#shadowrun ugc

[amphibianroyalty]

Hey guys, I made a run for Shadowrun Hong Kong!

Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1325052957

Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/shadowrunhongkong/mods/26

It’s kinda linear, but I’ve been told the story is nice! If you guys play, please report any bugs, typos, and other bad stuff, either on Steam, or Nexus, or here, and I’ll get them fixed.

[lilacyams]

What a great night for tragedy! Currently feeling sad and empty af. 

Beautiful UGC, now I’m gonna cry in a corner and make up an alternate reality where Monika just fell into some sort of coma and woke up around the end of the game, and declare it canon. 

[ghostfriendly5]

Helena Montoya

Character spotlight for Eden: It’s an Endless World, and Shadowrun

WARNING!!! Post contains spoilers for the Eden: It’s an Endless World manga, and disturbing matters such as severe violence and rape (Goblin Slayer fans should read on and see how manga can be ‘dark’ without being toxic solid waste)  

Following on from my post about Tsukuyo, my Hong Kong Shadowrunner, I thought of introducing another Shadowrun girl. Another ‘Hooker with a Heart of Gold’, alas, which is always a rather suspect trope; but no one does it better than the Japanese except Dostoevsky, and even poor Sonya, in some ways, didn’t do it as well as this girl. Frank Miller eat your silly heart out.

Helena Montoya is a career prostitute in the cyberpunk South America of the Eden: It’s an Endless World! manga. Which, for the poor in the favelas, is much the the same as modern South America, except when Japanese armies of the Gnostic pseudo-world government march in and abduct women as sex slaves (this is a Japanese mangaka writing, remember). Helena endures, escapes with some resistance fighters, ‘mans’ a machine gun when the fighting starts and looks very good indeed doing it. She sees the sweet young abductee she took under her wing get blown up by a landmine. She is mercilessly strong and outspoken from start to finish; after all this time she wipes the floor with the cyborg hacker girl and silent Japanese knife-ninja who were very much runners up as characters in that arc. 

Helena proudly claims that economic dependence on a husband is no better than prostitution, and that she wouldn’t trade her freedom for anything (An old, very suspect romanticism, but she pulls it off). She can hit the bottle and get pretty grouchy at times, but she persistently, thanklessly works to get other women off heroin and out of toxic relationships. In her spare time she even takes the cherry of the manga’s teenage hero, Elijah Ballard, in a farcical yet genuinely touching scene.

At the peak of her arc, Helena is gang-raped and has an eye and ear cut off by the stooges of a dealer whose girlfriend she’d convinced to break up with him. In a word, she tanks it. She doesn’t stop putting herself in danger to save junkies, though she carries a stun gun in future. She doesn’t stop having silly sexy scenes with Elijah, or working as a prostitute, wholeheartedly. In the face of the most unromanticisable horrors, she does not back down from her philosophy or her way of life an inch. It’s not perfect, but it’s recovery, it’s a victory and one more time--it makes Goblin Slayer look like the false, puerile rubbish it is.

What this horrific ordeal cannot break, years of loneliness eventually do. Helena finally ends her relationship with Elijah Ballard, and gets married to a pleasant ex-security services fellow, for this reason. The next time we see her, some random corrupt cops or spies, I really don’t recall, shoot her husband dead, and then shoot Helena. The manga shows the bullet go through her shielding hand, as a survivor fights for the life she loves to the end.

Helena’s ordeal, in the end, was all for the male hero who ‘becomes a man’ in another sense by violently avenging both her rape and her death. As soon as she has no more to give him, she is killed. If anyone did want to say that Hiroki Endo is a misogynistic twit, I would have nothing but respect for them. And yet Helena has a complete character arc, unforgettably drawn. Her convictions are honoured to the end, not trampled and silenced, and her ordeal is rooted in real world violence, not the artlessly contrived and gratuitous monster-rape of the manga that isn’t worth my mentioning by name again.

Simply put, Helena has quite enough character to be the heroine of her own story.

This is Helena ‘Sundown’ Montoya. A shaman’s power to call spirits from the vasty deep (High charisma comes in handy!) opened up a few more career options to her than streetwalking in Aztlan. After another brush with death, she’s looking to pay some urgent medical bills by robbing a Shiawase high-speed train in the Caldicott tunnel (another great UGC by Cirion). Every honest man, or woman, should have a crown if I could give it.                     

