Maybe I missed it or people haven't had enough experience with 5th yet, but Backgammon's game report inspired me to put this poll up since there has been some time to at least test drive 5th. Note, I have played 1st through 4th. My preference is 4th from those four (not having played 5th yet, I have no basis to judge it on--hence why I am asking this question). Mainly the reason I like 4th was that it had set the target number at 5, and the IP system was decent and fairar for the slower PC's.

Will I like 5th over 4th? I don't know--on the one hand, wi-fi bonuses seem interesting. But the limits to hits seems distasteful to me. Until I play it, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer.


Just a reminder from the sticky: Stick to the fact and your opinions/reasons for your preferences. There is no reason to go all edition wars on your fellow DSr's

I cannot accurately categorize my vote.
I played 3rd once, played a lot of 4, but didn't really enjoy it, haven't tried 5th at all.

I started with 2nd so it holds a special place in my heart. I like the layout of those books and the atmosphere as well. Also speed samurai.

Wow tough question are we saying system or setting. I have a soft spot for the settings of sr1-3 even though it makes sense the wireless matrix just doesn't feel right sometimes. On the other hand i think the game mechanics have definately improved over the years. So i guess my vote goes to Sr5.

Liked SR's 1-3 (though towards the end, the disparate sybsystems in SR3 irritated me greatly)...
Absolutely LOVED SR4A... Still do in fact... My preferred version of the Game.
Not a Fan of SR5... too many things about it irritate me .

SR1 for flavor, world, attitude, etc. What can I say? I loves me some 80s-fueled pink mohawks. The rules, especially damage codes were a mess though.

SR2 for being a dramatic improvement on SR1 without losing it's soul. Played the hell out of this edition and still get on a serious nostalgia trip for it sometimes.

SR4 and SR4A for game mechanics. I don't like where the world went, but what are you going to do? This edition gets my vote as best for its overall solid game mechanics.

SR5 looks... I dunno. Some parts look kind of terrible (Limits, Matrix, combat spells). Some of it is great (kinder, gentler priority table). Going to test drive it tomorrow with some folks in my extended circle of gamer friends. So, we'll see.

-paws

I only really played 4th/4A. I have the 5th ed book, and have looked through it and read the research. While some things were wonky and a bit unbalanced in 4th ed, and while I like some of the ideas in 5th ed, the negatives of 5th so far seem to outweigh the good. I'd be willing to give 1-3 a try, if I could reasonably expect to play them, but until I have a proper go at them I can't be expected to give them weight in my decision.

Even before getting into the contents, these problems with 5th are beyond what I faced in 4th:
- PDF lacks bookmarks for navigation, and is protected to prevent creation of bookmarks. Suffice it to say, even though I've payed for it I still am tempted to download a cracked copy just for the sake of convenience. This is before even "opening the book."
- The book is difficult to navigate to find information; certain sections refer to information (i.e. limits) without indicating where one would find that information. Even the index was not always helpful in discovering some important crunch.

In the book:
- Chargen (I admit it's mostly due to my unfamiliarity with it, though the noted imbalance between archetypes weighs in my mind).
- The overnerfing of Technomancers.
- The implementation and reasoning behind Wireless Bonuses and lack of material for circumventing them (even at an Essence cost for additional). Seriously, circumnavigating the city just to go to your next door neighbor will almost never be as fast as just going directly next door.
I'd attempt to continue, but I'm tired and having trouble thinking straight.

Things I liked in 5th ed:
- The stories between chapters.
- The pretty drawings
- Mystic Adepts (yeah, bite me)
- Changing the way programs work
- Bringing back decks (though not everything mechanically related to them).
- Returning hacking to being Stat + Skill (+ bonuses).
- Bringing all augments in line (I know it sucks to lose out on the high end, but I can respect it from a design standpoint).
- Uses for reagents in spellcasting.
same as above, tired and having trouble focusing now.

Well, I helped work on SR5, so it holds a special place with me.

Wait, you've got 9,500+ posts over five years on a forum for a game where 99% of your play experience is in a system that you didn't really enjoy?

How many years/posts are accredited to me when I had never been able to play the game?

If there was an option for SR4a.5 I'd so take that one. From what I've read there are elements of SR5 I prefer over SR4a, and would so import them into the SR4a mechanics.

I like the setting.
I like the stories my GM has told.
I don't like the system. There are things about it that I do like, but in general, I've played better.

