Welcome to the Shadows - Shadowrun campaign interest check (possibly future Epic Roleplay)

Veni-Vidi-Respondi

Veni-Vidi-Respondi

I came, I saw, I responded
The year is 2077. The world has not only Awakened magically -- it's wired. Cyber and bioware implants make your meat body better-than-flesh, while the wireless Matrix enhances your perceptions with hyper-real senses. Deals are made in steel and lead more often than gold or nuyen; success and failure live only a razor's edge apart. Creatures of myth and legend walk the streets, while the arcane skills of spellslingers are in high demand. Above it all, monolithic megacorps bleed the world dry, sabotaging each other in covert cutthroat competition as they go to war over the bottom line

You're a shadowrunner, a street operative, scratching out a living on the mean sprawl streets. You may be human, elf, dwarf, ork or troll. From lethal street samurai to well-connected info brokers, spell-slinging mages or code-cracking hackers. No matter what, you're a professional --corporate pawn or "deniable asset," you get the job done.

Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve your ammo. And never, ever cut a deal with a Dragon.

Archtypes
In the world of 2077, the metroplexes are monsters that cast long shadows. And in the cracks between the giant corporate structures, shadowrunners find their homes. Entire societies live and die in a black-market underworld, exploited and abused, yet powerful in their own way. The Mafia, Yakuza and other crime syndicates have grown explosively as their networks provide anything that people want to buy.
Shadowrunners are the professionals of this culture, where self-sufficiency is vital. When the megacorps want a job done but don’t want to dirty their hands, they turn to the only people who can pull it off: the shadowrunners. Though only the most confidential government or corporate databases even know of a shadowrunner’s existence, the demand for his or her services is high. Below is a list of archetypal shadowrunners and their skills.

  • Deckers (Hackers) can slide like a whisper through the databases of giant corporations, spiriting away the only thing of real value—information.
  • Street samurai are enforcers for hire whose combat skills and reflexes make them the ultimate urban predators.
  • Riggers ho augment their brains to manipulate vehicles and drones for a variety of purposes.
  • Mages, those rare folk who possess the gift of wielding and shaping the magical energies that now surround the Earth, are sought after to spy on the competition, heal and buff their allies, sling spells against an enemy, commit magical sabotage, and any other purpose that their employers can dream up.
  • Shamans are specialized mages whose attunement to the natural magical forces allows them to support themselves and fellow shadowrunners with a variety of defensive spells, as well as summon and barter with spirits.
  • Physical adepts, who use the awakened magical energies to refine their bodies to the point of absolute perfection and become the ultimate fighting machines.
Not every shadowrunner follows these archetypes. In fact, few focus exclusively on what they are supposed to be, leading to everyone being unique in their own way...
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SINNERS AND THE SINLESS
Some of us choose the shadows, and some of us have the shadows thrust upon them. One of the dividing lines between the world of shadows and the world of light is a SIN—a System Identifcation Number—the identifcation you need to be accepted in security systems and government databases and pretty much any computer anywhere that authenticates people’s identities. If you have one, you’re a SINner, one of the good, normal people of the world. If you don’t have one, you’re an outsider. You’re pushed into the shadows of the world by default.

So who is born without a SIN—who are the SINless people of the world? Well, if your parents didn’t have one, you probably don’t. So children of criminals, along with kids of a high percentage of orks or trolls (who often get denied SINs as a matter of course), often start off in the dark. Then there are criminals—the professional kind, the amateur ones, and the accidental ones. Whatever they did, however they got caught, they ended up with a criminal SIN, which is about as useful as a fingerless cyberhand. Most of the time, rather than staying with the norms and being treated like a radioactive leper, folks with a criminal SIN drop out of society, either running in the shadows or opting for the full-on criminal lifestyle (the mobs and street gangs of the Sixth World are always hiring).
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Links
-This is a great slide show that will introduce you to Shadowrun : https://prezi.com/bhsoqaqbmue5/a-basic-introduction-to-the-shadowrun-universe/

-Slang guide book probably good to give a once over but not crucial : http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/game-resources/slang-guidebook/

This is a super detailed section that covers history and focuses on North America. Definantly not required reading. We are going to play fast and loose with the history. https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shadowrun_primer.pdf

-This is a link to the Shadowrun Wiki open to the Megacorp page right now but great resource for other things aswell. I beleive they have a timeline there somewhere ect. http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowrun_corporations

There are also some quality Shadowrun video games out there on Steam, GoG, and possibly darker places of the Internet. It is a pen and paper role playing game original so your local nerd store should have a copy of the books if you are interested in playing with your friends IRL :D

Note:
Not ready to start this up right away just here to gauge interest and maybe brainstorm some plot locations and hear what people are interested in doing in a cyberpunk setting.
 
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I actually have a character with a background, but sans plotline that I would love to have join a Shadowrun world.
 
Sounds good, I'm going to plug away at a write up soon here. I think most people will jump on the ship once we get going and they see the cyberpunk awesomeness. I'm kinda attached to it taking place somewhere in Southeast Asia. I just have this scene in my mind of a ship gliding into a obnoxiously lit up neon near-future sprawl city. As it creeps through the waves undetected green phosphorescence catch in the ripples around the boat and your crew gathers on the deck. I'd do it much more detailed but I just really like this scene to set it off. You could be new to the crew or have run the shadows before, I have some general neighborhoods I want to visit, some cool set pieces in mind and some issues I'd want to cover.
 
Hey,

Count me in but it will take me a few days to get set up and once I am i'll have more to say - suggestions :)
Put me down as a pure Decker archtype.
 
Count me in as well! Want to play an Adept Street Samurai achetype...and I'll already have my character ready whenever you're ready to start accepting characters
 
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