Dumb and Wrong: Shadowrun, I

"Voodoo? You mean to tell me all this happened because you were messing with the Shadow Man?"

WELCOME TO DUMB AND WRONG! First off, yes there will be as many named segments as I want. You can't stop me, I'm the one chained to the writing desk, not you. This one I'm going to reserve for pointing out things about games I thought were really stupid, bad, or plain wrong. This kind of thing comes up a lot, even though I always advocate following what the books say. I do that because it eliminates arguing, streamlines the game, and sets an amount of inarguable fairness. A good game is one that has a level playing field. Other times something works the way it does for a reason that sets tone, and tone inherent to a system is something people often seem to overlook.

However, there's always going to be really dumb shit. Sometimes a game is victim of Ivory Tower Design philosophies where things suck on purpose. Other times designers just don't do their research or don't care about the implications of their design. I want to discuss these, but I very often don't have enough to say about something to fill an entire post. So this segment is going to be reserved for me getting 2 to 5 or so concepts off my chest. Most of these are things that always bugged me. So without further adieu, our first official segment of Dumb and Wrong.

Shadowrun's White Noise Generator (and Gadget Sizes). 

So this is something that's in pretty much every edition of Shadowrun. At some point I understand completely that this was a depiction of a Cyberpunk future and thus had a pretty strange retro-future feel. As our own world progresses rapidly through technology it gets a little hard for us to "forget" and dive into what Shadowrun expects of us, since the Cyberpunk genre is steeped in heavy cables, bulky terminals and thick, blocky technology. Because of that, Shadowrun 4th edition and beyond start to feel much less like Johnny Mnemonic and much more like Ghost in the Shell. That was PROBABLY a good move on their part.

But I draw the line with some of this dumb shit. When something is larger and bulkier than it is in real life, at the time the book was published, I'd hope that someone somewhere did a little bit of thinking and adjusted that. But no, I'd be wrong.

My prime example is the White Noise Generator. In SR Second Edition, the device is listed as being the size of a briefcase and several kg in weight. It's a device intended to defeat surveillance microphones or even eavesdroppers by creating a continuous "white" noise. Only, here's the problem.

The modern idea of a non-digital white noise generator is a small turbine housed in plastic. Without an on-board battery it's about the size of a baseball. I should know, I use one to help me sleep. The Marpac company first made one of these in 1962 by nailing a dog dish to a piece of wood.

No, really. 

Their design has only iterated four times since then, so we essentially own white noise generators more compact than the one that Shadowrun 2E has. And the thing is, you can't even say that this is a case of the Shadowrun version being bulky by necessity because it's got to be better than the super awesome Shadowrun microphones because technology marches on. That can't possibly be true. A White Noise Generator simply has to generate a certain amount of sound at a certain frequency to mask sounds around it. That's just how sound works. The White Noise Generator can't actually do anything better than it does right now.  The idea of device rating vs. device rating is even just an attempt to streamline device interaction. I guess that's fine.

That's all just assuming we're using a non-digital white noise generator like mine. If the one in Shadowrun is digital in nature, the size is COMPLETELY unacceptable! A digital white noise generator is only as big as a radio is, and Shadowrun has those fuckers extremely miniaturized. Oh, but it wouldn't be a very good white noise generator, you say. Again, that's literally impossible. All a white noise generator does is generate noise of a specific frequency and volume. It can't be better or worse unless you're talking about volume, which the game book clearly isn't. At least 3rd edition did away with most of this and simply gives weights. 1kg sounds about right for a non-digital white noise generator.

Voodoo


Ohh, boy. I hope you're sitting down. I'm guessing someone at TSR thought that since Voodoo is clearly a stupid fakey religion, they could do whatever they wanted with it. Their version of Voodoo hits all the major beats of pop culture but mostly fits to Haitian Vodou. I'll go from littlest problems to biggest problems, because it'll be funnier that way.

