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Win Advanced Copy of Crossfire at Origins!

The highly anticipated Shadowrun: Crossfire deck-building game is slated for release in late summer and is only weeks away from loading onto a ship to head to our shores. But for those attending the Origins Game Fair, you can win an advanced copy for free!

Thursday and Friday: On both Thursday and Friday, anyone that plays in a Shadowrun: Crossfire demo will receive a ticket for a drawing at 5:30 PM that day at the Catalyst Game Labs booth 601.

Saturday: On Saturday, anyone that has played in that day’s RPG gaming will receive a ticket for a drawing at 7:00 PM in the Shadowrun RPG room.

In both instances above, you must be present to win. If your number is called and you are not present, a new number will be called.

Prizes
On all three days, there will be one Runner Up and one Grand Prize Winner.

Runner Up: Each Runner Up will receive one free copy of the Shadowrun: Crossfire Demo Box.

Grand Prize Winner: Each Grand Prize Winner will walk away with a complete set of the following:
Shadowrun: Crossfire Base Game
Shadowrun: Crossfire Character Expansion Pack 1
Shadowrun: Crossfire “Oni” Character promo card

See you at Origins for all the excitement!

Look to www.catalystgamelabs.com and www.shadowruntabletop.com in the future for more details surrounding these coming games!

About Catalyst Game Labs
Catalyst Game Labs is dedicated to producing high quality games and fiction that mesh sophisticated game mechanics with dynamic universes-all presented in a form that allows beginning players and long-time veterans to easily jump into our games and fiction readers to enjoy our stories even if they don’t know the games.

Catalyst Game Labs is an imprint of InMediaRes Productions, LLC, which specializes in electronic publishing of professional fiction. This allows Catalyst to participate in a synergy that melds printed gaming material and fiction with all the benefits of electronic interfaces and online communities, creating a whole-package experience for any type of player or reader. Find Catalyst Game Labs online at www.catalystgamelabs.com.

Bullets & Bandages available now! Medical rules, gear, and more!

We have a new electronic release for you today! Bullets & Bandages (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), the latest book in our Shadowrun Options line, is now out. Packed with fun info about medtech, high-threat response teams, and optional rules to use in you Shadowrun game, Bullets & Bandages gives you the chance to add more details to healing the bumps, bruises, and bullet wounds runners in the Sixth World often take. And it’s got information that will make it usable to both Shadowrun, Fifth Edition players and those using Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Here’s the full description:

Sew ’Em Up, Ride ’Em Out

The only reason shadowrunners have scars to show off during their downtime is that when they got hit, someone had the guts, the skill, and the speed to pull them out of whatever drekstorm they’d gotten themselves into. Maybe it was a DocWagon High Threat Response team who rode in to save the day, or maybe a teammate who’d picked up some handy medical skills in the course of their career in the shadows patched them up enough to keep them moving. Either way, having someone who can pull your hoop out of the fire is handy in any situation. Make sure you thank them and buy ’em a drink—assuming, of course, they made it out with you.

Bullets & Bandages is part of the Shadowrun Options line, presenting new rules and background for players and gamemasters who want to add more detail to how medicine works when it’s practiced under fire. With new gear, qualities, actions, spells, adept powers, and more, it will add depth and excitement to your Shadowrun game—and maybe help you keep your chummers alive.

Bullets & Bandages is compatible with both Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

Sprawl Gangers (& Miniatures!) Update

Been a number of months since the last update on Sprawl Gangers. Since it has been a while, gonna be a big update here…so brace yourself…

Why the long delay…production issues. We haven’t been able to produce the miniatures and without that, the game simply has been in a holding pattern.

We are excellent at making books. We are just starting to reach a points where we do card games and boardgames. But miniatures, particularly high quality miniatures, have kicked us in the teeth for years. For those that have following our BattleTech problems (which have finally been fixed!) and especially our Leviathans troubles (which are still unresolved), you know this has dogged us for a while.

