Mr. Welch's Mad Musings: Shadowrun 

In my experience, Shadowrun can be summed up simply enough: multiple sessions of prepping and haggling and getting everything ready only for the ork or troll to fail their stealth roll and you have to go in all guns blazing anyway.

Back before FASA closed shop, the games Earthdawn and Shadowrun were linked - Earthdawn was the 4th World, Shadowrun the 6th. Several characters from the former are findable in the latter (Harlequin, several of the Great Dragons, etc). That all ended when the games went to different companies, sadly.

Remember Vote Dragon 2056!

I wish I could ever play a Shadowrun game that's tabletop that lasts for more than one session

Wow, that sounds even cooler than I had thought. At a con next week, I'm getting in on a 2 hour introduction to Shadowrun adventure, and I'm quite looking forward to it.

I read part of the 4th and 5th edition books, and made a few characters. IT's not for me. It's just not shadowrun mechanically. I also have a problem with the world changes. It radically changes the world, and the mechanics to fit the new idea. The "the dice pool" mechanic is what made FASA shadowrun unique in the RPG world. It was a pool of dice you could supplement your rolls with. However it depleted turning the round. Want to get better odds shooting that mage, use 3 dice, out of a pool of 5. Watch out , that mage has a street sam body guard with an SMG. If he hits now you only have 2 dice to soak damage. He can shoot your twice. In 4th/5th edition the "dice pool" is just a label. It means nothing. 4th ed is a stat plus skill level roll game. The game calls that the "dice pool" There is no supplemental dice, or tactical thinking using them. Then there is teh wireless "matrix". Your new decker rules allow them to hack a persons cyber ware on the fly because lol no one thinks about game braking mechanics. How did he do that from 50 feet away? Well he linked his connected through the coke machine with a wireless connection that the stream sam was using as cover duh.

More Shadowrun vids please!

Great video! Love how in-depth you go into the history of Shadowrun and its growth over time. 'sighs' I love the setting so much, now if only I could get through all the crunch and get my players to try it out with me. All in due time, I suppose.

Ahh the priceless look the first time you introduce the Murder Hobos to the Detective Mage and Swat Combat Mage. Good Times!

I've got signed hardcovers of 2nd and 3rd ed. main rules. I got dragged into because it was being played in the dorms in college, and I said what the heck. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the crew at FASA every year at GenCon while they were in Milw. They were/are a great bunch. We incorporated elements of Call of Cthulhu...because we could and gave New England and the Maritime Provinces a "feel" like some of the other settings in the game, including a notebook on "setting". It was very much a fan work for it, but folks at FASA were genuinely intrigued by it and thought it an interesting edition to the universe (probably just say that, gods only know how many times they were bombarded with these kind of setting expansions), but it was useful for character creation, a large handful of runs, and it got the gang out of Seattle and into the rest of universe.

Remember both Michaelangelo and Raphael are good games

Bug City was really great and if you want to make your own adventures

Ive actually had alot of luck homebrewing locally relevant monsters into SR 6e. Like just ripping mystaran kobolds to reflect rhe "rez dog" problem in some areas

One of my favorites.

Howling coyote 2024

Thanks for sharing .

Did someone say stealth is optional?

I hope at some point you'll do a full review series of SR books like you did for Cyberpunk : )

I love everything about Shadow except playing the TRPG. My group and I reskinned Starfinder to be Shadowrun and had a great time.

One universal in every version of Shadowrun is that the core Matric/decking/hacking rules are *terrible*. Every single time, they were clearly written by someone that does not understand computer technology. At least, almost every edition they got fixed in the Matrix book...

Ah yes, the game that first conditioned RPGers that living in a technocratic dystopia is somehow cool and fun and only their characters will ever be able to get away with breaking the law even though everyone else in the world is under constant surveillance.

3rd edition player over here, we really enjoyed it and I've always felt that these had some of the most enjoyable writing compared to most rpg books. Did they get crazy with the amount of stuff introduced? Yes yes they did but really it was giving choice to gm's on adventures and campaigns. Some gm's I've watched on RU-vid don't seem to understand editing an adventure to fit the party and just run them straight. You could do this in Shadowrun but you'd probably spend more time making characters than playing the game after all the party deaths. Shadowrun had to be customized to give players a chance,especially if you had a smaller group. Bug City was fun but don't think your going to survive it's

I thought the Underground RPG was the one you had a pistol that cost more than a Sedan. At least that's what it's listed in on your Livejournal.

I see the sixth edition core rule book is out. Seems to be mixed to poor reception in reviews. What have you gathered about this newest edition?

5th has some hilariously bad rules between books because the writers didn't talk to each other

Any thoughts oon 6th edition?

What's your opinion of 6th Edition? I've seen a lot of complaints about it, but some of the complaints seem to be annoyed that it's designed to be easy for new people, so I'm not sure the best version to try.

Sadly Seattle still hasn’t recovered from the cultural cancer of Kurt Cobain and plague of hipsterism.

I was one of the poor souls that bought the 1st edition. Loved the setting. But I've yet to play this game . After this video I think I'll have to check out the 5th edition eventually. Was that a picture of your shelf? I saw All Flesh Must Be Eaten on that shelf. I'm a fan of Unisystem.

3:04 Dude! The phrase is, "geek the mage," not, "shoot the mage first."

Also, you sort of mixed up like 3 different AI plots into one. :)

Love the lore just wish the player base wasn't so murder hobo happy

Personally I loved 2nd ed and 4th ed. I found a lot of the writing for 3rd ed to be worse than 2nd ed (and the mechanics not changed enough to justify rebuying everything again). I found some of the 5th ed rules had some really good ideas but the implementation left something to be desired (alchemy was much worse than other forms of magic, wireless bonuses added that made no sense just to have wireless bonuses, etc). I have not tried 6th ed due to the nearly universally horrible reviews.

Knoxville tn is spelled wrong. That's kind of annoying.

I had Shadowrun 1st Edition and binned the game pretty quick. It wasn't the rule system that bothered me it was the setting. They used fantasy tropes as their gimmick instead of world building. Where Cyberpunk 2020 had some creepy predictive power Shadowrun became dated fast. Predicting Japan would be the world power after they had already gone through an economic crash was just one example. Take away the fantasy elements and you don't have much of anything left.