For those not aware, there is a thread here in the Off Topic section on SG to see whether any might be interested in crowdsourcing to get Bull into the upcoming Shadowrun: Hong Kong game by HBS.

Likewise our favourite Neo Anarchist Podcaster is trying to get Opti into the game and you can see it here and use the link provided there to donate.
So if you like his reading of tales SR-ish and think it might be fun to run into him as an NPC then it may be worth tossing a few nuyen his way.

Opti has offered to let his donation page be used for also collecting toward the Bull fund and you can chip in by donating on the same page, just be sure to put "Bull" in the purpose box, this will let Opti keep track of donations toward the Bull Fund.
So why not help put some Bull into the upcoming game?

With 19 days to go it can still be done.

The link is not working.

You seem to have typed "http//..." instead of "http://...".

Here.

ah.. thought you meant the second one.. I double typed the http bit in the first .... fixed it now

Sorry for any confusion.

~hmmm~ I'm certainly not unbiased as far as having to pay that one grand is concerned. But my real questions here are:

Why would I want the Bull character in the Hong Kong setting?
Why would I want to pay for someone to get an already canonically established character into the game under the rules for how backers got their otherwise non-canon characters into the game?

Good questions.

While he is canon to the SR universe, like Canray said they are holding him to the same requisite as anyone else if we want him in there.

So in one way putting Bull in there is a bit of a easter egg for those contributing, it is something we can look toward to and he is well known enough that we could get enough folk to pool together for this.
Whereas if I wanted say Sendaz in there, I would probably struggle to get that much support together to pull it off.
(unless he was shootable by the player, then a few folk might contribute just to open fire on him I could see whole arcs devoted to just chasing him down and killing him in creative ingame ways )
I killed Sendaz by fire.
pfft.. we physically hooked him into a deck and let the decker run the psychotropic cyberprograms on him....

I remember reading a lot of Bull's articles over the years in the various supplements and such as well as his helpful posts both here and over on that other forum.

So I guess for me it is paying back a little bit of what he has given us as players over the years.

If enough of us each give a small bit we can accomplish what separately we probably couldn't do or reasonably justify the expense otherwise.

Again, not everyone can or may even want to.
And that is there choice.

We are just giving options.
(Edit: now there is some issue of timelines as Hong Kong is supposed to be 2056, which is around the time Bull was in Chicago, but we could still swing this via having players meet Bull online in the matrix perhaps, but seeing as he is a Decker this can still work and as they expanded the Matrix side with a stretch goal who can say?)

Grats on Opti reaching his own funding goal. The Crow Flies in Hong Kong! (plus he is not canonical so we are getting a regular guy in as well)

Edit: Bull Fund up to $140 $175 now. Closing in on the 20% mark toward goal.

Well, he will be now, right?

Sorry, but I've never been a fan of putting fan characters into official works, unless strictly for easter egg purposes.

While Opti will be in the game, I do not think that means he would be in other games down the road, except maybe expansions on the Hong Kong game itself.

As for being canon, it's more of a guest appearance in the game, I do not think HBG necessarily has influence over Catalyst concerning adding to the main lore.

There will be a Hong Kong Sourcebook, but that is probably already written up, so again fan characters probably won't be in there unless they get a special mention in a sidebar somewhere.

Opti is not necessarily not canon. There was a little blurb on the sidebar shadowtalk for missions adventure 5-1, where Optimyst talks about Giordanos Pizza. And Optimyst is Opti's longer name. But everyone probably already knew that.

Actually did not know that as I do not really follow all the missions...

The more you know

Frankly, I doubt anybody knew that.

*I* knew that

(As a note, this really, REALLY wasn't my idea. Can Ray got carried away with something, and Opti was kind enough to help him out. It's cool and awesome and I'm flattered by the whole thing though. )

Bull's not bad, but I bet we'd get a lot more interest if it was Mungo.

...no offense.

~Umi

I heard they did ask about that but all they got back was a lot of pale faces among the designers and a mumbled responses of Mungo being 'too big to fit into the game' and 'obscene violence level '.

The Bull Fund is up to $198 now, and just under 2 weeks to go so let's hope we can gather some more support.

$218 now...

Hey, it could've been worse. Could've been Bubba.

Yeah..... that's a whole skilltree I just don't even want to think about without some laes or brainbleach handy...

Update on the Bull Fund: Now up to $223 with just 7 days to go.

Remember, for the price of a cheap soykaf and a Nuke'em Dog you too can help put Bull's face in the game space

So skip the indigestion for one evening and bask in the warm glow of helping your fellow runner.

Or that might just be the residual effects from that last trip into Glow City.

It's 50/50, but probably the former (just in case you can find the potassium iodide tablets in the medkit )

Bubba and Mungo.

Shadow's Best Chummers Forever

nm

So... yeah. We actually got the money today. $1000 to get Bull in. You did it, chums!

WOO!!!

