I'm a gamer who has not played Shadowrun in YEARS (since 1991). I left gaming for awhile, and have played d20 stuff for the last 5 years. Last night I dug out my old, beaten-up Shadowrun stuff, and convinced one of my other old-school gamer friends (another Shadowrun fan) that we should play again.

Except I haven't followed the fortunes of the game very closely, so I need some help. Apparently a 4th Edition is on the way. I missed the 2nd and 3rd editions completely. Should I get the current rulebook, or just wait for the newer edition? Are the various editions compatible? Will my old sourcebooks (Street Samurai Handbook, Sprawl Sites, etc) be of any use to me at all? How major are the rules changes? Is the quality and artwork the same since FASA went under?

I guess asking for a 14-year synopsis is a lot, but if someone could help me in some fashion out I'd appreciate it.

It would take quite a bit of time and typing to describe just how different 3e is from 1e. The biggest difference is the sheer amount of setting changes.

However, if you're interested there is a free SR3 quick start rulebook available online at Battlecorps here

There is also an updated timeline on the Shadowrun website here.

Quick overview on some key things, though. Armor doesn't give auto successes, all staging is set at 2, damage codes have been revised (Heavy Pistols do eqv. to 9M2 now). Physads are called Adepts and don't suck. The last SR book finally gave them a ton of new powers, but they also got quite a few more in a book titled Awakenings which was released about 9 years ago. SSC and SS still are plenty useful.

At this point, I'd at least wait until 4th edition before you buy a new rulebook. Then you can pretty much start fresh, as the new edition will be issuing products aimed at new players (or players who haven't played in 14 years ).

A good place to get caught up on some of the current setting would be the Sixth World Wiki.

Uhm... wow.

Yeah, in that 14 years *everything* has happened.

2nd Edition greatly expanded on 1st edition, and then kept expanding. And kept expanding. And kept... you get the point.

3rd Edition really cleaned up a lot of the rules and streamlined many things.

Having said that the mechanics for 1st - 3rd edition are all at least similar. Dice Pools, Target Numbers, etc.

4th edition is going to change all of that though.

Personally I'd say get the 3rd edition ruleset, that way you can have some idea of the current storyline and what the heck's going on in any sourcebooks out now. In terms of sourcebooks 3rd will be where it's at for at least a year in some sense (I can't imagine 4th edition books really coming out in a flood like D&D did)

As for the metaplot (storyline), uhm.... jeez. Since 2050 (when the game was set in 1989) let's see. Some highlights, in no particular order:

Dunklezahn ran for President
Dunklezahn won
Dunklezahn died in a gigantic blast that left a hole in the Astral
Chicago was nuked (it was to destroy the hive of insect spirits)

Anyone else want to chime in with some of their favorites?

I'd suggest the timeline first, otherwise most of the content in the Wiki makes no sense. But that's just my opinion.

Chicago wasn't nuked. A small chunk of Chicago was nuked and left an irradiated crater.

Downtown Chicago was walled up for two and a half years because the largest bug hive in North America consisting of multiple hives of different bugs got loose. The UCAS sealed the city until Ares used a chemical weapons to clean it up to a point.

Oh, and the bugs spread through the UB, which you probably knew about. BTW, hold onto to UB if you have it... it's worth a fortune on eBay.

The Renraku Arcology in Seattle was taken over by an AI for a year and a half. It killed about 90,000 people who were stuck inside when it closed on Dec. 19, 2059. The AI rumors... Were true. It's now loose... sort of.

Anyway..

