Los Angeles is a glittering and decaying ruin. Rising sea levels and changing rain patterns have left the Los Angeles valley partially submerged. The rich have rebuilt and moved to higher ground, leaving hundreds of square kilometers to moulder. The inhabitants of these barrens and sacrifice zones do not officially exist, and their problems do not reach the trid sets of those in the suburbs and arcologies.
But there's something coming. A problem that no one will be able to ignore. You can feel the tension in the air, see the nervousness of the reporters. This town is going to burn. And you're involved.
Someone is trying to cash in. Someone is going to pay you a million nuyen for your involvement. And you don't even know what it is that you're supposed to do...
Shadowrun Horror
Shadowrun Horror is a board game for 2-8 players set in the Shadowrun Universe in the year 2072. It is heavily based on the game Arkham Horror, and this description assumes that you know how that game works.
Each player takes the roll of a Runner (Investigator), in their attempt to complete a run worth a million nuyen. Unfortunately, in the course of their legwork they uncover a Threat (Ancient One) that may destroy all of Los Angeles. Your Runner has Stamina and ID (ID replaces Sanity). If you run out of Stamina you are unconscious and transported to DocWagon Contract Hospital. If you run out of ID you are discovered and have to go to ground at the Safehouse. If either of these happen while you are at a Problem location you are missing in action and lose a turn. Your Runner has three sliders, that are Speed/Sneak, Fight/Caution, and Logic/Will.
The phases have been run up differently. Here they are:
1. Karma: essentially the Mythos Phase, you draw a Karma card, you resolve it. You place a Problem (gate) on the board with an Enemy (monster) or two depending upon the game size, you move Enemies and place a Tension Token (rift progress marker), and you resolve the text. Environments replace other environments, and furthermore an environment's text resolves before the Problem comes out. If a Problem comes down where there is already a Problem, you get a Vendetta (monster surge), and if a Problem comes down where there's an Exposé (seal) it bounces off with no effect unless it is a Coverup (gate burst), which are very rare. Every time a Problem actually shows up, you get a Doom Token, and the most common way for that to happen is with the Karma card having a Problem on it.
2. Upkeep: All Runners refresh all their cards. Then the First Player changes. From this point on, Runners may trade items. Then all Players take turns moving sliders and taking any special upkeep actions they have.
3. Movement: Each player takes turns taking their movement phase. During movement you get a number of movement points equal to your Speed. You can take Movement Phase actions before, during, or after moving. Whenever you move out of a location you encounter any Enemies there. If you sneak past them (or an Elusive Enemy sneaks past you), you get to the next space. If you fight them, you lose the rest of your movement points for the turn and can't get any more. Note that there is no longer a movement "action" that generates movement points, because there is no Outerworld movement, so there's nothing to distinguish.
4. Encounters: Characters take turns resolving their Encounters. They may take Encounters phase actions whenever they want. Enemies that have not already been Evaded or Escaped from are encountered before drawing or resolving Encounter cards. If an Enemy appears during an Encounter, you encounter that Enemy before continuing with the card. When you encounter an Enemy because of a card, that Enemy is not placed on the board (and thus does not count against Enemy limits) until the end of the Encounter. If you are at a location other than the streets, you draw the appropriate location encounter card. If there is a problem token there you draw a Problem Encounter (gate encounter) instead.
And that's the phases. Here are the big differences in resolution:
Terror Track: The Terror Track closes a lot more things. Something closes every other Terror level. Also, the Terror Track is added to the city's Enemy limit rather than limit = infinity at Terror Level 10. And you add half the Terror Track to the number of Enemies you place down when a Vendetta happens. So Terror Management is something that matters a lot more.
Allies: There is no boarding house. All forty-one Allies begin the game available but generally only appear by name in encounters.
Encountering Enemies: If you attempt to Evade an enemy and fail, you begin combat normally. This encourages people to evade more, and makes Sneak more useful (since even a die of Evade is "better than nothing"). If you are surprised by an Enemy, you skip the entire Evade step and go straight to combat. Enemies perform the Combat check first, and the Investigation (horror check) at the end. If after a round of Combat you want to leave, you can make an Escape test, which is like an Evade test, except that you can use Sneak or Speed. If you Escape successfully you skip the Investigation. Investigations only happen if you defeat the enemy or get knocked unconscious. Weapons are "melee" or "ranged" and resistances apply. The Elusive ability means that you have to make an Evade check to fight them. The Ambush ability means that if you fail the Evade check they inflict their Combat Damage before the first round of combat, and if you succeed at the Evade check you may choose to fight them or not. Nightmarish is called "Tagged." The Investigation is a Discretion check (secondary to Caution).
Board Encunters: Special encounters on the board are in addition to drawing an encounter card rather than instead of drawng an encounter card.
