What would his skill set be? We know that he is fast talker and very clever, ergo high marks for charisma and logic. I am going to assume that he wasn't crazy.

We know that he can fight, he beats Laertes 3-2 of five exchanges with no points in the fourth, and would have lived had he not been poisoned.
so I set him with a blades skill of 4.

any other ideas?

Nice idea.

He was a gifted scholar so he'd need a nice smattering of academic skills as well as knowledge (theatre) as he wrote a play. He should also have two low-loyalty allies played by Gary Oldman and Tim Roth. (Bonus karma point to whoever gets the reference).

Are you actually going to use this? Transplanting Danish royalty to the ruling family of an AA corp would make for a good plot. In fact, a lot of Shakespeare could rapidly be adapted to become Shadowrun plots. I'm tempted to start my new campaign with each adventure being a Shakespeare play and see how long it takes my players to catch on.

Unfortunately the large binary themes of Shakespeare and their incredibly convoluted and ironic denuements don't work in Shadowrun. Hamlet would have skewered Laertes straight away before there was a chance to poison him, or the poison's vector might have been an inhalation spray, but he rolled badly on his resistance and died within the first combat turn.

Hell, Romeo would probably glitch his athletics roll and fall off the balcony, and then have got perforated by a troop of Montague guards with sub-machine guns trying to escape.

Heh. Well, I was more thinking about the general plots than trying to exactly replicate specific scenes.

Example: An aging king, ah, CEO divides ownership of a corporation amongst his three daughters who then tear the whole empire apart in internal fighting, each courting the Shadowrunners as agents of the warfare. A personal involvement with one of the daughters will make things all the more dramatic for the PCs (and many PCs will jump at the chance to get involved with a rich, surgically-beautiful heiress even if she is evil).

Example: The PCs become involved in assisting a forbidden romance between a Renraku researcher and her handsome Saeder-Krupp counter-part. They fell in love at a nano-technology conference before either realised the allegiance of the other.

Example: The PCs are body-guarding a rich exec on his pleasure cruise when a mysterious storm drives ship onto an island inhabited only by an ancient hermetic magician, his lonely daughter a sexually frustrated troll and a powerful free Air Elemental.

Lots of material if you think about it.

-K.

Ooh please do Twelfth Night.

The leader of a successful street gang is turned against his longtime lover, a woman popular with the gang members, by his scheming lieutenant.

Young and promising corporate citizens, the children of high executives, find themselves lost in the woods at night where wild shamans and free spirits use their magic to make them fall in love with each other's partners.

A powerful and rising executive alarms his friends with his grasping after ever more power, until they turn on him en masse. Afterward, the friends fall to fighting among themselves.

A young and ambitious gang member wants to impress a rich and beautiful girl, so he appeals to his gang mentor for money to pimp his ride. His mentor has a cash flow problem, so he has to go to a mob loan shark for the nuyen. But when an important business deal falls apart, the mentor is left without the money to repay the shark. Somehow, the shark must be convinced to spare the mentor.

Hamlet, huh? He'd be emo and would whine a lot about how conflicted he is. I really wouldn't be surprised if he had a drug problem.

I guess there's a reason I far prefer authors like Nabokov over Shakespeare, but most of the characters from Nabokov stories are already basically standard fare in SR>

I don't think Hamlet transposes well into the 2070s. He is much much much too anachronistic.

But his story can be ripped fairly effectively. Guy's dad is murdered, dad's place is usurped, son must avenge. Son is angsty about it. Classic.

I also see brooding, whiny guys getting nicknamed Hamlet by their peers. Like a street samurai who always let everyone know how deep and conflicted he is about killing would get named Hamlet.

it seems far more likely to me, someone has made a series of simchip dramas of modern interpretations of Shakespeare. which would make a lot of sense, from the perspective of the corps that sell em.

Not sure if it's worth giving him the Contacts, after all Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead.

Example: One of the runners has a friend from their days in the Desert Wars who is in love with the beautiful (but not particularly bright) daughter of a respected corporate executive. He drags them in for some minor hijinks to make sure his suit goes over well, as he is about to propose. What starts as a cake walk becomes rapidly complicated by the fact that the executive's other beautiful daughter is a total bitch, and the executive's half brother has hired shadowrunners to ruin the marriage for sheer contrariness.

-Frank

Iago was an ensign, actually, not a lieutenant. The difference is important since it was this lack of promotion that set the events in motion. Most people misunderstand Iago's character. He isn't scheming over something petty, he is self-destructing after his life's ambition has been crushed. Having been passed up for promotion by a Moor mercenary, he doesn't really have much chance of rising in the military ranks under anyone else and outside of the military he has no chance of being anything but a manservant. And, most ironically, it is the facade that he wore in order to get close to Othello that sealed his fate.

