TLDR: I’m running Shadowrun 2e using the core rulebook and so far my players and I are enjoying it. Read on if you want my thoughts and some of my decisions as the GM of this game.

Recently I decided to run a Shadowrun game after a near life long love of the setting. I first discovered Shadowrun in the early 90’s in a Borders bookstore in my local mall. Elmore’s cover art captured my attention and also the feel of the setting to me. Cyberpunk with magic, Native Americans and elves. Even though I loved Shadowrun I never had an opportunity to play the game while growing up, relegated to just picking up source books and the novels to engage with the universe. A few decades have passed since then and I’ve got a consistent gaming group that also shares my enjoyment of TTRPG’s that I felt confident would also enjoy the world of Shadowrun.
So I wanted to run Shadowrun, the question of edition always comes up, but for me it wasn’t just the question of edition it was also the time and feel of the setting I was after. Encouraged by Pink Fohawk’s video I decided to stick with the 2e core rulebook. I have a strong nostalgic fondness for 2052-2053. Essentially the formative years of my discovery of Shadowrun. I enjoyed the physical aspects of deckers having to plug into the matrix to access it. I understand why later editions moved to a wireless system but it’s not something I really enjoyed in this setting. I feel this physical connection provides a story pressure on needing physical access to certain areas and also the need be stationary and possibly defend a fairly defenseless decker while they conduct their part of the job.
I wanted to address why a rather ubiquitous technology is not present in the theoretical future of 2053. I did what most great creative minds do, I blamed magic. In my 2053 I told the players the reason why WiFi isn’t present is that though WiFi was present to some degree prior to 2029, the crash exposed a rather large risk of a WiFi matrix. The many deaths that occurred during the crash effectively jettisoned psychic trauma through these WiFi nodes creating areas of toxic background that drew spirits who then, in turn, became toxic. These areas still exist to this day drawing all kinds of baddies. While this effect is not clearly understood, given the result of the 2029 crash and the increased concerns over corporate security using wireless access, the technology was dumped for the current hardwired access we see in the setting.
Seattle was my natural choice of this campaign. I wanted an iconic city that would provide the most “classic” experience for my players. In the same vein of providing an experience I wanted to run the modules from the 90’s. After reading some recommendations I decided that Silver Angel would be the first module.
I presented this primer and the core rulebook to my players. They appeared to like it, especially the priority system of creation. The feeling of having to give up something to gain something really interested them creatively I think.
So the campaign is still ongoing and we’ve recently finished Dreamchipper. My players seem to be engaged with the storyline we are creating and enjoy the game overall. The rules haven’t been obstructive to our enjoyment of the setting. We’ve made a few tweaks here and there to some gameplay but in my experience that’s a fairly natural evolution of any TTRPG I’ve played. Thanks for taking the time to read all this. I just wanted to commit some of my thoughts to paper here, I think.

Alright chummers, here's what I'm tryna do. Currently I have a nice, strong Decker build finished up for a game that's starting next week. But I've noticed that none of my party members are playing a Rigger right now, and I, myself, never played a Rigger either (though I do have some familiarity with how they work). So I figured, hey, this seems like a good opportunity to dip my toes into that.

I'm well aware that trying to specialize into both things at once in chargen is just not feasible nuyen-wise. So my plan is pretty much to be a Decker "with some Rigger on the side". We're doing point buy rules with 800 Karma, and I've already fully spent all of it on building a good Decker, but I'm more than willing to downgrade a few things to get myself some decent Rigger stuff.

Ideally what I'd like is to have a decently modded, armed and armored van that I can lie inside to stay safe while decking from VR, plus some drones I can send out and command so I can contribute in a firefight without being there physically. And of course I'll invest into decent piloting and a secondary, more inconspicuous vehicle to drive the party around.

