In the past I’ve really enjoyed keeping a campaign journal for D&D and Shadowrun. I find it’s a nice way to recap, keep track and sort of analyze our game sessions. With our new Shadowrun game starting up I wanted to do something again, but not quite the same old. Truthfully, keeping a journal can be rather time consuming. On top of planning for the next week and trying to maintain a game blog it often felt like a chore to make sure that I posted each week. After talking it over with the group we decided to create a campaign wiki to document what is occurring in the alternate world of our fantasy lives. I just got it set up and I must admit that I am sort of stoked on it. It’s located here.
One aspect that I really like about the wiki is that everyone in the group can contribute to it, rather than it just being a GM dictatorship. We sit at a round table so we should all be equal. I think that is the best practice for all, it’s all of our game. It’s cool to get the point of view of everyone involved rather than just a narration of events. I imagine there being conflicting accounts of certain things, which I think is great. Shadowrun is such a morally grey universe that nothing has an absolute truth to it. It does raise the question, though, of what it is that the players should be contributing. For now I have asked them to create character bios and some background info on their contacts. I did ask them to keep everything reasonable as far as their contacts are concerned. No megacorps presidents, dragons, or super generous wealthy benefactors. In the past I have always created their contacts (after they selected them) and I sort of see this as a challenge to me because I have to use and develop these NPC’s in ways that I need, but their origins are coming from someone else. I’m into it.
I am still struggling with exactly how game events will appear in the wiki. They can certainly pop up in an entry for a character and summarize their role in a certain situation, but that doesn’t really provide the big picture. I was thinking maybe anonymous Shadowland style posts about something that went down, or perhaps a media account from a third party. I was in a Shadowrun campaign years ago with a different group of players and one of the players would routinely write these newspaper style accounts of our runs and send them around. It was actually pretty cool. And I’ve already told everyone that I will be giving out karma for contributions, so that should give an incentive to put some work into it.
So what is the point of this whole thing? Well, it can keep track of NPC’s, give an additional platform for the players to flesh out their characters and is another method to include all sorts of superfluous info (or maybe it’s actually really useful info). I imagine that if it’s successful the players will be able to find pertinent information in there that can aid them in game. In a way it is some sort of ultra metagaming, but it is also realistic for the world that the party is in. Why wouldn’t they turn up some info if they snoop around about their latest Johnson? They could certainly just make a skill check and get the info, but this could be a little incentive to do a little more. In this case it’s my job to drop some “Easter Egg” style info into the game and see if it turns up when we meet at the table. One example so far involves the party shaman. In her backstory is some sort of corp character that she fell in love with. That’s all that had been decided. So I created an entry for this guy, gave him a name and a story and dropped it into the wiki. Now he exists and he has never really come up in game so far. It gives the player some info if she wants to pursue that storyline and it’s something to maker her ears perk up at the table if a certain name should come up. This is also opening the door for Shadowrun to occupy even more of our time, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Another aspect that I like is that it gives some permanence to the game. Now I am not the most sentimental of people and I think that RPG campaigns are rather disposable in the grand scheme of things, but I actually really like the idea that this campaign can live on in the cloud of the internet. Anyone can read it, we can also reminisce about it and check in and laugh (or cry?) over these characters for years to come. Perhaps some other folks will even get some inspiration or ideas from something that they read there. Which is neat.
The most surprising part of it for me is how fun it is to include pictures in the entries. I didn’t really think about that and then one of the players added a picture entry to all of the PC’s. Totally awesome to see some imagining of who these people are that we pretend to be. They are just images taken from Google and plugged in, but they are completely our characters now. We never use miniatures in our game, rarely maps as well. So this is the most visual we have ever really been with characters.
I used Google Sites to set the wiki up, employing their wiki template to get started. I’m not the most tech savvy but I found it very easy to use. The appearance of the page still leaves a lot to be desired, as does the layout but these are both aspects that can be improved over time.
