shadowrun. 3rd or 4th edition?

[Shademan]

so I have always wanted to try shadowrun, but I am at loss as to which of the two said editions I should put my resources in.
3'rd or 4'th edition?

and why?

[Doc Roc]

May I, as a huge fan of third edition, recommend fourth? It is, sadly, a much more enjoyable product since you can run the game with just one book. It also makes deckers fun, and riggers more fun. This is... important.

[Theodoric]

Fourth, and try to get the 20th anniversary version.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Fourth, for the superior and accessible hacking, among other things. Magician, samurai, or socialite, I can't create a character and not give them at least a little computer skills, because the new wireless net is just so damn useful.

[Shademan]

hm, 4'th ed seems a tad bit easier to understand too...

[NPCMook]

I too will chirp in for SR4A, it has a few tweaks to certain rules for better understanding, and also institutes a Dice pool limitation, so you avoid players with 50+ dice pools.

The only downside to Shadowrun is players have one role, and that's it, while you can cover multiple roles I would recommend against it.

[Tsotha-lanti]

All skill-based systems reward specialization - dividing roles among the party - to some degree, especially at lower levels of power. If you want PCs to take on multiple roles, give the players more points to create their PC with.

Anyway, it doesn't strike me as very difficult to cover multiple roles in SR regardless of edition. Magicians can do just about anything with the right selection of spells; the weapons expert should be a stealth expert as well; the hacker is the rigger; and so on.

[OverdrivePrime]

Chalk up another for 4th edition. 3rd is great, and really one of the better systems I've ever encountered. However, I cannot name a single way in which the 4th edition is not superior. It's currently my favorite RPG system, and I plan on tweaking it to work for medieval-fantasy play.

[Viv]

4th edition mechanics are vastly superior to 3rd.

It still helps to have sourcebooks from earlier editions for background on the world you're operating in, however.

[Viv]

And let me write a short essay on one of the major reasons why 4th edition is vastly superior to 3rd: Deckers and Riggers.

Before we begin, let me note that due to the way the rules worked, deckers and riggers were largely mutually exclusive character functions.

In 3rd edition, you had deckers -- a "class" of character that specialized in Matrix operations. The Matrix is the SR version of the Internet, and you dive into it to get information, break into government and corporate systems to manipulate information, etc.

This activity usually involved the group decker and the GM doing a full run of their own for an hour while everyone else wanting to play the game went off and watched a TV episode, or played a round of Munchkin or something.

Then, when the decker was done doing his thing, the rest of the group went and did theirs while the Decker went off and played some solitaire.

Obviously, this sucks (tm).

You also had riggers -- a "class" of character that specialized in operating vehicles and drones. This was a character that was either completely overwhelming in power, or utterly useless. In places where vehicles and drones could contribute, the rigger basically rolled any non-rigger competition without breaking a sweat. In places where vehicles and drones cannot contribute (which can occur fairly often in this game, mind you), the rigger is utterly useless.

Obviously, this too sucks (tm).

In SR4, these two functions have largely been combined in the hacker or technomancer, resulting in a character that is capable in both the Matrix and the real world. Hackers can still specialize as either "deckers" or "riggers", but if you go one way or the other, you can still maintain a minimal competency level in the other.

Also, the "hacker goes off and does his own thing" has been significantly mitigated in SR4. The mechanics are much simplified, and even though you stlil have this problem to some degree, most dives into the Matrix can be resolved in a matter of minutes with the new hacking rules.

On top of it, even hackers with no drones can contribute in combat now, due to the fact that almost everything is wireless, and you don't have to go full-VR anymore to be competent in the matrix. You can be in a firefight using AR -- augmented reality, sort of a half-way point between VR and a standard laptop computer -- to provide over-watch capabilities, mess with enemy communications, etc.

[Viv]

In fact, the hacking issue in SR3 was so bad that we had a rule in our group:

(1) Nobody plays a decker.
(2) The team face is responsible for bringing a responsible decker contact to the table to who we can outsource all our decking problems.

Then the GM just figured out what the decker was capable of doing, and we went about our business.

Really. I loved SR3, but SR4 is just plain better.

[Xuincherguixe]

Yeah. Pretty much everything everyone has said above.

I've been playing since second edition, and I've noticed a gradual shift towards making the system simpler, and broader.

4th goes a long way in bringing the various roles closer together.


Granted, it makes no sense that there are so many easy to hack wireless systems. Of course... it doesn't make much sense that those exist now. Dumb laws, and technological ignorance can explain away that.

