Shadowrun deserves better

[MGibster]

Was CGL actually there? Or were folks just running Battletech? I could see both, but at least CGL not being there makes it seem better if not still bad.

CGL had a booth. I almost bought one of their Mad Cat models, not the regular sized one, but the larger scale version just for display. But I just wasn't in the market for anything Battletech that day. As I recall, they had Shadowrun in their booth, but it was mostly BTech.

 

[payn]

CGL had a booth. I almost bought one of their Mad Cat models, not the regular sized one, but the larger scale version just for display. But I just wasn't in the market for anything Battletech that day. As I recall, they had Shadowrun in their booth, but it was mostly BTech.

Yeah SR might have been reduced to step child status in the wake of the Btech renaissance. Problem is even BT isn’t getting much in the way of support for playing the game just new products.

 

[nyvinter]

Shadowrun Anarchy 2e did get better than the first edition but that one is also attempting to be more rules light in all areas. The main line is a mess of badly edited rules.

OR, hear me out, put all that aside, and hack Burning Wheel with life-path creation, artha that ties you to the setting and every "encounter" has intense stakes.

Hah, someone already thought of that a mere 18 years ago.

[Burning Wheel/Shadowrun] Beliefs and Instincts in Shadowrun | Tabletop Roleplaying Open

For those of you familiar with both systems, does anybody see any reason why I shouldn't retrofit the Beliefs and Instincts from Burning Wheel/Empires onto Shadowrun 4e? Essentially, just as in Burning Empires, players would create three beliefs and instincts. And when they let their beliefs...

forum.rpg.net

Even earlier than so as Burning Wheel did get made because of a few things making an idea spark and I believe Shadowrun rules were one of them.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It's a shame Shadowrun Anarchy hasn't gotten more support. I'm hoping that changes with 2e, but considering it's being outsourced to a third party, I suspect not. To my mind, it's been the best presentation of Shadowrun in decades.

I started with 1e, trailed of at 2e, came back for 5e and got frustrated by the organized play. I'm just starting to dabble with 6e again, hoping that they've fixed some of my kvetches with organized play.

These days, I'm much more into Cyberpunk Red, but I'll admit to having a soft spot for Shadowrun still. It's wild seeing the push Cyberpunk got with 2077 and Edgerunners (and a metric ton of associated media and merch), and Shadowrun just kinda sitting there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As someone said, its essentially an impossible task. Some of the people who love the concept and setting want something much leaner, while for others that would kill part of what they appreciate about it. Even among the latter there's a pretty visible bifurcation between fans of 1-3 and 4-5 (I'm sure there are some fans of 6e out there, I but I don't seem to see a lot of them.)

 

[soviet]

As someone said, its essentially an impossible task. Some of the people who love the concept and setting want something much leaner, while for others that would kill part of what they appreciate about it. Even among the latter there's a pretty visible bifurcation between fans of 1-3 and 4-5 (I'm sure there are some fans of 6e out there, I but I don't seem to see a lot of them.)

Rolemaster is in the same boat I think.

It's an unappreciated risk of making a new edition that is substantively different or more complex than the previous ones; you make it very difficult for the franchise to continue afterwards as you have split the fanbase (or rather, you have replaced one fanbase with another).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Rolemaster is in the same boat I think.

It's an unappreciated risk of making a new edition that is substantively different or more complex than the previous ones; you make it very difficult for the franchise to continue afterwards as you have split the fanbase (or rather, you have replaced one fanbase with another).

Or even if you make it much simpler, as elements of the complexity may make it more valuable to some of the prior fanbase.

Its instructive to note that, though these don't tend to exist in other BRP derivatives, hit locations have been present in each edition of RuneQuest, including the three versions not done by the Chaosium. I'd suggest that's because its a simplification that wouldn't, by and large, be considered a virtue by much of the fanbase.

This is a thing I've noted about people who occasionally come up and want to get a new, much simpler version of the Hero System; its almost certain that some things would be lost along the way which would lose parts of the current aging fanbase, while the new game would find itself competing in a zone already occupied heavily by games like Savage Worlds.

Shadowrun seems like it probably already mortally wounded itself by the combination of the editing problems with 4e and 5e (which to make it clear, I prefer over the earlier and later editions but it'd be foolish to not suggest the layout and errata problems didn't matter) and the lackluster nature of 6e, and for many of its fans Anarchy is not a meaningful substitute. There's no one else who's really grabbed that market, but I think it may well have been shattered beyond repair.