Shadowrun, First Edition

The 1980s were a strange decade.  For those who don't remember, or tried to forget, it was an era of electronic music, strange makeup, and unfortunate hairstyles.  It was the era of Reagan and Gorbachev.  It was the era when the depths of corporate greed and influence were not only laid bare but even lauded and glorified, and when authors and directors started to predict that multinational conglomerates could become laws unto themselves, their readers and viewers could believe it.  Blade Runner and RoboCop were in theaters, Neuromancer was on the bookshelves, Max Headroom was on TV, and ShadowRun sunk its mechanized appendage into the hearts and minds of pen-and-paper gamers and never let go.  This was the era of the cyberpunk, when the Information Age seemed to hold unlimited potential to both unite, and alienate.

ShadowRun may not have been the first cyberpunk-themed RPG on the market - R. Talsorian Games' first edition of Cyberpunk (2013) came out shortly ahead, and Iron Crown Entertainment's Cyberspace shipped around the same time as FASA's entry - but it's the game that has been most successful in cross-marketing itself.  In addition to four published rules editions, the world has seen at least 40 ShadowRun novels, four video games, and a line of action figures with optional miniature wargame rules.  What makes ShadowRun so unique, what makes it stand out from all the other neon-bathed, robot-armed, rock & roll hacker games, is its overt inclusion of supernatural, Tolkienist fantasy elements.  Alongside souless company men and marginalized gangers with New Wave haircuts, one finds a cavalcade of orcs, trolls, elves, and dwarves, with magicians hucking fireballs and Native American shamans performing world-altering spirit dances.  The result is a little bit like that old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial, with two disparate genres colliding into one, hopefully delicious morsel.
For those requiring visual aids, this is what "normal" cyberpunk looks like:

This is what ShadowRun looks like:

According to the ShadowRun backstory, the Earth's magical energies ebb and flow across five-thousand year periods, roughly corresponding to the Mayan sun cycles.  For the last few millennia, magic has been weak across the globe, resulting a dependance on technology, culminating in the Industrial and Information ages. When the current cycle came to an end in 2011 (an error on the part of the author and editor which later editions decided to run with. They meant 2012), humans began spontaneously mutating into fantasy races and the Native American tribes (and other practitioners of "old" religions) kicked off a magical revolutionary war against plutocratic governments and mega-corporations.  Reading between the lines, you'll see that this is the exact same concept - indeed, the exact same setting - as Earthdawn, with the clock advanced around 10,000 years.  Earthdawn, as noted in a previous post, is laced with phenomenally atmospheric prose and descriptions, and an imaginative take on high fantasy that makes it unique in both tone and mechanics.  ShadowRun, being an earlier effort, lacks most of this development.  Magic works roughly like every other skill, the fantasy races could easily be replaced by mutants or genetically engineered humans, and the entire backstory of Native Americans organizing an enormous Ghost Dance to devastate the technological world feels both a little bit racist and a little contrived, as though the writers flipped a coin between it and a 'nuclear war' storyline.

Just a little bit racist.
Aside from their setting, SR and ED have nothing mechanically in common.  While Earthdawn requires a full set of polyhedral dice and a working knowledge of algebra, ShadowRun makes all of its rolls on the lowly d6.  Lots and lots of d6 to be precise.  Using a roll-over, dice-pool system, you'll be throwing handfuls of these venerable cubes around, which is probably why the designers went with a die than be acquired cheaply from basically anywhere, rather than specialized gaming stores.  Every dice-test in ShadowRun is given a difficulty or target number from 2-6, with the player selecting a number of dice from his associated pool to roll for the test.  If he hits or exceeds the target with at least one die from the pool, the test is a success; more successful die rolls improve the quality of his success, from skin-of-the-teeth to critical.  The number of failed dice is usually not an issue, unless the player both fails a test, and more than half of his dice come up 1's.  This results in a "glitch," a sort of critical-failure where the GM gets full discretion on determining just how badly the character's life has been ruined.
Character creation in ShadowRun is an odd duck.  The game comes with a number of pregenerated characters, called Archetypes, which it recommends players use, with provisions to swap certain attribute and skill values around to suit your needs.  The bulk of character customization comes from purchasing gear and equipment; generally speaking, one Decker (hacker) will be statted out just like any other, every Merc will be approximately the same, etc.  Options exist to modify each pregenerated Archetype to change its race (for example, switching from a human Wage Mage to an Elvish one, or creating a Dwarf private detective), and there is a brief paragraph and table for designing your own archetype from scratch, however.  For a custom archetype, the player must first jot down the following broad categories: Attributes, Skills, Tech, Magic, and Race.  Each category will be ranked by importance, from 0 to 4; the number of points a player can spend on Attributes and Skills is directly dependant on how each respective category is ranked, while the character's Tech ranking determines how much cash he has to spend on Cyberware, Contacts, and other starting equipment.  Race is Human unless the player gives it a rank of 4, in which event he can choose one of the Meta races (Ork, Elf, etc).  A Magic rating of 3 provides a Meta with magical power, while 4 provides a Human with magic.  0-2 provide no benefit.  It isn't that different from the Storyteller system, all told, though it works on a much lower end scale than the average Vampire or Exalted character.

