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I Remember the Future
Mar. 13th, 2009 10:19 amSo, for folks who might not know (or care), 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the Shadowrun RPG. Shadowrun remains one of my favorite RPG worlds of all time, as expressed, I hope, by the amount of writing I did for it. Writing for SR got me my start in the RPG industry, and the game itself gave me a lot of fun memories.
It’s hard to believe the game is twenty years old: I remember quite well cutting across the Royal Ridge Mall from the camera store where I worked my post-high school/pre-college job to the small hobby shop and seeing the full-color rulebook for the first time. FASA’s promo fliers for Shadowrun were brilliant, tantalizing pieces of marketing, with their hints about a crazy mixed-up fusion of cyberpunk and Tolkien-eqsue fantasy. I bought the rulebook right away (scandalized at the time that it cost 28 dollars, the most I’d ever paid for a new RPG at the time) and that weekend convinced my friends to play it. We plunged into the Sixth World and never looked back.
Now, twenty years later, it’s fun to look back on things like this:
Pocket Secretary: The pocket secretary is an office for the businessman on the go. The compact unit functions as a portable phone, a computer (100 Mp), and filing system. Standard software performs call screening, answering-machine functions, automatic teleconfirmation of credit transactions, word processing with standard letters on file and stenographer functions. Pocket secretaries are never equipped for jacking into the Matrix. Cases are shock- and water-resistant for durability and long service. (Shadowrun, First Edition, 1989, page 125)
Which pretty much describes the iPhone sitting on my desk to a “T”, except the pocket secretary weights about half a kilogram versus the iPhone’s 133 grams and we still have no idea how much a “megapulse” of memory is versus my phone’s 16 gigabytes (indeed, “megapulses” were specifically chosen to avoid later embarassments like the starship computers from Traveller with 16 kilobytes of memory). Plus the idea of wireless connectivity and the things you can use it for is barely a glimmer back in the pre-WiFi/pre-Web Dark Ages. Shadowrun has made efforts to update its tech over the years, up to and including the current edition’s wireless and omnipresent Matrix (the name of which SR was using years before the film, by the way).
So, happy anniversary, Shadowrun. Hope your dark future’s so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades...
It’s hard to believe the game is twenty years old: I remember quite well cutting across the Royal Ridge Mall from the camera store where I worked my post-high school/pre-college job to the small hobby shop and seeing the full-color rulebook for the first time. FASA’s promo fliers for Shadowrun were brilliant, tantalizing pieces of marketing, with their hints about a crazy mixed-up fusion of cyberpunk and Tolkien-eqsue fantasy. I bought the rulebook right away (scandalized at the time that it cost 28 dollars, the most I’d ever paid for a new RPG at the time) and that weekend convinced my friends to play it. We plunged into the Sixth World and never looked back.
Now, twenty years later, it’s fun to look back on things like this:
Pocket Secretary: The pocket secretary is an office for the businessman on the go. The compact unit functions as a portable phone, a computer (100 Mp), and filing system. Standard software performs call screening, answering-machine functions, automatic teleconfirmation of credit transactions, word processing with standard letters on file and stenographer functions. Pocket secretaries are never equipped for jacking into the Matrix. Cases are shock- and water-resistant for durability and long service. (Shadowrun, First Edition, 1989, page 125)
Which pretty much describes the iPhone sitting on my desk to a “T”, except the pocket secretary weights about half a kilogram versus the iPhone’s 133 grams and we still have no idea how much a “megapulse” of memory is versus my phone’s 16 gigabytes (indeed, “megapulses” were specifically chosen to avoid later embarassments like the starship computers from Traveller with 16 kilobytes of memory). Plus the idea of wireless connectivity and the things you can use it for is barely a glimmer back in the pre-WiFi/pre-Web Dark Ages. Shadowrun has made efforts to update its tech over the years, up to and including the current edition’s wireless and omnipresent Matrix (the name of which SR was using years before the film, by the way).
So, happy anniversary, Shadowrun. Hope your dark future’s so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades...
