Is/was Shadowrun the most widely played cyberpunk RPG?

tenbones · April 22, 2016, 03:56:03 PM

The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

jgants · April 22, 2016, 04:16:53 PM

Quote from: tenbones;893707The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

It's been a good 20 years since I played (back in the 2nd edition days I think), but I don't remember it being a terrible system, just one requiring buckets o' dice. I recall liking how they did chargen though. Probably wouldn't be my first pick these days.

Personally I always preferred Cyberpunk 2020, but that had more to do with me preferring a fantasy-less cyberpunk genre than it did with the system.

I think the biggest thing stopping me from doing using either system now would be that despite some of the bigger themes of cyberpunk still being very relevant, the trappings of the genre have a Buck Rogers / John Carter zeerust feel to them for me.

Apparition · April 22, 2016, 05:42:31 PM

Quote from: tenbones;893707The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

Try the Third Edition core rulebook. No longer in print, but you can find it available in PDF on DriveThruRPG. Without all the splat, it's not bad.

crkrueger · April 22, 2016, 06:12:45 PM

Quote from: tenbones;893707The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

They're talking about SR3 with a bunch of splats.

Use SR2, Street Samurai catalog and the more than a dozen adventures for second edition. You'll be good for a long time.

Omega · April 22, 2016, 08:13:52 PM

Quote from: jgants;893709It's been a good 20 years since I played (back in the 2nd edition days I think), but I don't remember it being a terrible system, just one requiring buckets o' dice. I recall liking how they did chargen though. Probably wouldn't be my first pick these days.

About the same here. But about 15 years now as a GM and about 5 as a player.

I have 1st ed and keep wondering where people get this "buckets of dice" thing from? Think the worst I ever saw as a player in 3e was a maxed out Troll in full heavy body armour. 19 dice of resistance to ballistic vs my Minotaur lugging the Ares MP-III Laser, 14 dice for medium range.

That is not buckets of dice... :nono:

That is a cup of dice! :cheerleader:

Get your terms right man! yeesh! Kids these days. :cool:

My main issue with 1e was that the general rules are spread scattershot through the book and some things are not adequately explained.

Critias · April 22, 2016, 08:57:26 PM

Quote from: tenbones;893707The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

Which is, FWIW, exactly the sort of comment/feeling that Anarchy is trying to tackle. We want to present the (fantastic) setting in a way people can play more quickly and easily.

Daddy Warpig · April 22, 2016, 09:21:27 PM

Quote from: Omega;89373619 dice of resistance to ballistic vs my Minotaur lugging the Ares MP-III Laser, 14 dice for medium range.

Had some min-maxed magician players of mine score a low 20 dice once. Pretty sure that was the most.

kosmos1214 · April 23, 2016, 05:34:44 PM

Quote from: KingCheops;893629Yeah pretty much. You're trying to balance 2 numbers -- Essence and nuyen. Although I'd say that street samurai are easier than other technical characters. After your wires there's not usually much Essence or money left. It's a weird bell curve where it doesn't take long when you first build one because you have no idea what you're doing so you just randomly grab useful looking stuff. As you get to know the system better it takes longer as you're trying to eke out that extra edge. Once you master it things get easy again because you know it all.

Things get really fiddly with gear and whatnot. Riggers and Deckers have it the worst. If you think people hand waved and ignored decking you should see what happened with Electronic Warfare. There's like 3 or 4 subsystems for all the different components of EW (not counting the MIJI system in Rigger 3) plus the Flux rules on top of that. No one ever bothered -- just roll Electronics and let me know what you get. Okay sounds good you listen in to their radio/intercept their drones.

ahh that explains a lot thanks

Itachi · April 23, 2016, 09:10:51 PM

Quote from: Critias;893741Which is, FWIW, exactly the sort of comment/feeling that Anarchy is trying to tackle. We want to present the (fantastic) setting in a way people can play more quickly and easily.

Color me interested. Where can I find more info about this ?

Critias · April 24, 2016, 11:41:45 PM

Quote from: Itachi;893936Color me interested. Where can I find more info about this ?

Not really anywhere yet, because it's not out (and actual preview material comes from the higher-ups). If you've got a specific question that wasn't addressed in the linked conversation, I can try to answer it, but there isn't really any other general info available yet.

tenbones · April 25, 2016, 02:00:49 PM

Oo! So how is die-resolution handled basically?

KingCheops · April 28, 2016, 04:49:45 PM

Quote from: tenbones;893707The more you guys talk about these systems in Shadowrun the less interested I am in playing the official game. I'm really interested in the setting... but that system. It sounds crazy-messy.

Playing absolutely RAW is pretty tough sledding but that being said actually playing the game and just focusing on making up stuff we thought would be cool works wonderfully. Pick a TN, roll some dice, and go! Each class has some resource management so there is some thinking to the game but Dice Pools and Karma replenish quickly (unless Karma gets burnt -- go Humans!) so think of it as all being tied to the Short Rest mechanic in D&D 4/5. There's a learning curve but it is definitely quality gaming once you get over that initial hump.

I'd second the sentiment that just playing 3rd edition core without any splats is probably best.

trechriron · April 28, 2016, 06:42:11 PM

Quote from: Omega;892839Thought that was the action figure edition? :jaw-dropping:

No. Im not joking. It was real and in stores. 150mm (6in) action figure ...

To be fair they were well made figures and pretty articulate. But it never caught on.

I have the first set still in packaging. :-)

Omega · April 28, 2016, 10:11:42 PM

I think with better marketing and a smaller scale it might have caught on. As was. No.
100mm/4in would have made them to scale with GI Joes and other standard 100mms.

Christopher Brady · April 28, 2016, 10:30:02 PM

I think another part of the issue was that there are no really iconic SR characters, at least none that are Adventurer class. Now, if they made several variants of generic Ork, Troll, Elf and so on and so forth, it might have worked better.