[ademeyn]

Hello.

Almost 3 years later, but yes - Project Glory still clings to life (though just barely).

First off, some pics from the editor - First one from the beginning of Glory’s journey manhunt for Harrow, second one is the entrance to the Warsaw-Lódź sprawl. Third one is the list of “import” variables that you can pick at the beginning of the UGC, Mass Effect 2 style. Most of it is pretty much for flavour but hey.

Second (and this one’s pretty big): I’ve employed the writing powers of @barbedbeat - my fellow Shadowrunner and PoE fanatic. If you haven’t checked her stuff out yet, do it now! Either on her blog or AO3.

[0void0v-blog]

JUST A FAVOR

currently sitting @ ~110 manhours of FUN. :D

[wearepaladin]

Favorite shadowrun ugc/mods (from returns, dragonfall, & hong kong)?

You know, I never played any of the mods of those games. Just the base campaigns, which I did enjoy.

[shadowrun-dragonfall-mod-kw]

Shadowrun: Dragonfall - DC Mod APK - المال غير محدود

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 Have something cool that you think should be shared with the community? Link it here! Whether you are a steam user or grabbed a DRM free copy of Shadowrun there is always a way to share content you've created. Check out Publishing Content to figure out the best ways to get your work shared with the rest of the community. You can download these and load them up in the Shadowrun game client to experience different adventures created by community members. Dropbox Nexus. In the case of a downloaded content pack, you'll have to place the file in the appropriate folder in order to run it from the game client. Shadowrun Wiki Explore. Gamepedia support Report a bad ad Help Wiki Contact us. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? User Generated Content. Edit source History Talk 0. Do you like this video? Play Sound. Categories : Shadowrun user generated content Add category. Cancel Save. Fan Feed. Universal Conquest Wiki. The Caldecott Caper. Your miserable life as a corporate rent-a-cop comes to an abrupt end, forcing you to the other side of the law in a desperate bid for a big score. Steam calfree. Steam Nexus. The Enemy of My Enemy. An elegant low karma solo run - a standard overnight data retrieval mission in a local Novatech side office. Johnson handed you an access code, instructions, reconnaissance info, and sent you on your way. Antumbra Saga. A sprawling campaign on the Pacific Coast in which you will rise from a lowly shadowrunner to a pivotal player in the struggle between CalFree and Tir Tairngire. Trying to score money to escape the desperate poverty of the Barrens, you and your childhood friends go on your first shadowrun. Action starts as security kills Ziggy, your chummer and decker. The Clean Fire. His daily routine is tossed aside when a shadowrunner break into the facility where he is working. Codename Cherise - The Galaxy Case. Dive headfirst into the neon streets of Tokyo. Cherise is a gun for hire. The long range expert that is as silent as she is deadly finds herself in a conspiracy that threatens to bring the city of Tokyo to its knees. You're an up and coming runner, hired to protect a rocker from her former manager. The pay is good, but be careful, chummer. Sometimes the darkest secrets hide in the spotlight. Operation Complex Prophet. Hunted by Renraku for a crime you didn't commit, it'll take luck, wit and good old grit for you and your team to survive long enough to clear your names. Random Access Memories. It's been one year since Monika passed away. A mysterious package has arrived at the Safehouse, a "Sim-Sense Unit Prototype," with the ability to transport you into a computer simulation. But what's the simulation, and who's running it? Shadowrun Stealth Mechanics. Short tutorial scenario about built-in stealth mechanics in the Shadowrun Returns trilogy. Invaluable knowledge to UGC developers. Shadowrun Unlimited. Shadowrun Unlimited is designed to be more than a simple campaign; it's the world of Shadowrun. Sandbox style gameplay with replayable Runs, assigned randomly by fixers from their "pool" of runs. Steam Dropbox Nexus. Turf Wars. Praeyach, Thailand. A city of depravity, a harbor for the pirates and ill-mannered criminals of the South China Sea. Proof that there is such a place where the leaders of the world will turn a blind eye to justice for profit. The balance is upset with a new arrival, fresh off the plane from Hong Kong. Zombie Nightmare! Hoi chummer, you look like you wanna blast off Slot up this BTL and enjoy some ghoul-slaying fun! Now with even more exclamation points! Crime Mall, The. Geeked - Portraits and Props. Telling you everything in it would fill this page to the brink. A small selection of extra stairways and doors that match the tenement tileset, for use in your own UGC. Dragonfall version. Mystery Market. Primarily used to create characters but also adds a lively environment for a bit of roleplay. The greatest feature in this UGC is having all the necessities to make your character such as nuyen, karma, equipment. Not only do you have access to equipment from the Berlin and Seattle source, but also equipment that wasn't available to the player from the DF campaign. Skillwires, Activesofts, and Linguasofts. Basic, Alphaware, Betaware, Deltaware grades. Also included are special Comsumables: Activesofts and Linguasofts. Activesofts add to Physical Skills for a number of combat turns while Linguasofts grant an Etiquette appropriate to the Linguasoft description. Way of the Gun Adept. The purpose of this mod is to add some more flavor to the Physical Adept archetype, and to hopefully get more from putting points into it. Most of this mod focuses on adding powers that boost Ranged Combat, but there are also several changes that will benefit any build. Powerful foes plot to take down Seattle's newest nightclub. Will you do the job cleanly, or go looking for trouble? Brothers to the End. A prequel to the Sega Genesis Shadowrun saga, following Michael and Stark as they race unknowingly towards the massacre that kicks off the Genesis story. The Sarpan Corporation sends a team of elite security agents on an operation which turns into something more than a simple retrieval. Nightmare Harvest. The Shambles is a slum with a secret. A secret the local Yakuza and Comanche Mafia are willing to go to war for. A secret that a lone Shadowrunner who's just trying to lay low and nurse a hangover will unwittingly uncover. The Price of Conviction. Play as Coyote pursuing her vendetta against the BTL industry. This module is assuming that her vengeance path was taken and that Gino's life was lost. Plays in Dragonfall Director's Edition without modification. The Shadows of the Salish Shidhe. This mod presents travel between locations, natural locations, tribal politics, and shamanic traditions, in a way not touched on much in other mods. A Stitch in Time. Runs unmodified in Dragonfall Director's Edition. More Stair and Door Props most for the tenements set to use in you Returns maps. Feel free to use them however you want, but a little credit would be nice. Shadowrun Fifth Edition Profiles v1. Street Samurai Catalog.

