It's a simple question here, people. Did you start playing SR before or after FanPro got the license? If you care to post it, I'd also like to know if you started with SR1, SR2, or SR3.

Personally, I first played the game with SR1, but only a handful of times. Later, I cameo'd in an SR2 game at a friend's insistence and I was hooked from there on out. I'm no fan of the system, but it's one of my favorite game settings ever.

I started playing with SR2.01d (read: German second edition) somewhen in 1992.

I bought SR2 in 1997, but only made a few testing games. I start playing regularly in 2000, which matches SR3 release (no relation though).

You see, fellow Poll maker, there is one problem with this poll.
I only GM Shadowrun (others are too lazy or don't want to), so there is no correct answer for me.

Also setting "Play year", "Play 5 years" would make this poll more interesting and accurate. My answer - I GM for a year.

I started playing with SR1 as soon as SR was released...1988? 87? I was already playing Battletech by that point (Summer '86) and the FASA catalogs I received advertized the new, upcoming Shadowrun, which immediately caught my attention. So I put an early order and got Shadowrun when it was released.

My first (and so far only) game was this past summer.

thrid ed,just before Man and Machine came out.

Started playing in my friends SR group they started to test-out the new SR3 rules. It was probably the first printing that was available in the UK but my BBB is older than that (seventh printing).

I read the Secrets of Power trilogy when they first came out but we didn't start playing until '93.

Ah, I remember like it was yesterday. My buddies and I were sitting aroun because it was raining and we couldn't sk8.
Someone said "Let's play D&D."
I said, "I hate D&D, let's find another game, like Shadowrun."
"What's Shadowrun?"

We went to the comic shop and each chipped in $5 for the rule book (2nd Ed.) and I've been playing ever since. Of the 7 kids form that day 3 of us still play regularly. one of the others now plays Vampire, in fact he wanted to be a vampire that first day.

Umm, my answer would have to be: I haven't got a clue. When, exactly, did the changeover take place? The SR3 book that I have is from '98 (I think) and is obviously from FASA-times, but I didn't buy it until ... '99? '00? And I didn't play (GM) it until the summer of '00, I think.

SR1, and in some ways I still miss the old damage stagging codes.

FanPro's first product was published in summer 2001: Year of the Comet. The latest 3 [maybe four... not sure offhand] printings of the core SR3 book have been from FanPro.

SR1 back in 91? then SR2 whenever it came out and on til now...

-Mike R.

IIRC, FASA closed its doors at the beginning of May, 2001.

Pre-FanPro it is, then.

SR2 back in 1992.

I had considered that only old-time gamers would be here, but I dismissed it. Internet use has expanded dramatically among households in the past two years and the modern gamer is very likely to hunt down forums and other online resources pertaining to their games of choice.

I found the old ShadowRN lists well before I messed around with Dumpshock and this is actually my second appearance here after some time away from the game.

Doing the math, I think I played in my first SR game in 1992. That would be 1st Ed. PLayed for a year, then picked up the GM mantle and haven't looked back. Though I've taken quite a few breaks to run other games in the intervening years...

I feel so young with this crowd... I first started playing in 98. This guy kept driving around my high school, offering "CRPGs". First one was free. Eventually they lost their luster and long story short, I started needing my SR hit every week. I've been to meetings, but I just can't get over it.

Your results are going to be VERY skewed, this is true. The people who come here are so immersed in SR, they laugh at jokes about dikoted allied AVS spirits. They're hard core.

Not everyone here is an SR3 freak, nezumi. A good percentage of SR3 freaks are here, but I doubt if even 10% of the people on these boards would meet your description. I certainly don't...

but but but... we love dikoted allied AVS spirits, and drones to have sex with... its part of the insanity that lives here!

So far, I'm very surprised that four people polled hadn't played the game until mid-2001. Percentage-wise, that's far more than I expected, but the poll isn't done yet...

I haven't been playing all that long, either.

I joined Sahandrian's group in August of last year, and had my first 'run with them shortly thereafter.

Although I'm a regular contributor to their site as far as posts are concerned, we haven't played together as a group since that 'run finished.

--Foreigner

I began playing Shadowrun (2nd Edition) in 1994.

The first thing I learned is that you do not fire Viper Slivergun bursts while your mates are busy in a melee.

GMing since '92, never missed a beat since then. Actually, wait, I think there was, like, two weeks in '98 when I couldn't get a fix...

Bought first edition Shadowtech 'cause it was so cool back in '93 and then bought SRII a wee bit later (Christmas of that year?) and have been playing it ever since!

I picked up the SR1 book back in 1990. Me and my friends tried to play this once in awhile but at the time it seemed really complicated, so we only did oneshots with it. About the time SR2 came out I got into Virtual Seattle because I wanted to see how a dedicated campaign of Shadowrun would go. That went fairly well, and one of the highlights for me was taking my character to Gen Con and meeting other people who play Shadowrun. When SR3 came out I went out and got the book first thing. What I find somewhat amazing is my old SR1 & 2 books are in much better condition than my SR3 BBB. I do have to say it got used more frequently but still...

Given the disrepair of my SR3 book and the fact that every single piece of errata seems to apply to it, I might cave and actually buy the latest printing.

i started with SR2. i think around '93.

Started in... '95 or so? SRII, I'm pretty sure, though it's not impossible that we were playing with a used SRI. I don't remember things like the old stageing/armor systems, though, so probably SRII. After a few games, though, I had a long hiatus that ended a little under two years ago with my receipt of the SRIII core rules as a birthday present.

