Slot Off, Frag-Face! Let's Play Sega's Shadowrun

Dammit all of you are voting wrong! The best thing about Shadowrun is the matrix and we won't even get to see it if we play a stoopid shaman! Change your votes now!

Btw That is also why Shadowrun the RPG wasn't always fun because the one decker in your party would plug in and then get to have an entire adventure themselves while the rest of the party sat around drinking mountain dew and eating chips for 45+ waiting for the door to be unlocked...

What does this mean? Always play as the decker

I loved both this and its SNES cousin back in the day, but never got further into it than that. With a few years' distance, my favorite thing to notice at first is the rote futurization of everything (nuyen, cybereyes, tri-video...)

I usually went with a decker, and was about to vote for him until you referred to the Shaman as Merlin Haggard, which has got to be somebody's stage name somewhere. Go shaman!

No, like I said, you can just hire an NPC decker and go in via him. No big deal. Unless you can't! In which case Hef should note this, and I'd change my vote to decker.

Shadowrun, from a mechanics and game design standpoint, is a freakin' mess. Great setting, terrible gameplay. 4th Edition (current) fixes the "waiting on the decker" problem, but at the cost of losing almost everything about the setting that made it feel like Shadowrun, AND the designers still couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.

The entire point of the game - the eponymous shadow run - is a crime caper. Like Hef mentions, it's pulled straight from Neuromancer specifically and the Sprawl trilogy in general, in which the main plot is, yes, a crime caper. Which in turn takes a lot from classic caper/heist movies (and if you want something more modern to take inspiration from, Ocean's 11 is good, or the Ariel episode of Firefly). But like everything else that came out of the 80s and 90s (and, well, still a lot that comes out today), it gets bogged down in combat and gear and misses the point.

Grab the 2E book for artwork and setting, the Seattle sourcebook (first edition) for more setting, Virtual Realities 2.0 or Matrix sourcebook for a good feel for the Matrix, and then grab a copy of Fastlane or some other caper-geared ruleset.

I think at this point I just have to start a Shadowrun thread in the tabletop section because every time the games come up I ramble on and on like this and I feel terrible for it. =(

That's not a bad idea.

In the mean time please continue Heffenfeffer!

Null perspiration, Decker chummers, nunix speaks the truth! You can head into the Matrix anytime if you've got a Cyberdeck and someone in your party with a Datajack. (Do note that if they suck with computers, it'll probably be a real short trip.) As well, whenever someone enters the Matrix the player's perspective switches to them, thus neatly averting the "take a beer run while the Genesis plays itself" problem.

Oddly enough, I've never played a tabletop game of Shadowrun myself - my experience with it is pretty much limited to the two 16-bit games and a few odds and ends picked up on the Interwebs.

There is a thread for that. I mean, it kinda mutated into people just talking about the Dandifor game I'm running, but it still exists. I'd probably be tempted to jump in on a Shadowrun game too, despite being involved with uh... 5 other campaigns now. Is it me or is it always feast or famine with these things?

We've wanted to play for a while, but no one in my group is confident enough to run it.

Welp, the people have spoken - it looks like Merlin Haggard is going in. So let's get to it!



Off we go!

Oh, wait a sec, what do we have?



AAAAHHHHHH!

Right, don't panic. Remember, this is 1994. HUD technology is in its infancy, and this is in the era of "We need more stuff on the screen! MORE!!!" This isn't exactly the iPhone style of off of screen, out of mind. Luckily, time pauses while we're futzing around in here.

Right - so out of this mishmash here can you guess where the cursor is? If you said "In the lower right highlighting the 'PS' button as confirmed by the lower center textbox saying 'Pocket Secretary'" then, Congratulations! Your prize is a job developing GUIs for KDE. If your answer is "There's a cursor?" or stunned silence, then you are part of the other, saner 99.9999% of the world's population.

No, really, this game is good and I do like it - they just front loaded the difficulty. Into this screen.



Anyway, since Pocket Secretary is highlighted we may as well select it. (The crash course for GUI controls is generally A confirms something, Start backs out, and C switches characters.) Here's a bit saner menu with a few options to pick from. Also notice your money there on the bottom - you've got 20 nuyen on you. Shadowrun's cash of choice is the almighty nuyen, a holdover from the Cold War days when we thought that Japan was going to buy us all. Of course, that's too silly to even contemplate now. Everyone knows that China's gonna buy us all in five years. All hail the nuyuan!

