This is Shadowrun!

[Derren]

Seeing that Shadowrun is the current spotlight game and that the introduction set for 5E has not been released yet as far as I know let me talk about what Shadowrun is as a setting as I guess many people will be unfamiliar with it.

Shadowrun is a mix between Cyberpunk and Fantasy. While most people are accustomed with fantasy settings, Cyberpunk might need some explaining.
A Cyberpunk setting is a subset of Science Fiction and set in a dystopian world, usually the real one. That means it is pretty much the opposite of an Utopian society. The environment is destroyed, the world is controlled by corporations with near unlimited power, most people are poor and live under abysmal conditions while the privileged elite live in undreamed luxury. Examples of this would be Blade Runner, Deus Ex (video game) or even Orwell's 1984.
The "Cyber" in Cyberpunk obviously comes from the existence of Cyberware. Cybernetic enhancements or even whole replacement limbs who makes you stronger or smarter, if you can afford it. This also goes hand in hand with a Matrix, a global network you can directly connect to your brain (which also carries the risk of frying it). The theme in most of such settings is the rebellion against authority, thats where the Punk comes from.
The genre was defined by the novel Neuromancer and Shadowrun borrows a lot of terminology from it.

The unique thing about Shadowrun is its blend of fantasy and cyberpunk. When the mayan calender ended (the setting was written in the 80s, so some of its backstory is outdated by now) magic seeped back into the world, transforming people into the Tolkien races, awakening spirits and dragons etc. And while in some places the expected battle between magic (including nature) and technology wages for the most part magic has by now integrated into the society. Your co-worker at the factory may be an Orc or Dwarf, wizard is a normal job description, dragons figured out that a stock portfolio is better than a pile of gold and there is even a Ghoul nation waiting to be acknowledged by the UN.

If you want to know more about the world of Shadowrun you can read the settings history which was included in the 4E book.
http://www.hitpoint.com.au/srd/history.php
I find it a pretty entertaining read, but it can be dry when you are not into history. The 5E book focuses more on the here and now and so does not include the now nearly a century worth of history, but I am sure it will be printed in full in a setting book in the future.

The usual player characters are the name giving Shadowrunners. Criminals who are used by corporations, private individuals, governments and anything else as disposable and deniable assets to wage a secret war against their enemies. Your main task will not only to perform the missions you are given, be it assassination, theft, blackmail, etc. but also to stay below the radar of the big players maintain your contacts, plan your intrusions or even just finding out who you are working for and against whom. Because if you anger someone too much you are in trouble as other than in many fantasy games you will never, ever be anywhere near the top of the food chain no matter how powerful you become.
And if a Shadowrunner is not to you liking, there are many other roles you can play. Journalists, trying to report the truth in a world ruled by corporate propaganda, rebels who openly fight against oppression and the destruction of nature or even paramedics trying to save their client while under fire by gangs or worse.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Thanks for posting this introduction to the setting!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd love to hear some basics about the rules. When Shadowrun came out, I was in an RPG hiatus and, as a consequence, don't know much about it beyond its setting and the fact that a metropolitan dragon is one of its main villains.

 

[Abstruse]

You've been on an RPG hiatus since 1989?!

I do want to correct one thing you said and that's the word "villain". There are no villains in Shadowrun (well, aside from shedim, insect spirits, toxic shamen, and the Enemy). All the characters, from the CEOs to your normal runner to the great dragons to the ghoul living in the gutter are all being with their own agendas and are doing what they think is the right thing. Sometimes they do evil things because the ends justify the means, sometimes it's because of megalomania (the world would be better with me in charge), sometimes it's just that the evil thing seems like the right thing. And there are varying definitions of what the "right thing" is as well. Shadowrun is built on grey-and-grey morality, so remember that before you start casting Lofwyr as the Big Bad and Ares as the good guys because Ares has some demons in their closet and Lofwyr has done a lot of noble things.

Anyway, the game system. The system is based on skills using a dice pool method (at least in the current edition of the rules). Everything you want to do is determined by a skill check, which is formulated as Skill Rating + Attribute Rating [Limit]. When you make a test, you add together the relevant skill plus the relevant attribute, then roll that many six-sided dice. Every 5 or 6 that you roll is a "hit". Your Limit is the maximum number of Hits you can use on any particular test. Your goal is to get more hits than the Threshold for the test, or to get more hits than your opponent if it's contested.

