Shadowrun MMO announced, who saw THAT coming?! Options

[Stahlseele]

"Here's 10k nuyen. Go around that corner, kill the people by the van, take the van, deliver the cargo inside to this location by that time. Run like hell."

[silva]

- One of the best descriptions i've heard of shadowrun is fantasy/cyberpunk/noir

Nicely chosen words.

Thanks for the kind words -
regarding your question: Yes, we have legwork planned. The level of complexity remains tbd, but we want to have things like this scenario:
The Mission is to infiltrate a nightclub in order to get to the basement, where a suspected informant may be kept imprisoned by a Crime Lord. Due to security waltzing in is out of the question. The Mission has the conditions: No large weapons, Limited Time. The Johnson provides entry passes through the backdoor, but security is tight.
Legwork could get you:
- Bribe an employee to hide a weapon inside (allows to add take weapon of choice with you)
- Hack their local network to delay security calls (extend time)
- Get blueprint for building
- General investigation magically or by hacking, using contacts
- Use Rent-a-Cop contact to mess up security schedule (increases response time for forces in the buidling)

All of those can help in the mission but also carry a certain risk (and cost).

Of course some missions will just drop you into the action at lightspeed, so not all of them include prep time...

Thats f*cking awesome! I want to play this right now.

And if you make the legwork phase in a different screen, maybe one of your apartment at night where you look through the window the rain washing the city streets outside, while listening to some noir-jazz or somthing, and choosing what to do (pick the vidphone/commlink to call a contact? check the trideo for news ? open your laptop/augmented screen to check the contracted runners )... oh sorry. Im wake draming here. xD

[Thanee]

...and also almost all big client based futuristic RPGs have failed commercially...

Yep, which is a shame. There have been some really great futuristic MMOs out there (Neocron, Tabula Rasa, etc.).

SW:G probably did alright, as did Anarchy:O, and EVE:O is the most successful one to date, I suppose. But there sure isn't much (esp. compared to fantasy-themed games).

Hopefully Bioware will manage to finally make a truely successful one with SW:TOR. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That being said, if anyone has 60 to 70 million dollars lying around unused looking for an investment opportunity, we are happy to reconsider.

Sure, who hasn't!? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

Instead we intend to focus on the more tactical parts of the game and we will do a browser based game with small team gameplay (either alone or with others), more in the tradition of Baldur's Gate crossed with Jagged Alliance - with more firepower.

Cool! That makes the whole thing a lot more viable. "MMO" simply wouldn't have worked. But you know that, of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Good luck on your project! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[hermit]

Sounds nice actually. What would "General Investigation" yield?

Interface-wise, I'd even be happy with moody Techno and somewhat well organised chart screens, like the SNES game of old ... of course, Bladerunner-esque Jazz-ish music and moody visuals would be neat too.

[primetide]

Sounds nice actually. What would "General Investigation" yield?

Interface-wise, I'd even be happy with moody Techno and somewhat well organised chart screens, like the SNES game of old ... of course, Bladerunner-esque Jazz-ish music and moody visuals would be neat too.

General investigation may yield exposed info on the mission map - like guard patrol routines or security levels for the surveillance software, the presence (or absence) of magical protection/personnel etc.

It being a brwoser game, the visuals will likely be simple - dialog/action windows with a few buttons and a nice pic (building levels for each legwork job is just out of scope), but we have devised a mechanic which allows us to a) include skills into the result b) have several "steps" to concluding legwork c)bring in items/contacts/edges to the mix and d) involve some sort of focus vs risk balance. Simply put, you would have a number of actions you can undertake. You may focus them on one or a few of the legwork parts for better chance of success (basically this simulates you putting in time and effort) or you can spread yourself thin but throw more resources (money, contacts, spirits, software etc.) at the job in order to maintain a solid chance of success.

[hermit]

More than a nice action winoundsdow with pretty images and maybe moody music would be too much to ask, indeed (though undoubtedly nice), so that s okay for an action-based game.

Will connections be staples - Bob the Plumber, Betty the Fixer, Harsh Joe the P.I.? Or will every player be able to customize their connections?

How do you plan to handle the Matrix? As in, the VR internet that is a staple of SR through all editions, the labyrinthine sites where you fight IC and are occasionally fried by it, not AR. Will there be Matrix-hack mini-games in Legwork or the run? Or even entire runs taking place entirely in the Matrix? Or do you plan to focus on meatspace action?

[primetide]

More than a nice action winoundsdow with pretty images and maybe moody music would be too much to ask, indeed (though undoubtedly nice), so that s okay for an action-based game.

Will connections be staples - Bob the Plumber, Betty the Fixer, Harsh Joe the P.I.? Or will every player be able to customize their connections?

