Shadowrun of Yesterday - 2nd session

Originally dated July 10, 2007:

So last night I got Jason and Davery and Christin together. Our fourth player, my dear wife, was sick with a headcold and dosed up on medicine, so she did not join us.

We got together shortly after 6:30, and immediately set about explaining Shadowrun. Davery and Jason are both old shadowrun fans, but Christin had not played any shadowrun before, so we laid out the setting, and touched on theme and tone. Then, we got right down to character creation. Character creation in TSOY is a simple process, especially when compared to D&D and alot of other systems out there. Still, it took us awhile, because we were teaching our new players how the system works. Eventually, we had shared enough info that we were able to get both of our new players setup with characters. Christin decided to play a gun-adept type who was also proficient with demolitions, and Davery went for the mage. As we went, we continued to explain some of the details of Shadowrun and the TSOY system, spending some time on how the system had abstracted many elements. For instance, in Shadowrun, for gun-types, the kind of gun you have is pretty important. Both from a shopping standpoint, browsing through all of the various types of guns available, to mechanically, when it comes down to figuring out how much damage your gun does. We talked about how that didn't really matter, and in Shadowrun of Yesterday, we assumed that gun-folks have a gun. What type of gun? Well, I asked Christin, "So what type of gun?" She seemed surprised for a second, confused for half a second, then grokked to it, and responded "A cool gun." We went into how Secrets could represent more static elements of play. If having a car, or a really big gun was super important to the character, then they could take a secret to represent it. The other question was related to equipment, and I think that's actually what led into the guns discussion. I told them that they had whatever equipment was appropriate. Guns? Sure. Knives? Ok. Explosives? Well, that's what her character does, so it makes sense that she's have, or have access to, moderate amounts of explosives. Need to blow a door? No problem, you've got that covered. Need to blow up the Sears Tower? That's going to take a little more prep.

Davery seemed a little crestfallen when we told him that there was no Smartgun link in Shadowrun of Yesterday. See, players of shadowrun know that 99 out of 100 people who fire guns for a living have a smartgun link. Its just the norm. But so far, I haven't mirrored it in Shadowrun of Yesterday. Why? Because the mechanical benefit that it creates in Shadowrun is handled differently TSOY rules. Can we put it in there? Sure, I suppose. But it'll mimic some other secrets already available.

Anyway, we got to playing, and I ran them through meeting with Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson was the owner of a corporate retreat facility who wanted them to investigate the kidnapping and randsom of an Ares executive from said corporate retreat place. He let them sniff around the place looking for clues, during which time, of course Jason wanted to muck about a little, and so we did a roll to see if he could sneak out from under the nose of Mr. Johnson and cronies, who were less than interested in these contract employees running around the facility, mixing with the corporate execs.

Sadly, I have let enough time escape that I've forgotten some of the details, mostly the good ones, like our stakes negotiation and so forth. I do recall that this adventure seemed to gravitate toward talking stuff out, and so Jason's character got to really shine - unfortunately a bit to the exclusion of Davery and Christin's characters. This wasn't Jason's fault, and I'll have to pay some mind to crafting adventures so that everyone can take nearly equal part. But everyone did get to roll some dice, and everyone did get some XP. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and I'm looking forward to running it again.