Why Is Old School Shadowrun So Fragging Good?
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- Old school Shadowrun is the best Shadowrun. You know it. I know it. The whole fraggin WORLD knows it. The question is...why? Why is old school Shadowrun so great? Why does old school Shadowrun hit so hard? Why does old school Shadowrun still keep its shine even decades later?
Let's find out, chummer.
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Since 2004, my group still plays 3rd edition and still loving it.
Another great old supplement was Shadowbeat. Going into sports, reporters, rock stars, etc. Not for everyone, but was great for world building
Oooh, yes. I've read a little bit of Shadowbeat and it was very interesting. Need to see if I can find a hard copy of it...
Shadowbeat was great.
The tech of the 2050s just resonates with me and my players more than the later editions. When the 2050 book for Anarchy was released I was over the moon.
I wish someone would release Shadowrun art book compendiums collecting all the art work from Shadowrun.
There was one released back in the 90s. I have it somewhere in my parents' attic. Don't know if it's available digitally but I'll have to see if I can track down a copy.
What really worked well for Shadowrun is it’s set in a recognizably modern setting. Most RPGs were set in some medieval Tolkien knock off world most modern players without a serious fantasy jones or history degree didn’t get. In Shadowrun your PC has a gun, a car, bills, an apartment (if it’s in their lifestyle), a PC, etc. Cops, businesses, traffic, malls, telephones, etc. all work in understandable parameters. Where do they live? Seattle and if they need to find something in game they use a computer; out of game a map. Settings are bars, warehouses, offices, apartments, and back alleys. Need to cross country? Buy a plane ticket.
If it has a failing, it’s that some players are too retro (like one who wanted to infiltrate a place disguised as, get this, a door to door _magazine_ salesman - in 2080!) Or the too up to date player who can explain why computer security would NEVER operate like the matrix. (Though I can point out many analogs to the matrix’s “impossible weaknesses” in modern internet/computers)
Compliments are due to the writers who introduced fantasy and sci fi items and made them “normal” in the context of the day to day Shadowrun world. (A dragon runs my Corp but he’s just like any boss high up in the hierarchy - unseen) They also introduced unreliable narration, a feature if not new then highly rare. (Did the corp or the government do this thing? Or both together? Or a mysterious 3rd party? It depends on your source and it’s ultimately up to the GM.)
Perfect. Couldn't have said it better myself!
Neo Anarchist Guide to Real Life was amazing for me. The annotated official/hacker format was wonderful to answering questions on smaller details of real life. Fantastic detail building rather than world building.
The lore, definitely ... and dice pool system.
I only started playing a few months ago cuz a friend's coworker invited us to his group. They're a bunch of old school dudes who only play first/second edition so that's all I know 😂 but it's super fun and I've been totally absorbed with the PDFs of the books they sent me. I've been planning all sorts of characters in my phone notes using books like the 2e core, street samurai catalog, Cybertech, Shadowtech, the Rigger Black Book, etc.
Right there with ya my man! 🤘🏻 if you want to hear some classic Shadowrun goodness, we have a 2nd Edition Actual Play podcast and you might dig it!
On the topic of *why* I think 1e and 2e are so great, is they are actually geared toward new players. It was only 3 years old at that point, so they don’t assume you already know what SR is. From 3e and on, it seems the books are speaking more toward Shadowrun fans and it’s very “inside baseball.” Just my opinion 😎
Keep running with that OG Shadowrun banner, chummer! 🦾
Personally, I got the shadowrun fever when at the age of 14 my advanced Dungeons & Dragons second edition group took me to a failing gaming shop and we played in this massive back room. There was a section of the room that was lit with black lights and was shadowy, and there hung a poster of The original Shadowrun art from the 1st Ed book. Lit to glow with black lights. I was hooked immediately. I begin consuming as much information about Shadowrun is my teenage brain could handle. Unfortunately, this was at the dawn of fourth edition so finding a group that would take a teenage kid was next to impossible. But now as an adult, I’ve got a pretty awesome collection of first, second, and third edition material that I’ve been putting to use whenever possible.
