1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
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Shadowrun had a problem in 2016 with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and it is a problem that continues today with Shadowrun, Sixth Edition. Originally published by FASA, Inc. in 1989, but now published by Catalyst Game Labs, the roleplaying game has always had a great setting and been a great combination of genres. Fantasy and Cyberpunk in a future in which man meets machine and magic, corporations are states unto themselves, dragons are CEOs and media personalities. The problem is with the mechanics. At their core, they consist of a dice pool mechanic determined by attribute, skill, and other bonuses, the aim being to roll as many successes—five or six on the dice—as possible, which is simple enough. Shadowrun though is a game of different character types—Adepts, Mages, Shamans, Deckers, Street Samurai, Riggers, and Technomancers—and effectively, the rules for each one is essentially a different subsystem. Which meant different rules for each player to master and a lot of different rules for the Game Master to understand. Plus, with different rules and different variations upon rules in each edition, no player or Game Master could quite agree upon which edition of the roleplaying game they preferred.
Published in 2016, Shadowrun: Anarchy was offered as an alternative ruleset to the then Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, notably a narrative driven ruleset which kept the core mechanics, but also simplified Shadowrunner creation. At its heart though, is the Cue System. This first appeared in the publisher’s pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying game Cosmic Patrol and then in the superhero roleplaying game, Valiant Universe Roleplaying Game. Both are storytelling games with some traditional mechanics, but unlike some storytelling roleplaying games, they do not forego a Game Master. Instead, in addition to roleplaying their characters, whether members of the Cosmic Patrol or superheroes in the Valiant Universe, the players take in turns to serve as the Game Master. Shadowrun: Anarchy uses the Cue System, but makes one significant change to it. Instead of each player being the Game Master for a scene, Shadowrun: Anarchy maintains the role of the Game Master as in traditional roleplaying games. The Game Master sets the brief and at the beginning of each scene narrates the situation, what the Shadowrunners see, smell, hear, and so on. Then the game play proceeds around the table with each player narrating what his character does. Each player’s narration ends when it is appropriate, either in terms of the story or the scene, or if the player needs to roll dice for his character, whether that is to attempt a particular objective or combat is initiated. A player is free to narrate his character’s actions in the scene and to develop the scene as long as any addition is not going to break it, usually inspiration from the ‘Cues’ or story or situational tags, that can either be ones the Game Master presents at the start of the scene or ones that are on the player’s character sheet.
The role of the Game Master here is to decide when a player needs to roll a Test for his character’s action, and then what Skill and Attribute are appropriate to the Test as well as what modifiers apply. She also roleplays the NPCs, rolls their Defence rolls, handles any rules difficulties, and decides when a player’s narration comes to end, either because it is too long or stretching the limits of credulity. The Game Master also needs to know the details of the Contract Brief, the scenario that she is running. When it is a player’s Narration, it is his role to keep the character’s opposition on its toes, to make his character stand out, to explore and highlight what is great about the Sixth World, and to work with the other players to make the story and the game better. When it is not his turn, it is the player’s duty to prepare for his next Narration, building on the Narrations of his fellow players, and to have his character interact with their characters in their Narrations. Lastly, the player is there, when needed, when need to make suggestions to his fellow players, in particular, if another player has difficulty creating Narration, again working from the Cues for the scenes and the Cues for the narrating player’s character.
Play proceeds like this through Scenes and Turns from the start of the ‘Contract Brief’ to its execution and its conclusion. However, Scenes can be broken by ‘Talk Time’, which is when conversations can take place—most typically with a Mr. Johnson—and when planning can take place. Both the Game Master and players have access to ‘Plot Points’. A Player Character starts play with three and can have at most five at any one time. More are awarded for great Narrations and certain Shadow Amps grant bonus Plot Points at the start of combat. A player can spend a Plot Point to ‘Live Dangerously’ to add a Glitch Die to a player’s roll (either their own or that of another player); ‘Shake it up’ by making a Narration and have his character take an action when it is not his Narration; ‘Double time it’ to take two movement actions; to add a ‘Surprise threat’, such as having unseen corporate security guards show up; carry out ‘First aid’ and heal a point of Physical or Stun damage; cause a ‘Malfunction’ in the spirits or devices of an NPC or another Player Character temporarily; ‘Take the hit’ if a weaker or injured character is successfully hit by a combat action; or deliver ‘A dish best served cold’ and immediately have his character take a free attack action against the NPC who just attacked him.