Despite this, caught up in the enthusiasm of trying to do a plethora of crazy cool stuff for Shadowrun, we moved forward with Sprawl Gangers thinking we had a solution for miniatures. Not only did that burn out, but we’ve since gone through several other aborted attempts to find the appropriate combination of cost vs. quality.

That being said, we do appear to have finally met a team that may just be the ones we’ve been searching for for years. I was waiting to reach a few milestones with this company before I started talking about this. And since we’ve reached those milestones, well, I can start talking.

First, the team we’re working with is Jeff Gracia and Jed Wahl at Green Brier Games. If you’ve not heard of them before, feel free to check ‘em out.

Second, as I’ve previously mentioned, we love being audacious and challenging ourself with aggressive schedules and really cool, big games. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. After spinning our wheels for far too long on Sprawl Gangers, part of this process has been to scale way back on what we want to do “right now”, and instead take the entire process in steady but bite-sized chunks.

What exactly does that mean? We are hard at work on an “experiment” of just a few miniatures to ensure that neither side is taxed too far and there’s not too much of a commitment to get anyone into trouble should things go sideways (its Shadowrun after all). The miniatures ultimately will be released as a “roleplaying game aid” boxed set (no, no dates or anything yet this early in the process).

However, one part of the experiment is to produce a single Sprawl Ganger miniature and move it through the entire process to a rapid prototype.

We just received rapid prototypes of two miniatures, which I immediately shipped off to Peter Wort, one of our fantastic camospecs.com artists, who’ll clean up the burs on the miniature and base coat it so we can really see what it will look like.

While I don’t have photos of that rapid prototype just yet, I can share the details that moved us from concept sketches into a miniature on my table (and when I get the miniature back, have no fear I’ll share photos right away!).

So first of all, the Sprawl Ganger. Here’s the fantastic concept sketches for a Halloweener that I’ve been sitting on for over a year…

And here’s the 70% render:

And then the near final renders came in:

Almost leapt out of my chair with a shout. So amazing…and funny thing is, I think her hair might be the best part…so much motion captured in that hair. Brings the model to life in a fantastic way.

But remember, this isn’t just about Sprawl Gangers at this stage. It’s about those small bite-sized chunks, so it’s about creating a pack of 5 “RPG Game Aid” miniatures. We’ve been creating a cast of characters that will visually bridge between Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, Shadowrun: Beginner Box Set, Shadowrun Runner’s Toolkit: Alphaware, Shadowrun: Crossfire and even into Shadowrun: Hostile Takeover and Shadowrun: Sprawl Gangers. So it was logical to start with those images as the basis for our first pack of miniatures.

First out of the gate is our Dwarf rigger, Hardpoint. Here’s the reference art from both the Beginner Box Set and Runner’s Toolkit: Alphaware:

Brent then turned that into an appropriate orthographic that Jed could use to start his render process:

Jed took that and turned over an initial render:

Obviously the first attempt to create “smoke” for the drone wasn’t working well, so some good brainstorming resulted in this near final render:

Obviously we are incredibly excited about reaching this place and so far working with Jeff and Jed at Green Brier Games has been fantastic. Can’t wait to see what the final rapid-prototypes look like once they’re cleaned up and show them off (fingers crossed we’ll have them at Origins for those attending…and I’ll share photos as soon as I have them).

“So, those are really awesome looking, and RPG game aid miniatures is a cool idea, but what does this mean for Sprawl Gangers?” It means that we can potentially have an end in sight for production. However, this does not mean we’ll suddenly see Sprawl Gangers by Gen Con. Remember, this is about taking it slow and then appropriately spinning up to the type of production that Sprawl Gangers will require. This will ensure that the game gets the quality miniatures it deserves, while also helping to ensure that once we announce that “this is the date”, we’ll be able to hit it and support it.

Thanks to everyone that have continued to wait patiently for this update. It’s perhaps further out than you’d like, but we are still completely committed to getting this game out and ensuring that not only will it be well worth the wait but that we’ll be able to fully support the game.

Thanks!

