MERCURIAL (by Shadowrun Identity Project)

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Congratulations to Harebrained Schemes on the successful funding of their Battletech Kickstarter.  The game has been funded and all except the last stretch goal has been met.  There is still time to become a part of the Kickstarter which ends November 3, 2015.  This looks to be a fantastic game so why not join over 28, 500 people and support Harebrained Schemes in their latest endeavor!

#BATTLETCH, #hairbrainedschemes, #sri-mercurial

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We have some fantastic news for everyone.  One of our members Rickard Johansson (TheSadDragon on Gog.com) has won FIRST PLACE in Your Shadowrun Contest.  We’re so proud of him! His mod will be released with an upcoming Shadowrun: Hong Kong game goodies pack.  Something to note: Gog.com has decided to extend the contest until October 23rd.  Rickard will still be the first place winner; but Gog.com hopes to have more entries so they can award their other prizes.  Good luck to all and congrats Rickard!

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I have wonderful news for everyone...the Shadowrun Mercurial mod has released it’s final build.  All aspects of the mod are done and the only future releases will be to fix bugs.  Enjoy everyone!

In another interesting piece of news; a fan, Kage of Shadows, has released a six part YouTube video series during which he plays through the mod!  Thanks so much Kage of Shadows!

#shadowrun, #shadowrun-mercurial,#Youtube

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This week we have some fantastic news,  Mercurial is now available for download from Nexus.com.  As all of you probably know, Nexus is one of the premiere websites to download mods for games.  I know that everyone who doesn’t own Shadowrun Dragonfall: Director’s Cut on Steam will now be able to enjoy our mod.  Happy playing!

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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.

Because they both died, neither one of them wanted to play Shadowrun with me anymore. It wasn’t until my brother moved back that they tried the game again (and loved it), but I almost killed my Shadowrun group before we ever started!

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Mark September 29 in your appointment books.  That’s the day to go check out the following: (This quote is taken directly from HBS’s page to announce the kickstarter.)

“Harebrained Schemes is pleased to announce their return to Kickstarter this Fall to partner with Backers in co-funding the creation of BATTLETECH. Jordan Weisman, the creator of BattleTech and MechWarrior, is back with the first turn-based BattleTech game for PC in over two decades. Steeped in the feudal political intrigue of the BattleTech universe, the game will feature an open-ended Mercenaries-style campaign that blends RPG ‘Mech and MechWarrior management with modern turn-based tactics.”

Please check out their Facebook page for more information. Retweet them on Twitter

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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?

    The best advice I have for anyone wanting to become part of a mod team is to pick a game you enjoy playing and then check websites that have information about modding the game.  Examples of this are the websites from the game’s creator or publisher; moddb.com, and Google+ communities. When you find a mod that looks appealing send them an email and introduce yourself.  You never know where this may lead...:)

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I just checked our subscribed count on Steam and we’re at a little over 2100 subscribed players.  That’s fantastic! Let’s keep the ball rolling.  Tell your friends! Tell your family! and tell everyone you meet!

Without further ado here’s the next of our Developer Discoveries:

Name:  Tod Hostetler

Position:  QA Manager

What is your history?  

Well, actually I applied to the CIA as a joke, the result of losing a bar bet.  The application is 50 pages!  At the time, I had no idea why they accepted me, but 8 months later I was jumping out of a helicopter at night in Nicaragua with an MP7 and a packet of… Oh, you mean my game testing history.

I’ve been in QA since 2000.  Activision, EA, Disney and a smattering of smaller publishers / developers / startups dot my resume.  In addition to games I have a fair amount of mobile social media platform testing under my belt.  It’s pretty rare to find someone that sticks with QA as long as I have without getting the itch to go into production, but QA is my calling.  I can count the number of bad days at work I’ve had on one hand, with fingers left to spare… how many people can say that?  Due to my experience I usually get tapped to lead the QA effort into unexplored territory, creating new teams and procedures to match emergent challenges… keeps it fresh for me.  For example, Mercurial was the first time I’ve organized an all-volunteer staff of testers that have never met face-to-face.  Finding the right solutions to this particular challenge has been very fun for me.