I'll be exploring the game's relatively deepest character generation option here, building an Archetype from the ground up using the game's ranking point buy system.  Here are the ranks:

Attributes 1 = 17 points
Skills 3 = 30 points
Tech 2 = 20,000Y
Magic 0
Race 4 = Elf, +1 Quickness, +2 Charisma
For my purposes here, I've decided to try to make an Elf rock star.  We'll see how this goes.  As a Metahuman character, I have to roll up a magical allergy (like Vampires with sunlight, or Werewolves with silver).  Rolling 2d6 on the appropriate allergy table, and I find my character is sensative to Iron, which is highly inconvenient as this extends to all ferrous materials, including steel.  Rolling on the severity table, I luck out and hit Mild.  My character should be fine as long as he remembers to wear gloves.
For starting cash, all characters roll 3d6 x 1000.  I wind up with 9,000 nuyen to start with, in addition to the 20,000 from my Tech score; the 9k is used to determine the character's income level (lower class), and can be used to be stock items, but cannot be used to purchase any custom gear; no contacts, no cyberware.  Just about every other attribute and skill from here on out is a point-buy, with a handful of exceptions: the character's Reaction is determined by adding Quickness and Intelligence, dividing by 2, and rounding down to the nearest whole number, while the character's Essence starts at 6, and is reduced by Cyberware installation.


So there you have it.  ShadowRun.  One part Gibson, one part Tolkien, two parts this:

ShadowRun, First Edition can be purchased at RPGNow.  All images are sourced from the First Edition (except for Labyrinth's David Bowie).
ShadowRun is currently published by Catalyst Game Labs, and is now in its fourth edition.
The current, 20th Anniversary Edition of ShadowRun's 4th Edition rules is available as a PDF from RPGNow, or as a hardcopy from BattleCorps.
Non-Playable Characters is raising money for the Children's Miracle Network!  If you've been enjoying this blog, please consider a donation.  Every single penny goes straight to helping sick kids at East Tennessee Children's Hospital.

The Doctor Who Role Playing Game: Adventures Through Time & Space

This week, one of my favorite television shows returned to the air for the second half of its sixth season, after what felt like an eternity on hiatus.  I am referring, of course, to the 21st century revival of the BBC's long-standing Doctor Who franchise, with which I've been perhaps unhealthily obsessed since I was a small child, staying up far too late with my eyes glued to PBS.  In honor of this particular, cultural phenomon, let's step into Non-Playable's own gaming time machine and vwoorp back about 26 years.

It is 1985, and FASA is riding high on the success of Battletech, their giant-robot miniatures-based wargame.  In a few short years, they will publish Shadowrun and Earthdawn, forever cementing them as the go-to gaming company for people bored with AD&D.  In the meantime, they came up with this.

For folks not familiar with Doctor Who, it is perhaps the world's longest running science fiction television program, running for 26 seasons between 1963 and 1989, two theatrical spinoff films starring Peter Cushing, a television movie on FOX in 1996, and the aforementioned revived series running from 2005 onwards.  Wikipedia claims a total of 777 episodes for the series as of August 2011, which is pretty impressive in its own right.  The program - and the adventures for this game - run the gamut from adventure, to horror, to mystery, typically with a science-fiction bend (such as the vampire inhabiting the gothic mansion high in the mountains turning out to be an alien, etc), while de-emphasizing the direct application of violence as a solution to problems.  The heroes typically triumph by out-thinking and out-manuevering their opponents, using creativity and ingenuity to turn the villain's plot back against him in some way, rather than simply overwhelming him with force.  This is a stark contrast to the dungeon crawls and other, combat-heavy, "GM vs. Players" style of gaming that once dominated the market, and it's an idea that we don't see much more of until the cooperative storytelling games from White Wolf come into their own.

