Shadowrun advice

[catfood]

I'm in a cyberbpunky mood lately so I wanna try out some Shadowrun. My only exposure to this ruleset has been through the new HBS RPG's. I'm basically looking for the edition which is the easiest to pick up and play. So which one(s) should I look into?

 

[Excidium II]

Read 2nd edition fluff and use 3rd edition rules

 

[Grokalibre]

Play it with a different ruleset, like gurps or savage worlds.

 

[Excidium II]

Play it with a different ruleset, like gurps

no

or savage worlds.

NO

 

[Grunker]

I play Shadowrun in GURPS, fuck the haters

 

[Ulminati]

I play Shadowrun in GURPS, fuck the haters

 

[Darth Roxor]

Idk about durps, but any person that recommends Savage Worlds should be beheaded.

 

[Jaedar]

I doubt gurps is significantly better than shadowrun ruleset that it is worth the effort of converting everything.

 

[Grunker]

Converting? It's GURPS, there's nothing to convert.

At the most you'll need to specify which variant rules fit (most GURPS systems have loads of variants to tweak them to your wishes) or you can explain how to use the rules to emulate specific class...

...which incidentally is already done for you:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3613210/GURPS Shadowrun.pdf



(not that you can't simply use Shadowrun if that's what you want, it's just not a huge amount of work to use GURPS... at least it never was for me)

 

[Matalarata]

Gurps is a GREAT system. Anyone talking against it should seriously give it a try. That said I still suggest to play shadowrun with its own ruleset, 3d edition is your best bet but 2nd has some really nice adventures (we recently did the one about the Baron of Munchmausen or something similar).
Just a little piece of advice, agree as a group if decking should be played or delegated to NPC. A group with a shaman, a samurai a rigger and a decker will have an hard time coordinating. Either each one is cyberspace capable or don't bother, else prepare yourselves for looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong downtime when the decker jacks in.

 

[rohand]

This is a good idea for you

https://sentientgames.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/shadow-hack/

Think of it as a Shadowrun Lite, but it's quite fun.

 

[catfood]

After careful consideration this system is waaaay more complicated than it should be. I'll take a look at your link rohand

 

[Silva]

Yeah, man. Shadowrun is an artifact of the 80s and it shows. Complexity for complexity sake, slow math-intensive combat, disfunctional sub-systems (most of them unplayable unless you have 6 hours in your hand just for surfing the matrix), etc.

Just grab the books for fluff, then use your favorite system on top of it.

 

[Excidium II]

Fucking babbies and your modern barely-structured-larp rule systems.

 

[Alex]

Converting? It's GURPS, there's nothing to convert.

At the most you'll need to specify which variant rules fit (most GURPS systems have loads of variants to tweak them to your wishes) or you can explain how to use the rules to emulate specific class...

...which incidentally is already done for you:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3613210/GURPS Shadowrun.pdf



(not that you can't simply use Shadowrun if that's what you want, it's just not a huge amount of work to use GURPS... at least it never was for me)

Does it have some kind of pool rule? I agree with you that Gurps is a pretty good fit for Shadowrun, but I think that if you played without some dicepool analogue, it would be missing something.

 

[Grunker]

^ I use this (only slightly homebrewed from GURPS Impulse Buys): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3613210/Karma Pools.pdf

But using GURPS Impulse Buys, it's entirely possible to expand those rules. I made the above in like, 10 minutes.

(I also have no pretentions that I'll be able to convince you of all people to use a modern system )

 

[Ulminati]

After careful consideration this system is waaaay more complicated than it should be. I'll take a look at your link rohand

Eh... I haven't checked out SR5E yet, but 4E was pretty simple.

Tally Attribute + Skill +/- Environmental modifiers like damage penalty or smartlink.

Roll that number of d6

5s and 6s are successes. If half or more dice come up as ones, something goes wrong.

Compare successes to a difficulty number out someone else's roll to tell if you succeeded

That's all the players really needed to know.

Of you want to make things easy, start of with a short campaign where everyone is mundane and there are no deckers. Keep cyberware to a minimum as well. That gives you less rules to worry about

 

[Alex]

Eh... I haven't checked out SR5E yet, but 4E was pretty simple.

Almost simple minded even.

^ I use this (only slightly homebrewed from GURPS Impulse Buys): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3613210/Karma Pools.pdf

But using GURPS Impulse Buys, it's entirely possible to expand those rules. I made the above in like, 10 minutes.