Favorite Computer game?  

Even a list of my top 20 wouldn’t do justice to my love of electronic gaming so I will decline to answer.  I will instead say this:  whatever Creative Assembly (makers of Total War) are doing with the Warhammer license… when that release date arrives, I personally believe that it very well might be the most important day of my computer gaming lifetime, past and future included.  It’s a great studio with an outstanding track record of quality, it’s a fantastic universe, and I think it’s a match made in heaven.  And the mods… oh god, the mods that will come of this union… I’ve got goosebumps.

What are you doing on Mercurial?  

Currently?  Breathing a sigh of relief as some new blood has come in to help with the testing.  Now that we’re on Steam, we’ve discovered a difficulty with testing unreleased local builds; the Steam seems to really want to take over.  So I’m working with DEV to see how we proceed; do we release untested updates onto Steam and hope for the best?  I don’t like that idea; I’m confident we can avoid it; we just haven’t yet discovered the ideal workflow.  Every morning I check the Steam forums and migrate any audience-discovered bugs to our database.  Finally, I’m advising the team on how to pare down a list of what we will and won’t fix before we call Mercurial ‘finished’ and move onto our next project… which is already deep into the early design phase.  

How did you come to be on the Mercurial team?  

At the start of this year, I moved from Los Angeles to tiny little Shingletown population 2800 in order to care for my beloved grandmother.  There’s no opportunities for me to keep my QA buzz on up here in a professional capacity, so I headed to Shadowrun.com to advertise my availability to help test UGC.  Initially I helped with this or that project, but when the Mercurial staff approached me and described the project, I decided it was worth my full and exclusive attention.

What’s your favorite part of Mercurial?  

Besides the friendships that I’ve gotten to form with this awesome team?  That’s such a tough one for me, as the person who has logged so many hours on testing Mercurial.  I’ll go with the moment when the player tells a certain character to “Stop saying chummer”.  It makes me laugh a little every time, and believe me I have played through that scene a hundred times.  Still gets a chuckle from me.  I also want to mention that a girlfriend of mine wrote the lyrics to one of Maria’s songs for this game; and approving my request that it be used was the DEV team’s way of thanking me for my work, as a personal touch.  So every time I see that, too, I feel appreciated.  It’s the song Quicksilver, by the way… don’t forget to stop by the concert stage and check it out.  The feeling that I’ve helped contribute a tiny bit of canon to the Shadowrun Universe…. feels great to me.

So you want to join a mod team?  

A lot of new would-be modders see the Editor as an opportunity to dream up their own personal creation and have that feeling of Total Control over every aspect of it.  Even though some few people have been successful with this approach, the SRR mod battlefield is littered with the corpses of unfinished projects by people that tried to go solo.  It’s a hard road to go solo; just be warned.  And I personally hate thinking about all those hours of work that went nowhere, when it could have been part of a bigger project.

I would like to see more people that are entering the mod community try it this way.  Learn the editor just enough to script a simple scene or two, a conversation or two, a ‘this key required to open that door’ kind of thing or two, and a combat or two on a map or two.  Then post online that you want to join someone else’s project, and once you join it, try to focus on the best possible combination of what you’re inclined toward / what the project needs.  You don’t need to know everything about everything… if you know something about something, and willing to put the hours in, believe me there’s no project that can’t benefit from having you onboard.

It really is so much more fun doing this as part of a team, even if it’s just two people.  While there is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen, with proper respect for each other’s contributions all things are possible.  Remember that your first idea is always your worst idea.  ALWAYS.  Having a team around to call you out on your bad ideas is invaluable.  Call your teammates out on their bad ideas, but never say that idea sucks, always say I think we can do better if we think about it more.  Stand your ground defending your opinions for exactly two go-arounds with the group.  After that, concede graciously and let it play out.

Smoothly recover from failures of communication with your team.  Be willing to have arguments with your teammates ONLY if you are willing to acknowledge that you might be wrong.  If you are wrong, or even if you just got hot-headed and accidentally insulted someone on the team, or if you just get out-voted on something, be gracious about it.  Make your apologies when necessary.  Similarly, accept apologies from your teammates when they get out of line.  No aspect or feature of the project is so important that it is worth a loss of friendship or trust within the team.

