Welcome to the Data Haven

Hello chummers.  😉

My name is J, but I also answer to Insomniac.  This blog will soon be the home of all my Shadowrun stuff that I have scattered around the Net.  Primarily a place to grab run notes, I plan on reviewing sourcebooks, posting fan fiction and perhaps even commenting on the game itself.

If you’re not familiar with Shadowrun (in the P&P RPG style, rather than the video games), it is a near-future, dystopian, cybernetic future game where fantasy elements have been re-introduced to the world causing an interesting blend of magic and machine.  The storyline is in-depth and there are so many things going on at once that Game Masters should have no shortage of material.  However, if you find yourself short on material, hopefully some of the future posts on this blog will help with that.  🙂

While I will occasionally pipe up like this, the bulk of my posts will likely be “in-character” as my grumpy, sleep-deprived sysop alter-ego, Insomniac.  He runs a board in the Seattle Matrix where shadowrunners can look for work.  He’s a no nonsense kind of guy, but he does welcome some discussion.  So if you’d like to comment on run notes, feel free to do so in character and become part of the dialogue.

Well, I think that’s it for now.  Hopefully, you’ll check back from time to time.

J.

>>Oi!  Who’s grumpy?  Anyways, I figured I’d step up and introduce myself.  The handle’s Insomniac and I run my own little corner of ShadowSea.  If you need work, I’m your guy…assuming legality ain’t a scruple you tend to have.  If you think the shadows might be the place for you, then loiter for a bit and see what’s around.  Who knows…maybe you’ll be the next best thing round here.  Or maybe you’ll end up as the next red stain on the asphalt.  Either way, these should be interestin’ times, omae.  Perhaps I’ll see ya round.
>> Insomniac
“The shadows never sleep, so why should I?”

RPGaDay 2026 #27 – Hunger (#RPGaDAY2026)

Hmmm… Hunger… there are different ways to interpret this. Some characters, like vampires and other monsters, this could be quite literal hunger, seeking to consume those they share the world with. For most, this is connected with things like Desire and Grit… the very thing that spurs the character forward in life.

What are they hungry for? Justice? Redemption? Favor with their God? There are no shortage of reasons that an adventurer might strike out on their own. For many, the motivation may be purely monetary… they need to make ends meet to support their family or village. But along the way, they discover something more motivating than mere gold. An end to tyranny or a desire to purge evil from the land, so those they aim to support will be able to live a life in safety. I have seen players play mercenary characters, who only travel for the almighty coin, but those characters often become dull and hollow in time. There’s no investment in the story or the group’s purpose, so each adventure just sort of blends from one into the next, rather than being present and contributing to the story.

So, explore your character’s hunger and let it guide them, but don’t fear change. If your character shifts their focus, definitely don’t forget their original purpose, but it should shift as their world view does. Tastes change and so should your character’s motivations as you play.

RPGaDay 2026 #26 – Regret (#RPGaDAY2026)

Regret. Most characters have them. Some seek to correct them. Other run from them. But, the things we regret often shapes the person we are and how we conduct ourselves. Our fictional characters should be the same way. If they are looking to rectify regrets from their past, they should regularly be conducting themselves in a way to avoid repeating past mistakes. If they’re running from past misdeeds, they will similarly want to avoid repeating that mistake, but also be doing whatever they can to not cross paths with the people or entities familiar with them.

Over the course of adventuring, there is always the possibility that they will be misled and conduct themselves in a way they come to regret. How will they correct that? Has their capacity to trust new people been permanently altered in some way? A regret that rises from an in-game moment can be some of the best character building over the course of a campaign. Something that occurred in a written backstory won’t have near the impact that a shared catastrophe will have with a party.

So, don’t fear the betrayal, the lies and the misrepresentations… your character may be fooled once, but they will learn and hopefully become stronger from the experience. If they don’t learn, or retain the wrong lessons from the experience, then there may be more missteps on their journey. But flawed characters will stumble along the way and those are often the best stories to tell.

RPGaDay 2026 #25 – Familiarity (#RPGaDAY2026)

Familiarity… just like me playing catch up on RPGaDay content…

This actually ties into the last prompt for me… characters sticking to what is familiar, even when it may not be the best course of action. The number of times I’ve heard the comment “…I guess I’ll shoot them” in response to the “what do you want to do?” question in Shadowrun… rather than being inventive, creative or throwing a wild card into the mix. It turns into something like one of those isometric combats like Shadowrun Returns… which are an excellent series of games, don’t get me wrong. But at the table, things are far more flexible than a video game. Click more than one skill, dude…

The familiar can be a trap for creativity. While there is strength in doing what a character is skilled in, it can lead to stagnation, if the character never strays from what they know well. So, make those Hail Mary plays… break up the expected with something out of left field. Be the creative disaster to challenge your GM and take some risks!

