More or less the same here, except that I'd had lots of earlier exposure to Shadowrun so I wasn't bothered by the mechanic. The hurdle was getting new players into it. No lie; SR4 did make it more approachable.

I'm settled in 4th edition, too. In my own mind, there are answers to all the major issues people found with the system.

I bought the core 6th edition book, and while I haven't studied it extensively, one attraction to me is the ability to share Edge with others. I always wanted to create and play a character I would call Lucky Eddie. The team wants him around not so much for his skills as for the fact the rest of the team always seems to be better at what they do when he is around.

The SR4e rules are a dead ringer for NWoD / CoD, not OWoD.

I remain bemused by all the difficulties people have with decking in 3e, I have a single reference sheet from Matrix (with page refs for 3-4 of the reference required, rarely used utilities) and a bookmark on my IC page.
The less risk there is with magic the more SR does become Magic Run - Adepts putting themselves in harms way losing magic from nasty injuries? There's a lesson there. Now it;s very m,uch horses for courses, you want simple Shadowrun 4e, you want nice grit and gravel 3e, you want something closer to a really loose GitS adaption 5e + crowbar (I have yet to see a table, including my own, that has not ended up with multiple page house rules for 5e).

...the issue I had with Adepts in 3E (and earlier versions) is they were at a greater disadvantage than a spell slinger, who could sit back from the combat out of the line of fire, hiding behind cover (like in the armoured van using mage sight goggles through a gunport or from around a corner), be invisible (which unlike in D&D, did not drop once the mage made an attack), have an army of elementals (in the case of a hermetic) to do use their powers, go into melee (with their resistance to normal weapons), provide protection, or pull his/her fat out of the fire. Meanwhile most adept powers required the character be into close combat to be effective. The "Gunslinger Adept" as we know it today really didn't appear until 4E when Adept powers were expanded more, and by then, the magic loss rule was dumped as the wound mechanic had changed. There also wasn't a "luck attribute" (Edge) until 4E which could be permanently burned (and later bought back with Karma) to save your hoop or used to avoid getting that "big smack upside the head" (or deliver one yourself).

As I also mentioned, spell slingers had other means to compensate for magic loss which Adepts didn't, such as various foci, fetishes, metamagic, and nature spirits/elementals. This is why I determined that the rule no longer applied to Adepts in my campaigns. It really didn't unbalance the situation (and didn't apply to spell slingers) as again, in earlier editions, adepts were primarily physical combatants who also start out less powerful than an "out of the box" mundane Sammy (or even spell slinger) did since they usually avoided implants that reduced their MA (or in the case of my campaign "Ki"). Adepts also usually ended up going into close combat against with some very nasty opponents, like paranormals, dual natured beings, and manifested spirits/elementals as they had powers (and usually a weapon focus) that would bypass any resistance/immunity to normal weapons/damage (crikey, the UCAS military ended up using FAB III and a nuke against the bug hive in Chicago and that still didn't completely eradicate them as we saw in Missions seasons 5 - 8 ).

As to Decking, 5E simplified the matrix mechanics enough to where the GM doesn't have to take a lot of time to design the local network and all the various nodes etc, then end up running what becomes effectively a separate session just for the decker for an hour or so while the other players sit around bored, play cards, fire up the XBox or PlayStation, or go out to get beer and snacks (basically running in the Matrix was akin to a "dungeon crawl"). Again, as I mentioned I used MS Excel on a notebook computer to streamline the process as best I could).

Eh, could be. It's been a long time at this point since we've played either of them.

The only real difference is the Dice used... D6's for Shadowrun, and D10's for nWOD/Chronicles of Darkness...

Obviously we have some VERY different experiences Kyoto Kid with our SR3 - The first adept I ever saw was a Gun Adept - Wild West Gunslinger type- who picked up Centering fairly early on and was amazing at what he did. I've never had to isolate the decker from the rest of the group as either A) They are feeding info back as they are finding it and getting input from the team for other things they need while everyone is leg working, and B) split my time between the group members doing things just like in any other instance when the party is functionally 'split'.

