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Ascension
2014-05-16, 08:43 PM
Multiple friends have tried to get me into Shadowrun in the past, but the game never really got its hooks in me until I recently played the video game Shadowrun Returns. Over the last couple weeks I’ve really been immersing myself into the setting, reading across editions between 4th and 5th Edition and checking some older history against online fansites and forums.

One of the things that has really struck me is how prominent a role online forums have in the setting, particularly in how the setting is presented to the players. Shadowlands, JackPoint, ShadowSEA, the Denver Nexus… the Matrix is a major tool for communication between shadowrunners, and has been for decades in-setting.

As a long-term forum lurker, poster, and play-by-post roleplayer, that little touch makes Shadowrun’s setting… surprisingly relatable. And as someone who’s also a fan of games and fiction that utilize their mediums in unconventional ways, I’ve been looking for some way to use it.

Have any of you seen a play-by-post Shadowrun game that presented itself as an in-universe forum? I think there’s a lot of potential there, and it wouldn’t have to limit itself to JackPoint-style discussion, speculation, and chatter (though I’d like to see that as well). I’m thinking you could handle runs with the framing device of a thread in which the forum’s runners are swapping stories about their latest jobs (interspersed with NPC posters’ commentary, naturally).

You could limit the GM’s posts in “GM voice” to an OOC thread, and let the PC runners relate the events however they like…
GM:
The estate is an old-style manor house, and despite what you’ve heard, the place looks abandoned. The low stone wall around the perimeter is overgrown with unkempt ivy (or maybe kudzu, it’s hard to tell at this range), and there’s not a light on in the place. You can’t see any security around, guards or drones.

Player:
Any wireless signals coming out of the place? I’m gonna make a Matrix Perception check in AR.
[rolls]

GM:
No, nothing you can see.

Player:
I’m gonna go ahead and jump the fence, then.
[rolls]
Player:
We pulled up to this creepy old vine-covered mansion and got out of the van. Look, I’m a sprawl kid born and bred, and I’d never seen anything like that place. Not a light on in meatspace, and totally dead in AR too. I knew in that moment that I wanted nothing more than to get the damn job done and get the hell out of there and back to good old smog-flavored civilization. I just took a run at the wall around the place and jumped.

Commenter:
Without letting your shaman scope it out in astral first? Let me guess, and then you got a manabolt up the ass.

...or you could structure it like a more traditional play-by-post game by means of the GM introducing the runner’s stories and handling scene-setting posts in the voice of their fixer…
GM:
So my runners had to head out of town, to this old country estate no corp’s decided to build over yet. They got there and the place looked dead, completely dead. Not a light on, and the whole place was practically drowning in ivy. No guards in sight either.

Player:
Of course, I wasn’t about to trust any place that looked that ripe for the picking, so I hopped on-grid in AR to see just how asleep it really was.
[rolls]

GM:
And he found jack squat, by the way.

Commenter:
Better safe than sorry. I was out in the boondocks one time, so far out I couldn’t get in touch with anything but the public grid and the Big Ten’s grids, and the place we were scoping out wasn’t supposed to have any AAA corp connections, so I was feeling kinda cocky. Gave it a quick once-over and then I brought up an old Neill the Ork Barbarian episode. That was the run I got my first cyberlimb.

The NPC comments could be handled solely by the GM, or you could let all the players “own” a couple NPCs, if they’d like to, to help flesh out the chorus. I have even encountered RPers who enjoyed the setting of a rules-heavy game but weren’t comfortable with its rules… you could bring in a player or two to exclusively play “commenter” roles, if there was interest.

I think ideally all this could both make the game feel more immersive (since we’re pretty well all intimately familiar with online forums) and potentially set up for a lot of metanarrative hooks. The forum becomes more than the medium through which the game is played, it becomes a potential resource and a potential vulnerability. It would help reinforce the fact that the online arena is, in-universe, another arena in which runners operate, and that that’s true for more than just the party hacker.

I’m excited about the possibilities here, but what do you think? Would this be feasible? Would this be fun? Would this really add anything to the game?

Note, this isn't any kind of recruitment or interest check, which is why this isn't in that part of the forums. I'm just looking for opinions on the idea.

Grinner
2014-05-16, 09:33 PM
You might have trouble getting the idea of this passive mode of play across to some players, but it sounds like a rather apt method.

You may wish to look up some reviews of a game called De Profundis. It's sort of similar, though it focuses on Lovecraftian themes. It might give you a few further ideas.