[Tsotha-lanti]

In fact, the hacking issue in SR3 was so bad that we had a rule in our group:

(1) Nobody plays a decker.

This was the rule pretty much all groups used in Cyberpunk 2020. Atrocious system, net runs that take an hour or two during which nobody else can do anything... gah!

Then again, in that game there was never any reason, ever, to not play a Solo. Combat Sense was just too stupidly good. (Unless, of course, you had the option to play a Powered Armor Jock and actually have Powered Armor.)

Edit:


Granted, it makes no sense that there are so many easy to hack wireless systems. Of course... it doesn't make much sense that those exist now. Dumb laws, and technological ignorance can explain away that.

Field research in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, just recently found that about 50% of wireless networks are unhidden (possibly unsecured; the news report was crap). And people leave their Bluetooth open all the time, with hilarious results.

The SR4 book (and the supplements even more so) does mention that anyone with sense will usually have their gear switched offline, or else slaved or wired to their commlink, and their commlink hidden. Finding a specific hidden commlink does take some effort, and then you'll have to crack it open. (Everyone has some security program in there, and smart people use Encrypt, Bomb, etc. on top of it.)

So professionals and runners will be hidden (except in areas where custom, security, or law requires broadcasting, where they'll be visible but closed and protected instead, requiring active, potentially detectable and traceable hacking). It's largely an electronic surveillance thing: corps and cops want everyone broadcasting so they can be identified, analyzed, and tracked. This, of course, is why you get a lot of disposable commlinks that you only use for a week or so...

GMs just have to give this stuff some thought to make it realistic; the system is pretty drat solid in this respect.

I think assuming anyone except kids, street punks, and the technologically illiterate ( = majority of population) has all their gear slaved to their commlink (or offline) is the way to go. There are advantages to linking to your commlink; getting gun aiming data, ammo, etc. in your AR, tracking fields of fire in AR, etc. Requiring hackers to find and then hack into enemy commlinks in order to mess with their gear and comm seems fair to me, and is just what I'd expect to have to do as a hacker player.

[Swordguy]

In fact, the hacking issue in SR3 was so bad that we had a rule in our group:

(1) Nobody plays a decker.
(2) The team face is responsible for bringing a responsible decker contact to the table to who we can outsource all our decking problems.

Then the GM just figured out what the decker was capable of doing, and we went about our business.

Really. I loved SR3, but SR4 is just plain better.

With the house rule above, SR3 is a workable game. Again, we've got something similar...the only decker allowed is a "combat decker" that's primarily functions as an on-site decker, not the batman-esque information junkie most people play.

The big draw for SR3 is the atmosphere. The first 3 editions of SR were heavy into "true cyberpunk", ideally focusing on gritty, humanesque drama and the nascent loss of humanity required to compete in the mega-corp dominated world. Not a mage? Then you almost certainly NEED essence loss to contribute? Technology and the soul are mutually exclusive, and in a high-tech world, not much soul is left. Even if you just have a datajack...you've got to have a hole drilled in your skull to get it. Will Gibson and Blade Runner are the primary sources. It's all very "future of the 1980's".

If you like that atmosphere, go with SR3 (plus, getting sourcebooks for SR3 is really cheap and easy these days).

The new edition is a sci-fi game of the modern era, a "post-cyberpunk" system. We've seen that technology isn't inherently harmful to the human condition, and the integration of machine and flesh can theoretically be considered the next logical stage of human evolution (the Technomancer really exemplifies this idea). This is where SR4 excels. It's a much glitzier world, where the megacorps, while massive and powerful, aren't quite as oppressive, and the shadows in the alley's aren't so dark. The whole atmosphere has lightened up considerably. The primary source is really the anime Ghost in the Shell.

I don't especially like the SR4 mechanics (and hate their character-creation system - the priority system, along with handfuls of dice, is one of the main hallmarks of SR), and so I can't honestly say go play it. I'm too much of a fan of the earlier noir atmosphere, and the SR3 system really supports this well, while the SR4 system supports high-power, over-the-top/Rule of Cool play (and very well, may I add). What I will say is that, hsould you decide on SR3, you should unabashedly steal from SR4 for concepts, and translate them over to SR3. Wireless Matrix? Not a difficult switch, and it completely changes the "Decker issue".

(Drone Riggers who sit in a van a mile from the action are a problem regardless of system, and there's no good "1 size fits all solution" that leaves both players and GM happy.)

