To all the various creative talents that have worked on Shadowrun through the past 20 years. If you'll indulge a nerdgasm, and tell us what you really enjoyed creating for the Shadowrun universe. I am sure there are a lot of hidden gems within the game over the past that we may have overlooked, or some favorites we want to relive again.

Basically, pull up a chair, and tell us about your favorite creations.

-M&P

I like this idea for a thread!

I think my three favorite contributions to Shadowrun are Brainscan, the Tibet chapter of Shadows of Asia, and the Hong Kong section of Runner Havens.

Brainscan rates as a favorite because it was my first writing assignment for Shadowrun and it was an idea I pitched. I honestly never really expected it to get picked up and I only hoped it would get me noticed as a writer; to be told that it was being added to the product schedule was just unbelievably awesome. And on top of that, the people who I worked alongside on that book were great. Dave Hyatt and Brian Schoner were the original idea guys behind the whole Deus plot and were the writers of Renraku Arcology: Shutdown. Steve Kenson remains one of SR's most prolific writers, and Rob Boyle and Davidson Cole are two of the guys now behind Eclipse Phase. That was an exciting crew to be working with on my first project.

Tibet makes the list because it's a part of the Sixth World I've always been fascinated with and never expected would appear in print. There's so much more I'd love to write about Sixth World Tibet, but even getting to put some of it in a book was wonderful. Also, that's another book that really had a great crew of people assigned to it; there was some great collaboration and synergy there.

Hong Kong was my most substantial solo writing assignment (about 45,000 words) and I had an unexpectedly easy time with it. I had mountains of research on Hong Kong and I was just "in the zone" when I was writing it. The ideas kept coming and they all just seemed to work well together. I could pretty much picture that city in my head, which made it fun to write down. A lot of people seemed to like it, which makes me feel like I was able to successfully communicate the ideas I was seeing in my imagination.

Yoiur Hong Kong write up helped me immensely while running Ghost Cartels. Had a lot of flavor, and it made it very easy for me to describe the atmosphere of the sprawl to my players while running Ghost Cartels. Thank you!

My best work...well, the closest I ever came to writing anything worth a damn was the intro fiction to the final chapter in Emergence. I wrote it when my brother went off for his first tour in Iraq (he came back in one piece).

You wrote the fiction introduction for Aftermath? That was one powerful piece of writing.

I am also glad your brother came back.

But I have to disagree. Some of the other stuff you have written is very good. The piece of fiction Happy Trails which is in the SR4LE is very good. Having a daughter, that piece hit me.

-M&P

The best thing I've done? Probably "The Infected" from Running Wild, just because of the stuff I got to create and the holes I got to fill in for the game world. Probably didn't go far enough, and certainly didn't get everything in that I wanted, but I think it came together well and offered a lot to the game.

Not necessarily what I'm proudest of, however, and that might surprise people. I'm pretty proud of "Azziewatch" from Target: Matrix, it being part of my first paid writing gig ever, and also for shining a little bit of light on a side of the game world that never really gets a lot of attention. Anyone who knows me knows that I've got a bug up my ass for a few things in the game. One of them is heights/weights, which I've been getting to exterminate in fourth edition for the most part. Another is Texas. I'm proud to be Texan, and the way Texas has been treated since the game began has...vexed me. So to be able to plant a few seeds about Azziewatch and the Sons of the Alamo, even if I haven't been able to make good on some of them (at least not yet), makes me smile.

Also proud of a lot of the changes that got made due to my efforts as a proofreader and playtester. I did a lot of rewriting on the weapon creation system in Cannon Companion, for instance, and I know it didn't come out to everyone's satisfaction, but I was damn proud that a lot of my rewrites were actually incorporated into the book. I honestly think it made SR, and SR3 in particular, a better game. One of my playtesters can look at a rule in the martial arts section of that same book and say, "That's my rule!"

And, like Jay, I really like this notion for a thread, especially with all the hate flying back and forth in other threads.

