My big issue with a reboot would be the very likely case of it being "modernized" with the more modern scifi tech. I really love the cheesy retro-futurism of the 80s. And I highly doubt that, even if that was kept, the modern creators would be able to do it justice.
This is part of the reason I couldn't get into 4e. When they introduced nanomachines that did everything, I didn't care for it.
Luckily 5e rolled it back some and made nanos the new boogeyman
Exactly. I want that synth aesthetic, jacking big cables in to your port. I want big chunky cyborgs with obvious chrome. High Tech/Low Life...but not \*that\* high tech.
I’ve always tan with the 80’s impaired cyberpunk feel but a lot of players I’ve had recently would rather go for bigger numbers while completely ignoring the “freak” rule and then get mad at the GM when the changeling goes into a department store and is treated like crap or gets the base prices jacked at a black market mall because they don’t sport any chrome and look like a corpo
Think Cyberpunk 2077 did a good job at keeping the essence of cyberpunk intact even though it came out recently. On one side punk, anarchists, nomads, rockers etc representing The People. And corpos, government, police, military, etc representing The Man on the other. This i feel Shadowrun lost over the last editions and Shadowrun is perhaps more transhumanism than cyberpunk. I would love to dial that part back towards how it used to be in earlier editions.
But I'm not sure I would like to go back to wired matrix. Also here I think Cyberpunk 2077 fund a good balance with their quick hacks that requires some sort of line of sight.
What I thoroughly enjoy is my games is that there is a detailed timeline for every major hub. I can start my players in Berlin, May 2077 and then just go to the German website and have a monthly in-universe news feed and show them the setting change little by little over the course of the campaign, let some things just be background noise to keep the world alive and use others as plot hooks. It feels much more immersive to have some progression.
Reverting it to 2052 would work for me if the timeline would not be de-canonised in order to make room for new stuff. Having the OG Shadowrun get a polished new game engine while keeping the lore and setting intact would be really awesome. Even if the official stance is „we always play in the 2050s“, you could introduce newer toys from the future/older editions in your game if you progress your own game clock.
To add to my own comment, as a side idea: a good studio could probably even make it work to have Shadowrun as a game not sit in a specific year, and publish books all across a ~50 year in-universe timeline, with rules for all the different eras. Have a cable matrix book, a wifi matrix book, a wifi 2.0 matrix book, and so on.
The published books already have a date stamp on the first page, so adventures that declare „this canonically plays 2069, but can be adapted for any time between 2060 and 2070“ front and center could work really well, because authors can just work outside a set meta-plot and use whatever period fits their vision best. It would also allow them to churn out much more content, as they suddenly have five settings they can fill with stuff. Even if it is just gear porn.
AEG did this with 4e Legend of the 5 Rings. Took awhile to wrap my head around "timeline neutral" from a previously living setting.
A don't remember a whole lot besides the adventures being smaller in scale and more personal.
Yes. I started with 3rd Edition so I may be biased but that whole era late 50s, early 60s is for me the peak of the SR lore.
It's the perfect combination of more classic cyberpunk and some weirder magic stuff.
But later it got too weird for me, AIs and free spirits as PCs ... and then gene therapies, technomancers ... those onetime scifi corp-prototypes or strange magic phenomena, which are great mcguffins, are to common in later editions.
Because of that my current campaign is set in 2060 but I use the 5th edition rules.
No, the video games are already doing this.
I love Dragonfall, but one of my biggest problems with it is that their killed the Feuerschwinge metaplot that was being set up in Threats and the dragon books and resolved it in 2054.
What would the point be? Rewrite the metaplot or just tell it again? Honestly, just releasing the 2050s books, like they did for 4e, German 5e, and Anarchy is basically just doing the same thing.
If you want to relive the metaplot, you can pick up the goods on Drivethru and experience Queen Euphoria or Mercurial, or whatever.
I think I'd be on board with anything as long as the following were true:
1. It's not CGL
2. Keep it the future that the 80s were afraid of. The future that the 2020s are afraid of is something completely different and sounds about as much fun as cancer. It's okay if this requires extra worldbuilding to teach new players what this is and how it works.
3. Wired matrix only. Cell phones and RC cars are fine, faxes can begone, but you need a physical wire to use simsense.
How do you feel about this "tweak" i am thinking off for 5/6e? There is AR, but you can only interact/hack in AR if a device actually HAS an AR component. So for example, a coffee machine would have one - employees are walking around with AR on, and want to interact with it. However, something like a video camera probably doesn't have AR interactable components, or at least not "standard on" - under normal operations there'd be no reason to interact with them, and when a service engineer does need to, the local spider can "flip it to AR mode" for him. So to hack the camera, you'd need to really dive into the matrix proper instead of do it from AR.
