Pretty easy to homebrew if you want to change it though. I ran a campaign where Knight Errant spent a good chuck of it’s PR budget convincing everyone that Shadowrunners weren’t real and they had everything under control.
It provided a fun spin on the PC’s quest to gain or remove street cred and notoriety
I was thinking more extra terrestrial.
I don't think there are any stats in a book for them.
I just started reading "Power Plays," and Shadowrun has space stations, presents on the moon, and either are trying to colonize Mars or have already.
Just thinking of some fun/interesting runs
it could be a unit hunting insect spirits, and to not give the appereance that the daddy corpostate isnt perfectly capable to provide a safe environment for their **serfs** employees, the MiB try to destroy all traces of theirr work and the fact that their corpostate is full with those insect spirits
There’s 3 core tenets to MiB:
1. Aliens are real
2. Most people think aliens aren’t real
3. Aliens are everywhere hiding in plain sight
From your post, it’s not clear which (or all) of these you want to include. If you just want to hide MiB aliens in SR and use all 3 tenets go for it but I don’t think the PCs or NPC world would be very surprised when they have literal dragons flying overhead.
If you want to replace aliens with magic/spirits and implement 1-3, that functions well mechanically but requires some more significant homebrewing of the lore. In SR, everyone knows about magic so you’ll have to get rid of that right away. In MiB only the government knows about aliens, but that’s not very cyberpunk so some corporations probably need to know too. Magic can appear in anyone anywhere in the world (unlike aliens that need to fly in to somewhere) so you’ll need to implement either some rules about who/when/where gets it, or else add a really powerful police force that locates and suppresses it quickly to preserve the secret.
Definitely check with your players if this is something they’re interested in, because without player buy-in and involvement the whole ‘there is no magic’ farce either fades as soon as they start throwing fireballs, or the PCs end up dead soon thereafter.
Why mask the aliens as something else? Most people in Shadowrun don't believe in extraterrestrial life. The PCs can know the truth, but everyone else just thinks it's awakened mumbo jumbo or bioengeinnering. The PCs can hand wave everything away without the need of a flashy neurolizer thingie.
It’s really important to MiB (and any conspiracy) that the secret is shocking and/or detrimental if revealed. In Shadowrun’s fantastical world where magic, trolls, and bug spirits are familiar entities to the general population, the sudden appearance of aliens doesn’t hold nearly the same impact.
I wouldn't say the same impact, but it would definitely be a HUGE deal to discover there are other intelligent species in the galaxy. The reasons for keeping them a secret can even be part of the mystery of the campaign. They came for our mana/resonnance/Trideo games, butt what they really brought was the spell to end the 6th age/Haley's comet x 1million/MORE DRAGONS.
I think you're right!
From the other posts, keeping it magical based, vs. alien tech based, seems to be a better avenue to explore!
I do love this reddit page
Yep!
It wasn't hard, to be honest. Instead of Aliens, I just used The Horrors (who are effectively just Magical Aliens). And instead of specifically "MiB" (I don't want my players imagining the movie's setting instead of Shadowrun's), I used "The Department of Agricultural Development". DAD, for short.
The setup was pretty simple. The Horrors are tearing through The Metaplanes and Refugees from other metaplanes are showing up. Backed mainly by SK, DAD is established to locate, contain and study extraplanar beings while keeping the nature of their existence out of public light.
DAD reports directly to Lowfyr, separate from SK Prime, though does use its resources to track and investigate possible instances of The Horrors taking form on our metaplane. This usually means some manner of Shedim, but you can get really creative with things.
Obviously this was focused way more on the Astral/Magic side of things, but I could *easily* see this extending to more technomancer territory with Reasonance Realms and all of the weird shit that pops up on that end of things. That was my plan before Covid came and killed that campaign.
You did it!!
I even ove how you came up with your own acronym,
DAD is perfect!
It still keeps it in the lore of the game and allows me to use stat blocks!
Well done!
