Anyone else a fan of the Sixth World?


Got a bunch of the novels on Kindle (first read some of them back in the 90's), and am reading them in order.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YNX9KQC?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1690004941&sr=8-1

I'm shocked Netflix/Amazon/Apple haven't optioned the IP (which, let's face it, ain't gonna be Tolkien/GOT/Expanse expensive to get the rights to) for a streaming show.  It's got literally everything:


Cyberpunk.
Magic.
AI.
Elves/Dwarves/Orcs/Trolls.
Monsters.
Dragons.
The Matrix.
Guns. Guns. Guns.
A Balkanized America (hell, the whole World basically imitated early 90's Yugoslavia).
California gets kicked out of the Union for being bitches.
Native Americans (So Hot Right Now!).
Conspiracies.
Heist stories (dataheist being the primordial/prototypical run).

I played the pc game back in the day. Really fun RPG.

Although, they released an updated one few years ago which I didn't care for. I'll try the books. Thabks

It was also Balkanized America built on demographics that just can't match up population-wise, even with VITAS.

The worldcrafting has some holes that get more glaring the more you look at them.  What they want to be there doesn't fit with the world they made.

It also suffered from some power creep in the game that got progressively crazier, and some "everyone is special" garbage by year of the comet where everybody's a metahuman with some special metahumanness and every super-local myth had its own metahuman variant.  "No, I'm not a green-haired dwarf, I'm a central-southeastern black forest kobold and my mother was a Orkney island kelpie."  It was like a game made of tumblrisms.

It also made the "you'll never see one of these" rare things turn into something that was all old hat and everything and everyone was one, no matter what it was.

I remember the early novels being pretty decent.

The recent games were okay.  First two felt like Shadowrun, complete with power creep that got absurd, and plenty of too-special characters.  Last one felt like Shadowrun tumblr, where the "I heard a rumor about a rumor about an urban legend about this once" rareness of characters are half your party and everything you encounter.

The computer games suffered from mechanics where the way to progress is to get good at full auto rifle fire and just burst and full auto every damned thing, because other than that, whatever traditional character role you wanted is already taken by one of your teammates, and probably with custom tweaks that make them uniquely better, and you'll find your character superfluous.

I think I have all 5 editions of the game, and basically have used 1, 2, and 3.  4 and 5 are just "lets see what they did now" followed by "why did they make the text small, change the font, and put it over a picture or textured background and still expect me to read it?  Did they hire the guy who did White Wolf's Book of Nod or some shit?  Fuck it, we're playing Rifts cuz I can use the main rulebook and still read it."

Also, the Landis kid did a direct ripoff of Shadowrun for some streaming service and called it "Bright".

I think the California Free State sourcebook was one of the last standalones I bought, and one of the ones that stuck to the core feel of the game, adding only a couple notes for toxic shamans in the desert.

I'd really rather see it not optioned by anyone, lest it get made worse.

Catalyst seems to have a culture about them that's...not representative of the regular public, their fans, and certainly not the average arfcommer.  See the Battletech thread.

I love the world and setting. The rules system isn’t the best.  I can never find anyone to play it because everyone in the US is d20 or d100 rules oriented.

Yeah.  I got a love/hate thing for Bright.

It simultaneously proved that, in terms of production value and photography, a Shadowrun show would be totally feasible.......AND then proceeded to drop 90% of everything interesting about Shadowrun in lieu of a Will Smith Buddycop Movie, with the world exactly like Real Life, just with Orks and Elves (who have been here all along, and somehow history turned out 100% identical such that Smith can make a Black Lives Matter joke).

My guess is that, waaaay back in the screenwriting process, Landis figured he'd never get the SR IP rights....and then mated a derailed SR project with a nascent Will Smith Netflix vehicle.


WRT Catalyst....they did a lot of good work for 4th Edition, and did a good job retconning/soft-retconning a lot of the FASAnomics/FASAtropes....but it feels like they have sort of run out of steam, narratively.   We've had 3 major "bodysnatcher" threats (Insect Spirits, Shedim, and CFD), and they haven't really figured out how to use the Great Dragon/Immortal Elves/Horrors overarching plot since Earthdawn isn't the Fourth World anymore ('cause CGL don't own that IP).

