Hello. I'm new to Shadowrun and don't have a whole lot on it (I just have the core rulebook). I will be beginning a game with a group that plays using 2nd Edition Shadowrun, and as such I need to know what changes I should expect. I have a fairly firm grasp of the 3rd Edition rules (I'm still fuzzy on the Matrix and some of the stuff on magic), and have gleaned a little bit from the Conversion section of the core rulebook, but any info on what to expect would be appreciated (especially character creation).

My gaming group resisted moving from 2nd to 3rd edition, and now that we've done it we wish we'd moved to 3rd earlier. Instead of the group making you learn 2nd Edition, which will be wasted effort when they all move over to 3rd, I suggest you try harder to get them to move to 3rd.

Perhaps convince them to add the following 3 rule areas from 3rd edition to their 2nd edition campaign, and see if they like it:

The Initiative System in 3rd allows everyone to go once (in order starting with the fastest) before those with very high initiative take their 2nd and 3rd actions in the Combat Turn. 2nd Edition allows the very fast people to take multiple actions before the slow people get their first. I remember in 2nd Edition my slow magician getting her first action late in the Combat Turn, and completing her dive for cover just after the Samurai had wasted all the opponents. In 3rd Edition I'd be able to dive for cover while the bullets were still flying, or maybe even being useful.

2nd Edition rules allow magical healing of magically-caused drain damage. My Elf Shaman (charisma , for example, would take 1 minute to prepare for a battle by summoning a Force 9 nature spirit, taking serious physical drain damage, and then using Resist Pain and Treat to heal herself up. If I'd summoned a Force 8 nature spirit I'd have serious Stun throughout the battle. 3rd Ed. is better on this.

In 2nd Edition, my Shaman could astrally enter a domain (such as an apartment building), conjure a nature spirit in that domain, and have it perform services for me (such as turning off the security system or opening a fire exit). All for free. In 3rd Edition the Shaman has to physically get inside the domain before Conjuring.


A few of the most obvious other differences:
Skills: General Skills, Concentrations, and Specializations of skills are allowed. Fewer starting skill points in 2nd Ed., but the most common 2nd Ed. combat skills cover more ("Firearms" covers light pistols through light machine guns and grenade launchers) ("Armed Combat" covers clubs, edged weapons, and pole arms). Etiquette in 2nd Ed. requires you take a concentration. No free Knowledge Skills in 2nd Ed. 2nd Ed. uses Skill Web, and has no notion of linked-attribute. I suggest the campaign not tackle the change over in Skills till they are completely ready to move to 3rd.
Damage level of Spells in 2nd Edition is specified at the time you learn the spell. They could switch to the new way anytime.
Being a meta-human Race in 2nd Edition is Priority "A" (or "C" with an optional rule). All races get 1/10th earned Karma into Karma Pool.

We handled the change from 2nd Ed. to 3rd Ed. within our campaign as follows: Characters kept current gear and money and spirits. Characters calculated a "karma allowance" equal to the Karma invested in their character's skills and attributes plus their a Good Karma. Players remake their character however they like in 3rd Edition, keeping the same money value in Resources as they had originally (but not actually getting any money), and then spend their Karma Allowance to improve their character. Any unused Karma Allowance remains as Good Karma. Karma pool and team Karma Pool carried forward, except meta-humans lose an appropriate part of their Karma Pool to go over to Good Karma.

So, in other words, most of the changes were simply making things more balanced for everyone, but nothing on the order of the changes ffrom 2nd to 3rd Edition D&D. Got it.

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, pretty much.

I don't remember all the 2nd edition rules too well now, but on the whole I think 3rd edition is more balanced and sensible. I'm sure people miss a lot of things from 2nd edition which were fun/powerful/silly, but generally speaking those were changed in the interests of game balance and suchlike.

The changes aren't as major as D&D 2nd to 3rd edition, but then, in my opinion, and from what I remember, 2nd edition SR wasn't as bad as 2nd edition D&D in terms of rules and being logical (or not), and so on.

Most of the fundamental things (like firing a gun, working out damage, effects of cyber and bio ware, casting spells etc) are *roughly* the same in both editions of SR.

I'd definately try to convince your group to play 3rd ed SR, although I'm sure they have their own good reasons for not doing so.