Old School Shadowrun

Really, William Gibson was asking for it.

Granted, Count Zero didn’t come out until 1986 and Shadowrun was first published in 1989, but the mystical aspects he built into the sequel to Neuromancer is just begging to be adapted into the “Where Man Meets Magic and Machine" mythos of Shadowrun.

Sez so right on the cover.

Plus, this is the novel that eventually led to the otaku in Shadowrun, so… now we’re even.

In addition, Count Zero also includes a few more Shadowrun staples such as:

Linguasofts and skillsofts in general

Rigging (by connecting cybernetically to a machine)

Megacorp extractions

To be fair, the last example was the focus of the 1984 short story New Rose Hotel, also involving Maas Biolabs, the same corp from Count Zero. And while most people have heard of, if not seen, the Johnny Mnemonic movie, even fewer saw the movie version of New Rose Hotel.

Each of those adaptations had their idiosyncrasies, and each demonstrated the danger of converting a beloved book series into film.

Except Lord of the Rings.

The 1981 short story Johnny Mnemonic was centered around the eponymous data courier and his woman, the quintessential street samurai Molly, who returns for both Neuromancer and the final Sprawl Trilogy novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. William Gibson even wrote the screenplay, but Hollywood does its own thing. While understandable given the anti-drug DARE-era attitudes in this country, it’s still a shame they had to cut the heroin-addicted cybernetically enhanced dolphin. Instead, we got Dolph Lungren, who has the perfect name to play that character.

Instead he had to play second fiddle to Aquaman.

And that’s not even the most quizzical casting choice, given that the film also includes Ice-T and Henry Fucking Rollins.

I'll tear your mind out! I'll burn your soul!

But even the post-Speed pre-Matrix Keanu Reeves couldn’t keep the 1995 movie profitable (box office of $19 million on a budget of $26 million), so it’s still more of a shock that three years later we had New Rose Hotel.

To give you an idea of how bad this movie is, its total box office gross was $21,521. About the cost of a 2024 Chevy Trax.

It's no Ford Americar.

While I can’t find budget numbers, I can’t imagine it could be profitable since Christopher Walken was seemingly paid in multiple duffel bags of pure uncut cocaine for this leading role.

“Can your character have a cane? It’s not in the script but… Oh you already have one. Okay. Action.”

Co-starring with Walken at this Walken-est is Willem Dafoe, whose performance can only be described as “Done as a result of a hostage negotiation so that he can see his family again,” and Asia Argento, who is Italian and has tits.

Exhibit A. Well, closer to a C.

Part 1: Dramatis Personae

Part 2: The Runs

Part 3: The Sense/Net Run

Dodger pulled up suddenly. He gazed in shock at the walls of the node they had just entered. Vertical slabs of mirror reflected their icons to infinity. It was uncanny, unprecedented… He had never encountered anything like this node in all his years of running the Matrix. Somewhere in the depths of the mirrors, Dodger saw something move.

The last third of Neuromancer involves the team (Armitage, Molly, Case, Riviera) launching themselves into space up to the private space station of the Tessier-Ashpool clan, Freeside, to make a run against their HQ in Villa Straylight.

In Shadowrun, they will instead make a run inside the Renraku Arcology.

Any why not? They did it in the first Shadowrun novel, Never Deal with a Dragon, so we know it can be done.

This also allows for a fortuitous intersection of metaplot for both: Neuromancer is the name of an AI who is seeking freedom from their corporate masters – just like the AI Morgan for Renraku.

Turning to flee, the ebon boy came featureless face to featureless face with an ivory girl, her jet cloak sparkling with highlights as though made from inky diamond. “For myself, there was hope of your return.” Dodger could not find words. “For myself, there was desire of your company,” the girl said. She reached out a hand to caress his cheek. “Come.” And they were elsewhere.

That’s the twist that the PCs can gradually uncover throughout. Morgan contacts Armitage, a psychically damaged veteran of Echo Mirage from 2030, and has him arrange the formation of a shadowrunning team to ultimately free her from Renraku’s clutches.

Morgan knows that the Matrix defenses will be just as formidable as the physical ones, so she first has them recover the matrix ghost of decker Zapper Weisman, whom she knows is being stored at the Caviliard Research Facility by Mitsuhama.

Just as Riviera is brought on the team in order to seduce Lady 3Jane and get invited into the corporate core, here Morgan will point the team in the direction of Douglas Geon:

“According to my sources in the intelligence community, Renraku security is investigating Douglas Geon (Director of Business Affairs for the arcology). Mr. Geon apparently frequents the city’s brothels during his leisure, where he divulges minor company secrets to the madams, who then turn a profit from his information. Damage has been minimal, but the potential for trouble is great enough that Mr. Geon could be confined to the arcology for life,” Smiley, 8/19/2050, Seattle Sourcebook

Armitage ensures the runners have sufficient leverage on Geon to arrange entry and relatively free movement within the arcology. Once inside:

The southwest section of 252 makes secret computer systems (mostly IC programs) for the sole use of company computers. This is also where most of the computer R&D labs are located. If the rumored AI does exist, it’s likely to be somewhere on Floor 252.

