Why Do You Play Shadowrun ?, Why this RPG and not another ?? Options

[Synner667]

Why do you play shadowrun ??

I’ve roleplayed for 20+ years, using a whole range of RPGs and [prompted by the carnage on some of these forum threads] wanted to ask the people of Dumpshock why they play Shadowrun.

There lots of RPGs available, many of them with cyberpunk settings, many of them with fantasy elements.

Some RPGs such as HERO, GURPS and FUZION have extensive customisability of character and equipment - far surpassing SR - with sourcebook, lots of hardware, massive amounts of fan support.
Some RPGs like Corporation and SLA Industries pit the characters as Corporate operatives, maintaining the status quo - with high levels of violence, lots of gear and little consequence, simple mechanics.
TORG has cyberpunk options involving cybered demons and corrupt religions, metaplots, multiple-genres.
Traveller has megacorps and metaplots, high tech in low-tech worlds, detail, number crunching, simple mechanics, lots of hardware, massive levels of fan support.
Equinox is the 8th world [as Shadowrun is the 6th world], officially sanctioned by FASA, with refugee humans, science fiction, powers, cybernetics [and is due from RedBick, the people publishing Earthdawn].
Dark Heresy has no-consequence Characters fighting demons from beyond the stars, in the far future, with cybernetics, psychic powers, detailed background, massive amounts of source material.

There are no "right" or "wrong" answers, it's just me asking questions.

Other RPG forums will get similar polls.

[fistandantilus4....]

Now that WEG doesn't make Star Wars any more, what the hell else am I gonna do with all those D6?

[hermit]

I got into SR because of the background, thhis fusion of classic fantasy and Cyberpunk. I stayed for the background, a setting with exactly the right mix of depth and freedom, and the evolving story, even if at times it has made me cringe and the jury, for me, still is out if the Lonsing Dork Age is over.

I like the way magic and technology are mixed (save for the mancer). I really, really like the freedom in chargen SR offers; most other gaming systems feel terribly restrictive and dull compared to this. Also, I like the way characters progress. No levels, you buy things with XP at whatever time you choose.

Finally, as a long term player, it is just kind of difficult to let go.

The other CP systems you describe all lack something I find in SR.

HERO is too Supers.
GURPS is too generic for my taste and lacks any deeper story. Nothing is ever developed in depth, everything is just brushed over.
SLA tries too hard to be dark.
Traveller lacks magic and is space opera. I don't care much for space opera any more.
Equinox is ... well, not my cup of tea. Migfht make a nice setting for metaquests, though.
... and Dark Heresy is 40K, which boldly goes to the ridiculously "dark" kinds of gorn even SLA avoids.

The only system I find similarily fascinating is CthulhuTech, but even with less cyber and more mechs, eldritch horrors, and a very different kind of metaplot, it feels very much like Shadowrun.

[Angier]

I remember buying an all new and shiny version of the SR3 bbb. That was even before I knew what role playing games were. It got me and over the next few years I literary ABSORBED any piece of SR fiction I could get my hands on. Then came the age of the internet and I got lost somewhere between all those d&d pc game adaptions which spawned also my first pen & paper experiences. After realizing that my life wasn't all about spell slots and magical swords I left for something more gritty.... the new world of darkness. It caught me because of it references to actual myths and the possibility to take part in sort of an underground community. But after some years I became tired of all those darkness and bitching about how the new one wasn't like the old one and the fact that over here in germany those haters actually killed the game line. That was back in '07 and destiny kissed me with a pal showing me the all new and shiny SR4. I again fell in love with this new edition and it's appealing mix of cyberpunk, fantasy and actual RL references, seemingly containing anything I went for over the years. Again, back then there were those haters of anything new, threatening the supremacy of their beloved older edition. But I was loyal and am now feeling rewarded by seeing it blossoming lately over here in ye olde germany. Finally.

[Aaron]

"Easy to Identify Bad Guys" and "Lack of Difficult Choices," huh? Seriously? Who's your GM?

[Muspellsheimr]

Always include an "Other" option in a poll. There have been several on this forum alone that I could not answer because they lacked the appropriate option. This is one of them.

[Zurai]

Now that WEG doesn't make Star Wars any more, what the hell else am I gonna do with all those D6?

Warhammer? That's where my 36d6 set comes from (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Anyway, the main reason I like Shadowrun (and always have) is the setting. It's the perfect blend of fantasy and reality. It has a huge variety of character options. There's technology and magic working side by side in a more or less believable fashion (once you suspend disbelief on magic in the first place). It's set in the real world, but in a dystopian future. Players have the opportunity to be good guys or bad guys or, (and this is rare, I find) guys just out to survive however they can.

