What do you guys think those kind of mechanics could bring to the Shadowrun experience ?

For those who dont know, Im talking the mechanics found in rpgs like Pendragon or The One Ring. In these games, after a adventure or two, time advances (in-game) in a predefined amount. In the case of Pendragon rpg (a game about arthurian legends), this advancement lasts 1 full season - the winter, a time when lords and knights stay at home, taking care of its ordinary lives, administering fiefs and serfs, participating in royal parties and courtly intrigue. Events in this "Winter Season" most of time simply means a series "rolls" the players make using varying skills, related to various aspects - fiefs administration (good harvest, bad harvest), serfs (people is happy, unhappy, revolting, etc) personal (had a children, father died, etc), diplomatic (neighbor broke alliance, etc), etc. Sometimes an important event may be roleplayed if the players and gamemaster feels its important or relevant to the story. Sometimes its simply rolled and time move on 1 year or so, to the next adventure(s).

I think this kind of mechanic brings some interesting things to the game, but the most important to me is the "generational" and/or the "everyday life" aspect. In the case of Pendragon, since 1 year passes between each adventure or two, the players can see their characters lives changing, chars getting old, marrying, having children, seeing the children grow up, and even dying. In the case of The One Ring, the time unity between adventures is smaller (from days to months), which help to depict the "downtime" between adventures as seen in The Hobbit, where the everyday life of the characters is narrated - everyday work, routine, parties, relationships, personal struggles, etc.

If we were to apply this to Shadowrun, I think the second approach (One Ring´s ) would fit better. This way we could depict, in the downtime between runs, the "everyday life" of the shadowrunners - the normal people behind the hero/antihero; the end of day-dark-tired eyes behind the cool mirror shades. The first thing, and the most basic, that comes to my mind about implementing it would be to define a time-unit to pass between one or two runs/adventures/campaign arc, and to define a series of rolls related to the diff aspects of the chars life: professional rolls (char promoted/fired/went well/etc. in his dayjob); relationships rolls (char married, divorced, had children, brother arrested, etc); rumors rolls (sonics won the NBA; renraku market shares decreased and you lose 15% of your nuyen; etc), "shadows" rolls (shadowrland assaulted by a matrix´ joint corp task force; SOTA 2071: new cyberarms with synthetic skin, blood and even heat and hair hits the streets!; fastjack is missing - some say azzies new ice fried him; etc), etc. One could even keep track of the years and char age, put the group some years in the past, and go telling (or playing) the events of Shadowrun timeline and how it affects the players (directly or not): Universal Brotherhood close down, Cermak Blast, Super Tuesday; Corp wars, Renraku Shutdown, Otaku rising, Year of the Comet; Crash 2.0, etc, etc, etc.

So, what do you guys think ? Cool/Not cool ? Could it be done in a simple and effective way ?

It's a table thing really. I've seen some campaigns that keep track of every day that passes, and coordinate events with the lore of the setting at large, and some that kinda separated runs with as much time and everyone wanted/needed to get some things done like repair to vehicles, write a new program, make some telesma, whatever. Sometimes the GM would interrupt that downtime, most of the time we just had downtime as much as we wanted to use.

Some random rolls might be a neat idea for creating more details, but seems like alot of work to me. You'd want to make sure your players want that or would enjoy it first Nobody may want the 'An ex-fling shows up with your 2 year old son' roll after all

I actually keep track of time in my games-we tend to do one job a week, with a week between jobs. The only break in this action is if the PC's need downtime for upgrades. (Initiation, cybernetic surgeries, etc...) I think my players would rebel if I tried to institute a time mechanic as described in the first post-but every table is different.

One run a week? Ugh that seems terribly fast paced

I used the Run-a-week ration for a time, then i dropped it to a ten-day period. That gives 3 runs a month, not a bad call on a shadow heavy city like denver or Seattle. Not all runs are "the big one", obviously, and it solves questions about lifestyle and availability. If you give them "unlimited downtime", some heavy duty and valuable upgrades comes up as just "have money, will implant", which does not, IMHO, show up how valuable and hard to get such a treatment and cyberware is. Same with certain initiation rituals that take time to get. "Oh i lived on the woods for a month only with the clothes on my back, but now i a back being a powerful, full of cash mage again. You know. The usual price of power."

