Funny / Shadowrun

• Dunkelzahn’s Will. The entire book is a cross between a Awesome and Funny, with the more you know of the setting, the funnier it becomes. Some examples:
  • Giving a powerful Macguffin to the government of either Tír Tairngire or Tír na nÓg, whichever first gives the full biographies of all their government officials. Given that both nations are run by immortal elves…
    • The Spirithiel quote at the end of that bequest reads, more or less, "Shouldn't knowledge be available for all? Share the language."
  • “To Alamais [another Great Dragon], I leave the fruitcake we have exchanged every Christmas since 2020. Unlike you, I’m really dead.”
    • Another layer of amusement here — the security measures of Great Dragons can perhaps best be compared to various mythical vaults, with lethality ranging from 'tiny sun' to 'supermassive black hole'. For Dunkelzahn and Alamais to sneak a fruitcake past each others' security on a yearly basis must have represented an enormous investment in effort, as well as perhaps the lives of many a 'runner.
    • Bonus points: by putting this in his will, Dunkelzahn actually outed Alamais as having faked his death.
  • Leaving $10 million so a band can complete a rock opera.
  • Leaving another 20 million nuyen to whoever owns the rights to Jiffy Pop—on the condition that they use the money to put it back into production (after suffering hundreds of burned bags of microwave popcorn).
  • His one foray into free-form sculpture, now in various museums and called “Pre-Bronze Age Cave Reliefs 1-12,” after he smashed it in a fit of frustration.
  • “For a period of ten days beginning on 14 February 2057, Lars J Matthews will cease to posses any legal status. He will be stripped of all evidence of legal existence, including SIN, credsticks, DocWagon contract, bank accounts, and so on. To the individual or group who ends Lars J. Matthews’ physical existence during those ten days, I leave all of Matthews’ assets and 1 million nuyen for a job well done. If Mr. Matthews survives and can prove his identity, his legal status and all possessions will be restored to him. Haven’t you heard? Never deal with a dragon, Lars."
  • “To the owner of the sky-blue Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit^note an all-plastic electric two-seater that only runs on roads with special cables buried in them that was crushed by a falling chunk of plascrete on October 26, 2045, I leave my 1964-1/2 candy-apple red Ford Mustang convertible. Sorry for the inconvenience – I had an itch that I couldn’t reach and caught the corner of the building with my claw."
• The entire Safehouse supplement. From the beginning with Kane having to sneak into Comic Con dressed as a Stormtrooper, to /dev/grrl given homework to tag 100 transit buses, to all the Shout Outs, to one of the sample safehouses with you staying with an elderly Troll grandmother that keeps talking about her grandkids, to the the image of the tagged bus with "HOMEWORK'S DONE! HAPPY?" in big angry letters.
• In the 5th edition rulebook, when introducing magic, it comments that when something new is introduced to the world, two questions are asked. 'How can I make money off of it', and 'how can I use it in porn'?
  • The oblique answer to both being, of course, the internet.
• Shadowrun itself could be compared, in terms of player attrition, to Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu. Therefore, as has been alluded to in many, many manuals and documents, when a mission goes unexpectedly right, the player characters start getting edgy, waiting for another shoe to drop. An experienced GM can quite happily leave that shoe dangling for several more sessions, until the players start checking their soy for intricate toxins and their boots for large boxes that read 'Point towards enemy'.
• The old 1st edition Street Samurai Catalog supplement has commentary from the Shadowland board denizens on the items. A lot of it is delightfully snarky, but the bit that takes the cake is the commentary on the voice changer cyberware. One of the posters, Findler-Man starts listing celebrities he could imitate with it, ending the list with Dunkelzahn. Dunkelzahn saw the post, and was apparently irritated enough that his reply came under his own name instead of his regular Shadowland handle of "The Big D".
  Dunkelzahn: Excuse me?
  Fastjack: ????
  • On the other hand, one has to wonder whether Dunkelzahn was genuinely trying to chastize Findler-Man - whether he meant to give him and the product quite a boost in sales - whether he was simply playing games - or whether he was playing something of a larger game involving the cyberware producers. Either way it's hilarious. After all, he's the dragon who left a fruitcake in his will, so he knows how to play the long game (and have fun doing it).
    • Making matters even better the reasons Dragons have speakers is that their non-shapeshifted voice cannot be captured technologically. Given that they named /him/ instead of his speaker that may have been what miffed him.
    • It's also likely it could've been his first post to Shadowland, and given what seems to pass for Dunkelzahn's sense of humor, it was meant to leave the folks commenting on the voice changer speechless.
• In old editions, the concealability rating of a thousand round belt of assault cannon ammunition is officially "Yeah, Right."
  • A book in 4th Edition had the Availability rating^note i.e.: the chances of a Player Character getting one on the Open/Black Market of a top-of-the-line laser cannon as "Good Luck With That".
  • In the 5th edition rulebook, the worst concealability modifier (+10 dice for the character trying to discover said concealed thing) is tagged "Forget it."
• For all the unadulterated Nightmare Fuel the Dark Terrors book brings to the setting, there's still brief moments of Mood Whiplash comedy, such as Slamm-O! freaking out over Deus coming back and apparently disconnecting in fear (Turns out his kid had spilled their drink on his deck). Or Miles Lanier revealing he's a Monty Python fan...by opening his commentary on Neo NET's fate by quoting the Parrot Sketch.
  Winterhawk: "I wasn't expecting Lanier to be a fan of 20th century British comedy."
  Miles Lanier: "Nobody expects it."
• The 4th Edition supplement Runner Havens has one of the commentators dismiss a particular restaurant as being a massive cliche, stating that any Mr. Johnson who asks to meet you there is likely trying to cheat you. Another commentator responds, "Couldn't get a reservation again, huh?"
• In the 6th Edition book, "Bestial Nature", the Dolphin Shifter Triple Flip is talking about how augmentations affect shifters, and how for him, personally, the loss of his Metahuman form is far outweighed by the power to become master of one's domain in the wild....
  Sea Dragon: So, the little fish thinks humans' toys make him master of my domain?
  <Waverunner, Triple Flip, and Mermaid have left the chat>
• The reason the California Free State exists: during the upheaval that caused the Divided States of America, California's government spent years debating on whether or not they should be part of the United Canadian-American States (UCAS) or go it alone. Finally the UCAS got so tired of it that they officially threw California out, resulting in CalFree.