[ghostfriendly5]

Black Lagoon aligns very well with Shadowrun; corrupt Japanese corporations, colourful mobsters, independent mercenaries, hackers, Neo-Nazis and magical realism. There's even a SRR UGC tribute, and a lot of influence from rogue wageslave Rock in my stories of Yuu Kamishiro and Karina Sosa. I would write a direct Black Lagoon-Shadowrun tribute, except for the former's severe weakness of plot. It's style over substance to the nth degree, a series of sexualised ultra-violent vignettes without the emotional depth of Planetes, Vinland Saga, Eden, Claymore, Gunslinger Girl, Ikigami etc, and a story without a conclusion. Oh well, far too much to write already.

[ravel-puzzlewell]

favorite shadowrun ugc/mods?

sorry, I didn’t play any player-made mods or modules for shadowrun, I generally almost never do

[ghostfriendly5]

Oh well, if London isn't associated with cyberpunk, Shadowrun does have elements of mystery, crime, horror and gritty espionage which go well with London. 'Streets of London' UGC for PC game updated the setting a bit to reflect contempory developments in the royal family, with the UK dominated by a royalty-owned corporation 'the Firm' (As the Queen has referred to her 'family business').

Of course, Britain has been home to the world's oldest magical corporation since the 1870s, namely John Wellington Wells and co from Gilbert and Sullivan's Sorcerer. Their love potions are developed with the strictest principles in mind, and on married people they have no effect!

"Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells,

I'm a dealer in magic and spells,

In blessings and curses

And ever-filled purses,

In prophecies, witches, and knells.

If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"--

If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax--

You've but to look in

On the resident Djinn,

Number seventy, Simmery Axe!

We've a first-class assortment of magic;

And for raising a posthumous shade

With effects that are comic or tragic,

There's no cheaper house in the trade.

Love-philtre--we've quantities of it;

And for knowledge if any one burns,

We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet

Who brings us unbounded returns..."

London Sourcebook for Shadowrun (1st Edition). Introduction.

