Shadowrun editions...

[malak]

So I've recently played Shadowrun Returns, and I did read a lot of shadowrun novels as a teenager. I would like to start a SR pnp campaign, but I've never really played it before. Years ago I played a single game at a Con, and I remember I thought it was fiddly and overly complicated.

So.. what edition of Shadowrun should I have a look at? What ed can you recommend to me, and why?

The friends I would play with know D&D 3.5 and 4E, but no other pnp systems.

[Username17]

Shadowrun 4th edition. Not Shadowrun 4 Anniversary Edition, just 4th edition.

It has a fixed target number, which blows the older systems of basic task resolution out of the water. Editions since then have basically just been SR4 where innumerate people put in their stupid and ill-conceived house rules.

Problems: Vehicles and the Matrix basically don't work. But... that's pretty much true of every edition of Shadowrun, so W/E.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

Common solution to the Matrix problem is to just skip it and handwave it with NPCs. Part of the problem is player roles- you get players who think that sitting in their apartment like Case in Neuromancer while the PCs do their thing, but it's either literally twice the work (if you're running a virtual dungeon) so that one person can be antisocial, or there is tons and tons of downtime for either the hacker or the runners.

The other part of the problem is atrocious rules. I actually find that 4th editions Matrix rules tend to be worse than the virtual dungeons of 3rd edition and earlier. I mean, the Matrix example of a super simple hacking job requires we determined something like 40 dice pool rolls. It's so spectacularly bad and ultimately pointless that in 5th edition they come up with arbitrary reasons to have shit like the scope on your gun open up to the matrix so you can hack it because reasons.

Rigging on the other hand suffers from having shit vehicle rules, which is very unfortunate.

My other problem with 4th is that you're going to find a schism. The first few books had some interesting ideas and some promise, and then the game basically takes a shit all over itself in favor of "MAGIC RULEZ EVERYTHING!" There's a 180 page thread here on why that is the case, but long story short, I find that beyond the premise of SR4, the setting kind of took a shit on itself. It was always kind of goofy, but to my knowledge SR never dipped down into anti-semitic ghostbusting in concentration camps to recover magical torture devices levels (true story) until 4th ed.

I'm happiest with SR4 rules houseruled moderately and adapted to SR3's timeline.

[malak]

Handwaving Matrix stuff is a good tip - anyway, I don't think anyone wants to play a decker; they want to be mage, adept, street samurais or riggers.


Are there any common house-rules to make combat faster?

[Lokathor]

Ends Of The Matrix is a legit good system to play, but trying to learn all the physical, magical, and matrix rules all at once can be daunting.

Probably easiest to focus on a just physical mission, then add matrix or magic into the next mission, then add the final part into the next mission, then play the game normal.

[Otakusensei]

Keeping things simple is your best approach to starting out. Keep everyone to the main book to start out and then bring the sourcebooks in later after everyone can handle the basic rules.

[Whipstitch]

I'd ditch glitches entirely. They do some funky stuff to the math at small dice pool sizes for very little practical gain.

[Blade]

All editions have wonky rules but all are at least playable out of the box.

I don't think I've ever heard someone saying that the SR1 rules were superior to any other editions.
SR3 is mostly a fixed SR2. It is more complex than the following editions, but if you're able to keep in mind all the rules (and the additional rules) and to handle them all correctly, you might have a more complete ruleset, but there are some big problems with it, such as the variable TN that not only makes it more complicated to estimate/adjust the difficulty, but also have the problem of 6=7.
There were people working on SR3R to fix and enhance SR3, but I don't know if it was any good, how far they went and if it's still alive or not.

SR4 has a better basic resolution mechanism, less special cases and specific ruleset than SR3, which might lead to a loss of granularity but makes it far easier to remember all the rules and use them correctly.

SR5 has a lot in common with SR4. On the paper, they have many problems, but from what I've heard it's actually pretty ok in play and should be good after some errata.

No matter which version you use, the Matrix is never really good and the vehicle rules are always absurd.

Common house-rules to make combat faster (in SR4):
- Skip the dodge test: treat the attack roll as a success test (I think this is an optional rule in the SR4 book)
- Skip the soak test: substract armor/2 (or armor/3) from the DV and apply the result as damage. In that case, condition monitors might benefit from a raise to 8+Body instead of 8+(Body/2)
- Keep the initiative scores for the whole combat
- Remove multiple IPs and replace them with bonuses to actions or specials effects (for example, the character can damage two opponents with a single attack)
- Don't play the whole combat if it's not necessary: if your group of runners are up against two gangers, skip to the part where the gangers are dead/unconscious/dying/captured.

