hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3233.txt

Episode: 3233
Title: HPR3233: HPR RPG Club reviews Shadowrun 5e
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3233/hpr3233.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:18:28

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3233 for Wednesday, 23rd of December 2020.
Today's show is entitled, HDR RPG Club Reviews Shadowrun 5E and is part of the series,
tabletop gaming, it is hosted by Klaatu and is about 54 minutes long and Karima Clean Flag.
The summer is cyberpunk plus magic and a fistful of D6.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An HonestHose.com.
Everyone, this is Klaatu, you're listening to Hacker Public Radio and welcome to the Hacker Public Radio RPG Club.
We are a social club of individuals who enjoy playing tabletop role-playing games.
We decided that we would meet once a week for about two hours to play role-playing games.
We play one system per month.
That's not aligned to the actual month.
That's just we play four or five sessions of one system and then we move on to the next system.
In between, we record reviews such as the one you're about to hear right now.
This is the first one we've ever done, so the format might change a little bit in the future, might not.
But for our first game, we decided to try Shadowrun, which is a very well-known and much beloved cyberpunk game.
Shadowrun was developed and published back in 1989 and it provided a unique take on the concept of cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk being, of course, a genre of fiction in which mega corporations have taken over the world, who could imagine such a future.
And rogue individuals called Shadowrunners, because they run around in the shadows, are hired by rival corporations, or sometimes other renegades,
to enact some form of sabotage, or reconnaissance, or assassination, or any number of criminal activities for the greater good,
is sometimes implied, other times it's just for your own good.
Shadowruns spin on this, though, is that in this high-tech setting, magic has been reawakened.
It has come into the world, and so you have people who are very adept on computers, but you also have people who are very adept
at casting magical spells.
So it's a unique world, and it's one that we really enjoyed spending four to five weeks in. Here's our review.
So I guess we should probably introduce ourselves first, but the way that we'll do it is we'll roll initiative to find out what order we're going to be taking questions in.
And then when you tell me your initiative number, you may introduce yourself a little bit.
Since we're doing Shadowrun review, I guess we should do an initiative with Shadowrun die.
So let's all roll 3d6, and add those up.
Wait, now I don't know who's going to tell me their initiative number first.
Alright, let's start with you, McNally. What did you get?
Got ten. Well, I am McNally, also known as Andrew.
Been hanging around here in Hacker Public Radio for a good while, and I like playing ropling games, which thanks to Clatu,
I've been able to do for the first time in a few decades.
Right. Okay. Benny, what did you get?
Alright, my initiative number is six, so I'm way lower than McNally.
And as you heard, I'm Benny. I'm also an HPR host of maybe six episodes, so that
not a very regular one, but I did some episodes with McNally on Slackware, at least one.
I'm not sure whether it was multiple, and I'm very new to roleplaying.
I just started basically during lockdown in a session with Clatu.
So this is very new to me. Actually, during my time at university, I kind of was opposed to
roleplaying, but I don't remember why, exactly.
It is kind of humbling to think or frightening, to think that your entire impression of roleplaying
is based on your experience with me. Like, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
At least you got me into roleplaying. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's a good point.
I did that. Phillip, what did you get? I got an eight.
And the last session was my third session of roleplaying of Pelt Paper Stuff.
Yeah, it all started with a couch surfing session at Benny's, and I saw this
Claire's handbook of the fifth edition of TNT on his table.
Yeah, I was interested in it before I thought of starting, and then we one came to another,
and I ended up in a shadow run session two hours later, and from that point on, I was
on here, and I'm kind of stuck into Pelt Paper in a good way.
Normally, I would want to start with talking about character creation, because that's such an
important part of RPG, but we didn't create characters for this, because the process is pretty
complex. Benny, did you happen to know that you have the shadow run? Did you have a look at the
character creation process at all? Yeah, I just read the chapter this week, I think.
It seemed very complex. Basically, like everything in shadow run seems complexer than in D&D,
which is not necessarily a bad thing, but them just saying. Yeah, there is just for people curious
about Shadow Run. Well, first of all, I should mention we're playing fifth edition Shadow Run,
which is important, because very recently, maybe less than a year ago, the sixth edition just
came out, but in fifth edition, they have the official method of building a character, and they
also have an extra source book called Run Faster, and they've got a couple of different alternative
character build methods in there, one of which is the life module method, where you sort of use
points to buy chunks of your character's history of the backstory, and you build a character from
like these sort of modular things that would have happened in their life, leading up to them,
becoming Shadow Runners. I like that one probably best, I quite enjoy that one.
Okay, let's answer some questions. Let's see, eight. Anything specific you didn't like about the
game? Is there a workaround for this? The first one to answer is McNalloo.
