My reasons are that the game world is incredibly rich and detailed, the rules system allows for really high lethality coupled with high power levels, and the magic system is very complex and yet logical. How about you?

Force of habit

Various reasons.

I especially like the style and that it is close enough to reality to be easily related to.

Quite realistic and still fantastic. Good mix.

Bye
Thanee

Now it's mostly nostalgia-so many great games in the past that it has a warm place in my heart, its become more than just the current supplement and the current game-good times with good friends (I started playing when the first edition of the core rules book was the only thing in print) are bound up in how I think of the game.

Which is not to say that the things I loved about the game when I first picked it up I do not still love-mostly things still related to the atmosphere and setting. Up until played Shadowrun the only RPG I had played was D&D, so the idea of taking fantasy elements and setting them not in a quasi-historical world, but in the near (dark) future of Cyberpunk was a big deal to my middle-school psyche (the games general attitude had no difficulty finding a place in my heart then either). And the fact that Neuromancer was (and still is) one of my favorite novels probably had something to do with it.

AFE

our world gone slighty into the twilight zone or something

One of the biggest things is the sense of mortality. After months of D&D with paladins who can smite dragons with single blows and survive falling hundreds of feet, it is nice to have a game with some tension. If you frag up in SR, you might not make it out and even if you do, there is a chance you will leave limbs behind...

I like fantasy. I like magic and elves and dwarves. I also like cyberpunk and futurism. Shadowrun is lethal fantasy cyberpunk...

"Gag me with a spoon."

...considering I live in the PNW and was a former resident of Seattle in RL was what first attracted me to the game. I especially like the fact the system allows players generate more personalised characters (Particularly after the SR companion came out with the BP system) instead of depending on random dice rolls. I have always been a big fan of playing the character you like.

The world setting is definitely one of the best I have seen. It has a rich backstory which still allows plenty of latitude for personalising a campaign.

When I first came to play SR in 1994, I just loved the background.
I still do.

Edit: Oh, and what Kyoto Kid was just saying. I really liked it that the game wasn't level orientated like every other RPG I played until then. Another thing I liked was the lack of manapoints/memorized spells/whatever.

Where Man meets Magic and Machine.

It's more often "Magic or Machine," but yeah, I know what you mean.

For me, it's a lot of things: the world, the mixing of tech and magic, a basic set-up that can be done with endless variation and still stay fresh, being a fan of Snow Crash and Gibson's stuff, being a fan of "caper" or "crime" movies (Italian Job, the Sting, Derailed, etc.), the focus on the evolving relationships between people (not just PC to PC but with contacts and other recurring NPCs), and the contextualization of all the stuff that as an RPGer you're wont to do anyway (i.e. steal and kill).

I like the weirdness. It's elves with guns, mages with cybereyes, chrome and nano and Orks.

It's a goofy world that doesn't take itself too seriously, but is hella fun.

And it's handfuls of dice. Mmmmm.

And yeah, regardless of your opinions on Gibson's work, the guy's kind of an asshole.

He also claimed that ebay would never take off.

How else is he an asshole? I want to know more.

Google is your friend. Decide for yourself if he's an asshole. Don't take our word for it.

I like it because all the trolls are extremely animatronic.


What? They are! If you had to portray a troll back in the 80s you'd be forced to make it animatronic!

Here it is 4th Ed is out and I am JUST starting to learn about how cool SR is. Back when I started gaming, I was always the one who initiated new games so whatever I read/saw/heard about was what we played. For some reason SR just never crossed my path.

But here as an adult, I can see the similarities to the darkness of SR and our own world. It's a wonderfly complex world with a simply awesome amount of history (and as far as Im concerned a well thought out history too). So that's one reason to like it so much.

Another is that VERY briefly I encountered Rifts. I was on my way out of being a power gamer so it lasted but a short time. What stuck with me, however, was the combination of disparate worlds. I thought even at the time, geeze if only SOMEONE could mix this correctly...

Anyway, my 2.989704862 cents worth.
Mark

I find the basic SR mechanic, d6, w/one die per Rating point against the Rating of whatever else for everything to be quite elegant.

The rules are comprehensive* (if you've got all the books), the setting widespread, and specific locales are frequently written by locals.

I was a big fan of Daniel Keys Moran's The Long Run and Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired (I'd read Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, and Count Zero by William Gibson, but honestly, they paled in comparison.)

For some reason, Cyberpunk 2013 RPG just wasn't what I had wanted.

The discussions in the LA Origins 1989 panel on Shadowrun sold me on the game.

It was cyberpunkish dystopian SF futurism crossed over with Fantasy elements.

I ate that up.

------------------------------

* Yes, I'm aware there are flaws in the game and especially in the earlier editions.

I play for the chicks.

