Part 5: Shadowrun
I love so many roleplaying games. I have to say that Dungeons & Dragons is the most influential on my life, since it was the game that introduced me to the whole RPG hobby. I must also acknowledge that FASA’s Star Trek and West End’s Star Wars took something I already loved and made it an RPG. Then, of course, there’s games that grabbed me by the genre and had their way with me, like Traveller, Cyberpunk, Space: 1889, and so many others. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say Shadowrun hasn’t been a significant chunk of the overall gaming hours I’ve clocked since 1986.
Shadowrun, for those who aren’t familiar, is a mashup of supernatural elements and the cyberpunk genre. Magic returned to our world when the Mayan calendar ran out, in the midst of a technological boom and social upheaval. It caused quite a mess, as you might imagine. Now, cybernetically enhanced people walk the streets with people capable of wielding arcane power like a fantasy Wizard, while a dragon coils itself at the head of the table in a Corporate boardroom. I’ve seen it compared to Cast a Deadly Spell, The Dresden Files, or Netflix’s Bright- but while those are close, they’re not spot-on. The cyberpunk element is straight out of Bladerunner and Max Headroom. But the world has adjusted to magic to such a degree that there’s even a word - “WageMage” - for a wizard who punches a clock.
Shadowrun was my first “dice pool” game, followed soon by Vampire: The Masquerade. By this I mean rather than rolling a die or dice to achieve a total, in this game you roll multiple six-sided dice, and count how many individual dice met or beat a given target number. Shadowrun has been criticized for requiring buckets of D6s to play, but I’ve been doing it for so long I find it comforting and nostalgically charming.
Most things in Shadowrun are contests between the character acting and the person or thing being acted upon. For example, if my Street Samurai shoots your Shaman, the Sam will roll his Firearms skill looking to beat a target number that is determined by range, cover, etc. The Shama will then roll against the power level of the weapon, using dice equal to their Body, plus some dice known as Dodge Pool if they are available. The results are compared, and can result in a clean miss, a hit for the base damage of the weapon, or a hit for far more damage if the shot was skillfully applied.
The game was something new for me on several fronts- the die mechanics, the mixture of Max Headroom and Dungeons & Dragons, the magic system where a caster could, if careful, cast all day long without running out of “spell slots.” It was wild. But let’s talk about magic in Shadowrun for a moment. It costs. A lot. Up front. And during the life of your character. Magic demands so much of your character creation resources, and once in play, it limits quite a bit of what your character can do. Cyberware will erode your magic. Being treated by modern medical technology can erode your magic. And if your magic wanes, but you keep on casting spells - you could kill yourself. In fact, a fully intact mage could do so just by overextending their abilities. But a prudent mage, casting with care, can cast all. Day. Long. And spells don’t care about mundane body armor. Magic is POWERFUL. But it costs.
Let’s see it in action.
Character Creation System:
Page 32 of Shadowrun tells you to choose an Archetype. But just doing that wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun for creating a character, now would it? So we’re going to use the rules for building an Archetype on page 53. Interesting, though, that the writers put it that way. Not building a character, but building an Archetype. That’s an interesting piece of writing I never noticed before.
Shadowun has one of the coolest concepts in character creation I’ve come across- and that is the priority system. The Master Character Table has five columns, and five rows. The rows are numbered 0 to 4, and the columns are Magic, Attributes, Skills, Tech, and Race. The intent is that a player assign each number 0-4 once, so that each column has a priority. This then yields a given effect based on the priority assigned to each column. A player must decide what is important to their concept, but some of those decisions can be very, very difficult indeed.
If you wish to play a Metahuman, that is, Elf, Dwarf, Ork, or Troll- that must be your highest priority. If you wish to be a spellcaster, that must be your highest priority for a Human, or second highest for a Metahuman. That means Metahuman casters have already eaten their 4 and their 3, and are left with 2, 1, and 0 for their Attributes, Skills, and Tech. OUCH.
Here’s an example of how much this hurts. The average attribute for a Human is 3. Priority 0 for Attributes gives an average of 2.5. 1 yields an average of 2.8, 2 a 3.33, 3 a 4, and 4 an average of 5. So giving the top slot to Magic, or the two top slots to Race and Magic, has a significant effect on the character, since a character is then limited to barely average Attributes, and those are used to resist adversity. Also, being magically active but having a low Tech priority means starting the game with magic, but few actual spells. Skills are likewise hampered. A priority 4 in skills yields 40 points of skills, and a 0 just 17. You have to give something to get something.
