Is Shadowrun really that bad?

Over the internet, doubly so in 4chan, things exist in binary: either something's your favorite thing ever, or it's shit. If you break free of that for a moment, though, Shadowrun's just sort of all right: not the worst thing out there, but not the best thing either.

Its rules are a mess but not the worst or the messiest, and its setting is kind of imaginitive and cool but not the best or the fanciest. And the video game was one of the better ones to come out of Kickstarter, but it ain't Shovel Knight.

So overall Shadowrun's just sort of "Eh".

>>53276558
You are living in it.
You just don't realize it because you're living it out fom the viewpoint of a wageslave/SINner.

Of course, I'm exaggerating (we don't have magic or metahumans or other shit typical for Shadowrun, for one), but the gist of what I said above is completely true - the spirit of our century corresponds with Shadowrun entirely.

>>53276558
Go ask the shadowrun general?

>>53276558
I think shadowrun is fantastic.
Every part is so-so to bad.
But if pathfinders popularity has taugt me, anything. Being playable but not balanced but full of half-bad-half-good ideas make for a good roleplaying game.

I enjoy playiung a technomancer, I enjoy making a hacker/mage combo work. I enjoy being a street samurai with chrome to the last 0.01 essence and having so much spirits I don't even need the rest of the team for some runs.

The fluff is so bad you can ignore entire swathes of it. But the idea, the feel and the point of it means I can steal ideas and make them better, even good.

It's like a person.
Being too pretty means I only mastrubate to it, not love it.

>>53276558
The fluff has problems.
So does the fanbase.
So does the system.
So do the devs.
So does the metaplot.

HOWEVER, much like any other system, if you can find a good group who aren't irredeemable shitcunts, it can be pretty great.

>>53276558
Why is that kitty allowed to just walk around like that.

There are SO many things it could step on in that picture.

Someone get that kitty to another room.

>>53276701
>Why is that kitty allowed to just walk around like that.
That's a sentient felid, he's the owner of the room, you numbskull.

>>53276689
Agreed.

I've spent a couple of years running it. In my experience, if you play fast and loose with the rules you can get a lot of fun out of it. Players need to be OK with that, though.

I think the thing that would immediately destroy any chance of a fun campaign would be a literal-minded rules lawyer player who wants to play a hacker. The hacking system is the messiest system in the game, and trying to play it as written will result in absolutely no one having any fun.

It's by far my most favorite setting for roleplaying. I had an amazing time playing it, just setting and fluff wise.

The rules can go fuck themselves though. Wie left out half of that stuff and still made mistakes. But nobody cared and we just continued having fun.

>>53276558
I LOVE the fluff and setting of Shadowrun. It's one of my favorites.
The RULES however... aren't great. Hacking is messy, and combat leaves WAY too much 'dead air' where one or two characters have 4 or 5 combat rounds, even more on a good roll, and the rest only have 1 or 2.

It makes for great video games were most of the book keeping is automatic and behind the scenes though.

>>53276558
No, it's really not. It may be a schizophrenic mish-mash of a setting, but it's still a fun one.

>>53276558
It is generally admitted that early fluff was excellent and well-researched (for a cyberpunk fantasy), but it took a progressive dive to the disaster that it is today.

Four worlds problem:
Hacking, astral projection, rigging (technically not a world) and meatspace. All are handled separately.

If you consider that combat in other game systems is famous for slowing the game down, imagine handling the four worlds problem AND combat (different rules apply to each one) at the same time.

Shadowrun was built to be handled by a computer.

>>53276558
Shadowrun is bad for running Shadowrun. Play Shadowrun in a different system so you can focus on Shadowrun instead of Shadowrun.

>>53276558
Depends on you. If you like or don't mind very rules heavy aystems, and think tje idea of mixing cyberpunk in with urban fantasy and a lot of dungeons and dragons stuff, you should like it.

If you are not co with either of those things, you will not like it.

>>53276768
>the thing that would immediately destroy any chance of a fun campaign would be a literal-minded rules lawyer player
True for pretty much every game ever.

>>53277223
But doubly true for a mess of a system like shadowrun.

Anyone who says otherwise are just butthurt Gibson fans who're mad that he's mad at SR.

>>53276558
Depends.