Wow, so we aren't hitting the 1st National Bank this afternoon then?

*crumples up the plans*

Just as well.

Umm. Holy drek. Wow. That's amazing. Thanks guys! I really don't know what to say...

Better make sure it's quotable, since we're gonna hear about it later.

RC over on SR Universe spotted THIS.

So good to know Bull is so popular.

I'll ask Andrew what he thinks, cuz... I'm pretty sure we have a perfect place to put Bull in, actually. Something we were talking about this morning.

Ooh... can you give us any hints/teasers on it? Pleeeeeeeeeease


Personally I am hoping they fit him in on the Matrix side, so maybe running into him in a node/host/etc....

Having recently played through Shadowrun HK, I can confirm that Bull is in the game. You run into him during a Run on Ares Asia. He doesnt have his Panther Cannon yet, though you can give him a laser cannon.

cool

Have not had a chance to sit down and play myself, but hopefully when things slow down here.

Not a laser cannon, just a prototype laser rifle, and it doesn't work yet. Though the tech genius on your team can make it work.

You can keep the rifle for yourself, but if you don't, Bull leaves some very helpful markers in the Matrix of the last big Matrix run you do. On the other hand, the rifle is pretty good, so...

Oh nice, because that's the next run I'll take.

It's the run where I'm presently stuck due to a bug I need to write HBS about...

Speaking of bugs, there will come a mission where you have to deal with Seoulpas, and a Johnson who does some shit that may make you want to say "screw the payday, I'm shooting this motherfucker right in the goddamn face."

If you decide to do both of them, but to first look as if you're siding with one of them so as to have them not shooting at you while you finish off the first side, do not allow the "allied" side's spokesman NPC to go down in the firefight, because if you do and then tell them you're doublecrossing them, you will be stuck in an endless combat mode with no enemies to kill who will put you out of it.

Awesome I look forward to meeting that old grumpy ork, maybe my chinese-american ork gillette can bat her eyelashes some.

Remember, SRHK is 2056. He's neither that old nor grumpy.

Tsk Bull was born grumpy

As my Disney shirt states "You say grumpy like it's a bad thing".

Actually, at one point, I was very much the hyper, annoying "new kid", who quickly gained a rep on ShadowRN for dragging topics very much Off Topic. e-mail, the internet, and Shadowrun were all still very new and VERY shiny to me, and I was excited to meet all these awesome people who shared my interests and with whom i could talk for hours and days and weeks and months about stuff.

It's telling that less than a year after I'd joined, I had the second highest post count overall to the mailing list of all the members. And the list had been around for a few years at that point.

And Bull the Ork Decker is really just a reflection of myself and my own personality. So he was much the same back then as well. He (and I) weren't old and grumpy until we hit our mid-30's.

I literally spent half of today trying to fix that. I HAD a solution that worked, a month and a half ago, but some stuff changed on the code side that I guess broke it. Sorry if you ran into it. :/ (Edit: I have a solution, I just need to test it more. It'll be fixed soon.)

It may not be endless, for me there were just 3 more Seoulpa up by where they came in I had to go find before it can drop out of combat. I've hit a bug that resets Racter's dialogue tree, though, and that's upset me. He's cool, and I'd like to continue his plotline, but it reset after doing the run on Ares.

Yeah, those guys spawned in. I shot them dead, but that didn't end the Endless Combat for me.

I do think it's odd that they didn't really use a lot of the lingo, as Bull also pointed out in his videos.

I realize they are catering to a wider audience who may not necessarily be familiar with cursing in SR, but somehow missing out on the use of drek and frag right at the beginning does feel a touch off.

Maybe that changes further in, but just now poking it a bit as schedule doesn't really allow a nice sit down at the moment.

Not necessarily.

Think about how weird it would be to hear someone in the US calling someone a "tosser," "wanker," "poof," or "nonce."
Now remember that we literally share a language with the UK. Almost all of the dialogue in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, is actually in Cantonese, it's just being presented in English as a translation convention so that those of us who aren't literate in Cantonese can understand it.

Why would the street slang of Hong Kong in 2056 bear any resemblance to the street slang of Seattle in 2056?

They actually make a point of it. One of the runners you can chat with at the bar is from Seattle, and your character's narration comments on how out of place 'drek' sounds in Cantonese.

I'm having a lot of problem with the Ares mission, actually. My character is a rifles character. That and decking is all she does. And the laser rifle is pretty darn awesome. But to get it... I have to tell Bull off, and I'm feeling a little RL guilty doing it

Worse, since I messed up my game and reloaded from a very early save*, I now have to do it twice!!


*I got the "this job is urgent" from Bao. I did a different job and he wrote me a snippy email saying it had been 'taken care of'. I figured it was a big mission that I'd missed and how could I play through 90% of the game knowing I'd missed a whole mission!! So I went back, and as auto-saves overwrite, I had to go back a long way, only to find out Bao's mission is less of a mission and more of a... scolding