Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[ZMOT]

I don't know if it's real, but on Tabletop Simulator there's a MLP version of Dominion. Same game, just the art is different.

the gameplay is so simple they even put it in ESO as a sidegame (most people don't seem to care about after the novelty and rather have another class or other big expansion feature). otoh MLP is like the r34 of fandoms, there's a MLP version of almost everything.

You had mentioned expansions. Should I just ignore most of them if I enjoy the game and stick with what you suggested? Also what's up with the promo cards? Can you still get the whole set if you wanted?

iirc out of print stuff can be a bitch to find, remember a mate gloating how much he could make if he'd sell some of the expansions. don't know if/what the promos add and if they're worth it. apparently they've been shuffling things around reprinting sets in bigger boxes for new collectors, but could confuse it with another game (and no idea how the distribution outside germany works).

however, I just remembered for anyone looking for a more interactive/more players version of dominion back then 7 wonders had a lot of hype. can't remember if it has been replaced by another game by now or the hype just died over time because everyone played it to death, but it's still pretty solid for what it is.
it had a nice online client before the official, dunno about the quality of the new one.

Is Netrunner even around anymore? For some reason I thought FFG/Asmodee/Embracer killed that IP.

it is, it's kept alive by troons. can't say anything about the quality, by they're doing new stuff:

https://nullsignal.games/

iirc wotc is to blame netrunner getting canned. wotc was getting pissed there was finally a game putting a dent in magic, so they apparently asked for a ridiculous license fee for the renewed contract (doubt ffg expected it to run for more than 5 years, let alone become as big as it did considering all their other competitive cardgames kinda fizzled out).

I think its complete bullshit that the world levels up around the players just because; the players come back from a year of harrowing adventure to find the town guard has also gained 10 levels in their absence due to fuck you that's how.
But if after fucking up several of his lairs the local lich has decided that the party is now enough of a threat that they need to beef up their undead, or the local Orc warlord has decided to stop hoarding the loot and pass out the sharper pointy sticks/get them blessed by his shaman because his raiders are getting wrecked by a bunch of assholes, that's fine and makes sense.

the problem is in that case, what keeps the heroes from shanking the lvl5 king and take over? higher level watchguard is just the simple/lazy version of the arms race to keep the internal logic intact. what I mean is if you have a gang of superpowered dudes running around, how to keep them in check? any authority only survives via the mandate of violence (chimp out and you get hit by the bigger stick), which wouldn't work in that case. the more elaborate plan is for the king to get his own superpowered dudes to prevent getting hit with the bigger stick, while also still having the same issue if/when they want to take over asf.

imo that's all shit you just conveniently ignore unless the game is open for it, but then I wouldn't use any dnd/pf for that.
either because it's borderline isekai "I win because my number is bigger", and when the discussion comes up turns semi-meta "we would never do that - why? - because I'm lawful good on my charsheet" etc. just "fight bigger foes with bigger loot and don't look too close at the details".
besides, if you want to prevent a player from going spastic you can always "solve" that via dm fiat, no matter the system or how the math works.

 

[Overly Serious]

I don't see how this is different. I've not played shadow run, but how is the corporate hit squad different from the lich? How is the gang in the slums different from the goblins?

Others have given some good answers, but I'll also add that tactics in Shadowrun are more likely to make a difference as well. A goblin with an axe does (I have no idea) 1d6 damage because that's the amount of damage a goblin with an axe does. Now a heavy pistol might do 5P damage (p = physical) but that's the base damage, Attacker has time to aim because they've been waiting for you? That's +1 to their dice pool. And if they have lots of time they can take the aim action multiple times, firing from point blank range because they smuggled the weapon past the bouncers and walk up to you unnoticed at the bar? Great, +2 dice for being point blank. Oh, they're unnoticed? You wont be rolling any defence dice. And so on... You only need 1 net hit to hit the target but extra net hits add to the damage. So whilst a random ganger might be outclassed by the Shadowrunner, the right circumstances on that ganger's part starts tipping the odds. And because Shadowrun tends to take place in realistic modern environments (urban, lots of ambush points and cover, modern vehicles meaning quick arrival of reinforcements and other factors) there tends to always be some way to stack the deck. And numbers matter more for a couple of reasons:

1. Defence reduces for each attack you have to defend against. If your normal full defence pool were 8 and this is the fifth person to shoot at you this round, well your full defence pool is 4 now.
2. Because ranged combat is more or less the default in Shadowrun (who brings a knife when you can bring a gun?) there tends to be less of a cap on the people firing at you. Walking into a room of forty orcs and they crowd around you and probably four can actually get into combat with you if you back against the door. Walk into a room of forty Cutter gang members who hate you? Yeah, you're going to be lit up like the 4th of July.