Yeah, FASAnomics was baked into the original "And so it came to pass..." Timeline back in 1st Edition.  There's waaaaay too many full/semi-full-blooded Indians around in the 2010's (enough to inhabit and govern half the Continent)....when IRL, they are a hair less than 3% of the population (counting literally everyone with a decent claim on the term).  Even with VITAS-1 knocking down a quarter of the US population and the Amerindians mostly being unaffected 'cause they were locked up in concentration camps....it still doesn't work.  CGL tried to patch this by saying that a LOT of "Indians" are really "Pinkskins" (Anglos/Hispanics/Etc who decided to hang with the NAN and call themselves Roger Shitting Bird, rather than move out of the newly formed NAN) and the real Indians just sort of rolled with it because otherwise they didn't have the numbers to make modern nations work.

There's also a lot of "critically-important individuals have heart attacks at exactly the wrong moment" and "foolproof mysterious assassins take out critical VIP at exactly the wrong moment", as a lazy way of shaping the Timeline.  FASA does that in BTech, a lot, too.

I suspect the VIP deaths thing is really a "new writer wants to make his/her mark" or with Catalyst xe/xer/xems mark.

I'm still pissed at the Battletech death of Melissa Steiner.  I remember picking up a sourcebook and reading somewhere she was dead, for no reason, and someone rewrote her daughter stealing her grandmas name and then all goes to shit.  But can't have Fedcom existing, gotta have a war for no reason.  Made for the awesome Chaos March book, but made very little sense in universe.  Isle of Skye saying "we don't like this" and a czech/slovak split?  Sure.  (Also still gets you Chaos March.)  But war?  Over what?  It'd be like the US and Britain warring after WW2, but minus the entire colonial history.

Back to Shadowrun, the whole "pinkskins" thing would really mean a population that's like 90% exactly as it is today.  It's sort of like how sci fi writers cant figure out the mass of giant vehicles correctly.  VITAS 1-3 is just silly, as you also core your population, unless you go to the Indian lands being almost uninhabited and don't sweat it.

The organizational and morale and logistics of throwing Indians in camps by the 2000s is pretty unlikely.  That's just not in the national makeup and not consistent with how the nation would Balkanize.  The Shiawase decision that gives megacorps extraterritoriality is a good way to change the world, but asking for a 21st century genocide by a nation that just...isn't....really doesn't work.

A simple rewrite would be to include the magic aspect but expansion of tribal membership based on taxation arguments.  Entire swaths of the country going native because of taxation, being accepted for "spiritual" reasons that may or may not be cover for giving tax harbors in res system against deficit spending and devaluation of the dollar after VITAS would make for a decent split.  Then the CAS is a couple states like Texas and Louisiana and space coast Alabama and Florida deciding to print their own bonds and bills.  Pretty soon you do have a split.

Gets you same place with contested nation states, but more feasible.

I think Shadowrun would be best served as an animated series.  Lets you mix computer/digital for matrix scenes, and allows for different styles.  Individual animation styles for different corp citizens and sinless would be interesting, subtle cues to show who's what and why and how.

I like Shadowrun and played the RPG a bit as a teen. I really enjoyed the Sega Genesis game and sucked hard on the SNES. I liked Hare Brained Schemes Shadowrun games and found them quite enjoyable. I've read one book but can't remember which one it was.

ETA: I hope they do not make a show as it will be woke trash with a strong female lead boss bitch and nothing interesting happening. I did like the movie Bright even though Will Smith is a cuck who plays Will Smith in every movie he is in. It felt a bit like Shadowrun and at least wasnt a remake or sequel.

I do note that the Writers apparently forgot that there are Indian tribes that don't live out West.

It was written during the age of Dances With Wolves.

Plenty of romanticism to go around.

I have most of the rulebooks and just about all of the paperback novels.  Bug City is really good both novel and rulebook.

I like the overall setting, but I also strongly suspect that some of the TTRPG writers were on shrooms and all the editors were constantly borderline ODed on heroin.