• There are no auto successes in 2e and 3e.
• Firearms was broken down into approximately 6-8 skills
• the Matrix still sucks. They tried to fix it twice (Virtual Realities 2.0 and Matrix). They failed. SR4 will burn it down and try again.
• Grounding no longer exists.
• you can travel through living matter, earth and water, and possess people.
• the opposite is also true.
• Initiation has changed.
• There are about 22 metamagics now, but you can only get them one at a time.
• New spirits exist.
• New foci exist.
• There are Adepts who can purchase "Magic Power" to use Sorcery and Conjuring. The rules are more complex than I'm going to go into here, but not that complex.
• There's a new version of the Smartlink
• There's some cool new cyber
• Some cyber from Shadowtech has been "altered" (that's code for FUBAR), specifically the Encephaelon and the Tactical Computer.
• The Math SPU is more powerful.
• They now have Nanoware and more uses for Genetic Modification (Geneware).
• There's a new class of cyberware (Delta-grade)
• You can buy Alpha-grade at character creation.
• There's a badass new skill called Small Unit Tactics.
• Rigging was actually made immensely more complicated than it was in SR1 and RBB (Vehicle Combat has 15 steps.).
• Dice Pools are significantly different from the ones in SR1 in how they are calculated and what they do.
• Combat Pool (Qui+Int+Will/2) replaces Dodge Pool and the Defense Pools. CP can be use to aid in attacks or soaking damage. Dodging Tests are optional and use only CP.
• Astral Pool is calculated differently than in SR1. Magic Pool is now Spell Pool. All of the pools are calculated differently, and differently than in SR1.

Read Quick Start. Really. I can't stress it enough. However, the "Action Pool" in Quick Start is not a pool in the actual 3e core book. There are around 8 dice pools scattered throughout the rule books (oh, and there are a shitton more rules in 3e and than in SR1), including Karma, Combat, Spell, Hacking, Control, Task, Astral, etc.

To me the coolest thing is how initative now works. If I remember correctly, it used to be that a Sam could easily act two or three times before the Mage could get his first action. (Which lead to a lot of "Oh, it's my turn? um, is anyone left standing? oh, ok, I'll zap him.")

Now everyone acts wonce, you subtract 10 from the everyone's init, and everyone acts agian. You repeat this untill everyone drops out. As people's Initative drop to 0 or below, they run out of actions and drop out of the cycle. Ya, the Sam will still act before the mage, but only wonce.

If you decide to just go ahead and play 1st ed, (You have the books after all) I would reccoment you house rule the 3rd ed initatiave mechanism. I'm sure one of the fellows around here can explain it in better detail than I.

Or just wait 'till SR4 (which is my genuine advice). It's gonna be "streamlined" quite nicely, and would be a great place for you and your buddies to start in.

I prefer the SR1/2 initiative system. I'm weird like that in thinking people who have faster reflexes should go first and more often.

Honestly, you're pretty lucky to be able to play SR1 rules (The next time I see a BBB, I will buy it this time). You can still play with 1e rules in the new setting. Most of the players are still around in one way or another.

I mean, like I said the biggest changes you'd face are 1) staging rules, 2) auto successes, and 3) dice pools. Using them or not isn't going to break a game since they were pretty well-balanced for the time. Plus, SR3 can become a great deal more complicated if for no other reason than because the rules are spread across 7 books (The core rules book plus 1 each for Magic, Matrix, Rigging, Cyber/Bio/etc. Ware, Combat, "Miscellaneous" (e.g., rules for using Athletics)) plus new rules in most of the supplements.

Yes, and there is the always-popular Timeline Explorer. However, "...And So It Came to Pass" is more fun to read for someone who's been gone for 14 years. That's... a laundry list. It doesn't incorporate some of the more important context that the narrative does.

However, the Wiki and Dumpshock timelines are more up-to-date.

But, shit, if he has time... Read them all. You'll at least be able to look back and think about all the time you wasted reading about it all.

Mr Sam still goes first and more often, he just dosen't get all of his actions before the mage gets done saying "Oh Shit! combat" It is a game after all, and having to sit while all the Speed deamons go, then go agian, and agian, . . . can get very old to the players of mages and other slow charictors. Mutable actions is one of the most powerfull things a charictor can have, in any system. And if being a speed deamon is esental to being successfull in the game then everyone will be one, and when everyone is a speed deamon, then no one is.

I couldn't care less about how fair it is. It makes more sense, though, and that is what drives my preference for it.

I also liked the 2nd edition init situation, and the lack of Dodge Tests. It definitely made it more realistic in the sense that the advantage went to whoever was in the position to shoot first and in that having someone draw a bead on you and fire was really really bad instead of being something you could dodge and be okay.

I think it was a bit more strategic, too, since the only way you could get the drop on someone with Wired III was with a delayed action from the previous turn. So there was more of a chess of positioning and line of sight work.

