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RE: Rant: Shadowrun: Anarchy is bad, too

in #rpg7 years ago

The problem with Anarchy is that it's not anarchic enough.

That is to say, it just doesn't go far enough in attempting to be a narrative-first game. It tries. It has a lot of the components. The "passing the mic" idea is extremely sound, even with the crunchy mechanics that they have surrounding it. In a sense, it reminds me of Universalis and the way it has a very upfront token economy as the primary mechanic for dealing with other players and the story.

It's clear that the writers of Anarchy, much like the writers of D&D Fifth Edition, have read and are familiar with some of the games in the last decade of the indie gaming phenomenon.

They just didn't trust the players.

All of the extra layers of cruft, all of the partially implemented bits here and there, they all scream "but we're still ShadowRun!" It's very much as if they didn't trust the audience to remember what game they were reading and what game they were playing, so they had to pick little bits here and there to throw out there as not-so-subtle reminders.

There is a really good game inside Anarchy struggling to get out. Strip off all the crap, strip off all the extraneous mechanics which get in the way of actual gameplay, remove the pregenerated missions and instead replace that page count with a system where players at the table can spend tokens to bring elements into play and trust them to do so – and I think it could really work out quite well.

You would suggest that people go play FATE, instead, and I would suggest they go play Remember Tomorrow, but either way they will end up playing a better cyberpunk game.

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As a completely GM-less game Shadowrun: Anarchy would work pretty well.
No GM at all, a pre-made mission pitch to built upon and nothing more.
Remove all the Plot Point stuff, etc. …

But the actual Shadowrun: Anarchy is a bad middle ground.

Sometimes you just have to commit to your idea, which is a problem for a lot of game designers – especially ones who are working in someone else's IP and who have a guaranteed audience – as long as they don't change anything.