Project to draw traffic to Dumpshock, Novelizing all the Printed adventures Options

[tisoz]

I have long wanted to novelize all the published adventures chronologically, even throwing in some Missions and web based adventures (can anyone say Redneck Runs?) It is a huge task. I have started it a few times and usually loose it due to computer crashes. I'd like to propose making it a group effort. Even if you don't feel literary enough to write the prose, things like reality checks or tactics or slick examples of how your group succeeded (and reality checks, lol) can be greatly appreciated contributions. Having a few authors working on it may help differentiate members of the team.

There are several benefits.
1) Drawing traffic to Dumpshock to read some Shadowrun Fiction.
2) Drawing traffic to Dumpshock to discuss and help decide what gets written.
3) Discovering some new writing talent that knows the setting and may go on to contribute to published SR canon.
4) More fluff based on rules so writers new to SR have something to reference when writing future products.

1) Everyone likes fiction, right? Especially good fiction.
2) Everyone likes discussing runs, rules, tactics...all the stuff that people come to DS for. Or at least to come read what people are arguing and discussing.
3) This is your shot at a writing career, or dabbling in writing. Or feeling like published SR authors and getting shredded. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) But how likely is that, lol.
4) I keep hearing this more and more as SR moves from establishing the universe to updating and expanding the universe. If we can do this well, who knows, maybe the new folks get told to check out such and such installment to get a flavor of what the line developer is shooting for in the next product.

[Cain]

I really like this idea, and I'd like to expound on it.

Dumpshock used to be a fan site, and the forums were just part of that. Unless something has dramatically changed, the admins should still be able to hand out dumpshock.com web pages.

I suggest that they do so-- open the dumpshock.com domain to fans, so they can make their own sites.

There's wonderful stuff that the fans came up with. The CLUE files are a hilarious part of Shadowrun history, and that was entirely fan-driven. The old Shadowrun Archive had tons of material, all fan-developed. NSRCG started as a fan project, as did Chummer, and Chummer beats the hell out of Hero Lab. There's tons of good fan material out there, and fans will continue to produce more and more.

I say, let's go back to that. Dumpshock was the place for fans to go and share their stuff, let's make it that way again. Allow people to run their own sites using the domain, and they'll draw in others. By collecting all of them under the Dumpshock name, the forums will increase in traffic.

[Remnar]

I've been pretty much gone from SR since 5th edition turned out to not be what I want, but I drop by and lurk here from time to time.

If a project like this starts up, I'll be here all the time, I've mentally novelized many of our runs the past. Too bad I'm a terrible writer, and lazy.

I'd love to see a project like this kick off!

[BigJake]

So by "novelizing," what are we talking about? Novelizing already-published playthroughs of published adventures, or just writing stories based on how they would play? All of them going back to 1st Edition?

[fistandantilus4....]

Perhaps choose a starting point, with a plan to run through a series. Start with something stupid simple like a milk run ala Food Fight just for the purposes of organization, then something more ambitious. A time frame, like the '50s or the '60s, then narrow it down to a starting point.
Ex: Food Fight -> Queen Euphoria -> Elven Fire -> Mob War

Harlequin -> Harlequin's Back
Brainscan. Nuff said

Something more recent like the Dawn of the Artifacts series. Around for long enough that people will have some idea of it, probably played it already, but still closer to the current timeline.

[BigJake]

I could be interested as a bit of an exercise in shared-universe writing and exercising one's fiction-writing muscles. It seems to me we'd need to pick both a timeframe and an edition whose background rules we could all agree on, decide whether the overall tone is to be black trenchcoat or pink mohawk (I lean toward the former myself), and maybe create a pool of characters that everyone involved could share, understand and use.

Admittedly I personally am a bit averse to all the Harlequin/immortal elves-wank in the FASA setting so that's a bit of an obstacle for me, but there are plenty of adventures to choose from where that wouldn't come into play.

[tisoz]

I am not a native english speaker,
but I think I can handle myself well enough to help with the editing of an existing text,
or discuss continuity and characters.

Writing a novel would be ambitious,
and therefore I like the idea,
but my feeling of the language may well not be sufficient for that task.
I particularly have a problem with commas and capital letters.

At the moment I am translating the core rulebook of a self-made RPG, for a friend of mine.
I am translating it from german to english, so I guess I like translating stuff.

Anyway, while doing that translation, I also make a lot of editorial suggestions to him.

I think all help offered will be thankfully accepted. At times just cheer leading or poking people to continue is needed.

