved a lot of dice, 1990 >would have been just before White Wolf's various gamelines, and by >extension various flavors of the Storyteller system, took off huge. >Storyteller as a game system is better than most, I feel, if executed >properly, but lord almighty you ended up rolling just... just an >insane amount of d10s. And back in the 90s those could be a lot harder >to track down than d6s, too. Pff. The regular WoD games were nothing. Exalted? THAT took all of the every d10s. -------- this world created by the hands of the gods everything is false everything is a LIE the final days have come now let everything be destroyed --mu |
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Verbena
Charter Member
439 posts |
Mar-10-14, 00:22 AM (EDT) |
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10. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #3
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>This is true, although in the intervening decade between the World of >Darkness taking off huge and Exalted coming out, it began much, much >easier to acquire those bucketfuls of d10s. I was very young in the >early nineties, but I do recall that any non-standard die could be >tricky to find if you weren't fortunate enough to have a dedicated >gaming store nearby; even getting extra d20s could be hard. After Storyteller-type systems became more popular they started selling 10-packs of dice, 6 or so of which were d10's. But before then? Not so much. > >(Pretty stoked about the third edition of Exalted, by the way.) Well, I love the setting and the concept, but Exalted 1st was broken to hell and gone, and Exalted 2nd was...well, it fixed those problems but introduced new ones, and the addenda to the rules made it this -horrid- kluge. So yeah, I really do want to see what they're doing with Exalted 3rd? But the fact that they're adding in Brawl again doesn't inspire confidence. Worse, I'm a Sidereal nut, so I'm going to have to wait ages to see how they will be updated. -------- this world created by the hands of the gods everything is false everything is a LIE the final days have come now let everything be destroyed --mu |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
422 posts |
Mar-10-14, 11:26 PM (EDT) |
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21. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #10
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>Well, I love the setting and the concept, but Exalted 1st was broken >to hell and gone, and Exalted 2nd was...well, it fixed those problems >but introduced new ones, and the addenda to the rules made it this >-horrid- kluge. The Exalted 2.5 errata at least made it playable and mostly balanced, tho. It removed Paranoia Combat as a thing and made the focus more on interesting combos and dodge/soak than perfect defenses. >So yeah, I really do want to see what they're doing >with Exalted 3rd? But the fact that they're adding in Brawl again >doesn't inspire confidence. I'm actually kind of glad it is making a comeback. I always loved Brawl. If you haven't already seen it, some kind folks have compiled a giant master list of... not exactly everything the line developers have ever said about 3e, but damn close. There's literally several thousand words worth of info straight from John Morke, Holden Shearer, Grabowski, Stephen Lea Shepherd, etc, right over here. They go in-depth into what they felt were the flaws of 2e and how they plan to fix'em, and what new stuff they're bringing forth. >Worse, I'm a Sidereal nut, so I'm going to >have to wait ages to see how they will be updated. Another Sidereals fan! My friend, you are talking to someone who once spent an entire evening on these very forums abusing Ben's forbearance by writing, and posting, UF/Sidereals fanfic. I think it is safe to say I am equally as nutty for them as you are. :) I am particularly excited by the fact that they are apparently involved in a long "Cold War" with the Lunars, such that the leading cause of death for young Sidereals in the field is, in fact, getting ripped apart by a shapeshifting monster from the depths of oh-my-god. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Senji
Member since Apr-27-07
116 posts |
Mar-11-14, 04:33 AM (EDT) |
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23. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #21
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>Another Sidereals fan! My friend, you are talking to someone who once >spent an entire evening on these very forums abusing Ben's forbearance >by writing, and posting, UF/Sidereals fanfic. I think it is safe to >say I am equally as nutty for them as you are. :) Speaking as the person whose character is now the go-to when they need a "Silver Faction" NPC... :-) I didn't really like 2e Sidereals though. OTOH 1e really wasn't all that balanced (or rather say "it was all too easy to make a gimped character who wasn't as awesome as your party members" since the power levels don't really encompass "balance"). S.
