#shadowrunidentity

Welcome to another Developer Discovery!  This time Matt Hendrickson (aka L0g41n, or ‘Mister 10-G-41N’) provides us with some more information about himself - this time with a role-playing bent. Without further ado...

What was your first experience with a roleplaying game?

I’m a second-generation gamer, which means that my first experiences around a table were at my family dinner table, with my brothers and my dad. My dad would put an adventure together, and we would make characters and play through the dungeon. My dad described the dungeons with details that I never had imagined- dust filtering through light, roots growing out of the roof of the cave, horrible monsters and devious traps. I was hooked on RPGs from a very early age, and I’ve been playing and teaching people games ever since.

What brought you to Shadowrun?

Teaching people games has always been fun for me. You take someone, introduce them to new stories, and let them loose with their imaginations, and they can do amazing things. One of the people that I tried to teach games to was my friend Will. Will’s mom was not a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, so when he asked to go to the game store to buy some books, she agreed- and when they got there, she made him promise that he wouldn’t buy and D&D books- I’ve talked about that before. When I came over that night, he told me all about it, and showed me the books that he had gotten- one had three people attacking an ATM*, the other had a sleek car across the front**. The title was “Shadowrun.”

I had grown up with dusty old 1st edition D&D books, but these books had sleek layouts, designed like catalogues in magazines, with hackers commenting on individual story threads or ‘telling the truth behind the lies.’ We played on and off for a year or so, but Will got moved to another school and we stopped gaming together.

Now comes my second introduction. My parents bought my older brother a copy of a game called DMZ***, which was a board game version of Shadowrun. In it were complicated rules for movement and firing, but there were also incredible set pieces, artwork, and beautiful maps. We continued to play that for many years, making up our own stories. My brother was our GM, and we did that for a lot of years until he graduated high school and moved on to other things.

*(Shadowrun First Edition); **(Rigger Black Book), ***(Downtown Militarized Zone)

What is your favorite Shadowrun story?

My favorite Shadowrun story is Super Tuesday. Shadowrun was a ‘living world,’ and had constantly developing storylines. There was a presidential election in the UCAS (United Canadian and American States), and an election scandal, which ended with the disgraced president was removed from office. Congress decides to run a short election season, culminating in a vote the following November called Super Tuesday! Now, the characters enter the game and start playing against the different politicians, working for this group or against that one. There’s even a dragon (Vote Dunkelzhan!) running for president! Now, the runners get to move the campaigns around, and there’s a running ticker that lists everyone’s poll numbers decided by what the runners do. At the back of the book, there was a small tear-out card that was addressed and you could send in. Only, instead of subscribing for a mailing list, this card was asking how the story went, and who won the election. I’m proud to say that I voted for Dunkelzahn, and he won the election! I had never been able to participate in a game at that level- no one outside of our group cared about my D&D stories, not even the really good ones, and certainly no one at the company that made the game wanted to hear about it. But here were these guys, making games, and letting us decide the fate of the world!

What is your RPG horror story (we all have one)?

My first attempt to run Shadowrun will be the horror story that I share with you today. I’ve been gaming for a lot of years at a lot of different tables, and I’ve seen some terrible things. This one is unique, in that it’s mostly my fault. This is the story of Club Nefertiti.

My brother had moved away, and our group was left without a GM. While we played D&D on a regular basis, I had a hard time convincing anyone to learn Shadowrun- but I finally wore them down and got a couple of them to try it! I explained about the world, and a world of criminals and high technology seemed to interest them. David and Nick were my test players, and they decided to be hitmen working for the mob. Since we had the DMZ maps, I pulled one out, and read the name: Club Nefertiti. It’s a club in the Renraku Arcology, and had a level of the mall as well as the layout of the club itself. While Dave and Nick finished making characters, I dreamt up a scenario- these hit men were doing a favor for a mob boss, looking to move up the ranks. A corporate suit thought he could ignore the mob’s wishes, so your boss wanted you to make an example of him while he went out in public to watch his girlfriend perform. While she was on stage at the Club, our “heroes” were assigned to take out the suit loud and messy.

Now, my players were regular D&D players, and perhaps not used to the high lethality of a game like Shadowrun. Or perhaps I did not prepare them sufficiently for the dangers of the world. They entered the club, surprised that security would dare to stop them, and managing to sneak in a few weapons (instead of their full arsenal), they wandered the club until they saw their target. There he was, watching his girlfriend on stage, surrounded by bodyguards. They covertly readied weapons, and in a break between songs, they shouted a greeting from their boss and let lead fly. The bodyguards tried to save the suit, but our hitmen were victorious- more or less. Shooting in a crowded club caused a panic, with the crowd rushing out while security for the place tried to rush in; this resulted in a screaming, thrashing body of pain. It also gave our button men a few seconds to get away- only they were still exchanging fire with the bodyguards. As security arrived, and the panicked crowd hit the floor of the mall and set off security alarms there, things went from bad to worse. Backup arrived, and one of our hitmen made use of a small window for the bar. Unfortunately, this left his companion catching a hail of lead. Leaving his companion for dead, our remaining hitman made a break for the door and was caught between the security for the club and the fearsome weapons of the Renraku Red Samurai. Pretty much everyone died.

