#shadowrun drone

[asayuriofficial]

Drone Its a finished version of the drone in the background of an old piece of mine from 2019 In my shadowrun game team from a finished game, a player character, Dingo, Had this cool ass dog drone that could turn himself into a motorbike named fenrir.

[shadowron]

The Elf Rigger, a Better Elf Archetype for Shadowrun (1st Edition)

Longtime readers of mine will remember that the Rigger is the best archetype published in the 1st Edition Shadowrun Core Rulebook – she had it all. What you might not know about her is that she came by all her toys using only 400,000 ¥ in starting resource nuyen – her attributes took the top spot. This is good news for our Elf Rigger – because it means we can take the exact same cyberware and tech as the Rigger, and just tweak the attributes and skills accordingly.

“Don’t swipe my drip.”

Rigger has 23 points of skills (odd, Priority 2 has 24, so she should bump up that Etiquette (Corporate) to 2) and 30 points of attributes (Priority 4). For our Elf Rigger, Priorities 3 and 4 will be taken by Tech and Race, respectively, and I’ll keep Attributes (Priority 2, 20 points) higher than Skills (Priority 1, 20 points).

Attributes:

Body: 2 Quickness: 6 Strength: 2 Charisma: 3 Intelligence: 6 Willpower: 4 Essence: 1.1 Reaction: 6

Yes, the low Body sucks, but she should be in the cockpit anyway! Or at least far from the action, monitoring via drones.

Skills

Bike: 4 Car: 6 Electronics: 2 Etiquette (Corporate): 2 Firearms: 2 Gunnery: 4

Computer has been dropped, but that’s why there’s a decker on the team.

“Milady.”

“Hey, Elven Decker, come back when you have a firearm.”

Cyberware:

Cybereyes (Thermographic Imaging, Low-Light Vision, and Flare Compensation) Datajack Radio Smartgun Link Vehicle Control Rig (Rating 2)

Gear:

2 Surveillance Drones Ares Predator (Smartgun Adapter, 20 rounds normal ammo) Armor Jacket DocWagon™ Contract (Platinum) Eurocar Westwind 2000 (Rigger Adapted, Concealed LMG, 1000 rounds of belt-fed ammo, two-shot missile launcher, 2 AVMs) Harley Scorpion (Rigger adapted) Hunter-Spotter Drone (with 2 LMGs and 1000 rounds of belt-fed ammo) Patrol Vehicle (with 2 LMGs and 1000 rounds of belt-fed ammo) Remote Control Deck (three ports)

[thamechanist]

So...I think I want to build a working cyberpunk drone? Move on from the servo-skulls for a bit, try for something a bit bigger and more capable

Not entirely sure where to start though? So any suggestions/tips/thoughts would be greatly appreciated (⁠⊙⁠_⁠◎⁠)

[gravedirtandbriarthorns]

Troll proportions are so fun??

[saltrockatansky]

redraw of my Shadowrun drone operator, Sunday [they/them]

[shadrell]

This is Gennady Dragunov, for those who find it difficult to pronounce - just Gin.

One of my GM's NPCs in Shadowrun, a Russian rigger. He has some problems with his head, which is inhabited by a drone AI that has gone crazy. I'M IN LOVE

[jamesshawgames]

Shadowrun: Neon Fire announcement post.

Hello, and welcome to the development thread for Shadowrun: Neon Fire, a free passion project designed to try to merge together the genres of IF and tabletop roleplaying game! It’s likely to be more stat-heavy than you’re used to, featuring dice-rolls and character sheets and all that jazz, but I still want it to tell a compelling story with choice and consequence, too. It’s set in the Sixth World, the well-established fictional universe of the Shadowrun TTRPG, a fusion of high fantasy and cyberpunk, where magic meets machine. Ever wanted to be a shotgun-toting elf who can command drones with their mind? A smooth-talking, sharp-suited ork conman? A dwarven hacker who can project his consciousness into the Matrix and access even the most well-guarded secrets? Or a big troll mage who combines mastery of the arcane arts with a mean aim with a rifle? Well, now’s your chance! (More setting info can be found in the in-game Codex. Yes, there’s a Codex).

