So I just finished watching Samurai Seven (a anime steampunk/mecha retelling of the Seven Samurai) and was curious as to how the dumpshockers would stat out the seven samurai transplanted into Shadowrun as a team while keeping them within the bounds of the original characters concepts and personalities.
The seven samurai
Guidelines:
BP cap of 600, however use as few BP as is appropriate.
Keep the basic character concept intact
No availability restrictions
No restriction on character type (eg, they don't all need to be Street Sams or something), race, or magical ability
If you want to use initiation, use 1 BP= 1 karma
I'll post new guidelines if I remember them.
Full Version: The Seven Shadowrunners
I'm not going to stat them out (just yet), But I could offer some character concepts:
Kanbei: Desert Wars veteran, wields an AK
Gorobei: Mage
Shichiroji: Sniper Adept
Heihachi: Decker/Comlinker or Otaku/Technomancer
Katsushiro: Spoiled Rich Kid in over his head. Minimal 'ware (if any), Latent Awakening (if any), but gobs of Edge
Kyozuo: Absolute Wiz combat mage or gunslinger adept, Ambidextrous. If a Gun Bunny, dual wields Salavette Guardians, Yamaha Sahura Fubukis, or Steyr TMPs
Kikochiro: Newbie Troll who blew his starting Nuyen on second hand 'Ware. Now has less than 1.0 Essence. Wields a Panther Assault Cannon
Kanbei: Desert Wars veteran, wields an AK
Gorobei: Mage
Shichiroji: Sniper Adept
Heihachi: Decker/Comlinker or Otaku/Technomancer
Katsushiro: Spoiled Rich Kid in over his head. Minimal 'ware (if any), Latent Awakening (if any), but gobs of Edge
Kyozuo: Absolute Wiz combat mage or gunslinger adept, Ambidextrous. If a Gun Bunny, dual wields Salavette Guardians, Yamaha Sahura Fubukis, or Steyr TMPs
Kikochiro: Newbie Troll who blew his starting Nuyen on second hand 'Ware. Now has less than 1.0 Essence. Wields a Panther Assault Cannon
was that any good? i saw a few ads for it that looked pretty cool, and... look, i hate to come off as one of those 'the original was so much better' snobs, but dammit, the original kicked some ass.
I, unfortunately, have yet to see Kurosawa's film. I've only seen the Magnificent Seven and Samurai 7.
Samurai 7 was extremely cool, especially considering that the bandits are huge mechs and the seven guys with swords are still seven guys with swords. More than a little over the top, though. Apparently you can cut a +100 ft tall robot in half with a 40-odd in. sword.
Samurai 7 was extremely cool, especially considering that the bandits are huge mechs and the seven guys with swords are still seven guys with swords. More than a little over the top, though. Apparently you can cut a +100 ft tall robot in half with a 40-odd in. sword.
QUOTE (Kingmaker @ Feb 20 2008, 10:42 PM) 
I, unfortunately, have yet to see Kurosawa's film. I've only seen the Magnificent Seven and Samurai 7.
Samurai 7 was extremely cool, especially considering that the bandits are huge mechs and the seven guys with swords are still seven guys with swords. More than a little over the top, though. Apparently you can cut a +100 ft tall robot in half with a 40-odd in. sword.
Samurai 7 was extremely cool, especially considering that the bandits are huge mechs and the seven guys with swords are still seven guys with swords. More than a little over the top, though. Apparently you can cut a +100 ft tall robot in half with a 40-odd in. sword.
Why do you consider that to be so unusual? The Lupin III films, with their meticulous realism, especially for the bladework of the katana-wielding Goemon, show that such feats are entirely plausible.
The entire point of Samurai 7 was the conflict between man and machine. I think that, except for the machine dude, all of the Samurai would have to be adepts. The machine dude would be a cyborg. The problem is that sword adepts in Shadowrun are quite lame, there are no 'sword powers' to speak of, just about everything powerful an adept can do applies to unarmed combat and not blades. So I don't think you could do the anime justice. I really liked Samurai 7, and I don't think it would be cool to garble it by trying to pull it into a setting with a system that can't properly represent its coolness.
Now, assuming you weren't trying to stay faithful to the anime at all, and using a bit of inspiration from Kurosawa, you could do ok by making completely unrealted characters but ripping their backgrounds from the film/series. Like you have one old soldier and his longtime war buddy, an incredibly skilled mercenary, an ex-ganger... I forget the rest of them.