So, let’s see about creating a metahuman spellcaster, just to see how much of our character has to give to have those elements. As discussed, Metahuman has to take priority 4, and Magic has to be priority 3. Now it gets hard. 2 will be Resources, so we can start with 20 points of spells. 1 will go Attributes, and 0 to Skills.
Attributes - 17 points. Ouch. Well, metahuman, let’s go with Ork just for funsies.
Body: 1 + 3 = 4
Quickness: 3
Strength: 1 + 2 = 3
Charisma: 5 -1 = 4
Intelligence: 4 - 1 = 3
Willpower: 3
Not amazing attributes, but not terrible ones either. Skills - not so hot as well, only 17 points there, as well. Hmmm. Let’s make our character a Shaman, so Conjuring will be a good thing. Our best wiz-bang attribute is Charisma, so it follows. We’ll take:
Conjuring 6
Sorcery 4
Armed Combat 6
Etiquette (Street) 1
Okay, not a really broad skillset, but useful in a Shadowrunner. Perhaps our Ork has spent their younger years in apprenticeship to another shaman, never really getting a handle on the technological world.
As a shaman, we gotta pick a totem. Let’s go with an urban totem, we’ll go with Dog. As a Dog shaman, our Ork will have an extra 2 dice for detection spells, and for conjuring Field and Hearth spirits. Our Dog Shaman will also have trouble changing his mind once he’s made it up, and must roll Willpower (4) to do so.
Now, we have 20 points worth of spells. So we’ll take Analyze Truth, Clairvoyance, Detect Individual and Mind Probe at Force 4 each. We’ll throw in Treat Severe Wounds at 4 as well. Language skills are a separate pool, our shaman gets their native tongue at Intelligence plus 2, and Intelligence worth of other languages. In this case, CitySpeak. So, English (5), and CitySpeak (3).
Now, we have to spend 20,000 Nuyen. We’re gonna drop 15,000 on having a tribe. This means when we need help, we can call, and 2d6 tribe members arrive to assist. We’ll take a sword, a reusable Detectrion fetish, a reusable Healing Fetish, Rating 4 materials for a medicine lodge, two Rating 4 Trauma Patches, a Lined Coat, a portable phone, a set of optical binoculars (which will allow spellcasting as long as there’s line of sight) and a suit of “ordinary clothing” for those awkward situations in which our Ork will need to spend time with “mundanes.”
Lastly, we roll 3d6x1,000 for starting nuyen balance, and this also determines the Lifestyle our Ork is living. OK, 10,000 nuyen, and a Lifestyle of Lower Class.
The Character:
Fido chose her own street name, both to honor Dog, and to express her personal view on the number one virtue she’d been brought up to hold dear- loyalty. At the tender age of eight she began to show magical talent, and was taken under the wing of her tribe’s resident shaman. She learned from her mentor, and from Dog, and became adept and working with spirits of the City, and finding out information, and defending herself. While other children learned the ways of the city above them, Fido learned the ways of the spirits, and became a detective among her people.
But her people were poor, in need of the nuyen that made the overworld go ‘round. They needed food, medicines, everything. Fido took the step of offering her services to the overworld as a Shadowrunner- and scored big on her first run. She gave half to the tribe, and kept half as a nest egg, in order to learn more in order to do more. She had gotten the bug, the desire to live life in the shadows, to help provide for the tribe. Her mind was made up, and there was no changing it.
My Thoughts:
I love Shadowrun. It’s in my blood, and has been since high school. While I am a bit dismayed at how disadvantaged a metahuman magician is in terms of attributes and skills in this version of Shadowrun, magic is unbelievably powerful in the game. It can fell even the toughest Troll in a single spell, seeing as how Power spells ignore worn armor, and Mana spells attack Willpower. Spell Defense in this version of Shadowrun covers the entire party with the defense dice without dividing them between the characters, as later editions did. First edition had spells like Petrify, and Turn to Goo. Immense power.
Yet that power came at a cost- was it one worth paying? Perhaps. Each individual player would have to weigh that question for themselves.
There is just something about the Shadowrun world, something about the whole package of the game as I initially played it- the mix of magic and machine, the empowerment of the Native Americans and Mesoamericans, the 80s-style Cyberpunk, the art, the Shadowtalk comments in the sourcebooks, the whole package. Sure, the system was kind of clunky, but this was, to me, pure Shadowrun. And each edition after 2nd, which only moved the clock forward from 2050 to 2053, drifted further and further from that purity until now. Sixth World has some promise. But this, this is where it all started. This is where I fell in love.
Thank you, TardisCaptain!
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