[Satyr]

Always willing to represent the minority, opinion, I found that 4th edition of Shadowrun was a large step back. I admit, I haven't played it much, but I tested it. I really wanted to like it, because there were many problems with its progenitor. Some of them were solved, others weren't and for the worst part, some completely new and unecessary problems occured as well, but the major one is, that the 4th edition completely messed up the core mechanism of the game.
Exchanging an interesting and fun game system with a mediocre NWoD clone of a system is a worse idea than drilling a whole in a head to put electrodes on your brain's pleasre centres to live in orgasmotropia until you starve. Fixed Target Numbers are a stupid idea, reducing the game's flexibility and depth for the sake of a false simplicity. The original 3rd edition rules had one mechanism to describe the dificulty of a task - the Target number. This ripoff system of White Wolf suddenly needs two - pool penalties and thresholds. Now, you do not only have a system with effectively less depth but more compleyity. Thanks for nothing.

I found it extremely convoluted, unnecessary complex in some parts (like the mess the character creation is, with these odd numbers in the point buy...), while others, like the Matrix, where dumbed down to the extreme. This is mostly annoying, like the unnecessary renaming of older elements. This seemed to me like a willing try to chum up with a potential new audience while not carring about the ones who bought and played the older editions. Some of the more unique fluff - you know, the stuff that makes a system actually interesting - was lead to a shiny wal and got a blindfold and a cigarette, to have some bland genericness instead.

Shadowrun 4 relates to Shadowrun like the NWoD to its corresponding original version: there are some - obviously intended - paralells and similarities, and much too many changes, often to the worse.
It may be that 4th edition run smoother if you learn the system in more detail than I did, but it is also the blander system, by far.

[Anakha]

OP, i find 4th edition shadowrun to work well. It took out 3rd edition's "I roll 54 dice to shoot gun". Point buy seems weird, but trust me, Priority system made it impossible to make characters in less than 1 session. As for people's comments on how 4th edition shadowrun is not gritty, and the megacorps aren't evil, go read the Emergence campaign setting. The **** they do to Technomancers is pretty terrible.

[Crow]

I'm for 3rd edition. 4th edition killed the atmosmosphere which made it worthwhile to play the game. I like my shadowrun to be good ol' fantasy-punk, not ghost in the shell.

[Viv]

The grittiness of 4th edition, or lack thereof, is a GM implementation issue. If you don't think SR4 is dark enough, that's something that is trivially solved. It is not a good reason to take issue with it, IMO. In fact, it's one of the reasons I gave a nod to SR3 sourcebooks, which IMO, represent some of the best damn world creation around.

The issue of target numbers versus pool penalties and thresholds -- well, heh.

First, the skill system in SR4 is simpler. There is no damn good reason for a person to be a ninja with a sword, but basically incompetent with a knife -- and that happened in SR3. Likewise, there is no good reason to be a crack shot with a rifle, and unable to hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol -- again, something that happened with SR3. This sort of stupidity is far less likely to occur in SR4.

Additionally, if you think that pool penalties and thresholds are intractable and silly, you really haven't looked at the mathematical properties of the target number system very carefully.

+3TN has totally different meanings depending on where you start on the scale. If you start out at TN3, +3TN just means your 2/3 chance turned to 1/6. If you start out at 6, then your 1/6 chance turned to 1/12. If you start at 9, your 1/12 chance just turned into a 1/36.

Or, how about +1TN? If you started out at TN5, your 1/3 chance turned to 1/6. But if you started out at TN6, +1TN makes no difference at all, because if you roll a six, you will always roll at least a seven.

The mathematical properties of the target number system were just absurd, and to call it the less complex system is just silly.

[Doc Roc]

The grittiness of 4th edition, or lack thereof, is a GM implementation issue. If you don't think SR4 is dark enough, that's something that is trivially solved. It is not a good reason to take issue with it, IMO. In fact, it's one of the reasons I gave a nod to SR3 sourcebooks, which IMO, represent some of the best damn world creation around.

[...]

The mathematical properties of the target number system were just absurd, and to call it the less complex system is just silly.

I spent a tremendous amount of time with 3rd edition and fourth edition as well as digging around in their mathematical guts, and I have to agree on both points. SR4 is mechanically more viable than SR3. The rest is an issue with your particular simulation environment and may indicate that your GM-Co. GMing module needs a refurb.

[Swordguy]

Or, how about +1TN? If you started out at TN5, your 1/3 chance turned to 1/6. But if you started out at TN6, +1TN makes no difference at all, because if you roll a six, you will always roll at least a seven.

