Lately I've been having trouble enjoying my games. While the stories are interesting and challenging, and my group members are a blast, SR just isn't as much fun. I love the world, but the actual gameplay feels lacking.

So, what part of SR is fun for you? What keeps you excited? How do you keep coming back to the table each week to face down the dystopia yet again?

Try a new campain. Change characters. Change the game master.

I love SR for being world wide. Where Magic meets the machine and where you are always doing strange missions. Some clear some unclear. Some that give the Players a real ethical debat while in character and out of the game.

Part of what Delarn said but theirs a lot more, the idea of being a one of the people that slips into one of the cracks in socity, not falling into any of the casts, not a vagriant, not a part of an organized part of crime, just existing despite everything to contrary.
Not to mention the action of the hist, the single decsion that means either life or death, the planing trying to cut down on the unkown, and than the moment when everything goes to hell, and the moment afterwards when it the peaces snap together.
Wow, I am such a nerd to be that into a rollplaying game.
Great thing is, I don't care about being a nerd.
PS: I could go on for a half hour about all the other stuff I love about this game.

I like the setting personally. The ability to actually somewhat relate to the setting: Cars, guns, the internet, geeks who like to play with 'magic,' while still having a unique cyberpunk feel. I play a persistent game online right now where we actually roleplay outside of just going on missions or following along in a campaign. That right there also helps to keep the game interesting for me since I can interact in different ways than what is -usually- allowed in a table top setting.

My personal opinion is that none of that matters.

The game rules are irrelevant, the setting unimportant, none of the developers flair matters one iota.

I agree with what Delarn said. If you like the group you are playing with, and if your GM uses a style you enjoy, you can have a good time playing tiddlywinks. If the group does not mesh, or if you are arguing with the gm all night, you are not going to have a good time regardless of how much you may enjoy other factors.

So examine yourself. Are you getting along with your fellow gamers? Is the GM providing a challenging game? Is the story that your GM tells one that you are able to get into? If the answer is no, discuss your issues with the other players and GM, or find another game to play. You seem happy with the players and the GM, perhaps you are having issues with style. So ask yourself, "Do I like the way combat is happening", "Is there too much combat, too much action, or not enough?" Once you figure out whether you need more roleplay, or more action, and you can decide what matters to you in game, and you can discuss it with your fellow players and GM.

Dwarfs with guns.

Biker nuns with guns.

Combat pool!

Also, Shadowbeat.

~J

It was about the 80s and the bodycount.

Tee hee yo har.

The layers of double dealing and conspiracy in the background.

The simple structure of the most basic campaign format to the melodrama of characters personal lives, triumphs and tragedies.

The layers of Grey in the morality games that SR allows for or the sheer cold edged mercenary types that come out of the shadows too.

Some of the reasons Why shadowrunners shadowrun.

Impressive showdowns with adversaries.

Reocurring personalities that quickly take life so easily.

dwarves with biker nuns

also I like the way you can see almost any movie, and throw an idea from it into shadowrun

KILLING OTHER PLAYERS FAVORITE CHARACTERS!


or


having fun with friends in an interesting setting...


its a close tie I'm sure for everyone else too.

It's one of the few games where I have fun playing the daily life of the character.
Just playing missions don't really cut it for me now. A B&E from time to time is ok but, to me, the real fun starts when things get personal, when my PC's feet beat the pavement in a living and breathing neighborhood, full of contacts, allies and enemies.

My Hobbits (as Technomancer and as Combat Mage) ,my Chars in General
Making new Chars,
I keep coming back because I'm still having so much fun playing,even after 25 Years of RPG.
I'm not only playing SR ,but also Deadlands,D&D 3.x,the whole Mix and I still enjoy goinhg to Conventions. I think in the next 30-40 Years I'll be looking for a retirement Center that facilitates Roleplaying Gaming

Hough!
Meddicineman

Terminator killing Legolas! < = that's how you have to play, make it more cyber PUNK!
Have fun, don't try to be those too serious pros all the time . . let one rip . . light it on fire, then let it rip from your full auto shotgun!

