There is frequently a thread going about what movies and television shows depict SR in some way. But there is hardly ever any that depict the magic aspect of the game (other than maybe an eadept here and there.)

I have been trying to think of shows that involved magic, but none of them reminded me of SR in any way. Bewitched - I think not. I Dream of Genie - hardly. Charmed - maybe, but hardly reminiscent of a SR setting.

Can anyone make some suggestions?

PS. I did just think of a movie that sort of had an aspected mage who showed signs of drain - Firestarter.
[edit]Thought of a good movie for a possession spirit, Fallen. [/edit]

Big Trouble in little China

He who dances with Green Eyes
Medicineman

I have yet to encounter a show or movie that does magic the SR way. Or even good. Most is so terrible, it's like magic in SR-TV shows. Or something

I know it's not a tv OR movie, but the magic system in the Sword of Truths books are vaugly shadowrun-esque (except for being super-sexist, which I didn't like)

Generally magic fatigues the person, and largely it is dependent on birth and how someone views the world. It allows for fireballs and lightning bolts and such, but not teleportation. And while casting spells can be done with chanting, not chanting but you can get by without chanting if you concentrate hard enough. Heck, you can even accidentally cast spells if you aren't careful, which will, of course, fatigue you.

I wouldn't call Sword of Truth sexist in the magic department. It clearly delinieates that magic *IS* different for men & women.

Wizards are male. Sorceresses and Witch women are female. The use & application of their powers are different. The stuff that powers their magic is the same (Additive & Subtractive magic).

Magic itself in that world indicates that you always have more than one way to accomplish a task. Need to heal something? Use Additive Magic to add to the person's healing rate. Use Subtractive to reduce the wound.

Wait, you need to hurt someone? Use Subtractive to reduce heart or brain functions. Use Additive to increase blood pressure, body temp, and so forth.

Magic is used to accomplish the same goals in different manners by the user of it. That line tends to br drawn around gender. Gender influences how one's reactions to the world around.

I'd mention the Dresden Files as not being too badly done for magic.

Big Trouble in Little China is just sooo good !!

How about Buffy ??

It all depends on how you think magic in SR is portrayed, really...
...And I don't think even SR portrays magic the way it used to.

Synner667, the less said about Buffy the better...

Ahem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRSGtLfeTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqLimAxNbU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylmJIKHlUsI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svfpOVuypMQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym54kXQ32Gc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2-jflicAD4

Yes, you have to watch all of them.

And, of course,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Z9h5k22tI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3su6hUqf6CE

Especially the last one.

Seriously? Scanners.

In Shadowrun, you look at someone, stare at them, and they die. Ergo, Scanners.

Just remembered, DnD.

No, no, stop, hear me out.

Rastlin, as portrayed in the Dragonlance books, has magic that is less like DnD and more like shadowrun, at least in performance if not in theory. He can cast spells, but it takes something out of him, and can even hurt him if he tries too hard. There is even a dragonlance animated movie out there so this counts s a movie (though, don't watch the movie, production values are very low.)

The Dragonlance movie looks like a cross from 80's cartoons and early 90's CGI. It is hilarious and entertaining, although still terrible. But he has a point, that Rastlin guy is doing magic more in line with SR than DnD.

I still hate you until the end of the encounter (or up to five minutes) for bringing back those memories.

Harry Potter if you leave out the wands an teleportation? - Hey, wouldn't Lord Voldemort be a nice Aztech Bloodmage?

Someone just needs to MAKE a shadowrun movie. Make a good one.

And a good game too.

The Half Life Engine might be a good place to start. They've already used it to create things more bizarre than ShadowRun (portals and hoards of zombies).

Actually, I was thinking something along the lines of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, or Wanted: Weapon of Fate, only with a skill system and RPG elements put in.

Is anyone on the boards in the videogame industry? We need to push this! Online petition and all that jazz.

Haven't heard of either game.

And if you want to go the commercial game route, I suggest only Valve.

EA will turn it into something else (See: Spore), Microsoft already botched it (See: ShadowRun), Nintendo will make it "kid friendly"...

