Just getting started Options

[Requete]

Greetings. My wife and I are just getting started with Shadowrun. We are both role-players (I'm an old school guy, she's only been playing a few years... we both like D&D 5th edition a whole lot). We tend to play on the fast-and-loose, rules-light side of things most of the time, but can handle some complexity.

My question is, are there any good tips for getting started? We are in several D&D groups but don't know anyone who plays Shadowrun. My wife has expressed an interest in GMing the game. Right now all we've got is the Shadowrun starter set (5th edition rules... came out recently and was 20 bucks). I was thinking about getting the Toolkit Alphaware box since it offers a continuous storyline with the provided characters... though it seems kind of expensive.

Anyway, whatever thoughts, advice, opinions, etc. are welcome. Just looking for tips/pointers for the newbie types.

[Requete]

Oh, I guess I should also add that we have a second-hand copy of "Into the Shadows", a short story collection. As far as reading up on the setting and all that.

[Glyph]

It's good you have some stories to get the "feel" of Shadowrun. Without getting into the edition wars, one of the disappointments of the SR5 main rulebook is that it doesn't have an overview of the game world's history, which is a pity. I would recommend, at this point, to forego getting the second box set and just plunk down about the same amount of money (or less) to get the core rulebook. There are supplements out, but the main rules are fairly comprehensive, and have everything you need to make and play characters and adventures.

One big difference between Shadowrun and D&D is that there are no levels, or classes, just points spent on things you want your character to be good at. As you get Karma points, you can improve your character, but it is piecemeal, one thing at a time. To put it into D&D terms, you can start out as a 10th level wizard, or a 5th level wizard/3rd level rogue/2nd level fighter. You can make an incredibly wide variety of concepts. You can play a chain-smoking smuggler with a shotgun in his artificial arm, a dwarven mage with a spikey mohawk and an assault rifle to supplement his fireballs, a sleek elven bike racer/data courier - the possibilities are endless. You have to remember that you only have finite resources, though. It is easy to overspecialize, or to overgeneralize. To put it into D&D terms again, you can make a dumb, ugly fighter whose only weapon is the war club that he is quintuple-specialized in, or you can make a mage/cleric/figher/rogue/bard/haberdasher who can do a bit of everything, but is not very competent at any of it.

[Lionhearted]

For a quick intro to the world of cyberpunk we got the neuromancer trilogy, if you prefer movies check out bladerunner or ghost in the shell, for games the deus ex series (avoid invisible wars) or indeed harebrained schemes new shadowrun games

Edit: Also check out the ancient files (link in sig) it's a great resource for metagame information explaining everything about dragons, immortal elves and the fourth world, AH haven't updated it in a while but it's still really inclusive. Just don't expect official sources to pursue much of it... I think it got something to do with IP and CGL not having rights to earthdawn

[Blade]

I'm not sure the metagame information is really useful for first time players, especially if they're not really interested in that aspect of the game.

Another important difference with D&D, is that Shadowrun isn't a dungeon game. It's not about killing monsters. While combat can play an important role, entire missions can go without any fights.

It's not about crawling through corporate facilities the way adventurers crawl through dungeons either. Some missions will be more about legwork and investigation, and while infiltrating a corporate facility is a common situation, you can sometimes avoid it by using social engineering or hacking to get what you need without ever physically entering the building.

You don't need your group to have one fighter, one mage, one cleric and one rogue. Sure, it's easier to have a mage to deal with the magic side (and have useful spells on your side), and having a hacker/decker for the Matrix, but you can do without. You can have a group made of fighters who'll just apply superior firepower in every situation, a group of social characters who'll handle everything through social engineering and cons or anything in between.

For the GM (and for players, but mostly for the GM) it's CRITICAL to always keep in mind that there are three planes: the physical plane, the astral plane and the Matrix. If there are no magic contermeasures to protect the Mc Guffin the runners are supposed to grab, a mage can just send a spirit to retrieve it and the run is over. If the server the PC need to hack is connected to the global Matrix, the decker might be able to handle the run on his own without moving from the meet with Mr Johnson. On the other hand, if nothing uses the Matrix, the hacker will feel pretty useless.

[Lionhearted]

It's important in the sense that it gives depth to the setting. It not just a dystopic future that happens to have dragons and magic. It's a rich world with mysteries and intrigue and unknown horrors (literally) it's what made me love it at least.
But yes the biggest transition from D&D is not the setting but the mindset. You could of course run a campaign focused on high octane action, combat and dungeon crawling. But the empathis on investigation, research and planning (colloquially known as legwork) is a big part of what makes it different from say D&D

[Neraph]

FOR HIM

Archetypes
A Shadowrunner's Best Practices
Commlinks for Dummies
Ten Questions For Any Shadowrunner
Commlink Security for non-Hackers


FOR HER

Adventure Design
Currency, Rewards, Bribes, Tips
Grunt Survival Guide
THUGS!
The Collected Paracritters Project
Favorite Villians
Retired Runners


I've also written a few technical guides for when you get more into the rules and whatnot, but I figure you don't need that right now. IIRC, my sig has contact info for me - I'm a stay at home dad, so hit me up whenever/if you have questions.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Neraph... You might want to change the Text Color in your Spoiler Tags... Super Hard to read without highlighting them first.