I've started with SR2, but the GM wasn't applying all the rules. The lack of the pools made it a bit difficult...
I've picked it up again with SR3; This time I was the GM, and I tried to apply the rules.. as well as I could. I've also played with other GMs. It was ok, but I had issues with some of the base rule concepts and also with the overall complexity and list of special cases.
I've moved to SR4, enjoyed it more, though I house-ruled it a lot. Took most changes from SR4A but rejected a few.
What I've seen from the changes of SR5 doesn't really tempt me. There are some good ideas, but also bad fixes to wrong issues while other issues were left open.

Right now I have to admit that there isn't any version of SR that I find satisfying. SR4 was pretty good when it came out, but the dice pool inflation caused by the additional books kinda broke the system. This led to an SR4A with inflated threshold, which is just an unsatisfying workaround. SR5 was the occasion to fix all this, but as I said above, I'm not convinced.

So for now I'm sticking to my heavily house-ruled SR4(A) for my campaigns, my slightly house-ruled SR4A when GMing outside of my campaigns, and whatever the GM is GMing when I play as a player.

SR3 got my vote, but my style was formed by SR2.

4 went in directions I despised.

5 looks alright, once the laundry list of errata are in and I get finished writing a concordance to find shit in the absurdly bad layout, but it isn't in a playable by RAW state as of publication.

Ive played this game since FASA released the 1st ed,, my first real campaign of any roleplaying game started with 2nd ed and continued through 3rd ed. Took a hiatus then came back to 4th ed and then 4A ed.

The 1st ed fluff hooked me, and continued with 2nd ed, I kinda stopped reading the fluff of 3rd, 4th and 4A, so in the respect Im with 1st and 2nd ed.

But the rules in 4A were better, but not overly well defined. The current line developer has a problem with errata or not wanting to put errata out.

So I guess my favorite for fluff, 1st and 2nd, rules would be 4A.

Even though I really despise WOTC, they had a wonderful support team that would help you clarify the rules, that the current Shadowrun team doesnt seem to care about. Plus it seems the current line developer for Shadowrun really doesnt care about the strength of the product line. Just about making the nuyen.

The team had the perfect opportunity to go through 4A and finally fix some of the problems, but instead they went to a whole new ed to restart the errata game again.

For all intents and purposes, SR2 and SR3 are basically identical. SR3 is more like SR2.5.

Having spoken with some of the designers at GenCon, my current rating would be:
SR2/3 - Favorite. I love the setting, I love the mechanics. I usually prefer early SR3 mechanics (before YotC), with a mix of splat books from both editions, but focused on SR2 setting. Like I said, it's basically interchangeable though, so it's more of a question of 'which book do I like' rather than 'which edition do I like'.

SR5 - From what I've heard, I like the changes. Mathematically they make sense. I haven't seen the setting beyond the art, but the art does look much better. I'd like to give it a try.

SR1 - The mechanics are crazy broken. This is the real jump the shark edition. Explosions everywhere, everything pink mohawk. I love it, but I don't think I could play a campaign in it before the bugs got me down.

SR4 - I detest the mechanics, and the setting is bland. I tried playing, I got bored, I never had any compulsion to go back. When I do pick up splat books, I'm frequently thinking 'wow, this is a reprinting of SR3 - and SR3 did it better.' (I did pull a few rules and bits of equipment out for my SR3 game though.)

I have played since the third edition. One of my main gripes with the 3rd and 4th editions (and from what I read, probably those before that too) were the matrix rules. I never liked them, even though (or maybe because) I'm a computer scientist. The new SR5 matrix is much more interesting in my opinion. Simpler, faster, better balanced and less contradictions, loopholes, unnecessary complexity and lousy attempts to implement technical concepts from the real internet. There may still be some fine-tuning to do, like for example buffing the technomancers somewhat, but apart from that I like the new design a lot. The other rules haven't changed that much IMO (what I liked in SR4A is still there for the most part), so my vote goes to SR5. It is not perfect and already heavily house-ruled, but that usually goes for any RPG we play.

2nd's (maybe 1st's too I'm not sure) initiative system was the best imo, it made samurai the kings of combat. A team with one or two wired up samurai could decimate the opposition before anyone else went. I firmly believe that is the way the system should work. For all the samurai gave up to be the fastest it should mean something. They should be gods of combat reaping foes like bloody scythes. Sure the others didn't do much during combat but they had their areas to shine as well. Riggers drove like nobodies business, mages cast spells and went scouting on the astral, deckers downloaded porn or something, I'm not quite sure what they do to be honest and samurai did combat. It was a simpler time those halcyon days. Now everyone does everything, hell mages are downloading their own porn, and deckers are shooting people! It's madness!

