I'm totally new to this kind of games and i have some (stupid maybe) question and i'm wondering, how many players does it have to be? can i play alone?
how does it all work? is there a "story" to follow in the Shadowrun third edition book? or do i have to make the story by my self?

what is needed to begin playing? books, dices ect?

as you can se i have no clue about this, but my interest started when i recently played Shadowrun for Super nintendo.. then i remembered seing a book at my friends house long ago, called shadowrun.. so after a little serching i found this site.

please help me out here!

regards stefan

good point.

I guess I was mentioning more mechanics oriented books.

You can play with the basic 3rd ed book. I'd suggest starting with that, and if you like it then you can buy other suppliments as you need them. People here are , as you've already seen, quite happy to offer suggestions.

Are you familiar with what Role Playing Games are?

ok =) thank!
I'll have a look around and see what i can find. I'll ask some of my friends too, and see if i have anyone to play with at all....

thanks all!

Everyone's done a good job at telling you what you need to get started; but, leme fill you in on 'how it works'.

A roleplaying game is a chance to create characters and play them in another setting. In Shadowruns case that setting is a dark cyberpunk future perforated with magic. And the characters are Shadowrunners, people who take jobs from giant corporations to attack other giant corporations for fun and profit.

You and anywhere between 1 to about 8 of your friends (3-5 is a better number to shoot for) get together around the table. One person is the Game Master and everyone else is a Player.

Players each have a Character. A Character is a persona they play. An elf magician, an ork decker. Whatever. The player has a sheet, called a Character Sheet with all their characters information on it. Stuff like name, age, what they look like, and Stats. Stats are how able your character is. Like a strong person might have a Strength of 4 or 5 while a dumb person might have an Intelligence of 1.

These stats decide how many dice you roll to accomplish something. So if you want to lift something heavy you roll Strength. If you want to write a thesis on the mating habits of the gnat then you roll Intelligence.

The Game Master is everyone and everything else. You decide where the game takes place, what things around them look like, how the environment reacts to the players. The people they meet are played by you. Every ganger, security guard, and cyber mercinary that trys to gun them down is played by you.

It's easy to say that the Game Master (or GM) is pitted against the Players; but, that's not the case. The GM creates a world and challanges for the players to meet. It's not your job to kill the Player's Characters (or PCs) but to write them a story they can star in. GMs are also the final arbitrators on everything. The player thinks he could jump across the chasm and the GM thinks he can't, then he can't.

The GM is not burdened with any restrictions. He could, if he chose, send an entire armored devision against the Players, with air support and artillery. It's only his common sense as to what could provide a challange to the Players that they still have a chance of overcoming would restrict him.

It's sometimes a thankless job, but it can be a very satisfying one.

Now that the Player have Characters, and the GM has a story for those Characters to fill, you gather around the table and start playing. The GM describes a scene, the players react to it, the GM describes how their reactions change the scene, players react again. Rolling dice, or GM discression, decides outcomes of fire fights, car chases, political debates, and belching contests.

What dice you roll, what numbers you try to get, how many dice you get to roll is all part of the System. Every Roleplaying game has a System, and they're all similar and different (Using different types of dice, different numbers, ect.). The System is used to resolve stuff that's hard to do. Opening a door isn't rolled out; but, breaking it down is.

That in a nutshell is how Roleplaying works. It's basically the same thing for any other Roleplaying game, with a different System and Setting. Check it out with your friends. I'm sure they'd have a blast.

I think it would be a good idéa if at least the majority of your group was beginners like you. If it were otherwise, you would have a hard time keeping up in terms of getting into the mood and imagining surroundings. I often find that completely new players find what we do stupid, as they only see a bunch of guys sitting ´round a table, talking franticly to eachother.

Find other new players, and take it slow. Find out how to play role-playing games like we all did at one time, long ago. Read the books and experiment.

Hey and just because you're the GM doesn't mean you can't play a character. I usually play a character with my group to provide a little backup in fights (or fill holes in the team), and just let my friends do the talking.

Good luck and I hope you have great fun playing and GMing!

In fact, if you're GMing a new group and you want to play a character, it'd be a good idea to be either the group's decker or rigger. Deckers are usually off in their own (virtual) world much of the time, and they have a set of rules which are both very complex and inherently different from everyone else's basic rules; riggers are the same way. As well, both of them are fairly limited with just what can be had from the basic "core" book. Generally, it's easier for the GM to take over one or even both of these roles and just sort of make up the results of their work. All those seperate elements may be a bit much for a group completely new to the system.

This is all good for mechanics, but to give you the spirit...

You are playing characters who might be inspired by the following movies:

Heat
The Italian Job
Ocean's Eleven
Ronin
Payback
The Professional
Resevoir Dogs
Le Femme Nikita
The Big Hit
Charlie's Angels 2000

Except some of them may be magical or cyber-augmented, instead of simply having skills.

They are in a world similar to that of:

Bladerunner
Johnny Mnuemonic
Dark City

Most of these (basically, all but Johnny Mnuemonic and maybe Charlie's Angels) are pretty darn good movies, well worth watching on their own, but as a group they should give you some very good inspiration.

JaronK
Judge Dredd

I would say that what JaronK just posted is ONE type of SR(shadowrun).
But as I often like to remind folks around here.

Falling Down, Die Hard, Negotiator, The Diry Dozen, and even The Running Man are all possible styles of Shadowrun as well.

Quite a few groups love the idea of a mercinary team and indeed shadowrun does support that style very well.
On the other hand, it is by no means the only way that the game can be played.

Quite honestly, read up a little on the atmosphere and history that's provided in the core book, at least, and then play it in a style that you enjoy the most.

Well, that's why I said characters that might be inspired by those movies. Obviously, the game can be played with more heroism, more comedy, or whatever you like... honestly, I've rarely seen a character that wouldn't work in Shadowrun, from elven mages to anime heroes to gritty detectives.

JaronK

wow..didnt expect to get so many replies =) thanks all! now i got lots to think about.. step one will have to be, buy the 3rd ed book thought
but i havent got around asking my friends yet, if anyone else is interested.. got to do that first.. it would be bad if i'm the only one interested in the end =(

Having a book on hand to show and hook them on the concepts involved is useful and having at least the base book will give you an idea of what you're getting into.

Hey bytestorm, where are you located? Maybe someone on the forums has a game you could join, so you can get the feal of the system a little better before you try GMing. (I've played a lot of different RPG's and found that the easiest way to learn is by playing)

I'm in Pittsburgh and starting a game full of first-time players in about a week if you're from around there.

When I first started playing back in '92, five of us decided to play. We all chipped in about $5-6 to buy the core book. That and a Crown Royal bag full of dice was all we used to get started.

Also, 3 of us had read the "Secrets of Power" trilogy.

i'm located in skövde...sweden.. =/ far away from the fun..

You might want to pick up the Shadows of Eurpe then. And maybe we'll have a resident Swede write a Swedish update.

for current movies. Nick Cages National Treasure is pretty good. Especially when he makes a run at stealing the Declaration of Independence. Cage is going for an infiltration type steal, smoozing guards and using disguises to sneak through the defenses, while at the same time Sean Bean is leading a more violent, armed team, trying to cut into the building through the cellers.

There are also runs happening here, bytestorm, if you want to take a quick look in Welcome to the Shadows. If worse comes to worse and you can't find anyone to tabletop with (a lot of us know what that's like) then there's always the option of joining one here.

I recommend 2 bricks of dice, one for skills one for dice pools. though with a little extra effort you can use the same dice. (some results change based on if you avoid something strictly by pool)