All of this probably sounds a bit more complex than D&D but actually you learn it pretty quickly and it plays pretty fast. Secondly, I'm not sure it actually is more complex - the basic rules might be with a couple more rolls like a dodge roll, but there are waaaay fewer weird exceptions and all of D&D's "well don't forget that my specific character has X ability that means Y happens when Z" exception based rules. Meanwhile, if someone wants to shoot you with their AR-97 on a short burst, they're probably picking up the right number of dice automatically and you're already picking up the right number of dice for your dodge roll. And the fact that combat in Shadowrun is quite deadly means any complexity is usually offset by the quickness of the total combat anyway.

A lucky shot (and unlucky dodge/soak) can wound or drop even a well-equipped runner pretty much instantly, whether it's coming from the corpo goon or the ganger with a heavy pistol. It's just the goon gets to take a lot more shots (full auto is lots of fun) and has better aim. Meanwhile, in D&D or Pathfinder, that goblin has to hack away at a level 10+ character for five minutes before it can whittle their HP down to 0, even with critical hits.

And to add to your comments about full-auto, there are other ways in which Shadowrun makes weapons more deadly, too. Let's not forget the notorious "Chunky Salsa Effect" (yes, the game authors named it that in the book) whereby if you let off a grenade in an enclosed space you reverb any unused blast radius back for additional damage. Fragmentation grenade has a 12m blast radius and there's a solid wall 4m away? Well you take the additional damage and then deduct 4 off that 12 and if the 8m is enough to come back again guess who's getting extra damage? You do NOT want to let off a grenade in a small room. They didn't name it the Chunky Salsa Effect for nothing.

Others already chimed in here, but like they mentioned, it's basically impossible for some goblins to drop a mid to high level character. They flatly cannot saw their way through the HP pool of the PCs even with the best possible rolls, while the PCs hit on anything better than a 1 and possibly one-shot the goblins. In some cases this is desirable, like minions in 4e that are designed to die on any hit; you may want a cinematic feel where the PCs are cutting through a horde of disposable nobodies, but in other instances it's simply pointless to fight something above or below your level because you either cannot possibly win or cannot possibly lose.

Could a street-level Shadowrun team beat a locked and loaded group of military pros? Probably not, much like a bunch of randos today wouldn't do well against professional killers. But it's not utterly inconceivable like you get in games with levels and always-rising ablative HP pools. And a team sauntering into some gang's territory couldn't just T-pose their way to victory; there's always a chance of a bullet going somewhere unfortunate.

One of the reasons it's like this is because whilst most games strive for symmetry between defence and offence, Shadowrun does not. It's been described as "eggshells armed with hammers".

A street tough in Shadowrun, like a goblin in D&D, cannot take much beating. But the goblin also only puts out similar damage to what it can take. The street tough puts out more than he can take. A lot more. So introduce our corporate assassin as an equivalent to some D&D vampire, he is now a hard-boiled egg with a hammer. He can take more of a beating but he still lives in a world where people are armed with hammers.

In D&D, as you level up your damage dealt and damaged you can take, they rise together. In Shadowrun, you tend to become deadlier by becoming faster and being able to take down your enemies more quickly and accurately. You do not want to be trading blows round after round with someone who has a shotgun. And this is also one of the reasons Shadowun is so big on intrigue and betrayal - he who shoots first, laughs last.

Those sorts of players ruin games and communities. Oh and when there is a game in which they can't acquire OP decks and cards easily like a LCG or a board game, suddenly these people find the game boring or bad and won't play.

The motivation of such people is purely to compensate for their own inadequacies. I've ditched games rather than put up with such people. I follow the principle of No Gaming > Bad Gaming.

 

[The Ugly One]

the problem is in that case, what keeps the heroes from shanking the lvl5 king and take over?

Because kings aren't 5th level. They're 10th level. By the time you're strong enough to wade through armies and conquer kingdoms...well, you should be conquering a kingdom for yourself.

One of my core complaints of modern D&D campaigns, not the mechanics, is that characters who have the ability to kill gods are sent on fetch-quests by local nobodies.

 

[filthypenguin]

One of the reasons it's like this is because whilst most games strive for symmetry between defence and offence, Shadowrun does not. It's been described as "eggshells armed with hammers".

How does it avoid the "rocket tag" effect that high level 3.5/pf1 had, where fights are won based on high initiative?

the problem is in that case, what keeps the heroes from shanking the lvl5 king and take over? higher level watchguard is just the simple/lazy version of the arms race to keep the internal logic intact. what I mean is if you have a gang of superpowered dudes running around, how to keep them in check? any authority only survives via the mandate of violence (chimp out and you get hit by the bigger stick), which wouldn't work in that case. the more elaborate plan is for the king to get his own superpowered dudes to prevent getting hit with the bigger stick, while also still having the same issue if/when they want to take over asf.