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
422 posts |
Mar-09-14, 03:08 PM (EDT) |
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5. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #4
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... oh my god. Pasha, you are my new favorite person. (Long personal story incoming.) From 2000 to 2006, I was in a very long-running Amber DRPG campaign. (If anyone here has ever wandered over to Phil Moyer's personal web pages, you may have seen his truly frickin' enormous gallery of art relating to said campaign.) There was eventually some... friction between our GM and myself regarding my character goals. The universe we were playing in was becoming increasingly and increasingly god-heavy as we went along. Not just the Serpent and the Unicorn, a bunch of others. People were actually undergoing apotheosis on a fairly regular basis and turning into gods themselves. The eventual plan by most people involved was that we'd tool up into our own divine army and go kick the shit out of the insane Lovecraftian entities threatening our universe. Except for me. My PC had had some... bad experiences, and found the way in which our Dworkin-equivalent was organizing the universe to be morally and ethically appalling. She wanted to start murdering gods. Lots of gods. (For UF context, imagine if one of the Midgardians who fought in Ragnarok looked around afterwards and went "Fucking hell, this is how the universe is organized? This is how things are run? Oh, I don't think so" and dedicated themselves to figuring out how to murder all demons and gods, everywhere, and establish a formally neutral and mechanistic underlying universal cosmology predicated on maximizing mortal free will and removing the possibility of beings like Skuld being able to hack peoples souls just because they want to.) This didn't precisely work out well for me in the end. There was... a lot of drama, lets just say. Anyway. There's a whole RPG out there that is purely about hunting down gods and murdering them in their stupid divine faces? Hell. Yes. New favorite person. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-09-14, 03:21 PM (EDT) |
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6. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #5
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>(For UF context, imagine if one of the Midgardians who fought in >Ragnarok looked around afterwards and went "Fucking hell, this >is how the universe is organized? This is how things are run? >Oh, I don't think so" and dedicated themselves to figuring out how to >murder all demons and gods, everywhere, and establish a formally >neutral and mechanistic underlying universal cosmology predicated on >maximizing mortal free will and removing the possibility of beings >like Skuld being able to hack peoples souls just because they want >to.) > >This didn't precisely work out well for me in the end. There was... a >lot of drama, lets just say. As that quintessential thespian Wesley Snipes once put it, some motherfucker's always trying to ice-skate uphill. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Pasha
Charter Member
791 posts |
Mar-09-14, 06:55 PM (EDT) |
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9. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #5
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-09-14 AT 07:00 PM (EDT) >Anyway. There's a whole RPG out there that is purely about hunting >down gods and murdering them in their stupid divine faces? And it's free to download! One of my favorite characters was a goblin (he didn't spend much time as one, but that's not the story). I would, after every battle that we killed stuff, cook it up and eat it. One thing when this was a Dire Bear or something, but the vampire lord raised everyone's eyebrows. So, one of the other characters in the game swore a blood oath to kill the God of his people (long story). I spent the rest of the game (while we were tracking down said God to fuck his day up) asking the priests and cooks in every town we came across what herbs and spices would make a God taste extra yummy. >Hell. Yes. The elevator pitch for Mythender is "So, have you ever wanted to stab Thor in his face?" >New favorite person. Hey, I didn't write the thing. But the guy who did is one of the better humans I know. -- -Pasha "Don't change the subject" "Too slow, already did." |
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pjmoyer
Charter Member
1213 posts |
Mar-10-14, 00:38 AM (EDT) |
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11. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #5
