FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, KICKSTART THE HELL OUT OF SHADOWRUN ONLINE.
I certainly am. As are many others. Whether or not enough of us do remains to be seen. But I REALLY want this game to happen. And I figure the only thing I can do to help, short of defaulting on my mortgage, is to take the time to wax lyrical about the whole thing.
Because I am so incredibly popular that everyone automatically does what I say.
Thinking about it I should just upload this to my okcupid profile.
So, anyway, Shadowrun! I fucking love a bit of Shadowrun I do. Not that I've ever really gotten to play much of it at the tabletop. But that's never stopped me enjoying the setting.
I was first introduced to Shadowrun in, of all places, the Doctors office. See, they had a rack of second hand books you could buy to contribute a few sheckles, and it was here I found the second book in the Secrets Of Power trilogy of novels. It took me years to actually get the other parts, but that's not the point. We didn't have any of this fancy matrix technology that you kids take for granted these days. Hell, we never even had a local games shop where one might find out more about such things. It was all trawling the flea markets and charity shops for whatever we could find. And find things I did. In particular I managed to snag a small pile of RPG books and, perhaps most importantly, the Shadowrun SNES game.
Holy hell but I played the everloving shit out of that game. There aren't many games that could be described as perfect. And this certainly wasn't one of them. But my god it was close. The atmosphere and story pulled me into the Shadowrun world like never before. It was one of those games that simply WORKED. You had a bit of everything to show off the setting. Magic, decking, gang warfare, dragons, spirits, vampires, cyberware. And thanks to the keyword system you had the crucial conceit of any cyberpunk setting: Information as a currency.
Seriously, it was such a simple and elegant idea that worked so incredibly way I am utterly baffled why no other game has ever utilized the concept.
I still have a boxed copy kicking around somewhere, but if someone would just put the game up for download I would buy it again in a heartbeat.
Of course we did manage to at least have a go at the RPG proper, since I'd managed to find the rulebook somewhere. As I recall my character was a Rocker with a guitar that doubled as a power axe. Because that's what happens when your teenage self sees pictures of KISS before actually hearing them.
Looks like True Norwegian Black Metal™. Sounds like Rod Stewart.
Anyway, the most memorable event of that short lived campaign was my engineering the parties escape from a cell by using the only item at hand: The severed head of an elf I had previously killed. I used him as a hand puppet to confuse the guard into opening the cell door. Afterwards I kept him around. His nam wase Elfis.
I was young. Stop judging me.
"NO."
So, yeah. I have a certain fondness for the setting is what I'm saying. And something else I have an extreme fondness for is turn based tactical games with RPG elements. Because X-COM exists and thus if you don't there is something wrong with you on a very basic level.
Imagine my joy then when terms such as "fast paced, turn based tactical RPG" get passed around in relation to Shadowrun Online. I mean, that's like proper erection inducing hyperbole right there. But that's what they're doing! And everytime I see something new about the game it keeps looking better and better. Shadowrun is a setting that, when you think about it, really lends itself to a multiplayer onliney kind of model. I mean, basically a run is a bunch of tooled up psychos meeting up in town and then, once they've got everything they need, going off on a mission. It's how MMOs actually work, but it's all there in the background and setting, so it doesn't seem so utterly ridiculous.
And from the look of it we won't even have to go kill 10 rats at any point. Which also helps.
Go look at the kickstarter page and check out the videos for some idea of the gameplay should work. It all looks intensely promising. But, as I said, it keeps getting better.
One of the key things about the kickstarter campaign that got me to sign up is the proposed campaign model. The game was originally announced as a free to play game. Which means micro transactions and all that sort of thing. All well and good if you're into that. I'm not really myself, but I confess that this was looking like something I might well consider spending a bit of money on as it looked further up my proverbial alley than a proctologists buttplug collection. But then they also proposed the campaign model. Where you can just buy the game and not have to worry about all that sodding around. You pays your money, and you get access to everything.
You know, like Guild Wars.
My cock is like advanced algebra right now: Incredibly hard, of little interest to anyone and entirely beside the point.
This is a business model I can totally get behind. Sure, they can sell me expansions and whatnot, but the full range of stuff is right there. I can pay a sum upfront and have everything available. I'm happy. The free to play types can play free, but still buy access to whatever high end stuff if they really want without dropping a lump sum. They've happy. The developers get paid either way and can eat as well as make their game. They've happy. Literally everyone wins if they can pull this off.
I think that this could be a good thing for gaming in general, not just for fans of this particular franchise. I'd love to see more games looking at selling themselves in different ways like this. And I'd REALLY like to see more developers engaging with their communities like these guys are doing. It's a message that I think needs to be gotten across. Give us options and treat us like human beings and we are more than happy to give you our money in whatever way works best for us.
I firmly believe that this game has potential. With the sort of results of player interaction on the setting and story they're promising it could even possibly rival EVE for financial shenanigans. I mean, they're outright said that runs can affect companies share price in game. That's gonna be interesting to see in action. Even more so if you can actually BUY company shares for your character.
As I write this there's about a week left on the kickstarter. It's still only about half funded. Please, if you've any interest in anything I've mentioned here then check it out and donate a few nuyen to the cause.
Here's hoping we can pull this one off.
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