Yep, a specific system. Have you played it? Did you like it? If so, what did you like about it? What didn't you like about it? What is your favorite edition?
Personally, I have next to no experience with Shadowrun. Someone tried running a oneshot I was in a long time ago but I was like 11 years old and had no clue what I was doing so it didn't make sense to me. Since then I've heard lots of good stories, read a bunch of the fiction, and while I am intrigued by the world and the feel I've never actually gotten to play in one.
Just as well. I know if I did I'd probably end up playing some cocky Decker or something and get vaped by Black Ice.
How about you?
Have you considered asking this on the Shadowrun forum, over at Shadowrun.com? You might find a decent bit of discussion on the subject there ^_^
ReplyDeleteWhen I first played Shadowrun, I swore that I would never play it again. We had a group of powergamers who just about shot everything that moved. It was a complete and utter disaster.
ReplyDeleteThen I played it again a few years later and I liked it much better, with other players. And currently I'm playing in a brilliant campaign run by a friend of mine, Rat's Nest. It's a sandbox setting and we don't play the typical runners. We have a shadow doc (me), a couple of gangers (including a 14 year old girl), a technomancer on the run from MCT, a private detective ect.
A lot of what we do is simply living our lives as squatters in a brutal world that's trying to get rid of us. There's a lot of social interaction between the PCs and NPCs and we're adding NPCs constantly because they might get important later - everything we change in this setting has consequences. That isn't what most Shadowrun campaigns look like, but it's absolutely possible to run a game like that in the setting and it's a lot of fun.
I love the Shadowrun setting, I've wanted to play a hacker from the start (and I do, in another campaign) because the thought of interacting directly with information like that blows my mind.
If you play a hacker, by all means study the sourcebook closely, in addition to the core rukebook. And a couple of other sourcebooks as well. This is something I'm not all that fond of with Shadowrun: there is a huge number of sourcebooks and they all have information that can be important or will give you an advantage over someone who has read only the core rukebook. Yes, you can make a character only with the core book, but there is a chance you will miss something that would make the character that much more useful then. Not just with hackers, with any character. The sourcebooks are not really optional and I prefer it when they are. But that's just me and I do have to admit that it's fun reading them.
On the whole, Shadowrun turned from a total catastrophe into one of my favourite systems. But only with the right GM.
I'm going to agree %100 with Jebediah. I love Shadowrun, with the correct GM and the correct group. A problem about Shadowrun as he said is everyone has to be someone that wants to read the book, and will read the book or it won't be as solid of a game for everyone. That makes it prohibitive for some players.
DeleteAt this point in my life it isn't a game I'd run just because of how much reading I would have to do to run it again. It is a lot of rules, and it isn't intuitive. That said, the world is amazing and the game itself is really The Cyberpunk game in my opinion.
I love the game, but nobody wants to run it here. I suppose part of it is that the cyberpunk aspects can seem a bit dated nowadays.
ReplyDeleteOne issue with cyberpunk style gaming is the friction between "life is cheap" as a genre convention and "gamers don't want to have their characters dying right and left" gaming trope.