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>From 2000 to 2006, I was in a very long-running Amber DRPG campaign. >(If anyone here has ever wandered over to Phil Moyer's personal web >pages, you may have seen his truly frickin' enormous gallery of art >relating to said campaign.) That would be http://www.jurai.net/~pmoyer/Art-Amber/PMArt-amber.front.html , in case anybody would be curious. Organized by campaign era and illustration/commission type! >There was eventually some... friction between our GM and myself >regarding my character goals. The universe we were playing in was >becoming increasingly and increasingly god-heavy as we went along. Not >just the Serpent and the Unicorn, a bunch of others. People were >actually undergoing apotheosis on a fairly regular basis and turning >into gods themselves. The eventual plan by most people involved >was that we'd tool up into our own divine army and go kick the shit >out of the insane Lovecraftian entities threatening our universe. Well, for what it's worth, my PC was starting to have some doubts as well -- mostly due to the scattershottedness of the whole deal. She wasn't morally opposed to it per-se; hey, who is she to criticize life choices, little miss "I decided to take Abyss because I justified it to myself as being tactically necessary"? But she wanted at least some control on if/when any apotheosis would occur, to have it happen on her own terms, not just luck of the draw. Something like the Mystaran model seemed reasonable, if anything... >This didn't precisely work out well for me in the end. There was... a >lot of drama, lets just say. *tries very VERY hard to keep from collapsing with pained laughter* *cough* Okay, I'm better now. --- Philip (also, for those curious, Shiori's ascension would have looked something like this.)
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Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" | |
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Nathan
Charter Member
1101 posts |
Mar-10-14, 00:52 AM (EDT) |
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12. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #11
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>>This didn't precisely work out well for me in the end. There was... a >>lot of drama, lets just say. > >*tries very VERY hard to keep from collapsing with pained laughter* > >*cough* > >Okay, I'm better now. Ah. Understatement. ----- "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious." |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
422 posts |
Mar-11-14, 00:30 AM (EDT) |
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22. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #12
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>Ah. Understatement. Yeah, if you guys think my personality here on the boards is a curious mix of squirrely and pedantic with some rare moments of insight, imagine me roleplaying in real-time, where I don't have the benefit of many long minutes to mull things over before saying something really stupid. :) (I once challenged the Logrus to a steel cage match.) -Merc Keep Rat |
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laudre
Member since Nov-14-06
257 posts |
Mar-11-14, 03:41 PM (EDT) |
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31. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #27
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>I know who Bull is -- nice guy, but haven't talked to him much because >he's ShadowRun, and I'm Battletech.... Well, to be fair, when we do talk tabletop gaming in fleet chat (and we use a custom channel for it, so that it doesn't matter which faction you're on at the moment... or which game you're playing, for that matter, since the custom channels also include Champions Online and Neverwinter), it's almost never Shadowrun that I recall. I know about Bull's work on the game mostly because of his sig block in the RPG.net forums and because of his grumblings about con season in fleet chat :). (And I'd completely forgotten that Stephen Lea Sheppard is one of the developers of Exalted 3E... I mostly think of him as the RPG.net mod that appeared on Freaks & Geeks and is generally a rather stand-up guy.) "Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis." - Kenneth Boulding |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-10-14, 04:59 PM (EDT) |
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15. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #13
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-14 AT 01:08 PM (EDT) >And just for the record, they came out with SR5E last year....:) I read something about that. I'm pretty sure I don't hold with the "revise backstory so new edition is as far ahead of present day as original edition was in its time" thing. I think that wacky "man, we did not account sufficiently for Moore's Law" thing that '80s cyberpunk has going on is part of what defines the form these days; "updating" it is like updating Napoleonic Wars fiction to include steamships and wireless telegraphy. That could be cool (indeed, that's basically what steampunk is), but it's not the same thing. Boy, I said thing a lot in that paragraph. Also, interfacing with the interwebs using a direct neural interface standard so sloppily designed that you can be injured by sudden disconnection was already daft - classical cyberpunk's equivalent of Star Trek consoles lacking basic overload protection or bottomless pits in Star Wars not having handrails - but doing so over wifi would be approximately the stupidest thing any human being has done since the first Cro-Magnon hunting casualty looked at a woolly mammoth and thought, Yeah, I can take him by myself. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
422 posts |
Mar-10-14, 08:06 PM (EDT) |
