Writing guide

From Shadowrun: Awakened

One of our goals is to "Capture the dark, nihilistic tone of Shadowrun; While having a sense of humor about it (as Shadowrun does); Be faithful to the established fiction of Shadowrun while still telling our own; Tell stories inside of its framework". This guide is meant to help mission writers working on Shadowrun Awakened deliver a compelling Shadowrun story to players of our game.

Shadowrun genre

Shadowrun, by design, is a fusion of genres. Its two most obvious veins are near future science-fiction (in the cyberware and matrix technology) as well as fantasy (magic and fantasy creatures). However, Shadowrun is really a forking crossroads of genres.

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a subset of science-fiction that deals in a technologically advanced near future (Cyber) suffering a collapse in social order (Punk). Cyberpunk itself is about clashing the promises of technology against its realities. It observes that as technology has spread, class and wealth has concentrated in corporations, which moved society away from serving the many and toward serving the few. Overall, it is a pessimistic observation of the future.

Despite his feelings about Shadowrun, William Gibson is perhaps most closely identified with cyberpunk literature. The novel Neuromancer encapsulating the entirety of Shadowrun's cyberpunk devices. Perhaps the greatest cyberpunk movie is Bladerunner. Ghost in the Shell is some of the best in recent memory.

Shadowrun utilizes cyberpunk for most of its world features. The Matrix, cyberware, bioware, nanoware, megacorporations, and an atmosphere of disenfranchisement are all cyberpunk hallmarks.

The world, despite immense technology, has a decayed civilization
The world, despite immense wealth, has stratified classes and most people struggle to survive
The world, despite immense information, is dumber and less aware
Characters are alone, they fight in vain, and their awareness of the world causes them grief

Fantasy

Fantasy deals entirely in the unlikely. It utilizes supernatural elements to pull together stories that commonly emulate popular myth. Fantasy itself is about struggle and growth leading to triumph, most importantly focusing on a single hero or set of heroes. The hero can always persevere and overcome no matter the odds. The hero must always journey to find their way; it must force them to grow during its undertaking. This journey will take the hero away from where they know and into a world beyond or unseen to them. The journey is rarely taken alone and they must unite with mentors and friends to succeed. In most cases, fantasy could be called an optimistic genre.

Shadowrun utilizes fantasy extensively. The inclusion of elves, orks, trolls, dwarves, and fantasy creatures add diversity to the game's potential cast of characters. Magic offers a power beyond our world. Finally, Astral space offers a place beyond our world.

Most importantly, the fantasy elements of Shadowrun create a tension between the pessimism of Cyberpunk and the optimism of fantasy. Fantasy allows the characters to become heroes and unite in a common cause. Also, fantasy provides the moral backbone for the characters to find the will to fight and to connect to others.

The World is full of adventure and thrilling danger
The World is unexplained and supernatural
Characters fight evil
Characters band together
Characters often have "simple beginnings"

Hardboiled AKA Noir

The family of styles referred to as noir, film noir, noir fiction, pulp fiction, or hardboiled are all different takes on the same idea: life is cruel, cheap, and to die for, get used to it. Often times thought of as being just a set of cliched '40s and '50s movies, noir is a fundamental genre to not only Shadowrun, but cyberpunk specifically.

Noir is characterized by a dark & moody atmospheres, an anti-hero who is a habitual loner, and cynicism. The entire point of noir is to reinforce that life is a long tragedy without meaning and any cruelty, violence, eroticism, sadness, or joy in this world is fleeting. Life is suffering. Their method of acting in the story is often born of unconventional motives, such as vengeance. Their actions rarely result in great triumph, but some small reduction in their suffering. Sometimes a character can surrender a part of themselves to attain "victory". In the end, their victory is small or short-lived and meaningful only to them.

Characters in noir are often "past their prime", "used up", or otherwise flawed and inadequate. Noir is not about taking responsibility for flaws and overcoming them, it is about dwelling. It is about wanting to never change even though it hurts every day. Certainly, there are personal tragedies that could befall anyone's life that would cause nothing but suffering for the rest of your life. Noir characters are just the unlucky few that had it actually happen to them.

Noir was a heavy influence on Cyberpunk. Bladerunner offers a perfect noir tale told in a cyberpunk setting. The main character is a moody, used up, loner who must be coerced into helping. His duty is killing sentient beings, violence is liberally applied, and in the end he has nothing to show for it, but the danger of becoming too attached to something fleeting. A History of Violence and Sin City are both new movies using classic elements.