Although time travel is a central idea to the Doctor Who RPG, it features only sparsely into the mechanics.  The time machine is simply a way for the party to arrive at the adventure, and leave upon its completion, and maintaining causality is typically not something the players or characters need to worry about.  For the purposes of this game universe, time is recorded objectively by a mindblowingly advanced and extremely pompous race of Time Lords, and history is effectively immutable, although the recorded outcome of events hinges on the player-characters' involvement.  For example, William Shakespeare was obviously not murdered by ancient aliens on the eve of the performance of his lost play, Love's Labour's Won.  However, this outcome was only due to the intervention of two resourceful time travellers, who happened to be in the right place at the right moment.  For the few times where time travel may be required as part of the game's plot, the characters make a skill roll to pilot their time machine to the correct spacial and temporal locations, and the results are compared against a difficulty table; successes place the characters when and where they want or need to be, failures can put them off by degrees from "a few feet" to "somewhere on the same planet," or "within a few hours" to "within a few decades."  The same interaction table is used for roughly every skill usage or saving throw.

This same success/failure table is used for all dice-related tests in the game.  All of the player's attributes (strength, endurance, dexterity, charisma, mentality, and intuition) are recorded with a Performance Rating, and all of their skills are recorded with a Proficiency Rating, both of which are leveled from I to VII.  Each rating costs a certain number of Attribute or Skill points, from 1 - 30, and both skills and attributes scale at the same rate.  Each character begins play with a score of 6 points in each Attribute, and 36 + 2d6 Attribute points to distribute in order to raise those scores.  To purchase Skills, the character begins with a Skill Point pool equal to the total number of Attribute Points (including the 6 "free" points in each Attribute), plus a number of Bonus Skill Points for skills based around Attributes, depending on that Attribute's score.  For example, if the character has a total of 15 points in Dexterity, they'd have Performance Level V, and get a bonus of 5 skill points to spend on DEX-related skills (like shooting a rifle, picking a pocket, etc).

In addition to Attribute and Skill levels, players will randomly roll for a Special Ability for their character.  Most results (except for 10 & 11) result in some additional ability, ranging from an enhanced Attribute (confering additional skill points and mastery), to supernatural psychic powers.  Appearance, age, and number of Regenerations used (if playing a Time Lord) are also randomly generated, though with the exception of Regenerations, these don't have any direct impact on gameplay.

Doctor Who uses a roll-under system, in which the player rolls 2d6 for all skill and attribute tests, with the goal of either meeting a target number, or scoring below the target number.  The lower the player's result is from the target, the better the success; if the target is 7 and the player rolls a 2, it's a massive critical.  On the other side of things, the higher the player's result is from the target, the worse the failure; rolling 12 with a target of seven is a massive fumble, with serious consequences.  Target numbers are determined by comparing the proficiency or performance rating of a character's skill or attribute, located along the Y-axis of a difficulty table, with the task's difficulty rating on the X-axis, modified for various penalties or bonuses.  The target number is at the intersection of the two axes. I would normally reproduce this table below, but as it takes up at least half a landscape page, and forms at least 50% of the game's core mechanic, I've decided to cut it for space concerns.  Instead, have some Daleks

.

The list of factors that modify a skill challenge is extensive, to say the least.  In addition to the usual concealment and range modifiers one expects out of a game, penalties are enacted if the attacker is moving, if the target is moving, or if the attacker is using a weapon other than the exact one he is skilled in; for example, if a UNIT commando from the 1960s is trained to Professional proficiency in submachineguns (as such soldiers are frequently seen using in the TV series), but has to attack with a laser rifle captured from an evil, invading Cyberman, he can't use his entire Level V proficiency, though may get to use half of his rating due to the weapon being similar.  In addition to these modifiers, further crunch comes into play when determining the number of actions a character can take during a turn.  Each action available to the character costs Action Points (AP), with different actions having different values.  The total number of AP available to the character is determined by his DEX value, divided by 3, rounded down, plus 4.  Are you still following along?  Using our earlier example of someone with a DEX of 15, we get:

(15/3) + 4 = 9 AP.

My current attempt at a mechanically complete character sheet is below.  I am relatively certain that the character is playable, per the rules of the blog, however due to organizational issues in the book (the rules for the game are spread across three different volumes within a single box set, with most but not all character mechanics discussed in the Player's Manual, while other's are described in the GM's Operation Manual), I'm not entirely confident that I haven't missed something. 

My eternally-supportive future-wife also attempted a sheet this week, apparently having a high tolerance for pain and unpleasantness.

Okay, maybe not that high.

A new Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space game based on the new series is available on RPGNow.  I believe it uses an entirely new rule system, rather than a revised edition of the game reviewed here.

The BBC's official Doctor Who website contains more information about both the current television series, and the original version.