This one’s on Bob.

Charette, that is, 1st Edition designer and author of the Secrets of Power novel trilogy. The second novel, Choose Your Enemies Carefully, takes us to England and immerses us in a tale of Toxic Druids, Blood Magic, Tír na nÓg, and Wendigo.

So fluffy.

I’ve been to London once. Technically twice – I flew into Heathrow and caught a bus to Oxford, where I was interviewing for a job at Oxford University, then had to take the bus back to London.

Yeah. I used to be someone.

Now I write a rarely read tumblr about a 32-year-old game.

It’s wizard.

Despite that depth of personal experience, don’t expect a region-by-region breakdown like I did for the Seattle Sourcebook. Despite having never been to Seattle, I have lived a thousand days there due to Shadowrun.

Most of my knowledge about the U.K. comes from Monty Python.

“Except, that Dinsdale was convinced that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog whom he referred to as ‘Spiney Norman’.”

There is an adventure for Shadowrun set in the British Isles, Imago, but it doesn’t appear until 2nd Edition Shadowrun is published (though it claims it can be adapted for 1st Edition). I vaguely remember my buddy running a one-shot home-brew adventure in London, but then that same buddy later fucked my wife (now ex-wife).

Now I’m remarried.

It’s wizard.

Of course they brought back some color plates.

Let’s face it: London is not a city that pops into your mind when you think “cyberpunk”.

Like Shadowbeat, I wonder who the audience really was for this book. I know the U.K. had a thriving RPG community – this is why we had the Field Folio for 1st Edition AD&D – but Shadowrun didn’t seem to thrive as strongly there as it did in, say, Germany, where they wrote their own German language sourcebook that had to be translated into English (for 2nd Edition Shadowrun).

Fiend Folio war der erste Auftritt der Githyanki.

So this will be interesting. And my first full reading of the London Sourcebook. Strap in, chummer.

[ghostfriendly5]

Shadowtober Fanfic - ‘Home Sweet Home’

Prompt by @mithryl-draws. Scenario from Maniac Monday shadowrun UGC by Mr. Person (This is literally the way it opens, could possibly supply the prompt '80s action movie poster' as well, and anyone who wants to illustrate this scene is very welcome!)

It could only have happened in Redmond at three in the morning. Enrica Croce had been far too zonked after a hard night’s legwork through Touristville to get dressed, just for ambling from the mattress in her fleabag apartment along to room five, and asking the cramhead screaming about purple dancing spiders to, like, quiet down a skosh. But never too zonked, in Redmond, for pulling some boots onto her slim elfy legs that would stand up to broken syringes and capsules all over the landing, before she unhooked the chain–or, of course, for sticking a Fichetti 600 handgun down the back of her panties.

Which came in handy when the cramhead neighbour flung wide his door, not only screaming even louder but swinging a baseball bat. Bare chest, bare feet, eyes deadly-dull as a mad elephant. Enrica barely slid the blow down a rising block; crashed down on her hoop. Skidded back through the trash as she got her gun round, fired. Then she consciously put another bullet through the ork’s chest, then another, then two through his cram-ravaged cueball skull. She drew up her bare knees to her chin and felt the gunbarrel’s warmth through cold sweat on her brow, as the ork crashed down.

A baby was crying on the level below. Anyone else whose beauty sleep they’d broken up had enough evident sense not to come out and complain; this was the Barrens, and more than somewhat.

Enrica did her civic duty by dragging the corpse off the landing and making a note to call the Organ Grinders. Casing her ex-neighbour’s vomit-scented pigsty of a flat, she had no scruples about treating the cuts on her legs with a cheap medkit under the sink, or yoinking a loose credstick.

She nearly ruptured herself forcing a grimy window open, but that did give her a surprisingly magnificent view of sunrise over Redmond, filling the skyline smog with bloody light like the mouth of hell. Enrica stopped to stare for a while, her face haloed by cropped golden hair as calm as a stone angel. The pistol hung by her bare thigh, and the body oozed out over the floor behind her. Sixteen years of life in Redmond and several in a blacksite prison had passed before those pure blue eyes (Perhaps the Corp drug trials her parents had sold her for, back then, had done something…) until death, at any rate, was an indifferent thing to her. Life, though, and all around that was beautiful and unexpected, she treasured more each day for knowing how swiftly it could be snatched.