Anyway, give it a go and see what you think. I’ll put some quick FAQs below.

What the hell is this? It’s an experiment, which involves seeing what happens when you port (simplified) versions of a TTRPG system into Choicescript. It probably uses dice-rolls and RPG mechanics more extensively than any other game, with the exception of Alice Chan’s brilliant but mad Warhammer 40k if/rpg hybrid, Holy Ordos. And it’s a love letter to one of my all-time favorite fictional settings.

Do I need to know about the Shadowrun universe to enjoy it? I hope not! I’m trying to be newbie friendly. For those who really want to dive into the lore, there’s the aforementioned Codex. But it shouldn’t be necessary to understand what’s going on.

Will you get in legal trouble for this? I don’t think so, because I’m not selling it. This is a fan project, which will always be free for anyone to enjoy on Dashingdon. I don’t plan to make a dime off of someone else’s IP. I put this in the same category as fanfiction and fan art, and there’s a ton of fanfiction and fan art of Shadowrun out there, so I should be OK.

What’s the actual story about? In Neon Fire, you play as an experienced shadowrunner (a highly-skilled mercenary criminal, doing illegal jobs for rich clients, usually representatives of the megacorporations who rule the Sixth World). You’re based in Seattle (the classic Shadowrun setting), but early in the game you receive a call from an estranged relative to go and investigate some mysterious goings-on in Neo-Tokyo related to your family’s past. More than that would be spoiling at this very early stage!

Are there romances? Yes, but not yet! Right now, there’s only the Prologue, where you go on a mission with your established Seattle crew, and which doesn’t strongly relate to the main story (it’s intended as an introduction to the universe and to the rules). You’ll meet the ROs early in the next update, after you’ve headed out to Neo-Tokyo. They’ll be fully gender-selectable, and are an interesting bunch. Info on the ROs, for those who are interested, can be found here.

Will there be troll sex? Yes. In the grim dark future, there is only troll sex.

The link to the game is below. Enjoy, and do let me know what you think, or what you’d like to see from this!

https://dashingdon.com/go/13142

And the COG forum thread is here: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/shadowrun-neon-fire/132365

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 42 – The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylar

I honestly forget the specifics of the recommendation that made me toss this on my TBR pile, but I’m glad I finally got around to it. The book’s, I think, something of a noble failure, but that’s more a compliment than an insult. It tries to do enough and is reaching for big enough themes that its reach exceeding its grasp is hardly fatal.

The book’s set somewhere in the late 22nd century or so, in a world where climate just wasn’t apocalyptic but it sure does seem to have made things a lot shittier. The geopolitics are only vaguely sketched out, but everything all feels rather cyberpunk, down to the city-states and megacorporations with de facto extraterritoriality. The book’s primary plot follows Dr. Ha Nguyen as she’s hired by an incredibly sinister megacorporation to study what is potentially a species of octopus that has evolved to near-human levels of intelligence and social culture, aided by the world’s only android and a mercenary whose army of drone killbots keeps the perimeter secure. Two secondary plots running in tandem on alternating chapters follow Eiko, an abducted slave laborer on an industrial fishing trawler chasing the world’s last reserves of accessible maritime protein, and “Bakunin”, a hacker in Astrakhan hired by a contact right out of Shadowrun for the most difficult job of his life.

So the book is overwhelmingly concerned with communication or, especially, the difficulty and failure that accompanies attempts at it, and how vital connection and reaching out beyond oneself is anyway. It’s woven into pretty much every character arc and every plotline in a way that manages to keep form coming off as heavy-handed or didactic, which is honestly an incredible aesthetic accomplishment. It also doesn’t soft peddle things – connection isn’t portrayed as any sort of panacea, and real communication is hard, even when everyone involved is trying their best and approaching it in good faith. The last note of the octopus plot is not the creation of a working translator, or even a successful exchange of messages, but really just the successful exchange of the idea of messages, and the establishment of some sort of relationship between a human and an octopus.

