Shadowrun Timeline

There's too much to it for me to say definitely one way or the other, but I'm likely dropping the Shadowrun timeline - not entirely, but overall. I certainly don't need that much detail or information on what reads like other peoples' campaign notes. I'm lifting the most important events from Shadowrun's (literal) daily timeline and adding those to the annual CyberSpace timeline.

I realize this timeline is key to the game according to many players, but it was a product of its time - and I was there, so I can say this definitively. The Soviet Union had just fallen, the Internet as we know it was barely underway (you were a "computer nerd" if you had an e-mail address in 1993), the Satanic Panic was nearing the end of its lifecycle but still in-swing, the Super Nintendo may not have even been released yet... either way, I remember the time and a lot of the events and situations surrounding it.

Shadowrun was based on these real-world events and emergent political ideologies, and that was one of its draws: The idea that this sort of thing (minus the most fantastic elements) might really happen any day now! Even the term, "Awakening," was a deeper, sociopolitical statement on current affairs, which Shadowrun did not really take, put in their game in a fashion, then extrapolate from; Shadowrun more or less just plopped them in the game and worked around them. That is to say that the day's current events and politics were central to the game which had a political statement to make, and that didn't work for me then and doesn't work for me now.

I love incorporating politics into my games, and they are often based (somewhat) on real-world events and ideologies, so I do not fear doing so, I just don't particularly care for how Shadowrun did it. And I'd be remiss if I didn't note that today's overheated political climate is unlikely to produce the same results as Shadowrun did in 1992 or '93; I want to play the game, not live it!

I know the timeline is important to the game as a whole, and that many fans find it sacrosanct (as does FASA), but CyberSpace's timeline extends into the period in which my campaign is set (the late 2090s) and Shadowrun's does not. As the name suggests, CyberSpace also extends beyond the planet and Shadowrun is far more concerned with terrestrial activity. I know that there is interplanetary activity in Shadowrun too, but I just plain like the way CyberSpace did it better.

Laser weapons are the standard of the day in our Shadowrun by Hero campaign, not noisy, antiquated hand-cannons, and is, on the surface, a far less fractured world than that of Shadowrun. I am keeping the campaign map, though, so all is not lost, superfans!

The over-reliance on governmental and real-world politics propelled my decision: Shadowrun overlays real-world politics into its timeline, where CyberSpace extrapolated from real-world politics and situations, changed the main players from governments and governmental operatives (soldiers and politicians) into megacorporations, super-mercs, and CEOs. And I prefer that approach, which is more in-line with the cyberpunk genre and more in-line with my preferred method of gaming.

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