It was certainly unexpected–checking the flat to see if the ork she’d killed had possessed any chummers who’d come gunning for her–to discover her batdrek cramhead neighbour had in fact been a batdrek cramhead cop, Lone Star undercover. She supposed it was a stressful job. And that her dead narc had missed a check-in, during his drug-crazed bender–because she could hear stamping boots on the building’s stairs.

An ork-size trenchcoat, hanging behind the door–she threw in over her slight, strong limbs. Back to her room for commlink, credstick, heavy Savalette pistol and some clips, then bolt. The real nuisance was, she’d be going on the run wearing beige-coloured underwear. Beige!            

[ghostfriendly5]

Shadowtober Fanfic - Halloweeners

Prompt from @mithryl-draws. An incarnation of Aria Landers appears in Fighter’s Story, but her origin is a helpful NPC/love interest in the Shadowrun UGC ‘Wolf Runners’. Ayumi is recreated from the Haruki Murakami novel 1Q84; not from a p0rn movie, but a novel from one of the ablest Japanese writers of the age!

Warnings: violence references, sex references, bisexual angst, homophobia reference 

----

The final shotgun blast died away–along with the Halloweeners’ skull-masked boss, smashed like a pumpkin beneath the back wall’s orange-black flag. The silence left by gunshots and flamestrikes settled within a cloud of their burning, bloody perfume, over the cleared chapter house.

Aria Landers (28, elvish, bisexual, single) winced at her own imagery over what it was better to think of as a strictly business matter, if it hadn’t been another miserable massacre on the streets of Renton. 

This crew of street-scum had threatened her little talismonger’s shop and killed two local security guards. She’d read on the newsfeeds what the Halloweeners did to anyone caught on the streets after dark, for fun, and seen their work–the poor souls they’d made into their work–during the years when she’d Run the Shadows full time, for real. Wiping out scum like these made the world a better place; even their own gang brothers wouldn’t do much more than laugh at their stupidity, getting killed by shadowrunners (They’d kill Aria or her bodyguard if they ran into them, of course, but they’d probably have done that anyway).

Still…some of the ‘weeners had been in their teens. Already vicious little monsters that had shot and slashed to kill her, naturally…no, nothing was natural here. Aria had noticed the cuts and burn scars under their evil-clown paint. Sitting down in a burning building for twenty minutes by the watch was only the initiation to years of hazings, abuse and contempt. Until you were a bigger monster than the monsters that had made you. The Cutters or the Spikes held out manhood to dumb, unbroken kids from Redmond and Puyallup–but for too many children whose families rotted alive in slums, while Renraku execs toasted champagne, a monster was all they wanted to be. Burning stray cats to death, stray people–Aria had seen those marks and traces too, throughout the locker-room stinking warehouse with blood and bodies flung against the bunkbeds–was not the sane response to a mad, mad world. Nothing was; that was the point.

Frag, killing gangers made her so maudlin. It was a mad, sad world–didn’t that meant it was time to find someone to love?

Aria raised her weary, beautiful violet eyes to her bodyguard. Her Yojimbo; the green Runner she’d hired to clean up the neighbourhood with her. Stupid risk to hire a greenhorn, even when the Fixer had praised her talent to the skies, as Fixers did. Aria had beheld the truth of Ayumi Sakata, though, and very possibly fallen in love at first sight.

Lying back on a rotten couch among a dozen slain gangers, with her shotgun in one hand and the synthol beer Aria had passed to her in the other, Ayumi was a big oni, all over. Trim, tremendous curves laid out her bulk smoothly over thighs and waist to make for something like three gorgeous women in the skin of one–and make for one unbearably desirous bisexual elf, besides.

Even squished down under a Kevlar vest, her breasts were huge. She wore long, dark hair in a fashionably high and sporty 2050’s ponytail. Her big, red-tinted Tanuki-gao face and eyes were laughably guileless and Aria was burning to behold, hold and possess every part of her for one night, even if this was one of the stupidest reasons to hire a shadowrunner that had yet been conceived.

