Just recently I have found out none of the players in one of the groups I gm have seen Bladerunner!!! Unable to let this opportunity slip, I am going to make a run around it; this team will be hired to hunt down a team of "rogue operatives" who have ran away from their corporate masters.


-and if you haven't seen the film, stop reading right now and rent it!!!- It is, in my opinion, a fundamental cyberpunk reference and quite a terrific flick!! - be more cultured than this bunch of guys, please!





The runners have already heard through the grapevine about that job opportunity and how they are coming to replace a
seasoned veteran who was thrown down a building while interrogating an alleged rogue operative... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Now, all is fine and well, but I have not decided what the rogue operatives are, mechanics wise... I would very much appreciate interesting ideas for the replicants true nature -I am somewhat allergic to use replicants and introduce something blatantly new to the SR gameworld in my campaign- so...

... rogue clones of former top operatives?

... bioengineered soldiers with lotsa genetic modifications?

... what would you use in lieu of the empathy test?

who would you stat Roy Batty?


anyway they are going to include a "internal clock", a genetically induced deficiency which is going to kill them shortly... but not before they cause some mayhem and lecture the shadow group about bursting stars and the meaning of life over rainy rooftops. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Cheers,

Max

p.s. aargh!!! I have just noticed the horrible double negative that I slipped in the topic title!!! And I cannot edit it, can I? I want to kill myself! This is what happens when you post SR stuff while working with excel sheets at the office. So much for multitasking!!!!

If you haven't read through the stuff at the end of Augmentation, now might be the time to do so! There are lots of theoretical and potential future science that the corps are working on, many of which could be used to create replicants in some way that would work well for your plans, though specifically something like a replicant is going to be far outside the normal scope.

And just because I know I'm in the minority, lemme just say thank god they released the original theatrical version of the movie. Yeah, the VO may have been the studio execs thinking people are stupid, but it was a happy accident. A far better film than the director's cut.

What about the final cut, is it good?

Excellent question, but I haven't watched that disk yet because I just haven't had the time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I thought the final cut was solid. But I do really like that the original is in there too.

the original is good enough. And I saw the director's cut and liked it too. I believe what's best of the film remains unchanged and the end... well... I think a sad ending is more fitting....

Cheers,

Max

Heck go a little weird... I'd use Flesh Form spirits of some inhabiting tradition...

Oh God. You can quote Roy Baty and they *won't know*!!
[jealous]

exactly!!! priceless!!

That's a pretty solid idea, once you figure out the 'why' of it all...

Hmm... Some kind of spirits trying to infiltrate er... a megacorp?

"All those moments will be lost, in time, like...tears in rain." The most poignant moment I've ever seen in a movie. Fun fact: Rutger Hauer wrote those last lines himself, and Ridley Scott approved their use. For reviews of the film, see the Final Cut thread under General Gaming.

Since you don't want to introduce new concepts into the game, I would go with humans who were genetically modified as embryos. Make use of the various positive qualities in the main rulebook, such as high pain tolerance, etc.; this could represent how the Tyrell Corporation (or it's SR equivalent) tweaked the genetic structure. Augmentation would be invaluable as well; I seem to recall a mod that increased the max for physical attributes by one. Also, I believe it states that bioware represents modifications that go beyond what can be acheived through geneware, so if you want something more powerful, along the lines of the replicants as they are portrayed in the movie, you would effectively have to invent a new race. Negative qualities that would need to be invented would be the four year life span, as well as some mental NQ to represent the emotional state of replicants...but maybe a version of Uncouth would suffice, one which is detectable by the Empathy test. Also, in the film, a replicant's irises glowed slightly when feeling a powerful emotion.

As for stats on Roy, I would give him the max augmented attributes posible for a human (i.e., a nine in strength and body).

Damn, Speed Wraith, don't say that on the internet! You'll get killed!


No, spirits trying to exfiltrate the metaplanar colonies where they've been forced to mine....I dunno, mana or whatever....But now they've gotta gain access to their spirit formulae before their evanescence kills them off. (Like I'm gonna kill off whoever decided SR players should have to think about one of the crappiest bands ever every time they mention a spirit that loses essence on the physical plane...)

Yeah, I know, I've been beat up for it before...Of course Scott didn't like it: the studio made him do it. It happend to be, IMHO, a smart move even if it was done for all the wrong reasons. The Film-Noir quality truly seems to add something to the flick that the DC didn't have.