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17. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #15
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>I read something about that. I'm pretty sure I don't hold with the >"revise backstory so new edition is as far ahead of present day as >original edition was in its time" thing. I think that wacky "man, we >did not account sufficiently for Godwin's Law" thing that '80s >cyberpunk has going on is part of what defines the form these days; >"updating" it is like updating Napoleonic Wars fiction to include >steamships and wireless telegraphy. That could be cool (indeed, >that's basically what steampunk is), but it's not the same thing. Thing is, there's definitely a market out there for people who want the cyberpunk aesthetic, but don't particularly care for the now-outdated version of the future it represents. I suppose they could simply make an entirely new game, but... I dunno. It starts to feel more like you're mucking about with parallel world stuff rather than future dystopia stuff. That's a bit different than dicking around with the past, which remains safely in another country. It's worth noting that you personally, if I recall correctly, decided to write Iron Age from a standpoint of "what would a cyberpunk Japan in the 2030s look like extrapolating from the tech base as I know it in the aughts" rather than rigorously restricting yourself to extrapolating from what the original writers of BGC knew in the 80s/early 90s. That's not precisely the same thing, but it is in the same ballpark. Presumably the guys updating Shadowrun had similar motivations. >Also, interfacing with the interwebs using a direct neural interface >standard so sloppily designed that you can be injured by sudden >disconnection was already daft I was always prepared to write that off as some sort of inherent danger in the direct neural interfaces they can't design around and merely live with because the things are so useful. Like, every day I strap myself into a relatively fragile steel and fiberglass frame filled with dangerous chemicals, many of which are combustible, and hurtle myself at dangerous speeds in a narrow, confined geographic space with other people doing the same thing, many of whom, statistically, are not qualified to be doing so. Despite the presence of many different safety devices, if my conveyance comes to an sudden and abrupt halt in a way contraindicated by its design specs, or if I exit it while it is in motion, the odds are very high that I will be serious injured and possibly killed, and there's literally nothing that can be done about that. But I keep using it anyway, because the advantages it offers are so amazing. I see it working the same way with the direct neural links. There's just a certain inherent level of danger with jacking the internet directly into your noggin, but people sort of live with it, and much like driving it is plenty safe until you start doing highly illegal shit with your heavily modified rig. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-10-14, 08:58 PM (EDT) |
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18. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #17
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>Thing is, there's definitely a market out there for people who want >the cyberpunk aesthetic, but don't particularly care for the >now-outdated version of the future it represents.I expect there is, or the publishers of the current edition wouldn't be doing it. I'm just not a fan. >It's worth noting that you personally, if I recall correctly, decided >to write Iron Age from a standpoint of "what would a cyberpunk >Japan in the 2030s look like extrapolating from the tech base as I >know it in the aughts" rather than rigorously restricting yourself to >extrapolating from what the original writers of BGC knew in the >80s/early 90s. I suppose so, though that was not (as the "update" of the Shadowrun backstory obviously is) a deliberate and conscious design choice so much as a side effect of the process. As against cross-pollinating it with the later edition of itself and various bits of the Marvel Comics universe, that particular detail seemed somewhat less than entirely important. >I was always prepared to write that off as some sort of inherent >danger in the direct neural interfaces they can't design around and >merely live with because the things are so useful. Well... that's fine, I suppose, in a fictional world where electrical engineering never developed as a profession and people still think electricity is a magical fluid that affects that luminiferous æther in various unintuitive ways. Which, given that Shadowrun is set in the Sixth World, I suppose it could be over there. That doesn't excuse Cyberpunk 2020, though. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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twipper
Member since Jan-8-03
215 posts |
Mar-11-14, 04:39 PM (EDT) |
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34. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #18