Showing posts with label Shadowrun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shadowrun. Show all posts
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Shadowrun: 2nd Edition Character Creation
So you want to be a shadowrunner? More specifically, you want to be a Shadowrunner using the character creation rules from the early 90’s? Awesome. Let me help. Second edition Shadowrun uses a priority system to create runners. No rolling going on here. Players assign a ranking to each of the five categories; Magic, Race, Resources, Skills and Attributes. The priorities are A,B,C,D and E; A gets the most out of that category, while E provides the least. It can be tricky to figure out what is going to work. For starters, Shadowrun is definitely a game that rewards smart play. So you don’t need a great character to succeed. But it helps.
We will start with Magic, because it’s the easiest priority to assign. If you want to be a mage or a shaman it gets priority A. If you don’t want to be one of them, you can dump it to E. The only exception to this is a metahuman wielder of magic, in which case you can put priority B here, as long as you use A for your race. Magic is actually really powerful in Shadowrun. It has it’s limits, but the power that it makes available is a fair trade for your highest priority.
We will start with Magic, because it’s the easiest priority to assign. If you want to be a mage or a shaman it gets priority A. If you don’t want to be one of them, you can dump it to E. The only exception to this is a metahuman wielder of magic, in which case you can put priority B here, as long as you use A for your race. Magic is actually really powerful in Shadowrun. It has it’s limits, but the power that it makes available is a fair trade for your highest priority.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Prime Runners: Shadowrun 2nd Edition
Lately I’ve been pretty obsessed with second edition Shadowrun. There are just so many things about the world and the game that I really like, as a result I’ve been buying up pretty much every second edition book that I can get my hands on. Some are replacements for ones that I had a teenager (that have all gone to some sort of abyss of old role playing material, my contribution to this netherworld is substantial) and others are new to me entirely. One of the best parts of this is that not many people seem to be playing second edition these days so the books usually cost more in shipping than to actually buy them. The point is that I have been reading a ton of these things lately and, while many of them are excellent, the one that most stands out to me is Prime Runners.
Prime Runners is a sourcebook, but it is not location specific. It is essentially a book of NPC’s of all types. When I purchased it I had assumed that it would just be page after page of elite runners, which seems pretty cool to me. I like reading about badass futuristic mercenaries. But it is actually way better than that and gives such an interesting view into what makes the Sixth World really tick. There are runners contained in it’s pages, but there are also talismongers, journalists, fixers, writers, athletes, and pretty much anything else that you can come up with. To see how a world really lives and breathes it would be not all that useful to just see the runners that operate in it’s seedy underbelly. But to see how many powerful people in the world interact with and use this seedy underbelly is something else altogether. How did that fixer with the suitcase nukes get to be that guy? Why has that journalist been able to survive and thrive in the most dangerous places in the world? It’s all in there chummer.
Like all the Shadowrun sourcebooks, Prime Runners is presented as the work of someone else. In this case two runners who decided to compile a directory of people that other runners would need to know. Good concept. And like other books it is filled with comments from others who have read and commented on the entries. I love that. Usually the comments present various opinions on the person in question and bring up rumors about them as well. Aside from that all the entries have the character’s motivations, history (or what is known of it) and hooks to get the players involved with them. It is well written, smart, interesting and funny. If you can’t get something out of this as a GM then you should probably retire your dice.
One other thing that I really liked about the book was that it showed what a really tough character looks like. Since Shadowrun does not have a level system for characters it is sometimes difficult to know exactly when someone is very powerful, so much of it depends on the particular situation that they are in. And the location sourcebooks rarely have the stats of actual characters in them, that just seems to be how they are. But this books peels back the curtain and shows you how a real wiz runner scans. Take for example Teachdaire, the elven assassin. This guy is no joke. Skills as high as 13, all custom delta-level cyberware and rating six hydraulic leg jacks. Okay, the leg jacks are weird but I would not tell him that. But that is what elite level looks like. Two things really stuck out at me as I read his entry. One, in a standup fight he is virtually invincible. Super fast, skilled and deadly. And two, that with a good plan he can be killed with one shot just like everyone else. And that’s what makes Shadowrun so cool. At least one of the things.
Another runner I would not cross is the combat mage Sukie Redflower. She is totally absurd, both in attitude and ability. But the book is filled with compelling characters. As I was reading through it I was thinking with each entry how I would fit that NPC into our campaign, and it wasn’t stretch for any of them. When I finished the book I had a year’s worth of adventures planned. Isn’t that what a good sourcebook should do?