Aye, caution. No, I always say there wasn't really anything in particular. I didn't like about
the game. I think it was quite complex. It definitely had to, to my mind, had a steeper learning
curve than Dungeons and Dragons, but I don't really view that as an active thing. I think that's just
means that we'd probably had to play it for longer before we, but certainly I
felt I reached a level where I was kind of not worrying about the rules and just getting
on with it, because I think I didn't quite after what three or four sessions didn't quite get to
that point. I was still puzzling over the rules more often than not. So I guess that, but I don't,
you know, I think it to me it means that it's going to be harder to get into shadowrun for
the average player, so it'll have a smaller audience, but that doesn't necessarily bother me. In
fact, I like complex rules, because you get bored. It takes you longer to get bored, or it stops
becoming semi, maybe. So yeah, that's the only thing I can think of. Philip, what about you?
Was there anything, anything specific you didn't like about the game and is there a workaround
for that? I can't really think of anything like what I probably missed was like this classical fantasy
stuff, like dragons or something, probably. I don't know, but I don't have anything to compare
like to D&D, because I just played shadowrun in a pen and paper section, but no, I enjoyed it,
and also like, I can agree with the others that complex rules isn't a bad thing. I come from
complex board games, so I really like complex rules and complex stuff, so that's not a bad thing.
Benny, what about you? Yeah, I think I'm on the same page as for a complexity since,
I mean, I'm a mathematician, so I like complex things, but I think what one downside that
struck me is that you need, you have to pay attention what your group consists of, so you need more,
a few more than D&D, you need different skills, so you need someone with computer skills or you
won't be able to dismantle any camera or do anything in the matrix, so I'm sure there is a workaround
for this, because before you set up the group, the game master can make sure that your group is
well balanced, but since which is, in our game, everyone just picked a character in the way
didn't actually discuss what the group should consist of, so it was kind of a bit unbalanced,
we didn't have, we only had magic users, we didn't have anyone with notable computer skills.
Yeah, I mean, that's a good point, and as to the game master, I did try to make sure that
there were ways or, you know, that you didn't have to rely on the computer usage,
since I knew you didn't have a computer user, but that's a great point that just wasn't even
an option for you, even if that was the avenue that, as a player, you think that would have been,
that would have been the most sense. Yeah, I think the story also felt a bit like unshadow
running, because there were no like, no cameras, no electronic sensors, so I'm sure you have to
make sure that they are all basically disappeared for us, for the game to be playable. Yeah, very true.
I think probably the correct shadow run answer to that would have been for you to use a contact,
and basically just make a call and just say, hey, remote hacker, can you hack into this system?
I just feel, I've never really felt like that's quite the same, because you're just making
phone calls in your RPG, that doesn't, I don't know, that doesn't quite feel as fun as your
character having to figure something out. And I think we didn't even have the context to
contact for computer skills. Right, because we didn't build the characters.
I was just going to say exactly that, that you have to have the contact, and we missed that too.
Yeah, and for me, for my answer to this question, that would be, I think the problem with shadow run
really is the character build. I think that, and I could just be missing something, but I've
searched for like quicker ways to get a character up and running in shadow run. I just have not found
it. Even the faster, the run faster rules, even they aren't very fast. I did that with two
two people locally for a live game that I do. And it took us two hours to go through even like the
quote unquote fast build system. And if you're not building your character, then you really can't,
you can't really prepare for the situations because you're not choosing your contacts, you're not
choosing all of your different skills. So yeah, I think that would be the problem. And I guess
the workaround for that would be for the game master to just have some pre-gen characters
of their own, which I did not have in advance. And I kind of, I kind of did that on purpose because
I felt like we should be evaluating the game sort of on what it offers people rather than like
something that we've worked around ourselves. I think shadow run could have better pre-gen characters
available. And arguably more importantly, I think maybe a faster character build system.
Yeah, I mean, for scale, dungeon dragons, both my children, I took them through a character
building for five years this summer. And it was about an hour, an hour, with a nine-year-old
and a 15-year-old. Easily, yeah. Like when a character dies in my live game, I just, I have them
just build their replacement character right then and there. And they're out of the game for like
maybe 15 minutes, but usually it's really fast. It doesn't, it's not like they have a full
character, but they have enough to start playing at least so that they are, they're still involved
in the game for that session. And then they can go home and finish it up. And that's, you know,
maybe another 45 minutes for them probably. But yeah, it's a lot faster on D&D.
Okay, does anyone want to roll a D10 to get the next question?
I got three. Did your character have lots of roleplay potential?