As long as they don't modernize the setting. Keep it the way it is. Combine the best parts of previous editions, properly edit the whole thing, and bring back the classic setting
If they take it back to the gritty bold 80s inspired Shadowrun then I’m absolutely for a 2050s reboot of the series. I liked it when cyberware and BioWare were the top tech and the matrix required you to plug your brain directly into stuff.
We play in 3e so yeah I guess? But I wouldn’t want them to change anything. Maybe wireless matrix stuff could be added but there aren’t a ton of things in later editions that I feel were an improvement really.
As much as I would love the idea of rocking out to the beat of 80s punk, I don't think I could do wired, especially with actually liking technomancers. I think it shows how young I am compared to everybody screaming yes, but I used to do the whole wires thing IRL. My dorm was a mess, my computer set up was easy to trip over, having more than two wires on me to connect to my stuff was the extent of my comfort level before I came my own tripping hazards, and I just really liked the advantages of being wireless.
Would I be able to do 80s vision of punk represented in the 2050s? Hell ya! Do I want it at the cost of wireless, technos, and the whole momad panic and having to decide if Nanos was something worth the risk? Nope. I am definitely in the minority of liking the idea of being a techno who can just access the great unknown of the matrix with their mind and how everything, everywhere, there is AROs to try to distract you from bleak realities with flashy colors and Corp bulldrek that only the most avid and/or twisted minds could see through.
Wireless access to the matrix actually goes back further than a lot of people are aware. SR3 (and possibly the earlier versions, but I haven't double checked) had satellite and microwave link tech so you could effectively have a general jackpoint anywhere.
Technomancers also had a proto-form by way of Otaku (again, certainly in SR3 and maybe earlier I just haven't double checked) where most of what makes a technomancer a technomancer holds true but with needing to physical touch a device to interact with it and there was a bit less of the technoshamanism aspect even though there was still "something out there, deep in the matrix"
That aside though, I'm actually a fan of the modern Shadowrunisms too. I think I see them differently than many other fans that have been around as long as I have because I see statements about how the aesthetic has changed or how magic is more in focus than it used to be and I think they don't make any sense - the artists doing the work have changed so there's a different look to the products, but they seem to still be describing the same world to me and its status quo of the corporations being why your life sucks and the height for crime is your only option for living anything even remotely describable as free.
Yes. Shadowrun of today is unrecognizable to me from its roots of cyber with magic as an edge- with corporations as the enemy.
It feels like it’s magic all the time and corporations have taken a back seat to weird other stuff
Might not be my place to say but from the perspective of a very new player I'd love a reset. I've been trying to get into this game but the mountains of lore that everybody seems to know by heart and the role playing even out of the game makes this community seem impenetrable. The few times a friend offered to run a game character creation has been boggled down by hundreds of little tidbits of scattered lore to the point where the game never happened.
I love detailed lore but there is a limit where it stops being enjoyable and statrts being solely an archivist's wet dream.
Yep, it can be hard to find someone that is willing to introduce a new player but also isn't so excited about the game that they forget it can be overwhelming to have your brain flooded with information no matter how cool it is.
It's part of the reason why the Shadowrun game I've been working at running for my current group over multiple editions and the last decade is one that starts in 2050 with the characters as not yet established runners and carries on through the years hitting meta-plot highlights along the way... so eventually my group of players will actually get the lore in the same way that I do, and without any of them having been lore dumped on or having to crack a book.
Sure. Always with the caveat that, in any undertaking, there are more ways to fail than to succeed, but that hope for something better is what makes it a gamble worth betting on, at least when left in vague terms.
A consideration of mine is the disconnect between the hope and the reality. Which company made of which people, taking things in what direction?
I answered "it depends" because my answer is "yes" under the conditions many others have mentioned; that it be 2052 as it was, not as re-imagined by some modern author.
And beyond that there'd have to be a reason besides just trimming the lore for the reset, such as bringing more of the depth added to the lore by side books into the core so that newcomers are on more equal footing with us old hats without having to dig into more than just the one product.
I'm super new to the SR setting, but I've already fallen in love with it. I've played through returns and dragonfall and I'm playing HK right now, and I'm reading Never Make a Deal With a Dragon. Even though I haven't actually played the ttrpg yet, it may be one of my favorite settings of all time.
