After first replaying the old shadowrun Nintendo game a few years or so ago, then playing through the new Shadowrun Returns games, I have really grown to love the shadowrun setting and game.  That led me to run a few Shadowrun games on rpol, but none of them panned out.  I know that it probably mostly my fault combined with the normal drop rate of players on RPOL.

I'd really like to try again, but I'm not sure what the best way of going about it is, to make the game last.   I've only played 4th edition, though I have access to 3rd and 5th, and I'm sure I wouldn't have a hard time transitioning between them.

My question is, what are the types of shadowrun games that draw the most attention and the most likely chance of success?  What keeps a shadowrun game going?

I loved 3rd edition.
I thought 4th was kinda weird and 5th has a very confusing ruelebook layout.
I haven't played shadowrun in play-by-post but I think the greatest danger is that it can be really slow to start,
In tabletop, a lot of players tend to spend hours making plans for the run, so that translates to weeks of nothing actually happening on a play-by-post.
Again, that's just speculation, but my best advice is to keep things rolling.

Having played a game of Shadowrun via PbP; one of the big dangers is that the clatter of dice isn't as fun in PbP I don't think. And all the various modifiers you have to keep track of. It's really quite complex a system, which isn't necessarily good for PbP.

Also, the inherent nature is that a lot of people do their own things from time to time; and that is bad enough in tbaletop, it's a nightmare in PbP.

Shadowrun's system is honestly just a bit much for PBP. What I would suggest is the excellent and free Sixth World game. It's a Shadowrun hack for Apocalypse World. I haven't gotten a chance to play it personally but it looks real solid. If you're interested it can be found below.

http://nerdwerds.blogspot.com/...ll-of-playbooks.html

As a veteran of Shadowrun (I still have my hard cover 1st ed book) I have found that the fun games are the ones that have strange concepts.  Having played 27 years in many different games my two favorite characters were a gang member and a drummer, although I am quite enjoying the 5th ed character I am playing now.  The secret is to get characters that have a personality to them.  Anyone can make a number stacked character, it takes a true love of the game to make a beloved character though.

One of the things to remember about system heavy games in PbP is to not let the system bog everything down. Sometimes just don't make the players roll for things, or roll for them, only wait on players to roll dice in combat or other _MAJOR_ events. In other words keep the game flowing.

Also, loners and the like bog a PbP game down even more than a TT one. Don't accept those concepts, or heavily modify them, so that you're dealing with a Shadowrunning team and not a whole bunch of individuals. Take time during char gen to have interlocking backstories. or have them all be together and the Fiat them into a situation where they need to co-operate and tell them that up front.

And if we're voting on systems, I like them in this order 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 4th. Unless I'm playing the mage, then I'm all for some 1st edition.

Also, if you get a game up, I'm _VERY_ interested.

I have to echo some of the system hate for the more recent editions. I never played 1st or 2nd, and only a little bit of 3rd. But if you liked the old SNES game and Shadowrun Returns, you are likely to be disappointed by most of the tabletop.

Shadowrun's various editions have systemically been stripping the 'punk' out of their cyberpunk with each iteration, and the actual reality of the numbers and equipment costs clashes violently with the supposed setting and themes. You run into weird situations where your 'broke and hungry' street ganger gets into shadowrunning to pay the bills. Good thing he has his million nuyen suite of cyberware to give him an edge...

I guess we know why he's broke at least :P

I honestly think my favorite edition of shadowrun is cyberpunk 2020. :3

Grognarding aside, one of the things I think is important is to take some time to properly 'set the dials' on what you expect and what your players should expect.

There are a lot of different ways to play SR, and a mismatch between your expectations and the players can be disastrous. For example, your players might be expecting a pink mohawk game where the streets are in perpetual anarchy and bodyarmor and shotguns are considered 'about town clothing', while you're wanting to run a mirrorshades game that's all about the terror of the surveillance state.

And it can clash in smaller ways too. A lot of SR is about preparation and clever planning backed up by brute force and shenanigans. If the players don't know what they should be planning for, they will either miss something you think is painfully obvious and then get butthurt when you use it to 'gotcha!' them, or they will over-prepare for every possible thing and waste a bunch of time worrying about nothing.

My recommendation for how to get around this is to ease everyone into the setting using a very tightly controlled environment to start. Basically, they don't plan their own runs to start. They get recruited as contractors by an experienced runner who does all the planning and legwork and just tells them "you go here, do this."

