I love games. I especially have a good time with PC games.

I think I would have a good time with a PC Game based on Shadowrun - setting, rules, role playing ... the whole shebang.

This stupid notion of mine comes from playing too much Baldur's Gate II or Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 and expansions. And X-COM: UFO Defense. And Sims 2. And Dungeon Keeper 2. And Evil Genius. And Half Life 2 & Episodes. And Sins of a Solar Empire. And Left 4 Dead. And ESIII: Morrowind. And Fallout (1-3). And GTA (1-5). And Deus Ex. And Jagged Alliance 2. And Company of Heroes. And ... well you get the idea, I hope.

And I didn't even hit on the Mods for games, did I? I know of at least a few mods, especially Dystopia, that have me thinking it would be cool. Speaking of which, at this point I think that is where we would most likely get our SR4 PC gaming fix on, making a mod for another game like GTA or Fallout.

So, which PC games give you some inspiration that a quality SR4A PC game is possible? Which game's design would you let inspire you more than others? Which of the PC games inspire you that there is a profitable market for a SR4A PC game? Who would be your ideal PC Game Developer to work on a SR4A PC Game?

Fallout 1, 2, Tacticts. Perfect for Shadowrn Mod.

When Left 4 Dead came out, there was a sudden surge of cooperative games. Looks like it didn't catch as well as some people expected it, but to me it's still a good thing for a SR video game.
SR has always been about team work.

SWAT4 Co-op mode also show how fun a cooperative SR tactical-FPS could be. The problem of such a game would be to add the RPG part: even if a cooperative RPG (where each player can do legwork on his own and the team meets for big operations) could be interesting, it's something completely new (which means that no investor would ever accept to put money in this) and it would also require a game with a good tactical-FPS part and a good RPG part, which I find highly unlikely (having to do two games with the time and budget for only one is difficult).

But I guess there are a lot of ways to make an interesting SR game: a RPG, a tactical game (à la Jagged Alliance), a cooperative FPS...

Thanks for the responses Stahl and Blade.

Yeah, Fallout does share a lot in common in its methods with SR:
- S.P.E.C.I.A.L. point buy character generation with perks aka qualities, so without character classes
- lack of alignment per se, but multiple endings possible aka consequences for actions
- diplomatic, non lethal approaches are possible
- 1 & 2 are turn based in combat and 3 has V.A.T.S.
- Dystopian setting

Only a few things lacking: multiplayer, matrix, magic, dragons & metahumanity (though ghouls and mutated creatures are there sorta), prevalence of futuristic tech (though Fallout does have some hidden throughout it), vehicles, and Corp dominance IIRC.

With those short comings in mind, I think I would ideally want the multiplayer from Neverwinter Nights that supports GM involvement. When it comes to matrix (and all the various future tech attached to it) and magic, these things really seem like they would be the biggest challenge to get inspiration on for a SR4A PC game - the best idea I can come up with is having the astral and matrix essentially be different textures on the objects within the world with some special conditions for the character using, so matrix and magic would end up being different than in our P&P game. ARO and rigger type stuff would be pretty straight forward I would hope.

Hmm, what about System Shock 2 as inspiration? There you have your various futuristic tech and the psychics are a sort of magic. It was the precursor to Deus Ex and appropriately it gave you goals but didn't rail road you into how to accomplish those goals necessarily.

GTA games are pretty bad ass inspiration too, getting to play the criminal. That has some ideals to it, also sharing the sort of sand box approach, not necessarily rail roaded, I recognize as possible in the previous games I mentioned as well.

I wonder, which of those games is the easiest to mod... Is the IP being protected by going after mods with cease and desist letter like what happened with mods that tried to make a fan made sequel to Duke Nukem 3D?

Also wondering how that whole online aka multiplayer PC game component to D&D v4 is going. When I first heard of it, I thought it was going to flop simply because a better option existed in Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2. Should there be P&P aides that are a PC Game component for SR4A? At first thought, I kind of think the futuristic tech setting of SR4A would work well to have it, especially since when I have gotten the chance to SR P&P game, everyone else at the table was using a laptop to keep notes and even receive visual aids from the GM, like maps. Would make finding other players to game with as well if one could draw from a much larger area, online PC gaming is very nice that way.

Well, that's about all the ramble I have in me at the moment on PC gaming and SR4A. I eagerly await to see what others have to say on the subject, take care and happy hunting in all your games.

Syndicate series.
No Magic, No Matrix, but i think pretty much most every thing else was in somehow.

Deus Ex would be ideal if you wanted to play a sammie, but in reality you wouldn't find modders for such a project.

If you want to make a Jagged Alliance 2 mod I strongly encourage you to do so because there are a lot things for modders available right now: http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/board/ubbthreads.php

I thought I came across something that suggested the Syndicate game was going to be remade but I can't seem to find it again.

But i certainly can ^^
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/...-Game-Confirmed

I remember playing a Syndicate game on the SNES. I kept coming back trying to play it, but I just didn't understand what I was supposed to do. That and all my agents kept dying on me. =(

You were basically supposed to kill people and steal their stuff.