Yes. And no. Well, I think my character was a street samurai called Marshall. So basically,
combat, no magic, please straightforward. I don't often play, let me a fight turn,
than just in dragons would be the closest, I think. I don't often play characters like that. I like
a bit of magic or something different. So, but you know, I was happy to try something different
here. And he was quite, I think it was a pre-generated character. And I got the feeling that he was
a strong silent type, which is again fine, because I don't think I'm a strong silent type. So,
I quite enjoy playing characters, which are not what, like what I am. Trouble if it's being
strong in the sight, the strong's fine, but it's actually a bit dull for the roleplaying game,
because you can't decide where you're at. I keep wanting to say something about, no, I'm strong
silent type. I, I'm almost one, one, no, syllabic. And it really is an education, and why I'm not a
strong silent type in the real world, because it's incredibly frustrating for me. So, yeah,
yes, he had potential, but it was more fun to play than my Dungeons and Dragons character,
and the moment is a chaotic, religious, dwarf, cleric. And that's much more fun, because you know,
you can do lots of crazy stuff for us. Marshall, the strong silent type, yeah, he didn't get to
say an awful lot, but it was a few moments, I think, where he just did something violent and
unexpected, which was fun, but, yeah. So, I think probably if I had longer, I could have
fleshed that out a bit more. Well, there was one thing, actually, to do with the game world,
the game world is set in this, the world is now ruled by corporations. What's the game,
you're 2070, something, is that right? 2075, yeah. And the world is dominated by these big
corporations, so it's like a dystopian extension of what you might argue is happening now. But one
thing that I had in mind from Marshall is that he's actually quite sympathetic to the corporations,
secretly, even though he's not supposed to be, because he likes order, and he likes strength. So,
although the characters in Shadow Runner are supposed to subvert the corporations, I think I
had to mind that back in my head that Marshall was not like that, and again, that's not at all
like me, that's not my view at all, but I thought that might be fun, but I guess we'd have a
longer adventure might have brought that out. That's a cool idea too, I guess it's kind of like,
I mean, it's that whole thing where you can't be, you can't be like a Shadow Runner in this case,
if the corporations don't exist. There's balance there, and so you kind of need each other.
Yeah, yeah, that's the kind of thing I was hoping to explore, but maybe another thing.
Okay, Benny, what about you? Did your character, do you feel, had lots of roleplay potential?
Kind of yes, no, I think the problem with my character was mainly that there was a
pre-generated character, which didn't, in some parts didn't feel like it was generated in a sensible
way, so it was a 300 kilogram troll who was a shaman, but had a huge battle axe, basically was known
for, for using his axe, and it was more or less also the strongest, was the strongest thing he
could do was just hit someone over his head with a battle axe, so even though it was a magic user,
there wasn't a lot of use to, to the magic side of, of the character. Apart from, from this,
I quite enjoyed being able to hit people over their head with a battle axe, so yeah, and you did
so quite effectively, actually, a couple of times. Philip, how about you?
It is a human, so it was, it was probably easier for me to get into human than, I don't know,
in a 300 kilo guy that kicks indoors, for example. That was quite nice, and I was a victim,
I picked him, because the name of the fire was a cult observer, and that kind of
probably also his type is like really, like, his good magic, and very, like, his strength is not,
the strength is one of the lowest, so this is, this felt people may not be the one who
goes right to someone and kind of starts to fight with something, just a little bit more
in the back, and yeah, trying to use the magic and the spells that I have to let us, yeah, that
was fun, it was really fun. Yeah, I feel like Shadowrun, you know, I mean, it doesn't, it's not a
class-based system, so when one has a character, it's not like you're saying, oh, I'm going to play
a wizard, or I'm going to play a fighter. You're playing a character who happens to sort of
specialize one way or another, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but
in terms of role-playing potential, but I feel like in a system that's class-based, like D&D,
I don't know, there's sort of clarity about what you're going to, what you get when you pick
up a character, because they're a certain class, whereas in Shadowrun, you could be picking up
something that leans one way and yet has skills in a completely different direction. I feel like
maybe that's part of the sort of the confusion here, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a
bad thing, I'm just making that observation. Yeah, I think to me that's actually a good thing,
because characters get a lot more diverse and are not so black and white as in D&D. Yeah, for sure.
Benny, do you want to roll a D10 to see what our next question is? That's a one. What did you think
of the game world, McNally? What did you think of the sixth world of Shadowrun? I liked it,
I liked that it is Dunedin. Is that how you call it? Is you call it Dunedin? Yeah, Dunedin.
Dunedin, yeah, because I think it's a place in Scotland, it's named after a place in Scotland.
Yes, it is. Yeah, I liked the idea, and I should say also we had a map with all these tall buildings
and sort of drawn a line drawn isometric way. I thought it was really good, very clear as well
for something that was isometric, and it gave you a real sense of the place.
Also, I quickly got the idea that it was a real place projected into the future, again,
like the whole game, so I really liked that. The only slight disappointing thing is that I've
never been there and I don't know anything about it, but it did cross my mind that had it
been a place in the well, like the city of Glasgow. I've understood the changes in the last
55 years, so I would love to think about what changes there might be to the city in the next 55 years.
Give me a connection to the world, which I've never had, I never thought about at all,
in this sort of fantasy Dungeons & Dragons type world. Yeah, I really could feel, because
2075 isn't that far into the future that I can't imagine what it's like, it's not like 3075
or something like that. Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, I absolutely love the world of Shaduran.
