Favorite Turn-based Video Games Based on D&D or other TTRPGs?

[TaiLiu]

I have character ideas that I wanna play or test out. (Usually in a d20 system, since they tend to be mechanics-heavy.) I can't test them out in the campaign I'm already in, since I already have a character. So I'm looking for turn-based video games that lets me build a character similar to the one I have in my brain.

Any recommendations? The only TTRPG-based video game I've ever played before is Dungeons and Dragons Online. Unfortunately, fights are real-time and I'm super bad at it.

Thanks. :smallsmile:

[Bohandas]

Temple of Elemental Evil (preferably with the Circle of 8 and Temple+ fan mods)

Hands down the best D&D CRPG ever

[CarpeGuitarrem]

D&D CRPGs are probably the closest thing for you, and you're in luck: there's a Humble Bundle going on for a couple more days that has a number of them: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/rpg-legends-baldurs-gate-beyond

May also want to give Freedom Force a look. It's real time, but also lets you pause at will and issue orders to everyone. It's based on the HERO system from what I recall, and it lets you put together all kinds of superpowers.

[Psyren]

You're in luck, we're in a bit of a CRPG renaissance right now. There are more options for digital translations of TTRPGs than ever before.

5e:

1) Baldur's Gate 3 fully released a couple of days ago and it is definitely turn-based, and is very close to the tabletop 5e ruleset.

2) Solasta Crown of the Magister is another one based on the 5e ruleset. Much more generic in terms of setting and plotting, but even more faithful to the tabletop rules. The big benefit to this one is that it's available on the Xbox Gamepass, so if you're already subscribed to that you can just give it a try without paying full price. (They've paywalled a number of the classes and races behind DLC however if you go that route.)

Pathfinder:

Both Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker fairly faithfully translate the PF1 ruleset to video game territory. They are also fully turn-based now, or at least have the option to use that instead of the "real-time-wth-pause" that was championed by older games like NWN and Baldur's Gate 1&2.

Older Editions:

The older CRPGs, based on D&D 2e-3e, are still around and being kept faithfully playable via GoG.

No Specific TTRPG:

CRPGs based on, but not mapping to any specific TTRPG, include the likes of Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin (especially the sequel), and Tyranny. Some of these may require mods to become fully turn-based.

[TaiLiu]

Temple of Elemental Evil (preferably with the Circle of 8 and Temple+ fan mods)

Hands down the best D&D CRPG ever
Thanks for the rec! Wikipedia tells me that it was controversial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil_%28video_game%29#Cont roversy) cuz of a possible gay relationship in-game. Sounds like a positive to me. :smallbiggrin:


D&D CRPGs are probably the closest thing for you, and you're in luck: there's a Humble Bundle going on for a couple more days that has a number of them: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/rpg-legends-baldurs-gate-beyond

May also want to give Freedom Force a look. It's real time, but also lets you pause at will and issue orders to everyone. It's based on the HERO system from what I recall, and it lets you put together all kinds of superpowers.
Nice! Thanks for the link to the bundle. That's probably enough gameplay to keep me busy for over a year. I'm not interested in superhero stuff, but I also appreciate the rec.


You're in luck, we're in a bit of a CRPG renaissance right now. There are more options for digital translations of TTRPGs than ever before.

5e:

1) Baldur's Gate 3 fully released a couple of days ago and it is definitely turn-based, and is very close to the tabletop 5e ruleset.

2) Solasta Crown of the Magister is another one based on the 5e ruleset. Much more generic in terms of setting and plotting, but even more faithful to the tabletop rules. The big benefit to this one is that it's available on the Xbox Gamepass, so if you're already subscribed to that you can just give it a try without paying full price. (They've paywalled a number of the classes and races behind DLC however if you go that route.)

Pathfinder:

Both Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker fairly faithfully translate the PF1 ruleset to video game territory. They are also fully turn-based now, or at least have the option to use that instead of the "real-time-wth-pause" that was championed by older games like NWN and Baldur's Gate 1&2.

Older Editions:

The older CRPGs, based on D&D 2e-3e, are still around and being kept faithfully playable via GoG.

No Specific TTRPG:

CRPGs based on, but not mapping to any specific TTRPG, include the likes of Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin (especially the sequel), and Tyranny. Some of these may require mods to become fully turn-based.
Thanks for the recs! I'm especially interested in the 5e stuff, so it's good to know that there are at least two games that'll let me explore that.

[Bohandas]

As for older editions, in addition to the aforementioned Temple of Elemental Evil adaptation by Atari, I am also partial to the Krynn trilogy by SSI, particularly Dark Queen of Krynn (Be advised though that the Krynn Trilogy's control scheme hasn't aged very well; IIRC only the third one has proper mouse support)

[Psyren]

Thanks for the rec! Wikipedia tells me that it was controversial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil_%28video_game%29#Cont roversy) cuz of a possible gay relationship in-game. Sounds like a positive to me. :smallbiggrin:

Not excusing the tag, but remember that ToEE came out two decades ago; LGBT romance options in CRPGs are much more common nowadays than they were in the early 00's.



Thanks for the recs! I'm especially interested in the 5e stuff, so it's good to know that there are at least two games that'll let me explore that.

If LGBT themes and romances interest you, BG3 has a bunch, so have at it!

[Spore]

Temple of Elemental Evil (preferably with the Circle of 8 and Temple+ fan mods)

Hands down the best D&D CRPG ever

This. The execution was so sleek. Yes Kingmaker and WotR are great games, but the turn based stuff is extremely janky, same with Baldur's Gate. They games are meant to be played with RTWP.

Well, and Divinity: Original Sin 2. It rewards creativity without becoming a cheese fest. It gives you the tools to do your own cool build and is not overly complicated in doing so. The encounters are interesting and not a pushover

[Psyren]

I'll add a bit of nuance and say that Kingmaker was originally designed around RTWP, but WotR, BG3 and Solasta were all designed from the ground up to be playable fully turn-based, due in large part to how popular the TB mod for Kingmaker ended up being.

[Bohandas]

In any case I'm just glad that people finally realized how terribly garbage RTWP is. The first two Baldur's Gate games were unplayable and so was Planescape Torment, although at least Torment warned you in the name

[Batcathat]

I quite like RTWP in some cases. It obviously doesn’t fit every game or every player, but neither does turn based or real time.

[Psyren]

In any case I'm just glad that people finally realized how terribly garbage RTWP is. The first two Baldur's Gate games were unplayable and so was Planescape Torment, although at least Torment warned you in the name

While I think "unplayable" is a bit harsh, I definitely/strongly prefer TB and RT over RTWP. (And TB over ATB, i.e. the Final Fantasy system pre-15, for that matter.)


I quite like RTWP in some cases. It obviously doesn’t fit every game or every player, but neither does turn based or real time.

My issue with RTWP is that too often it ends up being the worst of both worlds. You need similarly twitch reflexes to pause on time in a lot of cases, failing to do so leaves you gormlessly eating enemy attacks, and even if you do so perfectly your reactions still get queued up into whatever resolution stack the system is processing and may end up going off in the wrong order. Turn Based has none of that opacity, you know exactly where you are in initiative at any given moment. And RT lets you truly react on the fly instead of your actions being sequenced in a non-obvious way.

[Batcathat]

My issue with RTWP is that too often it ends up being the worst of both worlds. You need similarly twitch reflexes to pause on time in a lot of cases, failing to do so leaves you gormlessly eating enemy attacks, and even if you do so perfectly your reactions still get queued up into whatever resolution stack the system is processing and may end up going off in the wrong order. Turn Based has none of that opacity, you know exactly where you are in initiative at any given moment. And RT lets you truly react on the fly instead of your actions being sequenced in a non-obvious way.

I suppose it's a matter of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Because I also think it has some of the best of both worlds. You get the speed and pace of real time when you don't have to go into the details and when you do, you can take your time with it, as with turn based.

Now, if you're the sort of player who always wants to control every action of every party member, turn based is obviously better and if you're the sort of player who never wants to do that, real time is obviously better. But in my case – and I don't think I'm alone – I like the option to shift between the two extremes.

You're not wrong that RTWP has its issues, but so does the alternatives.

(Also, I really don't think the required reflexes to instantly hit a single key as soon as you're not sure what to do really compares to instantly doing one out of dozens of different things in every situation. Real time is having to drive a car race at full speed, RTWP is having the option to completely and instantly stop the car before making a decision).

[tyckspoon]

While I think "unplayable" is a bit harsh, I definitely/strongly prefer TB and RT over RTWP. (And TB over ATB, i.e. the Final Fantasy system pre-15, for that matter.)



My issue with RTWP is that too often it ends up being the worst of both worlds. You need similarly twitch reflexes to pause on time in a lot of cases, failing to do so leaves you gormlessly eating enemy attacks, and even if you do so perfectly your reactions still get queued up into whatever resolution stack the system is processing and may end up going off in the wrong order. Turn Based has none of that opacity, you know exactly where you are in initiative at any given moment. And RT lets you truly react on the fly instead of your actions being sequenced in a non-obvious way.

Or you have a bunch of flags set to pause at certain events (pause at 'turn' rollover, pause when an enemy dies, pause when a PC suffers a status effect, pause when somebody is at half-health so you can insert a heal, etc, depending on what the game allows you to customize) and at that point it's pretty much turn based with extra steps. I suppose some benefit in letting everybody's pseudo-turn process simultaneously which can save a fair amount of time watching individual actors moving around and executing attacks, but it's a super awkward way to control a party - personal preference is either full realtime but you have a small number of things you need to focus on (single character action games or the FF7 Remake approach where your partner characters are AI controlled and you can hot swap to whichever one you want to give full attention to, the Gambit/AI-guidance kind of systems where you can tell the AI what you want your companions to be focusing on) or full on turn based so you can properly coordinate and control the combat the way most of the underlying RPG systems were actually designed for.

[Erloas]

I'm also of the opinion that RTWP is the worst of both worlds.
I remember having a lot of issues playing DA:O, with several challenging encounters that just became an exercise in frustration. With one battle that, I think just because I picked a weaker class, I simply could not win. After many attempts over a few weeks that was the last time I played the game or even looked at the franchise. That is the only RPG or tactical game I've ever had that happen with.
I also don't care for VATs from Fallout 3+ and consider the Wastelands 2+ games superior.

I was going to say the Shadowrun games are good TTRPG based video games, but they won't help you build anything like a D&D character to test out. The Wastelands games also have roots in TTRPGs, though I have no idea what system(s) they were primarily pulling from, also not helpful in testing D&D characters.

[SerTabris]

Even with something like Pathfinder: Kingmaker where the RTWP mode was the one it was designed for, I definitely had a much better time with the turn-based mode. Though in that case, having RTWP for 'clean up an easy battle or the last enemy who happens to be on the other side of the map quickly' is sometimes helpful.

[TaiLiu]

As for older editions, in addition to the aforementioned Temple of Elemental Evil adaptation by Atari, I am also partial to the Krynn trilogy by SSI, particularly Dark Queen of Krynn (Be advised though that the Krynn Trilogy's control scheme hasn't aged very well; IIRC only the third one has proper mouse support)
Oh, wow. Dragonlance video games. Everything's all FR now, so I didn't expect that. I tried Dark Queen on the Internet Archive, but without an accompanying book it won't let me progress. Wonder if that's an anti-privacy measure.

Do you contribute to the Temple+ mod? Or are you a fan? I noticed the link in your signature.


Not excusing the tag, but remember that ToEE came out two decades ago; LGBT romance options in CRPGs are much more common nowadays than they were in the early 00's.
That makes sense. I should also say that I don't mind it being slotted in the controversy section of the wiki page. It sounds like it was controversial at the time.


If LGBT themes and romances interest you, BG3 has a bunch, so have at it!
Cool! It isn't the main thing I'm after, but it's a nice bonus. :smallsmile:

[Errorname]

I saw this in the last post preview and it cut out the "based on D&D or other TTRPGs" and I thought I saw a chance to spread the good word of XCOM, but alas, 'twas not to be.

Baldur's Gate 3 I guess? I'll confess a lack of familiarity with direct tabletop adaptations

[TaiLiu]

I saw this in the last post preview and it cut out the "based on D&D or other TTRPGs" and I thought I saw a chance to spread the good word of XCOM, but alas, 'twas not to be.

Baldur's Gate 3 I guess? I'll confess a lack of familiarity with direct tabletop adaptations
I'm terrible at real-time video games. If you wanna recommend turn-based video games, I'm happy to hear about it. :smallbiggrin:

[firelistener]

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is the most faithful implementation of D&D in a video game that I have ever seen, and I've played pretty much all the games mentioned in the thread so far. It's a shame that it's really only SRD content because the mechanics are almost completely 1:1 with 5e tabletop. All the actions like shove and dodge are implemented accurately, fireballs can be detonated in midair and lightning bolts can be fired at angles, and you can use Fly to rise up vertically and escape melee range. If you love tabletop rules, I highly recommend it. That said, it has a few issues too. The face models are awful by modern standards, the lack of non-SRD content can make it feel a little hollow compared to licensed D&D products, and the story is pretty forgettable although not bad either.

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 recently, and as much as I like it, I really wanted it to be more like actual tabletop than it is. The ruleset is way more similar to Larian's other games than it is to D&D, and Solasta showed me how possible that was in a modern game, so I'm a bit chuffed every time I read some article raving about how BG3 is "faithful" to 5e. Of course, BG 1 and 2 weren't very faithful either, so I shouldn't have expected otherwise lol.

[Psyren]

Solasta is more faithful to the 5e ruleset* than BG3, but BG3 is by far the better RPG. Solasta is closer to being a 5e-based tech demo with cookie-cutter party members and an excuse plot. It's a marvelous tech demo, mind you, but not particularly engaging if you're looking for things like meaningful choice and consequence and interpersonal relationships.

*And I'll point out that some of the liberties BG3 takes with the 5e rules, like Ice Knife creating slippery patches of ice on the ground or putting out fires, are technically things you can do in tabletop 5e as well. 5e isn't the kind of system where the DM has to rigidly stick to the text in every instance and never ad lib; they can improvise damage and conditions and impose advantage/disadvantage nearly at-will.


I'm terrible at real-time video games. If you wanna recommend turn-based video games, I'm happy to hear about it. :smallbiggrin:

X-COM is indeed turn-based, so you might enjoy it. It's more strategy game than RPG though.

[SerTabris]

Solasta is more faithful to the 5e ruleset* than BG3, but BG3 is by far the better RPG. Solasta is closer to being a 5e-based tech demo with cookie-cutter party members and an excuse plot. It's a marvelous tech demo, mind you, but not particularly engaging if you're looking for things like meaningful choice and consequence and interpersonal relationships.

Now I'm curious about the campaign-creation tools in Solasta, and whether it could end up being a tool for fan campaigns like happened with Neverwinter Nights 1 where basically nobody buys it for the main campaign it comes with.