For example, say your elf character want to sweet talk your way past the girl at the front desk of the hotel so you can get to the room your target's staying in. You have a Con skill of 5 and a Charisma attribute of 6 with a Social Limit of 5. Situational modifiers add or subtract dice from the pool, so say this girl happens to have a thing for elves. That gives you a +2 bonus. So you roll your 13 dice and get 8 hits. Because your social limit is only 5, you only get to count 5 of those hits. The clerk rolls his Perception + Intuition to see if she can see through your act and only gets 2 hits. Therefore, you succeeded with 3 net hits (indicating that not only did you succeed, but you did a pretty good job while doing so, so maybe the clerk not only lets you through but gives you a keycard to get into the private express elevator).

So you go upstairs and try to pick the lock on your target's room. Your hacker disabled the electronic locks on the door, but there's still that damn bar that every hotel room has. So you have to try to get that off the door so you can open it. You roll your Palming skill (2) plus your Agility (5) against a Threshold of 2. You roll a 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, and 5. So you got your two successes, but something else happened called a Glitch. This is what happens when more than half the dice you roll come up 1s. A glitch means "Something bad happens" but doesn't necessarily mean you don't succeed at your task. In this case, it means you managed to disable the manual lock, but you made enough noise doing so that the target (a grumpy dwarf engineer you were hired to extract) woke up. And is going for his gun. Oops.

So you roll initiative and get to go first. You get two Simple actions or one Complex action on your turn (there's a big list of them in the back of the book and definitions are scattered throughout, so I won't list them all here). You spend your first action to Ready Weapon (drawing your gun, turning off the safety, cocking it, etc.) Thankfully, you remembered to load your gel rounds. With your second action, you fire. You roll your Pistols skill (4) plus your Agility (5) and get 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4. Uh oh, this is what's called a Critical Glitch, when you get a normal Glitch but don't get any successes. Instead of something bad happening, something REALLY bad happens. In this case, your gel round explodes inside the barrel and gums it up. It's going to take time you don't have to clear it out before you can fire it again.

So that's the basics. I'd walk you through a full round of combat, but I'll probably end up posting that somewhere on here later in the week. For now, that should give you a good idea about the core game mechanics. If you've got any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[coyote6]

And after the events described by Abstruse, you throw your dice across the room and get new ones. Nine 1s out of 16 dice?!? argh!

(Okay, maybe that's just some of the folks I game with.)

PS: are there Limits for resistance or reactive rolls? For example, does the hotel clerk have a limit on that Per+Int roll?

 

[Abstruse]

And after the events described by Abstruse, you throw your dice across the room and get new ones. Nine 1s out of 16 dice?!? argh!

(Okay, maybe that's just some of the folks I game with.)

PS: are there Limits for resistance or reactive rolls? For example, does the hotel clerk have a limit on that Per+Int roll?

Generally no. Defenders don't have limits for most rolls. The notation I used is important because it's standard throughout the book. Here's what a static (non-opposed) test looks like:

Skill + Attribute [Limit] (#)

The skill and attribute are, well, the skill and attribute you use. The Limit is the specific limit that you use for that roll. The # in parenthesis is the Threshold of the test, or the number of hits you have to get to succeed. Note: Not all tests are going to be Skill + Attribute, but the majority of them will be. Rarely, you'll get a combination of two attributes, like Agility + Intuition.

Opposed tests, on the other hand, are notated as follows:

Skill + Attribute [Limit] v Skill + Attribute.

I've never seen a single one have the defender with a Limit, but it may be possible.

Also, there are two types of Limits. The first are Inherent Limits, of which there are three: Mental, Physical, and Social. They're determined using a weighted average of three different attributes. For example, your Physical Limit is (Strength x 2) + Reaction + Body, then that total is divided by three round up (you normally round down in Shadowrun so this is an exception). This has been an AMAZING boost to the game as the attributes they give more weight to are almost always used as dump stats in every other edition of the game.

The other type of limit is the Gear Limit. This means some attribute of a piece of gear you're using. It could be the Data Processing attribute of your cyberdeck, or the Accuracy rating of your gun. Gear Limits ALWAYS take precedent over Inherent Limits.

Oh, and yeah, you're going to need a LOT of six-sided dice for Shadowrun. A minimum of 10d6 per player and probably closer to 20d6. Before I started a campaign in the 3rd Edition of the game last year, I went on Amazon and specifically bought 200d6...for a three player game. Cost me about $20 too, so that was a pretty good deal. Also, I think dice with pips on them rather than numerals work better for Shadowrun, but I've had people disagree.

 

[coyote6]

Yeah, I ran a couple of short SR 1e games in '89 and after, and played some (including the beginning of this one adventure involving this new-ish religious sect, that led to the GM having to come up with insecticide stats on the fly), ran a 2e game that ran into early 3e (but I don't remember if we ever even converted to 3e or not) that ran out 'cause too many people liked the setting but couldn't stand the rules (and nobody loved the rules), and ran a 4e game for a year or two that petered out due to Life. So I've got a few bricks d6s around. Waiting.

