Over a decade ago, I had a friend who used to regale me with stories of "running the shadows." It sounded like lots of fun, but unfortunatley I never had the opportunity to try the game.

Now, I find myself with an established gaming group that may be looking to try something new in the near future, so I thought it would be a good time to give Shadowrun a go.

I've done a bit of research on multiple sites, and for various reasons, I've decided that the SR3 rules will probably work best for us. That having been said, I've come up with a number of questions I'd like to figure out before I get started. Please bear with me, as there is so much I don't know, and learning a new game can be a bit overwhelming.

First off, is there any difference between the Third Edition rule book published by FanPro and the one by FASA? I ask because the FanPro one seems to be available at a cheaper price for similar quality. The cover appears the same, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I know that the FASA works are generally considered to be better quality, but I wasn't sure if that extended to the rule book itself, or if in this case, FanPro just reprinted the same book.

From what I've read, SR2 supplements are generally considered to be better quality than the SR3 stuff, but they are supposed to be compatible between both editions. So are there any SR2 books that would be considered essential (or even just really good) to have starting out? Are there any SR3 books worth picking up as well?

Are there any published adventures (either SR2 or 3) that would be ideal for introducing a new group to the game?

Are there any specific things from SR2 that I would be well-advised to add to an SR3 game? For that matter, is there anything in SR4 that would be useful to use?

Are there any general house rules that are so common that I should consider using them right from the start?

I'm sure I'll have more questions going forward, but this should at least be enough to help me pick out some books and start buying what I need to get up and running.

Thanks in advance for your patience and help!

1) I didn't know that FanPro published English material. FanPro was the German publisher for SR2 & 3 and parts of SR4 (iirc). So no, there shouldn't be a difference. If you are German, however, take FanPro material. The translation usually leads to included errata (sometimes some quirks )

2) Most of the SR2 stuff are great adventures. I love the Harlequin campaign (Harlequin's back: not so much). That's just my opinion, others are really good as well. SR3 adventures are good as well. Just go with what interests you. They are compatible between SR2 and SR3, because the damage codes stay the same.

3) No thoughts to house rules, as I don't play SR2/3 any more. From SR4: Use opposing tests for stealth. It is really worth it, imo

Have fun starting out and welcome to this forum, I guess

Thanks for the quick response!

Yeah, I found the English FanPro stuff on Amazon - a "very good" copy of the FASA book seems to run $30-$50, while I can get a "like new" FanPro for as low as $7 (both in paperback).

I've seen Harlequin mentioned elsewhere as a good adventure as well. Can you give me just a quick idea of what it's about?

A facepainted psycho-immortal-elf has a feud with another immortal elf (less pycho, but what does that mean, when you're immortal?). Runners are tools of face-painted psycho and it can be run with several different (and unrelated) adventures inbetween.

Indeed... we jsut finished up the original (in 4th Edition even) recently. Was a lot of fun.

I've never played it. I have run it ... 5 times by now.
I REALLY want to play it some time

Good Luck on that...

Yeah, it wouldn't be fun anymore, probably, since I know it by heart ... But it is still a great campaign.
So! not to derail this thread any further: help the newbie

Keep in Mind you can purchase many SR2/3 PDFs from drivethrurpg, and IIRC some are available print on demand.

A short question, though, Blackbird: Why not start with SR4? It is much friendlier to starting players, imo. Needs more work to adapt older adventures, of course.

IIRC the FanPro printings include some additional errata, but there's nothing of significant quantity or importance to make that critical (it's not like Rigger 3 where you'd need to keep pages of errata with the book to be sure you didn't miss things).


Eh. The average quality is better, and a higher proportion of the best supplements come from the SR2 era (and the SR1 era), but until Shadows of Europe and later it wasn't bad.


For SR3, the core books, obviously (Shadowrun Companion, Cannon Companion, Man and Machine, Magic in the Shadows. Matrix, Rigger 3 Revised, and Shadowrun Companion). New Seattle is good to get some specific feel, as is Corporate Download. Beyond that, you probably want to get your feet a bit wet before casting too much wider.


First Run is iconic, of course. I'll have to give it some thought, but the published adventures that stand out most strongly are written for an experienced team (both in terms of players and in terms of earned karma), not a new group.


