GM Helper

Eye Witness Review

Eye Witness is an adventure for 2nd Edition Shadowrun. It is a wildly complicated backstory for a very straightforward adventure. The adventure surrounds a mystery where the players will be sent around to collect evidence for a fellow Shadowrunner bent on revenge. It will have the players bouncing all over Seattle and going to places they may have never even considered.

What can the players expect? Ratings out of 5!

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Double Exposure Review

“Is this the path to Eden?” - Johnathan Tang

Double Exposure is an adventure for 2nd Edition Shadowrun. It is a very story heavy adventure that brings characters in a really unique situation that I haven’t seen in many other adventures. This adventure will put the player characters right in the middle of a new sprung up commune in the barons. What’s even wilder? This organization even seems to be actually growing sustainable food crops. They are accepting anyone with a pulse that wants a better life and is willing to work for it. Sounds too good to be true? Yeah, its Shadowrun baby, of course its fucked.

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Total Eclipse Review

Before we dive in! I wrote another section of my adventure: Protect and Serve.

Music in the 80s was a bit more defining than today (Though Taylor Swift has definitely revived some of the old feelings of hardcore allegiance to a band or musician). Who you listened to and who you repped told you a lot about someone and in general I feel it had a lot more of a cultural impact than it does today. Clothing brands, commercials and like really strove to grab up bands for their products and in some ways it felt like they were larger and more important than even actors in their given time. Often whole movies would be scored by a single band to lend their kind of flavor to a piece. It really held serious weight. Movies like The Crow (The Cure) and Donnie Darko (which is a 00s movie, but was set in the 1980s and had the same done for it as other 80s movies by the Tears for Fears). Music from these movies and their scores really hit home.

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Decker Problems and How to Solve Them

One of the most common problems new GMs (And old for that matter) is running the Matrix for their players. In every edition of Shadowrun, the matrix has been a pivotal part of the game. It makes sense in the larger picture, Gibson’s Neuromancer (Which you absolutely NEED to read if your running Shadowrun or Cyberpunk! [Hardcover or Sprawl Trilogy (Plus Burning Chrome) - Good Christmas Gifts!] gives us the first console cowboy and we have been seeking that experience every since.

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Silver Angel Review

Silver Angel was the first published Adventure for Shadowrun. It was paired with the original Game Master’s screen for 1st Edition Shadowrun. What’s interesting is that it also came with standees (cardboard cutouts that you could use to show placement of characters and NPCs) which we wouldn’t see again until DMZ was released. These paired excellently with the Sprawl Maps.

This adventure is pretty short, but you can see the gritty bones of what would become the Shadowrun we all know and love.The story includes a dynamic cast of interesting street level people including a ripper jack and a dancer. As well, it is positively dripping with atmosphere. Tom Dowd laid some beautiful writing down on these pages. A line really sums up Shadowrun perfectly.

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Queen Euphoria Review Notes

It seems I am often drawn to Shadowrun adventures with famous characters in the fiction of the world. Starting with Dark Angel and now moving onto Queen Euphoria, there is something special about the world that was written in those first few adventures of Shadowrun.

Queen Euphoria is one of the classic adventures that in general is one of the few truly horror based adventures in Shadowrun. Given there are always horror elements in all adventures in Shadowrun. The Dystopian world that our characters live in brings about some amount of horror in general. However, there are some special things that only Shadowrun can bring to bear. This is the first taste of real true horror (Though I think it’s been blunted by some design decisions i’ll talk about in the spoilers section). I think this had a kind of success with the players that the designers had not expected and then they began to do it quite a bit more.

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Anchoring Foci and Spells and Why You Should Be Using Them More Often

When we play games with magic often we look at it in the lens of our understanding most of us learned from games like Dungeons and Dragons. That is to say that magical people always go into combat with magical shields and energy blasts. Fireballs and Counterspells to keep yourself from getting fried. Shadowrun has a lot of this too, but there is more insidious magic that exists and it’s as old as the human race.

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Fancy Program Name

Program Names for more immersion

I’ve always wanted to sit down and write down some fun program names for decking programs. Having programs with ratings is one of the things that made older editions of Shadowrun infinitely more fun.

This is an attempt to make something more interesting for folks. Let me know if this is something folks enjoy and if they would want more of them!