I was basically into it before we even play, because I read a couple of Shaduran novels, and
I'm pretty much interested in everything Cyberpunk, so and the Shaduran world to me is a bit like,
well, I like fantasy and I like Cyberpunk, and the Shaduran world basically gives me both. It
gives me dragons and elves and everything in a dystopian future, so I compare this to
Firefly. It feels a bit like Firefly, but Firefly is the same thing for Western and Science
fiction. It's this weird mixture of Western and Science fiction, and Shaduran is this weird
mixture of fantasy and dystopian future science fiction. In the main points, I can agree with
the guys before me, but one thing that made this the world a little bit strange and bizarre for
me, but that's mostly my fault because I didn't read into it, or didn't just look at it, and
was the part of how the magic got into the world. Yeah, I guess I didn't do a great job of
introducing that necessarily. That's also a part that I don't like about the Shaduran world,
because they jump through a lot of hoops to explain how magic ended up in our world.
I'd rather have them just have magic in a world which is our world in 55 years without any
explanation. I wouldn't mind this. Yeah, I guess ultimately the Shaduran world
relies a little bit on its own lore, where if you do invest the time in reading all the content
in the core rulebook or in the novels, then you get a really clear picture of everything.
And then otherwise, it seems like it's our world with a bunch of weird overlays over it,
which can be good or bad depending on your ability to just accept things. I will say that
this world is, I think in real life, if you're playing with friends locally, then it can be really,
really powerful to play in the modern world or the near future world, because you can just pick
your local city and start imagining it as a cyberpunk dystopia. And everyone knows, like when you
say, oh yeah, you go to the octagon, like everyone around here, where I'm an hour away from
the need in New Zealand. So everyone around here knows exactly what I'm talking about.
So there's a certain power to that. I think when you play online, it's a little bit less powerful,
because you don't know where people, what cities everyone knows. But if you all share a common
city nearby and can turn that into a dystopia in your game, it is a lot of fun, I think.
That's an interesting part of it. Sounds really good, yeah.
One thing to be and he said that never occurred to me before was the comparison with Firefly.
But actually, one thing I didn't like about it was that projection into the near future got broken
by the fact that well, where do these orcs and trolls come from? Right, right.
I felt that actually was a, you know, that broke that a bit for me. But to be honest, I
quite ignored it most of the time. It was only occasionally did it crop up. I mean, had these
been some kind of underclass or mutants or, you know, that's another dystopian sci-fi, that humans
know that he locks on them, what the he locks on them? I know what you're talking about.
The time machine, yeah, I don't remember. It starts with the more locks and eloy, yeah, yeah.
I got them, I got them muddled up. Yeah, so some, but 220, 75 is too close for that, some, yeah.
That's not a big deal, but yeah, it broke that little bit of reality for me slightly.
Yeah, you know, that's really funny. I'd never, like Benny, I was introduced to the lore before I
played the game. So it just never sort of occurred to me. I don't know, I just, I picked up
a book and this was the world I was presented and I just thought, okay, well, that's how things
are and I didn't question it. And I wonder if that different approach makes you think about it
from a different angle or something. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that the story that the return of all those
meta types is, is basically the result of a pandemic? Oh, really? There's a filler. Can you roll a
detent? Do you have one handy? I got a six. Six. All right. What did you think of the mechanics
of the game, McNally? So the first thing you need is a fistful of desixis. Yeah. So I had,
I only had five desixis and annoyingly four of them were the same and the fifth one was what I
borrowed from my dungeon dragon sets. That was a maximum number I could bring together. Of course,
you could use a dice roller app and then you've got infinite dice effectively, but I don't like that.
I prefer to, you know, I like the tactile feel of dice and the sum of them rolling around.
So I go for that. And that's not a problem. I think it was a great idea to basically say,
if you roll a five in a six, you've got a hit and a one, you've got the potential for a glitch.
So you don't add the dice together. So if you were rolling like 13 dice and I had to add them
together, it'll be like, I wish you do have to do for initiative a little bit, but most of the time
you would roll, say like you had 13 dice to roll, and that did happen. You'd roll 13 dice and
all de-sexes. And then you'd count up the number of fives and sexes. So there's a one in three
chance of that. And then you would say, well, if you've got four fives and sexes, you'd say you'd
have four hits. And then you'd have to count up the ones and they were glitches. And if you've got
a certain number, it was a critical glitch, but I've already forgotten how many.
Yes, like over half of your dipole is ones, it's a critical glitch.
Yeah, so the analog is rolling a one on a D20 in Dunston Dragons on an attack roll.
So yeah, that was fun. I mean, I think we forgot about the glitch in the first session,
but then we were just getting to go up so that it was all sort of fair enough. And after that,
I was really looking out for ones. I thought that I think to be honest, I find when things go
wrong, some of the most amusing moments in the game, not greatly a character, sometimes I had a
critical glitch in the last session. But I think that that mechanic, I think, was imaginative
new to me. I thought it worked really well and I liked it. What about you, Benny? Yeah, I was about
going to say the same as as Magnallum. I mean, for my time as a math teacher, I had around
100 D6s lying around at home. So this wasn't a huge problem for me. And it felt good, like,
I mean, rolling like 15 D6s. I mean, the most difficult thing was basically counting,
counting the amount of dice you have to use. So when I had to use say 16 D6s, I first had to count
like 16 Dice. And I'm not sure whether I got this correct every time, but I quite enjoyed the
fact that you didn't have to add up numbers that you just counted the amount of ones and
the amount of numbers above five. And they were like, I think it was a glitch or were hit.
