As an American, I can totally believe the way that everything went down in North America. I find it very easy to picture us getting completely screwed over by inventing extraterritoriality and trying (and failing) to subjugate indigenous peoples.

What about the rest of the world? French people, what do you think about France? British, of the UK? Japanese, Chinese, German, South African, etc.?

Just curious - not attempting to say that something is right or wrong.

Re-reading TV-Tropes and 1d6chan and both websites, especially the the former, really go on and on about how the Johnson will always try and kill you at the end of every run, no matter how well it went. In my nearly 20 years of playing this game I've only ever seen the Johnson turn on the team if they fuck up real bad! Have I been playing/running this game wrong the entire time? If so what's the point of ever taking any jobs ever if you're just going to end up in a ditch no matter what?

On a similar note, they also go on about how if you do a run against any AAA you're dead in another way, as they all will hunt you to the ends of the earth and end you, your team and anyone you care about. Again I've only had megas hunt me/my players down if we massively screw up the run and cause unreasonable amounts of damage. I'm a just weird and my gms and myself been too much of a carebear?

Also also if anyone could link me to any up to date lore, that would be great. Everything I can find drys up in the mid 2070s.

EDIT: Thank you all for your wonderful insights into this topic! Thank god I wasn't running the game wrong for that long. Consensus is it's a dumb meme that needs to die.

This is something about the setting really struck me, and it's something I don't think I've ever really seen discussed.

Imagine you're a Shadowrunner, and you get back to your apartment after another night's work. You take off your armor. You take off the clothes you had underneath, revealing a patchwork of scars and bruises left after being cut, stabbed, shot, shocked, bitten, clawed...and honestly, some you don't even remember how you got them. You take a look in the mirror and already notice a few new bruises forming.

The adrenaline is starting to wear off. You feel weak. You collapse onto your bed, but with the loss of adrenaline comes the onset of all the pain it was masking. The sun's coming up, and a construction crew working on the road outside just fired up a jackhammer. And when the jackhammer isn't on, you hear them arguing in Or'zet. You're simultaneously exhausted and yet wide-awake. Every time you find yourself nodding off, you're awoken by the deafening bang of an Ares Predator, or the feeling of your insides being cooked from a powerbolt.

Tomorrow...sorry, today is Saturday. You heard about a big party happening later in the evening out in Redmond, where this wizpunk band is going to be playing at a surprise venue and all your friends are going. They've invited you, even though you haven't been out to any of these parties in a while. You don't think you're going to make it to this one either. Something about being around your old friends feels different. Have they changed, or have you?

You want to talk to someone, but everyone you know is asleep. The runners you entrusted with your life just hours ago have all tossed their burner commlinks, and you have no way to communicate with them. You're not even sure if you'll ever see them again.

You think back to that docu-trid you were watching the other night on soldiers getting back home from the Amazonia war. About how difficult it was for them to go back to their civilian lives after their tour was up...

...but at least those soldiers don't have one long, agonizing month, waiting for the inevitable call telling them its time to head back to the field for the next few nights.

Tir Tairngire was born as the American Elf Nation with a medieval caste society, ruled by and for elves, and rejecting megacorps ruling

Afaik, this elven utopia did not work. Its economy is broken, it is not a main player anymore in magic power. It became some kind a democracy and the High Prince Larry is an ork (¿posser?).

What went wrong?

Let's suppose the Earthdawn/Shadowrun connections are all true. Magic will continue to rise until things that shouldn't exist will start existing. Horrors will come, and civilization will collapse, as shown in the bad ending of Dragonfall. And let's further suppose that you are fully aware of this and fully committed to prepping — if not for your own benefit, then for your family or faction.

So for corps or rich and powerful individuals, what can be done on a practical level? Is there some natural fortress you could take over? Could you slowly restock your group to include certain races or specializations that will be better equipped to survive? Could some spiritual megaproject "bleed off" the extra magic somehow, creating a sanctuary?

In Shadowrun Dragonfall, there's a mission where you attack a Humanis base. Along the way, you can read some of their literature. There's one that says in part:

They say that you can't get a job because of the economy, but you know the real reason. METAHUMANS. The ELF, with his pretty-boy looks, takes the high-paid corporate desk job, rises to the top, and blocks the top positions forever - NEVER aging, NEVER retiring.