If you've given a little thought to this, you'll note that your current nuyen is visible here and not on either the main inventory screen or the speech screen where Stoker was asking for some cash. The fact that this little fairly important factoid appears only here is one of Shadowrun's little *twitch* idiosyncrasies.

Sigh.



Moving on, we have The Notebook, which has some pertinent plot-based info.



As well as a snide dig at our cash-flow situation.



Tips and Clues is a helpful section designed to keep you on track when you stray off course from the plot. This part, at least, is a bit ahead of its time when considering that RPGs of the era would have NPCs give you this info either only once, while you were in town (as opposed to the dungeon when you needed to use said info), or both.



Mr. Johnsons are the folks you can turn to for a quick buck. The only one we know of so far is Mr. Gunderson, so this lists his 'office' for us.



Back one level, here's what we get by picking Cyberdeck. Sorry, Deckers - we're lacking an entry point into the Matrix at the moment.

Rounding out this menu is Save/Load, which provides a primitive version of save states into one of two slots. Awww, isn't that adorable? Note that this still has a function even under emulation should you get a tip from a Swedish pop-group's chauffeur.



At the risk of frightening and confusing my remaining viewers, it's time to go back to the main inventory screen. Picking Cyberware shows you what you're packing inside your body. Joshua here (Apparently Merlin Haggard is his stage name) has nothing in his system except for wheat grass smoothies with shots of Ginko Bilkoba and St. John's Wort.

Ah, here we go. Magic. This screen lets you pick between all the spells that Haggar here knows. First up is Mana Zap.



Then Heal Wounds...



And finally Rockskin.

Now time for a little magic primer. In lieu of mana, magic points, or Uncle Frank's MSG-powered magic sauce, spells have another method of determining how often they can be cast - Drain. Notice that Mana Zap and Heal Wounds have no drain at all, but rockskin does. Drain takes away some of your mental health whenever you cast a spell that uses it, and it's marked by the little bar second down in the upper left. If you make your spell more powerful or change your posture from more defensive to more offensive...



Then the spell will drain more of your energy when it's cast. Each little bar there represents 10% of mental health, so with Full Offense on Rockskin you can cast the spell five times before falling unconscious. The tradeoff that makes drain worthwhile is that if you use a more powerful (greater force) spell or posture, the spell becomes more effective (with the success bar in the top left.) It's quite an interesting system. As noted, you can cast spells that don't have drain until the warranty on your Genesis expires - but that may not be an option with a low success rate spell when bad guys start shelling you.



Let's head back a step into the main inventory screen. Here we see a fetish. Fetishes are nice little things that absorb drain from any spell any number of times, no matter how powerful said drain is. We'll have to stock up once we have unholy amounts of power to throw around.



At the moment, since we've got no real offensive spell to work with (even at the highest force we can muster, Mana Zap is a finger poke) let's turn it over to Ares Weapon Emporium for now. These six items, incidentally, are what we brought with us when we came to Seattle.



As far as armor goes, all we have at the moment are the clothes on our back. Oddly enough, we can sell these without buying new armor, but that doesn't make our sprite strut around nude. Slap patches and Trauma patches restore 20% of mental and physical health, respectively. And finally, we have the shaman's totem. This physical manifestation of the link between the metaphysical connection of nature and humanity through which we commune to perform physics-defying acts fueled entirely by constructs of our mind...



"Uh, Frank? Did you do the art for the totems yet?"
"Duh, I'll have it done by the time it goes to Greatest Hits."

Yeah.

Right, this is getting a lot longer than I figured it would be, so let's break it off here. (No worries about abandoning the LP, though - I've still got a load of pictures that were planned for this update and things should move a lot faster now that we're (mostly) done with inventory.) So let's hear it for 1990's era GUI design!

I wasn't expecting much in terms of shaman types with a Genesis game, but at least there's an alligator in the lower right corner of the lower left menu, so that's something.

Will you encounter any gator spirits in-game or anything?

Last time I played through this game, it was as a decker (natch), and I didn't play with magic any. I'm impressed they kept the force/drain mechanic, that's pretty neat.

Also: totem art! Since the game didn't supply any.



Also, make sure to pick up some ACME Mystic Circle Paint.

No!

The hell? Is Coyote Shaman trying to lure Roadrunner Shaman into that circle with free cyber-birdseed?

Welcome back to the Let's Play! We last left our hero fighting against a 90's GUI. What adventures will Merlin Haggard have this time?



All right, let's get moving!



Unfortunately, we come across one of Shadowrun's version of random encounters. This is, unfortunately, the bad version - it mainly consists of punks coming at you who want you dead. Now's as good a time as any to talk about combat, though.

