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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Ataraxidermist on 2024-11-16 20:07:33+00:00.

Welcome everyone! And please point out if I made a mistake here or there, English isn’t my native language. But drama is.

This is a story that happened on the fringes of the already complicated video game industry. If you don’t know a thing about video games or tabletop games, fear not, this is less about gameplay mechanics and more about good old questions of competence and management. If I speak about games, I will make sure everyone understands what’s going on.

And without further ado, let’s take a look at the main components of today’s presentation.

Shadowrun : A wonderful land where you can get sliced to ribbons by a katana-wielding maniac, crushed to death by a robot or fried by a magical electric shock all in the same day.

The one and only Shadowrun, created in 1989.

Picture a cyberpunk world, a dystopia ruled by mega-corporations where citizens get arms and brain parts replaced by cybernetics. So far so good? Cool, now add a magical event that suddenly has people turn into elves, orcs, trolls, and whatever. Yep, the idea behind it is to pick a high-fantasy world in one hand, a depressive cyberpunk universe in the other, and smash these two together. You can have a team with a native American shaman summoning spirits and flinging fireballs fighting next to a ex-military wielding a shotgun and hiding blades in his artificial arms.

Somehow, instead of dismissing the setting of Shadowrun as a hookah-fueled hallucination, people played it. Or maybe it’s because it was so odd that it got fans.

The standard game has you play as a shadowrunner, a mercenary for hire conducting deniable operations for whoever pays most. Destruction of assets, theft, sabotage, assassinations, your morals (or lack of) are the limit. Thing is, targets are often mega-corps, and combat is, like in real life, short and extremely lethal. As a result, avoiding fights is more important than winning them, and if combat is unavoidable, you better tip the scales in your favor before the bullets start flying.

It may not be the juggernaut that is Dungeons & Dragons, but Shadowrun made its place among the tabletop classics and is currently in its sixth edition.

Unlike Dungeons & Dragons though, Shadowrun saw few video game adaptations, despite the population of video games players and the population of tabletop role-playing games players overlapping quite a bit.

there had been a game on Super Nintendo in 1993, another on Sega Genesis in 1994, but otherwise not much happened. There had been yet another attempt in 2007, but unlike the previous two which did offer a story and a way to immerse yourself in the nightmarish hell of a future without socialized healthcare, this one was a straight up online shooter game meant to have you kill other players with the help of firepower and some spells.

All this to say, there was ample space for a new video-game.

Harebrained Schemes : Magic, trans-humanism and big robots.

Founded in 2011 by Jordan Weisman and Mitch Gitelman, two dudes with prior experience in video games. Oh, and Weisman also happens to be one of the creators of the Shadowrun franchise. Harebrained Schemes (shortened HBS) came at the right time to bank on the kickstarter craze. Remember kickstarter? It’s the platform that allows you to pitch a project, and if people are convinced, they can throw their hard-earned currency at your face in the hopes that you won’t change your mind or turn out to be a fraud. Be it for a book, a game or a potato salad. if you’re convincing, people will cover for your expenses and then some.

But how can you be seen when swimming in a sea of projects screaming for attention? One solution is to use a well-known license that will bring interest just by virtue of attaching an important name to whatever you’re concocting. You guessed it, Weisman got the rights from Microsoft, owner of the Shadowrun license, and proposed a new video game based on the franchise on kickstarter.

The numbers speak for themselves. HBS had hoped for 400.000 dollars, they got over 1.8 million.Harebrained Schemes : Magic, trans-humanism and big robots.

The project took off, and in 2013, out came Shadowrun Returns. Unlike the 2007 action game with lots of bullets and little in the way of words, Shadowrun Returns had a scenario. And instead of adrenaline packed action, this was a tactical RPG: meaning characters moved one after the other and you had all the time in the world to ponder your next move. In returns, you start as a down on your luck runner with no cash and no prospect who gets a message from your old pal Sam. Sam is dead, and the message was to be sent out in case of untimely demise with a simple proposal : Bring his killer to justice, and get paid. Naturally, things get complicated fast, with a serial killer, a cult and mega-corporations all coming to blows.The project took off, and in 2013, out came Shadowrun Returns.

The game had okay reviews. Nothing mind-blowing, the gameplay could get weird at times, the cover-system was obtuse, the story was nice, the Shadowrun universe was pleasant. But it had easy to use modding tools. For the uninitiated, modding is when you play with the code of the game to create your own campaign, or tweak the rules to make certain enemies stronger for example. The campaign, aptly named “Dead man’s switch”, was a showcase for the possibilities the modding tools the studio offered.

Returns truly tried to emulate the tabletop game, instead of giving a single story, you had the tools to create your own campaign and share it with others. But somewhere in there, Harebrained got another idea. Players did like the Dead man’s switch campaign, so why not make the next one more than a showcase?

Dragonfall came out in 2014. Originally an expansion for Shadowrun Returns, an expanded version was soon sold as a standalone game, and was considered a notable step-up from the original. As a rule of thumb, if asked which game to start with, people will either tell you to start with Returns because it only goes up from there, or skip it and jump straight to Dragonfall for the really good stuff. Unlike Returns which required the hiring of bland mercenaries each run, you had a solid cast of companions this time you got to know.

Ex-frontman for a punk band currently slinging fireballs in the name of a spirit who expects followers to do badass things, and also tends to lose followers when they bite more that they can chew? Check. Computer genius who notably isn’t socially awkward and shy? Check, although not being shy still doesn’t make him good at people skills. Or any other skill in life. Pale woman who barely speaks and sports cyberware that belongs to a museum? Check. A dog to pet in your hideout? You better check that too.

Gameplay was largely similar, but lively companions and a scenario taking place in an anarchist Berlin (anarchist in the sense of no clear leader, not the bomb-throwing kind), made the game into a success. Or at least enough of a success to warrant a successor.

Shadowrun Hong-Kong was pitched on Kickstarter. This time, Harebrained only asked 100.000, as they had leftovers from the sales of Dragonfall and Returns, and the kickstarter was a way to gauge if interest in the Shadowrun universe was still there on one hand, and add additional features on the other.

With 1.2 millions raised, Interest was there, and Shadowrun Hong-Kong came out in 2015. The mechanics had been polished, cover actually made sense and the story delivered once more. This time, you were accompanied by an orc worshiping a rat spirit who can eat anything without ever falling sick and whose former partners tend to be former by virtue of brutal death. We got a shy nerd (I know, but she’s still cool once you get to know her), an ex-cop who desperately wants his badge back, and some more exotic team-memb…

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