[Bertramn]

About the shared pool of characters:
Should we include official Shadowrun characters from the existing novels?
I do not know whether that is kosher, but I see an appeal.

I have not read the novels, aside from the Kellan Colt stuff, and Pesadillas (which was the shit!),
but what we could need is a list of characters names, and the times and places of their activity.
That way we could better coordinate where to include them.

What about the characters in the adventure novelizations?
Should we, as a community, create characters?
Should the author in each case make them up?

[Cain]

About the shared pool of characters:
Should we include official Shadowrun characters from the existing novels?
I do not know whether that is kosher, but I see an appeal.

I have not read the novels, aside from the Kellan Colt stuff, and Pesadillas (which was the shit!),
but what we could need is a list of characters names, and the times and places of their activity.
That way we could better coordinate where to include them.

What about the characters in the adventure novelizations?
Should we, as a community, create characters?
Should the author in each case make them up?

We actually did something like that. When SR4 came out, a bunch of us complained about how poorly made the core archetypes were. So, we started a character archive, which was very popular for a while. I saw some of those characters pop up in Missions, from people who had never played before.

The first blow was when the mods moved it to the projects forum. Fewer incoming people saw it, and older players forgot about it. The final one was when 4.5 hit, with slightly better archetypes. 5e meant it died totally, and no one has talked about starting a new one.

[tisoz]

My idea was to create a runner group and hopefully have a writer write for an individual character, or more if not enough people step up. Take this group of characters and apply them to the published adventures, hopefully in chronological order.

As far as edition rules, I want to avoid edition rules as much as possible. I don't want to have characters forced to do stuff because of a dice roll, but I don't want characters consistently acting in ways that would contradict the rules. Think of it as if you were GMing and fudged a roll here or there for the good of the story. Or, using your literary license.

I hadn't thought so much about the tone of black trench coat vs pink mohawk. Since it has been brought up... I'd rather have writers and non-writers brainstorm on the story of how each adventure will play out. Hopefully the plot for successful completion of the job will dictate a favorable style. If a character of the nonconforming style participates in the run, then in the story, they can discuss how it furthered or compromised the run. Maybe they refuse to work together, until they just must. Or they try to work together with one trying to get the other to leave the dark side and conform to their style?

I am going to guess that things will fall more to the trench coat and sunglass style, but maybe someone will help that makes a great case for pink mohawk.

When I say it would be nice to have each writer assigned to a character, I am not proposing that it falls into some turn based story telling. I am hoping that a character 'voice' emerges that others can emulate. I found a web based writing program that I hope this will make this simpler to coordinate. When a person writes a section heavily involving their character, they can (should) include other characters in their narrative. When the author of the secondary character reviews what has been written, they can expand on their character or correct something if they feel it is justified.

[tisoz]

About the shared pool of characters:
Should we include official Shadowrun characters from the existing novels?
I do not know whether that is kosher, but I see an appeal.

I have not read the novels, aside from the Kellan Colt stuff, and Pesadillas (which was the shit!),
but what we could need is a list of characters names, and the times and places of their activity.
That way we could better coordinate where to include them.

What about the characters in the adventure novelizations?
Should we, as a community, create characters?
Should the author in each case make them up?

I would want to create original core characters. I also want to avoid canon characters as much as possible with the exception of cameo appearances or perhaps describing them as passersby just to make it interesting for readers to spot the celeb.

I WANT the community to help create the characters to promote involvement. Since I want to avoid any particular edition rules, either they get statted out for several editions, or they get statted out in terms of 0/poor/below avg/avg/above avg/great, or whatever, you get the idea. I also foresee some character deaths, core characters leaving/retiring and being replaced.

Hopefully an author likes one creation more than the others and gets attached to it. He takes the numbers and fleshes out a personality. But I also want to go a bit beyond the numbers and give some artistic license to authors and let them have their characters be able to do some normal things (stuff you and I do all the time) without having to assign skill points to it, while making it more believable not less so.

[Bertramn]

That program sounds practical.

On the Pink Mohawk/Black Trenchcoat thing:

Why not Black Mohawk and Pink Trenchcoat?

Seriously though,
the way I view Shadowrun, is that at all times in the setting history, both character styles exist.
There is no reason why a Pink Mohawk should not be tolerated in a group of Black Trenchcoats,
if he/she is good at what he/she does.

Why involve rules at all? Is that question about the unified magic system?

Anyway, should this thread be moved to the Community Projects forum?