I also thought it resulted in a cooler atmosphere. With people more likely to be startled and blown away by the opposition it made the feel more like that old film Taxi Driver.

For those of you who don't remember the climax of Taxi Driver, the main character, a psychologically disturbed weapon-collecting Vietnam vet, decided to rescue a teenage prostitute from a slimy NYC pimp. So one day he takes several handguns and walks up to the brothel. He pulls one handgun after the other, blowing away the startled brothel staff and guards as blood explodes everywhere. Then, someone enters the room behind him and shoots him. He gets all bloody and injured, but still shoots back, before slumping down onto a couch and lying there making trigger pulling motions with his fingers in an exhausted resigned sort of way.

I think that this sort of dynamic and action is more likely if you get rid of dodge tests and make reflex and early inits more powerful. Since it's a very gritty and cool dynamic, I like that best.

It's also more realistic in that unless you had a lot of confidence that your Wired Reflexes were a lot better than the opposition's you generally didn't like to get into toe-to-toe frontal firefights. Because of the way init worked it was highly preferable to launch surprise attacks instead, or have delayed actions ready if you knew that the opposition was about to come around the corner. And, I mean, in real life, who would want to dive out in front of his enemies and hope that he was a little quicker on the trigger finger than his enemies were? Any rational person who dosen't want to die would prefer to shoot his opponent in the back instead while he is occupied playing Time Crisis.

I also like that when combined with 3e surprise tests to maximize a tactical advantage, especially when you consider that under the circumstances a well-made Adept with Reaction 6 can throw so many dice into a surprise test (27) that even if they are ambushed by someone rolling against a 2 they might win unless that person has more than 15 reaction dice or is an equally-designed Adept--a PC who might be better off walking around trying to be surprised.

And that's not even including the Quick Strike power. Given the circumstances, Quick Strike is probably the last power they'd get. It's redundant.

It's especially adept (so to speak) since the losers in a Surprise Test can't use CP at all. Had I not fudged that rule once to keep it gaming, I'd have had two Yak hitmen fired upon by a gunner using suppressing fire within a 1m frame (they were in a narrow hallway) not be able to dodge a single bullet and be forced to soak 10 APDS rounds from a G38 under the Suppressing Fire rules in CC. Shame what happened to them instead, since one dodged 5 and one dodged 7, and they got knocked backwards into the LOS of a waiting mage (delayed action).

No the 2ed system does not make sence.

If you can eat three twinkies in the time it takes me to eat one twinkie, does that mean you will be able to eat all three twinkies before I can even begin to eat my twinkie?

Besides, you have to care something about how fair the game is, if not you would not have any players. (Realistic GM's Ive had, let me see, there is the one that killed the party with radiation poisioning -In D&D!-, Or the guy who in Marro Project Gacked a PC 15 minutes into the first session with a sniper. No role, nothing, were travling along, minding our own bisness, and Pow! One PC dead. Neadless to say, I have hence forth avoided these GM's like the pleag.)

14 replies in a few hours. Outstanding.

Thanks for all the advice. I just downloaded the QuickStart rules.

To be honest, a lot of the campaign material I had forgotten anyway (although I remember Dunkelzahn, of course), it's more the rules I was concerned with. I guess I'll wait for the 4th edition to come out before re-investing, although I can't promise I won't pick up the current one while visiting my FLGS.

To quote Willie Beaman in Any Given Sunday, "Life ain't fair, and fair ain't what I'm here for."

I prefer logic and common sense in my games.It seems perfectly reasonable to me that someone who can react faster and can physically move faster should be able to act much more quickly than someone who isn't as quick on the draw because the person with the slower reflexes does not have the ability to respond to an action yet as their body is still processing it while someone with cybernetically-enhanced reflexes reacts to them while the person with the slower reflexes and reaction are still processing what happened around them as is effectively prevented from making any action yet--including drawing a weapon and firing or casting a spell.