You have to write around it.
For example, Rise of the Runelords was a pretty generic adventure from PF1. It has the players start in a small town that they are meant to be attached to. The sheriff and a ranger are the strongest NPCs, and they're not that strong. The players are meant to be attached to the town in some way, but even if they decide to kill the sheriff and take over the town it doesn't break the plot. After the initial goblin invasion, they go to the goblin dungeon, and when they're done they're the highest level characters in the town. The next part is that there's a serial killer in the town that they presumably care about. Tracking the serial killer down leads them to a haunted mansion. The serial killer was a cult member, so they track down the cult's base of operations in a much larger city with hellknight guards. The mayor there, who is defended by the hellknights that outlevel the players, send them on a quest to check on a fort which has been taken over by trolls. If the players decide to conquer the fort and keep it for themselves, the plot doesn't change: the mayor only cares that the fort is populated by armed forces to hold off trolls and doesn't care who's actually in charge. While they're at the fort, they find out about a stone giant plan to invade the town they came from and need to go back to defend it because that's where their friends and family live. During the fight at the town, an entrance to an ancient dungeon underneath the town is revealed, and ancient magic from said dungeon had cursed the town to turn people into serial killers and make it a good target for giants who wanted the ancient magic.

At no point in the adventure are players beholden to anyone who's a lower level, and the plot doesn't break if they decide to conquer every settlement they can.

If your players immediately kill the sheriff and assume control, they still have to defend their new town against the goblins, and the serial killer, etc. If they don't care to and let the town get slaughtered, well then the adventure is over.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

it is, it's kept alive by troons. can't say anything about the quality, by they're doing new stuff:
https://nullsignal.games/
iirc wotc is to blame netrunner getting canned. wotc was getting pissed there was finally a game putting a dent in magic, so they apparently asked for a ridiculous license fee for the renewed contract (doubt ffg expected it to run for more than 5 years, let alone become as big as it did considering all their other competitive cardgames kinda fizzled out).

The Nullsignal stuff isn't half bad. Been looking at their store a lot recently. But if you don't want to give them money (I think they let you print things for free) there was a ton of original Android: Netrunner content out there to keep you playing for years. Oh and it is obviously on Tabletop Sim.

There was a period of time when Netrunner was fucking awesome. Even errata updates were fun events. About half way through the SanSan Cycle of releases was when I bailed but that was more due to a lack of time than anything else. Though I also thought they were releasing stuff too fast as well.

Netrunner is fucking awesome. And it looks really cool when it is all set up and being played. And Netrunner General threads were a blast... some of the most autistic shit I've ever seen.

 

[LovisXVI]

How does it avoid the "rocket tag" effect that high level 3.5/pf1 had, where fights are won based on high initiative?

Avoid? No, that is an intended part of the game. Boosting your initiative is a major part of getting good at combat, because unlike most other games, you benefit extremely from great initiative, being able to have another pass (set of actions) per round every 10 initiative you have. It was even more so in 1st-3rd because instead of going in order then taking away the 10 spent on the pass, the character would go, take away ten, and then the person with the highest initiative would go, which might well be the same person.
You want to win? Well better start improving those reflexes and initiative score. There is a reason all initiative boosting ware and powers are expensive, they change the fucking game. Appropriately very few things add initiative direction unless its name is the dreaded Move-by-Wire, mostly just adding initiative dice which adds a flow turn to turn, because I forgot to mention every turn you re-roll your initiative, so one turn you get max on both your dice (lucky you chummer), next you snake eyes, down to just one pass, real feast or famine so you can't rely on just ganking them with passes, you need to be efficient.

 

[Ghostse]

the problem is in that case, what keeps the heroes from shanking the lvl5 king and take over? higher level watchguard is just the simple/lazy version of the arms race to keep the internal logic intact. what I mean is if you have a gang of superpowered dudes running around, how to keep them in check? any authority only survives via the mandate of violence (chimp out and you get hit by the bigger stick), which wouldn't work in that case. the more elaborate plan is for the king to get his own superpowered dudes to prevent getting hit with the bigger stick, while also still having the same issue if/when they want to take over asf.

@The Ugly One covers it pretty well, but the king should be too high level to just murk (or at least his guards should be). Town guards should be high enough level that either the players won't want to fuck around/find out. And by the time they are powerful enough to fuck with them, ripping off a small-town merchant is not worth their time. Or just don't give them the time to fuck around - sure they could go raze that village to the ground, but that's 3 weeks of round-trip travel time and that means they'll have less than a week to stop the Lich's ritual on the new moon.

edit: one of the things I've done in B/X and 3.5 to a degree is make civilians/merchants/nobles be their own classes. They don't get much in the way of combat but they get increased HP and Defenses/Saves to reflect their rise above normal mookdom. A little more valuable in 3.5 because the lvl lets you bump their skills.

There are also plenty of "Reap the whirlwind" things you can do if the players go full sociopath. Maybe you let them just murderize the town guard, but now they have high-level bounty hunters on their ass.
and there is always good ol' divine intervention if you want to check those murderhobo impulses. Dying guard prays to Pelor and gets an answer; now three Angels descend to mete out divine justice.

Defence reduces for each attack you have to defend against.

I think I'm going to steal this for some B/X weapon effects.

There was a clone I vaguely remember playing a lot. I forget what it was, but it was Dominion with some attack rules tacked on. Whatever it was, I liked it because it was Dominion, with juuuuust enough changed that people who had "solved" it couldn't just look up strats on the internet.