[BigJake]

Okay... well, if we don't want it to fall into something like PBP role-playing, then what I might suggest is having each participant propose a character and provide a sample example of "flavour text" that helps establish them, what their motivations are and how they'd react to various situations. A little bit of an audtion / backstory blurb, if you will.

In terms of choosing a tone: I don't think it's necessary for all of the runners to have the same approach to the adventures, but I do think it's necessary to have a clear decision in place for what rules the setting / adventure obeys. (Be as "black trenchcoat" as you want, it won't help you in Food Fight which is about mayhem; be as "pink mohawk" as you want, but in something like Ghost Cartels, being reckless will kill you. And those "rules" -- storytelling rules as opposed to game mechanical rules -- should be consistent.)

In terms of just the mechanics, in terms of actually getting it done it would probably be easier to have each participant contribute and explain a character and then assign adventures to specific writers, with editing input from the participants whose characters they're using. Otherwise it seems to me it would become a lot more like PBP and would be subject to the same pitfalls.

Why involve rules at all? Is that question about the unified magic system?

The rules and limits of the magic system are pretty important, yeah, I would think. I don't think we have to get into dice-rolls or anything but it would be pretty important for everyone to have a common understanding of what the limits are, what kinds of meta-magic work and so on.

[tisoz]

I could be interested as a bit of an exercise in shared-universe writing and exercising one's fiction-writing muscles. It seems to me we'd need to pick both a timeframe and an edition whose background rules we could all agree on, decide whether the overall tone is to be black trenchcoat or pink mohawk (I lean toward the former myself), and maybe create a pool of characters that everyone involved could share, understand and use.

Admittedly I personally am a bit averse to all the Harlequin/immortal elves-wank in the FASA setting so that's a bit of an obstacle for me, but there are plenty of adventures to choose from where that wouldn't come into play.

I sort of want to start at the beginning of the timeline. I can see ways around this by plotting out what happens chronologically then accounting for it in non-sequential installments.

I like older settings because it avoids tons of electronic tracking. I also see ways to 'handwave' wifi in existing in the earlier setting yet still requiring cyberdecks just by stating the bandwidth isn't sufficient for decking. Solving some of these setting problems is a good way for the community to get involved.

Yes on the pool of characters. But also assigning each a primary writer so they can develop it and breath real life into it.

[binarywraith]

We actually did something like that. When SR4 came out, a bunch of us complained about how poorly made the core archetypes were. So, we started a character archive, which was very popular for a while. I saw some of those characters pop up in Missions, from people who had never played before.

The first blow was when the mods moved it to the projects forum. Fewer incoming people saw it, and older players forgot about it. The final one was when 4.5 hit, with slightly better archetypes. 5e meant it died totally, and no one has talked about starting a new one.

We probably could do it again. The 5e archtypes are bad enough that you can't even legally build them, last I checked.

If I was to pick a project that I thought would draw interest, it'd be Shadowrun 5e : 2050.

However, I'm honestly of the opinion that the SR3 dice system works massively better than SR5's in most ways, so I'm not really up to do it myself.

[Shortstraw]

I would think the redneck runs would make the best stories.

[tisoz]

Writing Program I found. It's more an organizational tool than a word processing tool.

[tisoz]

Seriously though,
the way I view Shadowrun, is that at all times in the setting history, both character styles exist.
There is no reason why a Pink Mohawk should not be tolerated in a group of Black Trenchcoats,
if he/she is good at what he/she does.

Why involve rules at all? Is that question about the unified magic system?

Anyway, should this thread be moved to the Community Projects forum?

They may be tolerated, but like you say they need to be good, probably really good at what they do. Plus I like the idea of interplay between them for the story.

Rules, I sort of hit on, but didn't consider magic so much. I want to keep the flavor of different magical traditions even if the rules got streamlined into a unified theory. If someone has a compelling reason this won't work, convince me.

And I'd rather not move it to Community Projects, especially not until it gets a lot more publicity. Some people only visit every other week and can easily miss it. Plus, by using the Writing Program, a lot of the work once this is underway will get put together there.

[tisoz]

I would think the redneck runs would make the best stories.

I want to work some of them in too. I really like a lot of them.

BigJake, if a writer wants to create their primary character they can. I was wanting to get as many people involved as possible and get solid characters to fill out a team even if the writers usually create the same type(s) of character, or conversely, do not regularly play some types of PCs. Plus it is that much less work for the writers at this point. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) I am hoping some of the creations are just too interesting to pass not wanting to write about them, or at least a strong base to breath life into.

