Simple question: do you think it would be possible to take a wild divergence from canon and run a Shadowrun game in which alien life starts to poke around on Earth, and what it might entail?

I reckon it might be a way for players to play anything, from the local badass Prime Runners being contracted by a megacorp to ambush an alien abduction team and extract the extractors, to low-level being called upon by a desperate community of outsiders to protect them from the unknown threats that have been menacing them and finding far more than they bargained for, to a group of hardcore badasses, quite possibly those same runners from before, being scouted for inclusion in the eventual XCOM Project-alike entity that gets formed when it becomes clear this is not something within the scope of megacorporations and nations, and that one entity has to be formed to protect the world from these threats.


But, I wonder, what does this forum think? I know we have XCOM fans here, and if you're not a Shadowrun fan I question what you're doing here at all. Does anyone else think two great flavors could be mixed well, or would it be like ice-cream flavored pizza?

as a one shot, I think it adds up perfectly.

and for a longer campaign you could even start your players out as mundanes with little Cyber and then "Research" or discover alien tech
like Dermal plating and then mil spec armour and laser weapons and drugs and BIOWARE (call it symbiotics ?)

and you can have them have a pool of characters they want to play depending on the briefing ?

sniper for this mission, medic / assault for that

and late game you can even have them awaken if the player wants ... OR if they buy/build the correct safehouse addition

the more I think of it .. the more I like it

SR4 has the rules and the infrastructure, you just apply it to your world and imaginings

Also .. need to use the rules for battlefield panic from WAR!

for one reason only ....

You can have this with extraplanar threats rather than extra-terrestrial, as if the bugs and shedims were just the spearhead of a larger invasion.

In contrast to X-Com, it's very unlikely the corps would let the "X-Com" handle everything. They'd be all too willing to get their hands on the "aliens" for research or other uses. There would probably be heavy corruption of XCom and use of the aliens as pretexts for mundane sabotage.

Just make sure your players are ok with playing in that kind of game.

I think it'd mesh with Shadowrun very, very well.

Unlike in X-COM, in Shadowrun nobody is going to cooperate. All the nations are going to develop their own anti-UFO technology, and all the AAA's are going to do the same thing.

If the UCAS successfully shoots down a UFO, you can bet there's going to be a race to see who can get assets to the crash site and extract any technology, corpses, and survivors ASAP. So your Shadowrun team would be dealing with extensive legwork to find the location of any UFO activity, and then dealing with not only eliminating any alien threat at the site, but also any UCAS security forces that have shown up.

Of course, let's say the UCAS has already claimed the UFO and taken everything valuable off-site? Well I'm sure there are a bunch of corps and other countries that wouldn't mind hiring some deniable assets to locate the research facility where the UFO components have been taken. Any such laboratory suddenly became the goldmine of datasteals.

What if the UCAS has completed research on some alien weaponry and has a state-of-the-art manufacturing center that is building the first test-runs of a plasma-based weapon? You can't tell me Ares wouldn't be hiring to steal prototypes, research data, blueprints, etc...

I'm not sure how UFOs and Astral would work. You could imagine the aliens are either Astrally active, so they're Dual-Natured creatures, or they have unique Spirit servants, or whatever you can imagine.

I'd suggest you take a look at X-Com Apocalypse. It was pretty much dystopic cyberpunk+X-Com.

If I'm a theoretical metaphysicist circa Sixth World I've got to take seriously the postulation that the entire reawakening was set in motion by extra terrestrial technology despite lack of any direct evidence. Magic and astral projection don't work too far away from the biosphere so the astral nature of the aliens is important as mentioned below.

*Looks at title* Isn't that pretty much what SRR is?

I would play an X-Comm version of Shadowrun... It would be awesome.

X-Com Apocalypse was such an awesome game. The Turn-Based / Real Time Hybrid worked really well, and the retro-50's Sci-Fi graphics were really cool.

I believe Psionics/Molecular Control would look like mind-control magic, depending on how close to x-com you want to play. Not everyone had the latent ability, or at least enough to be useful, which would mean something like the latent awakening quality would work.

If you're going for more of the Shadowrun world, the information on the Grid Overwatch Division makes it sound like people can convince the corps to pretend to work together well enough to set up a joint taskforce. Then you can plan how much you want teamwork: are the players all from one corp or several. Just be aware you may end up with some Paranoia in the game that way.

Also, I'd throw in some paracritters. Aliens are weird, and the games loved to throw things at you that you weren't ready for. Also, they started you with joke weapons and no armor, so character death was common.

Maybe give higher-than normal karma awards and let them choose a team from a roster?

Let us know how it goes if you try it.

that would be amazing, you need to do jobs for multiple corps to get them to donate funds / researchers and engineers

and then you get one time missions for extra bonus points.

and PARANOIA ... is a BEE EE AYE UTIFUL thing to have in a game ! just don't overdo the in-party back stabbing, there needs to be some team cohesion or it all falls apart and they get DEAD .. Rapidly !

