[SR3] Tricks of the Trade

[Oracle_Hunter]

For reasons that are not entirely clear, I am compelled to start up a 3rd Edition Shadowrun game. In part, it's because of Google Wave and it's implications for PbP gaming. I may also have a hankering for a radical departure from all the 4E D&D I've been playing.

Anyhoo, I'm planning on running this completely by the book - Deckers, Riggers, and everything. Now, for my PbP it'll be easy (and perhaps, even automatiable) to deal with some of the more onerous mechanics, but I may try my hand at a few short Runs IRL just to get comfortable with the mechanics.

So, I ask the Playground for any tips or tricks for making SR3 not grind. Specifically I'm looking for tips in running:
- Combat (all those modifiers! Knockdown tests!)
- Decking (self-explanatory)
- Rigging (what the heck is this supposed to be?)

I've already worked up a decent custom character sheet to help the players keep track of important information (ammo left in their gun, the net Concealment factors of their gear, Cyberware reaction modifiers) but if anyone knows of a real good one, I'd like a link to that too.

Thanks in advance!

[Britter]

My main solution to keeping Shadowrun from grinding is, frankly, to ignore the vast majority of the rules minutiae. No shotgun scatter, no knockdown tests unless it is thematically appropriate, no decking or rigging, no astral questing. As often as possible I boil things down to simple opposed tests, using the base model of the combat skills to determine sucsess. If forced to have a rigger or decker, I try to boil those rules down to opposed tests where appropriate as well, instead of having to refer to a huge sub-set of rules.

Mind you, this is with a 6 person group in a real life game. If I were playing over PbP that would change the time frame slightly, and I would be more interested in adjudicating all the details that I ignore to keep the action around the table moving at a good clip.

You may want to consider a fixed number of initative passes for everyone as well, to prevent low IP players from losing interest once their character is out of possible actions to perform while the high IP guy still gets two or three whole passes to wreak havoc with.