Is Shadowrun good? Not bait or troll...

If you want to play Shadowrun, try Anarchy. It's not really great either, but it's probably easier to get into than actual Shadowrun.

What's the difference?

There are plenty of generic RPGs that could do it if you're concerned about the system. Fate, Savage Worlds, GURPS.

The newer editions have tried to keep up with real tech, so there's a lot more wireless going on in the TTRPG than the games.

Shadowrun is exactly as wacky or gritty as the GM wants. There's a lot of leeway in the fluff, so it all depends on the tone. I'm running two games, one is heavy intrigue, and the other is pink mohawk madness.

Anarchy isn't a different edition so much as a different ruleset based on the same setting. I personally find it great for one shots, but I wouldn't run a full campaign with it, I like my control over my world.

Ignore the novels, read the 2D storytime (in the /srg/ general thread's pastebin) to get a sense of how the game can play.

the world is interesting but not everyone's cup of idea because some people like pure cyberpunk (i like both flavors). the system is preeeeeeetty simulationist, so a category more complicated than D&D. you see, a modern setting like that offers more opportunities than a fantasy setting. consequentially you have subsystems for magic, hacking, vehicle combat, etc. learning this can be quite a bit of work. but once you got it, it can be quite satisfying. alternatively, you can save some work by not allowing hackers in your party.

dark heresy is easier to run, on par with D&D 5E.

so if you are not intimidated by putting up some extra-work, go shadowrun.

>alternatively, you can save some work by not allowing hackers in your party.

I think simplifying the hacking rules is a healthier decision long term. Just make them skill checks instead of the weird sub-game it is in RAW.

Shadowrun's amazing. It's got an incredible breadth of potential material to work with, it's hugely flexible from a storyline and specific theme PoV, and the system's quite robust, while remaining flexible. It's not perfect, but it hits a very useful bridge between character agency, lethality, and cinematicness.

You should play SRR: Hong Kong. It's great.

look, for example, in shadowrun 5E, much of the group's equipment can hook up via WLAN, giving extra bonuses and shit. while this is cool, it's also work because it comes with extra rules. and you have lots and lots of gear options and shit. that alone can lead to a lot of lookups in the corebook.

if that doesn't intimidate you, go for it.

Shadowrun: Anarchy is a rule-light version of 5e they just released. Haven't tried it myself because my group is firmly rooted in 4e but I've heard good things.

Anarchy is "Rules Light-er" Shadowrun. Opinions are pretty mixed on it. Most people think that if you're going to the trouble of trying to learn Anarchy it's not much of a step further to learn proper 5e.

That being said, 5e can be a lot to take in, be ready to read a lot and make rulings on the fly if you're GM. The general here is pretty helpful, as long as you've clearly tried to help yourself first. They also have a huge amount of helpful resources in the OP.

In terms of fluff? Yes very good, as the recent games have shown us.

In terms of rules sets? Shadowrun hasn't been good for many years now. Each subsequent edition suffered from more and more rules bloat, even when they tried to streamline it. Right now, it's an overly complicated system that requires you to roll two fistfuls of dice to resolve stuff. It's absolutely nothing like the simple elegance of the recent computer RPGs, and when a tabletop RPG is harder to figure out than a computer RPG you know something is wrong with it.

Well it intimidates me because I don't know what WLAN is. Took me a while to learn D&D 5e and it was mostly through playing rather than studying so if it's more technical than that I'm gonna have to put some actual work on, oh well. I'll have a look at this Anarchy thing, feels more my speed.

To be honest I am almost guaranteed to be playing it on R20 because there is no way I can get an IRL group together so I'll avoid GMing until I know a bit more. If there even is any games on there.

I'll start with "Rules Light" and see where it goes. Unless I can't find a game or anyone to play with in which case I suspect I won't.

Shadowrun is harder to learn than your dnd clone, in that everyone and their mother has a different system to learn. Deckers have the matrix and are working on different time cycles then everyone else, mages have the astral plane and can become a huge problem very quickly if left alone, regular meatworld combatants still need to learn either buffing spells or install cyberware to stay competitive, and if your team doesn't have a good face then they'll end up getting shit pay at the end of missions and have trouble getting in anywhere without violence.

Here is THE MOST IMPORTANT bit though. Shadowrun is not a "party goal to slay the bad guys" game. You are a survivor. Your team is there because you can use them to stay alive. The bad corps have already won control of the world. Your only purpose is to try and say 'fuck the system' long enough to enjoy your loot. Running WILL eventually get you killed because someone messes up or plays the traitor. The only victory is in learning to cover your tracks long enough for those consequences to never find you, after making enough loot and learning enough skills to satisfy you.