The mathematical properties of the target number system were just absurd, and to call it the less complex system is just silly.

Yeah, that was a facepalm 20 years ago, and it's a facepalm moment now. The easy houserule (suggested, but never officially endorsed) was to say that TN 7 never exists. Anything that bumps a TN to 7 actually bumps it to 8. Then you have the issue of a TN 5+2 (difficulty) being mathematically the same as a TN 5+3 (difficulty). Unfortunately, there's no solution with exploding dice systems that fixes this. Even L5R has it happen when you've got a TN that's 1 above the maximum exploding die value. It's just an unavoidable quirk of the system.

For reference, our houserule was that, in the case of a TN 7/13/19/etc, a "1" result on the rerolled die had to be rolled one more time. High, it made it; low, it didn't. It's not mathematically perfect, but it's at least a little better for those who twitch at the system as written.

[Satyr]

I didn't claim that the game became less gritty (or, actually I do, but that happened much earlier, with the Jumping the Shark Olympic Games that was Year of the Comet). I just said that it was blander and that several of the elements that made Shadowrun unique and interesting, the whole grown background - was effectively discontinued and negated.

If you complain about a system, please be sure that you understand it beforehand before you make claims like


There is no damn good reason for a person to be a ninja with a sword, but basically incompetent with a knife -- and that happened in SR3.

which are just plain wrong. Both knives and swords are bladed weapons, and therefore use the absolute same skill. And it's not like that you cannot derrive one skill from the other.


Anything that bumps a TN to 7 actually bumps it to 8.

I am pretty sure that this was an official rule.

[The_Werebear]

My recommendation as someone who played 4e SR only- Don't let the numbers powergamer review the book ahead of time. I don't recall exactly how, but he cranked his Manipulation Spellcasting pool into the low 40's and then spammed Mob Control. Only dedicated counterspellers could reduce his success rate lower than 90%.

When we made him come up with a new character, he produced a troll who could only be damaged by anti-vehicle rockets, and that's only if he was counted as wearing enough armor to be counted a vehicle. And he was a hacker.

My horror story aside, I like the system and the game. I would recommend lowering the point buy just a touch though.

[Narmoth]

Well, since I only need a system to run a post-apoc homebrew setting in, I don't really care about the grittiness. I think Shadowrun 4th ed will perform just fine for that task

[Lost Demiurge]

Well, the folks here have raised every point that I'd use to recommend 4th, so yeah, go with that one.

SR3 wasn't a bad system, but it kind of assumed familiarity with the rules. It wasn't as newbie-friendly as SR4, or as easy to get into.

I will chip in with the fact that I've been running SR4 off and on for a couple of years, and it's remarkably easy to work with, on the GM side of things.

[Jack_Banzai]

I've played every iteration of Shadowrun (including the oft-maligned DMZ), so allow me to present the following suggestion:

d20 Modern, using the d20 Future, d20 Future Tech, and d20 Cyberscape books, while lifting the Magic rules from Monte Cook's d20 World of Darkness game make for a very, very satisfying d20 Shadowrun using the Shadowrun 3rd sourcebooks and setting. Very satisfying, much faster than rolling endless d6s, and best of all, very easy for anyone familiar with d20 to learn.

[Britter]

Long time Shadowrun GM here.

I play a mishmash combination of 2nd and 3rd editions, in an effort to streamline play, minimize decker/rigger time sinks, and maintain a good game pace. Over the decade or so I have run the system, I would like to think I have gotten it fairly fine-tuned.

Because of that, I will whole-heartedly second the above recomendations for using 4th edition. While I do agree that the flavor is very different in the default game, the mechanics are a lot easier to use and work much better out-of-the-box then previous editions. Nostolgia and hard-headedness have kept me from changing my game over, primarily because I disregard the canon past like 2057 and don't care for the post-cyberpunk flavor of 4th.

But since flavor is largely the perogative of the GM, and a single book containing all the relevant rules, which actually work and allow you to run a game without a binder full of house rules and fiat, 4th edition is a better system to use.

I would recomend that if you want to run a game set in the Shadowrun setting that you invest some time and effort in acquiring and reading some of the vast amount of non-rule-based sourcebooks published for SR 2 and 3. There is a ton of great material in there that can easily be integrated into a Shadowrun game, regardless of rule set.

[Gerion]

Don't mix it with d20.
The skill system in SR is far better than d20.