Decking wise - You don't have to design Nodes mini dungeon in 3e, just a security sheaf, which can be genned on the fly in a couple of minutes if need be, or, you can have a page with half a dozen or so pregenned ones up for use at the drop of a hat, a metaphor if one is really needed (often a Reality Filter saves time on this) and an idea of what the Deckers objective is. The only time it bogs down is if the decker ends up in a fight with a security decker or a stack of IC on an Alerted system. But this is all much the same as anyone going to chat with some local gangers or contacts and getting into a dustup, or getting jumped while doing black market shopping - and even then unless people want to sit and wait you cans witch between characters.

But as I say, horses for courses. Some folks find Ad&d 2e overly complicated but will play and run games of Pathfinder with every option allowed. Likewise I have seen players get lost in 5e D&D but can recite Dramatic Systems from Mage the Ascension.

...yeah dealing with countermeasures and matrix combat was usually the worst part (one of the major systems he had to deal with on a couple occasions had extremely tight security as it was a governmental not corporate system). The pregenerated "hosts" and nodes I used were what I set up in Excel and yes, it did help streamline moving about in the system). IN a situation with gangers or other runners, usually more than one character is involved. That isn't the case with decking unless you have a team of deckers so yes players can get bored. I did my best to switch back and forth, pausing the decking for a bit and going to what the other characters were doing at the time then back to the decking, etc. That helped to keep everyone more involved. I've been in groups as a player where when it was the decker's turn, we just all sat around and twiddled our thumbs (too bad we didn't have fidget spinners back then).

My namesake character began her career in 1E and was converted to 2E then 3E. She was primarily a melee Adept (in 1E/2E that was about all you could be). She did pick up a gun (Ruger Warhawk) after having gone through the A Fist Full Of Karma segment in Harlequin's Back and improved her skill with it along the way but with no other augmentations (as she was awakened, no smartlink since implants reduced her MA and cost powers). When I finally "retired" her (3E), she had amassed something like 380 total Karma and was a grade 6 initiate (yes she did take a couple hits on MA early on in her career).

As it's been nearly ten years since I even cracked open a 3E book, I don't remember if improved ability could be used with firearms (I know in 4E and 5E it does). In any effect she was still far more deadly with her weapon focus and fists than with a gun, and due to the mechanics for melee, in some cases it made her more dangerous to attack as she'd usually roll better in defence than her opponent's attack.

For 5E Missions I resurrected her concept but more as a "gunbunny" type, primarily, armed with dual Ruger Warhawks (she has the Ambidexterity quality and a pool with pistols [revolvers] good enough that she can split it) as well as a Remington 900 as she didn't have the funds to start off with a weapon focus (though she still had Blades at 6). I initially burned out 1 point of MA to get some minor bio (Alpha Orthoskin 2 and Muscle Toner 2 as well as an Alpha Smartlink since Chicago had an ambient background count of 2 which negated most Adept powers like Improved Ability, Mystic Armour, etc. up to that rating (basically started with only Improved Initiative 2 and Combat Sense 5). She is now Prime Runner Status+ (360 TKE) with an initiate grade of 7, MA of 7, and Adept Centering 7 with the perfect time quality. Loved it when she "checked the wind" (Centering) to totally negate the penalty for a blind shot through a mirrored windscreen and nailed the driver with her "huntin. rifle".

Kyoto, I know you said you didn't like it that a mage/adept could deck, but, IMO, that makes it better because the GM can run a whole session in the Matrix. It also makes the 'Runners more versatile.

...however, it made the dedicated matrix specialist totally moot which took something away, and to a point, worked to homogenise the archetypes (particularly when you ran up against the hard skill caps for your character's concept and had to spend karma on something, basically you ended up with a lot of "jacks of all trades, masters of none").

Personally I'm glad they went back to making Deckers unique again (as well as Riggers) in 5E. That is sort of what made Shadowrun, "Shadowrun".

In 3e Improved Ability worked for anything, combat skills costing more than non combat active skills. Centering could be used with Imp Ability to lower TNs - delicious called shots. For me it is often the 'underworld' types that go off solo as, while back up is nice, most criminals don't like being known and dealing with people they don't know "Come alone" or "Only one friend" tends to be the mantra, so it was not unheard of for the street sam to do solo meets (or infact the Gun adept had a habit of wandering off). Likewise with the mage characters not wanting to share details of their Magical Organisation with everyone - just in case.

