Creating Immersion in Shadowrun, Part 1 - Proper Nouns

In this series we will be looking at methods to increase the immersion of your gaming universe. While these methods are intended for the Shadowrun milieu, most will work in other games or settings. 

Why increase immersion? Shadowrun is set on Earth, our Earth, just different. Creating that difference is key to making your game come alive. More than that, Shadowrun is a “city” game. Most of the time, your adventures will take place in cities, and usually the same city. And just like the song, cities never sleep. Because cities are full of people, and everyone is doing something, and something is always happening. We will be looking at easy ways to simulate that “hustle and bustle”. So let’s dig in and make your gameworld sing!

The first method is to use proper nouns. What the heck, you say? The truth is that Shadowrun and our world are close. A little too close. So we will use proper nouns to help separate the two. Shadowrun is famous for all that sweet, sweet gear, the many Corporations, and so much more. So use the names for that gear. Any game can have mooks wielding big pistols. Only in Shadowrun do the Ancients pull Predator V’s on your Crew. A Colt 1911A1 in .45 caliber is not a Predator V. Just the name, the Predator, brings up images of Shadowrun’s most famous weapon, with decades of service. For over 30 years, runners' first choice in offensive weaponry has been putting chumps in the ground. Use the name, and bring the fame to your game.

This is the singular weapon of Shadowrun...

But using a piece of gear’s proper name does more than create separation. It can provide important clues for your players. A bunch of guys shooting at the Crew with SCK Model 100’s might be from Renraku, seeing as that model of sub machine gun is the choice of the Red Samurai. Perceptive players or their characters know that the Ares Predator has a Smartlink, and that the Colt Manhunter comes with built-in laser sight. Which means the former is the choice of the cybered and the later is the preference of the Awakened. And everyone knows  Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbits are tiny subcompacts with pathetic acceleration (unless they have been heavily modified for high speed sewer heists.) Use brands and names to provide vital but subtle information for your players. Again, use the name.

It has a distinctive style...

Using these names will also fill your world, and help feed the over-capitalization of 2080’s Shadowrun to your players, and through them, to their characters. They don’t eat burgers, they dine on McHugh’s 150-Grammers (with Cheez, Pleez!) or feast on Frankenburger XL’s. They carry J-Pads or Fairlight LifeTec tablets (“For your life, on the go.”) Are they wearing classic Levi’s, hip Greenberg’s, or the new RedThreads styled by popular P2.0 star Jacob Histle? (“RedThreads are the only thing that gets this close, to this body…”) Are Choco-pops the candy of choice amongst young women in Seattle? Is that a steaming cup of SunHind’s soycaf in their hand, or an extra-large Stuffer Shack Morning Bru and a Spicy Kriller breakfast burrito? Hammer them with brands and their various products. 

New at Stuffer Shack!

Fill their world with music, trideo, and other entertainment by name. Remind your players of the ubiquitous of Neil the Ork Barbarian. Action figures, on tshirts, kids in parks screaming Neil’s trademark battle cry, Neil the Goddessed-damned Ork Barbarian on Ice! Surround them with pop culture: Karl KombatMage, Tyler Kwan’s Emerald City Urban Golf AR game series, Knight Errant’s NarcLine, KFRK’s Morning Music Pump, Orxanne’s newest #1 hit, the controversial “Breeder’s Bounce”, number 1, well everywhere, including all those P2.0 and MeTube trids of teens dancing to it, and commlink ringtones. (#2 ringtone this week is “Unicorn Splooge”, from the ‘teenty’ hit, ‘Corn Porn’) After all your players’ real life choices in entertainment are more informed that “some music” and “that TV show”.

Neil is large, Neil holds multitudes...

Use groups and organizations all have proper names as well. Locally, it is not football season, it is Seahawks Season! The footage of the car fire shutting down the 210? That’s not news, that’s KSAF news. That is not just some event in a hotel they are hiding their extraction target at. They are at The Regency On The Lake, and they walked past the “Fay McFadden Cooking Expo 2080” (And you can bet your hoop they are handing out free samples. How else are you going to distract the enemy Sammie when the Corp black ops team comes to retrieve “the package”?) Those aren’t “right wing” or “left wing” protesters, those are Archconservatives protesters and New Democrat protesters. Are those just some “Yaks” headed the Crew’s way, or are they Kanaga-gumi bagmen?

It’s a very distinctive tattoo....

Your players probably skipped over all this in their hunger for better dice pools when they created their characters. Giving a name to everything reminds them that they are strangers in this land, and that an entire world exists around their characters. 

It’s a very distinctive name...

People have proper names as well. As we talked about in the post on The Thing, using proper names for NPC’s is a powerful tool. Think about the closing of Venom. Eddy Brock walks into the bodega and greets the lady behind the counter. “Evening, Mrs. C!” She is not a nameless faceless non-person. Not only does Eddy know her well (he uses a nickname) but she is a “Mrs.” Mrs.Chen has a husband and family. The gangbanger, on the other hand, doesn’t even warrant a name. He is quickly disposed of while Venom quips. He gets  frakkin’ eaten. The “name v. no name” is a real life psychological technique. The FBI instructs kidnapped people to tell their names, and the fact that they have family who love them, to their kidnappers. It helps create empathy. Use this tool in your game. If you players begin to empathize with the NPC’s that populate your world, maybe their characters won’t go on sociopathic rampages killing them all and start role playing with them.

The guy on the right? “Shakedown Thug”
Is not a proper name...

And do this trick with your players as well. Never use the players names, or their characters’ archetype at the table. Always use their characters' names whenever possible. This helps with that separation again. “Bob, what are you doing now?” only helps to isolate the players from the milieu. “Okay, what is Shadow Wolf doing now?” is much more powerful. By using the characters’ names repetitively we help everyone at the table to remember those names, and encourage them to do so as well. And Bob is not doing anything in your world. Bob is an accountant, sipping Mountain Dew and munching on Flaming Hot Cheetos (see what I did there?), hanging out and rolling dice with friends. On the other hand, Shadow Wolf is a master Adept, his very body and mind magickally attuned to the Sixth World, trained in the arts of Shinobi-jitsu, and is about to unleash a magickal katana and an Ingram Smartgun upon some foes. Reinforce that difference at your table, and see the difference it makes with your players.

But there is another side to all this name calling. Mr. Black once played in a Dark Heresy game. At one point in the campaign, we spent about 4 months of real time on a planet doing investigations. But about half way through, we forgot the name of the planet. We all thought it was going to be a single quick mission, one night and done, so none of us wrote down the name. 2 months later, even the GM had forgotten the name, until it became important. So Mr. Black just started calling it, “Planet Whozifritz”, which stuck. So now the planet has a silly joke name. And the same will happen in your game. If you don’t name it, someone will step up with a quip. And that will stick. And every time someone uses the new name, your players will start laughing and cracking more jokes, which will kill the tension and pacing of your game. Nothing kills immersion in your game quicker than people making out of game jokes about it at the table. So make sure you do the naming, and make it stick.

It will make sense in a moment...

So give everyone and everything a name, and use them on your players. That’s not some food cart on the corner, it is Soy-Not Noodles, run by Joe. That is not the police, that is a Knight Errant, in a K-E Kruiser. That is a DocWagon/Crash Cart that just showed up, not some ambulance. That is BamBamBoom’s Jitter Fog playing in the elevator, not just some drab music. Those hard looking boys are members of the Yellow Lotus, not just Triads toughs. Keep reminding your players of those differences and enhance the immersion at your table, merely by using proper nouns.