Earthdawn, 1st Edition

First released by FASA in 1993, Earthdawn was the game for several of my internet acquaintences back in the day.  My friend Joe was such a fan that he formed his own gaming company, Living Room Games, and acquired a license to produce splats, and later an entire Second Edition.  As I don't have a habit of being nice to the games I review, I will not be touching LRG's Second Edition out of deference to my old pals, and the Third Edition from Red Bricks LLC is too new for the purposes of this blog, so we'll be examining good ol' First Edition today.

Earthdawn, in all its incarnations, can be described as a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy.  Hundreds of years ago, the background goes, the world's magical aura peaked, allowing mindnumbing Horrors from the astral plane to cross over into the material world and wreak all manner of chaos and destruction.  This was the time of the Scourge, and during it, most life on the surface of the world was erradicated.  However, the "Name-giving" (sentient) races of the world (humans, elves, orcs, trolls, dwarves, etc) were warned of this impending disaster by various wizards and shamans and prophecies, and constructed elaborate, underground cities called "kaers" in which to hide and wait out the destruction.  The kaers were sealed shut for centuries while the Horrors plagued the earth; some cities survived unharmed, others were breached by rampaging monsters or natural disasters.  The setting's "present day" is about four centuries after the start of the Scourge, when the magical aura has started to subside, and most Horrors have been forced to retreat back to the astral plane.  The majority of the surviving kaers have opened and civilization has returned to the surface, though some vast, underground cities remain closed, their populations unaware of the changes taking place over their heads.  For those playing along at home, you may have noticed that you can replace "kaer" with "vault" and "Horror" with "atomic bomb," and suddenly you're playing Fallout, four years earlier.

All of this is detailed in the book's extensive background fluff, primarily written "in character," as anecdotes, histories and oral traditions recorded by denizens of the fictional world, and punctuated with beautiful art, ranging from fully realized paintings to atmospheric pen-and-ink drawings.  Beyond its postapocalyptic tone, however, Earthdawn sets itself apart from most other fantasy RPGs by largely doing away with linear character progression.  Rather than levels, character advancement is measured in "Circles," with each Circle containing a new set of talents and abilities that the character can access.  However, acquiring a certain about of experience does not automatically advance a character to the next circle.  Rather than the usual XP systems, Earthdawn awards players "Legend Points," which can be used to purchase Karma (which can be spent to improve dice rolls, similar in some ways to Action Points and Action Dice in various d20 flavors), or used to improve Skills, Talents, and other class-related abilities, or finally to gain a new circle alltogether.  Furthermore, in the Earthdawn system, dice rolls increase in magnitude by "Steps," representing increasingly potent combinations of dice.  The number of dice rolled when a character, for example, swings a broadsword, would be determined by adding their appropriate, governing attribute (Strength) to the Damage Step of the sword.  In other words, while most games would assign a static dice value to that big, two handed greatsword, Earthdawn simply assigns it a modifier that improves your overall attack and damage rolls. The degree of improvement corresponds to a combination of dice, noted on the Step/Action table, a portion of which is reproduced below.

Unlike the previous games reviewed here, Earthdawn uses a point-buy system for generating attributes, allowing players a customizable, yet objectively measurable way to design their characters.  All characters begin with 66 attribute points to spend.  A score of 5 costs 0 points, scores below 5 grant additional points, scores above 5 cost points.  My initial attribute array, before adding in racial modifiers, appears below.

Attribute Points: 66

 

Dex: 11

Str: 9

Tough: 11

Per: 17

Will: 18

Cha: 11

 

I've buffed up Perception and Willpower, having decided to create a Nethermancer (a magic-user focusing on spirits and other planes of existence), whose spells rely heavily on those two attributes.  I've decided to build a T'skrang, part of a race of flamboyant lizard-people.  While not entirely optimized for spellcasting, my gaming group has a tradition of off-type lizards, and I felt like joining in.  Now, the T'skrang gets a +1 to Dex, Toughness, and Charisma, making my racially modified stats look more like: 

 

Dex: 12

Str: 9

Tough: 12

Per: 17

Will: 18

Cha: 12

With that sort of array, he's strictly a back-row character, but we'll see just what he can do shortly.  Before we get to skills and spells and talents, we need to derrive our character's Death Rating (hitpoints), Wound Threshold (amount of damage he can take before suffering an injury), and Unconsciousness Rating (amount of damage he can take before being knocked cold), along with his carrying capacity, movement speed, initiative, and other secondary attributes.  Fortunately, there are no complex calculations here; everything is based on the Attribute scores above, converted via a massive table on page 52 of the book.

