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Chrysalis
Hi,

If you were to distill Shadowrun to its most basic of elements, what would you say they are?

I am not expectying a few page response, but a few sentences.

For example:

  • Lord of the Rings triology is about Frodo carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom.
  • Rent offers a small army of characters who are willing to face miserable poverty in pursuit of their creative dreams.
  • In Guys and Dolls, all the major characters are ultimately willing to radically redefine their lives to marry the people they love.
  • Sweeney Todd will stop at nothing to wreak vengeance on those who sent him to prison on a trumped-up charge. Audiences are fascinated to see his need for revenge consume everything he once loved.
ShadowPavement
Shooting people in the face for money. With elves!!!
RunnerPaul
Post-cyberpunk urban fantasy in which the protagonists engage in freelance covert ops and corporate espionage.
Bugfoxmaster
Guns, Magic, Hacking, Crime and Money. Mix to your liking. Stir liberally.
the_real_elwood
QUOTE (ShadowPavement @ Sep 7 2009, 06:03 PM) *
Shooting people in the face for money. With elves!!!


Definitely shooting people in the face for money. Don't forget the dragons too, though.
fistandantilus4.0
Play as a criminal existing in the cracks between society. When "civilization" is a dystopian mess with high-tech, the return of magic, and megacorps marketing everything between at the expense of humanity, imagine what "uncivilized shadowrunners" are like. vegm.gif
Ancient History
"Watch your back, conserve ammo, and never cut a deal with a dragon."
Orcus Blackweather
Geeks with no lives sitting around fantasizing about becoming murderers?
Heath Robinson
People that don't exist doing things that never happened in exchange for money with no value.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Orcus Blackweather @ Sep 7 2009, 05:32 PM) *
Geeks with no lives sitting around fantasizing about becoming murderers?



Ruthless Orcus...
Chrome Tiger
Criminals, mercenaries, and people down on their luck doing whatever it takes to survive in a world where technology coexists with magic.
Freejack
Generally I describe it as "Fantasy Cyberpunk". That satisfies most people as they know what cyberpunk is or at least the ones that tend to ask me about Shadowrun do. That and the fantasy part is "magic, dragons, elves, like D&D". A small minority asks for more info and I go into a bit of detail for them with the Mayan calendar and some background on the game until they tell me to stop biggrin.gif

Carl
Chrome Tiger
QUOTE (Freejack @ Sep 7 2009, 08:48 PM) *
A small minority asks for more info and I go into a bit of detail for them with the Mayan calendar and some background on the game until they tell me to stop biggrin.gif

Carl


Yeah, this is typically what happens to me. All of the 'out of game' research kicks in and all of the real world comparisons come out. It is at this point they start looking at me like I have a third eye growing out of my forehead.
shuya
transhumanist interstitial counterculture felons!

shadowrun is a lot like the real world, but with bigger dice pools
McCummhail
Shadowrun is about giving the finger to a magically-infused corporate-driven dystopia; Oi, oi, oi!
Khyron
The 80's in the future with elves.
Blade
Cyber, magic and rock'n'roll.
Angelone
Elves and orcs and miniguns oh my!
StealthSigma
BladeRunner with magic.
ShadowPavement
The illicit love-child of Lord of the Rings and Matrix Trilogies.
Angier
QUOTE (StealthSigma @ Sep 8 2009, 04:53 PM) *
BladeRunner with magic.


I'd SO love to see a game fulfilling this description. As it is, Shadowrun is way too much Fantasy to be simply awesome BladeRunner with magic.

Man... think about it. Shadowrun without Metas. Critters being scarce. Dragons being just some more the Shadowmen of corporate society.
Like.... like.... Babylon A.D. with mor BANG! for your money.

*drools*
nezumi
Shadowrun is such a full, diverse world, you can't just reduce it to a few lines and expect it to make much sense. A lot of the things listed so far are true, but may not include what *I* think Shadowrun is (or why it's so great). The best one so far is AH's, since it allows the reader to read into it.
CanRay
*Falls over drunk* That's some good Homebrew Still of Shadowrun...
Krypter
Mercenaries fight corporations and monsters in a fantasy cyberpunk world where money & magic rule the world.
Traul
Trolls with machine guns, so much better than the old-fashionned trolls with big sticks...
Omenowl
Lord of the rings meets the matrix all in The world of robocop.
Totentanz
Magic. Big Guns. Dragons. No silly HP system. Ready?
BookWyrm
As Jason Hardy recently said:

"magic cyberpunk noir (except it’s missing “Twinkies.�)"
CollateralDynamo
The only setting where your wizard/hacker can blast his sub-machine gun expertly in the face of his cheating ghoul of an employer and flee from his rampaging security of fire spirits, troll techno priests, and that dragon who owed him a favor.
McCummhail
QUOTE (CollateralDynamo @ Sep 9 2009, 11:14 AM) *
The only setting where your wizard/hacker can blast his sub-machine gun expertly in the face of his cheating ghoul of an employer...

Hear, Hear!
All cheating ghoul-friends should be shot!
Kevin Adams
Shadowrun is akin to a cup of sugar with a dollop or two of coffee.
Its obscenely bizzare but obscenely sweet.

Or, if you dont like that one...

Dwarves with Magnums, Elven Ninja.
Troll Mages and Orcish Hackers.
Dragons galore. Its the Sixth World and its out to get you.
Its a veritable cornucopia of disharmonius goodness.


There, I tried.
Kerenshara
Shadowrun is best described as a dark and dystpoian future dominated by ten Megacorporations whose hegemony has largely supplanted the role of govenments and nation states, where the magic has returned and revealed that the creatures of legend have slumbered amongst us for over fifty thousand years and transformed the planet, technology has sprinted ahead of society's ability to fully assimilate it and begun to blur the boundary between man and machine, the ebbs and flows of digital information in the world-wide computer Matrix have become a true virtual reality of their own, and the protagonists are anti-heros whose goals and motivations are generally neither altruistic nor noble.

It is a world of polar opposites and juxtopositions, with glittering towers of glass and steel providing luxury to those with power and resources while the defenseless, the hopeless and the meek squat miserably in the ruins forgotten in the shadow of those same towers; With industry and technology opposed by nature and magic. It is a world where power comes not only from the barrel of a gun or the strength of an arm, but from information and willpower and the wealth of resources and money; Where the world has balkanized into a tappestry of tribe and culture and religion.

Shadowrun is the story of how the evolving face of humanity must cope with the ever-changing effects of magic and technology in an endless struggle to thrive.
rathmun
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 10 2009, 04:54 PM) *
--Snip typical Kerenshara awesome--


Wow, I think she nailed it.
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