The world is cold, cruel, and beautiful
The world hates the characters and the characters hate the world
Characters may themselves be evil to a certain extent
Characters often have a backstory with layered suffering and hidden secrets

Western

Both Shadowrun and westerns favor an attitude where you can only rely on yourself to stay alive. Both take place in a time where technology had never been greater, but it is primarily used to exploit people. Both take on an anti-heroic theme where survival is the most important action of the character and they cannot truly triumph over the greatest evils in the world. Westerns are similar to Noir in this respect; however, characters in westerns are often able to find a way to take on the responsibility of acting and finding a way to change their world for the better. This is because the cynical self-reliance of westerns is tempered by the open possibilities of that time in history. The old west was dirty, greedy, and immoral, but it was also the "destiny" of a nation.

Shadowrunners live in a dangerous place with limited social order and only as much safety as they have bullets. They have an ambiguous moral code, if any morals at all. There are greedy, unscrupulous people who run powerful corporations (building more than railroads) who bribe, intimidate, and exploit to get their job done. There is a very limited thematic correlation between the "noble indian" of later westerns with the tribes of the Northwest in 2070, but it is worth mentioning.

The world is expanding
The world is lawless
Characters work to seize opportunities whenever they can, good or bad following in their wake

Shadowrun themes

Shadowrun stories tend to involve similar themes. Many of them are pulled directly from the genres that influenced Shadowrun.

Power

Everyone has felt power at some point, be it burning ants on an ant hill or firing a quarter-million employees. Power is a commodity in Shadowrun and its gathering, transferral, and protection is very important to everyone. Power has many forms. Financial, political, and personal power are all common; and knowledge is power. Money may be a means to an end, but it is all really there for buying and selling power. All characters in Shadowrun desire power and everything they do is to empower them over their situation.

Secrecy

There are myriad secrets in the world of Shadowrun. These kinds of secrets range from bank account numbers, to illegitimate children of corporate executives, to the technology for cyberzombies. Everyone is trying to maintain power in Shadowrun, at the same time, everyone is trying to keep their power secret. Part of the premise of Shadowrunning is that the runners can find things no one else can. Whether it is kidnapping someone or stealing a prototype, Shadowrunning is almost always about exposing or keeping a secret.

Morality

Morality, or lack their of, is an important distinction in Shadowrun over classical roleplaying games. For instance, in Dungeons & Dragons, you have explicit alignments dictating who your character is and what they can do. No such metric appears in Shadowrun to describe a character's attitudes or beliefs, meaning characters are unrestricted. Shadowrunners cannot bother themselves with morality, it could get them killed. Ironically, this callous outlook resembles the much-maligned corporations they often profess to hating.

At the same time, Shadowrun explicitly rewards good deeds. The use of "karma" rewards not only facing risk, but also performing in a heroic or 'good' manner. This means that the system encourages positive morality, despite the fact that it is not really native to the world. This entire concept pushes Shadowrunners toward taking up a fight of good vs. evil; or in the very least, bad vs. evil.

Individualism

In the modern times, people complain about the growing homogeneity of culture in America. They often talk about how every bit of popular culture nowadays is pandering to the lowest common denominator. By 2070, this idea of a cookie-cutter society is taken to an extreme. In Shadowrun's Seattle of 2070, about half the population works for Megacorporations. Despite an apparent white collar status, they are the product of generations of plugged-in and turned-off minds (literally by 2070) and culture is a desensitizing mass of vanilla colored in with endless sexuality and violence; devoid of all meaning and concerned only with selling the next advertisement slot. Think what a 1940s farmer would think of today's hyped-up, ultra-merchandised society. Now think about 60 years from now when you can have 10,000 channels piped directly into your cerebrum and never leave the building in which you work.

Living outside this system of influence and drivel is an important factor in the life of a Shadowrunner. They have personal freedom and distinctiveness. They traded personal safety and their identity as recognized by the government and corporations for a more "true" freedom. This is the entire "punk" aspect of cyberpunk, where by defying the system you do not allow it to control you.

Nostalgia

By 2070, the world of Shadowrun has been turned upside down. For a player, it can be hard to conceptualize that this change didn't happen overnight and that most characters in Shadowrun remember a different time. Their memory is likely of a time of more possibilities and fewer problems. Most generations are able to dismiss the nostalgic remembrance of the past as future shock, but for most life in the present of Shadowrun is objectively worse than the past despite new futuristic toys. Even if someone is too young to have their own experiences of pre-awakening life, members of the generation before the Matrix and magic would have related stories of a simpler past. In particular, the collapse of old concepts of nationalism due to the newly re-distributed borders of the world hit many hard.

