So Sunday I get to start a new campaign. I have 2 old timers, 2 sometimers (3e & 4e) and 2 noobs. 2e is my favorite edition but im currious abut giving 4e/2050 the old college try. I think that the matrix rules look slightly friendlier to new players, the 4e cheat sheets are awesome (again for new players), and edge > karma pool (well i had PCs with 500+ karma in the day and the KP was insane by then, caping it is not a bad thing), but it has the downsides of lack all the fun pools (combat, sorcery, etc), has overpowered mind control spells, spirits too easy to summon... For the record i dont see stat+skill or static TNs as any kind of advantage, im rather neutral on it.

So should I stick with what I know or take a chance?

Take the chance. All you need is the main rulebook (and maybe the 2050 sourcebook, if you definitely want to play in that era).

If you don't like it, you can always switch back.

Bye
Thanee

2E if you like the flavor of those rules.

4E if you like the (bland) flavor of those rules.




I'm biased.

So should I stick with what I know or take a chance?
Take a Chance with SR4A as its easier to learn for the New Players and the Sometime-Players
and You Yourself could try out something new .
If all of You don't like it, you can always go back to SR2

with a New Dance
Medicineman

I've played SR4A (and went back to 2e) just not with the 2050 rules

What turned you off then?

The game still works the same, of course.

The 2050 rules only replace the available equipment (to a very basic set of stuff, akin to SR1) and some specifics (like wired Matrix, adding in Grounding, and so on).

If you didn't like it then, chances are that you still won't like it.

Bye
Thanee

turn offs = pt buy, qualities/flaws, skill caps, hacking merged with rigging, OS and comlink separation, unified magic.
turn ons = edge, the skill list/group skills, body 1 viability, and PACKS.
otherwise I have a meh or neutral reaction to all the other changes. I dont see them as better or worse.

Runner's Companion has a few other methods of character generation, including Priorities and Karma.



Well... I guess those will still be around.



Not sure what 2050 will do about that.



What's wrong with that? It totally makes sense. And it isn't really that seperate, anyways, since Response limits System, so there are dependencies.



That is somewhat taken care of in 2050, of course, with the differences between hermetic and shamanic traditions.

Bye
Thanee

3rd Edition.

Shadowrun 2050 is a horrible product. The only part of the rules that actually work are the equipment lists. The Matrix rules look like they were written in like 5 minutes. It takes all the worst parts of the decking rules from 3rd Ed and all the worst parts of the hacking rules from 4A and smooshes them together in some gestalt that's worse than the sum of its parts. The magic rules aren't quite as bad, but still comes off as unbalanced between mages and shamen (even moreso than 3rd Ed). I don't even think there were any rigging rules in the book.

If you want to play Shadowrun 4th Edition, play 4th Edition. Just change the timeline and reskin/houserule stuff if you want to play in 2050s era instead of the 2070s. Hacking works the same as decking, only the device has to be wired. Cludge together houserules for the shaman/mage split. It'd honestly be easier than trying to make the Shadowrun 2050s rules into something playable.

Close to a month, all told, actually. Bit over, in fact.

turn offs = pt buy...., hacking merged with rigging, unified magic.
I heard that very often from old SR2 and SR3 Players but never ( IIRC) from new Players.
Seems more like its ....an old habit. You grew up with these rules and don't want to get used to the (ImO better 'cause easier) new rules
(What is the English expression for : was der Bauer nicht kennt das frisst er nicht.... ? you can't change the habits of a lifetime ? You can't teach an old Dog new Tricks )
I think this is a good Point in Time to try out something New

With a new Dance
Medicineman

Thanks

Can't teach an Old Dog, New tricks

SR4A is MUCH easier to learn and run.
The GM can provide all the flavor you need if he and his players have a good clean set of mechanics to work from.
And SR4 uses the same mechanics for every thing.
The straw the broke the camel's back for me with 3rd edition was the new set of mechanics they used for a Spider/Building rigger against Rigger combat for control of the building.
I love how a rigger is just a form of hacker with some specialized interface cyberware and some drone/vehicle skills.

I run a 2050 campaign using SR4A.
I do use an NPC decker and you need to jack in to get full VR.
For a new SR GM, an NPC decker really helps keep the game moving.
Nothing really important is done via wireless.
Fiber Optic is so much faster and more secure.
Especially when you have a DNL to the user's brain so you can use ICE to melt their brain if they turn out to not be authorized.

Run SR4A, use what you like out of 2050.

I did like how they treated Shaman and Hermetic summoning.

