Hi all just a quick question to which i'm sure we all have a diffrent answer to ,
I've played shadowrun from the start and i think it's one of the best rpg's ever i'm just wondering why all of us clearly like it so much so tell me why you think it's so cool ?

Magic troll with a metal arm that is also a machine gun. That pretty much sums it up for me.

Classless system.
A workable, almost plausible magic system - no more vancian magic. Yaaay.
Unkillable (great) dragons.
Cyberzombies.
Technomancers.
Then throw in Guns. Guns. More Guns. Missles. Lasers. Explosives.

- J.

Magic with grenades and machineguns. And cat girl hookers some really clever writing.

Orcs with shotguns.

Also what The Jake said.

Orbital Death Ninja XII

To paraphrase DuctShuiTengu, it's the common nature of shoot-outs between Gandalf and the Terminator.

Almost unkillable great dragons. Almost but not quite.

The cyberware. If you want over the top magic you can get better from Mage, or you can adopt any high fantasy system. Shadowrun has trolls completely covered with metal whose solution to a machine gun emplacement is to charge it and just shrug off entire belts of ammo. That is awesome, and I the term in the sense of inspiring awe. Then the troll goes too far, turns into a cyberzombie, and everything goes to hell.

Actually, "and then everything goes to hell" really ought to be the motto of Shadowrun.

A background that was inspired and (at that time) completely original.

Logical and carefully thought out rules system.

Open characters - IE: no levels or spells per day limitations. You could play what you wanted to play and hae a realistic character.

The writing - it treated you as a fellow gamer and was also linked to logical explanations and promoted thinking in players and teamwork to succeed. I also appreciated the dedication of the authors to making the Sixth World as "real" as they could. You could tell they loved it as much as we did. The humour was also great. A pity we no longer have the in-character decker/shadowtalker flame wars and war stories.

NEIL THE ORK BARBARIAN!

'cause Shadowrun is like a Gumbo (in Germany it's called "Eintopf") and it tastes Good .
You can also add any Spices you want.
Thats why I Like it

HokaHey
Medicineman

Super flexible character creation, detailed pure genius universe, melting pot of challenges and combat, excellent and evolving game mechanics... Frag it chummer, what more could a smoothie want?

I don't think you can quite say that until you've personally slain Lofwyr....

- J.

Because:
1) No matter the power level you must play smartly or horrid things happen to your character
2) It uses a combination of Suspense, Detective, Drama, Action and Science Fiction elements often at the same time.
3) Flexible game world (and play) allows all moral compasses to contact each other without loss of Paladinhood, deific intervention etc. This makes roleplay varied.
4) The permutations within NPC's means you can never be sure about the other person and their capabilities/role without investigation to some degree [Assensing, e-Sensing, scanners, stakeout, etc]
5) Gaming culture with a mostly-singular identity. [Drop Bears, ohnoes!!!]

It has elves and all the tools needed to shoot them in the face. Nowhere else satisfies my elf-shooting needs.

Mwa ha ha.

Pervasive wireless networking. In particular, the fact that it's a full mesh instead of an access point infrastructure.

Also, friends play it.

But I can. Dunkelzahn's dead. Great dragons are killable, nobody said you had to do it.

Shadowrun is my "Go to game". It's the kind of game where I can get a call from a mate saying "Let's play something", and I'll have a game of Shadowrun up and running straight away.

The basic structure is incredibly easy to work with; criminals do bad things for money. Just think of a bad thing, and have the players do it. Why are they working together? Because working alone pays less. Why are they doing this? Because not doing it pays less. It's so stupidly easy to pull a party together and set them off on some kind of adventure.

But better still is the fact that these one off games frequently explode into brilliant campaigns, because the world is so open, so detailed, and so rich, that everything and anything you do can become a hook for a plot. It's full to the brim with ideas and possibilities. Every country, every city, offers a campaign with a different flavour.

I get to be very very bad..... and that's the point!

On a more serious note. Shadowrun is the Near Future, which like Near History, has a wealth of common popular fiction and fact on which the entire game can draw upon. There's no end of resources to use, and most of it is understood by all the players and part of the genre.