Danger, Will Robinson! Mixing editions without having a feel for either edition seems like a recipe for disaster. Besides, the SR2->SR3 transition was mostly small changes that were clearly good ones (watch someone come out with a bunch of changes I'd forgotten). If you really want you could bring back the Skill Web


No. They really are fundamentally incompatible systems, even down to the fluff.


You could always check out the SR3R Project but the details really depend on what the disposition of your group is like (and, of course, of you as a GM).

~J

I generally prefer a physical copy to PDFs. I will look into the PoD options though, thanks for pointing that out.



As I mentioned before, there were a number of reasons, but just to list a few of the bigger decision points:

Part of it is the difference in flavor; I much prefer the old school cyberpunk style to the whole "transhumanism" bit (the wirless mechaincs and concept were a big turn off).

Also, while the gameplay mechanics were streamlined in SR4, character creation seems to be a lot more complex. If I'm going to be running a game, I don't have a problem learning a lot of complex rules and helping the players through them during gameplay, but I know some of my players will balk at a difficult character creation process, and that would set the tone and their attitude for the rest of the game. Plus, I actually found some of the SR3 gameplay mechanics to be more interesting; less complex does not always mean more fun to play.

Price is another factor; getting started in a new game system is always a bit of an investment. From what I've seen, I can acquire a small library of the older stuff for what it would cost me to just get 2-3 of the newer books.

Thanks for the suggestions, that gives me a lot to work with.

I know that modifying stuff without really knowing the basics can get tricky, but I like to know what to look for and expect, and I prefer to learn from others' experience when possible as it saves the time and hassle of making my own mistakes. I'm not going to try to do some major Frankenstein hybrid right out of the gate, I was mainly just wanting to know if there was anything fundamentally lacking in SR3 that needed to be fixed and could be easily improved with a rule from another edition.

Fair enough
While SR4 is generally said to be more 'accessible' , I wish you and your group a lot of fun

I agree with Kagetenshi's suggestions and list of core books.

The Fanpro version is just a newer reprint, so go for it if it costs that much less.

I totally agree with your reasons for wanting to go SR3.

Harlequin is actually a SR1 format and was a series of runs, many out of town and out of country. They were related, but not in any kind of must complete Run A to go on to Run B type of way. Another SR1 favorite og mine is Dreamchipper and usually one of the first modules I'd run a new group through.

Actually, SR3 saw the introduction to "adventures" and "adventure books" that weren't like previous adventures. They just gave a general outline of the situation and a few details and left it up to the GM. Which if your a new GM was way less than what you may have gotten accustomed to.

Adventures: (these are listed chronologically, as best as determined by in game references, and I was checking to see when the edition changed and Ivy and Chrome uses SR1 damage codes, while Dark Angel uses SR2. Note that the publishers numbers do not match this order.)
Silver Angel - short and straightforward, similar to a single run from Harlequin.
Mercurial - I like it, but the first time I ran it, I had trouble.
Dreamchipper - A favorite. 3 objectives, I thought the way the info was presented was a bit here and there, but after running it a few times, you know what you need to find to keep things rolling along.
Harlequin - see above
DNA/DOA - good 1st run, similar to a dungeon crawl
Queen Euphoria - classic must run, but opposition could be overwhelming
Bottled Demon - Another favorite, could be good for a new group
Universal Brotherhood - usually hard to find and expensive, but another classic that becomes part of the plot
Ivy and Chrome - not one I've run repeatedly, but lots of legwork iIrc
Dark Angel - haven't run a lot, don't recall it at moment
NAN I & II - I like both the adventures in these "place" books. Both are road trips against magical bbg.
Dragon Hunt - work for a dragon
Imago - go to Britain, iirc, and didn't care for the adventure that much


what the heck, if you see an adventure that looks good ask about it

I do like the Professional Rating" feature from SR2. Makes GMing a bit simpler and can scale rating to match group level.

a standard introduction that no one has mentioned yet is Food fight, found in first run I think.

