I love Shadowrun. Well, more to the point, I love the fluff. I've been reading all about 3rd Edition for the last several months, and have skimmed some of the 4th Edition fluff.

But I don't actually know how to play the game. Is there a way that I, a completely incompetent person, could learn rather quickly how to play, and possibly run? The books make sense to me, up to a point, but it just seems like I don't get a lot of it, like decking and magic rules. Or vehicle combat. Or combat in general. Really, all I can do is build a character and make skill rolls.

Sooo....how about it?

(I think I'd have to learn 4th edition first. It seems to be what the kiddies are playing nowadays.)

I'd guess that your problem is that the decking and vehicle rules ARE just as stupid and incoherent as they look. Pretty much everyone who claims they are using the decking/hacking RAW are ignoring all the edits they automatically make to get things to work semi-logically. For example, per RAW you can prevent anyone hacking your drones by saying that you don't let them connect using subscription lists. Yes that makes no sense.

Magic and combat actually work fairly well, but some of the examples in the books are really terrible.

Anyhow, the best way is to show up at a con where they are running SR games and play.

My vehicle is completely broken, and I work a job from 4pm-midnight four days on, two days off. I only get saturday-sunday off about once a month, if that.

Learning by doing. Find a group of people, preferably some who have already played, and start playing.

If you don't get some of the rules it does not matter that much. Just read up on them as you need them, if the other players can't explain them to you. Unless you also intend to play on Conventions it does not even matter if you get some of the rules "wrong", as long as everybody at your table agrees how they are supposed to work. If you'd rather have a better understanding on the rules beforehand, ask specific questions here. Most people will be very helpful here.

There are some cheat sheets around the web telling you when to roll what. here is one example.

And most importantly have fun.

You can do that, but you cannot disconnect the commlink of the rigger controlling the drone. You just hack his commlink and then take control of the drones.

Indeed.

So, there's not like an online guide or anything that could help me?

You could also try playing in one of the PbP (Play by Post) games here on DS. The move a little slowly sometimes, but it can give a chance to play a little if you can't make it to a local game. I know my gaming group rarely plays SR, but I get my SR fix here on DS in between the few sessions we run a year.

Just a question, is SR your first RPG or are you only new to SR?

If finding a group is a problem, maybe you could ask your coworkers, they should have a similar schedule. and you could all learn the rules together.

Though I dislike the thinned down rules of Food Fight 4.0 is is a nice little scenario to introduce players to SR.

AFAIK there is also a book where they do a little story in one column and and the relavant rolls in the column next to it. Unfortunately I donÄ't remember which book it is, as I don't have it. Maybe someone else can help you with that.

Play. Nothing works better than actually doing something.

I was weaned on SR3, with a GM who was also totally new.

First, decide on your system. SR3, IMO, has a lot more grit, is more granular and tactical, more 80s, but is a LOT more complex and harder to learn (and indeed, is not gaining a lot of new players). SR2 is more so and SR1 even more so, but the older editions have more 'bugs' you'll need to houserule. SR4 is really very straightforward, in fact the first SR edition which is mechanically easy to pick up and play.

Second, get your group. Ideally you need two players and a GM. If you can't do that IRL, play online.

Next, flip through the main book. Bookmark pages, do some sample combat.

To learn, you'll go through the following progression:
1) Combat scene. No magic, decking, etc., just straight shooting guns at one another. Include ranged and melee, and maybe grenades. Figure out the healing. This stuff is all pretty straightforward, and after you do it a few times, it'll be second nature.
2) A quick adventure with some combat and social interactions. Social interactions are also super-easy.
3) Magic. Do a combat scene with guns AND magic, then maybe do some test rolls with conjuring and so on.
4) Full-sized adventure with everything but rigging and decking.
5) Character generation. Before this point, use sample characters in the book. Now you're ready to make your own. Give one guy some extra points to make a decker character. Keep the rigger as a pre-gen.
6) Full-sized adventure with your characters (with only a tiny bit of decking and little or no rigging).
7) Decking. Give everyone decking characters and do a few decker exercises, followed by a decker-only hacking scene.
8) Rigging. Buy a bunch of beer, drink it, and look at pictures of cars.
9) Update characters to reflect what you've learned. If they realize a skill or piece of equipment is useless, let them swap it out.
10) You're playing shadowrun!! Now kill all of the PCs horribly.

You guys are mean! Why hasn't anyone pointed this poor bloke to the Quickstart rules? They are right on the Shadowrun4.com main page.

It's a great little online guide that walks you through the basics of rolling dice, casting spells, decking, etc. The next place I'd point you to is the Runner's Toolkit. The tools in there will be a great resource to you.

http://www.shadowrun4.com/wp-content/uploa...art%20Rules.pdf

I'm AFB right now, but wasn't that Anatomy of a Shadowrun or somesuch? Part of Runner's Toolkit, anyway. It's a good place to get started indeed.

Actually I did.

Ohhh I missed that. I forgot that Foodfight 4.0 [i]was[i] the Quickstart Rules. Sorry!

I think it'd definitely worth a read. When I started GMing Shadowrun, I didn't go through this with my players, but I did have them read it all so that they got a decent understanding of the rules.

Start small. Just don't use hacking and magic for starters, and go from what you do feel comfortable about.

Then, once you have a good grasp of the concepts, start adding in the more complex stuff.

And, yeah, Quickstart Rules and Runner's Toolkit have some good stuff for beginners.

Bye
Thanee

So it all boils down to: PLAY. Nothing beats actual experience. Al the quick start rules, all the books-if you never play it's all useless.

Oh wow, they really changed food fight. It seems less wacky and a lot more survivable now. It pretty much invariably resulted in a TPK whenever I ran it back in the day.

I started playing SR during 2nd edition but spent some years afterwards in Limbo with some SR3 books and no group who played Shadowrun. Jumping over to SR4 and finally getting some people together to play was a bit of a culture shock to say the least. Even though I've cut my teeth on the rules pretty well at this point, I'm still constantly referencing back to the main book and street magic regarding certain things. The quick start rules linked above should definitely help as well as playtesting through a few scenarios to try and make sense of the rules. Truth is though, until it comes up in play with hard results, no amount of playtesting really makes it all come together.

Just try and get as much working knowledge as possible and work from there.

Hey, thanks everyone. All of this will really help a lot. I'm going to read the Food Fight Quick Start rules, and go from there.

Any advice you can give to a newbie player? (In game or out, it doesn't matter.)

If you aren't having fun something is likely wrong with the whole picture.

Shoot straight, conserve your ammo, watch your back and never ever cut a deal with a dragon.

Oh and geek the mage first.

Shadowrun is more fun the more dice you roll. Have your players buy massive quantities of D6's.

As along time GM here is what makes my dream players: someone who comes to have fun, and game. Someone who isn't constantly checking their blog or facebook while we game. Someone who isn't going to take it all personally-it's a game folks. Someone who is willing to play. I don't need high melodrama, I could care less how many dice you have-just be willing to play.