It's why Quick Strike was such a hellacious (and expensive) power in SR2 and why MBW 4 was so evil. The best description of how nasty MBW 4 was in SR2 is the second to last chapter of Stranger Souls when a cyberzombie ambushes and tears a 7-man Secret Service detail to shreds before any of them can even react to the presence of a threat, process it, and act even though 5 or 6 of them were chipped out of their skulls and at least one was a mage. They could not even process the new information fast enough before someone who could processed it and acted within the limits of his physical abilities (quickness, specifically).

See.. there's fair, and there's fair...

One is irrelevent, and in fact, can't be used, or you stretch what people are willing to believe. Examples include: Every single NPC being polite and honest and giving fair warning before they shoot you.

The other is important and in fact MUST be used, or you run out of players. Examples include: Instant death. Snipers with utterly no warning in any way shape or form (ie/ bland, ordinary starting runner, who's just bought his first predator, gets sniped from 2 klicks with an 8 action aim called shot to the head.. when he didn't have any backstory elements that would justify it). A squad of cyberzombies and null-adepts hunting the mage who just had his team geeked knocking off a donut shop while a dozen lone star are taking breaks at once...

If you haven't figured out what I mean...
The first is 'fair play', and the strict concept of chivalry.
The second is 'fair play' in that opposition is either defeatable or avoidable, within the abilities of the team.

All actions before people have a chance to react is, to my mind, a violation of the second. Not to mention, unrealistic. Most unaugmented people will react midway through the 3 second turn -- not in the last .5 seconds. Massive actions will be spread out over the 3 seconds -- not in the first .5 seconds. SR3 initiative isn't perfect right now -- but it's closer to fair then SR2. What would be correct, would be approximately half actions before the slowest member, and half after. But that's really hard to write a simple mechanic for.

To cut things short, I was sold a copy of SR1 (telling me it was, in fact, the latest version) by some scumbags in Appelton, WI. (If anyone finds a store called "pheonix hobbies" or something of the sort in Appleton, avoid it at all costs.) I now own a copy of SR3, and I can see some definite differences. The "burst weapon" method of resolving damage from high ROF weapons makes combat much faster, and metahumans are slightly cheaper to play, if I'm not mistaken. There's also a plethora of customization and enhancements availible for almost everything; Adepts, in particular, have some very interesting ability combinations.
The additional sourcebooks (Magic in the Shadows, Man & Machine, Rigger III, Cannon companion) all tie together very well and actually improve the game as opposed to simply making it more draggy; MITS contains rules for all sorts of powerful magical abilities and enhancing magicians by Initiation.
Biggest downside to SRIII? PCs can play catgirls.

EDIT: Vehicular combat seems to be a tad complex, but from what I've seen, drone-vs.-meat target combat is more common anyway. I personally believe that a few other combat options should be availible against vehicles; a bodybuilder-adept Troll (Think a strength of about 16 or so) could simply grab even a armed-and-armored combat drone and play throw-the-hammer. It's not important how much armor you've got if you've just been thrown thirty feet by a walking wall of muscle. In addition, polearms should be slightly less powerful, but massively more effective against anyone riding twoards them on, say, a motorcycle. (A bec-de-corbin does much more damage if you're hitting it at 60 kph.)

Given that both init systems are not realistic, I'd rather go with the system that is fun for all involved.

As far as books go, I'd buy a used 3rd edition book. You can start playing right away, and the system hasn't changed too much. As someone who has converted from 1st to 2nd and from 2nd to 3rd, I think you'll be fine converting the stats in your old books. While plenty of new stuff has been added, the existing stuff hasn't changed that much.

This way you can play without spending much money and when 4th edition comes out you can start off fresh like the rest of us.


I can't speak for the quality of artwork, there is less of it in the new books. I still use the old StreetSamCat to show what weapon a character is using. Books like Shadowtech and the Seattle sourcebook are nice to have around.

Given the sheer amount of Bradstreet art in NAN1 and some of the other SR1 books, the quality definitely went down over time. However, it's coming back with a vengeance.

After the first round, things change. The Sam's actions in the end of the turn are esentualy happening really early in the next turn. (Think about it, it makes sence) True, he is stuck using the combat pool from the 1st turn, But he does get to make multable attacks before the Mage can act. The 3rd ed system just lessens the blow to lower speed charictors a little.