First off I'm gonna be real forgiving here. While I know that everyone would probably be pissed off if more popular religious details were wrong in this book, I get that this is a game and not everything has to be historically accurate. The loa hit their major beats, and honestly Papa Ghede probably wouldn't suffer you to remember all the details anyway. He'd mostly suffer you to get drunk on bourbon. It does rub me the wrong way that the selection of "Loa" are from several different religions. There are one or two(like Shango) who don't feature into Haitian Vodou at all and are only a part of the Yoruba religion. The two share many other details, though, so I guess it could be worse.

No, I don't know why I put off the main event at all. Basically, in Shadowrun, being an evil, corrupt mage gives you something called Potency, which is free dice to roll on all of your magical tests. Thus, most styles of mage have some kind of evil NPC-Only style of corrupted mage. Shamans have Insect Shamans, who trade loyalty to dark, alien spirits. There is also the Twisted Way, who feed of terrible actions and negative emotions. There's also the ecoterrorist Toxic Shamans, or mages who make a spirit pact with free spirits.

So Voodoo had to have one of these. Let's put aside that we totally don't discuss Christian Mages getting an evil "Satanic Rites" at all. In fact modern Satanism is primarily about your own personal freedoms and not infringing upon the personal freedoms of others, so you know what? Maybe I should be glad they didn't fuck that up too. No, the book dedicates a few scant paragraphs to Petro Loa, who, and I quote, "Feed on the hatred and revenge sparked by Voodoo's legacy, born from slavery and oppression.". So what's wrong with that? Well, it's kind of true. In a way. Wanna know what Petro means?

There are many "Nations" of Loa in the Voodoo sects that believe in them. "New Orleans" Voodoo doesn't seem to, by the way. The Rada are generally older, their origin in Africa. They are 'cool' as in patient and non-aggressive. Damballah, Legba, Agwe and Loco are all part of this nation and feature in Shadowrun. The Ghede Loa are spirits of the dead, like, you guessed it, Baron Samedi himself who features in Shadowrun, and his wife Maman Brigitte who doesn't. Kongo Loa are from, say it with me now, the Congo.

Are you seeing a theme here? Petro Loa are aggressive and possessing of fiery tempers because they're associated with the "new world" of America.

That's. It. That's all Petro means.

There ARE Petro aspects for some Loa, such as Erzulie's Petro aspect being a fierce protector of women and children and often associated with lesbians. Fucking. Whoops. Other Petro Loa such as Ezili Dantor, the Black Madonna and Loa of Motherhood or Marinette, one who frees from bondage, are suspiciously not fucking mentioned.

I get it. The Petro Loa's rites include whip-cracking and gunpowder. Pretty much everything in Vodou is soaked in alcohol and sacrifice. The Petro Loa are even referred to as "demon" Loa. But how god damn stupid do you have to be to look at Petro, see "Demon Loa" and not bother to look past that? They're angry because they understand the harsh reality of slavery. They're bad-tempered and aggressive because they saw their people in chains. But no, the Petro rites are EEEEEEEVIIIIILLLL. The fucking wikipedia page(which I am fully aware the writers did not have access to) even mentions that this is a common mistake people make. Rada Loa can absolutely be used for malevolent purposes, and the Petro can, one hundred percent, be used to help. Basically, Damballah doesn't care about you any more than Marinette does. Maybe even less.

If you don't see why I'm irritated, imagine a world where Christianity got a similar treatment. Imagine the book insists that all Christians believe in the Catholic Saints and the "Patron Saints" players choose from are a random collection of the(admittedly long list) of popular Saints. One or two of them are just Jewish people. Like, Moses is on the list. Saint Moses. Later in the book it declares Saint Peter as being wholly evil for denying Christ three times and claims he's the Saint of Denial. I mean, not only is that pretty insulting, it's not even the whole story. It would be as if the writer saw a single thing in his research and latched onto it instead of reading further.

So I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. There will be another Dumb and Wrong coming up, on story, logistics, or even mechanics some time soon. Soon as I get pissed off enough to write it.