So after answering a question for a friend I got curious, and tracked down the Shadowrun April Fools day stuff below; raising a couple questions of my own.

• 2004 – Shadowrun [d20] (Archive)
• 2005 – Shadowrun 5 (Archive)
• 2006 – Cyberpirates! of the Caribbean Coast CSG & RPG (Archive)
• 2007 –
• 2008 – Runner’s Companion Preview (PDF) (Archive)
• 2009 – BattleRun: Best Ever, Eighth World
• 2010 – Shadowrun, Gibson Edition (Archive) (PDF)
• 2011 – A lost Shadowrun movie?

Questions:

1. Were there any Shadowrun April Fools before 2004 ? If yes, are there links ?
2. Was there a Shadowrun April Fools in 2007 ? If yes, are there links ?

EDIT 2011-JUNE-11: Archive links added (Since circa May 2011, broken CGL links often work if "www" is replaced with "old")

I'm just curious, what do you get when you download Battlerun? It's free but I haven't tried to download it yet and I'm curious if they actually made a set of rules or if you just get a bog "April Fool!" in the PDF...

You're missing the elf porn, but I don't remember which year that was.

Its a good combination of the game worlds. It led to some self-discovery about what types of stories enthrall me.

There are also, I think, characters done in both game systems. (I think the MW characters are from the older system though).

To be honest, I used Second Ed Shadowrun as a MW sub back in the day, so its not just a joke concept to me.

BlueMax

Is this archived anywhere ?

I would guess that Elf Porn was before 2004, since the "Still More!" image on the [d20] site reads "No More Elf Porn."

Does anybody know what the "Even More!" image read? The Internet Archive did not store a copy of that image as far as I can determine.

Wasn't that in one of the SoTAs? Or wait, that was just the elf lesbians, nevermind.

I dont know if it was april fools or some dumpshockers bad joke but I remember something about Nigel writing a new book via ouija board. Still bad taste, sorry I brought it up.

Arise my minion! Haunt the forums from which thy came!




Anyone have a backup of this somewhere? I just ran into the link (also bad) on TV Tropes and I don't remember seeing it.

As a GM, I'm never showing my players Battlerun as I'd have to buy non-existant books.

"Ok, I'll be an adept...and my weapon focus will be a Atlas D"

[Cue GM Hate Explosion]

-Tir

Aw. . . all the links are broke.

Yes. :\

Hey! Battlerun was not a joke! It was an excellent concept system that *happened* to be released in early April. The 2009 joke was about some anniversary edition. I don't remember. It wasn't very funny.

Just replace www.shadowrun4.com with old.shadowrun4.com. Helps with any broken links on the homepage, too

I downloaded it on my old computer and 10 minutes later said computer transformed into a robot and flew off.




-k

Added archive links where needed.

Does anyone have an archive of whatever the pre-2004 "Elf Porn" joke/post was?

Does anyone know if they did anything in 2007?

That wasn't an April Fools Joke, that was Fan Service!

....and people wonder WHY I despise April Fools 'jokes'.......

You think those are bad, two weeks from now I expect to have given at least one person alcohol poisoning due to intentionally bad writing.
(I'm familiar with the contest,¹ I planned my attack a year ago², I know that judging is done over beer vodka, I am the only person who was ever banned³ (2 years) from making submissions, it will be illustrated by no less than 3 different artists, and will make no god damn sense. If one of the judges doesn't drink himself unconscious, I will consider the project a failure).

¹Write bad prose in 24 hours. Really bad prose. No worse than The Eye of Argon bad.^4
2Last year the contest didn't occur.
³I submitted a story 7 lines (handwritten) long, that had no setting, no plot, and a single character who dies at the end. The entire story the character was going to tell never happened because of time travel.
⁴The first year someone submitted a story containing 7 different "Page 1" files (.txt, .rtf, .doc, and four others, two of which were corrupt) along with the lid to a pizza box ("page 1 and also the cover") and two hand written sheets, and one printed sheet (all labeled page 1). Reordering them didn't seem to make any difference. That caused a ban on "unusual writing surfaces." Another story was written on 3x5 cards, numbered incomprehensibly (including an "NCC-1701"), two were shopping lists, contained two different plots, and had been shuffled prior to submission.

Details?

I'm going to spend my free time having people read the last line written of the story and submit the next line. It'll be collaborative stream of consciousness that, in the end, makes no freaking sense.

I'll be encouraging people to make up words, misspell words, or if they wish, write a whole paragraph going into excessive detail about nothing (the next person would continue from the same original line, not the end of the paragraph, making the paragraph doubly pointless). I'll be editing it along the way too. Then I'll be taking small, selective chunks and commissioning an artist to draw it (no matter how nonsensical, irrelevant, or confusing the piece is; expecting back a piece of equal quality: nonsensical, irrelevant, and confusing).

The nature of the way the story will be written will mean that it can't keep character names through from start to finish, much less plot. But the result, at the same time, flows. Each sentence fits with the ones around it. It'd be what you'd get if a goldfish (with it's 3-10 second memory span¹) wrote a novel.

¹Fish swimming around the bowl encounters a little castle, "Oh neat! A little castle!" So it swims around the bowl again, "Oh neat! A little castle!" And it swims around the bowl again, "Oh neat! A little castle!" Around the bowl it swims again, "Oh neat! A little castle!"

What happens after that?

20: GOTO 10

Looks like I'm pushing this off another year. I've been turned into one of the judges this year and don't really have the energy to try and do this right now; got so much else going on that's so much fun.

Roughly speaking I've spent about....$290 (in two and a half hours), mostly on art.¹ Going to do it again tomorrow.⁴

If I'd made it to the intro at 3pm (I overshot in the dealer's den by a half hour, then was hungry) I might have dropped doing other things to try and get the story started. Instead I played Dragon Storm (it's an RPG as a card game as an RPG) where...we...went...to...Ponyville. *shudder* We seriously entertained the notion of burning the place to the ground (and eating the inhabitants, as we could turn into dragons and werewolves, much to the undying awe of said ponies).

The second reason to hold of until next year is that Buni isn't here this year, and I very much want to see her cry. The third reason is that there's no one of any merit doing the contest this year (I'd win by default). Fourth is that I'd have to find an ATM that isn't empty and withdraw more moolah. I'm down to $220 and I still have stuff to buy, and my story requires art.

¹Two t-shirts, one adult comic,² 7 pieces of art^3
2For a friend; I personally have no interest in two anthro-wolves banging each other (although I hear the story is really well done).
³4 for the same friend, two for myself and two other friends, one as a gift for two other people.
⁴I've got....about 6 more to get, depending on artist availability.