Just fair warning. I'd avoid mixing editions at all if you're new. SR2 and 3 were very complicated systems. With a mixture of modifiers which would modify the target number (TN), threshold (how many rolls you needed beating the TN), a damage system which was very inflexible. And there were some big changes going from 2->3.

The big thing about SR4 is it got rid of variable TN's and the inflexible staged damage system. Instead everything hinges upon how many dice you roll... all modifiers modify the number of dice rolled and the TN is always 5. (a 5 or 6 is a success).


If you like the old setting... I suspect you should take a look at the SR 2050 book that should be hitting store shelves soon (they just released the PDF). You should be able to play with only that book and the SR4a core rules. Not trying to sell you on it, just letting you know it's new and out there.


Much like you I dislike all the fluffy and overly PC bits that have taken over what used to be a much grittier gameworld

I made it out to one of the game stores in the area, and they had a handful of older SR books cheap,and I was wondering if any of them were any good. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry, and didn't have too much time to look through them, but I took note of a few that looked interesting. They did have the Bottled Demon adventure, which tisoz recommended. For sourcebooks, they had the Street Samurai Catalog (revised printing), Awakenings, Fields of Fire, and Cybertechnology. From what I could tell, these were all SR2 books. Would any of these be useful?

Thanks again for all the advice!

In my opinion: not really. While they do have interesting fluff, if you want to play SR3 ruleset, you should stick to the SR3 core rulebooks, which would be Magic in the Shadows, Man and Machine, Matrix, Rigger 3 and Cannon Companion (for optional rules for character creation, I also highly recommend the companion)

Welcome to SR3! We know your stay will be enjoyable, or at least it will be once we've hardwired this personafix to your headware...

Something no one's yet touched on - NSRCG. (Basically Stahlseele has a link to it on their sig, thank the gods, I can never find it without reverting to a wayback machine search)

Although it has it's quirks (Save often!), it's a very handy character generator that comes with it's own diceroller (SO handy for a GM) and you can set what books/suppliments/insanity that your players are allowed to have - play around with it, look at how the "sample" (read: SR3 sample characters) are put together and you'll quickly find that you can tweak and twist and make things pretty.

Note that the Priority Build and the "Point Build" systems are canon and supported, as are a few other build systems (which I've honestly never used) - once you've chosen the build, you can then just follow the tabs until you're finished (and fill in the 20 questions) and then print to html or whatever.



Books - they've been covered here quite well. The ones in your local store are, well, more collector's pieces than relevant game books (Although they have awesome fluff and are well-loved by myself and our players, you're working to a budget and they're luxuries) sorry to say.

Apart from that - don't be afraid to ask questions, start topics and discuss things with dinosaurs like myself. (Not gone to 4th, thank you.)


Also, don't be too afraid of digging through the 1000+ pages of SR archives here - there's awesome stuff in that trove, from run ideas, game-breaking characters (and how to avoid them or the players who want them) and all the other weirdness that has gone on before.


Do have a lovely day,
-Tir

Yes,i have a link in my Signature.
Not sure wether or not it works right now.
Several people told me it does not anymore as of late <.<

That's why i uploaded the NSRCG3 to here: http://www.share-online.biz/dl/L4MLWM7MHY

I did a double take on the Bottled Demon as recommended, lol. I enjoyed it. I thought it was challenging, but not overwhelming. There was one part I didn't care for.



On the books at the bookstore, About the only one I'd recommend is Fields of Fire. I know it was the SR2 book that had a complete equipment list, but I think I recall it having some good advice and merc tips.

The others are obsolete. Street Samurai Catalogue has excellent fluff about the weapons and a Sammy of every metatype. Awakenings has some NPCs in the back that are on the high end.

To quote Ancient History:

"Now, Harlequin and Harlequin's Back are horrible railroads as far as adventures go, but it's important to remember that the majority of players appear to just jump onboard and yell "Choo-choo!" Those books sold. That's while Loren Coleman wanted the Artifacts series to be or lead into Harlequin 3: Bigger Ears, Smaller Cornholes.

The thing about IEs is that they are old and powerful and unknown. The thing that makes IEs effective as a plot device is that they predate the current paradigm - and yeah, especially in the early days of SR there were overtones of Tolkein-esque elves.