Uncharted: Drake's fortune ----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUiz2LIGDPI

Wanted: Weapon of fate ------> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWnJjAISxyY
(Note that this game features a 'bullet curving' element that wouldn't be in shadowrun, obviously)

No way. That guy seriously challanged a school kid to prove his superiority. Which he failed at. A Bloodmage would have just carved that sucker up. And spared us a few annoying books, to boot!

Repeatedly we might add.

Yes, but probably doing the wrong thing for the wrong people to have any say in anything.



The FASA guys got let go or rolled into (I think) the main Microsoft Game Studios offices - and rightly so, because that studio was totally dead. Valve would never make a game that they didn't think up themselves or buy all of the rights for, from the getgo. Besides, there's a lot of smaller studios that could do a good job with it, but most people have never heard of.

If you want something to occupy yourself with that's Shadowrun-like, allow me to suggest Fear 2: Project Origin, by Monolith. It's really similar in mood to how I've been running SR lately - cloned soldiers, Mitsuhama Magical Division 13 research with Shedim, Anthroforms, and even a wired reflexes like mechanic for beating people to pieces. Plus it's really stylish and you'll be supporting some of my friends.
Alternately, the new mod for Half Life 2, Dystopia! I haven't played it yet, but it looks pretty cool.

I'll check them out when I have time and if I remember.

Also money.

In addition to my highly enthusiastic recomendation Supernatural, I'm also going to suggest Lord of Illusions.

For those unaware, Lord Of Illusions is a 1995 Clive Barker movie starring Sam from Quantum Leap, essentially a modern Noir story about a PI who gets caught up in a conflict between real magicians, including one who is obviously a blood mage channeling a high-force spirit.

Some people also suggest Cast a Deadly Spell.

Silent Mobius is one of the few shows I know of that actually combines spellcasting with cyberpunk. So you've got high tech supercomputers, Bladerunner vehicles, cyborgs, and wizards all fighting an extrademinsional invasion.

Wicked City combines magic and extradimensional invaders with a cyberpunkish world, as well. While Demon City Shinjuku is more post-apocalypse + demons + magic, focusing on a weapon-focus using ki adept .

Then you've got Twilight of the Dark Master about a conflict between a very powerful aspected magician and a very powerful free spirit in a cyberpunk future.

And then there is X which takes place in the far flung future of 1999.

And the magic hunting escapades of Witch Hunter Robin which takes place in the present of 2002.

Notice how most of these are anime. It's really hard to find good live action western shows with the modern magic premise and even harder to find them with the cyberpunk magic premise.

If we start listing porn, I could probably find more. La Blue Girl, certainly. But that might not be to your liking.


And, and let me suggest Supernatural again. Just watch Supernatural. It's awesome.
Just ignore the wincest girls, nod, and slowly back away from away them.

I should note that shadowrun has had 4 video games made about it. The most resent FPS which is shadowrun only in title, one for genesis which is a pretty good representation of the system(and a good game reguardless), one for SNES which is a love or hate game that gets the setting good but not the mechanics, and one for the Saturn which is japanese and I know nothing about.

Yes, that is all true. I was thinking that we need a current-generation Shadowrun game that doesn't SUCK. The SNES one was OK, the Genesis one was good, but the Microsoft FPS was complete bull. They should have called it "An FPS with magic," as it had almost nothing to do with Shadowrun. A true Shadorun game needs to have at least SOME RP elements.

And, I don't know anything about the Japanese Shadowrun either.

I was thinking that we need a current-generation Shadowrun game that doesn't SUCK

we all feel the same

HougH!
Medicineman

It's not for Saturn but for Mega CD, it's sadly in Japanese because it looks pretty good and is as RAW (2nd ed) as it gets (as far as combat is concerned): it even shows the dice rolls, the TN and let you manage your combat and magic pools.
As far as I know there still aren't any active translation project going on but we can still hope we'll get a surprise some day.

There has also been a canceled game where you were supposed to play an "assassin who kills assassins" or something like that. It was said to have many ways to complete your missions... Kinda like "Hitman" but in the Shadowrun universe, I guess.

No reply at current. Just want to find this at home where the 'net filters won't stop me from watching all the links.