Many on both sides of the shadows, including runners, don't find the future all it was cracked up to be. One day they woke up in a slum and never realized they were once living in a golden age of society. In the present without their former identity and security, they might vent their angst through racism against new humanoid species, terrorism against new governments and corporations, or rejection of modern life. Except for those at the very top of the new world order, everyone in the very least yearns for a time with a little less greed and a little more hope.

Transformation & Connection

Shadowrun is also separate from other games in that the point of your character's time through the game is really to hone their concept and transform them through the events of their life, not necessarily make them all-powerful killing machines. Shadowrun is intended to present a dramatic journey through a character's life. One trait of drama is that the character is transformed by the events and choices during their lifetime. It is not necessarily an obsession with becoming more powerful, even if it is often a side-effect.

Common transformations in Shadowrun include a shift toward supporting a specific belief or movement. In joining with one or more characters who share ideals, each character transforms at the time they make that connection between them. For our game, the growing connection of a character with a faction should cause some form of transformation for the character. Connections mean identity, which is important to a character both internally and externally.

Innocence, Vengeance & Redemption

In most fantasy epics, the story begins with a character who has not yet to truly see the world; they are innocent. In most noir tales, the character has been chewed up and spat out; no innocence at all. In Shadowrun, characters can occupy either or both states at the beginning of their narrative. In the least, innocence in Shadowrun means that the character is able to remain static, be it face down in the gutter or happily living outside the shadows. The transformation of the character takes away their innocence and pushes them out into the darkness of the shadows where they must find their way out.

Just as innocence is a static state, there are states of pure change. The two most common in Shadowrun are vengeance and redemption. When a character has suffered or inflicted a past transgression then there must be atonement. A runner may die or kill on any given night. The one who dies will inevitably have been someone's son/daughter/mother/father/brother/sister/lover/friend/enemy. This creates its own shifting economy of emotional suffering that becomes a powerful catalyst for storytelling.

Telling a Shadowrun Story

Beyond just talking qualitatively about defining Shadowrun, there are some practical techniques that will help leverage all these observations into useful stories. The TV Tropes Wiki is a fantastic resource for quantifying every angle of how to make characters, conflicts, and motivation. It goes into far more detail, and digression, than the descriptions below.

Characters

At the center of any Shadowrun story, there must be an intriguing character or cast of characters. These characters can be enemies, allies, or bystanders to the player. The more colorful the characters around them, the more the player is pushed to participate. Most importantly, you must remember that characters are the only entities with any real power in the story. Only the characters make choices in the story that determine its outcome. Be it a scripted choice in an NPC or a player's change of heart, the tension and outcome of the story can only be changed by a character.

So, who is the most important character in the story? Easy: the player. The difficulty in Shadowrun is that we have more than one of them in a given story. This can create practical problems with handling all of the presented angles. The big secret is not to guide each character's progression, but instead, offer a problem to the group and let them find a solution from amongst their pool of skills. Presenting many, diverse problems for a party to solve will allow each character a chance to act in the story. If a story were to never involve these choices, it would feel like a movie playing out in front of them.

Conflict

Conflict provides a means for the characters to express themselves and a means for the storyteller to create drama. Conflicts in Shadowrun express themselves through various means: melodramatic interpersonal romances, deep introspective brooding, gunfights and explosions. The type of conflict at the center of the story determines the dimensions the narrative can examine as well as the different avenues of resolution.

The most prevalent conflicts in Shadowrun are:

Man vs. Man - This is about a hero confronting a villain. In such stories, it is as important to offer an interesting villain as it is to develop a good hero. Often times, there can be professionals on opposite sides of someone else's war.
Man vs. Society - Whenever a society can be rolled into a single "character" that opposes the heroes, this type of conflict can arise. Already, Shadowrunners frame themselves as rebelling against society thus, this conflict is very common. This type of conflict can be thematically difficult to include as runners are never truly able to triumph against society at large.
Man vs. Himself - A struggle against one's own character. These conflicts in Shadowrun are often played out in a runner's morality where they must come to terms with embracing a struggle beyond mere survival in the shadows or just trying to overcome the fact they are not a good person.
Man vs. God - Trying to stop the machinations of the cosmos, be them through a divine presence or mere destiny, has some special implications in Shadowrun. As Shadowrun magic specifically features foresight (divining metamagic), then the narrator is free to create conflicts where characters actively attempt to thwart fate.
Man vs. Machine - Direct conflicts between man and machine are better realized in Isaac Asimov stories; however, there is a certain tension between man and machine inherent in Shadowrun. It is reflected far more in the limits of comfort between humans and machines. By 2070, mankind has been able to integrate parts into their body, plug their brains into computers, and in turn be killed through virtual reality. They have also put complete trust in electronic money and having a paperless society. This conflict is more about questioning and defining "What is human?".