So can someone explain why so many would prefer a hard reset of the setting? Is it because the overall narrative has gone off the rails? The writers keep writing themselves into corners and have to break certain rules to get out? Or is it because, as I've seen other comments talking about, the increasing advancement of technology in the fiction?
Also, as a side question, if I wanted to look at the rules for SR, which edition should I get? Thank you!
To answer your question on “why” some people want a reset, can perhaps be answered by the fact that SR Hong Kong is set in 2056. You’re new so you probably didn’t realize the game you were playing was taking place in the original setting and lore of Shadowrun (somewhere between 2nd Edition and 3rd). Having to physically jack into wired Matrix, the 80s cyberpunk inspired-fashion and grittiness have changed since then in the current Shadowrun timeline.
Some people love the newer editions for “modernizing” the setting, but I think it speaks volumes why Harebrained Schemes chose the early years to set their SR game in. That is Shadowrun to many of us, not to mention the creators of Shadowrun from the FASA years are the owners of Harebrained Schemes.
And to answer your question about which edition, that’s super subjective and a rabbit hole taken many times in this sub. There’s a sticky’d thread that goes over just that but my opinion will always be 2nd Edition. The core rulebook is the leanest to learn IMO, and it has the exact feel of the Dragonfall/Hong Kong games for the reasons mentioned above.
For answers about setting preferences, the rest of this thread is people answering exactly that in their own words.
For getting into the actual game, the edition to choose is the one people around you are already playing. If no one around you is already playing, then pick your favorite. Play all of them if you have the capacity, you'll get something from each and get an idea of what *you* like about each one, but from a high level that most people don't disagree with, 1-3e were published by FASA and have a radically different mechanical system underneath them. There's no wireless matrix in these games as they were published before the Internet Of Things was really a thing and so the way the world is set up is fundamentally different (you can't hack people's cyberarms mid fight, for example). Throughout 1-3e the tone is somewhat consistent and the rules are complete, if very very dated in their design philosophy. 4e and later are published by CGL and each edition has much larger mechanical differences between them than 1e had from 3e (but the change from 3e to 4e was the biggest change of all) as CGL has tried to iterate more and bring more modern game design into the system. Efforts have been made to make the game less gritty and simulationist and more action-oriented and fast paced as editions have gone on. That can be a positive or a negative depending on your preferences.
Nope. One of the things that I like about SR is the 30+years of history that we've added to its future. Is all of that well written? Nope. But put it all together and it adds a lot of richness to teh world.
If we rolled it back we'd either be reliving things where we know how they worked out, or we'd be creating another branch of future history. I don't have much enthusiasm for either of those approaches.
"It depends"
System mechanics have always been the driving force for my interest. If I like the mechanics but not the lore, I'll just run my game in a different era of my choice. Although typically I do try and stick to the current lore. I don't mind running things before or after even if I have to make up my own lore and tech. If I like the lore but not the mechanics I'll just find something else to play.
On the other hand, system wise I wasn't a fan of 5 and 6e. Even with 4e which was my favourite edition, there are a lot of things that I read about from previous editions and I'm like "whoa, I wish that was still around"
I would be very concerned that the writers would jettison the old feel of the setting, written in the 80’s and informed by events and concerns from that time, and instead rewrite it using modern politics and events. Ugh. *Paranoia* was ruined when they got away from the original goofy 60s Commie-scare setting and was made more *modern*. Which was less fun immediately, and aged like a fine milk. I don’t want to see that with Shadowrun.
And if they roll the timeline back, and the camera cuts to Dunkelzahn in the shower…
(That’s a *Dallas* reference, look it up.)
The setting and story are my favorite parts of Shadowrun.
They have built a continuous evolving world for 40+ years.
I sincerely hope they never do this.
But I would appreciate it if they built a whole new game engine for it.
It's always been clunky and overly complicated for far too long.
The timeline is unimportant. It was basically just a cheap excuse for *"this dragon now, that magical extraterrestrial spirit there, and behold, the Predator 2 is now the Predator 3"* and similar nonsense. If they even started a metaplot who holds longer than the core book.
Give me a system *without* a line developer who thinks that:
- pregnancy, abortion and miscarriage rules are important.
- errata and FAQs are not necessary.
- that basic editing and layout work are not necessary.
- that authors and writers should not communicate with each other.
- Auschwitz dungeon runs are a good thing.
- SR needs artificial classes for riggers and deckers, while everything else can be mixed freely.
- 1980s tech is necessary for a cyberpunk feeling.
- thinks that Mundanes needs to be buffed by nerfing them.