Neotokyo: A mod for Half-Life 2

Neo Tokyo is just... wow. I still prefer to play games like Call of Duty 4 & Vegas 2, where 1-2 bullets = dead, but that's because I just prefer that style of multiplayer. But Neotokyo is f'ing amazing.

Oh man, I should have figured I saw it on The Escapist. Google just turned up stuff on the older games



Nice find! I could have sworn I stumbled across this before but perhaps it was before its release.

Kill everyone basically. Unless it tells you to use the persuadertron.

That looks amazing, but is it multiplayer only?

Bethesda released several super modding tools for Fallout. I doubt you can go as far as creating astral and matrix, but you could certainly add magic and design your own world and NPCs.

Here is something really interesting I just thought of thanks to some silly posts on making a Jedi/Sith in Mystic Adept in SR4A... Something Kerenshara or Chrysalis posted I think...

Knights of the Old Republic.

I wish I had thought of it sooner, you basicly have a ton of similar things in it to SR and you get some silly PC game style role playing, even though it is on some serious rails in some ways. There should be some interesting inspiration there, especially having a drone that calls most everyone "meatbags". High tech equipment (sorta), magic (force?), drones, incredible poverty and rich, secret dealings...

Hmm, I wonder if I could somehow convince Bioware, Obsidian Entertainment, or Bethesda to make a SR PC game?

Go, ask Smith and Tinker instead.

Every time I fire up the Ballistic Weapons mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 it reminds me of shadowrun. I suppose its just something about excellently done near future weapons with lots of optional accessories that makes me think of all the fun stuff you can do with guns in Shadowrun. That mod has convinced me that it is possible to make a shooter with near future weapons and a level of realism consistent with shadowrun that is just plain FUN. (Note that the realism in Ballistic Weapons is quite variable, so you can set it close to shadowrun levels.)

Dues Ex is also a great inspiration and is probably needs to be studied closely for game play inspiration.

I think shadowrun is the only PnP RPG I've played that has the potential to be made into a good MMORPG. This is mainly a setting/scope issue. In SR one can run an entire game in an impoverished neighborhood of the sprawl, or in a 30 block radius of Downtown. Also players can be douche-bags, as they might be prone to and not break the suspension of disbelief for the setting. If someone wants to go trolling for blacks (or trolls) and beat the shit out of all of them, its perfectly appropriate in the setting. If a player wants to Kill other characters and take their stuff it fits perfectly. If this starts a vicious cycle of reprisals, even more appropriate. Of course I envision allowing the most D-baggy players the honor of playing Lone Star or Knight Errant characters just so they can go around raining on everyones parade, just the way they are supposed to in the setting.

So yeah, letting players act like they do in GTA and want to in other games could work well in a SR game.

You know what? You're right, I'll put them first on the list than the others so that they can bug them to because I am assuming they want my (and hopefully others) PC RPG money too.

So I googled and found some comments here that reflected something I had learned about in the chat that was had earlier today:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/03/smith-an...n-i/1#c21758868

Huh, Jordan Weisman, the guy I read about in another thread here who dissed Microsoft for 'destroying' FASA culture, so he seems alright, heads this Smith & Tinker I am learning about:

http://www.smithandtinker.com/about/founders/jordan-weisman/

So, I jump over the Contact link there:

http://www.smithandtinker.com/contact/

Alrighty then, Washington state, that's pretty close to where I am, so what the heck, I'll give them a call (1-425-641-3376) ... darn, just a message machine at this time just past 4 PM. Didn't think offices closed that soon *shrug* So, I leave a message saying that I found Mr. Weisman's comments and he should know he doesn't have to wait, that other SR PC Game is already forgotten about and if the IP were treated at least as well as Fallout, Neverwinter Nights or Knights of the Old Republic, I would be glad to give their product my hard earned money as well.

I think I will fire off a email (info@smithandtinker.com) to them as well. Hmm, maybe I could send off a fax to them as well, like a image sorta like Batman Returns only have it say Shadowrun Returns. Hmm, I could have sworn I saw something once where I could just fax a document right from my laptop...

May I ask for my fellow Dumpshockers reading this to do something similar? I've heard of mailing petitioning campaigns having some interestingly positive results with other game companies before to show there is interest in a product.

Good points. Wasn't there a inexplicably fun multiplayer for GTA4 as well? I think I came across some Youtube videos detailing some hijinxs there.

Oh that reminds me, dang, I should have mentioned GTA in my message to Smith & Tinker as well. Oh well, I hope I gave enough examples that the intent came across.

Well D&D has already proved it's a dismal failure as a MMO. The whole reason is because clerics are OP. Archetypes/classes in their natural state must be capable of acquiring exp. Some classes just can't solo, and if you get screwed over on finding a party, you're SoL. There are two reasons a Shadowrun MMO would fall short, at least by 4th edition. The first is a lack of solid archetypes. Shadowrun is very open-ended in character design, and that open-ended character creation would be lost in an MMO where archetypes would have to be hammered down into a loss guidelines. The second would be on how they award exp for non-combat characters. I don't think the first can every truly be overcome in an MMO setting. The 2nd can have a solution at some point.

