I'm ever so slowly gearing up to start writing a novel, and considering that I do not (yet) have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things SR, I am wondering about the release dates on most/all of the equipment in the books. The novel, so far, will be set in 2069, so I would like to know if there is anything that can be said about public-release dates.

Also, along the same lines, is there equipment listed in older editions of SR that is old, new, or different? An example of this would be, of course, an Ares Predator III in another book.


As stated in another forum post, the drek is in the details, and I wanna get the timeline right, at the very least.

Most books list a date in the character commentary by Fastjack or Captain Chaos listing when the books were first published to Jackpoint or Shadowland. If not, look at the real copyright date and add 61 years. However, a lot of character commentary includes someone with a story of "i saw this thing in action once," indicating that the devices have been around for sometimes many years prior. Just gonna have to look one book at a time, though the second edition stuff will probably be the most helpful.

As to your specific topic question, the first time the Chameleon Suit was listed as a stock piece of gear under that name was in the 4th Edition Corebook (as far as I know). However the idea of a ruthenium jumpsuit (nicknamed a Burglar's Tuxedo) is mentioned in the commentary in the security section of State Of The Art 2063. Ruthenium itself, and the rules for how to coat an outfit with it, are way back in Shadowtech in 2052.

I wasn't meaning in what date the books were written, but when, in the shadowrun world, the equipment items were released. Like, the predator IV was first put into production in (just taking a date here) 2071, to replace the predator III that started production in 2068.

Generally, the book the item is first listed in is the first time the item is publicly available. Since the SR timeline is generally 60-65 years ahead of the actual timeline (currently 62 years), if you add that number on to the publishing release, you'll have the public date of release of the piece of gear. This is what he was making a point of.

...Ah, okay. I guess this requires delving into the older releases! Huzzah.

On the flipside, the fluff sometimes talks about how the weapon has been around forever and a day.

Oh, I estimate that the AK-97 probably came out in 1997, BTW.

Yeah, that makes sense. ;P Looking through 3rd ed book PDFs, and there's a LOT of firearms, at a glance, that aren't in 4th ed. So, what I suspect I'll do is grab what editions I can find (Any help would be wonderful), then probably make a large spreadsheet for the equipment. Note various statistics, edition and copyright date of said book, the like.

Also kinda curious as to the differences between editions. I looked at 3rd ed's equipment availability chart, but I had to look away because I felt my brain starting to hurt.

Main gun and gadget original sources, in addition to the corebooks, are the Street Samurai Catalog and Fields Of Fire. For cybernetics you want Shadowtech and Cybertechnology. There's also the Rigger Black Book for all sorts of vehicle goodness. There's only a few bits of gear in the 3rd edition books that isn't just a reprint of 1st or 2nd edition stuff.

The Colt M1911 came out in 1911.

What? We have stats for it now!

This is true. As I am a new player as of 4th ed, I assume much of it is from older editions. anything else, I tend to assume some of the sightings were pre-public.

Browsing the 2nd edition rulebook, finding it hilarious that they had to specify how many mammae that each metatype has, but then I feel sad because they had to...