Coming soon: A piece of enhanced fiction called "Another Rainy Night," by yours truly. Theoretically, it should be out the end of this month or the beginning of next month, but production issues could delay it again. I mean, it's already happened once, so....

Anyway, it has some original art by the remarkably talented Péter Tikos, including this character illustration, which looks nothing like how I originally envisioned the character...but it rocks. I really could not be more pleased with how the art came together for this project, and I'm tremendously happy that I can tease this illustration and show you a piece of things to come.

Let me know what you think.

The character looks interesting, and thanks for introducing Péter's art to me.

So, pardon my ignorance. What is 'enhanced fiction'?

The Enhanced Fiction line is a ebook product series that includes a full blown short story (as opposed to the short snippets of fiction you get in the books now), and then includes some game material linking to that fiction.

Technically, 99 Bottles was the first Enhanced Fiction product, but it's not really representative of what the line is supposed to be, as it's closer to a Mission than anything else (though it's a pretty nice little adventure in it's own right). Patrick's upcoming piece is what will hopefully be the style we'll be seeing more of in the future.

What Bull said...only probably longer. I tend to ramble.

Interesting. Photorealism isn't a style we've seen much in SR products. Not sure how I feel about that. Definitely beats the anime-style garbage that plagued SR3.

So what was your description of the character that lead Tikos to that image? (Or do we just have to wait for the e-book?)

meh. Compared to the other art on Peter's blog, a short guy in a turtleneck with prince valiant haircut is pretty underwhelming. There's nothing about that pic that says "Shadowrun" to me. The game is cartoonish, I'll take anime style.

Excited about the fiction tho.

Eagerly anticipating 'Another Rainy Night' - I'm very interested to see a 'proper' Enhanced Fiction SR-product (though I liked 99 Bottles very much).

Still say he looks like a goon from the first Max Payne game.

More or less...

Another long-distance night alone.

Actually, Max Payne would make a good Pink Mohawk/Noir character in Shadowrun.

Same here.
Nice picture, but it could be used for any character in any universe after the 1950s.

So, what would make that picture unique to Shadowrun?

I wonder how many people just didn't get that reference.

It's Queensryche, of course I got it. then again, I suspect I'm one of only about a dozen people left on the planet taht thinks of them as the "Soundtrack of Shadowrun", since everyone else seems to want to default to some kind of crappy techno.

Anyway, as for the pic and being "generic", well... that happens sometimes. It's justa character portrait, and not every charcter is going to scream "Shadowrun" or "Cyberpunk". I'd guess taht if you took at least 50% of the humans in Shadowrun artwork (any edition) and pulled just their image out and put it on a page alone, it would look pretty generic.

I really like Peter's work here. It's clean and it's detailed, which is all i really ask of my artwork. The character isn't a mage, isn't a cybermonster samuari, he's just a dude. So the fact taht he looks like Just A Dude works.

Bull

Oh, and for those wondering, here's the song and video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fuP3teihg&ob=av2e

I'm not certain that Patrick pulled the title from this song, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. I know I'm certainly guilty of ganking Song Lyrics for stuff (The last two missions I wrote, 04-00 and 04-05 each have a featured Band who provided all the Scene titles )

Plus, Queensryche is not unfamiliar with dystopian science fiction themes. And is from Bellevue!

I got it, Paul, and was grinning ear to ear. It's where I got the title, after all. That's about all the story has in common with the song, but I was looking for a short title (the original title for the story was a Warren Zevon song, "Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead," but that was way too long).

Deadlands had "Things to do in Denver when you're Undead".

Same here.

He's just a dude? Good to know.

Sometimes obvious is not the way my characters roll.

Sometimes the ones without any, or only a minor amount, of augmentations or magic are the ones you have to fear the most.

I've explained my "Accountant From Hell" to most people and they already don't want to mess with him. All he has are cyberoptics, a Math SPU, and a Datajack. All from the days when he was a wageslave.

To clarify, Thomas is a college professor and a doctor. Who watches too many action trids. Who gets handed a firearm. You think he's not going to do something goofy-looking?