RPGaDay 2026 #24 – Distance (#RPGaDAY2026)

He’s going the Distance. He’s going for speed…

Many characters have a long road ahead of them… some have a long road behind them already. But one of the things that set heroes apart from most NPCs is the distance they travel and how far they’re willing to go. There is a lot of truth to the tale of the person who has never really traveled far from home. Maybe they are the Samwise Gamgee type, who can rise to the occasion, but most of the “background noise” NPCs the characters will encounter will have worked in their humble little village and maybe the surrounding villages all their life.

Player characters should be the most cultured and traveled characters in the world. Traveling far and wide, interacting with far off kingdoms and remote villages. Yet, in so many games I’ve run and played in, the characters don’t expand their world view at all, despite everything they see. I know I’ve been guilty of this. Characters who are so rigid in their methods that they remain unyielding in their world view, despite extensive evidence that might contradict what they’ve come to believe. And maybe this is the older, more mature version of me talking, but I find characters that evolve to be far more interesting to play, both as a the controlling player or sharing a table with.

So, if your character is going to go the distance and see the world, when they inevitably return from where they came, they should be changed from the person they were. If they’re going to leave an impact on the world, the world should leave an impact on them as well.

RPGaDay 2026 #23 – Fortune (#RPGaDAY2026)

Ah yes, Fortune. Every shadowrunner wants to make one. Of course, if you’re looking at fortune in regards to chance or luck, that kind of falls into the mechanical part of any game system… luck is typically relegated to dice rolls or whatever mechanic the system uses to determine the outcome of any uncertainty in the game. Aside from dice, the other factor that feeds into the good vs. bad fortune side of things is tied to setting. A dystopian setting is likely to have a more negative slant than something like 7th Sea, which is based in heroic fantasy. The heroes are expected to succeed in 7th Sea, where every runner is expected to be on borrowed time.

A character can harness their own destiny somewhat in the face of the random element through their life outlook. Someone who is described as brash and reckless is more likely to fall prey to ill fortune based on their behavior over a more cautious character. Similarly, a character who is under taking the exposure of a lesser noble is going to be exposed to less danger than someone aiming to topple a king or megacorporate CEO. Despite these character design choices, the biggest factor in your character’s fortune stems from their dice. Being highly skilled and having a solid plan cannot fully save you if your dice are standing in your way.

As important as a good story is to a fun character, whether good fortune finds you or abandons you still boils down to good old-fashioned luck. And perhaps, that’s the best parallel to reality we can get.

RPGaDay 2026 #22 – Grit (#RPGaDAY2026)

Grit… if this were a conversation about a setting, I’d just say “Yes please!” and move on. But when it comes to characters, it’s less clear cut. Sure, every character should have a back story to tells everyone why they’re risking their life like this… but for so many players, beyond the story that states why they’re here, the back story actually guides very little about their day-to-day actions.

Grit is all about treating their desires as a marathon rather than a sprint, but it always seems very rare when a player acts during a session in a way that is a means to their end goal. I often get told what their character was doing “off-camera” to pursue their agenda, but when we’re at the table, their actions are very much focused on the here-and-now and pass up opportunities to chase their own agenda. It would be like my wife’s character Hel, who is bent on hunting down the last vestiges of Cross Applied Technologies, breaking into a corporate compound that used to be a Cross holding, finding an old CATCo data vault buried under the building and then just ignoring it because it’s not for the game we’re doing right now. She would never… she would derail my plot to make sure she bled that server dry… but I’ve had players that have outright ignored the plot carrot placed specifically for them because they didn’t even remember their own character’s back story. That’s not grit… that’s coughing up a story to shut me up and let them play.

So, where every GM has an obligation to keep their players invested, so do the players have an obligation to at least buy into the story of the game enough to engage with the story the GM is trying to tell. Then, when a loose thread for your story is dangled before you, find that grit and pull that thread with everything you’ve got. The GM placed that there for you and acknowledging that indulgence is very welcome. Speaking from experience here…

RPGaDay 2026 #21 – Charity (#RPGaDAY2026)

Charity, huh? Most characters I’ve witnessed are not the most charitable sorts. Granted, most of that experience is in Shadowrun, where characters need to improve or die. Even in the fantasy games I’ve played have a similar mindset though. Hoarding gold in order to afford that next most powerful weapon or suit of armor, when a few silver pieces could save a family in a nearby hamlet from starvation. The game aspect of roleplaying games often sees characters acting as selfish hoarders of wealth, even when a paladin or cleric might tithe at the local temple.

Sometimes, there are mechanics that can help to reflect this sort of charity. In Shadowrun, there is a Negative Quality called Dependents, which takes a share of each job to reflect them having to care for someone. Burn has this quality to reflect looking after his disabled brother, though on large scores, I have chosen to drop a couple extra thousand nuyen to the care facility his brother is in. This has also historically had a rule (or house rule… it has been both over a few editions) of cash-to-karma to incentivize this sort of charitable act. In 7th Sea, my wife’s character Giulia donates to orphanages, having been raised by them growing up. So, it’s not impossible… but often requires mechanics to support.