Analyze Program Suite

RatingName
Rating 1Preliminary Scan Mk1
Rating 2Insight Probe V2
Rating 3DataSight Recon 3.0
Rating 4NeuraVision Quest IV
Rating 5EchoLocator Sigma
Rating 6Quantum Observer VI
Rating 7Mystic Decoder VII
Rating 8Renraku Scanner Octa 8
Rating 9Transys Apex Viewer IX
Rating 10Fuchi Red Eye X
Rating 11Omniscan XI
Rating 12Mitsuhama Transcendence Viewer XII

Browse Program Suite

RatingName
Rating 1SearchLite Starter Mk1
Rating 2IndexSweeper Core Mk2
Rating 3QueryVortex 3.0
Rating 4EchoSeeker Pro IV
Rating 5QuantumFilter Elite mk.5
Rating 6CyberSift 6
Rating 7MetaScan Ultra VII
Rating 8Transys NexusProbe 8
Rating 9Ares InfiniSearch 9
Rating 10OmniQuery mk 10
Rating 11Golden Data Retriever v11
Rating 12Renraku DataRipper XII
RatingName
Rating 1SignalStarter Basic Mk1
Rating 2ISignalStarter Pro Mk2
Rating 3EchoTap 3.0
Rating 4StealthLink Pro IV
Rating 5PhantomCall v5
Rating 6GhostWave Elite 6
Rating 7ShadowComm Master VII
Rating 8SilentNode 8
Rating 9VaporSignal 9
Rating 10InvisiLink v10
Rating 11AetherNet v11
Rating 12Renraku QuantumConnect XII

Deception Program Suite

RatingName
Rating 1ImpostorCode Basic Mk1
Rating 2The Masquerade Mk2
Rating 3PhantomKey v3.1
Rating 4CryptoMimic Pro IV
Rating 5ShadowPass v5
Rating 6FauxGate 6
Rating 7Master VII
Rating 8“I Shall Pass” v8
Rating 9CipherClone 9
Rating 10MimeSlicer v10
Rating 11InfiniteFacade v11
Rating 12Transys Ethereal Key Forge XII

Decrypt Program Suite

RatingName
Rating 1LockSmasher v1
Rating 2KeyCruncher v2
Rating 3CodeShatter mk 3
Rating 4DataBreach Elite mk 4
Rating 5HashQuake v5
Rating 6InfiniteKey Solver mk 6
Rating 7Mitsuhama Omnihack 7
Rating 8CipherNihilist 8
Rating 9Gate Dissolver Edge v9
Rating 10CryptoFracture v10
Rating 11NullCipher v11
Rating 12QuantumDecipher 12

Read/Write

RatingName
Rating 1ByteForge Basic 1
Rating 2FluxEncoder 2
Rating 3ScriptWelder v3
Rating 4NexusRewriter 4
Rating 5FileMorpher mk5
Rating 6StreamWeaver mk6
Rating 7FileFusion 7
Rating 8QuantumScribe 7
Rating 9CyberLoom 9
Rating 10ByteComposer v10
Rating 11BinaryAlchemist 11
Rating 12EtherTranscriber mk 12

Spoof Program Suite

RatingName
Rating 1GhostCommander v1
Rating 2PhantomTrigger Pro mk2
Rating 3SignalMasque v3
Rating 4EtherWave Rider mk4
Rating 5John the Imposter 5
Rating 6Omnisend Omega 6
Rating 7MirageSender mk7
Rating 8Saeder-Krupp QuantumFacade mk8
Rating 9HoloFlux v9
Rating 10NebulaConduit v10
Rating 11Shiawase InfiniSynth Command mk 11
Rating 12Renraku Decree v12

Sleaze

RatingName
Rating 1Ghost mk1
Rating 2Fade 2
Rating 3InvisaTrace mk3
Rating 4Phantom v4
Rating 5Virtual Obscura 5
Rating 6PhantomShroud 6
Rating 7WhisperWeave 7
Rating 8Null Aura 8
Rating 9ShadowVeil 9
Rating 10SilentSmoke v10
Rating 11Ares Silent Stride mk11
Rating 12Shiawase GhostNet 12

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Divided Assets Review

I know it’s been awhile folks! I’ve been busy writing Holostreets! Blood For Money and Blood on the Pavement. I am looking for people to review these in any capacity so if you are interested please reach out to me! Otherwise, lets get into Divided Assets!


Divided Assets is a Shadowrun adventure for 2nd Edition. The plot revolves around kidnapping and the ramifications of extractions on the family of those being extracted. It’s an interesting take on the idea of looking outward into Shadowrunning (or Edgerunning for that matter). A lot of times players run these crazy scenarios where death and violence explode into the lives of people who can’t even imagine what they are about to see and experience. This would leave a lasting sting that is never really talked about!

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Dark Angel Review

Dark Angel is a Shadowrun adventure for 2nd Edition. The plot revolves around recovering the original recordings from the Legendary Rocker, Dark Angel. Seems he killed himself (though it’s murky that anyone would set himself on fire as a way of going out) and some new kid suddenly showed up with recordings and signed contracts. This of course seems like the HOTTEST of Bull Drek that could be, because Angel swore he would never record them and sell out. It’s up to you and your friends to recover the songs and get the skinny on how this person got their hands on these things.

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