The League of Magnificent Scoundrels

After reading through all ten of The Core Mechanic’s “Skill Challenges of War”, I have come to the conclusion that converting them to Shadowrun is pretty moot (at least, in the case of the current gaming group). The way our GM is running our current campaign, we are already thrown into a war that is very much larger than ourselves. My reasoning as to why I’m not going to convert them: skill challenges are inherently built into Shadowrun. A lot of our “quests” are mission-based. Some of the things our ‘runners have done are very much like the listed possibilities within the Skill Challenges Concept, such as “capture something” or to “gather information on a diplomatic mission“.

To help explain, let me expand on the latter challenge. When the first piece of our Runner group came to the Sixth World from the Fourth World (more explanation later), we were immediately trained to be Runners by a corporation held by Knight. We were to go see the Elves, but on our way there the Elves captured us, thinking us prisoners of Knight’s. Through this, we ended up working for both sides for a time, with our main mission given by Knight to give them information about certain Elves.

We were working both sides, and in one instance, Azitade contacted Mr. Johnson of Knight to arrange a dummy server with dummy information, with short notice. He arranged this, and some of our group, including our Troll decker Exodus, did not know about the set up. Neither did Knight’s headquarters that we were to break into.

Exodus, Drek, and Elk Foot made it to the floor we were supposed to. We watched over Exodus while he pilfered the information off Knight’s matrix. When he was done, he decided to plant explosives that he had with him around the terminal. (The troll likes to blow things up.) Before we blew it up, alarms sounded and we were greeted at ground level by some twenty or so guards. Using our combined abilities (and Drek’s seeming magnetism to bullets), we managed to escape. Luckily, Mr. Johnson also arranged for the patrol of the headquarters to be new recruits who thought this was a training exercise… until we totaled a few of them.

We gave the “stolen” data to the Elves, and continued working for them as well as Knight.

The way Shadowrun works, there was no reason for me to implement a conversion of the skill challenges. Everything from street thugging to corporate espionage, is an integral part of the game. Skill challenges of DnD are a commonplace among Shadowrunning. Things like taking out important people and flushing out spies are a day-to-day event for any good ‘runner group. Sure, you have plenty of shooting and hack’n'slash, but there is a much larger emphasis on stealth and hacking the matrix (by the way, this use of matrix predates the movies). There are sessions spent with characters solely gathering information, which Shadowrun (as well as a good group/GM) make fun.

Oh, to explain the Fourth and Sixth world references, Shadowrun’s timeline is based on events of the Mayan calendar. The Sixth World is said to start in 2011/2012 (the end of the known world and all that). We are presently on the “closing” of the Fifth World. It is only fitting to assume that DnD/fantasy is in the Fourth World.

Over at The Core Mechanic, there is an interesting series about a way to incorporate war into a campaign (in this case, it’s Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition) using skill challenges. I find this rather fascinating, as it adds a cool element to the roleplaying atmosphere. As of this writing, there are four parts.

This has got me thinking about a campaign that I want to run, and seeing how well it would translate into other tabletop games, such as a modified Shadowrun 3rd Edition (there are a few rules we don’t like, but we’ll not cover that here). There are so many possibilities. Being that it is centered around skill challenges, it would work perfectly into Shadowrun, and I imagine possibly even White Wolf games (though I have only played them once, a long time ago, so I really have no bearing on that).

When I have some progress, I’ll post about doing it the Shadowrun way.

In the bustle of life, one can forget even the simplest of relaxation techniques. To endure the standard ’9-5′, it is common for the working class to employ the use of a wide variety of techniques, drugs, chemicals, books, music, etc. to relax and make themselves feel better.

Usually, their attempts are futile.

Without proper breathing, relaxing can be (read: is) impossible. Breathing, though a semi-automatic function of our bodies, is often overlooked as the most effective way of relaxation.

As described by an author at Zen Habits, six seconds is all it takes to feel AWESOME.

Give it a shot.

It’s a shame that my only post in months (really? months?) is not as full-featured as a normal article, but that will change in the future.