Shadowrun Pub
General => Reviews => Topic started by: Jester on February 03, 2007, 05:03:54 AM
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Great movie. Loved it. In a nutshell without giving anything away a mob snitch jumps bail and now the FBI have to get to him before the hitmen do. Chaos and hilarity ensue :)
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Yeah, I was suprised by how much I liked this movie- especially when the redneck neo-nazis embarrassed me by reminding me of the way my friends and thier runners act.
It was sad- superfast guy with two swords, and crazy boy with a chainsaw... they could have been in my runner group and no one would have noticed!!!!
I also have to say, I was suprised at Ben Affleck's role. He did a great job.
;D
-kv
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yea he did :) Which one was Jason Biggs? Was he the bail bondsman that had the beard and got hypothermia?
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Jason Biggs? The american pie guy? According to IMDB, he wasn't in this movie.
I liked Martin Henderson, who played the guy who lived and had hypothermia (he was also the main character in Torque).
The IMDB entry is here: http://imdb.com/title/tt0475394/
-kv
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I;m waiting for the DVD for this one, but I certainly want to see it.
Gabriel
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ah, my buddy musta saw jason bateman and thought it said biggs
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Yeah... it was weird- someone had put a comment that Jason Bateman stole the show... but No. He didn't.
Aside from some sort of creepy weirdness and sex fetishes being all over the place, he didn't do... anything.
I thought Ben Affleck did a great job. And the conversation he has with the psycho killer guy made me laugh... I can't believe he kept a straight face for it.
-kv
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lol, no kidding. I woulda lost it
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I can't believe that he did that whole thing without cracking a smile. I wonder how many takes it took. ;D
I'm still impressed that those psychotic hillbilly guys were able to portray my running group without ever having met them. ;D
-kv
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Maybe you should have all of your players watch some Shadowrunneresque movies so they can kind of see what the game is supposed to be like. The Itallian Job is a good one, so is the Hiest (I think it was the Hiest, with Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brano).
Gabriel
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those hillbillies reminded me of my Cyberpunk game. How they got the security uniforms is like something my group woulda done
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I still think my "false labor in the bathroom" was a stroke of genius in that game. And your "blessing" of the pregnancy was just too damn funny.
Gabriel
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hehe, thankyou :)
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I saw the ads for this and was torn.
It looked like it would be either really really good or all hype and total crap.
I'll have to check it out on dvd since you guys liked it so much.
and KV how DOES your runner group act?
do they not understand the genre, or?
have they seen Bladerunner? That might be a good mood setting for them. Of course Max Headroom (movie or series) might be a good thing too.
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And have then read Neuromancer by William Gibson for a really well-done cyberpunk world. In fact, I was shocked at how much of SR is a complete and total rip of Gibson's world, I mean even down to slang.
I would like to get my hands on a 1st edition SR core rulebook and see if he is credited as having developed the game.
Gabriel
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I would like to get my hands on a 1st edition SR core rulebook and see if he is credited as having developed the game.
He isn't, as far as I recall, however, since it bills itself as a Cyberpunk game, that rather goes without saying, really.
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Just curious about the licensing rights and all of that. When I say SR ripped off a TON of material, I'm not lieing. I was really shoked at how much of the jargon appears in SR canon books.
Gabriel
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Problem is that he pretty much made the genre. His works have been so thoroughly ripped off by an army of authors already that you'd be surprised if he realized he'd been quoted by something as insignificant as an RPG.
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I guess. I was just surprised.
Gabriel
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I was too, until I thought about it.
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Apparently Gibson hates Shadowrun with a passion, though, which I thought was odd. He says that they took his beautiful idea and bastardized it with the whole magic/elves thing... but that's what makes Shadowrun unique from the rest of the cyberpunk genre.
Anyway, my group tends to be a little muderous-crazy-psychotic-street-sam heavy, usually carrying things like dikoted katanas and axes, and stuff like that. Everyone loves Wired reflexes level 3, which means that if you don't have wired reflexes level 3, you don't get to go often in combat.
Another of my runner friends recently retired his sword-weilding character, to much applause (I was hoping he would change character types away from the psychotic street sam) so he made a guy with level 3 wires who shoots two grenade launchers at the same time.
The scene in that penthouse, where the three brothers cut up everyone with swords and chainsaws- that very well could have come from one of the shadowruns that I've been sad to be a part of. Of course, I was the mage, so I used my drive skill of 2 to ferry around the psychotic masses in a borrowed step-van. I rarely, if ever, get to cast any spells. I always use the prep time to summon elementals, though, so I now have like 4 of them. Which is nice.
-kv
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We hear your pain brother.
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I know you do- which is why I come to this pub. ;D
-kv
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good lord! They sound like a buncha rookies
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Well, they kind of are. My brothers and I have been playing for about 6 years or so. (I started earlier, with first edition, and then stopped playing, we all took it back up with DMZ, and they played second edition, and then we re-started when I got back from Australia in 2001 with 3rd edition)
The guy who plays the psychotic street sam- he's been playing with us off and on since about 2002. He took a break for a couple of years to get his heart ripped out in Minnesota, and then he came back and started playing with us again.
