Category Archives: Uncategorized

Stolen Souls now available! Plot action, extraction advice, and more!

The latest book in the Deep Shadows line for Shadowrun is now out (BattleShop, DriveThruRPG)! Building on plot threads presented in Storm Front and Splintered State, Stolen Souls details a crisis shaking up all parts of the Sixth World, including the refuges of the richest and most powerful individuals on the planet. People are losing something they can’t replace–themselves. Their minds and their personalities are being taken from them, with few prospects of getting it back. People are running scared, and they want answers. That means the market for people who might have answers has skyrocketed, and corporations are working over time to snatch the best and brightest minds from each other, in order to find answers to the growing problem–and perhaps discover who was behind it in the first place.

Stolen Souls introduces a new focus for the Deep Shadows book. They have always focused on a particular subject, giving tactics, game advice, gear, and rules associated with this area, but with Fifth Edition, each Deep Shadows book will focus on a particular type of shadowrun. Stolen Souls focuses on extractions, providing advice on how to successfully carry them out and gear, spells, and other rules to help you get the job done. With plot information and details on one of the extraction hotspots of the world–the corporate haven of Manhattan–Stolen Souls is full of information to rocket your game ahead and send it catapulting through twists and turns that will make your game memorable.

Need more info? Here you go:

The War Within

Not all has been right in our shadows of late. Especially in the dark shadows of my mind.

Those were among FastJack’s parting words to JackPoint when he left, the victim of a condition that divided his mind against itself. And the condition is spreading. Across the Sixth World, people’s minds are in schism, as new personalities emerge and battle the old. The world is in chaos, and there is a dramatically increased demand for extractions, to get infected people out of sensitive positions and to steal the insights of people who might know what’s gone wrong.

Stolen Souls is a Deep Shadows sourcebook for Shadowrun with plot updates and adventure hooks, as well as information, techniques, and gear to help make runners extraction aces. It also contains setting information about Manhattan, where key extractions are taking place. Players will get the chance to dig deeper into a new mystery that has torn through the Sixth World—and discover just how deep the conspiracies and cover-ups go.

Stolen Souls is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

StolenSoulsCoverSm

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Shadowrun 5th Edition for Hero Lab Releasing May 23rd

Excerpt from the Lone Wolf Development website:

herolab_shadowrun5

As many of you know, Shadowrun Fifth Edition has been in Beta testing since mid-April, and in last month’s newsletter, we shared that its development was nearing completion. Thanks to our Beta testers and the hard work of Mathias, the lead Shadowrun data file author, things are looking good for the Shadowrunners!

We’re excited to announce that Shadowrun Fifth Edition will be releasing for Hero Lab on May 23rd!

Once Shadowrun 5 is available, you can buy Hero Lab at our online store for $29.99, which includes one game system of your choice. If you’re already a Hero lab user, you’ll be able to add Shadowrun 5th Edition to your license for only $20 once we release it in the upcoming weeks.

Keep an eye on our website for release news, and be sure to “like” Hero Lab on Facebook, follow @lonewolfdevel on Twitter, or follow Lone Wolf Development on Google+.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New Mission hits the streets! Critic’s Choice now available!

We’re sorry about the gap between Shadowrun Missions, but the good new is the wait is over! The new Mission, Critic’s Choice, is now on sale (Battleshop, DriveThru), and it’s fast-moving fun! Here’s the rundown:

It’s Showtime

When the curtain goes up on a shadowrun in Chicago, you never know who’s going to take the stage. There are all sorts of creepy players out there, ghouls and gangers and more, and once the overture’s done, runners better be ready to dance with whoever emerges, with the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets keeping time.

The cast of characters in this mission includes a good-hearted street doc looking to expand, a pit-fighting elf, a pugnacious gang leader with an historical bent, and one of the oddest tribal gatherings ever seen inside a major sprawl. That’s not all, of course—what would a good shadowrun be without a few surprise guests? Runners will have plenty to keep them on their toes, and hopefully by the end they’ll have moved up a spot or two in the Chicago shadowrunner cast list. Assuming, of course, that they haven’t dropped six feet under.

Critic’s Choice is the latest Mission for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

SRM05A02Cover

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hostile Takeover: Designer Blog Part 1

SRHostileTakeover_logo

Designer Blog Part 1

When I got the news that I would be creating the first big Shadowrun-themed board game, I was ecstatic. Shadowrun and I have a long relationship from decades of being a gamer, and my local gaming crew has run RPGs off and on over the course of its existence. Getting the chance to create a milestone event like Hostile Takeover is not only my pleasure, but also truly an honor. Off went the gamer’s hat and it was replaced by the designer’s cap.

Hostile Takeover needed to be epic in feel and execution. Not a game about individual runners sneaking around in the shadows and alleyways, like what happens in the roleplaying game; instead this needed to be a game from the other side of the plot—the megacorporations. This was going to be a game where players were the ones doing all the string pulling, but without losing any of the gritty feel of sketchy missions, random violence, and constant under-the-table double crossing that a good Shadowrun game should have!

That in mind, the initial designs for Hostile Takeover began to take shape.

I knew the game needed to be set in Shadowrun’s iconic Seattle in the 2070s, which gave me a solidly defined base of information to build off of. The map has already been drawn, the megacorporations have already been laid out, and much of the cast of supporting roles exist in the thousands of pages that have been previously written. All we had to do was put all of this together in a fun, exciting game of manipulation and scheming for three to six players.

Many of the best board games in the market combine resource management, a little bit of luck, and oftentimes a set limit on game turns or play time. Mixing all of these things into one game plan, Hostile Takeover will not only require players to think their strategies several turns in advance but also be ready to adapt when the hidden card draws and dice rolls throw unavoidable monkeywrenches—and monkeywrenchers—into the works.

As the game starts to take shape on the designer table, I decided I wanted three major elements in the game to give it the Shadowrun feel: shadowrunners accomplishing missions, players negotiating and manipulating each other for fun and profit, and the potential for an underhanded snatching away of victory from their opponents. The game should have all of these things … and more.

The rough draft of the game started to take form as a badly photoshopped map of Shadowrun’s Seattle, a growing list of shadowrunners, and twelve megacorporation statistic cards to represent who will be hiring them. While the next chapter in Hostile Takeover’s Designer Blog will share a bit more light on how the game is evolving into what I hope will be a fan favorite, I think a great way to close out this segment is with the current list of the megacorporations (you never know what’s going to happen between now, final play testing, development and production) that players of Hostile Takeover will be using to vie for dominance of Seattle: Ares, Aztechnology, Evo, Horizon, Mitsuhama, NeoNET, Regency Megamedia, Saeder-Krupp, Shiawase, Telestrian Industries, Universal Omnitech, and Wuxing!

See you around chummers! Stay tuned for more on this game as it evolves!

Bryan Steele

Also posted in Hostile Takeover | 1 Response