Problem Encounters: Problem tokens do not have difficulties, nor are there any outworld locations that you get transported to. Instead, each color of Problem encounters has a total of 5 Problem types associated with it (for example: Yellow has Corporate Secuity, Gang War, Yakuza, Triad, and Astral Rift). There are 25 of each color of card, so when you draw an appropriately colored card there are 10/25 cards that have a specific encounter and 15/25 that come up other (well, 20/50 for everything but CorpSec and Gang War that are 40/100, but you get the idea). All of the specific Problem Encounters have a "Problem Solving" test at the end. All of the "Other" encounters don't. If you get a Problem Solving chance, you can make the specific test it offers to solve the problem. If you succeed, you take the problem as a trophy and you can spend 5 clues to Expose it.
Mages and Hackers: The Astral Rift is closed to characters who are not Mages. System Failure is closed to characters that are not Hackers. There is a Spellcasting test that is usable only by Mages, it is Secondary Will check. There are magical spells in the Talisman deck that work like Spells in Arkham save that they have Drain that is a Stamina cost instead of a Sanity Cost. There are Hacking Programs in the Contraband deck, which use the Hacking test that is secondary to Logic and only available to Hackers. They have a Signature that costs ID.
Tension and Riots: Every time Enemy Movement comes up with one of the six "standard" movement icons (which is almost all of the Karma cards), you place a Tension Marker onto one of the slots on the board with that movement icon. Each Tension Marker has a location around town on it, and you draw them from an opaque cup. There are two slots with each movement icon. There are three Riots, and each one has two of those slots attached to it. Wen all of the Tension Markers attached to a Riot are placed, the Riot moves to the board in the streets of the neighborhood that was last drawn as a Tension Marker. When a Runners has an Encounter they may remove one Tension Marker with the location that they are in. Riots stay on the board until all the Tension markers have been removed. When you would be called upon to place a Tension Marker and both of the slots are already full, you draw the marker anyway and place an Enemy token at that location. The Riot itself has a movement icon on the back, and when it moves it drops an Enemy if it moves White and raises the Terror level if it moves Black. Riots take 2 Movement points to enter the location of.
Traits: The game keeps track of traits for enemies (and allies) of Drone, Critter, and Spirit. Many spells and programs behave specially against one or more of those traits, and some Runners have special abilities that trigger off of that. For example: Damien is a devil rat, so his Ally has the Critter marker. Gillian Valentine gets a bonus on skill checks to gain Critter Allies, so she has a bonus on the die roll during the Problem Encounter where the player may get Damien as an Ally.
Board
Resources
Runners have access to six different resource card types. Talismans, Common Items, and Contraband are tradeable. Allies, Augmentations, and Skills are not.
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Shadowruns: There are several key differences between Shadow Runs and AH Tasks. The most obvious is that there are skill tests that are listed on some of the areas. When you have an encounter there, you have to make the skill check or you don't get a progress token on the Shadow Run. The second important difference is that once you get a progress token and trade it to another Runner, you don't lose the progress token. Players are encouraged to join forces to complete more difficult runs by handing them back and forth so that the right specialist does each part of the leg work.
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Augmentations inherently penalize your Spellcasting tests by -1 each.
Encounters:
When you have your location encounter at a location that has a Problem token in it, you draw a Problem Encounter, here's a sample:
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If you are in the streets you get no encounter. And if you are in any other location, you draw from one of the twelve Neighborhood Encounter Decks, depending upon what neighborhood you are in:
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Major Players:
Each player takes the role of a Runner. Each Runner has their own card. Like this one:
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The main Threat also has a card. Here is a sample:
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Every turn, the Threat's plans continue to affect the city. This is done by drawing a Karma card, like this one:
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The players may be sponsored by a Johnson. They provide advantages and disadvantages as well as a hook for getting the characters into the story. These are wholly optional, and here is a sample:
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Card Lists
- 111 Karma Cards:
- 61 Headlines
- 40 Environments
- 10 Rumors
- 12 Free Commerce Zone Encounters
- 12 Griffith Park Encounters
- 12 Glendale Suburb Encounters
- 12 River District Encounters
- 12 Barrens Encounters
- 12 Arcology Encounters
- 12 El Infierno Encounters
- 12 City Center Encounters
- 12 Watts Encounters
- 12 Docks Encounters
- 12 Coastside Encounters
- 12 Rust Town Encounters
- 25 Green Encounters
- 25 Blue Encounters
- 25 Red Encounters
- 25 Yellow Encounters
- 4x Corporate Security Tokens
- 4x Gang War Tokens
- 2x Yakuza Tokens
- 2x Triad Tokens
- 2x Vory Tokens
- 2x Mafia Tokens
- 2x System Failure Tokens
- 2x Astral Rift Tokens
10 Threats
6 Johnsons
140 Enemy Tokens
24 Special Cards- 8x Wanted/Favors cards
- 8x Bum Fighter/Good Karma cards
- 8x Day Job cards
41 Allies
30 Augmentations- 2 Shadow Runs
- 15 Hacking Programs
- 5 Shadow Runs
- 5 Shadow Runs
- 20 Spells