She’d got into very ugly trouble before, coming onto straight girls. Or with men being the idiots men were, woman who could be very nearly as cruel and useless–herself, no better than any but the very worst. Ayumi might very well call her a disgusting raging dyke and break her in half, for all she knew, only for letting what throbbed in her heart drift past her lips…loving other women was hard enough without dealing with killers in the shadows as well. It might be for the best, no it would certainly be for the best, if she gave her beautiful bodyguard the agreed nyuyen, and watched her walk out of her life. She could go home, take a cold shower, curl up with a nice red wine and the trideo romance of a Tir Duchess and her maidservant-bodyguard…

…but her blood was up. She didn’t want to control it. The way Ayumi had rushed into the chapter house, jacked up with the Haste she’d cast. Swinging and striking down a ‘weener with her shotgun barrel, who’d been aiming his sawn-off at Aria–glancing back, to make sure she was safe, in the burning light of her summoned fire spirit? There had to be more in this Sixth World than senseless nyuyen and violence. There might be, but only if she spoke…

“…a job well done, Aymui.” She dropped the credstick in the oni’s lap that she’d more than earned, “Why don’t we retire to a hotel and wash off the filth of this place?”

“Perfect end to a perfect run,” Ayumi knocked her beer back, grinned through her pretty little tusks, “Eh, with a couple of hot guys, it’d be perfect.”

“…I suppose so.”

A bitter tremor passed through Aria’s slim body. She fought with all her strength not to cry, though she was sure even John Wayne would’ve shed a single, manly tear…

“First real shadowrun.” Ayumi rumbled on; she seemed not to be the most observant girl, “That deserves a celebration, right? Frag, and I mean, you were right there with me, novahot! You’re not just a pretty face; you never even flinched. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Through the roaring pink fog of lust, Aria perceived Ayumi grasping her little hand. The red oni sat up on the couch; spoke simply and matter-of-factly as a little girl making a playdate with her bestie.

“How about we go to a swanky hotel in Bellevue, clean up, pick up a couple of guys–or three, or four? We could make a contest of it; then we make a night of it? Running a small business is tough, excuse me saying so, but I feel like you need to let your hair down. Have some fun. I guess this isn’t exactly the typical thing for Johnsons and Runners to do together; but I got this feeling as we fought together, Miss Landers. You’re not any kind of a typical person.”

“Ah…okay then. But call me Aria, please.” The elf talismonger lowered her eyes, glanced up under her lashes, with a weary but charmingly hope-filled smile, “Beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

TBC in ‘A well earned break’  

[ghostfriendly5]

While plunging through hellish metaplanes to save the Shadowrun world from evil spirits (with a strong party of chummers and powerful allies) has a certain grandeur...it's funny that a shootout down the local Stuffer Shack can have more tension and danger. More emotional impact, even, when the lone Street Samurai has to choose between ducking into the back for mid-firefight medkits, or protecting the staff/patrons from some surprisingly tough armed robbers...

Ending of Darkness Falls UGC for Shadowrun Dragonfall turned out a lot lighter than the Returns version, but good. Ayumi didn't get to ride on a dragon, but managed just about everything else. Including saving the world, accquiring a harem, killing Lord Torgo of the Spikes, and infecting a cheating fox-shifter's underwear drawer with fleas...

One flaw DF does have is being unnecessarily written for a male MC. So much so, that my original Runner, Rosebud, nearly went bisexual before she completed it, until I headcannoned her cute dwarf love interest Charla into Charlie. Ayumi doesn't have that problem, but she's more into elves like Emma 'Frosty' Foster, Harlequin's protege...

[ghostfriendly5]

@neophyte-no1

It’s fairly common for my Shadowrun MCs to say whatever will keep their team of killers and psychopaths happy, without voicing their personal feelings; a hindrance to roleplaying, but a realistic team leadership strategy. Whether they genuinely respect their chummers’ personal goals, or might sociopathically do anything to please their team while they had use for them, and then sell them out to Qian Yi when they didn’t. Though I’ve yet to play an MC like that. In Cirion’s Caldicott Caper I believe you have a real risk of your crew walking out on you, if you offend them sufficiently, which would make completing the playthrough rather tricky. Cirion’s next module, Calfree in Chains, replaced the ‘favour’ mechanic with probably a better idea, where your dialogues with the crew influence their choices about the various crossroads their lives have reached.  