Philip, what about you? Yeah, what I can add is that there are a lot of the core mechanics
where I have already been told kind of, but then a lot of other mechanics, what are kind of
complex, what we've already said. But it feels to me that because of that, you have a lot of
like, you have more flexibility and you're missing the words. It's more flexible. It's like, you
can do more, you can do more free of how you play it. Yeah, I think I get a feel for what you're
saying. Yeah, the abilities, like, you have all these different skills and you can use them in
different ways to make your character do different things. I think compared to D&D, this is also
interesting because you have, you have a lot of different types of checks. You have checks where
what you do against someone else and against some abilities or other skills or knowledge skills
where in D&D, sometimes it almost gets a bit boring because it's always like, well, yeah,
that's another intelligence jack and that's another charisma jack into one. I think Philip kind
of nailed it there. I mean, because it is so skill based and there are attributes and skills and
you can combine them in all different manner, I think that it is, it's a lot more dynamic and then
sometimes like when you're when you're in combat, you you have to make like, if you're being attacked,
it's not just against your armor class, it's you have to try to resist the damage with a body
roll, you know, and where if something's being cast upon you, you have to resist it and so on. So
yeah, there's a lot of sort of back and forth in Shadowrun. I will say from a Game Master perspective
though, that is brutal. Like trying to keep track of all the different kinds of things,
it's absolutely brutal. There's just no easy way. I mean, they've got a cheat sheet in the back of
the core rule book, two page spread of all the different kinds of things that you're supposed to
keep track of and it's just, it takes a lot of practice and this being my first time running
Shadowrun, I will say, oh, it's a four sheet spread, it's not two sheets, it's four sheets,
four pages of all the different kinds of checks, it was rough. So I will say that from from my
perspective. Alright, what I'm interested in now is, would you have to have the keep track of
the ammo because he said you don't want to keep track of the ammo, but is this what the
cheat sheet set or is this what you said because you just didn't want to keep track of another
number? The latter, it was just me saying, I don't want to have to keep track of another number
right now because we were still learning. As a player, the experience in Shadowrun is so different
as a player versus a Game Master because like as a player, you don't have to think about all those
things, you can just do what the Game Master sort of like tells you to do. I mean, you don't have to,
I'm just saying like, you can get by in Shadowrun as a player and not know that much and so you can
track ammo and you can track stuff because that's all you have to worry about is what is on your
character sheet and that's how I've pretty much played. I usually play a Decker, which is like a
hacker in Shadowrun and I just, whatever the shadow, whatever the Game Master tells me to roll,
that's what I do and that's kind of like, you fall into like this sort of like, oh yeah,
I know Shadowrun and then when you're a Game Master having to keep track of all that stuff so you
can help the players know what they're supposed to be doing, it gets tough. Yeah, I can imagine
it does. One thing that I quite like is that when I had my critical glitch, I ended up being injured
and that then impeded my ability to attack, which of course has never happened in D&D,
I mean, you can have spells cast on you and stuff that will impede your ability to attack,
but you can be done at one hit point and still be, you know, which sort of kind of sounds like
you've had three of the alums chopping off at one hit point. Yeah, but you're still able to attack
at full strength. So that was, and although it was an extra load on perhaps to keep track of these
things, I thought that was one thing that was, you know, that felt quite good actually, you could
disable somebody by attacking them. Yeah, and it's suddenly even connected to the critical glitch,
even if you take damage, you have your dice pool reduce by one or two and so on. So you get
weaker when you take damage, which doesn't happen in D&D. Yeah, Philip, I think you took,
I think you took the most damage in that one, in that very first fight, I think you were down to like
what nine, nine damage boxes or something. I mean, minus three, yeah, exactly. That's right, yeah.
Yeah, so I do like about Shadow Run that damage is, I mean, it's a lot more threatening like,
you don't take damage in Shadow Run like you do in D&D, you really think about it. I was in a cyber,
I was in a cyberpunk game, not Shadow Run a different one for years and we would avoid gunfights
at all cost because just like in real life, when you get shot, like it hurts, like it affects your
character. Yes, I think one thing to add is that there was a, there was a lot of stuff on the
character feet, which didn't even touch. So it most likely the game is even more complex that we
then we just just realized. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I think in the ideal world, you know,
everyone would have their Shadow Run core rule book, which is this huge book that's like literally
490 pages and you would all know sort of like everything about your character abilities and the
game master would know everything about the game system and and it all sort of just comes together
that way. I have played Shadow Run at conventions though and, you know, people are like you,
they don't know all of the rules, they don't know everything about their character. So you can
squeak by, it's just the potential to get deeper and deeper into Shadow Run is definitely there
because the system is is very, very complex. What did you think of the game adventure you played,
which I'm going to, I'm going to note here, the game that we played was called the deck job
and it is published by Shadow Run, the company, tops or catalyst or whatever they're called these days.
