Talk to me about Shadowrun

On paper this is a game that has everything I love. Dwaves, elves, dragons, distopian themes, weird cthulhu bug creatures, mad AIs and shopping! Until now though it has been a game that I have never run or played in for one very simple reason, the crunch. To me it has been completely prohibitive and unreasonably complex. I will admit that I am more of a narrative guy than a rules guy but even so but even so its a bit mad. So my question is what your experience with Shadowrun has been? Did you find the cruch overwhelming? If so how did you get through it? I have also heard of the Anarchy version of 5e and I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has used it. Another question I have is given the devisive nature of team roles how did you manage that? How did you keep the party involved while the decker was off doing his thing?

I love Shadowrun, a game where the system seems to match the tone. The world is crunchy, the devil is in the details, and all that, so the system mirrors that complexity.

The problem that I have with SR in PBP is that when your actions are scattered across weeks, you never really get that intense learn burn. Every time I want to do something, I need to remember what I forgot. And it's alot.

I think at the table, with others acting, you get that immediate reinforcement of the WAY THINGS ARE DONE. Over the course of an evening, you'd get a real feel for the system. On PBP, that four hour evening with your buddies is instead spread over, like, three months.

Granted, I've been with Shadowrun since 2E, but I've always found the system to be a positive feature of the system, not a detriment. It's one of my top 5 all time, certainly, maybe top 3.

I've never played Anarchy, but I've heard it was a rather half-arsed attempt at a rules-lite conversion. Leaving too much unadressed.

RE: "divisive roles", we just handle the party splits like we do in any other system (cuz every other system has them too). Round Robin-style, where each split gets a few minutes/checks at a time to progress their "scene", while the other ppl go have a break of whatever sort (food, phone, drink, smoke) they want, or watch and snark along OOC.

Having played 2, 3, 4 and 5, I can say that 4th Ed was the only edition where we really fealt the need to house-rule "decking" (it was called hacking in that edition) to reduce the "mini-game" effect. And 5th has it at it's best place ever, in my opinion.

All in all, I feel like ppl use the book editing and level of crunch in general as a massive excuse and red-herring for a general unwillingness to invest time in the hobby/system.

That would make sense given what I have read. It may possibly be that it is a game that is ill suited to PBP. It happens sometimes.
I wouldnt say its unwillingness on my part. As I said it has everything I enjoy and the fluff is amazing. I have tried on four seperate ocassions to get through it and each time I have come up short. I am glad you dont mind the crunch and it works for you and your table though. Obviously you arent alone since the game is hugely popular. I am more looking for advice from people like me though that found the crunch initially challenging or as a barrier for entry.

My experience with earlier editions of Shadowrun was that the crunch was definitely a problem. It lent itself very much to a min-maxing style of "break the system" powergaming, which really turned me off.

The later editions seem to have done a huge amount of work to reduce that effect, as well as the "Everybody plays their own game" effect of deckers, riggers and so on. They've smoothed out a lot of the rough edges and I find 5th ed to be very well polished and very playable.

The setting is brilliant. If you end up running a game, colour me interested. And if you haven't checked out the computer game adaptation Shadowrun Returns, definitely give it a try - the base game is a little bit uninspired, but the Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns are fantastic.

I heard the joke that Shadowrun was a power gamer's wet dream: racial bonuses, magic items, and cybernetic enhancements!

Please note, I'm not trying to comment on your particular situation. I just feel like based on things/comments I've seen/see all the time in the community at large, lots of ppl don't even try, they have just heard so many complaints about the editing, that it "allows" them to check out from their responsibility in the matter.

As with any system, rules heavy or not, it's easiest to learn it from someone who already knows the system. So if you can't get past the crunch, and you want to learn it, then find someone to teach you. I make it sound so easy right? No, I get it. That's the hard part. Everyone's a Player in this hobby, very few GMs.

In that regard, resources like Roll20 (assuming you don't know/can't find anyone IRL, hence PbP), and community forums are tremendous resources.

There's cheat sheets out there.

When I got into 4E, I hadn't played Shadowrun in probably 8 years, and it was 3rd, so I downloaded Chummer and basically learned 4th via that free program (there's a5E version too).

Basically, all the standard stuff to help one learn a system are out there for it.

But ultimately I feel like you have to want to learn the system first. If you don't, you won't.

I have never really understood the appeal of powergaming, to me it just sucks all the fun out of the game and all the drama out of the story you are trying to tell. Don’t get me wrong I like my characters to be effective at what they do but I also like to feel like I am overcoming a challenge, not just skating past everything. Can I ask how the older versions lend themselves to powergaming? Characters seem to be very specialized leaving the GM with options to combat this type of thing to my mind. For example, if you had a street samurai that completely broke the back of the combat system, could you not indirectly challenge them with deckers, riggers and magicians?
I have downloaded Chummer and taken a look and it seems to be a very good system, thanks for the tip. You are quite correct in assuming I can't find anyone IRL and even if I could my schedule is not kind in that regard. I have also tracked down a cheat sheet and this video series that goes over the rules. I also have no issue with the editing of the book. Is it the best? No. Is that a barrier from preventing me from learning? Also no. I will post something up on the forum and see if I get lucky. My goal would be to simply learn the system so I could move onto GMing myself, even if that meant a series of one shots.

It wasn't so much that characters broke the system (for me), it was that they ran the risk of being too focused. The system allowed you to build too far in one direction. For example, say you wanted to play an assassin - you could tech your character so that they were literally the deadliest sniper in the world, and could kill anything in the game in a single shot, provided that they had a good vantage point and a few rounds of aiming. Unfortunately, they would be terrible at every other activity.

This tended to encourage the players to make their characters ridiculously good at one specific thing, and then approach every problem by wanting to do that one thing. If their "thing" wasn't appropriate to the situation, they'd just check out until it was time to do their thing, or whinge about the GM never giving them opportunities to use their skills.

So that's the min-max problem, as I found it. The newer editions seem to have gone a more modern route, forcing the characters to be a bit more well-rounded and to get involved in a wider variety of activities.

Right well that would make more sense and I could certainly see why that would happen.

I have come up with the beginnings of a Shadowrun campaign surrounding Los Angeles, Horizon, CAS, Aztlan, Amazonia and what I am terming the "Whistler continuity" - where I make some changes to the fluff and add and take things away, most notably a Great Dragon that I took a lot of inspiration from Earthdawn for.

I am considering posting an expression of interest board and make it really clear that while I would do my best to get across the rules before we start, that I learn best by doing, so I might get some stuff wrong on occasion. The idea would be to check for interest before I dive into the rules and come out the other end and find out no one has interest in my campaign idea.

Sounds like a good plan. I'm interested, but I'll have to see if I can dig my Shadowrun books out of storage. :)

Send me a PM and make a post in the recruitment thread and we can have a chat, I might have a solution for you.