But we all work with the tools in different ways, speaking of which i need to go and convert some more Maria Mercurial material because the team is actually trying to arrange a meetup with New Horizons to try and sort things out without anymore yakuza hit teams or a threat to Ms Mercurial. That's gonna be fun!

Given that the WoD systems run pretty much fine with their 'hard skill caps' since pretty much forever, the decision to move SR4 effectively to the Trinity/Exalted system was bold, even radical - but not 'surprising' in the sense of system design. While I agree with you that investment into your main character focus should gain you something, I personally found that this means Essence. Anything else, Mages or Technomancers will do better. So any 'matrix specialist' not modified with all the implants you could get your hands on, simply... wasn't a matrix specialist.

Individually, those effects were small, the sum however made a huge difference - a difference nobody without that investment could match (or steal, or simply lose for that matter), even if they were able to do matrix searches, use drones or agents - hell, even hack simple nodes. Could there have been more implants to make this differentiation more significant? Could the hacking difficulty curve have been more steeper or exponential? Could Attributes factor in more? Sure... those are tweaks, not system re-hauls. Taking the ability away to use drones or agents from normal users is like limiting the use of guns to certain archetypes in a traditional fantasy RPG.

To me, the 'it just works' approach of the SR4 matrix when it came to integrating and actually using it presented a so tremendous game flow advantage, that all other considerations are pretty much obliterated. In SR5, deckers are back to being NPCs like in SR3... the matrix just isn't worth the rules hassle.

Of course, I'm not entirely certain how serious I should take the whole "jacks of all trades, masters of none" argument:


Personally, I stopped regarding anything under the lead of Hardy as "Shadowrun". That started with 'War' and includes the following reboot retcon of the Matrix.

Shadowrun unfortunately died pretty much with the exodus of the old team after the 20th anniversary and what we see is just it's CFD-reanimated corpse, shambling on, gorging itself on money instead of brains.
The mechanics of WiFi (SR5&SR6), Limits & Marks (SR5) or Edge (SR6) were just random symptoms of the same disease.

...In 3E it was easy to get augmentation as well as a fairly decent deck (which was easier to upgrade/customise) and your programmes. Slashing starting resources like was done in 4E onward made doing so more difficult. For one the price of Bioware really didn't come down that much if at all (and in some cases, increased). Admittedly simplifying all augmentations to just use Essence was one of the smart ideas as the old Body Index system in previous editions was a pain in the hoop to track. Also glad they ditched trying to quantify components like memory, I/O processing power, etc. I do miss teh ability to build custom decks however (more later)

Now granted in 4E you only needed a commlink with a hot Sim module which was much less expensive than a full cyberdeck. However in 5E they made it really difficult to get even a mediocre deck and have enough left over for augmentations. The decker character I currently have in Missions relies on a cyberarm for being able to contribute in combat (Pistols/SMGs) and armour. She can't even wear a ballistic mask with an armoured business suit and matching longcoat without incurring penalties. Would have loved to get her the Synaptic accelerator genemod (adds 1 die to defence) but was just too expensive as her deck (device rating 3) took up most of her resources and she took resources as her A priority. I gave her the one shot Boosted Reflexes just so she had more than one die of initiative in meatspace and she tends to hack in AR more than VR unless one member of the team has a heavily armoured van she can hide in.

The 3E version had a couple levels of Muscle Toner, Synaptic Acceleration 2, Orthoskin 3, SmartlinkII, and even Bone Lacing to give her a bit of an edge in meatspace (I don't care what anyone says, decekers need to be able to deal with matters when the lead starts flying and not just hide behind a dumpster) as well as a pretty raging deck which she kept customising.

As to custom decks in 5E, I feel why did they even bother as they are so gimped? In the lower cost version, all the attributes are fixed so a decker cannot swap them and Firewall is way too difficult to get at a meaningful rating due to the availability (the highest you can get at character creation is rating 3).

Other than that I find decking in 5E to not be anywhere near the pain it was in 3E.

The Security Tally was way more elegant in SR3 that the equivalent in SR5... and things as Marks weren't there, either. So for me, SR5 managed to add complexity to the SR3 system.

