Back in 1984, William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, a book that gave birth to the Cyberpunk genre along with Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, or DnD) was already in the geek scene for ten years at the time. I’m a little surprised that it took Shadowrun, ten more to show up, and still somehow miss the point.

I’ve spent the last week or so reading up Shadowrun rules. I want to bring up the DnD gang back together to explore a new world, one that I’ve been cooking in my head for months. It takes place in the far future. Human cloning failed unexpectedly and spectacularly, giving birth to a certain form of “magic” in the process. I wanted a roleplaying game that brings into play huge corporations, cybernetics, and computer systems, and Shadowrun was an obvious spot to revisit. But I dropped it pretty quickly.

First, we already know and understand DnD 5e. Learning a new system of rules, especially a confusing and complex one like Shadowrun’s, is not appealing. That, and the fact that I don’t think the human hand is meant to roll 12 dice at once (a bad Shadowrun joke).

Second, I don’t like the lore of Shadowrun. Magic is fantastical, Dragons are real, and dwarves and elves show up because of some sort of disease… eck. I already have my own story, as I mentioned above. I wanted the system to adopt my world, not the other way around.

Third, making your own rules is fun. I am not an experienced DnD DM and I will never memorize all those rules. I count on my players not just as guests to my creation, but also equal in its making. We will shape and adjust rules as needed. Taking out the Big Book of Rules and searching if something can be done and how or is not as fun.

So nowadays I’m expanding on my rules and lore where it makes sense: my wiki. It’s mostly DnD rules that will remain unchanged with a couple of twists influenced by Shadowrun and my own inventions. My goal is to get to a “beta” point where we can test it, perhaps during a session 0 of sorts.