Samantha Patri's Blog

This is from an essay we wrote back in 2012, when Shadowrun 5e was first announced. A lot of this still holds true to this day. We're going to tweak it slightly, but for the most part it holds up well. Shadowrun 5e  is slated to come out this summer.  I decided to make a wish list about what I would like to see in it, and I was (not entirely) surprised to see people wanting a reversion back to the first edition "feel" of mirrorshades, cyberdecks, and the removal of the wireless world from the setting. Having just finished writing an essay on science fiction, this debate was already fresh in my mind. Good science fiction uses the setting as a framework to reflect aspects of the modern world and raise questions, while near science fiction will usually extrapolate from where we are to where people think we will go. Shadowrun , I feel, does this very well, which is why it is one of my favourite roleplaying games. When dealing with many science fiction games, I tend to think ...

This idea that somehow magic and technology are at odds in fantasy settings is, in our mind, incredibly lazy thinking. We had a long talk with a friend about this, and we spent the time basically pointing out just how unlikely it would be for magic to be an actual hindrance for technology unless the game master / world builder made the two forces artificially hinder one another in some fashion (like the idea that technology doesn't work around magic / magic doesn't work around technology). He believed that with magic, people wouldn't put the time and effort into developing technology when magic could do it 'easier'. We pointed out a few things that put the lie to that: Magic is generally restricted to the middle or upper class. Magic tends to be 'local', with a small area of effect. Magic use is restricted to specific individuals. The use of technology can generally be taught and shared. Technology has a longer 'duration' than magic tends to. Technol...