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Shadowrun: Crossfire

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19 Nov 2014 16:33 #191034 by metalface13
Have any F:ATties played this? It's kind of a Shadowrun version of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Are they significantly different? I own Pathfinder, but I also love Shadowrun. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has played this, haven't seen much chatter about it on here though.

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19 Nov 2014 16:52 - 19 Nov 2014 16:53 #191039 by VonTush
Replied by VonTush on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
I played Crossfire a few months back...I don't like games where on your turn you flop your hand of cards down and everyone works together to figure out how to maximize your hand for that turn. As I looked at my hand all I saw was a collection of colors and symbols mixed with words to allow me to manipulate those colors and symbols. But I don't know anything about Shadowrun but the game did nothing to draw me into or inform me about the world...From what I gather it is a mash-up of Fantasy and Cyberpunk?

EDIT: Not my Cup'oTea if you will. But I also felt the same about P:AG and Legendary: Encounters so what do I know I guess?
Last edit: 19 Nov 2014 16:53 by VonTush.

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19 Nov 2014 21:46 #191057 by mrmarcus
Replied by mrmarcus on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
I've played it a couple of times. It's more of an exercise to see how long you last before it all goes wrong. Pathfinder is much more straightforward than Crossfire.

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20 Nov 2014 07:13 #191077 by JEM
Replied by JEM on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
It's a puzzle of escalating difficulty, and very difficult if you're not familiar with it. The decision by committee comment is valid, and that may or may not be a good thing. I do like the idea of continuing the characters with experience points, but at no point does the game feel like you're on a mission with any narrative to speak of.

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20 Nov 2014 09:02 #191086 by Legomancer
Replied by Legomancer on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
Shadowrun is a game where they took the idea of Cyberpunk -- a world where technology has so outpaced the average person that it may as well be magic -- and decided it needed actual magic.

Oh, and elves, because god fucking forbid RPGers play a game without goddamn elves.
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20 Nov 2014 13:30 #191127 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire

Legomancer wrote: Shadowrun is a game where they took the idea of Cyberpunk -- a world where technology has so outpaced the average person that it may as well be magic -- and decided it needed actual magic.

Oh, and elves, because god fucking forbid RPGers play a game without goddamn elves.


Nice summary of why I hate Shadowrun. It's Cyberpunk with big clunky training wheels for people who don't think they can handle role-playing without magic.

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20 Nov 2014 22:45 #191177 by mrmarcus
Replied by mrmarcus on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
I always believed Cyberpunk 2020 was a better system, just criminally underrated.
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21 Nov 2014 09:46 #191197 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
Cyberpunk 2020 had tremendous style, but it often seemed like the only thing that mattered was reflexes and armor. I never got around to trying the special hacking rules that used the Netrunner cards. The Hardwired supplement written by Walter Jon Williams was outstanding, because he was both a gamer and a successful cyberpunk writer.

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21 Nov 2014 11:30 #191204 by Green Lantern
What does the term cyberpunk mean? I have no idea so can't comment on whether or not Shadowrun fails at being a cyberpunk game. Shadowrun was always about the ebb and flow of magic, heists, and not knowing who to trust. That fact that elves, dwarves, trolls, and orks were in the setting was always window dressing. The in game explanation for the existence was clever too so their presence never felt forced.

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21 Nov 2014 12:03 - 21 Nov 2014 12:05 #191211 by Mr. White
Replied by Mr. White on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
The one thing I thought Shadowrun had separating it was it allowed for a lot more racism in role-playing. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but the setting pretty much draws this out and even provided many slurs in the rulebooks.

It seemed that it allowed for playing more dubious characters than one normally would. I imagine players would feel more at ease dropping racism on fantasy races over the ugliness of real ethnicities.


I say this as someone who's only played the SNES game, the TCG, read one novel, played two sessions of the rpg and a read through the rpg books. I don't know how much players or DMs actually handled race relations in their games though.

Again, maybe this isn't something one wants to role-play (we didn't), but from the material I gleamed it seemed like this was an area that other rpgs didn't even go near.

(I didn't love that SNES game though. And the TCG was a lot of fun for awhile.)
Last edit: 21 Nov 2014 12:05 by Mr. White.