I was introduced to SR in college with 1st edition by my DM that initially used it to crossover with his D&D game (he found a way to convert SR to D&D which I thought was amazing). We then played some 1st edition later but I headed back home after that year of college and didn't really pick SR back up until 2nd edition.
I found the rules much more streamlined and easier to teach to my players. We played a lot of SR 2nd ed. and when SR 3rd ed. came out we picked up a copy and decided, after reading over the rules, that we'd convert our then 2nd edition game into 3rd edition. We ran that game until the group had averaged around 300 karma each.
We played SR3 on and off for several years after that between other TTRPG games.
When 4th edition came out a couple of us picked up the main rule book to check out the changes and try the rules some. I felt like the rules nerfed a lot of stuff by putting limits on skills and abilities as well as the new character build system felt like a much more limited version of the SR3 Companion character build system. Also don't get me started on how much it felt like they were trying to neuter spell casters. I tried converting a mage I'd built and couldn't even come close to the initial build of the character as it was without any karma applied. I think they were trying to "balance" spell casters for the later editions, but those of us who played earlier editions know that spell casters were supposed to be rare. Also in a GM wanted a heavy spell caster game he knew to balance and counter for such.
To keep the original feel (and headaches to a minimum) we always play our SR3 games with a house rule of 1 spell caster PC per team. They can have all the physads they want, but only 1 spell slinger has kept GM sanity. We imposed this after finishing out a campaign that had 2 spell casters in it which could prove very difficult at times to challenge the party or for the non-casters to see much action during a well planned run.
All the limits and new rules that popped up in later editions of the game felt like the creators were trying to simplify the rules for new players, which a good GM already knew how to do, and trying to slow or lower the power level of characters by putting dice caps and max dice applied rules. Again these could be emulated by a good GM placing build limits at the beginning of the campaign and using training rules to slow progression during the game.
So, my love is for 3rd edition because I believe it had a great background setup and using 1st - 3rd edition source books and very flexible character creation, especially if using the 3rd edition SR Companion. I have probably between 80% and 90% of the books for 1st-3rd editions and since we enjoy those rules we don't feel the need to spend possibly large amounts of money to buy a new set of rules that we may not enjoy as much.
I was nodding along as I listened. Bug City, CyberPirates, Threats….so many inspiring books. How could anyone read Dunklezahn’s will without getting inspired? And the novels back then were great. I still have a vast collection and cannot get rid of it. Modern SR may be excellent but I just don’t have the time or opportunity to play these days. It may be a case of you-like-what-you-played🤔 anyway, I have such fond memories of 2nd Ed☺️
You named my top 3 favorite supplements in the first sentence...lol...
@@TheSixthWorld well, I mentioned those because you mentioned those😉but there are so many more too. And so many I bought but never got chance to use😅 I still love to browse my collection, see for example the tech changes from Street Sam Catalogue through Fields of Fire to the cyber-zombie, move-by-wire madness of Cybertechnology.
I grew up on 2nd ed and, although subsequent editions didn't hold my interest, I still regard its core rulebook as the finest example of such a book I've ever come across. It's brilliantly laid out, clearly but evocatively written so even the driest rules sections are fun to read, and the illustrations - by Laubenstein, Aulisio and Bradstreet in particular - still define the look of the world to me. The world-building is superb, setting the Sixth World up as frightening and gritty but also exciting and dreamlike, creating an impression of a society trying to find its feet after a series of weird catastrophes; it remains to be seen if the Awakening was a blessing or a curse, and the impression I got was that this was for your group to decide. The game is also startlingly complete; you can (and I did) sustain a campaign with nothing but the core book for a couple of years. When you finally exhausted those possibilities 2nd ed had you covered with a wealth of terrific supplements. The place books (Bug City excepted) were oddly floppy but things like Threats, Rigger 2 and Super Tuesday were fantastic.