The hassle SR3 was all the micromanagement with memeory... but even then, Tortoise Mode allowed for working without an expensive deck - provided your programs were silent, as Tortoise Memory was cheap.

...I felt h having to map things out for the various grids was a bit cumbersome. Yeah I learned to deal with it, but it was kind of like designing a dungeon crawl for the decker (and I even shortcut some things).

In 5E the the basic concern for the is Host Rating and Firewall to see if the Decker can even get in. Of course there are"backdoors" (cameras, vending machines, possibly even the coffee maker that all may be connected by the Host...or not) to bypass the firewall.

Where I feel 5E breaks down is for the player with the plethora of different matrix actions. I actually found a chart that I printed off as well as printed several pages from PDF supplements that introduced additional ones so I didn't have to go paging around looking for them. While decks have been simplified a bit (no more managing memory capacity & such) I feel it is sort of like having a Mac in RL, where to upgrade, you pretty much have to buy a brand new one rather than simply modifying attributes and components of your existing hardware. That is a pretty hefty price given you usually only get one third of your original purchase price selling used gear. In Missions we use the same procedure as for upgrading cyberware to take some of the "sticker shock" out of purchasing a 300,000+¥ piece of gear (players pay the difference +25% in between the price of the old component new one). As I mentioned the custom deck system is ridiculous as it really isn't as "customised" as it was in 3E. There I could take a stock cyberdeck and modify the drek out of it. or if my character had the skills/skillsofts, time, and resources, build a "one off" (I actually had a GM that let me do that at character creation using using middle lifestyle to calculate the time cost in addition to that for the components and tools, ended up with a deck that was between a Renraku Kraftwerk and Transys Highlander which was designed more towards stealth than combat, for just under the cost of a stock Kraftwerk).

I remember in one of the "axioms" of being a decker back then was "never trust someone else's tech".

Yeah I'll admit, the whole having to get marks on things is annoying (as are limits in general), but in 3E deckers primarily went after hosts and data, and systems directly hooked into the matrix, not vehicles (that was the rigger's job) or anything with wireless (including your chrome). I built my decker for Missions to have as high a pool as possible (with hacking specialisation in Hosts, Cerebral Boosting 2, Cortical Nanites 3 and uses psyche with the Narco genemod bonus), and gave her the Go Big or Go Home quality. In the matirx she's deadly, but when the lead and mana starts a flyin', she looks for that big dumpster heavily armoured vehicle, or corner of a building to hide behind.

That is what rubs me really the wrong way about SR5 & SR6.

SR4 had rules for building your own hardware modules, which is quite frankly, kind of strange, given the tech involved.

And it had programming rules, even open source rules... featuring that those did not decay as cracked corp software, only kind of. (And non-cracked corp software was out of the question for anything.)

So when I look at SR5 & SR6... what do i see? the big, bad neo-anarchist 'deckers'... queuing up for buying corp produce - and the specific corp produce for hacking the new, unhackable, secure matrix.

Sooo...is anyone here less apathetic about 6th than me and has taken a look at 30 Nights yet?

...+1.

Sixth Edition isn't real, and it can't hurt you.

Phew, good to know

Any chance you got a write up for those houserules I could look at?

I did. All the tech parts are cringe-worthy - but at least they gently suggest not destroying all the toys of Riggers, Deckers & Sams. Just most. Hooray?
In fact, they don't even kill the unwashed cybered masses like Cutting Black tells us! How is the Magical Master-race ever gonging to shine?!

You can probably salvage most of it for a generic, 'Magical Threat'-centered story arc that just happens to play in a city without power & technology - just in case all those mundanes depending on tech did not feel useless enough in that kind of plot already.

...so is SR 7 going to be Earthdawn 2090?

I have a friend who's done Shadowrun from 1st edition, and for the longest time 3rd has been his favorite. Not for the rules, mind you, but for the setting, the lore, the story. The impression I got from him when I told him about the highlight events from Cutting Black was that he was glad he's not kept pace with the lore since the start of SR5.

...same here. I also felt that 3E had the best world setting. I ran a campaign that was completely based in Europe. There were a lot of great threads and sub plots to use, most of which were poorly explained away in and after System Failure and some that were just forgotten.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I have been converting that campaign (still set in 2061/62) over to 5E mechanics and doing some serious houseruling. (such as perception being an attribute roll like Memory or Composure, Using appropriate knowledge skills to complement active skills, and making all Chrome "throwback" but still granting bonuses as if it were wireless).