[Bohandas]

Oh, wow. Dragonlance video games. Everything's all FR now, so I didn't expect that. I tried Dark Queen on the Internet Archive, but without an accompanying book it won't let me progress.
I think the manual's on Abandonia

[TaiLiu]

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is the most faithful implementation of D&D in a video game that I have ever seen, and I've played pretty much all the games mentioned in the thread so far. It's a shame that it's really only SRD content because the mechanics are almost completely 1:1 with 5e tabletop. All the actions like shove and dodge are implemented accurately, fireballs can be detonated in midair and lightning bolts can be fired at angles, and you can use Fly to rise up vertically and escape melee range. If you love tabletop rules, I highly recommend it. That said, it has a few issues too. The face models are awful by modern standards, the lack of non-SRD content can make it feel a little hollow compared to licensed D&D products, and the story is pretty forgettable although not bad either.

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 recently, and as much as I like it, I really wanted it to be more like actual tabletop than it is. The ruleset is way more similar to Larian's other games than it is to D&D, and Solasta showed me how possible that was in a modern game, so I'm a bit chuffed every time I read some article raving about how BG3 is "faithful" to 5e. Of course, BG 1 and 2 weren't very faithful either, so I shouldn't have expected otherwise lol.
I looked Solasta up. I guess the SRD-only implementation is why they have all those weird subclasses.

I was curious about fly, so I also looked that up. Gate's implementation is more like a super jump. That's too bad.


X-COM is indeed turn-based, so you might enjoy it. It's more strategy game than RPG though.
Oh, cool. Kinda like those puzzle games.


I think the manual's on Abandonia
Got it, thanks. I found the webpage (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/621/Dark+Queen+of+Krynn%2C+The.html), but there's no manual. That's okay. I don't know anything about 2e anyway.

[Zombimode]

I was curious about fly, so I also looked that up. Gate's implementation is more like a super jump. That's too bad.

Baldurs Gate 3's approach to the battlespace is a real missed opportunity. The game actually DOES make use of the Z axis. Objects ARE located by X, Y and Z and it is correctly taken into account for distances and stuff.
But you cannot really interact with the Z axis. You can't target points in 3d space, you cant fly, and climbing is binary: either you can make the climb and reach the top/bottom of what you were climbing or you can't make the climb. It is impossible to end your movement on a vertical plane.

A wasted opportunity, really.

[tyckspoon]

Got it, thanks. I found the webpage (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/621/Dark+Queen+of+Krynn%2C+The.html), but there's no manual. That's okay. I don't know anything about 2e anyway.

It's the 'journal' link, although it's all just a text transcription of the contents. Has the race/class/spell/etc descriptions in it as well as the in-game lore descriptions that are probably what the copy protection challenge questions are drawing from - this was a somewhat common version of 'DRM' in that era. The game would ask you to reference a physical accessory that came with the game, under the assumption that while the game files themselves were relatively easy to copy and distribute replicating a (map/100-page guidebook/fiddly spinny codewheel) would not be.

[TaiLiu]

Baldurs Gate 3's approach to the battlespace is a real missed opportunity. The game actually DOES make use of the Z axis. Objects ARE located by X, Y and Z and it is correctly taken into account for distances and stuff.
But you cannot really interact with the Z axis. You can't target points in 3d space, you cant fly, and climbing is binary: either you can make the climb and reach the top/bottom of what you were climbing or you can't make the climb. It is impossible to end your movement on a vertical plane.

A wasted opportunity, really.
Oh, dang. That sucks.


It's the 'journal' link, although it's all just a text transcription of the contents. Has the race/class/spell/etc descriptions in it as well as the in-game lore descriptions that are probably what the copy protection challenge questions are drawing from - this was a somewhat common version of 'DRM' in that era. The game would ask you to reference a physical accessory that came with the game, under the assumption that while the game files themselves were relatively easy to copy and distribute replicating a (map/100-page guidebook/fiddly spinny codewheel) would not be.
Oh, thanks. I didn't notice the link there.

That makes sense. I typed a bunch of nonsense for my answers and the game closed.

[firelistener]

Now I'm curious about the campaign-creation tools in Solasta, and whether it could end up being a tool for fan campaigns like happened with Neverwinter Nights 1 where basically nobody buys it for the main campaign it comes with.

I actually messed with it pretty extensively before the latest DLC came out, and I don't think it will ever be something that draws in a ton people. There are mods that let people create "extended" custom dungeons that allow more creatuve scripting, but the base tools are very limiting. Unfortunately, some of the logic is very buggy as well, so making switch puzzles or complicated doors, portals, or quest lines is very finicky or downright impossible in some instances. If you have computer programming experience, these logic shortcomings really make themselves apparent rather quickly when trying to create even simple questlines that involve fetching an item for someone. That said, the bones are good for making a decent dungeon crawl, some simpler quests, and even a branching dialogue. I've played a few of the popular custom dungeons, and the most polished are usually just very combat-focused. Trying to do much dialogue or quest branching quickly makes your custom dungeon a buggy mess.

[SerTabris]

I actually messed with it pretty extensively before the latest DLC came out, and I don't think it will ever be something that draws in a ton people. There are mods that let people create "extended" custom dungeons that allow more creatuve scripting, but the base tools are very limiting. Unfortunately, some of the logic is very buggy as well, so making switch puzzles or complicated doors, portals, or quest lines is very finicky or downright impossible in some instances. If you have computer programming experience, these logic shortcomings really make themselves apparent rather quickly when trying to create even simple questlines that involve fetching an item for someone. That said, the bones are good for making a decent dungeon crawl, some simpler quests, and even a branching dialogue. I've played a few of the popular custom dungeons, and the most polished are usually just very combat-focused. Trying to do much dialogue or quest branching quickly makes your custom dungeon a buggy mess.

Interesting, thanks for answering! Definitely sounds like it's not going to get the sorts of people who made the most well-known NWN modules, for one.

[Bohandas]

Do you contribute to the Temple+ mod? Or are you a fan? I noticed the link in your signature.

Just a fan at this point.

One of these days I'm going to put together a portrait pack to go with the mod's support for custom character portraits

(If I can ever find the full instructiona again that is; I tested it out a couple years back for my pwn game with stock art and it worked but in the intervening years the full instructions seem to have vanished from the site (or possibly I've overlooked something obvious when I was trying to look them up, it wouldn't be the first time))

[TaiLiu]

Just a fan at this point.

One of these days I'm going to put together a portrait pack to go with the mod's support for custom character portraits

(If I can ever find the full instructiona again that is; I tested it out a couple years back for my pwn game with stock art and it worked but in the intervening years the full instructions seem to have vanished from the site (or possibly I've overlooked something obvious when I was trying to look them up, it wouldn't be the first time))
Oh, cool. :smallsmile:

[Bohandas]

This is unsuitable for the OP's purposes, but a while back (like a WHILE back) someone on Newgrounds posted a flash game based on the RPG Toon by SJGames, and that was pretty fun

[TaiLiu]

I recently started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I began with a Druid, realized that the game didn't support what I wanted from it, and switched to a Kineticist.

The game explains very few of the mechanics, and a lot of it seems awkward or odd unless you're already familiar with D&D 3.5e or Pathfinder 1e. Luckily, I half-recall enough of PF 1e's rules for the game to make sense to me. But I wonder how much players who've never played the tabletop version understand.


One of these days I'm going to put together a portrait pack to go with the mod's support for custom character portraits
Until I started playing Pathfinder: WOTR, I wasn't sure what this meant. Apparently a character is represented by both a static picture and a movable avatar, which can look very different from one another.


This is unsuitable for the OP's purposes, but a while back (like a WHILE back) someone on Newgrounds posted a flash game based on the RPG Toon by SJGames, and that was pretty fun
That seems really cool. I wonder if it's a Flash game that's been successfully preserved. Do you remember the name?

[T.G. Oskar]

Strange that no one has mentioned Shadowrun Trilogy (i.e. Shadowrun Returns, plus its Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns). It's turn based and uses a very simplified version of the Shadowrun rules - it's only tangentially point-based, compared to the original system which ranges from point-based to priority based. From what I've heard, the combat system is very similar to the XCOM, specifically in how it treats cover and the concept of Overwatch (akin to 3.5's, 5e's or PF's Attacks of Opportunity, but on a zone).

The default setting (Dead Man's Hand) is very bare-bones, good to let you familiarize with the setting and the rules, though the stakes spike at the very end. It's a lot like the NWN original campaign, specifically in that the other campaigns are considered far, far better. Dragonfall, which is set on the Flux State of 2050's Germany, is considered the quintessential expansion - it adds a lot of new content to all archetypes, a set team which you can relate to, and a much deeper story which, as is Shadowrun tradition, raises the stakes right at the end. When the expansion was sold on its own, it got additional content (about three new missions) and multiple endings. Hong Kong rebalances the game by altering a LOT of the character development, and while the story has cutscenes for the first time, it can be quite chaotic; you have more control over your team, though the stakes aren't as personal as those in Dragonfall. Hong Kong also has the distinction of having an extra mission (that being Shadows of Hong Kong) which resolves some of the leftover issues from the third campaign while respecting the decisions made at the end of it.

True to Shadowrun lore, it's set in an alternate future where Magic returns to Earth and turns the world around: the US is divided as the northern states fuse with eastern Canada, a good deal of Native Americans reclaim their native soil, the Confederates retake the south and the Elves (yes, the Elves) form their own nation (and also retake Ireland). Dragons are power players (one campaigns to become president, the other owns a megacorporation), and corporations rule as kingdoms of their own, with their possessions acting as dominions independent of government. And, as you can expect from the cyberpunk aesthetic, it's a terrible world where you're either a corpo slave, born in the right place, or screwed up - and you're basically playing a combination of criminal and revolutionary, selling your skills to the right people to do missions from where you're not expected to be alive. (And sometimes, that involves becoming an actual hero.)

A key concept that the games replicate for the most part is the existence of the Matrix (which predates the movies), which is essentially Internet 2.0 (and very blatantly taken from Gibson's Neuroamncer). In all three games, if your MC (or one of your teammates) happens to have a cyberdeck and skills in hacking, you can physically enter the Matrix and interact with it. The OC has its Matrix sections almost always separate from combat, but come Dragonfall (and specifically in Hong Kong), you can have your decker character take turns in the Matrix while the rest of the party takes turns in the real world. (And the actions in the Matrix can have effects on the real world, including and not limited to opening doors, triggering traps and hazards, and finding data that you can sell.)

It's also a game where gear is as important, if not more, than the build. Partly it's because of cyberware, partly because there's virtually no magic items in the game (Hong Kong breaks the mold), and partly because the amount of money you get is pretty tight - as is Karma (the equivalent of XP), because it's gained through completing missions, not necessarily killing enemies. And while there's Magic in the game, it's neither weak nor as broken as in other games - it's a tool, like the 'ware you install in, the drones you can control, the full-auto rifle you unload on a single enemy, the sword/axe/katana you equip the character, amongst others.

By now, you might've realized I really love these games (finished all on PC; waiting for the physical copy on the Switch to replay them again). PC also has great mods and campaigns. I recall playing like three of them; Antumbra Saga can be brutally hard but has a very unique storyline, A Stitch in Time is one of my all-time faves; can't remember the third one but it's based on a module from the 1st or 2nd Edition of the TTRPG. The Editor is pretty robust and quite simple to learn: I tried to do a mod but got too distracted and a lot of things broke, but I had the opening scene, the first recruitment scene and the first mission mostly done, and that was on a laptop.

If anything, the game's pretty old (ten years as of now for the first release; Dragonfall was released about six months later, and Hong Kong in 2015), and even by that time it wasn't graphically intensive - all graphics are isometric, though hand-painted, rather than full 3D as would be the norm for the time. It has extremely good music, and its developer (Harebrained Schemes, the same people that eventually also brought Battletech) is comprised of one-half of the TTRPG's developers (Jordan Weissman), which ensured the game felt true to the setting (though it could've added a few randomly-generated milk runs like the Genesis version to really nail it). It's hard to admire these games after seeing what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk (despite the debacle at its start), and I'd really love to see an updated version that takes some of the best traits of games like Baldur's Gate III, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect with the story concept of games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. But, as it stands, these games do just fine.

[Bohandas]

That seems really cool. I wonder if it's a Flash game that's been successfully preserved. Do you remember the name?

Newgrounds uses a built-in emulator so it's fine:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/117212

The game's pretty short and a little rough - it's basically a proof-of-concept demo, but the author never got around to making a full version - but I remember it being charming

[TaiLiu]

Strange that no one has mentioned Shadowrun Trilogy (i.e. Shadowrun Returns, plus its Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns). It's turn based and uses a very simplified version of the Shadowrun rules - it's only tangentially point-based, compared to the original system which ranges from point-based to priority based. From what I've heard, the combat system is very similar to the XCOM, specifically in how it treats cover and the concept of Overwatch (akin to 3.5's, 5e's or PF's Attacks of Opportunity, but on a zone).

The default setting (Dead Man's Hand) is very bare-bones, good to let you familiarize with the setting and the rules, though the stakes spike at the very end. It's a lot like the NWN original campaign, specifically in that the other campaigns are considered far, far better. Dragonfall, which is set on the Flux State of 2050's Germany, is considered the quintessential expansion - it adds a lot of new content to all archetypes, a set team which you can relate to, and a much deeper story which, as is Shadowrun tradition, raises the stakes right at the end. When the expansion was sold on its own, it got additional content (about three new missions) and multiple endings. Hong Kong rebalances the game by altering a LOT of the character development, and while the story has cutscenes for the first time, it can be quite chaotic; you have more control over your team, though the stakes aren't as personal as those in Dragonfall. Hong Kong also has the distinction of having an extra mission (that being Shadows of Hong Kong) which resolves some of the leftover issues from the third campaign while respecting the decisions made at the end of it.

True to Shadowrun lore, it's set in an alternate future where Magic returns to Earth and turns the world around: the US is divided as the northern states fuse with eastern Canada, a good deal of Native Americans reclaim their native soil, the Confederates retake the south and the Elves (yes, the Elves) form their own nation (and also retake Ireland). Dragons are power players (one campaigns to become president, the other owns a megacorporation), and corporations rule as kingdoms of their own, with their possessions acting as dominions independent of government. And, as you can expect from the cyberpunk aesthetic, it's a terrible world where you're either a corpo slave, born in the right place, or screwed up - and you're basically playing a combination of criminal and revolutionary, selling your skills to the right people to do missions from where you're not expected to be alive. (And sometimes, that involves becoming an actual hero.)

A key concept that the games replicate for the most part is the existence of the Matrix (which predates the movies), which is essentially Internet 2.0 (and very blatantly taken from Gibson's Neuroamncer). In all three games, if your MC (or one of your teammates) happens to have a cyberdeck and skills in hacking, you can physically enter the Matrix and interact with it. The OC has its Matrix sections almost always separate from combat, but come Dragonfall (and specifically in Hong Kong), you can have your decker character take turns in the Matrix while the rest of the party takes turns in the real world. (And the actions in the Matrix can have effects on the real world, including and not limited to opening doors, triggering traps and hazards, and finding data that you can sell.)

