why is shadowrun so cool Options

[ICPiK]

I've always enjoyed SR a lot more than any other RP game due to it realness of life and death. It doesn't matter how long you've been running a character or how sweet his mods are. Step into the wrong alley or catch the wrong slug in the wrong place your geeked end of story.

[zombieneighbours]

Because ontop of providing an awesome setting, it is a game that lets you play 'the invisibles' almost as well as it lets you play 'ghost in the shell: stand alone complex'.

[Warlordtheft]

Trolls with panther cannons!! Real cool. One of my favorite SR mini's.

[Shadowfox]

All right.

Amanda Mayweather is the Boss From Hell and the head editor for fashion magazine En Vogue, headquartered in Boston. She is cruel, malicious, and utterly devoted to staying on top of everyone else. The only person higher than her is the actual owner of the magazine empire, Floyd Unether, whom she hates with an absolute passion.

She also tends to go through personal assistants like tissue paper during a cold.

Using this fact and some contacts, she starts combing the underworld for someone with the skills compatible to her needs - smart, talented, capable, beautiful. Someone with an edge, like a technomancer or an adept or someone with no obvious malicious cyberware to tip someone off.

The PC (as this is supposed to be a one on one campaign with my girlfriend) is then hired by a Johnson on a fake run, where she'll run into Mayweather (as the real Johnson) and offer her a very lucrative contract. The job? Full time personal assistant with "room to grow", using her talents gained in the shadows to topple Untether's magazine empire while setting herself up as his successor. She'll have access to unlimited funds and equipment but must be cautious to play the part of the dutiful assistant.

Expand from there.

I was trying to figure out how to get my gf into shadowrun...I'm totally stealing this.

[ravensmuse]

Go for it. I haven't had the opportunity to present it to her in months.

[Dr Funfrock]

Because ontop of providing an awesome setting, it is a game that lets you play 'the invisibles' almost as well as it lets you play 'ghost in the shell: stand alone complex'.

I...

but...

uh...

Shit. You actually can and all, without even leaving the core setting. You can even summon the ghost of John Lennon and perform hermaphroditic ritual sorcery, whilst fighting the secret cabal that rules the world in service to their eldritch masters from beyond reality.

Wow.

Now I totally want to run this.

[zombieneighbours]

I...

but...

uh...

Shit. You actually can and all, without even leaving the core setting. You can even summon the ghost of John Lennon and perform hermaphroditic ritual sorcery, whilst fighting the secret cabal that rules the world in service to their eldritch masters from beyond reality.

Wow.

Now I totally want to run this.

You would probably be better of using Mage: The Ascention to do the invisibles, but not by so very much. Their is no better system to do A ghost in the shell game with that i am aware off.

[Darkeus]

But I can. Dunkelzahn's dead. Great dragons are killable, nobody said you had to do it.

You know he sacrificed himself right? To stop some horrors.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Anyway, I love Shadowrun because of setting, setting, setting.. Dragons and elves and trolls, oh my! It is the best of Fantasy and Sci-fi cyberpunk all thrown into one. A mage can carry an assault rifle just the same as a street sam and nobody blinks. The rules are not lovable at times but the setting is the true icing on the cake.

Once I discovered Shadowrun, I never looked back. I have seen better mechanics, but as far as settings Shadowrun is one of the best..

[Blade]

Because Cyberpunk is cool.
Because you can do a lot of thing inside the setting: nearly everything I enjoy in RPG can be done in SR, and in some cases it's even where it's done best.

[Stahlseele]

'cause the devs, especially the freelancers, actually come and talk to us.

[Jhaiisiin]

'cause the devs, especially the freelancers, actually come and talk to us.

Hear, hear!

[Dr Funfrock]

You would probably be better of using Mage: The Ascention to do the invisibles, but not by so very much. Their is no better system to do A ghost in the shell game with that i am aware off.

Actually I'd run Ghost In The Shell using Greg Stolze's One Roll Engine. But that's another discussion entirely.

[Kronk2]

[/b]312']
I would LOVE to see those rules in a pure fantasy setting.

Ditto.

I LOVED The old first and second ed thought line of supplements as in game props. The London book esp. Full Page adds for fictitious charities (that we latter found out to be run by bug spirits) and Magic supply stores. It was the intersection between roleplaying and commercial design.

reason 2:
Total and complete freedom in character creation. none of this, my class doesn't do that, bullcrap. If I wanna throw fireballs and hot lead I can. (and sometimes in the same round of combat) . Oh And Adepts. I love Adepts. Most economic way of getting good at something fast. This build is much less broken in this edition, but still effective.

And I love that the folks who write the game are amongst us; giving us, their bastard children, the love we demand. And also loving us enough to tell us to knock it off when we get out of line.

[Cardul]

Troll Fashionista Social Adept....You can break stereotypes effectively without having the system try and
force you back into them...

