Can anyone please help me understand what the current status is of the Shadowrun 6e game? I bought all the initial products, including the core rulebook, starter set, Neo-Anarchist Streetpedia, No Future, etc. We set up a local face-to-face campaign in short order and I eventually completely burned out on the game when I saw how utterly confusing the rules were in the core rulebook, even for character creation! The game was even completely missing some very important rules.

We decided to put things on ice and revisit it in the future to see if they ever filled in all the missing stuff and clarifications that they kept promising.

Where are we now and if things have been made better, where can I find the updates, please?

I walked away from it after two weeks of looking through the main rules for 6e. I consider it a lost cause. I'll be curious if anyone has anything to say that might change my view.

Nothing has been done to fix the issues as of yet and they recently released the advanced combat book (Firing Squad) which will just add to the mess. I haven't bought it because I was too disgusted with the utter PoS they foisted off on us fans as the core book.

I bought the boxed starter set, grabbed the pregens, and started my group on the intro adventure. We really struggled to try to figure out how to do anything with the rules, so we abandoned the adventure and decided just to have a random encounter combat in an alley to try to shake down the system and understand how things worked. Total disaster. Nobody could figure out how the rules worked and my group vowed to never play Shadowrun again. Strange, because they are usually pretty forgiving if I have a rules problem in a game, but this one just turned them off totally somehow.

If you expect Catalyst to do anything good for Shadowrun, you are dreaming. Just leave it be.

Yup still got my copy of SR3 so I'm sticking with my poison.

Anyone with 50% or more of their sanity points remaining use the setting with a system of choice. You can go GURPS 4e, HERO 6e (both would handle SR with aplomb). You could also go lighter/OSR like Stars Without Number. There are so many variants now for cyberpunk for systems with magic, it shouldn't be hard to cobble something together. If you like 5e check out Ultramodern 5 revised. It too could handle SR for the 5e fans.

Why not just stick with SR4 or 5?
I liked both.
Just like people generally stuck with DnD3.5 when 4 came out (and was rather... uhh, let's not get into that, maybe).

I haven't played SR6, yet. What did they do?
SR4 and 5 to me have just the perfect amount of complexity. You get invested in your character (because you actually need to spend time on creating one) and have lots of agency in how you create and evolve your char. No class restrictions (other than Mage/Adept/Mundane) so generally very flexible.
Magic is done just perfectly, without that inane "can only cast X spells per time period" while still having a cost to casting spells that you have deal with.
Combat is also great with the two damage tracks and how receiving damage actually makes you fight worse.
And, oh man, the things that can be done with cyberware and how it interacts with magic. Nice.

The only real differences between 4 and 5 are the limits, IMO. Other than that, 5 only had minor changes over 4, should've been a 4.5 really.
Did they somehow manage to mess all of that up in SR6?

Quote from: TheSHEEEP;1132384Why not just stick with SR4 or 5?
I liked both.
Just like people generally stuck with DnD3.5 when 4 came out (and was rather... uhh, let's not get into that, maybe).

I haven't played SR6, yet. What did they do?
SR4 and 5 to me have just the perfect amount of complexity. You get invested in your character (because you actually need to spend time on creating one) and have lots of agency in how you create and evolve your char. No class restrictions (other than Mage/Adept/Mundane) so generally very flexible.
Magic is done just perfectly, without that inane "can only cast X spells per time period" while still having a cost to casting spells that you have deal with.
Combat is also great with the two damage tracks and how receiving damage actually makes you fight worse.
And, oh man, the things that can be done with cyberware and how it interacts with magic. Nice.

The only real differences between 4 and 5 are the limits, IMO. Other than that, 5 only had minor changes over 4, should've been a 4.5 really.
Did they somehow manage to mess all of that up in SR6?

Yes, yes they really did.  look up some of the preview interviews on Youtube to see why, but it is basically unplayable right now.

Here's a link to video from a live play group that was running SR6 and gave up. The video is why they gave up. It doesn't address all the issues with the system but should serve as a good starting point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn1cYgG0bQw&list=WL&index=5&t=0s

I'm just about 20 minutes into that video and my jaw already dropped a few times.
Oof...

What a sad state of affairs.

Really happy to stick with SR5 then. Or 4 (I don't mind, either way).

Quote from: TheSHEEEP;1132393I'm just about 20 minutes into that video and my jaw already dropped a few times.
Oof...

What a sad state of affairs.

Really happy to stick with SR5 then. Or 4 (I don't mind, either way).

might be worth having a look at Cyberpunk, and seeing if you can homebrew a magic/meta system on it.

Quote from: Taggie;1132394might be worth having a look at Cyberpunk, and seeing if you can homebrew a magic/meta system on it.

Not a fan of homebrews. Minor houserules, sure, no system works without that.

But homebrewing magic into a system that was designed entirely without it?
That's not gonna work well. At all.

I really think SR4 or 5 is as good as it gets for this kind of scenario. So why not just use it?

Quote from: TheSHEEEP;1132396Not a fan of homebrews. Minor houserules, sure, no system works without that.

But homebrewing magic into a system that was designed entirely without it?
That's not gonna work well. At all.

I really think SR4 or 5 is as good as it gets for this kind of scenario. So why not just use it?

fair enough .

SR4 wasn't my cup of tea because it was too overpowered but it was the last edition that IMO is any good.  That's when they still had good writers and editors before Catalyst chased them all out.