It's also a game where gear is as important, if not more, than the build. Partly it's because of cyberware, partly because there's virtually no magic items in the game (Hong Kong breaks the mold), and partly because the amount of money you get is pretty tight - as is Karma (the equivalent of XP), because it's gained through completing missions, not necessarily killing enemies. And while there's Magic in the game, it's neither weak nor as broken as in other games - it's a tool, like the 'ware you install in, the drones you can control, the full-auto rifle you unload on a single enemy, the sword/axe/katana you equip the character, amongst others.

By now, you might've realized I really love these games (finished all on PC; waiting for the physical copy on the Switch to replay them again). PC also has great mods and campaigns. I recall playing like three of them; Antumbra Saga can be brutally hard but has a very unique storyline, A Stitch in Time is one of my all-time faves; can't remember the third one but it's based on a module from the 1st or 2nd Edition of the TTRPG. The Editor is pretty robust and quite simple to learn: I tried to do a mod but got too distracted and a lot of things broke, but I had the opening scene, the first recruitment scene and the first mission mostly done, and that was on a laptop.

If anything, the game's pretty old (ten years as of now for the first release; Dragonfall was released about six months later, and Hong Kong in 2015), and even by that time it wasn't graphically intensive - all graphics are isometric, though hand-painted, rather than full 3D as would be the norm for the time. It has extremely good music, and its developer (Harebrained Schemes, the same people that eventually also brought Battletech) is comprised of one-half of the TTRPG's developers (Jordan Weissman), which ensured the game felt true to the setting (though it could've added a few randomly-generated milk runs like the Genesis version to really nail it). It's hard to admire these games after seeing what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk (despite the debacle at its start), and I'd really love to see an updated version that takes some of the best traits of games like Baldur's Gate III, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect with the story concept of games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. But, as it stands, these games do just fine.
Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?


Newgrounds uses a built-in emulator so it's fine:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/117212

The game's pretty short and a little rough - it's basically a proof-of-concept demo, but the author never got around to making a full version - but I remember it being charming
I got into a fight with a dog. The UI isn't very good, but it's a good effort for sure. It might be more fun if I knew the rules of Toon.

"You're mistaken, my police training keeps me from developing any pleasant character traits" is especially funny.

[Erloas]

Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?
I had at most a cursory knowledge of the setting before I played Shadowrun and I thought they were all great. Nothing in the combat system was that obtuse and was easy enough to pick up without knowing the setting. The stories do pretty good job of standing on their own. The engine and combat got a fair amount of polish by the time the second one came out, but Returns was still good.

[T.G. Oskar]

Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?

All campaigns do their best to detail their settings (Seattle for Dead Man's Switch, Berlin as an anarchist state for Dragonfall and obviously HK for Hong Kong) and they explain the lore pretty well.

The system itself is pretty simplified. You get stats much like in D&D (Strength, Quickness, Stamina, Logic, Willpower and Charisma), and each skill governs certain skills - Unarmed and Melee Combat for STR, Pistols/SMG/Rifles/Throwing for QUI, Medicine, Decking and Rigging for INT, Sorcery and Chi Casting for WIL and Shamanism and Summoning for CHA. (STA had nothing until Hong Kong, where it gained Cyberware Affinity). Each score has a range from 1 to 10, though the actual maximum is determined by the race: Humans are balanced, Elves are quicker but have poor stamina, Dwarves have decent stamina and Willpower but poor Charisma; Orks have a lot of Strength and Stamina but little Logic, and Trolls take Orks to the extreme. You can't get more points in a skill than your stat: therefore, you can't have more Melee Combat or Unarmed than your base Strength.

Stats are pretty easy to explain: they govern half of the success on things you can do. As you level up those stats, you gain certain things: more weapon slots if you have high STR/QUI, access to more programs if you have high INT, access to more spells with WIL and CHA - extremely important - access to one Etiquette per 2 points of Charisma. This last one is mostly for roleplaying, and it represents how you behave around certain people, which usually means you open up certain dialogue choices that can stop battles or earn you rewards.

Skills govern the other half of success in things you can do, but act as specialties - Unarmed defines how good you are fighting unarmed or with loaded gloves, Melee Combat defines your skill with weapons, Pistols/SMG/Rifles are self-explanatory, Throwing includes both throwing weapons and grenades, and so on. As you level up your skills, you gain special perks with it, such as special actions you can execute - some weapons require you have a specific rank on a skill to use them, also. Spells are divided into two types - Mage spells (Sorcery, using Willpower) and Shaman spells (Conjuration, which use Charisma). In this case, think only slightly in D&D: Mages cast a ton of useful attack spells, debuffs and healing, while Shamans get most buffing/debuffing spells and barriers. Summoning is treated differently.

The way you level up your stats and skills is based on Karma, which acts like XP but added directly. You need to spend a number of Karma points equal to the rank of the stat/skill +1 (therefore, to raise Strength from 4 to 5, you need to spend 5 Karma).

The good thing about SR is that you get archetypes at the start, which auto-fill your stats and skills to however suits your need and give you related starting equipment. This includes Street Samurai (think Fighter but loaded with cyberware that enhances them), Decker (a hacker), Rigger (mechanic, uses drones in combat), Mage (self-explanatory), Shaman (self-explanatory) and Adept (think Monk that self-buffs with magic-based powers). You can develop each character to your liking, but it's recommended to specialize in only one or two things; Sammies should go full Strength and physical combat or full Quickness and go ranged, but not both - and preferably, focus on one weapon only. Deckers could dabble into Rigging but should also specialize. Adepts can learn some Sorcery to cast some spells but will suffer since they also need good Strength to make use of their Adept Powers. Shamans can choose Conjuration and Summoning but that means they'll have their other skills spread thin. As long as you don't try to make a jack of all trades, you should do fine.

Combats in SR are turn-based, but use cover and line of sight rules extensively. You fortunately get the necessary info regarding whether you'll be able to hit or not, the potential damage you can do, and the effects of the cover they're in. You get AP, which is the number of actions you can do, which can be divided into moving or attacking; as you progress in the campaign(s), you get more AP. (Note that spells like Haste and some cyberware/bioware/drugs can boost your AP by 1 or 2. Summoning or jacking into a Drone reduces your AP but grants the Spirit/Drone the ability to act on its own.) The game helps you with in-game tutorials, so you shouldn't get too lost while playing it.

As things go, SR is much easier to understand than games like BG or NWN, and you don't need to understand the TTRPG before playing it, since the stats and skills tell you what you get when you progress. The devs take some liberties in how the stats and skills are interpreted, though, as MANY skills are missing (Melee Combat collapses most of the combat skills; skills such as Shadowing, Hiding, Acrobatics and such are missing from Quickness, a lot of skills are missing from Logic; Etiquette is supposed to be a Charisma skill, not a trait from Charisma) or entirely replaced (Sorcery and Conjuration aren't WIL or CHA skills, but based of a separate Magic stat which starts at 1 and maxes at 6).

One last thing to mention is Essence. You get 6 Essence, and you lose Essence when you put on cyberware/bioware. In the TTRPG, if your Essence goes down to 0, you die (your soul separates from your body, basically). Game-wise, you can't get lower than 1, but it restricts the amount of 'ware you can equip. Furthermore, Essence influences your Magic - the lower your Essence, the harder it is for you to use Magic because you get less spells you can prepare and recovering from their use is much harder. Also, you don't get MP or specific spell slots - you can use Magic effectively at-will, but using the same spell too quickly incurs Drain, which is HP loss. Because recovery in this game is restrained (the Heal spell only recovers your last wound, and you can only really recover using Medkits), this means you don't want to drain yourself too hard. Fortunately, most spells have a quick recovery time of 1 or 2 turns, which means that Mages never really are out of spells. (However, with less Essentia, it takes longer to recover from casting a spell.) So, in short: don't add cyberware if you use magic of any kind (and this includes Adepts).

[Eldan]

I mean, Shadowrun lore isn't that hard to explain. At least hte basics. In 2012, magic came back, people turned into elves and orcs and so on. It also turns out dragons were real and they are enormously powerful. Now it's the cyberpunk future, but the megacorps also use magic and some of them are ruled by dragons. Because it's cyberpunk, a lot of our present-day countries fell apart and there's a lot of megacities.

That's mostly it.

[T.G. Oskar]

I mean, Shadowrun lore isn't that hard to explain. At least hte basics. In 2012, magic came back, people turned into elves and orcs and so on. It also turns out dragons were real and they are enormously powerful. Now it's the cyberpunk future, but the megacorps also use magic and some of them are ruled by dragons. Because it's cyberpunk, a lot of our present-day countries fell apart and there's a lot of megacities.

That's mostly it.

It's a great simplification, since it encompasses a good deal of the stuff happening in the world, but it misses a lot of things:

For starters, the concept of the Sixth World. Yes, Magic came back - because it's like a tide. Magic always existed, but - like dragons - was on a dormant state. This has happened many times before, and it happens to be related to the bak'tun concept of the Maya. This is important, because Shadowrun is related to a more traditional (but no longer published) TTRPG called Earthdawn, which details what happened in the Fourth World. (For comparison, the Fifth World is mostly everything from early human history.)
Yes, people turned into Elves and Dwarves, and Orks and Trolls. The first two were cool so they got a pass, but Orks and Trolls are ostracized by literal racism (*wink wink nudge nudge*) And that's not all - many animals also turned into paranormal critters. Basilisks? Tamed as guard dogs. Hellhounds? Same. If it's mythological, you bet it exists.
As a corollary: HMHVV. You know Vampires and Wendigos and Ghouls? They're caused by the same virus, but with different mutations. And they're effectively immortal, so you got your undead too. Furthermore, Halley's Comet made antrhropomorphic creatures real, also.
Talking about dragons - there's a distinction. There's drakes, there's dragons, and then there's Great Dragons. And Great Dragons do what they want, are often at odds with each other, and generally treat humans as either pawns or tools. (Hence, the great Shadowrunner adage, "never make a deal with a dragon".)
Megacorps... It's important to remember that Shadowrun follows good ol' cyberpunk tropes, and these involve megacorps. This is also based on 80s cyberpunk, which held the idea that Japan would rule the world. There's A-rank Megacorps (think something like Toyota), AA-rank Megacorps (corpos with extraterritoriality, i.e. they're like their own countries with citizenship and stuff; think big fused corpos like Procter & Gamble), and AAA-rank Megacorps (few and far in-between, effectively control everything in the world; think Microsoft, Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, Raytheon, Boeing, SpaceX, the holding brand to KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut and three other huge brands being owned by a single company, and that's still not the reach of a AAA). Speaking of AAA-corps: they own the World Bank, they got kill sats, they sometimes own countries (Aztlán, the successor to Mexico, is owned by Aztechnology), and are shady as heck. And yeah, some of them (specifically Saeder-Krupp) is owned by a Great Dragon.
The Matrix. (Just as a reminder: Gibson predated the Matrix, and the movie itself uses many concepts.) It's not just the new Internet - it's a world unto itself, it's ubiquitous, and is as strange as magic. It's also the third time it crashes: first with the Internet going down and becoming the Matrix, then the Crash 2.0 that effectively made it wireless (and was made to stop a rogue godlike A.I. from ruling the world), and then the repercussions of that years later. There's free nascent A.I., machine spirits, A.I. getting into metahuman bodies, metahumans that can interact with the Matrix as if it was magic, and the idea that there's this thing called Resonance that may very well be a new form of Magic.
True, a lot of present-day countries fell apart. And yeah, there's a lot of arcologies. It's the best way to resume everything, because if we speak about the Great Ghost Dance, Mexico becoming a corporate state, the Caribbean becoming a bunch of pirate fiefdoms, Berlin attempting anarchy only to be crushed down, the Euro Wars (hitting close to real life, actually), Japan becoming increasingly imperialistic, amongst *others*, it's almost like a different world on its own. (Important: the world deviated during the 90s, mostly to justify that the world will never catch up to real life.)


It's partly the reason I love the system - it's so deep in terms of lore, yet so familiar to our own world. (And our world still manages to both eerily resemble it and yet grow so distant. Plugged in cyberdecks in 2050, when the Internet went wireless 40 years ago? Functional AI by the 2050s, when we're approaching that by the 2020s?)

The good thing is that, while the games skim over the lore, they still show a lot of it.

(Oh - and forums still exist and are as notorious as they usually are. There's no Twitter/X equivalent, though, unless the 6th Edition of the rules changed that.)

[Errorname]

I'm kind of surprised at how few high profile Shadowrun video games there are. I know they exist, but they're not omnipresent in the way D&D and Warhammer games are, and they don't have a Bloodlines style universally recognized classic either.

[Triaxx]

Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

As for proper Turn-based D&D style I'd suggest Baldur's Gate and setup auto-pause to go off every end round. There are also some solid AI scripts available to help manage party members.

But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?

[T.G. Oskar]

Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

It's been so long since I played DDO - mostly because of the connection issues. I quit by the time they added the autoloader - or whatever it was that helped with logging issues - and even that didn't help me connect. I think it was Update 15 or something? I know it was after they added the FR content and IIRC were working the skill tree revamp in Lammania (sp?) but quite a long before they added the Warlock.


But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?

It's kinda unforgiving if you lack a guide. I tried it without one and I felt completely lost in Hommlet. It has a pretty darn good character creation system, though.

[Triaxx]

Well I'll say this. Update 62 is dropping in the morning and they've done a lot of work on Lag. They even turned off the limiter meant to help it run on Dial-up. (Which is not a joke.) 15 races, 15 classes, Iconics, and a ton of expansions. Honestly it's probably better than ever.

The first time I played ToEE the only guide available was on Sorcerers place. And it wasn't amazing. But the thrill of clearing out the guardhouse is unmatched.

[Bohandas]

It's kinda unforgiving if you lack a guide. I tried it without one and I felt completely lost in Hommlet. It has a pretty darn good character creation system, though.

Install the Circle of Eight Modpack. It auto-explores the towns and adds an extra low level dungeon that makes it more feasible to skip the XP from Hommlet's confusingly written RP quests

[T.G. Oskar]

Well I'll say this. Update 62 is dropping in the morning and they've done a lot of work on Lag. They even turned off the limiter meant to help it run on Dial-up. (Which is not a joke.) 15 races, 15 classes, Iconics, and a ton of expansions. Honestly it's probably better than ever.

I checked a couple months ago the state of the game through the DDO Wiki and I know it has upgraded a lot. It's interesting that they kept the skill tree revamp almost intact from the moment I left (though you need a CB to plan properly). I also know that they added Gnomes (at last!) and Aasimar, and there's also premium Skill Trees that you can gain through paid quests (Falconer is the one that comes to mind).

I'm not too keen with the Iconics because they were meant to enforce the forced FR intrusion on the game. (I loved DDO because it was on Eberron, specifically Stormreach; making an intrusion where the Lolth Drow basically tried to take over the Vulkoorim felt like a kick in the nads.) I *know* Bladeforged is one of the Iconics, which is still a bit disturbing since it disconnects from the 3.5 lore (Paladins were LG exclusively, but the Lord of Blades is LE; therefore, you're essentially playing an evil Paladin. This is less important now but it was important back then, since it meant you lost your class features.) The only real advantage is to start at level 15 with some great items, but you basically miss the charm of the Waterworks low levels (because fighting Beholders at the deeper levels is just terrifying).