In short, it's made of win and awesome.

[Freejack]

Back in 1977 I got interested in Dungeons & Dragons, coming from wargaming. I invested a lot of time and money in DMing. Buying not just TSR stuff but stuff from other companies to help with my DMing. I'd even buy other gaming systems and books to glean information to make my D&D game better. With AD&Dr2, I liked that there was a lot of good information coming from TSR that I thought improved the game. Heck, THAC0 made my program a lot easier to update (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Being a computer geek from 1979, William Gibson's Neuromancer was a book I really liked. While I was interested in other systems for their information to improve my game, Paranoia was an RPG that I immediately liked for the computer type humor. I ran a one-shot for the fun of it. It was the first time I'd run an RPG other than D&D. I continued with D&D though.

One day I spotted Shadowrun 1st Ed and it intrigued me. After browsing through it, I thought it would be interesting to run. It was the first RPG I actually was interested enough in to want to run since D&D. I got the GM screen with Silver Angel, read up on it, printed out some character sheets and the group built some characters up.

The Street Samurai Catalog was excellent and I remember how excited I got when I spotted Rigger Black Book. It was weird. It was the first RPG I was excited about since I started playing D&D. Denver Boxed set, Virtual Realities, Sprawl Sites, Paranormal Animals of North America... Then Second Edition, Aztlan, New Seattle, DNA-DOA ,Mercurial...

I couldn't find anyone to play though. Even my D&D game was petering out, ending with my daughter's Rifts group.

I packed up my gear and put it away.

Back in 2006, my wife's pestering got me to go through my boxes of games. Coming upon my Shadowrun books was awesome. I'd lost interest in D&D but never lost my appreciation of Shadowrun. I set them aside and checked them out later. I found dumpshock and started gathering up the rest of the 1st and 2nd edition books I didn't get back before I stopped. Then I thought I'd get into playing a bit and found a local game. I picked up the 3rd Edition books with an eye to running it. 4th Edition was new and the group I was playing with wasn't interested in it.

When I finally started to GM again, it was 4th Edition. There were other gamers in the area that wanted to try it and since it didn't have a bunch of extra books to learn (well Street Magic), I was able to reasonably run the SR4 missions.

And a fun time has been had by all.

Carl

[BookWyrm]

For me, it was just as I was fed up with what was coming out for AD&D, and I had just started getting into 'cyberpunk' fiction (I read the original story of Johnny Mnemonic well before the movie came out) and I spotted that first flyer, back in 1989, with all the great Elmore artwork, from FASA, in a comic shop I was frequenting at the time.
I decided to try the main book out forst, I could always get my money back (or a store credit) and I was hooked immediately. Especially with the concept behind the Magic system.

[Cain]

I've been gaming for as long as Freejack has, and I have much the same story to tell. I toyed with other games over the years, but I kept coming back to D&D, whatever version.

Then 1989 rolls around, and I find this Blue Book with an Elmore cover in my local toy shop, at Northgate Mall in Seattle. Intrigued, I picked it up. I read it, and was instantly whisked away into a future Seattle. I loved it.

But the big transformation had yet to happen. I was a bad GM, probably one of the worst you've even encountered. I got Harlequin, and suddenly I realized I didn't have to railroad players through plots. I started to grow and develop as a GM, gaining skills and learning how to construct a flexible plotline.

So, I play Shadowrun and find it hard to let go. SR4, and now SR4.5, are not the game I fell in love with, twenty years ago. But just enough of the "Soul of Shadowrun" exists in it.

[HappyDaze]

I've played since 1st edition, but not so much anymore. The game system is just getting too cumbersome, especially with all of the add-on bits. Even worse, the game really is made to be abused and powergaming is almost a necessity in many of the SR4 groups I've experienced. In short, there's no good reason why I should play SR over other games...

[Freejack]

But the big transformation had yet to happen. I was a bad GM, probably one of the worst you've even encountered.

Yep, me too. Not railroading though. I wasn't able to do more than run hack and slash games. The city was my favorite place to want characters to go to but I could never actually provide a good city type game. I bought Thieves World and Sanctuary to get background information on shops and NPCs. I bought several city type adventures from different game systems. Heck, I bought history books on cities. I even have a reproduction of a map of Rome framed in my room (packed now). But none of them had the adventures that getting a group of characters together and going out to rampage through a dungeon did.

