Wow. I'm prepping an SR4A game that will start off in 2050. As such, I've been boning up on the SR1 rules a little bit, mainly to capture the feel of the game from back then, and to remind myself of what was (and what wasn't) in the game yet.

I'm amazed, honestly, at how different the game has become. Even stuff I took for granted from early editions, like the initiative rules, are vastly different (YOu got an extra action for every *7* or so points above 10 he rolls... So you only needed a 23 to get 4 Actions. The charts actually a bit wonky.) EVen from 1st to 2nd to 3rd edition, there were some big changes.

I'm also amused by the lack of Simple vs Complex actions. Guns all just fired once.

Just amused.

Reading your post made me think of post apocalyptic movies like Water World, where feral people always find some machine based on ancient (to them) technology and are all puzzled and bemused about how it works.

"What is this dice mechanic? It is strange and unlike what I have come to know..."

It;s just funny how many little mechanics and such I've totally forgotten about. Granted, I never played much SR1... Made a few characters, loved the setting, but didn't really dive in and seriously play till 2nd edition.

And trying to reconcile the SR4A rules to the SR1 style is... Interesting. I'm kinda praying no one wants to play a hacker or rigger.

Come on, Bull; Not ALL guns fired just once... that's what a reactive trigger was for! And who left home without Firepower^TM Ammo in their magazines? Now you've got me thinking back to the old stuff. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be nostalgic or shudder. Back in 1st Ed, Deckers (not hackers, you impertinent young pups!) were code wizards, no script kiddies playing hacker on their Super-Ultra-Mega-iThingie2071. Remember code carriers? Remember having to worry about storage memory? When Alphaware was new and wiz? When having a PC decker meant having the group go out for pizza while they spent two hours rolling 2.674 pounds of d6's into the top of an Axis & Allies box?

Or as we got into 2nd Ed, when Bioware made an appearance? And the new Deltaware?! The new CRANIAL cyberdeck? Or the early tactical computers? Cyberjacks with different throughput speeds and varying amounts of on-board storage? Remember when your DNI had chip slots?

Do you remember early Initiation, how none of us had a clue? The first time you tried to use the old rules to design a spell? How about designing an actual Matrix Map with the physical connections (including those pesky 1-way lines) and the dead ends like a maze? Remember the wonder the first time you picked up a clip of APDS ammo? Wasn't THAT wiz? Or packing Ex-Ex ammo in your Walther to geek the awakened rabbits eating your carrots? How about salivating over the million nuyen laser rifle put there just to tease us?

Yeah, me too. Been there, done that, got the drekky quality slotting t-shirt that faded, ran and shrank the first time I washed it.

But the idea of trying to run SR1 (2050) with SR4? Now I'm intrigued. Let us know how it goes.

Although I occasionally wax poetic and pine for some of the early flavor of the game, I wouldn't trade the design efficiency and game flow of SR4x for any of the older versions.

YOu know, I remember the Reactive triggers (And you're the second person to bring them up), but I'll be damned if I can find them in SR1 or the SSC.

Anyways, I'm setting the game in early 2050. I'm tweaking chargen a little bit, as well as a few other rules, and I'll likely be giving out a little extra karma per run. I'm also planning to track the timeline, so as books were "published" in game time, those materials become available for the players. So to start with, only SR1 gear is available (I'm gonna fudge things a little if anyone wants to play an Adept, since the Grimoire is technically a 2050 supplment, but doesn't have any solid dates listed inside).

So for example, SSC doesn't become available till 2051. Shadowtech doesn't drop till 2052. Etc.

EVerything else isn't too bad, just limitations on whats available, and some tweaking of prices and such (I'm actually using SR1 pricing for everything, and have redone how you get money at Chargen to open that Million Nuyen up).

SHould be interesting. NOt sure yet when the games gonna start yet, gotta find the time and all.

I'd love to play in a back to the past game. Wish I lived closer dude. I've thought about running one sometime, but I've never had players well enough familiar with Shadowrun that it would give me the particular sort of fun I'd be looking for.

Hey, I'm in Dayton rather than Cleveland now, so I'm almost 5 hours closer for your commute

Doesn't help me much, Bull.

What changes did you make to how some of the gear works things like smartlinks?