I had a player complain in a 4e campaign that they didn't like 4e because "They couldn't go online for character builds".
Bitch that's a feature not a bug.

Said player also never once came to me and said "I want my character to be like X, do you know anything that can get me going that direction?" they just bitched that 4e wasn't the same as pathfinder.

 

[Overly Serious]

@LovisXVI slightly beat me to the punch (funny, given the subject matter) but I'm going to reply as if he didn't anyway. Because I want to.

How does it avoid the "rocket tag" effect that high level 3.5/pf1 had, where fights are won based on high initiative?

Avoid? AVOID?

Half of Shadowrun is about stealth and being the one to get the drop on your opponent. It's fun! But to make clear nobody said that this was an absolute. You can take a few hits in Shadowrun, usually, if you're careful, and you don't pick the wrong fight. So it's not mostly the case that a single failed initiative roll means death. And if it does, it's probably your fault for not prepping properly.

D&D adventure (grossly stereotyping but not without basis): Follow plot hook to adventure location. Fight series of battles, culminating in one really big battle. Take treasure, go home.

Shadowrun mission: Receive plot hook. Investigate plot hook to check you're not being set up by someone you wronged in the past, investigate target, bribe or hack the plans to the run location, scout out who runs security for the mark, etc. Now try to stealth your way in using hacking and magic to whatever degrees you can (and can afford - no sense spending more on a mission than you're being paid to do it). Avoid security and fights. Avoid another fight. Forced to kill a security guard who takes an unexpected route. Oh, shit oh shit - how long do we have before someone calls him and wonders why he doesn't answer? Move it, chummer! FUCK! Your shaman just walked through a ward whilst bedecked with active foci that you told him to leave at home but he refused. He lit up like an astral Christmas tree and now there's an air elemental on your butt. Alarms are going off. An Ares Steel Lynx opens up and plugs your mage. He's up and moving but seriously injured and getting penalties to all his roles and if he goes all out with the magic will probably pass out. Start laying down covering fire, get him the fuck out of there, we're never getting paid for this, hacker abandons stealth and goes hot, blasting open doors to clear you a route to the target, you acquire the prototype/files and flee the compound throwing grenades to cover your retreat. The Samurai has jacked up reflexes and can take down security guards that pursue you but everybody's bleeding and you can hear the sound of a corp security VTOL approaching with a tactical response squad. Mission ends with you racing through the streets trying to lose your pursuers, blood is everywhere, the Johnson tries to renegotiate the price due to "indiscretion" and you just made an enemy out of the Ares corporation. It went better than most of your runs.

In short, it doesn't avoid it - Wired Reflexes cyberware, sustained Increase Reflexes spells, etc. are all critical elements of making sure you do unto others before they do unto you. And this is one of the things that makes Shadowrun such an exciting game with so much emphasis on tactics, planning and subterfuge.

(Though @LovisXVI clearly isn't playing 4th edition which is best edition. However, I have not the time to get into a lengthy edition war. Especially as other than this catastrophic lapse in judgement he seems a nice guy)

 

[LovisXVI]

(Though @LovisXVI clearly isn't playing 4th edition which is best edition. However, I have not the time to get into a lengthy edition war. Especially as other than this catastrophic lapse in judgement he seems a nice guy)

I started with 5th edition, since it was the one advertised with Returns which is how I got into the setting. I just have a preference for it, I like limits, though I have freely stolen from 4th edition, like the spell creation rules in my current game. I do not engage in Edition Wars generally as its more preference imo, except in the case of WoD in which case V5, H5 and W5 are an abomination against God and I will have none of it.

 

[titty skeleton]

4th edition which is best edition.

At risk of starting an edition war and because the last real discussion on Shadowrun editions was on Page 462 I have a question. For a group of people that have played D&D5e, some of 3.5, Call of Cthulhu and PF2e which Shadowrun edition would be the best to start with? From what I've read in this thread SR4e seems king for attempting to merge the hacker archetype into the ground team for better or worse and generally being a well constructed book.

With my friends and I having no prior attachment to or playing experience with Shadowrun picking an edition really comes down to recommendation. Obtaining the books won't be an issue. My VTT of choice is Foundry which only appears to have systems for 5th and 6th which is a shame if 4th is the commonly held best edition.

Any pointers in regards to quick rundowns or familiarization with the Shadowrun setting for 4th and onward is much appreciated if anyone has resources for that beyond the sourcebooks and splats themselves.

 

[Overly Serious]

I started with 5th edition, since it was the one advertised with Returns which is how I got into the setting. I just have a preference for it, I like limits, though I have freely stolen from 4th edition, like the spell creation rules in my current game. I do not engage in Edition Wars generally as its more preference imo, except in the case of WoD in which case V5, H5 and W5 are an abomination against God and I will have none of it.

