Hi all,

I'm Pretty new to the shadowrun thing, and had a few questions. I heard about shadowrun years ago(ver1), but never got to play. Now I'm involved with a group I met online, playing weekly. The GM has a VERY involved story line with tons of twists and underlieing forces. I'm trying to understand what exactually IS shadowrun. From what I can see, its not about building a super strong character and shooting everything in site.(tend to die, and will get boreing) Its not about just living as a non person, and never showing up on the radar.(boring) Its not just about Role playing a characters life.(tons of outlets for that)

The things I see that make shadowrun be shadowrun are times when things happen that make you say wow. IE: Getting into a bar fight, and taking out the troll bouncer by beating him senceless WITH the dwarven bartender. Talking your way out of the back of a LS patrol car after being arested for attempted murder, and ending up with the LS officers daughters phone number.(lot of good chr rolls on that one)

Am I right? Do we all play for the rare moments when the dice align?

Dave

Breaking into the lab of a non-profit developing a methadone-like substance for rehabbing users of a street drug that a certain Seoulpa ring would like to remain popular.

Invisible facility security mage catches up to us when things go bad and my character is carrying an unconscious fellow PC. Failing his test my character shoots said teammate in the head, killing her.

So to answer your question:Yes, but not necessarily the way you might think. The above run happened years ago, but I don't think I'll forget it any time soon. Easy victories and lucky rolls from the same era are mostly forgotten.

Broadly speaking, I agree with you: Shadowrun is more about the journey than the destination.

... stumbling right into a bug hive.


I think I've just got a new run for the forthcoming convention next weekend.

Your campaign sounds like a lot of fun

I suppose it's a bit of all the things you mention, but the What means nothing without the How; by using cool hypertech gadgets, slick or spectacular magic..

Maybe Ocean's Eleven is a good example; the smooth coolness with which they pull of everything is one way of doing things, and some of the fight scenes in the Matrix the other way.

Big violence and body count aren't cool, unless it's done with style. If you can imagine the cool moves with which something is achieved, then it's good.

Someone here had/has a sig that somewhat sums it up..

"If you're trying to decide to do something, ask yourself this: Would this be truly awesome? If the answer is yes, do it immediately."

Shadowrun is a well-chosen name; shadows and running. Both cool things. Somewhat contradictory; working by stealth, or by being faster than everyone else. Of course, the best way of being faster is not having 5 IPs, but having better ideas, more stun-your-GM plans than the enemy. Keep them amazed at all times, and you don't even really need high stats.



(Note: a high Edge may be very necessary..)

Be Creative:
I have a Street Shaman [Scrounger], she even has a street level life style and is that way because she is a notorious Spend-Thrift. Back in the day she bought as Level-12 Mag-Lock for her Rat Bike [To no ones surprise one day she came out of a club and someone had cut the Mag-Lock off he bike]
On one run, someone gave her some grenades; she had no clue what to do with them. Later in the run she pulled the pin and gave it to here Level -2 Air Spirit and told it to give it to the Gang Leader.

This is the kind of stuff that make the game fun for everyone including the GM

Sadly those were just examples. One was someone elses player before I joined the game, and the other was just made up. Some times I worry my character isnt living by the "Would this be truly awesome?" rule. The group I am in tend to be more of a "Would this be safe?" rule. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get more "awesome"?

I'm not exactly sure how to do it.. it's also a matter of temperament I suppose.

Consider: I'm fairly good with rules, and I know what's possible and what not. A friend of mine doesn't know all that well what can and can't be done. So he's always the one doing Indiana Jones style action while I systematically whittle down enemy positions in a safe manner. Except of course I'm trying to learn from his example, because it's more fun.

Maybe the trick is to think "how would this look in the action movie?"

If I can share my humble opinion, the best part of *any* RPG is when you and your friends get a chance to cheer because something awesome happened. Sometimes it's a critical success in a tight spot, or even a critical failure at the worst possible time. It's often when a player gets creative and nobody saw it coming, even though it makes perfect sense once he points it out. Sometimes a PC or a Villain will get to deliver a monologue that just cracks everyone up, or somebody will make a joke out of character that the group will be repeating for years. There's no right or wrong way to play as long as your group finds a way to get to those moments of awesome.

Shadowrun can be whatever you want it to be, and that's the whole beauty of it! high Fantasy can be done just like high SciFi/Posthumanism.
You can be Neil the Ork-Barbarian or James Bondage. The World is your Sandbox. As long as you and the rest of the group and the GM are in accord, nothing is impossible.

So help me get my creative juices flowing. What are some of your best storys from shadowrun?