I ask because I'm running a 4e game right now set in 2050. The plan was for it to be a long term campaign where the characters have a chance to play thorugh some of the major events in the shadowrun timeline.

I thought that SSC was available in 2050 so I included that in the available gear in my game? Same with Rigger Black Book.

Fields of Fire, IIRC.

Was it this or later editions that had variable damage staging for different types of weapons plus so many automatic successes for damage resistance with armour? I have vague memories of troll tanks that could shrug off practically anything but it's been an absolute age since I looked at anything preceding Third Edition.

I can't find rules for reactive trigger in either SSC (V1 or 2) or FoF, but I distinctly remember that feature from back in the day (and I'm sure it was SR1). Any body else know where to find it?

And on another note: Mmmmmm... variable staging numbers...

Sorry! I can only do so much




One nice thing about the 1st and second edition books, all the comments in it are Time Stamped So you can get an idea of when the books were "published" to Shadowland, and extrapolate from there.

With SSC, the gear is actually out of "Ares America WInter Catalogue 2050", and the earliest date stamps in it are late November, 2050. I'm starting my game in January 2050, so I won;t trickle the new toys in till the end of that year.

Rigger Black Book's first posted date in 04/29/52. Shadowtech is 11/30/52.

As for Smartlinks, I'm leaving them as is, though keep in mind that most guns (if not all) in SR1 do not come Smartlink adapted. THey don't get the nifty range finders and all those gizmo's (Those were a Smartlink 2 system upgrade in Fields of Fire), but with the simplified rules for SR4, those are mostly fluff anyways now. I will, however, reduce the bonus for smartlink goggles (ANd laser sights)to +1 dice, since older systems gave a -1 vs the integrated -2.



That was SR1. Obviously, since I'm playing with SR4, I'm tossing that craptasticly convoluted system out the window.

Eventually, I'm gonna work up a solid timeline for books and materials for the various editions as a reference for when stuff becomes available. I'll probably publish that up here (Or, maybe save that as an article for the upcoming Dumpshock Magazine we're doing ).

Bull

Yeahm I've dug through almost all the 1st ed books. UNless if was buried in one of the location books like London or Germany... It's not in any of the gear books. Fields of FIre was a 2nd edition publication, and by that point SS vs SA had been established in SR2.

I don't have the SSC any more, but IIRC, the reactive trigger was a feature on one of the pistols (the Browning Ultra-Power, I think?), and that was where they mentioned that you could modify other pistols so that they could have reactive triggers. So that's why you're not finding it - it didn't have its own separate entry.

Aaah, now you made me feel like a 14 year-old full of acnes again

Ahh, thank you!

Whats even better is that while the Browning Ultra Power has this feature, the comment about the cost and that any weapon can get it is actually in the Shadowtalk under the Predator (Which also talks about modifying guns to use the new Firepower ammo). That's annoying...

And nice, my PCs get to wait a year before they can make their guns able to shoot twice a round

For the record, it's basically +25% cost of the gun to have the Reactive Trigger system installed.

Bull

Ah! You are correct sir. I had a vague recollection of such, but I thought it was the Beretta 200-ST. The reactive trigger was ret-conned out of SSC V2 (after the switch to SR2).

Street Samurai Catalog (first print):

• Page 18: "All single-shot weapons can be equipped with reactive triggers like on the Browning Ultra-Power. The weaponsmith cost of this upgrade is roughly 25 percent of the base weapon cost."
• Page 20: "The Browning Ultra-Power fires two shots per action, with a recoil modification of +1."

Edit: I always take too long to write my posts, beaten to it above.

Yeah, it basically became standard on all weapons after 2053

Well Gurth has already done that for what looks like most of the Second Edition sourcebooks as well as the published adventures so that should give you a fairly large head start. Any that he missed I'm sure the usual forumites can help you out with.

Yeah it was a huge shock to me. Fortunately when I started with 1e... I hadn't seen a thing in years, outside of rarely looking at copies of the books in the gameshops. Fortunately 4e was fairly easy to pick up. And while I have to admit it has it's little bugaboos, I find them a lot better than 2e and 3e now that I've had time to look at those in a bit more detail.

