Does everyone remember the famous film, Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZl2M8BLERs

I was playing Dragonfall again the other night and reflected that even if you try to play a "good guy" character you still basically end up killing people for money, unless you decline a lot of jobs.

Today I remembered the "Seven Samurai" where a bunch of disenfranchised and impoverished samurai defend a village against overwhelming odds in exchange for three meals a day.

Maybe it could be a great set-up for a Shadowrun campaign. You could easily have a village somewhere menaced by a large gang and defended by a handful of down-on-their luck sammies.

I could sort of see a samurai character growing tired of the body-count rat race of taking runs in the normal manner, and who might see something like this as a situation to socially establish him/herself in a small village and sort of get away from it all. Or maybe a character sees it as atonement for past misdeeds. Maybe there's some Rambo IV syndrome going on.

The more I think about it, with the right player characters, it sounds like it could be a really compelling and very tactical campaign.

Actually, I had a Seven Samurai-esque adventure in the wings for awhile.

(helps that it was rekindled by Magnificent Seven)

That the PCs would be at their lowest point, where for whatever reason (a high-profile run gone tits up, they pissed off a great dragon that decided instead of killing them is instead pulling their resources to make sure they don't ever get work again) get contracted out by a little backwater town that's under constant assault and pressure by either a large group of gangers/bandits that LS or KE aren't going to lift a finger to help, they're getting paid practically nothing, but it's the right thing to do.

Who knows, we'll see...

I think these sorts of theme games work best as an event rather than a part of or as a regular game. Something you run at a convention or as a special event for your regular group.

That said, this sounds amazing.

and in Battle Beyond the Stars
(Robert Vaughn plays the reincarnation of himself in Magnificient 7)

The 7 Samurai is a classical Theme not only for Shadowrun
but I guess for any RPG Genre.
Its material for a Mini Campaign or a short Adventure to be inserted in an ongoing Campaign
Its such a classical material (Heroe's band together to defend the Helpless against Evil) that I wonder why the Greek had no such Legend ?

with a Dance beyond the Stars
Medicineman

You could even do Seven Samurai vs giant robots.



-k

You mean Seven Physads vs Giant Drones right?

Technically Seven Physads vs Giant Cyborgs.


-k

To do it right, though, you need tough characters. The concept may be street-level and gritty, but the characters should be built more like Marv from Sin City. If the group faces equal opposition, then you will lose the whole feel - you need large numbers of low-skilled but overconfident thugs who are more used to bullying shopkeepers than fighting. The challenge should come from numbers and attrition.

Someone told me once that he GMed (or wanted to, I don't remember exactly) such a game but with a twist: the job was just to teach the villagers how to defend themselves and set up the defenses.

Then they got another job: "We've got this group of rebels, they've got themselves some mercenaries to train them and set up their defenses, so we need a team to get rid of them."

Played in one of these in a L5R game once, with ronin originally from all different clans. Was pretty good stuff, but SR sounds better. More like the Magnificent Seven western version.

Could be great fun, as a massive Kurosawa/Mifune fan, I may have to spring this on my group.

Also plays well to the lethality and noir sensibilities of Shadowrun--after all remember how it ends.

[edit]

For a Shadowrun conversion, I'm thinking less "small farming village threatened by bandits" and more "small barrens commune threatened by gangers." Instead of being paid with rice, the runners are getting paid with fresh produce from the community garden. Beats the drek out of soy-snacks, and considering "real food" is essentially an upper tier luxury item in SR, it's a much more viable form of payment for those who appreciate that stuff. Hell, even if you were all about the nuyen you could probably have your fixer fence the veggies to a fancy restaurant for a tidy profit.

Yeah, definitely liking this idea...

I started a game running a game like this once. A self sufficient farming village in the middle of the Redmond Barrens hired the PCs to help fight off a Biker Gang that had been giving them trouble. We didn't get very far, but my plan was to give them a set number of able bodied adults, as well as a small "discretionary" budget, which they could use to buy/build defenses, arm the villager, etc. There was also a couple of skilled villagers, A mechanic, etc that they could assign to tasks.

The gang would then come rolling in with a couple of small waves, followed by the final assault. With time between of course to allow stealthy characters the opportunity to go steal the "musket" (for you Seven Samurai fans).

This is called Samurai Seven. I would link to it on ANN, but my phone makes such thingdifficult at best. Decent anime. The peasent"Samurai" is a steambot.

Old thread, but with lots of ideas about a Seven Street Samurai mini-campaing -> http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=24596