Especially seeing how we, on dumpshock, are widely known to break stuff in the system still playing by the rules.
Now think about what would happen if Shadowrun were to be made into an MMORPG with the Shadowrun Rules.
Dumpshock would suddenly gain a big audience and 90% of the characters in the MMORPG would be broken ^^

Actually a SR MMO could be very successful without archetypes - Just because we don’t have classes doesn’t mean we don’t have roles. Us a pure skill based system rather than classes - sort of like the original ultima online (I think) where in you could learn any skill given enough time (and practiced with them all to maintain them)

Things I'd like to see in SR MMO:
* FPS style (think planetside)
* Skill effects things like weapon bloom and inherent accuracy
* A faction Reputation system (think WoW)
* Multiple methds work for missions - so we can smash and grab or stealth out way in
* In line with the above a street cred sort of thing that tracks your way of doing missions so that if you do runs and never get seen youd get a big boost to your ""stealth rep"" and have these translate into mechanical benefits like the type of jobs offered
* Scrap random loot as the way to get better gear - keep it as part of your rep - as a faction likes you more it gives you more access to its toys
* Keep the 3 worlds - wow showed us the potential for an astral plane with phasing
* Vision mods should be implementd (Think AvP)
* Have deaths be meanigful (not so much equipment damage - more exp loss or penalty)

For character creation:
* use a karma gen esque but toned down a lot in power level (Street punk start)
* Have the option to play magic users/echnomancers be available but warn people about the karma sink

That's not a positive improvement when it comes to pay to play MMOs. That was one of the worst things about Final Fantasy XI back when I played. The xp loss from dying and the nature of various classes made it practically impossible for most classes to solo experience. This lead to a group dependency where you needed a healer, and a shortage of players that wanted to play healers. This would result in a situation where you either played a job you didn't enjoy (which didn't earn experience for the jobs you did enjoy) or play the job you do enjoy and possible sit around looking for a group for upwards of 30 minutes or more. XP loss is terrible if there's no way for a player to easily regain that experience on their own. The only death penalties that I've had no problems with have been CoX's and WoW's. WoW with its 10% equipment damage per death made a financial impact. CoX's debt system basically slowed down your leveling by splitting your xp earned between debt and actual xp towards level.

The intrinsic problem is that you need a player base of around 100,000 for an MMO to survive. Less than that and you start running the risk of being unable to develop new content which will eventually lead to an exodus of players away from the MMO as they look for something new, and if that number drops low enough that the servers start running red, the plug will be pulled.

Actually, most of this was planned for SRO, before it got killed by MicroShaft.
Perma-death for certain Character classes, such as the Cyberzombie.

I can see why MicroSoft would kill it. Blizzard has shown a LOT of what is and isn't good in MMOs or online games in general. Take Diablo 2. One of the favorite features is Hardcore mode where you only have one life, and I believe that is partially due to the ladder system and some tangible rewards being tied to it. However there are still a number of players that don't bother with Hardcore mode. If Hardcore mode was enforced, Diablo 2 would have had neither the initial popularity nor the continued popularity that it does.

MicroSoft look at it as players getting frustrated and quitting when their character that they had spent hours of time and their own money were permanently gone, especially if it's from a silly stupid mistake. They were willing to take a loss on the sunk development costs instead of taking the loss of continued development costs and the losses as SRO would likely, in their mind, ran in the red.

And, perhaps most importantly, it behooves any copyright or trademark holder to aggressively protect their intellectual property, at the risk of brand dilution. Small office of unpaid devs wants to develop a shadowrun MMO, great. They show the proof of concept to Microsoft, and MS says, "No thanks, we're not interested" that is end of the line. You don't pass go, you don't get to keep creating it, and you don't get to release it because you don't own the rights to that IP, and they haven't been licensed to you. This is as true of creating a shadowrun MMO as it would be if I took it upon myself to create a Harry Potter comic book, or a Star Trek board game, or anything like that.

If the IP holder doesn't want to invest in your effort, you're done.

Interesting post.

It seems to me like the flip side to this is you get characters where, so long as someone has no life and logs constant hours playing the game, they are pretty much destined to become maximally powerful.

That sort of progression never interested me as a table top RPGer, and I feel like in an online environment that would basically make the game about people with no life outside of the game.

Yes, and in such a system you drive off players as new players and those that don't spend every waking hour playing the game will never be able to match the power level of those who played from the start and spend every waking hour. It creates an unbalanced situation, even if the excess power isn't really that much. In a world where numbers are everything (which is what a MMO ultimately becomes) it will cause problems.

Essentially, by having an upcapped power progression, and a hardcore game at its core, you combine two highly undesirable traits in what should be a cooperative game. Those traits are perfect in combination in a competitive environment, Hardcore Ladder in Diablo II is a prime example of that.

If you want to do those things, by all means try it. It likely won't run for very long. If you want a hardcore MMO which will end up being mostly current Shadowrun fans anyway, you're probably better off doing a MUD/MUSH and saving the millions of dollars in development and maintenance costs.