Note- When I say samurai I meant all combat types.

SR3:
+ best fluff
+ I like the damage category system
- the balancing via target numbers was terrible

SR4:
+ better mechanics due to the combination of attributes and skills and balancing via dice numbers
- even though we largely ignore the matrix, the wirelessness feels yucky
- numbers instead of damage categories are bad for the athmosphere

SR5:
Undecided at this point.
Limit idea has potential, Matrix rules have potential, giving incentive to accept wireless via bonuses as a general concept has potential, but execution in the rulebooks is sloppy at best. Time will tell if a combination of a complete ruleset and houserules will be acceptable.

Problem is that means the people who don't have that extra initiative never get to go.

The people who don't have the extra initiative usually weren't dedicated combat types. They had other roles in which to shine. Now it's like everybody wants to do everything. Back then people had roles that they filled. That's my take anyway.

Haven't voted yet, but at least I'll give my opinions: 2e for fluff and some mechanics, 3e mostly for mechanics are my preferred versions.

There are ASPECTS of the newer games I like(I'd actually say 5e is my 3rd overall favorite, to be honest), like cheaper cyberlimbs(dear god, cheaper cyberlimbs!) but overall 2e/3e just had a much more comfortable feel for me. I mean I'm sure some of it is nostalgia goggles, but I just loved digging through the old books and making characters, and then playing them in our mohawky early 2050s to 2060s. (I think SR5 ends up number 3 for me since it brings back some of that old feel I missed, and I do like the general mechanics, though I think I prefer 3e's overall setup.) 2e/3e with Becks chargen though, always a joy.

Tough call. 1-2e owned the setting for me. 2e was my favorite of the 1-3e mechanics overall, and many aspects of it I prefer to 4e. Still 4e has some good rules systems in it as well so I like it. 5e haven't played much but so far I like it, though it has some problems which will hopefully shake out in errata.

I cut my teeth on SR1, so that's my favorite. Even though some of the mechanics were awful, I have a special place in my heart for that edition.

SR3 is my favorite edition, but only if played with a group that really likes the mechanics and understands how things work. SR5 is my favorite edition to run and play right now, because it's easier to hit the ground running with, so to speak. SR4 was a huge turn off.

2nd and 3rd Editions were what I played and what I would prefer if I were ever to play again. We did, however, play a little fast and loose with the rules to maintain flow and "rule of cool". Lots of just made up TN's that "felt" right to the GM instead of adding up multipliers.

Tried 4th a bit before I stopped playing, rules seemed pretty OK but the style/atmosphere/wirelessness really wrecked the setting for me.

5th looks interesting as far as I've seen, so I'll keep an open mind. And keep buying books for a gama I, sadly, will probably never play again.

I don't understand the people who like SR5 and hated SR4 (mechanically). They aren't that different! The change from SR3 to SR4 was much larger. I could understand all the hate back then.

Because some of the changes were really badly thought out.

They still are, but we can't be quite certain of how 5e really works because the book's so poorly edited that the rules need massive revision.

Redownload it - the wrong version of it went up originally, and now the one up has bookmarks done up properly now.

I liked both SR3 and SR4, with SR4 getting the nod due to slightly less cumbersome rules.

That's an easy one, for me anyway.

1) SR4 introduced a push away from cyberware, to the point that certain pieces of gear -- like the bread-and-butter of Shadowrun cybereyes, cyberears, and smartlinks -- as implants were completely irrelevant. Further moves toward better/easier or functionally equivalent bioware and nanoware detracted from the spells-and-chrome aspects of the game.

2) SR4 scaled back the deadliness of the game in general, making it such that people would get hit more often but take small bits of damage with minor negative effects, made worse by offering -1, -2, or -3 dice wound modifiers, which barely made any difference in most dice pools (since bonus dice were quite easy to get). SR4 also heavily encouraged simply using the easier and more-reliable stun damage options rather than making no-kill runs more difficult and more dangerous.

