i have shadowrun 3rd edition and my parents are letting me get two new books which should i get to help me make games Cannon companion, magic in the shadows, or the new seattle sourcebook? thanks in advance.

I'd probably reccomend you go with Cannon Companion and Magic in the Shadows to start with. The additional material will definately let you grow your characters more and provide more gear and options and such for you.

New Seattle is a nice book to have, but there are others I'd say to get before it, even after the other two, such as Sprawl Survival Guide, Matrix, Rigger 3 Revised, Year of the Comet, Shadowrun Companion, etc... Those last ones are in no particular order, btw.

CC and MitS... you can make up your runs just fine without the Seattle Sourcebook.

Of those listed, I'd suggest New Seattle Sourcebook (especially if you're new, it's a decent compilation of setting information with lots of adventure seeds) and Magic in the Shadows (the one I always recommend first due to how heavy a role magic plays in Shadowrun).

tough choice. if you have to get just two, i'd reccomend magic in the shadows and new seattle. i love my cannon companion, but MitS is a bigger expansion of the rules, and new seattle gives more flavor.

thanks guys for all the replies but i just have two more questions does seattle source have maps and if so do they have blanks house for PCs and NPCs? thanks again.

Yes, they have maps, but they aren't all that great. Mapquest does a better job, heh.

There are some maps to show you the layout of the city, but nothing on the scale I think you're looking for. The only book that's ever had building layout maps has been the old Sprawl Sites book.

However, a lot of us just use images.google.com to search for house plans and other blueprints to use for building layouts...

right. new seattle has a low-detail map of the American Northwest, and a low-detail map showing Seattle's districts, major highways, and a few other points of interest. if you want higher-detail maps of Seattle, you'll need to look for the old Seattle SB; it's much cheaper to, as others have suggested, look on mapquest.

Descriptive thread titles are your friend. Yes, singular.

That being said, based on your username I'd recommend the Matrix sourcebook.

~J

Don't let your players get into bad habits. Don't let them play with the CC until they are immunized to the gun-bunny itch.

Mits has all the fun stuff to play with, and Seattle has *very* many plot hooks. CC just has things that shoot hot lead.

Good thing you aren't in any of my games. Firing a shot will often get you jailed or killed in my games.

Gee... does the sec guards in your games carry stun batons only? I see all my sec guards in your jails then...

I meant as a character.

NPCs will be NPCs, but PCs who use the 'shoot it' option enough that they actually have more guns than they can use at one time attract far too much attention. I've noticed that gun-bunnies make the most common CLUE fodder.

For the original post - Magic In the Shadows, Cannon Companion. You may also
want to go to the SR Official Website and look at Dunkelzahn's Will for run ideas.

Now...rant time.

I find this "if you have a gun, use a gun, or look at a gun sideways, you die or get thrown in jail" view of GMing pedantic and awful. Not to mention the numerous GMs who harp on about "being professional", as if no professional shadowrunner ever kills anyone or lies on their taxes, and they always take home stray kittens.
I mean, picture this:

GM: Three security guards come through the right doorway.
PC1: Damn. (Rolls dice) Okay, I have a 32 for Initiative.
GM: You act first.
PC1: I'll attempt to fast talk my way out of this.
GM: You fail and die. PC2? Your go.
PC2: I'll shoot him.
GM: WHAT?! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET A GUN?! YOU KNOW I ALLOW
NO SUCH FOOLISHNESS!! LONE STAR KILLS YOU! UNPROFESSIONAL!
PC3: I guess I'll run away
GM: There's a good lad.

Now I'll be the first to admit that knocking on the front foor of your generic "corp facility" and cutting a swath of death to your target with Vindicators ain't gonna endear you to the local smokies, but taking some sec guards down with a few well-placed shots doesn't mean you aren't "professional" or that the Star is going to drop on your head in 2 Combat Turns with a Banshee.

And while I'm at it, enough with the "munchkin" BS. If a GM can't deal with some high stats (I somehow manage to), then he/she shouldn't be running a game. Provided a decent character history is provided, the character sticks to it,
and no rules are broken, let the PC have some fun.

GM: so what kind of character do you have?
PC1: A Total Pacifist Dryad
GM: Hmm.. let me see here (looks at sheet) Charisma of 4!? MINMAXER! MUNCHKIN!
PC1: But that's the minimum I can have for a Dry..
GM: SILENCE! I SUPPOSE YOU WANT EDGES TO BALANCE OUT THAT FLAW, TOO!
PC1: Well...
GM: I KNEW IT! NEXT YOU"LL BE WANTING KNIVES!
PC1: No...I would never...
GM: AAARRRRGHHH! LIES! LIIIIIIESS!

