Why is/was Shadowrun more popular than Cyberpunk?

[Umbran]

The combination of that and putting decking on the same time frame as everything else made a big part of the problems with it go away in my limited experience.

Well, the whole thing is still pretty baroque, but yes, it did get rid of a lot of the issues.

 

[Reynard]

That's a setting thing, not a rules thing.
Megacorps are just noble houses vying for control - it's just Game of Thrones with a bunch of LEDs stuck on 'em.

Sure, you can use D&D for autherpunk/magitech fantasy, but I don't think that is common. But yeah, you can play Arcane with D&D, and Arcane is basically a cyberpunk story wrapped in magitech.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, the whole thing is still pretty baroque, but yes, it did get rid of a lot of the issues.

To a degree, but I didn't find it unmanageable, and I hadn't run an SR game for, well, three editions at that point. It didn't seem out of keeping with the rest of the game anymore, at least.

 

[MGibster]

The truth is that a lot of cyberpunk tropes fit nicely in a variety of settings. The American west is one of the most cyberpunk settings out there. Corporations hiring goons to to break the legs of the competition and a bunch of wildcats using new technologies in ways nobody envisioned is just built into the setting.

 

[Reynard]

The truth is that a lot of cyberpunk tropes fit nicely in a variety of settings. The American west is one of the most cyberpunk settings out there. Corporations hiring goons to to break the legs of the competition and a bunch of wildcats using new technologies in ways nobody envisioned is just built into the setting.

I mean, there's a reason they use "white hat" and "black hat" to describe hackers...

 

[Staffan]

Mechanically, early SR is probably closest to Storyteller of anything I can think of (and as I recall there's a design connection why that is).

I only played it once but the old d6 Star Wars felt closer to SR. I vaguely remember pools of d6s.

Shadowrun is closer to Storyteller than to Star Wars/D6 except that it uses d6es instead of d10s. In Star Wars, you roll a handful of dice and sum them up – if you roll 5D, you'll get a result from 5 to 30 (barring the exploding wild die in 2e). In both Shadowrun and Storyteller, you roll a handful of dice and count how many are X or above – a roll using 5 dice will give you a result of 0 to 5 (again, ignoring that some versions give doubles or rerolls on certain numbers).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Shadowrun is closer to Storyteller than to Star Wars/D6 except that it uses d6es instead of d10s. In Star Wars, you roll a handful of dice and sum them up – if you roll 5D, you'll get a result from 5 to 30 (barring the exploding wild die in 2e). In both Shadowrun and Storyteller, you roll a handful of dice and count how many are X or above – a roll using 5 dice will give you a result of 0 to 5 (again, ignoring that some versions give doubles or rerolls on certain numbers).

Though you can make a different argument about D6 Legend.

But there are other things that resemble Storyteller in SR; the addition of successes to damage values, for example.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've been racking my brains trying to think of any RPGs that don't have some form of magic or fantastical technologies that might as well be magic.

 

[Voadam]

I've been racking my brains trying to think of any RPGs that don't have some form of magic or fantastical technologies that might as well be magic.

 

[billd91]

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I dunno, having stats on a d100 and lucking out on a ridiculously high roll for some things meant a character was (virtually) magically successful at things based on that stat/skill.
The game was super atmospheric, but the design wasn't the greatest.