Shadowrun™

Everything began with the advancement in  biotechnologies  and cybernetics. The return of magic occured in 2011 with the birth of the first awakened : elves. Humans gave birth to elves, dwarves, orcs and trolls. The animal reign knew the same eventwith, for instance, whales giving birth to leviathans. You have understand tha Shadowrun is a cyber-punk Roleplaying Game tingered with magic. Players evolved in Seattle in 2050 A.D.  In those days, United States have exploded in many countries including the Indians Country  from the N.A.O. or Native American Origins( for instance, the Salish Shide Council), the elven realm (Tir Tairngire) and so forth. Seattle is just an enclave belonging to UCAS (United Canadian and American States), remnant of the Canada and the United States. All the major cities are the scene of a war between Megacorporations. Sometimes the war is obvious, but usually, these wars take place between mercenaries who achieve Shadowruns. So, these mercenaries are called Shadowrunners. Now you know who the Players are!  Missions are various : extraction (kidnapping a scientist or an important personality  from a rival corporation), political murders, data and materials thefts are the main businesses of the Shadowrunners. Of course, failing, leaving or succeding a mission is very important for the reputation of a Shadowrunner. The major risk for a Shadowrunner is to receive a special gift from a Corporation : a contract which means that a team of Shadowrunners will have to kill him!

Players might be warriors, often cyvbernetized, called Street Samurai, Magi or Deckers (which infiltrate the Matrix, similar to Internet, so as to short-circuit the defense grids or to bring back datas and informations). Many other archetypes are available. The rule system is based upon a six-sided dices roll. The Game Master will define a difficulty level and a number of success to manage an action. The Player will roll a number of dices equal to his skill level and the result will show if the action is successful, partailly successful or failed. The difficulty level may be greater than 6, but every 6 obtained on a result can be rerolled by the Player and he will add the new result to 6.

Our Opinion

Advantages :

The abundance of rules and the coherence of the worl give Shadowrun a solid  pattern and offer the Game Master many opportunities of scenarios and campaigns. Many years of play can be done through the corporation wars (we can testify it !). The global atmosphere is very easy to render if the Game Master saw films like "Johnny Mnemonic" or "Blade Runner".

Defects :

We play in the majority with the First Edition and the damage codification is purely hermetic and a simple action may become a nightmare for the Game Master because of the complexity of the rules. The second edition partially palliated this problem, but the Game Master has to be nevertheless motivated to master the rules correctly. As a consequence, the fights where sometimes long and demanding. The Deckers have the same problem in the two edtions : they connect to a parallel universe where they will evolve to gather the information they need. Meanxhile, the other Players don't do anything! The universe is so coherent that it may be difficult for a Player to do something else than Shadowruns, and that's a pity! At last, we must report that 80% of the archetypes are unusable by Players. In the First Edition; there is an archetype vowed to die in some days.