[TheFlatline]

Congrats, the first two houserules turn combat into nWoD and completely clusterfuck the entire combat minigame into pointlessness.

[phlapjackage]

Yeah, I don't think these are common houserules. About the only one I would say is ok is keeping the same init scores throughout the whole combat.

The 4th one (no multiple IPs) seems like it's more complicated and requires more thinking than just being able to act multiple times. The 5th one seems bad as well, why have combat at all if you skip parts like that?

[Username17]

As far as I can tell, Blade does not and has never actually played Shadowrun, and collects the books and considers himself a fan because reasons. If you wanted to speed up combat you'd use group initiative and not give Edge to NPCs. You wouldn't remove the defense roll or skip combats altogether, because that would be shitty.

-Username17

[Blade]

Removing defense roll is an optional rule that's in the SR4 core book (IIRC). I don't like it either, but I know people who do and who used it to speed up combat so I've put it here.

Removing the defense roll works, I've used it for a whole campaign. It made damage less random for characters with high armor and body, and also made it so that such characters could not shrug off the damage caused by a grenade that exploded at their feet (except for characters with a really high armor score).

The fourth (removing multiple IPs) requires more details than that, but I've seen a few people in Dumpshock or other forums proposing such rules to speed up combat and I'd like to try it one day.

The last is simple to understand, if you're not someone who thinks that RPG=combat games. It's similar to not bothering to roll when trying to do an action that you can't fail. If you're 99% sure that the combat will be something like:
- Roll initiative
- Runner goes first
- Runner shoots mook
- Mook dies
- Runner shoots other mook
- Other mook dies
- Combat is over
Skipping the combat is a way to avoid 9 rolls for exactly the same result.
It's similar to the movies/anime where they show the thugs harrassing the heroes, then skip to the part where the thugs got their ass kicked, because it's obvious it will end up this way and because the combat wouldn't have been interesting to show.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

If you think a proposed houserule is stupid, why suggest it?

Alternately: If you think a proposed houserule is stupid, why suggest it and not automatically declaim it by saying "Some people may like this rule but it's really pretty fucking stupid when you get down to it"

[Blade]

I'm not a true denner: when I don't like a rule, I don't necessarily think it's stupid.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

As for skipping easy combat: If you ever find your self in a position where you want to skip combat because it's too routine and too easy, you need to reconsider your encounter design philosophies.

I'm a fan of combat that is a foregone conclusion, in the right situations. They can be a good way to get a novice party used to the combat rules and their character's abilites without putting them in huge risk, it can be a good vent in a tough campaign where the party has to use all of their cunning to get through other fights. It can even be used as flavor text, for example if the party is going through a rough and violent part of town, having a couple wanna-bes jump the party to try to make a name for themselves and getting their asses handed to them in the process.

But this sort of thing should be rare and great majority of the fights the party encounters should involve actual risk to the party (If at least some). If you get to the point where all combat is boxed text, especially if it's because the party is largely unbeatable, you need to step back and re-examine things.

[Almaz]

I'm not a true denner: when I don't like a rule, I don't necessarily think it's stupid.

Which probably means you don't think, as if you didn't like a rule you would have some reason to dislike it, which most commonly is a flaw (perceived or real) in the rule you disagree with. Since you fail to stand behind an assessment of a rule or make an assessment in the first place, I suggest you simply go away. A failed attempt at thought is sad, but still better than a mindless regurgitation of what you've heard.

[Blade]

It seems that I think a bit further than you do, Almaz.

When the flaw in a rule is a mechanics flaw, then it's a stupid rule. For example, houseruling that you glitch when you have more 1 than 6 would lead to professionnal being as likely to glitch as amateurs and this would be a stupid rule.

When the flaw is a fluff-rules disconnection, it's also a stupid rule. If you houserule that dragons have Logic of 1, it won't cause any problem mechanically but it won't go with the fluff that states that dragons have important positions and are often engaged in deep and complex schemes. So this would be a stupid houserule.

Then there are rules that are mechanically sound, that agree with the fluff, but that have an impact on the game's ambiance or gameplay. If you make a very complex houserule to handle gun maintenance (for example), then you add a focus on the topic of gun maintenance. If you're playing with gun nuts, this might be an excellent idea. But if you play with people who don't care about gun maintenance, this will be cumbersome and detrimental to the game, even if the rule in itself is solid and consistent with the fluff.

Now will you say that this rule is stupid?

If you're well-behaved, you'll say that you don't like it, that it doesn't fit your playstyle, that it's not something you're interested in.
If you're an egocentric asshole, you'll probably say it's stupid (and insult whoever is talking about it).

