Hurdles: First time with new players Options

[Joe Chummer]

I haven't played Shadowrun in years -- mostly due to lack of a steady group of players -- but the 20th Anniv. 4th Edition book really gave me the itch to start up again, and I'm working on cobbling together a group of players.

Here are the hurdles I have to overcome, and I'm not sure exactly how to get around them, since I've been off the horse for so long:

1. None of my players have played SR before. I've got a solid handle on GMing (which was my primary job back in the day), so I've got that covered, but it's been about 12 years or more since I had my last group of newbies. Back then, I was a newbie too, so I was learning along with everyone else.

2. My significant other has never played ANY pen-and-paper RPG before, so she's rather hesitant to play ("I don't think I'm that creative," she says). She's interested in being a technomancer, so I'd really like to convince her she doesn't have to be an Oscar-winning actress to enjoy the game.

3. One guy (the husband of a prospective player) supposedly hates SR (although I'm not sure why). I figure either he's played and doesn't like the game, or he knows about it only by reputation and wrote it off (one of those narrow-minded, Gibsonian, purist "I don't want any elves in my cyberpunk, thank you" sort of people). Any ideas on how I might be able to convince him to join us? A husband/wife player combo would be a welcome addition to the group.

4. Short of handing my players SR novels as homework assignments, how do I handle the disparate gap between 12+ years of GM knowledge vs. a lack of player knowledge? For example: Say the team finds out they're not running for Ares, like they thought, but through clever misdirection, are working for the Big A instead. Players who know anything about Aztechnology (and thus hate them to the core) would immediately start looking over their shoulder for a blood mage bent on revenge for them slotting up their recent job. If I used this kind of plot point with a new group, the players would all shrug and go, "So? What's the big fragging deal?" And then they would all get cacked by blood magic. I've found SR to be enjoyable with players that have an appreciation for the source material, but I unfortunately do not have that luxury this time around.

5. Since I'll be playing with a new group and new rules (2nd Edition was my bread and butter, but 4th Ed. rules are really growing on me), is there any advice on making the game less lethal yet still challenging? As a GM, I would much rather see my characters succeed than watch them all get shot up by an offended go-gang the minute they leave the meet. This is especially frustrating with new players when the character they spent hours building gets geeked right off the bat due to some bad dice rolls or because they were unlucky enough to stand too close to a grenade when it went off. Granted, 2nd Edition rules could be pretty deadly too, but characters had Karma pool and other various dice pools to help balance out their chances of success. 4th Edition seems to replace the Karma/dice pools with Edge, but this only helps to a certain degree, as enemy NPCs have an Edge attribute as well (whereas in 2nd Ed. they only had their Threat Rating dice). But on the other hand, I don't want the adventure to be as easy as a run to the Stuffer Shack.

Any other advice would be helpful! Domo arigato, chummers.