I've decided to take a break from manipulating gamemastering philosophies to the point that they no longer resemble anything even remotely connected to a "concept" and have devoted this writing to several paragraphs of somewhat egotistical Blackjack's Shadowrun Page related drivel.

When my page first went up in March of 1996 I had no idea it would be as successful as it has become and, even more importantly, I had no idea it would eat up as much of my time as it has. But, luckily, I usually have a lot of time to spend on it. Sure I occasionally let one of my weekly updates slide, but I usually have good reason for this such as I was too lazy to update the page that week. But, all in all, I believe I've compiled a decent amount of quality stuff, some of which actually makes sense.

People often remark on the amount of material on the page with nice, pleasant messages submitted through my feedback form, many of which, mysteriously, do not possess a return address. Here's a sample:

Dear Blackjack,
Do you have a life?

Dear Blackjack,
You have a large amount of stuff on your page.  I can only conclude that you have no life.

Dear Fuckhead,
Your page has lots of shit.  Fucking tons of it.  You must be a real fucking loser you miserable piece of shit!

Ha! Ha! I love you wacky people! But, seriously, I also receive a fair amount of positive feedback which more than makes up for the occasional bash I receive from some putrid little mutant child who finds time to stop by as he passes from smut page to smut page, looking at females he will never in a million years get within fifteen miles of.

But this does raise an interesting question: Why do I have time to create so much stuff for my web page? The answer is simple: I don't watch television. Ever. People spend more time in two days watching the tube than I do in a week working on my Shadowrun page. So not only do I have time to work on my page but I also have time to respond to the honest and coherent questions I receive from my feedback form. Sort of the self proclaimed "Dear Abby" of Shadowrun on the web, I receive questions regarding rules, ideas, GM problems (A lot of GM problems) and the occasional inquiry as to how old I am. To answer the last one, I'm 347.

Not only does this information exchange give me an opportunity to solidify my own SR ideas and help others, it also give me the chance to spend hours attempting to decipher the occasional message that rolls in written in complex forms of Shadoweese. I've never been a big fan of Shadowrun's alternative language and thus rarely use it. But it appears that many people out there in Shadowland actually think they're in Shadowland and insist on writing cryptic messages like this one:

Hoi, Cummerwalken!
I was jandering down the matrix and said to myself, "Frag!  I got a question about the possibility of spelltossing trogs in the etheral who also sideline in the wax biz!".  So I decided to pass on this wizzer question hoping your head gear is in order so you could help me out of.....

This gets to be even more fun when somebody located way the hell across a large ocean in some place like England decides to send me a message that looks like they took elements of slang out of the London Sourcebook completely at random:

Hoi from Brum, Home
Just snaggin C-Net from my jam hole in the Smoke, sniping baggies with my baldrich after a slamming proff opp in a gopping sec of orbital when this gopi gator selling rags gets me aggro big time when this dino in his shazzy jammy makes a slamming snag of my hilda home....

And if this weren't bad enough, some people insist on writing in both Shadoweese AND internet shorthand resulting in messages that look like somebody spilled alphabet soup into their computer:

PMFJ,
Chummer IMHO jander SWEUB :( half AK-98 wizzer  and happening :D* up in :O-<- the  warehouse FUAGEK SNUPPLE tweed jacket HEFY? chummer, =>8-<># I was ROTFL!

And I don't even want to TALK about the decker nuts who like to write in binary. (By the way, that last emoticon is Uncle Sam after getting bit in the rear end by a badger.)

But, all in all, I get some pretty good mail and, hopefully, provide some half way decent answers to SR questions. These questions range from simple inquiries..

How many sides should my six sided die have?

..to more complex questions resembling something you might find on an honors Physics exam:

So one of my players' samurai in a souped up Brumby was chasing a gang member on a Scorpion when both of them took a sharp right at 90 kph down a side street while the sammy fired his vehicular assault cannon from 45.2 meters away and the gang member let loose with a heavy pistol round from a Manhunter.  Now the sammy was injured with light damage but also had pain killers, mag vision, and wired reflexes while the gang member was moderately damaged but had the advantage of a level 2 control rig and had recently won the Seattle combat biking championships.  My question is: If both are traveling at top speed and firing at a mutual angel of 45 degrees which one will reach Redmond first and what speed will he be traveling once he gets there?

The variety of my responses ranges greatly, some being rather simple..

Drop a cow on him.

..while others are more thorough:

Drop TWO cows on him.

User questions and comments are also the main way I get ideas for my Guides To Bitter Gamemasteing as well as the articles found right here in Blackjack's corner. The way I get ideas for and write the more fictional material found on my page is a bit more complicated but usually ends up following the same basic procedure:

1. Smoke a cigarette.
2. Smoke a cigarette.
3. Check my E-Mail.
4. Smoke a cigarette.
5. Smoke a cigarette.
6. Check my E-Mail
7. Mix myself a drink.
8. Smoke a cigarette.
9. Smoke a cigarette.
10. Mix myself another drink.
11. Sit down and mentally prepare myself for writing fictional material.
12. Mix myself another drink.
13. Smoke a cigarette.
14. Smoke a cigarette.
15. Steal an idea out of Newsweek.

Of course it takes practice and hard work to establish such an efficient system but if you're devoted to the task at hand it is possible to produce two, maybe even three pages of writing a day until such time as you keel over and die from lung cancer and a failed liver.

Well, that's about all for now and I'll leave you with my top ten pet peeves about running a "viewer interactive" Shadowrun web page. I'd like to thank everybody who has visited my page, E-Mailed me comments and threats, and made the game of Shadowrun one of the best damn roleplaying systems on the face of the earth.

BLACKJACK'S TOP TEN WEB ANNOYANCES

10. People who submit an entry into my Player Database but don't have an E-Mail address. (I, personally, am not telepathic.)

9. People who ask me if they can submit stuff to be placed on my page. (Nobody ever reads the Credits and Other Important Stuff, page. I guess nobody notices that the names/addresses on every single of the writings are mine, either.)

8. People who ask me how old I am and what I look like. (As if I'd tell the truth.)

7. People who correct my spelling of Renreku. (I also tend to spell Aztlan as Azlan and continually identify Seattle's Lone Star Security as the ancient and defunct SPD. Thanks for the news, buddy.)

6. People who tell me I should use "frag" instead of "fuck" in my writings. (I now have conclusive proof that all of this E-Mail is actually coming from the same individual: Pat Buchanan.)

5. People who send vicious E-Mail through my mailform but don't include a return address. (Pussies.)

4. People who ask me a question through my mailform and include something that, at 3:00 in the morning, looks a lot like an real E- Mail address, such as "sorry@i.dont.have.an.address.yet", causing me to write up a three page response which I send and which immediately gets bounced back, never to be seen by anybody but myself.

3. People who find the need to inform me that they A: Conducted a search for Blackjack the card game, B: Came across my page, C: Don't understand what it's about, and D: Would like me to explain it to them. (My typical response: ("Take Bladerunner, Conan The Barbarian, The X-Files, Strange Days and an atomic bomb, throw them into a blender, add some steroids and what you get is Shadowrun.")

2. People who ask me for weapons lists. (I swear I get about four or five requests a week for this. Apparently people need a refresher course on the concept of a "copyright".)

And the number one annoyance:

This only happened once but somebody actually used the Shadowrun Player Directory Entry Form to mail me the following question: "How do I enter myself into the Shadowrun Player Directory?". Sometimes you have to wonder.....