I'll avoid bringing up any rules comparisons. I don't want any edition wars either (and agree about WoD). But I would like to say a few things about the background to 5th edition, just for general awareness not as any sort of counterpoint. So 4th to me was the best edition for a number of reasons. I've said I wont raise the rules side of it but in terms of lore, thoughtfulness in making the setting coherent and deepening the setting, 4th was really hitting its stride. In terms of publishing quality it was at the top of its game - artwork, layout, lack of errors, indexing... I adored the original Larry Elmore cover to 1st and 2nd and there was good artwork in those and on the novels. But they were the showpieces. 4th was polished throughout. Planning out of the supplements was superb as well - the core book for 4th contained a LOT of stuff that had previously been supplement only so you had a more complete game than you'd ever had before right from one book and then you had the four core supplements: Augmentation (cyber, bio and nanoware), Arsenal (guns, vehicles, gear, guns), Street Magic (an absolute tonne of extra magic stuff) and Unwired (everything Matrix). Nothing was a must buy and everything was useful. It was really a fan's dream compared to things like WW (complete mishmash of things split up over many supplements as the writers think of it) or FFG games where you have the organisation but massive redundancy as they repeat material over and over (their Star Wars games are shocking for this). 4th was really written by real fans of the setting. Some of which I knew and talked to. 4th isn't my first edition, btw. My first edition was... 1st.

But there was trouble in paradise. Two pieces of trouble that coincided, in fact. One of them was this: Shadowrun grew out of Cyberpunk. And Cyberpunk may not have been dead but it sure as fuck smelled like it. The whole 80s doomvibe, alienation of technology, 80's CGI Virtual Reality... It was getting really dated. Now some of us grew up with Neuromancer and Cyberpunk and we liked it but we continued to change. For some people, it was their True Love. So you had 4th edition doing things like moving to use the term Hacker instead of Decker and hackers could interact with devices wirelessly and without a Yamaha Keyboard sized "deck" they lugged around. This was both more believable to people who weren't living in the 80's and had mobile phones and notebook computers. And it also worked a Hell of a lot better for gameplay when your hacker could be integrated into the group and take actions with the group rather than the VR Dungeon approach of earlier editions which frequently led to everybody going to go and get food whilst the Decker player did their hacking mission. They also wrote the Matrix rules in a way which was very prescient and very close in many ways to what we see today with Cloud Computing. But man did some people lose their shit over this. The number of angry posts I saw about "a company wouldn't allow someone to access their data from outside the office" I couldn't count. "LOL!" The Matrix rules actually played exceptionally well and you did build "dungeons" in a sense but they overlayed with real stuff in a believable way. Anyway, I'm on the edge of talking about rules again and what I'm really trying to just get at is that moving away from punks with giant cyberdecks wired into their temples and slumped on a piss-stained couch for days on end really, really pissed off the Cyberpunk types. As did the tonal change. I didn't write "piss-stained couch" for no reason. 4th Edition had a different vibe. In no way had the setting lost its sharp edges - the world was still a violent place with extremes of poverty and wealth and megacorps bestriding the world. But they were no longer nearly all Japanese. The feeling was no longer one of despair but of chaos and excitement. Hard to convey the tonal change with just scattered examples but in short, Shadowrun had grown past its Cyberpunk origins even more into its own thing than before. A truly unique setting. And though the disaffected bitched and raged on the Dumpshock forums, ultimately they could do nothing because frankly lots of people loved it and Shadowrun was going from strength to strength.

I said they could do nothing. That was true until an opportunity came along. This happened independently of the above but you'll see why I described the above first. The Shadowrun property had been bought by a company named Catalyst Game Labs, run by one Loren Coleman. 4th was bringing in money but it stopped reaching the freelancers who were writing it. And 4th was largely built by freelancers on the off-chance the word makes one think this was a few on the periphery. Instead it appeared to be going into building Loren Coleman's Californian home (half a million dollars seemed to have dropped out of existence at one point). Detailing all of what went on would take time and is unnecessary. People weren't paid for the work they did, they kept their mouths shut for a long time trying to resolve it internally. At some point one of them broke the flood and threatened to withold the licence for their work, others joined, shit started hitting the fan legally. You can read a partial account here by one Frank Trollman (not a username, actual name). Frank is one of the most opinionated people I have ever run into. But he's not wrong.

https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=50989

https://archive.md/wip/Gshik

So this is where our two troubles meet. Faced with legal troubles over 4th edition materials, unpaid freelancers, CGL found it had a celebrating seething cadre of bitter and disenfranchised oldtimers who willingly worked for free on a 5th edition purely for the satisfaction of returning the word Decker to the mainstream, forcing hackers to have a giant cyberdeck again and some other rules stuff that got things closer to pre-4th, things like that. 5th edition was the grognard edition and it was largely born out of spite and backstabbing.

I personally had a number of rules criticisms of it but it's been so long since I ran Shadowrun that I can barely remember what they are without digging out old conversations. At any rate, I wanted to share some of my recollections of all this and also say "fuck Catalyst Game Labs". None of this is a dig at you for liking it, each should enjoy what they wish. It's not even a condemnation of 5th itself as that actually would lead into edition wars. It's just a bit of history from someone who saw Shadowrun from its first release and knew some of the people affected. The thing is, just because you're old, doesn't mean you have to be a grognard or can't grow.