Somebody else actually played and enjoyed Apoc? I'm amazed. Except for poppers, fuck poppers, they are worse than chyrsallids.

Welcome to X-COM, this will be your base of operations for the forseeable future.

The world is at War! The great Dragons are silent and the Megacorps have retreated to their sanctuaries.
You few have been selected to represent MetaHumanity against an unknown foe.
Should you succeed the rewards will be abundant, should you fail, we all will fail.

My name is unimportant as is who I represent, but you may call me Mr. Johnson.

Before you are three packages, each one represents a task, You may take a task of your choosing and assign a team that best suits it's nuances.
each task also has it's own relevant rewards.
--------------

Mission ALPHA: Strike team - Enemy forces have overrun a facilty downdown, wipe them out and bring us corpses.
Reward : keep any equipment you find

Mission BRAVO: Infiltration - Horizon Corp has gained details of an advanced alien technology, retrieve it and destroy any evidence
Reward : research available - Biotech

Mission CHARLIE: Rescue - A team of DocWagon Biotechs is trapped in a bus downtown, rescue them and convince them to join us.
Reward : research team members with knowledge of alien artifacts

choose wisely, choose quickly, the enemy draws near.
-------------

GM info:

the Johnson is brokering the corps, and the corps are funding the initiative at different levels (obviously they don't trust it to work initially)

And in the course of time there may well be encounters with mutant alien/metahuman/paracritter experiments that each corp has independantly funded outside of XCOM.
just to add some more fear into the mix (Similar to the ALIENS movies where the corp wants a sample to create an army from hybrid tech)

Each mission is sponsored by a respective corp but the characters will not know which until completion though they may guess or use contacts
- (if contacts are still alive)

with each completed mission there are NOT personal monetary rewards but a team pool that the PC's can draw from to do three things:
1) improve gear
2) Pay for accelerated research into technology
3) improve the facilities available

as well as the normal Karma rewards

This. I would think that knowledge of X-Com's existence could be measured in hours before some corp or another would try to take it over. Of course, once word really starts to get out, they'd probably try to make it an arm of the Corporate Court (or their governmental puppets in the UN).

One game I haven't looked at in ages that falls into this theme is Conspiracy X, if you can get your hands on one of the sourcebooks for that. ConX is basically "X-Files made into a tabletop RPG" and plays extremely heavily on the "conspiracy within the government" theme, so you'd have to break that out along corporate lines (or make it one of the odd situations where governments are actually better than corps at something - ha!), but there's definitely enough inspiration and similarity to certain aspects of Shadowrun to use it as a jumping-off point. The big challenge, IMHO, would be figuring out how to make it sufficiently different from other elements of Shadowrun to be interesting. What is it about alien invasions that gives them a unique place in the game world?

Then again, it could be that I'm overthinking it and you and your players just wanna splatter some aliens. There's always the "inspired by" angle for that, if you don't want to go to the trouble of retooling everything for the setting. A former GM of mine in a different game system once had us fighting in underground tunnels against genetically modified alien creatures, all of which said "KEKEKEKEKEKEKE" and looked suspiciously like Zerglings.

Well, you scrub the actual History of Shadowrun, and fill in with your X-Com History. Then you just use the system.
Would work really well, in my opinion.

Actually i don't think it can be done, not without major change to the shadowrun universe to fit with the X-com universe. The reason I feel like this is because comparing the enemies in X-com to the usual players in shadowrun (not including the min-maxers) The shadowrun universe is way overpowered. Especially when the aliens just start scouting the earth and I'm not sure the players can wait around or fight though very easy fight until the more challenging enemies appear.

However like Mach_Ten and Tymeaus mentioned in those scenarios it is possible.

But I have one question to raise, how will the alien deal with magic uses and the paranormal things in shadowrun for I think just because of that the aliens will take one look into the Shadowrun universe and say," Yeah lets just skip this one."

Feel free to prove me wrong.

That's the rub, Maybe the AAA's tried to keep a lid on the news that aliens had arrived because they underestimated the threat ... or didn't have the tech to detect them approaching
" it's just some little grey guys with plasma pistols ... Aaaaaaw dey is so cuuute!"
so they try and communicate and trade technology and keep the info from the mass population

then *BLAM* fucking invasion man ! .. Game over maaan!
the fleet arrives and suddenly it's millions of little grey men with mind control and Chrysallids and DISKS and fucking MUTONS ....
There is NO WAY that they are underpowered compared to char gen SR4 Characters.



What IF :

the magic and spirits and para-critters are the REASON the aliens are here ? the Ethereals maybe have a need to feed on their energies or somesuch (WE DON'T KNOW)

Meta-Humanity just happens to be an annoying bug that is in the way and needs squashing?