Prime Runners is a sourcebook, but it is not location specific. It is essentially a book of NPC’s of all types. When I purchased it I had assumed that it would just be page after page of elite runners, which seems pretty cool to me. I like reading about badass futuristic mercenaries. But it is actually way better than that and gives such an interesting view into what makes the Sixth World really tick. There are runners contained in it’s pages, but there are also talismongers, journalists, fixers, writers, athletes, and pretty much anything else that you can come up with. To see how a world really lives and breathes it would be not all that useful to just see the runners that operate in it’s seedy underbelly. But to see how many powerful people in the world interact with and use this seedy underbelly is something else altogether. How did that fixer with the suitcase nukes get to be that guy? Why has that journalist been able to survive and thrive in the most dangerous places in the world? It’s all in there chummer.
Like all the Shadowrun sourcebooks, Prime Runners is presented as the work of someone else. In this case two runners who decided to compile a directory of people that other runners would need to know. Good concept. And like other books it is filled with comments from others who have read and commented on the entries. I love that. Usually the comments present various opinions on the person in question and bring up rumors about them as well. Aside from that all the entries have the character’s motivations, history (or what is known of it) and hooks to get the players involved with them. It is well written, smart, interesting and funny. If you can’t get something out of this as a GM then you should probably retire your dice.
One other thing that I really liked about the book was that it showed what a really tough character looks like. Since Shadowrun does not have a level system for characters it is sometimes difficult to know exactly when someone is very powerful, so much of it depends on the particular situation that they are in. And the location sourcebooks rarely have the stats of actual characters in them, that just seems to be how they are. But this books peels back the curtain and shows you how a real wiz runner scans. Take for example Teachdaire, the elven assassin. This guy is no joke. Skills as high as 13, all custom delta-level cyberware and rating six hydraulic leg jacks. Okay, the leg jacks are weird but I would not tell him that. But that is what elite level looks like. Two things really stuck out at me as I read his entry. One, in a standup fight he is virtually invincible. Super fast, skilled and deadly. And two, that with a good plan he can be killed with one shot just like everyone else. And that’s what makes Shadowrun so cool. At least one of the things.
Another runner I would not cross is the combat mage Sukie Redflower. She is totally absurd, both in attitude and ability. But the book is filled with compelling characters. As I was reading through it I was thinking with each entry how I would fit that NPC into our campaign, and it wasn’t stretch for any of them. When I finished the book I had a year’s worth of adventures planned. Isn’t that what a good sourcebook should do?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Shadowrun Campaign Journal #3
After a session which consisted mainly of downtime investigation and off color jokes the party was eager to make something happen. Bring a little action to the shadows of the Outer Edge. Gathered in Mr. White’s warehouse they discussed their options and worked out some potential plans. The ultimate goal was to flush out the Trashcan Man and free themselves of his blackmail, but being the wily raccoon shaman that he is that was not going to be easy. They checked in with their contacts again but not much was moving on that front so they decided to set a plan in motion. Puppy picked up the waitress at the local Long John Silver’s, but she did not yield as much information as Puppy was hoping that she would.
The party assumed that if they made some sort of move on the drug dealer Dark Cloud that Trashcan Man would be in the area watching it go down. Why would he be doing that? Well, his covetous nature made them think that he would want to be involved in whatever was happening, but also as a blackmailer he would probably want to record the whole situation as a future source of income and manipulation. With this in mind the party rolled over to the area of Dark Cloud’s warehouse, not entirely sure of what was going to happen.
Most of the party sort of had their own desired outcome for what they wanted to happen and how it was going to happen. They considered trying to have a face to face with Dark Cloud and let him know that there was a hit out on him. They also toyed with the idea of ignoring him all together and looking for an alternate way of getting Trashy to make an appearance. There was also some debate about the use of the infamous autocannon. Katsin was dead set about not using it, while Mr. White was extremely anxious to bust it out and mow down some degenerates.