3) Hacking was painful, since there was no functional difference between hacking a bank's security system and hacking some dude's cell phone (SR5 manages to keep the mechanics the same while making a Host uniquely challenging as compared to a commlink). This was made worse thematically by strictly limiting the number of connections to any system to a bare handful, which was directly opposed to prior Shadowrun where thousands of people would realistically be connected to one Matrix system at one time -- essentially if a nightclub with 500 people was handling drink orders through their node, the connection limit of maybe 6 would just be absurd, and even the high-price nexuses with their limit at 30-odd wouldn't be enough, and the nightclub would have to have 15 nexuses just to service their clientele. Creating and running this sort of matrix architecture was simply tedious, and it's much better to plonk an all-encompassing Host down in its place, since nothing's really served game-wise by making the hacker jump through 40 separate nodes just to find all the stuff he needs to access. Point-to-point hacking (where you just act on the video camera instead of having to jump into a node to find it) likewise alleviates a lot of game-angst, while still preserving the ability for in-depth hacking of security systems (by jumping into the host) where everything's at your fingertips.

4) Magic: triple-cast stunbolt.

I started with SR2, but my favorite is SR4/4A, which I understand makes me an outcast from the pink mohawk or die crowd, but I'll deal.
I really liked SR3, it is easily my second favorite, but I think may of the concepts introduced in SR4 were necessary to keep the setting relevant. I also really liked Technomancers, so obviously I really hate SR5.

Because I haven't played it yet, and so I give it the benefit of the doubt

Make mine SR3. It's the version that appealed to most of my playing group. We all came together on that one, so it holds a nostalgic place in my heart. Plus, we ran the hell out of that book, sometimes playing twice a week. A lot of fond memories. SR4 was probably the worst. SR1 blew my mind at the time. I can still remember picking the rulebook up for the first time and saying, "whoa, what's this?"

Makes me think of my old SR2 book. Wore the hardcover off, most of the pages were either falling out or held in with glue and prayers. Little colored sticky notes all over the place to denote where tables and whatnot were (I can't for the life of me remember the color coding system, but it was there). More than a few pages stained with soda or water or whatnot.

Wonder if that book is still around somewhere.

SR2 did that for me. Went into a game shop to buy a few M:tG boosters and saw the illustration on the cover. Read the intro fic, put the card packs back in the box, and went home with the book. One of the better decisions I've made in my gaming life. \

edit: Still have that book, too. Went and had it comb bound along with the rest of the SR books I owned at that time. Still irritated that the Kinkos monkey bound my RBB backwards with the cover upside down.

WTF

Exactly! No one is content to have a certain role anymore in a game.

I used my SR3 book so much I had to have it re-bound at a university library.

SR2 - but I like many of the rule changes from SR3, especially initiative and spells.

Also, later editions of SR lost out by not having program carriers for naked matrix runs.

Yeah, I have 2 copies of SR2 for that reason. One's my good hardback, and the other's a paperback that's been three-hole punched and put into a binder because the inevitable FASA glue explosion happened.

Pretty much my response at the counter when I picked it (plus a few correctly bound books) up the following day. I lit the manager up pretty good, considering at that point it was impossible to find another copy anywhere in the damned city; I was over the moon when I found it in the first place. They ended up eating the cost of the work, and I never went to that particular Kinkos again.

We use 3 for most things but 4 for decking/hacking. We keep up with the metaplots but don't bother buying all new rules books every few years and learn all new systems time after time.

To me, wireless connectivity seems so quotidian, whereas the idea of plugging into some neon lit overly complex 3d user interface is a beautiful evocation of the 80s.

It's kind of like the original Star Wars movie...a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...I see the Shadowrun universe as being more like an alternate 80s world.

See, this is me, still dealing.
No two people are going to like all of the same things, but I still like TM's and still like my Matrix wirelessly accessible.
I grew up in the 80's, doesn't mean I want to trade my smartphone for a brick or go back to wearing my Members Only jacket, with the sleeves rolled up.

Just means you have to plug your smartphone into your skull.

See, I live in 2013 (approx.), my life almost never involves the police taking any interest in me, and I still avoid using wireless for anything. In my game, people can have cell phones, but using one for illegally hacking someone is both very slow, and terminally stupid.

I have to say 4a and 5th. both systems have strengths and weaknesses.

It's something I like to compare to Fallout. Even while modernizing the way the game is played (going from top-down to FPS), they still managed to keep the idea that the Fallout world is an alternate US that split in the 50's.

I wish Shadowrun would have had such a clarity of vision.

The 2050s, maybe. The War with Canada was in the future.

Yes but the game is still soaked in 1950's Red Menace Americana.