Shadowrun 5E coming soon

Derren

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While I am sure that it was on the news page somewhere I haven't found anything on the forum.

This year is (officially) "The year of Shadowrun"
Besides two video games coming out (financed through Kickstarter) a new edition of Shadowrun will be released this year.
There is also a little internet game going on where you can read about some events which happen in the transition between the editions (world shaking events)

To "play" go here http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/ and press on the diamond in the "O" and solve the puzzles. The passwords are posted on twitter (https://twitter.com/Jackpoint2075) and when you are stuck or just want to read the stories http://forums.dumpshock.com/ can help you.
Keep in mind that this has been going for some time now so you have a lot to catch up.

Nothing concrete about the timeframe, but the last Shadowrun 4E book "Storm Front" which will serve as transitional book between the editions will come out "very very soon"


For those who don't know what Shadowrun is a small explanation.

Shadowrun is at its heart Cyberpunk. Think Neuromancer or Bladerunner. A bleak world where corporations control everything, people agument themselves with technology (cyberware), crime is rampant and so is environmental destruction.
Shadowrun is unique in this regard as the setting also contains fantasy elements as when the Maya calender ended a "new world" with magic started. So while driving to work you must not only be worried about meeting a go-gang which blows up cars for fun or that you will be fired as you do not have a headware which allows your company to download new skills into your brain, you also have to live with that smelly troll as neighbor who lowers the land value by his mere presence and that this crazy kid down the street is actually a mage who can incinerate you when you look at him wrong.

Players play Shadowrunners who are criminals doing the dirty work for corporations (or everyone else who can pay them) in their little secret wars and are constantly on the run from the law (or the private company paid for enforcing the law), revengeful corporations and former employers who want to make sure that you "don't talk".

The game is entirely played with D6, your skill and attribute determining how many of them you can roll at once. A 5 or 6 is a hit and the amount of hits you score determines success or failure.

If you want to know more you can read the timeline which I find quite enjoyable. Although I prefer the older 3E timeline. Captain Chaos just has a more interesting style than the 4E narrator FastJack.

About the games I mentioned, there is Shadowrun Returns (which will have tie ins with the old SNES and Mega Drive Shadowrun games) and Shadowrun Online
 
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Full disclosure, I haven't looked at much shadowrun since the 90's, So I'll ask... Are new Shadowrun Editions minor upgrades and improvements like Chaosiums Call of Cthulhu / AD&D 1E to 2E or are they whole rebuilds of the game like AD&D2e to D&D3E / D&D3.5 to D&D4E.
 

Full disclosure, I haven't looked at much shadowrun since the 90's, So I'll ask... Are new Shadowrun Editions minor upgrades and improvements like Chaosiums Call of Cthulhu / AD&D 1E to 2E or are they whole rebuilds of the game like AD&D2e to D&D3E / D&D3.5 to D&D4E.

I haven't played the older Shadowrun editions so I can't comment much on it.
But I do know that the Matrix got a huge overhaul in SR4 becoming wireless. The rest looked more like updates.

By the way, they are currently also publishing a 2050 "retro" setting if you like the old style more than the current 2070 one.
 
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I haven't played the older Shadowrun editions so I can't comment much on it.
But I do know that the Matrix got a huge overhaul in SR4 becoming wireless. The rest looked more like updates.

By the way, they are currently also publishing a 2050 "retro" setting if you like the old style more than the current 2070 one.

Very interesting as I've not paid much attention the last year. The matrix changed completely so that parties didn't get totally split up for long periods. The matrix lost a lot of its allure and uniqueness IMO but it became much easier to integrate as well. Hopefully the new edition won't just be a reissue as would like to get our group back to playing Shadow run.
 

Very interesting as I've not paid much attention the last year. The matrix changed completely so that parties didn't get totally split up for long periods. The matrix lost a lot of its allure and uniqueness IMO but it became much easier to integrate as well. Hopefully the new edition won't just be a reissue as would like to get our group back to playing Shadow run.

In 5E they try to bring a bit of the "old feel" back to the matrix while keeping it Wireless.
And don't forget that even though its wireless to encourage hackers to be with the team, you can still do a full immersion and hack from the other side of the world.
 

Small notice, Storm Front is out on DriveThroughRPG.
This book is the last major release for SR 4E and sets the stage for the next edition.
 

So Storm Front is out (Together with a small pdf about BTL called Sim Dream and Nightmares), the world is still standing (As FastJack pointed out, it could have been a lot worse) so all its left is to wait for the 5E release at some point this year.

Known changes in the new edition:

- Dice pools are still attribute + skill.
- Skills are capped at 12 (to make them more important).
- Gear limits how many successes you can use with edge allowing you to break that limit (for example, even when rolling 10 hits when shoting someone, having a shoddy half broken gun with accuracy 3 means you can only use 3 hits unless you spend edge).
- Some things are also limited by attribute.
- The number of tests deckers (yes, deckers) need to do is reduced to bring them in line with other characters.
- Deckers are rewarded to be with the team by suffering less noise penalty when hacking up close.
 


We're playing Shadowrun 4e right now. In your opinion, what's the big advantages of switching to 5e?

I am not one of the testers or have any special insight. The things I posted are pretty much all I know about 5E + the plot for it set up in Storm Front.

Here are the actual blog posts about these changes:
http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/02/sr5-dev-blog-where-do-dice-come-from/
http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/02/sr5-dev-blog-more-about-limits-and-exceeding-them/
http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2013/03/the-matrix-clarifying-the-rules-amping-the-awesome/

To answer your question you likely have to wait till it gets out + some months till people had a chance to play it.
 

One of my problems with SR4 was that many - maybe most - of the cool metaplot and setting stuff - such as Saito, the Arcology, the Bugs and so on - were already resoplved, and the newer metaplot was less evocative. Most of the cool metaplot stuff was already resolved. I actually think that the 2050's were cooler, in terms of look, feel and metaplot, than the 2070's.

Also, guidelines to what could be hacked and when would be very welcome. SR4 had the feeling that "everything could be hacked", right down to your foe's smartgun, and hacked by wi-fi, no less. Clearer rules and guidelines about what hackers could do (with examples) would be very useful indeed.
 

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