NERPS! NERPS! NERPS! NERPS!


It's not just for breakfeast anymore!

A magic system that is both simple and second only to Ars Magicas in flexablity from my experiences.
Exellent story and drama possibilities (even the Dragons are rather human and nearly everything else is human).
LASERS!
Trolls with grenade launchers.
Kung-fu master elves fighting Bio/cyber engineered dwarves.
Space adventures. Undersea adventures. Deep Astral adventures. Matrix adventures.
All along side street level adventures.
Orcs shooting magical LASERS out of thier hands... eyes... whatever.
Making up Mega Corp jingles and slogans on the fly to insert into the end of the news.

NERPS

Magicians who trade magical power for implants because magic has limits. Basically, SR has a magic system that, while versatile, has limits and doesn't inherently break the game at high levels... unlike that other game.

People who not only drive vehicles, but they essentially become the vehicle. I loved the SR1 rigger. Drone riggers, not as much.

People who elect to have their arms removed and replaced with metal ones so they can cram more gear into their bodies and shoot better. Cyberware is fun.

Trolls in business suits, dwarf punk rockers, ork hackers. Fuck stereotypes.

Elves using monowhips to de-limb and decapitate everything. Including themselves, sometimes.

Sasquatch stand-up comics.

-paws

Note to self: Consider buying some AR sculpting software that blanks out sasquatch stand-up comedians before next meet with Mr. J...

It's what I wish my life was.

Shadowrun inspiries me. Despite how shitty our own world is, shadowrun reminds me that it could be worse and that there is still some hope.

Yes but you didn't kill him. Did you?

No. I didn't think so.

- J.

PS: I don't think "death by suicide" counts as 'killable'. Bearing in mind we're talking about a demi-godlike NPC.

As I said:



Nobody said you had to be the one that did it, nobody said I had to be the one that did it either. Just that someone had to be able to do it, even if he did the deed himself.

I dispute your interpretation, smart arse.

Let me put this another way -
Could a PC kill one? Unless your GM is functionally retarded, the answer is no.

- J.

"If it's got stats ,it can be killed !"
Dragons and Grand Dragons have been killed before in SR(Nachtmeister in Frankfurt,another Psychotic one in the Sox by Met 2000)and they can be killed,even by Player Chars! Its an Epic Task and extremely difficult(none of my Chars would volunteer for such a Run,not even for a Million ¥) but feasable none the less !

HougH!
Medicineman

Poor, nasty, brutish, and short?

Future tech is cool, but I'd prefer my future to be less dystopian. My internal jury is still out on elves and CEOs that can eat you in one bite.

There is a reason to wanting life to be that way: In shadowrun there is no question about things being bad..
everyone knows the worlds situation is bad in the 6th world. So why would one WANT to live there? Because it would justify going against the powers-that-be and there would be much less hesitation of doing so and much more understanding, thus a dystopia enables somebody, who has some anarchic and/or anarchistic/libertarian ideals of what life should be like, to free himself from the fear of loss he experiences IRL(loss of social standard/property, fear of retribution by state), because in an EXPLICICT DYSTOPIA, there is nothing more to loose, and thus you are much more motivated to go for it...

just my 2 nuyen

Because I can do these campaigns:

+ A group of "freaks" discovering a sleeping dragon in Hawaii and having to stop elves from killing it
+ Devil Wears Prada meets The Force Unleashed
+ Harry Potter in Boston
+ Post-apocalyptic Chicago
+ Is Lady Gaga really Christina Aguilera's attempt at punking everyone?

With a completely straight face. Well, not completely, I mean, look at that list.

Also, shooting people in the face for money.

I've been running or playing in SR since launch way back in 1989. And in that time I've had high powered games.
The average mage slinging initiate grade of 4. Maximum 6.
We've had characters become oyabun of a Yakuza clan and major shareholders of MCT.
I've seen players borderlining cyberzombie status before 'Cybertechnology' was released.
I've seen players unlock the immortality gene in their elven characters to become ageless.
Heck, I even once played in a one off session with a guest GM where he had opened up time travel (farcical - I know. It was a one off).