I feel the game rewards newbies and punishes older players.
Playing your average Sammie is ridiculously easy, streamlined, and very fun. But playing a decker or a mage? Christ, I am glad we have two rule lawyers in our group; they don't call it "Pizzarun" for nothing.

>>53276558
Catalyst fucked it hard.

But hey, Loren Coleman got a new porch

>>53279614
Is this some badly cooked pasta?

>>53279440
I'm running Shadowrun with no magic and no metahumans and you can't stop me.

>>53279614
Tell me all about your degree in literature.

>>53279614
It always befuddles me when someone says Shadowrun is cyberpunk. It's like, have they never consumed actual cyberpunk media before?

It's an exercise in missing the point.

>>53276558
Shadowrun the setting is awesome.

Shadowrun the game runs into so many problems that it's infuriating.

>>53276558
It would be cool if they got rid of all of the fantasy aspects and just went full anime techno-dystopia

If you get a hang of the rules the setting can be really great.

Getting a hang of the rules is the difficult part here … I'm doing oneshots for some friends, so to explain the game to everyone who's new to shadowrun I've written several readme files for every "profession" (one for base-mechanics, one for mages, one for deckers, …) summarizing the rules which are a total of 20 pages now …

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>>53276558
Problems with Shadowrun.
>Fluff and crunch don't mesh properly
For example: magic users are rare, like 0.1% of the population so your standard 5 magic point runner (with the help of some spirits) will be an untouchable god against all but the most world renowned wagemages.

>Too many worlds.
There's combatworld, matrixworld, socialworld, astralworld, and legworkworld. And inevitably someone (or everyone except one person) is going to be left out of long portions of the game sessions.

>Encourages minmaxing.
This one is subjective, but in my experience characters tend to hyper specialize into one or two of the aforementioned worlds. Your experience may vary.

>Complicated system.
Holy shit this one is an issue. Your GM needs to be a back to front expert on the entire book and god help you if you're using splats.

There's more, but these are the most prevalent issues. Never split the party is good advise in every RPG in the world, but in Shadowrun most of the time you will be doing it on purpose.

>>53280182
>so your standard 5 magic point runner (with the help of some spirits) will be an untouchable god
That does not follow. The fact that magic is rare doesn't make it more powerful.
I'm sure the percentage of people in the world who can play guitar with their toes is fairly small, but none of those are untouchable gods.

>>53280073
The game you're looking for there is Cyberpunk 2020.

>>53276558
It's just not my cup of tea, plus in my introduction to it, the GM made it feel like an urban fantasy setting than he did a cyberpunk fantasy.

>>53276558
It's perfectly servicable. Has own issues, has problems with being a bit too "robust", but my biggest issue is about god-awful setting rather than the mechanics themselves. Gameplay-wise the game is crunchy shooter and it's fun. It's the shit-tier setting that rubs me the wrong way.

So what is the best cyberpunk game?

>>53280711
Not him, but CP2020 has also the rather unfortune problem of being aged like milk. I remember playing it in late 90s and it was already back then rusty. As for now, unless I play it with real grogs, nobody wants to even touch that without a ten-yard pole and for a good reason. The crunch is just barely servicable from the standpoint of modern standards. And it's not about "modern games are casual shit duurrrr", but CP2020 simply aged badly. A lot of what was cutting edge when it came out is now obsolete itself.

>>53280073
Well i kinda like the idea of the Samurai and all the crazy augmentations but yeap, the fantasy part is kinda of unnecessary

>>53280800
Straight out cyberpunk? CP2020. Didn't age well, but is workable if you adjust to the game.
Modern ruleset for cyberpunk and making setting on your own? GURPS 4e, hands down. Combining few kits you are going to get top-tier crunch, but setting is entirely on you.
Don't mind magic? Shadowrun then. Just don't try to think too much or too hard on the setting and it's fine by itself, even if certain features are pretty redundant.

>>53280739
>the GM made it feel like an urban fantasy setting than he did a cyberpunk fantasy
Was he running a homebrew campaign or something from a book? I've definitely noticed that a lot of published material (at least for 5th edition) seems to almost be afraid to embrace the cyberpunk aspect of the setting that it tries so hard to bill itself as, and more often than not it feels like the missions are frequently, "You know how you chummers ALWAYS are running the streets? Well how about I send you to the jungle/outback/wilderness/ruins/other-place-with-no-Matrix-service?" It almost seems like the writers themselves think putting an adventure in a stereotypical dystopian megacity is too cliched or beneath them.