I would also recomend the 4th edition rules, they fixed some bugs in the old rules. For the world building part, run with the 3rd edition books.

[Viv]

f you complain about a system, please be sure that you understand it beforehand before you make claims like (...)

which are just plain wrong. Both knives and swords are bladed weapons, and therefore use the absolute same skill. And it's not like that you cannot derrive one skill from the other.

For what it's worth, I'm quite familiar with the system. As far as this goes, you're right -- simple brain fart on my part.

But, you're missing the forest for the trees friend:

Firearms that are separate skills:
Rifles
Shotguns
Submachine Guns
Pistols
Assault Rifles

Now, like I said, in SR3, you could be a crack shot with Rifles, but couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol.

Melee that are separate skills:
Clubs
Edged Weapons
Unarmed Combat
Polearms/Staffs

Now, my point stands, despite my poor choice of specific weapon examples. You could be the world's best swordsman, but completely, utterly incompetent with say, a billy club.

This is nonsense.


I am pretty sure that this was an official rule.

I don't think so. If you read the Dumpshock forums, abuse of this was always pretty standard optimization. If I'm wrong, please cite.

[BRC]

Question. Where did things get less gritty in 4e? The characters are still slum-dwelling mercenaries working for soulless monolithic megacorps. The tech got a bit fancier, but otherwise things seemed pretty similar.

[Viv]

And all that said, I don't hate the SR3 ruleset. I enjoy playing with it very much.

It's just that the SR3 rule set:
(1) Suffers from TN silliness, like I mentioned.
(2) Suffers from skill silliness, like I mentioned.
(3) Suffers from decker/rigger problems, like I mentioned.
(4) And finally, the rule books are in my experience, poorly organized. It was not uncommon for my friends and I to have to look at 2-3 pages in separate sections in the core rulebook to find all the relevant rules on a situation; and worse, if you were bringing in other books, you'd have to do the same within them, also.

SR4 is just a cleaner implementation overall. It was designed with the lessons learned from SR3 in mind. It's a radical departure mechanically, and yes, it does have its own problems.

But it's simpler to learn, simpler to apply to real game situations, and solves the most egregious broken parts of previous editions of SR.

[Viv]

Question. Where did things get less gritty in 4e? The characters are still slum-dwelling mercenaries working for soulless monolithic megacorps. The tech got a bit fancier, but otherwise things seemed pretty similar.

Honestly, I disagree that it did, but it's not a point that you have to argue when deciding between the two editions because this is something that the GM can easily solve once a ruleset is adopted.

[Satyr]

Now, like I said, in SR3, you could be a crack shot with Rifles, but couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol.

Again, it's not like that you can't derrive one skill from the other. If I remember correctly, it's a simple TN+2 modifier. That's not much of a problem.


I don't think so. If you read the Dumpshock forums, abuse of this was always pretty standard optimization. If I'm wrong, please cite.

And perhaps I always assumed that it is assumed to be played this way and used it for so many times, that the difference between RAW and RAI blurred. Or it is a difference between the English and the German version. There were always some, as far as I know. But in the one Gamemaster screen I had, TN 7 was included in 6 in the difficulty table.

Certainly, Shadowrun 3 was never a perfect system. It has some extremely funny glitches (like falling from a chair deals a lot more damage than being stabbed with a knife by an average person... or light pistols). But it had some innovative (for its time) and interesting mechanics, like the freely allocatable dice pools.

[Viv]

Again, it's not like that you can't derrive one skill from the other. If I remember correctly, it's a simple TN+2 modifier. That's not much of a problem.

TN+2 is a huge problem.

Let's take ideal conditions in melee, which results in base TN4 for both parties. One is a master swordsman with edged weapons (6). Next guy is a go-ganger with clubs (2).

Each can expect one success per round.

Now, we're talking a world class swordsman here, against some dude on the street who got basic training with a club for the last 2-3 weeks.

Do you really think this outcome is reasonable? I don't.

Worse, if the swordsman puts a razor blade on the end of this billy-club, all of the sudden, he's a ninja again.

It's just stupid.

[Viv]

On the other end of the scale, if you take that same scenario and throw in HORRIBLE conditions that jack up the target number -- eg, smoke filled room, at night, everyone's been hit by neurostun... all of the sudden, +2TN isn't a problem anymore, and the swordsman dominates again through sheer number of dice rolled and hitting the magical exploding 6.

I'm not saying that SR3 is a horrible system, I'm just disagreeing with your assertion that SR4's success test system results in "a system with effectively less depth but more compleyity."