Now try RUNNING having to mantain the asceticism...

*Shrugs* It works for us. We tend to play a lower powered game-so they literally depend on their jobs to make a living. But from an OOC perspective it works for us. It captures the fast paced Dystopian world we see as being the world of Shadowrun.

I would say that is terribly limiting, in some cases. We usually have a major run that may take a week or more to fully complete, but the characters are almost always trying to attend to something personal as well, maybe multiple personal threads. And then you have the other extreme, with the major run taking months of detailed work towards the end goal. Still, the personal runs/favors/whatevers were often still there. 2-3 runs a month is the norm for us, though, not including the personal things.

Note that despite our table taking a break from Shadowrun, if I'm running the next mission it's taking place on the heels of the last mission. (0 downtime).

I would almost be tempted to set up a "2 simultaneous missions" run. I've never had a group in the past that I thought could pull it off, but these guys are pros at splitting the team. It's really tempting.

Yup. That's by design. Like I said we do sometimes allow longer lapses if a PC needs to get upgraded, or if there's a logical plot/character hook reason. This isn't something that is set in stone.

Those are sometimes the best runs...

The game has always time advancement, just not as a solid mechanic because, quite frankly, there doesn't need to be one. Downtime is the amount of time between runs, which can be hours, days, weeks, or even months. During that time there's plenty of things you can be doing, and each of those downtime activities has their own time requirements. Refining orichalcum can take more than a month, while modifying a gun can be done in a few hours. There's also lifestyle costs to worry about.

If you try to regimentalize (is that even a word?) such things, it introduces all kinds of problems. It's best to keep it fast and loose, measuring it by ear. That way the players can do what they need or want to do in between runs as their needs demand, rather than possibly being cut short because of some predetermined limitation.

That said, each sourcebook that comes out basically moves the story ahead little by little, with editions making huge jumps.

The missions are run at one a week I believe.

The thing about long time lapses with shadowrun is the setting assumes a very specific year. Technology and magic are constantly evolving, and an edition shift is a change of a few years.

So if your runner is going around taking a month or two break after every run, you're going to get into some pretty weird places lore wise down the line, unless you decide to totally handwave that and say "Yes, I've been doing this for 5 years, but it's still 2070. Fuck yeah time loops".


On the other hand, a run every week runs into issues of the runners not having time to train skills or get gear, which seriously stunts character progression in a rather annoying manner.

We've never had a problem with advancement. My guess is it's all in how you decide to approach it. But yeah, like you said there's trade offs for any choice you make.

We started in year 2059, and have watched the world change from second to third. Soon the god-awful pandora's box of UB, Renraku, Chi-town and Super Tuesday, along with the Mob War and the corperate meltdown will then fall into the comet frenzy...*

How? Easy. Start at a date and keep a record of the downtime taken. Weeks are fine, days if people are anal about things. Toss together a spreadsheet and you've got a timeline with some interesting dates...

"...wait, you'd like to go do some Christmas Shopping at the new Renraku SCIRE? Sure - you know that's a high security place, as GM I'd advise you not to go in with anything heavy, unless you like getting shot. Yep, some big cred is fine - just make sure your gear can pass through a high-end scanner and let's see if you can score some contacts and gear..."

-Doing shit like that, with players new to the lore and a few survivors of an Archology run or two makes for a fun, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil, game.

-Tir out.
*Yes, yes, I know it's not chronologically in order.

Well just as an example, my group does a run basically every week. In one run, my characters van got shot up, so I put it in the shop, and decided to get some upgrades for it while it was in there.

It took 2 months for my van to come back, so there was a half dozen runs in between where I had no vehicle. After a run or two of realizing "It's going to be a long time before I get this back" I went out and bought a cheap/low avail motorcycle just so I'd have something.

Yeah that's one of the things we like. In fact a player just commented the other day about this very thing. When he realized his character couldn't just outright bulldoze the opposition, and actually had concerns about things like ammunition and where he was going to find shelter and food he happily exclaimed how fun this all was. But I agree, everyone has a different style at their table. One of the major themes in our games has always been that Shadowrunners don't have infinite coffers. They really have to be resourceful. We like, and it works for us-but at someone else's table it might go over like a lead balloon.