So it was not a custom adventure, although they were custom, customizations as always, you know,
as based on what you guys actually did. So what did you think of the game adventure?
I thought it was good fun, it felt quite compact, you know, it was, it felt like a short
adventure, there wasn't, it was just to find this thing in a short time schedule, quite focused.
So I quite like that, I think that's ideal kind of adventure for the taster that we were really
going for. It was, I suppose in some ways, I felt I couldn't quite get my head around the
what we were doing because I was so busy with the details. So I think I was so busy with the trees
that I wasn't really paying much attention to the forest at times. But yeah, I thought the
the adventure was quite interesting. I like the fact that we were, you know, we were
detectives, essentially, and we ended up writing the middle, not far from this octagon you mentioned
and doing trying to track what had some skip dogs through a park. Yeah, I thought that was,
I thought that whole bit was quite good fun. So yeah, yeah, it was good adventure.
I think for me, it helped to already know the shadow around the world a bit. So I already knew
a bit how how the world worked. So I could pay more attention to the actual, to the actual story.
And I think it wasn't, it was a nice story for, for an introductory game, but it was kind of
maybe too short for, for a longer real game. But of course, you could, you could make it more,
more interesting if you had more, more time. I quite, I quite enjoyed the different stages. So
first it was the Erecona salsa stage where we checked out the streets and heard about the, the
store, dogs and so on. And then we went into this one frenemies building, which was basically the
first first fight. And then we also went into building of a major, major corporation, which is,
of course, what you often do in, in shadow run, we have basically looked at every, every aspect of,
or a lot of aspects of shadow run. Yeah, that is, that is one of the reasons I chose that
particular adventure, just because of that, of that segmented nature. I thought that was good.
Philip, what did you think? Yeah, I definitely liked the detective nature of the adventure.
And also, which fits to my, to my, to a ban on who is an occult observer, and I definitely love
the shooting of the grenades. This was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I also noticed that I very much
enjoy all the hitting axes over people, people's heads and shooting grenades and like all the
explosions and then fireballs and what, what have you? Yeah, you make some quite bombastic
impressions upon the world and shadow run. I will say that the adventure kind of betrayed me a
little bit as a game master. There was a key point early on about how the deck that you're searching
for gets stolen. And when I was reading through the adventure in the first chapter, it sets that up.
And I thought, okay, well, I didn't, I don't remember seeing what the answer was, like how that got
stolen, but they probably address it later. And then I kind of forgot about it. And as we were
playing the very first session, I'm re, I read the thing, you know, in advance, again, the, the first
chapter. And it turns out that the author just never, you know, he, he sets this thing up where the
deck was stolen out of a delivery truck with no sign of forced entry, blah, blah, blah. He said,
he goes to great pains to set that up and he never explains in the adventure how the deck was stolen.
Ever. Oh, right. I actually never, I never noticed for now that you mentioned it. That's a point
we never never touch. I said, oh, well, Renracco had like while the diversion of the dog's escape
was going on, Renracco had a hacker break into the truck. And so there was no physical sign of
forced entry, but that was the best I could do with, with, with a dropped plot point. But from the
adventure, it was very disappointing. Yeah. Because it was quite, it was, because that's something that,
I mean, that's the first thing that I went to. It's a real puzzler. Yeah, I was looking for any
sign of how they got in. And of course, by the end, we've, you know, that was immaterial. But,
yeah, a clue there would have been nice, actually, yeah. So especially during the first session,
you know, we're all struggling to figure out the rules. And I'm struggling to keep track of all the,
of all the story, you know, and then, and then I'm like, oh my gosh, they don't answer this question.
And I don't know what to, you know, I'm the, I don't know what to insert there to like,
answer it on the fly. Yeah, it was, it was bad. So luckily in Shadowrun,
uh, you know, the answer can always be, oh, a big mega core, because they have all the,
all the resources. So you can never go wrong with just say, oh, it's, you know, it's Renracco. They,
they just, they did it. Yeah. And basically everything's, everything's electronic. Yeah, exactly.
There is always a way to hack whatever you want to have hack. Yeah. And you had no computer
users. So it's not like you could have, you didn't search, you know, the, the electronic side of
the thing. So yeah, it was just, but I felt like that was a real kind of cop out. What was actually
a thing that was stolen? Did I miss it or did? Yeah, it was the, um, well, the L77 2006, uh, it was a
computer. So it's a deck. I didn't make a big deal about it at first because, um, I didn't know
how fast we were going to get through the adventure. So as, I, I had it in my mind that if we got
through it too quickly, I might make it something different. And that would maybe send you on another,
yet another leg of the, of the adventure, but it all kind of worked out so that you got to where
you needed to be. So it just, yeah, it just, it was a deck, a prototype computer. Benny roll a
10. We already had three, right? Yeah, we did. And we already had 10, so I'll roll again.
We did not have 10 yet. How easy was it to find information about your character or about the
rules while you played? I'll be honest, I struggled with this a little bit, but I'll tell you why,
it's because I had two, oh, that's right. It's because I had two characters that I thought were
the same in two different formats. One was in an HTML file, I think you sent me Klaatu, and the other
one was in the PDF. And in my, I think because I hadn't really, although I had read the PDF and the
rules, I hadn't really picked up on the meta type business, or I hadn't registered. So I didn't
notice at first that I was a different meta type. I was a trolling one and a human and the other.