Shadowrun uses another technique years ahead of its time for combat - lock-on targeting. Pressing B will target an enemy (press it more to cycle through enemies) and you'll attack them with whatever you have handy when you tap A (a gun, hand razors, magic, etc.) The target crosshairs will go from healthy green to almost dead red whenever a target is highlighted, too. Not a bad system, really.



The only problem is that we're at the start of the game with the weakest gear and outnumbered two to one. So...um...



Get used to this happening if you're playing along - Shadowrun can be a bit tricky. That said, since Shadowrun follows the Dragon Warrior school of thought, you end up revived with all your stuff, save a little cash. Thankfully, death isn't too deadly around here.

Thus, since the game will revive me an infinite number of times and has a scenario of finite length, I can't lose! Therefore, I declare myself the winner!

I hope you've all enjoyed this Let's Play. It was a bit hard at the start, but it became easier once I saw how short it was! Here's a preview of my next LP: Bioshock!

Pulitzer, here I come!

Oh, all right.



Here's Little Chiba, were I am unceremoniously dumped after being healed. Unfortunately, those bastards decided to help myself to 10% of my nuyen while reviving me from the dead, so I'm down from 20 to 18 of them! The nerve!



Anyway, we mosey on over to The Jump House, thankfully free of street punks this time.



Ooh, not bad. I'll have to come back when it's Ladies Night. No time for the 50 cent well/wine/margaritas, though, we're here on business.



At the booth in the top right is the man himself, Mr. Gunderson Johnson. Fortunately, he's a fairly personable sort.



Mainly because of his more flies with honey than vinegar approach. Thousands of Nuyen? I can't even count that high!

Much like in real life, you've gotta take your lumps at the bottom before you can move up. Although I kinda wonder about the gaming possibilities of going through as a Mr. Johnson. Is there a "General Contractor Tycoon" game in existence yet?



A girl that knows how to use computers? My high school dreams have finally come true!



Unfortunately, she is out of my grasp due to my not having thousands at my disposal. Just like high school. Way to open up old wounds, Gunderson!




Perhaps I can win her heart once I get some scratch from a part-time job. This run is a courier run - where I need to run a package of dubious legality from one building to another. Easy enough.



Since I'm now gainfully employed, my pocket secretary finally reflects that. (Yeah YOU get a job, plastic piece of crap. 64k cache memory my ass.) Quite nice to have around when loading from a save to have a little confirmation of what it was you had to do again.



Oh no, not again!



Come on, come on...

Damn it!

Methinks they set the early game difficulty a wee bit too high. Admittedly most players aren't trying to take screenshots while playing, though. Wait a sec...one-button quick screenshot! Son of a bit...

So, yeah, I'm learning new stuff all the time about LPs. But I digress. Anyhow, there's no real penalty for failing runs - just head over to Mr. J and ask for a new one. (This is, incidentally, the reason why I'm still playing here - sure it's hard as a rock, but there's no real penalty for failure, so it's an encouragement to try again. Luckily this object lesson has been well taken by developers these days. It's a lot more fun to play a game that's too easy than too hard, and on their side it's a lot easier to make a game harder than easier.)

Incidentally, this is the dreaded Escort Mission, bane of gamers the world over. It's bearable here mainly because there's not too much space between places.



Anyhoo, it turns out that William Gibson has been sucked, TRON-like, into his Genesis while playing this game during a thunderstorm. Poor sap. Let's get him over to Boris's.



Here's Ares Weapon Emporium. Unfortunately, the buildings in Seattle all tend to blend together - the only real distinguishers between buildings are the package sign for shops (any kind), drink glasses for bars, and a physician's symbol for doctors. But to find out what each building actually is, you'll need to step inside. We'll find out why that's a bad idea in a moment.



Yikes, Billy, you look more generic than usual.



Luckily we run into no street punks this time. And at least the greenhouse looks kind of greenhouse-y.



Yeah yeah. Mona Lisa Overdrive was crap, you hack.

That said, he did pay us...



I'm rich!

Not rich enough, though - back to the grindstone.



Hey! Don't be taking my money! I finally come up on top against one of these punks. Maybe I can find a job that pays a little more, now.



Mr. J offers me a ghoul bounty run. All I gotta do is kill these suckers and I'll be rolling in green. If I get up to twenty, that's 400�, and I can get Mike's stuff out of hock! Perfect!



Right, so ghouls tend to congregate in abandoned buildings, and there are plenty around Seattle. So let's step inside...