That's because SR3 had a world setting at the very end of SR3: Shadows of North America, Shadows of Europe and Shadows of Asia. In fact, even Shadows of Latin America was impacted by the embezzlement & subsequent walk-out... as was the SR4 6th World Almanac and the new corp book.

Mostly, I run SR4A games using SR2 & SR3 lore books, using updates from current SR4 books like Seattle 2072 and the 6th World Almanac. Things like the Magical Matrix, Borgs and the 4th World reenactment in Denver just... never happened and will never happen. Like the things from Cutting Black.


System Failure was quite weak as a SR3 book, indeed. The flat out declaration that the big AI were dead was really bad, and killing off Captain Chaos as a SysOp and the Shadowland node system really drained the lore. ShadowSea is worse than Craigslist, Fastjack & Jackpoint just did not compare... and Jackpoint under Bull is just the same mess like anything else including Bull.

It was truly unfortunate that The Untethered Life never happened in Attitude due to the walk-out from AH... but, alas... we all know that the ghost of Cap is out there somewhere. Given SoLA, Chile would be my bet... if I were a betting man.


I still think you are seriously better off basing that on SR4A, as things like cyberware having DNI and internal connections are default there. And don't get me started on the things they did to some implants like the Trauma Damper in SR5...

Equipment can be wireless enabled for ease of integration... or not, at no real penalty. Or just Skinlink'ed - a nice option they just flat out retconned out of SR5 - without any explanation other than '..but combat-hacking, bruh!'.
There are no 'WiFi bonuses', limits and marks either and Unwired even features optional rules for a SR3 style Security Tally. And if you really want that 'Deck' lingo... just call everything up & including Response 3 a Commlink and everything above that a 'Deck'.
Playing Traveller 2nd Edition from Mongoose, even SR4A computer rules are horrible micro-management anyway. The SR3 deck rules or that stuff from SR5... just look positively insane in comparison.

And of course, SR4A features a core rule book that not only is actually including errata and polished layout to find things, but a master index referring to all the core supplements.

The only thing going for SR5 was that it was the most current and thus officially supported edition in things like Missions or convention events... and that is now in the past.

you mean actually throwback, as in "actually has all of the functions that the old 'ware had back when it was not specially designed to be hacked by your enemies" rather than the new stupid throwback where your throwback gear is retconned into being incapable of functioning without being connected to the wireless matrix that didn't exist when your gear was made?

...there were some things I didn't care for in 4E. One was turning deckers into "phone phreaks" by using coimmlinks instead of decks which allowed anyone to hack, even spell slingers. I also was not too keen on the hard skill caps as well along with spells becoming way too uber powerful while adepts got crocked by the initiation rules (needing to both increase their MA and initiate to get a power point [this was "sort of" fixed in Street Magic with the alternate rule of a flat 20 Karma per PP]).

I actually prefer the autofire rules in 5E as they impose a penalty from defence tests rather than increasing the DV, and love the suppression fire mode (allows for characters who are not primary combatants to have an effect in combat). I also like the fact that Genetics and Nanotech are better set up than they were in 4E.

I actually introduced a "skinlink" bio option when I was running in 3E. which I will be using in the updated campaign.

The final point is why I chose to use 5E over 4E or just going back to 3E. All the setting "fluff" is still primarily 3E particularly SoE, SoA (for Russia) Target Wastelands, and the two SOTA books. Also using Euro War Antiques (4E), the setting notes for Hawai'i from the Paradise Lost module (2E). as well as material from the Germany, and London Sourcebooks (1E).

@ Jaid: Exactly, all the original functionality. If you wanted to hack someone's internal systems in 3E, you had to physically jack into their gun, head, or cyber prosthesis. I also thought that teh 5E version of throwback was weak as the old stuff should have still worked. I have a 14 year old Notebook that still functions fine just as it did when I bought it, Crikey I have a TI-1200 calculator from the 1970's that works as it always did.

