Shadowrun Diaries - So it Begins

My friends and I have begun our very first foray into the world of Shadowrun. Here I will document our triumphs and disasters....probably a lot of disasters.

Want more Shadowrun? Check out my Beginners Hacking Guide!

Week One - Character Creation
None of us have played Shadowrun before and with only myself owning the books we were some what in over our heads from the beginning. Though the character creation process is relatively straight forward and we managed to get through most of it.

The book itself seems to be a bit all over the place with rules, leaving us a little unsure on what exactly to do. But with a little searching we managed to figure most of it out.

As far as characters go, we have three of them. A currently nameless Dwarf Technomancer, A Troll brawler type by the name of Jurgen and a human engineer sort called Takamoto Kimiko who is an a pretty frail old women.
They each have some contacts that I'm going flesh out over the next week for use in the campaign, after we finish buying gear and applying the finishing touches to the PC's themselves.

I'm a little worried about the party make up but not having played the game before I have no idea how this will play out. With any luck they will turn out to be an awesome team, otherwise, killing players can be fun too.

Geek & Sundry guys mention Leaping Wizards

The guys over at Geek & Sundry collect together mentions from the around the internet and a few days ago they were kind enough to mention Leaping Wizards and my little fan boy rant about Wil Weatons show TableTop, which you can read here.

The community round up is here for anyone who wants to see other articles written by North Star Games and The Outhousers.

Oh also...THIS:

Wil Wheaton's TableTop

Back in April the lovely Felicia Day started a Youtube channel and website called Geek and Sundry, it features a few shows including Day's vlog, named The Flog where she talks about her favorite things of the week, does some random and usually awesome activity and answers a fan question. Though most importantly it is the home of Wil Wheaton's TableTop which is by far the most entertaining thing I have watched on the internet since I realised Netflix had Firefly.



TableTop is a show where Wil Wheaton gets his friends and other awesome people together around the gaming table to play some of the best games around. I have already bought Settlers of Catan and Fiasco because of the show, which may reveal more about my impulse control than the show itself but nevertheless it is awesome.

Oh look I mentioned Fiasco! TableTop's three part episode of this game was amazing, just watching Will Wheaton, Alison Haislip, Bonnie Burton and John Rogers play this game was a truly enjoyable experience and I cannot wait to play it for myself.

For those of you wondering, Fiasco is described as a:

GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with six-sided dice and no preparation. During a game you will engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It's like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it'd take to watch one.
THINGS CAN GO WRONG, FAST...

 So please go HERE and watch TableTop and bask in all its glory. The show is truly a hero to the GMless crowd and does a great job of highlighting some great games that many may not have heard of.

Quest - Make Your Own Game

Quest is a tool created by a clearly awesome dude by the name of Alex Warren, that allows you to create your own text based adventures and even turn that game into an app. It simplifies all the coding involved,  into an interface that anyone can use. Best of all, its completely free.





I'm sure many people reading this have wanted to create a game at some point, most of you probably do every week at the gaming table but putting that game in an interactive format for random people to play, that takes a lot of fairly specific knowledge, well not any more. Quest is a tool that you can download or use right in your browser.

When beginning to create a game you are given two options, to either make a  'Text Adventure' or a 'Game Book'. A text adventure is similar to a MUD, you are given a description and you type in commands, such as, "I look at sword". The game book option is of course like a game book such as the Fighting Fantasy series.

The software makes creating your game unbelievably simple, walking you through every step so that there is no need to know how to code at all. But for those of us who like to get our hands dirty a code view is also available. You can also add sounds and images to make your game completely unique.

Another amazing feature is that you can turn your game into an iOS and Android app with very little effort and even sell it on the app store and google play, or give it away for free.

Although certainly not the only way to make your own text based game, Quest is a very powerful tool and bridges a gap for a lot of people, hopefully helping out a lot of budding game makers.

Visit www.textadventures.co.uk to download Quest and check out the wealth of documentation and games available  all for free.

P.S. I was made aware of this by someone on twitter this morning, but I was mostly asleep at the time and have no idea who that was. So if in the unlikely event you happen to be reading this THANKYOU fellow game book enthusiast.