Hoi chummers!

I am returning to the Shadowrun Tabletop RPG after a decade-long hiatus. I keep finding forums for Shadowrun. So far, I have found and joined:

The Catalyst one - http://www.shadowrun.com/forums/categories...run-5th-edition
Dumpshock - http://forums.dumpshock.com/
Reddit's Shadowrun subreddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/
Shadow Grid - http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/

Can anyone give me a rundown of the strengths and weaknesses of each? Is there a single forum "to rule them all"? My goal is:

1) Ample eyeballs on questions/posts
2) Good solution-oriented discussion
3) Achieving reasonably official clarifications


Or all they all special snowflakes that I should track?

Thank you for your kind attention.

Dumpshock above all else.
Reddit probably due to size of userbase alone a second.
The Catalyst one only if you need some official information you can't find in any of the above named.
Shadow Grid . . never actually heard of that one before your post, so draw your own conclusion there.

Dumpshock has plenty of 1, a bit of 2 and a little of 3 as well.
Reddit probably has plenty of 1, and a bit of 2.
Catalyst one has, in my eyes, only a bit of 3.


Also, not quite sure if this here is the correct sub forum, to be honest.

I became familiar with Shadowgrid when following a discussion about Grenades and AOE Spells to comments made by Bull, the Missions freelancer; it was offered up as the closest thing to an official clarification, so I am currently seeing Shadowgrid as my #1 source for "reasonably official".

As for the choice of subforum, I did not want to invade the other forums with this since it seems more like a meta forum discussion, but I would not be upset at all if an admin chose to move it.

Actually, shadowruntabletop.com is Catalyst's official presence. While shadowrun.com was toted as the one forum to bring them all together, the fact that CGL kept their forums running as is nothing happened should give you a hint how serious everybody took that plan (just like the rest f the "year of Shadowrun")...
Add to that the sanity-grinding structure of that forum, and I gladly pass.

The Reddit forum is relatively new, so you'll find little older information. But the major problem to me is, it's Reddit.


That leaves the corporate forums and Dumpshock. I'm reading both, but I prefer the DS community...and when was the last time CGL posted an official clarification/errata, anyway?

I'd tend to agree that Dumpshock tends to have a population with the widest range of opinions, and...usually...the most productive discussions when differing opinions run into each other.

One helpful forum on the official site is actually the errata forum. The new product posts here often attract some of that, but surprisingly the official boards have wound up with more comprehensive lists of issues and suspected issues than DS, at least recently.

And since it's actually incredibly relevant, I'd just point out that the "Shadowsearch" custom search engine in my signature below is handy for searching most of those sources fairly easily.

DS as a whole just seems to have given up on SR5. We had a large errata thread and lots of rule discussions over the core book, probably on the subconscious hope that CGL might manage to pull their act together this time. The depressing reality is that it's still the same shit we've had since 2009, so what's the point in caring for new releases?

I think that is where I am at. Overall I was meh on 5th edition. But I'm kind of at that point where it has to really excite me to purchase any gaming stuff. I liked fourth for many things, there were three things that needed fixing IMHO--Drain codes were too low, matrix--mainly slow hacking and "privileges" needed to be better defined, and gun damage was a little too weak for my tastes. That being said, 5th addressed the drain codes fairly well, matrix was still FUBAR, and they did increase gun damage and altered armor. THey took out impact and ballistic though which to me is a mistake.

I'm curious why you think this. The correlation between Ballistic and Impact armor values hovered around 0.9 for SR4. That sort of stability seems to scream out that it can be simplified somewhat.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of SR5. But consolidating the armor values and futzing with outliers over on the damage side of things seems like a solid move.

I read DS and reddit. I'd say DS is probably the more active of the 2 communities. That said, I know someone on reddit just created a new thing called "Runnerhub" which I think they are hoping to create PbP games with.

Reddit is definitely more positive overall though, and more likely to get you an answer to your question over a "5th edition is terrible!" response. The trolls on DS are ancient, malevolent beasts; the creators dug too deep and unearthed something terrible and wicked which you don't want to cross.

I don't really read the official boards; I haven't found anything particularly useful on them and their community is a lot less active, so it's harder to get stuff answered.

Because some types of armor are better designed for stopping blunt force (like a suit if plate armor) and others are better at stopping ballistics like a kevlar vest. Its a realism thing that didn't add too much complexity to the game. Yes, but 8/5 for an armor vest in 4.5 was worth noting.

I get your reasoning, I'm just pointing out that despite having rules for both Ballistic and Impact, the statted armors were predictable enough than knowing one value was enough to derive the other around 90% of the time. If you're rocking custom armors at your table with significant differentials, more power to you. But CGL never really did that to any notable extent (hence the correlation of 0.9), and so nothing was really lost when they stopped pretending otherwise.

The Catalayst board, IMO, is full of yes-men. It is the developers playground, though, so if you want something official cleared up, they're more likely to have it first.

Dumpshock has a longer relationship with the Shadowrun community, though. Freelncers from every era come through here, and sometimes stuff leaks here before it appears anywhere else. Unofficially, this is more a haven for freelancers and other CGL support staff than the official boards. You'll definitely get more eyes-on help here, as well as a better perspective.

I've been taking a multi-year break from Shadowrun - the second I've had since I started playing in 1989 (and the last was in 1993-1997). But Dumpshock is still the place I come to talk about this game.

Yea, I was sad when I found out about DS so late in the game...
I also have an account on the "official" forums under same name and pic.......
I think I've posted twice there....