You mean the Magical Matrix? The one that is powered by the Souls of 100 dead Technomancers? Where everything is virtual and backup-ed everywhere?

Because wireless matrix predates back to SR3 - in fact, the Cellular Satellite Service provided that matrix worldwide to every cellphone and deck with a cellular interface. (It got destroyed in the 2nd Crash)

Well, to each his on, I suppose... but I kind of get the feeling that you didn't not quite take a look at the 20th Anniversary Edition... some of those things are kind of misconceptions of what SR4A does... and what SR5 does. SR5 is basically the MagicRun edition of SR4, with lot's of inflation added on top.

Like everyone is allowed to pick up a gun and shoot, indeed. Does that diminish the street samurai? If the only thing defining you character's role is a single piece of gear... I got really bad news for you. Because if there's one thing 'spell slingers' got to spare, it's money... so the mage was more likely to get a better deck. On the other hand... what you think of an 'exclusive' character concept in both SR3 & SR5 still is just a name under 'Connections' for the spell slinger. And God help you if you ever lost your deck or it was slagged by a Power Ball. The way the matrix works in SR5 was a complete aberration in the history of Shadowrun, and unceremoniously dumped again with SR6. Personally, I think that even SR6 is more similar than SR5 to SR1-4 matrix, as it has no MARKs. Still, SR3 Matrix was a lot different than people actually cared to remember... and it did not age too well. And neither has the variable target number.

My general impression is that in SR5, Magic became even more powerful - especially compared to Mundanes. Buying power Points was flat out broken in SR3 and only included as a stop-gap solution since there were no initiation rules in the main book - it completely threw any semblance of balance between Samurai and Adepts completely out of whack. Then again, since essence costs in SR5 went through the roof, the halving of the lower part of bio/cyber was removed, cyber is now brickable... let's just say it's pretty obvious they don't want people to play cybered mundanes. If you want to play lightly cybered Adept deckers or Mages, though... SR5 is the perfect system, as there are less skills involved than in SR4. Playing a hacker in SR4 really meant investment in Skills and Essence. In SR5 & SR3 - not so much... mostly money.

Can't really change your preconceptions, though... only encourage you to check how the systems actually work without house rules. And the skill scale thing... well, it's something that always was like that in the WoD. Personally, the option to build a new character that is world-class in one areas is something I really think grounds experienced characters. Like the Olympics - it kind of would be boring if there is no new talent, because the old guard has such a head start.

That's in SR4 already, it's called wide burst.

..and that is in SR4 was well.

Those were just carbon copies from SR4. Actually, with the whole CFD thing, the nano and gene thing in SR5 was a lot worse.

..scratch that. When I take a look at the rules for Nanite Hives in SR5, that is horrendous, compared to how it was in SR4. Basically telling people not to get them. Then again, Nanites did only degrade monthly in SR5 without them, instead of weekly like in SR4... making Nanites even better for Awakened, instead for Mundanes. MagicRun even there.

The third edition was released in 1998. So Shadows of North America was released in 2001, and System Failure and the Fourth Edition in 2005. SoNA doesn't really belong to "the very end of SR3". What's true is that Dragons of the Sixth World in 2003 and Shadows of Europe in 2004 (technically, the writing of SoE started first, but DotS got out before) kickstarted some sort a "World Tour" with Shadows of Asia, and the ill-fated Shadows of Latin America, but also a broader geographic coverage in books like Loose Alliances, Sprawl Survival Guide or State of the Art:2064.

Shadows of Latin America cancellation was a decision made along the the move to the 4th edition in 2005, with the "Shadows of..." format discontinued and replaced by the "two-cities" format (in Runner Havens, Corporate Enclaves and Feral Cities). That was four years before the embezzlement story and the departure of freelancers, which took place in 2009.

As far as I understand, the "Shadows of..." did not sell that well, especially given the amount of time, work, and pages they required. And obviously the 100 pages in Sixth World Almanac could not replace or properly update the 700 pages from 3rd edition (and 850 if you include SoLA) after the five years hiatus of System Failure.

So your point is that the actual 'world setting', instead of just focusing North America, was either published 2004 (SoE) or 2005 (SoA)? Kind of at the very end of SR3?

