I'll just leave this here for you, chummers.

http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product...roducts_id=3144

Still reading the short story, but so far I'm diggin' it.

Also: can I safely assume that the runners that are in the short story are the same ones that are on the cover of the SR5 rulebook?

Glad to hear it.


Oh, yeah.

Got it. Haven't read it yet. Likely tonight or tomorrow.

Ok, finished reading through it. So far, really liking what I'm reading.

Both the short story and the introduction does a good job at introducing the world of Shadowrun as well as the tone of the setting. The intro in of itself is definitely something I (as a GM) would read out loud at the beginning of a campaign, especially to first-timers to Shadowrun, just to set the mood and give an idea of what to expect. Bang up job on the short, Critias.

Also, a couple of thoughts from the short story itself (which I will go ahead and put in spoiler tags)

-Some interesting things revealed about cyberdecks in SR5: our decker Gentry here seems to have made his by cobbling together commlinks, and is described as a "drek-hot Renraku hackpack rig". So I'm going to go ahead and assume Gentry made it from a bunch of Renraku Sensei 'links. In other words, you CAN modify commlinks to hack...sort of. You just string a bunch of them together to make 'em more powerful.

-I dig the narrative framing for this one: switching between the perspectives of our four runners and their lines of thinking on the run, as well as a bit of characterization here and there.

-Ares wagemage insect shaman confirmed.

...

I'll let that one sink in for all of you (and any particularly evil GMs).

-Took me a bit before I figured out the meaning behind Coydog's street name. Nice.

Oh, and one thing I should note to all that get this: this preview is pure fluff only, with NO crunch. So keep that in mind.

Excellent job, Crit. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these characters in the future.



I'd hoped I had misinterpreted that. Apparently not.

Glad folks are digging Sledge, Hardpoint, Gentry, and Coydog so far (I hadn't meant for her name to be TOO mysterious or subtle, FWIW, but maybe I'm slanted by living in real-life 'yote country for lots of my life)! It was weird to try and write the story after seeing artwork (almost reverse engineering the fiction), but I think it turned out okay. It was fun to bounce from perspective to perspective, too, trying to give each character their moment in the spotlight (while someone else watched them be a badass), and hopefully it appeals to the fans of all these genre tropes pretty evenly.

Just to repeat -- this preview is very much meant to be a teaser trailer, at this point. Fluff, not crunch. An introduction to the setting, a taste, for folks who aren't already hip-deep in it. There are more previews coming, and Ghost only knows how much Jason plans on spilling before the release date. There's no stoppin' him, he's mad with new edition power, I tells ya! Maaaaad!

Yeah, the "Coy" I thought to mean that she was...well, coy. Didn't think the "Dog" part was more significant in relation to the first part.

Now I'm not sure if you're the right guy to ask this, but I'm going to anyways:

Are the next previews going to be just fluff, just crunch, or a mix of both?

That's above my pay grade. Just keep an eye out, is all we can really say.

Fair enough.

Still, Summer 2013 is shaping out to be a good one (at least for me).

I did like that, having them show someone else doing their thing while they watch and focus on their part. Which makes Gentry all the more badass when he's down to the wire, opening the escape. Of course, I had Dancing Mad playing in the background and it hit the fourth movement right about then, which certainly didn't hurt.

I was definitely expecting a bit of crunch with the opening warning that Page XX citations would of course be corrected, though.

Note that this clearly says Preview One. Which implies there will be more coming.

Okay, I'm missing it. What's with Coydog's name?

It's just a type of animal. A coydog is a nickname for a coyote/dog mix. More independent and feral than a dog, but more likely to be found in a city (not just at the fringes) than a full coyote. Coydog, in the fiction, is a Salish shaman who was raised in Seattle (mixing tribal expectations and city-kid street smarts).

I thought it worked okay.

That was ... too obvious for me to even consider

Wolfdogs are what we have up here in Canada, same deal. Feral nature of wolves, no fear of humans like dogs.

They can be trained, however, and make killer guard critters. Even scarier is the feral ones that see your family as "Pack" in some of the more rural parts of Canada. Yeah, someone shouts from your house in fear or pain, someone's going to be getting a hurting!

Well, yeah. Like I said, *I* didn't think it was some terribly deep or clever name, so much as catchy and appropriate. Just wanted to explain it, for folks who'd had it hyped up by Tasti Man.

Great fiction has an old school run feel with SOTA details.