~J

am i the only one who started playing because of one of the video games?

i remember it now....We had gotten the snes cart from blockbuster along wiht bladerunner, only got SR since the lord of the rings game wasnt there, i was very upset since the game looked like a dorky demonic gmae (goat skull on cover, or so i thought). But we loved it, the graphics were out of sight! We would rent it 3-4 more times, before.....(i guess this was 94?)

in 1996?.....After coming home after living abroad, me and my 3 brothers were given a 20$ bill for the lot of us, we went to the new mall and wanted to buy books, after getting bored one of my bros wandered around and came into this section with big-ass books, and there was one with shadowrun on the cover! (we found some small ones in another section) He really wanted it since it showed that you could get motorcycles and cars and clothes and stuff as well as the guns and armor you got from the game! i said no

we came back another day and i wanted birthright, had the money but it was no longer there and the other game i wanted was too expensive (we didnt know what an rpg was, i wanted a board game/war game which my dad had gotten us into), so i told my brother i would get sr for him and it is now the only thing the 4 of us do as a group, going to my oldest brothers house once a week (one brother telecommutes now).

so, i played pre-wizkids/fanpro (and got pretty depressed hearing they were going away, no more btech or sr, but i was wrong )

p.s. the nfound ds like 1-2 years ago while looking for bulls place again, after having found it at school one day and seen that it had online resources! maps! we never used maps! but it hadnt been updated since then it seemed, but they had a webring, and this site called dumpshock...

Er, I somehow doubt you played pre-FASA

~J

Edit: by the by, how did you get the title Freedonia Expatriate? I had assumed that that meant you were a former FASA employee, but that post suggests not...

oh, lol i had to fix the pre-fasa thing. I dont know how i got it, thought i shose it as my location maybe?

I dunno exactly when I started playing, before Cannon Companion or YotC, whichever came first. I think it was right around when SR changed hands. My friends and I were playing so many different RPGs and one of them said, "Hey, let's try out Shadow Run" I didn't really want to, when you're playing like 4 or 5 different games you don't really wanna learn a new system, they convinced me to. I single-handedly screwed up our first run (Andy still hates that character for it) and now SR is my favorite gaming system. I love the lack of set-in-stone character classes and level systems games like Rifts and D&D have.

I bought the Elmor covered hardbound SR book when it was released in '89. I have bin playing ever since.

I"ve been playing since around '95 or so. At the time all I pretty much knew about was AD&D, but a friend of mine had started to get the cyberpunk bug through a combination of Johnny Mnemonic and the SR video games. He brought me and the rest of my playing group into it and we pretty much never looked back. Although the group started to dissolve a bit after four or five years and we haven't really played as a group since 2002.

I played 1e a few times, but really didnt get into the game until the 2e rules came around. We used to borrow the confrence room at the local library to play, and I remember our GM was the only one who could reserve it, because he was the only one who was 18 at the time...

I still have quite the eclectic mix of sourcebooks from 1e to present... I just wish that the new stuff had a similar formatting to the old ones. I miss the pictures of the gear and the deckers comments like in the SS Catalogue or Shadotech. IMHO, I would like to see a book for SR3 that would replace my worn copy of Sprawl Sites, tho. All those nice maps of generic locations....

Started way back when the game first came. My friends bought it, and I wanted to try it out mainly because of the big poster in the game shop with Larry Elmore's painting from the cover of the 1st and 2nd edition books. Heck, I remember phys ads with the +4D6 initiative bonus for 8 magic points (ya, my friends played almost everynight for a year or two).

I bought Shadowrun 3rd edition last year after Christmas with my Christmas money. Didn't touch it (silly me) for an entire year except to get Matrix and Year of the Comet. Then I ran about half a game during December this year and bought Rigger 3, Magic in the Shadows and Cannon Companion and am patiently waiting for Man and Machine to be reprinted so I can find it somewhere...(Sad thing is, I tend to buy lots of books for games I usually don't get to play...spent a good hundred dollars on Shadowrun, ran it once. Spent huge amounts of money on another game line and played maybe ten games of it...silly gaming group.)

side note --> my freedonia tag is gone now, you ratted on me

Aww, sorry.

~J

Well, I guess I'm probably the newest player here at the moment. I just started last Wednesday. Well, actually, I started GMing Wednesday, so Crimzero would be the newest.

I started playing last week...

go me!

I started in 1989. I still have my blue book, autographed by Jordan Wiseman. Shadowrun was my first break from D&D, and I've never regretted it.

I bought SR1 the day it hit the shelves, and have been hooked ever since.

Started with SR2 - played (very) infrequently since late '96, up until the middle of last year, and now GMing SR3 every week.

I started in 1990 I guess, with 1st Ed. I had seen a guy at school with a hardback copy and when I went looking for a new RPG (I had been running Warhammer Fantasy Role Play before then) I was choosing between Marvel Superheroes and Shadowrun.

Shadowrun won out.

I GM most of the time, in fact my first experience of Shadowrun (and WFRP for that matter) was as a GM. Is that unusual, to GM an RPG before ever playing in one?

I've never played Shadowrun before.

Shadowrun? Never heard of it, is it like Poker?

Actually started playing waay back in 1990 (I think it could have even been '89) with obviously 1st edition. Although I've not actually played (or GM'd) since '93.

I've still got a whole load of 1st edition stuff - Harlequin, Missing Blood, Dreamchipper, SSC, Shadowtech, Shadowbeat, Grimoire, RBB are all sitting on a shelf (although annoyingly, not the nice hardback rulebook, which was kept by one of the other players when we went our seperate ways). 2nd ed stuff includes the rulebook (yay!), VR2, Rigger 2, Silver Angel, plus some others that escape my memory right now.

I've also bought a fair bit of 3rd edition stuff, which on reflection is a bit silly considering I've not played any RPG for over 10 years. Every few months I try and persuade my (now) wife a few friends to try gaming, but can't get enough people together to make it worthwhile!

I need to grow up and get a life