We’re excited to announce the release of a new mobile tool for Shadowrun—the Shadowrun Dice Roller!
This app, now available for iOS and Android, rolls up to forty D6s, since we all know Shadowrun needs plenty of them. And they’re not just any dice—there are currently seven different types, each with its own color, custom design on the 5s and 6s, and individual animation when you roll a hit or a one. Each one is themed to a classic Shadowrun archetype, so there are street samurai dice, hacker dice, face dice, mage dice, rigger dice, adept dice, and shaman dice!
You can roll dice one at a time, choose an amount to roll,
create your own customized roll, or use one of the presets for common dice
rolls (like primary attack, defense, spellcasting, hacking, and so on), making
it easy for you to quickly throw the right amount of dice. The dice roller
tallies hits and glitches automatically, and it also tells you the total amount
rolled, in case you’re doing an initiative roll.
The app is filled top to bottom with cyberpunk flavor. From
the appearance of the dice to the sound effects to the background wallpaper, the
whole app is designed to convey a Shadowrun feel.
While the roller is specifically designed for Shadowrun,
it can be used with any D6-based game. As long as you have your device nearby,
you’ll always have enough dice to get a game going. So get the dice roller now,
and get playing!
(Note: The Rigger Dossier intended for release this week will be made available at a later date. In its place, we present this in-depth look at upcoming Shadowrun fiction.)
By John Helfers
I’ve been editing fiction for Catalyst Game Labs for several years now, and I like to think I’m pretty decent at it. But even though I’ve commissioned dozens of stories and novels, some projects still require a bit more of a hands-on approach due to their unique nature. And along with that uniqueness often comes a deadline that is just as immovable as anything else in publishing.
Just like the one for this article was. How was I supposed to write about overseeing the creation of six interlinked novellas set in the new backdrop of the next edition of Shadowrun, and featuring the new characters from the Beginner Box Set and take you through how that all came about?
While I was staring at my computer screen, trying to get the words flowing, the core idea hit me: for all intents and purposes, a tie-in fiction editor is a lot like a Mr. Johnson in the Sixth World.
Exactly like them, in fact.
I receive my assignment from the corp: It all started when the CGL overlords (well, one of the overlords) Randall Bills started a thread (or perhaps an e-mail) about how to tie our fiction line into the upcoming release of the next edition of the Shadowrun roleplaying game. I assured him that this was a great idea (it is), and of course I could commission a series of six original interwoven (!) novellas, all featuring a team of runners out to score some kind of major run on a corp, and have the first one ready to publish in about 45 days from initial concept (!!), with the next five to follow in two-week intervals leading up to the launch of the new Shadowrun edition this August.
I assemble my shadowrunning (shadow-writing?) team: Next, I had to pull together the group of writers I would hire to handle this trickier-than-usual job. Commissioning six Shadowrun novellas is easy; commissioning six novellas whose plot paths cross over one another and weave in and out as the story progresses is a very different item. I needed to find writers I not only could trust were familiar with the Shadowrun universe, but who were also solid writers that would play well with the rest of the group. If we didn’t have cohesion as each writer turned in their separate plot for the others to tie their stories in to, the whole project could fall apart.
Fortunately, I’ve been editing this IP long enough that I know several excellent writers who can turn in wonderful stories on relatively short notice. I also had contacts on the gamebook side of SR, and Line Developer Jason Hardy put me in touch with a couple writers who had been working hard on the core rulebook, were experienced in writing Shadowrun fiction, and who were also free (and willing) to tackle this project in the limited time frame it required.
So, relatively quickly, I assembled my team: game designer and writer Dylan Birtolo; two Shadowrun, Sixth World writers, Brooke Chang and CZ Wright; professional game guy and Shadowrun enthusiast Bryan CP Steele; former BattleTech editor, and current Shadowrun and BattleTech freelance writer Jason Schmetzer; and to wrap the whole thing up into a nice neat ending, the same Jason M. Hardy (because he didn’t have enough to do with overseeing the creation of the new edition) who gave me his author list in the first place. Once again, no good deed goes unpunished.
I give the team their assignment and turn them loose: I brought the team together on our online Basecamp project managing site and pretty much let them loose on figuring out the who, when, where, why, and how the overall plot would go down while I kept tabs on how things were progressing and weighed in on ideas and answered questions when needed. The authors all came together nicely, and soon the ideas were flowing fast and furious.
I take the results of each section of the overall mission and make sure they work for the parameters I’d been assigned: The novella manuscripts started hitting my inbox, and that’s when I really got to work in editing and shaping each piece to make sure they fit our vision of what the overarching story was going to be. I’m pleased to say that everyone has delivered stellar work so far, and I have no doubt that the rest of the pieces will be up to the high bar of the first three stories we’ve published.