I like the fluff which to me is almost more important than crunch in such a stratified game like sr. Only thing im kinda sad about is that the powers that be are moving Ares firmly into the Insect camp and that sucks even if it makes sense from the storyline. I may have to hate Ares more than I hate azzies... such a sad day.

ares has been in the insect spirit camp for years.

The city is Tenochtitlán ?
I think a "a" is missing in "Dassault tech"; in the city there is "Dassult tech".

I think its Seattle. They also have a big Pyramid in the middle.

Two, actually. Aztechnology and Renraku arcologies are both pyramids.

http://imageshack.us/a/img189/4571/seattle2072.jpg

For the fiction, the city is Seattle (even with several canon locations featured/name-dropped).

Yeah, because I was about to say; the blogpost claims that the city is supposed to be Tenochtitlán.

...

...sooooo first error for SR5?

The 'Dassult Tech' would be a mistake in the picture, but the blog post only states that the big panorama is the Tenochtitlán Skyline. Since there is no Puget Sound visible near the big pyramid thing, nor the Space Needle, I'd say it's as advertised

Well, now time for me to peek into the old Aztlan book to see if there really are two pyramids in that sprawl...

No, no. I meant that there are two pyramids in the Seattle 'plex

I interpreted Ixal's 'They also have a big Pyramid in the middle' as Seattle.

In Tenochtitlán itself I suspect a bit more than only two pyramids.

Sorry if I was unclear: The cityscape picture is not of the city the fiction takes place in. The cover art picture -- which was already released -- is linked to the intro fic.

Assuming that the story reflects the actual crunch, cyberdecks can seemingly be a cluster of modified commlinks and other components (including "those goggles of his, half shooting glasses and half supercomputers"), rather than a single device in the shape of a C64.

...and one point of criticism: A newly summoned insect spirit cannot affect the material world. Only True Form spirits (which have inhabited a vessel) gain the Materialization power; that is one of the reasons why bugs need to play Body Snatchers from Outer Space.

I go out of my way for my stories to reflect actual crunch. It may or may not be exactly what you just described, but...my stories reflect actual crunch.


I'm not going to spoil later fiction or anything like that, but -- this was not a mistake. A concession was made (on my part) to the artwork, and it may not be exactly what it looks like, but it was NOT a retcon or an error, FWIW.

"We can neither confirm nor deny...."

bugs the new voodoo munckinry? c/d

Perhaps bugs are getting even more dangerous...

So the eggheads of Ares R&D figured out how to bring bug spirits directly into the material plane...

Well SHIT.



Don't tell me you let people play as PC insect shamans (or you yourself played as one).

well, i haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but speculatively:

- it could be a free spirit that happens to look like an insect
- it could be a free spirit that is also an insect spirit
- in the event that it is a true form, it could have simply been previously bound and the magician simply called it into active duty, so to speak

"...all she could see of him was the faintly glowing blade and the occasional muzzle flash of a point-black shot."

Should be point-blank?

If you can get me an advance copy of the SR5E rulebook, I'll find editing mistakes for free!

Oh, I enjoyed the story, btw!

Notice the disclaimer on p. 1

The story is quite clear in that the spirit gets summoned with all bells and whistles, the mage does not just snap her fingers to call up a spirit from the side lines. Yep, it looks like Ares found a way to bring bugs into the material plane directly, which would be REALLY bad. And not just because of the bugs. The fluff reason bugs without a host cannot Materialize and suffer Evanescence is that they come from a far-off metaplane and therefore need an anchor in our world, now beings from the deep metaplane of ohfuck apparently have an easier time coming over...

No bet says we'll see as 'how do I optimize my new insect shaman' thread within a week of release.

Two pyramids in Seattle ?

Yep. The imaginatively-named Renraku Arcology (now some stupid acronym, ACHE I think), and the just-as-imaginatively-named Aztechnology Pyramid.

The ACHE is a modern Egyptian-style pyramid with a flat top, while the Aztechnology Arcology is a modern South American-style Stepped Pyramid.

"Anatomy of a Shadowrun" was great. I'd love to see these SR5 characters pointed out with beginner stats and used as the POV and example characters throughout the rules. Liberal use of that, and explaining where the dice fell during the fluff would be a great help to everyone while they learn the new system, IMO.

Thorguild

With a bullet to the brain pan!

you clearly didn't spend enough time trying to kill bugs as a child.

one bullet? not reliable enough. use a flamethrower, or chemical weapons

Kill it with fire, definitely applies here.

I think you will enjoy the Intro Box Set, when it comes out.

Talking about the shaman here, not the bugs.

Still applies, Bigity.