Hamlet would make an interesting awakened character, maybe a physad with social/blades focus and a whole point blown on astral perception (makes seeing angry ghosts easier).


Macbeth (cue the horses) would probably be better suited for an SR/The Bard crossover.

Othello is one of my favorite stories and I think would also translate easily/well.

Romeo and Juliet... Lord, Westside Story with Ingram Smartguns?

I feel pretty
Oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and gay
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me today
I feel charming
Oh so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real
See the pretty girl in that mirror there?
Who can that attractive girl be?
Such a pretty face
Such a pretty dress
Such a pretty smile
Such a pretty me!
I feel stunning
And entrancing
Feel like running
And dancing for joy
For I'm loved
By a pretty wonderful boy

Now imagine that the person singing this has day-glo hair and wields dual SMGs.

Or in the Astral plane... or the Matrix. God the places you could go with a 2070 remake

Romeo is the son of a Humanis politician, Juliet is Cascade Ork troll he's fallen in love with, Mercutio is the drug addicted TM buddy.

Well other than the title of the film, they really are only dead a few weeks before Hamlet himself bites it, so you could most definetly include them, and their sorry little drama/execution for the benefit of the players.

There was a pretty decent modernized version of MacBeth made a couple of years ago that is worth of checking out.

That's the one I was thinking about. Throw in some cyber and you'd be there.

Bonus points to Nikoli for putting the answer in the form of a witty comment.

What the hell, no one saw this version of Hamlet?

It's exactly what you'd expect - son of a corporate bigwig in a big city. If you're making a SR Hamlet, your conversion is already there. It's a half decent movie, you could do worst than rent it.

This

The romantics would also make a great shadowrun 2 rich grandfathers want to keep their grandchildren apart or so it seems anyway. They build a wall to keep them apart, hire some swordsmen (the runners in our play) and in the end we discover that the two men are plotting to get the children together, and have been old friends for decades.


Another of these would be Cyrano de Bergerac.

I was also thinking about changing Hamlet some. Making Hamlet instead of a foppish emo kid into a model of a prince, say Brutus, or someone like that.

But if you ever need a good villian, look no further than Aaron from Titus Andronicus. For revenges sake, he sets a girl up to be raped, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out.

But do you know which was which?

Gildenstern was the inventor

Actually, no. But I'll defintely be checking it out. Thanks.

I was thinking that Titus really makes for one of the easiest transitions to Shadowrun. Aaron would fit right into most groups, and it's basically people hitting each other back and forth with bigger and bigger sticks. Translates over just too easily, doesn't it?

Better yet, a group of people at some weekly book club slotted a bad batch of Shakespeare Persona fix Chips, now they ARE there characters and can't help but act out the play de'jour.
Perhaps, its market testing gone bad, perhaps the guy who bought the chips really liked one of the girls and slotted everyone for Romeo and Juliet, perhaps some eVil ancient vampire runs these groups and gets his kicks by watching and partaking of these deadly BTL plays? Hmmm.

So Bob is madly in love with Sam who is coordinating the self-implosion of Sarah who is bemoaning her mom, Joan, marrying her uncle, who is under a fairy spell so he has an asses head but is in love with...

And then a guy named Bowdler hires the PCs to replace every Shakespere P-fix in the world with "decent" family-friendly versions.

So Bob talks with a speech impediment and wants to eat Sam who is tricking Sarah to fall off cliffs who is cross-dressing to fool Joan who is crazy and tries to eat everyone and everything she sees...

you have won:
one (1) internet
one (1) my heart

Quick answer= Yes

Long answer, I am making Hamlet much more of a Dane than he was. More Beowulf less Finch. Think Gustavus Adolphus of the corporate word. CEO at 19, he carves a small business empire out of single operation shops and integrates them into a vertically integrated production chain. Anyway. He and his girlfriend go downtown for a night out. They are attacked by a go gang, she is cut down with a sword and he takes a lance to the shoulder. (ow)

He survives and vows revenge.

more on this later. its 6am and I need sleep.

Assuming that the main characters are right (in that even they are not sure which of them is which), then Rosencrantz was the inventor and Guildenstern the realist.



Been done, well almost: Too, Too Solid Flesh - a group of android actors attempting to solve the murder of the troupes director. Twist being that the robots are actually programmed to be the characters they play on AND off stage.

But I really like this idea. Imagine a CEO whose wife secretly loads him with a "ruthless ambition" p-fix causing him to murder his CEO to get a promotion. Meanwhile his wife is regretting her actions and going steadily mad: "Out, out, damned BTL!" Spot the source?

-K.