Glancing a SR1 book (since I keep it in the satchel w/ my SR4 books)... I'm a little amused by how little the vehicle section and some others have changed. We still have the eurocar and many other workhorses with us. Some of them are more amusing as well... the EFA fighters for a cool half million (compared to the fighter-bomber in arsenal which IIRC is 10mil).


Right now... my GM has us in a similar situation. We're running a quite a few years back. So far, the retrotech issues have mostly shown up as a problem of no that equipment isn't available. (or downgraded). I guess I'm lucky in that aspect I got shunted into the mage role (Fallout3 "War, war never changes..." "Magic, magic never changes..." well it does, but at least I don't have to worry about losing magic/essence for silly stuff).

The one guy who wanted to play a decker though is rather hosed, as there's no good way to get him setup w/ equipment. (especially since the game's timeline moves fairly quickly and the GM has something against essence holes and replacing older cyber w/ newer cyber as the matrix changes over time).

And yet, large chunks of SR4A's introductory section, "Welcome to the Shadows" are quoted verbatim from SR1's intro "The Year is 2050". Aside from some shuffling of ideas up or down in the essay and minor copyediting to clean up a few of the concepts presented, they're nearly identical. Plus ca change, plus c'est meme chose. (No, wait. That's SR2.)

And while I can understand wanting to be faithful to the march of technology in the setting, I personally wouldn't wait for the rest of the SSC to drop to give the players access to Firepower Ammo, Reactive Triggers, and Securetech Clothing. Unlike the other items in the catalog, these three had always struck me as "stealth errata" to the main book, put out in a time where there was no easy way to freely distribute errata among the customerbase. Back when SR started, expensive high-end modems were 2400 baud, while the midrange ones were only 1200 (for you young whippersnappers who don't know what baud is, that's 2.4 and 1.2 kilobits per second -- get off my lawn). The majority of online services were local, with only a handful of national providers. While FASA did use one of these national providers to get feedback from its customers, they knew that only a fraction of them went online despite the major alignment along the geek axis of both the Tabletop RPG and computing hobbies. My theory is, that FASA got some harsh criticism about certain aspects of the core rules, at some point after the book had gone to press, but while SSC was in development, and they hit upon the idea of offering up the fixes in the SSC to avoid having to make such sweeping changes to the text of the core book on subsequent printings.

The Firepower rebore and the Reactive Trigger retrofit are both dirt cheap modifications compared to the effect that they have in game. It was almost a no-brainer for players to take these on every firearm that was eligible. Plus, they're both listed in a sidebar box on the same page, even though the example pistol for the reactive trigger was on another page. Why alter fundamental sections of the core rulebook, causing chaos and confusion at kitchen tables and conventions when one player shows up with a first printing and a different player shows up with a later printing, when you can write a fix in to the first sourcebook, and make it such a must-have that the players remind each other "Don't forget to take this! It's good!"

Then there's Securitech Clothing, which has a curious statement about the accuracy of the statistics for those items, unlike a rival publication. At the time the SSC came out, the only other Shadowrun "publication" with stats for armored clothing was the gear chapter of the core rulebook itself. While the statement is in the in-character fluff text of the Ares Catalog itself, it certainly comes across as FASA saying "we know the stats in the core rulebook aren't realistic, here use these instead." Then again, when the SSC was reprinted for second edition, items such as Firepower Ammunition and Reactive Triggers got labeled as "Banned in Second Edition" so that FASA wouldn't mess up the page count, or insert new content that would cause an uproar from customers who had bought the older book. Securitech Clothing was not given this treatment.

Actually, in the original (not 2nd ed-it may be blacked out in that version) SSC, page 18 (Ares Predator 2)-the cost is described in a comment made by winger. It adds 25% to the cost, and has the same effect as what is added to (of course you could add that to you panther cannon too. It was one of the few times where the comment of a poster was a rule.

Beat me to it too-I should read all comments before posting!

Well, Firepower isn't really that big a deal, as I'm using SR4 stats (or something equivalent) anyways.

The Reactive Trigger though I kinda like keeping for a bit. I know at least 2 of my players played 1st ed, so I really wanna go with a classic game feel. Plus, it'll be a nice and very easy "upgrade" to the game a little ways down the line, let them really start feeling like badasses without resorting to bigger guns or big, massive tech.

