When did you start playing SR?, Researching player demographic Options

[Omega Skip]

GMing since '92, never missed a beat since then. Actually, wait, I think there was, like, two weeks in '98 when I couldn't get a fix... :D

[Prototype]

Bought first edition Shadowtech 'cause it was so cool back in '93 and then bought SRII a wee bit later (Christmas of that year?) and have been playing it ever since!

[CanvasBack]

I picked up the SR1 book back in 1990. Me and my friends tried to play this once in awhile but at the time it seemed really complicated, so we only did oneshots with it. About the time SR2 came out I got into Virtual Seattle because I wanted to see how a dedicated campaign of Shadowrun would go. That went fairly well, and one of the highlights for me was taking my character to Gen Con and meeting other people who play Shadowrun. When SR3 came out I went out and got the book first thing. What I find somewhat amazing is my old SR1 & 2 books are in much better condition than my SR3 BBB. I do have to say it got used more frequently but still...

Given the disrepair of my SR3 book and the fact that every single piece of errata seems to apply to it, I might cave and actually buy the latest printing.

[sir fwank]

i started with SR2. i think around '93.

[Kagetenshi]

Started in... '95 or so? SRII, I'm pretty sure, though it's not impossible that we were playing with a used SRI. I don't remember things like the old stageing/armor systems, though, so probably SRII. After a few games, though, I had a long hiatus that ended a little under two years ago with my receipt of the SRIII core rules as a birthday present.

~J

[Slamm-O]

am i the only one who started playing because of one of the video games?

i remember it now....We had gotten the snes cart from blockbuster along wiht bladerunner, only got SR since the lord of the rings game wasnt there, i was very upset since the game looked like a dorky demonic gmae (goat skull on cover, or so i thought). But we loved it, the graphics were out of sight! We would rent it 3-4 more times, before.....(i guess this was 94?)

in 1996?.....After coming home after living abroad, me and my 3 brothers were given a 20$ bill for the lot of us, we went to the new mall and wanted to buy books, after getting bored one of my bros wandered around and came into this section with big-ass books, and there was one with shadowrun on the cover! (we found some small ones in another section) He really wanted it since it showed that you could get motorcycles and cars and clothes and stuff as well as the guns and armor you got from the game! i said no

we came back another day and i wanted birthright, had the money but it was no longer there and the other game i wanted was too expensive (we didnt know what an rpg was, i wanted a board game/war game which my dad had gotten us into), so i told my brother i would get sr for him and it is now the only thing the 4 of us do as a group, going to my oldest brothers house once a week (one brother telecommutes now).

so, i played pre-wizkids/fanpro (and got pretty depressed hearing they were going away, no more btech or sr, but i was wrong :))

p.s. the nfound ds like 1-2 years ago while looking for bulls place again, after having found it at school one day and seen that it had online resources! maps! we never used maps! but it hadnt been updated since then it seemed, but they had a webring, and this site called dumpshock...

[Kagetenshi]

Er, I somehow doubt you played pre-FASA ;)

~J

Edit: by the by, how did you get the title Freedonia Expatriate? I had assumed that that meant you were a former FASA employee, but that post suggests not...

[Slamm-O]

oh, lol i had to fix the pre-fasa thing. I dont know how i got it, thought i shose it as my location maybe?

[Raptor1033]

I dunno exactly when I started playing, before Cannon Companion or YotC, whichever came first. I think it was right around when SR changed hands. My friends and I were playing so many different RPGs and one of them said, "Hey, let's try out Shadow Run" I didn't really want to, when you're playing like 4 or 5 different games you don't really wanna learn a new system, they convinced me to. I single-handedly screwed up our first run (Andy still hates that character for it) and now SR is my favorite gaming system. I love the lack of set-in-stone character classes and level systems games like Rifts and D&D have.

[Zazen]

[Shadow]

I bought the Elmor covered hardbound SR book when it was released in '89. I have bin playing ever since.