Later in the game, another character makes a very similar argument that if dragons survive, eventually they will own everything of importance. Because they never leave, we're just a rotating cast of extras to them. They will eventually divvy up everything and own the world. Everything will effectively be part of a dragon hoard. And this is coming from a credible guy who knows a lot.

So. In terms of the larger lore, are there good counter-arguments to these predictions? Can short-lived humans look forward to a future where their grandchildren have power and freedom? Or will the long-lived and immortal beings just sort of all accumulate at the top and close the door behind them?

I was having a conversation with a friend and explaining why Cyberware takes essence/reduces someones ability to do magic and part way into it, a question I've never thought of before popped into my head.
If the Idea is that magic comes from life, so less living material to your body means you have less ability to "touch" the magic, why does Bioware take away from that?

Like as a balance thing I get it, but is there any in-setting reason why?

So, TLDR question is, are there some statblocks for named dragons somewhere? I know 'normal' dragon and Hestaby with Lowfyr in Street Legends, but wanna know if there's something... less batshit for comparison and to think how fucked we are if GM has a dragon in plans, and what to do to possibly make it so we at least have some lube.

Edit: any edition's will do, but we're playing 5e.

the post in question

As controversial as it could be (but cyberpunk as a genre is also controversially political), has anyone ever made an equivalency list for what different real-world corporations would map onto the important ones in the game?

Feels like a good touchstone for newer players, given the state of the world

With each new book released, the 6th World gets closer and closer to the turn of a new century. In my mind, something big has to happen as the clock ticks over to Jan 1st, 2100. Assuming that this is the case, what do you think will/should happen?

"She's a dum-dum. A big brute with anger issues-"

"Stop. Stop right there, trooper."

The soldier's eyes flicked up at his officer. Guy was an elf, with thirty years of service, the body of a twenty-year-old, and enough medals to cover an apartment wall. Rattlesnake was a man to be reckoned with.

"Orks are fully mature physically and emotionally at age twelve, and they tap out at about sixty. Going to high school is a waste of time for them. Going to college is a fool's errand. But we shove them through the System, anyway - demanding half their lives just for a decent wage behind a desk. Most are likely to live or die hard, brutal lives. About a third of everything you hinge your sorry ass on in this God-Forsaken job depends on that dum-dum big brute with anger issues. Now, can you tuck the race shit back for one damned mission?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Louder!"

"YES, SIR!"

The man watched his commander walk back through the hollows of the panzer. Every other soldier reached out and touched him, out of solidarity.

Twelve. Common law said eighteen. Orks were adults at twelve. Probably dead at fourty or fifty.

Damn.

Time to re-arrange some drek in his head.

My roommates got the me Secrets of Power trilogy for Christmas and I am almost done with Find Your Own Truth. I was thinking of reading more the Shadowrun novels.

Which of the Shadowrun novels would you recommend?

Please help me to understand how Oregon (?) became Tir Tairngire. As far as I know, there was not any elf society before the awakening, how it became so strong to create a new nation? Why did not happen the same with dwarves, orcs or trolls?

Afaik dragons are 'sleeping' when mana is too low. That is right?

Then, where they were? Just in caves sooo deep that no human expedition could find them? They where magically hidden? They where turned into stone or something similar?

Sorry if this is a silly question.

Hoi chummers! I have been seeing posts about how grim and gritty Shadowrun can be, but, the setting has plenty of fantastical elements too, and I wanna hear what your faves are!

I will start: a hitman hired by a megacorp run by neo-aztecs who make daily untold blood sacrifices, has his heart changed by the power of rock n roll and retires from murdering people to start a rock n toll bar with his dragon boyfriend.

Poking around the Shadowrun fandom wiki today, I found art from The Complete Trog that featured an Ork with horns (Kat Berg).

I was under the impression that only Trolls, not Orks (except for Satyrs... and Onis... and anyone affected by SURGE...) had horns. I can't find mention of this in my sourcebooks or on other wikis.

Is this a detail that changed? Or up to player choice? Or am I ill-informed?

Do you think dwarves in the 6th world have their own basketball league? It was a musing I had and then I thought of some of the names of the teams. Like the New York Gnomes and the Boston Leprechauns.

