What's the best Shadowrun edition?
>>97917057The one you actually play.
I liked 2e best, but the system sucks in most editions. Grade A setting though
>>97917057Most say 4e. I prefer 5e. Everyone can agree 6e should be nuked from orbit.
>>97917057I run 3e with 1e's matrix rules.
>>97917057Never the current one. No matter when you ask.
>>97917057The one you like the least, fight me.
>>979170573e, and it's not even close. 2e was a very good game but it was kind of the "early access" release for the system (compared to 1e's primitive alpha version).3e took everything 2e had, polished it up, added extra detail and had an overall magnificent simulation system for literally everything yet still keeping it abstract enough to handle everything mind's eye and without being forced to use (((grid/hex maps))).>absolutely über-kino setting development with the Threats books, Arcology Shutdown, Dunkie's election fallout, Lovecraftian shit like insect & toxic shamans, H̷͇̽ó̵̹r̶̝͒r̴̞̔o̷̡ŗ̴̈ṡ̷ and Shedim.I only wish every game out there used it, it'd be great for Eclipse Phase, Deadlands'/HoE's modern fantast or having a fantasy variant for whatever wizards and dragons shit you want to run. Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Shadow of the Demon Lord or Symbaroum: They'd all be much better with SR3e's ruleset.
>>979170572e setting, and then some generic system, probably. Gurps, Genesys, and savage worlds all have fan hacks.Anarchy 2.0 also looks promising, but I feel as though everyone is waiting to see how CGL is going to fuck up the North American release.
>>97917057I've only played 4e.
>>97918634>without being forced to use (((grid/hex maps)))"Sorry your street samurai with augmented legs isn't fast enough to get to the your target but the non-augmented fatass with a knife stabs him in the face and kills him fuck you roll a new character."
>>97918840My condolences.
>>97917057The games I ran and played were 4e20 (20th anniversary edition of 4e, with all the errata included). It was pretty solid, even if I acknowledge that they were a major change of pace from previous editions, most notably with the introduction of the wireless Matrix. I recognize that the system tries to retroactively acknowledge the march of technology in the real world, and the original 4e released in 2005, well into the rise of wireless connections but shortly before the iPhone.
>>97918667>Anarchy 2.0I hate to hand it to the French for that one...
>>97921121Black Book did a hell of a job, it's everything that I wanted the original Anarchy to be.
>>97921121Is it in the folder?
>>97917057They're all bad, and in different ways.How often do we have this thread?
>>97921343It speaks to the enduring quality of Shadowrun as a setting that, all these years later, people still want to play it, even though most versions of the game are mid to bad
>>97922524I credit it to Shadowrun being strangely prophetic. It corrected predicted the wireless world, smartphones, and a few irl company mergers. Not to mention recent events are getting eerily similar;>Companies like Blackrock trying to push extratotalitality >Government trying to install "eco" measures to directly control your car and driving patterns, like the Grid. >Companies treating AI like a magic 8ball to decide anything at all, like HorizonThe setting is somehow becoming extremely relevant to modern life and I'm not sure I like that, moreso than Cyberpunk 2020.
>>97923454Yeah, I think that shadowrun is weirdly a better version of cyberpunk, even though I love cyberpunk as well. Cyberpunk 2020/Red ends up reading much more like a Flanderized version of the concept, whereas Shadowrun is more... Believable isn't the right word, but it's easier for me to take it on its own terms, I guess.
>>97922524>>97923454>>97923607At the end of the day, wizards and cybernetics or trolls and guns are a cool combination and people want to try it.Personally I was ok with 4e but it felt cumbersome to run. And that's saying something considering I've played GURPS a lot.
>>97922524Jordan Weisman once told me that people love Shadowrun in spite of its rules, not because of its rules, which struck me as observant and pretty funny coming from one of its creators.