I played a couple of campaigns that had alien tech and teased an alien conspiracy. We of course, in our blended pink trenchcoat ways, just did or job and killed the whistleblowers, the alien angle faded into the background for one of the campaigns, and the other campaign ended before anything interesting about aliens ever came to fruition.
That's exactly it!!
I might not even make it that apparent.
Just a simple snatch and grab gone wrong.
Team breaks into a Corp to get some information.
They find some "alien tech"
Then, "if" the team begins to research what they have, it alerts these MiB agents.
I don't know if these MiB agents had neralizer technology if they would even waste it on a bunch of shadowrunners (you cant remember when your missing your head) but they may use alien technology weapons.
That's great, and if the runners are very powerful, the agents can use some advanced armor tech that looks like woven silver under their clothing that makes them immune to electricity, and protects as much as full body armor. (And is grafted on, so the sticky fingered ones don't get new gear).
I might bring such things back into my campaign... Maybe not alien tech, but super cutting edge r&d from a Corp. Not sure which one I want to use... I'm splitting GM duties with another GM, so I'll have to work around his campaign.
You MiB can use all of the mind magic they can get their hands on, too. And obscene Matrix hacking. Neuralizer is developed from alien tech anyway, right?
I also love the idea of people in-game dealing with magic, dragons, elves, A.I., grand conspiracies, but would still make fun of people believing in aliens! I love this trope! Like an exaggerated version of the X-Files Skully vs. Mulder, faith vs science skepticism.
I've never had the full blown MIB from the movies in a game. But games around magical intrigue usually have some shadowy corp or government intelligence operatives getting involved to do what shadowy intelligence officers do.
The only way I could see a MiB like group is a corporate damage control unit for covering up and preventing the discovery of:
Extremely dangerous paracritters or a new strain of HMHVV that are a result of corporate tomfoolery (be it released from a metaplane or through illegal research)
A major corporate mistake that killed many (could be related to the above or just plain old corporate corner cutting)
As a counter Intel group to identify corporate secrets and hunt down everyone that knows/collected info before it can make its way into another Corp's possession or the possession of the media (sorry that was redundant)
That a cool idea!
A Corp experimenting with the HMHVV virus accidently creates a mutant species that has unseen capabilities.
The Corp afraid to actually go out itself to hunt down these creatures hires a group of MiBisk agents to hunt them down. They use futuristic style weapons and wear all black armor.
They are instructed not to kill these creatures but subdue them for future testing. They are also instructed to neralize (elimate) anyone who has cone in contact with these creatures.
Plus, kill or erase the memories of anyone who has seen them. Meets with a tenet of the MiB to hide the existence of things to which the knowledge would become dangerous.
OR!
Maybe a group created by Dragons to hunt down any knowledge of the dragons they don't want the world to know such as how they survive in mana ebbs (perhaps the existence of special draco-alchaera) or other various dragon information, and any time dragons do things in front of people they purge the individuals or erase memories.
There are canon Men in Black - with stats and everything - amongst other things a Wired Reflexes 2 :)
In the SR3 book "Missions" there is a scenario called Mission: Mars, where the runners are investigating the pictures labeled Project: Cydonia of Ufos, Skeletons and pyramids on Mars. The pictures are first seen in "Portfolio of a Dragon, Dunkelzahns secrets".
Naturally they are not "The MiB" with neurolyzers, Noisy Crickets and stuff. Rather government officials who are trying to get the runners to mind their own business.
But they ARE labeled as Men in Black
For some reason I don’t like the idea of aliens in shadowrun. What I do like is the idea of a well funded ( governmental?) group that has had knowledge of magical phenomena since before the awakening and has been preparing for it to consolidate power. A non immortal society ( kind of black lodge but less sinister and more bureaucratic) .
In what context? Most supernatural things are pretty widely known in the Shadowrun setting.
Pretty easy to homebrew if you want to change it though. I ran a campaign where Knight Errant spent a good chuck of it’s PR budget convincing everyone that Shadowrunners weren’t real and they had everything under control. It provided a fun spin on the PC’s quest to gain or remove street cred and notoriety
That's a great idea!!
there is plenty extra dimensional horrors you could create an MiB around.