Unfortunately, there are some things in the game where you can't do that. Cooking orichlacum, for example. You only get a short time to deal with your 'real world' responsibilities while doing so, and the rest of the time must be spent in your alchemy lab micromanaging the entire process for the entire 28 days it takes (or however long it is). And if your goal is to create your own weapon or power focus using handmade virgin telesma, that's a huge investment of time. And you should be able to do those things from time to time.

Additionally, stretches where you can't find work only adds to the value of the rewards you earn. Say you've gone six months without a job. Your bank account is on death's door, your landlord is giving you the stink eye every time you pass him in the hall, and you've stomach is angry at you for all that Stuffer Shack crap you keep force feeding it because it's all you can afford, and all because you were living it up for the first couple of months thinking the money would always be flowing in. A scenario like that can lead to all kinds of possibilities in and of itself, and it emphasizes the shitty world you're supposed to be living in. As opposed to always having the income you want and losing perspective of who and what you are -- a sleazy, disposable bit of street scum.

I don't think any one is advocating that you shouldn't be able to make advancements.

I'm not saying that either. I'm saying that if you use a static measure of time and stay with it no matter what, it cuts off a lot of possibilities. It has to be mutable, especially in a game with as many downtime options as this one.

I agree.

I dont see a game where you have 1 run per week as something minimally plausible (in my group, if we dont see plausibility in our fiction, our immersion breaks). I can even see 1 shadowrun taking weeks (or even months) to complete as plausible, but if the group goes to shadowruns as a wageslave go to his everyday work.. then there is something wrong with the ecology of your setting (at least its how my group think).

And here enter the "table rolls".

If your group has an average of 1 month between runs, the "advancing-time-unit" could be 1 month (but there is no problem in varying this, of course). The point here is in depicting the more mundane aspects of the players lifes - day jobs, relationships, family, personal agendas, "shadow-biz" (rumors and changes in the local shadow-ecology, that could affect the players direct or indirectly, but not necessarily involves doing shadowruns), etc, etc, etc. This brings interesting issues and hooks to the table, that enrich and deepen the characters. Those issues could be play out in sessions or not, and the cronological advancement gives a sense of continuity and setting-emergence to the games. The mundane-heroic/adventuresque contrast may not only enrich the chars sense of existence, but give the characters pluasilbe motives for them to WANT to live on, to go back to home, to fight just another day, and make just another run - motives the GM can tap on and produce great and fun times.

Well, I dont really know how this would play out in Shadowrun. The only thing I know is that, once, and only once, me and my friend played out the live of a elf teen running way from his royal (and boring) life in the Tir to the Seattle sprawl, and his growing up between gang wars (he was initiated as an Ancient). We tracked the passage of time, the events unfolding around his personal, inter-personal, professional and shadow-professional life, and this was awesome. Most of the games involved gang affairs and wars - he made his first real shadowrun only in the 5th play session! (as he grew up, though, he began having bigger ideals: we stoped playing with he wanting to graduate on magical studies in MIT&T, and considering going back to Tir to help in revolutionaries ). THAT was the most memorable and fun character we had.

Now, of course, I know each group has its own playstyle, and maybe this not to ones´s tastes. No problem with that really. YMMV and all that.



I agree completely.

Everyone is different. At our table an average run-the actual game portions-take a week or less.

I just ask the PCs what they're doing with their spare time. If I don't get a reply, I check their knowledge skills, find one I like, and (s)he did that all the downtime.

"Wait, we were down for two months waiting for the heat to come down, and all you did was watch Urban Brawl? It's out of season!" "Yeah, but the Russian College League is just heating up. I had to get a Shareware Russian Linguisoft and I think I got most of it, in fact, the rules are very different, for one thing..." "You can stop. Right now. Stop. I mean it. I have an Uzi."

I think there's a disconnect between Missions timekeeping and a home campaign. Missions are short straightforward runs on rails. Characters don't have to do them in order, can take any amount of time between missions and continunity is tossed out the window.

This is simply the nature of missions.

