Hum...


The classic seinen manga serie (and animes) Golgo 13 may be very interesting for players of 'professionals' and DM alike. Cynic, dark, realistic.... No magic or high tech (much) really, but...


The extremely brutal and freaky Ichi the Killer may be great for japanese low level or yakuza-themed games. Or in Saitoland... Similar remark for Crying Freeman (toward Triads and chinatowns and China).

Violence Jack (so disturbing...) for slum-ish ganglands? And retro punkiness...

The equaly brutal Riki-oh/Story of Ricky (the manga is actualy quite dark and realistic... so grim) for eastern slums, armyland, etc feel. And perhaps Shadowrun China, especialy if there is truely lowtech places (and jails..). Also, physica-fighting adepts.

This post has been edited by The ubbergeek: Sep 4 2008, 06:08 PM

realistic? err...

i bailed on it after about 6-7 episodes as it was "japanese sniper/marksman/genious wins, no matter the odds". replace the lead with a american ex-military or something and you would have 1 of a dozen or more 80's tv shows...

I hard so-so reviews of the TV serie, but the base material is still awesome. Things are often so grey, the 'good' guys ain't always so clean...

Duke himself is kind of a Deus Ex Machina at times, but it's a part of the appeal, I guess. Leaving the show to the protagonistsand antagonists others.

By the way Hulu.com is awsome and has a bunch of the stuff we're talking about. At least the American stuff.

Did somebody say Burn notice yet? That's awsome.

Hellsing could fit. sure not quite the normaly run but the same thing could well exist in the 6th would well up to about volume 5 then it gets a bit to much for shadowrun.

It's an eceltic mix, but.

The Maltese Falcon - a classic, and what you usually feel like during a run.

Strange Days - living on the lower end of things?

Denno Coil - a Japanese cartoon - watch to see how wireless works.

The Matrix - only to see what wired 3 looks like.

The Great Escape - how to plan

Max Headroom - already mentioned, but yes, this is a media blitz.

i seriously need to fake my way in there with a US proxy of some sort...

same the closest in the UK you have to pay for. =(

and they wonder why p2p is popular...

One show that I think probably inspired some of my gadgets is Bugs, an old 1995 UK TV show. It follows a group of freelance high-tech experts, saving people and solving crimes. Some of the ideas were pretty funky though, and much of the tech was shadowrun-grade, although there was no cyberware that I can remember. Things like fly drones that inject viruses tailored to members of a specific family, bombs that go off when they hear a particular voice pattern, gold-eating bacteria, etc.

It's well worth a look. Even if you can't find the videos, you could read the synopses on IMDB.

When someone said hellsing, were they meaning the Hellsing anime, or the recent feature film with lots of swinging from ropes? The anime was excellent, really good animation, and might serve as an idea for some runs. I think they did another thing more recently, "Hellsing Ultimate OVA Series", but I don't know if it was as good.

Anyone seen Alias or Nikita. Both are very shadowrunny as the main characters are performing runs as assasins/data steal/destruction/infitration.

If books count. The sciencefiction books of Modesitt, L.E.
Especially Flash, Archform: Beauty, Octagonal Raven,The Elysium Commision

Not very cyberpunkish but showing the impact of high tech on human society and on the individual

The Dresden files, if not mentioned, are rlevant from a magic+skyscrapers kind of way.

The only thematic disconnect is that typically Shadowrun magic threats are pretty straighforward. It would take work and maybe some houserules to make stuff a real mystery.

The books more so than the show, because the show has the magic more flashy and visable, and Harry's digs as nicer than they are described in the book, mostly due to the needs of the visual medium.

As for watching US shows, I think most of the websites like Hulu just check the location of your DNS. Try changing your DNS to open DNS and you should be good to go. Of course, to watch the BBC you'll have to switch back. I feel your pain - we get Dr. Who with a few weeks of lag, and Torchwood is at least as slow. Old media is really silly about this stuff, Hulu is a start in the right direction.

theres http://tvparadise.org idk if its legal or not though.

Wow, I really got in with this before everyone?

Cyber Wars, and Sin City. Come on, people.

Cyber Wars, for those who haven't found this tiny gem, is so cyberpunk it bleeds little William Gibsons when you cut it. It opens with a bounty hunter wrapping up people with fake SINs, and ends with a massive megacorp conspiracy, and hits all the great tourist sites on the way. Betrayals, setups, Matrix work, gangs, cyberware, spy drones...get a clue and buy this thing. I did, and it's #2 on my list of DVDs to show SR newbs, behind Johnny Mnemonic and before Blade Runner and GitS.

Also, read the 2099 Marvel comics. Especially Spider-Man and Ghost Rider 2099.

Nuff said.

Wild Palms (Virtual Reality meets Oliver Stone conspiracy) and the Max Headroom (AIs in a corporate television controlled future) TV series. Both are pretty dated but worth one watching.

QFT.

I have been told (and by the pics I saw, it really have) that the old anime Cyber City Oedo 808 have really a Shadowrun/cyberpunk taste by the technical side of stuff. Criminals/ex-criminals forced to do 'runs' for the governement? hum!

I quintuple that, (or whatever number we're up to) but Sam is ex-military, not FBI, and he's been in the series from the beginning.

Also, Total Recall 2070 is right up there for TV shows, Kiss of the Dragon for movies.

And though it's been mentioned: Black Lagoon. It's so much like what my group is doing right now we're leaving hong kong and looking for Ronapur.

By the way in addition to Hulu there is a site called animewin.com I'm not sure if it's as fully legal as Hulu is though, but it only does anime and I don't know that it does current shows the way hulu does so maybe the licencing fees are low enough it manages on site ads.

Anyway it can get you at a whole heck of a lot of anime there.

Oh and the Japanese have a style of show that I don't think we really have here where they mix fighting demons or mechs or some action element but then shift down to something closer to romantic comedy for even up to a whole episode. Like imagine if Dresden from The Dresden files was also in the cast of Friends.

Anyway I wouldn't spend a whole session on stuff like that. But I do find it can help a game to mix in elements like that. And it really fleshes out the PCs. Otherwise they have a tendancy to be just numbers on paper that kill things.

It occurred to me, watch Casablanca and see "rick' as a fixer.

He has contacts, brings people together and pays off the local police

Big Bruce Campbell has been there since day one of that series. It is kinda hard to recognize him at first since he has put on some weight. He does a great job of playing his part.

I have series one on dvd, and series two on my tivo since I tend to watch the episodes over and over again. it is a good show.

now to my adds to the thread...

Street Kings.. no cyber/magic.. but if you took Keanu out of the police force (he sorta is now) and make him independent than you have shadowrunning to a the gill. Working outside the normal rules. Doing whatever it takes to complete the job. The "in-house" people hate him but know that they need him for what he does.

second (or so): ronin.. that is classic shadowrunning as is..

True. Or watch Michael Clayton. George Clooney's protagonist flat out states that he's a "fixer" and behaves accordingly.

For a thrilling moment there I actually thought you meant Nikita. Truly some of Luc Beson's best work. The lighting, camera-work and score are all amazing. In the dictionary under Dystopian there is a picture of the minuscule Anne Parillaud crouched in that kitchen holding up that gigantic Desert Eagle.

Some of the better parts of the score appear in Fifth Element, another strong candidate for this list.

Smokin' Aces would be a pretty good film, I think. A variety of runners, fixers, and plenty of people getting screwed over.