I guess since I am a Champions player (Hay, put the rotten frute down) The interspersed actions make sence to me. In Champions, a turn is made of 12 segments, and everyone acts on a number of segments equal to the Speed statistic. These segments are evenly placed throught the turn, IE a speed four acting on segmets 3, 6, 9, and 12, and a speed six action on 2, 4, 6, 8, 10,12.

Oh well, either 1st ed or 3rd ed init. has drawbacks and advantages.

Say you have wired Sam: 4 actions
Mage: 1 action.

What makes sense:
Sam gets 2 actions, mage gets 1, Sam gets another 2.

The Sam's actions spread out over the turn, the mage's right in the centre.

That's really easy to figure out for two people. Who wants to figure out how to do it 5 people with anywhere from 1 to 6 actions apiece, every turn?

Bigger example in the spoiler


SR3 style initiative gets close to this:
Everyone gets an action.. then the faster people get more actions. It's not quite right -- the people with 1 action aren't smack dab in the middle... but they're closer.

That's about where it makes sense for them to be, because it's not 'stand there, waiting' -- it's reaction time (there's a bit of a pause to start), time to perform the action, and recovery time after the action. Wired to the gills cuts the reaction time down and cuts the recovery time down, so they get more actions, but they are spread out over the turn. Someone really fast, 3 actions, one would be first second, one second second, one third second. Someone really slow, starts slightly later (say a half second), acts (takes a bit longer), and recovers (takes a bit longer). They're acting close to the middle.

SR3 initiative.. well.. that's close to where they are. It just doesn't divide the speed demons actions up properly. About half their actions would be before the slowest character, about half after.

And then you have MBW 3 and 4, and their effects on Initiative.

Not exactly sure how it worked in 1st Ed., but how often dice pools refresh has been changed from 2nd. They used to refresh on your action (man, that was so sweet) but now you keep it all the way until your roll initiative again. And the process for casting magic changed pretty drastically to fall more in line with using regular skills, but it leaves some gaping problem holes, too (like how Invisibility works now).

OBTW, one last thing. I just wanted to clear up the apparent misconception some people have about my GM style. I am not one of those GMs who takes potshots at PCs for no reason just because I can. I may be a bastard, and I may not believe in fairness, but I'm not a petty bastard who feels the need to self-aggrandize by whacking PCs at random. It's especially good advice since I game online where everyone plays PCs and serves as GMs, and I would be PNGed if I did that. What I do like about this and its inherent unfairness (although like Aardvark mentioned, SR3 is just as unfair in its own right) is that it encourages PCs to not act like idiots and expect to come out unscathed. Stupid people have a short lifespan on SL, which is a small bit of justice against RL, but would even if Initiative was "fair."

This is similar to a little chart for initiative timing I scribbled down in the days of 2nd Ed. I didn't get around to using it and then 3rd Ed. came out and we went with its initiative system. The P column represents passes, the top row is number of actions in the turn and the other numbers show the order of actions.

About the auto successes, my guess is that when they changed the staging rules(all staging to 2), the auto successes might make it too easy. Someone with titanium bone lacing, an armor jacket, and a vest underneath has an effective ballistic of 7. 7 automatic successes alone can nearly wipe out the attacker's successes on average(unless they are a 6 firearm, 6 combat pool sammy shooting you or something), and you STILL get to roll Body, 2 successes each stages it down even more. Now, then again, hitting a base 9 for a pistol isn't easy, but with a body of 4 and a few combat pool dice it would be feasable to grab a couple more successes in there. Even someone without the bone lacing and layering, with an armor jacket has a cool 5 successes under their belt already.

With the old staging rules, the auto successes didn't seem as excessive, since some weapons had higher staging than 2.

Imagine keeping the auto successes with the new Dodge test now. Yikes. No one would hit anybody.

Does anyone remember the old 1e munchkin discovery that was nearly immediately banned by GM's worldwide? The ol 'extended clip' rule that allowed you to connect the clips together. I literally heard stories of a sammie connecting about 20 clips together and dragging/getting someone to carry them.

And for some reason, aformentoned people were upset about the removal of Firepower ammo and Turn to Goo. Wonder why.