Randall

Hostile Takeover: Designer Blog Part 2

Oy, chummers! Guess what time it is? Time for Mister Steele to tell you a little bit more about Shadowrun: Hostile Takeover! When last we met, I had told you the general idea behind the game—become a megacorporation and take over the city of Seattle by any means necessary. This time around, let’s look at who is going to be actually turning the wheels and manipulating the pieces of the puzzle.

First off are the Figureheads. Each player gets two of these pawns, both literal and narrative, to represent their influential agents driving, flying and sneaking around the city. The Figureheads travel to and from iconic Shadowrun Seattle locations from the roaring Renraku Omnidome to the smoky atmosphere of Dante’s Inferno. While visiting these locations the Figurehead spreads their megacorporation’s money and influence around town, vying for control over the locations themselves as well as recruiting shadowrunners and hiring Wage Slaves.

Controlling map locations is a key element to the game itself. This is measured by a limited number of Territory Tokens that each player has to spread around; where they have the most tokens they have the most control. Figureheads will be zooming around the board wining, dining and bribing the city of Seattle in order for their megacorporation to create and maintain a stranglehold upon it. Some locations will be more important than others, and players will quickly decide what Influence battles are worth waging—or whose side to back in battles already waging.

While they are planting their figurative flags in the real estate, megacorporations will begin to put together their plans and the teams to complete them. Shadowrunners from all walks of the trade can be hired on to be part of their machinations. The shadowrunners are drawn from a deck of many different personalities; some of which Shadowrun fans will recognize. Putting teams together with the likes of Rigger X and Ethernaut along with new faces like Aargh and Twitch, important Missions can be undertaken to gain power and resources—or vicious Schemes can knock down the competition a peg or three. We’ll talk more on Missions and Schemes in a future blogpost, but rest assured they are a HUGE part of Hostile Takeover.

If Shadowrunners are the tools with which a megacorp manipulates the world, Wage Slaves are the furnishings of the home and the armor it wears for protection. Hiring on a staff of “regular” agents like Mister Johnsons, Security staff and even putting the Mayor on the payroll adjusts the megacorporation itself. They help keep the megacorp safe from outside attack, but also grant special benefits like additional movement for Figureheads, more control over who goes when, and the number of employees a team can have. While not as necessary as a Shadowrunner team to take over Seattle, trying to do so without Wage Slaves would be a helluva uphill climb.

So basically, while you are moving your Figureheads around the map trying to build a powerbase, your opponents are going to do the same. You know what they say about big fish in a small pond… well, in Hostile Takeover, you are all going to be sharks. Your Shadowrunners, Wage Slaves and all the things they do for you will your teeth.

Next time, maybe we’ll look at exactly how you will be taking bites out of the city—and each other!

Good gaming to you all,

Bryan C.P. Steele

Shadowrun Fifth Edition is Now Available for Hero Lab!


The wait is over – Shadowrun 5th Edition is now available within Hero Lab! Battle for survival in the Sixth World, with rules for character creation, combat, rigging, magic, Matrix hacking, and more!

You can purchase Hero Lab on our webstore for $29.99, which includes one game system of your choice. If you’re already a Hero Lab user, you can add Shadowrun 5th Edition to your license for only $20.00.

Read Full Article.

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.

Shadowrun 5th Edition for Hero Lab Releasing May 23rd

Excerpt from the Lone Wolf Development website:

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+.

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.

 

 

Hostile Takeover: Designer Blog Part 1

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

Sneak Preview: Crafting the Cover for STOLEN SOULS

Crafting a cover for Shadowrun goes rarely the same way twice. Sometimes the magic happens organically, sometimes its the a wonderful recipe combining a variety of ingredients, and sometimes you just need to hit it with napalm. When it came to crafting the title image for Stolen Souls the recipe included all three.

It all started with a plan…

I had an idea in mind that I finally wanted to have the legendary Raven Mimura bring the characters to life. Raven crafted some of my all time favorite character images from the Fourth Edition era, and his amazing character images infuse a range of intensity and storytelling that is among the very best in the industry. I’d long wanted to put him on a cover and as a huge fan of Shadowrun, he was glad for his shot at it.