SR4's success test system is mathematically more reasonable, is simpler to grasp, and has less absurd outcomes than the TN system.

[Satyr]

Let's take ideal conditions in melee, which results in base TN4 for both parties. One is a master swordsman with edged weapons (6). Next guy is a go-ganger with clubs (2).

Each can expect one success per round.

Now, we're talking a world class swordsman here, against some dude on the street who got basic training with a club for the last 2-3 weeks.

It's more like 12 Dice to 4 dice. That is what the Combat pool is for, and that is limited by the used skill.

[Viv]

And now you've got the master swordsman expecting two successes per round (12*1/6), and the go-ganger likewise expecting 2 (4*1/2).

[Viv]

About the only thing you can say for this scenario is that the master swordsman's expectation is more reliable.

[Lost Demiurge]

Regardless of which one you go with, I heartily recommend the SR3 setting books, and even some of the regular books which mix fluff and crunch. Just disregard the old rules, and you can recycle them into some fairly awesome adventure ideas, background decoration, and immersion aids.

Hell, one of my favorite meet points that I'd throw at the group, I got from a SR3 adventure sourcebook. It was a bar called the Rubber Suit. The team went there expecting some sort of S&M deal, and found out they were TOTALLY off. The place was a kaiju-themed bar... All the tables looked like buildings, and there were AR helicopters and tanks shooting at the patrons as they walked around, and little AR people fleeing them or being crunched underfoot... You could pay a couple of nuyen to get yourself an AR monster overlay for the night... That kind of thing. It went over really well the first time they saw it, and added a bit to the game, I think.

[Waspinator]

Any particular recommendations for setting/fluff/adventure books?

[Satyr]

Universal Brotherhood is old, but one of the best. Think Bodysnatchers crossed with Scientology. Yes, that evil. Bug Citiy is the second volume to this, and adds post-nuclear slums to the mix.
Renraku Arkology Shutdown is similar, but goes in another direction, more like 2001 (the movie), combined with the Nakatomi Tower. And the Children of Wrath.
Threats 1 +2 are also great books, if you ever wanted to run a game based on nice conspiracy theory, that will make increase your player's paranoia pool on a daily base.
Cyberpirates sounds silly, and actually is in some parts (I mean... Orc pirate kings that more or less rule the Carribean... it's bad, but it's hillarious) but on the other hand describes some really exotic places. My players went catatonic when Madagascar was only mentioned.

Just stay the drek away from anything that deals with the fragging comet. YotC is the Jump the Megalodon moment of Shadowrun, and if you ask me, it was all downwards since then.
And every book dealing with Germany is a large collection of jokes. Seriously, these books are the RPG equivalent of Manos: The Hand of Fate.

[Xuincherguixe]

Eh. Ghost in the Shell elements have always been part of Shadowrun. I mean there's an immortal elf that goes trolling around on the boards called "Laughing Man"

And you know, it's not like it isn't a pretty bleak world too. Shadowrun is, and always will be as dark as the GM makes it.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Eh. Ghost in the Shell elements have always been part of Shadowrun. I mean there's an immortal elf that goes trolling around on the boards called "Laughing Man"

GITS:SAC is pretty much some of the best cyberpunk there is, anyway... the conceptual stuff is pretty much on the same level as Gibson's Bridge trilogy. (I gotta admit, the SR4 Hong Kong reads really familiarly if you've watched GITS:SAC.)

[comicshorse]

Any particular recommendations for setting/fluff/adventure books?

I loved the English sourcebook. Which had great atmosphere, ideas and was perfect for running a lower powered game. However in the name of all that is holy stay away from the Tir Na Og sourcebook which is just terrible

[Lost Demiurge]

Shadows of North America and Shadows of Asia are pretty awesome. I'll have to hit my bookshelf and see what else is good...

[Swordguy]

Any particular recommendations for setting/fluff/adventure books?

Here's another vote for the Universal Brotherhood campaign track, as well as the Renraku Arc Shutdown. Both are great campaigns with a heck of a punch. I personally like the Corp War book as well - corporations fighting an all-out war in the streets of Seattle is a runner's worst nightmare and dream job come true. If you want a short adventure, I'm rather partial to Maria Mercurial's adventure ("Mercurial") as a one-off but be aware that ALL of the older Shadowrun adventures (as opposed to campaign sourcebooks like Arc Shutdown) as written contain a large amount of railroading. Make sure your group is willing to go along with you, or be prepared to make a LOT of changes on the fly; several adventures assume the runners undertake a course of action absolutely not intuitive to the players.