I'm well-behaved.

[Rawbeard]

That rule is still stupid.

[Username17]

Yeah, the big problem with SR4 combat is that it is too deterministic. In that it takes 2 hits to drop people pretty much no matter who you are or what is being fired. Getting rid of the chance to miss simply makes combat completely deterministic. You'd just total up the number of initiative passes that people get and knock off that many enemies. All the remaining die rolling would be largely pointless. Who honestly gives a fuck if soak rolls knock the damage down to five boxes from nine? You're still going to get shot again with the next simple action and go down.

I could see a rule that eliminates soak as being fairly redundant and simply replaced it with a damage reduction threshold. But getting rid of the defense roll is a stupid rule. The attack roll vs. defense roll is 100% of the part of combat that means jack shit in this game.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

It seems that I think a bit further than you do, Almaz.

When the flaw in a rule is a mechanics flaw, then it's a stupid rule. For example, houseruling that you glitch when you have more 1 than 6 would lead to professionnal being as likely to glitch as amateurs and this would be a stupid rule.

When the flaw is a fluff-rules disconnection, it's also a stupid rule. If you houserule that dragons have Logic of 1, it won't cause any problem mechanically but it won't go with the fluff that states that dragons have important positions and are often engaged in deep and complex schemes. So this would be a stupid houserule.

Then there are rules that are mechanically sound, that agree with the fluff, but that have an impact on the game's ambiance or gameplay. If you make a very complex houserule to handle gun maintenance (for example), then you add a focus on the topic of gun maintenance. If you're playing with gun nuts, this might be an excellent idea. But if you play with people who don't care about gun maintenance, this will be cumbersome and detrimental to the game, even if the rule in itself is solid and consistent with the fluff.

Now will you say that this rule is stupid?

If you're well-behaved, you'll say that you don't like it, that it doesn't fit your playstyle, that it's not something you're interested in.
If you're an egocentric asshole, you'll probably say it's stupid (and insult whoever is talking about it).

I'm well-behaved.

I've played nWOD, which uses your house rule, and it's fucking stupid. Categorically, empirically stupid.

If you show me character stats at the beginning of the game, and an initiative count, I'll tell you the end result of combat pretty close to how it'll actually go, because combat is that deterministic when you use large dice pools and eliminate any reactionary rolls as well.

[vagrant]

The only house-rules I run with for my current SR4 campaign are a few chargen tweaks in Chummer and a nerfed SnS. (I should probably add <anything to do with vehicles> but that's a gimmie.) Hell, even the Matrix works (mostly), the only thing that bothers me are the fiddly bits that involve digging through three sourcebooks, but once they're annotated and you've gotten used to the tricks your PCs use, shit speeds up considerably.

[Almaz]

Now will you say that this rule is stupid?

Yes.

If you're well-behaved, you'll say that you don't like it, that it doesn't fit your playstyle, that it's not something you're interested in.
If you're an egocentric asshole, you'll probably say it's stupid (and insult whoever is talking about it).

I'm well-behaved.

If you're a sniveling moron who can't stand by his own analysis of the rules, you'll whine and pout about how this is a standard of etiquette and discourse when in reality, you're just spouting words you don't actually stand behind.

You can say shit you recant, you can yell angry shit you won't really care about an hour later, but if you aren't willing to back the words in at least the moment you speak them, then fuck you and die. You're just a politician, and we don't need another useless squid-faced liar whose only function is to sit and look pretty when really he's trying to shovel shit down your throat.

[Heisenberg]

I'm hard at work on my own comprehensive fanhack of SR4A, Shadowrun Perfect Crime Edition (SRPC). It will be everything SR5 should have been, and utterly failed to be. At least that's the plan. It will be like SR4A but with workable vehicle and matrix rules, and actually balanced magic, as well as some of the worst balance issues of SR4 spot-corrected (i.e. Stick'n'Shock, Stun Bolt, etcetera). It will also eventually support rules for playing in every major era of SR's timeline.

In the meantime, I'd recommend SR4 or SR4A. Fixed target numbers DO make the game much more playable, as Frank said. Avoid SR5.

Handwaving Matrix stuff is a good tip - anyway, I don't think anyone wants to play a decker; they want to be mage, adept, street samurais or riggers.

Sad, but all too common experience.

[Rawbeard]

"balanced magic" sounds like an oxymoron to me. But good luck with that, I can't imagine your hack will not be better than the "real" SR.

[Heisenberg]

I mean more balanced with itself than balanced with other things, if that helps. (I.e. Stunball versus Fireball, etcetera.) Not that I won't try for the other.

And thanks!