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Did that stop me from appreciating Shadowrun, though? Hell, no. Just because I’d never gotten my hands on it didn’t mean I couldn’t love the idea behind the setting. I’d often describe the line to friends as, “Imagine if a Neal Stephenson novel and a D&D adventure module had hot, sweaty unprotected sex.” That’s not entirely appropriate, of course, as I’ve since learned, but the idea of a setting that could blend such disparate concepts held great appeal to me. So, it was with a head full of half-founded ideas about Shadowrun, most of them positive, and a Barnes & Noble gift card in my wallet that I found Shadowrun Fourth Edition lying on the shelf at my local store. I scooped it up, returned to my dorm, and cracked it open. I repeat: I have never played Shadowrun before in my life. I have no real idea how this differs from Third Edition, and whether those changes are for good or for ill. You’re getting this opinion from the ideal customer for the RPG market: someone who has never played the game before, but finds the concept so appealing that they just have to get into the hobby. At the same time, I’ll be bringing the perspective of someone who’s at least had some experience with other systems, and thus can draw a comparison between the positive and negative elements of this game and others.
For those of you who have never heard of Shadowrun, a brief intro: It’s the year 2070. Megacorporations basically rule the world, highly-advanced cybernetic limbs and implants are the norm, and everyone is connected into an ever present WiFi Internet known as the Matrix. At the same time, magic came pouring back into the world in 2011, so alongside all of this, mages walk the streets, elves have their own nations, and a dragon served as President of the United States (not for very long, of course, but that's another story). You are a shadowrunner, the pawn of the corporations, various criminal enterprises, or anyone with enough cash to their name. You do things that are not very legal, and you do them for profit. Sure, it’s risky, sure, it’s not exactly wholesome- but hey, it’s better than a desk job.
So, fair warning and lengthy exposition out of the way, let’s get into this monster, shall we?
The book opens with Buzzkill, a piece of fiction detailing a group of runners, one of their jobs, and how it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. The fiction is satisfactory, and gets across the basic themes of the game:
1) What you are doing is very, very wrong in the eyes of the law. 2) What you are doing is very dangerous, and there is a good chance your skull will get ventilated before the night’s through. 3) What you are doing associates you with some very dangerous people, many of whom will gladly shoot you in the face for a few bucks.
With all that out of the way, we get into the book itself. The first three chapters- Welcome to the Shadows, A History Lesson for the Reality Impaired, and Life on the Edge- all go toward fleshing out the setting. “Welcome” introduces the reader to the basic archetypes of the game (magic user, physical adept, hacker, rigger, face, and street samurai) and some of the setting features. “History” is a record by FastJack, a guy who’s been around from the time the shit first hit the fan, and goes into explaining all the little factors that led to the world as it is in 2070: corporate takeovers, plagues, secession after secession after secession, natural disasters, magic returns, bug spirits, mad AI- LEONARD BERNSTEIN!
Ahem. Sorry. From there, we go into “Life”, which tells you what’s going on in 2070 with regards to crime, pop culture, the corporate world, magic, and that most crucial element of every RPG, sex. Everyone’s personally Wi-Fi enabled, no one really “gets” magic (though, for the most part, they’ve accepted it), the megacorporations are God, and there’s no lack of gang activity, organized crime or racial strife. All the more fun for you and your band of misfits.
