Once again it’s time for Blackjack to shrug off his devotion to supplying you, the reader, with inaccurate, sometimes unhealthy, gamemastering advice and instead present material that’s only vaguely relevant to the world of Shadowrun. Ready? Here we go:

Q: I recently rewrote the entire Shadowrun rule system. Instead of using armor ratings, I use Armor Class and I got rid of that pesky condition monitor and replaced it with something completely ingenious: Hit Points. Also, in my games you don’t work for nuyen, you go off on wonderful adventures in vast, far away lands in an attempt to find treasure and items with names like Keldor’s Jockstrap Of Glory. I got rid of karma, too, and replaced it with a system whereby you climb through Levels of development by gaining Experience Points for killing stuff. So, what do you think?

A: I think you should find a place to hide before anybody has a chance to shoot you.

Q: What kind of music do you play during your runs?

A: I prefer to start out light, perhaps a little Celene Dion or Barry Manilow, and then move up to harder music such as Rod Stewart. Occasionally, if I’m feeling frisky, I’ll throw in a little Whitney Houston, although it’s likely that my CD player will have committed suicide by this point in the evening.

Q: I want to start a Shadowrun Page. Do you have any suggestions?

Well, one thing I’ve always found annoying about many pages is their lack of frames. If you create a page, make sure you create a grid of about 10 to 15 frames of various size, none of which do anything a simple table wouldn’t normally take care of. Make sure you use really, really large font sizes so people viewing the page on a 14” monitor will be able to enjoy the excitement of scrolling over every time they want to read the end of a sentence. Also, be sure to fill your page with at least 4.2 megabytes worth of badly compressed graphics, all of which have been stolen from various FASA publications. Be sure to add the following disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that this page, and all aspects contained within, are completely of my own creation and have absolutely nothing to do with FASA corporation. Even if my page consists of 1 part Shadowrun material and 50 parts links, it should be known that this Shadowrun page, even if it only vaguely resembles a Shadowrun page, was not generated by the great minds of FASA who are currently busy re-releasing the 15th edition of the Grimoire as opposed to writing new sourcebooks for stuff we need, like something explaining what the hell's going on in Tokyo.

Q: Is current day Philadelphia anything like the cities of 2050?

A: Well, having lived in Philly for a good 3 years (thus qualifying me as an expert), I can safely say that I haven’t had much time to think about your question because I’m too busy dodging bullets.

Ha, ha! That’s a little joke. Life in current day Philly isn’t anything like the world of 2050, unless you take into account the time a Mafia enforcer decided to deter police interest in his activities by tossing grenades into precinct stations. Or the unsaid ‘at least one gunshot a minute’ rule in North Philadelphia. Or the fact that most of North Philly looks like it’s been bombed. Or the fact that many cars have little holes about the size of a bullet stitched across their fenders. Or the time I was riding the subway and a guy, who just moments before was calmly sitting in his seat, decided he didn’t want to be in the subway anymore so, as the Orange Line rumbled down the rails, he made numerous attempts to kick out various windows in the car.

But, other than stuff like that, Philly’s nothing like the cities of 2050.

Q: How many security guards should I have protecting a fast food restaurant?

A: Well, it depends. If it’s a small, independently owned restaurant you’ll probably want to post somebody at the front door in order to delay any incoming intruders for a good .5 seconds. If the restaurant is a franchise owned partially by Renraku, you’ll want three guards at every door, two bodyguards for the manager, a hellhound to two patrolling the preparation area, five SmartSentry medium machine guns mounted in hidden locations around the ceiling, landmines in the parking lot, and a grizzled ex-mercenary named ‘Alf’ to guard the toilet paper in the bathroom.

Q: Do people still use toilet paper in 2050?

A: Yes they do, although numerous attempts to create an alternative system of hygiene have been tried in the past, all of which produced undesirable results. The first attempt was made by a now defunct Hyperbum, who created the Bumomatc, an aerosol device which, unfortunately, had terminal problems with its pressure regulator. The project was scrapped after numerous customers experienced ‘pressure related elevation problems’, which is corp speak for ‘it shot them off the toilet and into the ceiling’. Ares Macrotech’s ButtLazer 4000 met with results that I really can’t go into without first ingesting large quantities of alcohol. All I’ll say is that it gave new meaning to the words ‘rump roast’.

Q: Are there such things as Awakened bunny rabbits?

A: Of course. Bunny mutations range from the docile Great Planes Fluff Bunny, which has completely lost its body and exists strictly as an astral cotton ball, to the mean and nasty Outback Muscle Bunny of Northern Australia, which grows to a height of 18 feet and which can project acid laden fireballs nearly two kilometers. Just the poop of the Muscle Bunny can weigh up to .5 metric tons.

Q: Aren’t you glad there’s going to be a 3rd Edition of Shadowrun?

A: Thrilled.