The scope of the conflict in the story is also an important trait in Shadowrun. While many entries into the action genre push toward making the hero a singular savior of the world, Shadowrun conflicts are always much smaller. There are thousands of mercenaries in Seattle and few survive in the business very long, let alone long enough to change the world. The stakes of a conflict for a character should be immense; however, it is uncommon for the implications of that conflict to spread much further than the immediate cast of characters.

Motivations

Spectacular characters, either amazingly powerful or just quirky and unique, would never journey headlong into conflict if it were not for motivations. Establishing a great story often takes inspiration; lacking that, there are some easy techniques.

Plot Generator - A plot generator is a device that, through its existence, can create an open-ended set of conflicts to send the characters on an adventure. The science-fiction shows Stargate SG-1, Sliders, and Quantum Leap all involve plot generators for creating continual conflict. Shadowrun's premise as the characters as mercenary works as such a plot generator. The generator generally operates across many conflicts, the last time generally involving a final resolution on the generator.
McGuffin - A McGuffin is a plot device that drives the story solely through its existence. In many stories, this can simply be something of obvious value, such as gold or diamonds, while in some stories it is something more exotic. For instance, in The Lord of the Rings, the ring of power is an arbitrary object that has been given, by the author's choice, immense value. The output of the traditional Shadowrun plot generator is some McGuffin that the characters must protect, retrieve, sabotage, or destroy for money. McGuffins remind us that at the center of all conflicts must reside something of value, be it an object or simply power, the character's risk must be justified in the story somehow.
Pandora's Box - Similar to a McGuffin, a metaphorical Pandora's Box is an object or event that sets of a conflict revolving around undoing or negating the previous action (or all around coping with the larger issues hiding all along). A classic Pandora's box is an "easy money run" that turns into a corporate conspiracy or personal vendetta.

Pacing

A summary of pacing and story structure in classic Shadowrun missions can be found in the Writing the Classic Run article.

Most people are familiar the the fundamental idea of pacing and tension in a story, the method taught since grade school: build, build, build, then resolve. The other side of pacing is realizing that the audience has a finite capacity for changes to the story, especially dramatic plot twists. This threshold can be thought of as a danger since the audience may just turn off their brains once you pass the limit and any subsequent drama is just noise to them. If you can properly gauge when the audience is "full", it will allow you to deliver the optimal resolution.

A story is a chain of events that cascade one into another. Each must make logical sense in its linkage between past and future; however, each must also take on a certain responsibility for maintaining tempo during the story. Like a symphony, every beat of the story brings you closer to the end, but each also adds either tension or resolution. The more varied and cataclysmic your choice of events, the more memorable, powerful, and resonant your story will be with the audience. Here are some common techniques for framing and pacing stories:

Acts - Grouping scenes such that they lead to a single, extremely important, plot point is a very basic technique. This has many benefits including: reduced complexity for creator AND reader, built-in small resolutions as each waypoint is reached, built in tension to see where the next step goes. In most TV, they utilize a two act format to drive the story (get the premise out before the first commercial break, realize how screwed they are by the 40th minute, and tie up the loose ends by the 55th minute). A lot of movies have a three act format (premise by minute 20, stop the villain by minute 70, kill the villain by minute 90).
Twist Ending - Everyone is familiar with having an ending that you didn't quite expect. The two basic types are: an unexpected resolution taking the audience to a place they did not expect to be (Romeo and Juliet die instead of living happily ever after???) OR an unexpected resolution that shows the audience they have been somewhere all along they did not think they were (Bruce Willis is dead???). This can also be used at the end of an act instead of at the end of the story, this is generally known simply as a plot twist. The important thing about twisting your plot is too not twist too hard or too often. Always do it at the end of an act to start a new story; otherwise, the audience will not often be attuned to them.
Plot Threads - One way of controlling the pace of a story is to tell another story within, beside, or parallel to it. Certainly, it is rare for a story to be a single-threaded in TV or movies, but MMOs tend to never utilize more than one story. The best within-story threads are often driven simply by the growth of two characters, such as a romance.

Setting

Shadowrun offers many different places, both physical and metaphysical, to host your conflict. Each should offer a different means of expanding, exploring, or thwarting the conflict and each should be leveraged to add to the experience. All places can serve as battlegrounds or sanctuaries. Each has separate inhabitants and will evoke different expectations in your players.