Sort of related to that, the book’s also very big on the idea of connection, of being tied up in vast systems and affected by choices on the other side of the world by people you’ve never heard of who probably weren’t thinking of you at the time. There’s the two subplots, of course – and this is the rare occasion where having three stories running in tandem and only really intersecting at the very end feels like it really does work for me. But more directly there’s a great deal of time spent on the nature of an octopus’ intelligence and how each arm is almost an autonomous agent only intermittently checked and directed by the central brain – and how this is analogous to the latest and greatest generations of drone networks slowly revolutionizing the world, and to the nature of the corporations and institutions which dominate the world. This is doubly underlined, in something that’s just barely on the edge of too on the nose for me, by the fact that the automated trawler that has abducted Eiko and is eventually destroyed trying to intrude on the island sanctuary Ha is working on, is owned by a subsidiary of the same corporation that enforced the sanctuary and hired Ha in the first place.

Which is where the books starts running into issues, at least for me. Near the book’s climax, Ha has something of a revelation about violence; that it’s not exactly useful to resent or feel disgusted by the security officer keeping their island isolated and uncontaminated by destroying any of the automated trawlers that intrude on the perimeter, no matter how many slaves on board are killed in the process – after all, all her work relies upon exactly that violence, that her whole world is build on such violence as a matter of course. Something the book then just kind of, fails to ever really resolve, or do anything with? There’s the idea that this is bad and important to stop, but the book ends with everyone just, choosing to do so?

This is kind of tied into the wider issue of how the main plot resolves at all. The book had thoughtfully and carefully written itself into a corner, having clearly explained how the only reason why the megacorporation paying for the island to be kept as a nature preserve and these potentially intelligent octopoids to be studied was because they might be useful later on – because they might be studied and vivisected and pulled apart so that the understanding of their intelligence might fuel further advances in artificial intelligence. Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan, the genius-CEO of the company, is something of an ideological nemesis to Ha, and the book’s themes generally.

And this is resolved by, well, basically a deus ex machina? The Buddhist Republic of Tibet, thanks to a monopoly on a particular advance in drone networking one of the wealthiest entities in the world, launches a hostile takeover of Mínervudóttir-Chan’s company and seizes the island to establish a true sanctuary, where all are welcome and no exploitation will occur (Mínervudóttir-Chan herself is helpfully killed in a conveniently random act of meaningless interspecies violence). They seem driven to do this entirely by pure idealism, with the book giving no signs that we’re meant to be skeptical of this theocratic nation state with an economy-driving military-industrial complex or the purity of its motives. I could go on about this, but lets just say that the unevenly applied cynicism rang a bit false to me, in a way that fundamentally weakened the book’s whole resolution a great deal. Enough to take this from one of my favorite reads of the year to something that I still very much enjoyed but was left pretty deeply unsatisfied with, anyway.

Speaking of cynicism – the book’s characterization of conservation was (all-loving Buddhist cybernetic kill-teams aside) surprisingly sharp and bitter? The two visions of it the story provides are either a formality that exists only on paper, with underpaid rangers enthusiastic participants in the lucrative smuggling of whatever rare species are being conserved and whose trade is the by far the most vital part of the local economy, or else something imposed from a distant center with overwhelming force, and local human inhabitants being forcibly deported or harshly punished to preserve the nature park for the benefit of outside money and power. Was an interesting sort of perspective on the subject, anyway.