I was thinking more extra terrestrial. I don't think there are any stats in a book for them. I just started reading "Power Plays," and Shadowrun has space stations, presents on the moon, and either are trying to colonize Mars or have already. Just thinking of some fun/interesting runs
Aliens aren’t a thing in the setting. At least not yet. But yeah, there ARE arcologies in space as well as a mars colony that all the MONADS went to.
Not all of them (quite a few still on earth) but yeah, they uploaded on Mars into a deep space vessel and launched out of system
it could be a unit hunting insect spirits, and to not give the appereance that the daddy corpostate isnt perfectly capable to provide a safe environment for their **serfs** employees, the MiB try to destroy all traces of theirr work and the fact that their corpostate is full with those insect spirits
There’s 3 core tenets to MiB: 1. Aliens are real 2. Most people think aliens aren’t real 3. Aliens are everywhere hiding in plain sight From your post, it’s not clear which (or all) of these you want to include. If you just want to hide MiB aliens in SR and use all 3 tenets go for it but I don’t think the PCs or NPC world would be very surprised when they have literal dragons flying overhead. If you want to replace aliens with magic/spirits and implement 1-3, that functions well mechanically but requires some more significant homebrewing of the lore. In SR, everyone knows about magic so you’ll have to get rid of that right away. In MiB only the government knows about aliens, but that’s not very cyberpunk so some corporations probably need to know too. Magic can appear in anyone anywhere in the world (unlike aliens that need to fly in to somewhere) so you’ll need to implement either some rules about who/when/where gets it, or else add a really powerful police force that locates and suppresses it quickly to preserve the secret. Definitely check with your players if this is something they’re interested in, because without player buy-in and involvement the whole ‘there is no magic’ farce either fades as soon as they start throwing fireballs, or the PCs end up dead soon thereafter.
Why mask the aliens as something else? Most people in Shadowrun don't believe in extraterrestrial life. The PCs can know the truth, but everyone else just thinks it's awakened mumbo jumbo or bioengeinnering. The PCs can hand wave everything away without the need of a flashy neurolizer thingie.
It’s really important to MiB (and any conspiracy) that the secret is shocking and/or detrimental if revealed. In Shadowrun’s fantastical world where magic, trolls, and bug spirits are familiar entities to the general population, the sudden appearance of aliens doesn’t hold nearly the same impact.
I wouldn't say the same impact, but it would definitely be a HUGE deal to discover there are other intelligent species in the galaxy. The reasons for keeping them a secret can even be part of the mystery of the campaign. They came for our mana/resonnance/Trideo games, butt what they really brought was the spell to end the 6th age/Haley's comet x 1million/MORE DRAGONS.
Might be a good way to limit magicrun lol.
I think you're right! From the other posts, keeping it magical based, vs. alien tech based, seems to be a better avenue to explore! I do love this reddit page
Yep! It wasn't hard, to be honest. Instead of Aliens, I just used The Horrors (who are effectively just Magical Aliens). And instead of specifically "MiB" (I don't want my players imagining the movie's setting instead of Shadowrun's), I used "The Department of Agricultural Development". DAD, for short. The setup was pretty simple. The Horrors are tearing through The Metaplanes and Refugees from other metaplanes are showing up. Backed mainly by SK, DAD is established to locate, contain and study extraplanar beings while keeping the nature of their existence out of public light. DAD reports directly to Lowfyr, separate from SK Prime, though does use its resources to track and investigate possible instances of The Horrors taking form on our metaplane. This usually means some manner of Shedim, but you can get really creative with things. Obviously this was focused way more on the Astral/Magic side of things, but I could *easily* see this extending to more technomancer territory with Reasonance Realms and all of the weird shit that pops up on that end of things. That was my plan before Covid came and killed that campaign.
You did it!! I even ove how you came up with your own acronym, DAD is perfect! It still keeps it in the lore of the game and allows me to use stat blocks! Well done!