[Connor]

I"ve been playing since around '95 or so. At the time all I pretty much knew about was AD&D, but a friend of mine had started to get the cyberpunk bug through a combination of Johnny Mnemonic and the SR video games. He brought me and the rest of my playing group into it and we pretty much never looked back. Although the group started to dissolve a bit after four or five years and we haven't really played as a group since 2002.

[PuyallupSquatter]

I played 1e a few times, but really didnt get into the game until the 2e rules came around. We used to borrow the confrence room at the local library to play, and I remember our GM was the only one who could reserve it, because he was the only one who was 18 at the time...

I still have quite the eclectic mix of sourcebooks from 1e to present... I just wish that the new stuff had a similar formatting to the old ones. I miss the pictures of the gear and the deckers comments like in the SS Catalogue or Shadotech. IMHO, I would like to see a book for SR3 that would replace my worn copy of Sprawl Sites, tho. All those nice maps of generic locations....

[Swansonegger]

Started way back when the game first came. My friends bought it, and I wanted to try it out mainly because of the big poster in the game shop with Larry Elmore's painting from the cover of the 1st and 2nd edition books. Heck, I remember phys ads with the +4D6 initiative bonus for 8 magic points (ya, my friends played almost everynight for a year or two).

[Ditaki]

I bought Shadowrun 3rd edition last year after Christmas with my Christmas money. Didn't touch it (silly me) for an entire year except to get Matrix and Year of the Comet. Then I ran about half a game during December this year and bought Rigger 3, Magic in the Shadows and Cannon Companion and am patiently waiting for Man and Machine to be reprinted so I can find it somewhere...(Sad thing is, I tend to buy lots of books for games I usually don't get to play...spent a good hundred dollars on Shadowrun, ran it once. Spent huge amounts of money on another game line and played maybe ten games of it...silly gaming group.) :rotate: :spin: :wobble:

[Slamm-O]

side note --> my freedonia tag is gone now, you ratted on me :)

[Kagetenshi]

Aww, sorry. :oops:

~J

[Trell]

Well, I guess I'm probably the newest player here at the moment. I just started last Wednesday. Well, actually, I started GMing Wednesday, so Crimzero would be the newest.

[Crimzero]

I started playing last week...

go me!

[Cain]

I started in 1989. I still have my blue book, autographed by Jordan Wiseman. Shadowrun was my first break from D&D, and I've never regretted it.

[Fortune]

I bought SR1 the day it hit the shelves, and have been hooked ever since. :)

[Bizarro]

Started with SR2 - played (very) infrequently since late '96, up until the middle of last year, and now GMing SR3 every week.

[DigitalMage]

I started in 1990 I guess, with 1st Ed. I had seen a guy at school with a hardback copy and when I went looking for a new RPG (I had been running Warhammer Fantasy Role Play before then) I was choosing between Marvel Superheroes and Shadowrun.

Shadowrun won out.

I GM most of the time, in fact my first experience of Shadowrun (and WFRP for that matter) was as a GM. Is that unusual, to GM an RPG before ever playing in one?

[DV8]

I've never played Shadowrun before. :)

[Xirces]

Shadowrun? Never heard of it, is it like Poker?

Actually started playing waay back in 1990 (I think it could have even been '89) with obviously 1st edition. Although I've not actually played (or GM'd) since '93.

I've still got a whole load of 1st edition stuff - Harlequin, Missing Blood, Dreamchipper, SSC, Shadowtech, Shadowbeat, Grimoire, RBB are all sitting on a shelf (although annoyingly, not the nice hardback rulebook, which was kept by one of the other players when we went our seperate ways). 2nd ed stuff includes the rulebook (yay!), VR2, Rigger 2, Silver Angel, plus some others that escape my memory right now.

I've also bought a fair bit of 3rd edition stuff, which on reflection is a bit silly considering I've not played any RPG for over 10 years. Every few months I try and persuade my (now) wife a few friends to try gaming, but can't get enough people together to make it worthwhile!

I need to grow up and get a life :)