I’ve even heard players tell others “if you give away this money, my character is going to stab yours in the face” when the team makes money and one of them is charitable… which is already seldom and only discourages it further. So, I don’t see a lot of charity at my table.. it is un-gamer behavior, it would seem.

RPGaDay 2026 #20 – Promise (#RPGaDAY2026)

This prompt on my birthday is Promise. Well, I promise that I’m older now, but remain immature.

That aside, characters seem to often find themselves trapped by promises they’ve made. A solemn vow of fealty to a noble family, a promise to avenge a fallen father, or a ill-conceived sentence offer to a crying child that you “promise to bring their mother home alive and well”, these sorts of promises shape stories both long and short. Promising that child to bring their mother back, only to have to explain that their mother is gone at the end of the adventure can be an evening’s adventure, while learning the noble house you’ve sworn a vow to are really not as noble as you believed could span a campaign.

So, does that mean that a character should never make promises? If your character shirks all attachment, perhaps. But even being the member of a team on an adventure is a sort of promise: a promise to watch their back and they will watch yours. Even that vow can be broken… I had a character retire via betrayal and they became the focus of a mini-arc within the campaign, as the runners that survived the betrayal by the decker devoted time and nuyen to tracking him down. Even when they caught up with him, they didn’t kill him, but rather destroyed his reputation, stole his cyberdeck as “compensation” and left him for dead in hostile territory. Naturally, that wasn’t the end of him… but they promised him that if he stuck his neck out again they’d return. They kept that promise… violently.

How do your characters handle promises? Those they willingly make and those they imply… it says a lot about a character with how they keep their word and when their word is broken, how they react. Some rarely give their word, so that when they do it “means something”. Others may give their vow and when forced to break it, atone for it later. Then others may promise the moon and deliver none of it. All are valid strategies, but how the rest of the world perceives them should be different. If your character has a reputation for breaking your word and/or giving it to readily, then it will carry less weight going forward. Know that a promise is only as valuable as how often your character upholds them and the world should react accordingly.

RPGaDay 2026 #19 – Desire (#RPGaDAY2026)

Oooh, Desire… Everyone has it. What they crave may vary from person to person, but everyone desires something. Those passions can change. They can weaken, intensify, shift or mutate. The desires of characters often serve as the main driving force that sees them strike out onto the road, seeking adventure, vengeance or purpose.

Burn is an example of how desires can change (hey, I’ve been playing the character for more than a decade… he’s got a lot of history). Initially, he wanted to burn Mitsuhama to the ground. Then he became primary caretaker for his disabled brother and he had to be a little more cautious. Then he found a woman who was willing to put up with his impulsive anger and give him a place to land. He got off of drugs and suicidal missions and has now positioned himself as the protector of his core people. He’s still brutal, honest and has no tolerance for racists. But now his desires are centered on keeping his brother and girlfriend safe (even if she really doesn’t need his help) over simply sowing discord.

Knowing the desires of your NPCs also helps any GM decide how a character might react when under threat or planning out their next move. My recent Anarchy villain, Sarah Braun didn’t set out to become a villain… she just wanted to help her people in the face of impossible odds and took a few shortcuts to become strong enough to do more. Even as she started using blood magic, it was never with malicious intent. She just needed a little extra power to help those who needed it at the expense of those whom she determined were beyond help anyways. Those who couldn’t be helped gave their life to ensure those who could be helped survived… justifiable in her mind. Still murdering people… but in the name of reducing body count.

Understand desire and how strongly the character will pursue it to shape them as a hero… or villain. The distinction between the two is often closer than the dichotomy would have you believe.

RPGaDay 2026 #18 – Directness (#RPGaDAY2026)

Directness, eh? I mean, I have characters that are very direct in their actions and others who would do anything before telling someone the honest truth. Does that make one a better person than the other? In this particular example, no… both of them are kinda terrible people… but it does tell someone something about how the characters will conduct themselves and shape how they interact with the world around them.

My usual example of Burn is the first one. Burn is an ass and will tell you exactly what he thinks of you, to hell with the consequences that may follow and he will just as soon crater your skull than tell you what he thinks of your racial slur. No filter and direct, for better or worse. The flipside of that is my character Fade. A face/decker, he specializes in getting into places he shouldn’t and stealing from people, disguised as anyone he feel will get him past the next checkpoint. He is charming, dishonest and has a million lies ready to deploy in a moment’s notice. You will never get a straight answer out of him, even when you’re on his team. Truth is an anathema to him.. probably because he doesn’t remember what the truth is anymore.

Most characters will fall in the middle somewhere. But knowing how they handle truth and whether they have a direct or blurred line with it can shape a lot about a character and how they interact with others.