Shadowrun PC generally gives you four or five very competent and reliable chummers who you’d be daft to needlessly alienate; traitors or incompetents in less lucky crews, or real criminal outfits, are notoriously common. Blitz in Dragonfall is the nearest thing to an exception (Apart from Sam and Dowd in DMS, possibly Masato and Dorbi in Calfree in Chains); someone wrote a whole UGC module where Blitz puts the MC in danger to continue his search for Emile, and very likely gets sacked on the spot in consequence. Blitz is a brilliant but unreliable decker, and no one running a dangerous criminal enterprise can realistically afford unreliability. In the words of Mr White from Reservoir Dogs, you can never tell with psychopaths. The memoirs of real-life mercenary Karl Penta were striking for what a shower of liabilities and incompetents most of the comrades he entrusted his life to seem to have been; but there aren’t enough trained mercenaries willing to try and topple the government of Suriname that he had a lot of choice. Finding fault, suspecting everyone, and cutting ties with even friends and competent fighters if they took to the bottle or somesuch, were presumably qualities that assisted his survival. Conversely, incompetent or unhappy team members may remain in criminal gangs because of sentimental ties, or an unwillingness to betray their crew by leaving; even if Alexander gets killed in Dragonfall, Dietrich remains very unhappily with the team.  

To try and bring this to some conclusion, Racter has walked out on Lucky Strike’s team for his personal goals; for a sufficient personal incentive he would betray the Hong Kong crew, but the MC should receive the impression, for what it’s worth, that it would have to be a very big incentive. It’s their job as team leader to cut liabilities loose at any time, if new information presents itself, but they would weight that against any attachment they feel to Racter, and the value of his not-easily-replaceable skills. Even if Racter makes some efforts to win the MC’s loyalty, for his own ends, a unemotional risk-benefit analysis on the MC’s part would sit better with his own philosophy; although the essence of the psychopathic mindset is that Racter would principally approve of cold, logic when the results are beneficial to himself. He certainly wouldn’t think much of Dietrich choosing to remain with a leader he despises for getting Alexander killed; I’ve often thought of the cybernetic Rigger and the punk-rock shaman as symbolic opposites, and certainly both rather popular...but this all just my own thoughts or perspective and I essentially agree with everything both of you have said.       

Sharing some Racter dialogue that looks a bit into his past and his family. The one bit that always catches my attention is, “Things happened as they did, and I have no regrets. We’re both the better for it, are we not? Surely it is advantageous to have me on the team.”

Keep reading

[ghostfriendly5]

It's extraordinary that the My Hero Academia creator received death threats, for supposedly legitimising domestic abusers by attempting to redeem such a character, while the Goblin Slayer creator has got off scot free after exploiting, shaming and silencing rape victims to glorify a cross between a racist serial killer and the Doom guy.

I suppose the former creator tried to do a good thing, not 100% successfully, while the latter did a very bad thing well. Not in the sense of originality or sensible worldbuilding, but in shamelessly giving certain people what they want, under a veneer of female empowerment (Sword Maiden victim shaming and undermining). Of course I don't know his motives, but writing a generically plotted harem fantasy with added gang rape is more the action of profit-seeker than a feminist. And the kind of people who take 'feminist' as an insult would be very likely to enjoy Goblin Slayer. The people with objections don't watch GS or care about it because it's offenses are so blatant. Their existence is a great comfort to me. I'd like to thank them all.

I have a BNHA Fighter story in the ideas pile, apart from her very NSFW spin as a superhero in On Top of the World. It might have been a more popular field for her than Shadowrun, but without the UGC plots, thanks to Cirion and H2SO4Maraurder, or much needed anti-racism message. It'll be coming though; Fighter isn't going to fall silent before Goblin Slayer does.

[ghostfriendly5]

Playing 'Darkness Falls' Shadowrun UGC mission again after a few years. It's a sprawling campaign but good fun, and Ayumi gets to be the toughest cyborg troll girl on the block. Minigun, monosword, five stat boosting cyberwares, and a lot of shaman chummers with the maximised Haste spell.

It was a strangely pleasant feeling when the story went off on quite a tangent to what I remembered. Plus side, my chummer who died in the end last time is out of harm's way. Bad news, I can't imagine stealing a giant diamond from Dunkelzahn along the way will make for a good ending. Final mission can wait for tomorrow...dun dun DUN...