The party assumed that if they made some sort of move on the drug dealer Dark Cloud that Trashcan Man would be in the area watching it go down. Why would he be doing that? Well, his covetous nature made them think that he would want to be involved in whatever was happening, but also as a blackmailer he would probably want to record the whole situation as a future source of income and manipulation. With this in mind the party rolled over to the area of Dark Cloud’s warehouse, not entirely sure of what was going to happen.
Most of the party sort of had their own desired outcome for what they wanted to happen and how it was going to happen. They considered trying to have a face to face with Dark Cloud and let him know that there was a hit out on him. They also toyed with the idea of ignoring him all together and looking for an alternate way of getting Trashy to make an appearance. There was also some debate about the use of the infamous autocannon. Katsin was dead set about not using it, while Mr. White was extremely anxious to bust it out and mow down some degenerates.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Shadowrun Campaign Journal #2
The party started the night in Mr. White’s warehouse, licking their wounds from the previous encounter. Both Puppy and Phil the Kill had serious injuries so they decided to hole up a while and do some healing. Mr. White did some computer recon to learn about the fallout over the shootout at Morpheus’ Throne. Apparently the police thought it was the work of some amateurs considering the haphazard way that everything seemed to go down. The party seemed to get a kick out of that, especially since the police were right. There was a mention of some military grade weaponry used in the fracas, this seemed to be of some concern to the local police force.
After a couple of days of laying low they decided to contact Zapper and get their payment for killing Handsome Dick. Phil and Katsin met up with a grim faced Zapper who had some bad news for them. First, he informed them that they had all been had by his employer. The “Aztechnology” corp man does not exist, Zapper thought the whole thing was a setup and that there was no money for any of them. Someone just wanted Handsome Dick, and perhaps all of the Silver Streaks, dead. Secondly, he played them some video footage on a small player of the incident with the Silver Streaks. Clear as day they watched Mr. White unload with the autocannon, reducing some gang members to red mist and tearing apart a section of a building in a hail of lead. There was also footage of the inside of the bar showing the rest of the crew doing work. Zapper told them that the footage was going to be released to the police unless the party cooperated with the wishes of the mysterious client. Zapper apologized to the group and assured them that he had no part in this and was very sorry that they were being manipulated this way. After a perception test Katsin believed him, but the party seems unlikely to ever trust Zapper again.
With the blackmail in place the party was assigned a new job. In the Outer Edge section of Seattle (the same area that housed the once semi-prominent Silver Streaks) there is a drug dealer named Dark Cloud. He is to be killed. They were given the address of his warehouse but not much else. Now is where things started to get interesting…
After a couple of days of laying low they decided to contact Zapper and get their payment for killing Handsome Dick. Phil and Katsin met up with a grim faced Zapper who had some bad news for them. First, he informed them that they had all been had by his employer. The “Aztechnology” corp man does not exist, Zapper thought the whole thing was a setup and that there was no money for any of them. Someone just wanted Handsome Dick, and perhaps all of the Silver Streaks, dead. Secondly, he played them some video footage on a small player of the incident with the Silver Streaks. Clear as day they watched Mr. White unload with the autocannon, reducing some gang members to red mist and tearing apart a section of a building in a hail of lead. There was also footage of the inside of the bar showing the rest of the crew doing work. Zapper told them that the footage was going to be released to the police unless the party cooperated with the wishes of the mysterious client. Zapper apologized to the group and assured them that he had no part in this and was very sorry that they were being manipulated this way. After a perception test Katsin believed him, but the party seems unlikely to ever trust Zapper again.
With the blackmail in place the party was assigned a new job. In the Outer Edge section of Seattle (the same area that housed the once semi-prominent Silver Streaks) there is a drug dealer named Dark Cloud. He is to be killed. They were given the address of his warehouse but not much else. Now is where things started to get interesting…
Monday, July 19, 2010
Shadowrun Campaign Journal #1
I’ve decided to run a Shadowrun mini-campaign over the next couple of weeks. It has been a couple of years since I have played Shadowrun and probably 15 years since I have been a GM for the Seattle based cyber punk RPG. I’m looking forward to it. I also don’t feel like buying some new books for a game that is only going to last a couple of weeks so I am sticking with the one book that I have; the 2nd Edition basic book. Also, none of the players in the game have ever run the shadows before and Shadowrun (especially 2nd Edition) is not the most novice friendly game. So I’ve decided to do a stripped down easy version of the rules with an emphasis being on quickness of play and a good time. We will see how it goes.
