Are any of the earlier editions better for any good reason? Besides the temporary lack of sourcebooks for SR4.

earlier editions vs SR4: you dont want to go there

lots of older posts and threads on this subject, nothing recently however.
personally, though i like SR4, and think its a game worth playing, its not the SR i've come to know and love, therefore i still love SR3 and other earlier editions and still play them. Now, thing is though i also play SR4, because like someone else said in an earlier thread, "Its not a good update to the old system, but a good first edition game" or something to that effect. SR4 plays as if it is a new game just developed and put out on the market, not as an old tried and true game that people have been playing for decades. why, because there have been so many fundamental changes to the core concepts of the game in my mind that it has become something completely different.

Even though the concept of being a Black operations mercenary for corporations, governments, and organized crime is still what you do, the feel of the game has changed. Gone are the variable target numbers and in is the variable thresholds, while making things difficult it doesnt make the difficult completely impossible, allowing for a more "John Woo" type of game play. This has been made into a video/live action game writer so someone could take and make multiple millions, because the ability is there for the easy modification to the following:

video game
LARP
Movie

there is no longer a strict cannonality that lends to a completely realistic feel of the game.

but thats my feelings on the mater, i have to go to work now

"How bout I take a venti razor and shove it up your hoop, you tall brained moron. I hope you choke on a biscotti."-paraphrase of "Foamy the squirell in small, medium, large"

Personally, SR4 feels too dumbed down and washed out for me to ever actually enjoy playing it. It has a few good ideas, but IMO, piss-poor implementation.

Those, combined with the lack of desire to spend a couple more thousand on books, will keep me from playing it. (Although the first reasons I give are more important to me.)

Weird perspectives...

For instance, I've never played SR, nor owned any of the previous editions. However, I'm really really digging SR4. In fact, I'm gonna run a game at my work place, and play in another SR4 game with my usual gaming group.

I think it's great.

SR3 had a plethora of really rather nifty rules for a billion different situations, that all fit together rather nicely.
SR4 has one set of rules for most everything, and is much, much easier to run. (Less dependent attributes is nice.) Also, they have an elephant gun in the rules. Anything that can shoot two large lead slugs at the same time is a good idea, in my book.
It's a little bit like comparing C++ and Java, from what I've heard.

EDIT:
If you're new to SR, get the SR4 book. It's worth it.
If you're not new, and used to SR2, SR3 might make a bit more sense. I'd get the SR4 book anyways, though.

True, I suppose it's worth noting that if you've never played any other edition, you could very well just get SR4. You'll never know the difference anyway.

You shouldn't get SR4 because if you do, Satan will eat your kitten and Santa will take away your birfday.

Bull

I have to admit. When I first heard about 4th Ed Shadowrun, visions of WotC 3rd ed DnD butchering started dancing through my head. Especially with what was going to be changed. But when I got my hands on the book, I was pretty amazed with what Fanpro came up with.

I expected a real hamburger book of rules and alterations. What I got, was a well sculpted system that does indeed change how SR plays, but in a positive way. Essentially, I think they turned the Corebook into a real rulebook now, with a lot more information on characters and gear, and less on cities, gangs and other things that ended up reprinted two or three times in supplementals.

But, if you're looking for reasons to not buy it, there are some. For one, the game itself is radically different from 3rd ed. Most if not all of the SR players have made their peace with 3rd. 4th might be too much of a change for many veterans to put up with. Being a 3rd player for over ten years, I find it a little hard myself to let go of the Dice pools. in a constested situation, dice pools gave players a lot of control over the moment ("Let see. all my combat dice to dodge the minigun toting Troll? Or save some for an attack on that large belt of EX-Explosive ammo he's using?")

Ultimately, I think the biggest reason to not buy SR4, is a paradoxical one. Put simply, the system changes are untested by the general public. There's a lot of new ground to be covered in 4th in regards to the rules. The SR community is gonna have to go through growing pains all over again with it. And there's no guarantee that they will. Sadly, the paradox is: no one buys the system cause it's untested, the system stays untested and fades, and we're left with a lot of 3rd ed books that are now out of print.

SR3 isn't "dead," it's just done being molested by game developers. You can still run a game perfectly well using the SR3 system -- or, hell, the SR2 or SR1 systems -- and the SR4 (aka, the "continuing") timeline.

Just like, if you really wanted, you could go back and SR4ify 1st ed modules, and play a whole campaign from 2050 on up, or something, if you really wanted, all using the SR4 rules set.