What pisses you and everyone else off is the fact that Nigel D. Findley (rightly) stated "if you give it stats, players will kill it." That wasn't supposed to make all the IEs complete untouchable badasses, it was just intended to keep the PCs from putting two in the back of Harlequin's head and completely hosing the adventure. People took that idea and ran with it declaring that every IE is a marty stu/mary sue unkillable bastard, when (as you show in your experience of Harlequin) that's not necessary or even intended."

Uh. I think, you misunderstand
Just stating facts there *g*
I am in no way pissed off and in fact do love the first campaign. Very hard. So hard that its cover has been repaired twice now
The second wasn't to my liking because of the 'we save the world' tone. This is not something I do or want in my games.

Edit: The 'facts' being, that immortals are always kind of disconnected from the rest of human (or human-like) persons. => psycho ^^

If you're looking for free adventures, Season 1 of Missions (which you can download right here) was for 3rd edition. I've been running through them, and plan to convert a few up to 4e (yes, shun me) for my group.

The SR3 book will also have conversion guidelines in the back to convert stuff from SR2 to SR3. In my personal opinion, both editions are pretty equal when it comes to good and bad; I would like to have a full run of 2e and 3e books at some point.

I should clarify what I mean by budget - I'm not exactly keen on buying a half-dozen $40+ books to run an untried game, but for around $3 a piece, I could easily see myself picking up a "fluff book" here and there, if they're considered to be among some of the better fluff out there.

Also, thanks for cluing me into the NSCRG, I'll definitely try that out!

Fuck me, $3?! WANT! BUY BUY BUY!

Oh - and in regard to the SR3 Missions - you're going to want 4+ players if they're new characters. Six would be a great group.
(Ie: The normal Awakened "Watcher swarm" and rigger "Drones Go In First" equalizers aren't going to be there to back up your army of 2, just sayin')

-Tir

I didn't know what his friend's party makeup was, but I figured linking to Missions wouldn't hurt.

I'm also a new member of the Dumpshock forums, haven't got into the game yet...before I participate, I need to learn what the game is about and how to play it correctly. Gaming looks like fun, then I should join in not to leave myself behind.

They are, IIRC, all good. If the prices are great, by all means buy them and stick them on your shelf. "Useful", though, not so much—not until you get past the point of feeling out the rules, system, and basic details of the setting and start diving into the setting in more detail.


I do not recommend learning from the sample characters in the book—they're truly incompetently built, and really only appropriate for a very heavy "we play for the story" type of group (which, although that's a fully valid play style, almost certainly means you're choosing the wrong system—Shadowrun has major strengths in its tactical crunch that such a group would be ignoring, while keeping the complexity that goes along with supporting that). IIRC it got fixed in one of the later printings, but for quite some time the samples weren't even legal builds.


This reminds me of two suggestions to give: first, although it can be nice to whip up some quick characters for training runs, if you're going to run a serious campaign you should ignore Priorities and use Build Points only. The flexibility is huge—over the process of gaining experience building characters people will inexorably gravitate towards BPs anyway, but this way you can save any newer players who might make the mistake of choosing Priorities. The second is that you should mentally cut out and burn the section of Shadowrun Companion where the GM creates the sample custom Edge "Good Looking and Knows It" (GLaKI), as well as the part where it's suggested that this should be a canon Edge. The GM in the example creates an Edge strictly more powerful than previously-existing Edges that cost 2 BP, then permits himself to be talked into making it cost only 1 BP.

~J

Technically, Priorities is BETTER under SR3.
For BP to be Equal to Priorities you need to work with 123 Points i think. Not sure though.
And you can under Priorities do silly stuff like 1 Million Nuyen Physical Adept.

I've actually got a large group - we regularly have 6-7 players (including the GM), so those missions might not be a bad idea.

I'm going to have to dig for analyses, but I'm pretty sure it isn't, even before you get into issues of build flexibility.


You may be thinking of the analysis of how much the sample characters cost if built in BPs. The issue is that the relative costs can shift depending on what build choices you make—and if you make a bad character that would be unbuildably expensive under BPs, what you have at the end is still a bad character.


Why can't you do that under BPs? 25 points Physical Adept, 30 points for the meganuyen, call it a day?