There's a difference between the players/PCs not knowing and the GM not knowing. The former is fine, the latter usually means there's little to no justification for in-game events. IMHO, without some kind of internal consistency it's not going to be a very good story, which brings us back to the question of what an X-COM-style alien invasion will offer the Shadowrun universe that it doesn't already have. How is an alien invasion that's going to use mana as a fuel source and destroy the world any different from the return of the Horrors using mana as a fuel source and destroying the world, besides "because aliens" (or "because X-COM")? As a one-shot, sure, it would be fun to do as a change of pace (same theme but different "flavour"). Same goes for what TJ suggested with just scrubbing SR history, which gives you "The X-COM Roleplaying Game" with SR4 mechanics.

As for actually integrating the X-COM setting fully into the Shadowrun setting? Sure, there's no reason you can't go "dude, aliens want to eat all our mana and kill the entire population of Earth!". There's no reason you can't make a body similar to X-COM that's a subdivision of the Corporate Court Crisis Coordination Committee (no wonder they just call it C5), and have one or more megacorps actively working on "anti-alien weaponry" for the purpose. I guess my hangup is just that it seems like an awful lot of work to try to completely integrate the two settings for the sake of being able to say "because aliens" instead of "because magic" or "because Matrix". If that's what you want to do with your game, though, go nuts.

yeah, what Freya said! if your players really buy into the SR canon, don't kill it off ... they'll get pissed

Or the players have been recruited by a new arm of the corporate court, formed of second and third rate members of their corporations, similar to the ARM/GOD, and the players are new players in the buisness who want to help and have enlisted, been assigned to a team and are starting to be sent on low priority missions. After they prove their mettle, they start to get better corp backing. Gear can be requested, but is subject to availability (at a reduced rate) until they get to a certain level.

You still believe a single dragon could raze down Tehran, don't you? Aden was fighting alongside the Iranian Revolution Guards. He's the only living being who made it out alive.

That attack actually was far easier to cover up than the next one. That story of US rogue units in Europe? It never happened, but we had to explain the Russian casualties report while no European units had engaged them. Few people in the organization really believed we would be able the whole thing secret when the alien destroyed both Russian and European Allies field headquarters during the final assault. I still think that story of an Arab and Turkish army of volunteers surrounding Vienna was pushing our luck too far. Go figure.

At least we had media under control at the time. I guess we should probably have brought Horizon on-board earlier. When they got those footage of aliens and landing ships in Bogotá, it was probably the biggest threat on our organization for a long time. Carnivorous trees and submarines! I can still hear director Carlsen laugh at it.

But this time, really, I don't know how we're gonna deal with the ongoing situation in Northern Italy. Over 10,000 dead in six months. Maybe it's time.

The thing I like most about the idea is that it doesn't detract from the setting too much, (mostly)
compared to say the apocalypse / wasteland scenarios where Tech is all gone (anyone watching Revolution btw?)

that infrastructure is still there, and the XCOM idea has a more unifying agenda BUT still maintains all the undertones of paranoia
where it's all happy and blowing aliens up but then *POW* whaddya mean ARES Pulled our funding ? but we almost researched laser weapons !! .. and now there are bigger aliens and ... oh crap

There's no need to remove key elements of the game to make it work, it just kinda fits ... obviously as above the history aspect goes out the window with the baby and the bathwater ... but if you can handle that .. then .. it works I think

Having played multiple genre's using just the Shadowrun SYSTEM, it can be a lot of fun.
I remember a game in San Antonio, TX where we played X-Com using a Generic System (Similar to Gurps or Champions), and it was loads of fun, as well. Shadowrun 4 has the benefit of having some very robust mechanics that you can re-flavor to taste, depending upon Genre.

Bith ways could work and be really fun.

As far as the xcom settting using shadowrun rules system, it could really work. Make it so that magic is the psionic powers, and bam! Only trick would be telling your group they can't start with magic until your team researches psychic abilities.

"Geek the Sectoid Commander first."

The first time I encountered that bastard, he mind-controlled my best teamie. I thought that it would work like when a Sectoid mind-controls another Sectoid: kill the controller, kill the controlled, so I had everybody pop caps in his ass with their pistols to get him below 3 health, then gave him a jolt with the arc thrower.

It turns out that it doesn't work that way, you can just pop the mind-controller to free them. Still, it's worth capturing a Commander!

Damnit, now I wish I could get in on a game of this as a player!

It would be pretty awesome to see a Muton Berzerker scream and rage... And run right the fuck into a Troll Street Samurai bigger than him and wearing far more chrome...

The real trick, I think, would be statting up the aliens and their tech, and figuring out how the alien's psychic powers work and interact with Magic, without actually BEING Magic.

Lets be honest here, you wish you could get into any game as a player

Some more than others. And I wouldn't enjoy a D&D 4^th edition game, or the new Gamma World (I've tried both.). But, yeah, pretty much otherwise.