You are here: Level One / Blog / RPG Legends: Shadowrun When most people think of role playing games, they think of fantasy settings. After all, the origins of the genre were strongly tinged with fantasy and most of the games that followed tried to copy what was already successful. There have been some games, though, that have seen more potential in these games. Their creators realized that the mechanics could be adapted to almost any setting. One game that proved that RPGs could be more than just swords and sorcery was Shadowrun. This cyberpunk-tinged game has expanded out to novels and video games, but remains one of the best examples of how diverse RPG settings can be. https://litrpgreads.com/blog/rpg-legends-shadowrun
I love Shadowrun. I have yet to be able to play an actual Pen and paper game in the setting though. My group doesn't want to give it a shot, despite liking the Shadowrun video games. It's too bad, because it's one of my favorite settings ever.
Shadowrun is probably my second favorite setting, right behind it's sister game, Earthdawn. If you are unfamiliar, Earthdawn is an adaptation on Shadowrun in that it is considered the 4th world - the world before ours that we exist in today - that is teeming with magic. Then our world is the 5th world, then Shadowrun exists in the 6th world which is near future cyberpunk version of ours where magic as returned. There is one super vocal guy (our current GM) who despises Shadowrun. I've offered to run it several times and while the rest of the group seems interested, he refuses to play. He does offer to run it for us though, but we all know he'd half-ass it or try to break the system to prove his point of how crappy the rules are. It's weird because I love how SR incorporates fantasy into sci-fi. I love it. But dear good God almighty, don't put sci-fi in my fantasy. I hate guns (even powdermage stuff) in fantasy settings. I'm not sure why, but it's a total hypocritical pet peeve of mine.
Haha I have that exact same pet peeve wordrew. I love Orks and Trolls and Dragons in Shadowrun, but if you put a Warforged or a Gunslinger into my D&D, I'm out.
YES! YES! YES! I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE! +10 Awesome points for helping me feel vindicated @James T. Witherspoon !
I've seen some talk elsewhere in the forums here that discuss the viability of sci-fi LitRPG books and how there isn't a big enough readership for them to be very successful within the genre. I've been wondering how success a direct tie-in series of books to an RPG line would be. I think it'd be cool to read some D&D or Shadowrun or LoFR LitRPG that progressed the actual characters and classes through a storyline. Not sure if I'm just special in that regard though...
Why the hate on Warforged, they aren't powder-based. They are for all intents and purposes a sentient metal golem. Fits in fine with fantasy D&D.
You know, you're right, but every time I've ever been in a campaign with a Warforged, they played the character like a robot. I honestly forget sometimes that they're magically created and not mechanical. (It's been a good five years since I've played in a game where there are Warforged).
My last Warforged, would try and take all adamantine items to incorporate them into his armor, disregarded mithril as junk. Made the party crazy, but it was so much fun.
Man I love Shadowrun as a setting, but jaysus the rules are an absolute mess. When we used to play Shadowrun way back in the way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the concealability rating of a minigun was a simple "yeah, right" listed in the table, we used GURPS rules. Pretty sure (if memory serves) there was an official conversion book done up by Steve Jackson for it - at least before they released GURPS Cyberpunk.
Sad face, I've been worried about my gun set up... I'm actually having a lot of fun thinking up an arquebusier /pistol and cannon system based around rare Bat Guano for my game world. Basically warring islands create the powder and players can side with any of them as buccaneers that rip off the others and try to sell the rare in game material for a profit. Using up most of the powder to keep their monopolies and the price of powder high, blasting away other buccaneers. Its my game worlds version of the middle east, but at sea. There are also arbitrary rules of transporting it and firing it, if it comes in contact with metal, it explodes, so the firing mechanism is more of a guillotine than fire, except in the cannons where fast burning powder bags burn away and then expose metal to powder and kablammo. I've also got a magical variation that is 1,000x better but has limited shots, I'd have to reread my notes but I think I went with 2 sniper shots and 3 pistol shots (which represents the players total energy for a single shot type), and they use energy that takes forever to regenerate. A sort of lay hands offensive class built around that single mechanic with scout class abilites. But the class is limited to proven assassins who get employed through the games karma based bounty system. No powder involved. For the rifles, a length of copper tubing is inserted in a larger in diameter gun barrel, then the players energy builds up behind a pinched off copper round (or other metal potentially) that is made on the spot through another guillotine like "cocking" mechanism that first severs a segment of copper tube from its length, freeing it to be fired, then crimps the end of it together to make the round pointed and aerodynamic. Multiple variations of the rifle exists, so either the crimping mechanism leaving the pathway of the bullet and restoring the barrel fires the gun, or another firing mechanism is involved. The energy pistol fires raw energy that shreds through