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Message no. 1
From: Achille Autran aautran@****.fr
Subject: Playing Shadowrun vs. Playing in Shadowrun
Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 01:54:53 +0100
>From: "Nimster" <nimster@*********.net.il>
>Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 16:39:28 +0200

>Anyhow, the question was: Ever played non-shadowrunners in the world of >Shadowrun?
>How was it? what did you play?
>How far from the shadows were they? Mafia, for example, is not that far >from
playing a shadowrunner. Playing a part of some secret society >moving the world (like
I'm going to run) is somewhere in the middle >slightly closer to the shadow world.
Playing a wage slave is as far from >the shadows as heaven is from hell.
>Haev you any tips, common pitfalls, etc. to share?
>
>Thanks,
>
>-Nimster

First I will borrow a Gridsec suit and kindly ask you to post in plain text
mode, in digest mode it gets really weird, and if I manage to read with the
strange formatting, more troublesome is that each time you post the whole
digest gets an ugly blue background that makes reading ALL posts a real
pain for the eyes... But you probably just forgot to set your mailer to
plain mode on the ShadowRN mail adress, I'm quite certain you thoroughly
read the FAQ. ;-)

Now on topic: I've run a few solo games with absolute non-shadowrunners,
and a few para-shadowrun games (in the same campaign). The most
non-shadowrun was an auditor character, that spent much time digging
financial dirt on his superiors and fellow auditors, he ended up planning
runs and playing the Johnson to perform a few "internal" buyouts when he
was employed by the Villiers branch of Fuchi. I just had fletched out the
NPCs, and then it was up to the player to climb the corporate ladder. It
was really funny, however I had to feed the player with Corporate
Shadowfiles before the games, without a minimum of background that kind of
intrigue is not enjoyable for the player.
In some other games we played the youth of Tir-na-nOg danaan elves, that
was also quite funny, especially the astral quests the characters went
through when they entered the orders. Later the game (with a group of PC
this time) was more a standard "spec ops" team.
More generally, I think that playing outside the shadowrunning usual
pattern is very gratifying, however it lends itself more to freeform
roleplay and if you're not blessed, as I was, with enterprised players,
playing "life as usual" can quickly become rather boring. When you'll
introduce them into the "real" campaign, you'll have to work very
thoroughly the characters motivations and implications. They are not as
obvious as in standard games (earn money for whatever purpose, go
"adventuring" for a fantasy game). In my campaign, all characters had very
refined histories and goals, though I hadn't paid enough attention to this
point, and the campaign (with the above characters plus another one)
collapsed after a number of fine games, due to an heterogenous group that
lacked any motive to stay together. That's just my own experience, I hope
you won't make the same mistakes as me.

Molloy

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