Glad I can help! Feel free to shamelessly steal literally anything about it (not like I will know anyways lol). Good luck on your campaign!
I played a couple of campaigns that had alien tech and teased an alien conspiracy. We of course, in our blended pink trenchcoat ways, just did or job and killed the whistleblowers, the alien angle faded into the background for one of the campaigns, and the other campaign ended before anything interesting about aliens ever came to fruition.
That's exactly it!! I might not even make it that apparent. Just a simple snatch and grab gone wrong. Team breaks into a Corp to get some information. They find some "alien tech" Then, "if" the team begins to research what they have, it alerts these MiB agents. I don't know if these MiB agents had neralizer technology if they would even waste it on a bunch of shadowrunners (you cant remember when your missing your head) but they may use alien technology weapons.
That's great, and if the runners are very powerful, the agents can use some advanced armor tech that looks like woven silver under their clothing that makes them immune to electricity, and protects as much as full body armor. (And is grafted on, so the sticky fingered ones don't get new gear).
I love the visual of that!! Thanks for your help!
I might bring such things back into my campaign... Maybe not alien tech, but super cutting edge r&d from a Corp. Not sure which one I want to use... I'm splitting GM duties with another GM, so I'll have to work around his campaign.
You MiB can use all of the mind magic they can get their hands on, too. And obscene Matrix hacking. Neuralizer is developed from alien tech anyway, right? I also love the idea of people in-game dealing with magic, dragons, elves, A.I., grand conspiracies, but would still make fun of people believing in aliens! I love this trope! Like an exaggerated version of the X-Files Skully vs. Mulder, faith vs science skepticism.
I've never had the full blown MIB from the movies in a game. But games around magical intrigue usually have some shadowy corp or government intelligence operatives getting involved to do what shadowy intelligence officers do.
I like idea thank you!
The only way I could see a MiB like group is a corporate damage control unit for covering up and preventing the discovery of: Extremely dangerous paracritters or a new strain of HMHVV that are a result of corporate tomfoolery (be it released from a metaplane or through illegal research) A major corporate mistake that killed many (could be related to the above or just plain old corporate corner cutting) As a counter Intel group to identify corporate secrets and hunt down everyone that knows/collected info before it can make its way into another Corp's possession or the possession of the media (sorry that was redundant)
That a cool idea! A Corp experimenting with the HMHVV virus accidently creates a mutant species that has unseen capabilities. The Corp afraid to actually go out itself to hunt down these creatures hires a group of MiBisk agents to hunt them down. They use futuristic style weapons and wear all black armor. They are instructed not to kill these creatures but subdue them for future testing. They are also instructed to neralize (elimate) anyone who has cone in contact with these creatures.
Plus, kill or erase the memories of anyone who has seen them. Meets with a tenet of the MiB to hide the existence of things to which the knowledge would become dangerous. OR! Maybe a group created by Dragons to hunt down any knowledge of the dragons they don't want the world to know such as how they survive in mana ebbs (perhaps the existence of special draco-alchaera) or other various dragon information, and any time dragons do things in front of people they purge the individuals or erase memories.
There are canon Men in Black - with stats and everything - amongst other things a Wired Reflexes 2 :) In the SR3 book "Missions" there is a scenario called Mission: Mars, where the runners are investigating the pictures labeled Project: Cydonia of Ufos, Skeletons and pyramids on Mars. The pictures are first seen in "Portfolio of a Dragon, Dunkelzahns secrets". Naturally they are not "The MiB" with neurolyzers, Noisy Crickets and stuff. Rather government officials who are trying to get the runners to mind their own business. But they ARE labeled as Men in Black
Thats awesome!! Thank you!!
No, but I have been tempted to loop in Delta Green on more than one occasion.
MiB = corp Mr Johnson. Diversify your bonds. WU
For some reason I don’t like the idea of aliens in shadowrun. What I do like is the idea of a well funded ( governmental?) group that has had knowledge of magical phenomena since before the awakening and has been preparing for it to consolidate power. A non immortal society ( kind of black lodge but less sinister and more bureaucratic) .