The dystopian future, guns and magic thing is cool... but what I really love about the game is the strategizing it takes to get a particular shadowrun accomplished. Personally I've never actually played, only GMed, but even from the other side it is fun to watch a well thought out plan come together. I love all the different roles that can be played, and all the cooperation required between them to give the game the feel of a good heist movie.

In my opinion it is fun, because the characters have real lifes. They are not a bunch of adventurers wandering through the world - you may travel the world but you have a home. In my fantasy and far-future games the characters are homeless. In the far future you are not riding on horses, instead you use an interstellar ship. This Han Solo style is nice, but in SR the characters feel ...more alive. You know the adress where they live, or at least the part of town in which they dwell. And playing in the (slightly modified by magic, Elves etc.) real world helps the imagination.

just my 2ct

Are you running SR3 or SR4? SR3 sometimes upsets players because its focus on mechanics slow down gameplay. SR4 gets... goofy. If you're having trouble with one, I'd say try the other. They seem to cover each others flaws pretty well.

I can never just do things the short way...

I love Shadowrun because I can do so much with it. Because it's such an open world, I can have crazy ideas and have open territory to plop it down and run with it.

Harry Potter? I can run that (the adventures of a bunch of college kids in MIT&T). Aliens? I can run that (Ares Firewatch team). Predator? I can run that (Amazon Basin). Shonen manga? I can run that (Emergence). Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider / The Mummy? I can run that (either Dunkelzahn Foundation members or Atlanteans). The Devil Wears Prada meets the Force Unleashed? Yup. (Actually, I gotta actually sit down and write that out). Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Tenjou Tenge, Air Gear, the Matrix, Lady Gaga with a katana...

I can use anything that I'm in love with and it won't feel out of place. Love, action, comedy, gender issues, sexuality issues, transhumanism, the pursuit of science over rationality, zombie apocalypses, pop culture...nothing feels out of place in Shadowrun. I think it's that huge open world that makes me love it as much as I do.

Plus there's all of that history! Yeah, it's made up history, but at the same time it feels so real. I love when the books are written as a collection of documents or clippings, because it makes the world seem real. You can take published books and plot them along a timeline, which is really neat, and you get to watch people grow up, fall in love, break up, die - it's heartbreaking when Dunk dies, but we get a lot of really awesome stuff to come out of it, and none of it feels like it was forced (imo, of course).

One final note: Dragons! I was raised with a fantasy loving older sister and uncle, and I love dragons. Oh man, do I love dragons. Shadowrun has Dunkelzahn, probably the coolest literary dragon in existance because he was human in the way that only a dragon can be. We got lots of info from him from his postings on Shadownet, but when his Will was published, it was like looking inside of his mind. There was in-jokes, take that's, humanitarian works, and just plain goofy shit that I catch myself remembering sometimes and chuckling over ("Unlike you, I'm really dead.").

In fact, Shadowrun has the most "personable" dragons ever, dragons who don't exist to horde gold and lord it over you until you're strong enough to go out and kick ass; none of them are people that you want to mess with, but they've got personality. Lofwyr is your typical lording dragon. Hestaby's got a great PR campaign, but is it all flash? Masaru is young but idealistic. Ghostwalker's a bit of an old fogey, but he's a master of strange and mystical arts. And then there's Ryumyo and Luung...

So yeah, that's why I love Shadowrun. And all I had to do was give you a huge wall of text to prove it.

THIS!

Seriously though, I'm one of those guys that when I sit down to make a character I'll probably run through 4 or 5 sheets sketching out ideas for a character and then, only when I've made something that truly makes me feel the character am I decided, and I've never played a game that gives me so many fantastic and fantastically bizarre options. I've actually played a hacker who was just this side of a cyber zombie and was, basically, a japanese tentacle monster off and on the 'trix!

It's whatever you make it. The limit is your imagination, or how many movies/books you've consumed.

