Tag Archives: announcement

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And we’re back

Our game location, Moenen & Mariken, moved about 70m eight months ago and needed some time getting its new basement ready. The basement now has its own entrance, allowing for us to play there again.

I intend to switch over to more regular open events in the future, rather than two short campaigns per year, but we’ll see how it goes. There also will be miniature-games in the future, which are basically fight-scenes fought out in detail. Unfortunately the miniatures need to be painted first.

For now there will be Ticket To Ride, three sessions working for GridGuide. These sessions will have a lower power level, using Sample Characters from the books rather than more optimized ones. To keep the power level balanced, no custom characters will be allowed. For more info, see here:

https://shadowlandblog.wordpress.com/open-play-events-en/ticket-to-ride-nl/
https://shadowlandblog.wordpress.com/open-play-events-en/ticket-to-ride-en/

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Busy times, quiet times

It’s been quiet here for a while, as a result of me being rather busy. The job schedule is okay, but as a result of social activities, plus spending more evenings with my gf whenever we can, I barely spend any evenings at home nowadays. And on those I’m generally too tired to feel like shadowrun posts.

However I did put together a list of Easily Missed Rules during my commute and will put some up soon. Until then I’m enjoying playing my new character, Samuel Jones. He’s a wicked socialite without physical abilities but with a very sharp tongue and some dark secrets as to how he stays alive…

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Black Hearts & Updates page

First about Updates: WordPress allows for both posts and pages. Since a page is permanent, it can be hard to realize an update has been made. With a post you can simply reschedule it to appear as a recent publication. So an Updates page has been made and added to the menu, where changes to the permanent pages will be written down.

Today’s updates are quite simple: The houserules index had some links added, and the Black Hearts pages have been added.

Black Hearts is the spiritual successor of Wild Things. Its information page has been added to the menu in both english and dutch, which includes dates and chargen rules. Of course sample characters will also be available again.

Black Hearts is an open campaign where the team has a fixed employer, namely the UCAS government. The goverment will provide the team with some necessities, such as several fake IDs, and also will give them as much intel as possible. There will still be plenty of need for legwork on-site though…

Each session will again be stand-alone, though a common thread will be present and build up to the season finale, so to speak.

Black Hearts will, unlike Wild Things, actually take place in civilization making the Matrix actually relevant. This means a good commlink is now rather relevant even for normal characters.

However, the Sample Characters will not include any Hackers or Riggers, because writing an adventure for both with and without risks devaluating those characters. Instead, these characters are allowed in chargen for those intending to attend all sessions. Please contact me if you want to make one of those, so we don’t end up with half a dozen Riggers or Hackers…

– MC

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Houserules Index

A small newspost: I have added the Houserules Index to the sidebar. This one is built for the future, listing several houserules I already designed and also houserules I still want to work on. I have already scheduled a few posts for the future, posting some houserules every friday for a while.

If someone can’t wait because they feel they really want/need details on one in advance, just contact me for it alright? =)

Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if I change a few rules here and there, compared to the ones I posted on the forums in the past. As an example the Noise rules predate Data Trails so I imagine I’ll rewrite those a bit.

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First Wild Things session & Sample Characters #1

First Wild Things game will be tomorrow, on the 5th of may. The scenario played will be Polarbear Poachers, and a second scenario has been prepared named Noisy Nights.

(Yes, the alliteration is intended. 🙂 Of the first four run-titles 3 alliterated, so I adjusted them to all do so.)

Asides from three players with their self-made characters, there’s six sample characters available for people to choose from. They’re a Face (social character), a Bodyguard, a Hunter, a Survivalist Expert and two mages, one Overwatch and one Combat.

Now these have been made with the Life Modules system, which gives more detail to their development history. Rather than just being a set of skills and attributes, your character combines Life Modules and some extra karma expenses into a bigger story.

First of, we got the Face, Smedley: He’s an Ork (the only orc in Shadowrun is the Ork Rights Committee) from Tír Tairngire. Now the Tir, which roughly overlaps with current Oregon, is a mostly-Elf country which has a lot of discrimination going on against non-elves. So an Ork will usually suffer greatly there. Smedley still went to all the decent amounts of education though: He went through white collar education, prep school, state college and obtained a job in Sales.

But due to all the discrimination there was a rub for Smedley, and at age 25 he had enough. The control of English he had picked up over the years he then employed in the shadows, doing the social work for others as Face. He scored some nice big connections then, but he still didn’t feel at home, so he began to drift. His journeys brought him to Africa, where after a while doing work here and there in Cape Town, he moved to Johannesburg and scored a job as cop there.

Now while intimidating people might alleviate boredom for a while, it’s not the greatest of all jobs and Smedley really felt the urge to put his other social skills to work again. One of his big connections then contacted him, suggesting a job that he might very well enjoy: Troubleshooter for Wild Life Incorporated. It’d give him a chance to put his social skills to the test, a challenge he decided to accept.

Statwise Smedley is average physically, except for a really sturdy body. But he’s real smart and charismatic, quite excellent at his social skills, and knows nearly every main language he should know for his job. While he’s not all that good in his physical skills, he compensates with the smooth talk or the threats you’d never expect from a sturdy Ork.

Another character from the Tir is the Elf Hunter Charmante. As an Elf she was treated far better, but she became an orphan as a young kid and ended up spending her teen years on a farm. Due to this she lacked the chance to get a proper education, instead she decided to get tough and mean. At a mere age of seventeen she already hit the shadows as Street Samurai, developing her gun skills and her quick eye.

A few years later Charmante managed to draw the attention of a corporate Johnson from Telestrian Industries. Since she was an elf born and raised in the Tir, getting her a limited Corporate SIN wasn’t that hard to arrange. Charmante got much better at her combat skills there, and used her spare time to learn more about critters & paracritters since Telestrian Industries bred and trained those.

When gender-discrimination got in the way of her position, her boss helped her get a job working for the cops. With her skillset SWAT was glad to have her. Heck, her skills were so good she got to spend part of her weapon training on improving her skill with blades instead.

Charmante got to the point where SWAT just didn’t do it for her anymore and she started missing her life in the shadows, where she was her own boss. She used her skills to become a Bounty Hunter and liked to hunt them in wilder areas. Eventually one of her bounties happened to be on a Wild Life Incorporated safari. She took the guy down without security even noticing and got him out through twenty miles of jungle.

By the time Wild Life Incorporated caught up, she had already cashed in the bounty. She immediately got hired as Troubleshooter, because someone that good at hunting, sneaking about and beating people up was perfect for many a Wild Thing.

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Wild Things

Going to keep this brief, because most of the info is on the left already. Just check Open Play Events and its subheader Wild Things (also linked to on the Open Play Events page).

Wild Things is an open campaign, so anyone can join. It will be a bunch of single sessions where someone can just come in, grab a sample character and enjoy the game. There also will be a red thread weaving through the sessions, connecting them to a scary spooky evil masterplot.

Because the runners work for a company, there won’t be the usual ‘going to the meet, possibly getting ambushed/tested, negotiating with the Johnson, finding out what they’re not telling you and whether or not they’ll backstab you’ that most normal Shadowrunners go through. This is part of how I’m cutting down the gametime required. There will still be plenty of chances for socialites, of course, and also battle opportunities for the tough guys.

One last note: No Riggers, Deckers or Technomancers. We’re avoiding the complicated archetypes for this campaign. Plus in the middle of nowhere none of those are that comfortable to play. ^_^’

– MC