Shadowrun 4th Anniversary Edition is one of the finest RPG books ever produced.

 

[LovisXVI]

At risk of starting an edition war and because the last real discussion on Shadowrun editions was on Page 462 I have a question. For a group of people that have played D&D5e, some of 3.5, Call of Cthulhu and PF2e which Shadowrun edition would be the best to start with? From what I've read in this thread SR4e seems king for attempting to merge the hacker archetype into the ground team for better or worse and generally being a well constructed book.

With my friends and I having no prior attachment to or playing experience with Shadowrun picking an edition really comes down to recommendation. Obtaining the books won't be an issue. My VTT of choice is Foundry which only appears to have systems for 5th and 6th which is a shame if 4th is the commonly held best edition.

Any pointers in regards to quick rundowns or familiarization with the Shadowrun setting for 4th and onward is much appreciated if anyone has resources for that beyond the sourcebooks and splats themselves.

There is no consensus on what the best system is other than 6th is bad. 3rd is the most refined of that era, retaining the same dice mechanics while also having the most stuff and efficient ruleset, basically 1-3 use a target number system, where you need just one die to hit the target number, where you re-roll 6's and add it to that dice, gear can increase your effective dice value or decrease target numbers, it is more like the Storyteller system in that regard, also in that 1's constitute failures and negate successes. 4th and 5th are paired together as they focus on hits instead, like Burning Wheel, where you want a result that is a 5 or 6 which is a hit, and you need a minimum number of hits to succeed, often an opposed roll. The main differences in 4th vs 5th is that 4th has better editing and the great 20th edition book which includes a master index in the back for all 4th edition material, whereas 5th edition has more books, more features, more gubbins. HOWEVER, 4th has a weakness in that it is easy to accrue tons and tons of dice, which is part of the point, but whereas 1st-3rd editions had a sort of built in limit to the insanity, 4th has no such restrictions and as such many legendary tales of faces with 40 dice, never failing any ever came to pass, so 5th added in limits derived from attributes and gear. And again it is entirely personal preference, I would say 4th or 5th are probably your best bets because 1-3 dice pools are weird and scary compared. Don't buy Catalyst products either way, they own both editions and they don't deserve your money.

As for modernizing cyberpunk, I run it in the 50's for a reason, I like the retro-future tech and aesthetics.

 

[AnOminous]

Speaking of CoC (fuck you I double post all I want) I have been thinking over the possibility of running a one-shot (maybe PbP) game for some kiwis here, I was thinking of Call of Cthulhu since it is an easy sell and I have done tons of one-shots for it. Would anyone be interested? Also any suggested platforms?

I'd be okay with playing a dumb brawler. I'd even be okay with being the first dumb idiot who teaches the rest of the party that trying to have a fist fight with a shoggoth is a really bad idea.

 

[East_Clintwood]

For SR in general I personally recommend 5E with a healthy leavening of homebrew/shit ported from 4E. If you're just gonna play an edition as-is to get a handle on it, 4E is better. Just be aware 4E has some absolutely horrendous books (War! being the ur-example) caused by all of the original freelancers leaving because of the company's fuck up.

My VTT of choice is Foundry which only appears to have systems for 5th and 6th which is a shame if 4th is the commonly held best edition.

Of those two, go with 5E. I'd say avoid 6E like the plague, but honestly if someone gave me a choice between playing 6E and catching the plague, I'd probably take the plague. This isn't a culture thing like the issues between 4 and 5, that @Overly Serious covers, but is just because 6E is a legitimately badly written mess, from both a lore and rules perspective.

Any pointers in regards to quick rundowns or familiarization with the Shadowrun setting for 4th and onward is much appreciated if anyone has resources for that beyond the sourcebooks and splats themselves.

4E has the Sixth World Almanac which is a good general timeline of the world up to that point, and Storm Front that covers some of the bigger potential plot stuff.

5E is harder because the entire thing was being built around a metaplot called CFD which tied into an online game (that's now long dead), and was generally so poorly regarded they basically bailed halfway in the simultaneously laziest, yet most hilarious, way possible, part way through. Even so because it was such a defining part of the 5E story I'd recommend the books about it (lockdown + stolen souls). Hard Targets + Dark Terrors both touch on some of the other major plotpoints from 5E like what happens to Ares and NeoNET.

Unfortunately there aren't any good up to date public resources outside of the books that I know of, even the wiki is now out of date.

 

[LovisXVI]

War! being the ur-example

Excuse me War! is great actually, I even used the tactical nuke a few sessions ago.

Of those two, go with 5E. I'd say avoid 6E like the plague

While having just said 6th is bad, let me reiterate yeah, 6th is bad. If I were to sum it up in a single word: edging. I will not explain further.