Now that we’ve devoted a good three chapters to setting, it’s time to get into system. Or, at least, parts of the system. In Game Concepts, we begin with the system used to resolve everything in the game. The player rolls a series of d6s, determined by the PC’s ranks in an attribute and associated skill. Each 5 or 6 counts as a success, and it’s the player’s goal to at least match the number of successes (the “threshold”) determined by the GM. There are simple Success Tests, Opposed Tests, and Extended Tests, as well as glitches (when you succeed, but at least half of your rolls turn up 1s- “Okay, you outrun the guards, but trip and drop one of your guns”), critical glitches (when you roll no successes and at least half your rolls are 1s- “You trip and fall while fleeing the guards… oh, and your pants fall down”), and Edge (your basic “I need a bonus” stat). So, at its core, it’s the Storyteller system, only with d6s instead of d10s. The chapter also has some good suggestions on possible ways to run the game, in case you want to run your game as The Fifth Element (more cinematic), Reservoir Dogs (more lethal), or Blade Runner (grittier), as well as suggestions for alternate forms of combat, other ways to use Edge, and other ways to run Attribute-only tests. The chapter also covers the basics of each metavariant (human, elf, dwarf, ork, and troll), as well as what the main statistics represent. There are eight main statistics, as well as five “special” stats: Body (how much you can take physically), Agility (how skilled you are with your body), Reaction (how quick you react physically), Strength (somewhat obvious), Charisma (your ability to influence others, for good or for ill), Intuition (your mental acuity), Logic (how much you can remember or learn), Willpower (how much you can take mentally), Edge (the aforementioned “luck” attribute), Initiative (your reaction time in combat; derived from Reaction and Intuition), Essence (your bodily wholeness; affects Magic and Resonance scores, and decreases with introduction of cyber/bioware), Magic (an adept, shaman, or mage’s eldritch prowess; mutually exclusive with Resonance), and Resonance (a technomancer’s ability to reach out and touch the Matrix; mutually exclusive with Magic). This information, while helpful, seems a little tacked-on to the end of the chapter.
And with that, the chapter also points towards a problem which really rears its head in Creating a Shadowrunner- that is, the scattering of information throughout the game book. One section of the book covers the basics of each metavariant and what each attribute means, another section covers how to stat up a character, another section tells you what skills you can take, and so on. Now, I’ve read books that use the same layout, specifically the D&D Player’s Handbook. The thing is, in D&D, separate stat pools are used for attributes, skills, equipment, and magic, which means you can deal with all these sections in turn. Paying for equipment may be a bitch, but it can be done after everything else.
In Shadowrun, on the other hand, your character is created using a base pool of 400 Build Points. These points are used to buy everything, from metavariant to attributes to skills to qualities to spells to gear (attributes cost 10 BP per rank, active skills go at 4 BP, it’s 3 BP per spell, and you get 5000 nuyen- the game’s currency- per BP). Which means that once you’ve actually managed to spend all your points, you will most likely be going back and tweaking your character as much as you can before play begins. When creating my first character, it took me about four hours to get anywhere near straightening everything out. I’m sure that time will decrease with practice (it took me about one-and-a-half hours to recreate the character when I lost the sheet), but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time my D&D group spent an entire night writing up 12th level characters for an one-shot.
I do have to give the book some credit, though, for including a list of pregenerated characters, complete with full color illustrations and full stats. These are good for people who want to get into the game without spending a lot of time working on a character, as well as providing some basic advice on where to spend your points. That, and they have some pretty good illustrations, some of which caused me to look at the basic metavariants in ways I’d never thought of before (four words: hot Chinese ork women).
The next chapter goes into Skills. Oh, God, does it go into Skills. Eleven different skills for weapons (not counting Unarmed Combat), six different piloting skills, and a whole lot of other lists to match. Fortunately, the book does offer up a reasonable solution for some of these skills: taking ranks in a skill group (a cluster of three or four skills) for 10 BP per rank rather than buying ranks in each individual skill for 4 BP per rank. Mind you, this only works if you’re going for a build that’s probably going to need every skill in a group (such as combat specialist, magic user, or technomancer), but it works. There are three different kinds of skills: Active, Knowledge, and Language. Active are the ones you will be using most often, and the book openly admits that Knowledge and Language Skills are more for character development rather than usefulness during a run. Still, this isn’t much of a problem, as the player automatically gets a number of points to spend on Knowledges and Languages based on their Intuition and Logic stats.