Stuff to avoid very definitely includes the Harlequin books. I STILL have players (nigh on 15 years after I ran them) who hate me for running the adventures and subjecting them to "that ****ing clown". And not the good, "I hate you for that awesome adventure" that Shadowrun is famous for - but the actual, "I don't want to game with you" hate that comes from exposure to a poorly run DMPC (which Harlequin is actually written as - he manipulates you openly, and is literally written as being "unkillable", and the book says that the runners shouldn't be able to beat him under any conditions or circumstances).

[Winterwind]

Just stay the drek away from anything that deals with the fragging comet. YotC is the Jump the Megalodon moment of Shadowrun, and if you ask me, it was all downwards since then.
And every book dealing with Germany is a large collection of jokes. Seriously, these books are the RPG equivalent of Manos: The Hand of Fate.Out of interest, why? I've heard both of these notions before (and haven't gotten the books; I make my fluff and adventures myself anyway), but with hardly any explanation...


Oh yeah, 3rd vs. 4th... personally, I've only played 3rd, so I am wary of making statements in the favour or disfavour of either, but I've heard the arguments Swordguy and Satyr make in favour of 3rd over 4th many times in the past from independent sources, leading me to believe there might well be something to their claims (in addition to both of them usually knowing very, very well what they are talking about).

[Tsotha-lanti]

After the comet, you only have a host of sub-types of orcs and trolls and elves and whatnot, and a ton of other fantasy critters, but you also get people who aren't actual nonhuman ethnicities but have scales and tails and horns and dragon wings and whatever. It does sound like 100% Mary-Sue BS excusing, so I mostly ignore it myself. (And I have like zero grounding in the old background, outside of what the older core books told you.)

[Satyr]

Out of interest, why? I've heard both of these notions before (and haven't gotten the books; I make my fluff and adventures myself anyway), but with hardly any explanation...

The Metahuman subtypes are actually older, and were published for the first time in the 2nd edition Compendium. They weren't that much of a problem, as most of them were only a minor group of freaks, and sometimes it is fun to include something exotic in your game. And if this means that you face a somewhat smaller, more bulky orc or an extra hairy Elf - so be it. On a small scale, having exotic stuff is fun.

YotC does not understand this. It included a spontaneous mutation of physical traits that could randomly appear anywhere and which were just... strange. We are not talking about a distinct minority of metatypes here, which may even be plausible in a way. We are talikng here about completely usual guys who wake up one day to find a cangaroo pouch on their belly. And the whole book is full with stuff like this. It is the complete overkill with what is supposed to be exotic and therefore interesting, bu it is so much at once that it's just one large blur of stuff. It also included the angry ghosts of the dead that come back to live and take ovre unoccupied bodies and rules for Drake characters, which were directly stated to be complete NPC material two years earlier... but most importantly, the book was just not very good. The single ideas aren't necessarily bad, but the way they were presented and the extreme frequency with which they come over the wold are killing of any form of interest for them.

Now, the Germany source books suffer from the same problem - overkill. Anything that anywhere in the world took place, is going to have a counterpart in Germany as well. Including: Insect spirits in the old Ruhrgebiet mines, more Great Dragons than in the rest of the world combined, an own land of the immortal Elves (in Greifswald, the former capital of FKK tourism), a Chernobyl area in the Saarland which also happens to be a magic void, the biggest, baddest slums in the world (in Berlin, which also happened to be an enklave of total anarchism), a theocracy of religious fanatics (in Westphalia. Seriously.), the biggest mega corp, the meanest and least transparent mega corp (both of which are controled by dragons), half a dozen of off-shore arcologies similar in size to the Renraku Arc, a seprate Troll Kingdom in the Schwarzwald and a civil war between Bavaria and the rest of the republic.
Not to forget a free spirit who takes the form of a SS panzer division.

[Tsotha-lanti]

The Germany sourcebook sounds awful; it's an understandable mistake to try to make one country contain everything interesting, but it's just stupid in a genre where you're supposed to travel all over the world on jobs anyway.

And yeah, the metahuman subtypes aren't that bad, but the freaks and "mutations" and drakes were just so out of place it's ridiculous. There seemed to be no attempt in their descriptions (in 4E material) to make them actually fit the cyberpunk style of the setting.