I'm a huge fan of downtime. I find it really makes characters and the setting come alive, and if I just wanted to wargame, I suppose Shadowruns OK, but I might go for some WH40K.

From a practical point of view, "downtime" RP usually takes place at the beginning and ends of sessions. Often one player is late or something, and so we don't want to get into missions, but downtime is easily done with a subset of the full time. Usually there is some time at the end of the night too, especially once they start looking forward to it.

The key is to make it interesting. Throwing in stuff like secret admirers, practical jokes, domestic abuse next door, getting stuck with someones kid, and relationships of all sorts. At one point my players were set up in a relatively nice part of town, and I had a bunch of suburban punk "gangers" roll in. Vastly outclassed by the runners, and no threat aside from the occasional comment. But the runners didn't want to alert the cops over some punks, so they had to get creative. Pretty soon they're throwing barbeques and things. Also hobbies can lead to sort of free contacts.

As for passing time, I've sometimes taken to giving bonus karma based on lifestyle (either an official lifestyle, or spending an equivalent amount in an equivalent time on "hobbies"). It keeps everybody greedy, and perhaps quite a bit more realistic.

http://www.pvponline.com/1999/11/11/thu-nov-11/

But you only ever get it after a month passes in game.

On the note of time passing, I tend to have some new players, so usually I start with just the core book and maybe some choice bits and pieces from others, and set things at the start of that edition (if not earlier). As time passes in game I'll occasionally say "You found something interesting in the Matrix today" and I toss out a new book full of goodies to the group.

I didn't really do day jobs, but I'm now pondering it... Very CP2020

Awesome. hehe

I'm with Sunnyside on this one, also a huge fan of 'downtime' and have actually filled entire sessions with it and really used it to bring my SR3 game to life. In my opinion it's really the key to bringing the game world and the characters to life, and making a 'realistic' backdrop against which runs/missions can be set, and I use it to foreshadow upcoming events which may (or may not) interest the players/characters, throw in red herrings, introduce technological and social developments - some of which have game effects, some of which are fluff.

For example, our street sam is a big martial arts fan, his sensei keeps a dojo in the Ork Underground where the character has been spending alot of his downtime training, and has recently started exploring sections of the Underground which has allowed me to introduce a part of the world we've never looked at before. Our mage is a former street rat with links to The Ancients - he's recently shed his 'nomad' status and been repatched (thank you Sons Of Anarchy) and for good or ill been dragged back into the gang life - it's going to be an awesome for the Elven Fire adventure when I get around to running it. The sam is also a part time bouncer at DeClerry's in Tacoma (there's my link to the Mafia if I ever need it). The mage is a member of a magical coven which meets monthly, keeping up to date with magical developments. Alot of times these things can be glossed over in five minutes worth of dialog, other times we can spend entire sessions on them - developing characters, discovering new sections of the world, maintaining contacts, logging on to Shadowland, etc. All of which can be picked up later as story hooks. I always award karma for taking an active role in this sort of stuff, as I think it's important to our game.

I personally don't think a particular mechanic is necessary, but the most useful tool I use to keep everything flowing is my campaign log. Alongside a detailed timeline of the SR canon and an ingame timeline of sourcebook/adventure releases, it allows me to move the world along and throw in minor & major news stories & discoveries that makes the world feel like it doesn't just exist as a playground for the characters. I deliberately chose to begin my game in 2051, thereby allowing me the option to involve the runners in any particular published adventure/metaplot/world event that I fancy.

With regard to units of time, it depends. Some runs take place over days or weeks, as do some downtime events and travelling (on occasions when the runners leave Seattle) - I use my log to keep track of time and dates, lifestyle costs are charged at the end of the month, so if the runners are particularly flush with cash I can fill in an extended period of 'downtime' to empty their wallets, maybe a month or two between runs (some roleplayed, some not), other times they might have a run a week or even two runs on the go similtaneously whilst trying to deal with personal issues and resposibilities. Writing it down keeps it all straight. However you choose to do it, IMHO, opinion, downtime is very important to a well-rounded game.

