What do you guys think those kind of mechanics could bring to the Shadowrun experience ?

For those who dont know, Im talking the mechanics found in rpgs like Pendragon or The One Ring. In these games, after a adventure or two, time advances (in-game) in a predefined amount. In the case of Pendragon rpg (a game about arthurian legends), this advancement lasts 1 full season - the winter, a time when lords and knights stay at home, taking care of its ordinary lives, administering fiefs and serfs, participating in royal parties and courtly intrigue. Events in this "Winter Season" most of time simply means a series "rolls" the players make using varying skills, related to various aspects - fiefs administration (good harvest, bad harvest), serfs (people is happy, unhappy, revolting, etc) personal (had a children, father died, etc), diplomatic (neighbor broke alliance, etc), etc. Sometimes an important event may be roleplayed if the players and gamemaster feels its important or relevant to the story. Sometimes its simply rolled and time move on 1 year or so, to the next adventure(s).

I think this kind of mechanic brings some interesting things to the game, but the most important to me is the "generational" and/or the "everyday life" aspect. In the case of Pendragon, since 1 year passes between each adventure or two, the players can see their characters lives changing, chars getting old, marrying, having children, seeing the children grow up, and even dying. In the case of The One Ring, the time unity between adventures is smaller (from days to months), which help to depict the "downtime" between adventures as seen in The Hobbit, where the everyday life of the characters is narrated - everyday work, routine, parties, relationships, personal struggles, etc.

If we were to apply this to Shadowrun, I think the second approach (One Ring´s ) would fit better. This way we could depict, in the downtime between runs, the "everyday life" of the shadowrunners - the normal people behind the hero/antihero; the end of day-dark-tired eyes behind the cool mirror shades. The first thing, and the most basic, that comes to my mind about implementing it would be to define a time-unit to pass between one or two runs/adventures/campaign arc, and to define a series of rolls related to the diff aspects of the chars life: professional rolls (char promoted/fired/went well/etc. in his dayjob); relationships rolls (char married, divorced, had children, brother arrested, etc); rumors rolls (sonics won the NBA; renraku market shares decreased and you lose 15% of your nuyen; etc), "shadows" rolls (shadowrland assaulted by a matrix´ joint corp task force; SOTA 2071: new cyberarms with synthetic skin, blood and even heat and hair hits the streets!; fastjack is missing - some say azzies new ice fried him; etc), etc. One could even keep track of the years and char age, put the group some years in the past, and go telling (or playing) the events of Shadowrun timeline and how it affects the players (directly or not): Universal Brotherhood close down, Cermak Blast, Super Tuesday; Corp wars, Renraku Shutdown, Otaku rising, Year of the Comet; Crash 2.0, etc, etc, etc.

So, what do you guys think ? Cool/Not cool ? Could it be done in a simple and effective way ?

It's a table thing really. I've seen some campaigns that keep track of every day that passes, and coordinate events with the lore of the setting at large, and some that kinda separated runs with as much time and everyone wanted/needed to get some things done like repair to vehicles, write a new program, make some telesma, whatever. Sometimes the GM would interrupt that downtime, most of the time we just had downtime as much as we wanted to use.

Some random rolls might be a neat idea for creating more details, but seems like alot of work to me. You'd want to make sure your players want that or would enjoy it first (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Nobody may want the 'An ex-fling shows up with your 2 year old son' roll after all (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I actually keep track of time in my games-we tend to do one job a week, with a week between jobs. The only break in this action is if the PC's need downtime for upgrades. (Initiation, cybernetic surgeries, etc...) I think my players would rebel if I tried to institute a time mechanic as described in the first post-but every table is different.

One run a week? Ugh that seems terribly fast paced (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I used the Run-a-week ration for a time, then i dropped it to a ten-day period. That gives 3 runs a month, not a bad call on a shadow heavy city like denver or Seattle. Not all runs are "the big one", obviously, and it solves questions about lifestyle and availability. If you give them "unlimited downtime", some heavy duty and valuable upgrades comes up as just "have money, will implant", which does not, IMHO, show up how valuable and hard to get such a treatment and cyberware is. Same with certain initiation rituals that take time to get. "Oh i lived on the woods for a month only with the clothes on my back, but now i a back being a powerful, full of cash mage again. You know. The usual price of power."