 

[robobobo]

6th is complete garbage, like missing and broken rules throughout first-timer hot garbage. 5th is... okay. Functional, at least, though if you want the whole running around with a keyboard plugged into your head vibe, 3rd is better. 4th and 5th are within spitting distance of each other, rules-wise, so you can use the 5E system in Foundry and get by when doing a 4E game. You'll have to fudge initiative, since 5th completely redid that, and the Matrix stuff in the 5E system module aren't compatible with Matrix actions in 4E, but that aside things basically work fine. The 5E module at least suffices for rolling skill checks, damage, soak, etc.

And yes, like East_Clintwood pointed out, 5E's metaplot went over like roadkill.

Spoiler

A nanite plague going around overwriting people with fragmented AIs. That sounds cool, too, but in practice it was just lame. Basically it was a zombie thing, like 95% of the people infected got their brains scrambled and shuffled around occasionally attacking others who got close to them, so it just wasn't interesting outside of the tiny percentage who came through the infection with some measure of intelligence remaining.

 

[AnOminous]

Excuse me War! is great actually, I even used the tactical nuke a few sessions ago.

WAR! What is it good for? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

 

[Overly Serious]

At risk of starting an edition war and because the last real discussion on Shadowrun editions was on Page 462 I have a question. For a group of people that have played D&D5e, some of 3.5, Call of Cthulhu and PF2e which Shadowrun edition would be the best to start with? From what I've read in this thread SR4e seems king for attempting to merge the hacker archetype into the ground team for better or worse and generally being a well constructed book.

I think to avoid edition war, proponents of any given edition should probably focus on selling their preferred edition rather than shooting down others. So that's what I'll do. I should also say that I have no familiarity with sixth. I will say that you shouldn't view the editions as a steady path of refinement. There are significant changes of direction between some editions.

So that said, I found 4th edition one of the most complete base versions of the system and if you can get hold of the SR4A (A is for Anniversary edition) it's fantastic. I have both hard copy and the PDF. It contains everything you actually need to run the game with zero requirement for the supplements. You have tonnes of gear at a wide range of power levels, extensive grimoire of spells, initiation (a type of advancement for mages that used to only be in a supplement), a decent bestiary of critters - spirits, dracoforms, wendigo. It's enough given that most of the time you're facing humans and metahumans not "monsters". Tonnes of cyberware and bioware for people to spend their cash on - it'll be a long time before people can't "level up" with just the core book.

4th is fantastic for integrating hackers into the game. The rules make a lot of sense and play pretty quickly. There aren't hard boundaries to being a hacker, either. It segues quite nicely into also being a rigger or even doubling it up for a more skill-money samurai. The traditional Shadowrun problem of "the decker has his own adventure" doesn't exist in 4th. Well, doesn't need to.

As a game system, it plays very quickly. No variable target difficulties, simple to calculate dice pools. And again, if you can prioritise the Anniversary edition, the layout was primarily done by a guy named Adam Jury (who went on to do the Eclipse Phase gameline) and is one of the easiest to reference RPG supplements I've ever owned. You need to get a quick eyeball at the dice pool modifiers for ranged combat? Bang - there they are. Although there's a fair bit to digest with Shadowrun, once you've done so 4th ed. tends to play quite quickly.

There's quite a lot of background in the core book as well - enough to get you going and even run a campaign if you want.

4th also has a good line in supplements. For background and flavour I'd really recommend Seattle 2072 for pure immersion and detail and getting the atmosphere of the setting. Depending on availability and priorities, Vice is quite a nice supplement if you want to do a realistic feeling criminal campaign. Running Wild is a personal favourite but it's quite focused on wildlife so although I adore it and it's packed with atmosphere I can't actually recommend it unless you want to include that stuff in the game.

Okay, so the above supplements are more flavour-focused (except for Running Wild). For actual rules supplements you're very well-served with 4th because they're very neatly collected into four primary supplements none of which are necessary and all of which work fine by themselves. Also, there's not much in them that invalidates the core material if you add them later. There's stuff where someone might feel they would have gone a different route if they'd had it but there's very little power-creep that would make people feel obsolete when you do get them. These four supplements are:

• Augmented. Lousy cover but a good book covering implants, body modification. Like all of these four it has a lot of atmosphere and background material as well. Chapters on how the illegal organ trade works, for example. Solid stuff for any Samurai character or GM wanting to throw some curveballs.
• Arsenal. This is one giant book of toys. Guns, explosives, tanks, helicopters, submarines, armour, parachutes (for those very special infiltrations). Oh, and rules for modifying vehicles. This book is a Rigger's dream but anybody can get something fun out of this. You wouldn't think a giant book of equipment could be so much fun but again there's tonnes of background too and the toys are hilarious.
• Street Magic. I genuinely mean it that with SR4A you can run happily with just the core book but if any rules supplement were "required" it would probably be this one. It's THE book for magicians. Great for GMs who want to make some very special magical opposition as well.
• Unwired. Despite my glowing love of the Matrix implementation in 4th, this is probably the least needed supplement. It's fine though, apart from the Technomancer stuff. Bit more on that below.