(I also have no pretentions that I'll be able to convince you of all people to use a modern system )

My only problem with GURPS 4e nowadays is that the advantages and disadvantages are too abstract. Which wouldn't be a problem per se if the abstract parts were specifically made to build new advantages rather than to be used as is if that is what you wanted. But this can be fixed more or less easily. That is, it would take some work, but wouldn't be particularly complicated nor would require you to change rules around.

I do have a problem with GURPS in general which is how turns work. One second is way too quick for any kind of melee and way too long for firearms combat, especially old-west style showdowns. I don't mean to say this would somehow invalidate GURPS, in fact I don't know any system that does both of these very well (Aces & Eights manages to represent firearms pretty well though). But it is something I would like to fix but don't know how.

 

[catfood]

Ulminati ok I haven't checked 4E yet, but I'll have a look over the rules. What is 5E like?

 

[Ulminati]

Haven't checked out 5e. I heard some good and some bad thigns about it. 4E kind of retarded the game a little. But the basic rules became a lot easier to explain to new people. Skill + attrib + modifier dice. 3 kinds of tests
1) You need X successes to succeed, else you fail
2) You and someone else roll their pools, whoever rolls more successes wins
3) You roll your dice every X in-game seconds/minutes/hours/days. Successes accumulate until you've reached a set number. (For example, to se ehow long it takes you to pick open a lock or repair a car. When success is guaranteed given enough time, but it matters how long it takes you to accomplish it).

All the rules build off that dice mechanic. It also makes it easy to make up stuff on the fly. Player wants to swing from the chandelier? Tell him to roll Quickness + Acrobatics (or another relevant skill) - 1 dice because the chandelier is slippery or whatevs. 3 successes and he manages it. 2 and he slips. Roll a glitch and the chandelier falls down on top on him. :3

The system is quite good for players who like to improvise without bringing everything to a grinding halt. Want to grapple the troll? Opposed strength + relevant martial arts/unarmed skill +/- size modifier for troll being big. Roll your dice, winner gets to decide if grapple happens.

 

[Grunker]

Almost simple minded even.



My only problem with GURPS 4e nowadays is

Sorry bro, getting into a discussion about how 4e is in any way, shape or form inferior to 3e is pointless from my point of view. We've been there before

 

[Alex]

Sorry bro, getting into a discussion about how 4e is in any way, shape or form inferior to 3e is pointless from my point of view. We've been there before

Well, to be fair, that problem was present in the previous editions as well. It was just exacerbaited.

 

[Caim]

Have you considered Cyberpunk 2020? It doesn't have the supernatural elements of Shadowrun, so it's Cyberpunk all around. The four rules of Cyberpunk 2020:

- Style over Substance. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you look cool doing it.
- Attitude is Everything. The weak perish, the tough florish. You're a cyberpunk, act like one!
- Always take it to the Edge. Go to where you can operate as a cyberpunk and operate there. And if you're good, you might make yourself a few Eurobucks.
- Break the Rules. As a cyberpunk you won't be a law-abiding citizen, so do away with your boyscout attitude before someone tramples over you.

It really evokes the Cyberpunk feeling, though if you look closer you can see it's hilariously dated. Mobile flip phones are akin to black magic, and if you want to use the Net while on the street you gotta find a terminal and pay like a buck per 10 minutes or so. There's megacorps, corporate espionage, proxy wars, people living in filthy luxury and people living in just filth, white collar slaves not wanting to risk their underpaying jobs, biker gangs, cybernetic limbs, you're lucky if the food you're eating still resembles food and not kibble and so on. It really feels like an 80's dystopia and I love it.

The core book is a good start, but if you want some real fun you gotta find the Chromebooks, a series of 4 books with tons of extra weapons, cybernetics, items, vehicles and what have you.

But stay away from the Netrunners. If you got a Netrunner in your party prepare to have the game just grind to a halt once a person starts Netrunning. This is an unfortunate downside, but that's how it is.

 

[Rahdulan]

You didn't warn him about Cyberpunk V3.

 

[Silva]

Eh... I haven't checked out SR5E yet, but 4E was pretty simple.

Aside from the character creation that takes 2 hours and half where you must distribute 300 points between different stats with different costs, etc ? Oh, and aside from the subsystems of matrix and rigging, etc that consists of insane amount of neeedlessly complex rules that no sane person could memorize ?

Shadowrun was never a simple system, and newest editions didnt make it so. They just swapped the complexity around, really.