Next we needed the details, so I tasked Jason Hardy with designing a set of notes that would allow Raven to really work his magic. Jason is a huge fan of Raven’s so he worked up a description for a character wizard to sink his teeth into, which in this case were the frayed ends of forced insanity caused by the dangers in Stolen Souls. Here were the original art notes:

    Setting: Interior hallway of a corporate office. Should be a nice place, with dark wood doors, brass wall sconces, beige walls, padded carpet, that sort of thing. As we get farther in the background, some of the walls look like they have been slashed with an axe…because they have been.

    The focus of the scene is on an executive running down the hallway (toward the viewer) at a full tilt. He is wearing a business suit and tie. His tie is slightly loosened. He is carrying a fire axe. It looks like some of his swings with the axe have been somewhat wild and have cut into his pants, so the lower part of them is looking a bit shredded. His facial expression should be very crazed, to a scary extent—like, say, Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

    Behind him is a runner team. They have been sent to extract him, but they had no idea just how far gone his mind is. They are supposed to take him alive, so they cannot just take him down. They are running after him—we should be able to see a female ork street samurai with a large stun baton, a male dwarf mage getting ready to throw a spell down the hallway, and a female elf shooter lining up a shot with a dart rifle. This team should look like the type you would trust to do a corporate run—not too crazy looking, professional and all, but still looking like shadowrunners.

Raven’s characterizations were right on target from the get go and he did an amazing job bringing these to life.

With those characters in place I then handed off the image to Victor Moreno to build the corporate setting around these characters. Victor has delivered some over-the-top amazing work for Shadowrun settings (like the upcoming Shadowrun: Crossfire box cover) so I tasked him with designing a background which showcased the scene and reinforced Raven’s storytelling. The heavily tilted ‘ground’ reinforced the unbalanced state of the foreground character’s state of mind, and wood panel color palette really sets off the characters nicely.

All told the collaborative result just goes to show how great a team we have here on Shadowrun, and the awesomeness of letting specialists play to their strengths. It’s a great image and does an excellent job illustrating the state of mind one risks in the Sixth World.

Brent Evans
Art Director

Get your Shadowrun fiction fix with Sail Away, Sweet Sister!

New Shadowrun fiction is on sale now for your immediate consumption! It’s got hungry vampires, sardonic spirits, Anne Ravenheart, and so much more! Featuring Thomas McAllister, the main character of Another Rainy Night, the story is an exploration of shadowy deeds and dark desires–just what we like to see in Shadowrun! And as part of the Enhanced Fiction line, it comes with game statistics and rules for the main characters. If you buy the PDF version, the stats are right in the document. If you buy the ePub or Kindle version, you can get the stats for free right here. Or I guess you could just get the stats for free–but you’d be missing out on a great story!

Sail Away, Sweet Sister is available at the following outlets: The Battleshop has a bundle with the PDF, ePub, and mobi versions all bundled together; so does DriveThruRPG. Alternately, you can get the Kindle version at Amazon, and it will be coming soon to the Barnes & Noble online store–watch this space for the link!

Here are some more details if for some reason you haven’t already run out and grabbed it:

Monsters of the Shadows

Thomas McCallister’s area of expertise—the virus that turns metahumans into flesh-eating monsters—has taken him into some dark corners of the Sixth World. When he came face to face with the serial murderer known as the Mealtime Killer, he had hoped that a particularly dark chapter of his life had come to a close. But when night falls in the sprawls of the world, blood is still being shed, and people are still dying. Another killer is still out there, one that needs to be found and stopped, but the challenge McAllister is about to face is one he never could have anticipated. His resolve will be tested in ways he never anticipated in his darkest nightmares.

Sail Away, Sweet Sister builds on the events of Another Rainy Night, taking another dark turn down the streets of the Sixth World to face the monsters that lurk there. Along with a full short story, it contains game statistics for the major characters in the work, as well as spells, gear, and other game information that allows you can drop the people from this story right into your Shadowrun game (stats are included in the PDF version and will be made available as a free PDF that ePub/Kindle buyers can download).