Also surprised that the only added Epic Destiny is when they added the Warlock. (And I'm stunned that they added an Alchemist class, which hasn't translated to 5e because it already exists as an Artificer subclass.)

Unfortunately, I don't think I could download it unless I had a proper set-up. I don't think my Internet speed will be good enough to let me enter, for one, and avoid the time out issue that made me drop the game in the first place. (And I kinda lost any interest in MMOs, since the fun of it is playing it with friends.)

[Triaxx]

I don't entirely mind the FR content. Mostly because it's quite self-contained. There are just a couple harbor quests and the drow you see are actually FR imports not Vulkoorim locals. Only 5 of the Iconics even start in FR and honestly there's not a lot of reason to stay there since the quests available are mostly above your level.

U51 also saw a total revamp of Epic Destinies and a finalizing of the U50 stat adjustment. Prior to it there was a massive step from 28-29 in gear which they realized was a big mistake.

I can definitely understand low net speeds though I play just fine on DSL. As for playing with people... DDO feels more like a single player game with optional Multiplayer. Which I admit feels weird but DDO has never been quite as massive as other MMO's.

[Bohandas]

Wasn't there supposed to be a computer game that was gonna be based on Paranoia? What ever happened to that? Did it come out and I missed it or what?

[TaiLiu]

I had at most a cursory knowledge of the setting before I played Shadowrun and I thought they were all great. Nothing in the combat system was that obtuse and was easy enough to pick up without knowing the setting. The stories do pretty good job of standing on their own. The engine and combat got a fair amount of polish by the time the second one came out, but Returns was still good.
Cool! That's encouraging. :smallsmile:


All campaigns do their best to detail their settings (Seattle for Dead Man's Switch, Berlin as an anarchist state for Dragonfall and obviously HK for Hong Kong) and they explain the lore pretty well.

The system itself is pretty simplified. You get stats much like in D&D (Strength, Quickness, Stamina, Logic, Willpower and Charisma), and each skill governs certain skills - Unarmed and Melee Combat for STR, Pistols/SMG/Rifles/Throwing for QUI, Medicine, Decking and Rigging for INT, Sorcery and Chi Casting for WIL and Shamanism and Summoning for CHA. (STA had nothing until Hong Kong, where it gained Cyberware Affinity). Each score has a range from 1 to 10, though the actual maximum is determined by the race: Humans are balanced, Elves are quicker but have poor stamina, Dwarves have decent stamina and Willpower but poor Charisma; Orks have a lot of Strength and Stamina but little Logic, and Trolls take Orks to the extreme. You can't get more points in a skill than your stat: therefore, you can't have more Melee Combat or Unarmed than your base Strength.

Stats are pretty easy to explain: they govern half of the success on things you can do. As you level up those stats, you gain certain things: more weapon slots if you have high STR/QUI, access to more programs if you have high INT, access to more spells with WIL and CHA - extremely important - access to one Etiquette per 2 points of Charisma. This last one is mostly for roleplaying, and it represents how you behave around certain people, which usually means you open up certain dialogue choices that can stop battles or earn you rewards.

Skills govern the other half of success in things you can do, but act as specialties - Unarmed defines how good you are fighting unarmed or with loaded gloves, Melee Combat defines your skill with weapons, Pistols/SMG/Rifles are self-explanatory, Throwing includes both throwing weapons and grenades, and so on. As you level up your skills, you gain special perks with it, such as special actions you can execute - some weapons require you have a specific rank on a skill to use them, also. Spells are divided into two types - Mage spells (Sorcery, using Willpower) and Shaman spells (Conjuration, which use Charisma). In this case, think only slightly in D&D: Mages cast a ton of useful attack spells, debuffs and healing, while Shamans get most buffing/debuffing spells and barriers. Summoning is treated differently.

The way you level up your stats and skills is based on Karma, which acts like XP but added directly. You need to spend a number of Karma points equal to the rank of the stat/skill +1 (therefore, to raise Strength from 4 to 5, you need to spend 5 Karma).

The good thing about SR is that you get archetypes at the start, which auto-fill your stats and skills to however suits your need and give you related starting equipment. This includes Street Samurai (think Fighter but loaded with cyberware that enhances them), Decker (a hacker), Rigger (mechanic, uses drones in combat), Mage (self-explanatory), Shaman (self-explanatory) and Adept (think Monk that self-buffs with magic-based powers). You can develop each character to your liking, but it's recommended to specialize in only one or two things; Sammies should go full Strength and physical combat or full Quickness and go ranged, but not both - and preferably, focus on one weapon only. Deckers could dabble into Rigging but should also specialize. Adepts can learn some Sorcery to cast some spells but will suffer since they also need good Strength to make use of their Adept Powers. Shamans can choose Conjuration and Summoning but that means they'll have their other skills spread thin. As long as you don't try to make a jack of all trades, you should do fine.

Combats in SR are turn-based, but use cover and line of sight rules extensively. You fortunately get the necessary info regarding whether you'll be able to hit or not, the potential damage you can do, and the effects of the cover they're in. You get AP, which is the number of actions you can do, which can be divided into moving or attacking; as you progress in the campaign(s), you get more AP. (Note that spells like Haste and some cyberware/bioware/drugs can boost your AP by 1 or 2. Summoning or jacking into a Drone reduces your AP but grants the Spirit/Drone the ability to act on its own.) The game helps you with in-game tutorials, so you shouldn't get too lost while playing it.

As things go, SR is much easier to understand than games like BG or NWN, and you don't need to understand the TTRPG before playing it, since the stats and skills tell you what you get when you progress. The devs take some liberties in how the stats and skills are interpreted, though, as MANY skills are missing (Melee Combat collapses most of the combat skills; skills such as Shadowing, Hiding, Acrobatics and such are missing from Quickness, a lot of skills are missing from Logic; Etiquette is supposed to be a Charisma skill, not a trait from Charisma) or entirely replaced (Sorcery and Conjuration aren't WIL or CHA skills, but based of a separate Magic stat which starts at 1 and maxes at 6).

One last thing to mention is Essence. You get 6 Essence, and you lose Essence when you put on cyberware/bioware. In the TTRPG, if your Essence goes down to 0, you die (your soul separates from your body, basically). Game-wise, you can't get lower than 1, but it restricts the amount of 'ware you can equip. Furthermore, Essence influences your Magic - the lower your Essence, the harder it is for you to use Magic because you get less spells you can prepare and recovering from their use is much harder. Also, you don't get MP or specific spell slots - you can use Magic effectively at-will, but using the same spell too quickly incurs Drain, which is HP loss. Because recovery in this game is restrained (the Heal spell only recovers your last wound, and you can only really recover using Medkits), this means you don't want to drain yourself too hard. Fortunately, most spells have a quick recovery time of 1 or 2 turns, which means that Mages never really are out of spells. (However, with less Essentia, it takes longer to recover from casting a spell.) So, in short: don't add cyberware if you use magic of any kind (and this includes Adepts).
Thanks for the mechanics summary. This is helpful. :smallsmile:

The tech/magic division is interesting. I was envisioning magitech, but it seems like SR has the opposite.


I'm kind of surprised at how few high profile Shadowrun video games there are. I know they exist, but they're not omnipresent in the way D&D and Warhammer games are, and they don't have a Bloodlines style universally recognized classic either.
Maybe it's a popularity thing? D&D 5e is just so so so much more popular (https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2020-8-million-users-edition/) than SR.


Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

As for proper Turn-based D&D style I'd suggest Baldur's Gate and setup auto-pause to go off every end round. There are also some solid AI scripts available to help manage party members.

But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?
By Aura Warlock, are you referring to the Enlightened Spirit enhancements?

[T.G. Oskar]

I don't entirely mind the FR content. Mostly because it's quite self-contained. There are just a couple harbor quests and the drow you see are actually FR imports not Vulkoorim locals. Only 5 of the Iconics even start in FR and honestly there's not a lot of reason to stay there since the quests available are mostly above your level.

I was playing when that was promoted, and it broke immersion.

Traditionally, the global rewards were given by Vulkoorim. When the FR content started to appear, there was mention that there were "strange Drow" that spoke of an alien goddess. It appears that they were displaced?

And that's part of the issue - DDO was Eberron-centric, and that started displacing its focus just to add more content and attract new players. Considering that there's an FR-centric MMO (Neverwinter) and that the multiverse concept wasn't enforced yet (and that, even by Planescape standards, Eberron is extremely distant), it felt forced.


I can definitely understand low net speeds though I play just fine on DSL. As for playing with people... DDO feels more like a single player game with optional Multiplayer. Which I admit feels weird but DDO has never been quite as massive as other MMO's.

When playing F2P, it can be complicated to do Elite or Epic content on your own (or with a hireling only). IIRC, there are some missions that require at least 3 players to trigger plates. (It could be done with two by using summons, but the content explicitly said you needed 3 players or more before entering. And if you want enough Premium content to buy the races and classes, you need to complete as many missions as possible (particularly after exploiting all the first-time bonuses on every server).


The tech/magic division is interesting. I was envisioning magitech, but it seems like SR has the opposite.

SR has some Magitech, but not as you'd expect (full merger of Magic and Technology).

The most important is mass-producing an algae that serves as a barrier against spirits and astrally-projecting Mages and Shamans, as well as sensors. There's no way to create guns that shoot magic, though. (There's a way to create magic weapons - Weapon Foci - but they only apply to weapons such as swords and axes, not guns.)

This is by design. Magic is supposed to be extremely rare and tied to Essence. Cyberware (and to an extension, Bioware) reduces that Essence, and therefore the individual's connection to Magic, which is assumed as something natural. The setting has a huge "nature vs. civilization" feel when you think about it.

(Also, important note: Cyberware/Bioware also affects those people with innate connections to the Matrix - i.e., Technomancers - but there's a little more leeway in that regard. Proto-Technomancers, aka "Otaku", needed the bare minimum Cyberware - a datajack - to connect, and their powers were erratic. Come 4th Edition, Technomancers could connect wirelessly to the Matrix, but Cyberware/Bioware affected them just like it does to Magicians, reducing their Resonance score. I don't know 5th Edition onwards, but I believe Technomancers are the only characters that can connect to the more advanced version of the Matrix without the newer wireless Cyberdecks.)

[TaiLiu]

And that's part of the issue - DDO was Eberron-centric, and that started displacing its focus just to add more content and attract new players. Considering that there's an FR-centric MMO (Neverwinter) and that the multiverse concept wasn't enforced yet (and that, even by Planescape standards, Eberron is extremely distant), it felt forced.
Yeah, I'm a little grumpy that Eberron is starting to lose its primacy, too. Tieflings and Dragonborn are free, but Shifters are premium and Warforged need a favor-unlock.


SR has some Magitech, but not as you'd expect (full merger of Magic and Technology).

The most important is mass-producing an algae that serves as a barrier against spirits and astrally-projecting Mages and Shamans, as well as sensors. There's no way to create guns that shoot magic, though. (There's a way to create magic weapons - Weapon Foci - but they only apply to weapons such as swords and axes, not guns.)

This is by design. Magic is supposed to be extremely rare and tied to Essence. Cyberware (and to an extension, Bioware) reduces that Essence, and therefore the individual's connection to Magic, which is assumed as something natural. The setting has a huge "nature vs. civilization" feel when you think about it.

(Also, important note: Cyberware/Bioware also affects those people with innate connections to the Matrix - i.e., Technomancers - but there's a little more leeway in that regard. Proto-Technomancers, aka "Otaku", needed the bare minimum Cyberware - a datajack - to connect, and their powers were erratic. Come 4th Edition, Technomancers could connect wirelessly to the Matrix, but Cyberware/Bioware affected them just like it does to Magicians, reducing their Resonance score. I don't know 5th Edition onwards, but I believe Technomancers are the only characters that can connect to the more advanced version of the Matrix without the newer wireless Cyberdecks.)
Oh, neat. Now I'm curious why magic has re-entered the world in a time where technology is at its highest. I found this wiki article (https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Awakening), but it doesn't say why.

I also came across the wiki article for Goblinization (https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Goblinization), which ended with this funny sentence: "This event caused the Coffee Famine of 2022."

[Erloas]

The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.

[NeoVid]

I was playing when that was promoted, and it broke immersion.

It didn't for me. The long quest chain you have to adventure through to make the link from Eberron to FR is both awesome and does a good job at presenting the whole thing in Eberron's terms. That Aspect of Lolth who started the whole thing had been on Eberron since the Age of Demons, entombed in Khyber for all this time. It's just our bad luck that she was the first one the Lords of Dust managed to successfully free...

The immersion breaker for me is that it's easy to get to Barovia and back.

Huh, just remembered, 5e finally gave us the official bit of Eberron that's trapped in the mists of Ravenloft. I really hope we'll get to see that in DDO....


When playing F2P, it can be complicated to do Elite or Epic content on your own (or with a hireling only). IIRC, there are some missions that require at least 3 players to trigger plates. (It could be done with two by using summons, but the content explicitly said you needed 3 players or more before entering. And if you want enough Premium content to buy the races and classes, you need to complete as many missions as possible (particularly after exploiting all the first-time bonuses on every server).



Every year for the past few years, they've released a promo code that unlocks every adventure pack in the game except for the newest one. At the same time, they also drop the price of the expansions from thousands of store points to 99, which anyone can earn in days. That promo is a large part of why I'm back after all these years!


Wasn't there supposed to be a computer game that was gonna be based on Paranoia? What ever happened to that? Did it come out and I missed it or what?

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory released on Epic in December 2019, then was delisted after two months. The Steam page is still up with a 'coming soon.' As far as I've been able to tell, absolutely no one who might be in the know about the game's fate can be contacted. The fact that it's turned into an ungame and been redacted is the most Paranoia thing possible.

[T.G. Oskar]

Oh, neat. Now I'm curious why magic has re-entered the world in a time where technology is at its highest. I found this wiki article (https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Awakening), but it doesn't say why.


The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.

Mostly this. Magic in SR is like a tide, with ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and happens to be cyclical. Each "World" is what happens when Magic switches from a high to a low and viceversa. The Fifth World (most of recollected history) was a low-magic world, and thus many of the paranormal critters and races went dormant. 2012 (the end of the bak'tun in the Mayan calendar) represented that point where Magic started to wake up.

What made things different from previous Worlds is that, as you mentioned, technology advanced at a rapid pace, to the point that those who existed since the end of the Fourth World had to adapt. Magic entering a "high tide" phase was inevitable but not expected; those remnants of the Fourth World didn't expect, however, the technological advancements of the Sixth World, to the point that there's a whole new world (the Matrix) developed in the interim.


It didn't for me. The long quest chain you have to adventure through to make the link from Eberron to FR is both awesome and does a good job at presenting the whole thing in Eberron's terms. That Aspect of Lolth who started the whole thing had been on Eberron since the Age of Demons, entombed in Khyber for all this time. It's just our bad luck that she was the first one the Lords of Dust managed to successfully free...