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>Well... that's fine, I suppose, in a fictional world where electrical >engineering never developed as a profession and people still think >electricity is a magical fluid that affects that luminiferous >æther in various unintuitive ways. Which, given that >Shadowrun is set in the Sixth World, I suppose it could be over >there. That doesn't excuse Cyberpunk 2020, though. :) Point, Ben. :) In minor defense of Cyberpunk 2020, it was to me the only tabletop RPG that really nailed the lethality of firearms. Character death wasn't so much a case of overly nasty GM as simple mechanics. Brian
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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
40 posts |
Mar-12-14, 02:05 PM (EDT) |
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42. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #34
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Deadlands (Weird West and Wasted West, not the flimsy reboot that's out now) did a pretty good job of making guns quite scary. Basically, a person takes a Wound for every ~6 damage inflicted on him, and at 5 Wounds, the relevant piece of the body falls off (head, torso, limbs). Your standard six-shooter inflicts the total of 3d6 for damage, but here's the catch: the dice Ace (or explode or what-have-you), so every 6 nets you an additional roll that adds to the total, so every once in a while, your standard issue .38 revolver would plunk 10-15 Wounds into some poor jerk's guts, and here's your new character sheet. "This is probably a stupid question, but . . ." |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-10-14, 10:30 PM (EDT) |
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20. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #19
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-14 AT 03:28 PM (EDT) >It always bugged me, on a fundamental level, that the entire CONCEPT >of "black ice" falls apart in seconds if you simply install a fuse in >the circuit. It's even worse than that, actually. There is no reason for a control interface to involve dangerous voltages in any way, and no reason for software to be able to introduce them where the cabling standards should prevent them from being in the first place. It's not a question of bandwidth - at the wire-coming-out-of-the-wall level, the biggest, baddest data trunk in the world isn't going to give you a lethal, or even perceptible, electric shock if you unplug it and touch the conductors. Digital telecommunications simply don't involve dangerous quantities of electricity. (Particularly since the biggest transmisssion lines aren't even electrical. The only way a person could be injured by fiber optics would be to suffer an eye injury from direct laser exposure, and that would take some doing.) So the only way black ice could work is if the interface hardware were deliberately designed so that there was a mechanism inside it that had no other function but to kill users - and frankly, even most cyberpunk settings don't reach those levels of tinfoil hattery. And that's just for hardwired connectivity! Over a wireless network the concept is even more ludicrous. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
167 posts |
Mar-11-14, 02:40 PM (EDT) |
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29. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #20
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>So the only way black ice could work is if the interface >hardware were deliberately designed so that there was a >mechanism inside it that had no other function but to kill users - and >frankly, even most cyberpunk settings don't reach those levels >of tinfoil hattery. And that's just for hardwired connectivity! Over >a wireless network the concept is even more ludicrous. I didn't play much Shadowrun, but I read a lot of the fluff and a lot of the fiction that (I'm told) influenced it (Gibson, et al.), and the way black ice always worked in my mind was not lethal voltage but rather it reprogrammed your nervous system, shutting down body functions. Truly lethal ice would shut down the heart or cause never-ending seizures or something. Less lethal would put you to sleep, nice and convenient for the corp's security team to come pick you up. And yeah, the main reason I had to come up with this is because electronics don't work that way and I don't have Suspenders of Disbelief strong enough to take it at face value. --sofaspud -- |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-11-14, 03:42 PM (EDT) |
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32. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #29
