Shadowrun – Platypus has Fallen

I first played Shadowrun at a convention called Arcarnacon in the early 90’s. A group of us  tried a number of RPGs that we already played and some we hadn’t. Shadowrun with its mix of future and fantasy held my attention and I liked the mechanics of the game too. My group didn’t play it, but I collected an assortment of books through the 90’s. I later sold off many of them in order to buy miniatures, but re-invested in a few things pdf and paper in the last decade.

I’ve spent most of my free time over the last week reworking my basic structure of a one-session SR3 adventure I first made notes on 4 years ago. I’ve cleaned up and expanded the adventure and made a bunch of extra maps and visual aids. I’m now happy to declare it done.

The whole idea was based mostly on the movie “Olympus has Fallen”. The characters are all slightly improved versions of the sample characters from the SR3 rulebook, and named after the actors in the three movie series. Eg: Gerald Butler, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Basset, etc. There are ten choices offering a wide spread of character options.

The setting (as the name suggests) is the Canberra, Australia, based in and around our Parliament House. The President of Australia is hosting the Deputy PM of New Zealand. Injecting a little humour, all the politicians involved are Australian & NZ celebrities. So the players could be trying to rescue Hugh Jackman, Kylie Minogue, Russel Crowe, Peter Jackson, Neil Finn, or Paul Hogan.

I may be an Aussie, but the closest I’ve gotten to the real Parliament House was driving past it with my parents when I was a kid. (The War Memorial held a much greater attraction!) I do enjoy researching stuff though, and there’s an incredible amount of material (especially maps) that you can find on the internet nowadays. I’ve looked at lots of photo’s too, so I had a good idea of what the main chambers within the building actually look like, in order to come up with authentic and accurate handouts and game aids.

When I put together the PC’s it was always in mind that they could be used for other SR one-off games. This week I had a basic idea for a Tasmania based adventure. (My SR timeline says Tassie was abandoned 30 years ago except for 2 small research stations.) I really need to get back to finishing my Star Gate and Battlestar Galactica one-offs before I chase this idea any further though.

I’m haven’t seen some of my gaming group face to face for what could be a year, but its a good time to see if we can get back together. A one-off game could be a better option than straight back into our long FalsKrag D&D game. This is one possibility, though one of my players has already voted for “A three hour cruise” – a Cthulhu Future one-off based on Gilligan’s Island. We’ll see what happens…