Wait, what??? ;)

Thanks to my work, I’ve now spent four weeks refreshing my memory on curve sketching, vector and integral calculus. Please don’t put that in the game as well. :D

I think you are safe for now. :D

I’ll answer here to avoid derailing the other thread. ;)

After reading some recommendations online, I settled on “Never deal with a dragon”. It’s an earlier novel, I’ve gathered, but people’s opinions were unusually unanimous on the topic of “best novel to read for beginners”. So we’ll see.

It’s already managed to catch my interest at least. Quite a lot of not-so-elegantly-placed exposition in the beginning, but that’s alright. In this case, I for once appreciate having the world explained to me. ;)

Also, out of interest: If “Alter Ratio” is “not recommended”, why did you read it all the way to the end? :D

I hoped that it would get better.
And usually I read every book I bought to the end. There was only one exception so far.

Now I need to know what that exception was, of course. ;)

I forgot the title. And I don't want to remember. :-P

The whole Secrets of Power trilogy is worth reading and sets the early tone of the SR Universe. Never Deal with a Dragon is the first one.

Choose Your Enemies Carefully and Find Your Own Truth are the others.

Cool, seems the Reddit advice was right, then. ;) It seems like it might help me get a feeling for the world. As I already said to our GM, after dozens, probably hundreds of fantasy books, diving into a fantasy RPG is easy. And while I love Sci-Fi, I’ve never quite read in a setting such as this one. What would you call it, cyberpunk? I know I read “Neuromancer” at uni, but that was so long ago I hardly remember it.

If you want OG cyberpunk, look up William Gibson's Burning Chrome short story anthology. It includes the short story Johnny Mnemonic. His first novel was Neuromancer which introduced everything we know about running the Net/Matrix. Only other novel I've read of his was Count Zero. I've never gotten around to reading Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Ohhh, thank you for that recommendation. I may just pick up Neuromancer again as well. I think I sort of liked it, but I also remember it vaguely as quite dark...

The screenplay of the movie Johnny Mnemonic was written by William Gibson, but he swapped out Molly Millions from the story for Jane who is not nearly as awesome. Gibson was unable to use Molly as she was in Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive as Sally Shears, and the movie rights for Neuromancer were elsewhere.

Johnny Mnemonic is one of my suggested cyberpunk movies along with Strange Days and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.

It was originally Cyberpunk with a Fantasy focus.

4e moved away from punk and tried to push toward Transhumanistic philosophy but 5e tried to move back toward punk.

But Punk is an interesting concept that means something different to different people and I am not truly sure it is understood today.

I often described SR as Lord of the Rings meets Neuromancer and Hardwired.

Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams is one of my favorite CP novels and set the standard for both rigging and certain types of 'ware.

You ask any group of people not part of the same group what cyberpunk is or how the SR Universe should work and be played and you'll get just as many different responses.

Even suggestions for novels to get the flavor of the universe will vary based on what SR is to the reader and even what edition they started with.

That's without getting into edition changes or writers' bias as they try to change the universe to their particular flavor.

It's always good to have the occasional table talk to see where everyone stands on how they view the universe, how it operates, and what they expect. As what was once the standard can change over time.

For example, I run games where mores and ethics can be tested and there are consequences. I don't have an issue with combat within context but I prefer when other methods are found as well. My themes used to be far more balanced.

But in the last few years, I've been running toward a darker and darker setting in all my games. My focus and ability has changed and maybe eventually it will change back to a far more balanced display of each setting. But for now, even when I tried to lighten things up, they've gone toward a darker theme.

I'm wrapping up an arc in one of my other groups and they are about to hit the climax of the campaign. I tried to lighten it up but it went quite dark, disturbing, and dropped a number of bombshells that left those characters reeling and even the players having to work through some emotions.

They were okay with it because it is also helping them in other ways but it reinforced to me where I am at for the style I want to run and the themes I am focusing on.

I am really really busy this week.
So posting will be slow. Though I do reserve some time each day for RP.

With several things happening around here RL got really busy by now. In a way that I have to step back from GMing one of my games on rpol. With the other game more established and the group already together I decided to leave and close this one. If there is anything you want to save from this game: I'll leave it open for a few weeks

Really sad to see you go from here! But I’m happy for you concerning all the good things happening in your life. Go and conquer the world, alright? :D

Jeanette, I'd like to keep mentoring you if you're up for it still?

Yes indeed, life is moving ahead with opportunities and that's cool!

Thank you!

I’d be happy and honoured, good sir!

GM please keep this up until I get the chance to set things up. It should be late next week. Another project deadline is causing fun.

Alright.
"Causing fun" sounds... odd, though ;)

There are far more appropriate F words for this.

I have a penchant for understated sarcasm. :P

*adds the word penchant to new-words-learnt list*