Greetings all!

I am knee deep in the middle of my first sr4 campaign and I love it! I enjoy the rules, though they can be difficult at times. Anyway, all that being said:

Are their any good books from previous editions which would work well in 4th edition?

Thanks a bunch!

-Josh

Loose Alliances would be #1 on my list.

What is loose alliances about just out of curiosity?

A sourcebook of non-corp, non-government, non-syndicate organizations. Policlubs, religious cults, arcane societies, terrorist cells, etc.

I find myself using Shadows of Asia a lot recently (though I'm designing a campaign around being Wuxing employees rather than shadowrunners), so YMMV

Prior to that I was looking at the Seattle sourcebooks
Seattle Sourcebook
New Seattle

Mark

Of 1st-3rd edition materials, the following are the easiest to use:

- Shadowbeat
- Corporate Shadowfiles
- Lone Star
- Threats
- Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets
- Underworld Sourcebook
- Cyberpirates
- Corporate Download
- The Neo-Anarchists Guide to Real Life
- Target: Matrix
- Target: Awakened Lands
- Threats 2
- Target: Wastelands
- Dragons of the Sixth World
- Loose Alliances
- Seattle Sourcebook
- Native American Nations Volume One
- London Sourcebook
- Germany Sourcebook
- Neo-Anarchists Guide to North America
- Native American Nations Volume Two
- California Free State
- Tir Tairngire
- Ti­r na nOg
- Denver: The City of Shadows
- Aztlan
- Target: UCAS
- Target: Smugglers Havens
- New Seattle
- Shadows of North America
- Shadows of Europe
- Shadows of Asia
- the two SOTA books

Some of these books have a little crunch but they're mostly fluff that can be adapted to your 4th Edition games. You can find most of these on eBay or Amazon Used Books for cheap. I wouldn't pay more than cover price as the content is still 10+ years out of date.

Loose Alliances is a very useful book; it gives you information on various political and religious movements, secret agencies, and a bunch of famous Shadowrunner teams (Technicolor Wings are freaking awesome).

New Seattle is a good in depth guide to the default setting. There are books I like better, but I have absolutely no regrets about buying it. If you're running a game in Seattle, you quite simply need to have this book.

Mr Johnson's Little Black Book has one of the greatest names for a sourcebook ever (The other being The Neo-Anarchist's Guide To Real Life), and is a damn guide to GMing Shadowrun. It breaks down the whole idea of how a run works, how to handle stuff like downtime, police presence, running the initial meet and the hand-off, training and buying equipment, and all of the other little things that make up the game. It also has stacks of cool game ideas.

The "Shadows Of..." books (Shadows of North America, Shadows of Europe, Shadows of Asia) are possibly the best money I have ever spent. Between them, they basically constitute an atlas of the Shadowrun world, filling in all of the little details that the city books miss. There's some absolutely fascinating stuff in there, and the more you read, the more you'll find cool ideas just leap out at you. Running in Hong Kong? Send the players around the Pacific rim, explore the interior of China (or the fractured mess that's left of it), go to Korea (where female runners outnumber men, and the mob has IC that kills your family), or India (where the Ganges has become a mana flow, and Shadowrunners have a designated place in the caste system), or Siberia...

...actually, don't go to Siberia. Eaten by werewolf secret police is a poor ending for any party.

After the "Shadows of..." series, check out the "Target:" books. Target: Wastelands is worth your money just for the chapter on space. Target: Awakened Lands is also extremely cool, especially for running Mad Max style games in Australia, contending with wild spirits and mana storms and oh my...
(Don't bother with Target: Matrix, and only grab Target: UCAS if you really want to run a game set in Washington DC.)

Finally, grab yourself a copy of Threats. The PDF is only about $8 now (if that). It's an astonishingly good book, and worth twice the price of admission just for the chapter on Winternight (let alone Alamos 20K, the eldritch horrors commanded by Mr Darke, and the TV news network that can predict the future). I still get chills whenever I hear the words "fish hooks".

I will never understand peoples' fascination with this book. It just really isn't that good.

But to answer the original question: I would snag a copy of the original Seattle Source book if you're basing your game in Seattle. Or you can wait for the forthcoming SR4A revamp which should be out sometime this year... maybe. Beyond that I agree that Loose Alliances, Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book, and the Corporate Handbook/Download are all useful. I have also always enjoyed the Threats books, which can be particularly useful if you are playing with a group new to SR.

Maybe he doesn't want to read 30+ sourcebooks. It's perfectly fine as an overview of the cynical culture-within-a-culture that is Shadowrun.

Thanks all, I will get these books as I can lol.