Dave

Oh that would be one very much over the top campaign.
Basically a multi cross over between knight rider, street hawk, thunder in paradise and airwolf . .
One corporation that does not want to be named right now decided to build AI's into specific vehicles.
Then outfit them with whatever they saw appropriate too. Turns out one Exec was a BTL Junkie who had gotten his hands on some re-imagined chips of those old serieses.

I'm playing an ongoing online run since spring 2007. We found an ancient airship about 300 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea south of Malta in a great SR/ED crossover campaign. (Actually it isn't a real x-over as ED's still officially the past of SR.) Meanwhile we're fighting agains a minor (or so I hope) Horror and his servants, are being hunted by a team from Tir Na N'Og and have been separately betrayed by both our Tir-refugee elf hoping to get her ticked back home and our archaeologist. Oh, and our J's an IE closely watched by his fellow IEs so we don't know whoever else might be interested in us. Our J. just recommended to cut a deal with the Tir elfs and call in the Draco Foundation when we get our hands on the scripts the Horror wants us to recover. Bad new's that I got myselfe a Horror Mark. Looks like we'll have to return for another dive and we're down to my cyber-mage, an ex-navy Ki-Ad and our eight-year-old TM girl. But Mr. J. just arrived in Italy and got his beloved sword we recovered for him the first time we went down to that airship. And I called in two members of my magical group. One of them's on standby in North Africa for giving us an airlift from the sea the moment we surface with the Horor's scripts.

I'd say, we stand a fair chance.

Moments that will we remembered dont have to story changing moments, they can be small things that are fun and/or defy the odds. To mention a few:

We had just broke into a hairdesser (that had master shedim workshop in the basement. Dont ask me why) and our unbelievably lucky phys-ad notices the safe:
Player: I try to open the safe.
GM: Do you have tools?
Player: No, I just randomly poke the keypad.
GM: Roll your edge, threshold 5.
Player: *rolls 5 dice, 5 success.
GM: You all hear a click and turn to watch as Captain Sky opens the safe with big grin. 1000 per character.

Or the time when we were in Caracas slum fighting something (definitely NOT zombies, since there are no zombies in SR) that had Immunity to Normal Weapons. Our gunslingers couldnt do anything to them while my Str 2 elven shaman with zero combat skills beats troll-sized something literally into the ground with his brand new weapon focus. With dice pool of 4.
It is still the favourite weapon any character in any rpgs I have ever played has wielded.

I totally agree. Our group had been playing together for 10 years and we still tout my son's saying. He was a mage in The Other Game and was being attacked by dragonkin. He was down to 5 hp and when I suggested that he quaff the healing potion that he had, his response was "I don't want to waste that now." He was immediately attacked and killed. We all laughed about that and still remind him to "not waste that right now..." and that was eight years ago!

One of my most fun games was when I ran One Stage Before. My players had some really interesting characters,
great stories behind them, etc. Over the course of previous runs, they had made strong contacts with a Yakuza Oyabun
and his pet go-gang...additionally, the teams rigger had a water-landing capable helicopter. Yeah, the entire pre-made scenario got shot to ribbons everytime something happened(like the "Ambush" where the players saw the snipers on the roofs as they were going in, landed for their meet, anyway, blew up the cars for the roadblock of the ambush, got in the helicopter, and the dwarf mage lightninged the snipers on the way out..)we were all laughing, in fact, because it was so preposterous the idiocy and assumptions that went into the pregenerated adventure...(that, BTW, was the last pregenerated adventure I ran for SR) However, it was SO Pink Mohawk when the plan behind the pregenerated was obviously supposed to be Trench Coat and Mirror Shades, and it was a total blast. Still makes me smile when I think of it..

So there we are, fleeing in the riggers recently acquired helicopter, all the other players are shooting big guns at the pursuing attack helicopters while my street ninja physad just watches. Our troll ganger McBrick (actual streetname) grabs my character and throws him in the general direction of the enemy but it is pointed out I'll fall well short of them. What do I do? grapple gun my way into the lead chopper, kill everyone inside, jump to the next, repeat and so on and so forth. The rigger had to talk me through a landing when I was done. when I get back in our chopper McBrick is freaking out about how cool that was, my characters response "That is why the sword is still the soul of the warrior."

I sometimes GM runs on a online game of Shadowrun I play in. I started a thing that has been adopted by people in my team. I call it "The Adam West Rule," basically the rule is simple. If Adam West's Batman would think that a plan would work it has a chance, if Adam West's Batman would think something is groovy it can work.

It's lead to some over the top moments, but as a whole it lets the players think less 'Do the rules handle this,' and think more 'This would make the run more fun.

One of my team members is a troll that got the handle "Roulette" because he threw a roulette table at a pair of guards that were pinning the team down with rifles inside a warehouse.