Now try RUNNING having to mantain the asceticism... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

*Shrugs* It works for us. We tend to play a lower powered game-so they literally depend on their jobs to make a living. But from an OOC perspective it works for us. It captures the fast paced Dystopian world we see as being the world of Shadowrun.

I would say that is terribly limiting, in some cases. We usually have a major run that may take a week or more to fully complete, but the characters are almost always trying to attend to something personal as well, maybe multiple personal threads. And then you have the other extreme, with the major run taking months of detailed work towards the end goal. Still, the personal runs/favors/whatevers were often still there. 2-3 runs a month is the norm for us, though, not including the personal things.

Note that despite our table taking a break from Shadowrun, if I'm running the next mission it's taking place on the heels of the last mission. (0 downtime).

I would almost be tempted to set up a "2 simultaneous missions" run. I've never had a group in the past that I thought could pull it off, but these guys are pros at splitting the team. It's really tempting.

Yup. That's by design. Like I said we do sometimes allow longer lapses if a PC needs to get upgraded, or if there's a logical plot/character hook reason. This isn't something that is set in stone.

Those are sometimes the best runs... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The game has always time advancement, just not as a solid mechanic because, quite frankly, there doesn't need to be one. Downtime is the amount of time between runs, which can be hours, days, weeks, or even months. During that time there's plenty of things you can be doing, and each of those downtime activities has their own time requirements. Refining orichalcum can take more than a month, while modifying a gun can be done in a few hours. There's also lifestyle costs to worry about.

If you try to regimentalize (is that even a word?) such things, it introduces all kinds of problems. It's best to keep it fast and loose, measuring it by ear. That way the players can do what they need or want to do in between runs as their needs demand, rather than possibly being cut short because of some predetermined limitation.

That said, each sourcebook that comes out basically moves the story ahead little by little, with editions making huge jumps.

The missions are run at one a week I believe.

The thing about long time lapses with shadowrun is the setting assumes a very specific year. Technology and magic are constantly evolving, and an edition shift is a change of a few years.

So if your runner is going around taking a month or two break after every run, you're going to get into some pretty weird places lore wise down the line, unless you decide to totally handwave that and say "Yes, I've been doing this for 5 years, but it's still 2070. Fuck yeah time loops".


On the other hand, a run every week runs into issues of the runners not having time to train skills or get gear, which seriously stunts character progression in a rather annoying manner.

We've never had a problem with advancement. My guess is it's all in how you decide to approach it. But yeah, like you said there's trade offs for any choice you make.

We started in year 2059, and have watched the world change from second to third. Soon the god-awful pandora's box of UB, Renraku, Chi-town and Super Tuesday, along with the Mob War and the corperate meltdown will then fall into the comet frenzy...*

How? Easy. Start at a date and keep a record of the downtime taken. Weeks are fine, days if people are anal about things. Toss together a spreadsheet and you've got a timeline with some interesting dates...

"...wait, you'd like to go do some Christmas Shopping at the new Renraku SCIRE? Sure - you know that's a high security place, as GM I'd advise you not to go in with anything heavy, unless you like getting shot. Yep, some big cred is fine - just make sure your gear can pass through a high-end scanner and let's see if you can score some contacts and gear..."

-Doing shit like that, with players new to the lore and a few survivors of an Archology run or two makes for a fun, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil, game.

-Tir out.
*Yes, yes, I know it's not chronologically in order.

Well just as an example, my group does a run basically every week. In one run, my characters van got shot up, so I put it in the shop, and decided to get some upgrades for it while it was in there.

It took 2 months for my van to come back, so there was a half dozen runs in between where I had no vehicle. After a run or two of realizing "It's going to be a long time before I get this back" I went out and bought a cheap/low avail motorcycle just so I'd have something.

Yeah that's one of the things we like. In fact a player just commented the other day about this very thing. When he realized his character couldn't just outright bulldoze the opposition, and actually had concerns about things like ammunition and where he was going to find shelter and food he happily exclaimed how fun this all was. But I agree, everyone has a different style at their table. One of the major themes in our games has always been that Shadowrunners don't have infinite coffers. They really have to be resourceful. We like, and it works for us-but at someone else's table it might go over like a lead balloon.