And now, we get into that which will soon be near and dear to every runner’s heart: Combat. I can’t find much fault with the basic system. Like in D&D, initiative is rolled for, and each turn is split into a series of action: Free Actions (which can be taken at any point past your first turn in a round), Simple Actions (such as drawing a weapon, firing a simple handgun, or sprinting), or Complex Actions (such as firing a heavy gun, using a melee attack, or using a skill). Each player can take two Simple Actions or one Complex Action during their turn. Each player acts on their Initiative at least once during a round; certain cyberware, spells, and adept powers allow a player a second or even third Initiative Pass (turn) during a round. The book also devotes a good amount of time to the specifics of ranged, melee, and vehicular combat, and contains lists of combat modifiers for (almost) every situation. While it may require a bookmark or two, it’s probably one of the smoother parts of the book.
From here, we get into the character-specific specialties, diving into what magic means in The Awakened World. I find the magic system one of the most interesting parts of the game. That may be the magic user preference talking, but after playing game after game where spell points or slots determine what you can cast and power is tied firmly to progression, I like the variety. If you have the spell, as well as the means, you can do anything with it. You’ll just have to deal with the cost—physically. Cast spells up to your level in Magic, you’ll have to deal with Stun (non-lethal) damage; cast it above your level, and the burn will be Physical (lethal). Cast a fireball that could take out an army of security guards- right at character creation? Yeah, you’ll probably go into a coma after doing it, but you can.
There are three major traditions (yes, Mage players, those kinds of traditions) in the Sixth World: shamanic (relying on spirits and mentors), hermetic (relying on logic and research), and somatic (magic used purely to power the body- practiced by adepts). The book also features suggestions for how to create your own tradition, so you can say your magic comes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster if you want to (at least, until the GM beats you senseless). Magic is split into two major skill categories: Sorcery (spellcasting and counterspelling) and Conjuring (the summoning, binding, and dismissing of spirits). There are also rules on fetishes and foci, items which give you a boost to your magical abilities in certain limited categories.
The Wireless World effectively blends character-specific crunch and background information to clue us in to that which keeps the world of 2070 reasonably together: the Matrix. The Matrix is a wireless Internet resource that anyone worth their name in nuyen is connected to in some aspect, be they hacker or surfer. The Matrix uses an augmented reality interface; people with the right equipment can use their commlinks (portable computers… in a sense) to look up the info of any guy they meet on the street, play massively multiplayer games in real life, or possibly hack into that security drone that’s currently firing on them.
That takes us onto hacking and virtual reality, an important part of any Shadowrun game. Hackers can either use their programs and technical prowess to do their dirty work, or they can fully immerse themselves in the Matrix, “physically” attacking security protocols and wrestling away data. When a hacker goes into VR, he has two options for how to process the data around him: cold sim and hot sim. While hot sim allows a hacker to act faster than cold sim, it carries the risk of addiction (as the entire Matrix effectively induces the same brainwave activity as speed) and real damage (as dumpshock- being forcibly kicked out of the Matrix- deals Physical damage to hot simmers, as opposed to Stun damage for cold simmers).
The chapter closes with a well-rounded description of technomancers, as well as a brief section on rigging. Technomancers, as the name implies, are basically shamans of the Matrix; they can interact with the Matrix without need of a commlink, they can compile their own hacker programs (known as Complex Forms), and even call upon the Matrix’s equivalent of spirits, known as “sprites.” There is a downside, however: whenever a technomancer goes deep into the Matrix, they are always acting as if under hot sim. While there’s no addiction risk, there’s still the risk of significant physical damage. Which means that if you want to play a technomancer, you might want to watch your back around security protocols that appear larger than a Buick.
From here, we go into Running the Shadows. I’m going to be honest; in some aspects I think “Running” is the chapter where the designers saw all the info they had left over and said, “Well, let’s just throw it all in the GM’s section.” The chapter opens with info on healing, addiction, toxins, security measures, and your runner’s lifestyle, and then goes into Karma (the game’s equivalent of XP), Street Cred and Notoriety (statistics that tell everyone how bad-ass and, well, just plain bad your runner is), and ideas for GMs. Thematically, it all ties together, but objectively… eh.
