At about 1:35 am on Tuesday, January 14 a friend and I finally came to a realization which explained what had thwarted the speed and grace of many a gaming session for the last, oh, five years: Both of us had completely different perceptions as to exactly what a C Security Rating area looked like. My friend perceived the area as consisting mostly of small single family homes mixed in with the occasional high rise and office building with virtually no regular foot traffic and the occasional abandoned structure. Take away the abandoned building and you’ll have exactly my perception of what a B area looks like. My perception of a C area revolved around rowhouse apartments, high rise apartment buildings, the occasional cop racing through with sirens blaringg. Generally your typical city oriented blue collar living environment.

It wasn't long before another individual chimed in that he never really thought the security rating had anything to do with setting and simply reflected the odds of you or your house getting robbed, the presence of drugs or gangs, or just all around crime. The more I think about it, the more I believe this theory is the most correct.

But the point is that none of us had any idea what was going through each other’s head as far as setting and mood was concerned which was the direct cause of many a misunderstanding. I like to keep things moving and try to spend as little time as possible describing the actual surroundings, often taking extreme shortcuts by describing a tiny bit of the area and giving the security rating in the hopes that the player’s thoughts would align with mine. I see now that it was similar to attempting to get somebody to picture an apple in their heads by simply describing it as fruit.

A brainstorming session quickly ensued as we all wracked our brains in an attempt to figure out the best way to align our perceptions of setting and mood without necessitating the need for lengthy, detailed descriptions. Eventually we came to the following conclusions:

Read the sourcebooks

I don’t have too much of an aversion towards Shadowrun sourcebooks but many of my players would rather be shot through their eyeballs with a crossbow bolt than read one of them cover to cover. I’m still astonished that, even after all this time, NONE of my players have ever read the Seattle Sourcebook all the way through. I could tell them that their run will be based in Hell’s Kitchen and most will nod slowly in feigned acknowledgment and arrive at the cracked, cooling lava bed in their Westwinds which , generally, are not lava bed oriented vehicles.

In addition to simply informing a player what is where city sourcebooks also give you a glimpse as to the mood of certain areas and how they should act when they get there. Lets say they have to go to an imaginary district called Fwup located in an imaginary sourcebook. If the players fail to read the entry regarding the district they won’t know that A: It is run by big mean trolls, B: Anybody wearing the color mauve is executed without trial, C: The entry contains the following comment:

>>>>>[Yeah my brother went there the other day only he didn’t know that on Tuesday anybody entering the area has to keep one finger stuck up their nose at all times and, well, my brother went in there with BOTH fingers up his nose and the trolls took it as a personal affront so they hung him by his genitals from a flag pole.]<<<<<

-Kruddlemunk (01:32:55-01/22/59)

In other words, read the books.

Media

A good way to get everybody thinking along the same lines about what everything looks like is to, well, show them what everything looks like. You can use movies, drawings, photographs...anything. In preparation for future games I’m compiling a video of clips from various movies which contain Shadowrun like settings (I’ll be drawing heavily on Bladerunner). I’m also piecing together a scrapbook of images found throughout various sourcebooks as a hand out of sorts to be given to my players before the game. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know what a public communications/ATM terminal looks like even though it’s right on the cover of the damn rulebook.

Field Trip

By far the most effective way to get the feel as to how a city looks and functions is to go to an actual city and drive or wander around. Even if the area you’re in doesn’t exactly represent the area you’re trying to describe you can “tweak” the surroundings a little by adding comments such as “Throw in freaky clothing, narrow the street, break out the lights and expose some weapons and what we have here is a C Rated commercial district.”