Shadowrun then and especially now with the Missions modules has not only given me city type adventures, it's made me a better GM.

Carl

[Critias]

Because there are precious few other games where I can be an elf with a gun?

Honestly, for me, it's always primarily been the setting. I didn't realize how much the die mechanic mattered to me, too (particularly the flexibility and sense of control granted to you by Combat Pool), until the edition changed and that flexibility and sense of control got snatched away from me... but the fact that I still own SR4 stuff, still try to keep up to date, and still write short fiction (even if none of it's been published) tells me that it's the setting I've always loved, more than anything else. It's cyberpunk plus magic, and I dig that.

Now that WEG doesn't make Star Wars any more, what the hell else am I gonna do with all those D6?

Go play Warhammer 40k, duh.

[TheDarkPhoenix]

For me, I don't play Shadowrun over any other game. I might play Shadowrun one week, and something different the next. Might even enjoy two or three different games on the same day.

[eidolon]

I clicketyd some options and hit vote, but to directly answer the initial question:

Why Do You Play Shadowrun ?, Why this RPG and not another ??

'Cause I like it.
I do play others.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Heath Robinson]

Where's the choice for "my friends play it"?

You play what your group plays, and you shut the hell up. I happen to like SR, thankfully. But it was never a calculated move. One day my housemates called out "Hey, we're playing Shadowrun, want in?"

[Ayeohx]

Like Freejack and Cain I started in 1st edition. The Timothy Bradstreet pictures, the Elmore cover and the runner speak in the sourcebooks roped me in. There was all these deep plots carrying through the books. The game felt alive.

3rd edition didn't seem to have a lot of this feeling to it so I only ran about 15-20 sessions and checked out for while. Even in 2nd edition the game started getting cartoonish in many ways, loosing its gritty realism to a point. Back then I probably ranted about the changes as much as some of you folks are about the new changes in SR4A edition.

4th edition seems to be bringing the ambiance back and I'm excited. So far I'm digging SR4A. All of the intelligent design from 4th edition in a pretty new package. God bless Catalyst for keeping this game alive long enough for me to come back around.

[DireRadiant]

I play many other RPGs too....

[Fuchs]

I was roped in by the Shadowrun anthology "Into the Shadows", which I found in the Fantasy/SF section of my local bookstore (German Edition).

[Wesley Street]

I also play D&D, Spycraft and 2300AD (and probably Eclipse Phase, whenever it's released)... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I was introduced to Shadowrun in 1989 with the 1st edition Big Blue Book. It was the first role-playing game I actually played (2300AD was the first I ever bought) and while I found the combat mechanics to be ridiculously complicated, I was sucked into the game world. Having just read Gibson's Neuromancer and Count Zero I loved the cyberpunk-lite feel mixed with the silliness of dragons and elves. It was a setting where I could close my eyes and actually imagine it. In fact I could taste, smell, and see it in my mind's eye! I remember having my socks knocked off playing through Dreamchipper (remember, this was the late 1980/early 1990s when cyberspace was still a new concept). Then I was introduced to D&D 2nd edition and Rifts (boooo!). After that I devoted more time to comics and sci-fi/Star Trek and dropped out of the whole RPG thing for awhile.

I checked in on 2nd and 3rd editions. While I thought all the setting, metaplot and fluff material was the bees' knees, the mechanics seemed to have grown even more convoluted. I wanted to play a game, not crunch stats.

After joining a D&D group, I had an itch to run Shadowrun for them. After picking up 4th Edition I felt that same rush of excitement I felt back in 1989. And as an added bonus, the mechanics had been streamlined which made it easy to play and easy to learn. Compared to, say, D&D 3/3.5, anyway. After that, my imagination ignited again in a way it hadn't since art school and I've been hooked since.

[TBRMInsanity]

Before I got into RPGs, friends of mine wanted me to play AD&D but it never appealed to me. When I went to High School my roommate introduced me to SR. I loved the fact that a starting character was just as good as a character that had been playing for quite some time (they are just more specialized). This meant that I wasn't going to be the lone weenie in a group of vets. As I got into the system I grew to love its approach to dealing with dice roles (The SR system was always way more easy to understand then THACO).
When I went to university I started to play AD&D and D&D 3.0 . I still loved SR way more because it didn't have all the winy rules lawers that I saw on the D&D side. I have always played games for the fun of it. Anything more is just childish and distracts from the game at hand.

[Kanada Ten]

Dragon CEOs, AI CEOs, Japanacops, NAN, Humanis Policlub, Green War, GenePeace, MOM, Cybermancy, Geomancy, Ninjas...