With that out of the way, now we can get to skills and talents.  At start, an Earthdawn character gets one Rank 1 "Artisan Skill," and two ranks worth of "Knowledge Skills."  Magic users get one Artisan Skill, Robe Embroidery, so there you have it.  Artisan skills are more or less mechanically useless and under normal circumstances, an Earthdawn character will never actually have to make an Artisan skill check; according to the background fluff, individuals who are corrupted by Horrors are unable to concentrate long enough to perform artisan tasks (such as sculpting, weaving, etc), so having an Artisan skill proves the character is uncorrupted.  Now, because Nethermancers deal with weird magic from other realities, I'm going to go ahead and spend two ranks on Knowledge: Horrors.

With skills assigned, we get into the real mechanical meat of the character, Talents.  Talents are where each discipline becomes mechanically distinct from one another; an archer will have talents for aiming and evasion, a cavalryman will have talents for riding and melee combat, etc.  In the case of my Nethermancer, he starts with access to the following First Circle talents: Karma Ritual, Read & Write Language, Read & Write Magic, Spellcasting, Spell Matrix, Spell Matrix, and Thread Weaving (Nethermancy).  The character has 8 rank points to distribute among these talents, which affect the rate at which he regains Karma points, his ability to learn new languages and spells, and the difficulty he has casting those same spells.  I'm pouring two points into Nethermancy,one into each Spell Matrix, two into Spellcasting and one each into R&W Magic and Karma. This allows me to store one First Circle spell in each Matrix, regain one Karma point each time I use my ritual, and increase my steps for casting a spell by 2, my steps for weaving a complex spell by 2, and my steps for learning a spell by 1.  For the spells themselves, I have access to 7 "Spell Points," (equal to the Perception step), which can be used to purchase spells from any circle.  First Circle spells cost 1, Second Circle cost 2, etc; since this little lizard can only cast First Circle spells, I'm focusing on those, though you can purchase from any circle; you just can't access those spells to your character advances to the required Circle himself.

Spells:
First Circle:

Bone Dance (one point)

Command Night Flyer (one point)

Spirit Grip (one point)

Undead Struggle (one point)

Insect Repellent (one point)

Shield Mist (two points)

Of these, I can't cast Shield Mist yet, but it never hurts to be prepared for later.  Spirit Grip and Insect Repellent go into the Matrices for immediate access.  Now, for actually casting these spells, the rulebook suffers from a serious case of vagueness.  Spirit Grip requires no threads, and can be cast by a Spellcasting test, rolling dice for the character's Perception step + his Spellcasting rank.  In this case, that would be Step 9, or 1d8+1d6.  Insect Repellent, however, requires a Thread to be Woven first; so, the character spends one round Weaving the spell, and then makes his Spellcasting check once he's done Weaving.  In order to Weave a Thread, the character must pass a Thread Weaving test. The book, however, does not say what to roll for a Thread Weaving test, in any section that I could find detailing the magic rules.  Presumably, one rolls the appropriate Attribute (probably Perception) + the Thread Weaving rank, as with Spellcasting, but it could also be designed so that I just roll on the Thread Weaving rank.  If Rank + Attribute, then I'd be rolling 1d8 + 1d6 again and casting fairly consistently, but if I'm supposed to just roll on the Thread Weaving rank, that's 1d4 - 1, which produces fairly unfavorable casting results.

 My inability to locate the Thread Weaving Test information is indicative of a larger problem with first edition Earthdawn, that being the complete lack of organization in the rulebook.  The book is heavy on fluff - beautiful, well written, incredibly atmospheric fluff - which lays out a world that is, quite frankly, one of the most exciting that I've ever seen in a stock pen-and-paper campaign.  However, while the writers and editors have an amazing talent for creating fiction, they were pretty bad at laying out mechanical information in a way that makes it easily accessable.  The book discusses the same features, such as Thread Weaving, in multiple sections (Talents, The Working of Magic, and Spellcasting), each section referring back to the other sections for more information, no single section providing all of the needed information to use the mechanic.  Hopefully, later editions resolved these organizational and editorialerrors.  Certainly, if I were going to actually play the game, I would grab the more recent Third Edition.  

My ever-supportive fiancee will not be joining in the character creation this week, as her new, absurdly early work schedule is kicking her ass at the moment.  Hopefully, her sheets will return next week, as things settle down around the office.

All images above are sourced from the now out-of-print Earthdawn First Edition, published by FASA.

RPGNow offers both Earthdawn Classic Edition, an edited and revised version of First Edition, and the fully updated Earthdawn Third Edition for sale, both published by Red Brick LLC.

Earthdawn Second Edition, from the largely defunct Living Room Games, is also available at RPGNow.

This ancient, Earthdawn fansite from the 1997 Internet contains a good portion of the First Edition rules.