Shadowrun: sell it to me!

[Bagpuss]

it's like collecting a spool of thread, and once you think you're getting most of it, it just keeps trailing away from you - BTW, to keep collecting the thread it gets harder and harder to pull it up.

It's too complicated, too tough - the rules are strewn all over the place, and some things are overly dominant.

But great flavor and feel!

That's true of any game system that is published for a decent length of time. Shadowrun is completely playable with just the rules in the mainbook, the others are nice optional extras.

You'll have an easier job running Shadowrun with just the rulebook than you would running D&D with just the PHB.

 

[Thresher]

While I havent played it for many years SR was probably the 1st real roleplaying game I ever started on and a little bit of 1E D&D. Well at the time we where sort of grungy punk and goth uni students so we felt at home in Shadowrun more than we did in D&D and to some degree I like it a lot better than the D20 stuff.
Overall you'll find that magic and tech seem to be better compliments for individual archtypes and there isnt a real disparity between them that you have in games like D&D.
D&D is a nice and easy way to get into roleplaying, its pretty much beer and skittles heroic adventure, however there are a multitude of systems out there that are better and do things differently so dont be put off by learning a new one.

Best of all.-
No levels, the system hangs together for as long as you want to keep playing the characters.
I had characters, mages, sams, ordinary humans with no tech or magic run for literally years and they where all just as good as each other, none of this turning into 'gods' crap of high level games. Its pretty bulletproof.

I think some people made the mention that Astral and Decking take too long, this is true sometimes but if youre careful you can do both quick and dirty. Lets face it, neither is very healthy if your doing it alone so its not good to stay there for any length of time.

Its relatively easy to learn, the setting is one of the best and you can have a lot of fun as being career criminals and general lowlifes.

 

[Tsyr]

As Shadowrun is, to paraphrase The Comic Book Guy from the simpsons, my "Favorite. Game. Ever!", I figured I should chime in here.

Shadowrun has come along way from first edition. The rules have improved alot, the setting has become a bit more cohesive, and the timeline has taken some interesting turns (The Shadowrun timeline, in terms of cannon setting, is always progressing, at realtime... IE, each year Shadowrun exists in the real world, the Sixth World (Shadowrun's setting) progresses another year, or pretty much.).

The rules... Hmm... In a way, they are like a much, much grittier version of the White Wolf Storyteller system. By which I mean, dice pools (D6's, as opposed to D10s of Storyteller), generaly low-ish scores (Physical attributes range from 1 up to the midrange of single digits for the average person, for example, before cyberwear is accounted for... Not the 8-18 of D20, for example.) Depending on how many of the systems you use strait from the book, it can be quite complex... Decking (aka hacking), for example, involves such details as making sure your deck has enough memory to run all the the programs you are running, how fast various sub-systems of the deck are, all sorts of nifty details. Likewise, if you use the advanced, custom firearm construction rules in The Canon Companion, you have all sorts of options for making a gun from the ground up... What you want the components made of, if you want custom grips, various methods of recoil surpression, stabilization, sights, targeting assist mechanisms, etc. The flip side of this is, most Shadowrun GMs eventualy will choose a few systems that they think are a bit too complex for the type of games they run and trim them down. Decking and Astral Projection are the two most commonly trimmed, but I've only trimmed Astral Projection a touch... Decking is actualy fairly easy once you get the hang of the system.

Cyberpunk Fantasy is the best description of the setting, but it doesn't really explain much...

Like someone else mentioned, most major governments, at best, are fairly fragmented. The United States, for example, exists only as The United Canadian and American States, and is probably half the size of the USA... And occupying only the north-eastern 1/4 of what used to be the USA (It has some of Canada now, remember). There aren't a whole lot of nations that have not had their borders altered some, but there are a few... Mostly the smaller ones, but again, not always. Japan is intact, though the government is different. Australia. Some of the european nations (Spain, Portugal, France, Norway, England, Ireland (Renamed Tir Na Nog)...), a few others. Many, many new nations have sprung up... Some are racial (Tir Tairngire is a nation occupying more or less the same geographic are as the state of Oregon in the USA, run, to paraphrase a common saying, "By Elves, For Elves".), some are political, some are other things.