When the last of the stories is completed, I will make sure the runners…er, writers are all paid for their work, and I’ll enjoy the satisfaction of having overseen the completion of another successful mission in media tie-in publishing. The job’s only half done at this point, with me still having to review and make sure the last three stories bring our story to its exciting conclusion. But I have every confidence that the rest of my writing team will do it justice.
Okay, so there was no posturing for respect on the mean streets or last-minute double-crosses among the writers (good thing, too) or betrayals from the corp itself—the closest thing to any obstacles I encountered was that some of the authors needed a few more days to complete their stories (and one time cover art was delayed, necessitating a rescheduling of the publication of one novella). Frag, I even work on a computer for 99 percent of the time, so I don’t even get so much as a paper cut nowadays.
The team I put together worked like a well-oiled machine that gave me the results I wanted, and the final product is a great introduction to the exciting world of Shadowrun, Sixth World. I completed my assignment (or will), making my corp happy and allowing a very talented group of writers to show all the Shadowrun fans what they can do. In short, I executed like a true Mr. Johnson.
But now, as I’m re-reading this, maybe editing tie-in work isn’t all that hazardous, and perhaps I’m stretching that editor-as-Mr. Johnson analogy a bit too far…
While last
week’s post focused on the rules of Shadowrun,
Sixth World, today I want to talk about the game’s Sixth World setting,
which is a key element of its success. It’s not just the unholy hybrid of
fantasy and cyberpunk that make it compelling, but also the way the ongoing
storyline has evolved over the years. With dragons, spirits, and sasquatches
wielding significant corporate power, AIs and other mysterious entities roaming
the Matrix, and spell-casting gangs spreading chaos through the world’s cities,
the Sixth World is vibrant and exciting—and always throwing challenges at
shadowrunners.
Talk to
any Shadowrun fan and they’ll tell
you stories—maybe about the Universal Brotherhood, or Renraku Arcology, or the
death of Dunkelzahn, or Crash 2.0, or the fight for the future of Chicago. The
unfolding story over the past thirty years has kept players and readers
entertained, as stories play out in both sourcebooks and fiction.
That
tradition continues with Shadowrun, Sixth
World. Last week I talked about the upcoming plot sourcebook Cutting Black and the campaign book 30 Nights. While I don’t want to spoil
any of the upcoming plot details, let me say that they start with Ares making a
big move against the bugs, and the various responses to that destruction will
reshape the world. The events are big, multi-pronged, and provide lots of
chances for shadowrunner involvement. These aren’t events that happen over
shadowrunners’ heads—they’ll be right down in it, dealing with world-shaking
events and trying to survive while figuring out just what happened.
While
these events are important, they don’t cover all the stories of the Shadowrun universe that need to be told.
Novels, novellas, and short stories play vital roles in immersing readers in
the universe and sharing unforgettable stories. From classics by Nigel Findley,
Tom Dowd, and Robert Charrette, to new favorites like Russell Zimmerman,
Jennifer Brozek, and R.L. King, Shadowrun
has been Home to great stories and storytellers. Which means I’m very
excited to talk about the fiction that’s coming up!
We already
mentioned the six-part series of novellas called The Frame Job. They’ll cover the four characters included in the
beginner box set, as well as a bonus character, then have a Sixth novella
wrapping the whole story up. Dylan Birtolo wrote the first one, Brooke Chang wrote the second, and talented writers such as
Bryan Steele, CZ Wright, and Jason Schmetzer will take on the other characters.
Then I’ll be delighted to wrap it up!
But that’s
not all the Shadowrun fiction that
will be coming your way! Jennifer Brozek has a new novel called Makeda Red coming your way. It starts
with an extraction on a luxury Party Train, and it’s every bit as fun as that
concept implies. And more is in the pipeline, so keep your eyes peeled for
future announcements!
Wait, Shadowrun, Sixth World isn’t out yet?
But I’ve been thinking about it for years! Playing it for more than a year! How
are other people not playing it? Development time can be so disorienting.
There was
a time—six years ago, to be specific—when I threatened physical violence to
anyone who said the words “sixth edition” in my presence. (The threats didn’t
work. No one is ever scared of me. But I digress). Fifth Edition took a lot of effort to produce, and I didn’t want to
think about starting that whole process again. But then there were a few years
where I didn’t have to think about a new edition, and I could recharge. Actually,
that’s not entirely true, because every time I play a game—whether it’s one I
worked on or not—I’m kind of thinking of a new edition. I’m looking at what
works well, what works differently than intended, and what possibilities might open
up with a tweak here and there. So when the time came to envision the next
edition of Shadowrun, I had a few
ideas, as did the excellent roster of Shadowrun
writers and gamemasters I could tap into.
