Hoi,

I have posted some ideas here and have quickly caught the bug again.
I last played Shadowrun 2 back in 1998, it is has been a very very long time.
I have not played SR3. Are there people that still stick to the 2nd edition rules,
or has everyone pretty much migrated to 3? I am saying that on the cusp of
the 4th version release. I was really enamoured with 2dn edition rules, and
had little problem with them, so there is apprehension about moving to 3rd.
(I have seen a few of them and was not overly keen, but it was a cursory glance
at the system.) If there are people not migrating to other systems have they developed conversions or other resources?

I was wondering if old first and second edition manuals that are no longer in print
have been released into an open format? most people prefer to have the books,
rather than print off 1000 pages, and if there are any open community source books
out there. (I come from a mud background, where source is shared and ideas are
exchanged freely.)

When I jump into a community I usually get quite absorbed, and try and work to
publish free open resources, ie. I am starting on some stories and a blog of my
old character's daily life. (I was inspired by the Darth Vader blog) And I was thinking
of creating a daily events stream of news like blackjack did. ie, fire at blah blah blah does damage, daughter of johnson gets kidnapped, a shipment of compound yyy hijacked on the I-5, etc

I also need to find a primer of everything that happened from 2054 till now basically.
I am finding the blood magic and horrors stuff quite overwelming as it seems that the technology aspect of shadowrun is seemingly getting left behind. Are there other non-official directions and story lines?

There's plenty of people that said "no" to 3rd edition. I know of several gaming circles in Ohio that never caved in (my own included). The timeline stuff isn't that important, it mostly just gets goofy anyway. You're right, technology becomes less and less the focus, and then discussing it gets you into trouble with all the new SR players that swear up and down that SR isn't supposed to be cyberpunk, and magic is the best thing ever.