I also like the idea of the character MO. (I'm sure there's some term for it.)

[binarywraith]

I really like the idea of a stable of characters people can use as background NPCs/fill ins for shared world stories. Lets you put together something like a braided novel.

[Bertramn]

If we establish a staple of characters which can be used as playable archetypes, I see no reason not to stat them out in several/all editions.
The stats are not the issue with the kind of character creation we are planning anyway, at least in my opinion.

So, if I am getting this right,
we are planning to have people volunteer to write novelizations of the published adventures.
The way the characters in the novelization act in relation to the adventure material is determined,
first: by the volunteer writer, and second: if he wants, by the community.
We are going to build up a staple of background and foreground characters,
to use in the adventures.
These will be made by the community, and included in the novelization according to the volunteer writers decision.

Did I get that right? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

That sounds ambitious and awesome, where can I start submitting characters?

As I said in the PM tisoz quoted:
I would be happy to help in writing, even if it is just help in brainstorming, or proofreading.

[tisoz]

Regarding character creation/statting: this is still in the brainstorming stage, so I am trying to accommodate and incorporate suggested ideas.

What I would like to see is the community create a nice, balanced Shadowrun team. I do not want to force these creations on volunteer writers, as I think it may be difficult to get volunteers, but I would like the writers to see these characters as a resource and an aid. If a writer desires or needs to implement their own character, I do not want deny them the possibility. Actually statting them for any/all editions seems like a task that is going to be more trouble than it is worth. Which is why I suggested defining them in general, non-edition specific terms. If people in the community want to then define them in edition specific statistics, I have no problem with the idea and do not want to deny people who find such process fun. If this creates a game resource, so much the better.

Honestly, I do not know what is going to work 'best' for actually getting the thing written. I am trying to account for a few things.
1. Much of the plot is already set by the published adventure.
2. Wanting to integrate community input
3. Wanting to let the authors have some creativity
4. Wanting to split the writing burden between as many authors as possible while producing a cohesive story
5. Wanting to use the same core characters to give it a series feel
6. Wanting to give the character types equal time in the spotlight

Perhaps letting volunteers write an adventure will work best. I'd be delighted if this happened, but I am planning for the worst where no one steps up to tackle an adventure. In that case, I'm trying to devise a way to get 'er done by sharing the task.

Sharing the task could involve the community plotting how the run can be pulled off with success. The community has already contributed by defining the characters. So the author(s) can then fictionalize these elements and tell the story. The other authors in the pool can then review and add to the work in the parts where they are familiar and comfortable.

I also want to avoid the 'blow it up' type of adventure resolution where the characters decide just blowing up the entire landscape earns them a paycheck. In a not so obvious example of blowing it up, I had a group run Dreamchipper and they felt that Junior got a raw Deal.

[ Spoiler ]

Junior's father cuts Junior out of his will and left his half of the company to his business partner, who actually hires the runners to remedy his mistakes. Junior is a major antagonist who is trying to take back control of the company

So they work to fulfill the contract yet aid Junior instead of fighting him. Although I liked this development, I don't think it is how the adventure was intended to be resolved, hence the 'blow it up'. I have no issue with writing the fiction in this way if the community determines they would like to see it resolved this way.

[BigJake]

Well, I'd be in for at least one adventure. I personally would want to just write the adventure up myself, easier to keep it consistent that way. I could start by putting a character together, though, to get the character pool started.

[DrZaius]

As an aside, I have had limited success with short fiction on here blending in the rules. My Sig has a copy of an example from 5th. Basically, I set a scene with a conflict, and write what happens as I roll to resolve it. The ones I have written so far have been one on one fights, but there's no reason you couldn't blend in longer stories (decking, magic, social encounters). I wrote them mostly to test out the melee rules in a fun way. It has been a personal goal of mine to write something longer in this format. The problem is that it is extremely time consuming. However, I would encourage anyone who was interested to try it out, I found it quite rewarding.

Not to derail from your overall mission which seems great, just to add a little bit I've done in the past. There are 3 or 4 more buried on DS somewhere, I think mostly titled, "Friday night fights". I could dig them up if people are interested.

[Koekepan]

Sorry that I'm so late to the party here.

Things have been pretty crazy on the farm.

If anyone wants to do anything with the Redneck Runs, you have my total blessing. Characters, scenarios, whatever.

Make me proud.

In the fullness of time I may join in, but that won't be in the next week or two, most likely.

You may fire when ready.