In game play, you will spend 3/5 of the session planning the run and 2/5 actually running if things go right. it's not a 'wing it' sort of situation unlesss shit hits the fan. Good runners map out their mark and plan a strategy accordingly to try and make sure things go off without a hitch. A proper GM will punish you for slip ups. Fingerprints at the scene of a known crime? you're being tracked by the cops. Druglord got screwed over and was left alive? There's going to be trouble in the next dark ally when the PC wants it least. This ain't about heroically running in to save some damn princess, it's about getting paid to break the law. Be ready to act like you expect trouble.

>Black trenchcoat is the only way to play

Literally eat the shit straight out of my asshole.

This seems like it's a very difficult mindset to persuade normal RPG players of if the ones I've met are anything to go by. Far higher....roleplay skill ceiling.

It's a great setting, but the mechanics are a mess. Apparently the earlier editions are better, but I haven't played them.

>hook up
Yeah, you need your smartgun to log into AOL before it actually improves your shooting at all. And nothing says stealth bonus like EM radiation from your chameleon suit.

To be fair, it's also fairly self-correcting. Shadowrun isn't the sort of setting where you have to have every innkeeper be a retired level 20 adventurer to keep the party from slaughtering any villager that disagrees with them.

It's not a great system mechanically, I much prefer GURPS at a similar level of complexity.

I don't know anything about GURPS beyond what the acronym is. tl;dr?

It's a basic framework system for rules heavy simulationist type games. It's got splatbooks for every possible setting and you can combine them however you want. It's hard to wrap your head around at first, but once everyone has it down you can do literally anything with it.

It's a general system with dozens of books and settings, you'll usually just use one or two other than the core. Point buy character creation that allows you to build almost anything. The complexity is front loaded to character creation, combat is pretty streamlined but can be made more complex with optional rules. There's a rules light edition that you could skim through, think it's only about 15 pages.

Simple and adaptable core rules, but they can be expanded in any number of ways.

Shadowrun is one of those rulesets that looks very impressive on paper but when it actually comes to running it things turn into a convoluted mess.

The fundamental tension at it's core is that Shadowrun is a heist game in the same way old-school D&D is a heist game - get into the dungeon (office building), get the treasure (the objective), get out while avoiding the dragon (the dragon CEO). The issue is that heist games like this benefit from either a very fast and loose rules regime to keep the session flowing fast and loose; or a consistent system of rules that uses abstract game mechanics to incentivize heist-style gameplay. Either way, you also want a good set of design principles for GMs so that they can build heists that create challenges in an organic and emergent way.

Shadowrun has none of this; the rules are dense, frequently contradictory, and often bog down the game. The main source of challenge is usually just adding more mooks, which slows combat to a crawl, and the incredible number of player-facing options means that sometimes the game is more about buying a solution to a problem rather than innovating a tactical plan. Most GMs that "make it work" will admit to not using all of the rules, which in my opinion is not a convincing argument for the system being good. The fluff, however, is still fantastic and the background can easily be transferred over to another ruleset.

I think an old school hack with a shadowrun skinn would be good, like percentage dice for hacking

Oh god whatever you do don't play Anarchy. 5e is a poorly edited mess but Anarchy is a poorly edited mess with a bunch of actually important rules gutted for the sake of being "Rules light" while still being completely bloated in other respects.

Personally I'd go with 3rd Edition. It has problems too but the books aren't a pain in the ass to read like 4 and 5 are.

SR5 is hot garbage because Catalyst are corrupt fuckwits

it can be played that way, it can also played very differently

>Shadowrun has none of this; the rules are dense, frequently contradictory, and often bog down the game.
Correct. But if you're well-versed in the system, that's not an issue.

>The main source of challenge is usually just adding more mooks,
Incorrect. Shadowrun is all about cool, stylish enemies and not groups of faceless mooks.

>the incredible number of player-facing options means that sometimes the game is more about buying a solution to a problem rather than innovating a tactical plan.
Well, yeah, if you're only bringing mooks. If you're bringing other runners or skilled corp employees, it's their tricks versus ours.

Bought a copy of Shadowrun Returns and tried every character path, thinking there were all sorts of wonderful character design possibilities. That's when I realized there were effectively only two paths- magic or electronic. Then I found that every path offered the same in-game effect, whether it was stun, damage, bleed, or anything. This level of overbalance meant that your character creation choices didn't matter at all.

I learned a valuable lesson from Shadowrun- balance taken too far can ruin the fun of a game very very fast.