Japan is now the economic focus of the world in some respects... The closest thing to a world standard currency is the NuYen, and Renraku is one of the most famous megacorps.

The specifics of the setting are vast and I'm not going to go into too much detail, but some quick common themes: Magic and Technology aren't exactly opposites, per say, but they don't get along well. Modification of the body via cyberwear, for example, makes the body "less whole", and damages a persons ability to use magic. There are dragons. The world, in many places, has become very much a throw-away culture... There are vending machines for almost anything you could want, clothes, electronics, you name it. There are traditional stores too, of course, but cheap clothing can be gotten from a vending machine if you need to change your outfit quickly. Space in the major cities is at a premium... The capsule hotels Japan is known for are much more common everwhere now, housing tends to be smaller, more packed into any one building than used to be, etc. If you live a legit life, you are tracked in pretty much everything you do... Not quite to a "Big Brother is Watching you 24/7" level, but if the government (Or other interested parties) want to find out something about you, they probably can... If you payed for it with a legit credstick, or purchased a plane ticket with a valid SIN, etc.

Some other supplemental information:

http://www.divnull.com/lward/sixthworld/

Good maps of the world as of 2062. I'd suggest you download the PDF map (Click on Acrobat World Maps, on the left)... The link to the dev-null site isn't broken per say, but I've never had it work by clicking on it. Instead, just copy-paste this into your browser bar (ftp://ftp.divnull.com/pub/srun/maps/), and download as many of them as you want... Get "World2062.pdf" at least, though.

http://matrix.dumpshock.com/mcmackie/

Go there to download the best shadowrun character generator software(Actually, the only one I know of anymore... Used to be a couple others, havn't seen them in a while), will give you a peek at the system. And if you plan to play, it shortens the time needed to make a character considerably.

Someone already posted a link to the dumpshock forums, so I won't bother with that...

 

[MarauderX]

First edition was great. Not sure about the latest releases, but it wasn't that bad once you got into the game. Everyone wanted to be the biggest, fastest, badest guy they could so there was some balancing to be done.

Fights were pretty fun, but just tended to go the way of whomever won the most initiatives, as the mages would always go last and rarely blew anyone apart because they were afraid of passing out themselves.

I would love to play it again, if just for rolling all those d6s.

Oh, and filament whips kinda got out of hand for us; our GM didn't know what to do about it either.

 

[Tsyr]

Initiative has been fixed somewhat. Elves with wired reflexes and such can no longer run into a room, shoot everyone, and run out before anyone else can act

 

[randomling]

Damn - and I so wanted to play an elf with wired reflexes!

Tsyr: thank you for all the info and links! I'm just about to check them out. From what people have said here it certainly sounds fantastic... as much as I'm not that sure about dice pools.

*drumming fingers happily* Now all I need is to get paid!

 

[Tsyr]

Oh, one thing more, I was going to mention and forgot:

The Sixth World is connected to another roleplaying game. Earthdawn. The connections are there, if you look for them. But don't think you need to know Earthdawn or anything to play Shadowrun... You don't. Unless you know Earthdawn pretty well, you won't even notice the few links that are there, and even if you do, they aren't important. In fact, it's still speculation among some people if the two worlds are actualy supposed to be "officialy" linked, or the linking is just eastereggs by the developers (Both were FASA games originaly). I think it is official, but I couldn't tell you a souce for why I think that... But their are simply too many things for them to be coincidences... NPCs existing in both worlds, specific concepts (The comming and going of magic through the years, etc), etc.

Like I said. It's nothing major. If you don't care to look for it, it's nothing that will ever matter in any way. But if you do play Earthdawn, it's just sort of a neat little thing to know.