That introduces them to the system and to how you expect a shadowrun to go, and it also gets them right into the action. Then on the next run, they get to do some of the legwork. They still aren't making the plans, or deciding what to look for, but they're doing the looking.

And so on and so forth. Don't hit them with the whole thing all at once, ease them in piece by piece so they know what everything is supposed to look like in your version of the 6th world.

That's my thoughts anyway. Never have managed to put it into practice, so it might be terrible :P

I like what Knarly is saying.

You mentioned enjoying the Shadowrun Returns series, I don't know if you played Dragonfall, but if you did, think about Paul Amsel and the team. Your players are the team, you have a "Paul Amsel" NPC to do most of the planning. Don't railroad them into a plan, but give them options and let them pick one.

They'll change things on the fly because no plan survives contact with the enemy but they'll at least have a plan so that will reduce the endless planning problem.

are your recommendations for the earlier editions from ease of play, or fond memories of games run in those editions?  I'll be honest, my preference runs more toward mirror shades than pink mohawks, though I'm not a huge fan of the 12 hour prep ocean's eleven style heists 4th and 5th edition seems to lend itself to.

and yeah, my initial idea, which is probably a long way from implementation, was the group be various people pulled together by circumstances, to work for a fixer somewhere like the Redmond barrens.  That way, the targets are less corporate, and therefore less structured security wise, to begin with, and lend themselves easier to a smash and grab style of run.  Then progress to higher profile targets if thegroup seems to work well together.

another problem I've run into is the importance of the hacker/decker, and the difference in pace needed between the player in the matrix and the rest of the team.  It seems like you almost need a player that can post at a much higher rate than the rest to be the decker, so they can get the information/fight the security without the rest of the players waiting for weeks.

Mine are for ease of play and for setting.
Both the SNES Shaodwrun game and the Shadowrun Returns game happen in the 2nd-3rd edition era of the 2050's, and 5th is in the 70's with all kinds of new tech and new magics. Technomancers who can magically interact with some dude's cyberware for exemple, add another layer of complexity. While that can be fun for some, I prefer the old school SR approach of keeping magic and tech separate.

In a TT game a Decker slows things down incredibly, less so in PbP because you can run things concurrently in separate threads. But, you are correct,t they have to be able to keep up post and timing wise and such, it takes a more effective player in PbP.

A Barrens style game lends itself more to Pink Mohawks, in my opinion, because you don't care about the cops as much, just don't get shot. Mirror Shades is the Ocean's Eleven style heists, meticulous planning and don't get caught... and is a more corporate environment. However, characters can grow from one to the other as their reputation grows.

And Cappadocious covers my opinion on settings, I do not like Technomancers.

from what I've read and played, technomancers aren't ass effective as you seem to be making them out to be, especially in ease of accessing someone's cybernetics.  It just seems like a different style of hacking, it takes quite a lot of karma to get a technomancer to the point where he can effect technology outside the matrix in any meaningful way.  But that doesn't really matter much.


To me, the difference between pink mohawks and mirror shades is attitude and approach.  In any game I'd run, I'd prefer runners who understand the need to be discreet and can operate in a more civilized setting without drawing huge amounts of attention, but can also cause havoc if needed.  If we're using the newer SR games as reference, dragonfall and hongkong have closer to the desired idea I'd want, with the runners very capable of fighting if needed, but also able to walk into a dinner party in Repulse Bay and manipulate a corporate stooge.

To me, it's stuff like that, that separates Shadowrun from many other games.  That air of legitimacy and criminality that shadowrunners have, as opposed to any band of armed thugs wandering the world for coin.  I can run a game like that in almost any setting.

Technomancers harsh on my fluff for SR. Magic and Machine are antithesis, they aren't supposed to cooperate. That a there's a magician who can affect machines? Doesn't jive with what I like. Personal opinion, I realize they operate just like a Decker.

Sounds like you want a James Bond style game, Mirror Shades, they can be a lot of fun. You just need straight forward runs to start with so the players and GM get in tune.

technomancers aren't magicians. It's a totally different thing according to the books.  they are two separate traits that can't mix.

I just want to not go too far down the mirror shades hole, which leads to too much independent action and prep time.  So somewhere toward the middle of the combat vs spy spectrum.

Never said it was easy but the fact it's a possibility still adds a level of complexity to the game. Then there's the wireless stuff, which makes complete sense since it's technology we currently have but when your decker can hack the enemy's cyberware too, well... things get out of hand.