Awakenings: New Magic in 2057 could be the best supplement in RPG history. The magic system in Shadowrun was always my favourite part of the game, both in terms of mechanics and lore, and Awakenings wraps some useful new rules with some startlingly evocative fiction discussing what being a magician actually feels like. At the time a lot of my friends were getting very excited by Mage: The Ascension, which traded on its rich, edgy lore, but Mage never came up with anything as engaging and effective as stories like 'Way of the Burnout,' 'Azeroth' and 'Becoming Prairie Dog.' The fact that I still remember those stories 20+ years since I last ran Shadowrun says a lot.
So for reasons of objective assessment and sentimental attachment, Shadowrun 2nd ed is my pick for best RPG ever. I would not think it amiss for this channel to host a retrospective review of Awakenings; nobody else I know ever used it and I'd like to know what another GM thinks of it.
The reasons that 2e is the greatest edition of Shadowrun are far too many to lay out here, but if I had to pick just one it would be the style/feel of the setting -‘80s retrofuturism, high tech, low life, cyberpunk meets a magical/mythological revival grounded in real world peoples, cultures and practices.
One of the things I liked the most about old style shadowrun is the everything was wired, no wireless bs for deckers and such lol
I played Shadowrun for the SNES. Read a bunch of the books.
Shadowrun for SEGA was one of the best games of that era. SNES was just mid by comparison. So if you never playes rhe former but liked the latter, you'll love the SEGA version a lot.
I'd even say the Sega version is better than the Shadowrun Returns PC games.
That sandbox gameplay is just amazing.
2nd edition is my favorite. This is driven partially by nostalgia I would say, but we still play this edition every 3 weeks to this day, so it is still a fun system. Many people say 2nd edition rules are difficult, not false, but if you just take some notes for certain sections--such as: Matrix, vehicle combat, and magic, the rest is along a same line and can be remembered semi easily.
We haven't had an issue with decking...mainly cause none of my players want to deal with the headache. They just hire a decker if they need one.
@@TheSixthWorld yeh, when I was in high school we didnt deck much, but I became really interested in the matrix rules 25 years later and finally learned it. Another difficult aspect is that decking is almost a game inside the main game and it can drag on if you dont trim the fat.
Just reading the old school novels these days (now: Lone Wolf)👍
I started with SR 1. And I'm still refereeing it. With homebrew rules, though.
3rd ed shadowrun was my first ttrpg. 80's cyberpunk dystopia neon mohawk Sci fi. A beautiful blend of Sci fi and fantasy and over the top tropes of genre media I found 4th to 6th more bleak, losing a lot of the flavour I loved for realism. 3rd ed and before was robocop, total recall, rollerball. My favourite now and forever. The most cinematic ttrog for me.
I think old school Shadowrun is better because it is more closely tied to its inspiration, which William Gibson is a big part of, as well as the vision of its creators. Later editions and content are more self-referential, much like Star Wars became.
The first Seattle source book was my favorite.
I think i own every physical 3E sourcebook (thank you ebay) fucking epic.
I agree. 2nd and 3rd ed. lore is the best. Even when we played with 4th and 5th ed. we often played in the 2nd and 3rd ed. timeframe with the old scorcebooks.
For sure, it was nostalgia because at the time I started to play it, it was new. 1e to 3e were fresh, cool and most importantly cohesive with a clear direction and storytelling for the world. The supplements and novels were awesome. And that gonzo crazy art, man! They balanced tech, magic and critters well. 5E just made it bloated with rules for every little thing, and for me, it just didn't appeal.
The art was phenomenal and the world building was top notch!
I took a poll in my 40+ 1st Ed. Shadowrun is the Best Club to find out which edition is the most liked. 1st edition won.
If you gave me a chance to play any edition of Shadowrun, it would be Second. First Edition was great, but 2nd cleaned up a lot while keeping the feel.
Great game, all you need is every D6 from every board game. All of them.
God those dice pools....lmao
Because minus the magical, everything else is coming true. Timeline of tech is pretty close even. But corporate takeover of the world is spot on.
"You'd best start believing in cyberpunk dystopias...you're in one!"
I think you confused 5th and 6th editions ss5th edition is probably the most played 6th edition gets the most guff.