Yes, Shadowrun is great. I'm not 100% sure it's the best choice for "my first non-D&D RPG," but you have to learn dicepool systems eventually...

That's not really true, every edition of Shadowrun is a clusterfuck in it's own special way. 5e is probably the most playable Shadowrun has ever been, it's just tainted by CGL's Search Results
malfeasance and editing failures that resulted.

A solid but bland core mechanic and a huge number of well-written splatbooks that add additional systems to model different types of fiction. The GM has to pick which of those optional rules are needed for your setting, which is a pretty hefty task, and you really ought to ask something like the GURPS general to at least narrow down what books you want to read.

It's pretty rules-heavy. Or rather, it starts out relatively rules-light and gets heavier as you add systems, but it's not actually good as a rules-light game and if you wanted that you should just play Fate or something.

Also has a bit of a tendency to run more gritty and lethal than you expected.

>Shadowrun has none of this
Rubbish. The basic resolution mechanics are simple, adaptable, and intuitive.
>frequently contradictory
Welcome to the 2000s, it hasn't been like that since 3rd.
>slows combat to a crawl
No more than DnD, and in practise, combats are very quick affairs. There's simply not that much you need to do. Attack and dodge, then soak. Done.
>Most GMs that "make it work" will admit
Stuff pulled out of your ass for 100, Alex.

He's saying Shadowrun 5e is crunchy, not D&D 5e. Coincidentally, both are on the 5th editions atm.

Anarchy is supposed to be Shadowrun Lite, but I find it still at least as complex as dnd5.

Shadowrun is a fun game if you're autistic enough to understand all the rules, the GM may need to tell a player to not play a broken build, but overall its pretty good.

WLAN is a real thing, user. It's wireless (which is what it's called in the SR books). The conceit is that everything moved to cloud computing and borrowing runtime from the endless number of idling devices around, so to the the most from your stuff you need to be on the equivalent of public wifi where everyonr can see your device exists - not a problem for Joe Wageslave, bad for a career criminal. Thus deckers are necessary to keep you hidden, as well as fuck with the opposition.

Orcs live truncated lives

that Bar girl is probably 12

To be fair to that user, challenge is easily added by a couple more goons with assault rifles. It's just super boring and frustrating to keep throwing Full Auto at the PCs until they fall over.

>5e does not have frequently contradictory rules

How do you shoot while jumped in?

I've read the Secrets of Power series. I'm not sure if I'd call them GOOD, but they're certainly not bad either.

>I don't know what WLAN
Wireless Local Area Network.

>I am almost guaranteed to be playing it on R20
Remember that the diewise explosion function ({XdY!!}>TN) exists. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to roll when the Rule of 6 (explode on 6) is in effect. Also remember that Roll20 uses > to mean 'greater than or equal to', so your TN is always going to be 5 for SR 4e and 5e.

If you find you mostly like the setting, but not the rules, there are a lot of alternative rulesets for shadowrun. There are quite a few Fate hacks and there's even a PBTA game called sixth world.

I GM SR 5e and it's not like you described at all.

The system is crunchy but it fits the tone : you're all experts and you got to have your shit nailed down. It's hardly bloated and the different planes (meat, astral and matrix) are dissociated so running a straight up cyberpunk game without magic nor orcs isn't hard at all, and still deep enough.

There's also The Sprawl for generic cyberpunk. I guess Sixth World has Orcs by default?

Yeah, that's like adding more Goblins to a fight in D&D.

Not really, it's more like adding danger

If you want a simple and adaptive cyberpunk system, then play Cyberpunk 2020. It's incredible simple and should you want to change some stuff (get rid of character classes, reduce the number of skills, change the combat system...), it's very easy to do without breaking the whole game balance - in fact, you don't even need to do it by yourself, just find some house rule on the net.

Some people say it is complex but it's really not - I taught it to my brother and sister when they were around 12yo and used it as intro for new players at conventions. There are no advantages/disadvantages/quirks/feats to remember. Characters have stats, skills, equipment and contacts, that's it. There are no buzzwords, moves or triggers to remember. You don't need x-types of different dices, or dices of special colors, or cards and chips - just get a few d6 and d10.

Combat is straight forward and brutal and should be avoided. Characters cannot dodge bullets or perform special combat feats. Only better tactics, situational awareness and superior firepower will keep you alive.

Netrunning is Cyberpunk 2020's weak point (there is no cyberpunk game that makes it right anyway), but a netrunner still can do a lot of useful stuff without going through the whole datafortress hacking - he can hack and control directly about anything that is remotely controlled in a certain radius.

depends on the number of goblins