Author Archives: jhardy

Our ebook explorations of the Sioux Nation are moving ahead with two new books (one a bit newer than the other). The newest one provides a look at the shadowy goings-on in the city of Butte, and it goes by the easy-to-remember title of Butte (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG). With intrigue diving down to dozens of meters below the earth’s surface, Butte has a lot going on for adventurous shadowrunners. Check out the details:

The Sixth World is, of course, a horribly dystopian place, but it also is a place where people face the wondrous possibilities of making entirely new versions of themselves. Any part of the metahuman body can be replaced, and the new augmentations sourcebook Chrome Flesh (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG) is your guide to all the possibilities. With cyberware, bioware, nanotech, genetech, and a host of new chemicals, this book gives runners dozens of ways to amp up their game–and see just how much of their humanity they’re willing to fritter away. It also comes with full tables listing all Shadowrun, Fifth Edition augmentations to this point! Here’s more info:

The Edge of the Possible

Shadowrunners cannot be limited by what their bodies can—or cannot—do. They have to do more, stretch farther, surpass any limits, and accomplish the impossible. Some runners can rely on magic; for everyone else, there are augmentations. From shiny chrome that makes your body into a humanoid semi-truck to genetech that alters you at the most fundamental level to drugs and chemicals that give you a quick and dirty boost, Chrome Flesh provides dozens of new ways to alter Shadowrun characters and make them better, stronger, faster, and altogether readier to kick ass and take names on the streets.

Along with the gear and a compiled table of all cyberware, bioware, genetech, and nanotech currently available in Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, Chrome Flesh covers how runners break down and what resources can help fix them up, and where augmentation tech might go in the future. It’s paydata every shadowrunner needs if they want to overcome everything the Sixth World is going to throw at them.

Chrome Flesh is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

Do you like hacking the Matrix? Do you feel the need for new programs? Qualities aimed specifically at deckers and technomancers? Advice on playing and running the Matrix? A two-column example of how Matrix play proceeds? Information on artificial intelligences, Dissonance pools, and other deeply weird parts of the Matrix? All this, and art that springs from the most deeply deranged art notes we’ve ever assembled? Then you should know about Data Trails, the new core Matrix sourcebook for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition. It is now available for PDF purchase and print pre-order (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), including various bundle configurations that also offer a sweet limited edition. Need more details? Scan this:

The Infinite Frontier

The last great undiscovered country is vast, wild, and weirder than you can possibly imagine. And it’s nearby, waiting, accessible by the press of a button, or a simple gesture, or even just a thought. The Matrix holds a whole lot more than selfies and cat videos—it has artificial intelligences, electronic ghosts of people formerly alive (or perhaps still living), and deep wells of pure data that can swallow you whole. Oh, and a copy of every secret ever recorded electronically. The possible rewards of exploration are great, and the dangers are greater.

Data Trails is the Matrix sourcebook for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, offering more options for decker and technomancer characters, including qualities, programs, gear and more. With detailed examinations of hacker culture, information on diving deep into immersive hosts, and briefings on the strange sites hidden in dark corners of the Matrix, Data Trails is a vital resource for any Shadowrun players involved in the omnipresent flow of information. Non-Matrix specialists have chances to get in on the adventures as well, with game details explaining how their skills and expertise translate into the wild virtual world.

Data Trails is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

Also, we have a new novel for you! The Shadowrun novel line continues to march forward with Borrowed Time by R.L. King (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG, Amazon link coming soon!). You’ve seen King’s work in Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and the anthology that accompanied the Shadowrun Returns video game, and now you get a full-length novel, featuring her signature character, Winterhawk! If you need details, you can read the summary below, or you can check out the full review that has already been posted on Diehard GameFan. But whatever you do, make sure you check out the creepy cover art below.

Out of Time, Out of Options

JackPointer mage Winterhawk left the shadows at the top of his game: these days he indulges his curiosity about all things mysterious and magical on his own terms. But he’s about to discover that the shadows are hard to leave behind, and old enemies have their ways of drawing him back in.

