Number one problem with SR3? It's not a currently supported product! Ah good memories though!

Yup, I have this impression too. Things seemed more extreme in old editions, sometimes even getting an absurd tone, that I loved. Now, things a too.. normal, mundane.

I agree. But better yet, the old material hasn't been made open source.

The sad thing is that we as customers haven't stepped in either to bridge the gap. I think there are opportunities to make supplements using the rulesets that would bridge the gap. For instance I would like to recruit help for a fallout and a dresden files ruleset/supplement sourcebook. Statting out Denarians and skinwalkers would be cool. I think magic would need a little tweaking for the Dresdanverse, and fallout would need special modifiers for crotch shots.

I'm in for Fallout. Especially if I can get in on the game.

I love running post apoc runs. You prefer with or without magic?

I haven't seen any good scrounging/scavenging rules to draw reference from in my searches.

Alternate settings is a definite missing piece to Shadowrun.

Deadlands: Hell On Earth. I have a number of printed-out scavenging rules from various websites... Somewhere. Some of the pages are so old and referenced that they're worn away, actually.

*Pouts* And link rot seems to have gotten most of them. Found this one, however.

EDIT: Found some from the rubbish heap! And more here. Pity, I had a good relationship with these guys once upon a time.

EDIT²: Go Wayback Machine!

I think it's two faces of one issue -- time.

First is simple human nature being reflected.

For the 'adults' of the 2050s, VITAS and the Awakening and Goblinization and the Crash were first-hand experiences. Just as significant they were wildly unexpected. VITAS was the closest to being an "anticipated" catastrophic event (see Bird Flu). For these adults the world CHANGED, and the back-to-back shocks locked in the mindset that you could trust nothing. Everything you thought you knew wasn't true.

SR4 is 20 years later. While there are a lot of people who experienced the change, for the majority of "current" adults the magic and goblinization and cyber and all that is normal. They've adapted. It's... OK, some of us are old enough we had a relative or acquaintance who died in VietNam and who occasionally boggle at personal computers, cell phones, and the internet. Even if we had our own small part in making it happen. VN is already ancient history to the majority of legal adults, and in 20 more years the idea of NOT having internet will be hard to wrap one's head around.

So whether you like it or not part of it is that the people of SR are, well, adapting.

Unfortunately, the second face is that this adaptation is pushed. There are these clues (for lack of a better word) that indicate normality is happening.

The biggest thing to me? Commuters. There are commuter cars and there are commuting executives. Nations still exist -- and matter -- despite the brief flirtation with corporatocracy. SINs happen - when you work for a corp or when you deal with a corp or when you get arrested (and live) by a corp. SINs are the majority, not minority. The poor and outcast are the exception, not the rule. There's international trade so you can get pretty much anything anywhere and get most anywhere without that much pain.

There are more, but that's the deal. It's throughout SR4's stories. It's common in a lot of SR3 missions and the later gaming material for SR3.

I'm not sure how to reverse this. People like stability. Corporations like it too, mostly. I can push against it as a GM, but not easily -- certainly not while incorporating new material that almost requires some of that stability.