You needed at least a year then. The decking rules are bad. I couldn't make heads or tails out of them after a couple of readthroughs to even get a basic idea, and I'm one of maybe a half dozen people left that actually still know and understand the 3rd Ed decking rules. Should've started from scratch to make new rules or just reskinned stuff from 4A's rules. Trying to do both in that short of time made a giant incomprehensible mess. Unless I'm really just missing something with the memory thing.

Thanks for the responses, I feel i need to clarify again.

5 of us have played SR4 or SR4A and DID NOT LIKE IT (various reasons).
2 players HAVE NOT PLAYED any SR.

The new bit is only the 2050 book, and it may have fixed some issues people had with the new shiny edition.

I'm generally leaning that direction now but I just wanted to point out that SR4 isnt new to most of us. My only reservation is teaching them SR4, then having to go back and teach them SR2 because we decided 4 isnt working for us again. 2e is also very easy for me (since i played it once a week or more durring the years it was in print), where as I dont have nearly that amount of 4e experience but I think ive played it enough to see any big issues.


* on the matrix rules - i found them pretty easy to understand but it was like reading 1e or 2e pre vr2.0 with some changes to make it work with 4e. idk how well the changes work but the rules seamed strait forward to me. BTW RAY!!!! no tortises?!? or did i miss them. I saw the desktops which i guess are more or less the same thing.

Desktops (Cyberterminals) can be run in "Tortoise Mode" (Not jacked in): -4 to Initiative, and only 1 IP. SR2050, Page 156. Upper-Right Hand side.

If you really, REALLY don't want to give SR4/SR4A another chance, at least go to SR3 instead of SR2, and for the love of all that is Holy, please do not force your newbies into the "Choo Choo!" Priority bull-drek.

It could also be that new players don't know about the SR2/3 options, so can't possibly have a preference. Offering me vanilla and my not choosing chocolate doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer chocolate.



I've never had a player complain about using priority system ... But you can use SR3's point buy (or BeCKS) with SR2 just fine.

I do recommend using SR3 mechanics in general though. It fixed a lot of niggling issues with SR2 (the high cost of metas, weird sustaining rules, the grounding exploit, etc.) Otherwise the two systems are basically identical, so you can still use your SR2 equipment lists, missions, etc.

I'm quite the opposite and I've played 1st-4th, 4th so far is my favorite.

• BP system, I prefer it over the priority system and I've made characters with all the character generation systems.
• Qualities/Flaws, I like these because it helps me come up with different concepts for characters.
• Skill caps, never had a problem with these before.
• Hacking merged with rigging, I think it gets rid of some complications make both run off one common system instead of two different systems, and allows for more versatility.
• OS and comlink seperation, just like computers in RL makes things a bit easier imo.
• Unified magic, see Hacking/rigging above


I have other issues with 4E, but overall a much better system than the previous.

Well this group HATES pt buy systems with the fury of 1000 suns. Priority or PACKS are the only way they would agree to make characters. We like templates/classes/anything where you can pick a couple things and start playing in 5 min with no math. PACKS is ideal but 2070s has already been ruled out for not having enough niche protection. Which leaves priority because with karma or pt buy they just will walk out and refuse to play.

So you like creation systems that railroad you with only minimal ability to personalize the character? Remind me to stay the hell away from your group...

They probably also insist that the archetypes in the books are the ideal characters to play too.

That's a shame. I'm sure if you were to play with them you could teach them the "right" way to have fun.

To the topic, stick with what you know. It doesn't sound like you'd gain anything by going 4e with your group.

We like to play games, not create characters... Give them a pre-gen with crazy backgrounds and they will roleplay the hell out of it. We (myself included but not to the extreme of some) want to roleplay, not create characters. I have a job and a family I dont have time to worry about if this flaw or that one is better. If I want to play a PTSD ex solider ill just put it on my character sheet and rp it. Damn the pts who cares! I'm here to game. Not that theres anything wrong with pt fiddling, I used to do it when I had time but these days I just want to roleplay.

2e priority is in no way ideal as you still have gobs of resources to spend. We are going to give 4e/2050 the old college try i decided, mostly because i think if I stick to 2050 gear section and priority chart character creation will be tolerable and potentially we could use PACKS as the body count climbs.

I personally like Sum to 10. More flexibility and gives mundane humans a very slight advantage. Otherwise, why wouldn't you always pick ork or dwarf if playing a mundane for the attribute boosts?

The Archetypes ARE playable characters. Have played many of them over the years, and they work just fine.

We use Sum to 10 too since 1st Ed or whenever it turned up.
tete, why use 4th Ed if 5 players dislike it and the other 2 don't know otherwise? Just by the way.

I also love sum-to-ten, although it's tougher to grok. I let the player make the character with priority, then if there are left-over priorities, I tell him to bump his current priorities up appropriately.