This reminds me of the story of how I convinced my players to give SR a try, we were sitting around after a session talking about a lot of random shit. Primarly Lord of the rings and possible twists on the character, and someone was debateing how Legolas would have faught if the he had been putt into a futeristic or modern setting, they settled on dual weilding pistols or dual weilding modified shotguns.
The next thing out of my mouth was
"Have you guys ever heard of Shadowrun?"

Change up the kind of character you play, get outside your comfort zone. For the first time ever I'm not playing a "beat stuff" character (in fact, this time around, if I'm getting shot at, I've done something very wrong).

Of course, our GM is running the Renraku Archology shutdown module and has voice clips of Shodan from System Shock 1&2

The SR system was historically better than the most widely known other system, the D20 system, for good firearms gameplay where getting shot actually kills you.

I personally like the lack of a level system-as it allows for more flexible character creation. That and that damage tracks don't change (at least not extensively).

It's true. Levels are a stupid abstraction that IMO should not simply exist for their own sakes.

You say that, but some of the freshmen on campus can be slain with one hit from a trigonometric identity, let alone a recurrence relation.

~J

Ah but was it a critical hit?

When I first saw the 1st ed. book, and looked on one of the first pages and saw a Troll with a baseball bat and a pistola stuck in his belt. Then I was told I could play that..........love at first sight. For me it has always been the wonderful mix of Blade Runner and Lord of the Rings. It is the most rich environs for excellent story lines, and the source-books are so well researched and developed that ( as others have said ) the actual rules are just grease for telling a great story.

Shadowrun is let my friend crush tell :
Crush: 'Cause we were like, "woaaaah.", and I was like, "woaaaah." and you were like, "woaaahh..."

I like cyberpunk and I like swords and sorcery. Nuf said!

I like it, because your planning criminal activities. I've always been like " I could rob a bank" eventhough I would never. I actually sometimes translate all the game-terms to real-world words and try to just formulate a plan with my father, who is also like that. So, double whammies, I can indulge my dark side without doing anything illegal and family bonding.

Awwwww. Shadowrun is a family game!

Well, seeing as my brother is the GM, yeah it kind of is.

I play with my fiancée. She likes to roll dice and kill monsters.

so, does she play a troll and you have her go up against humanis and the such? O.o

It's billed as cyberpunk meets Tolkien but its evolved into it's own thing. Shadowrun is one of the few systems and settings that a GM can literally run any type of story in.

If you're bored you have no one to blame but yourself.

I like games set in mythic earth. Ars Magica, Vampire the Masquerade, Shadowrun and alike are all set on earth with a fictional twist.

Check out novels by Charles de Lint.

Or Naomi Novic. I mean, come on, Napoleon and dragons? Win!

(It should be noted that the main character's dragon--if he were to exist and was born on the indicated date of January of 1805--would still, not only be alive, but likely still "fighting fit" based on the small amount of data available for his species)

Cheshyr, what are you looking for in the game that is lacking? Are you the GM or a player?

If you're a player, then what is your GM not giving you in your games that you want? Have you communicated this concern? As a GM I want feedback. It's when my players give me a thumbs up and nothing else that I get bored with the game.

If you're the GM are your players not giving you feedback? Are the 3 layers of SR (Matrix, Magic, physical space) causing you a headache and burnout?

Is the game too slow for you?
Too predictable?
Rules getting on your nerves?
A person around your table killing your fun?
Outside issues interferring (kids, school, work, etc)?
Lethality & paranoia or SR limiting your decisions?
PC killer GM?

I'm curious to hear. I've only ran a few sessions in SR4A and I'm already feeling the burn. It's the 3 layers killing my games. I find myself nearing completion on a session's rough draft and realizing that a mage or hacker can one-man stomp the hell out of a mission. I'm longing for "simple" - maybe some Warriors and Warlocks.