That's why I started this one and the Why I Love Dumpshock thread. I wanted to remind myself, and anyone else who wants to join the ride, why we care about this game in the first place.

Thank's Patrick - I love what you did with the Infected. Being from the south, I'd love to see the CAS filled in some more, maybe someday I'll write about that .

-M&P

My best shadowrun work so far was killing two VIP Triads using a hacked bus to hit one of the limos and shooting a HE grenade from a moving car UNDER the other limo, I was really proud of myself for coming up with the plan and it worked as planned in the end.

Oh, wait, you meant contributions to the Shadowrun world, never mind.

(1.) The Augmentation cyberlimb rules

(2.) Cyberware suites

(3.) The ammunition-errata (even without the SnS-downgrades I longed for... )

Well, apreciate the effort for the ammo errata, and yes, it is a shame SnS wasn't downgraded.

I'm a big fan of Cyberware suites (as a player and GM). I like both the small numerical benefit the package provides, and also the fluff behind who markets said packages.

How did you want to change SnS ? (An answer might be better in a new thread, in case it inspires a string of responses).

I've really liked and enjoyed everything I've gotten to write so far, but my favorite so far has got to be Perianwyr.

Kyle Morgan and Perianwyr became a running foil for Bull in our games, after I tried foolishly to set them up very early in Bull's career, when we were playing through Mecurial. I managed to deck into their missions funds, and I cleaned them out, and tried to leave a trail to make it look like Kyle did it. After that, they tended to pop up every few months as our personal arch nemesis.

I've used the duo myself as a GM on a number of occasions. I even had one campaign where Kyle was the groups primary Fixer and Mr Johnson.

Somehow, getting tie that storyline up a bit, and setting up this Music Loving Dragon who drank himself into a stupr after his friend and partner died was just a lot of fun. And judging by comments after D0t6W came out, a lot of others liked it too, so... It was a short piece (1000 words that I parlayed into 1500ish), but by far the most fun.

And as anyone who knows me will attest, I'm also inordinately proud of the Sangre Del Diablo from Year of the Comet. I like all the critters I wrote there, but the evil tree just tickled my funny one for some reason.

I also really liked a series of articles I did for WizKids called the "Newbies Guide to Shadowrun", that was originally slated for their Website. I got paid for em, but they never ended up getting used. It was a series of Shadowtalk articles that was basically "Here's some advice so you newbs will stop fragging up my runs and getting yourselves killed". Since WizKids had been hoping to attract some Non-SR players into playing Shadowrun Duels, Mike Mulvihill was interested in fiction that would help explain the concept of the game, so that's what these were for. (It's also one fo the prime reasons the Kellen Colt series reads the way it does).

Fun stuff

Bull

As a writer I've got a handful of preferred works. I love writing about the Sixth World so the various parts of Shadows of Europe still stand out for me, though I'm also partial to my India writeup for Shadows of Asia and my unpublished Argentina for Shadows of Latin America.

Plotwise, and despite the critics, I'm very happy with the Winternight track of System Failure (it met Rob's goals for the overall storyline, my own peculiar taste for resurrecting old plots and characters, conforming to the Ragnarok mythos, tying into the Deus and Ex Pacis tracks, etc).

As a developer I'm particularly proud of Ghost Cartels despite its faults it is the mature, gritty, street-level, globetrotting campaign I wanted it to be.

I'm happy with the work I did on Skillsoft fluff / program options. It was sort of an "aha" moment when I realized SR3 skillwires could be varied for both rating and MPs, but had no real use for "extra" MPs. Its the only thing I wrote where I think I nailed a decent balance of fluff, playability, versimilatude, and readability. AFAIK, its also the only stuff I wrote where the terms and even rules have been carried over into SR4, despite the fact that MPs aren't used any more.
That, and playtesting SR3. I probably turned in 15K worth of editorial comments for Sr3 playtesting, some of which was probably useful.

