Solo Shadowrun: What Edition, What Aids, and What Tips? Options

[CornWhiskerTea]

First, Hello everyone! This is my first post, and well, I found about Shadowrun a few years ago; I quickly fell in love with the setting, from corporate CEO's being literal dragons to drones, spirits, and magic co-existing.

After having a bit of free time and finally deciding to play, I decided that due to IRL reasons (work, schedule, finding people, etc) - that I would love to start a game of Shadowrun....Solo.

Now, I fully realize that Shadowrun is a game where you can't do everything, but most runs require almost every aspect of the game.

So far, I've decided to "wing" some aspects of the game, like saying "Oh, my fixer gave this job for me, he'll take a bigger cut but I'll accept it" , while ignoring other aspects of the game - like if I'm a decker, sitting out on the magic-related jobs.

Sure, I'll not be able to enjoy "Every" aspect of the game, but that's something I'll fully embrace - I like getting my face slammed into the dirt, and if my nerdy character gets in a firefight? Well, he'll get banged up, but I won't feel bad about it.

The question I want to ask is "which edition to go for". I'm primarily thinking of 3rd Edition vs 5th Edition, for the following reasons.

3rd Ed. seems to have the most solo resources - more specifically, I'm looking to play either a decker or an Otaku, specializing in matrix runs and paydata using the matrix and paydata generation rules found in the 3rd Edition Matrix book. This is a huge boon for me, as all other editions of SR seem to either lack this random table feature, or are "suspended" by SR3.

However, SR3 doesn't quite have a smooth character generator (I've had to install a virtual windows XP inside my computer just to get NSRCG running), and it has little internet support compared to more modern editions.

5th Ed. has a great character generator program, and also has huge internet support, which means I can talk about the game and get answers, suggestions, and more far more easily. But it doesn't seem to have random tables that allow me to put a "solo run" on the fly, and for now, I'm unaware of any supplement or Holostreets stuff that does so.

In terms of "crunch", I'm fine with both systems - while the dice pool of 5th Edition come to me as more intuitive versus the various pools of 3rd, it's not a hill that I'll die on.

So...I'd be happy to hear anyone and everyone's opinions on what I should pick out for Solo-ing SR, and if there's any other resources I should go for. TIA, and happy day!