The Aspect of Lolth was an attempt to hammer the multiverse concept into Eberron. I know the 3.5 books had a suggestion where you could have Corellon and Lolth in Eberron, with the former (as well as the rest of the Seldarine) being ancestral spirits of the Valenar while Lolth was supposed to be a Lord of Dust; the same applies to Bahamut and Tiamat, where the latter was also meant to be a Lord of Dust. However, this was mostly to justify adding the Yochlol and the spider demons.

The issue is that it reinforces the idea that all Drow are part of a twisted matriarchal society no matter where, which wasn't supposed to be the thing with Eberron, given the existence of the Vulkoorim (which aren't good per se but aren't always evil; they ARE treacherous, though), as well as the other two groups (the Sulatar that appear later in the game and the Umbragen which are bitter for being abandoned but are actually holding something even worse. That was a reinterpretation of the Drow that got diluted by adding the "traditional" drow.

The main issue was that Eberron was designed to be divorced from all the other planes, as by 3rd Edition Planescape was no longer supported as a setting (even though the Planar Handbook dealt with aspects of the setting). 4e forced a merger in order to introduce the new Tieflings (which were originally touched by the plane of Shavarath, either by heritage or by contact with the coterminous plane) and badly hammered Baator as an intruding plane, only to justify why Asmodeus was there. That lacerated the uniqueness of the setting, as now Eberron had Dragonborn and Tieflings just like in the other settings, rather than their own versions.


The immersion breaker for me is that it's easy to get to Barovia and back.

Huh, just remembered, 5e finally gave us the official bit of Eberron that's trapped in the mists of Ravenloft. I really hope we'll get to see that in DDO....

That's a specific thing from Ravenloft that supersedes the general rule - the Demiplane of Dread is supposed to reach even the most distant places.

And speaking of the Cyre 1313 bit - unless they negotiate with Square-Enix, I doubt they'll try to do it. Though, it'd be fun if they could add some references to it.


Every year for the past few years, they've released a promo code that unlocks every adventure pack in the game except for the newest one. At the same time, they also drop the price of the expansions from thousands of store points to 99, which anyone can earn in days. That promo is a large part of why I'm back after all these years!

That shows how much it's been since I've played. I bought some of the cards to get the stuff I wanted (specifically Warforged and Artificer, because you couldn't get Warforged unless you had favor with House Cannith, and most of the favor was locked behind the quests), because trying to get the right amount of points from favor alone was crazy.

[Triaxx]

Given the design principle of Eberron is: stuff happens let the players sort it out...

That said if you're a tabletop and version purist, there's a lot to hate about DDO. To the point I would say avoid it.

[NeoVid]

The main issue was that Eberron was designed to be divorced from all the other planes, as by 3rd Edition Planescape was no longer supported as a setting (even though the Planar Handbook dealt with aspects of the setting). 4e forced a merger in order to introduce the new Tieflings (which were originally touched by the plane of Shavarath, either by heritage or by contact with the coterminous plane) and badly hammered Baator as an intruding plane, only to justify why Asmodeus was there. That lacerated the uniqueness of the setting, as now Eberron had Dragonborn and Tieflings just like in the other settings, rather than their own versions.

For good or bad, that ship has sailed in DDO. With the Codex of Infinite Planes storyline over the past few years, the Gatekeepers have been policing planar anomalies ranging from the Temple of Elemental Evil to Saltmarsh, and now with Vecna showing up, it's been confirmed that the Ring of Siberys in DDO is damaged and planar incursions are just going to get worse in the future. A pretty cool in-world way to handle it, I think, but I can see why it would be disappointing to someone who wants more Eberron.


That's a specific thing from Ravenloft that supersedes the general rule - the Demiplane of Dread is supposed to reach even the most distant places.

And speaking of the Cyre 1313 bit - unless they negotiate with Square-Enix, I doubt they'll try to do it. Though, it'd be fun if they could add some references to it.

What's the Square connection? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't end up suplexing this train.



That shows how much it's been since I've played. I bought some of the cards to get the stuff I wanted (specifically Warforged and Artificer, because you couldn't get Warforged unless you had favor with House Cannith, and most of the favor was locked behind the quests), because trying to get the right amount of points from favor alone was crazy.

I wouldn't be surprised if you last played more recently than I did. I was a fanatic player for years, but I stopped cold all of a sudden around Update 20 and didn't come back until the promo code this year... at update 58.

[TaiLiu]

The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.
Sorry. I appreciate the explanation, but I'm a bit confused. You say the article says why, but then you also say there isn't a why. Which is it?


Mostly this. Magic in SR is like a tide, with ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and happens to be cyclical. Each "World" is what happens when Magic switches from a high to a low and viceversa. The Fifth World (most of recollected history) was a low-magic world, and thus many of the paranormal critters and races went dormant. 2012 (the end of the bak'tun in the Mayan calendar) represented that point where Magic started to wake up.

What made things different from previous Worlds is that, as you mentioned, technology advanced at a rapid pace, to the point that those who existed since the end of the Fourth World had to adapt. Magic entering a "high tide" phase was inevitable but not expected; those remnants of the Fourth World didn't expect, however, the technological advancements of the Sixth World, to the point that there's a whole new world (the Matrix) developed in the interim.
I think I understand the tide metaphor. But what's the mechanism responsible for it? Does it have to do with certain celestial bodies and their approximation to Earth? Halley's comet (https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet) is responsible for some magic stuff.

[T.G. Oskar]

I think I understand the tide metaphor. But what's the mechanism responsible for it? Does it have to do with certain celestial bodies and their approximation to Earth? Halley's comet (https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet) is responsible for some magic stuff.

Halley's Comet only triggered SURGE, which caused the Changelings (i.e., anthropomorphic animal-human hybrids) to emerge; it's not what triggers the surge of Magic, but a byproduct of it.

The exact mechanism is one of the things that the lore leaves deliberately unexplained. Judging by how it uses 2012 and the Mayan end of the world concept, it seems to happen every certain amount of years. The best explanation is, "it was supposed to happen and it happened".

One thing that happened during this iteration that might explain how it works is the Great Ghost Dance and its results. When the First Nations brought this into effect, it caused Mana to pour faster than ever, This is BAD, because it brings the attention of the Horrors.

The Horrors are essentially the setting's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos (but not being the Elder Gods and creatures OF the Mythos). The best I can say about the Horrors is - nope. Nope. You don't want to deal with them, period.

Horrors are from the depths of the metaplanes, effectively making them from another dimension. They sense when Mana is spiking in the world and make their way, and the results aren't pretty. Insect Spirits, which are essentially alien spirits that are associated with insects because of the shape they take when arriving to Earth, only exist to consume and propagate. Shedim are bodysnatching spirits that hate metahumankind, causing wars and other things. And these are merely the heralds.

That said - the reason why the Horrors are so mysterious is because they're merely being referenced and rarely intended to be used. This is because Horrors belong to the alternate sword & sorcery setting from the original company that developed Shadowrun, Earthdawn. The Horrors were main antagonists in the story, which was supposed to deal with Earth in the Fourth World (hence, before known history). Because of this, and because Shadowrun was supposed to be the sequel, Horrors are referenced but legally can't be used.

Lore-wise, the only reason the Horrors haven't appeared in full force is because one of the Great Dragons, Dunkelzahn (who was recently elected and confirmed as President of the UCAS), offed himself with a super-bomb in order to plug the big hole caused by the GGD. Great Dragons work to keep the Horrors at bay, but some suspect that technology may be key to stopping them once and for all.

That said, this is mostly a byproduct of Mana spiking into the world and not its cause. There's no defined cause, just as there's no given explanation to what's Resonance.

[Bavarian itP]

Thanks for the rec! Wikipedia tells me that it was controversial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil_%28video_game%29#Cont roversy) cuz of a possible gay relationship in-game. Sounds like a positive to me. :smallbiggrin:


It was also controversial because of a ****load of bugs. That was before the era of Steam and Bethesda, so it was a big deal. You couldn't even loot your enemies' corpses. I don't think I need to tell anyone on this forums how useless a D&D game is if you can't loot your enemies' corpses :smallfurious:

[Triaxx]

Since I totally forgot to respond, yes there are still some things which aren't free but most of them can either be picked up with points earned while playing or via Favor. Artificier and the Falconry Universal Tree are the two things I'd pay points for because both are irritating to unlock via favor.

There is even one streamer who's now intermittant due to real life stuff who earned everything via points and became 'uber-completionist' without spending money on the game.

Fortunately each server offer's first time bonuses, meaning you can easily get a leg up on things.

[Bohandas]

It was also controversial because of a ****load of bugs. That was before the era of Steam and Bethesda, so it was a big deal. You couldn't even loot your enemies' corpses. I don't think I need to tell anyone on this forums how useless a D&D game is if you can't loot your enemies' corpses :smallfurious:

I think most of that was fixed by patches, and the bugs that weren't were fixed by the official patches were fixed by the fan patches "Circle if Eight Modpack" and "Temple+"

(Except for the pathing bug that occasionally splits the party when you try to move through certain narrow passages; that's proven intransigent)

[Bavarian itP]

I think most of that was fixed by patches, and the bugs that weren't were fixed by the official patches were fixed by the fan patches "Circle if Eight Modpack" and "Temple+"

(Except for the pathing bug that occasionally splits the party when you try to move through certain narrow passages; that's proven intransigent)

I don't deny that. But that was, as I said, in an era were "released with game-breaking bugs" was not a normal thing.

[Erloas]

Sorry. I appreciate the explanation, but I'm a bit confused. You say the article says why, but then you also say there isn't a why. Which is it?
The link explains what happened.
But there really isn't a direct "why" is what I was saying. There wasn't an event you missed; it wasn't a portal opening up, dimensions crossing, or some specific magical or technical event, or anything like that

[TaiLiu]

Halley's Comet only triggered SURGE, which caused the Changelings (i.e., anthropomorphic animal-human hybrids) to emerge; it's not what triggers the surge of Magic, but a byproduct of it.

The exact mechanism is one of the things that the lore leaves deliberately unexplained. Judging by how it uses 2012 and the Mayan end of the world concept, it seems to happen every certain amount of years. The best explanation is, "it was supposed to happen and it happened".

One thing that happened during this iteration that might explain how it works is the Great Ghost Dance and its results. When the First Nations brought this into effect, it caused Mana to pour faster than ever, This is BAD, because it brings the attention of the Horrors.

The Horrors are essentially the setting's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos (but not being the Elder Gods and creatures OF the Mythos). The best I can say about the Horrors is - nope. Nope. You don't want to deal with them, period.

Horrors are from the depths of the metaplanes, effectively making them from another dimension. They sense when Mana is spiking in the world and make their way, and the results aren't pretty. Insect Spirits, which are essentially alien spirits that are associated with insects because of the shape they take when arriving to Earth, only exist to consume and propagate. Shedim are bodysnatching spirits that hate metahumankind, causing wars and other things. And these are merely the heralds.

That said - the reason why the Horrors are so mysterious is because they're merely being referenced and rarely intended to be used. This is because Horrors belong to the alternate sword & sorcery setting from the original company that developed Shadowrun, Earthdawn. The Horrors were main antagonists in the story, which was supposed to deal with Earth in the Fourth World (hence, before known history). Because of this, and because Shadowrun was supposed to be the sequel, Horrors are referenced but legally can't be used.

Lore-wise, the only reason the Horrors haven't appeared in full force is because one of the Great Dragons, Dunkelzahn (who was recently elected and confirmed as President of the UCAS), offed himself with a super-bomb in order to plug the big hole caused by the GGD. Great Dragons work to keep the Horrors at bay, but some suspect that technology may be key to stopping them once and for all.

That said, this is mostly a byproduct of Mana spiking into the world and not its cause. There's no defined cause, just as there's no given explanation to what's Resonance.
Got it. That's pretty neat and complicates the nature versus technology narrative you mentioned. Sounds like nature is pretty bad in this situation!


The link explains what happened.
But there really isn't a direct "why" is what I was saying. There wasn't an event you missed; it wasn't a portal opening up, dimensions crossing, or some specific magical or technical event, or anything like that
Got it.


It was also controversial because of a ****load of bugs. That was before the era of Steam and Bethesda, so it was a big deal. You couldn't even loot your enemies' corpses. I don't think I need to tell anyone on this forums how useless a D&D game is if you can't loot your enemies' corpses :smallfurious:
You actually can't loot corpses in Dungeons and Dragons Online. The only game I've ever played that let you loot corpses is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Being able to get the magic item your foe used against you is a lot of fun.

[Triaxx]

The last one of those I can think of is Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale 2. I get it though. Forgotten Realms is a generally High Magic setting so you're constantly tripping over magic swords. But at least the first BG it had a story element.

I think later games wanted more control over distribution as well. No point saying stuff is rare when you can just go kick some bandits and retire.

[T.G. Oskar]

Got it. That's pretty neat and complicates the nature versus technology narrative you mentioned. Sounds like nature is pretty bad in this situation!

Actually...

You need to consider it's a cyberpunk game. Narrative will be grim from the start.

Nature isn't inherently good or bad, and neither does technology. The Horrors are explicitly considered unnatural, as well as everything that represents them. However, spirits of nature can be benevolent. They can also be free, sometimes interacting and experiencing the human world in their own way or by assuming a corporeal form. They can also be warped into something unnatural because of what humans are doing, becoming toxic spirits. And even Mentor Spirits can be good or bad; spirits like Bear can be either nurturing or aggressive, Dragonslayer can grant incredible courage at the cost of unsurmountable battles, and the Adversary is akin to Satan under both its traditional concept (opposing rightful rule and therefore leading to Evil) and as conceived by some people (opposing tyranny and therefore positive).

Technology can be ambivalent as well. Cyberware and bioware shave off Essence from a living being, and upon reaching 0 Essence, you die - though there are ways to bypass this limitation, the victims end up as shalllow, psychotic and self-destructive heavily cybered shadows of their former selves called cyberzombies. (They're one of the rare mixes of magic and technology, where the few remaining biological components are preserved through a mixture of restorative magic and alchemy but the end result is so devoid of Essence that it's almost like a black hole in Astral Space, frightening any Spirit or Magician that can see them.) AI is seen cautiously because of what happened during the Crash of '64*, and more recent editions are showing off the fallout of that incident - Technomancers, the Resonance (and the Deep Resonance, as well as its counterpart the Dissonance), self-emerging AI, "e-ghosts" and eventually CFD. Other than Dissonance (which is almost overwhelmingly negative), they're not inherently evil - cyberware can replace lost limbs, for example, and any positive use of technology you can think of now is almost certainly in the Sixth World as well.

I won't say who says it because it's a HUGE spoiler, but one character says this almost at the very end of "Dead Man's Switch", which resumes the Sixth World almost to perfection:
"It's a series of conspiracies, conflicting agendas and petty jealousies, all building upon, feeding upon, and excreting into an unending web of drek that people wade through every day and call it Life. If there was one Dark Lord controlling everything and we could drive a magic sword through his heart to free the world, that would be grand. Such clarity! Such focus! Alas."

[...]

"[...] The lesson is this - the game is rigged. The cards are stacked. The dice are loaded. It's the same as it always was. Every cycle. People in power exert power. Little people cower in their homes, think what they're told to think, and buy whatever product will help them forget how horrible their lives are for another day. And that's why we don't *play* their fragging game. We don't swallow their drek sandwich and politely ask for another. It's why we run the shadows. That's where real life is, kiddo. Reality's living in the places no one wants you to see."