 

[Kesh]

Shadowrun was my first RPG experience with a regular gaming group. Absolutely love it.

Most of it has been summarized pretty well up to this point. One thing I rather loved was the dice pool system... while having a single d20 streamlines things, there's nothing quite as satisfying as picking up two handfulls of d6's and tossing them onto the table.

As people mentioned, the setting itself is rather portable. You could take d20 Modern, Urban Arcana and Digital Burn to make a pretty good rules-base for the Shadowrun game world. Plus, many of the setting events, such as Bug City would easily fit an Urban Arcana game. Other rulebooks, like Corporate Security Handbook are really useful for any modern or post-modern game.

 

[Vocenoctum]

on Character Generation:
It can take a while, sure, but mostly that's buying equipment. If you're making a D&D character at 15th level, it'd take a bit to buy equipment also.

The grace of it though, is it's not "a while" at the game table. It's point based and there's no dice rolling. For the first game or two, use the pregen archetypes and that's fine. After that, people make PCs and give them to ya, and you double check them, long before the game starts.

Magic is great. You have fewer spells in general, and they have a rating to determine strength (force). When you cast a spell, it channels the energy through you and you may take damage (drain) from it. If you play your dice right, you don't take any drain. I don't think my spellcasters have taken drain in 90% of their castings.

This means that you can also use magic out of the direct combat applications. If you have levitate, you can float the whole day, or levitate your coffee, or just about anything.

Decking> Most commonly neutered part of the game. It's involved is the main thing. If you trim it so that it doesn't take up a lot of time, you're really taking out most of the fun of being a decker. Best to do it ahead of time when you can, or to have other stuff for the PCs to do while it happens (such as legwork or surveillance).

Astral Projection> Basic mage's can go astral. It's most like casting ethereal jaunt, but can last hours and your body is left behind. In my games it's never been a problem, since in general it's more abstracted and doesn't take long at all. That depends on the astral security of the place of course.

It's a great game. Basic roll is your skill level or your attribute, plus floating dice from a pool. Everything is d6's.

Rule of 6: If you roll a 6, you roll anotehr die and add it to the 6. If you roll another 6, you add another die, etc. So, if the number you need is 10, you can still roll it on a d6

Rules Complexity: It's just not there IMO. We have a regular player in our games that doesn't HAVE A RULEBOOK! She's never had a problem with any of the stuff. Outside of combat (which is very simple) there is little dice rolling and what there is usually boils down to "roll negotiation" and you rolling the dice of your skill in negotiation.

SR1 looked very complicated at first glance, but it's because it's a rulebook. Everything looks complicated until you've played it a bit and realize how easy it really is.

(IMO ofc.)

 

[Vocenoctum]

Shadowrun was my first RPG experience with a regular gaming group. Absolutely love it.

Most of it has been summarized pretty well up to this point. One thing I rather loved was the dice pool system... while having a single d20 streamlines things, there's nothing quite as satisfying as picking up two handfulls of d6's and tossing them onto the table.

As people mentioned, the setting itself is rather portable. You could take d20 Modern, Urban Arcana and Digital Burn to make a pretty good rules-base for the Shadowrun game world. Plus, many of the setting events, such as Bug City would easily fit an Urban Arcana game. Other rulebooks, like Corporate Security Handbook are really useful for any modern or post-modern game.

For my next campaign, I may do UA because of it's similarity to SR. The reviews I've seen harp on the similarities with WW, but the setting is sooo SR (but year 2000, so no cyber) in many ways.
I was thinking of a more mystical SR game, and UA fits the bill.

The thing between the basic mechanic of the d20 and the Fistful of Dice is that there's more variation in the d20. The Take 10 rules help, but half the time the novice players don't remember them. For normal tasks you can lose because of a d20 roll that's low.
Also, SR's Fistful of D6's handles the degree of success too. The more successes, the better you did. Which is nice.