For the sake of brevity I made all the characters ahead of time. Yes, I understand that creating a character is a ton of fun. But so is playing and I wanted to get down to it. We only have a couple of weeks before D&D picks back up. We got together and the players decided to randomly pick the people that they were going to be playing. I gave everyone a basic history of the Shadowrun world so that they understood exactly where they were in time and space. Everyone seemed into it. In my opinion the strength of this game has always been the universe that it exists in. It’s just pretty awesome and has a ton of possibilities for adventure. I also explained that there was really no such thing as alignment and as good and evil, just varying shades of grey. I think that they liked that as well, knowing that they were free to indulge whatever they wanted to without having to adhere to some sort of ideology that may or may not apply to their situation. After the intro we stacked silly amounts of six sided dice on the table and I distributed the characters. Let’s meet the party.
For the sake of brevity I made all the characters ahead of time. Yes, I understand that creating a character is a ton of fun. But so is playing and I wanted to get down to it. We only have a couple of weeks before D&D picks back up. We got together and the players decided to randomly pick the people that they were going to be playing. I gave everyone a basic history of the Shadowrun world so that they understood exactly where they were in time and space. Everyone seemed into it. In my opinion the strength of this game has always been the universe that it exists in. It’s just pretty awesome and has a ton of possibilities for adventure. I also explained that there was really no such thing as alignment and as good and evil, just varying shades of grey. I think that they liked that as well, knowing that they were free to indulge whatever they wanted to without having to adhere to some sort of ideology that may or may not apply to their situation. After the intro we stacked silly amounts of six sided dice on the table and I distributed the characters. Let’s meet the party.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The best and worst of Shadowrun
After D&D the first role playing game that I ever got into was Shadowrun. I don’t remember what got me started, I assume I saw it at the game store or read about it in Dragon or something, but I immediately thought that it was a super cool system and such a great counter to D&D. So much about it was very different and new, but it had some consistent anchors to the familiar world of fantasy gaming that I knew. There were orcs and magic and rumors of dragons, but there was also dermal plating and boosted reflexes. Something called a rigger and street samurais. I’ve played in a bunch of Shadowrun campaigns over the years and the game is always a good time, but I have to be honest that the mechanics of the game are pretty awful. Sometime in the semi near future I plan on running a mini campaign when our D&D DM is away so I have been doing some thinking about it lately. Here is my list of the best and worst aspects of Shadowrun.
The best:
1) Cyberware. Totally bad ass. Internal implants that link your eyesight to the barrel of your gun? Check. Air filtration built right into your respiratory system? Awesome. Boosted reflexes that keep you twitchy and three times as fast as anyone else? Required for any chummer to survive when the drek hits the fan. Essentially the magic items of Shadowrun, cyberware allows your character to far surpass what a normal human is capable of.
2) Native Americans. When magic returned to the world of Shadowrun one of the first people to get on board were the Native Americans. Embracing their shamanic past, America’s first people reclaimed the heartland of America and now wield more power than ever before. It’s not just the Indians though, the history of Shadowrun is well thought out and interesting. Dragons appearing in Japan, corporations running the show behind the curtain of glass and steel skyscrapers, and Goblinization. This is a very engaging and fully formed world that Shadowrun exists in.
3) Lethal combat. If a bunch of jacked up, cyber enhanced gun jockeys are having it out in the street with flechette loaded assault rifles people are going to die. And they do. In mass quantities. Lethality in Shadowrun is no joke. Even if you are heavily armored Troll with dermal plating, two well placed shots are going to take you out. It is not easy to keep a character alive in this game, which I’m fine with. This is a risky line of work. If you can’t handle character death I suggest that you leave the shadow running to someone else and go play 4th edition D&D.