Though i strated with 2e 3e was the best hands down. I think more people 5th due to accessibility
Really? Cause I've actually heard more negative about 5th than 6th. Different tastes in different areas I suppose.
@@TheSixthWorld i have ran multiple polls in the. Runners Union 5e always gets most played
I've gone on record in the past that while i love the setting of Shadowrun, the game itself has always felt more than a little clunky and disjointed. Therefore, I have to look at the setting information itself and that.. Okay, Third Edition was the best when it comes with the setting itself with fourth being a fairly close second, and that more comes from the fact that Catalyst decided to make the Confederation of American States into the confederacy part two.
I subbed out the standard SR system with a modified version of the Chronicles of Darkness. It runs surprisingly well.
The only bad side to old school shadowrun were the Matrix rules for me. I had a GM back then who was a computer technician and was able to make it sound "believable", but I think he was winging it and not following the rules. Anyway, it put me off trying to run Shadowrun myself until Anarchy came out.
The old matrix rules make my head hurt...
3rd got the best artwork imo.
I like 2nd edition art but I'll agree that 3rd is where Shadowrun really hit its stride. Some quality artists during those years.
I haven't been able to play new Shadowrun either, but I think 5th and 6th seem messy....and way too much dice to roll. However, I do like the new tech. If there was a way to use the new weapons and tech with the old-school game, I'm all for it.
My experience is only with 3e, 4e, and 2e, but if it's a question of art, then the old black and white pictures and the hand drawn art do far more for me than the sterile 4e Photoshop art with all the glowing lines and perfection. I've seen art from 5e and 6e and it doesn't interest me at all.
I found that 1st Edition could get a bit clunky, 2nd was a quicker to play and 3rd seemed like a polished version. Played a fair bit of 4th but less background and equipment.
I like how 4th streamlined decking and rigging. The wireless matrix is...fine...most of the time my group doesn't bother with it and just uses hackers/technomancers in a traditional manner.
I have no experience with the earlier editions, and am mostly here due to the video games.
Tried playing fourth edition tabletop a few times, and just despaired everytime I tried to make a character. I have how many points to distribute in how many skills?
It was D&D 3.x, just twenty times worse. Being told by the DM that my character can't drive a car because I overlooked an esential skill among all the others.
Mostly the nostalgia. Unfortunately, those editions no longer resonate with the newer generations so they had to go towards something more... modern, but I like the fact that everything in the pasts edition is canon and they just roll with it. They even made a continuity to Bug City with Cutting Black and bring up old faces. Fifth edition was a bit too complex for my taste but my favorite edition, gameplay wise, must have been third edition even though the sixth start to grow on me.
Agreed about the world building. In the 2nd Edition... Players Handbook? Core Rules Book? Either way, the section in the main book for 2nd edition called... I think it was "A Brief History Lesson" or "And So It Came To Pass", one of those, that section was the most verbose and well written piece of fictional academic history Shadowrun has ever printed. I feel like they all went down hill from there. Other tellings of the sort of "what happened?" story, the "how we got here" story, always seem hand-wavey and incomplete, as if they were dictated by a random person off the street in an unrehearsed interview, with no detail or hard facts to speak of. At least by comparison to that of 2nd Edition. I always make reading that section from 2nd Edition mandatory reading for new players, no matter what year we're playing in or what version. And some times, we don't even use SR rules. I've run it with GURPS rules or Eclipse Phase rules before and it's pretty great.
Yeah that was the second edition book. The best lore of any edition.
No runner should be without Shadowtech a 3rd edition splat book, no matter if you are playing 1st edition, 2nd, whatever. The stuff in there is just way too cool to not at least use or convert over if you have to.
The old art and world building is far superior in my book. The new stuff just isn’t gritty or appropriate in my mind. Catalyst is relying on too many new school artists and authors and isn’t taking any chances, in my book
I've read some 4th edition stuff that was good with regards to world building. The Attitude sourcebook comes to mind. Nothing matches the old FASA books, though.