The Game Master starts a Contract Brief with a single Plot Point and earns more as the players spend them. She cannot spend her Plot Points to aid or hinder a Player Character, but can spend them to add a Glitch Die to an NPC’s action and also to change the turn order, whether that is in reverse or randomly! This is to shake up the play pattern and to keep the players on their toes.
In general, this is well explained and there is good advice on how to handle this switch to shared narration. Encouraging the players to build up, rather than tear down, encouraging a player to use all of his character’s options instead of using the most powerful, and where necessary, offer hints and recapitulating on the current situation, plans that the characters have already made, and twists already introduced. However, there are issues with the explanations in places. For example, the explanation never goes into how exactly a player rakes inspiration from a Cue, but worse, having told the Game Master and her players how to play a Contract Brief and thus Shadowrun: Anarchy, what it does not do is show them. There is no example of play anywhere in the book. Go back and read that again… Such an omission is a fundamental flaw in the design of any roleplaying game, but in a roleplaying game such as Shadowrun: Anarchy which is making a radical shift in its style of play, from traditional, simulationist to narrative, storytelling, this is worse. It is not a catastrophe in that its omission makes the game unplayable, but it hinders the learning of how the roleplaying game is run and played and it hinders the teaching of how the roleplaying game is run and played.
To be a little nuanced here, if the Game Master and her players have some experience of storytelling, narrative roleplaying games, this is much less of an issue. Even less of an issue if either has experience of the previous Cue System roleplaying games, Cosmic Patrol and Valiant Universe Roleplaying Game. If not, if the Game Master and her players are wanting to play Shadowrun for the first time or have played Shadowrun for a long time and are looking for a lighter ruleset, then it is a grave error of judgement upon the part of the designers.
In terms of the rules, Shadowrun: Anarchy starts with Shadowrunner creation. A Shadowrunner is defined by Attributes, Skills, Shadow Amps, Weapons, and Gear, plus Qualities and Cues. A Shadowrunner will also have a Metatype, either Human, Elf, Dwarf, Ork, or Troll. This Metatype provides various bonuses and adjustments. The Attributes consist of Strength, Agility, Willpower, Logic, and Charisma, which typically range between one and six for Humans, but can be higher or lower for different Metahumans. There is a wide range of Skills and a Shadowrunner will have some Skills in common with his colleagues—combat skills in particular—but specialise in a particular area, whether that is magic, vehicle use, hacking, or even combat. All skills have Specialisations, which increase the number of dice a player rolls when using them. Shadow Amps are what makes a Shadowrunner special. These can be Awakened so that the Shadowrunner can cast spells (the spells cost extra) or Emerged which gives the Shadowrunner access to Technomancer Amps. There are Amps for Adepts, Bioware and Cyberware, Matrix Amps for hacking, Drone Amps for the Rigger, Gear Amps, Social Amps, and Critter Amps. Installing too Bioware or Cyberware has its cost though, reducing a Shadowrunner’s ability to handle the effects of magic, including healing. Cues are often common phrases that a Shadowrunner might say or how he might react.
Qualities are the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages and a Shadowrunner has two positive Qualities and one negative Quality.
To create a Shadowrunner, a player assigns points to his Shadowrunner’s Attributes and Skills, purchases Shadow Amps, selects weapons and gear, and then creates Cues, at least two or three, and optionally add Tags, which give a quick ideas as the theme and style of the Shadowrunner. He also selects Qualities. The number of points the player has to spend on Attributes, Skills, and Shadow Amps, as well has many weapons and how much gear he has to select, will vary by game level, either Gang-Level, Street Runner, or Prime Runner. The rules allow for a player design the Shadow Amps he wants for his Shadowrunner, but the Shadowrun: Anarchy includes lots of off-the-shelf options which ease the creation process. The process overall is not difficult, except that is for coming up with Cues and Dispositions.