All those
ideas needed a framework, of course. As we started our work, we decided the
sixth edition of Shadowrun needed to
possess three main qualities:
Be
no more than 300 pages long;
Use
D6 dice pools; and
Feel
like Shadowrun.
Those last
two points are related, because it’s tough for a game to feel like Shadowrun if you’re not rolling a
healthy handful of D6s. But there’s more to it than that. Combat specialists,
spellcasters, conjurers, adepts, faces, deckers, technomancers, riggers,
enchanters, weapon specialists, and more all need to exist, and they all must
have different and meaningful ways to contribute to a run.
In this edition,
all that had to happen within 300 pages. Which is a trick. Fifth Edition, not counting the index, is 466 pages; the
anniversary edition of Fourth Edition
was 351 pages, and Third Edition was 325
pages (minus the sample record sheets). Second
Edition is a lean 284 pages, but it had no bioware, no technomancers, no
alchemy, and no qualities, to name a few things that have changed in the
intervening years. The book that started it all is an even leaner 207 pages, but
along with the elements Second Edition
didn’t have, it lacks things such as adepts and foci, and it offers only twenty
guns—heresy! (Fifth Edition has 52,
while Shadowrun, Sixth World will
offer 53–we didn’t cut back much on those options!) All this is to say that
streamlining the core rulebook back to 300 pages was not going to be easy.
It’s
important to note that simply making the book shorter doesn’t, by itself, do
any good. You can make any book shorter by simply ripping every third page out,
but you end up with a book that makes no sense. Making the book shorter only is
useful if the game also becomes smoother to play. In other words, we didn’t
just want a shorter game—we wanted one that moved faster and was easier to get
into, while still offering lots of meaningful options. We also didn’t want this
to be Shadowrun: Anarchy for the
simple reason that Anarchy already
exists. Anarchy represents a more
extreme end of the rules-light spectrum than Shadowrun, Sixth World–one way to understand the difference between
the two is that the gear rules and listings take up about seven or eight pages
in Anarchy, compared to fifty pages
in Sixth World. Did I mention we
wanted to offer lots of options?
Anyway,
this means that if the rules were changed, they needed to be changed with an
eye toward enabling players to do the things that they wanted to do more
quickly. Combat should be faster. Hacking should be smoother and more
intuitive. Magic should adapt to be just what the caster wants it to be. And so
on. So what, specifically, did we do? Here’s a sample:
Expanded Edge: Yes, one of the things we did to streamline the game was to make one function much more detailed. But stay with me for a second. The definition of Edge has shifted—rather than being that undefinable something extra you reach for in a tough spot to help put you over the top, Edge now represents the accumulated advantage you get in opposed situations. Whether you’re fighting, spellcasting, hacking, or negotiating, you’ll have a chance to earn and spend bonus Edge. And you should spend it—if you’re not gaining and spending Edge regularly in Shadowrun, Sixth World it might be time to rethink your tactics. Or find less formidable opposition. Gaining and spending Edge replaces a lot of other functions in the game, like calculating situational modifiers, dealing with recoil and armor piercing, and environmental modifiers. Edge also provides a chance for a character to really have an impact when it’s time to spend it.
Fewer action types: There are two, Minor and Major. That’s it! You get one Minor and one Major per turn, with an additional Minor for various circumstances, such as reaction-enhancing augmentations or spells. One Major Action may be traded for four Minor Actions, or four Minor for one Major.
Simplified initiative: You roll initiative at the start of an encounter and then don’t re-roll it. Certain actions or effects may change your initiative score, though.
No limits: Limits served a valuable function of balancing attributes and providing different opportunities for rule effects, but in a streamlined ruleset, they are not needed. Limits on most tests and Force for spells have all been removed.
Skill list narrowed: SR5 has 80 skills, while SR6 has 19. That’s a big difference. There’s definite streamlining there, but it comes at the risk of characters not being distinct from each other. To deal with that, players can still select specializations but can also upgrade a specialization to an expertise, giving their character +3 bonus dice instead of +2, and once they have an expertise they can select an additional specialization. This will provide characters with chances to become truly distinct.
More intuitive Matrix: This is an ongoing goal, and it’s always fun to try to make Matrix activities happen alongside and in parallel with the other actions. Deckers will have meaningful things to do and ways to get in, make things happen, and get out—all while trying to avoid the watchful eyes of the Grid Overwatch Division, of course.
Those are
some of the major changes, but far from the only ones. We haven’t talked about
Attack Ratings, the uses of armor, changes to Knowledge skills, revamped spell
design, new vehicle stats, cyberjacks, and more. I hope this gives you a taste
of the upcoming changes, and I look forward to you all playing Shadowrun, Sixth World as much as I have
and will! And look for more information on this blog each Wednesday in May!