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>I didn't play much Shadowrun, but I read a lot of the fluff and >a lot of the fiction that (I'm told) influenced it (Gibson, et al.), >and the way black ice always worked in my mind was not lethal voltage >but rather it reprogrammed your nervous system, shutting down body >functions. Well, again, if the system was designed in the only way I can believe that such a system would be, all that would be coming in would be substituted sensory inputs. I suppose it might be possible to induce some kind of seizure through inappropriate stimulation of the visual cortex (that's more or less how photosensitive epilepsy works, IIRC), but again, any properly designed interface would prevent things like that from happening at a level independent of the software. Saying a clever enough hacker could program around that would be like claiming that all the bad guys need is to know your POTS phone number and they can turn off the electricity in your living room. Uh, well, no, not as such. :) I've revolved this quite a bit in my head over the years, and neither I nor anyone else who's tackled it in my presence has come up with an implementation of the black ice idea that doesn't fail the "no, I don't buy that" test. In any scenario where the design of the interface hardware has any hope of becoming a widely adopted standard, you're just never going to be able to kill somebody with software. A related matter was also my biggest problem with The Matrix, beyond even the hilariously wacky thermodynamics of the stated reason why the machines keep people around. One is expected to believe that these people are employing a cybernetic interface system that uploads the mind into a computer system, such that if you get disconnected without logging off properly, your mind is cast adrift in the system (and promptly dies because it no longer has a body to support it), while your body dies because it no longer has a mind in it? There isn't a single discipline involved there - electrical engineering, neurology, telecommunications, computer programming - wherein that idea is anything but laughable. I don't know if anyone has ever worked out the bandwidth requirement for a complete human sensorium, but I would guess that however monumental it might be, it would pale in comparison with the transfer capacity required to FTP an entire human neural map onto a server somewhere in the, what, second or two it takes to jack into or out of the Matrix. Besides which, even if you accept the idea that the mind is just the electrical pattern of the synapses in the brain (which I more or less do), you wouldn't "upload" that to a computer system in a way that meant it was no longer present inside the brain, particularly if you then pile on the conceit that you put it back when you log off. It is an idiotic movie and I am ashamed that I enjoy it so much. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
130 posts |
Mar-11-14, 03:47 PM (EDT) |
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33. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #32
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>I don't know if anyone has ever worked out the bandwidth requirement >for a complete human sensorium, but I would guess that however >monumental it might be, it would pale in comparison with the transfer >capacity required to FTP an entire human neural map onto a server >somewhere in the, what, second or two it takes to jack into or out of >the Matrix. Besides which, even if you accept the idea that the mind >is just the electrical pattern of the synapses in the brain (which I >more or less do), you wouldn't "upload" that to a computer system in a >way that meant it was no longer present inside the brain, >particularly if you then pile on the conceit that you put it >back when you log off. >You could kinda retro-justify it with the interface cable being an intrusive USB-esque connection and improperly disconnecting it would leave the underlying meatware in a corrupted state, like yanking a USB drive when it's still writing. >It is an idiotic movie and I am ashamed that I enjoy it so much. :) > There's nothing wrong with enjoying bad movies; I take great joy in watching bad kung-fu flicks. ...The Matrix counts for that ;-P -- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea |
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laudre
Member since Nov-14-06
257 posts |
Mar-12-14, 01:19 PM (EDT) |
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39. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #38
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>...unless the eyes don't actually provide it in 'high-def' and the >brain interpolates quite a bit of information based off of relatively >sparse resolution, which would kind of make sense. The high-def part of the eye is a very small part, relative to the total field of vision, but the eye is constantly moving around to keep it covering as much area as needed, depending on how wide an area you're focusing on. It's just like how there's a blind spot in the dead center of your field of vision, where there are no photoreceptive cells, but the same motion keeps you from "seeing" it. And the brain's visual processing puts all that together into a single, coherent, moving picture. "Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis." - Kenneth Boulding |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-12-14, 01:28 PM (EDT) |
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41. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #39