[Iduno]

I'd agree that the history is one of the important parts of the setting. D&D history is reset and usually changed each edition. History in Shadowrun is continuous, and new books released are set 53 years +/- in the future. There's a pretty decent timeline here: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowrun_timeline but you can find quite a bit of canon information about any topic with a bit of searching, or by asking around. It can be pretty fun to research the history of the ork underground in Seattle, the rise and fall of some corporations, or what happened in the Euro Wars (for example). I suppose the other difference with the history is Shadowrun events are told to you by characters within the game who might twist things for their own agendas/viewpoints, or just have incorrect/incomplete information. It makes it easy to change things as you see fit.

The other major difference is D&D 5th edition tries to balance everything by making classes more similar. Shadowrun balances by letting you choose what you're good at and how good. More choices means more rules, and more work for the GM (or the players being willing to police themselves). However, like Blade said, Shadowrun isn't as combat-focused. Entirely non-combat characters and entirely combat characters can co-exist in the same group as long as people don't mind their character being out of the limelight for a bit.

Edit: Oh, and this may help with finding information about about Shadowrun history (form one point of view): http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=38987

[Neraph]

Neraph... You might want to change the Text Color in your Spoiler Tags... Super Hard to read without highlighting them first.

.... What the heck happened?

EDIT: Fek it. Removed spoilers.

[Ed_209a]

I recommend Googling the Neo-Anarchist Podcast and listening to it.

This will give you a basic history of the setting (up to about 10 years before setting present), but more importantly, will give you the "feel" of the setting. The basic conflicts, tone, morality, etc .

After listening to the N-A podcast, you might not know all the setting details, but you will have your mindset in the right place.

[Requete]

I really appreciate all the advice so far! I've also run a fair bit of Call of Cthulhu, and she has played some of that, so we're accustomed to the nuances of gaming in a modern milieu. I can see a lot of possibilities so far for interesting storylines in Shadowrun. It seems like there's quite a bit of fiction out there to look at as well.

I'm disappointed to hear that the Alphaware Toolkit is not necessarily a good value. I wasn't able to tell if there is an eBook version for sale maybe a bit cheaper. I saw an unboxing video, but it was in Russian (unfortunately not one of my languages). The gist of it seemed to be that there's not a whole lot of bulk in the box.

Do most people play SR with minis and a battle mat, or is it more of a "theater of the mind" sort of thing?

Also, I have gleaned from a couple of comments that the SR 5th ed hardback has a few typographical/organization problems? I was wondering if there is a corrected edition available, or an eBook, or if something is coming down the pike that will set it right.

One thing I thought that the second starter box would be good for is a "canned campaign" where you don't have to worry about character generation and whatnot... just dive in for a couple of episodes and see if it takes. But maybe there are better ways to accomplish that.

[Lionhearted]

Playing with a battlemap gonna require you to tweak some number, mostly weapon ranges and movement... unless you got a huge grid

[Glyph]

SR5 has some bad editing problems, but don't expect a fix soon. They had one errata a while ago that only fixed a few things. It's nothing that makes the game unplayable, just a few obvious errors, and some places where the GM will have to choose one way or another to interpret a rule.

If you want premade characters, the SR5 book has 16 archetypes for players to use, as well as stats for common "grunts" (security guards, thugs, etc.), contacts that the characters might know (mechanics, beat cops, etc.), and paracritters (ghouls, dragons, etc.). There are even some random run tables if the GM is stuck for inspiration. Neraph's links can be helpful, too, but keep in mind a lot of those stats are for SR4, not SR5.

Shadowrun is like D&D in one respect - you can run it with miniatures and a battle map, or just wing it ("Okay, these guys are about Medium range away..."). One thing you want to at least try not to gloss over is situational modifiers. It can seem tedious figuring out the modifiers for glare, range, movement, etc. but while you can use some approximation to keep the game flowing, don't ignore them altogether. Shadowrun's main resolution mechanic is rolling your dice pool (usually an Attribute, a skill, and then those modifiers) and counting your successes. Modifiers to those dice pools are a big part of how the game is balanced, and if you ignore them, characters with high dice pools can steamroll over a lot of things.

