Shadowrun Returns - Berlin!
 

The latest Shadowrun update announces Berlin has won the second-city poll in a come-from-behind victory:
More information.

Boo, that's an unfortunate mistake by the community. They should have encouraged the devs to play by their strengths and expand in areas they are intimately familiar with, including the "MORE SEATTLE" option, or going down the West Coast to California, where a lot of them had lived.

All we're going to get out of Berlin is some bullshit cliche German flavor (probably lots of red, yellow, and black, and some unimaginative references to popular historic events) with no depth. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, as I put $100 into the kickstarter, but I don't think there's any potential for anything rich and deep coming from it.

I'm a little disappointed that it's going to be Berlin, but I disagree that they should have done another American location. I'd rather it had been something further East.. i.e. Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc.

So we can have cliche elements from those countries instead?

I hate it when Western RPGs portray Asian locations or characters, because they are extremely predictable and borderline racist. For example, why does every damn Japanese character in any given game need to have an obsession with honor? That's like having a Jewish character in a video game obsessed with gold.

I find that Western developers can produce a much more sophisticated array of Western characters, so I'll say it again — they should stick to their strengths!

I didn't really care where the primary game itself was set (somewhere outside the US would have been fine with me, though I'm not prejudiced against the US either), but once that location was set, I think it would have been better to just enhance that one location rather than add others. That's why I chose "More Seattle" in the first poll. I figured more assets could be reused and it would be less work to integrate with the main game and therefore would leave more resources for story/NPC/quest content (which is what matters most to me).

I went with Hong Kong on the second poll, though I really didn't have very strong feelings between the two. The snippets both sounded good and I never got into any other settings in my limited time playing PnP Shadowrun. I admit I tend to like the stylized Eastern locations (like in Deus Ex) even if they are predictable.

As opposed to American cliches?

I'm not sure how your example is any different from the way African Americans or Native Americans are portrayed in a lot of games.

I'd rather have a location that offers more of a difference from what I see every day in real life. Another US city? No thanks.

I was hoping for Denver, the city I grew up in, but didn't think it would make it. I cannot remember any games where it was featured. Not that its more interesting than Berlin but new content either way is fine with me.

I apologize that Central Europe can't offer the magic feeling of a totally different culture we / you don't understand. But I can see still lots of differences between North America and Germany, if it is done right. ;)

And for the voting result: I Like.

Err, no. Berlin is a very well developed setting in the shadowrun universe:
http://www.amazon.de/Shadowrun-Berli…/dp/3941976125
And there is another sourcebook on Germany.

The biggest mistake would have been selecting 'More Seattle' - would we really have got double if we'd selected that one? How would we've known - there'd have been no way for us to tell if we got twice as much or a 1 1/4 as much. At least by selecting a second city we get a bit of variety (hopefully in the art assets as well, since there'll be modding)

Yes, exactly. There still might be some cliches, but you have those everywhere. Far from being a bad decision. You can argue about which would have been most interesting, but neither of the choices was really bad.

Amen.

I really enjoyed the self-apparent phrase, "there still might be some cliches, but you have those everywhere." That defines my disappointment.

As for what is more interesting, my argument is that while "more Seattle" would have potentially offered more to do (as they would need to create more depth and breadth beyond the obvious) but adding Berlin simply offers more places to go and some colorful albeit undoubtedly predictable German themes.

I can't say for certain that this is the case, but anyone involved in this discussion should consider all other games they had played and what "foreign lands" had traditionally offered. All of the examples I can think of provided little more than the borderline racist stereotypes, broken English, and the generic imagery one would associate with the country.

I could be wrong with Shadowrun because of the "established material" another person had mentioned, but can anyone who had read through or played through the Berlin chapter of the collection attest to its value?

The best measure of its merit would be how the native population themselves reacts to how they've been portrayed, and Shadowrun was/is very popular in Germany .

Is it of some help, if I tell you that for a considerable amount of time a poster, picturing an orc on the Brandenburg Gate who waved an Anarchy flag, graced a wall in my room?

Ah, this is sort of nostalgia… The Swedish roleplaying game MUTANT the 2nd edition had a supplement box called Berlin City 2092. I have always considered Berlin to be a cyberpunk city.




And for good measure, here's Cyberpunks Eurotour;

I guess we know how that Kickstarter money is going to be spent now. Berlin "research" by the team. While they're in the vicinity, maybe they can set up some Swiss bank accounts too ;)

I voted for Berlin because it's already in the Shadowrun material and I'm tired of asian locations in games I play. I'd rather Berlin over Hong Kong any day.

I did NOT vote ! ;)

And - as long there aren't Bavarian Lederhosen being mistaken for being "German Lederhosen" (Lederhose are ALWAYS Bavarian !), I'm fine. ;) :D

(There is a far-too-common wrong belief that all Germns look like Bavarians. However, Bavari is its own federal state with its own distinct cilture, like other areas have their own distinct cultures also - like the Frisians, for example. No one depicts Germans as if they were constantly wearing Frisian clothes ! ;) But the cliché often depicts Germans as constantly wearing Bavarian clothes ! ;) )

Oh come on Alrik. I've been to Germany several times and noone but us tourists was not in Lederhosen. ;)

For refererence:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthias17/3271680863/