After reading through SR4E for a while, I realised that I prefer the earlier settings, like SR2E pre-Bug City. You know, where you still need a cyberdeck to deck in. And that got me thinking: how easy is it to utilise the earlier setting stuff with SR4E?

Very easy.

A few ideas

Drop technomancers

Require a deck for any serious hacking.

All the wireless stuff is there, but no one puts anything of value on wireless. Still a skilled decker could hack a comlink remotely, but a Drone would be very hard to take control of.

Double the essence cost of a Control Rig.

To differentiate between Hermetics and Shamans, Shamans "Natue" spirits are +1 force inside their native Domain (say on the river bank or in the river for a River Spirit) and -1 outside their domain (drain is based on the unadjusted force). A Shaman doesn't command the spirits but instead has a mutual assistance pact. In order to bind a spirit the Shaman must negotiate an alliance. This takes 1 day per force of a spirit he wants to Bind as he negotiates for a mutual assistance pact. A shaman may do additional negotiates at a later date to be able to bind a stronger spirit. Because of this, an uncontrolled spirit will usually just leave. A shaman coming to a new land must repeat the process before he can bind spirits in the new land.


Also check out Harlequin if you want to run old school. Best SR adventure ever!!!

I would think it would be incredibly easy, I mean it's all just setting stuff right? Personally if you can get your hands on a copy of Universal Brotherhood, I think that it and it's lead up to Bug City is perhaps amongst the greatest RPG Campaign ever written, by anyone anywhere.

The real hard part is making sure your group is willing to put aside metagame knowledge.

I am guessing they got rid of it in SR2, because I only saw a few books for SR2, but in SR1, they had a program carrier. It allowed you to slot your persona chips of Sensors, Masking and Evasion and using your own Bod, you became the cyberdeck. I think you could use headware memory or DNI storage space for downloads, but you would make programs on the fly IIRC.

Could be a way to use technomancer style rules for pre-2070's SR matrix.

Was program carrier the one they got rid of because it "caused cancer"?

I remember there was one cyberpiece that did that.

Then the question becomes how you simulate cyberdecks. I suppose that you could use Comms for that, and redecorate them.

IIRC, it was called "running naked", because your hardening rating was Zero, thus you had no defense against ICE and other nasty forms of biofeedback. I believe program carriers never made it into later editions because anyone stupid enough to do it got their brains melted.



1: make anything worth hacking require tapping a hardline to access.
2: Make your hacker's commlink bigger/bulkier.
3: make standard commlinks unable to run hacking programs. browse/command/scan is OK, but cybercombat is deck-only
4: profit.

I too wanted to use all the fantactic adventures from the past 20 years of Shadowrunny goodness, and bring my players from 2050 to 2072 with a REALLY long series of linked campaigns. I started work on picking the campaigns that made sense to link together, then I ran into a very steep hill. I would have to convert all the gear from the past into an SR4 equivalent rules mechanic, AND keep track of what gear became available when, and then I quit.

The good thing that came out of it was I have a really long Excel list of old weapons (and a little other tech) that I can use to give my players that helps flesh out the world. Guns have a VERY long useful life, compared to a Walkman, for example, so older weapons give the world a more "lived-in" feel.

Where I hit the wall was non-weapon tech, and the complete change in rules and useage of tech from the 2050/2060 rulesets and the 2070 rules. That said, I still want to do it, but I do not have the time because I am too busy GMing the current campaign!

Someday, when I hit the lottery and can retire, I would like to complete my Excel sheet of gear. The amount of time it takes for each item entry in order to cross-check it between SR4 and older sourcebooks was excessive.

I feel this statement can be false.

Let me explain. It all depends on what 2050 is to you. There are many pieces of gear & spells that never had equivalents in 2050 (some that are even MAJOR plot points). Its not just re branding a Novatech comlink to a Fuchi cyberdeck. For example magical tatoos were introduced around the 2057 timeline. Magic in 2050 is way more rare and the rules reflected that (remember having to spend karma like you would on skills for each spell?). So if you want that level of detail this becomes astronomically complex. You can however just branding a Novatech comlink to a Fuchi cyberdeck and call it close enough.

The other way in which this could be false is the feeling of the game. The rules give the game a certain feel and the new rules are way different that the old rules so its not going to feel the same. Again this may or may not be an issue for you.



The adventures are not all that fantastic. Some are good, some are terrible and most are somewhere in the middle. I would instead suggest reading through the adventure and then re-write it for your group. For example I rewrote Maria Mecurial into an Ork Rapper named Crime Time and had him be a former employee of perfecto chemical that they thought was killed in the "accident" when he got famous they sent in kyle morgan to clean up the mess, however Crime Time's body guard took the bullet at the airport instead so now hes got a gig to get to and someone is after him. They have been receiving death threats from jamie hernandez (his old agent and lover), etc etc...