In other words: the problem isn't "nature vs. technology", or the Horrors that could at any point tear the world apart or enslave it - it is what has always existed and will always exist, which is greed and lust for power and control. While two of the most famous sayings are "Never, ever, make a deal with a Dragon" and "Never trust an Elf", they only represent two of the biggest forces in the game. Megacorps are just as monolithic and greedy and power-hungry as Great Dragons and immortal Elves that have played that game for centuries - and that's without speaking of all the ancient and recent conspiracies and divisions.

This is a very important narrative in cyberpunk - that society is irredeemably corrupt, that everything has become a commodity that can be sold - including human life - and that only by escaping it and going against it one can realize everything, but that you can't fight it - at least, not alone. It does so through the lens of a near-future with advanced technology but modern sensitivities. Shadowrun twists that narrative by introducing fantasy elements and analyzing how they'd integrate into a bleak futuristic society - megacorps are like dragons in terms of behavoir, so what happens if you add actual dragons? What if Magic, long believed to be a myth, becomes a commodity just like everything else? How does the concept of mythological races as allegories of foreign, misunderstood and sometimes loathed ethnic groups stands when those mythological races are real? How does the conflict between the anarchists and the powerful change when you add magic swords and spells to the mix? As you can see, not much, and yet a lot - a cyberpunk world filled with fantastical elements is still as bleak, but YMMV whether it's less or more.

At best, it's fun.

P. S.: Regarding the Crash of '64 (aka Crash 2.0)...
To understand how that shook the world, you need to understand a few details. By 2029, the Internet got hit with a HUGE virus that threatened its existence - the Crash virus. Because the world became so dependent on computers (as it is now), it essentially toppled governments and ruined a lot of things. A corporate group, Echo Mirage, resolved to face it through the use of more advanced interface technology - ASIST, a way to feed information directly to the brain in a form of virtual reality, and cyberterminals which allowed them to traverse the web more efficiently. The Crash virus, however, proved resilient, causing lethal biofeedback to the team. To counter this and protect the group, a program was created to counter the virus's lethal biofeedback - and because of the interaction and self-autonomy of the program, it eventually developed sentience; That program, Mirage, became the first AI.

After the Crash virus was isolated and trapped - as usual for companies - they started to analyze it. The result of that fight left the Internet a wreck, and from its ashes came its successor - the Matrix. (Which predates the movie but is based on Gibson's "Internet successor" concept revealed in Neuromancer.) This created Intrusion Countermeasures - ICs - which, alongisde other programs, showed semi-autonomous capabilities. This led to the creation of two more AI - Morgan, created from a semi-autonomous program that latched and became romantically involved with an Elf decker, and Deus, a security system and admin program meant for a megacorp project - the Renraku Arcology.

The seeds of the second Crash began when Deus, realizing their creators made kill-switches in case they became a danger, gained sentience out of fear and locked the Arcology. (In effect, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Renraku isolated and dealt with the situation - at the cost of some of its prestige - but by that time the AI had escaped. Turns out, Deus was secretly experimenting on humans to make them capable of using their minds to interface with the Matrix. These would later be known as "otaku". When Deus escaped, it did so by fragmenting and placing itself inside the otaku it created, with the ultimate idea of recompiling and becoming akin to a god. To combat it, Renraku had the aid of Dodger and Morgan, and during that fight, Deus vanquished Morgan - but the latter pulled the same trick and downloaded parts of it into otaku. From there, Deus and Morgan (which would eventually become Megaera) waged a secret war in the Matrix.

This leads to the actual Crash of '64. The detonating event is an IPO (initial public offer, a term used in stock exchange for when a company goes public to sell stocks at any of the world's stock exchanges) for one of the AAA-corps, Novatech. Because this would create a ton of speculation and sales, the East Coast Stock Exchange (the successor to the New York Stock Exchange, aka Wall Street) upgraded its servers, giving it a ton of processing power - the kind of processing power that could create a Ultraviolet server.

Ultraviolet servers are so powerful they're like worlds into themselves. Anyone inside thinks and feels that they're in the real world - in a way, much like in the Matrix movies. Because of that level of processing power, it is the perfect breeding ground for AI - or to have self-aware AIs recompile. This was the moment Deus was expecting, as with that level of power it could recompile, use the ECSE servers as a hub and then dominate the Matrix - as it had been secretly doing at other places. Megaera was trying to stop it, but futilely - and she did so by using her otaku against Deus's own. So, you have two small armies of prodigious hackers led by a super-advanced AI fighting each other for control over the Matrix. Because of this, the entirety of the Matrix soon became the battleground of these two AIs and their followers.

That leads to what actually caused it - a dirty bomb from a terrorist organization. See, while all of that was happening, a small doomsday cult called Winternight started plotting to destroy the world by means of the Jormungand virus, which would effectively take control of the world's nuclear armament. To assist this cult - which had magicians in their raniks - they contacted a "friendly" group of Otaku known as "Ex Pacis", led by Pax - one of the oldest otaku, formerly allied with Deus but abandoned when Deus escaped, and that wanted revenge by causing chaos in the Matrix in order to create a lor of Dissonance. Thing is, Pax became addicted to being in an Ultraviolet host and wanted to create one, and thought she could do so by creating Dissonance pools within certain hubs - perhaps to transcend, perhaps to serve the Dissonance, that's unclear. What's clear is that Pax used Winternight to attack the main servers of the Matrix and helped in the creation of Jormungand for those purposes.

All of this happened roughly at the same time. Deus invades the ECSE servers and starts compiling with the help of his Otaku; Megaera does the same, creating a Matrix war between Otaku but failing. Mirage, realizing there's a huge threat to the Matrix, goes and fights against Deus but also fails - however, their efforts were good for stalling. Once Deus thought he was unopposed, Winternight gets captured and they trigger Jormungand - but because Jormungand was targettng the core of the Matrix, what it really caused was a worldwide outage which effectively caused the death of Deus, Megaera, Mirage and virtually ALL of the Otaku engaged in, as well as many others that were on the Matrix at the time.

The results were just as bad as with the first Crash - loss of communications, a need to reconstruct the interface and make it more resilient, and so on. Unlike last time, the repairs were swifter, but by 2067, the Matrix would finally become wireless with the introduction of the commlink (akin to a smartphone), using Augmented Reality alongside the old Virtual Reality. However, by that time, strange events started happening with people apparently being able to connect to the new Matrix without a commlink or ASIST tech. Fearful of what the Otaku could do, these people were hunted, gathered and experimented upon. These would become Technomancers, who would be able to do what the Otaku weren't able to as they were effectively born able to access the Matrix. It is there where most Technomancers start speaking about the Resonance, which is this sort of chthonic entity representing the Matrix. Much later on, rumors about AI starting to spawn, or programs claiming to be the people who died in the Crash started appearing, and while that stoked the flames of fear in people - with the megacorps claiming they had everything under control, as per PR protocol - it effectively changed the Matrix and ithe world forever.

At least, until Boston Lockdown and the CFD.

[TaiLiu]

The last one of those I can think of is Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale 2. I get it though. Forgotten Realms is a generally High Magic setting so you're constantly tripping over magic swords. But at least the first BG it had a story element.

I think later games wanted more control over distribution as well. No point saying stuff is rare when you can just go kick some bandits and retire.
Gotcha. Thanks for the suggestions. I think I have Baldur's Gate 2, but I believe it uses D&D 2e. Which I'm totally unfamiliar with. So I haven't been interested in trying.


Actually...

You need to consider it's a cyberpunk game. Narrative will be grim from the start.

Nature isn't inherently good or bad, and neither does technology. The Horrors are explicitly considered unnatural, as well as everything that represents them. However, spirits of nature can be benevolent. They can also be free, sometimes interacting and experiencing the human world in their own way or by assuming a corporeal form. They can also be warped into something unnatural because of what humans are doing, becoming toxic spirits. And even Mentor Spirits can be good or bad; spirits like Bear can be either nurturing or aggressive, Dragonslayer can grant incredible courage at the cost of unsurmountable battles, and the Adversary is akin to Satan under both its traditional concept (opposing rightful rule and therefore leading to Evil) and as conceived by some people (opposing tyranny and therefore positive).

Technology can be ambivalent as well. Cyberware and bioware shave off Essence from a living being, and upon reaching 0 Essence, you die - though there are ways to bypass this limitation, the victims end up as shalllow, psychotic and self-destructive heavily cybered shadows of their former selves called cyberzombies. (They're one of the rare mixes of magic and technology, where the few remaining biological components are preserved through a mixture of restorative magic and alchemy but the end result is so devoid of Essence that it's almost like a black hole in Astral Space, frightening any Spirit or Magician that can see them.) AI is seen cautiously because of what happened during the Crash of '64*, and more recent editions are showing off the fallout of that incident - Technomancers, the Resonance (and the Deep Resonance, as well as its counterpart the Dissonance), self-emerging AI, "e-ghosts" and eventually CFD. Other than Dissonance (which is almost overwhelmingly negative), they're not inherently evil - cyberware can replace lost limbs, for example, and any positive use of technology you can think of now is almost certainly in the Sixth World as well.

I won't say who says it because it's a HUGE spoiler, but one character says this almost at the very end of "Dead Man's Switch", which resumes the Sixth World almost to perfection:
"It's a series of conspiracies, conflicting agendas and petty jealousies, all building upon, feeding upon, and excreting into an unending web of drek that people wade through every day and call it Life. If there was one Dark Lord controlling everything and we could drive a magic sword through his heart to free the world, that would be grand. Such clarity! Such focus! Alas."

[...]

"[...] The lesson is this - the game is rigged. The cards are stacked. The dice are loaded. It's the same as it always was. Every cycle. People in power exert power. Little people cower in their homes, think what they're told to think, and buy whatever product will help them forget how horrible their lives are for another day. And that's why we don't *play* their fragging game. We don't swallow their drek sandwich and politely ask for another. It's why we run the shadows. That's where real life is, kiddo. Reality's living in the places no one wants you to see."

In other words: the problem isn't "nature vs. technology", or the Horrors that could at any point tear the world apart or enslave it - it is what has always existed and will always exist, which is greed and lust for power and control. While two of the most famous sayings are "Never, ever, make a deal with a Dragon" and "Never trust an Elf", they only represent two of the biggest forces in the game. Megacorps are just as monolithic and greedy and power-hungry as Great Dragons and immortal Elves that have played that game for centuries - and that's without speaking of all the ancient and recent conspiracies and divisions.

This is a very important narrative in cyberpunk - that society is irredeemably corrupt, that everything has become a commodity that can be sold - including human life - and that only by escaping it and going against it one can realize everything, but that you can't fight it - at least, not alone. It does so through the lens of a near-future with advanced technology but modern sensitivities. Shadowrun twists that narrative by introducing fantasy elements and analyzing how they'd integrate into a bleak futuristic society - megacorps are like dragons in terms of behavoir, so what happens if you add actual dragons? What if Magic, long believed to be a myth, becomes a commodity just like everything else? How does the concept of mythological races as allegories of foreign, misunderstood and sometimes loathed ethnic groups stands when those mythological races are real? How does the conflict between the anarchists and the powerful change when you add magic swords and spells to the mix? As you can see, not much, and yet a lot - a cyberpunk world filled with fantastical elements is still as bleak, but YMMV whether it's less or more.

At best, it's fun.

P. S.: Regarding the Crash of '64 (aka Crash 2.0)...
To understand how that shook the world, you need to understand a few details. By 2029, the Internet got hit with a HUGE virus that threatened its existence - the Crash virus. Because the world became so dependent on computers (as it is now), it essentially toppled governments and ruined a lot of things. A corporate group, Echo Mirage, resolved to face it through the use of more advanced interface technology - ASIST, a way to feed information directly to the brain in a form of virtual reality, and cyberterminals which allowed them to traverse the web more efficiently. The Crash virus, however, proved resilient, causing lethal biofeedback to the team. To counter this and protect the group, a program was created to counter the virus's lethal biofeedback - and because of the interaction and self-autonomy of the program, it eventually developed sentience; That program, Mirage, became the first AI.

After the Crash virus was isolated and trapped - as usual for companies - they started to analyze it. The result of that fight left the Internet a wreck, and from its ashes came its successor - the Matrix. (Which predates the movie but is based on Gibson's "Internet successor" concept revealed in Neuromancer.) This created Intrusion Countermeasures - ICs - which, alongisde other programs, showed semi-autonomous capabilities. This led to the creation of two more AI - Morgan, created from a semi-autonomous program that latched and became romantically involved with an Elf decker, and Deus, a security system and admin program meant for a megacorp project - the Renraku Arcology.

The seeds of the second Crash began when Deus, realizing their creators made kill-switches in case they became a danger, gained sentience out of fear and locked the Arcology. (In effect, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Renraku isolated and dealt with the situation - at the cost of some of its prestige - but by that time the AI had escaped. Turns out, Deus was secretly experimenting on humans to make them capable of using their minds to interface with the Matrix. These would later be known as "otaku". When Deus escaped, it did so by fragmenting and placing itself inside the otaku it created, with the ultimate idea of recompiling and becoming akin to a god. To combat it, Renraku had the aid of Dodger and Morgan, and during that fight, Deus vanquished Morgan - but the latter pulled the same trick and downloaded parts of it into otaku. From there, Deus and Morgan (which would eventually become Megaera) waged a secret war in the Matrix.

This leads to the actual Crash of '64. The detonating event is an IPO (initial public offer, a term used in stock exchange for when a company goes public to sell stocks at any of the world's stock exchanges) for one of the AAA-corps, Novatech. Because this would create a ton of speculation and sales, the East Coast Stock Exchange (the successor to the New York Stock Exchange, aka Wall Street) upgraded its servers, giving it a ton of processing power - the kind of processing power that could create a Ultraviolet server.

Ultraviolet servers are so powerful they're like worlds into themselves. Anyone inside thinks and feels that they're in the real world - in a way, much like in the Matrix movies. Because of that level of processing power, it is the perfect breeding ground for AI - or to have self-aware AIs recompile. This was the moment Deus was expecting, as with that level of power it could recompile, use the ECSE servers as a hub and then dominate the Matrix - as it had been secretly doing at other places. Megaera was trying to stop it, but futilely - and she did so by using her otaku against Deus's own. So, you have two small armies of prodigious hackers led by a super-advanced AI fighting each other for control over the Matrix. Because of this, the entirety of the Matrix soon became the battleground of these two AIs and their followers.

That leads to what actually caused it - a dirty bomb from a terrorist organization. See, while all of that was happening, a small doomsday cult called Winternight started plotting to destroy the world by means of the Jormungand virus, which would effectively take control of the world's nuclear armament. To assist this cult - which had magicians in their raniks - they contacted a "friendly" group of Otaku known as "Ex Pacis", led by Pax - one of the oldest otaku, formerly allied with Deus but abandoned when Deus escaped, and that wanted revenge by causing chaos in the Matrix in order to create a lor of Dissonance. Thing is, Pax became addicted to being in an Ultraviolet host and wanted to create one, and thought she could do so by creating Dissonance pools within certain hubs - perhaps to transcend, perhaps to serve the Dissonance, that's unclear. What's clear is that Pax used Winternight to attack the main servers of the Matrix and helped in the creation of Jormungand for those purposes.