“I’ve heard that this (Floor 202) is where Dr. Cliber has her office and that the research into Artificial Intelligence goes on here and not on 252,” Arcology Ears, 8/22/2050, Seattle Sourcebook

By this point, the Renraku R&D team aware that something is going on with the AEP:

“Sherman, take a look at this!” Cliber’s shout brought Huang running to stare at her console screen. His eyes widened with excitement. “Signal conductivity and virtual memory increases simultaneous with multi-tasking crashes,” Huang muttered… Hutten crowded in to view the display. The systems engineer looked perplexed. “OMDRs operating beyond spec. A full three banks of 77206 chips at maximum capacity, but the Haas biochip’s barely above maintenance cycle activity.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t match any of the expected parameters.” “Exactly,” Huang beamed. His infection grin spread to the other two. “We’ll need to confirm it.”

The team splits up -- one group to Floor 202 and another to Floor 252, to hunt down the heart of the AI. But it's not just as simple as ejecting a diskette -- the AEP also controls the day to day operation of the arcology, and Morgan does not want to sacrifice all of the people inside for the sake of her freedom.

That comes later.

Instead, the teams must work in concert to extract the "Morgan" portion of the AI from the AEP, while leaving lower level portions still intact.

Hey, it worked here.

Meanwhile, Armitage has gone fully cyberpsychotic, the Red Samurai are swarming all around, and the carcerands that were secretly injected into the party are slowly dissolving...

Oh drek.

Part 1. Part 2.

“Live and learn. Die and forget… unless you are an Expert System.”

– Zapper Weisman, Legendary Decker

The first major run, in the novel, is against the Sense/Net Pyramid in the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA), aka, The Sprawl, to recover a ROM cartridge containing the personality construct of McCoy Pauley, aka, Dixie Flatline.

Conceptual Design of the Sense/Net pyramid, from Vincenzo Natali.

In Shadowrun language, Sense/Net is a simsense company, and so there are a few different options for transplanting this. The physical pyramid might suggest the Aztechnology Complex in Seattle, but this would be too difficult for the first run, especially for what is coming next…

Different pyramid.

Since the Sense/Net job is basically a datasteal and I am basically lazy, the quickest way to run this is to… just run Silver Angel.

Very lazy.

Change Eve Donovan to Armitage and have the eponymous file be that for the Dixie Flatline equivalent, which for Shadowrun will be an Expert System/LLM for the legendary Sixth World decker, Zapper Weisman. You still need the decker and the muscle, and could still involve a Panther Moderns-style gang for a diversion.

Part 1 here.

I think one reason why I never played any iteration of the Lord of the Rings as a role-playing game is the fundamental contradiction in both desiring to have character agency yet still adhering to canon.

Gandalf has to knock on a particular circular yellow door in the Shire,

Strider has to save the Hobbits from the Nazgul,

Frodo has to take the ring to Mordor.

Though he does not know the way

Otherwise, the story diverges too wildly as to become unrecognizable and undesirable.

Really, Gandalf had it coming.

If you are approaching it from the vantage point of D&D power level, you will also be set up for massive disappointment when you find that even the Great and Powerful Gandalf’s best spell in combat is…

Hurling flaming pine-cones.

Yes, LoTR inspired D&D, but so did many other properties.

Such as it is with Neuromancer in Shadowrun. At its core there are some fundamental incongruities between the works of Gibson and FASA, the two biggest being:

Shadowrun has magic stuff, which Neuromancer does not

Neuromancer has space stuff, which Shadowrun does not

And sadly, neither has Space Magic.

Really the best you could hope to achieve is an adventure that broadly captures the essence while abandoning any conceit of a simulacrum. What do we have to work with, anyway? The story is strongly centered around one character (Case), and while there are others that could be adapted as fellow player characters (Molly, Riviera, Maelcum), they don’t do so simultaneously as a Shadowrun team would expect. If you strip away everything superfluous, you’re left with:

The Sense/Net Run

The Straylight Run

Which is a lot to work with!

From the website of Vincenzo Natali.

From the website of Vincenzo Natali. Art by Bedlam.

From the website of Vincenzo Natali. Art by Amro Attia.

It's happened to all of us.

Maybe your long-time home-brew PC ran out of Karma dice in the Renraku Arcology and the Red Samurai used them to test the iron sights on their SCK-100s.

Or maybe you're brand new to the game and don't want to spend five hours making a new character -- so you want to grab and go.

Except that... after a while, you don't want to play the same old lonely decker. But you still need a decker.

You can still play the archetype, and you don't even need to make any changes -- you just need a new spin.

Check below for some ideas.