Sail Away, Sweet Sister is dual-statted, meaning it can be used with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition or Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

Run & Gun available now for PDF purchase, print pre-order!

The previews have all been posted. The ramp-up is all done. The time is here. Run & Gun, the core combat book for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition is now available for PDF purchase and print pre-order (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG). And when we say print pre-order, we have a load of options for you, since along with the regular edition, we’re also releasing a limited edition of the book! Following on the look of the Shadowrun, Fifth Edition limited editions, this will feature a red leather cover with an embossed illustration of some of the weapons from the book.

So what do you get in Run & Gun? Well, the previews will give you a good taste, but here are some highlights: A monofilament chainsaw. Three laser weapons. Full-color illustrations of dozens of firearms, including the Savalette Guardian and the Ares Executioner. Fashion armor, mil-spec armor, and the deceptive murder armor. Group maneuvers in combat. Called shots on specific body locations. Information on using explosives in cars for assassinations. And so much more!

The graphic below outlines the bundles available at the Battleshop; below that is the summary text of the book if you need more information. Enjoy!

Nothing Is Free

Guns and ammo cost nuyen. Mastering martial arts takes time. And learning how to use explosives without blowing yourself up takes patience and a steady hand. These weapons and more are out there, waiting for you. You have the chance to use them to become deadlier, faster, more dangerous than the next guy—and more dangerous than you were yesterday. You’ll have to pay the price to get what you want, but this is the Sixth World. Don’t you always?

Run & Gun is a combat core rulebook for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, containing more weapons, more armor, more modifications, and more game options such as martial arts and unit tactics. Explosives, survival gear, specialized techniques—they’re all here! Break the book open and prepare to raise your game!

Crossfire At The Printers!

I think that’s worth saying again. Shadowrun: Crossfire is officially at the printers!!! My head does it feel so good to say that.

Why all the delays? Well, as I mentioned in a previous blog, we got a little carried away in our excitement and enthusiasm for all of the awesome-sauce games we want to publish for Shadowrun. While the roleplaying game will always remain near and dear to our hearts, the universe is what makes it sing. And it’s high time that universe was experienced through a variety of ways, from card games to board games and more. Additionally, we tried hard—so very hard, across many months—to see if we couldn’t print this game domestically. But ultimately we finally had to admit defeat and print it overseas.

We’ve used those delays to good effect, though. Going to print simultaneously with the core box is a Demo Kit (we used this last year at Gen Con and Origins, and we’ll be using it for various conventions in the future). Every retailer that orders a set number of boxes (the exact details are still being worked on) will receive a free Demo Kit to help push play in their stores.

On top of that, Character Expansion Pack 1 is also heading to print. It includes 20 Character Cards (with new art), 1 each of the Basic Cards with new art, and a full pack of character upgrade stickers found in the core box. It’s a quick $14.99 purchase that instantly expands your play and campaign options.

Finally, we’ve got a unique Character Card promo with art by the brilliant Echo Chernik that will go out with every single purchase of the first printing of the box. (The exact nature of what the character is … well, we’ll share that sometime in the future.)

“So, it’s at print—what does that mean?” I’m sure that’s the very next question. Well, in a nutshell, this is what’s going to happen (some of you are aware of this process, but sharing it for those who don’t):

1. They’ll send us digital proofs of everything to review and we’ll either approve as is or ask for some tweaks before approval. (This process is already underway with a swath of files already approved.)

2. Then they’ll print out physical proofs of everything (including huge card sheets for all the cards) and ship them to us. It’ll take several hours to carefully go over absolutely everything to ensure the colors are correct, card backs are with correct card fronts, all pieces are there, and so on. Those should be in hand within the next two weeks; obviously we’ll share photos when they’re here.

3. A complete white sample of everything will be built and shipped; generally simultaneously with the materials above. That allows us to see the quality of the paper being used, to make sure everything fits where it should and the box quality is solid, and so on.

In both instances above, we usually ship everything back after the review, so there are some additional days in shipping of materials on both ends.