Missions organized play is even worse in this regard. One of them actually has you going to Amish country for your task. Though to be fair it was part of an April Fool's joke mission, but it was also literally one about a certain kind of technicolor horse fad, which made it even worse.

>>53280828
For me Shadowrun went into "Fallout spiral". They've started with pretty neat ideas, and then with each itteration of it and each new team working on it, they've exaggerated into absurdity what was originally a background, tertiary element. The fantasy part in earlier edition served just as a spicing, with soem further dehumanisation and bits of urban fantasy. By now it pretty much plays the major role in the setting itself, sidetracking the cyberpunk bits.

>>53280806
Honestly 2020 never bothered me that bad mechanics wise, but then again I play shit like WoD and Pathfinder without issues.

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>>53280886
>outback
Say what you will, but Mad Max is perfect for explaining the concept of a Manastorm.

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>>53277172
oh shit
now I understand

>>53280637
Except the only real counter too magic is magic.

>>53280926
Or technology.
It's really fucking hard to work Magic on drones.

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I unironically think that the shadowrun system is perfect (except the hacking).

Fight me.

>>53280905
I like when game is simple in design. And when it's not simple in design, then it comes with justification why it's using complex and/or variable rules.
CP2020 is neither of those. It's complex for the sake of it and due to lack of polish. Don't get me wrong, it streamlines a lot of shit that was going in the late 80s in game design, but outside that context, it's a piece of rusty junk, where 2/3 of the parts serve no real reason other than just being there and cluttering the whole thing. If you have 20 different types of rolls in your crunch for no real reason other than not streamlining it, you've fucked up big time. Same if you have rules with no real justification other than "Because". As much as people complain about all the issues of it, GURPS wins in running cyberpunk games, because shit is simple in general run and complex when you want it to be complex. CP2020 is complex, because.

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>>53277172
I've been tempted to run a Shadowrun game with Dogs in the Vineyard but I fee like that's going to be too narrative. But it could definitely work if you were doing an Ocean's Eleven style run but I don't know how much it has in terms of legs.

Plus one of the things I love in SR is tons of bizarre cyber and biofreak stuff. Getting 3 initiative passes and using them to mow down six mooks with six well placed headshots is alot cooler than "Wired Reflexes 2d6"

>>53280949
Unless your Force 5 Air Elemental with an Heavy Machine Gun has something to say about it.

>>53281063
Can't only Guardian Spirits know how to use firearms?
Or did 5e change that as well.

>>53276558
Crunch is 7/10. Could be a little bit better, the rules could be more clear and better-worded, but it's definitely a solid, reliable game in its current shape
Setting is 2/10. I guess that's the moment when you use word "subpar". Part of it comes from continously being run as a single, unified setting all those years, part from sloppy writing and part from the sole fact it's "urban fantasy in cyberpunk real world retrofuture!". The whole magic in cyberpunk just doesn't work. It could work as either future tech urban fantasy, urban fantasy in general, future tech cyberpunk, used future cyberpunk... but not all those things together. Especially not in "real world" setting. Just running a homebrew setting or ripping any given cyberpunk work/setting is better than playing Shadowrun's

>>53281097
Oh who fucking knows anymore. The point is magic is ludicrously powerful in the setting and confronting it directly is impossible unless you're a mage, delving deep into splat books, or carrying around a ludicrous amount of firepower.

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>>53281104
You sound like the stuck up hipsters in my English class who think Sci Fi is the greatest thing since canned bread and that fantasy is childish and uninspired.

>>53281097
Spirits don't use weapons. Even if your Guardian Spirit looks like a headless horeseman with an Uzi, that's not an Uzi he's using. Those bullets are magic and use the rules for Critter Powers, not weapons.

>>53280886
He ran it stock standard, but the way it was all presented, it didn't feel like cyberpunk at all. Like the tone wasn't there, if that makes sense.

>>53281185
gotta be 18 to post senpai

>>53281209
I understand that man, however in 4e Guardian Spirits have an optional power which granted them a combat skill.

Meaning that your Apache Chief Guardian Spirit could bend over, pick up the CorpSec minigun, and let loose on the advancing corpers.