I think that’s my best advice.  I choose to stop typing now.

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As of 8/29/15 we had just over 1800 downloads of Mercurial.  Thanks so much for all of your interest in our mod.  Here’s the second in our Developer Discoveries series where you get to meet Matt Hendrickson. Without further ado...here’s Matt!

Name: Matt Hendrickson (aka L0g41n, or ‘Mister 10-G-41N’)

Position: Lead Breaker of Things / Head Writer

What is your history? I grew up with roleplaying games and video games. My Dad is a computer programmer by trade, and taught us to play D&D at the age of eight. I’ve been in gaming groups and making games ever since. When I was about fourteen, a friend of mine wanted to learn to play, and his mom took him to the game store, and as they walked in the front door said, “You can get whatever you want, but no D&D!” He didn’t get any D&D books, and his mom forbade me from bringing D&D into her house, so we started learning the books he had picked up, some game with elves and machine guns called ‘Shadowrun.’

Favorite Computer game? I have played far too many games to have a favorite. Some of my favorite games come from series that have great stories (Kings Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter).

What are you doing on Mercurial? I’ve been involved with Mercurial in a lot of different ways. I’ve been the writer, the backup art guy, the backup props guy, the second string scripter, the conversation writer, the sounding board, the Defender of Canon. I’ve worked a lot of different jobs, and I’ve been happy with them.

How did you come to be on the Mercurial team? When I first backed Shadowrun Returns, I was excited for even the idea of the editor: I had been involved with modding in NWN and NWN2, some quake stuff, but nothing grabbed me about those games like Shadowrun did. Not only did I want to play new stories from Harebrained Schemes, but I wanted to write new stories of my own, and share all of the classic Shadowrun campaigns and stories with the world. I mean: Bug City, Super Tuesday, Harlequin, Mob War, Blood in the Boardroom; there are just so many great stories that someone who comes along and picks up the video game will never know about. I found a group of like-minded individuals, who were gathering under the banner “The Shadowrun Identity Project.” I was assigned to Preying for Keeps, but I also volunteered for every project that was looking for people to help out. One of those projects was Mercurial. When Jason/Axis rebooted SRI to focus everyone on a single module, we consolidated around the oldest module we had a team working on. Since I was already subscribed to the team, it was an easy transition to bring in people I knew from other projects and the Shadowrun.com forums.

What’s your favorite part of Mercurial? My favorite part of Mercurial is that people have begun to see the story that I had in my head all those months ago. It seemed like a simple idea at the time, but realizing it has taken a year and thousands of hours of work to make a reality. I’ve been lucky to work with an amazing group of individuals, and to labor on every inch of this module.

So you want to join a mod team? Modding is a marathon, not a sprint; People have real lives, school, work, families, and illnesses. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but in all honesty, no plan survives contact with reality. Mod teams are all about doing everything we can with the people that we have. When it comes to joining a mod team, my advice would be: Don’t limit yourself to a particular skillset. If your team needs someone to step in and help with art or scripting, or anything, be willing to pitch in and help wherever it’s needed. Don’t be afraid to ask for help: you have a team to help support you, either the others working on your project or the larger modding community .

[sri-mercurial]

Blog Post for August 25, 2015

A lot of works goes into creating a mod for any game.  To that end we thought you might enjoy meeting some of the team.  So the next few posts will be a short series of developer discoveries.  Here is the first one from our fearless leader:

Name:   David “DaveOfDeath” Hendrickson

Position:   Project Manager; Head Developer

What is your history?   I started programming computers in 7th grade, following in my father's footsteps.  He was a programmer for the DOD, and so computers and tech kinda runs in the family.   Progressed in skills as I made my way through high school, and into Junior College… when I discovered that just because you want to take a class, doesn’t mean it’s part of your major… And eventually ran out of money.   Bounced around some techy jobs, before becoming a Termite Inspector is Califonia.   Good ol’ economic downturn, and I found myself in Arizona, working as a warehouse guy.   Got promoted to Truck Driver (not a coincidence that the trucker @ Yoshiros is named Dave), and now work with the Shadowrun Identity Group as a hobby.      Stay in school, chummers.   Turn your hobbies into income streams, and live much happier.