[Neraph]

If OP mentioned which system they're using I missed it, so I naturally assumed they'd be using the superior system.

[Lionhearted]

If OP mentioned which system they're using I missed it, so I naturally assumed they'd be using the superior system.

That means a lot of things on this forum (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) some are diehard SR3, Im still sticking with SR4...

[Neraph]

That means a lot of things on this forum (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) some are diehard SR3, Im still sticking with SR4...

Personally I mean 4th Ed, but basically anything but 5th until it matures. 5th Ed right now is in that awkward preteen stage where they don't quite have a lot of the rules fleshed out and they certainly don't have very much actual source material. It's always bad going immediately to a new edition since your previous characters or concepts are no longer playable until the new rules for them come out.

[Glyph]

Any new edition, the mechanics for optimizing a character will change. You can make a badass street samurai or mage in SR5, it will just look a lot different than a badass street samurai or mage in SR4. It was the same going from SR3 to SR4. Sorcerers were my favorite type to play in SR3, but aspected mages were a lot less appealing in SR4.

[Neraph]

Any new edition, the mechanics for optimizing a character will change. You can make a badass street samurai or mage in SR5, it will just look a lot different than a badass street samurai or mage in SR4. It was the same going from SR3 to SR4. Sorcerers were my favorite type to play in SR3, but aspected mages were a lot less appealing in SR4.

It's not just that. It's that certain playable options are not available until the source material comes out. For example, Paizo's Pathfinder system is really cool - essentially D&D 3.75 - but for years psionics were unplayable since their take on psionics rules hadn't come out yet. In the mean time you were simply adapting 3.5 material for their rules.

Likewise, currently you cannot do SURGE or Infected or Shifters because the 5th Ed source material for them isn't out yet, just like in 4th Ed you could not do the same options until Runner's Companion finally hit the shelves.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

It's not just that. It's that certain playable options are not available until the source material comes out. For example, Paizo's Pathfinder system is really cool - essentially D&D 3.75 - but for years psionics were unplayable since their take on psionics rules hadn't come out yet. In the mean time you were simply adapting 3.5 material for their rules.

Likewise, currently you cannot do SURGE or Infected or Shifters because the 5th Ed source material for them isn't out yet, just like in 4th Ed you could not do the same options until Runner's Companion finally hit the shelves.

Surge and Shifters are out (Run Faster), though I do not remember if it includes Infected. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Neraph]

Oh. I took an immediate dislike of 5th Ed, then I went into the Corps, so I've been a little out of the loop.

[Lionhearted]

Oh. I took an immediate dislike of 5th Ed, then I went into the Corps, so I've been a little out of the loop.

Seem to be a trend, whenever a new edition is released of whatever game you always have people that dislike it.... Taking D&D MMO edition as an example... oh wait D&D 4 is it?

[Neraph]

Seem to be a trend, whenever a new edition is released of whatever game you always have people that dislike it.... Taking D&D MMO edition as an example... oh wait D&D 4 is it?

Sure-ish, but I took a particular dislike of the new mechanics introduced as well as various ret-con decisions made. It isn't an "it's new, I dislike it" thing, it's an "it's poorly designed, I dislike it" thing.

[Glyph]

Yeah, same here. I wanted to like it, but there are some things about it that are really grating. SURGE and shapeshifters are both options that are a lot less palatable in SR5. I haven't gone over the rules for infected enough to say about them.

To bring things back to the original poster - the main rules have everything you need to get started, but there are some supplemental rulebooks that have come out. Street Grimoire has expanded magical rules. Run & Gun has new weapons/gear and combat rules, including martial arts. Run Faster has expanded rules mainly focusing on player characters - three new alternate character creation systems, options to play rarer metatypes (ogres, satyrs, pixies, etc.), shapeshifters, infected (basically undead such as ghouls and vampires), and changelings (magical mutants, basically); lots of new qualities, a few new archetypes, and so on. There is a fourth supplemental rulebook, Chrome Flesh, out in .pdf, which focuses on augmentations (cyberware, bioware, etc.), but I am waiting for the print version, so I can't tell you much about it. Like the main book, these books have fairly poor editing and a few glaringly stupid rules, so be prepared to tweak/interpret things a bit to make it playable.

[Neraph]

So SR5 has Street Magic, Runner's Companion, Augmentation, and Arsenal? I'll give those a look and take an honest look at 5th Ed rules.

I have a feeling I'll stick with 4th Ed though. There seems to be as much difference between 4th and 5th as there was 3rd and 4th D&D though, or maybe just 3rd/3.5... It's not so much a "new edition" of rules as it is a giant mess of house-rules. When I see a new edition of rules I expect significant changes to game mechanics, not tacking on a couple of things to change the behavior of one or two things.