As a stylistic note, this book made probably the best use of the whole ‘start each chapter with a quote from an in-universe text’ conceit I’d every seen. Each chapter starts with an excerpt from one of two texts – How Oceans Think, a work of speculative and philosophical xeno-neurology that made Ha’s career and made her the specialist brought in for the plot of the book, and Making Mind, the pop science memoir by Mínervudóttir-Chan detailing her creation of Evrim (the aforementioned world’s first real android). They both serve double duty as wonderful bits of characterization for each character (Making Minds provides several times as many words by or features Mínervudóttir-Chan as her actual appearance in the narrative, something which I’m inclined to call a bit of a failure, otherwise) and establishing the sort of thematic dialectic at the core of the book.

I’m especially fond of the fact that Mínervudóttir-Chan’s never really made a cartoon villain or personally vicious. She’s a genius, driven woman, heroic in the classical, world-remaking sense. And what she wants (needs, really) is mastery over the world. You don’t have to be personally cruel or ill-intentioned for that to leave the world a ruin around you. She is, frankly, exactly the sort of monster I’d have loved to spend a book in the head of.

Evrim as a character was also fascinating. Partially just because I am always an incredibly easy mark for alienated and isolated inhuman intelligences being portrayed as sympathetic-to-heroic, and both the fantasy and terror of a literally perfect memory is an amazing central trait for a character. But also there’s a conversation between them and Ha about what it means to be human, and Ha’s proposed answer – to participate in the shared symbolic world of humanity, or something like that – seems elegant enough I’m probably going to steal it for some thing.

Anyway, yes, generally loved the book, sadly to a large degree the final resolution let everything that was building up to it down. Still would call it a worthwhile read, though. It’s thematically cohesive without being overly didactic in a way I find elegant and pleasing, and don’t necessarily see much in a lot of genre fic.

[samueldays]

Shadowrun and Harry Potter should switch magic systems.

Shadowrun depicts a magic system where magic varies between locations and traditions, is affected by many factors, has many different manifestations, and has a significant random element. Most spells are difficult or impossible to reproduce with technology. Each mage knows only a handful of spells, and magic is strictly the province of mages; there are no permanent magic items for muggle utility. Muggles who want access to magic have to lean on a mage.

This magic system is a good fit for a setting of mages who went underground to get away from muggles and who live in small, secretive groups.

Harry Potter depicts a magic system that's been flattened into a "Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3". Everyone learns mostly the same spells, and learns them by rote. There are many spells, but most of them are trivialities like casting Flashlight or casting Water Bottle. The most famous banned spell amounts to casting Gun. Magic is used to mass-produce gimmick items sold in shops, usable by muggles. Magical education has career counseling.

This magic system is a good fit for a setting of megacorporations trying real hard to suck all the fun out of magic and turn mages into interchangeable worker drones who can be monetized.

[solitaireships]

for the universe thing. can I interest you in the tabletop roleplaying game Shadowrun :autismcreature:

Prefacing this by saying I tried to read a pdf of the 5th edition rules and then remembered I am too tired for that. So instead I'm writing this based on the wiki info I was able to get

From the archetypes I found on the wiki, I think my self insert would probably be a rigger! I like the idea of having a drone friend, and the wiki describing them as being a mix of support and damage dealing with the help of their drones sounds cool. I'd also go with a human character bcs I'm boring like that

She'd probably be a low level employee from one of the megacorps, but that also means she's become very disillusioned with them. I'm thinking she'd work for Horizon specifically since that's a media and entertainment company, and she'd be a writer on a show they produce. She barely ever gets credited for her work and the pay is terrible, but at least it's a job, so she sticks around. She mainly just would need a push to fully leave her job there and start acting out against them (and maybe it would be her f/o that would help encourage her towards that 👀)

She definitely would be a little out of her depth there tho. I'm thinking that the drone she would have would probably have been something she either bought from someone or stole and managed to get reprogrammed. Maybe it was originally supposed to be an emotional support drone, and now it helps her with some anti-corporate action. She's a decent tech person, but definitely not much of a hacker. She's quick to adapt, but also incredibly nervous with breaking the rules. She's always been a pretty by the book person, so she's trying something new here and fumbling through this. But she is trying!