Seriously though, I love cyberpunk, I dislike CP2020. I don't like the magic aspect of SR that much (I like it, but I'd like it more if it were toned down). The background of the world is great though, and I generally just love cyberware and everything cyberpunk.

The setting itself is reason enough to like SR. But it was also the first game I played besides D&D, and by that time, as long as it wasn't D&D, it was the greatest thing ever invented.
I haven't looked too much at this 4th edition (it makes me feel old; I started with the first), and probably won't, but as long as it gets new people into the game, it can't be a totally bad thing.

I came to SR straight off of D&D as well and was attracted by the same things as most: the interesting plot, no class system, more open magic system (no more 1st level wizards with only 1 spell for an entire day), and, of course, big handfuls of dice.

I like SR because it lets me shoot people in the face without going to jail.

My question would be more: why don't more people like Shadowrun!?

My brother-in-law introduced me to the game mid-2nd Ed. Where there was already a few sourcebooks out beside the core, and man, 3D virtual matrix... cyberware, magic, mythical creatures in present.... all the stuff I love about fantasy and science fiction rolled into one RPG! And done well, with a detailed history.

4th Ed has bridged the gap from the 80s style computing network to include the wi-fi we love to day and expand on it. Sure there's still some holes in it big enough to drive a Banshee through, but that can happen when you have a lot to cover, but limmited page count to cover it in.

It certainly isn't the system. Hated the convoluted overweight rules of SR3. SR4 is a massive improvement from my perspective, but it's still not the 'ultimate roleplaying system', IMO.

No, it's the setting and the style of it. The conspiracies. The secret history tying into Earthdawn. The fact that you can play down-and-dirty street level games, or real epic save-the-world type games, sometimes even in the same campaign. Cyberpunk probably did a better job on the whole cool-cybergear-and-vehicles front, but the SR world is so much more involving and tragic.

Orbital Cows and Drop Bears...

That's what I like.

That would have been cool, but SR goes for a universal theory of magic.

ki/chi/mana, is it realy a diffrence?
(and yep, im probably going to provoke atleast a rant with that one)

I like the lack of pidgeon holing characters. No alignments, no classes, you can choose to be good, evil, or anything in between. You can make your character anything you want you aren't limited by the system.

Now I realize some overclever person just read that last sentence and thought "Well you can't play a cyberzombie mage, can you?" Fear not they will get a nice cuddly vampiric suprise for even thinking it.

Simple it's not a fantasy only game nor is it a furtue/technological only game it's both and then some.

Yes I like to play Rifts as well.

That's not to say I don't like to play other games that are not fantasy or furtue/technological mixed i just like the way Shadowrun mixes both together.

That's my point though. Shadowrun ultimately ISN'T a low-magic setting. Even with only 1% of the population magically active, mages and spirits are relatively common place, and ultimately a team without a mage is simply ill-prepared. Sure the GM can say "I will never send you to a mission that involves mages or spirits", but that feels like a bit of a cop-out to me, like the GM saying "I will never put you in a situation you can't handle," which seems to run counter to the whole 'unexpected things happen' part of the game.

I bought a copy of 2nd Ed at a used bookstore when I had barely started roleplaying so Shadowrun holds a special place in my heart. Also it mixes so many elements that almost any character concept you can think of can work, and have sensible backstory. But it is far more coherent than any other setting you can do this in.

Mages are not the end all be all in shadowrun, you just have to adapt and overcome, like when the plan goes to hell. Ran over our former mage (who had gone toxic) last week, I knew he could stop our bullets, so I changed tactics and BAM magically active roadkill.

EDIT- Charlie Foxtrot just reminded my I did basically the same thing. I'd played the Sega game though so I kinda knew what I was getting into. Only kinda though.

Catharsis, first of all. Second, because I refrain from hanging out much online in forums or other interactive spots, it's the one thing I have in common with a dwindling number of people who I can honestly now refer to as friends (or as close to friends as you can become with people who you've never met) just because there's no way I could just talk to them on SL about this one game (especially since some of them play, or have played, other systems on SL).

As far as the game goes, it's useful enough to not be annoying, and interesting enough to keep me occupied (whereas if I had to sit down and played, say, Exalted, I'd want to kill myself), and it gives me something to bitch about that isn't real life, but which I get to use real life as a basis for my bitching (case in point: watching this coup in Thailand reminds me yet again how fucking stupid the New Revolution coups in System Falilure are. Luckily, it seems even the author of that particular brain dropping couldn't be bothered to mention the effects on a city like Seattle post-coup, since luckily everything was tied up in a neat little "let's forget this ever happened" package within 24 hours. Except for the Tir. That was just a giant "Fuck you" to those of us who actually somehow *gasp* liked playing in an environment most people were apparently too stupid to figure out).

Oh, see. There I go again...

Not before Hell freezes over and I becomes its new dictat... er, Liberator.

Well, I expected that answer