Alot of the dislike comes from rule changes to support 2070 style play more than anything else. In theory 2050 corrects all but a couple of them. We played a session and most of the 5 of us were pleasantly surprised and a little disappointed. IF we got the rules all correct (and I'm not sure that we did) it did feel older, but a few things need tweeking. The decker seamed really weak and the spirits seamed way to easy to summon, but otherwise it was alot more like the shadowrun we liked. We also all agree the priority chart is really street level... It feels like your gangers not shadowrunners out of the gate.

I agree with that sentiment Tete. I like the SR4 rules generally (having played going back to SR1). But I dislike most of the core setting changes. Hard nosed cyberpunk --> sparkly transhumanist

SR4 has continued the tradition of reducing mages compared to everything else (said as someone who normally plays the mage). But to be honest I don't recall it being any harder to summon/bind spirits in earlier editions. (outside of more strict limits on what you could do while astral).


If you like the pool mechanic... you could always try and experiment with eliminating edge and reintroducing the old pools. Most of the new stats are fairly easily understood from the old ones. The number of passes is about the same as well. It's something I've debated trying as well. Though on the whole I've found edge to work fairly well. It's more a flavor thing.

Well, maybe you should understand that the rules sourced from 1st edition and 2nd core (pre-VR2). They are close as could be expected to that source with 4A ruleset, IMO. Aside from some issues with missing tables of costs, and the memory stuff, can't can't really blast them. At least, it's not fair to blast them assuming a 3E source.

Sum To 10 was what our table used, for years.

Slightly disagree with you Bigity. It is right to give Canray some flak as the section is clearly incomplete. And a month's work or not. It's not viable as written. That to me is a prime indicator that it was not playtested adequately... that a lot of material was probably left in the authors head and assumed (if he did his own playtesting) and not provided to others in his writting.

I'm waiting to see the errata for this stuff to see how it's all fixed. Though with the current line dev, have no clue if even a necessary errata will be allowed.

Sorry, but it's a mess. I don't blame CanRay. I'm sure he did his best. I blame CGL for rushing the book out to capitalize on the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter. What ended up was a mess of a book. The first half was full of canonical errors and the second half was full of half-developed unplaytested rules. The entire book feels like it was pitched the moment the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter started getting a buzz (basically its first day up) and was sent to the printers before the Kickstarter even finished. I have no idea how long it was actually in development, but it needed a lot more time than that.

The thing that really pisses me off about the half-ass nature of Shadowrun 2050 is that it would have gotten me buying new Shadowrun products regularly if it had been good. I have exactly two problems with the 4A ruleset - no exploding dice (which means that a character can no longer attempt anything that is theoretically possible and try to hit a target number in the 30s or 40s for something like shooting a rocket launcher through one helicopter to hit another helicopter behind it) and the rules being tied so strongly to a 2070s storyline (which keeps me from being able to convert and use my library of 1st-3rd sourcebooks and particularly adventures). Shadowrun 2050 would've been the perfect product for me. I would have bought it and kept buying supplements for it.

And they blew it.

Which is a really interesting position, since we have been using many of the previous editions (1st, 2nd AND 3rd) books (which have been converted, obviously) in our SR4A games as of late. Not all of them, to be sure, as there are tons of books out there, and not all of them need to be brought forward, but it really is not all that hard to accomplish.

I guess it has to do with your (generic) opinion on the game. I think SR4A absolutely blows the doors of the previous editions in almost every way (I absolutely hated Exploding Dice and Incrementing Target Numbers - TNs of 30 - 40 were just ludicrously stupid in my opinion, and you can actually play a fairly useful Matrix Jockey WITH the rest of the team taking actions simultaneously). So I may be a bit biased.

Writers aren't in charge of playtesting, as I understand it (could be wrong). As a technical writer for nearly 20 years, it is impossible to catch all of your own mistakes, and is pretty silly to expect it. Especially when you don't have control over layout or the final product.

Playtesting? How much playtesting do think CGL actually does?

Interesting notion, but it's wrong. The book was being worked on months before Harebrained Schemes announced SRR. Several months, in fact. That HBS announced their game, set it in the 2050s, and the release schedule put SR2050 out at around the same time that the Kickstarter was making all sorts of noise was pure coincidence. Happy and fortuitous coincidence, to be sure, one which all sides were happy to take advantage of, but coincidence nonetheless.


There is, in point of fact, an optional rule to allow Rule of Six on all rolls, not just Edge rolls. This helps you get more hits to beat thresholds (which is what more or less replaced sliding target numbers). You can still, in fact, shoot an RPG through one helicopter to hit another helicopter with the current rules. I've done it. It's fun.