4. The printer says the manufacturing/printing will take 55 days. I’ve seen that swing by almost 14 days (almost always to the longer).

5. Then the entire print run will be boxed up, palleted and placed on a ship; couple of days of work there. It generally takes 30 days to transit to a US port. It’s another week (provided there are no customs hold ups, which happens about 1/10th of the time) to transit to the warehouse. Then another two to three weeks to be fully processed and shipped out to retail stores all over the world.

Where does that leave us? Well, if you do the math, it means it could be anywhere from mid July all the way into September. That’s why we don’t provide release dates until it’s at least sitting in a US port, and usually not even then; it’s much better to provide that information once the game is in our warehouse. That way once we say “The Street Date is X”, we know it will hit that date.

Will it be at the big conventions? Again, hard to say at this point. We’re hoping to have some limited advanced quantities available at Origins and then stacks-to-the-rafters at Gen Con. But we’ll need to get much closer to those two dates before we’ll know for certain.

Now, at this point we need to point out that we are well aware of today’s date, which means people might take this post with a troll-sized grain of salt. We completely understand how that would be the case. All we can do is share a preview card our crack staff recently put together, and present it to you this way—either the Character Card presented here is completely genuine, or this announcement is. We’ll let you make the call as to which you think is real.

Or just download the PDF.

As we move toward launch day for the game, we’ve got a variety of digital initiatives planned. Obviously we’ll continue to showcase art and cards on our Tumblr. We’re looking at producing multiple promotional videos that players can view and share, as well as a “How To Play” animation video. We’re also planning a “Digital Shadowrun” that’ll involved the community in digging out cards and rules, and perhaps getting people started in playing. A Strategy & Tactics Guide … the full demo kit … the full rules … lots of plans … but we’ll hold more specifics of the when and where until we start pushing things out.

Thanks to everyone that have so patiently waited for this great game. It’ll be well worth the wait for the endless hours of Sixth World card-game goodness coming your way!

Randall

The Shadowrun community mourns the passing of Steven A. Tinner

I recently heard that Steven A. Tinner, co-host of the Critical Glitch podcast, gamemaster to the stars, and all-around excellent guy, passed away. So I’m going to talk a little bit about him now.

At Origins Game Fair in 2012, we at Catalyst learned we were going to have the chance to have Felicia Day of Geek and Sundry play a game of Shadowrun. Naturally we wanted her to have as good an experience as possible, so the current conventions coordinator, Steven “Bull” Ratkovich, was tasked with selecting the right gamemaster for the job.

He chose Tinner, and he made an excellent choice. Tinner had been Bull’s gamemaster for a long time, throwing him into the shadows, making life difficult for his characters, occasionally blowing him up, but always making sure all the players had an awesome time.

As a gamemaster, he had all the tools. The rules knowledge, the storytelling ability, the characterization, the enthusiasm—it was all there. Even better, he wanted his players to have fun. Sure, he was tough and would put them through the wringer, but that’s what gave them the stories they talked about years after the games happened. And that’s what happened almost any time you talked to someone who played in a game Tinner ran—they’d tell you a story about the trouble they went into, how fragged up everything got, and how much fun they had.

At conventions, Tinner was one of many great Shadowrun gamemasters who found a way to accommodate any players who came. If people wanted to game, he wanted to make that happen. When he wasn’t running a game, he was an enthusiastic player, throwing himself into his character with energy and glee and daring everyone else at the table to keep up.

Recently, he joined with Tim Patrick to co-host the Critical Glitch podcast covering all things Shadowrun. Listening gives you pure, unfiltered Tinner—smart, opinionated, funny, well informed, and a good interviewer and listener. Quite simply, he had a voice worth listening to.

I knew him through his Shadowrun life, but that wasn’t the only part of his life. He was a family man, active in his faith, and a person of great kindness and compassion. In short, he was the kind of guy we need many more of.