All in all, the OP mentioned wanting to get into SR based on 3rd-edition-based SNES and PC games, so 4th and 5th will bring a different feel.

the cyberware hack is pretty difficult due to cybernetics being hardened, and not something you'd run into every day.  And honestly, it isn't much different than a mage with a spell that paralyzes his opponent, or takes control of them.  Just different system-wise.

what is different, system wise, about 3rd and 4th edition?  having learned 4th edition, I'm not bothered by the wireless matrix or the newer technology, since I don't have years of previous experience to make that seem unusual.  I'm more wondering if one system is better in terms of game balance and play, as opposed to setting.
This message was last edited by the user at 18:57, Fri 17 June 2016.

System wise I believe 3rd and 4th are nearly identical, just re-skinned when the property was bought. 5th is the new system. However, I could be wrong.

If the 4th feel doesn't bother you, go with it if you already know it.

System-wise, I think the biggest change is in the character creation. I created a character in 4e once for a game that never took off and rather than prioritize the different aspects of your characters, you simply get a big pool of pts to spend on everything, kinda like Mutants & Masterminds.

But like I said, the game never took off so other than that, I'm not really sure what other differences there are.

2nd, 3rd, and 5th all have point based systems to make characters (which I prefer because it adds more realism to the game, imo).  3rd is definitely my favorite, I despised 4th ed, but 5th seems to be ok.  Although systemwise so far it seems to me that 5th ed characters fail more often than third ed.

why do you despise 4th edition?  it has a point based character creation as well.

There's the whole priority thing of A-B-C-D-E like if you put money in A you get a million, if you put skills in B you have more pts there than the one who puts skills in D, and all that.
4e didn't have that, it was just, have points, spend them, no prioritizing.
Unless I'm misremembering.

so the not prioritizing points, and just spending them to buy abilities, was not as good?  Is it because it lends itself to min-maxing?  I ask, because I can see where the priority thing could be frustrating, too.  If I wanted to make a troll mage in 3rd edition, he's going to start fairly subpar in most things, since you have to use your high priorities just to make him a troll mage.  But is the priority creation generally better, in your opinion?

I looked through the 4th ed book and I did not like it.  I don't even remember why but to me it didn't feel like shadowrun to me.

5e balanced a lot of the problems with regard to races/magic/money, in my opinion.

What problems did it address?  Just trying to understand the differences.

In 1e, 2e, & 3e how strong a magician you were was based on you lr respurces, at least at the beginning, was directly related to what priority you used for Magic. Meta humans used higher priorities for race and magic, so their resources were usually a very low priority.  Making them unable to hang with a Human mage.

That's why I preferred the point method of character creation in 2nd and 3rd, it fixed many of the problems with the priority system.

I would likely default to 5th edition rather than the earlier ones, if no one likes 4th.  I think, in a lot of ways, 4th and 5th edition included technology that actually exists today, so it doesn't make a lot of sense for it not to exist in 2050.  I guess it also lends itself a bit more toward the black trenchcoat, which I'd lean a bit more toward than pink mohawk, at least in flavor.

My favorite edition was 3rd, with the caveat that it didn't scale well to high power levels.

I prefer the background from 2050, and I ignore pretty much all of the metaplot development.

I currently run a game that uses the 5th rule set, set in 2050, but adding all of the things that should exist by then (AR, wireless, self-driving cars), and it's working pretty well. I prefer a heavier chrome load in my cyberpunk, so bioware is largely non-existent.

I think the 5th ed rule set is pretty good, with the caveat that it is heavily slanted towards mage in the balance. I've been part of two or three games now, and with the rejiggering of availability, is has become hard to impossible to make a samurai that can even come close to going toe-to-toe with a mage. In 3rd, that was not a problem, even though the mage would win out in the long run. Especially the mental attribute boosting spells are balance destroying; just boost Will to 7 or 8 and never suffer drain again from the average spell.

I think it is really important to make sure that the power level between players is balanced. It's no fun if one character can stomp any opposition that the rest of the party can barely handle.

I like the idea of a GM imposed dice pool cap. (and suggested minimum for important rolls) Thus far, I haven't been party to a GM who put it in writing. L5R fourth edition introduced me to the suggestion of limiting the number of separate bonuses that can apply to one dice pool, which is another way to keep things level.

looking over the priority thing, it still looks like it is very slanted to certain types of characters.  My previous example still fits in 5th edition.  If you make a troll mage, he's going to have sub par stats, no money, and few skills.  Am I missing something on how that balances out?