Favorite Computer game?   I like games for many different reasons.   Usually the ones that I gravitate towards seem to be story based, rather than stunning graphics, or impressive mechanics.    The Mass Effect Series is an all-time favorite of mine, because you could be the hero, or the anti-hero… and the game progressed.    Once I figure out the mechanics behind a game, and how it works, I typically lose interest.   This is why the world of Shadowrun sounded so appealing.   Being released with it’s editor means a wealth of games which will break expectations, and change how you see the world appealed to me greatly.

What are you doing on Mercurial?   For Mercurial, I was both the Project Manager, and Head Developer.   My early focus was on building a stable framework for the team to hang their ideas off of.     Once the frame was in, I helped fill out some of the scenes and contributed towards building most of the ‘animations’ / effects that you see in the game.   Bus arrival, getaway van, fighting a dragon prop, weapons check, etc…

How did you come to be on the Mercurial team?   Drafted, because I wasn’t smart enough to run the other direction.    Early on, my brother Matt (L0g41n) roped me into the early edition of Shadowrun Identity’s community.   It was ambitious, but ultimately ended up being over-reaching and crumbled.    Out of the ashes, Jason Miller (Axis Mundi) popped up and announced that he was going to reboot the SR:I concept, but focus on a single module at a time, rather than assigning everyone their own.    His infectious enthusiasm is largely the reason I came to, and stayed with Shadowrun Identity.   Since then, we’ve developed more than a mod, we became a group of friends.

What’s your favorite part of Mercurial?   As corny as it sounds, my favorite part of Mercurial is the team behind it.   These guys and girls are the best that I could even imagine working with.   They challenged me, they pushed me, the propped me up and the knocked me down, whenever I got an inflated head.   This team had all the right mix to really let the game we were trying to build shine through.    Mercurial is a testament to our stubbornness and inability to take the ‘easy’ route.   Honestly, I can’t remember having more fun beating my head against a desk than I did here.   The team really made this mod shine… And they let me steer this ship.   Couldn’t have asked for more.   

So you want to join a mod team?   So you want to be a hero, huh?  Well my advice would be that If you want to join a mod team:

First, be confident in your skillset.    You don’t have to be the greatest scripter/writer/artist/mapper/logic/tester ever to be desireable.    Often times, having a niche skillset can make you more valuable to the team.  Filling a gap in the team whether they know the gap exists or not is often the easiest way in...

Second, be prepared for a TON of work.   Building one of these mods is a HUGE undertaking.   There are no shortcuts to this… it requires someone to put in the time, and build the thing.   This kinda ties into my third point.

Third, Every aspect of a mod has highs and lows.   You may come onto a project and have a billion and one great ideas for improving an aspect, or all the aspects… There are fantastic high points, where you can make the world altering changes that will forever shape the face of video games… but most of what every team member does, is the boring parts.  The scripts that make the whole thing work are far more important that the ‘wow-factor’ scripts, even though they are way more fun to write.   The same holds true to all aspects… mapping, art, scripting, mechanics, story, etc…

Last, be a team player.   This is the one that I looked for the most with the team.   The ability to give and take criticism without breaking apart the team is about as important as it gets.   With Mercurial in general, I got to drive the boat… but that didn’t mean it’s “my-way or the highway”.   Each team mate had open communication lines to tell me how wrong I was doing things, or how much they liked a particular spot.    It’s not easy to hear “You messed everything up” but how you deal with hearing it is way more valuable than getting it perfect on the first try.    

Once/If  you feel like you’ve got the right mindset, gimme a call.  You never know when we’ll be looking for a few good helping hands.  ;)

[sri-mercurial]

This is a screenshot from Shadowrun Hong Kong which comes out on Thursday, August 20th.  Personally I can’t wait to play this.  It should be just awesome. Shadowrun Hong Kong will be available on Steam, Gog.com and Humble Bundle.

Edit:  I changed to the correct release day. :)

[catalystgamelabs]

The Power of the Community

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…

Randall