Look, I GM. I've done it for a long time now. Most of my players pack a gun. All of them have killed people. When it's kill, run, or die, my players have the cojones to
deal a little death. If they didn't want to break the law, they shoulda gotten a real job.

I'd recommend MItS and CC. I'd really recommend the Seattle Sourcebook, if you can find it. New Seattle is more of an update than a full sourcebook compared to the original.

I also agree that Shadowrunners should A)have guns and B) need to use them sometimes. Sometimes you need to eliminate the guards? And sometimes the run is wetwork. Unless your a mage or adept you need something for those...

Just don't be a retard and walk down the street with an AK/LMG/Rocket launcher/tank.

Capt. Dave: *Applause*

I've had runs where not a shot has been fired. I've also had runs where the players have moved through an area and systematically killed every guard in the place (it wasn't large, they weren't going out of their way to do so), but it was ok because they did it quickly, efficiently, and up until a slip late in the game, quietly.

~J

It depends on your bad guys, if you're fighting the UB or some other evil force of evilness it's perfectly acceptable have resupply drones bringing trailers full of extra ammo and weapons into a fight. If you're simply breaking into a C rated corp to nick some datachips then I guess it's not really acceptable. In between those levels of run, there's plenty of room for manouvre between violence and stealth. And that is the beauty of SR.

You should take New Seattle and (not on your list) Sprawl Survival Guide.
IMHO atmosphere is far more important than rules and gear.

I would definately say New Seattle as well.

Maybe MITS, maybe Man & Machine (I think it has been reprinted again), maybe Sprawl Survival Guide. Depeding on the interests of the group (magic, cyber, roleplay & setting). If you really just want toys and rules MITS and Man & Machine are both way better than Cannon Companion.

Cannon Companion, imho is very skippable. It is mostly just a big list of weapons very similar to the ones in the book, and lots of rules to make combat more complicated or to cover various unusual situations. Eventually I bought it, but I like the other books way more.

I'd agree with M¥$T1C, except that MITS is really, really useful and has lots of flavour of its own. Its also seeded with stuff to get the old GM juices flowing, which both SSG and New Seattle have in spades, but I'd go for a little balance. Give the mages a little extra, and allow the GM to throw some really wierd drek at the players. Having SSG and NS would give lots of flavour but for a starting campaign either one should be enough flavour to be going on with. I'd reccomend the SSG rather than New Seattle though. If those three are your only choices, MITS and New Seattle would be my choices. Cannon companion has some nice stuff in it, specially the advanced combat rules, but you'll get more milage out of the magic and only some of your players will be using it instead of all of them, making your job a little easier.

EDIT: think of it this way - with SSG and NS you enhance everyone's understanding of the game world, but the rule book gives you a really good handle on that anyway for a starting group. With MITS and NS or MITS and SSG, you get to add to the flavour and give a little something to your players (at least some of them) at the same time. Everyone gets to have fun, and seeing how much fun the mages and physads are having now might prompt other players to buying the books they're interested in themselves, saving you/your mom cash. Which can only be a good thing. Get your own copies if you can though!

I got my CC through the mail last week or so. I've got to say I was rather underwhelmed after reading through it. I think its a decent source book, gave me a couple nice updates, especially in regards to the unarmed combat section, but overall I found it to be dry and lacking in detail.

I miss the "Shadowland Comments" format that most of the other source books have. I was a little tweaked that they didn't have illustrations for the various guns they talked about.

Can't wait for a reprinting of M&M, or SOTA 2063.

i mostly agree. however, i would note that the German CC, at least, manages to fit illustrations of each weapon into--i believe--about the same number of pages; the extra space was created by simply leaving out the stat blocks on each page (the stat blocks are printed in the lists at the back of the book, just like the English version). not saying WizKids should redesign the CC to match, but "only print material once within a given sourcebook" is an idea to keep in mind for future releases.

Hm. If given a choice between stat blocks twice and stat blocks once and picture, I'd probably choose stat blocks twice. It's a lot better that way, IMO.

~J

Timing is everything, in bitching perhaps more than in most things.

~J

A true enough point.

Hmm... just because we can, wanna go through and do shadowtalk for a few items? The board hasn't seen enough semi-IC craziness lately.

~J