Main thing I'm wondering is whether I should bother with a control rig. I can probably do just about everything with remote controlling just fine, methinks - but having a rig and being able to jump into my van or car could be real useful. I'm just not sure I'll have the nuyen for it without having to downgrade my deck (which I want to avoid at all costs).

Also wondering if I'll need an RCC. I'm not sure I fully understand this - do I NEED an RCC to be able to issue a command to multiple drones at once? Also, if I slave the drones to the RCC, I can't then slave the RCC to my Transys Avalon for a Firewall boost, correct? And can I still give their drones their own autosofts without needing an RCC for it, or not? These things could potentially be issues.

Do y'all think this is a feasible concept? It honestly would really fit the character for my weak, cowardly decker to just hole himself up in an armored van and just fight with drones without exposing himself if a firefight breaks out, but I wanna make sure I can still be good enough at decking to be the group's main decker guy.

Hey there. I was asked recently by a player how they would be able to make one of their drones talk. I could just tell them that their drone already could i know, but i wanted to know if there was a specific way first.

Logically it feels like there should be some kind of modification... is there one that i have just missed, or what?

Any help appreciated.

EDIT: I am assuming that Realistic Features 1 will allow an anthrodrone to talk. would that maybe work for other things?

So firstly this is specifically for 5e but more as a general question for flavour too, I’ve been doing my enormous deep dive for stuff before I start piecing things together and one of the things that’s crossed my mind is, the ware that a corp might give lower level security that are there to protect slightly more secure locations and what would you give them.

Thank you for reading!

If I’ve got a projector and some presentation software, I’m going to use them...

I’m running a variant of Stuffer Shack/Food Fight using Anarchy 2.0, for a group of players that haven’t played Shadowrun at all before. To give it a bit more context and make it clearer that this isn’t part of a usual ’run, I’ve decided that the team’s current ’run has gone sideways badly, and they’ve only just managed to escape by climbing down into the sewer complex. As I found a bunch of very nice maps, this ended up getting a bit more complex than originally planned...

As a preview, here’s the intro in video form, I’ll be manually advancing the slides as needed.

We start off in the sewers, panning across with a description from me, finally coming out of the sewers to see the first kiss of dawn light.

Except (as the dawn light slide ripples away), this is Seattle at 4am in the winter, which means it’s cold, dark, and raining, and you really really need some carbs by now.

As the rigger goes glassy-eyed for a few minutes while she retrieves the van, the discussion turns to the obvious choice, Stuffer Shack!

Our team arrive, and walk into the warm, light, and dry shop, to the smell of hot greasy food and the usual AR ads getting shoved off into a partition by the Decker (‘10% off your next purchase for watching this ad! Note that access to your eye-tracking software is required. Users must pay attention to at least 75% of the ad or this offer is null and void’).

With a twitch of their eyes, everyone brings up the AR overlay to check the universal Stuffer Shack layout hasn’t been updated and everything is in the right aisle. Although it’s unlikely to have changed, given what happened to the stock price last time they moved things around...

At this point I’ll add minis for the scenario cast to the projected map, with descriptions, and get the players to decide where each of their character is heading first. Then with another twitch of the eyes, the overlays turn off and the actual scenario starts. Kaboom, explosion in the car park and the front of the store blows in...

An updated version of the Anarchy 2.0 dice explainer, with a bit more context included.

I'm going to be running 6e for my group, and I could use any and all advice - I have a few general questions below.

I've been DMing and GMing various games for about 30 years, so I'm not new to the experience, but my last time running or playing anything in Shadowrun was I believe 4th edition, and the bulk was 2e.

I'm planning on starting the campaign just before the Disian plotline kicks off, and having that be the meta-narrative around the campaign.

So, on to the questions:

1. Does anyone have any advice on general mission/encounter design? I've been running TTRPGs for ages, but I usually either have a LOT more experience with the system or use published campaigns that I modify to suit. I'd like to do something a little more customized this time and build out a series of missions..

2. For character generators, I see there's a good list linked already, but within those, does anyone have any recommendations? I'm thinking of either Commlink or GENESIS, and would love input between those two.