~J

Depends on the character, but better for Magic users generally. Mundane Humans however, do better under Build Points by far. I like the flexibility of BPs, but it has the auto optimisation issue I'm not a fan of.

A quick list of the SR3 sample characters costed under build points.

The Adept 124
Combat Decker 123
Combat Mage 126
Covert Ops Specialist 122
Drone Rigger 123
The Face 124
The Investigator 119
The Mercenary 120
Sprawl Ganger 115
Street Mage 129
Street Samurai 118
Street Shaman 123
The Tech-Wiz 123
Tribal Shaman 123
Vehicle Rigger 123
Weapons Specialist 114

Personally I like 'Sum to 10'.

More when I don't need to get up for work in 5 hours.

I'm again going to have to dig for (or recreate) the proper analysis, but I'm pretty sure this is illusory—I'd believed this for a long time, and certainly you can create Awakened characters with Priorities that are worth significantly more Build Points than are typically awarded, but some of my players who are much more mage-centric made compelling arguments that to do so you need to make very specific choices for where to allocate your chargen resources (not to be confused with Resources) that really leave you with a mediocre final character.

~J

Yeah, the best part about Build Points is Edges and Flaws. Bonus Points! Interesting Frag You Characters!

Also - a quick infoprimer for those that might not be savvy with the lingo:

Priority system is the build system that came with the game, based on previous editions and was pretty much what people cut their teeth on. Although simple, it didn't allow much in the way of customization (read: Uber munchkins) and did leave a few player "classes" (read: builds) weeping gently by the roadside.

With the publishing of Shadowrun Companion (A sort of "stuff we left out of the main book, but it's still works!" addendum) they introduced the...Point Build system.

This allowed a much greater range of customisation and tweaking, as well as introducing (In SR companion) the addition of Edges and Flaws. You've got a interesting backstory, or amnesia - work those edges and flaws and play the character AS the blind, quadraplegic rigger that's relying on lifesupport that's funded by his drone insertation missions.
There were "additional" metatypes as well (Drow, sorry, "Nightkin", Minotaurs and a few others) that are fun colour, but pretty expensive to play, unless you need to play that twin-scimitar-wielding mage-adept nightkin with a stone body panther homunculus.

Hint: don't go full Drizzit.

This of course means that, as GM, you might REALLY want to look up "What not character to allow" threads on Dumpshock as the smooth-talkin' criminals here have made some horrific things using 123 points (that's pretty standard, there was a gimp "streetlevel value and an excessive "Professional" value from I don't remember where) and you might want to learn from other's mistakes, fast.

Also, it's up to the GM to enforce those edges and flaws - they're not free build points, they're character weaknesses that may (or may not) be "bought away" with a ton of nuyen and karma.

Oh, and as a reference, "Mysterious cyberwear" and "Amnesia" flaws are the open-season for GM's to REALLY rotoroot the player foolish enough to take them. Do go and search some of the Amnesia threads for terrible suggestions.


If your group is 6-7, then hell yes, you've got enough able bodies to do a LOT and take on a few of the tougher missions "earlier". Things like Magic/decker/rigger overwatch are luxuries with 3 people, a delight with 6.

And don't be afraid to mix and match!
As SR3 is classless, you're not simply "Heavy weapons guy" but underneath that blunt, gorilla head there might be a head that's been boosted with various cyber that's great for firefights...and decent on the matrix, if you manage to snag a deck mid-run. Mages and shamen often have enormously high Charisma (all the better to resist summonig drain) so are often used as distractions, Faces or money-factories (The enchanting train, woo-wooo, everyone on board) or plot elements after they've been kidnapped for the Bunraku parlour, again.

And never, ever, be afraid to kill.
Shadowrun can be brutal if the dice don't like you - that 1 million Nuyen sammy can go down as easily as the most fragile mage if ambushed by a $5 ganger with a shotgun and unlucky rolls. Players will soon play smart and think about things rather than "I kick down door and shoot anyone in sight"*.

*Admittedly, the above is a valid action and one performed by countless players over the years, but it helps if they think for a sec before kicking door.


Hope we're helping,
Tir.

BTW - Still want those books!