I've mentioned this before, but if you want to see adepts of all stripes, what you want to watch (for the fights) is an anime called Tenjou Tenge (trans: Heaven & Hell). The series takes place in a Japanese high school built with the secret purpose of training young, highly capable martial artists into the ultimate fighting weapons, and as such, fighting is quite common. We're talking people who punch craters in walls, seventeen year olds in eight year old's bodies walking around with cursed Buddhist weaponry, luchadores throwing people through public urinals and my favorite, the fight between the seventeen year old in an an eight year old body versus the sixteen year old assassin who's really an 800 pound woman who hides her fat (and in them a whole crap load of throwing knives) through folding her skin through yogic training. Did I mention that this also happens in a bathroom?

Now if you want to figure out what's going on, you have to read the manga. They only got up to the second arc in the anime and almost nothing gets explained. But the manga continues to go all out with a twelve year old with Ivy's sword from Soul Calibur (and her other deadly trick, the twin compressed flame swords), the Bullseye rip off who shoots deadly balls of compressed water essence, the mystic adept who casts spells channeled through her tongue fetish (the item, not the sexual term)...that's just the stuff off the top of my head.

Of course, there's always the official SR movie with a demonstration of Sally Tsung's magic.

Darker than Black is a great shadowrun-esque anime. The epsiodes are even arranged in a run like manner.

Yeah and it's worse than most filmlets from FanPro's (Germany) fan contests.

It's so terrible, it's awesome!

Well, that official SR movie is over 15 years old...
...And lots of movies from that time look just as bad.

It's interesting tho, to see Characters from the rulebook brought to life...
...To see their vision of the Matrix. Would have been interesting to see them do more on magic [I've never taken SR magic as just "flash of eyes to cast spell"]

It does remind me of the Digital Burns RPG, which had lots of people-as-Characters images all over it.

Makes you realise [or me, at least] that stomping around blowing the crap out of everything isn't what SR was about.

Watch Ghost in the Shell if you wanna see the matrix. I've never seen it done better anywhere.

Magic is tricky, however.

Shame it happens so rarely, the full matrix stuff that is.

How about Johnny Mnemonic, that was quite go... ok, I can't finish this sentance with a straight face. I like it non the less.

I full maintain that series is shadowrun sans magic. I just wish they would include magic, cause then we'd have shadowrun!

That's not a good definition, in real terms - so many people differ on what they think SR is.

How about what you'd want to see in a movie and/or anime ??

I think of Mission:Impossible or Ghost In The Shell with magic for corporate type action
But I also think of Big Trouble in little China for general mayhem and fun

I want high tech, gadgets, spells, rituals, views of netspace [though, as with any cyberpunk game, too much is just boring], companies, action, babes, a bit of investigation, a fixer/thirdman, things that evoke magic [like signs and sigils]...
...And plenty more !!

Well, the other thing missing from ghost in the shell is essence loss... you can be chromed all to hell without problems. Still, it's a very nice series, especially from a Shadowrun standpoint.

In the end, though, I think Heat, Ronin, and maybe Ocean's 11 are the best in terms of how to Shadowrun.

JaronK

I think Bus Gamer catches the Shadowrun feel pretty well. It lacks the magic and hacking but has the feel of a run. Also I stole the idea to use for nights when I don't have a full run planned. Just use A or AA corps(I can't imagine AAAs giving up corporate secrets for a game)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdyhu1DNTNk

New? Dystopia's been around for years my friend, and it's damn fine.
Basically it's class based, but with very broad classes. You're either a heavy, medium, or light, each of which gives you four primary weapons to choose from. In addition everyone has a different type of grenade (heavies get spider grenades which home in on people, mediums get regular frags, and lights get EMP), a melee weapon, and a machine pistol. In addition each class has a certain amount of bodyspace and headspace for cyberware. One of the neat things is that, aside from the stealth mod being restricted to lights, everyone picks cyberware from the same people. The difference is that heavies and mediums are assumed to already be modded up to the eyeballs with basic stuff like dermal plating, bone lacing, and muscle aug, so they get less space for weirder mods, whilst lights have lots of room for tac-scanners, cyberdecks, nanobot healing systems, etc.

Anyone telling you it's like Shadowrun is basically telling porkies, but it is a damn fine cyberpunk themed FPS, and playing with all of the different mods available, and experimenting with the different possible combinations, is a lot of fun.