The real world in 2070 Seattle is a varied place. From the shiny towers of corporate headquarters to the dirty alleyways between them, the Amerindian forest villages to the rusting industrial factories, there are many places in the real world to take your adventure. The real world is the primary place of play and each subsection probably deserves its own description. Remember that this futuristic version of the world should be grounded in the modern day.
The Matrix is an electronic network, the ultimate evolution of the internet combined with TV and phone, that offers all information at light speed filter through a complete alternate reality. A lot of action can happen in the matrix very quickly, especially exposition on the plot. This can be an exclusive avenue for interaction between technologically inclined characters. Also, the Matrix offers a surreptitious means of manipulating reality through attached items, meaning actions in the Matrix can have huge practical effect on the real world; anything from disabling door locks to turning gun turrets against security guards.
Astral space is an abstraction of the life force of the world, held in a place beyond normal perception and only accessible to magically "awakened" characters. It exists parallel to "our dimension". This means that Astral Space can offer a glimpse into prior events through the background count; an "impression" left by emotional acts with duration and magnitude pursuant to the act. Also, astral space allows characters to see information mundane characters cannot see, such as emotional states, health states, and other information. Astral space also has a native population, spirits, that are unique and powerful allies (and enemies). Spirits can be used to serve other characters, or, using free spirits, as standalone characters acting with supernatural means. Lastly, astral space is again a limited access place for meeting characters and battle.

Rewards

While motivations for a particular story may suffice to explain 'how' a character is involved in a conflict, rewards often maintain 'why' a character stays involved. The point of rewards, in any game, is to have the player view their time spent as an investment with a return. There are many forms of rewards and each can be used to achieve different things for the player.

Progress & Achievement - The rewards below are for the character; however, the purpose of the story is to entertain the player. Ideally, the player is playing to learn "what happens next?" or "what can I do next?". Properly connecting current activities to the conclusion of the story and the promise of future possibilities will keep them playing. While perhaps immensely obvious in the heat of a mission, the concept of campaigns and storylines means that players should be given a clear summary of what they accomplished and what lays ahead for them. Players should feel they have achieved something in the world, not just on paper with their character.
Money - Cold, hard, electronic cash is a strong motivator for most players. In the very least, their characters need to pay rent. Also, any technologically invested character (street samurai, hacker) has a fondness for money since part of their character's abilities are directly tied to available equipment. Money is a very basic reward and should be offered for most every task the storyteller wishes the players to perform.
Gear - Guns, vehicles, cyberware, and magical supplies are all almost as good as money and in some cases better. The value of the item depends not only on monetary cost, but can also reflect the rarity or difficulty to acquire in the game world. In particular, high grade cyberware requires not only a lot of money, but also access to tightly controlled facilities that don't serve your average SINless thug. Missions offering gear act on the supply side of the game economy, so it's important to evaluate these as you would any other source. If the gear reward for a mission is disproportionate, especially accounting for non-monetary costs, then it could have a distorting effect on the community (such as offering an overpowered weapon too early or acting as the sole source for an item, which eliminates diversity of strategy).
Karma - Karma is special in a few ways: it cannot be bought, there is morality in how it is rewarded, you cannot bargain on how much you get, and it is only rewarded for deeds deemed "significant" by the storyteller. This means that karma can be in high demand since not everything in the game offers it as a reward (unlike money, which you can steal, sell stuff for, or get up front). This means that karma can be used to force the player to follow through on promises. Also, character can be coerced toward acting in a "good" manner if there is foreseeable karma in it for them. The nature of "good" can obviously be skewed. Things such as violence are often referred to as "evil"; however, if someone is violent toward a villain, it is suddenly called heroism. Feeling any moral ambiguity yet?
Reputation & Street Cred - Street cred is an overall rating on perceived "power" of the character (deadliness and skillfulness) while reputation is the personal esteem an organization has for your character. The rating of each goes a long way toward determining who the player can do business with, what missions they are offered, and who will socialize with them. While money and karma may be important to increasing the character's power, it is only through changing reputation and street cred that new and more challenging missions become available. The great storytelling tool here is that changing reputation often is a double-edged sword. This means the character does not simply accrue reputation becoming more powerful, instead, it specializes their character and provides them with an identity.
Contacts & Enemies - Contacts and enemies account for the major NPCs in a player's life that can help or hinder them as they advance in the world. While these are rewards insofar as they compel the character toward the storyteller's intended conflicts and resolutions, they are again something that do not simply accrue to create more power. In the shadows, one person's happiness means another person's hell. Thus, it should be difficult for players to simply stock up on allies without anyone coming after them. Also, contacts & enemies can be difficult as you do not often know their true nature toward you and what you thought was an asset could soon become a liability.