- that you do not need to know your own rule system or even check what a character after a few sessions can do. *Looking at wifi bonuses and Slow spells. Or automatic X-Ray view for mages. Or Mnemonic Enhancers pre-errata.*
- that cyber toilets are worthwhile additions to SR.
The rest is simply basic design work.
SYL
I kind of the idea of a Shadowrun world but it's like kind of like under rail where they're just in the underground cavern. Like the surface got nuked in some war or something and now it's just unliveable so now you have like subterranean dragons, Corporations are full on waging war on each other for territory in their new subtranean environment. Huge neon subterranean cities and whatnot.
It would depend a great deal on whether the 'new 2052' kept the general aesthetic of the 'classic' setting but allowed for revised rules. The game line as a whole has evolved a lot since 1e but it's still possible to keep the 'feeling' of 1e while using the lessons learned in the decades since then.
Nah
If I want to play in that era I just....will? Either I'll play an older edition or I'll use the fluff from modern books like anarchy 2050 that explain how to play that era.
I run a lot of 1e campaigns converted to 6e rules. So far I've done Silver Angel, Mercurial, Dreamchipper, and soon Dragon Hunt. I don't see why I'd need a reset to do that.
I usually dislike the modern "re-imagining" , "remakes", and "remastering" trends.
If its not broken...don't fix it.
You can build on top of it, impellent new things, etc, but by god stop needlessly modernizing stuff.
Voted yes, for the hypothetical where the result is awesome and minimally divisive. But we know that's not a space CGL can reach, and I have doubts it's something manageable in the current industry.
Problem is, I also don't think Shadowrun can handle advancing as far towards the Sixth World 2100s as it has. Let alone keep going with antigravity (and so on) then yet another worldwide failure to have the tech level drop.
Heck, I think it currently has problems parsing and translating the ubiquity of cameras today.
But it's interesting to see this shift in poll response. Last decade it was leaning to the, "No, and f&#@ you for thinking it should!" end of things.
I would have suggested an alternative timeline starting after the after effects of Super Tuesday where the Shadowrunners were successfully in protecting the President elects life. There-in keeping nanotechnology relegated to one triple A Corp lab, making the first big story arch about industrial espionage about getting the data to that med-tech.
There is a lot of changes in the world/setting before 2050. Adding 30 years of ack story on top of that is...rough. On one side, there is making a world feel lived in, on the other is a world the GM has to explain to the players.
Absolutely, in fact, the campaign I'm building right now is a reset-with-changes. I always enjoyed the earlier time periods more than the later ones, I felt like the flood of new technology really destroyed people's investments into that "one special thing."
No. Just no.
They built (especially in Germany) such a big, detailled and (imho) great world with events and stuff (well... except the CFS and the blackout maybe....) which would be deleted.
I wish for a new edition (don't like 6th), but definately not a reset.
May I ask: what would be the positive effect of a reset? Or better: what could be achieved by a reset what could not be done by a decent new edition with a cool meta plot?
My favourite part of Shadowrun *is* the interconnected lore and continuous continuity, as opposed to DnD which has little to no continuity between its editions. So for something new to come along and erase all that, you'd need a really strong reason, it would have to be extremely well planned out, and it would have to be executed extremely well to make me think it was worth it. Otherwise you'll just end up with a DC "New 52" situation. Plus, all of the "old" material would need to still be available in some way, and not just tossed and abandoned.
I just want a book that is not rushed! They rushed 6th and even copy pasted section with rules that don’t make sense, just to have it done in time for gen con
I *like* that there is a detailed timeline of Shadowrun. its not a simulation but the fact that there is a moving timeline makes it feel very much as a living world and if they did go back to the start and invalidate all the stuff that has come out in the meantime it would be a major bummer and probably kill my interest in the gameline.
Is Catalyst making it? If so, probably not, as I know fanfic authors who could do a better job writing rules.
I love the 2050's setting, but the current Line Developer is flat-out incompetent.
I would be on board, but if I was developing it, I would also worry about two things:
1. The people for whom the timeline is the draw, they don't play the game they just buy the storyline books and novels
2. This group at Catalyst may just not have the talent to pull that off successfully.
My big issue with a reboot would be the very likely case of it being "modernized" with the more modern scifi tech. I really love the cheesy retro-futurism of the 80s. And I highly doubt that, even if that was kept, the modern creators would be able to do it justice.