The priority system does tend to push you in certain directions, at least a bit, because it's "all or nothing" in some respects.

But since 3rd edition each edition has had rules for both the Priority system, and a point buy, so you can go either way you want.

I see plenty of GMs that rejigger the priority system as well, so that's an option.  Or you could give out karma that can only be spent in certain areas as determined by the concept.

Really character balance is something best done on a case by case basis, and honestly is secondary to having a game actually get up and running and not immediately trip and die as is usually the case on RPoL when it comes to Shadowrun.

just trying to figure out the best choices to give a game the best chance of success.

I do feel that 5th edition really leveled the playing field with the races.  In previous editions I used to hate it when players played trolls, because I knew exactly what kind of character I was going to be dealing with and what arguments I was going to have in the future.  5th ed made it so that all the races can play together and don't necessarily get placed in a niche.

I guess my question is, if you're using the point buy system instead of the priority system, what are the differences between 4th and 5th?  what makes 5th superior, aside from tone and fluff in the books?

In reply to gladiusdei (msg # 35):

This would have been an easier question back when fifth was doing prerelease pdfs / soon after release, and people were still writing up in detail how fifth improved on fourth.

Initiative, firearm modes, augmentation costing, spell casting & drain, among others differ between 4e & 5e. For the most part, I'd say the rules are an improvement.

Good grief this thread has me dreaming about Shadowrun, lol.

I couldn't say what the difference is between 4th and 5th I looked through 4th and didn't want to play it.

If you build it, they will come.  More than likely.

I think the choices you should be concentrating on are what's going to make things easiest for you to keep the game flowing, and keep yourself interested and sane.

The last SR game on RPoL I was a part of was pretty standard 5th edition, Metatypes from the core book only, but rules and equipment from everything else.  Pretty standard in terms of player expectations, 3-4 posts per week, recommended posting conventions, etc, etc.  The GM decided to take whomever wanted in and then group people up.

The game had 17 players and 15 completed characters and about two weeks of active IC posting when the GM ghosted due to what they later informed us was a combination of RL issues and perhaps biting off a bit more than they could chew.

That's not an unusual thing either.

So as long as you set it up so you can be in it for the long haul, keep the story flexible so you can bring characters in and out as players fall off the face of the planet (as always happens in every game) and you have to recruit more, I think your game will succeed as well as any, no matter what mechanical system minutia you decide to go with.

The main thing with early editions of Shadowrun was that it was easily backwards compatible. The later editions aren't. 3rd and 2nd had a both a point buy and an ABCDE chart. I tend to stick with 3rd personally as it didn't have technomancers. Otaku sure which were the beginnings of technomancers. The biggest difference is balance. Otaku are the only wireless users, but it was with a cost. Namely the time you put in. Of course most decking was handled by NPCs in the games I played so there is that.

Apart from systems keeping the posting going is pretty important I have found.  Needless die rolling bogs down the story nit picking rolls really becomes a drag for players.  With how glitchy the die roller appears to be on a regular basis requiring
die rolls that aren't drastically necessary but could potentially cause major problems isn't going to endear characters to the game.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 40):

Keeping the posting up is super key.

Something one of my current GM's is doing that I just adore is that they *always* post every couple of days at the least, even if they don't have time for an IC post. Having regular updates from the GM along the lines of "Hey, really busy right now, will have a post up tomorrow or next day." or "Want to wait on X to post before moving forward, will post anyway if X doesn't get one in by tomorrow." and so on is really reassuring and makes it feel like the GM is still active and involved even when they aren't moving the plot along.

So yea, big advice for GM's: Post! Even if you don't have time for a full post or are waiting on a player before moving the plot, tell your players that!

Good advice, Knarfy.

One thing I have found useful is to make heavy use of routine for die rolls. 1/4 of dice as successes often works to knock out tasks you might have rolled for in Tabletop.

Actually, my standard policy is to use first whatever die rolls a player might provide pro actively. If I need a die roll that was not provided, I just take 1/3 of the dice pool as successes.

In combat, I provide pertinent information on the opponents so the players can roll out entire exchanges, and post appropriately.

The main thing is that I never ask for a die roll. That does really streamline things.