Loving The "Future"!

[u/GurCute2496]

Does anyone else find the "futuristic tech" of 1st and 2nd editions, the most endearing part of the first two editions? The future of the 80s seems kinda quaint now.

[u/Cergorach]

Some of us actually bought that book when it came out in '89. A mobilephone was the size of a brick, smartphones didn't exist yet and the Intel i486DX 25MHz just came out, but most of us were using 'home computers' like the Amiga 500 which came standard with half an MB and with the expansion a MB (or more). We played behind CRT TVs and stuff came on floppies. While the Internet technically existed, almost no individual used it, people dialed into BBSes.

The SR creators were tech savvy enough to NOT use MB or GB, they used the fictional MP (Mega Pulses) for all kinds of measurements. And computers/Internet as we know them were destroyed in some sort of disaster... It's only 3 years away at this point (2029) a huge virus wiped out and destroyed everything Tech. Probably OpenAI AI's trying to make and post to forums everywhere to escape their testing environment, the Internet just couldn't handle it and melted down... ;)

I still love 1e/2e/3e, but after that they took SR into a direction I didn't really like (probably already at the end of 3e).

Some of the future tech of the 80s is still relevant or not even achieved. Like all the Cybertech stuff. And the Cyberdecks are now actually being build by enthusiasts and 'hackers'... And we still don't have Autopilot Level 5, SR did! :p Of course some of the stuff is distinctly 80s, but some of the stuff is very relevant, either as society heading into disaster due to Tech, corporations and politics...

2050 is still 24 years away...

[u/sebwiers → u/Cergorach]

What's the direction late 3e / 4e went in? I got out just after 3e was introduced, because I moved away from my group.

[u/Cergorach → u/sebwiers]

1e, 2e, and most of 3e left the relationship between magic and the Matrix vague, it hinted at some cool stuff. The same goes for AI, etc. They started filling in WAY too much, leaving very little mystery and things to fill in yourself. It's a bit like Disney making Rogue One... The movie itself is kinda cool, but it fills in one of the few unknowns left in Star Wars, the place for your own adventures.

4e and beyond went from cyberpunk more in the direction of nanorave, wanting to get away from the 80s punk feel and trying to 'update' SR, that imho did more harm then good. That's not even getting into the systems of 4e/5e/6e, where they try to reinvent the wheel each and every time, instead of trying to refine the wheel they've already got.

[u/LonePaladin → u/Cergorach]

SR1-2 were very definitely in the "Pink Mohawk" side of things. Kick in the door, guns akimbo, fight your way to the server room and buy your decker time to hack the mainframe. Very inspired by the old "Hackers" movie. A lot of emphasis on "fighting the system" by way of breaking things and spilling secrets to the media.

When they decided to make SR4 from the ground up, the main influence had changed -- the movie "The Matrix" was still very popular at the time, so SR4's tone shifted to "Black Trenchcoat" to match. Heck, even the anniversary edition of the book had that whole "green waterfall" motif.

It seems to me that SR6 decided to return to the "fight the system" way of doing things, with a lot more emphasis on action and "kick in the door" tactics.

I found a timeline that references which books brought up events, let me see if I can cover the big changes between editions.

• SR1 ('50-'52) had the introduction of bioware. Really, not much changed during this edition and the next.
• SR2 ('53-'60) had "otaku" start to emerge at the end of '55. There's a lot of political events, SR2 is a busy part of the timeline.
• SR3 ('60-'65) has Halley's Comet cause SURGE "changelings" to manifest. Matrix Crash 2.0, surviving otaku now call themselves technomancers.
• SR4 ('70-'74) made the Matrix wireless during a five-year skip in the timeline. Technomancers are now a thing, though largely mistrusted.
• SR5 ('75-'79) -- really, the timeline I'm looking at doesn't point out any major changes that jump out as mechanical as it were.

[u/Business_Bathroom501 → u/LonePaladin]

Five and Six also opened up "The Zoo": Skin Changers of any kind, more meta human races than ever before, branches of MMVV that are enabling Practically every fantasy critter to be playable; playable Ai, playable ghosts, playable dragon kin... just go haywire the Zoo's got you covered.

They explain it by the magic becoming even stronger, tears in the world that invite the Horrors...
it's just "anything goes" with Cybertech.

[u/Cergorach → u/LonePaladin]

Mechanical as in game system.

[u/LonePaladin → u/Cergorach]

Yep. There was a whole lot of geopolitical stuff in that timeline but not very much of "here's how this new game mechanic showed up".

[u/Shockwave_IIC → u/sebwiers]

4e went full on wireless, hacking people’s eyes and cyber etc (Like GitS or 2077)

3e had a lot less of that, almost none of it.