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>And the brain's >visual processing puts all that together into a single, coherent, >moving picture. Except when it doesn't! For a while there when I was having my ADEM attack in 2007, evoked potential testing showed that one of my eyes was reporting about 30 milliseconds behind the other one, which made perceiving anything with both eyes at once an... interesting... experience. I imagine if you were watching something using that 3D technology that involves polarized flickering and the timing on one of your lenses was screwed up, the sensation would be similar. Also, here's a fun science fact: your peripheral vision isn't even in color! You only think it is because if you notice something interesting over there, you'll turn to look at it properly and then see what color it is. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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StClair
Charter Member
514 posts |
Mar-12-14, 06:47 PM (EDT) |
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46. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #32
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-12-14 AT 06:56 PM (EDT) What you have in The Matrix is, for all intents and purposes, good ol' fashioned astral travel dressed up with a lot of technobabble. When you look past the trappings, the setting is steeped in mysticism, some acknowledged, some not. (My thought after my first viewing, all those years ago: "it's Mage: The Awakening: the Movie.")Further irony is that it would make perfect sense for this being the real mechanism behind the (other) Matrix in the SR setting - that techies somehow stumbled upon a backdoor to the astral, a form of it that exists in / reflects computer systems, like the "regular" kind mirrors the "real" world - and would explain most of the decking genre conventions which, when you come down to it, are lifted (sometimes with very little modification) from shaman dream journeys et al. Different tools, same result. But as far as I know, SR has never acknowledged this, and insists on pretending that they're completely separate things. Oh, almost forgot - as noted in an ancient but still googleable review I did of Cybergeneration, the lighter-and-softer sequel/update of Cyberpunk, the new (wireless) interface did do away with lethal feedback... but could still hit you with nasty subliminals, "basilisks", seizure-inducers, etc etc, or just a full-sensory sim of being on the wrong end of a Mortal Kombat Fatality. No actual damage (except perhaps to your SAN), but still very unpleasant. |
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BobSchroeck
Charter Member
1979 posts |
Mar-13-14, 09:38 AM (EDT) |
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49. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #46
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-13-14 AT 04:47 PM (EDT) >Further irony is that it would make perfect sense for this being the >real mechanism behind the (other) Matrix in the SR setting - that >techies somehow stumbled upon a backdoor to the astral, a form of it >that exists in / reflects computer systems, like the "regular" kind >mirrors the "real" world - and would explain most of the decking genre >conventions which, when you come down to it, are lifted (sometimes >with very little modification) from shaman dream journeys et al. >Different tools, same result. But as far as I know, SR has never >acknowledged this, and insists on pretending that they're completely >separate things. Huh. Reminds me of my online campaign, Narth 2000, which I created and ran... whoa, just about 20 years ago now. Whoa. Okay, I'm back. Anyway, in it, about a century before the campaign date mages had discovered a chunk of otherplanar space where the astral and the dream realms bordered on each other which was malleable under the force of combined magery and willpower, and where changes so made were persistent and resisted further change proportionally to the power of the one who made them. Mages could astrally project into this realm, or physically visit it, and eventually discovered that they could directly store information, magical or otherwise, in the very fabric of the space. It was basically a magical version of cyberspace, which evolved with wierd parallels and equally weird divergences from the cyberpunk equivalent. There's a short page about it on my website with some GURPS 3E specifics, if anyone cares enough. EDIT: removed an invisible character at the end of the link url that sent anyone who clicked it to my 404 page. -- Bob ------------------- My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite. |
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MuninsFire
Member since Mar-27-07
130 posts |
Mar-13-14, 12:59 PM (EDT) |
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50. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #49
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-13-14 AT 01:03 PM (EDT) > >There's a short page >about it on my website with some GURPS 3E specifics, if anyone cares >enough. The concept sounds fascinating, but that link doesn't work. I like collecting unusual settings, and that one sounds like a doozy... EDIT: Hrm! http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/cspace.shtml is the correct link, but for some reason your site doesn't like deep-linking and 404s if it's not accessed via "My Worlds | Narth2000" and then "Cerebrospace". -- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea |
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BobSchroeck
