Looking to get back in, what's the state of Shadowrun Options

[sunnyside]

I've been out for a while and I'm looking at SR again, however things seem a bit...confused.

Google sent me to www.shadowrun.com

That made it look like there was a lot of new stuff including a fifth edition, however their tabletop section
http://www.shadowrun.com/shadowrun-tabletop/about/

Has links that send you to a Shadowrun 4 fansite that has turned into something selling testprep materials. Which rather made me feel that Shadowrun had gone bankrupt trying to publish the fifth edition and I was examining its digital corpse.

Poking around more led me to:
http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/

I saw some mention of SR5 there as well, but I clicked on "core rulebooks" to see what was out and I'm looking at 4th edition stuff referencing the anniversary edition for rules.

So what's up? Is the idea that fifth edition is basically just the anniversary edition which is basically just fourth edition and everything's compatible so they aren't replacing the core rulebooks but are instead printing adventures? Did Shadowrun slam into hard times financially or in licensing and it's dead in the water?

I'm hoping the people here know what's up.

[Zednark]

5th edition is a full new edition, and it's doing well, so I think it's just poor web design. That, or you're looking at sites that are outdated.

Currently all the main source books are out (you know, Rigger, the combat book, the augmentation book, etc) as well as a few adventure compilations and smaller PDF splatbooks.

[Blade]

SR has been through some difficult times, with many writers leaving due to some muddy financial management. The team was nearly completely replaced and it took some time to get things going (and some would argue that on some aspects it's still not there yet).

There is a fifth edition, that uses the same resolution mechanics as 4th but with many changes here and there.
It tries to address some of the issues of SR4A. I'm not really satisfied with the way it does it, and I think it failed to address some important problems, but from what I've heard and read it's good enough (same as SR4, which was far from perfect but worked well enough).

[Coldstone]

A quick summary idea is that SR5 is playable, but it has 'bugs' in explanation. It irks some people who are use to the fine level of detail you can pull off in SR4 (with proper GM approval), and other times it basically leaves it to the GM to hand wave an answer for more complicated questions.

That said, there is enough tweaking to how things like the matrix and magic worked that it caught peoples interest despite wariness. Even I like some portions of it -I'm just not sure if they were thought out completely. ^^; However, I don't have enough game experience to say whether or not that is true, but I'm learning bit by bit!

I am actually compiling all the SR4 matrix stuff together right now to try and make something a bit easier to learn and reference from, though the 'Crash' of 20XX is making it a bit of a challenge with the mayhem going on. After that and cleaning up the other sections, I plan on looking at some of the newer elements of SR5 to possibly adapt backwards for a pleasing fusion (I like the alchemy concept and a few new uses for reagents, for example, but need to study it more closely).

[Jaid]

first i would suggest you go to http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/ and ask there as well. while we have some SR5 players on these boards, i don't think we have a lot of people who really truly love SR5 and think it is superior to other editions here. so, if you're looking for what's good about SR5, well, you'll probably want to go there as well so you can get both sides of the picture. full disclosure: i'm more biased towards the "5th edition isn't very good" side of things.

anyways, as has been said, SR5 has quite a few books.

try going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shadowrun_books, sort them by edition in reverse order (or scroll down), and you should find quite a few listed. some are PDF-only releases of something like 20-25 pages as i understand it. you'll also find a few that are somewhat straddling editions.

the main books are of course the core book itself, data trails (matrix), run faster(character options) chrome flesh (augmentations), street grimoire (magic), run & gun (combat options), and the creatively named rigger 5.0 (i'm sure you can guess what it's about).

and yeah, they're not very good at organizing their website very well.

in any event, 5th edition seems to be healthy in terms of quantity of material. i've not been too impressed by some of the choices they've made, and they seem to have an unfortunate tendency to completely disregard feedback from their proofreaders, but there's certainly plenty of stuff.

(of course, if the tradition stays accurate, the rigger book is the harbinger of the new edition, so it might also be a good idea to not invest too heavily into books just now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )

[Sengir]

That made it look like there was a lot of new stuff including a fifth edition, however their tabletop section
http://www.shadowrun.com/shadowrun-tabletop/about/

Has links that send you to a Shadowrun 4 fansite that has turned into something selling testprep materials. Which rather made me feel that Shadowrun had gone bankrupt trying to publish the fifth edition and I was examining its digital corpse.

Actually, shadowrun4.com used to be the official site, but CGL was too cheap or disorganized to pay the few dollars a year to have it redirect to their new site, leaving somebody else to snag it up.

The new and official site is shadowruntabletop.com, which as you have noticed kinda continues the "cheap, disorganized, and abandoned" theme. The actual 5th edition however does exist, is far more actively maintained than the website, and...well, it works. Is rampant grognardism managed to put off a lot of the grognards on Dumpshock, the editing in some books has been piss poor, and it lacks any revolutionary new features -- but just judging 5th Edition by itself it's a good cyberpunk RPG requiring no more than the usual amount of GM band-aids to play (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Wounded Ronin]

Should have stuck to improving 3rd edition instead of starting over in 4th, I guess.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah. That's my opinion as well.
But that does not sell books.
And, honestly, SR3 had become a version better suited for port to PC, because there were just too many rules and variables to do it all in your head on the fly.
That was both the biggest problem as well as the biggest boon to SR3. You want to do some crazy shit?
THERE ARE RULES FOR THAT!
And not a "mother may i?" minigame between you and the GM.