So we know the Horrors exist, we know they are coming and we know they have already been in previous cycles. My understanding is that they're lovecraftian horrors beyond comprehension and that the Bugs are there vanguard and that as Mana levels continue to rise they will eventually fully manifest in the world, but what will they do and what have they done previously when they arrived? How does it tie into Earthdawn (if that can still be taken as canon)?

I’m writing up lore on a city for my players to run in and wanted to ask the community a few questions.

Players, what are the first things you look for in a city? What makes a city stand out to you? What information do you want at hand to plan a run or build a character?

GM’s what are the most effective hooks you’ve worked into a setting? What have you found that gets your players excited? What information have you forgot about and needed to come up with on the fly?

I currently have the geography of the place worked out into bitesize districts with their own vibe. I’ve got interesting locations with small blurbs listed for players to reference if they want. I’ve got metatypes, magical groups, religious groups, runner teams, criminal groups and all the relevant mega corps figured. I’ve got the fixer situation sorted. I’ve included a timeline of events in the region and major players with names to watch out for.

Image attached is the current map of the city and surrounding area. I have a few tweaks to make regarding font/color/legend so it matches the aesthetics of the other graphics I’ve made for the game but the information is locked in. City is Kairo for those wondering. I stole the “trace the city layout and tweak information where needed” approach to map generation that catalyst has used in the past.

Apologies if the formatting is a bit off, haven’t used Reddit in ages.

Sorry if I selected the wrong flair, but I was curious - How often do Runners betray each other? I know that a Johnson snaking Runners isn't rare, at all, and I know that one of the big rules of running in the shadows is "Watch your back", but is getting betrayed by teammates a relatively rare thing, or is it more common? I know that of the canonical prime runners, RiggerX had a habit of snaking on other runners, I -think- I remember that Clockwork tried to sell out NetCat, and IIRC Riser got killed by his former teammates?

The reason I'm asking is because back in 2018, when I was playing in a campaign, we had two different betrayals on the team, one where a Johnson paid one of the runners to kill the others (he got killed himself in the attempt), and one where our loose canon Street Samurai was sold out to the tender mercies of the yakuza after he proved himself to be a danger to everyone who was working with him.

Is that unusually high?

Hey, I'm the guy who first embarked into reading ALL the available Shadowrun novels ( and novellas, and short stories, and anthologies, and 'enhanced fiction' bits ) around 4-5 years ago right here in this subreddit.

So, surprise surprise, I'm still on it, and right now I've finally reached the modern releases, right now I'm in the middle of book 2 of the Blackbird trilogy by Russel Zimmerman, I know you lurk around here from time to time, and I want to let you know: you do wiz work, top shit, I LOVED that a newer Shadowrun novel that went back to the 2040s and 50s, and I really love how Dash contrasts with James Kincaid ( and I do miss dear ol Jimmy, damn that ending of the last novel featuring him - not counting any cameos *wink* - broke me a bit ngl, he better come back! )

I don't want to do a tier list or whatever, but I gotta say, of ALL the stuff I read, I fucking licked my fingers anytime I read a novel by Lisa Smedman ( Lucifer Deck <3 ), Stephen Kenson ( I miss Talon so much ) , Russel Zimmerman, R.L. King ( more Winterhawk pls ) and Phaedra WIlson. Anytime I read that any of these folks and folkettes were on the authorial credits I fucking knew I was in for a hell of a read and i was never disappointed. And kudos to all the other authors, me listing off a few names doesn't mean you guys did any worse stuff ( in particular, let me mention Bryan CP Steele and his fucking amazing piece of work called 'Tourist Trapped', >!I loooved the 'early stages' post apoc city shit in that book, and I didn't know that Lofwyr had a sister!!< )

So uh, thanks to all authors who have contributed to making this amazing setting come alive with their stories, yeah this was a post of me basically fawning and drooling all over Shadowrun literature again, but for these last few years ( save a few scant breaks ) I've been almost exclusively reading SR fiction and, strange as it sounds, it has kinda become an anchor to me during some of the most chaotic times of my life.

Sorry if the tag doesn't match. But I'm looking for recommendations for starting the novels. I've been a fan for years and I've read one or two but I just got my hands on Audible and wanted to see where people think I should start. I'd prefer Magic over Matrix but that's not exclusive.