Since it sounds like magic and tech are kind of at odds with each other here, I would say that she leans a lot more into the tech side of things. I don't think she would have any cybernetic stuff, but if there are those kinda cyberpunk type holographic visor things in universe, imo she would definitely have one of those as a substitute for glasses

Also obligatory thing for all my self inserts that she's mixed (like 3/4 and 1/4 Korean) and she's ace-pan

Assign me a universe to make a self insert in!

[cyberpunkplaylist]

I owe you all three today. My wife came through her surgery like a champ by the way. ^_^!!

Public Image Ltd. - The Order of Death

Introduced to me as the opening and closing themes of the dystopian killer robot movie, ‘Hardware’ this is Johnny Rotten’s post-Sex Pistols band droning out what feels like traveling through a wasteland.  Much as our protagonist has in the movie. 

This is walking through industrial sites that have gone to rust and tetanus waiting to happen.  Blowing dust and debris.  This is a theme for a world that’s in the process of moving on.  Things have got bad.  Things are likely to get worse.  We’re all just trying to survive it.  Making what living we can.  But so often, what we want and what we receive are very different things.  Much like any gig or shadowrun you go on.  No one plays it straight with you nowadays.  “This is what you want.  This is what you get.  This is what you want.  This is what you get.”

BONUS: The Trailer for Hardware

[chocochipbiscuit]

1,7,10 for the 40 questions for fic writers

1) Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Warm sensual smut with feelings, with an emphasis on oral sex and maybe some size kink. Or general shippy nonsense, usually femslash. <3

7) Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

She knew—vaguely—of land-dweller customs. She knew the burnt woman of their church, but never held much faith. Could you eat your gods in times of famine? If not, what good were they? What use was religion if it couldn’t sustain you?

Or maybe these fragile, death-bound little humans needed to believe that something waited on the other side. They needed to believe in souls in the way that Isabela believed in whale falls, in unexpected kindness and serendipity that nourished hidden depths.

that’s what the water gave me is an Aveline/Isabela mermaid AU, told from mermaid!Isabela’s POV. One of the themes I really wanted to explore was place and belonging, and the way that hungers can nourish or terrify. One piece of Isabela’s history is being captured by Luis, which made me think of selkie stories, which themselves are easily interpreted as an allegory for the kidnap of indigenous women. Which made this an extended metaphor for Isabela’s distaste for forced conversion and general mistrust of land-dwellers and a religion that (to her) only offers pain without nourishment.

And just. I like to think these are a few lovely paragraphs. They flow. And they manage to be both interesting (with varied sentence length and a playful display of wordiness and specificity) and to tie together some of the main themes of the fic. Isabela truly doesn’t understand Aveline yet, but she wants to, despite herself.

10) Which fic has been the easiest to write?

*hour long fart noise* Are any fics truly easiest to write??? Or is it just that I black out on all memory of writing them afterwards???

…a quick flip through my AO3, and the easiest fic I’ve written in a while was All Mouth and Bad Ideas. It was fun PWP featuring a disaster decker that I’ve thought a lot about but never actually written about before. IR-8 is a nonbinary disaster, the kind of character who picks all the hilariously bad dialogue options but makes up for it by being frighteningly competent in their one area of specialty: drone combat.

Plus just. Aleksi Laine is hot and easily the Shadowrun: Dragonfall character that I’ve thought about writing the most smut for. (....or maybe a tossup between him and Eiger. Big tall trolls make my brain go brrrrrr.)

Thank you for the asks! I had fun answering!

(Asks are from this meme!)

[luchadorbard]

WIP Tag game

(Sorry for the delay in response)

Thank you @orphanheirs for the tag! I'll be sharing some more Shadowrun writing I've been working on. The first part of which can be read Here!

---

Vickers peered around the corner of the latest hovel in the BTL den, the scope of FN HAR glinting in the shoddy lighting that was left after the first fire fight.

