Shadowrun

The trick is that the more granular you make it, the more tactical and interesting it becomes, but the more time it takes. Too much and you wind up with the situation where the hacker is enjoying himself, but everyone else at the table's eyes glaze over as tons of irrelevant numbers and positioning stuff get tossed back and forth.
Make it just a single roll to succeed, and the hacker doesn't have much to do, or contribute.
It's very tricky to get the right balance.

Honestly, Shadowrun is one of the only times where my best advice to actually study the book--it's pretty dense and takes time, but the payoff can be enormous if your group loves nitty-gritty details (and rolling shitloads of dice).

If you aren't using 5e, I'd recommend it for a beginner; 3rd is just horribly bloated and poorly-organized.

In either event, follow user's advice--even experienced players/GMs struggle to involve Deckers in a sensible, organic way.

I'm a demo tech so I'm under NDA's.
But fuck em, anyway, they're playtesting shadowrun anarchy, a rules-light shadowrun. I am not talking any more, because I don't want to get sued.

CGL actually announced Shadowrun: Anarchy already, and it's all but confirmed it's coming out at GenCon.

Here's a thread where the devs talk about some aspects of it.
forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?779798-Shadowrun-a-rules-lite-announcement

It's not a surprise or a secret, is either an idiot who does not pay attention to what's happening around the playtest, a liar who is trying to make themselves seem important by pretending to be in a secret playtest, or self-important enough to lie about how secret it is.

SR5 does a good job at integrating decking (hacking), rigging (drone control) and regular meatspace.

It does this by having everything on a magical universal wireless network that makes no sense if you try to look at it from a technological standpoint, but at least the rest of the table doesn't go out for pizza while the decker gets into the host.

I hear Savage World: Inteface Zero 2.0's Hacking rules are bearable.

>Anarchy
They've confirmed that it's narrativist garbage "collaborative storytelling":

IE not fucking crunch heavy like OP wanted, you mean?

They've also confirmed that it's compatible with Shadowrun 5. Obviously both these things can't be true, so we have to wait for it to come out to see.

My response would be "don't". Every edition is riddled with editing mistakes, contradictory rules, and needlessly complex systems. If you DO still want to run it, realize you'll need to run 3 games at once, for the tech/hacking side, the gunslingers, and the mages. Keep in mind the player's status in the world, both short term and long. What I mean by this is that many RPGs don't really pay attention if the character is fully armed in an urban setting, and if you go to the mall in SR in full battle rattle there should definitely be problems.

Ignore rules for hacking; play the game without focussing on the matrix. Do something similar to astral rules

Without that little problem, the system works perfectly.

IE not a fucking game but an excercise in giving each other tugjobs at the gaming table.
It's FATAL for pretentious people who'd prefer to call their anal circumference stat an Aspect.

They've said you can convert SR5 stuff to it but that's about it.

>IE not a fucking game but an excercise in giving each other tugjobs at the gaming table.

You have no idea what "fail forwards" even means, do you?

It's not "you automatically succeed", if you fail a roll, it's "the situation changes if you fuck up, so something typically bad happens".

So if you try breaking into the guards barracks and fail picking a lock then a guard looks out the window after hearing a scratching lock, and starts shouting for reinforcements, decide whether you want to run or fight now. It's not "oh you get in anyway" and it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than "you don't pick the lock, do you want to try again or do something else now"

>You have no idea what "fail forwards" even means, do you?
I'm well aware of it's meaning and how it's theoretically used.
Much like most mechanics dubbed "narrativist" it's fucking terrible.
It's effectively taking the GM's prerogative of pacing and versimilitude and turning it into a horrible auto-mechanic.
Sometimes a failure is just a failure.

So, what happens as a result of a failure in any other game?

>a: nothing, you just have to try again
>b: you've fucked up badly enough that you can't do the thing again
>c: you've spent too long doing this and something else is now happening to interrupt you

If the result is always a, then why are you bothering to roll? There's no danger present, and it just means the guy has to work until he gets the job done.

If the result is B or C, GUESS WHAT THAT'S EXACTLY THE SAME CONSEQUENCE AS FAILING FORWARD HAS SUGGESTED.

As a GM, what else would you say happens is a result of "a failure just being a failure"? What actions occur because of this failure?

fag here, we use Sr 4, I think they got cleaned from the junk that is useless and works pretty good(except Matrix)

I dislike the character creation in Sr 5

5 has karmagen rules now, in Run Faster.

There's also Life Modules, but they're garbage.

You're arguing based on the false paradigm that a failure always results in a GM-driven "action".
I'd continue arguing your communal masturbation habits but i've got work to do.

>arguing based on the false paradigm that a failure always results in a GM-driven "action".

It's funny, because if I had suggested the alternative being a player-driven action, you'd have bitched me out for suggesting a "collaborative narrative game" mechanic for having players choose to do things.

But hey! Enjoy doing your other stuff, and have a great day!

3ed has a little more traditional setting, you don't have to keep account of every wireless piece of shit at all times.

Still somewhat rules-heavy but if your crew are serious about playing it they should at least do a collective effort to learn the rules for combat and their archetype's system.