The beauty about "I kick in the front Door and start killing"
The GM tries to play the World reasonably realistic and intelligent.
And NOBODY expects people to go through the hardest Part of a Fortification.
Much less the GM, usually . . and if you don't leave anybody living, who is to tell other people about it so they can be prepared for it?

Very much, thanks!

One quick question: In my searches for material, I've seen "Matrix", and "Target: Matrix". Is there a difference?

Matrix is the core book, Target: Matrix full of fluff and additional toys and rules, iirc.

Thanks, it gets confusing sometimes when so many of the books have similar titles, I can never be sure if some sites just aren't using the full title or if they're actually different books.

Hey BB71, welcome to SR... any version!

I agree mostly with all the comments and suggestions made in this thread. No one is steering you horribly wrong anywhere.

SR3 is a great system. It's complex and very rich and can seem a bit daunting to the new GM at first but it's so very worth it. It's the system I cut my teeth on as an SR GM after years of DMing D&D 2nd ED. So, it was a whole new ball game. I completely taught myself the system. None in my gaming group of over 8 players had ever played SR and I introduced them all to it. It went on to almost completely supersede D&D for most of a decade.

I took a week and read main book front to back at least 4 times that week. And then I bounced around in it to design characters because it is very chopped up in layout. Once I had designed a few characters, I ran some mock combats with myself and finally started creating characters with my players... one at a time by themselves with no distractions. That gaming group went on to play my SR game with mostly those start up characters for YEARS. Sure, there were a few mistakes made in creation and I allowed a few changes to be made after we realized certain things were very sub optimal, but really, we pretty much got it right directly from the get-go. The nice thing about those characters WAS the fact that they were built as characters rather than MinMaxers. They had flaws. Their choices were often flavor rather than power. It made the game more interesting. They had things to work on and flaws to overcome in spending their Karma.

As far as books go...I would insist on your players building characters straight from the BBB (SR3 Core Rulebook) and avoid the supplements. Add those to your game later once you have figured out how to play by the original rules. The supplements are great for the most part and I would recommend them all to be purchased eventually, but they can offer way too many options and choices for both a new GM and players. By the way, the Priority build system is just fine. And probably the easiest way for a newbie to build a character.

A note on books:

Everyone above seemed to be offering comments on the "crunch" books. If you buy those, stick to SR3 ones, assuming that is what you run. Adventure-wise, once you get a few sessions under your belt any of the SR1-3 adventures will be easily adapted to any of those three systems, especially SR2 going to SR3. I did it myself very early on and had absolutely no problem. Buy anything written by Nigel Findley. He was a god among men. RIP, ND. One of the better adventures (and mini source book) that wasn't mentioned is Paradise Lost by Nigel Findley. It's the Hawaii sourcebook-ette. I would recommend running it after your party has run at least several larger runs.

Something else that all the posters seemed to omit were ANY of the sourcebooks. Get them all, SR1-3... any edition. I highly recommend starting out in Seattle. And get all the Seattle Sourcebooks. You should be able to get them on Ebay, if nothing else. And you can surely find them in PDF format. The "fluff" books are good for any edition. I still use my old stuff for my SR4 game.
Hope this helped.

Welcome to the Shadows. Shoot straight, conserve ammo and never, ever... and we can't stress this highly enough, deal with a dragon. Unless the money is too good and then, well, you know... that will be an iteresting day. ;P

Vlad

I disagree on two points.

1) Do NOT limit your players only to the core book. Cutting the options may be a =little bit= simpler, but all in all it will not be as enjoyable to play, in my opinion.

2) Do NOT use the Priority character generation system. It is by far the MOST inferior generation system ever devised, as it basically throws the players on a freight train--it's that lacking in ability for a character to truly be one's own.

It wasn't that bad in 1st edition, as they only said it had to add up to a number (10 iirc). So if you took two "1" values you could get a pretty kick-ass character. FASA had never though about that approach, so then they banned it.

I concur. If you're going to start with just the core book, do so on a mini-campaign with the explicit intention of then starting again with new characters built using the full set of core books. The things they introduce are simply too game-changing, and since one of the weaknesses of SR3 is the degree to which stuff is much easier to get at chargen than afterwards, you'll end up with players longingly gazing at things they'll never be able to get in the core books other than SR3 that they could have just taken at chargen.