"They'll send in drones first, then followed by the heavy duty officers who can take a slug or two." The Troll looked back the crew, equal parts apprehension and expectation mixing on most of there faces.

"Think they want the target alive?" Longstreet asked as he cradled the unconscious woman in his arms. The Dwarf tilting his head towards the windows as Tatiana took cover, sword drawn and magic already getting charged up.

"If they don't, we'll learn real fragging soon when they just decide to bring the building down on top of us."

Vickers glanced back at the latest addition to the crew. Iron Crow was glancing in every direction, as if trying to cover the exits or contemplate a way out. The twitchy hands of someone not used to Improv on a run...

He quickly strode forth and the Street Samurai tensed up as he snatched her attention.

"Listen." He spoke through gritted teeth. Iron Crow had fight and flight war behind her eyes as the Troll leaned down close, face to face with her.

"Show me you that you're worth a spot on the crew. Roll with the punches and work our way through this drek. Help me cover the stair ways. Can you do that?"

The Haida woman furrowed her brow as that familiar pathways of fear being channeled into outrage and fury playing out on her face.

"Can. You. Do. That?" Vick repeated his question as he leaned closer, trying to summon his best drill sergeant cadence.

"Yea. Just point me in the right direction."

Vickers pulled back and nodded. "Good. With me on the main well." The two quickly posted up as the sounds of motorized gears and wheeled treads echoed from below.

He readied his rifle as, Iron Crow's long steel spurs neatly folded out of her arm, the first wave was about to hit them.

---

[thamechanist]

So as there's only a couple of months to go until mcm October, figured it'd probably be a good idea to try and work out what my plan is for it...eek...

Warhammer

There's two plans for Warhammer cosplays - both will involve a new servo-skull (I promise this one will be wireless)

The first is a tech-priest cosplay. I now know how much of a hash I made the trims on the robes the first time around, so provided I can fix them up, it should be good. Maybe add some sewable LEDs to the white trims for some motive force effects.

The other is an inquisitorial agent. Doubling down on my may cosplay, some suitable gothic coat, a big fancy staff, various trinkets and led goggles could be quite good

Star Wars

Death to the chancellor! Death to the republic!

Yeah... really want to try a nihil cosplay. Have found a nihil helmet stl, just have to hope I can properly print it.

Will feel a bit weird without some mechanical companion, so might see if I can make an evil Lola(or other small droid) to sit on my shoulder...wait! A pirate parrot Lola!

Shadowrun/Cyberpunk

aka the 'runner cosplay

A lot of people were really supportive of my test a while ago with the black cowl and faceless mask 🤭. So working that into a cyberpunk-esque cosplay with a suitable coat might not be a half-bad look? Add in a cyberdeck(have got plenty of ideas, and more importantly parts for this), along with a companion drone and I should have the core of a decent 'runner fit

[lillesfavouritecubes]

Well, it's still halloween somewhere, so I am taking this as an excuse to do something scary: Have a lil bit of baby's first fanfic, set in a hermitcraft/mcyt shadowrun au i've been slowly rotating for a few months now.

Featuring ZombieCleo, drone expert and Joe Hills, local menace.

„Look. Uh… I really don’t want any trouble? Like I am not being paid enough to mess with you. Soooo… If we could… stop with the spooky lights? Really would love that.“

In response the lights flickered again, bursting a number of lights on some of the more dilapidated machines.

„Okay… okay, fine. This is fine. Sure. Spooky lighting it is then.“ Cleo cursed under their breath, holding their SMG tight. Was it going to work against a ghost? Probably not, but it was better than trying to punch said ghost.

Cleo sighed in relief when the arcade fell quiet and dark again. Maybe the ghost had gotten bored?

NOPE. NOPE. DEFINITELY NOT.

„Howdy there, Joe Hills here, floating as I always do in this abandoned arcade. And today I am bringing this random person here the challenge of a lifetime! The Colliseum of Infernal Skies 2! I am calling you out, random stranger!“