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21 Nov 2014 14:38 #191233 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire

Green Lantern wrote: What does the term cyberpunk mean? I have no idea so can't comment on whether or not Shadowrun fails at being a cyberpunk game. Shadowrun was always about the ebb and flow of magic, heists, and not knowing who to trust. That fact that elves, dwarves, trolls, and orks were in the setting was always window dressing. The in game explanation for the existence was clever too so their presence never felt forced.


Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science-fiction that focuses on near-future settings where computers and cybernetics are everywhere. The style of a given setting is usually multi-cultural, noir, cynical, high-tech, and somewhat dystopian. Common concepts dealt with in cyberpunk fiction are surveillance, alienation, loss of humanity, rebellion against authority, corporations becoming more powerful than governments, artificial intelligence, and above all else, hacking. In real cyberpunk stories, the multi-culturalism is that of various human cultures, but in Shadowrun, it is all about the tired Tolkienesqe stereotypes of elves, dwarves, etc.

Blade Runner is a great example of what a cyberpunk setting should look like. So is modern Japan, except for the multi-cultural part. Other movies influenced by cyberpunk include Brazil, Robocop, Hardware, the Lawnmower Man, the Matrix, Total Recall, and Dredd. Max Headroom and Dark Angel are two tv shows that were definitely based on cyberpunk.

I suspect one reason that Shadowrun was a more popular rpg than Cyberpunk was the miniatures. A lazy or cheap gamemaster could just recycle his D&D minis for a Shadowrun game, but running a Cyberpunk game would have meant buying lots of new minis and painting them.

The original Cyberpunk rpg was published in the '80s and set in the year 2013. That is part of the problem with cyberpunk... most of the writers were only peering a short distance into the future, and now their works are dated.

The best cyberpunk material was always the books. I highly recommend trying these:

Neuromancer, by William Gibson
Mirrorshades: the Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling
When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling
Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan
Vacuum Flowers, by Michael Swanwick
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams
Burning Chrome, by William Gibson
Steel Beach, by John Varley
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
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21 Nov 2014 15:15 #191239 by JEM
Replied by JEM on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
Don't get me wrong, I like Diamond Age, but that just replaces tired Tolkienisms with shallow Orientalisms.

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21 Nov 2014 15:46 #191244 by charlest
Replied by charlest on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
Don't you have to play Crossfire like 400 times to reach max character advancements and then you'd have stickers all over your character sheet?

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22 Nov 2014 18:08 #191286 by Green Lantern

Shellhead wrote: Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science-fiction that focuses on near-future settings where computers and cybernetics are everywhere. The style of a given setting is usually multi-cultural, noir, cynical, high-tech, and somewhat dystopian. Common concepts dealt with in cyberpunk fiction are surveillance, alienation, loss of humanity, rebellion against authority, corporations becoming more powerful than governments, artificial intelligence, and above all else, hacking. In real cyberpunk stories, the multi-culturalism is that of various human cultures, but in Shadowrun, it is all about the tired Tolkienesqe stereotypes of elves, dwarves, etc.


Well then, with that definition I can certify that the Shadowrun game and materials incorporated every one of those elements. To those that think having Tolkien races intermixed somehow negates the cyberpunk themes I got nothing. Haters gonna hate. I've played several editions, read numerous novels and source books and never got the impression the game solely focused on the races. In fact, the idea of various races trying to cope with survival in a dystopian future while trying to establish new cultures was simply an opportunity to flesh out and explore those themes if a group wanted to go that route. The races were just one more tool in the kit for the GM and players, nothing more.

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22 Nov 2014 23:36 #191290 by Shellhead
Replied by Shellhead on topic Re: Shadowrun: Crossfire
You're completely missing the point. There was this cool sub-genre of science-fiction called cyberpunk that was about as far as you could get from the tired Tolkien fantasy rip-offs and their tedious stereotypes about elves and dwarves. Then some lame asshole had to drag all that tired shit and dump it on top of cyberpunk for no other reason than an extreme lack of imagination. Sure, the general concepts of cyberpunk were still there, but diluted, because of elves and fairies and shit. If the combination was such a good idea, then why did almost all other cyberpunk material (books, movies, etc) leave all the fantasy baggage out?

However, if somebody is really stuck on the Shadowrun take on cyberpunk, I can recommend a couple of good books by Michael Swanwick: the Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel. I can't recommend any of the dozens of official Shadowrun novels, because I had already read too many bad books written primarily to cash in on the popularity of other games and assumed that these books would be more of the same.

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