Shadowrun: Hong Kong

I backed the Kickstarter because Hairbrained Schemes had proved itself with SRR and SR:Dragonfall. I figured even if they churn out just another campaign with no changes, I'd be buying it, so advancing them the purchase price felt low-risk. And then, I didn't pay that much attention, because following a project like that gets maddeningly tiring after a while.

The end result isn't dissatisfying. It felt a little on the short side, but that's probably because I didn't have much else in the way of games to play over the weekend. I think I put in around 15 hours. The campaign is pretty solid, though it does structure a couple relationships for your character, which could be a good or bad thing depending on opinion. Decking is pretty well essential at some point, but there's a solid NPC decker available throughout. The only major difficulties I hit on Normal were toward the end - a bug in one area stuck me in-combat with enemies off the main map, and one encounter was genuinely made harder because the team decker had to work in a relatively exposed spot. There are a fair number of options to avoid combat or "skill" your way around encounters. Money seemed a little on the short side, though the primary NPCs available upgrade themselves. I found the supernatural elements a bit more interesting than insect spirits, though I was having some flashbacks to Guild Wars: Factions.

System-wise, a few things have changed. Cyber-/bioware has been expanded, which looks pretty awesome, but in my first run-through, I didn't really have the nuyen to spend there. The Matrix has undergone the strangest transformation, with a real-time initial mode where you traverse a map and try to avoid sentries. Getting spotted puts you into the more familiar turn-based combat mode. That was a shock at first, but works okay. I noticed a bit more variety in high-tier decks, and there are probably similar expansions in magic and weapons, though I didn't really notice those.

The NPCs are pretty good. I never felt as impressed as I did with Dragonfall's, but that might be a matter of contrast against the previous release. Gobbet, the rat shaman, is my clear favorite. Is0bel could have been better if there had been a little more payoff somehow in her personal missions (though she's a solid decker and has a grenade launcher that made me want one). Duncan's a solid gunner, if a little cliche with his family issues. Those three made up my usual team. Racter is a creepy rigger who raises some interesting questions. Gaichu, the ghoul spec-ops ronin, has a story that will appeal more to some than me. But I didn't dislike any of them.

Overall, a good game for the Shadowrun world, and I look forward to the post-game mini-campaign that should be out in a few months. And having found out they seem to have the license to do a Battletech game, I'm eager to see how that works out too.


Essence in the Shadowrun world is... a measure of spiritual power and integrity. Magic abilities are all reliant upon it in the sense that they're limited by it as a maximum. And cyberware (and bioware to a less/different degree) reduces essence in a person. Essence loss is described as not only making it harder to channel the energies necessary to work magic, but also as making a person less human, less... empathic or feeling, more cold and distant. And there's a maximum a person can lose before no longer being a person.

Ractor, a rigger who claims to have essentially put his id in his drone, says he's gone over that limit. His entire lower body is cybernetic. He's probably got various stuff in his head to support the drone (some form of datajack, at least).

So how does he do it? Well, he explains that he's a psychopath. He didn't have any sense of empathy to begin with, so when he had massive amounts of his physical form replaced with cybernetics, he didn't feel different at all. There's implication that he could go even further, though that isn't really explored.

If that weren't freaky enough, he posits that he's an example of the way (post-/trans-)humanity is going. The heavily cybered will be the ones to go forward, and that will lead to a more emotionless "humanity." That's his vision of the future.

That raises some questions about how possible it is in the setting. Is he an exception to the rule? Is he not as far gone essence-wise as he thinks? Or is he right, and the psychopaths will inherit the world?

That, in turn, raises some questions about reality, though we aren't quite "there" yet...