There are also a few other issues, like the fact that you really need to have Rigger 3 to field a Rigger (there are all of five drones in SR3).

~J

Ohhh - Human priority 1 and then... (pop open NSRCG to tinker with the numbers.)Ooh, oooh. Oh, that's never happening at our table. Ever.

Great call on the Seattle sourcebook - it's a wild and interesting place, full of odd areas and run ideas. It's also dripping with local colour.

Regarding Matrix and Target: Matrix?
The rules in the Core book are the very basic "what you need to play" stuff, much like the SR3 core book Magic rules versus "Magic In the Shadows" (The magic expansion book, full of wonder and delight and a black hole to any karma accrued by your spellslingers).

If you're running the set adventures, I'm pretty positive all you need is the Core Book for the bare basics, but Matrix cleared up a lot of questions for me when trying to run deckers and more importantly, trying to improve and develop a decker character without making them into a rigger.
To us, Target: Matrix seemed mostly to be an extra book's worth of stuff that was cut from Matrix due to space issues. Some newish stuff, a lot on the personalities behind the glowing waterfalls of data and some rules which allow the rules lawyer in the group to get a serious leg up on their program suite without spending too much money.

Magic In the Shadows (MItS) was a big hunk of juju - it opened up the lid on a LOT of Shadowrun Lore (Earthdawn, the big evils, immortal elves, metaplane weirdness) and set up reasonably simple ways in which your players could set about making their vanilla mage into some serious ass-scorching mofo. It also really tried to give a taste of some of the various "flavours" of magic use in the 6th world, but I think the "threats" section took up a lot more space, dating the entire work (IMHO).

Rigger...well, you can play without it, but your players will want it, sooner or later. Vehicle builds, new toys, new tricks, vehicle railguns...yeah. If they can play with those toys, they'll want Rigger.

The "Target" books (Wastelands, UCAS and Smuggler Havens) are also great with more of the 6th world coming out of the mists to be brutally-exploited. Just never run in Australia and you're home and happy.

It is my great disappointment that I've never even SEEN "Paradise Lost" - in his other works Nigel Findley had a great vision of the future (Hint: Outlook not good) and really made things alive*, for the GM and the players.

*Note: this did lead to a lot of player deaths, so take it as it is.

But if you're stuck, get a concept in your head, try and make it with NSRCG (should take you 30 minutes, including all minutae) and see if it can withstand "Stuffer Shack".

Oh, yeah. Make sure your players go through Stuffer Shack, at least once. (It's basically a "random encounter", anything from a cakewalk to TPK)

-Tir.

Paradise Lost is indeed an awesome book.
I didn't list it, because it's an adventure and a lot of fluff, not a core rulebook, but vladski is completely right. It is also a real rarity, so if anyone finds it for a decent price: Just get it.

Thanks to everyone for all of the helpful information!

My plan at this point is to first run a single session adventure one evening to give the players an introduction to the game. I'll try to keep the rules as simple as possible for this, limiting the players to the main rulebook and maybe something like the Shadowrun Companion (I'll have to take a look at these once they arrive; I've ordered the main book, and I'm still shopping around for others). I'll probably recommend to my players that they use the priority system for this, just so that they can get into the game faster and focus on learning the rules. Once the players are familiar with the game, I'll have them either make new characters or rebuild their originals with the point buy system and additional rulebooks, and we'll move on to bigger adventures.

I've used this approach before with other systems and it seems to work pretty well: keep character creation simple at first, learn how the game works by getting into it quickly and trying it out, then once everyone has a grasp of the basics, you can expand and get creative.

On books, since they come so highly recommended, what adventures other than Paradise Lost were written by Nigel Findley?

Regarding "Stuffer Shack," I haven't seen this anywhere yet; is this a stand alone, or is it included in one of the other books?

I think what it was in was called 'First Run' or something like that. Could be remembering wrong though.

Yeah. The actual run name is Food Fight.

(IIRC it has a random table that you roll on every time someone misses a shot to determine what kind of foodstuff gets hit and goes flying everywhere)

~J