Blackout City: Toronto [Learn to Play Shadowrun: Sixth World]

Creating your character

We will be using the Character Creation rules in Shadowrun: Sixth World Core, P. 59-67, though you should also read through pages 68-79 (Qualities), 80-91 (Archetypes), and 92-99 (Skills). You should also read Chapter 1: The Life You Have Left to understand exactly how the Sixth World got to be the way it is now to help you develop your Character Concept more fully. Pay particular attention to P. 61-63's sections on "How do you feel about the Darker Aspects of the World?" - Shadowrun's Sixth World is arguably one of the worse futures we could make for ourselves, and includes a lot of all-too-human ugliness that your Shadowrunners will have to deal with at some point. We'll talk more about this in the Safety Section.

Preparing for the session

This is a game played over the Internet, and as such some means of reliable voice communication is necessary, so a mic and speakers so we can hear you and you can hear us are essential. A webcam is nice but not necessary, though I do prefer seeing my players' smiling faces whenever possible (It gets lonely being the only one on Camera!) You should also have made a player account at Foundry and communicated that to me, and sent me your Discord Handle as well. I use Zoom for voice and visual communications, so you should download the Zoom Client as well. All of these setup steps should only take a few minutes. (Note: you do NOT need to pay for accounts at either Zoom or Foundry. My paid accounts cover all of us.)

What Overlord Jim brings to the table

As a GM, I bring my theatrical background (which sometimes manifests in unique character voices, and always shows up in their unique motivations), my decades of experience in front of and behind the GM Screen, and my love of all things Roleplaying. I have played with the Rule of Cool long before it got its name, but as this is a Learn to Play, I will try to stick to the Rules As Written for the most part, but I can and do bend and break systems to do things they were never meant to do in the name of letting the players pull of that one cool thing they thought up that the system was never meant to simulate. I am your character's biggest fan from the moment I meet them. I want your characters to be Big Damn Heroes, and everything I do behind this screen is to help you do that. My Villains will be terrible, so that your confronting them can be glorious. My worlds will be full of evils both grand and banal, so you always have something going wrong you can make right. I want you to become Heroes with a Capital "H", and I will cheer on your characters every step of the way. I have a confession to make: I love combat. I am a relentless action junkie who loves nothing more than throwing your precious characters to the wolves - figuratively and literally! My monsters howl for your blood and will gnaw on your bones if you don't fight smart and watch each other's backs. I will use every system the game has to simulate deadly combat, but it must be said that I am more of a Theater of the Mind GM than a Tactical Grid GM. My favorite part of all, though, is the roleplaying. I live for that moment when I watch you become the character, speaking their words, affecting their mannerisms, and making choices that ring true for the Character above all. I invite you to a deep immersion with your character, and can't wait to see you become them. I look forward to meeting you and your Heroes!

How Overlord Jim creates a safe table

I run all my games and my server as a safe space for everyone, and both are explicitly and aggressively inclusive. You are welcome at my table if you can follow the game's rules and play nice with others. Pronouns and identities are to be respected, BUT we also do not take offense when people make honest mistakes trying to honor them. (I guarantee I will flub your pronouns at least once, but will always try to self-correct when I do) I WILL NOT tolerate people deliberately and intentionally making my clients - who often become my friends - feel unsafe and uncomfortable. This is the expected baseline for everyone in my games and on my server. You WILL be asked to leave the game and the server for deliberate offenses against the other players. I use a Pre-Game Survey to implement Lines & Veils. Once compiled, the Lines & Veils document will be posted on the Discord Server and reviewed as necessary, such as when new players join and their Lines & Veils are added. We will discuss them in Session 0. We use the X, N, and O Cards, and you can use them visually or submit X N & O Cards by PM, but the visual usually gets my attention faster. It is my usual practice to do a mid-game break, and we can do breaks as needed after intense scenes. I encourage high quality roleplaying and thus am prepared to deal with Bleed as it occurs. I often forget to do my Stars & Wishes, so please remind me so I get better about that. I am always open to constructive criticism, it's how I improve as a GM, and I'm always trying to run a better game than the last one. As you can see from the rather extensive set of warnings, this game can have a lot of dark spots. As I have noted above, the Sixth World of Shadowrun is basically what would happen if we made all the worst decisions possible, and there's a lot of ugly, mean, and all-too-human darkness in the Sixth World. Plagues far worse than the Pandemic we all lived through ripped the world apart. Racism gets turbo-charged when humans actually start becoming different sub-species. Magic is used for great and terrible things. And it's all still enslaved to the profit motive. The more things change . . . Something else to consider is that Shadowrunners are by definition, Criminals. Most Shadowrunning jobs involve some degree of trespassing, theft, breaking and entering, destruction of property, assault and battery, the list goes on and on. Shadowrunners are often violent, anti-social outcasts, but I am going to ask you to please remember that even they exist in a society that is not too dissimilar from our own - anti-social behavior is still going to get you in trouble, and if you don't cover your tracks, well, they do still have police, even if they are for-hire these days, and the court system still takes a dim view of vigilantes who commit crimes for money . . .