I always look forward to convention season, especially to the chance to walk into the Shadowrun gaming area and see old friends. The fact that Tinner won’t be in that room is a very sad thought; the fact that he will be cackling with glee somewhere as players in that room run into dire situations brings some comfort. I just wish I’d be able to hear it.

Thanks for the laughs, great runs, and good times, Tinner.

Run & Gun preview #4 up with tactical tips!

Say, that there Run & Gun book  we’ve been talking about from time to time is getting awfully close to electronic release. But before it gets there, we’ve got one more preview for you–this time, you get a look at the Tactics & Tools chapter, which is full of info on how your shadowrunners can work together to get the best results, such as not getting their face filled with flying hot lead. It’s available now at the Battleshop and DriveThruRPG-enjoy!

Check out some Shadowrun: Dragonfall reviews, won’t you?

While we’ve been working away on many projects here at Shadowrun central (we use that term because it sounds better than “the desk by my window”), including the forthcoming Run & Gun, we can’t help but notice the stream of alerts making its way into our mailbox courtesy of Google telling us of the various reviews of Shadowrun: Dragonfall that are filling the Internet. Just the other day, we saw a link to PC Gamer that said “I’m going to remember Dragonfall for a long, long time. When the topic of great RPG stories comes up, I’ll mention it in the same breath as Dragon Age or Knights of the Old Republic.”

Then yesterday, when we were editing the metaplanar weirdness that is the forthcoming Aetherology e-book, we came across this from Kotaku, compellingly headlined “Dragonfall Is the Shadowrun I Know and Love.” And on top of that, Hardcore Gamer said “This is a developer that understands and loves their source material, which very evidently comes out in their work. Consequently, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is another home run for the up-and-coming studio.”

In fact, the volume of alerts coming in started to present a problem. We could just keep finding money quote after money quote, like where Game Informer said “The strongly established Shadowrun fiction is a joy to explore, whether you’re familiar with its intricacies or you’re new to the universe,” or Gamespot saying “The action and storytelling merge beautifully in one memorable experience after another,” or Destructoid’s opinion that “If you enjoyed your first taste of Shadowrun, then Dragonfall should be an immediate purchase.” And we thought about how we could keep doing this for a while, but then we remembered one of the things we like more than reading nice things about Shadowrun is playing Shadowrun. So we’re going to go play.

Crossfire Character Cards Preview

Thought we’d share a slew of pre-final Character Cards for Shadowrun: Crossfire. Not all of these will appear in the base Crossfire set; some will go into the base set, others will be included in a Character Card Expansion Pack 1.

If you’d like a close-up look at one of the Character Cards, check out our Tumblr.

Run & Gun preview #3 up! Check out some of the combat options!

Another Run & Gun preview has spun out into the wilds of the Internet—particularly the Battleshop and DriveThruRPG—and if you want a preview of some of the combat options this book is going to offer you, this is a preview you definitely want to check out. Especially since, like the rest of the previews, it’s free! Just so you know, the full chapter from which this is excerpted is nearly 40 pages long and has some sweet martial arts stuff in it, along with offensive options, defensive options, and more!

Run & Gun preview #2 now available! Catch an overview of the whole book!

I guess it’s time for another Run & Gun preview, so we’ve got one posted! This time we’ve posted the entire introductory section to give you an idea of what you’ll be able to find in the book and how it can be used. It’s totally free, and available at either the Battleshop or DriveThruRPG, so I can’t conceive of a single reason to not go out and get it. Enjoy!

Run & Gun preview #1 now available!

Did you know that Run & Gun, the Shadowrun, Fifth Edition combat core rulebook is coming soon? And that it will have new weapons, armor, explosives, combat and defense options, martial arts, and more? Did you know the art crew has been doing their usual bang-up job to make things look especially awesome and brutal? Well, all that’s been happening, but we don’t want you to take our word for it. Go check out the first preview for the book instead! It’s available for free at the Battleshop and DriveThruRPG. Remember that the usual preview caveats apply–proofing is still ongoing, so what you’re looking at likely isn’t the final text. But it should give you a taste of what’s to come–in this case, a taste of the armor section! Check it out!

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