Substantially more than you apparently think. Whether it winds up working out is a separate issue, but I know it's done.

Oh, and to the OP's question: Go 4e and SR2050. Use the Priority System from the Runner's Companion. You'll be up and playing in half an hour or so.

Wow. Look at me, defending SR4. Who saw that coming...?

+1

Not to start an edition war, but I think 4th Ed fixed a lot of the problems with the previous editions. 1st ed was fun in its day, 2nd, was my prime playing experience until fourth. 3rd--too much crunch to keep track of, also didn't help that I never got into a good gaming group then. 4th I like as GM as it allows me to easily throw in NPC's of the appropriate level of competancy.

Thats what we did, character creation took about 3 hours for everyone to finish... and I even simplified it a bit more by making the special attribute pts go to edge for everyone and no qualities/flaws (outside of magery) allowed.

The matrix rules are going to need some tweeking (because of the memory issue) but im not sure at this point if I want to go the easy way (add memory) or the hard way (make it like combat, thus making everything attribute+skill). Also need to find something to make hermetics as good of a choice as shamans rather than a money sink of binding. Granted this existed in 1-3e as well. Id also like to add some sorta full out attack to simulate the old combat pool. Otherwise I'm pleasantly surprised and how well it works.

From a rules-only standpoint, I honestly see Shadowrun 1-3 and Shadowrun 4/4A as apples and oranges to D&D 1-3 and D&D 4e levels almost. So much stuff got changes (this time with Shadowrun ripping off Vampire rather than the other way round). I look at the two systems kind of the same way I look at Savage World and Pathfinder versions of Earthdawn out now - two numerical ways to play in the same sandbox.

Shadowrun 3rd is the best of the 1-3 set of rules. The Matrix rules benefited greatly from the VR2.0 rules they refined, and the changes to race in the priority system and build points made a huge difference in the game. The way firearms skills are handled make less logical sense in 3rd than they did in 2nd (the difference between using an SMG and an assault rifle aren't that huge), but I can deal with it from a game balance standpoint. Same with etiquette specializations (I fix that with house rules for defaulting between some skills and requiring specializations).

Shadowrun 4A has a learning curve that's far less steep, which is a good thing when trying to get players who are interested in the system (got a group together a few years ago solely by inviting over some friends who were fans of the Dresden Files novels to watch Bladerunner and Strange Days). I don't particularly like some of the rule changes, but mostly for flavor reasons. The combat, hacking, magic, etc. all run far more smoothly in 4A even though I never had problems with decking in 3rd Ed after Synner's thread back around 2002. However, the system's tied greatly to the 2070s era and it's difficult to convert hacking to work well in a 2050s era game, along with changing cash around (the only serious attempts I've made at conversions were well over a year ago and long before SR2050 came out).

Basically, if I want to run a game set at any point from 2040 to 2064, I pretty much have to use SR3 because converting from 4A or attempting to make the SR2050 rules usable are both way more work than teaching people the old, harder to learn rules - yes, even decking. If I want to run a game set after 2067 or so, I'd run it in 4A since the rules work so much more smoothly.

I know there's no way that the development time was as short as I claimed it was. It just seems like it was that rushed. They needed more time to do a good job and they just really failed. The 2050 rules just flat out don't work. If I've got to spend more time making house rules to fix the rulebook than I did converting the adventures in the first place, they've screwed up.

SR3 didn't have absurd unstoppable magical attacks of SR2 (grounding anyone?) but mages are still crazy powerful compared to SR4.

Very true. Heavy Weapons Troll felt very inadequate until suppressive fire was required.

Mechanically it's a fine system, the problem is just that it stripped away a great deal of flavour. Easily fixed though, shamans get Conjuring but no Binding and Mages get Binding but no Conjuring (that's also how SR 2050 does it).

So how do you bind without actually being able to Summon? Seems pretty counter-intuitive.

The summon roll is ignored, its assumed you made it. The problem is the Hermetic then becomes a money sink (which was also true in 1-3e). So the flavor is back but it didnt progress the system. This is balanced in theory with GM being a dick and limiting the type of spirits (shamans) available based on domain.

See tete, seems pretty intuitive to me

And I think 3000 ¥ for a Force 6 spirit are a fair price, a Doberman drone costs the same off the shelf. Drones do not need to be rebound, but you sink a lot of cash into a Doberman before it gets as scary as a Force 6 Fire Elemental.

Also, your Dobie isn't as likely to go insane and want to kill everyone if the Rigger gets offed.

You don't apply that?

I do, and I find it's a true limitation to shamans.

Yes, if you enforce it RAW, it is very limiting, especially on the move/run. Nothing like summoning a spirit, then having to run for new cover and having to let it go.