Dosed with an exotic arcane poison that will kill him in days unless he retrieves a powerful magical artifact, ‘Hawk has to assemble a team fast and think even faster, because he’s not the only one tracking down the prize. His team is hardly the well-oiled machine he’s accustomed to: an old friend with major trust issues, an old rival who hates everything ‘Hawk stands for, a decker who annoys everyone he meets, a samurai who’s only in it for the money, and a gunslinger who may have her own agenda.

With his life on the line and the clock ticking fast, ‘Hawk must survive the mean streets of Los Angeles and the magical hellscape of the Australian Outback while keeping his mismatched team from imploding before they finish the job. But when the artifact is revealed to be far more than it seems, Winterhawk is forced to make a choice that could affect the lives of millions—to say nothing of his own.

We all know that Shadowrun is not the happiest of game universes, but for those of you who like to add a nice heaping of extra darkness to your games and reading–and who doesn’t?–we have two new releases for you today!

First up is a new e-book called 10 Terrorists (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), and to get a sense of what’s going on in the book, we’re going to share a little behind-the-scenes exchange with you from when the drafts of art were coming through. Here’s how the author (who also wrote Nothing Personal and the Mr. Johnson chapter of Run Faster) reacted: “HOLY S***! … That’s some extreme art. Awfully violent, but it makes a statement.” And then the e-book developer explained it like this: “This is a dystopian universe and terrorists are generally considered the worst of the worst. To illustrate that in pictures we needed to reach into places the public doesn’t like to look.”

The point is, 10 Terrorists looks at some dark parts of human nature and how this can be used in your Shadowrun games. We understand that not everyone wants to go where this book goes (and for a glimpse of that, take a look at the cover on the linked pages), but for those who do, the book has some ways to throw new twists and dangers at shadowrunners while fleshing out the dangers of the Sixth World. Here’s a summary of the book:

Causes of Blood

There is no way to sugarcoat it—people in the Sixth World spend an awful lot of time coming up with reasons to kill each other. When it comes to moral codes, people don’t think they’re better than others because they don’t kill and others do—they compare the reasons for killing, ranking them, trying to justify the oft-unjustifiable. You can talk to a hundred people and get a hundred different opinions about what’s justified and what’s not, and about which motivations are worse than others, but consistently at the bottom of the list are those who would kill innocents for a cause, who would instill terror in people for political gain, because they see no other recourse.

10 Terrorists covers ten groups in the Shadowrun setting who add chaos and violence to an already chaotic and violent world to further their own twisted causes. From Seed, a Matrix terrorism group that split off Ex Pacis, to Logos, a group that combines environmental extremism with talislegging, these are groups that can add and danger and plot hooks to Shadowrun campaigns. Whether runners are infiltrating the groups, avoiding them, or dealing with the fallout from the chaos they cause, 10 Terrorists can increase the threat level of any Shadowrun game.

10 Terrorists is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

Want something slightly lighter? How about a vampire shadowrunner in the ruined sprawl of Chicago trying to catch up with a world that has only grown more dangerous and stranger while he has been out of action? Okay, that may not sound exactly “light,” but that’s what’s happening in the new Shadowrun novel Crimson (Battleshop, DriveThru–note that both of those have epub and Kindle copies in a zip file–Barnes & Noble, Amazon), and even if it’s not exactly sunshine and puppies, it’s plenty of fun. Here’s the summary, as well as the terminally cool cover:

Where No One Knows Your Name …

Thanksgiving, 2075. Shadowrunning vampire-mage Rick “Red” Lang used to make his living hunting dangerous insect spirits and twisted mages, but when he awakens after twelve years of involuntary hibernation, he finds the rest of the world has gotten even stranger.

Red begins piecing together what had happened during his lost time—and who put him under in the first place. But as he journeys through the neon-drenched ruins of Chicago and its augmented facades, Red uncovers an even larger plot involving eldritch forces seeking to invade from beyond our reality. He teams up with the few allies he can trust—Pretty, a beautiful ghoul, and Slim, a hacker extraordinaire—as they head into the middle of multiple schemes and power plays surrounding a dangerous new conflict threatening to shatter the uneasy peace into all-consuming chaos.