Shadowrun first time help.

[MikeB1917]

So at my table we try to encourage anyone who is willing to DM to do so. Normally I will DM, but one of my players has been buildinf a campaign for awhile now, and we just finished our last one so we started playing his.

When his ends I will almost certainly be the DM again, and I want to change the game up a bit.

We play Pathfinder, all of my guys are new to tabletop rpgs but me and one other guy who used to play 3.5.

To the point, I want to run a shadowrun campaign. I know very little about shadowrun except the basics. (watched a few vids about corps, runners, general world info, etc)

This would be my first time DMing and everyones first time playing.

I just need a full download from anyone who has experience with the game on the best way to play it/run it.

We will be playing 5e, as im told its a bit more streamlined than 4e, we also use herolab for almost all character building.

I like the idea of the players having to find their own lines of work, and setting up their own contacts, and generally just exploring the new world none of them know anything about.

The group tends to be silly at times, which is fine for our table, we like having a good time. That being said from what I can tell this is a world all about respect and power, and if you dont give it or have it you can easily be put in your place. I would like to make them second guess themselves and their actions, should we have trusted that guy? Can we really pull off this job? Who do we piss off if we fail?

They are used to pathfinder adventure paths where everything goes their way because they are the protagonists, I want to play a game that will punish that mentality and shadowrun seems like my answer.

I have alot of time to get everything together, but obviously the more time to prepare the better.

And yes the group is cool with switching games entirely.

[Harmelyo]

Hello Mike and welcome to the distopian future!
Disclaimer:
This will not be a full download, I haven't played 5e I stopped at 4e and never got to the point where I cracked my 5e collector edition but I think I can give you a few idea on the look and feel of ShadowRun. I played it at several tables with different DMs and Runners and twice as the actual DM.


So without further waiting, here is a few randow of mytake on the game... (experience does vary from a group to another)

I think you got the right idea on ShadowRun. It will more than likely let you do what you are looking for.
ShadowRun is a great game with a really cool universe and an approach which is quite different from PF or 3.5. Darker and far less forgiving.
My best experiences were the one where the DM took extra effort to empasize on the general despair that permeate the ShadowRun world: Life is hard, regulars people are cogs that can be replaced without a thought by emotionless corporation.
ShadowRun is about playing bottom feeders, you are no hero this time, just a poor guy that try to survive in a world where your grandma would shot you for a tepid soy coffee.
ShadowRun is deadly. I good shot get you dead so when you start shooting be sure to shoot first and shoot well. Don't hesitate.
ShadowRun is for people who like throwing buckets of D6s. An okay to good pool for a roll is 12+ dice.
In ShadowRun there is no big gap between your starting and ending character (unlike PF), you are competent from the get go and evolution is slow.
It is a kinda serious game that require a bit of investment from the players. There is no notion of class, just basic roles you probably heard about Face, street samurai or Magician. So in order to make things work, your players will need to think harder than with a PF character where class give an idea of where to go/look. I would advise to not hesitate to rely on pre-rolled at first if you don't have player loving to dive into new mechanics. (this is very true for NPCs, use and abuse the pre-rolled or you will end up spending hours just fleshing your NPCs.)
Learning all the mechanics (Matrix, Magic, Gunfight) is complex, long and hard on the DM, players just have to learn 1 or two mechanics, you have to master all of them.
Runners are supposed to be discrete professionals, act with "finesse", at least if they want to live more than a run or two. Shooting dead a random rent-a-cop is the best way to get into trouble (Pissing ff the lone-star get you in serious SERIOUS troubles). It is all about applying the right amount of lethality to the situation. Don't bring a rocket launcher on an infiltration mission.


Conclusion:
ShadowRun is awesome. Kinda hard to master but really rewarding. Players and DM experience far more freedom than in PF.
You can easily change the feel of the game from one run to another. When your player or you are tired of pushing the general plot, you can always insert a random run to get some cash in or grab this sweet piece of ware the street sam has been eyeing for a long time.

I hope it helps.

[Hunter Noventa]

It is a kinda serious game that require a bit of investment from the players. There is no notion of class, just basic roles you probably heard about Face, street samurai or Magician. So in order to make things work, your players will need to think harder than with a PF character where class give an idea of where to go/look. I would advise to not hesitate to rely on pre-rolled at first if you don't have player loving to dive into new mechanics. (this is very true for NPCs, use and abuse the pre-rolled or you will end up spending hours just fleshing your NPCs.)
Learning all the mechanics (Matrix, Magic, Gunfight) is complex, long and hard on the DM, players just have to learn 1 or two mechanics, you have to master all of them.


Expanding on these, I know that the latest books, at the very least, have some pre-built characters that are competent examples of different archetypes. Those should give your players an idea of what you're aiming for.

The split of magic/matrix/gunfights is simultaneously shadowrun's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness. It's a strength because it provides variety and more than one way to solve a problem. It's a weakness because depending on the version you play, you end up splitting the party because, for example, only the age can astral project to investigate a magical occurrence. only the decker can do matrix-based recon, during which time everyone else has nothing to do. Part of that may be the fault of our DM, but there's only so much you can do to mitigate it I feel. More recent versions of the game make it harder to remote matrix recon, and hacking it something that can be effective in battle, but it's still something to be aware of.