Karma works on your basic “spend XP for greater stuff” mechanic; nothing new, but I did find it interesting how players could use XP to get rid of negative qualities picked up at character creation. I don’t really know yet whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing (“Oh, yeah, my character’s no longer allergic to peanuts”), but it does allow for some nice variety. Furthermore, even if you spend your Karma, the total you’ve earned so far counts for Street Cred, which allows you to add bonuses to any Social rolls around people who might know who you are. Street Cred, however, is offset by Notoriety, which is what you get if you fuck up a mission, talk smack to a client, or decide to go full-out Chaotic Stupid. Both Street Cred and Notoriety count towards Public Awareness, which is how aware the world at large is about you. This is a double-edged sword; while it’s kind of flattering to know that someone might have made a video game based on your exploits, there’s a good chance that those corporate execs might find out that it was you who hacked their prototype, and then decide to correct the matter using very unpleasant pointy things. Still, if you’re careful, you can keep down your Public Awareness by covering your tracks.
Following this, we get into Friends and Foes. The “Friends” part comes in the form of Contacts, people that every shadowrunner should know if they want to get a job. Contacts are friends, business partners, or just that guy down the street- someone you know reasonably well, and who knows everyone else just as reasonably well, if not better. Each Contact has two qualities: Connections (how much they know) and Loyalty (how likely they are to tell you about it). Contacts can be purchased at character creation, with one BP for each point in Connections and Loyalty.
On the other side of the equation, you have the various nasties you will likely encounter in your line of business. Ranging from racist goons to corporate ninjas to elven special forces to Awakened creatures to spirits to dragons, there is no shortage of things that might possibly horribly kill you. Some of these foes come in groups with a Professional Rating; this Rating not only tells you when you should throw them at your players, but how likely they are to be talked out of a fight (in the form of a bonus against all Social rolls by the PCs). There are also rules on how to build a Prime Runner, otherwise known as “the GMPC that will likely torment the players for the vast length of the campaign before being satisfyingly struck down.”
Closing out the book, we have a section on Street Gear. The section opens with a comprehensive explanation of the specifics of gear: how much you can reasonably carry, how to get stuff special made for trolls and dwarfs (and what it means if you don’t), and how to purchase items which aren’t quite legal (which, in this game, you will be doing a lot). There’s also a sidebar that defines the various terms you’ll be encountering in each item’s listing.
From there, we go into the items themselves, and my, are there a lot of them. Everything from monofilament whips to grenade launchers to drones to medkits to fetishes to fake identities to contracted medical service. And, of course, all the cyber/bioware you can cram into your fleshy shell without driving your Essence down to 0. There’s a wide variety of things you can purchase, and all of it rather clearly defined and categorized. The only problem I really have with this section is more of a problem with the character sheet- that is, that there’s no space for half the stuff you can buy in this chapter. Hell, I had to cross out the “Melee Weapons” and “Cyberware” sections on my sheet to make room for “Stuff” and “More Stuff.” Other than that, though, I can’t complain.
Conclusion
So, there it is. Shadowrun. At its base, it’s a pretty solid system. Still, the Sisyphean task of creating your first character can be a deterrent to some players, and combat comes with so many potential modifiers that you’ll probably need a crib sheet. I have no idea how the previous editions handle character creation, so I can’t really tell whether it’s better or worse than before, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it as someone’s first RPG.
Still, it’s not the system that drew me into the game. It was the setting that did that. Shadowrun succeeds because it takes two concepts that should not logically be within one hundred yards of each other, fuses them together, and takes them to their logical conclusion. Shadowrun manages to balance magic with technology, elves with AI, shamans with cyborgs- and it doesn’t really seem ridiculous at all, no matter what William Gibson says. Shadowrun, like Mage: the Ascension, is one of those games that just begs to be played, just so you can say later on, "Yeah, I did that" (where "that" is anything that should not really be possible).
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just got a call from a "Mr. Johnson" about a possible job. See you later, chummers.
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