Charter Member
1979 posts |
Mar-13-14, 04:44 PM (EDT) |
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52. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #50
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LAST EDITED ON Mar-13-14 AT 04:46 PM (EDT) >The concept sounds fascinating, but that link doesn't work. > >Hrm! http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/cspace.shtml is the correct >link, but for some reason your site doesn't like deep-linking and 404s >if it's not accessed via "My Worlds | Narth2000" and then >"Cerebrospace". Well, that's weird. I get the 404, too, and for no good reason -- I'm not using any kind of content management system or anything, and it's a simple flat file. Nothing ought to keep it from appearing unless some bizarre non-printing character got into the url by mistake... Huh. Okay, this link works in Preview mode, at least... I wonder what's different. EDIT: And yes, there is an invisible character of some sort at the end of the original link. I have no idea how that happened. I'll go edit it so no one else gets to see the dubious humor of my 404 page. -- Bob ------------------- My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite. |
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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
167 posts |
Mar-17-14, 03:45 PM (EDT) |
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55. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #48
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>Like Gryphon says otherthread, even the biggest comms trunk in the >world doesn't carry enough current to make smoke roll picturesquely >out some poor lout's ears - and this is from a guy who has been neck >deep in comms for over a decade. The thump is my Suspension of >Disbelief bottoming out, so your theory comes as a blessing. Dude! How the hell have you been? Long time. Unless you're a completely different Wiregeek, in which case, oops, sorry? :) --sofaspud -- |
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Pasha
Charter Member
791 posts |
Mar-11-14, 12:25 PM (EDT) |
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25. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #15
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>>And just for the record, they came out with SR5E last year....:) > >I read something about that. I'm pretty sure I don't hold with the >"revise backstory so new edition is as far ahead of present day as >original edition was in its time" thing. This has actually been a consistent design choice throughout the editions. It allowed them to do things that changed the world permanently (chicago, for instance, and Dunkelzien >I think that wacky "man, we >did not account sufficiently for Godwin's Law" thing that '80s Did you mean Moore's Law here? Because I'm kind of confused what 80's cyberpunk and Nazis have to do with one another >cyberpunk has going on is part of what defines the form these days; >"updating" it is like updating Napoleonic Wars fiction to include >steamships and wireless telegraphy. That could be cool (indeed, >that's basically what steampunk is), but it's not the same thing. Ah. The issue here is that they decided that, instead of just re-writing the rules, they were going to play with an extrapolation of the current tech level because that's what early aught's cyberpunk was all about. Oversurveillence, drones, hackers in shady corners emptying out your bank accounts with their telephones. >Also, interfacing with the interwebs using a direct neural interface >standard so sloppily designed that you can be injured by sudden >disconnection was already daft - classical cyberpunk's Dumpshock was never (well, it might have been in 1E, I never played that) described as physical damage, but stun damage.<1> Which makes sense if you think about it as the groggy state you're in right after being suddenly woke up out of a particularly vivid dream. -- -Pasha "Don't change the subject" "Too slow, already did." <1> This is a footnote in two parts. Part the first: We're getting into kitten smashing territory here and so if you want me to shut up, go ahead and say so. Part the second: We're a little off topic here, even for Misc, so if you want me to shut up about it, I totally can. But you all stumbled into a big steaming pile of my fandom here. I can talk about RPGs the same way you all talk about STO and CoX and etc. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13491 posts |
Mar-11-14, 01:08 PM (EDT) |
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26. "RE: Memories of games gone by..."
In response to message #25
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>>I think that wacky "man, we >>did not account sufficiently for Godwin's Law" thing that '80s > >Did you mean Moore's Law here? Ha! Yes, yes I did. That's a trailing pointer from a fun thing that happened in history-of-technology class a while ago, in which Prof. Segal asked if anyone knew what Moore's Law was, and the guy at the end of the table put his hand up and said, "Sooner or later someone will mention Hitler?" --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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