So the one fly in the ointment for me in 4th edition was it introduced "Technomancers". I say introduced, they appeared in earlier editions as "otaku" (yes, really). I find the entire concept of Technomancers to be misconceived and frankly against some of the foundational concepts of Shadowrun. Perhaps that's my own grognard moment but they also don't work very well from a rules and balance point of view. About the only thing in 4th that doesn't. They both make regular hackers look stupid underpowered whilst at the same time being weirdly narrow and vulnerable. That sounds like a kind of balance - powerful but fragile - but in practice it just makes them play badly and puts the GM in a box of "do I let the technomancer walk over everything or do I kill them". I entirely scrapped Technomancers from my game and you know what? The setting was largely unaffected by their non-existence.

Gah, all this has really made me want to run a Shadowrun game. We all still talking about doing an online Kiwi game for ourselves? I've almost talked myself into it!

Any pointers in regards to quick rundowns or familiarization with the Shadowrun setting for 4th and onward is much appreciated if anyone has resources for that beyond the sourcebooks and splats themselves.

I can see if I can ferret some up.

 

[Overly Serious]

and as such many legendary tales of faces with 40 dice

If I may respectfully comment on this one bit (and I thought your post was very fair given you have an acknowledged preferred edition so kudos!)... I ran 4th for years and never saw that, outside theoretical builds which wouldn't have worked well in practice. There was a poster on the old Dumpshock forums who had his "Pornomancer" face who he was convinced could break any game. It would never work that way with any sane GM but he liked to use it to "show" how 4th edition was broken.

You do use a lot of d6's in 4th, but it's kind of fun clattering 10-12 dice across the table and eagerly counting up your 5's and 6's. OP says he's playing online though so I imagine whatever he uses just does it all for him and says "three hits!".

EDIT: 4th also has the "trade dice for hits" rule whenever the GM allows it. So for most things the hypothetical 40 dice Face could just say they got an automatic 10 hits. At least until the GM killed their overspecialised, hyper-fragile build with a devil rat.

 

[LovisXVI]

You do use a lot of d6's in 4th, but it's kind of fun clattering 10-12 dice across the table and eagerly counting up your 5's and 6's. OP says he's playing online though so I imagine whatever he uses just does it all for him and says "three hits!".

I would generally recommend using Chummer which comes with a diceroller which records hits anyway @titty skeleton, it is the digital character management software and really eases the hiccups of either system (like remembering how many shots you fired among other things). There is a version for 4th and 5th so this holds up either way.

So for most things the hypothetical 40 dice Face could just say they got an automatic 10 hits. At least until the GM killed their overspecialised, hyper-fragile build with a devil rat.

Which is why it was never the 40 dice sam, which I don't think would even work in the craziest hypothetical since eventually they would get hit once.

• Augmented. Lousy cover but a good book covering implants, body modification. Like all of these four it has a lot of atmosphere and background material as well. Chapters on how the illegal organ trade works, for example. Solid stuff for any Samurai character or GM wanting to throw some curveballs.

The version I has a better looking cover, think it is the 3rd printing? If you end up getting anything 4th, you would be getting the Anniversary versions which were re-edited for used with 4A anyway

Gah, all this has really made me want to run a Shadowrun game. We all still talking about doing an online Kiwi game for ourselves? I've almost talked myself into it!

Hey, I would certainly be down for playing, even 4th edition, I will check out Matrix (how appropriate a name) and see if I can't get anything set up for CoC first and move from there.

Now @titty skeleton if I were to sell 5th to you it would be a lot of the same things as 4th in context to 3rd vs 4th, however it would come with the caveat of *more* in all regards. More guns, more spells, more magical traditions, more mentor spirits, more 'ware, more cars, more martial arts, more called shots, more bad editing, more poor formatting, it is generally a culmination of many of the design decisions of 4th edition but generally brought further and to further extremes. There a handful of things that never made the crossing which is really bothersome, such as gear design guidelines, spell creation, and that sort of thing, though you can and should look to 4th for them anyway (lucky us that its all basically compatible). The real bonus to fifth is the aforementioned limits. Putting a restriction on how successes you can use, it can serve as a serious deciding factor, where a gun with high damage and a mediocre accuracy might serve you well in the early levels, like a shotgun, you might have to switch, trade up for accuracy or get into modifications to up your limit, which means hitting enemies with higher defence tests and doing more damage from additional successes. Want to go up against a hard nosed Johnson in the negotiation? Better put on the proper duds for that addition to your social limit. Need to do deep research in an extended test but don't have much time? Pop those drugs or cast that magic to improve your mental limit. Or if all else fails, spend some edge to break it altogether.

As for intros, 4th edition's 6th world almanac is probably your best bet, though I think that misses some of the most fun elements from the setting so I will also recommend the somewhat unorthodox but I love it anyway: Shadowbeat, a 1st edition supplement which is all about culture, no matter when you set your game lots of parts are still relevant, what are sports like? Popular music (What final tour is Mercurial on now)? It generally gives you a look into the parts that most people just forget about in most fictional settings: just being a regular guy. Having a PC care about the game between the Tacoma Wings and Seattle Screamers so we've better hurry this up, because he is not gonna miss that adds a lot to a feeling of real-ness to it all.