I suggest really hand tailoring the PCs in the beginning. 4e for all the simplifications has been the 800lbs gorilla for my 2e/3e brain (doesnt feel simplier just different). When I first started running SR though we hand tailored all three PCs into something I could handle and they enjoyed. We had a human hit man, a human demolitionist, and an elf thief. No magic or cyberware or anything. Gradually we worked in the cyberware followed by the matrix then rigging. Once I had a handle on those if someone died they could make a physadept and eventually a mage.

Good advice Tete. We've been running somewhat magic and Matrix light as well. The hacking has been ran by an NPC. He's a faceless contact that contacts the PCs when he needs a physical presence on a mission. Excellent setup really and I'm somewhat proud of it even though it's an obvious arrangement.

SR4A is fun but the pseudo real world networking is something of a pain - and I'm a freakin tech. Hardware tech, but still familiar with networking. I both love and lament it all at once.

Oh, and another thing that makes SR fun for me is that it has a real world presence. Seattle actually exist. I used Google Maps to map out most of the Seattle 2072 sites (and then stopped when interest waned). It's the possibility of SR plus the magic that draws me.

Amen!!! I started in the '70's with D&D, then Adv D&D, then 2nd Ed D&D and Cyberpunk. That was when I was introduced to SR (I believe it was 2.0). Of all the games I had played, that was the best because it was different from all the others (even CyberPunk). Then I moved to D&D3.x with a different group and introduced them the SR3. What a blast!!!! Now I am with yet another group after 10 years with the last and we are playing D&D 4ed and we just need a change of pace. Something that doesn't need the maps and exact measurements. Something to boost the RP in RPG. And we are looking at SR4. I can't wait to get started! One of the other guys in the group and I are going to take turns running the SR Missions at our local game shop's monthly lock ins. It is good to be back in the shadows and out of the light of the fantasy world.

Character creation and advancement. No class system, no levels, just "Here's extra points to improve your character. Spend them well."

That, and as had been mentioned previously, the fact that everything is based in the real world. Now, part of that definitely has to do with the fact that core settings like Seattle and Denver actually exist and can be mapped and studied in the real world if you're local. But that's only a part of it for me. The setting lets me do things like incorporate stuff from our own ancient history into the game. I'm going to be GMing for the first time in February, and I'm setting up the campaign's climax as an AF-sponsored search for who stole some artifacts from a dig of theirs in western Scotland. The main piece they're concerned about it is actually the mythic Irish sword caladbolg -- a powerful weapon focus -- taken to Scotland when the Irish first immigrated and set up the ancient kingdom of Dal Riada. So when my hacker character starts doing his research, I already have pre-made websites I can direct him to (thanks, Wikipedia!).

I read William Gibson.
Yes, high fantasy has to be put into it to make it a full out Shadowrun game, but I can work with or around this as I need.

Shoot, in Shadowrun, getting hit with a sword actually kills you, and heaven help you if you are getting
chased down by a Troll with a Combat Axe. That is part of the appeal: in That Other Game System, you can
jump off a 200 foot cliff, hit the ground, take a few points of damage, and then go wading into combat against
an army, while in SR...you are more likely to Australian Rappel down the front of a building, firing as you go,
toss down some grenades to clear your target area, hit the ground firing...Shadowrun for me is
a) more visually interesting in my minds eye and b) encourages you to think before you act on one level,
but on another encourages you to do crazy stuff, because, your character really *CAN* die...and the Crazy
Stuff™ is the stuff that generally works!

Speaking of "fighting armies" in the "I can't believe we're not epic" game (I was not in, but heard about), one of the players had a paladin who could take an undead army by himself. They actually did the math to figure out how many days it would take (it was like a week, non stop). Same character also caused the GM to cut scene fights with 38 balors (no really, the party showed how they could kill a single balor and his minions before the balor and minions got to act while expending no expendable resources and taking no damage).

Strangely, that is why I pretty much abandoned The Other Game. Heck, I can use Shadowrun rules perfectly
well for a High Fantasy game if I want, and it works..(drop Bioware, say the "essence" cost of things is their
leeching off your life force, and have magical implants that match many of the Cyberware stats). I run and
play a lot of other games, but, really, I do not touch The Other Game anymore.