We'll also be tackling a lot of the old Modules. WHich should be interesting

Starting with DNA/DOA, I imagine? Not that that's a bad thing, but it's quite apparent that it was the first SR module and the author was lacking for points of reference. The thing was a late 80's AD&D dungeon crawl with the serial numbers laser-etched off.

Considering that Dave Arneson wrote it, that's not too surprising

I honestly don't recall the reactive trigger... but maybe treat it like electronic firing. Or simply 'fire selection' , making a gun from from SS to SA is only a basic modification and only takes 1 modification slot.

This sucks, Bull won't let me take any of those old moduals off the shelf now

I am running a 2050 campaign using 3rd ed rules, and we just finished DNA/DOA. I think that module was meant to transition fantasy roleplayers to a cyber-punk genre; in addition to the dungeon crawl, there were monsters and an evil wizard. My players really had a good time, and managed to learn most of the core rules without dying.

Ah good ole Fields of Fire. It was out of print a the time but I found a copy at a book store during a college visiting trip with some students down to Burlington VT. The kids were all wondering why their counselor was giggling in such a fashion.

Very cool idea.
I really love my old SR1 and 2 materials as well.

And even though most of the time, SR4 and even SR3 seems more elegant and works better (notice how it took till SR3 before additional passes didn't mean going 3 times before anyone else could act?), there's some things i actually miss.
The old skill default web was great, i wonder if one could come up with a version that works under SR4 rules.

Anyways, to add something more constructive than my geek nostalgia, here's some more gear and magic changes to consider :

-will external smartlinks only give one bonus die until somewhere in the mid 60s?
-do rating 4 gas vents, MAOI and dicote mysteriously disappear at that point?*
-how are you adressing the change in magical paradigms (new spirit types, Binding available for shamans, Summoning available for hermetics)?
-are natural low light vision and IR better than the cyber/glasses equivalent for the first 15 years of the campaign?
-do you include the difference between optical and electronic vision enhancements?


* there may actually be a lot more things that mysteriously disappear in later editions, especially as far as magic is concerned.
IIRC correctly, SR3 introduced paradigms, which where a bit like totems for hermetics, there where things like having an entire pantheon as a totem/idol, there where, in all editions with the possible exception of SR1, more totems, idols etc. to begin with and i think SR3 also had a Metamagic to let you use posession even if you followed a materialization tradition and vice versa.

All this talk has me fondly remembering our SR1 day's and waiting for that first SR book to show up after seeing an ad for this new fantasy/cyberpunk game to come out. (All this while waiting for my SR4A book to show up tomorrow.)

Really looking forward to hearing some "war" stories from those old modules.
Whole topic got me to go dig out my old SR box SSC & FoF both bringing back great memories. Hope we see a FoF type release for SR4 one day.

The spell design rules from the first edition Grimoire was actually something that worked, and was consistent with all of the published spells. You couldn't say the same abouth the second edition spells and the second edition spell design rules.

Lars

I always assumed that becuase dikote was so good and so ubiquitous, everything's dikoted now, and they save the costs of it by making that base thingy really shoddily

In my game I have used as much of the SR 4 concepts as possible, primarly so I didn't confuse my group so much because they were all new to SR. It is much easier for them to read the books for game mechanics but look at seperate sheets for gear than to just all out change the basic mechanics.

I am not planning on using Gas Vent 4 in my game, but Dikote will appear.

I am also not bothering with the difference between natural and cyber vision. It keeps things simple.

The problem I have is with the costs of gear. The programs and cyberdecks in SR1 were much more expensive than they are in SR4. I have upped the cost so that it is closer to SR1, so that I can bring the costs down later as the technology gets cheaper.

There is the same problem with some of the vehicles as well. I have chosen to go with the SR1 costs.

How do you address that issue Bull?

anyone feel like doing the math to see if SR1 juggernaut is tougher then SR4 juggernaut?

I don't feel like doing the math, but I'd sure like to see it!

heh, thinking about it, it dawns on me that the mentioned variable staging numbers, as well as the (for me) unknown armor rules would make for a nasty bit of math...

Well can you blame him considering some of the weird stuff you have up there. Was that your Hungary sourcebook in some of the pictures from GenCon?

Besides, you only have to hold out until 07-10-2050 for some of the Street Samurai Catalog gear to start appearing in-game. Not sure if there's a concrete date for reactive triggers though.