Converting 1st ed to 4th ed Options

[WVrunner]

I have several 1st edition adventures. What would need to be done to make it over to 4th. Would I just have to update the weapons or is there more? I am new at running games but have played about 20 years ago. My players are relativly new. Thanks for the comments.

WVRunner

[TeOdio]

Thanks for joining the ranks! If you are super new to running the game, then running a published adventure is a great way to help you get pacing and structure to your games, as well as giving recommendations when things go awry. I recommend purchasing a couple of the Shadowrun Missions adventures to get you started. They are relatively cheap as they are PDF downloads, and there are a ton of them. After you and your group have a couple of those under your belt and you have a better understanding of the gear and opposition levels in the game, then I would start converting those oldie but goodies.
To convert, keep all of the fluff (ie. NPC names, legwork info, the overall plot of the adventure).
Take all of the crunch, and replace with a reasonable facsimile from 4th edition. (Replacing important antagonists with an Archetype from the main book, replacing lesser opposition with something equivalent from the main book.) You can tweak the gear, skills, and metatypes pretty easily if need be, but that will give you a quick and dirty solution to recreate what is published. The rule sets between 1st and 4th edition are so different I personally feel that even using a good conversion method (I'm sure someone here has made one based on the 3rd ed to 4th ed conversions) will still be too time consuming.
For any matrix nodes, I recommend scrapping all of the crunch, and just replacing it with what you think makes sense for your game. If you remember what Orange - Hard means, then use those descriptors as a guideline, if not, just go with your gut (ie. something easy has ratings of 1's and 2's, average 3's and 4's, security and low end military 5's and 6's).
Put your new crunch info into a document layout in the same order as the adventure, then print it and place it into a binder that can be used concurrently with the printed book. Now you can use easily reference the updated info as needed.
Hope that helps!

[WVrunner]

thanks for the reponse. I do have one of the missions from the New York series. Only thing that sucks is, beleive it or not, is that I am still stuck on dial up. So it takes me awhile to down load them. One of these days they will do something about that.

[WVrunner]

Started down loading some of the missions, taking a little time but it is happening.