[Satyr]

Drakes are an Earthdawn inheritance. There was a time when the interconnection between Shadowrun and Earthdawn was emphasised (probably to get more people to play Earthdawn, which is a great settingg, but was never too popular), and the drakes were one of the migrants from one era to the other.

[Winterwind]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanations.
Geez, some writers just don't know when to stop, eh? :smallbiggrin:

[Swordguy]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanations.
Geez, some writers just don't know when to stop, eh? :smallbiggrin:

To be fair, the books they're talking about are either pretty early-on in the FanPro series (so the writers were still getting their feet under them) or pretty late in the FASA series (where they self-admittedly stopped caring). I can't recall which offhand.

And even the horrible books are light-years better in atmosphere and fluff than many, many other games, so I'm not to concerned. Hell, I actually liked the Tir Na nOg and Tir Tairngire books, and the inherent connections between Earthdawn and SR - I just wish they'd been given the attention they deserved rather than shoved in there.

Finally, I'm pretty sure that the German version of SR is considerably different than the English one. We've been over this before - there's differences in printed rules and fluff text that really matter (the one I remember offhand from our discussions here was that in your German books, cultured bioware wasn't available at character creation, while in the English one, it very much is). The German line has novels and I THINK even sourcebooks that we don't have at all. It's like it's not really the same game - they're "cousins", not twins.

[Britter]

Well, to be fair, the license was in transition a lot. I think that the Year of the Comet stuff was the handywork of WizKids, not FASA. WizKids had picked the license up sometime after Second Edition and a lot of what they did with both the storyline and the ruleset went in different directions from what FASA may have originally intended.

There is a similar disconnect, to me at least, in looking at the changes between Thrid and Fourth edition as well, which I attriubte to Catalyst taking over and putting their spin on things.

Now, it has to be said that some of the errors were surely FASAs, including some of the things already listed, like the Germany and Tir Na Og books and the various Harlequin Adventures (all of which, personally, I thought were a lot of fun. The Harlequin material livened up one of my campaigns. YMMV of course).

I think that the canon is just too crowded, and so I don't use anything past the Super Tuesday stuff. And as I recall, even that was considered a little dodgy by a lot of people.

Edit- I was just totally ninjaed by Swordguy. And I agree with him :)

[Shademan]

we have decided to give 4'th ED a try.
and we'll be making ourselves a post-apocalyptic setting.


:smallbiggrin:

[Shag0120]

Our group actually implemented a pretty good fix for the exploding dice problem. If you roll a 6, then for the next die you roll a 1 counts as a total of 6, 2 is a 7, 3 is an 8, etc. It seems to work mathematically, and it continues in the trend that a 1 is always a failure/non-progression. As for which system is better: I personally think 3rd ed is better. I can't really remember the details, but when we got 4th ed we tried it out for a long time, probably close to a year, and found glaring problems with the combat rules system in general. After working for a while to fix it mathematically, we realized that 3rd ed was easier to fix, simply with the exploding dice rule change and a couple other tweaks. Just my two cents.

[Tokiko Mima]

3rd Edition? 4th Edition? Please! When you you want your hardcore cyberpunk, your only choice is Shadowrun, Gibson Edition. (http://www.shadowrun4.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/SRGEPromo.pdf)

You can thank me later for showing you the light, Grasshopper. :smallwink:
P.S. It's an April Fools day joke from this year. Don't want someone to think I'm actually being serious! :p

[JaronK]

GITS:SAC is pretty much some of the best cyberpunk there is, anyway... the conceptual stuff is pretty much on the same level as Gibson's Bridge trilogy. (I gotta admit, the SR4 Hong Kong reads really familiarly if you've watched GITS:SAC.)

Except it's not cyberpunk, it's post cyberpunk. The difference being that cyberpunk was all about fear of a dark future... the corporations oppress the little guy, machines replace the soul, the internet has monsters that can kill you. GitS has the same elements, but loses much of the fear... corporations exist, but are no worse or better than today. You can replace your body with cyber upgrades and that's fine (though costly). The internet is a place, like any other.

By the way, if you want to fix the exploding dice thing, the best solution is actually to have rolling a 5+ mean that you add 4 and roll again. Thus, if you roll a 6 you roll again, if you get a 3 the total is 7 (4+3). It's simple enough, and the probabilities are actually very close (same chance of rolling a 5+, slightly higher chance of rolling a 6, barely higher chance of rolling a 7, etc).

JaronK

[Dragero]

Gah! A Thread Necromancer is about!!

*Chanting and clapping to cast a spell*

Come out you DAMB DIRTY NECROMANCER!!!