 

[Abstruse]

Yeah, I ran a couple of short SR 1e games in '89 and after, and played some (including the beginning of this one adventure involving this new-ish religious sect, that led to the GM having to come up with insecticide stats on the fly), ran a 2e game that ran into early 3e (but I don't remember if we ever even converted to 3e or not) that ran out 'cause too many people liked the setting but couldn't stand the rules (and nobody loved the rules), and ran a 4e game for a year or two that petered out due to Life. So I've got a few bricks d6s around. Waiting.

No better time to break them out. Between the new edition and Shadowrun Returns launching next week....whoooooo, boy.

 

[Derren]

The spotlight week has been over since a week, but I feel like writing a bit more about Shadowrun (playing Shadowrun Returns likely has something to do with it).

So lets start with

Running around the World

A cool thing in Shadowrun is that you are not playing in a fantasy world but in the real one. You can imagine the skyline of New York (with or without WTC) much better than some fantasy city, you can defuse a bomb on the Eiffel Tower. You can even set your campaign in your hometown and maybe your safehouse is exactly where you are currently playing.
Of course, cities like New York are a bit more suitable for shadowrunning than for example Fairmeade, Kentucky so here are some of the top spots (but certainly not only possible locations) for running.

North America

Seattle
Seattle is the default setting for Shadowrun. Whats interesting with this city is its location. You see, when the Amerindians took back their land with their mojo they were only interested in intact nature which Seattle is not. So the white man was allowed to keep it while they took all the land around it. Then the elves violently founded their country right on Seattles doorstep and because of its location the Megacorps moved their west coast headquarters in. Seattle is now probably the biggest frontier town in the world and there is always stuff going on (at least, the rain is).

Denver
When the war between the natives and the USA ended the treaty was signed in Denver and in it, they gave Denver the "Berlin treatment" and divided it up between all involved parties. Coincidentally, Denver had a very powerful guardian spirit which through an "accident" also got splintered into several aspects. Then a Great Dragon moved in and declared that the city belongs to him and while some people challenged him the the recent past he is still in control. Today Denver still resembles a pie chart and the saying goes that in no other place in the world you can cross as many borders as in Denver in a 15 minute walk.

South America

Bogotá
Bogotá was a free (= lawless) city sitting between Aztec Mexico and the Amazonian hippies. Those two couldn't get along and waged war rather recently with Mexico winning in the end. So while now formally in control of Bogotá, the average citizen (Drug Cartel member or Catholic Priest) does not like that at all and certainly won't accept their new overlords saviors without a fight. All the while the Corps are trying to rebuild Bogotá (and securing the best prime estate for themselves)

Europe

Berlin
While the rest of Germany was busy reshuffling borders the people of Berlin said " it", quite literally, and threw the government out. The government had too much to do to also fight an army of punks and employed a often used tactic in Shadowrun. Building a wall around a problem and not caring what happens inside. Thus Berlin became the biggest anarchic experiment in history. And like every good experiment, it imploded spectacularly. It didn't take long for the corps to move in and take over half the city and after the most recent crisis they also took the other one. And with so many corps in one place there is always a demand for Shadowrunner. And lets not forget the leftover punks who want the anarchy back.

GeMiTo
Another lawless city (I really make Europe look like a giant wasteland...), GeMiTo are actually three cities, Genoa, Milan and Turin grown together into one massive sprawl. And while in Berlin the people kicked the government out, here the various government looked at the cost for maintaining this sprawl and at the expected tax revenue, decided its not worth it and refused to take responsibility for it. That all went well (more or less) till a Great Dragon with his followers moved in and decided to go "Survival of the Fittest" in it. A year and 90.000 dragon snacks later his brother came and kicked his butt. Now while the governments still do not care about GeMiTo, the corps are suddenly interested in rebuilding the city. The citizens are not to thrilled about that as none of them cared while they were being terrorized by dragons. Well except for the company which is owned by the dragon which liberated them, but they also have enough of winged, scaled firebreathers for a while, too.

Asia

Hong Kong
Hong Kong decided it had enough of China and became independent with the help of the corporations. That of course means that they are owned by them, but they do their best to hide it. So now HK is a free enterprise zone with even less laws against acquiring wealth at the expense of others, so there is always a demand for Shadowrunners. In addition HK is quite magically active with various ley lines going through and intersecting within the city. And finally, HK also has successful little Simsense chip (Think movie DVD you put directly into your brain) production going on as their chips not quite follow the safety regulations of the rest of the world.

 

[Morrus]

The spotlight week has been over since a week, but I feel like writing a bit more about Shadowrun (playing Shadowrun Returns likely has something to do with it).

I've been interested to see how long it lasts! I might be changing them to spotlight months, depending on how long this one keeps trucking!