2nd edition is my favorite and the easiest to play in my very humble opinion
I have copies of 1e, 2e, 4e, and 6e. 6e has hands down been my best experience with Shadowrun, only 2e comes close in Pink Mohawk style and Punk themes. 2e’s art is evocatively better and it has more First Nations representation in the narratives … but a lot of that representation is far more cringe in making First Nations representation stereotypes written from eastern USA colonial perspectives that has fueled a lot of racist bullshit I saw in book’s Matrix chatter, in Dumpshock and Shadowrun blogs over the decades. This was evident in novels as well, there have been some more recent novels that do far better in being substantially researched and respectful as to why say Council Island, Sioux Wildcats and SSC Rangers are top of the Professional Ratings while still staying true to the dystopian setting for punks and shadowrunners to rail against. Don’t get me wrong though, there is still room for improvements, more Shadows In Focus, to help GMs and players alike realize there is fun to be had in not just viewing Shadowrun’s Landback divisions of North America timeline as problematic, relegated to erasure behind a metahumanity, especially immortal elf, focused world building.
I think the issue of Neo-School Shadowrun is getting far too many options and new tech options that tries to play catch-up to modern day.
Old-school Shadowrun had the whole vidphones, it was wired, it was very stationary. New-School on the other hand is a lot of wireless, mobility and the likes.
That would be my pressing point.
Then some of the options are actually really s'well! Stuff to play AI and the likes. But a lot of those options feel so disjointed.
I guess an easier way to put it is that old-school, like anything has soul.
New-school always lacks this soul. Same reason I'm far more interested in AD&D and D&D Basic over D&D 3.5 and forward.
Have to admit the wireless Matrix gives me trouble. Like I can't wrap my head around it in the context of Shadowrun. I'll also agree that a lot of new school TTRPG stuff in general doesn't have the same flair as the old stuff.
True true, at this point it is retro sci fi like Fallout, Bioshock or the Outer Worlds. Trying to crowbar in modern tech just breaks the immersion and the setting.
It is just not how things work within this setting.
Because....The marketing department advertising it had no freaking idea what on can do plan and practice with it. Like at all. They all like Unreal, the real deal CoD, dude.
#provos
Real Talk:
Some people told us you are planning bank robberies in the cafeteria?
Ahhm. No. I just took the recent bank robbery sieries in the area as inspiration for some Shadowrun adventures. It is dark dark future sci-fi role playing game. I am the head in the game and a street sam..
You can go.
Thanks. Have a nice day.
#hellskitchenkidstakingoverthestove #90ies #brotfuerdiewelt
Back before it went woke and politically correct. Used to be anti corporate messaging and now it parrots what every major corporation shouts about.
Wait, so now anarchist and socialist messages in fiction are considered unwoke and politically incorrect?
Wow, those terms are utterly devoid of meaning these days. If they ever held any meaning.
@@Duchess_Van_HoofWoke these days has just become the worst of both social conservatism (satanic panic) and pretentious liberalism. So you have a bunch of right wing liberals who shun those who dont support the new status quo, but they larp as leftists while holding no actual leftist beliefs beyond the new ones they fabricated on social issues that they fabricated from an overreaction to disgusting fascist angry hate and old school status quo bigotry.
In other words:
In the 80's you had the Satanic Panic in ttrpg's led by churchy types who demanded everything be safe and normal. Self-righteous moral conservatives who condemn everyone who doesnt fit in their status quo box of social norms.
Now in 2020's you have the "Not One of Us" crowd led by the liberal types who demand everything be safe and normal (the new normal). Self-righteous moral conservatives who condemn everyone who doesnt fit in their status quo box of social norms.
The irony is also the 1980's conservative Republicans would now belong in the Democrat party, as people like Nixon and Reagan would be seen as radical leftists now. It's gotten so bad and the overton window shifted so far right.
So these people are the same people. They just changed their religion from virtue signaling churchy christians to virtue signaling terminally online losers.
In other words: counter-culture is still shunned today just like it was in the 80's & 90's. The labels these people use to describe themselves changed but nothing else did. Theyre still the same people. Just moved their church from physical buildings to digital Twitter.
Ok, who asked a Humanis Policlub member to write in