And then I just thought that was the only difference. And then it turns out that street shamans were
completely different. There was almost nothing in common. So that meant there was lots of confusion
in my part, but I don't think I can blame anyone other than myself for that. It really was great
silly that took me so long to figure that out. That aside, going to the short PDF, which summarized
the rules, was pretty straightforward to understand, although I do prefer flicking through paper.
I've never quite, I mean, PDF is better because you can do a quick control F and search them.
So that's got that advantage, but still, once I've got to know the shape of a book, it's
mentally, it's much faster for me to get my way to the right section and page. So I never quite
got there because I don't have a paper book. So yeah, I think I was a bit peculiar in my experience
there to be honest. Well, by the time I bought the player's handbook or whatever it's called,
it was very easy to find everything. But before that, it was kind of, well, there is a quick start
rules PDF, but they leave out a lot of details I was interested in. So I think I bought
rulebook after the first session and it helped a lot to just be able to look up the details.
Like, we had this one discussion, what was a critical question, what was a glitch, and like,
who'd just go and look it up after a session. Yeah, for me, it was a struggle to be honest,
because yeah, it was my first time playing pen and paper and then I was sitting in front of this
paper like a thousand things on that tells me something and yeah, it was, it was a struggle to find
out what it can, what is actually like helpful right now, what can I do and what is effective.
I mean, it's got better, of course, but yeah, it was, it was a struggle. So that's interesting,
because we kind of have three different experience levels or three different experiences of the game,
because I feel like Philip, did you even have the quick start PDF? Did I not, I probably didn't
send that to you. Yeah, okay. So you had nothing. Benny or McNally had the quick start guide only,
and then Benny, you started with quick start and then had the PDF of the book. That's kind of
interesting. I've got the physical book and I've had it for ages and so it's been, I marked the
sides of the pages for the different sections and so I've got it, yeah, I've got it well sort of
well marked up. It was relatively quick to find things for me, but I do feel like this really does
in a way. Well, at first of all, I think it would be, it would have been an interesting experiment
to try to run a game of Shadow Run just with those quick start rules, just to see if that's even
feasible. I kind of can't imagine that it would be, but that would be kind of interesting,
because as a whole, I feel like the fact that Shadow Run is not open game license is kind of
tough, and I never really, it never really dawned on me just how tough it would be, but like for
Shadow Run, I feel for a really, really successful game, I think everyone kind of needs to go out and
buy the book, which you know, potentially is, that's asking a lot, like it's really asking people
to invest in the game up front, whereas for D&D, you can just, you know, one person at the table can
have a player's handbook and that's all you really need, or and you can go online and look at the
free rules, so yeah, Shadow Run being sort of like this non-open system kind of actually made
a difference in this game, I think. I think that's why when I picked a character, I avoid magic,
so I thought magic always complicates things, so if I'm learning something new, I'll avoid magic,
so that was, that was behind my choice, but of course, if we all did that, then we wouldn't really
get the proper game experience, so there's a problem. Well, I do have to mention this that although it
was, it was still fun, so it wasn't, like the story was not too big that it was, that it didn't
enjoy the game, that's, that has to be mentioned, I guess. That's a great point, yeah, and I think that's
ideally, I mean, for role playing, for tabletop role playing, I think, generally speaking, that's
that's more or less true, as long as you have a fun group to play with, and everyone's just sort of
in it to have fun, even if you're getting the rules wrong half the time, it's still fun, so like,
it just works. What I was going to say about running a game on the quick start rules is that there
is a huge problem using magic, because I don't think any of the spells are, or at least most of the
spells are not explained anywhere, so you have to have the rule book. That's an excellent point,
yeah, the spells, you will literally not know what the spells do or how they work without the
the actual rules, that's a really good point, and that would go for the matrix as well.
Did you guys understand the stats of your character, and how long did it take you to learn them,
Nick Naloo? I think I got the basic idea after the first session, and I think I was,
but then I missed one week, so that meant there's a bit of a memory hole,
hole where you get rusty, well my memory gets rusty, so I think that slowed me down a little bit,
but I know I got, I think I got a reasonable feel, I mean the stats were quite simple,
in a sense, is how you used them and how you put them together, that was complex.
Yeah, I think I understood the stats we actually used after one session, but there were all
those numbers on the sheet that I mentioned before that we didn't even touch, so that's why I don't
know anything about those. Okay, so no it took me, as I said, like the attributes here,
this is not so hard to understand, but like the others, because usually it just says a spell,
and then just the name of the spell, and then a lot of different stuff that is not really like,
yeah, that I didn't get, so yeah it was hard for me, but it helped to just ask like what is that,
what can this do, and then yeah, we worked it out somehow, but yeah, it was really clear for me.