I'm not sure I could really come up with a compelling way to deal with the flesh-form spirits, though I like it. Maybe it is best to use the whole thing to tie into the Sapient's Rights theme?

I would probably go with genetically engineered humans, load them with qualities and use genertic heritage to smuggle some built-in bioware. The corp will probably be AGC Europa, as we are playing in Hamburg -but the run will have happened in Franckfurt, Jena or Berlin- I like the Genera angle.


Cheers!

Max

yep... these operatives will have returned from some work in Africa when they went rogue...

Cheers

Max

Have to agree with you wholeheartedly here. I was extremely disappointed in the DC.

I, too, liked the original theatrical version better than the DC. But then, I LIKE voice overs... always have and have never understood why people get so down on them in many movies. For detective type stories, I have always thought htey added that perfect noir quality to settings that otherwise wouldn't have had it so much. An example of htis is the terrific series Veronica Mars. That show would not have been nearly as good without Veronica doing voice-overs. It really made her feel all private-eye-y in a setting that could have too easily become Nancy Drew Goes to 90210. Magnum PI is another series that utilized voice-overs to marry noir to a setting that did not immediately lend itself to "detective."

I like the Blade Runner run idea! Of course, my players have all seen it many a time, but, I was working the stroyline into my "Marshals of 2070" campaign. Recently, the players were set to protect the daughter of a Corp President. She was kidnapped right out from under their noses. What they weren;t aware of is "why." I didn;t have it all fleshed out yet, but I was going to make her a "replicant" utilizing an AI concept inhabiting a bioware body. A prototype, basically. I figured that later on, they would discover her after she had escaped her captors and it would spawn an investigation where they discovered finalyl what she was... and see how they dealt with the concept.

Vlad, who realizes that he did just come out of hte closet as a Veronica Mars fan.

i think there is a double negative in the title...

"...because none my players had not seen it!! amazing!"

so all your players have seen it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Beware...

Blade Runner is a movie. It has a fixed scenario, a fixed script. Shadowrun is a PnP RPG, and players can do what they please with the GM's scenario.
Deckard reacts the way it's written he'll react. PC will react the way they want.
More importantly: Deckard is a human (well, maybe not exactly but that's not my point). More than that: he's a hard-boiled detective, a tough-but-sentimental guy. He's not a team of 4 killing machines, with 2.7m tall members, members who can stun everyone in a six meter radius in less that 3 seconds and members who can put 12 bullets in the head of an enemy before he even hits the ground.

In Blade Runner, Roy Batty is a powerful machine, compared to human standards. If you stat him the same way in SR, he'll be about as tough as the next troll, or the next cybered-human. If you stat him tougher than that, you'll get an über-character and chances are your players will be more likely to tag him as an unfair overpowered boss than as a complex and sad individual.

So beware, you might end up disapointed.

"What the hell is a Tanhauser gate?"

Drillbit Taylor was a crappy and un-funny movie, but it partially redeemed itself by using a Blade Runner quote.

Also, the most important thing in Blade Runner was the ramen stand. With the neon.

@hobgoblin: of course I noticed... just a little too late. look at the edit line. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

@blade: don't worry. What is most important is the concept and the mood, plus the rewarding inclusion of many bladerunner elements and quote without my players' knowing what I'm doing. I will roll with the punches, trust me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

@wounded ronin: the ramen stand is awesome! I thought I was it's only fan!!!

Cheers all, and keep it coming, I find your comments most interesting.

Max

Hell no! I've used a neon noodle stand in the middle of the street in just about every SR game I've ever run! (normally people think of the 5th Element, but that's ok, because I think of them as simpletons)

Replicants are easy enough using Augmentation's biodrone technology. The Tanhauser Gate is substantially more difficult.


If you are prepared to drop the philosophical implications of Blade Runner and replace them with similar philosophical implications, you could make the antagonists high-functioning cyberzombies. The emotional and spiritual detachment produced by the cybermancy process can easily replace the voight-kamph test, though it makes identifying them too easy if you have a magician on your team. This can be compensated for by making a cyberzombie an initiate magician with Masking, but the background count will still be a dead give away.

Its only a give away if the team have ever seen a cyberzombie before or are not annoying meta gamers. Cyberzombies would work "limited" life span powerful and seen as semi-expendable. Now correct me if my view of cyberzombies and or replicants is off I last saw blade runner at the age of 12 not to long ago for me but still an age away relatively.