I'm not very comfortable as a fiction author, so I haven't made any contributions there, certainly nothing that impacted the game world. I was happy with my piece in Target Matrix, but I think it showed my my limits in that area. That and personal factors made me decide not to write any more. I enjoyed the game and the process, but (aside from occasional insights) don't think I'd want to try and push out a major contribution. The game deserves (and has) better talents.

Hm... I have to admit, the Lifestyle section of Runner's Companion was a whole lot of fun to write. Adam Large and I co-wrote it, and bouncing different lifestyle qualities back and forth often had us in stitches. As far as rules go, it is about as fluffy as you can get, but it still was a lot fun to write.

As for writing, I really liked my A Walk on the Wild Side in Running Wild. I think there's a lot of value to exploring the SR world, not just presenting rules all the time, and thinking about what it would really be like to be a centaur living in a city, or what kind of rituals a naga community would have, is the kind of thing I really get into. (Poor AH, though - I think I broke his brain when I was bouncing ideas off of him. He'll never forgive me for the kitten thing. Or the centaur nursing question.)

And for just sheer fun, the Netcat vs. Slamm-0! bit I wrote with Aaron is my favorite fiction.

Tiger Eyes, I just wanted to say that my favorite part of Runner's Companion is the "Living With Parents" lifestyle quality. I have begged my players to take it, going so far as to offer bonus karma. The possibilities are endless:

"Honey, do you have some friends over?"
"We're busy, Ma! (Now, the facility has cameras covering the parking lot and loading dock, so we'll need to...)"
"Do you think your friends would like some lemonade?"

And the Slamm-O! vs. Netcat fiction is kickass.

I want to say that I love Running Wild. The whole thing, though the Walk on the Wild Side, Infected, and Dragons chapters the most. It's actually what got me back into Shadowrun earlier this year, when I ran across it in a game store and decided I had to have it because I'd always loved Shadowrun critters. Now I'm actually running a campaign, and trying to use as much from that book as possible.

I also love the Netcat vs. Slamm-0 fiction in SR4A. It, Weekend Edition, and Night Shift are my favorite three fictions in the book, though I enjoyed them all.

This is a little off-topic, but I'm a little curious, and this seems to be a good thread to put it in. I'm reasonably sure I found a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference on page 84 of Corporate Enclaves, at the end of the Sub-Tokyo section: "I fear the shokushiki themselves flee from something far worse. The spirits too cringe and warn that from beneath you, it devours." I'm curious if that was actually meant to be a Buffy reference, and if so, what the author had in mind (if anything) for the Shadowrun "it."

I remember some long email/PM conversations with you Patrick right after Azziewatch came out. It was always a favored piece of mine from a book I wasn't real big on otherwise. Azziewatch saw a lot of use in two campaigns I was running at the time, and it's still one of my favorite additions to the setting found in SR3.

Heh, reminds me of Brick.

Actually, I wondered that too. Lower pair for convenience, I'd say.

Running Wild is the best SR book in a while. Love the animal training and handling rules - finaly useful guidelines for pets! - as well as the Wild Side chapter. Was there anything major dropped, like a third installment covering Merrow? They're just as distant and in need of exploration as Centaurs and Naga were (both very well done, read them twice over just for the fun of it).

I also liked the lifestyles, but would have liked moreEdges/Flaws even more! Were there any cut that you might spoil to us?


Am with you there. The CAS is a very under-used part of the game world, even moreso than the mainland of the UCAS. I'd really like a USA remnants type book. We know more about out of way places like Lagos than one of the more important states in the 6th world. That's wrong somehow.


What became of them, if I may ask?

I will have to double-check my drafts to see if that piece of shadowtalk was edited at all from what I originally wrote, but to answer your question, it's not a deliberate Buffy reference (though maybe a subconscious one!). As for what I had in mind, I never really defined "it", even in my own head. It's a very Lovecraftian idea, that something terrible is lurking far below Neo-Tokyo, something so horrifying that it scares even the Infected. Especially given that the tunnels of Sub-Tokyo include these positively creepy massive flood drains, I couldn't help but think of some otherworldly evil lurking there.