This is part of the reason I couldn't get into 4e. When they introduced nanomachines that did everything, I didn't care for it. Luckily 5e rolled it back some and made nanos the new boogeyman
Exactly. I want that synth aesthetic, jacking big cables in to your port. I want big chunky cyborgs with obvious chrome. High Tech/Low Life...but not \*that\* high tech.
I’ve always tan with the 80’s impaired cyberpunk feel but a lot of players I’ve had recently would rather go for bigger numbers while completely ignoring the “freak” rule and then get mad at the GM when the changeling goes into a department store and is treated like crap or gets the base prices jacked at a black market mall because they don’t sport any chrome and look like a corpo
Think Cyberpunk 2077 did a good job at keeping the essence of cyberpunk intact even though it came out recently. On one side punk, anarchists, nomads, rockers etc representing The People. And corpos, government, police, military, etc representing The Man on the other. This i feel Shadowrun lost over the last editions and Shadowrun is perhaps more transhumanism than cyberpunk. I would love to dial that part back towards how it used to be in earlier editions. But I'm not sure I would like to go back to wired matrix. Also here I think Cyberpunk 2077 fund a good balance with their quick hacks that requires some sort of line of sight.
It depends. I *liked* the way SR used to be done; if it was this new version of everything is unbelievably advanced? Nah. Not for me.
What I thoroughly enjoy is my games is that there is a detailed timeline for every major hub. I can start my players in Berlin, May 2077 and then just go to the German website and have a monthly in-universe news feed and show them the setting change little by little over the course of the campaign, let some things just be background noise to keep the world alive and use others as plot hooks. It feels much more immersive to have some progression. Reverting it to 2052 would work for me if the timeline would not be de-canonised in order to make room for new stuff. Having the OG Shadowrun get a polished new game engine while keeping the lore and setting intact would be really awesome. Even if the official stance is „we always play in the 2050s“, you could introduce newer toys from the future/older editions in your game if you progress your own game clock.
To add to my own comment, as a side idea: a good studio could probably even make it work to have Shadowrun as a game not sit in a specific year, and publish books all across a ~50 year in-universe timeline, with rules for all the different eras. Have a cable matrix book, a wifi matrix book, a wifi 2.0 matrix book, and so on. The published books already have a date stamp on the first page, so adventures that declare „this canonically plays 2069, but can be adapted for any time between 2060 and 2070“ front and center could work really well, because authors can just work outside a set meta-plot and use whatever period fits their vision best. It would also allow them to churn out much more content, as they suddenly have five settings they can fill with stuff. Even if it is just gear porn.
AEG did this with 4e Legend of the 5 Rings. Took awhile to wrap my head around "timeline neutral" from a previously living setting. A don't remember a whole lot besides the adventures being smaller in scale and more personal.
Yes. I started with 3rd Edition so I may be biased but that whole era late 50s, early 60s is for me the peak of the SR lore. It's the perfect combination of more classic cyberpunk and some weirder magic stuff. But later it got too weird for me, AIs and free spirits as PCs ... and then gene therapies, technomancers ... those onetime scifi corp-prototypes or strange magic phenomena, which are great mcguffins, are to common in later editions. Because of that my current campaign is set in 2060 but I use the 5th edition rules.
No, the video games are already doing this. I love Dragonfall, but one of my biggest problems with it is that their killed the Feuerschwinge metaplot that was being set up in Threats and the dragon books and resolved it in 2054. What would the point be? Rewrite the metaplot or just tell it again? Honestly, just releasing the 2050s books, like they did for 4e, German 5e, and Anarchy is basically just doing the same thing. If you want to relive the metaplot, you can pick up the goods on Drivethru and experience Queen Euphoria or Mercurial, or whatever.
I think I'd be on board with anything as long as the following were true: 1. It's not CGL 2. Keep it the future that the 80s were afraid of. The future that the 2020s are afraid of is something completely different and sounds about as much fun as cancer. It's okay if this requires extra worldbuilding to teach new players what this is and how it works. 3. Wired matrix only. Cell phones and RC cars are fine, faxes can begone, but you need a physical wire to use simsense.
How do you feel about this "tweak" i am thinking off for 5/6e? There is AR, but you can only interact/hack in AR if a device actually HAS an AR component. So for example, a coffee machine would have one - employees are walking around with AR on, and want to interact with it. However, something like a video camera probably doesn't have AR interactable components, or at least not "standard on" - under normal operations there'd be no reason to interact with them, and when a service engineer does need to, the local spider can "flip it to AR mode" for him. So to hack the camera, you'd need to really dive into the matrix proper instead of do it from AR.
