who are the Shadowrunners among us?

[cignus_pfaccari]

There was a design-your-own-gun book for SR2/3 that I'm pretty sure I had in my possession for all of a week before I lent it to someone, never to see it again. So much so that apparently I've forgotten the title!

That was Cannon Companion. Oh, man, that was a beautiful book. For my last character (Agent Sean O'Halloran, a fomori bodyguard (Secret Service Agent)), I built two weapons out of that: A light machine gun with recoil comp out the wazoo and two clips (for switching between soft and hard targets on the fly), and a rifle that killed more people with its bayonet than the bullet. The rifle was so I wouldn't have to switch weapons to engage in ranged and melee combat, and the light machine gun was for killing helicopters, drones, and dragons.

Man, I love Shadowrun. That was the first game I played more than a handful of sessions. My D&D group has even taken slang from it, when we geek the mage first.

Brad

 

[Steverooo]

I played and GMed SR 1, a skoosh, then bought 2e right before 3e was announced... I think I bought 3e, as well, but haven't played since the 1e days...

 

[Saeviomagy]

I love shadowrun. I run a game of it, and we have a lot of fun. My longest running and by far the most enjoyable campaign I've ever played was shadowrun. I mean - we're talking about a campaign where we actually started taking control and navigating our own plotlines. Someday we were going to go on a run to steal an authentic italian pizza oven for our local mafia don. I owe a lot to that GM. Mr Milliken, I salute you.

Shadowrun made me the roleplayer I am. It taught me how to min-max. Once I'd learnt that lesson, it also taught me to use that power for good not evil - it taught me how to min-max for cool not for raw power.

Shadowrun's rule system is... pretty bad as written. Sorry chummers, but that's the rub. It starts with the idea of a unified mechanic, but every single little bit of the rules has yet another slight difference that changes everything. In a perfect world, whether you punch someone, blast someone with magic, shoot someone or kill their online avatar or drone, it should all use the same basic resolution mechanic, and it doesn't, and that sucks.

Someday I dream of porting the game over to something like godlike/wild talents, where a unified game mechanic will solve all ills. Someday. I just don't think that d20 can quite emulate the game faithfully.

Oh, and if mages are getting walked all over, then you're probably running NPC's with stats from adventures. Man do those guys suck.

 

[VorpalBunny]

One of my favorite SR supplements was Beyond the Shadows, because it dealt with the primary weakness of SR: the fact the game is geared toward playing *only* 'runners.

There was a great adventure compliation called "Missions" that dealt with non-traditional PC's also. IIRC, the included adventures featured PCs as DocWagon medics, Lone Star Cops, and other "legit" professions. Lotsa fun.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Add another 'runner to the mission here. SR was the second game I came upon after Basic D&D...and the contrast made me love it. That was 14 years ago. And I'm damn happy I found a few people who want to try it out again after crashing and burning with a pretty bad GM on a SR 3E high.

The rules...heh, that's what the GM is there for. To change what he doesn't like in the inner workings of the machine he's riding. I've streamlined magic and matrix running by bringing it more in line with the other skills, changed the autofire rules so you can resolve them with one dice roll and still can treat each single shot instead of pretending to be a sniper with a HMG, able to place 8 shots on the same spot...now all that's waiting for me is taking care of the vehicle combat rules, because they are the biggest mess. But all in all, I love my SR 1E books, and I'm always grinning when I can go back to Seattle again...just like I'm happy when I reach for my old Gazeteers.

 

[GlassJaw]

Life to you, Glass Jaw. And everlasting glory.

Hey, thanks! No one's ever wished me everlasting glory before. That's pretty cool!

Right now I'm drafting rules for my Shadowrunish d20 game.

I plan on posting the rules onto Enworld at some point.

There were quite a few discussions a while back in the OGL forum about a conversion. At any rate, add me to the "Shadowrun can't be emulated with d20" camp.

 

[cmanos]

I think I first picked up shadowrun the summer of 1989. LOVE it!

 

[Thanee]

As they said in Harlequin...

Welcome Chumlichen (the german word for Chummer).

Needless to say, that was the first and the last time I have ever encountered this word...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Bigwilly]

Played it, ran it, but apart from the odd fireball it's been years since I rolled that many d6 all at the same time.

Bigwilly

 

[Scotley]

I played a lot of Shadowrun, both 1st and 2nd edition back in the day. I enjoyed it a great deal, but as our group got older we just didn't have time and money for multiple systems. I'd love to play again some day when my real life constraints allow me to game more than once every few months. I hope the lastest rules are a bit less broken than in the old days, but the setting is good enough that we didn't let that bother us too much. I got some earthdawn books too, but never really got a chance to play.