All of this happened roughly at the same time. Deus invades the ECSE servers and starts compiling with the help of his Otaku; Megaera does the same, creating a Matrix war between Otaku but failing. Mirage, realizing there's a huge threat to the Matrix, goes and fights against Deus but also fails - however, their efforts were good for stalling. Once Deus thought he was unopposed, Winternight gets captured and they trigger Jormungand - but because Jormungand was targettng the core of the Matrix, what it really caused was a worldwide outage which effectively caused the death of Deus, Megaera, Mirage and virtually ALL of the Otaku engaged in, as well as many others that were on the Matrix at the time.

The results were just as bad as with the first Crash - loss of communications, a need to reconstruct the interface and make it more resilient, and so on. Unlike last time, the repairs were swifter, but by 2067, the Matrix would finally become wireless with the introduction of the commlink (akin to a smartphone), using Augmented Reality alongside the old Virtual Reality. However, by that time, strange events started happening with people apparently being able to connect to the new Matrix without a commlink or ASIST tech. Fearful of what the Otaku could do, these people were hunted, gathered and experimented upon. These would become Technomancers, who would be able to do what the Otaku weren't able to as they were effectively born able to access the Matrix. It is there where most Technomancers start speaking about the Resonance, which is this sort of chthonic entity representing the Matrix. Much later on, rumors about AI starting to spawn, or programs claiming to be the people who died in the Crash started appearing, and while that stoked the flames of fear in people - with the megacorps claiming they had everything under control, as per PR protocol - it effectively changed the Matrix and ithe world forever.

At least, until Boston Lockdown and the CFD.
Wow! Thanks for this thorough writeup. I wish I could write a response worthy of it.

I don't think I understood cyberpunk till this post. It's kinda like the opposite of a typical D&D campaign. There's a BBEG or two, but squashing them doesn't solve the setting's problems. I'd say it's a lot like our world, but the stuff about the Matrix and magic and fantasy is pretty different.

The otaku and technomancers... Are technomancers, like, natural-born otaku? I originally thought most otaku were natural-born, and it's just that there are some otaku made by AI. I also thought some otaku, after losing their powers by growing up, became technomancers.

[Eldan]

Cyberpunk 2070 and the tabletop games it's based on is actually a great example for this.

Johnny Silverhand, the great rockerboy hero/terrorist of the 2020s smuggled a nuke into Arasaka Headquarter and nuked them. Electric guitars play, it's awesome, hooray.

50 years later, they have rebuilt. Millions died for nothing in the fallout that's still hanging over Night City and Arasaka is still here. Most of the Arasaka family kill each other or are killed by the player if the game goes like that, and Arasaka the institution is still here. And if it's not them, there's still Biotechnica, and Militech, and Night Corp. Night Corp are currently mind controlling the major of Night City. It's a small side quest in the game and you can do nothing whatsoever about it. If you tell him, he forgets it. If you don't tell him, he just goes on. If you tell anyone else, they don't do anything.

You don't defeat capitalism by nuking Microsoft.

[Zombimode]

If you tell him, he forgets it.

Actually, its worse. If you tell him, his life goes down the toilett in a downward spiral of paranoia.

[T.G. Oskar]

Wow! Thanks for this thorough writeup. I wish I could write a response worthy of it.

I don't think I understood cyberpunk till this post. It's kinda like the opposite of a typical D&D campaign. There's a BBEG or two, but squashing them doesn't solve the setting's problems. I'd say it's a lot like our world, but the stuff about the Matrix and magic and fantasy is pretty different.

Cyberpunk is (or rather, was) a satirical, cynical view of the future. It's a response to the utopic futuristic visions of the early 19th century. (Think how ads in the 30s up to the 50s were very clean and praising the effectiveness of technology, and the vision behind the Jetsons.) By the mid-70s/early 80s, people began to grow cynical of future, aided by dystopic visions such as 1984 and Brave New World. Literature feared that the utopic vision of the future was a fallacy.

When Gibson wrote Neuromancer, it echoed that dystopic vision of the future but modernized it. It played on most of the fears of the age, specifically Japan's technological developments and corporate vision. Considering how they were recovering from WWII and advancing rapidly, people feared Japan would take over the world and expand its culture. Because of this, there's a lot of Japanese influences in cyberpunk (the New Yen being the currency of choice, corporate soldiers following a strict code of conduct akin to Samurai - and mercenaries following suit, hence the idea of the "street Samurai", most people knowing a modicum of Japanese), though these fears weren't supported because Japan's growth got stunted by population issues.

The biggest take is on how corporations effectively take over the world - one of the few things that the cyberpunk genre got right. Essentially, corporate fusions and takeovers create gigantic corporations with resources large enough to influence politics. While Europe has stymied things, in the US, the Citizens United SCOTUS decision could be considered a step towards a cyberpunk future (*could*, not necessarily is) because of how that gives corporations the ability to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to further their interests and effectively "purchase" politicians. The cyberpunk genre took this to its (apparent) logical conclusion, with megacorporations dominating the world. Cyberpunk stories usually have megacorps flat out ignoring government overreach; Shadowrun focuses on "corporate extraterritoriality", where a megacorp's lands are owned solely by the corps and aren't considered part of the land.

The reason it may feel so eerily similar to this world is because, of the few things the cyberpunk genre got right was its scathing critique of capitalism.

Left unchecked, a corporation's interest is generating money for its owners - and what better way to generate money than to effectively own slaves again? After all, slaves don't need to be paid and have no rights. To our sensitivities, slavery is just plain wrong - therefore, anything that may seem like a modern version of slavery is observed carefully. Specifically, depriving people of their rights against their will.

The cyberpunk genre observed from history that indentured servitude was, in many ways, akin to slavery - you don't own people officially but you press your employees to depend on you to the extent they can't escape - it's either staying with the employer or lose what little stability you have, especially because you have little to no rights and you need to start up from scratch.

By the 70s and 80s, people started to notice that corporate lifestyle could be oppressive. Specifically, how corporate employees (especially those not supported by a union) have a lifestyle that depends exclusively on their job - without a job, they can't pay for their mortgage, lose healthcare insurance and in occasions can't pay their student loans (which some corporations help pay), so they're forced to stay. And in occasions, that leads to employers making oppressive decisions because their employers can't fight back. (Unless there's a union backing you - which is why union-busting exists and there are companies designed to convince employees that unions are noxious to employment.) In fact, there's a term for it, which popularized by the nineties - wage slave.

The genre combined hierarchical organization, corporate greed, uncontrolled capitalistic mindframe and indentured servitude when developing megacorps. Robocop and specifically OCP is text-book cyberpunk in this regard, and you could easily consider the series as cyberpunk, if not cyberpunk-adjacent. Megacorps, because of their alleged "efficiency", are capable of making deals with cities to handle some of their amenities - not just power and water, but security. In Robocop, the Detroit City Police is effectively owned by OCP, which provide payroll and resources while giving themselves immunity to criminal activities (as the corporation is who polices itself). By the time of Robocop, OCP pretty much controls Detroit and enacts its plan to get rid of poor neighborhoods to create Delta City, an utopian paradise fully controlled by OCP. Executives are lords in their own right, being filthy rich and immune to being accused of criminal activities, but are still oppressed by their superiors who expect revenues with their projects.

As you can see, this taps into what the real world is turning into. Having billionaires purchase powerful platforms to become their own pet projects (*coughcoughTwittercoughcough*), corporate fusions reaching a point where they're at the edge of becoming monolithical and bypassing anti-trust laws (YMMV, but Microsoft purchasing Activision-Blizzard, which is by itself another corporate fusion), rampant lobbying, amongst others, brings to mind the fears of corporate domination of the world as espoused by the genre. That leads to things like "corporate media" and accusations of being unbiased adn propagandistic, for example.

Truth is, while the cyberpunk genre isn't prophetic (the Metaverse is nowhere near the Matrix envisioned by the genre, and I'm not sure if ANY of the writers ever imagined the impact of social media), it is visionary - as does every literary genre that critiques society.

Note that cyberpunk as a genre is mostly outdated. We're effectively in a "post-cyberpunk" society, where the critique to society exists but the cynicism has faded. Yes, corporations are dominating, but not all of them are the blackest of black, and there's a slim hope that they can be taken down. Corporations are not proving immune to their own greed, and neither are billionaires. It's an evolution to the genre, where people noticed "gee, the world isn't as black and grim as we thought".


The otaku and technomancers... Are technomancers, like, natural-born otaku? I originally thought most otaku were natural-born, and it's just that there are some otaku made by AI. I also thought some otaku, after losing their powers by growing up, became technomancers.

Mechanically, otaku were designed to act as Matrix counterparts to Mages and Shamans, running from the idea that, just like the Natural World can be altered through the Will of an individual, so should cyberspace. (It's also a reference to Angie Mitchell, from Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, who was implanted with the ability to interface with the Matrix only with her mind.) While they still needed a headjack to connect to the Matrix (because of its closed nature), they could do things that deckers couldn't, like compile their own programs and pseudo AI (sprites) on the fly, rather than copying, purchasing or designing them and then loading them into a deck. Their skill with Matrix combat and interaction depended exclusively on their mental stats (Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma), but they were also more prone to biofeedback. One key trait was that they could load themselves with cyberware, meaning that they could (barring lowering their Essence into the level of cyberpsychosis) gear up with boosted reflexes and cybereyes and concealed guns and act as soldiers.

How otaku were created is debatable. The biggest source of them are those "sponsored' by AI, but some could conceivably tap into the Deep Resonance on their own and awaken. What mattered was that the otaku was of age. Even in the current edition of the game, it's not clear what allows someone to become a Technomancer, just as there's no way to predict you'll be an Awakened. (What's known is that awakening as a Technomancer means you can't be Awakened; both are mutually exclusive.)

Technomancers are not natural-born otaku - at least, not mechanically. This is mostly branding - otaku were feared and misunderstood in lore, and some could easily consider them "technomancers". (The Shadowrun Trilogy game Dead Man's Switch has a character claiming to be a "technomancer" but in reality is only a very skilled decker - also, a reference to Count Zero.) After the Crash 2.0, when the Matrix became wireless due to new advancements, the conditions for metasapients capable of directly interfacing with the Matrix became a reality, which led to Technomancers as they currently exist - no need for a datajack, no need for a cyberdeck (or a commlink in 4e). In a way, Technomancers are the successors of the otaku - tapping into a wireless Matrix free of restraints.

You're right in that some otaku resurfaced as Technomancers following the Crash 2.0, after suffering the effects of Fading. Not all of them did so, though, and this is key. Fading was introduced as a "balancing" mechanic, explained as losing contact with that innate connection with the Matrix, and only staving it off through "submerging" with the Deep Resonance but never truly reversing it. What made ex-otaku and survivors turn into Technomancers is mostly unexplained, other than it's arbitrary. (Considering the connection between Essence and modern Resonance rules, it's possible that those otaku that Faded while heavily cybered cannot access their powers, while those who submerged and didn't sacrifice much of their Essence reawakened as Technomancers, but there's the odd possibility that a heavily cybered ex-otaku suddenly gained (limited) Technomancer powers while an older one that Faded early and keeps its old datajack (probably updated to run a modern cyberdeck and a commlink) never recovers them.

(Again, mechanically - the otaku-to-Technomancer change is mostly for balance issues. Having heavily cybered Technomancers that could rival a Street Sammy in combat while being obscenely powerful in the Matrix simply didn't make a lot of sense, so they grafted the Essence limitations to Resonance rules and expanded it to apply to most non-Awakened creatures, specifically Metasapients. Note that there are no Great Dragon Technomancers, though, for similar reasons - Great Dragons are Awakened creatures, and those that installed datajacks may have incredible skill but no unique insight into the Matrix. Except for Celedyr, but that's an entirely different issue.)

[Anymage]

The biggest take is on how corporations effectively take over the world - one of the few things that the cyberpunk genre got right...Cyberpunk stories usually have megacorps flat out ignoring government overreach; Shadowrun focuses on "corporate extraterritoriality", where a megacorp's lands are owned solely by the corps and aren't considered part of the land.

One thing that bugs me about SR is that they never thought to distinguish de facto extraterritoriality from de jure. If a weakened and cash strapped local government is happy to let someone else take over maintaining an area, that makes sense. Ditto if they're willing to take the corp's word for how things are being handled so long as it's plausible. It makes a lot less sense when a corporation can declare an arbitrary spot of ground legally theirs and have that backed up when nations are the primary writers and enforcers of laws. (I'm aware that the corporate court is a thing in SR. A naked literal land grab is still going to trigger all sorts of conflicts, and is one of many bits of SR lore I wish had been better thought through.)


Mechanically, otaku were designed to act as Matrix counterparts to Mages and Shamans, running from the idea that, just like the Natural World can be altered through the Will of an individual, so should cyberspace. (It's also a reference to Angie Mitchell, from Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, who was implanted with the ability to interface with the Matrix only with her mind.) ... Again, mechanically - the otaku-to-Technomancer change is mostly for balance issues. Having heavily cybered Technomancers that could rival a Street Sammy in combat while being obscenely powerful in the Matrix simply didn't make a lot of sense, so they grafted the Essence limitations to Resonance rules

I'm wondering how much of dumping otaku comes down to more people realizing just how cool the name wasn't.

There's also how the idea of preternaturally skilled child hackers is cool on the surface, but being able to interface with the matrix with just your bare brain is a bit redundant when you physically have to plug a cable into your skull, and a talented decker with the cash to spare could get a similar look by having their deck implanted. And how much of real life tech was going wireless so SR had their world modify instead of sticking with the 80s aesthetic, meaning that bare brain hackers would have to now have wireless bare brains. Child cyber-soldiers in an AI war is an interesting plotline but doesn't have much potential outside of that, so I'm okay with it being an arbitrary pivot to technomancers.

[TaiLiu]

Cyberpunk 2070 and the tabletop games it's based on is actually a great example for this.

Johnny Silverhand, the great rockerboy hero/terrorist of the 2020s smuggled a nuke into Arasaka Headquarter and nuked them. Electric guitars play, it's awesome, hooray.

50 years later, they have rebuilt. Millions died for nothing in the fallout that's still hanging over Night City and Arasaka is still here. Most of the Arasaka family kill each other or are killed by the player if the game goes like that, and Arasaka the institution is still here. And if it's not them, there's still Biotechnica, and Militech, and Night Corp. Night Corp are currently mind controlling the major of Night City. It's a small side quest in the game and you can do nothing whatsoever about it. If you tell him, he forgets it. If you don't tell him, he just goes on. If you tell anyone else, they don't do anything.

You don't defeat capitalism by nuking Microsoft.
Right, I understand. I guess cyberpunk isn't for me—I play TTRPGs partly to feel a sense of power and control that I won't ever get in real life.