>>97923713We just tried to start up a 2e game and it was just fucking awful. There are some excellent concepts in there (I really like the way damage, health, and armor work and are linked together) but taken as a whole it's just a mess. Hacking was bad in a way I didn't even expect, and the pixel bitching over what seemed like a dozen tiny modifiers at any one time just was not fun. It breaks my heart, because 2e lore *is* shadowrun to me, but we all walked away from that one.
>>979170575e is the edition I played the most but I'd like to try out 2e one day since I've had good experience with Mechwarrior 2e the company released in those times.
>>979170572nd by a longshot. 3rd is also good though, and I actually used to play with a lot of houserules that mixed elements of 2e and 3e.Anything after that isn't even Shadowrun, it's fanfiction by a new company that completely murdered the original soul.
>>97917057SR4 has probably the best rules.I have mixed feelings about SR3. In some ways it compiles a lot of the SR2 stuff into one place; but at the same time that can make it a bit overcomplicated and harder to get into or get people into.
>>97917057tips for making a aztech pit fighter who is a huge fan of Aztechnology?
>>97923454>It corrected predicted the wireless world, smartphonesPre-4e hilariously didn't. And business smartphones were a thing when it was developed, just not common among normies. I distinctly remember making fun of a guy whipping out his Pocket PC Phone Edition running Windows Mobile with Pocket Internet Explorer. Dad had a Nokia Series 90 smartphone for work.
>>97926379>Anything after thatVery much agree, even though I prefer the 3rd over the 2nd.>>97926776That's unironically the ONLY thing that "needs fixing" in 3rd edition: 3-6 pages of house rules/errata for a matrix built upon upon wireless connections and rules for it.
>2nd>3rd>4thCan we narrow it down further? What are the main differences?Hard mode: Corebook only, getting splats for these gets harder by the day.
>>979274333rd ed is just 2nd ed, with more stuff. There were some minor attribute changes iirc, the systems are identical apart from that.
>>97917569>>97918667>>97921343>>97922524Everyone always say “oh the system sucks and is bad and only the setting is good” but I’ve recently been collecting Shadowrun books and I think the system works perfectly fine and is easy to learn for 1st to 3rd edition. The skill lists are stripped down, the rules aren’t nearly as crunchy as people pretend they are (especially before 3rd edition) and the character building is easy to get your head around but still freeform enough to let you make your character truly yours. At this point I’m starting to think the whole “the system sucks” shit is either the later Shadowrun books being badly edited trickling down for the old stuff or people just not being able to read and wrap their head around an RPG that isn’t rules light “lol the system barely matters” shit anymore. 4th edition definitely ups the complexity but even that is very playable and enjoyable, Shadowrun starts shitting the bed with 5th edition when they stop having editors.>>97927767The biggest differences are that 3rd switches to using the Virtual Realities alternate matrix system as its default, lowers the requirements for playing as some metahumans and changes the initiative system so that every character is guaranteed to get at least one turn of before the chromed up cyber samurai gets to do their five additional turns.
>>97927901Oh yeah! The initative order in 3e was in "turns of tens" rather than just a countdown from the 47(+) rolled by the group's autistic cyberzombie minmaxxer and the Kyle Morgan GMPC: That was actually a good rule change and yet another reason for 3e>2e.The matrix rules were also an improvement over 2e, since the old system was a MASSIVE singleplayer dungeon crawl that regularly took 1+ hour with the rest of the group sitting in another room. 3e's decking wasn't perfect but it at least sped things up to 10-15 minutes, rather than ~75.Iirc. the vehicle- and driving systems were hugely overhauled as well?
>>97927767>>97927901>>97928148So it's just a case of preferring 2e for fluff rather than crunch?
>>97927901Have you actually played 2e? Because, in practice, it's fucking awful.
>>97928227It's not that bad except maybe the matrix. Compared to other games of the era it plays fine.
>>97927901The biggest complaint I hear about 1e-3e are the variable target numbers and how shit they are to adjudicate. Not knowing what the odds of a roll are without checking a table is a general problem of dice pool system, but not having fixed targets makes it even worse.