Pretty much everyone else has only joined our group in the last few years- my fiance, her cousin, my other RPG friends... they're all more recent additions, and they're suffering from transferring directly from D&D to Shadowrun, which is a hard enough transformation by itself, much less EVERYONE in the group being new at it.
My biggest problem is that even though I have like 5 years of experience on most of these guys, they outnumber me, so when we are trying to plan, there's my plan, and four other REALLY BAD PLANS, and usually we end up going with one of the really bad plans.
Or, more recently, we go with one of my plans, and halfway through prep, someone gets bored and then wanders into danger and messes things up.
-kv
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Sounds like Ruski needs to start smaking them down a bit. Have a Lone Star tactical squad show up with a drek-load neuro-stun X and gel rounds full of gamma-scopolomine. Most runners like you have are really into the body armor/guns/explosives angle and I would bet a fair few of them would be prepared for another group to take them alive. You could thin out the ranks and teach everyone a lesson at the same time.
Gabriel
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Actually, I'm hoping that this is one of those problems that will solve itself.
Last time we played, several people almost got killed in the Arcology, and Ruski was taking it pretty easy on us. I emphasized to all of them that next time it would be a lot more dangerous, and a few of those people like thier characters a little too much, so there is a good chance that they'll miss this event, just so thier characters "magically escape somehow!"
It would make the group quite a bit smaller, and smaller groups are easier to work with.
We'll see what happens.
-kv
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Good luck. And remember, if he wants to really have some fun with them, he could always have them taken alive and "recruited" by Deus.
Gabriel
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Bonus!
Dark Secret Flaw!
Experimental Cyberwear Flaw!
Cranial Bomb Flaw!
Boy, that just makes me warm and happy all over.
-kv
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Hard to keep a dark secret when you have brand new completely blue cyberoptics and fresh black tatoos on your arm.
Gabriel
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You could wear glasses... and a long-sleeve shirt.
-kv
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Yeah, because that's not obvious at all, is it? ;)
Gabriel
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With the amount of runners wearing smartshades and black trenchcoats... probably not.
-kv
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kid's got a point you know...
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Well, that's true. But in the Arcology? Who's trying to look wiz in THAT place? I figure everyone is just trying to get OUT, not look good doing it.
Gabriel
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what's wrong with looking good while running for your life?
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Well, you can stop to fix your hair if you want, but I'd rather just run like hell.
Gabriel
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fix your hair while running. Multi-task ;D
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lol. I wonder which dice pool you'd use for that?
Gabriel
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Hmmm... for 4th edition, your reaction and your "hair stylist" specalization. ;D
For 3rd edition, your Hair Stylist knowledge skill that you dumped points into to be funny.
-kv
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Those aren't dice pools. Jeez, aren't you supposed to know how this game works???
Gabriel
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Yeah I'm sure he does...perhaps he just misread what you typed....you know late night for KV and all!
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I don't know... Some of the stories I've heard about those games makes me wonder if we are talking about the same system sometimes. ;)
Gabriel
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Is 4th edition that bad?
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I've browsed over it, and I really don't like the feel of it. Way too anime for me. I honestly liked the feel onf 2nd Edition best, but got into 3rd Edition since it had come out at the time. Personally, I think they should have kept the tech curve stable in the game and not analogous of modern life. Wireless Matrix is just stupid and Augmented Reality was already a part of ALL sensory cybernetics.
But still, this has nothing to do with the movie...
Gabriel
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This is true, I agree with enjoying 2nd edition. I was very nervous about switching to 3rd edition, but I actually enjoy it. And you're very right this has nothing to do with the movie, in fact I haven't even seen Smokin Aces...but I WANNA SO BAD!!! I think it looks gangsta!
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The idea of several hit teams all after the same guy at the same time sounds like a fun movie.
Gabriel
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Yeah, it was pretty good. It also shows a bunch of different types of Shadowrunners- those who plan ahead (Ben Affleck is part of that group), runners who sneak in and get the lowdown on security before moving, those who sneak in with sniper cover... it was bad assed.
The ones that (shamefully) reminded me of my group were the ones who lit flares and sat in an elevator full of smoke until they got to the floor they were looking for, and then ran out with swords, chainsaws, and machetes to kill everyone. Psychopaths.
-kv
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Nice. Real covert.
Gabriel
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Darwin was a quack. The dumbest shadowrunners I know keep surviving mission after mission, as though the Gods are taking pity on these poor souls, while people that I know and like who are smart enough to conjugate verbs get mowed down by double-crosses.
It makes me sick that morons survive while the smart die off. At least, in Shadowrun.
-kv
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Just depends on the GM.
Gabriel
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It makes me sick that morons survive while the smart die off. At least, in Shadowrun.
-kv
to quote Arnold Judas Rimmer
"Everyone loves a bastard!"
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Darwin was a quack. The dumbest shadowrunners I know keep surviving mission after mission, as though the Gods are taking pity on these poor souls, while people that I know and like who are smart enough to conjugate verbs get mowed down by double-crosses.
It makes me sick that morons survive while the smart die off. At least, in Shadowrun.
-kv
I think he keeps them around for entertainment value
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Or sadism.
Gabriel
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lol, that too