Shadowrun Edition, Which one did you start with? Options

[JesterX]

Just wanted to know how much new players there is ...

Personnally, I started with the first edition... I picked it at my local game store and it quickly became one of my favorite RPG universe.

I played Cyberpunk 2013 (1st edition) before and it hooked me to the dark future thing. At first I was not really interested by elves in a futuristic world... but peoples change and tastes too... ^_^

[Beaumis]

Started with first but prefered Cyberpunk because of the greater and much much cooler cyberware variety. Got into it for real when 2nd launched and been playing ever since.

[JesterX]

[James McMurray]

Looks like we're all ancient or newborns. I'm among the "soon to be senile" majority.

[Kyoto Kid]

...still have the actual character sheet for the original Kyoto Kid (then simply nicknamed "The Kid" since she was only fifteen at the time). Yeah the damage codes were a bit odd in SR1, but the skill web was fun ("I default from my Japanese Cooking" and make up a couple kilos of C6") and an adept could buy auto successes as a power.

[JesterX]

I sooooo remember those 6M2, 10D4 damage and such... and the dreaded Turn-to-goo spell that was re-introduced in SR4... ^_^

[stevebugge]

I voted 2nd because I started with first, and then second came out very shortly afterwards and that was what I really got in to playing. So if there was an option for 1 & 1/2 that would be the most accurate for me. Skill Web was great, mandatory Allergies, wacky damage codes, Astral "grounding" all good times.

[Platinum]

[Drraagh]

[DragginSPADE]

Put me down for being an old-timer as well.
Ah, for the days when an armored jacket could almost stop anything short of an assault cannon. :)

[Lagomorph]

I played my first game of SR in 2nd ED. I remember the very first meet, we had all been called seperately to meet in a ware house, I stood at the door while every one else looked around the building. When the door opened, the man behind said "Where's every one else" to which my character replied "They chickened out". It was pretty funny at the time, but maybe that was because I was like 14.

[Demon_Bob]

I bought 1st in the game store, but couildn't find anyone who wanted to play until 3rd came out. So an I an old coot or a teen? An old teen?

[Drraagh]

For those who remember SR1, what did you think of the different Staging numbers for weapons? I felt it gave variety for weapons, rather than just looking at each weapon as the same damage (or similar) and the only difference is the way they look.

For those who don't know, staging numbers were a number that each weapon had determining the number of successes required to stage the damage to the next level, up or down. So, here's a few examples:

The Walther Palm Pistol was 3L1 (so it did 3L, with each success staging it up or down).
The Ares Predator was 4M3.

So, Palm Pistols were somewhat useful since they staged easier, but they were also easier to stage down. Basically, they made good surprise weapons and such, as opposed to pea shooters they are today.

[James McMurray]

Turn to Goo has been in all editions IIRC, just not in the core book.

The variable staging was ok, but it was pretty annoying, and the higher staging weapons could get really nasty because of how hard it was to stage the damage down. <scurry to bookshelf> Assault cannons (10D4) and AVMs (12D8) were da bomb!

[Platinum]

[Drraagh]

I've been collecting every CP2020 book I can get mu hands on. I have pretty much every book, adventure and sourcebook both. Been using them for ideas, sometimes even taking the runs from the corebooks and running them in SR, using the screamsheets as handouts and such.

Might have to sit down with some people and convert things to SR and post it somewhere, like other people have. ;)

[Platinum]

I think that Gurth also did blackhand's weapons.

Too bad you are not closer I would be interested.

[Kagetenshi]

Depends on what you count from. The seed was first sown by Second Edition way back in '94 or so, but I didn't get into the game seriously until about 2000-2001 and Third Edition.

~J

[BookWyrm]

I remember it quite well. I was burned out on playing AD$D, MSH was still fun but lacking something, CP 2020 just didn't look like fun to me....then, on a trip to a comic shop in Wantaugh (NY), I spotted the first flyer for a new RPG, made by the guys who did a great job on the first Star Trek RPG.....it had the elements of Cyberpunk (which I had just gotten into, thanks William Gibson!) &...magic? A magic system that actually COSTS damage no matter what happens? I was hooked.

Yes, it was SR1. I still have all my SR1 books. :D

[Catsnightmare]

I got hooked on 2nd Edition, made a character and played only once. After that I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to play, and at the time I couldn't make heads or tails enough of the rules to run a game myself. It wasn't until a friend introduced me to SR3 a few months after it's release, that I really started playing. I found SR3 to be so much more organized and better layed-out, made it so much more easily understandable than SR2. I fell head over heals for it and have no intention of giving it up for the FUBAR SR4.

[Grinder]

I won the SR2 BBB and some more old sourcebook and after reading the BBB in two days, I was hooked. Hadn't played much rpgs back then, but SR got me started. Played more or less regularly SR since 10 or more years. 12 I think.

[toturi]

Started with a friend's 2nd ed. So I have been playing since the 90s. More than 10 years I think.

[JongWK]

I began with SR2 in 1994.

[The Stainless St...]

2nd ed. in '93. My GM had been running 1st, and my first game was also his first forray into 2nd ed., so I missed the 1st ed. boat by about a week...

[knasser]

I started with SR1 right at the very beginning, very young. I enjoyed it a huge amount and we carried on playing into SR2. Those who raise eyebrows at the newbie posts I've been making, what happened is that we stopped early on in SR2 (I recall we were part way through the first Harlequin adventure which was new out at the time) and then didn't pick it up again until SR4. I vaguely recall Dunklezahn as a media friendly dragon that owned a theme park in northern UCAS.

I loved the magic system which was vastly superior to any other I'd seen until WW's Mage was released. I really liked the damage codes on weapons because they were so intuitive and a medium machine gun was bad. I also really loved the way you could divvy up your combat pool and your magic pool to weight different preferences. Do I keep some of the dice back for drain or do I really go for it? Do I need to lend some dice to my friends for counterspelling? From such a simple set of rules it expanded out into a wickedly wide range of tactical options.

I do recall the mages eventually outstripping the mundanes because of better things to spend karma on, so no change there, then.

Rules aside, one thing that SR1&2 had over SR4 was immediate accessibility to the setting. There was chaos, a crash, magic and new races, but nothing a player couldn't digest in a quick skim or during the game. SR4 has a huge backstory of characters, dragon presidents, comet stuff, insect stuff, Aztechnology stuff, collapsed Megacorps, Immortal Elves, yada yada. If you're familiar with the setting then you probably don't notice it, but if you come to SR4 from scratch, you're going to be really really lost. The initial history section in the SR4 book has a crack at covering it, but it still sometimes feels like a list of things you don't know.