The worst:
1) Too many D6’s. I have a lot of D6’s, more than any reasonable human being could possibly have a need for. Except if you play Shadowrun. Since the game only uses the D6 and most checks are opposed successes it requires an obscene amount of dice. More than most players would have. More room to roll them than most tables have. When dice are cutting into space that could otherwise be used for food, there is a problem. And that is a lot of math that tends to slow the game down. Now in it’s 4th edition, the game continues to stubbornly stick to this clumsy system. I don’t get it. I’m not sure what advantage it is providing. Though it is sort of fun to roll that many dice at once.
2) Deckers. You can’t have a futuristic cyberpunk game without computer hackers, known in Shadowrun as deckers for the hooked up cyberdecks that they carry. I get it, in the future information is a big commodity and these guys know how to get it. What they also know how to do is slow down the game for everyone else while they spend a half hour hacking into some mainframe and fighting lethal programs as the rest of the party stands around. In the last couple of games that I played in everyone agreed to just sort of outlaw deckers for that reason and either have an NPC replace their skill set or just make all computer type stuff kept to a minimum. And really, who wants to be a decker? They make clerics look popular.
A couple of years ago I was awakened real early one morning by a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it and was met by a cold voice saying, “You ready to run the shadows?” It was silent as they awaited my response. I was clueless but eventually put together that it was someone that I had played Shadowrun with years ago inviting me to join him in a new game. Unfortunately at the time my schedule was not very conducive to another weekly game so I declined, but I always loved that phone call. That is one of my favorite aspects of Shadowrun.
The best:
1) Cyberware. Totally bad ass. Internal implants that link your eyesight to the barrel of your gun? Check. Air filtration built right into your respiratory system? Awesome. Boosted reflexes that keep you twitchy and three times as fast as anyone else? Required for any chummer to survive when the drek hits the fan. Essentially the magic items of Shadowrun, cyberware allows your character to far surpass what a normal human is capable of.
2) Native Americans. When magic returned to the world of Shadowrun one of the first people to get on board were the Native Americans. Embracing their shamanic past, America’s first people reclaimed the heartland of America and now wield more power than ever before. It’s not just the Indians though, the history of Shadowrun is well thought out and interesting. Dragons appearing in Japan, corporations running the show behind the curtain of glass and steel skyscrapers, and Goblinization. This is a very engaging and fully formed world that Shadowrun exists in.
3) Lethal combat. If a bunch of jacked up, cyber enhanced gun jockeys are having it out in the street with flechette loaded assault rifles people are going to die. And they do. In mass quantities. Lethality in Shadowrun is no joke. Even if you are heavily armored Troll with dermal plating, two well placed shots are going to take you out. It is not easy to keep a character alive in this game, which I’m fine with. This is a risky line of work. If you can’t handle character death I suggest that you leave the shadow running to someone else and go play 4th edition D&D.
The worst:
1) Too many D6’s. I have a lot of D6’s, more than any reasonable human being could possibly have a need for. Except if you play Shadowrun. Since the game only uses the D6 and most checks are opposed successes it requires an obscene amount of dice. More than most players would have. More room to roll them than most tables have. When dice are cutting into space that could otherwise be used for food, there is a problem. And that is a lot of math that tends to slow the game down. Now in it’s 4th edition, the game continues to stubbornly stick to this clumsy system. I don’t get it. I’m not sure what advantage it is providing. Though it is sort of fun to roll that many dice at once.
2) Deckers. You can’t have a futuristic cyberpunk game without computer hackers, known in Shadowrun as deckers for the hooked up cyberdecks that they carry. I get it, in the future information is a big commodity and these guys know how to get it. What they also know how to do is slow down the game for everyone else while they spend a half hour hacking into some mainframe and fighting lethal programs as the rest of the party stands around. In the last couple of games that I played in everyone agreed to just sort of outlaw deckers for that reason and either have an NPC replace their skill set or just make all computer type stuff kept to a minimum. And really, who wants to be a decker? They make clerics look popular.
A couple of years ago I was awakened real early one morning by a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it and was met by a cold voice saying, “You ready to run the shadows?” It was silent as they awaited my response. I was clueless but eventually put together that it was someone that I had played Shadowrun with years ago inviting me to join him in a new game. Unfortunately at the time my schedule was not very conducive to another weekly game so I declined, but I always loved that phone call. That is one of my favorite aspects of Shadowrun.
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