[binarywraith]

Should have stuck to improving 3rd edition instead of starting over in 4th, I guess.

Pretty much.

I'm in a holding pattern myself, running SR3 and hoping that they pull their heads out of their cloacas and do SR6 from scrathe rather than chain it to 5's cobbled together wreck on top of 4e.

[Medicineman]

Pretty much.

I'm in a holding pattern myself, running SR3 and hoping that they pull their heads out of their cloacas and do SR6 from scrathe rather than chain it to 5's cobbled together wreck on top of 4e.

with CGL ?
Don't hold your Breath !

HougH!
Medicineman

[binarywraith]

with CGL ?
Don't hold your Breath !

HougH!
Medicineman

Preferably not with CGL. I don't really see them holding the license long term, unless SR5 sales have been a lot stronger than they look.

[Beta]

First, to be clear there is material being published on a regular basis. Take a look at forums.shadowruntabletop.com or simply go to drivethrurpg.com and look up Shadowrun, and you can see that there is certainly still an engaged community and there is material being published. Their 'main' web page is, admittedly, awful, but look around and you can see that there is life.

Second, I feel I have to somewhat defend the current rules. Granted that I'd not played 3rd or 4th, but overall I like the 5th edition rules better than 1st/2nd. The change in the dice mechanic, and adding in the limit function in fifth, added a lot of scope to what had been, IMO, a very limited and fragile resolution mechanic.

Not that I think the new rules are anything like perfect. In particular I have somewhat mixed feelings about how magic has been made more generic, and far more flexible (it always had power, but you didn't always have the right power for a given situation -- it is much easier now). I get that having many traditions makes it hard to make them all mechanically different but it still feels like things maybe became too generic there. And for sure the writing is a mess. Apparently they decided that the 'show, don't tell' approach of the original rule book was far to compact and evocative, and that instead what we all wanted was four times as many words with half the flavour.

But those things aside, I find it to be a quite robust and usable rule-set which lets us have a lot of fun with the game. If you want to play ShadowRun, I certainly don't see any reason why you shouldn't grab the current material and go have fun with it -- it is certainly playable and enjoyable.

[Medicineman]

Hah, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
SR is more than just alife ! Its among the Top 5 selling RPGs in the US and among the Top 3 in Germany

with a topdance
Medicineman

[adzling]

Ugh, I love Srun and have been playing it off and on since 1st e.

I currently GM a bi-weekly game of 5e for my runner team.

Unfortunately I came back to the game recently after years away to find out some incompetent company had taken over the franchise and installed an even more incompetent line manager to oversee 5e.

All of the books are riddled with horrific editing fails, rules that are terribly mangled by the lack of editing process that results in having to spend days on end on their Shadowrun forums (currently overtaken by malware for the past few days that Catalyst can't seem to be bothered to fix) trying to divine what their rules are actually meant to be.

They have now had years to get 5e publishing/editing right and issue errata for their many multi-variate fails, none of which they have done.

It's gotten so bad that our group is seriously contemplating subbing a new play system in place of 5e as it's just that borked and Catalyst has basically fallen down and cant get back up. Repeatedly.

It's triply galling because Catalyst does much better with Battletech, but that's because the owner actually cares about that franchise and hasn't pawned it off to someone else who clearly is AWOL.

My advice to someone considering 5e: DON'T BOTHER because CATALYST DOESN'T EITHER.

[binarywraith]

Honestly it makes me wish my German was better, because apparently the German SR publisher actually gives a frag and has cleaned up a lot of the basic copy editing mistakes Catalyst can't be fucked to fix for the German language releases.

[Glyph]

I only grabbed SR5 because most of my gaming is online, and the switch over to the new edition was inevitable. But if it's just you and your buddies... SR3 and SR4 are both better choices - complete games with errata as well as lots of fixes and house rules for them out there.

It's sad, because I really wanted to like the new edition more, and there are some good parts in there, but it is all undermined by the horrible, horrible editing, as well as too many unfun nerfs and hindrances. Grognards and people with an obvious axe to grind were given too much free reign, and there are also bits that never should have been left in the final draft, because they were written by people demonstrating zero understanding of either the setting or the rules.

[Medicineman]

Honestly it makes me wish my German was better, because apparently the German SR publisher actually gives a frag and has cleaned up a lot of the basic copy editing mistakes Catalyst can't be fucked to fix for the German language releases.

No.
Every "change", every Erratta that appears in a German translation is send to CGL first and only if CGL gives the OK they're implemented.
Pegasus has NO Leeway (and does NOT want any Leeway) in the Books. only the German content is not send to CGL for an Ok first.
Pegasus can only "invent " German-only Material.
But please don't ask my why the Erratas that are already presented to CGL do not appear in US Books

JahtaHey
Medicineman

[binarywraith]

But please don't ask my why the Erratas that are already presented to CGL do not appear in US Books

JahtaHey
Medicineman

I think we're all probably better off not asking that question, Medicineman. It sits right up next to how both Dumpshock and the official forums can generate whole lists of errata, mistakes, and rules questions with every release and not get a response. Better we just focus on house rules and coming up with fun scenarios for play. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

-wraith

[Stahlseele]

Dumpshock did it pre release as well.
Because noo . . using the snippets released as preview of the finished product? PERISH THE THOUGHT!