[TeknoDragon]

Seconded on the 'does not require a specific selection of archetypes'. No face? Well, it can be painful to watch the group piss off a Johnson in a failed price negotiation. Inherently, the group can work around the problems of not having X or Y archetype support.

Able to play what you want, too, even if you have to give your character cosmetic surgery.

Consequences for doing a jackson and walking around town with a dino face, scale-themed dermal plates, balance tail and wearin' the fancy 'raptor legs.

Running surveillance with the two Awakened watching astrally, said Dyno-boy taking over a security camera, and the sammie being pretty sneaky.






Life is short, the night is long, and we've still got ammo left...

[jerusalem7227]

why so cool?

Mike Mulvihill
Tom Dowd
Nigel Findley
Tim Bradstreet
and many more that worked in and with FASA to create the game.

The younger (read 3rd ed. on) players don't understand what it's like to play a game that talks about a world-wide computer network that has everything at your fingertips...and that is actually amazing cause you've never heard or thought about somthing like that before!

[cREbralFIX]

Frankly, all the supporting material mixed in with the rules gave the game "flavor"...like first edition Vampire: The Masquerade.

I also thought it was neat to watch a mage slowly lose magical power as he cybered up in response to a cruel Cyberpunk world.

[vladski]

There is a reason to wanting life to be that way: In shadowrun there is no question about things being bad..
everyone knows the worlds situation is bad in the 6th world. So why would one WANT to live there? Because it would justify going against the powers-that-be and there would be much less hesitation of doing so and much more understanding, thus a dystopia enables somebody, who has some anarchic and/or anarchistic/libertarian ideals of what life should be like, to free himself from the fear of loss he experiences IRL(loss of social standard/property, fear of retribution by state), because in an EXPLICICT DYSTOPIA, there is nothing more to loose, and thus you are much more motivated to go for it...

just my 2 nuyen

"Freedoms just another word for nothin' left to lose..." - K. Kristofferson


And why do I love Shadowrun?  

The setting, pure an simple.  So many others have mentioned it in specifics and I agree with most of htem:

• It's the near future, so everyone playing has a touchstone with the universe.  Reminds me of Star Wars WEG(D6) in this aspect.  Who doesn't know the SW universe?
• It has magic to satisfy the fantasy guys.
• It has tech to satisfy the Sci-fi guys.
• You typically get to play hte anti-hero... or the outright villain.  And can waffle back and forth withthe same charcter all you want.  Alignment SUCKS!
• You can build just about any character you want, right out of hte box.   
• It has two decades of setting support and even tho' we are on version 4 now, all the campaign source books remain valuable.  80 percent of everything you ever bought for SR is still usable today with very little adaptation.
• It uses environmentally and dolphin safe D6's. D20's cause cancer, global warming and possibly support terrorism.
• A freshly created character can jump right in and play with other characters that have been around hte block 6 times and really contribute and survive.
• It is a (more) balanced game than any other I have played.
• You can and usually do play almost every type of adventure within it's setting.
• It's a mature game and has the canon documentation to deal with anything the characters want to do or try.
• My players love to play it.
• It's the only game that I find myself repeatedly saying of other pieces of fiction/tv shows/movies "Oh, that's so Shadowrun!"  or "That would be a neat idea to build a campaign/run around."
• Oh.. and it has guns.  They can be sorta fun, too.  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Vlad

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Way to go Vlad...

[Red-ROM]

every time I get away from shadowrun, I watch some movie that makes me want to play it again. I have the most memorable games in SR. things happen in this setting that happen nowhere else. It has the best one liners. and most of all

I love the 80's

[The Monk]

As a GM I like that I get inspiration from all sorts of different places. I've gotten story ideas from comics like Stardust, Hellblazer. TV shows like the Wire, or a Nova on Mayan language, just to name a few.

[AzureusJake]

Because I can crash land a prop plane in Aztlan, limp to the nearest town, kill a bunch of people and 48 hours later massacre a corporate SWAT team, steal their helicopter shortly before crossing the border into Amazonia and parachuting into the jungle in one session.

[Thanee]

'cause the devs, especially the freelancers, actually come and talk to us.

To be fair, many of the D&D writers do that, too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



Shadowrun is so cool, because you can actually kill the great dragons there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

And some other reasons... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[Bira]

I really like the premise and the setting. I'm not so sure about some of the metaplot, but those bits are easy to discard or change. I'm actually thinking of using GURPS 4 for the next SR game I run, though, since I think it will be a better fit for some of the things I want to do.

[thelovedr]

The younger (read 3rd ed. on) players don't understand what it's like to play a game that talks about a world-wide computer network that has everything at your fingertips...and that is actually amazing cause you've never heard or thought about somthing like that before!

This is it for me. The ideas were so cutting edge and amazing, and as time passes RL tech is catching up to the original material.

Also, Shadowrun combines just enough reality into the sci-fi mix that it feels more real.