Askani'son, I would be interested in the log setup that you maintain. Do you have a segment that you could provide for me to peruse? We kind of do this, but it is very much off the cuff, and I am interested in a different style of recordkeeping. I have a few ideas, but I would really like to see what you have come up with in this regard.

Tymeaus, no problem, I'd be happy to do that - after a couple of years worth of playing though, my campaign log runs fairly long (60+ pages), but I'm sure I could email you a section or something...

To be fair, it's nothing special format-wise, and you may not find my way of doing things suits your own game - I just use a basic word document. I've begun by noting major canon timeline and specific character history events in the years leading up to the campaign start date - that way when a major historical event is mentioned, it's easy for me to check if it's something a character may have a childhood recollection of or whatever - adds a bit of flavour and connection.

Sections after the campaign start date are headed with a rough date - 'start of June, 2051', 'last week of Sept, 2051', etc. If the focus of that 'time frame' is on a published adventure, I'll note that too, for the purposes of reference.

Within each time frame, text is divided into titled sections or scenes, if the scene is from a published adventure I'll note that in the section title along with the scene name. Within the text I'll describe what occured, bolding important character, location or item names for ease of finding later, and italicise 'mechanical' references such as the name of spells, skills, etc. The text itself may be as detailed or sparse as I need it to be - if it IS a scene from a published adventure the section will generally just cover the published scene (unless, as it often does, things go off the rails). If it's NOT a published adventure scene (I guess what we've been referring to as 'downtime') I'll give the scene a descriptive name and the section may cover minutes, hours or days in as much or little detail as required depending on the current or potential significance of the activity being undertaken. I'll end the text when it seems like a natural break or scene change. A scene may start with, for example, 'the following day', 'that evening', which allows me to keep a check on the passage of time. Often whilst running a published adventure I'll find that published scenes end up interspersed with 'downtime' sections if the players end up going off in an unforseen direction or feel the need to fulfill other responsibilties when time allows, or whatever. I'll also include a note of any news or events that the runners have heard, which really helps add flavour.

After each section or scene I use bullet point to make GM notes for myself on the scene - things like ammo spent, gear acquired, money spent, behind-the-scenes stuff, NPC notes, rules notes, potential loose ends and ideas that occur to me during the scene.

A given time frame would usually incorporate an entire published adventure (could be a single night, a few days, a week), or a similar duration (or longer) of non-published 'downtime' activities - whether roleplayed or dialogued. The time frame usually ends with the karma award for whatever's been accomplished, and a note to that effect, after which I'll begin afresh, noting the dateline of the new time frame which may begin immediately but usually days or weeks later depending on player and game needs. This way I can also keep track of when the rent's due (lifestyle costs payable at the end of the month), and things like that.

I update the log between sessions from memory and (maybe more reliably) notes that I make during the session, and it effectively works to keep all my notes for the game in one place as well as chroncling our ingame activities as a kind of story. Next session the log acts as a great recap on events from one or more previous sessions, since I often ask for player input regarding the details, it cuts down on game-slowing arguments about money, ammo spent, gear and misremembered events. if it's in the log, then it's pretty much gospel. Also makes a big difference to the smoothness of the game and the cohesiveness of the campaign as a whole - if I'm cut short on pre-game prep time, I find it MUCH easier to run something off-the-cuff if my campaign log is up to date.

I've been running games for nearly twenty years and I can safely say that this SR game is the most satisfying I've ever run (likewise for the players, I think), thanks largely to a really simple but incredibly useful tool.

Sounds Interesting Indeed... I would like to see a snippet (or even a whole journal), if you do not mind.

I have used Word in the past for many other games (DnD, Star Wars, Feng Shui, etc), but never for Shadowrun, and I used Publisher for my World of Darkness Games (I put out a weekly newsletter, from 8-32 pages, depending upon what was going on in the campaign at any given time).

Currently, I have been eyeing OneNote, as it has a lot of functions that I find useful for such things, but have not actually pulled the trigger on it yet. Still batting ideas around, and I am always up for more ideas/structure.

Thanks for the information...

I used OpenOffice.org to make PDFs of news reports that happen during the group's downtime, as if their CommLinks got them from ShadowSEA based on what's happened, as well as their interests.

*Sighs* I think only one person read them...

Yep, I know your pain...