PDA

View Full Version : [Shadowrun] Inspirational Material?



OverdrivePrime
2008-12-07, 12:46 PM
Hey all,

I'm trying to get to know the Shadowrun 4 system better, and since no one else I game with is familiar with it, I figure the best way is for me to run a small game.

I'm generally a sword & sorcery or post-apocalyptic kinda guy, so I'm looking for good material (books, comics, movies, whatever) to get my brain rolling down a nice path of ideas for the Shadowrun setting. Obviously, Bladerunner and Akria are good go-tos for inspiration, but what else would you recommend?

Right now I'm trying to figure out a good city to set it in. I figure Seattle is waaaaay to complex for me to try and tackle, at this stage. I was actually thinking of setting this (small) campaign in my native Milwaukee, Wisconsin, conveniently located just a short T-Bird hop North of the Chicago Sprawl. That way, there's access to a lot of the crazy influence and intrigue in Chicago when the characters get more competent, but also a smaller, less formidable atmosphere of the Milwaukee and Madison metro centers.

Something I was thinking of running with is the strength that Madison and Milwaukee already have with gene research, maybe having a few large corps with subsidiary research centers doing various 'unsavory' research in Milwaukee and Madison that might lead to a couple good plot hooks. Full cloning, abductions, attempting to create new metatypes, you get the picture.

Anyway, I'm betting that you guys have way better ideas than I'm currently working with. Hook me up, chummers! :smallsmile:

LibraryOgre
2008-12-07, 01:11 PM
Well, William Gibson's book "Neuromancer" is pretty much Shadowrun without elves, trolls, and the like. There's even a wizard, though Gibson handwaves it away with Clarkeian science.

You might also try Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"... again, no magic or other races, but you get a good sense of the power of corporations. I'd also suggest books by Richard K. Morgan, especially Altered Carbon (modern noir-ish cyberpunk), Market Forces (look from inside the corporations), and Thirteen (look from inside the government; set in the same world as Altered Carbon, but a few hundred years earlier; called Black Man if you're outside the US).

I'll also pimp Palladium's "Tales of the Chi-Town Burbs". While set in Rifts, it's also got a lot of cyberpunk to it... themes of alienation, rejection, and insanity.

Raum
2008-12-07, 02:38 PM
For other inspiration, watch Johnny Mnemonic, A Clockwork Orange, THX-1138, Cherry 2000, Heavy Metal, Aeon Flux, Ghost in the Shell, Total Recall, or Cypher. They aren't exactly Shadowrun (no magic or other races) but they should help with the cyberpunk feel. Here is some reading material in the SR universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shadowrun_books#Novels). I recommend those by Charrette and Findley. Steel Rain by Nyx Smith is also worth reading.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-12-07, 03:27 PM
Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex (the films are over-appreciated schlock; the TV show is freaking brilliant, easily the best anime ever made).

Most anything by Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash, Diamond Age, etc. The absolute best in cyberpunk, because of the attention to detail in and actual knowledge of technology.

Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) are classic mirrorshadepunk. They're absolutely awful SF, the Matrix is the worst conception of virtual reality networks ever (no wonder, either - the man had never even touched a computer when he wrote Neuromancer). The Bridge trilogy is much improved, because it deals less with technology specifically, and more with the effects and concepts of it - Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties. As a side note, Gibson hates Shadowrun, which gives me a degree of malicious glee about how cool the game is.

Adding dragons and whatnot is easy - really, it's not conceptually different from writing something like Diamond Age. Instead of "What if nanotechnology?" you just go "What if magic? Oh, and cybertechnology" and then start extrapolating logically. Obviously the dragons are going to run the biggest megacorporations and governments, directly or indirectly... the trolls and orcs are going to be the new urban poor... and so on and so on.

Artanis
2008-12-07, 03:32 PM
System Shock and System Shock 2 are pretty much the ultimate expressions of Bad Things That Happen To You In Cyberpunk.

Satyr
2008-12-07, 04:23 PM
The archetypical Shadowrun novels are the four ones by Finley. He died much too early, but these are by far the best Shadowrun novels. Which doesn't mean much, but the most of them aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Novels based on games do not have particular high standards, but from what i have seen, Shadowrun novels are among the worst.

The best inspirational movie for Shadowrun I know is Strange Days. Other movies that catch the mood (yet not the technology or the supernatural aspects) of Shadowrun is the Ocean series, Sneakers, the Italian job and similar crime and burglar movies, as well as anything about riots, social injustice and rundown slums. I would strongly recommend to not waste any money on Snow Crash though, that book is just terrible.

Deus Ex is also a good source of inspiration.

The other races are easy. They are 99% human, with slight cosmetic differences and almost no cultural differnces. The first independent subcultues are only slowly developing, but by and large, they doesn't matter much (apart fom surface differences and racism).

BRC
2008-12-07, 04:34 PM
The other races are easy. They are 99% human, with slight cosmetic differences and almost no cultural differnces. The first independent subcultues are only slowly developing, but by and large, they doesn't matter much (apart fom surface differences and racism).

Which makes sense considering that, by 4th ed, I think there at most one generation away from Human.

Satyr
2008-12-07, 04:38 PM
The more important factor is: They live in exact the same regions (with the exception of the Elf countries with their deportation programs), share the exact same language, the same media and macroculture and often the same family background and history. Yes, Orcs and Trolls are marcinalised and discriminated (with the excepion of sports...) but they are not really any less 'human' than the standard humans. They are only slightly different.

BRC
2008-12-07, 05:28 PM
The more important factor is: They live in exact the same regions (with the exception of the Elf countries with their deportation programs), share the exact same language, the same media and macroculture and often the same family background and history. Yes, Orcs and Trolls are marcinalised and discriminated (with the excepion of sports...) but they are not really any less 'human' than the standard humans. They are only slightly different.
Nah, Trolls and Dwarves have their own baseball Leagues, though that's less racism and more for strike zone reasons.

Satyr
2008-12-07, 05:38 PM
Nah, Trolls and Dwarves have their own baseball Leagues, though that's less racism and more for strike zone reasons.

That is new to me, but I have to admit that i stopped carring about the officiual Shadowrun background when they run out of ideas ("Year of the Comet", and that crappy Dragon campaign).

On the other hand, Baseball and similar classic sports eem more or less extinct in Shadowrun and seem to have become niche events.

NPCMook
2008-12-07, 06:32 PM
Crime Dramas: CSI, NCIS, JAG, and etc.

But mostly anything can be used, depending on how characters build their contacts, one of them could call in a favor for them to retrieve a lost item from the sewer. It can either go smoothly, or with a roll of the dice horribly horribly wrong getting attacked by Ghouls, Loup Garou, or a Toxic Shaman.

LibraryOgre
2008-12-07, 06:51 PM
Which makes sense considering that, by 4th ed, I think there at most one generation away from Human.

Depends on the race. Elves born during the initial expression of UGE (which is starting about now for "spike babies") are still going strong, as are dwarves. Orks are probably the grandchildren of those who goblinized, and trolls are probably having the third generation.