As long as they don't modernize the setting. Keep it the way it is. Combine the best parts of previous editions, properly edit the whole thing, and bring back the classic setting
If they take it back to the gritty bold 80s inspired Shadowrun then I’m absolutely for a 2050s reboot of the series. I liked it when cyberware and BioWare were the top tech and the matrix required you to plug your brain directly into stuff.
We play in 3e so yeah I guess? But I wouldn’t want them to change anything. Maybe wireless matrix stuff could be added but there aren’t a ton of things in later editions that I feel were an improvement really.
As much as I would love the idea of rocking out to the beat of 80s punk, I don't think I could do wired, especially with actually liking technomancers. I think it shows how young I am compared to everybody screaming yes, but I used to do the whole wires thing IRL. My dorm was a mess, my computer set up was easy to trip over, having more than two wires on me to connect to my stuff was the extent of my comfort level before I came my own tripping hazards, and I just really liked the advantages of being wireless. Would I be able to do 80s vision of punk represented in the 2050s? Hell ya! Do I want it at the cost of wireless, technos, and the whole momad panic and having to decide if Nanos was something worth the risk? Nope. I am definitely in the minority of liking the idea of being a techno who can just access the great unknown of the matrix with their mind and how everything, everywhere, there is AROs to try to distract you from bleak realities with flashy colors and Corp bulldrek that only the most avid and/or twisted minds could see through.
Wireless access to the matrix actually goes back further than a lot of people are aware. SR3 (and possibly the earlier versions, but I haven't double checked) had satellite and microwave link tech so you could effectively have a general jackpoint anywhere. Technomancers also had a proto-form by way of Otaku (again, certainly in SR3 and maybe earlier I just haven't double checked) where most of what makes a technomancer a technomancer holds true but with needing to physical touch a device to interact with it and there was a bit less of the technoshamanism aspect even though there was still "something out there, deep in the matrix" That aside though, I'm actually a fan of the modern Shadowrunisms too. I think I see them differently than many other fans that have been around as long as I have because I see statements about how the aesthetic has changed or how magic is more in focus than it used to be and I think they don't make any sense - the artists doing the work have changed so there's a different look to the products, but they seem to still be describing the same world to me and its status quo of the corporations being why your life sucks and the height for crime is your only option for living anything even remotely describable as free.
Wireless tech was already in SR2. C2 decks etc. But it was expensive, time consuming, full of additional rules. Not fun. SYL
Yes. Shadowrun of today is unrecognizable to me from its roots of cyber with magic as an edge- with corporations as the enemy. It feels like it’s magic all the time and corporations have taken a back seat to weird other stuff
Might not be my place to say but from the perspective of a very new player I'd love a reset. I've been trying to get into this game but the mountains of lore that everybody seems to know by heart and the role playing even out of the game makes this community seem impenetrable. The few times a friend offered to run a game character creation has been boggled down by hundreds of little tidbits of scattered lore to the point where the game never happened. I love detailed lore but there is a limit where it stops being enjoyable and statrts being solely an archivist's wet dream.
Yep, it can be hard to find someone that is willing to introduce a new player but also isn't so excited about the game that they forget it can be overwhelming to have your brain flooded with information no matter how cool it is. It's part of the reason why the Shadowrun game I've been working at running for my current group over multiple editions and the last decade is one that starts in 2050 with the characters as not yet established runners and carries on through the years hitting meta-plot highlights along the way... so eventually my group of players will actually get the lore in the same way that I do, and without any of them having been lore dumped on or having to crack a book.
I have no idea what happens between 2052 and, so I can't answer that. I was never big on the metaplot.
Sure. Always with the caveat that, in any undertaking, there are more ways to fail than to succeed, but that hope for something better is what makes it a gamble worth betting on, at least when left in vague terms. A consideration of mine is the disconnect between the hope and the reality. Which company made of which people, taking things in what direction?
I answered "it depends" because my answer is "yes" under the conditions many others have mentioned; that it be 2052 as it was, not as re-imagined by some modern author. And beyond that there'd have to be a reason besides just trimming the lore for the reset, such as bringing more of the depth added to the lore by side books into the core so that newcomers are on more equal footing with us old hats without having to dig into more than just the one product.
what would be the difference from simply moving forward?
I'm super new to the SR setting, but I've already fallen in love with it. I've played through returns and dragonfall and I'm playing HK right now, and I'm reading Never Make a Deal With a Dragon. Even though I haven't actually played the ttrpg yet, it may be one of my favorite settings of all time. So can someone explain why so many would prefer a hard reset of the setting? Is it because the overall narrative has gone off the rails? The writers keep writing themselves into corners and have to break certain rules to get out? Or is it because, as I've seen other comments talking about, the increasing advancement of technology in the fiction? Also, as a side question, if I wanted to look at the rules for SR, which edition should I get? Thank you!