Concerning SoLA, there was an option fostered by Synner to do a release as PDF only even after SR4 (that's why the fan PDF wasn't released earlier) - that possibility died when Hardy took over and declared that option dead. Thus, the fan-release coordinated by Synner.

As a whole, I agree on those books not generating enough RoI - that's why you saw the shovel-ware PDF style thing under Hardy, at the end of Sr4 and in extremes in SR5 where gear-books were split up a lot.

...I admit I prefer point build systems (such a system was an optional choice in both 2E and 3E (Shadowrun Companion). The one major complaint I have with 5E is that they went back to the old priority table (the Karma Build option is weak in comparison to the older point build ones). For my campaign I am using the Sum to Ten build which gives players a bit more latitude as well as a slightly modified version of the Prime Runner level (as this is a difficult campaign). Basically what I am doing is combining what I like from 3E and 5E together and adding several house rules. Being that I have been involved with Missions for the last four and a half years and that most players in my area are very familiar with and well as have all most of the materials for 5E, that is what influenced my choice. If I had my druthers I'd just run it in 3E again but finding players knowledgeable or even interested in backtracking to an older edition is a real challenge.

I also fell out of the loop shortly after 4E was released partly because, as I mentioned, I had some issues with it and and setting. as well as because there was a general falloff of interest where I live at the time (hence I missed the 50th Anniversary edition), I actually did do another run-through of the campaign arc in 3E about 10 years ago and was in a short lived 3E campaign after that). I only got back into SR when I learned of a missions group about 5 years ago which met weekly at a FLGS nearby. Since then I became very comfortable with 5E (about the same as I was with 3E), in spite of its flaws, and over the years, picked up all the books on PDF.

Oh and I disagree that playing a Decker in 3E didn't require lots of skills particularly if you wanted to repair, modify, and upgrade your deck using the deck customisation rules as you needed quite good repertoire of supportive knowledge skills (as these actually had more value due to the complementary skills rule). The other part about 3E I liked were the resource levels as you could start with a pretty good deck, good mental attributes and enough physical augmentation to keep from ending up on a slab in the morgue. I actually played two different Deckers. who were quite successful.

practically speaking, no the wireless matrix does not go that far back. oh sure, you could connect to the wired matrix through a wireless connection, to some extent at least. but the matrix was most definitely wired.

...yep the decker just couldn't sit in an armoured van and remotely hack a host. Back in the "old days, he or she had to go in with the rest of the team and physically "jack in" perform overwatch for the team, open doors, loop cameras, disable countermeasures. suppress alerts, all while avoiding IC and spiders. Being a resourceful stealth decker was far more valuable and programmes meant a lot more.

They sort of tried to bring that back in 5th but with the reduction in resources (which occurred in 4E) pretty much all your starting funds as well as attribute and skill points (at lower priorities) went to supporting decking with little left over for protecting your hoop and being at best, marginally effective in the meat world. My current decker violet primarily works from AR just so she can "jack out" when it looks like drek is going to hit the fan in meatspace so she can get out of the line of fire. Her 3E counterpart had no trouble when the lead started flying and could dish out some of her own pain (usually with her Ares Super Squirt II [modified to look like a toy squirt gun] that was usually loaded with some nasty DMSO/toxin cocktail in or her Savaltte Guardian with APDS).

You really should check out the SR3 Matrix sourcebook and Unwired:

In Unwired, it is stated that the backbones of the matrix still are fibreoptic cable. And in Matrix, it is stated that every cellphone and PDA is connected to the matrix over cellular service... because everything is the matrix.

The big difference between SR4 & SR3 is the unification of the wireless interface, which, from a gameplay perspective, is the only non-masochistic option*... and the fact that SR3 had world-wide coverage through the Cellular Satellite Service.

*There were options emulating remote control decks with decks back until ShadowTech - and it was just arcane and painful.

Well, YMMV - from what I have seen, in SR3 even, Karma-gen became the norm as it made min-maxing more costly. And in SR3, that was a fan supplement.


I still don't get the 'setting' part... then again, I get that you never actually got into SR4(A) and SR5 grew into a habit as it was the only game in town.

