sit-rep: to date, I have only played and GMed 2E... in a "meta-campaign" shared with a few other GMs, e.g. friend's brother ran a campaign in high school, friend ran a sequel to that in college, another friend ran a sequel to that, I ran a sequel to that, two of my players ran sequels, and I've run coquels and sequels to those campaigns). All told I've GMed ~200 shadowruns in 2E, and the entire meta-campaign is ~400 shadowruns.

most recent campaign ended... collapsed in spectacular fashion... partly due to rough transition to online playing due to COVID, but mostly due to the vagaries of running games with people you didn't know that well (some of whom end up being more than a little creepy on the issue of Neo-Nazis and Lügenpresse and why I pulled the plug)

so... taking a deep breath... in no rush to run anything again soon, get almost as much kicks out of world-building (and fewer headaches) as I do game-mastering

I want to stick with the meta-campaign (essentially an alternate timeline, 2.75E if you will, where The Big D does not die)

but I'm wondering if it would be easier to recruit players (and have more latitude to filter players, in order to avoid a repeat of Mr. Lügenpresse) if I upgraded to 6E

and how easy would it be to run an alternate history 2E / late 2050s setting in 6E

looking for thoughts from folks who are familiar with post-2E editions

thanks!

I'll be blunt, converting to 6e with the current state of 6e is a very bad plan.

If you feel the need to go to something more modern, go to 20A or 5e. 6e is a poorly written, poorly edited mess with about a third of the rules actually published right now, and the rules assumptions to mirror Hardy's setting are so different from the 2050's that you'll spend as much time writing your own houserules for the conversion as you would recruiting a group for another edition.

thanks, will give 20A and 5E a look and steer clear of 6E

one problem I've encountered, and would still encounter, regardless of if I upgraded to a newer edition or not, is players googling, finding the SR wikia and absorbing info that's 2070-ish that hasn't happened or won't happen in my setting... e.g. I need to make my Obsidian Portal page for the meta-campaign a comprehensive "don't read the wikia, read this" for players, so time wise I'm already committed to re-reading a bunch of 1E and 2E splatbooks

There is an English Shadowrun 2050 source-book for 20A, so if the tech style of 2050 is desired, this gets you there fast. Oddly enough, the German translation is for 5E.

As someone who has played 20A and 5E (and went so far as to preorder the collector's edition book of 5E) I would suggest 20A if you have the choice. 5E made some brave choices which didn't really end up working out so well, with stuff like bounded limits reducing the fun of the game (who wants to have a fantastic roll rendered meaningless by a limit losing you a bunch of improbable hits?) and their matrix system, while clearly designed to stop "stay at home hackers and riggers", is extremely flawed. Other stuff like the absurdly high cost of cyberdecks and vehicle rigs (a feature designed to stop people dabbling in decking and rigging like they did in 20A) is part of a design philosophy that is very clearly built around punishing dabbling and trades suspension of disbelief for questionable gameplay benefits.

If they wanted to get rid of stay at home hackers, just do what any SANE person would do... make a system where the important data is NOT accessible from the Matrix. Kinda have to have the hacker be there.
Also I LOVED the idea of cheap computers that could allow you to hack. Made it so that any character can hack. Hell, a campaign I'm going to be, I have a Combat Mage (more like a healer, but with guns and both stun spells) who has rating three in the Cracking Group and a commlink, so I can be the backup hacker.

I mean, if you're going for a 2e vibe, well... I never played 2nd, but from what I can tell, expensive cyberdecks (and cyberware, for that matter) is not going to feel out of place in terms of updating the campaign. certainly that's what I recall from the small amount of 3rd I was able to play.

Yeah, 5e (you don't upgrade, because nobody can afford to) overcorrected for the costs of cyberdecks after 4e (you don't ever upgrade, because you're already maxed out), and I think 6e was just saying "F the fans, we meant things to be bad, you should have played a mage." Not sure if cyberware followed that trend, but it was still overpriced in 4e (and bioware was about right, except too easy for mages).

Well, 4E had the option to get Nexi - which were more expensive than Comlinks, but not as expensive as Decks.

I mean, it's been a long time since I looked, but I'm pretty sure the high end of resources priority in 3rd edition at least was 1 million nuyen, and if you tried to buy the best stuff, it didn't go very far. and I recall official runs paying out maybe in the 50-60 thousand nuyen range for the most part.

I mean, I don't like a lot of things in 6e, and I'm not fond of 5e either, but these are hardly things where it makes sense to say it is purely the fault of those later editions. you want to blame them for stupid things like armour that doesn't protect you from attacks, laser sights that only really help you aim if they're connected to the matrix, or technomancers being kinda mediocre in their main area of expertise at the same time as they cost too many chargen resources to be able to make them even *have* an additional secondary area of competence, let alone actually be good at anything, go nuts, but expensive cyberware or cyberdecks? that isn't remotely new.

goes back to Neuromancer, TBH...