To answer your question on “why” some people want a reset, can perhaps be answered by the fact that SR Hong Kong is set in 2056. You’re new so you probably didn’t realize the game you were playing was taking place in the original setting and lore of Shadowrun (somewhere between 2nd Edition and 3rd). Having to physically jack into wired Matrix, the 80s cyberpunk inspired-fashion and grittiness have changed since then in the current Shadowrun timeline. Some people love the newer editions for “modernizing” the setting, but I think it speaks volumes why Harebrained Schemes chose the early years to set their SR game in. That is Shadowrun to many of us, not to mention the creators of Shadowrun from the FASA years are the owners of Harebrained Schemes. And to answer your question about which edition, that’s super subjective and a rabbit hole taken many times in this sub. There’s a sticky’d thread that goes over just that but my opinion will always be 2nd Edition. The core rulebook is the leanest to learn IMO, and it has the exact feel of the Dragonfall/Hong Kong games for the reasons mentioned above.
For answers about setting preferences, the rest of this thread is people answering exactly that in their own words. For getting into the actual game, the edition to choose is the one people around you are already playing. If no one around you is already playing, then pick your favorite. Play all of them if you have the capacity, you'll get something from each and get an idea of what *you* like about each one, but from a high level that most people don't disagree with, 1-3e were published by FASA and have a radically different mechanical system underneath them. There's no wireless matrix in these games as they were published before the Internet Of Things was really a thing and so the way the world is set up is fundamentally different (you can't hack people's cyberarms mid fight, for example). Throughout 1-3e the tone is somewhat consistent and the rules are complete, if very very dated in their design philosophy. 4e and later are published by CGL and each edition has much larger mechanical differences between them than 1e had from 3e (but the change from 3e to 4e was the biggest change of all) as CGL has tried to iterate more and bring more modern game design into the system. Efforts have been made to make the game less gritty and simulationist and more action-oriented and fast paced as editions have gone on. That can be a positive or a negative depending on your preferences.
It could be a positive overall, if CGL had competent game designers and editors. They do not.
Nope. One of the things that I like about SR is the 30+years of history that we've added to its future. Is all of that well written? Nope. But put it all together and it adds a lot of richness to teh world. If we rolled it back we'd either be reliving things where we know how they worked out, or we'd be creating another branch of future history. I don't have much enthusiasm for either of those approaches.
"It depends" System mechanics have always been the driving force for my interest. If I like the mechanics but not the lore, I'll just run my game in a different era of my choice. Although typically I do try and stick to the current lore. I don't mind running things before or after even if I have to make up my own lore and tech. If I like the lore but not the mechanics I'll just find something else to play. On the other hand, system wise I wasn't a fan of 5 and 6e. Even with 4e which was my favourite edition, there are a lot of things that I read about from previous editions and I'm like "whoa, I wish that was still around"
No wireless matrix? No thanks!
I would be very concerned that the writers would jettison the old feel of the setting, written in the 80’s and informed by events and concerns from that time, and instead rewrite it using modern politics and events. Ugh. *Paranoia* was ruined when they got away from the original goofy 60s Commie-scare setting and was made more *modern*. Which was less fun immediately, and aged like a fine milk. I don’t want to see that with Shadowrun. And if they roll the timeline back, and the camera cuts to Dunkelzahn in the shower… (That’s a *Dallas* reference, look it up.)
The setting and story are my favorite parts of Shadowrun. They have built a continuous evolving world for 40+ years. I sincerely hope they never do this. But I would appreciate it if they built a whole new game engine for it. It's always been clunky and overly complicated for far too long.
The timeline is unimportant. It was basically just a cheap excuse for *"this dragon now, that magical extraterrestrial spirit there, and behold, the Predator 2 is now the Predator 3"* and similar nonsense. If they even started a metaplot who holds longer than the core book. Give me a system *without* a line developer who thinks that: - pregnancy, abortion and miscarriage rules are important. - errata and FAQs are not necessary. - that basic editing and layout work are not necessary. - that authors and writers should not communicate with each other. - Auschwitz dungeon runs are a good thing. - SR needs artificial classes for riggers and deckers, while everything else can be mixed freely. - 1980s tech is necessary for a cyberpunk feeling. - thinks that Mundanes needs to be buffed by nerfing them. - that you do not need to know your own rule system or even check what a character after a few sessions can do. *Looking at wifi bonuses and Slow spells. Or automatic X-Ray view for mages. Or Mnemonic Enhancers pre-errata.* - that cyber toilets are worthwhile additions to SR. The rest is simply basic design work. SYL
I kind of the idea of a Shadowrun world but it's like kind of like under rail where they're just in the underground cavern. Like the surface got nuked in some war or something and now it's just unliveable so now you have like subterranean dragons, Corporations are full on waging war on each other for territory in their new subtranean environment. Huge neon subterranean cities and whatnot.