That's too bad. After playing D&D5 and the more I get into Traveller 2nd, the less I can even imagine playing game system parodies like SR6 or SR5, with their weird complex comparison mechanics for basic game elements like Limits on guns or comparing the attack value of the gun to the armor value of that target to determine who gets Edge. Even SR3 kind of looks silly in comparison - as the actual results of those high-detail rules are still producing the same patterns over and over, so abstraction would have been prudent. Then again, it was a system of it's time, where high-detail rules were the norm.


And if you just were a rich mage or an adept, the only thing you really needed was Computer and a lot of money. SotA added the Improved Skill in SR3, too. Compare that to SR4, where there are two entire Skill Groups dedicated to the Hacker... and tell me again, how some dabbler with a Commlink is going to steal your character spotlight. The implants like Encephalon and Maht SPU are the same, but things like Simsense Booster were added in SR4. So unless you cybered up, you were missing speed.


Actually, quite the opposite was true in most of the cases I experienced - the team moved in with some Radio Links (see Matrix SB), plugged that into the super secret jackpoint and the decker lay drooling in the armored van... because exposing his limp body and his incredible expensive deck to gunfire kind of was a no deal. As there was no AR, you had no real option to move with the team... and mostly, all of what you just said was hand-waved by the GM using a decker contact that had the Radio Links shipped to the team, as that allowed for (ch)easy dramatic license, like the signal cutting out, etc.


Well, leave it to Hardy and Bull to screw things up for Mundanes... in SR6, if you have an cranial deck, if gets bricked (which happens now automatically at the end of the security tally), it's as much damage as a cortex bomb. And even if you have an external deck... if you glitch on the repair roll, it's totaled. Better play a Technomancer, eh?

It's truly unfortunate that SR6 is not a system of it's time (and SR5 neither)... but creating something with the mechanical robustness & character balance of D&D5 is probably something that the current team will never achieve.

sure. your cellphone can make calls over the matrix, and your PDA can make and receive emails. that's very nice.

it is also very much not the same thing. there is no "my deck is connected to the matrix, I am close to that computer terminal, therefore I can directly hack that computer terminal" situation (never mind being able to hack some random person's cybereyes and view all their pictures). your deck would be connected to some specific broadcasting device over your wireless connection (which most decks wouldn't even have, certainly none had such a thing by default), and you would start in the matrix from wherever that wireless access point is, then go wherever else you go from that point. if someone puts up a barrier in between a device you want to reach and whatever access point you are connected to, it does not matter whether you are 5 feet or 5 miles or 5 astronomical units away from that device, you cannot use your deck to hack it without either installing a new connection somehow (and no, the ability to change something to become wireless does not make that thing inherently wireless), or going through everything that is between the thing you're actually wirelessly connected to and the device you want to reach.

some devices in SR3 had wireless capability. that does not mean that the matrix as a whole was in any practical sense wireless, any more than the existence of highly specialized electrical vehicles 50 years ago means that you could just go to a typical car dealership and buy an electric car then in the same sense that you could do so today. yes, they had electric vehicles in 1970 (like the lunar rover). no, that doesn't mean that it is reasonable to describe the 1970s as having electrical vehicles in a broad sense.

And if you used the cellular service, that was the local access grid. Basically going directly to any cellphone and PDA. Congratulations - that's pretty much how it is in SR4 with commlinks.


True... not only in SR3, but also in SR4... just in SR3, you had no way to defend your cell phone or PDA... or vehicle for that matter. That was only introduced in SR4. And given that there are offline systems or wired only systems in SR4, as detailed in Unwired... well:

The forced hackability for gear & ware was introduced in SR5. In SR4, turning off wireless capability came at no real penalty, especially using Skinlink. (Unless it was the wifi of your commlink. Kind of a penalty not getting calls... Then again, that's what airplane mode is for in cellphones.)

Mostly, WiFi in SR4 is about daily convenience, like bluetooth today.


Cellphones, PDAs and vehicles had cellular matrix access - and all of those even could be used for tortoise hacking... which was kind of the predecessor of AR hacking. You whole home was connected to the matrix anyway, as per SSG.

Most people did not did not quite know how connected the life & world in SR3 already was - and how bad it was to make an enemy of someone who knew how to hack stuff. And concerning the matrix not being wireless... well, like I said - Cellular (Satellite) Service in Matrix, wired backbones in Unwired.