Name: ‘Rávdos’
Metatype: Ork
Tags: Ork • Barrens Girl • Rat Shaman • Wet Behind the Ears
Cues: Oh shiny! • The darkness is my friend • I know a shortcut (if you’re squeezy enough) • You lost something? I can find it • The pack is family • Eyes most places
Dispositions: Twitchy • Not run to fight another day. Just run • The streets always deliver • Pack player
ATTRIBUTES
Strength 3 Agility 4 Willpower 5 Logic 4 Charisma 3 Essence 6
SKILLS
Agility: Athletics 1, Close Combat 2
Willpower: Conjuring 2, Sorcery 2
Logic: Knowledge (The Barrens 1, Greek 1), Tracking 1
Charisma: Negotiation 1
SHADOW AMPS
Awakened (2), Vermin Control (1), Analyse Truth (1), Clairvoyance (1), Natural Weapons (1)
QUALITIES
Mentor Spirit (Rat), Home Ground (The Barrens), Low Pain Threshold
WEAPON
Knife (STR/2+1)P
GEAR
Synthleather jacket: 6, Trauma Patches, Crowbar, Smoke Grenades
Mechanically, Shadowrun: Anarchy uses a dice pool system that will be familiar to players of Shadowrun. When a player wants his Shadowrunner to act, he forms a dice pool of six-sided dice consisting of Skill Dice and Attribute Dice, plus any Modifiers from the situation, Shadow Amps, and Qualities. This roll is made against the Game Master’s Opposing Dice pool. Results of five or six count as Hits and if the player rolls more Hits than the Game Master, his Shadowrunner succeeds, if not, he fails. Edge can be spent—and a Shadowrunner typically starts with a single point of Edge—to alter the results. If spent before the test, four, fives, and sixes count as Hits, but after the test, any results that are not five or six can be rerolled. A player can also spend a Plot Point to add a Glitch Die to a dice roll. This is a die of different colour. If the result of the Glitch Die is a one, bad luck has befallen the Shadowrunner, even if the result overall means that the Shadowrunner has succeeded. For example, a Close Combat attack could not only fail, but the attacker falls over as well; a gun could jam; a Hacking Test results in the Hacker deleting or downloading the wrong file; and so on. However, if the result on the Glitch Die is a five or six, then good luck has befallen the Shadowrunner, such as bypassing armour in a fight, finding something interesting on a Hacking mission, and so on. Again, this good luck will still occur if the overall result indicates that the Shadowrunner has failed.
Combat is more complex, though some elements, such as ammunition tracking, shots fired per turn, firing modes, reloading speeds, and so on, have been removed to simplify player choices and keep things moving. When a player wants his Shadowrunner to attack, he forms a dice pool of six-sided dice consisting of Skill Dice and Attribute Dice, plus any Modifiers from the situation, Shadow Amps, Qualities, and Weapon effects. For the opponents, the Game Master is rolling a dice pool formed from the Agility Dice and Logic Dice, plus any modifiers and Shadow Amp effects. If the attacker rolls more Hits than the defender, the difference is added to the damage of the attack. If fewer or none, the attack fails and no damage is inflicted. Armour is treated as ablative and reduces damage, but is damaged in the process, though it can be repaired. Damage can either be Phsyical or Stun and is applied to the appropriate track of a Shadowrunner’s Condition Monitor. As it is filled in, modifiers reduce the number of dice a player will roll on every Test. Eventually, a Shadowrunner will either be knocked out or killed.
Combat is slower than standard task resolution in Shadowrun: Anarchy. Although there is an optional rule for handling Mooks, that is being able to subdue or kill numerous opponents in one attack, it is not the default. The problem here is that adds an element of grit that otherwise is at odds with the cinematic simplification of some rules elsewhere, such as removing the need to reload or track ammunition use.
There is a brilliant piece of writing when it comes to ‘Attack Limits’. “A character can only take a single attack action during their Narration. What is an Attack action? An action that intentionally and directly damages another living being (including NPCs, critters, spirits, and whatever). Want to debate the meaning of Attack action beyond that? Have fun, and we’ll be here for you when you’re ready to play!” It is just saying, get on with it, because Shadowrun: Anarchy is not the kind of roleplaying game where that kind of detail should be causing any sweat. This is not to say that Shadowrun: Anarchy manages to avoid causing any sweat, but it is a point well made.
An interesting side effect of there being no Nuyen in Shadowrun: Anarchy is that a Shadowrunner cannot simply go out and buy new armour. A Plot Point can be spent repairing a single point, but for a full repair, the player has to pay a point of Karma (usually awarded at the end of missions and spent to improve a Shadowrunner) or promise a favour to the Game Master. This allows the Game Master to select the next Contact Brief—normally the players do it—and if multiple favours are owed, the players at least get to choose the order in which they do them. This adds a narrative wrinkle as an urgent job suddenly gets in the way of what their Shadowrunners might want to actually do!