Unfortunately, there are some things in the game where you can't do that. Cooking orichlacum, for example. You only get a short time to deal with your 'real world' responsibilities while doing so, and the rest of the time must be spent in your alchemy lab micromanaging the entire process for the entire 28 days it takes (or however long it is). And if your goal is to create your own weapon or power focus using handmade virgin telesma, that's a huge investment of time. And you should be able to do those things from time to time.

Additionally, stretches where you can't find work only adds to the value of the rewards you earn. Say you've gone six months without a job. Your bank account is on death's door, your landlord is giving you the stink eye every time you pass him in the hall, and you've stomach is angry at you for all that Stuffer Shack crap you keep force feeding it because it's all you can afford, and all because you were living it up for the first couple of months thinking the money would always be flowing in. A scenario like that can lead to all kinds of possibilities in and of itself, and it emphasizes the shitty world you're supposed to be living in. As opposed to always having the income you want and losing perspective of who and what you are -- a sleazy, disposable bit of street scum.

I don't think any one is advocating that you shouldn't be able to make advancements.

I'm not saying that either. I'm saying that if you use a static measure of time and stay with it no matter what, it cuts off a lot of possibilities. It has to be mutable, especially in a game with as many downtime options as this one.

I agree.

I dont see a game where you have 1 run per week as something minimally plausible (in my group, if we dont see plausibility in our fiction, our immersion breaks). I can even see 1 shadowrun taking weeks (or even months) to complete as plausible, but if the group goes to shadowruns as a wageslave go to his everyday work.. then there is something wrong with the ecology of your setting (at least its how my group think).

And here enter the "table rolls".

If your group has an average of 1 month between runs, the "advancing-time-unit" could be 1 month (but there is no problem in varying this, of course). The point here is in depicting the more mundane aspects of the players lifes - day jobs, relationships, family, personal agendas, "shadow-biz" (rumors and changes in the local shadow-ecology, that could affect the players direct or indirectly, but not necessarily involves doing shadowruns), etc, etc, etc. This brings interesting issues and hooks to the table, that enrich and deepen the characters. Those issues could be play out in sessions or not, and the cronological advancement gives a sense of continuity and setting-emergence to the games. The mundane-heroic/adventuresque contrast may not only enrich the chars sense of existence, but give the characters pluasilbe motives for them to WANT to live on, to go back to home, to fight just another day, and make just another run - motives the GM can tap on and produce great and fun times.

Well, I dont really know how this would play out in Shadowrun. The only thing I know is that, once, and only once, me and my friend played out the live of a elf teen running way from his royal (and boring) life in the Tir to the Seattle sprawl, and his growing up between gang wars (he was initiated as an Ancient). We tracked the passage of time, the events unfolding around his personal, inter-personal, professional and shadow-professional life, and this was awesome. Most of the games involved gang affairs and wars - he made his first real shadowrun only in the 5th play session! (as he grew up, though, he began having bigger ideals: we stoped playing with he wanting to graduate on magical studies in MIT&T, and considering going back to Tir to help in revolutionaries ). THAT was the most memorable and fun character we had.

Now, of course, I know each group has its own playstyle, and maybe this not to ones´s tastes. No problem with that really. YMMV and all that.



I agree completely.

Everyone is different. At our table an average run-the actual game portions-take a week or less.

I just ask the PCs what they're doing with their spare time. If I don't get a reply, I check their knowledge skills, find one I like, and (s)he did that all the downtime.

"Wait, we were down for two months waiting for the heat to come down, and all you did was watch Urban Brawl? It's out of season!" "Yeah, but the Russian College League is just heating up. I had to get a Shareware Russian Linguisoft and I think I got most of it, in fact, the rules are very different, for one thing..." "You can stop. Right now. Stop. I mean it. I have an Uzi."

I think there's a disconnect between Missions timekeeping and a home campaign. Missions are short straightforward runs on rails. Characters don't have to do them in order, can take any amount of time between missions and continunity is tossed out the window.

This is simply the nature of missions.