I mean, where’s the lie?
I remember playing Shadowrun when I was young. Second Edition. It was awesome. I read the rules, skimmed the chunky bits that I knew I could come back to later, absorbed the setting, and was ready to rock! This was going to be awesome.
Then I actually started making my character…
Then I bought some weapons… and actually read how combat works… Initiative…
…what?
And I basically never played Shadowrun again after that game.
I still have flashbacks to slogging my way through the Shadowrun 5e core book. That rulebook is a crime unto itself.
I remember thinking “wow, guns are stupid. I’ll be an Elf Wizard instead!”
Then I read how magic worked.
“I’ll be a Decker!”
Great, now every time I want to do anything, the rest of the party has to wait while I play a hacking minigame by myself for a half-hour.
Every hacking sequence in a Shadowrun game is either:
I played exactly 1 session of shadowrun 4th ed and it was enough to convince me never again. Just incredibly bitty rules and rolling stupid amounts of dice. Also I kind of hate fantasy in cyberpunk setting.
I played a like 3-4 session campaign in, I think 3rd edition. Rather than do any work I found some character builds online that I liked and found an automatic wielding superhacker.
I came to the table with this guy and quickly realized nobody at the table knew or cared about how hacking worked, other than that we knew that there was ICE and Black ICE and that’s about it. We actually had a great time and enjoyed the game provided we just skipped all the rules we didn’t know including my characters primary stat.
Then we stopped playing because shadowrun has systems for everything and nobody can be bothered to use them all.
Did ya know it has a system for determining your living arrangements? Like you’re creds are going down every time period?
My first table top rpg I ever played was Shadowrun 3th edition. I got cd from friend of a friend that had shitty quality pdf scans of the rule book and was told to make character for next Sunday.
I’m surprised how well I got into the game and tabletop rpgs overall with that start. Though the Shadowrun’s mission based structure meant that we had a rotating GM system that meant I got to GM pretty soon after starting the hobby, which was definitely good as I know people who have played for years but don’t dare to GM even if they might want to.
Also for anyone who likes the cyberpunk and doing missions against greedy megacorporations aspects of Shadowrun, I’d suggest looking into Sparwl, it’s great.
Edit: Also has supplement to add fantasy stuff in it, in case one wants it to be even more Shadowrun. Haven’t read the book, so can’t tell how it is.
My experience with Shadowrun was a bloody nightmare. Met up with this weird guy who’d be GMing and a classy dude who was very neat I’d be playing with.
Guns: stupid
Magic: stupid
Hacking: stupid.
Made a martial artist who lived on a boat. GM noted I was basically Popeye.
He got killed after several missions.
Made a gruff dog shaman. Just got made fun of until he died.
Offered to run something good. Was told, go ahead, just as long as it was Savage Worlds. Read Savage Worlds… Left the group.
Stayed in contact with the other guy for a few years, he was a professional in a similar field to myself but never gamed with him again.
For anyone who enjoys the Shadowrun setting, there is a PbtA mod for it called Shadowrun Anarchy that is a lot more playable.
Savage Worlds actually have a sort of sensible narrative driven system which I see as the polar opposite of shadowrun’s ruleset that I find that kind of funny actually.
I really don’t see why trad games are the norm. I played Liminal at the last convention I was at and it majorly sucked. There were some names of people I know and like attached to it, but it was just more of the same.
I’m tired of the expectation that I should be open minded enough to enjoy something that’s plain terrible.
Also.
Cyberpunk.
Hey, I’m playing a massive Cyberpunk LARP that you should all join.
It’s called 2019.
Time to destroy some megacorps.
The Sprawl would be my first choice as well. Magic is a (new) add-on supplement, but my preference is to keep it Gibsonian and leave magic out. I think it still requires some GM skill and finesse to work the Matrix moves into the real world moves, however.
Yeah I will def report back here as soon as I get my hands on a Cyberpunk Red starter kit in august.
There is a stupidly large number of people who have a D&D-centric model of the RPG universe. Also the laughable assertion that D&D does anything well. There’s nothing about the mechanics, lore, or experience of D&D that is inherently note worthy other than its pre-existing network from a first mover type advantage. Hell even if you only ever want crazy fantasy adventure where you roam from dungeon to dungeon on a power trip there are much better systems (Dungeonworld, torchkeeper, etc.) that do a better version of the D&D game feel and story. /end rant.
So I used to think in lock step with your opinion. But I’ve changed my mind a bit. Dnd has another not oft talked about advantage. That’s it’s sheer size. Especially when it comes to character creation. If you can think of it, there’s probably already rules for how to do it in dnd. Official and written by wotc game designers rules no less.
This isn’t a problem for most people, as most people are comfortable either changing over to something that already has rules for how it works in torchbearer or whatever or are more comfortable modifying or adding rules on the fly. Some though, are not happy with either of those options and for those people dnd has something to offer that most of it’s competitors don’t.
Those rules are usually not well written and are usually made up as content add-ons or expansions that are not inherently designed or balanced in anyway to function together holistically leading to all of the hilarious improbable systems mechanics interactions in D&D 3 and 3.5 for example. I dig a lot of the stuff that Mearls and Crawford have had a hand in putting out through Unearthed Arcana expanding content for players and adding a lot of stuff, but its a YMMV kinda thing that’s incredibly depend on GM skill to run a lot of the optional content/rules effectively. If someone told me they wanted a system to handle “everything” I’d just say use Fate or Fate Accelerated as they have sufficient abstraction to actually cover any conceivable story translated to mechanics need.
That’s generally not what I’m talking about. My group generally eschews third party things, except in very limited circumstances and on a case by case basis. Nevertheless we find most classes have many ways to modify them to be what you want them to be, just using nothing more than the official books.
Admittedly when we play, we play 3.5 which, is a bit older and has the benefits of many books written over the course of years. I’m not sure if I could give the same status to 5.
5e has shit tons of first party content, more than thitd party I’m pretty sure.