"Safe-ty? Guns can be made safe?"

I wouldn't go quite as far as the 'soundtrack of shadowrun', but they're quite fitting, yeah =)



I am neither of those things, mind you! I may be guilty of watching too much action, sure - but I know how to handle a gun!

The muzzle goes at the thing you what dead, right?

Don Diego de la Vega: "Do you know how to use that thing?"
Alexander Murrieta: "Pointy end goes in the man."

Calling it the "Sound Track to Shadowrun" is actually pretty accurate. The early artists were huge fans, and I've heard that Joel Biske actually worked on Queensryche's website back in the early days of the Internet. Look through most SR1 and some SR2 books, and you'll see the Queensryche symbol everywhere, as buttons, T-shirt and jacket logos, and in graffiti. you'll also find song lyrics occasionally as graffiti.

As I've said elsewhere, I listen to a lot of Queensryche as my background music while I write these days, as well.

Bull

A doctor-turned-shadowrunner character huh? That could be interesting.

Oddly enough, I happen to know a number of doctors who are total gun bunnies, including a few ex-military transplant surgeons who would make badass SR characters and not goofy at all (quite scary actually).

But then, that doesn't fit the "just a dude" model.

I hope, when it finally hits the streets, that you guys like it. I'm really nervous about it. I think it's solid, and I'm proud of it...but it's a little bit of a different beast, I think. Maybe I'm just psyching myself out, I don't know.

It's also the first story I've actually finished, front-to-back, in like 10 years. I've finished other things for the game sourcebooks and such, but that's not the same as writing straight fiction. The sourcebook material...it's a piece of a larger whole. You have to say what you meant to say, but you don't have to carry the whole plot of a thing, you don't have to figure out the beginning, middle, and end.

It's hard to explain, which is odd, I know. But it's...maybe I'll just shut up and let you guys decide when it finally ships. I will reiterate that I think it's solid and I'm proud of it. I just hope other people like it.

One guy I know, when he made his first Shadowrun character (That didn't turn into an NPC at least. Bastard is good at backgrounds!), he made a street doctor with a rich history that did Shadowruns to help fund Sam's Surgery and Deli.

He was also a Guerrilla Journalist as a hobby, and dressed up as a Gorilla when doing so. He was exiled from Manhattan for climbing the Empire State Building while wearing it, fighting a Gargoyle and some Rotodrones. He was only exiled because it was good PR for the city.

The funny part is, he's a Dwarf, and a Parkour expert.

Oh, I know that there's a lot of Queensryche stuff in the art - made me quite happy, and after awhile I started looking for it, even. I didn't know that rumor about Biske though - cool!

I should really listen more to the 'old stuff'...

Oooookay...

That's already a movie, anyway...

The story is in proofing now; there's a picture of the cover up on the official Shadowrun page on Facebook.

100 Proof?

The smile and turtle neck are getting to me. The char looks like he's about to go get some coffee and use a mac to make people think he is working on a screenplay.

He does drink coffee in the story, but he's a little busy to be pretending to write a screenplay. Since the story's live now, you'll have to read it to find out why.

Coffee? The real stuff? That's going to cost him!

Alright!

It's out, and sitting on my desktop! I'm not gonna have time to read it tonight, but it looks neat.

Story, stats for 4 people, and...

stats for the Ford Americar...and...

...new ammo, a new aerosol-dispensing personal weapon, and a special 'toxin/compound' of sorts to use against certain creatures of the night. Liking those very much Mr. Goodman!

Yeah, I'm probably not going to be able to be coy much longer about what the story's about, I'm thinking....

Only thing I'm lacking is a section with suggestions for using the characters in our campaigns - although I'm sure the story can give some ideas.

Hm, maybe I should start a gang of Ford AmeriCar stealing Ghouls...

Well, Alice Bujold can be used anytime you deal with Knight Errant in the UCAS sector of Denver. She first turned up in Spy Games. Thomas McAllister can turn up anywhere you need him to; he first appeared in Running Wild.

"Fear the man with only one weapon, because he has to use it quite well"

-Tir.