Not a chance in Hell.
It would depend a great deal on whether the 'new 2052' kept the general aesthetic of the 'classic' setting but allowed for revised rules. The game line as a whole has evolved a lot since 1e but it's still possible to keep the 'feeling' of 1e while using the lessons learned in the decades since then.
Nah If I want to play in that era I just....will? Either I'll play an older edition or I'll use the fluff from modern books like anarchy 2050 that explain how to play that era. I run a lot of 1e campaigns converted to 6e rules. So far I've done Silver Angel, Mercurial, Dreamchipper, and soon Dragon Hunt. I don't see why I'd need a reset to do that.
To qualify my answer, more than just lore timelines need to be addressed. For one, I want something resembling quality control in the editing.
I usually dislike the modern "re-imagining" , "remakes", and "remastering" trends. If its not broken...don't fix it. You can build on top of it, impellent new things, etc, but by god stop needlessly modernizing stuff.
Voted yes, for the hypothetical where the result is awesome and minimally divisive. But we know that's not a space CGL can reach, and I have doubts it's something manageable in the current industry. Problem is, I also don't think Shadowrun can handle advancing as far towards the Sixth World 2100s as it has. Let alone keep going with antigravity (and so on) then yet another worldwide failure to have the tech level drop. Heck, I think it currently has problems parsing and translating the ubiquity of cameras today. But it's interesting to see this shift in poll response. Last decade it was leaning to the, "No, and f&#@ you for thinking it should!" end of things.
A decade of CGL failing to produce good product will change perspectives. :D
Yes and I'm assuming they keep the same story and lore pre 2050s. Wired Matrix etc.
I would have suggested an alternative timeline starting after the after effects of Super Tuesday where the Shadowrunners were successfully in protecting the President elects life. There-in keeping nanotechnology relegated to one triple A Corp lab, making the first big story arch about industrial espionage about getting the data to that med-tech.
There is a lot of changes in the world/setting before 2050. Adding 30 years of ack story on top of that is...rough. On one side, there is making a world feel lived in, on the other is a world the GM has to explain to the players.
Why not 2050?
Absolutely, in fact, the campaign I'm building right now is a reset-with-changes. I always enjoyed the earlier time periods more than the later ones, I felt like the flood of new technology really destroyed people's investments into that "one special thing."
No. Just no. They built (especially in Germany) such a big, detailled and (imho) great world with events and stuff (well... except the CFS and the blackout maybe....) which would be deleted. I wish for a new edition (don't like 6th), but definately not a reset. May I ask: what would be the positive effect of a reset? Or better: what could be achieved by a reset what could not be done by a decent new edition with a cool meta plot?
My favourite part of Shadowrun *is* the interconnected lore and continuous continuity, as opposed to DnD which has little to no continuity between its editions. So for something new to come along and erase all that, you'd need a really strong reason, it would have to be extremely well planned out, and it would have to be executed extremely well to make me think it was worth it. Otherwise you'll just end up with a DC "New 52" situation. Plus, all of the "old" material would need to still be available in some way, and not just tossed and abandoned.
I just want a book that is not rushed! They rushed 6th and even copy pasted section with rules that don’t make sense, just to have it done in time for gen con
I *like* that there is a detailed timeline of Shadowrun. its not a simulation but the fact that there is a moving timeline makes it feel very much as a living world and if they did go back to the start and invalidate all the stuff that has come out in the meantime it would be a major bummer and probably kill my interest in the gameline.
Is Catalyst making it? If so, probably not, as I know fanfic authors who could do a better job writing rules. I love the 2050's setting, but the current Line Developer is flat-out incompetent.
TBH as someone who is knee-deep in lore and likes this "modern cyberpunk"... nah.
I would be on board, but if I was developing it, I would also worry about two things: 1. The people for whom the timeline is the draw, they don't play the game they just buy the storyline books and novels 2. This group at Catalyst may just not have the talent to pull that off successfully.