What's your favorite Shadowrun edition?

[AIM-54]

I voted 3rd edition myself. I first started playing with 2nd and was not really a fan, although I loved the books. Can't beat shadowtalk Anyway, a few years later we came back to 3rd edition and I love it. It remains my favorite game. I never had the advantage of playing with people who already knew the rules, so we spent about a year mucking around, figuring stuff out and having a blast. Things run smoother now that we've got that all under control, but the comments on complexity are not unwarranted. I've had the pleasure of teaching the game to newbies as well (which was a blast, although I'm still not sure I have everything down...) and if we'd had more time, they'd have gotten it down (it was the end of my senior year of college). I'm actually hoping to run something with them again when I head up to Boston in a couple weeks.

In terms of the books, while I wish they'd kept some Shadowtalk elements in the core books, they seem to have kept that part mostly for the supplements (SOTA:2063, SONA, the Target books etc).

And I concur on the Rigger books, the Rigger's Black Book was awesome because of all the pix. Rigger 3 Revised has pix for most of the vehicles, but it still remains almost entirely crunch...mmm EW rules...

If I were to run into a relatively local SR game down here, I'd drop my current d20 group without hesitation...but part of that is due to serious burnout on D&D.


Okay, I'll stop my inane, SR-starved ramblings.

 

[GlassJaw]

If I were to run into a relatively local SR game down here, I'd drop my current d20 group without hesitation...but part of that is due to serious burnout on D&D.

Wow, I couldn't agree more. DC huh? Too bad. :\

I swear it seems like their are suddenly more posts about Shadowrun around here. Did I miss something? What gives?

I've been posting a lot on SR in here lately. I was curious to see how much of a following it still had. It still seems to be pretty strong.

I voted for 3ed too. I haven't played it yet but I think I would have rather had my teeth pulled than fire a chaingun with the old rules (well, maybe not). The lack of flavor text in the books is disappointing but it's not like the older books are obsolete by any means. I've found a ton of them recently on ebay. You can actually buy some of them pretty cheap.

 

[MacMathan]

I voted 2nd edition because that is where I played for years. Perhaps I would have liked 3e more but my group faded right after its release.

I was somewhat disappointed that magic did not change more in 3e and I am not sure if I like what happened to bioware. It was also a bit of a challenge to translate 2e characters over to the new edition.

Still, SR is my favorite RPG of all time and FASA was my favorite company, they used to dominate my purchasing dollar like no other.

 

[Sejs]

Rules-wise, I definitly prefer 3rd ed Shadowrun. 2nd ed did have the greater bredth of material available, but it was pretty easy to convert to SR3.


Though like Thanee pointed out, I do miss the shadow-talk. Made for more immersive books.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Just a bump, my PbP game is recruiting one more, if anyone would be interested. Look in the Talking the Talk board.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Rules-wise, I definitly prefer 3rd ed Shadowrun. 2nd ed did have the greater bredth of material available, but it was pretty easy to convert to SR3.


Though like Thanee pointed out, I do miss the shadow-talk. Made for more immersive books.

An interesting side note: In some of the German versions of the books, they added Shadowtalk back, as far as I know.
Unfortunately, the quality was not always good, but since I don`t know the 2e shadowtalk, I don`t know if that is different from the earlier edition.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

I voted for SR2. I GMed that for about a year three times a week. Ah, for the life of a college student again. Before that I GMed SR on and off for about a year. I never really played SR3, I got to make a character once, and to run through a single encounter, that was it though.

Maybe third would have been nicer in terms of the rules, but when I saw what they had done by getting rid of the shadow talk, removed the gritty feel of the books ... meh. That was half the fun of playing the games and reading the books.


-Ashrum

 

[Westwind]

1st was great since it really captured the "us against the world" feel that I try to convey when I GM. However, it was almost impossible to explain to a new player given all the small variables you had to account for. Plus, it had that damn skill web. Ugh.

2nd was better in terms of clarity, but had far too many loopholes that allowed for unbalanced characters. I really didn't like the idea of "Firearms" as a skill since I felt it gave an unfair advantage to gun toters.

3rd still has some balance problems but makes a lot more sense in terms of being a game system. Some of the crazier things they've done with the metaplot in 3rd, like SURGE, I've just ignored. I do miss Shadowtalk and some of the other flavor stuff, but remember the company that decided to devote that many pages to empty space and commentary is no longer around, so I'm happy to use my out of print stuff for fluff and current stuff for crunch.