Elsewhere, there is a lot of streamlining in Shadowrun: Anarchy compared to previous editions of Shadowrun. Nuyen and Lifestyle Costs are treated as abstract, narrative elements rather than players needing to track the numbers; weapons and gear are simplified for fast play; hacking in the Matrix is distilled to single rolls and reactions such as triggering alarms and the Overwatch Score are narrative elements; magic remains much like Shadowrun, but there is no Drain effect; and Technomancers have no Drain effect. In many ways, this is an improvement, often really simplifying quite complex subsystems in Shadowrun, such as the Matrix rules. This does come at a cost, in terms of limiting the number of spells a caster can have, the spirits that a summoner can bring into play, and the Complex Forms a Technomancer knows. Combat in the Matrix though, works exactly as it does in the real world. Optional rules do allow for hacking to be more detailed if desired, but that does add extra complexity. In comparison, the Rigger, the one role which would have benefited from streamlining is underserved by the lack of details for drones and vehicles, except some drones described in the NPC descriptions.
Shadowrun: Anarchy does give the Game Master and player with a lot of support. There is a solid introduction to the setting with some fiction, the characters from which appear as NPCs or potential Shadowrunners elsewhere in the book, and there is decent account of the history up until the year 2077 when Shadowrun, Fifth Edition is set. The Big Ten megacorporations from Ares Macrotechnology to Wuxing Incorporated are detailed, as well as organised crime, gang, the law, politics, major powers, and more, as well as a look at life in the Sixth World. Thirty sample Shadowrunners, including an Elf combat archaeologist, Dwarf parkour adept, Human ganger razorgirl, Troll face, and Ork reporter, are given full descriptions and character sheets, plus there are stats for twenty-three NPCs, though twenty-three definitely does not feel enough. There is a good guide to Seattle as well.
The star though of this support, is the twenty-five ‘Contract Briefs’, several of which are multi-part affairs. Each starts with ‘Mr. Johnson’s Pitch’ and then lists the objectives, the setting, and the plot scene by scene. There are suggestions as the NPCs for each scene and a list of Tags for the whole mission. There is even one called ‘Food Fight’, an obvious nod to the original scenario/encounter given in Shadowrun. Overall, the selection of ‘Contract Briefs’ is very good and will provide multiple session of play if the Game Master decides to use all of them. Most of them can be played through in a single session or two. Lastly, there are notes on Shadowrun: Anarchy and Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and on using source material from the latter as well as adapting Shadowrunners from one to the other or vice versa. These are serviceable.
Physically, Shadowrun: Anarchy is a good looking book. The artwork is excellent and the
layout clean. However, it definitely needs another edit.
Unfortunately, Shadowrun: Anarchy is a book with problems. Not least of which is the fact that there is no map of Seattle and its environs in 2077, let alone North America or the world. There are places where rules could have been clarified, but either never are or are very later on, such as placing the ‘Anarchy Catalogue’ with its ready-pick Shadow Amps right at the end of the book rather than with the rules for Shadowrunner creation or rules for a particular in a ‘Contract Brief’ rather than in the general section for the pertinent rules or in the NPC section. The selection of NPCs or ready-to-play Shadowrunners is great, but not all of them are consistent in their design. So, if player or Game Master wants to use one, they need to be redesigned to make the costs balance.
The issue with Shadowrun: Anarchy is threefold. First, it set out to address the crunch and mechanical complexity of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition that made it difficult to learn run, and whilst it can be argued that it very much did that, offering a streamlined, faster-playing system, in switching to the more narrative, player-involved Cue System, it asked player and Game Master alike to make a radical change in playing style, but did not explain it enough. How exactly does a ‘Cue’ work? Or a ‘Tag’ or a ‘Disposition’? It is possible for the Game Master and her players to grasp the fundamentals, but the nuances are lost they are not fully explained or given a full example of play, which if done right would have been the best teaching aid of all. Second, Shadowrun: Anarchy cannot decide who it is for. The old Shadowrun veteran who wants to try a simpler system for his favourite roleplaying game? Someone who is completely new to Shadowrun? Or someone who has played a Cue System roleplaying game and wants to try a Shadowrun roleplaying game? All three? It is unclear. Third, is the lack of development to make it coherent and have more of the pick-up-and-play aspect that you get the impression it is aiming.
Shadowrun: Anarchy is a great idea. A fast playing roleplaying game with narrative elements in one of the best developed and entertaining settings in the roleplaying hobby. In fact, it is not actually unplayable, but the lack of development, the underwhelming lack of presentation in terms of its idea, and its organisation make it almost as difficult to play as the then current version of the main roleplaying game, Shadowrun, Fifth Edition. Which misses the point of what it was intended to do.