Cyberpunk is (or rather, was) a satirical, cynical view of the future. It's a response to the utopic futuristic visions of the early 19th century. (Think how ads in the 30s up to the 50s were very clean and praising the effectiveness of technology, and the vision behind the Jetsons.) By the mid-70s/early 80s, people began to grow cynical of future, aided by dystopic visions such as 1984 and Brave New World. Literature feared that the utopic vision of the future was a fallacy.

When Gibson wrote Neuromancer, it echoed that dystopic vision of the future but modernized it. It played on most of the fears of the age, specifically Japan's technological developments and corporate vision. Considering how they were recovering from WWII and advancing rapidly, people feared Japan would take over the world and expand its culture. Because of this, there's a lot of Japanese influences in cyberpunk (the New Yen being the currency of choice, corporate soldiers following a strict code of conduct akin to Samurai - and mercenaries following suit, hence the idea of the "street Samurai", most people knowing a modicum of Japanese), though these fears weren't supported because Japan's growth got stunted by population issues.

The biggest take is on how corporations effectively take over the world - one of the few things that the cyberpunk genre got right. Essentially, corporate fusions and takeovers create gigantic corporations with resources large enough to influence politics. While Europe has stymied things, in the US, the Citizens United SCOTUS decision could be considered a step towards a cyberpunk future (*could*, not necessarily is) because of how that gives corporations the ability to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to further their interests and effectively "purchase" politicians. The cyberpunk genre took this to its (apparent) logical conclusion, with megacorporations dominating the world. Cyberpunk stories usually have megacorps flat out ignoring government overreach; Shadowrun focuses on "corporate extraterritoriality", where a megacorp's lands are owned solely by the corps and aren't considered part of the land.

The reason it may feel so eerily similar to this world is because, of the few things the cyberpunk genre got right was its scathing critique of capitalism.

Left unchecked, a corporation's interest is generating money for its owners - and what better way to generate money than to effectively own slaves again? After all, slaves don't need to be paid and have no rights. To our sensitivities, slavery is just plain wrong - therefore, anything that may seem like a modern version of slavery is observed carefully. Specifically, depriving people of their rights against their will.

The cyberpunk genre observed from history that indentured servitude was, in many ways, akin to slavery - you don't own people officially but you press your employees to depend on you to the extent they can't escape - it's either staying with the employer or lose what little stability you have, especially because you have little to no rights and you need to start up from scratch.

By the 70s and 80s, people started to notice that corporate lifestyle could be oppressive. Specifically, how corporate employees (especially those not supported by a union) have a lifestyle that depends exclusively on their job - without a job, they can't pay for their mortgage, lose healthcare insurance and in occasions can't pay their student loans (which some corporations help pay), so they're forced to stay. And in occasions, that leads to employers making oppressive decisions because their employers can't fight back. (Unless there's a union backing you - which is why union-busting exists and there are companies designed to convince employees that unions are noxious to employment.) In fact, there's a term for it, which popularized by the nineties - wage slave.

The genre combined hierarchical organization, corporate greed, uncontrolled capitalistic mindframe and indentured servitude when developing megacorps. Robocop and specifically OCP is text-book cyberpunk in this regard, and you could easily consider the series as cyberpunk, if not cyberpunk-adjacent. Megacorps, because of their alleged "efficiency", are capable of making deals with cities to handle some of their amenities - not just power and water, but security. In Robocop, the Detroit City Police is effectively owned by OCP, which provide payroll and resources while giving themselves immunity to criminal activities (as the corporation is who polices itself). By the time of Robocop, OCP pretty much controls Detroit and enacts its plan to get rid of poor neighborhoods to create Delta City, an utopian paradise fully controlled by OCP. Executives are lords in their own right, being filthy rich and immune to being accused of criminal activities, but are still oppressed by their superiors who expect revenues with their projects.

As you can see, this taps into what the real world is turning into. Having billionaires purchase powerful platforms to become their own pet projects (*coughcoughTwittercoughcough*), corporate fusions reaching a point where they're at the edge of becoming monolithical and bypassing anti-trust laws (YMMV, but Microsoft purchasing Activision-Blizzard, which is by itself another corporate fusion), rampant lobbying, amongst others, brings to mind the fears of corporate domination of the world as espoused by the genre. That leads to things like "corporate media" and accusations of being unbiased adn propagandistic, for example.

Truth is, while the cyberpunk genre isn't prophetic (the Metaverse is nowhere near the Matrix envisioned by the genre, and I'm not sure if ANY of the writers ever imagined the impact of social media), it is visionary - as does every literary genre that critiques society.

Note that cyberpunk as a genre is mostly outdated. We're effectively in a "post-cyberpunk" society, where the critique to society exists but the cynicism has faded. Yes, corporations are dominating, but not all of them are the blackest of black, and there's a slim hope that they can be taken down. Corporations are not proving immune to their own greed, and neither are billionaires. It's an evolution to the genre, where people noticed "gee, the world isn't as black and grim as we thought".
Thanks for the review of cyberpunk. :smallsmile:

I wonder if maybe the key difference between cyberpunk and the actual world is how obvious the corporations exercise their power. All the parking meters in the city of Chicago are owned by corporations, but we wouldn't know that without looking it up. There are so many brands that are actually owned by a small handful of companies, but we wouldn't know that without looking it up...


Mechanically, otaku were designed to act as Matrix counterparts to Mages and Shamans, running from the idea that, just like the Natural World can be altered through the Will of an individual, so should cyberspace. (It's also a reference to Angie Mitchell, from Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, who was implanted with the ability to interface with the Matrix only with her mind.) While they still needed a headjack to connect to the Matrix (because of its closed nature), they could do things that deckers couldn't, like compile their own programs and pseudo AI (sprites) on the fly, rather than copying, purchasing or designing them and then loading them into a deck. Their skill with Matrix combat and interaction depended exclusively on their mental stats (Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma), but they were also more prone to biofeedback. One key trait was that they could load themselves with cyberware, meaning that they could (barring lowering their Essence into the level of cyberpsychosis) gear up with boosted reflexes and cybereyes and concealed guns and act as soldiers.

How otaku were created is debatable. The biggest source of them are those "sponsored' by AI, but some could conceivably tap into the Deep Resonance on their own and awaken. What mattered was that the otaku was of age. Even in the current edition of the game, it's not clear what allows someone to become a Technomancer, just as there's no way to predict you'll be an Awakened. (What's known is that awakening as a Technomancer means you can't be Awakened; both are mutually exclusive.)

Technomancers are not natural-born otaku - at least, not mechanically. This is mostly branding - otaku were feared and misunderstood in lore, and some could easily consider them "technomancers". (The Shadowrun Trilogy game Dead Man's Switch has a character claiming to be a "technomancer" but in reality is only a very skilled decker - also, a reference to Count Zero.) After the Crash 2.0, when the Matrix became wireless due to new advancements, the conditions for metasapients capable of directly interfacing with the Matrix became a reality, which led to Technomancers as they currently exist - no need for a datajack, no need for a cyberdeck (or a commlink in 4e). In a way, Technomancers are the successors of the otaku - tapping into a wireless Matrix free of restraints.

You're right in that some otaku resurfaced as Technomancers following the Crash 2.0, after suffering the effects of Fading. Not all of them did so, though, and this is key. Fading was introduced as a "balancing" mechanic, explained as losing contact with that innate connection with the Matrix, and only staving it off through "submerging" with the Deep Resonance but never truly reversing it. What made ex-otaku and survivors turn into Technomancers is mostly unexplained, other than it's arbitrary. (Considering the connection between Essence and modern Resonance rules, it's possible that those otaku that Faded while heavily cybered cannot access their powers, while those who submerged and didn't sacrifice much of their Essence reawakened as Technomancers, but there's the odd possibility that a heavily cybered ex-otaku suddenly gained (limited) Technomancer powers while an older one that Faded early and keeps its old datajack (probably updated to run a modern cyberdeck and a commlink) never recovers them.

(Again, mechanically - the otaku-to-Technomancer change is mostly for balance issues. Having heavily cybered Technomancers that could rival a Street Sammy in combat while being obscenely powerful in the Matrix simply didn't make a lot of sense, so they grafted the Essence limitations to Resonance rules and expanded it to apply to most non-Awakened creatures, specifically Metasapients. Note that there are no Great Dragon Technomancers, though, for similar reasons - Great Dragons are Awakened creatures, and those that installed datajacks may have incredible skill but no unique insight into the Matrix. Except for Celedyr, but that's an entirely different issue.)
Gotcha. The distinction doesn't make too much sense to me, but that's probably cuz I'm not familiar with Shadowrun.

[Wookieetank]

Right, I understand. I guess cyberpunk isn't for me—I play TTRPGs partly to feel a sense of power and control that I won't ever get in real life.


I'd say its less that one is powerless in cyberpunk settings, and more that there's always a bigger fish. Also that systemic change is possible, just difficult. Its a delightfully complex genre, but I can understand how its not for everyone.

Just finished up Shadowrun Returns for the first time last week, and by the end of it I'd saved a city, bettered my own situation, and solved a friend's murder (also punched a jerk cop in the face for being a jerk IYKYK). Not too shabby even with all the behind the scenes manipulations and scheming going on. The world might not be a better place, but this one corner of it is still standing thanks to your efforts.

[Eldan]

Right, I understand. I guess cyberpunk isn't for me—I play TTRPGs partly to feel a sense of power and control that I won't ever get in real life.

Thanks for the review of cyberpunk. :smallsmile:

I wonder if maybe the key difference between cyberpunk and the actual world is how obvious the corporations exercise their power. All the parking meters in the city of Chicago are owned by corporations, but we wouldn't know that without looking it up. There are so many brands that are actually owned by a small handful of companies, but we wouldn't know that without looking it up...

Gotcha. The distinction doesn't make too much sense to me, but that's probably cuz I'm not familiar with Shadowrun.

The sense of power you get in Cyberpunk is that you can decide to not play their game. You can tell the corps to get ****ed, destroy their immortality project and leave the city and live your best life for the few months you have left. It actually feels quite empowering if it happens in the game.

[TaiLiu]

I'd say its less that one is powerless in cyberpunk settings, and more that there's always a bigger fish. Also that systemic change is possible, just difficult. Its a delightfully complex genre, but I can understand how its not for everyone.

Just finished up Shadowrun Returns for the first time last week, and by the end of it I'd saved a city, bettered my own situation, and solved a friend's murder (also punched a jerk cop in the face for being a jerk IYKYK). Not too shabby even with all the behind the scenes manipulations and scheming going on. The world might not be a better place, but this one corner of it is still standing thanks to your efforts.
Yeah, I might be too simple for cyberpunk. Shadowrun Returns sounds like something I might wanna try, but it probably won't be a staple game for me.

Congrats on saving a city! You don't get much cop-punching in traditional fantasy TTRPGs. Big plus for cyberpunk there.


The sense of power you get in Cyberpunk is that you can decide to not play their game. You can tell the corps to get ****ed, destroy their immortality project and leave the city and live your best life for the few months you have left. It actually feels quite empowering if it happens in the game.
Oh, I see. If a big corporation was going to kill me in a few months, I think I would feel paranoid and scared. Different preferences, I guess. :smalltongue:

[Eldan]

This is a spoiler for... the entire game, but I don't think you're going to play it anyway, so... the corp is not who's going to kill you.

The entire plot of the game is set around the idea of an Engram Chip. It's experimental nanotechnology cyberware the company has developed. The idea is that this chip stores the personality and memories of a person. The chip is then implanted into a new body, with the idea of bringing a dead person back to life. Arasaka's idea was to do this in a controlled way, using a brain-dead clone of the dead person in a lab.

Instead, what happens is that the player character - a mercenary - gets hired to steal the Engram chip. Through shenanigans, your character puts the chip into their head while still conscious (they don't know what the chip does). Their personality is now slowly being overwritten by the one stored on the chip. Everyone gives you, at best, a few months before you either die or get overwritten by who's on the chip. The rest of the plot is the character taking increasingly desperate measures to survive, while trying to deal with the rather unfriendly personality on the chip and all the politics caused by the theft and the people who hired them.

It turns out there simply is no way. Your endings, more or less are:
-Die immediately
-Make one last vengeful attack on the company before you die, then escape the city to try and enjoy your last few months
-Surrender yourself to the company, who cryogenically freezes you on the off-chance they ever find a way to extract the chip
-Let the personality on the chip have your body

Pretty much everyone reacts with some degree of "what did you expect, putting untested biotech into your head" when you tell them. With more or less sympathy for your impending death as your brain slowly fries itself.

[haltingdusky]

I have character ideas that I wanna play or test out. (Usually in a d20 system, since they tend to be mechanics-heavy.) I can't test them out in the campaign I'm already in, since I already have a character. So I'm looking for turn-based video games that lets me build a character similar to the one I have in my brain.

Any recommendations? The only TTRPG-based video game I've ever played before is Dungeons and Dragons Online. Unfortunately, fights are real-time and I'm super bad at it.

Thanks. :smallsmile:


Certainly! If you're looking for turn-based video games based on TTRPGs, I'd recommend checking out "Divinity: Original Sin 2" and "Pillars of Eternity." Both of these games offer deep character customization and turn-based combat, making them great choices for testing out your character ideas. Hope this helps!

[GloatingSwine]

Cyberpunk is (or rather, was) a satirical, cynical view of the future. It's a response to the utopic futuristic visions of the early 19th century. (Think how ads in the 30s up to the 50s were very clean and praising the effectiveness of technology, and the vision behind the Jetsons.) By the mid-70s/early 80s, people began to grow cynical of future, aided by dystopic visions such as 1984 and Brave New World. Literature feared that the utopic vision of the future was a fallacy.


Cyberpunk isn't really about a cynical view of the future, it's a cynical view of the present as compared to the future that was promised by Sci-Fi of the past.

The real story of Cyberpunk as a genre doesn't start with Neuromancer but The Gernsback Continuum. A story about visions into a world where the rocketship future of the '30s to '50s really happened, from one where it didn't.

There are three phrases which form, essentially, the true core of Cyberpunk.

1. This is not the future we were promised. (The genre is inherently dystopic, you are making the best of a bad lot.)
2. The future's here, it's just not evenly distributed. (The haves and have nots live in radically different environments, but sometimes things trickle between them.)
3. The street finds its own uses for things. (Tools are radically exapted from their original design use, a lot should feel jury rigged and not slickly designed for the purpose to which it is being put.)

[Eldan]

Yep. Which is why the best Cyberpunk always leaves you with an aftertaste of "Geez, that feels entirely too familiar, I've seen something almost like this on the news".

[TaiLiu]

This is a spoiler for... the entire game, but I don't think you're going to play it anyway, so... the corp is not who's going to kill you.
Thanks for the summary. If I find good controller support for the game, I might try it out, so I've elected to skip the spoiler for now. :smallsmile:


Certainly! If you're looking for turn-based video games based on TTRPGs, I'd recommend checking out "Divinity: Original Sin 2" and "Pillars of Eternity." Both of these games offer deep character customization and turn-based combat, making them great choices for testing out your character ideas. Hope this helps!
Thanks. I don't think they're based on a particular TTRPG enough to fit my criteria, but I appreciate the suggestions.