Best Edition of Shadowrun?

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Shadowrun is a game I've been wanting to get into for a while now, but haven't gotten around to playing yet. I was wondering what is considered to be the best edition. Google wasn't terribly helpful, but from what it sounds like, the most likely candidates are 3rd or 4th edition. I know the answer isn't 5th edition.

Related, but slightly different question: which edition of Shadowrun would be the best for someone entirely new to the game to play? Would the answer be different than what the best edition is?

Also, is the 20th Anniversary edition of Shadowrun any good?

P.S: Any tips for a new player? I remember hearing that character creation can be tricky if you don't know what you're doing.

[angelfromanotherpin]

On this board, Shadowrun 4e is generally considered to be the best version. The pinned thread 'The Ends v4.01' is a set of house rules for 4th to address some of the more egregious problems with the Matrix rules, if you're interested.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

On this board, Shadowrun 4e is generally considered to be the best version. The pinned thread 'The Ends v4.01' is a set of house rules for 4th to address some of the more egregious problems with the Matrix rules, if you're interested.

Appreciated, I'll take a look.

[JonSetanta]

4e.

No exploding dice.
Simplified, although not entirely fixed, hacker rules.
Wifi.

[Whipstitch]

I prefer 4e over anniversary since it doesn't introduce a minor divide by zero error for no good reason. With that said the differences are minor.

Common pitfalls to be aware of and potentially houserule:

1. Character creation & advancement features an arbitrage minigame for those who wish to min-max. That's because characters are created with build points but only advance with karma points once they are in play and generally a point of build point gets you more than a point of karma. Further, attributes and skills have a flat cost in BP per rank during chargen but karma costs increase the higher you go. This heavily favors building specialized characters who than broaden their horizons in play--a pretty manageable situation, on paper, but it can lead to two characters of the same nominal archetype having wildly different power levels if one player didn't get the memo. Simplest global fix is to pretend karma doesn't exist and treat BP as the main currency that gets handed out during play.

2. Spirits are hilariously powerful. It's been so long that I can't remember the particulars of how many passes it takes for a spirit to actually finish manifesting and start wrecking shit but they're strong enough that enforcing the delay is warranted--particularly since with preparation it won't matter anyway. Beyond that, I would strongly recommend working out a houserule for how much Edge and Mental attributes spirits have in your game. Trust me, you don't want people casually summoning unbound high Force task spirits with astronomical mental attributes in your games. Houserule that shit. For the children.

There's other things like the matrix and vehicle rules being cold vomit but that's beyond the scope of what I'm willing to rant about at 1am.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

I prefer 4e over anniversary since it doesn't introduce a minor divide by zero error for no good reason. With that said the differences are minor.

Good to know. 4e it is, then.

Common pitfalls to be aware of and potentially houserule:

1. Character creation & advancement features an arbitrage minigame for those who wish to min-max. That's because characters are created with build points but only advance with karma points once they are in play and generally a point of build point gets you more than a point of karma. Further, attributes and skills have a flat cost in BP per rank during chargen but karma costs increase the higher you go. This heavily favors building specialized characters who than broaden their horizons in play--a pretty manageable situation, on paper, but it can lead to two characters of the same nominal archetype having wildly different power levels if one player didn't get the memo. Simplest global fix is to pretend karma doesn't exist and treat BP as the main currency that gets handed out during play.

Interesting.

2. Spirits are hilariously powerful. It's been so long that I can't remember the particulars of how many passes it takes for a spirit to actually finish manifesting and start wrecking shit but they're strong enough that enforcing the delay is warranted--particularly since with preparation it won't matter anyway. Beyond that, I would strongly recommend working out a houserule for how much Edge and Mental attributes spirits have in your game. Trust me, you don't want people casually summoning unbound high Force task spirits with astronomical mental attributes in your games. Houserule that shit. For the children.

That's about what I remember people saying about spirits in Shadowrun.

There's other things like the matrix and vehicle rules being cold vomit but that's beyond the scope of what I'm willing to rant about at 1am.

Thank you for the information.

[pragma]

Adding to the chorus of 4e. I had a lot of fun with 3e, but it is definitely a bit of an anachronism. 4e is a semi-reasonable rules set, especially with EoTM.

As for where to start
* Getting sucked into the lore is a huge advantage for a GM. There's a million nooks and crannies in the Shadowrun universe, and they are what make it captivating to play in. So read lore from 2e through 4e as much as you can. (Lore skips the rails at the end of 5e, and the start is mediocre.)
* Combat is clunky and I haven't found a great way around it. Compact stat blocks are hard to write, and every attack takes a few rolls. Practicing a bit before running with players seems advised. (Skill checks, on the other hand, run great.)
* Be OK with players walking all over your first few runs. Getting the hang of how much security to include, and how to distribute security between physical, astral and matrix, is hard. An astrally projecting mage may get the whole layout of your first building and that's OK.
* Anything you've read about mystery plots applies to designing runs. They are best when the heist has a few secrets the players can uncover to go in prepared. (And a few they miss.)