organic material but is absolutely worthless against giant class monsters whose vital organs are all beyond reach. Also terrible against plate wearing players. Super awesome against unarmored horses and all people that don't wear solid metal over the majority of their body. (the energy shots don't ricochet off metal, but they will work their way through links of overlapping chain-mail on as straight of a path as possible. Monks and spirit users can be a hard counter to the energy using assassins, and because human characters have a sort of sixth-sense propioception ability that makes their hair rise up and their ball tingles whenever they get looked at with murderous intent, the majority of players within the game are impossible to ambush with the first shot of anything. So the right strategies have to be used for the fastest moving but least accurate powder shot projectiles in the game, and the Assassins are basically roving karma assassins who can get rich by killing other assholes. Any sufficiently large travel group and the rare assassins (who actually have to learn how to shoot accurately with just 2 long range shots for hours - who don't get any special aiming skills) and the assassins are screwed as far as banditry goes, requiring that they join up with a group - except they have their own bounties for participating in the bounty system. Any sufficiently high quality magic plate armor or metal-thread robes will stop dead even the rifle shots. Siege class crossbows and siege class bows shoot spear sized projectiles that are absolutely awesome for big game hunting, and cannons themselves don't do shit against sea monsters who only attack the bottom of a ship. Sea monsters being one of many obstacles in taking powder shipments through certain waters, and traitorous players gaming the powder war with allies in other factions eventually ruins the market and drops the cost of powder which pushes up the content that rich NPC nations that mostly buy the stuff up can then conquer. So paladins with cannons against undead drive their nations territory expansion and trigger more powerful undead with better drops - which then "trickle down" into the player economy as the Nation offers better rewards for helping with their crusade and keeping new/reclaimed land. Players using powder against each other is wasteful by comparison, and so mostly its only ever used by ships. Ships with NPC crews and player Captains, because Joe Blow is going to touch metal to powder eventually, and NPCs don't mess up, plus who wants to role play as a ship hand. So player Captains go out to the high seas and upgrade their ship and pillage, then they step into port and get their head blown off by an assassin because of how high their bounty is. Respawning not on their ship in the Captain's room like they would when at sea, but back at their last inn. So if the player ever visits another port, they are in full blown war-mode until they hand gold to an innkeeper. Which would also be true if they didn't respawn on their ship, so I don't know if that will stay in. Magical fire can activate powder as well, and cannon tubes can be modified to work with fire magicians, but any arquebusier style weapon would melt, so no rapid fire hand held pistols or rifles. Fire immunity can't be used on a large enough ship to pose a threat that players couldn't just solve by running them down, and fire magicians can extinguish fires so having one on board prevents fire magicians from running the high seas. TLDR: I put guns into a game setting that already had OP and destructive fire mages who would run shit at sea without them in place. On Topic: My experience with ShadowRun has been the ShadowRun Returns game which I had a blast with even though I played a totally shit set up on my first play through(Double f**cking shaman!), but I love the integration aspects of the world and the fact that it actually works. ShadowRun is sort of a "Versus" dream universe, Robot mech controller with an automatic pistol against a psionic energy using magician doctor. You can test that one out. Elven sniper with bionic eye and a hacking kit against a full melee chakra assassin that carries a back up pistol, sure why not. Summoned demon manifested with flesh harvested from drugged up lobotomized Mega-Corp slaves (actual quest in the game) VS Orc Samurai on a motorcycle with a mini-gun and a claymore on the front (just made that one up). There are a bunch of comic books that have stupid names like "Cyber Hunter" / "Cyber Force" etc that were always eye catching cyberpunk romps. Madame Mirage does the body mod side of the ShadowRun equation without going magical (though its farfetched). Was a fun read with great art, was expecting nothing much and it totally surprised me. It was the sort of setting I'd actually like for a super hero game.
Why not just convert the Pathfinder Gunslinger class to your D&D game and allow guns? There's already balanced rules in place for them, no need to add more complexity to what's already a very complex game. That picture. Holy hell, the Escher pose is STRONK with that one! The absolute worst part of Shadowrun rules is pretty much anything having to do with deckers. You either trivialize one player's entire character by reducing hacking to a series of d6 rolls, or you cheese off the rest of the players by catering to the decker for an hour or so of table time while the rest of the party is just twiddling their thumbs.
I've seen a different take on it once. The Decker had the other party members linked to him, and the GM ran them all through a mini-dungeon for the Decker to get what he needed to do. Then when the Decker was done it went back to normal play. Was a lot of fun, had the same thing done once in a Cyberpunk game too.