If you like anime, and you like the original, you'll like Samruai 7. What's cool is how parts of the anime parallel the film almost exactly, but it occurs in this strange and beautiful far future world. It starts in a city which looks like a feudal village, but just under the surface there's technology, and the kinds of bottomless pits that you expect to find in scifi cities. And then it moves to an actual feudal village where there's essentially no technology, and it's being terrorized by bandits, except the bandits are some of the many samurai who were grafted into flying giant robot bodies for the recent apocalyptic war. The scope of the plot is much greater, with political intruige and the heroes actually fighting the emperor himself. In all, it's amazing how faithful the series stays to the film, while at the same time going waaay beyond it.
Now, assuming you weren't trying to stay faithful to the anime at all, and using a bit of inspiration from Kurosawa, you could do ok by making completely unrealted characters but ripping their backgrounds from the film/series. Like you have one old soldier and his longtime war buddy, an incredibly skilled mercenary, an ex-ganger... I forget the rest of them.
QUOTE (mfb @ Feb 21 2008, 01:37 AM)
was that any good? i saw a few ads for it that looked pretty cool, and... look, i hate to come off as one of those 'the original was so much better' snobs, but dammit, the original kicked some ass.
If you like anime, and you like the original, you'll like Samruai 7. What's cool is how parts of the anime parallel the film almost exactly, but it occurs in this strange and beautiful far future world. It starts in a city which looks like a feudal village, but just under the surface there's technology, and the kinds of bottomless pits that you expect to find in scifi cities. And then it moves to an actual feudal village where there's essentially no technology, and it's being terrorized by bandits, except the bandits are some of the many samurai who were grafted into flying giant robot bodies for the recent apocalyptic war. The scope of the plot is much greater, with political intruige and the heroes actually fighting the emperor himself. In all, it's amazing how faithful the series stays to the film, while at the same time going waaay beyond it.
QUOTE
Weapon Mastery
Uncommon Metamagic
Requires: 6 skill in chosen weapon, 2 levels of Improved Ability in chosen weapon
Taught by: initiates, free spirits, astral quest, research
Weapon Mastery allows an adept greater flexibility in the use of a single melee weapon--the katana, to use the most common instance, or the mace, or any other specific type of weapon that one can specialize in the use of. An adept with the Weapon Mastery technique can buy powers which normally utilize unarmed attacks, and utilize them instead with the chosen weapon type. For instance, an adept who takes Nunchaku Mastery might buy Nerve Strike (Nunchaku), allowing the adept to use the Nerve Strike power in conjunction with his nunchaku attacks. The adept does not need to know the unarmed version of the power, nor is the armed version applicable to unarmed attacks, or to armed attacks using any weapon type besides the one specified at the time the technique is chosen.
Uncommon Metamagic
Requires: 6 skill in chosen weapon, 2 levels of Improved Ability in chosen weapon
Taught by: initiates, free spirits, astral quest, research
Weapon Mastery allows an adept greater flexibility in the use of a single melee weapon--the katana, to use the most common instance, or the mace, or any other specific type of weapon that one can specialize in the use of. An adept with the Weapon Mastery technique can buy powers which normally utilize unarmed attacks, and utilize them instead with the chosen weapon type. For instance, an adept who takes Nunchaku Mastery might buy Nerve Strike (Nunchaku), allowing the adept to use the Nerve Strike power in conjunction with his nunchaku attacks. The adept does not need to know the unarmed version of the power, nor is the armed version applicable to unarmed attacks, or to armed attacks using any weapon type besides the one specified at the time the technique is chosen.
this is a metamagic i came up with for SR3, to address the issue that there just aren't enough cool sword powers in SR. seems like it'd be pretty easy to adapt to SR4, if one were so inclined. there are some other fun powers, melee-oriented and otherwise, here.
another possibility would be to geas or fetish-limit all of a mage's spells to his melee weapon, and use katas as his centering technique. so the mage does some impressive slashery with his sword that seems to have no effect--until a fireball drops on the guy he was slashing at. stuff like that.
The idea I had was not so much to just make a bunch of sword wielding melee adepts as it was to see how one would remake the seven samurai as a newly assembled shadowrunning team, with the team members retaining the essential traits of the original seven samurai.
Now I have to watch that again...
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.