Casting Shadows

The standard prompt for Day 20 of #RPGaDAY2024 is Amazing Adventure and as usual you could take that in a variety of directions. For my response, in fact, I intend to take it in at least two. I will probably succeed in this intention because while there is a tale of adventure buried within this post, the scenario the post is about cannot really be classed as ‘an adventure’.

It certainly started one, though.

My first foray onto the dangerous streets of 2050 Seattle came as the direct result of a wheezing description of Shadowrun when missing a bus precipitated a very long walk with some people I had just met at a job I didn’t like through a part of town that should be avoided. We had had to choose between walking the rest of the way and being quite late, or waiting for the next bus (as sitting ducks for criminally-motivated attention) and being too late (and possibly mugged).

I didn’t consider it much of a choice, either.

One cat chose to stay behind, of course. We never saw him again.

Hearing about the amazing gameplay of Shadowrun and how it had changed my smoker’s coughing companion’s life while hiking along the highway rather than cut through the economically-challenged “residential area” where the bus transfer point had been (and is – like everything else that had been there – now erased from existence), I determined to make something good come from that awful job and vowed to buy the rules on the weekend. He was thrilled, and offered to run the game for me.

I leapt at the chance.

The other two people who were being pulled along listlessly in our wake, did not leap at anything and were in fact let go before the weekend managed to drag its tired butt into view.

What had my new Shadowrun GM all a-flutter was the great first impression the game had made on him as a first-time player, and which had rewarded him as a GM of the game each time he had introduced new people to it. He was a little younger than me, and had not played as many games nor as long, but he had that passion for gaming that I looked for in others and had already figured out that life as a gamer is better when everyone in the group both runs and plays games.

I would be amused to find out later, when reading my own copy of the rules, how little he had told me about the game, and how much he had instilled in me a desire to play it. In fact, it remains to this day one of the few games I hope to be able to play more than run.

Anyway, we arranged to play in two-week’s time, after he had moved into a better apartment. He was a bit worried about me buying the rules and possibly spoiling the intro he had planned, but he needn’t have worried and he laughed about it – then grew baffled at FASA – as he discovered a few shocks all at once. First, his copy of Shadowrun was now suddenly Shadowrun 1st Edition as mine was 2nd Edition. Second, his copy of Shadowrun 1st Edition was a battered blue softcover, while mine was hardcover – and black. Finally…? The introductory scenario that he felt was so amazing and that I would soon come to agree was amazing, was not in the 2nd Edition rules.

He felt slightly less jealous.

He was right, of course, there was something amazing about Food Fight and I think of it often when I play the game, or just see it on the shelf when I walk in the room. It has changed from edition to edition and as a result it has changed its essential character, but I have faith that it is still a lot of fun for those for whom it serves as their entry point into the Sixth World.

When I played for the first time, we had managed to recruit some additional players from the game store where I got the rules. They were usually GMs, and as curious about the game as I was. So curious were we, in fact that we drove the hour across town in the middle of the night in the middle of the week to have an impromptu house warming for the GM who until we arrived was unaware that it would be Shadowrun ’til dawn.

He didn’t mind.

For me, it was incredibly immersive and the GM nailed his description of not only what was around us, he managed to evoke a sense of what items might mean to our characters without drawing direct comparisons to things from the real world. As directed both by the scenario author and his own experiences with it on both sides of the screen, the GM was highly conscious of the fragility of objects in the location, the placement of things in the location, and the splatter factor of things in the location. He was conscientious and liberal in his application of projectile damage to packaging, shelving, creme filling, and carbonated beverages – among other essentials – such as TP. The carnage among the carbs was a calorie catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions.

It truly felt like he had been in 2050 Seattle just that morning and was merely describing it from memory while trying to get soymeat stains out of his lined coat.

What I liked most about that original version of Food Fight was how it brought players into the shoes of their characters on the ground floor of the world. No mystery to solve. No plot to get caught up in. No devil’s bargains or hard choices. Just life in the Sixth World as it is lived every single day.

It was essential context and I loved it.

The scenario gave us a foundation in the world, in the Seattle street scene of 2050, in our own characters and their capabilities, and even gave us a quick glimpse of the deadly blonde trendsetter on the cover of the game. That gave us both the capacity to understand our aspirations as characters, and it gave us context for how much work those aspirations might require – should we survive this innocuous snack run.

Looking back on it now, I wonder if this had occurred in 1994 or 95, would Wendy have uttered – a few seconds late – the majestic call of all cash-register jockeys world over?

“I wasn’t supposed to be here today!”