[Naysayer]

Back in the days of the steam engine, I had been playing your average fantasy game for a while, and while it was fun and all, I felt something was missing.
Then, I saw a book at a local gamestore. It was blue and had this kick-ass cover, so I was intrigued. I flipped it open... and there was a picture of an Ork Mercenary, complete with stats and all. "Wait, so you can play this guy?!" I asked?
Thus began my lifelong love for this game.
I loved the setting, the gonzo-dystopian background, the mixture of tech and magic.
By the time 2nd Ed. rolled around, I also began to appreciate the mechanics.
By the end of 2nd, the shift to epic-level, high-magic world-saving quests began to put me off a bit, and when 3rd Edition upped the cartoon factor and introduced more and more convoluted rules, I felt it was time to move on.
I still dabbled a bit with my old 2nd Ed stuff, but it wasn't the same anymore.
Then, 4th Edition came along.
It was like meeting your old high-school flame at a reunion, and she looked hotter than ever.
"I am sorry for running off with Mike, I was to young and dumb and tried to be something I am not!" Shadowrun said to me.
"You better be!" I replied.
We got loaded, and one thing let to another.
This time, I think it will last.

I have played and still play other games from time to time, but in none am I as invested as in Shadowrun.

[Draco18s]

Technology and Magic together in the same setting is absolutely fantastic. I'd say this is my #1 reason for playing SR over other RPGs. Though I have seen some (Aberrant) that felt similar. I also like the mechanics, d20 just doesn't jive with me: there are some things you Just Can't Hit (despite being the size of a house) and magic quickly runs itself out of energy (ok SR mages do eventually knock them selves unconscious, but they can still cast small spells with some effect over and over and over without too much worry, which puts them on par with gunbunnies).

WoD I never got into, it just didn't capture my imagination. I was in one Mage game that I liked, but I joined so late, I never got to fulfill my ideas of where my character was going to go once he awakened.

Blue Planet was very techy (with some alternate races other than "Everyone is Human") though does lend itself to being easily modifiable to suite any purpose: Magic becomes just another skill that works the same as any other skill (though the GM I played with who did this was repeatedly confused at my question of "how does magic work in character" and either said the mechanics or "force of will;" not long after we got into a rather large argument about how he was a shitty GM and have since blocked each other on YIM (games were done over voice chat)). I'd love to play another BP game (there are no other systems that include Dolphins and Orca as base RAW races).

ShadowRun just continues to impress me and surprise me at its ability to allow ANYTHING (well, there are restrictions of course, but one of my friends who doesn't play TTRPGs asked if he could be "a brain in a jar cyborg who owned a robotic street urchin that followed him around with a backpack that contained his brain" under the idea that the main body would be expected to house what little of his meat was left, and get shot up, while everyone ignored the urchin, another ridiculous idea that came up was "an elf who rigs his own arms" and turned into a character who's cyberlimbs were all modular and drones with implanted guns).

Edit: another reason someone posted about in another thread that I also agree with: ShadowRun allows multiple options to solve the same problem: Skill, Tech, and Magic (sometimes only one or two of the three are available, but many problems can be solved in multiple fashions).

[AWOL_Seraphim]

Like a lot of "not-as-young-anymore" gamers, I started with AD&D 2e back when I was about 10 or 12. My friends and I then went on to try a whole lot of different games (our main one being, in the end, HârnMaster.) I GMed SR2 for a few games in the early (?) 1990s, but, although we all loved the setting, and still do after all those years, we all agreed that the rules were not to our taste. Like, at all. I ended up being the "mainly WoD gamemaster", running Vampire: the Masquerade for about 5 years, and now Mage: the Ascension for a little more than 5 years now.

Honestly, I LOVE Mage: the Ascension, and so do my current players. However, their characters keep their big guns with them all the time, they are highly specialized in infiltration and wetwork, and they have developed a well-deserved reputation among local mages as the very best "troubleshooters" around (as in, you point at a problem, and they litterally shoot it to oblivion.) At first, I was aiming at the standard, "pseudo-philosophical" Mage: the Ascension, but looking at my players, you'd almost think they play Shadowrun.

Which brings me to my future campaign: I have decided to litterally run Shadowrun for them, since there is just no way they can't enjoy it. There's magic, high technology, big guns, etc. Plus, personally, I like the 4th edition rules, and would definitely enjoy going back to an old favorite, not unlike what Naysayer was telling us above. This is why I play, or rather will be playing soon, Shadowrun.