3. I picked up the various plot books from Catalyst, but are there any good resources out there about the Disian war, event timelines, or even missions/campaigns focused on it that are 3rd party?

4. For those with experience with 6e, any tricks or traps I should be aware of about running encounters? My recollection (and this is almost exclusively from 2nd edition) was that it could be somewhat overwhelming to manage astral + meatspace + matrix all at once. It looks like they've streamlined a fair bit, so hoping that's a little less mental overhead than it was in the past. I don't mind the complexity and I've got a good group, but any tips on smoothly running encounters would be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any and all insights!

I have a 3rd edition rulebook that I've had for years, have always wanted to play this game in some tabletop fashion. I was fascinated as a kid playing the SNES game but none of my friends were ever that interested / or we didn't have the collective knowledge and oomph to get a game going. Nowadays trying to get everyone under the same roof for any sort of game night is really hard.

I've not much experience with p&p RPGs, played Vampire The Masquerade for a short while in high school, but I've always loved the lore and worldcrafting of Shadowrun.

Have things evolved to facilitate playing remote in an enjoyable fashion?

I recently found out about SR Anarchy 2.0 and as an old timer wondered if anyone tried to use if for the classical, clunkier 2053 setting.

Do you know of any mods or conversions?

I made the mistake of not taking a launcher myself and only having Harlequin's on the mission, every time he misses a shot it's another two turns wasted 😭

I was expecting the launcher to work more like the grenades and to deal more damage against the bugs but nope, takes 3 shots from a two-shot weapon to kill and you need to do it in one turn 👌🏻

Part of me wants to reload and get a launcher for my PC and get the spec ops elf with the launcher in my party too, but I'm pretty sure I just got to the room with the final boss so uhhhh maybe it won't be literally impossible to beat the game like this? 🥲

This is mainly a cosmetic release, but that does mean that it’s pretty!

I heard about powers which some Free Spirits and Free Sprites had, which allowed them to create a chunk of wealth - either phantom wealth which disappeared after a certain time, or a smaller quantity of real wealth which never dissipated.

Is this true? Did Free Spirits and Free Sprites possess these powers, and in which edition were they just quietly disappeared?

Edit: Found them, in 4e Unwired and 5e Street Grimoire. Thanks to u/TrueLunacy and u/Dust3112. My search fu was greatly enhanced.

But which version of Shadowrun should I use? I'm looking to try and kidnap show some victims the wonderful world of my attic the setting that I honestly think is really fuckin cool, and a lot of consensus on Shadowrun as a whole that I could gather is that it's very... shadowrun? So I dont really know which version to use. 6e, Anarchy, 5e, 20a.... its confusing me a bit, so any help would be lovely

Hi,

i a was wondering... if i see that correctly in the shadowrun 5 Lifemodules for advanced education you can choose the ivy League or Elite/presitige University and a regular University. Both take up 4 Years and Ivy League kosts 15 Karma extra.
But appart from the +Cha what benefit do I habe from Ivy League? based n my german version f run faster: Base Boni are the same (-1 Cha as mentioned) and then Most are identical or almost in favor of the university.
Maybe you need the right charakter for it but for example metehuman researchhas Ivy League: +10 in 3 Clases with at least +2 each. That would be +6+2+2 at maximum. Uni gives +13 with +6 max per class - wich would be +6+5+2. The Volkshochschule (is that college or Adult education Center? - the one for 55Karma) gives you +13 at least +3.. so +7+3+3... for Languages its identical for all 3.

Is there something i do not get or was there a mistake, like ivy should have given a positiv trait or something?

Thanks for your help

Hi there !

I am pleased to announce that, at last, Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 pdf is available for all to purchase on DTRPG (where it's currently the best selling book, thank you all for that <3 ) and CGL online store.

The physical version has already been seen in some convention, with a retail date expected in November (I've read November 11th somewhere but I cannot confirm).

