Hello!

I am a fairly new GM, and have only ran a few sessions of CY_BORG. I’ve played in many home TTRPG games (mostly DnD 5e) and have familiarized myself (through reading rather than experience sadly) with some fundamental RPG design and GM advice. My issue is, at the time I went to the game store to pick up RPG books, I wasn’t knowledgeable on Shadowrun and the editions/universe other than the fact I wanted to run it some day.

I have now realized, after buying the book and past the possibility of return, that I have bought the reprint of Shadowrun 2050 (1e) which appears to be the most complicated and problematic of the games in terms of system. That being said, I’d still like to run this some day and I’m mostly fine with a bit of complexity and crunch in an RPG. I was wondering, though, if there was a way that I could sort of build up to running something like Shadowrun?

Running not only a very rules heavy system but also a world with something complicated like The Matrix in it is pretty daunting compared to most RPG systems I’ve been interested in, so I’m a bit lost on resources to help guide me. It also doesn’t help that even among old school Shadowrun fans 1e seems to be the least played edition.

Thanks in advance!

  • Ziggurat@jlai.luEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I wouldn’t worry too much about the actual edition people could play with it 40 years ago, and there is enough nostalgia to do a 2025 reprint, so they must be somehow playable.

    With my limited shadowrun experience,

    • Beware of Decker going to the Matrix and mage doing Astral projection, it “splits the party” lead to a player having their own overcrunchy game-phase spending a hour to open a door or locate someone. I believe some latter edition got better but the early one where like their own game in the game

    • I see shadowrun like the diesel engine of "crunchy system"it’s heavy, slow to start, but there is a point where it runs smoothly

    • Just like every other crunchy system, and especially older one, feel free to ignore half of the rule (You know the meme about aircraft carrier, but more seriously never saw a GM caring about the Grenade dispersion roll)