Yeah, I feel like the basic idea you get pretty quickly, it's like okay, I've got an attribute,
and then I combine that with some skill, and that becomes my dice pool that I roll,
you know, and you kind of, you get that main, that idea, but the detail of when to use one or
the other, and when to roll on those can get complicated, don't think it helps that initiative
is a completely different system as well, so you've got that sort of thrown in there,
and you've got default rolls where you just roll an attribute, but you minus one, rather arbitrarily,
so there's a lot of like exceptions to any given rule I think in Shadowrun, which makes it
difficult to track. Yeah, I think they even suggest in the quick start guide, they even suggest that
at the beginning you write down the tests you actually run, so you write down the limit of a test,
and the attribute you're using, and the skill, and so on before rolling the dice.
Yeah, and that's one thing that I kept looking for online was a really good sort of task-based,
or test-based cheat sheet. There's a certain menu here, right? I mean like we can only do a certain
number of things with our die, and surely there's a list somewhere of each one and how to do it.
I never did find one that like sort of broke it all down. I don't know, it seems like there
must be some kind of infinite combination of what you can do, because I just couldn't find the
quick and easy version of like, here's everything you can do with your die in Shadowrun, and here's
how to do it. It was really hard to find. So I suppose the first question is, I'd ask myself,
would I play it again and answer would be, oh yes, yes, definitely. The second question would be,
am I in such a rush to play it again that say I would be asking that we pause our current weekly
dungeon dragon sessions, and instead I think that's that would be no, because why would like to do
is move on to the next one, so on. Yeah, I liked it, but not so much that I'm desperate to dive into
a longer game right now. Definitely at some point in the future, but at the moment I like the idea
of tasting them, tasting different rules, so it's actually succeeded in giving me a desire to
grow out there and try other game mechanics and other scenarios other than dungeons and dragons,
which I'm familiar with, but it's made me want to do that more, and it's made me want to play
Shadowrun, if you understand what I'm trying to say. When the first session, well not the first,
when this adventure stopped, I felt quite sad that basically Shadowrun was over, but now I feel
like Magnalo, it will be fun to try out other gaming systems or other RPG systems, but I will
I definitely want to go back into the Shadowrun world, someone in the future, and if someone who
listens to this, if someone wants to get into the Shadowrun world, I think a very good starting point
is just to read novels, so you don't have to actually play the game to get something out of
the stories from the novel. Yeah, I 100% agree, I think the novels, they're just so satisfying,
they're good cyberpunk fiction, they're just a lot of fun. I think I started reading
Shadowrun novels because you once posted a list of cyberpunk books in the SDFB board, could this
possibly be? Yep, that sounds familiar, yep. Yep, so you even got me into Shadowrun, not only role
playing, so it's so cool. Yeah, that's so cool, that's so crazy. Phillip, what about you?
Yeah, my last thought is like, yeah, I think Shadowrun is a game that reads in each time,
and the more time you put into it, the more fun it gets, like if you if you play for really like
a piece of the amount of time and you get what you can do and what all these things on your ship
there is, then it can be a great amount of fun, I guess, because then you can yeah, you can do a lot of
yeah, it's very precise then, I think you can really do a lot of things differently, and that's
yeah, I think it's time. I think that's super insightful, I mean, I do think that the curve is
different than a D&D curve, like in Shadowrun, you're gonna start out sort of not knowing what you're
doing and the more time you spend, the more fun you have, and in D&D the same is true, I mean,
like you'll start out not knowing anything, and then as it ramps up, you'll have fun,
but if you spend more time in effort in D&D, then you can even have yet more fun,
so I don't know, somehow sort of D&D is more tolerant maybe than Shadowrun in a way,
but Shadowrun, I think, yeah, the more you know about it, just the more fun you have. For the
game master, I really, I think it's a lot tougher to run Shadowrun, and part of that might be because
I'm not as familiar with the rules, so maybe I'm being a little bit unfair there, I guess we'll,
I'll find that out for myself, the more RPGs we try, I'll find out what it's like to game master
different systems, but yeah, overall, I'm with you guys, I think that the world is a lot of fun,
I think the game was really entertaining, would love to play more of it at some point, but I am ready
to try the next thing as well. I don't know, unless anyone else has anything to say, I think that
kind of sums it up for Shadowrun. One thing that's maybe also worth mentioning, even though I have
absolutely no experience with it, is there is a thing called the Runners' Hub on Reddit,
where they actually run online Shadowrun games, where you can just join the app. I might even
give this a try if I feel that I missed it though a Shadowrun world too much. That's a really great
tip. Yeah, I've played some forum games online, not of Shadowrun. They are, they're obviously
different because you have to wait for the posts to come through, and yeah, the cadence is definitely
different, but it is a fantastic way to learn more about a game or just get your fix on that game,
and sometimes that cadence is nice because you don't have to give up two hours of your life every
once a week. You can just go in and do it whenever, so that's a great tip. Okay, I think that's it.
Thanks guys for reviewing Shadowrun, and let's do this again in a month.
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