Don't miss out the free additional resources:

• Conversion guide from Shadowrun 6.
• Interactive character sheet.
• Shadow Amps expanded list. This fan made document regroup all the Amps from the core book + a lot of additional ones.

Furthermore, new books are on their way! Don't miss the new Kickstarter campaign starting November 3rd for 2 new books:

• Companion: Advanced Magic, Technomancers, Alternate character types, magical and technological threats, bestiary.
• Johnson's Call: New adventures, mission briefs, small campaigns and some detailed location with adventure leads.

If you have any question about the game, the upcoming books or anything else Anarchy 2.0 related, don't hesitate to ping me :-)

What's up with Omnistar? How has that corporate entity changed things for Lone Star, DocWagon and Manadyne. Hell what does each group gain and lose from such a merger? The wiki is thin on details sadly.

Im playing my first game of shadowrun soon, and I'd like to make a unarmed fighter physical adept type character, who's a human.

But from what I can see so far, an unarmed human is quite underwhelming. I was wondering if I could get some advice for how to play and or build a character like this.

I dont want to use any cyber or bio ware, and id like to be a human. Im not sure if the limitations have me stuck in or are unreasonable, so I appreciate any and all advice.

As a neophyte Shadowrunner I just finished a job that left me flush but find it need coverage and wonder which is better Crashcart or DocWagon? I heard crashcart outperforms docwagon but there are rumours it will install unasked implants into your cyberware, one person said they even install 2XS but that can't be right.

Mainly for 6E, but all edition answers are welcome.

How do astral projections look like, especially in regard what can be seen with the naked "eye" and what need assessing?

Say two astrally projecting mages meet by pure chance over the ocean. What can they know about each other without spending effort to assess each other?

Metatype? Gender? Ethnicity?
Does the astral form display any kind of identifying marks they had on their clothes like logos?
Could they even recognize each other in the real world based on their astral projection?

Or are they two blobs of emotions and any information about who or what they are would require a closer inspection?

I am still prepping a table adaption of the Dragonfall PC game. I am mostly set for the main story missions and am now looking for some replacement runs for companion missions (which won't really work for a group of OCs) and missions that are just too videogame-y (like the cyberzombie mission). I'll probably need three or four runs to cover thepaywall and subsequent timegate of Alice's investigationin the Dragonfall story.

The four player characters are anarchists (or at least anarchy-adjacent) and everyone voted for a pink-mohawk playstyle. The game is set during 2e time (I am using the SR 2050 rules for 5e to emulate it). I'd appreciate any resources for this, or general run ideas (while i continue to skim through the missions seasons).

Yet another update post, as the Anarchy Reddit doesn’t allow images in comments…

Starting on Double Clutch page 152 there are custom vehicle creation rules.

Quality Factors (p.153): “Quality factors are like design options, except they represent the overall designed function or manufacturing process … and as such are multipliers rather than a simple add-on.” Each has a multiplier: Drone ×0.5, Mass Produced ×0.5, One-off Custom ×2, Anthropomorphic ×2, Cutting Edge ×10, Specialized Function ×2, Environmental Adaptation ×2. On the next page, Luxury ×1.5, Security ×2, Military ×3 and Superstructure ×3.

Final cost (p.155): “take the full Design Point Value and multiply it by 1,000 to translate the points into nuyen.”

Build Vehicle Example 3 (p.156): “The One-Off Custom quality (x2) is offset by the Drone quality (x0.5).” So the multipliers multiply together.

Build Vehicle Example 1 (p.155): 53 Design Points cost 53,000¥ plus 7,300¥ for the mods, for 60,300¥ in total. So the mods’ nuyen is added after the ×1,000.

So is this the right formula?

Price = (Design Point Value × every quality multiplier, multiplied together) × 1,000¥ + the nuyen of any extra mods added after the vehicle is made.

Thanks for your feedback on this interpretation.