OK, so this ghoul got the drop on me and scored a free hit. No probl...wait, did that just take 50% of my mental health? In one h....AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH



Maybe this wasn't the best idea after all. Ghoul bounties are incredibly hard, *and* incredibly low-paying. Once we see some other runs this game has to offer, it'll be unclear why these were even implemented. And since ghouls tend to attack when entering any abandoned building, it's a bit of a dick move to not have the buildings clearly labeled.



Yeah, the ghoul contract wasn't our speed, all right. Let's take a little break from this and step outside.



Aah, perfect! A terminal allows us to do some fun stuff.



Pretty much, terminals are our de facto desktop computers. Using the Cyberspace option at the bottom will connect us to the Matrix...if we have a datajack and a cyberdeck. 0 for 2 there.

Vid-Phone will let us call our contacts - of which we have none right now.

OK, so all that's left is to call a taxi and blow this popsicle stand.



Well.

Yep, Redmond Barrens is noob central. I think this 'traffic' will clear right up once we clear some arbitrary event flag. Join me next time as I destroy The Matrix with my leet hacking skills probably catch a taxi!

Damn, so much for easing you in to the game, huh?

Street Samurai is the first character choice for a reason. Being a tough sonofabitch will get you through any Redmond mission easily. Buying a better weapon will also speed things up. The model 101 is just a waste of ammo.

Actually, yeah. Why are we using the gun instead of the magic? Not enough damage?

Unfortunately, yeah. You know how when you bring up the gun it says "Power: Light"? Well, when you bring up Mana Zap you get "Power: Very Low". That said, once we finally see some magic shops we can alleviate this little problem with more focused and more powerful spells.

Edit: Actually, a little futzing around made me away of what the "power" rating really means: ability to punch through armor. Thus, Mana Zap won't work against folks with even mediocre armor. It does work on the random yahoos around here with one tiny snag - it also has really low damage. Thus, for the moment, technology reigns supreme.

For the time being, though...yeah. If it helps, pretend that Haggar is using a magic wand to shoot tiny fireballs at his enemies.

I am loving this, I died over and over and over again playing this at my neigbors house as a child. I am currently almost finished with my first read of Neuromancer so this is timely to that as well. Interesting enough William Gibson is not a fan of Shadowrun! This is from his website

"SHADOWRUN: GAG ME WITH A SPOON

No relationship. No permission. Nothing. Nary a word exchanged, ever.

Except that the admixture of cyberspace and, spare me, *elves*, has always been more than I could bear to think about.

I've just been ignoring it for years, and hope to continue to. "

WELL OK MR. GRUMPY.

Well, if some dudes decided to rip off your work wholesale then futz around with it adding a bunch of elements you deliberately avoided, how would you feel about it? I know I wouldn't like it, no sir.

Fortunately though, everyone still remembers Neuromancer and most of us had forgotten about Shadowrun.

So I decided to play along! This game really is open... and it doesn't feel the need to hold your hand as to where you'll find the main storyline either...

Gibson has every right to complain about the elves. I don't see how anyone could get upset about the addition of dwarves, orcs and Native American shamanism to cyberpunk, but no science fiction writer should have to stand for elves. And in Shadowrun the elves are complete jerks.

That "shut your mouth" sample that plays inside the Jump House is freaking hilarious.

THAT'S what it says? For sixteen years I was thinking that the barkeep merely wanted me to "Check it out." Geez LaWeez, I'm learning things left and right about this game.

Yeah I can definitely side with Gibson on this one.

Of course, I still want to try a cyberpunk game setting, but maybe Shadowrun isn't the best choice.

Well, there's always Risus.

Hey Guys! Just because a guy says he invented something doesn't mean he does, nor does it mean he has an absolute say oh how that thing can be used/changed/adapted by others.

Besides, Cyberpunk existed before Gibson. Lots of people were writing and expressing their anxieties towards advanced computers and the role they'd play in life. A perfect example is that Bladerunner came out in 1982 and perfectly captures the feel of what cyberpunk is before Gibson published Neuromancer two years later. I know BR is based on a Phillip K. Dick novel but the oppressive feeling present in the movie isn't in Dick's novel and captures the punk in cyber punk

So yeah, fuck Gibson.

If we didn't have people stealing from other media, we wouldn't have Snatcher, and that game's fucking awesome.

Really, I can understand Gibson being unhappy with people swiping his work and slapping Dungeons & Dragons into it, but I never would've known about Neuromancer if not for Shadowrun.