Mercurial is still progressing along quite nicely.  We are always testing refining and finding new ways to make Mercurial more interesting to play.  This week we have a new Developer Diary from me, the maintainer of this blog.

Name: Heleen Durston

Position: Playtester/Writer

What is your history?  

    I’ve played computer games since back in the Commodore 64 days.  I have always wanted to develop my own computer game.  To that end, I have played around with a lot of different game engines.  My favorite game engine is Unity.  My goal is to someday create my own game.

Favorite computer game?

    My favorite computer game is Diablo 3.  I love the fast combat, random loot, special effects on spells and abilities and the way that every time you play it is different.

What are you doing on Mercurial?

    For most of my time on Mercurial, I have been a playtester.  I was presented with the opportunity to do some writing on the Sewer part of Mercurial.  I jumped at the chance as writing for games is what I want to do as a career.  I was also asked to help with the conversations in the hotel.  

How did you come to be on the Mercurial team?

    My husband saw a post on Google+ that a group was looking for playtesters for a mod of the Shadowrun Director’s Cut game.  He knew I owned the game and might want to help out.  I jumped at the chance, dashed off an email and the rest is history.

What is my favorite part of Mercurial?

    My favorite part of Mercurial is when <<deleted - spoiler alert>> first appears.

So you want to join a mod team?

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but for me, community is one of the best aspects of gaming. 

And those communities come in as many flavors as pantone colors: my original group in High School--Chad, Tony, Scott, Amy, Kater, Jeff, Denby, Manu...--that we grew into a 20+ member BC Legion that played games (mostly BattleTech) every week; my current D&D group split between my family and about 10 kids/adults that show up every other week; groups from long ago that I interacted with, like The Dark Ones--Jesse, Sam...--that first showed me how great a gaming community could be; to groups I’ve interacted with for long years, like the Steel City MechWarriors--Rich and Brian....--via play testing and convention play (just faced off against Rich in a Masters & Minions BattleTech game that was one of the hardest and most enjoyable games I’ve ever played); or groups that are apart of our demo agent teams, such as the fantastic Canadians--James, David...--that invade across the border and help to make such massive shows like Gen Con possible; to brand new groups we run into, such as the various fantastic Shadowrun Cosplay we love seeing. [Sorry, way too many names in there to list everyone....]

I could go on and on, both gushing, humble and thankful to be apart of and to see such wonderful communities elevating our hobby to something more...precious (yes, I just had the tone of voice going through my head as well, ha!).

This time, though, what brought it into focus was seeing new ways in which communities are running wild and making extremely cool things for all of us to enjoy.

If you’ve not already played it, please, do yourself a favor and check out Shadowrun: Dragonfall. The latest offering from Harebrained Schemes, it’s a brilliant computer game that will have you lurking in the shadows of the Sixth Worlds sprawls, and keep you almost breathless with great story and action.

But the reason I bring that up is the following:

I just saw a notification on Google+ from Jason Miller (for those that can access Google+): 

If any of you play Shadowrun Dragonfall, be sure to check out our (+Shadowrun Identity ) first full length campaign mod, based on the paperback sourcebook Mercurial, published back in 1989.

So you’ve got multiple things going on here.

First, you’ve got a brilliant computer game based upon the Shadowrun tabletop RPG (which is where Shadowrun all started when it first published in 1989). Then that game has a massive editing tool set that allows for an unlimited sandbox of play (literally the tools the designers at HBS use to make the game they give out with that game). Then the community steps up and goes back to the very first tabletop adventure in Mercurial published for Shadowrun and re-creates that adventure in this computer game setting which anyone can go and play! (Check it out in the Steam Workshop!)

And for the great, subtle links provided by this fantastic community, the art they’re using for Maria Mercurial is actually from Shadowrun 2050, a tabletop sourcebook Catalyst published a few years ago to coincide with Harebrained Schemes’ first Shadowrun game, Shadowrun Returns (and if you’re not yet aware of it, you’ll notice there HBS’ Shadowrun: Hong Kong, their next installment, is just about out!).

Now that...is...just...wiz! To have such layers permeating back and forth between computer games and the tabletop, spanning decades of great shadowrunning and all powered by the enthusiasm of a community.

Can’t say how much I love seeing that sorta thing. If possible, it makes me enjoy the Shadowrun universe all the more; and of course, I’ll need to try that Shadowrun Identity and see how I do in a “world of megahit rock stars, dreamchip addiction, sleazy talent agents, corp hitmen, toxic waste, and Yakuza sorceresses.”!

Thanks to all of you, for your great passion and creativity, no matter what part of the geek-sphere you harken from...