Apathy, you're addressing my specific points but failing to address my overall argument. in a nutshell, my beef with the SR4 dice system is that it a) makes the impossible far too easy for mid- to high-end characters, and b) makes the difficult completely impossible for low-end characters unless they expend Edge. these points have both been explained and backed up with solid mathematics in other threads; do a search for "probability" and the username "Ellery" if you're interested.

i can't reccomend anyone to either buy or not buy SR4, because i don't know what other people look for in an RPG. i can tell you that the base game mechanic of SR3 is more sensible and less spastic than the base game mechanic of SR4, but i don't have the energy to explain why that might be important (all i'll say is that if you don't like the way d20 plays, you might not like the way SR4 plays--again, Ellery has already explained this stuff better and more exhaustively than i can). i can tell you that SR3 supports grittier, deadlier play than SR4--SR4's glitch system would make SR4 grittier, except that they happen so often that it's more like The Three Stooges than Heat.

and, yeah. i was talking about extreme ranges, not half-mile targets with pistols. even SR4 isn't that broken.

edit: like Critias said, it's not like SR4 is the only alternative. i know of at least two projects seeking to update and improve the SR3 rules--to create a ruleset that is what SR4 "should have been", in other words. even if neither ever come out, the SR3 rules and setting can continue to be used.

yes, but it's not like d20-esque low granularity and 1-1000 skills are the only options. just to pull an example out of the air that has nothing to do with the current discussion, variable target numbers greatly increase granularity without greatly increasing complexity.

edit: blah. not getting into this.

SHUTUPSHUTUPI'MBUYINGITI'MBUYINGITAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

....thanks.

Oh, I forgot. The SR3 toolbox also has rubber and leather mallets.

Anyone have links to these what SR4 should be projects.

There is so much about SR4 that I liked that changed, but so much that makes me cry at night.

blakkie, your grasp of mathematics makes the baby jesus cry.

flipping a coin is simpler than a linear system. there's a difference between can't and recognizing futility.

For god's sakes. Both of you, quit it.

But they will be! And people will buy them in droves! Spend...SPEND!!! SPEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDD!

Wait a tic. I think I morphed into the CEO of Hasbro/WotC and GW at the same time there for a second.

well SR3 is anything but dead just ask my groups. Now, on to more important things, like the status and location of these beautiful, special people who are daring to make SR4 how it should have been.

oh, for god's sake. blakkie, for once in your life, pick a fucking argument and argue it. quit changing the goddamn subject every time someone proves you factually wrong. you are living, breathing proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing in the hands of the right moron.

I itch when I read blakkie's posts.

Strangely, Shadworun 4 seems fated in my group to follow D&D 3.5's model. When D&D 3.0 came out I was sceptical, but one look through the book convinced me to switch to 3.0 from AD&D2 at once. When 3.5E came out, my group debatted a bit - most of us got all books - but then we decided to stick with house-ruled 3.0.

SR4 may share a similar fate. I bought the book, but the rules did not compel me to switch - unlike SR2 and SR3 did, I started with SR1. Part of it may be my familiarity with SR3, but a bigger part is that I simply do not use rules as much as other GMs, or so I'd assume, reading this board. We use the combat rules often - but not every game session - the magic rules too, as they relate to combat. However, most of the rest is usually simplified to a single test or such, decking done by an NPC and therefore completely out of the equation.

So, I will buy the SR4 books, and mine them for fluff (which I also pick and choose anyway), and other stuff I'll use, like the new matrix background, and the new cyberware stuff.

(Incidentally, we play D&D the same way, with more emphasis on social stuff than combat.)

You shouldn't by SR4 because it causes herpes.

Also, it's cold-hewn from the bones of stillborn puppies.

I think what it boils down to is: If you don't like SR3 because it's too complicated, or you're a total canon whore that feels an obsessive-compulsive need to have an "official" game, , or your players have attention spans that can grasp D&D or a video game, but not SR3, buy SR4.

If you don't need a dumbed down/streamlined version of the rules, you don't need SR4.

That makes it sound like the only reason to buy a new edition is because you're OCD or your players are tards. Which honestly could be said of any new edition for most any game. Or even buying rules at all, rather than making your own.

I would challenge that statement insofar as adding the following:

1) If you don't want to take the time to reverse-engineer future sourcebooks to SR3,
OR
2) You're hoping for a re-working of a particular rules-set so you don't have to deal with that particular hodgepodge (Rigging rules come to mind...)

You may have something for buying it. Otherwise, maybe not.

But I'm a freak, and I'll play both and own both.