[Dogbert]

I'll say 4E on virtue of:

1) Classless/point buy.
2) They tried to step away from the otherwise Zeerust/Raygun Gothic trappings of previous editions.
3) It was the last bit of cyberpunk I played before the genre itself became redundant in the hellscape we live in.
4) It's the only SR I've played.

(Granted, vehicle combat was ass, and I heard net rules are even worse).

[OgreBattle]

There was a "consolidate skill list, remove one of the damage steps, limit spirits to force something something" house rule on here for 4e I think

I don't know if double tapping was solved, or considered a problem worth solving

[JonSetanta]

I must add- Initiative is better in 4e as well.

I started with 2e and a single round would easily take ten times longer then.

[Stahlseele]

Played Tailend of 2nd, never Played 1st edition, not many memories of that.

I will stick with 3rd Edition and with my opinion that if ever there were a new Shadowrun Computer Game made, it should be based on 3rd Edition.
Because 3rd Edition? IT HAS RULES FOR THAT! EVERYTHING! QUITE LITTERALLY!
Which, sadly, makes it a giant pain in the rear to play with people around a desk.
And it could do both street punk batshit crazy AND the mirrorshade trenchcoat noir.

Character Concepts i could do more or less within the rules, i would have to give 4th and 5th probably the thumbs up.
An AI Living as a Hologram. A Pixie in a People Suit. A Centaur Hover-Tank. YES YOU CAN DO ALL OF THOSE!
6th? No clue, never even skimmed a single book.

[JonSetanta]

How about the end-result of all scifi settings: giant Mecha, power armor, and GITS?

The closest thing to "full conversion cyborgs" in SR are, from what I remember, cyberzombies, yet for whatever logic loop, you can "vat grow muscle replacements" but also not put your brain and spine in a machine body nor do the Altered Carbon thing?!

[Stahlseele]

No, not as of SR4.
There is now a Jarhead as well.
Which comes with an USB adaptor for several things.
Drones, Vehicles, Humanoid Robot Bodies.
You keep positive Essence.
It is basically a Level 3 Rigger Gear from SR3 which cost 5 Essence.
They just hook up your brain to it and cut off the rest of your body.

[JonSetanta]

Ah. Thank you. The forums I Googled on the subject of "how to I do ghost in the shell in Shadowrun?" were full of math, logic loops that end with "you can't", and Essence this-and-that, but you state otherwise.

Funny how a friend went and allowed me to do just that back in the mid 90s in 2e after we saw the GITS movie. No one else wanted to, since they were all magic-users or Adepts or even just one guy with an Ares Predator and tons of skills but no cyberware.
The condition that was applied to my "brain in a bot" PC was that if I ever betrayed the corporation that had saved him from certain death, the "Handler" would thought-activate his comm to detonate the cyborg's head.
It ended with an us-or-them ultimatum by the end, my PC leveled his gun at the Handler, and Your Head Esplode'd a millisecond before he could pull the trigger (aka Rutger Hauer's old film "Wedlock", or the anime OVA "Cybercity OEDO").
So, that's one way to handle it.

As for "mechs", I imagine it would just be larger Rigger-type stuff, with or without placing yourself inside.
Probably safest to do it remotely, but as with modern-Earth military drones, they very likely would get hacked and turned against the user.

[Stahlseele]

You could do GITS stuff in SR3 already.
It was just prohibitively expensive to do so.
Because you would basically need at least
all alpha ware to get your body replaced.
If you want the eyes, ears and nose as well,
better be prepared to shell out for at least
betaware quality. Delta if you want to then
have room for something actually usefull too.
It works, it is just not feasible and usefull.
It is cool and massive style points and then
they crammed in black magic to make it even
more extreme and silly und unfeasible to do
as a player character.

SR4 is still basically that, but adds another
way of going at it. It is only more feasible,
because they seriously nerfed most flesh
combat and made drone use and matrix stuff
more viable in exchange.

[JonSetanta]

Ah yes the different gradings of cyberware. Cyberdoc has parts if Runner has credit.

The in-game downside to being a brain in an android is that every time the PC is injured, back to the shop for repairs they go.
It's advantage vs weakness.
But if you can see and Dodge bullets as well as take magnitudes more punishment than an organic character, well...

[Stahlseele]

go to a mechanic or go to a doc.
have to do your own healing check.
have somebody do the repairs check.

also, no, higher grade cyber is really fucking hard to come by . .
standard and alpha readily enough. beta is already waiting time.
delta is basically a whole run to get your hands on the stuff itself.

and then you need an actual clinic capable of installing that stuff.