A few of my buddies, Andy, Shawn, Daniel, and I, got together to play the table-top RPG Shadowrun. For those that don’t know what a table-top RPG is, think D&D or geeks; actually both. So pretty much it is a bunch guys getting together, rolling dice, checking off spreadsheets, and following/creating a story with characters that they have created for this game. If your thinking that sounds awesome, it was. If your thinking, wow nerd overload, then this probably isn’t for you.
Shadowrun takes place in the near future, but the twist is that at the end of the Mayan calender that magic as released in to the world, so now it is full of, Elves, Dwarves, and what-have-you. Also the future is now run by Mega Corporations that use governments as their pawns (so that part is pretty spot on), and ‘Runners’ are their mercenaries that carry out missions for them. So we as the players take the roles of these runners.
Shadowrun was a little daunting at first, due to the sheer amount of customization you can do with your character. Every gun, item of clothing, in game knowledge, skills, and pretty much everything else can be tweaked, but once I got the basic stats down it became a little easier. We also took awhile just to figure out how to play the game, like hit an opponent, and how much damage you do and or take, and since the rule book is 348 pages long, you can see why it took awhile to get it all down. To be fair to the book, there are a lot of examples and short stories in it, so it is not all rules.
But once it got going it was a lot of fun, and like most of these games the reason for that is mostly due to the company you are with. Having a good time will pizza and pop, and little trash talking. I hope we get to play again soon.