How do you plan to handle the Matrix? As in, the VR internet that is a staple of SR through all editions, the labyrinthine sites where you fight IC and are occasionally fried by it, not AR. Will there be Matrix-hack mini-games in Legwork or the run? Or even entire runs taking place entirely in the Matrix? Or do you plan to focus on meatspace action?

Initially we want to focus on meatspace and AR. The reason for this is simply budgetary. We cannot make a good number of Matrix Levels including special rules for them for a limited part of the player community when we can do levels which allow everyone to play instead. If the game is commercially viable we intend to bring out pure Matrix levels.

Regarding contacts - we currently probably will start with staples, but I just thought we may as well allow players to "craft" contacts from "components", which are effectively stats etc.

[primetide]

More than a nice action winoundsdow with pretty images and maybe moody music would be too much to ask, indeed (though undoubtedly nice), so that s okay for an action-based game.

Will connections be staples - Bob the Plumber, Betty the Fixer, Harsh Joe the P.I.? Or will every player be able to customize their connections?

How do you plan to handle the Matrix? As in, the VR internet that is a staple of SR through all editions, the labyrinthine sites where you fight IC and are occasionally fried by it, not AR. Will there be Matrix-hack mini-games in Legwork or the run? Or even entire runs taking place entirely in the Matrix? Or do you plan to focus on meatspace action?

Initially we want to focus on meatspace and AR. The reason for this is simply budgetary. We cannot make a good number of Matrix Levels including special rules for them for a limited part of the player community when we can do levels which allow everyone to play instead. If the game is commercially viable we intend to bring out pure Matrix levels.

Regarding contacts - we currently probably will start with staples, but I just thought we may as well allow players to "craft" contacts from "components", which are effectively stats etc.

[Stahlseele]

Have you heard of PACKS?
Maybe something like that will work?
And as for Runs . . Remember the Mr.Johnsons Little Blackbook?
There were random runs generated by rolling dice.
There even is a little program called Runcreator II based on this.

[CanRay]

The SR4 GM Screen had a random 'Run generator. Runner's Toolkit will have it as well, hopefully.

[Thanee]

The SR4 GM Screen had a random 'Run generator. Runner's Toolkit will have it as well, hopefully.

It does, yep. It's called "Run on the fly generator" and is on p. 23 of the Contacts / Adventures / Sprawl Sites booklet.
It also has Shadowrun Frameworks (p. 16-23), giving the GM a "fillable frame" for several typical run setups.

Bye
Thanee

[baronspam]

Question to the video game developers: Any thoughts on your revenue model yet? Will this be a subscription based game? Free to play with microtransactions? Free to play supported by advertising? Some combination there of?

[primetide]

Question to the video game developers: Any thoughts on your revenue model yet? Will this be a subscription based game? Free to play with microtransactions? Free to play supported by advertising? Some combination there of?

Free to play with Micro Transactions (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
By the way, we have some new screens for our JAO game, showing the quality and gameplay here JAO Online - this would be what we are looking for in Shadowrun

[primetide]

double post by accident - delete please

[CanRay]

News so nice it had to be posted twice!

[hermit]

This shot and this one look promising. Pity there're no more flamboyant lighting effects, but they're well enough. If you take care with graphics design, you could actually get this looking pretty good. That is presuming most of your runs will take at night, of course.

[primetide]

This shot and this one look promising. Pity there're no more flamboyant lighting effects, but they're well enough. If you take care with graphics design, you could actually get this looking pretty good. That is presuming most of your runs will take at night, of course.

For Shadowrun the ligthing would have to be more extreme in general and more colourful - for JAO we are going with more of a realistic look. So there will be definitely an extra serving of flamboyancy for Shadowrun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[hermit]

Cool. Will there also be half-transparent holo-things and such? I don't really know what this engine can handle.

[primetide]

Cool. Will there also be half-transparent holo-things and such? I don't really know what this engine can handle.

absolutely - transparency and the neon-style holo look etc. are easy to do. The whole AR layer will be similar to this, with semi-transparent images superimposed over the physical environment.

[hermit]

Sweet. That'll do a lot for the atmosphere.

Will Berlin be among the settings where this game will stray? If so (or alyplace else Germanophone - Vienna maybe?), do you plan to coordinate yourself with Pegasus for cooperative prouct, or with CGL for that matter?

[primetide]

Sweet. That'll do a lot for the atmosphere.

Will Berlin be among the settings where this game will stray? If so (or alyplace else Germanophone - Vienna maybe?), do you plan to coordinate yourself with Pegasus for cooperative prouct, or with CGL for that matter?

Yes, we are including Berlin and we actually already talked to Pegasus and enlisted one of their Chief Authors - Catalyst we will talk to when the game is further along.

[hermit]

Oh, nice. Curious how this will shape up.

[hermit]

... news?

[Stahlseele]

none so far . .

[primetide]

sorry to have gone silent- we are knee deep in jagged alliance online currently, so the rest of the stuff takes a bit of a backseat