Five Things: May 11, 2023
"They simply must do better." Five things for May 11, 2023. That's it! That's the excerpt.
Commentary and reviews on games and gaming of all types.
"They simply must do better." Five things for May 11, 2023. That's it! That's the excerpt.
Remember the "This is the world liberals want!" meme? Subversion is the game they'd be talking about, and I mean that as high praise. While it has the requisite cyberpunk trappings of economic dystopia and extreme power imbalances, it flips Shadowrun's integration of fantasy on its head, imagining a world that a) always had magic and fantastic lineages (aka, races), and b) building upon Babylonian mythology as its foundation instead of the usual European inspirations. In Neo Babylon, magic has ruled for eons and technology is trying to level the playing field, disrupting the balance of power while crushing the underprivileged between them. In this world, the cops (Lawjacks) are implicitly a gang.
I've had an itch to write something in this ridiculous and ridiculously cool world since I finished Shadowrun Returns a couple of months ago, like I used to for D&D, and have started sketching out my first character's backstory.
"It's basically Pop-Up Video 3.0." Five things for March 2, 2023. That's it! That's the excerpt.
"Accountability rolls downhill in Corporate America." Five things for February 2, 2023. That's it! That's the excerpt.
I honestly don't know how Shadowrun escaped me all these years, but its combination of D&D, The Matrix, and Mission: Impossible is 100% my shit! Imagine: fantasy races, magic, cyberpunk, and elaborate heists sitting atop an intricately fleshed out near-future world that uses the Mayan Long Count calendar and corporate greed as its main pillars. It's as problematic, corny, and compelling as you'd think — and I'm totally digging it.
"We have the power to say (and do) something about the situation." Five things for January 19, 2023. That's it! That's the excerpt.