But in all that time, not ONCE has ANYONE ever killed a Great Dragon. Ever.

I submit to you that if any PC has killed a Great Dragon then you (or your GM more specifically) fail(s) at Shadowrun. Epic fail.

- J.

Well, bla bla, that's just your opinion. Please stick to the topic.

I really, really, really love the core rules (especially the magic) in shadowrun. And I would LOVE to see those rules in a pure fantasy setting.

Time Travel?
Go find the Great ones while they are still sleeping.
Take a week off. Use that week to kill one of them.

Also, don't tell ANYONE they fail at playing Shadowrun for WHATEVER reason.

I didn't run the time travel one, I'll be honest there.

But sorry, killing Great Dragons isn't allowed. Sorry. I read it somewhere.

- J.

Psh, if they can pull it off, i say let them.
Especially, since it's going to come back and bite them in the nads.

Could a PC kill one? Unless your GM is functionally anal, the answer is yes.

You realize, of course, that you're just giving me ideas.

-paws

That really depends on what kind of campaign the GM and the players want to have, now doesn't it? You "can't" stick Ares in a box, but that still sounds like one of the more amusing campaign ideas to me.

I submit instead that if a PC has killed a Great Dragon then you and your GM win at Shadowrun. Epic Win. And any GM who has had to fudge so that a GD lives, that's the Epic Fail.

Nah it wasn't for any sociological reasons that I said I wished it was how my life was, I have a pretty good one, I'm not posting this from the slums or anything. It was solely for the tech/magic.

Care to elaborate? This sounds, um. Well maybe awesome, maybe insane.

Why should any of those be mutually exclusive? O.o

All right.

Amanda Mayweather is the Boss From Hell and the head editor for fashion magazine En Vogue, headquartered in Boston. She is cruel, malicious, and utterly devoted to staying on top of everyone else. The only person higher than her is the actual owner of the magazine empire, Floyd Unether, whom she hates with an absolute passion.

She also tends to go through personal assistants like tissue paper during a cold.

Using this fact and some contacts, she starts combing the underworld for someone with the skills compatible to her needs - smart, talented, capable, beautiful. Someone with an edge, like a technomancer or an adept or someone with no obvious malicious cyberware to tip someone off.

The PC (as this is supposed to be a one on one campaign with my girlfriend) is then hired by a Johnson on a fake run, where she'll run into Mayweather (as the real Johnson) and offer her a very lucrative contract. The job? Full time personal assistant with "room to grow", using her talents gained in the shadows to topple Untether's magazine empire while setting herself up as his successor. She'll have access to unlimited funds and equipment but must be cautious to play the part of the dutiful assistant.

Expand from there.

For me Shadowrun has fundamentally altered how I look at games and game design. DnD was all about the mechanics it didn't start out with a developed setting it didn't need one. Shadowrun flipped that concept on it's head, here you had a game which was ALL about the setting. The setting in Shadowrun is so bloody cool that the mechanics have always had a tough time keeping up.

If you look at Shadowrun (at least 3rd edition) you had the following systems contained within it...
Matrix
Real World Combat
Magic
Rigging

Each of which is a different game system, there is no one single mechanic that bridges ALL four systems. Yet in spite of that 3rd edition sold hundreds of thousands of copies! People played it, devoted websites to it, and talked about it...we still are!

Shadowrun is awesome because it lets me be an elf with an unbelievably amazing cyber arm that is capable of doing more damage to a persons face then if they got hit by a car.

I hacked a humanis members cyber eyes and forced him to watch 12 straight hours of a human chick banging a troll. Sometimes death is to good for a person and you need to get creative. Situations like these are what made me love the setting and the sick people within.

Never ending possibilities and the 3 worlds to consider at all times (flesh, matrix, astral). Guns and magic doesn't hurt, either And the GM-friendly predetermined group concept that can also be skipped, but it's there.