EDIT: I looked up the Buffy quote, and because of how exact it is to the actual quote from Buffy, I have to think that someone edited my shadowtalk to reference Buffy, but it wasn't me! I have no idea who did that, but yeah, it's way too close to be a coincidence.

Yeah I wanna know too, I'll make a new thread.

Synner, I would like to say thank you and man I LOVE Ghost Cartels. I am running it right now with my group and the more I read and the more that comes to life on the table for my guys/gal the better it gets. Thanks much!

I'm waiting to see when some of the latest kerfluffle dies down; I've got some ideas on things I'd like to do with it, even had a nice chat with Jason about it recently. It's not out of the question that I might get to do some more with Azziewatch, and possibly some more with Cavalier Arms, sometime in the future. (Cavalier Arms I can take responsibility for, since it was a corp in one of my games, but I can't take credit for putting it into the game worle; that was Erik Jameson back in Corporate Download. Anyone heard from him recently?)

Well, back in the day I did agitate for a Target: CAS book, and something along the lines of Feral Cities to cover a couple of places (Atlanta, Dallas and/or Houston, a couple of the spookier places in the Carolinas maybe) would not go unwelcome, at least to me. As I said earlier, I'm working on some proposals for when things settle down and I see a longer-term improvement in freelancer relations with management. Most of those proposals are CAS-centric, specifically Texas but dealing with other parts of the CAS by necessity.

As one of the contributors, and the guy who wrote "The Infected," let me say that I'm thrilled to death that you like the book. I'm glad it helped you get back into the game; interestingly enough, it's the book that sort of sucked me back in, as well.

I had a hard drive blow up back then, and I lost a lot of data that I foolishly hadn't backed up. I had 4 or 5 of those that I had submitted final drafts for. I have the drafts for 2 or 3 of them still though, maybe I'll post them up one of these days.

Bull

As it's acting VP, you well should!


Loved the intro fiction. The writeup was nice too. You even included the Mutaqua!


I'd like it, too. The only source of any detail we have is the ancient NAGNA.


That would be awesome.

Hey, how about a semiofficial "bits, pieces and snippets" netbook where all the things go that were rejected or died an unfortunate bureaucratic death?

I've got 2 things I've been really happy with, but neither has gotten published yet... suppose I'll get back to the grind on that.

I am happy with how my adventures came out...well the one, someone needs to finish the layout on the second I suppose it got some heavy edits first though.

Acting VP? I'll have you know that "Patrick Goodman" was founder, president, and CEO of Cavalier Arms, as well as having an honorary Novatech CAS VP position, since CA was a majority-owned subsidiary of Novatech. Wonder what they're up to now, since my doppelganger got himself murdered back in '63....

I'm really fairly pleased with how the intro fiction turned out. Back in the day, it was a sidebar, and as such it didn't work nearly so well. As an intro piece, though...yeah, that's one of the things I've written that I think came out well.

I hadn't planned to do anything with the mutaqua, but enough people convinced me that it was time for it to be addressed that I worked them in. Kind of glad I did; I think I left it vague enough where people can just use the things as urban legends if they choose.

You wrote that? That was damn near my favorite piece of fluff in the book. I liked how you were able to create something, sweet, pleasant and so very normal in the middle of what really is a completely different world. Your fiction really helped me make the transition into playing that much eaasier, by showing me the world wasn't all just violence and desperation.

Thanks! I have to admit a fondness for Netcat and Slamm-0! And, hey, SR needs more romance!

I'd kill for something like that, working on my Tampa campaign now. Especially for a Yank like me, who's never lived south of Philly.

Actually, I didn't even think of it, but the SRM logo for season 3... I'm really happy how that came out. The right feel between Broadway glitz and street level grime.

When I run games, I pretty much always assume anything that a shadowtalk character calls an urban legend is not only real, but even worse than any of them imagine. It's served me well so far. Anything that's vaguely referenced, actually, not just things poor Snopes is trying to debunk. I'm still trying to think of something I can do with the kid who hangs out at Denton's Lore Store from the Seattle 2072 book.