Like my overwhelming emotion about it is just... "WHY?"
Like imagine if Call of Cthulhu was out... then they made a competitor game that was Call of Cuthulu, but there were elves and dwarves... or Vampire the Masquerade... but there were also halflings...
Like I've never gotten into it so I can't judge, but I just don't get how throwing high fantasy into the cyberpunk future wouldn't detract from both...
Like honestly the opposite of shadowrun would seems way cooler on paper... Shadowrun is a world where high fantasy has crashed into the real cyberpunk world through some sort of cataclym... It'd seem a fantasy world that just kept technologically advancing til they were cyberpunk would be way more interesting. Is the wizards guild losing influence now that Hackers are doing more and information is the main currency... how are the ancient order of knights adapting to everyone being an augmented killing machine... are they outgunned and the whole thing is falling to chaos... or have they made the deal with the devil and are now leading the trend? Is it an age of high colonialism where all the dark lands are being conquered because the humans and civilized races are now so technologically advanced?
Like I've never played shadowrun... but Its world feels disrupted enough that litterally anything could happen at any second and there's no predictability or consistency that the characters choices can have real consequences... like you can't dispatch the kill teams after the players for doing something dumb, when so little makes sense and no one even knows what would be dumb.
To add onto Iconochasm's reply, Shadowrun is very aware of the conflict between the natural, magical world and the artificial, technological world, and it makes for a really nasty setting when you think about it for long enough. Getting augs makes you less good at magic (and there is a character in the second game from the Harebrained Schemes trilogy who exploits this for a reason), one of the top 10 megacorps literally performs blood magic (or at least is heavily, heavily implied to benefit from it), and the powers that be are where they are because they've tamed the chaos the world gives rise to.
That despair in the face of megacorp dominance takes on entire new dimensions when the CEO is a millennia-old Literal Fucking Dragon that knows ancient lore beyond space and time and can cram new research faster than any metahuman.
I mean... yes, but that's still just Saburo Arasaka...
The dude's a 180 year old Japanese flying ace from ww2 that's run his company and most the world more than most people's grandparents have been alive, and he pretty much literally eats people's souls
but I just don't get how throwing high fantasy into the cyberpunk future wouldn't detract from both...
No, it adds to it. Shadowrun is a hilariously awful hellscape that merges the alienation of cyberpunk with the sheer danger and wonder of urban dark fantasy, against the mundane reality of A Boring Dystopia. Imagine being a wage mage whose day job is just walking a perimeter around some megacorp chip factory, casting the same ward against nature spirits every 6 minutes. Being in the poor part of town and hearing there are literal flesh-eating ghouls in the sewers. Or seeing an entire assault helicopter full of a Fast Response Team crash and burn because some teenaged punk had a dream where Dragonslayer taught him Lightning Bolt, and told him to go rage against the machine.
like you can't dispatch the kill teams after the players for doing something dumb
Noooo, Shadowrun has kill teams a plenty. On top of the cyberwarriors and elite hackers, they also have combat mages who can track you through the astral based on blood traces you left at the crime scene, and then levitate invisible snipers into overwatch positions.
The real "trick" of doing shadowruns is that the world is a nightmare of jurisdictions, so if you can evade or hold off pursuit long enough to get extra-territorial, you can probably dodge consequences for the time being. But over time, every team will build up a list of corps and governments that want you dead, so that gets harder and harder, unless you take active measures about it.
And that's why it's so fun that it's based in the real world. There is so much real history, that hundreds of writers have built on over decades of the game, so that most stuff actually is pretty nailed down. You can do a run in a new city, and look up which corps or governments control which areas, then bring up Google Maps and plot out your getaway route on real highways.
But because of that, Shadowrun really only works super well if you have a whole group of mega-nerds who want to learn deep lore on top of intense crunch.
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Notes -
I honestly don't get Shadowrun...
Like my overwhelming emotion about it is just... "WHY?"
Like imagine if Call of Cthulhu was out... then they made a competitor game that was Call of Cuthulu, but there were elves and dwarves... or Vampire the Masquerade... but there were also halflings...
Like I've never gotten into it so I can't judge, but I just don't get how throwing high fantasy into the cyberpunk future wouldn't detract from both...
Like honestly the opposite of shadowrun would seems way cooler on paper... Shadowrun is a world where high fantasy has crashed into the real cyberpunk world through some sort of cataclym... It'd seem a fantasy world that just kept technologically advancing til they were cyberpunk would be way more interesting. Is the wizards guild losing influence now that Hackers are doing more and information is the main currency... how are the ancient order of knights adapting to everyone being an augmented killing machine... are they outgunned and the whole thing is falling to chaos... or have they made the deal with the devil and are now leading the trend? Is it an age of high colonialism where all the dark lands are being conquered because the humans and civilized races are now so technologically advanced?
Like I've never played shadowrun... but Its world feels disrupted enough that litterally anything could happen at any second and there's no predictability or consistency that the characters choices can have real consequences... like you can't dispatch the kill teams after the players for doing something dumb, when so little makes sense and no one even knows what would be dumb.
To add onto Iconochasm's reply, Shadowrun is very aware of the conflict between the natural, magical world and the artificial, technological world, and it makes for a really nasty setting when you think about it for long enough. Getting augs makes you less good at magic (and there is a character in the second game from the Harebrained Schemes trilogy who exploits this for a reason), one of the top 10 megacorps literally performs blood magic (or at least is heavily, heavily implied to benefit from it), and the powers that be are where they are because they've tamed the chaos the world gives rise to.
That despair in the face of megacorp dominance takes on entire new dimensions when the CEO is a millennia-old Literal Fucking Dragon that knows ancient lore beyond space and time and can cram new research faster than any metahuman.
I mean... yes, but that's still just Saburo Arasaka...
The dude's a 180 year old Japanese flying ace from ww2 that's run his company and most the world more than most people's grandparents have been alive, and he pretty much literally eats people's souls
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No, it adds to it. Shadowrun is a hilariously awful hellscape that merges the alienation of cyberpunk with the sheer danger and wonder of urban dark fantasy, against the mundane reality of A Boring Dystopia. Imagine being a wage mage whose day job is just walking a perimeter around some megacorp chip factory, casting the same ward against nature spirits every 6 minutes. Being in the poor part of town and hearing there are literal flesh-eating ghouls in the sewers. Or seeing an entire assault helicopter full of a Fast Response Team crash and burn because some teenaged punk had a dream where Dragonslayer taught him Lightning Bolt, and told him to go rage against the machine.
Noooo, Shadowrun has kill teams a plenty. On top of the cyberwarriors and elite hackers, they also have combat mages who can track you through the astral based on blood traces you left at the crime scene, and then levitate invisible snipers into overwatch positions.
The real "trick" of doing shadowruns is that the world is a nightmare of jurisdictions, so if you can evade or hold off pursuit long enough to get extra-territorial, you can probably dodge consequences for the time being. But over time, every team will build up a list of corps and governments that want you dead, so that gets harder and harder, unless you take active measures about it.
And that's why it's so fun that it's based in the real world. There is so much real history, that hundreds of writers have built on over decades of the game, so that most stuff actually is pretty nailed down. You can do a run in a new city, and look up which corps or governments control which areas, then bring up Google Maps and plot out your getaway route on real highways.
But because of that, Shadowrun really only works super well if you have a whole group of mega-nerds who want to learn deep lore on top of intense crunch.
Ok that does sound more interesting
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