>>53280896
Both aspects tend to stomp each other out, in my experience. Magic and tech don't really get mixed heavily in setting, so you don't get magic drones or digital wizards (Unless you count technomancers, but they're kinda underwhelming)

>>53281411
It's a uni course

>>53281477
Well, 5e spirits have "all relevant skills at a rank equal to their Force;" Combat skills are rather relevant to Guardian Spirits, so it makes sense that they can still do that.

>>53281037
is shadowrun the only system where you can "mow down mooks with headshots fast"?

>>53281567
Dis-fucking-gusting.
All the more reason for me not to play 5e

>>53281631
Wasn't it the same for 4e?

>>53281620
Bad example I guess. The point I'm trying to make is in a system like DitV the difference between a Street Sam and a Mage is a trait listing of Cyberware 2D10 and Magic 2D10.

Half of the fun of being a Street Sam is shopping for new wiz gear and that's not an aspect you can implement in DitV.

>>53281694
No, they had specified skills which were mostly the kind of stuff you'd expect a walking mystical bonfire to be able to do. Running, jumping, punching, flying for air spirits.

Then you had the specialised Spirits from alternative traditions like Task Spirits whose entire jam was that they could have a specified mechnical skill, and so forth.

>>53281809
If I recall if you bound a spirit you could give it a skill you have equal to its force. So if you've got Heavy Weapons you can bind a Force 5 air elemental, which has like Agi 10 and give it a Ultimax HMG-2 with tracer rounds and watch it tear ass through everything.

>>53281868
In 4e? Nope.
Binding just let you keep its services beyond the normal time limit.

>>53280926
Or a sniper bullet in the brain. That's also a counter to magic.

>>53281919
What kind of shit mages are you running into that actually put themselves in the line of fire?

>>53281935
Ones that want to throw spells?
I haven't played 5e but in 4th you had to have clear line of sight to sling spells at someone.

>>53282397
Can't you just augment your vision to wallhack, and thus have LOS?

>>53282463
Nope.

>>53282463
Magic targeting rules are convoluted. There are two different types of spells; those that travel to the target through meatspace (fireballs, lightning, etc), and those that travel over the astral plane. The first requires that you see the actual light reflected by the person's body (regular sight, mirrors, or fiber optics. digital sight is a no-go, because it's translated.), and the second requires you to be able to perceive their astral signature. The second targeting system has its own issues, because the only indication that the astral plane isn't wallhax as far as the eye can see is in a single throwaway sentence buried in a paragraph of the core rulebook.

And with the sentence taken into account, any armor that isn't multiple inches thick and encompassing your entire body (this isn't even detailed in 5e as far as I know, making RAW astral targeting some insta-lock bullshit) won't obscure your astral signature.

Mech suits are meant to make you immune to astral targeting, but 5th edition's editing fails to bring that stipulation over in hard writing, so it's extremely unclear what astral targeting's limitations are.

>>53281704
I was literally asking for more systems like that i am interested, but is good that you expanded on your answer

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>>53282397
>Went to MIT&T on Corp scholarship
>Wrote his thesis on spirits and their manifestation of human consciousness
>Graduates a magic 3 wagemage specialized in spirit summoning
>is on astral overwatch in the Azztechnology archology, high security zone
>monitoring about 30 corp facilities in the sprawl
>security reports a heavily armed team has been detected in a shipping warehouse by the bay
>sends one of his Watcher spirits to check it out
>four intruders, two heavily cybered
>astrally projects to facility
>they are tearing through onsite security, high threat response is atleast 25 minutes out
>this facility is marked Red 7 security, low priority
>is about to return to his normal rounds
>message comes in, this facility is temporarily housing a tech prototype marked Red 1 priority
>Calls his force 3 bound spirit of man to aid him
>With the aid of his bound spirit, summons a force 6 water elemental in the astral plane
>due to the massive drain, takes a huge amount of stun damage
>slams a stim slap patch onto his arm to stay conscious
>orders the Water Elemental to manifest physically and subdue the intruders in the facility
>the force 6 water elemental rips apart the shadowrunning team because they are just 4 meatworld assholes
>Wagemage, having never left the office, gets major kudos from his boss and an extra day off as thanks for protecting the prototype

Fucking magic man.

>>53282613
You'll excuse me, this being /tg/ I assumed you were being ferocious.

And no, I don't have any other systems like that.

>>53282594
What a clusterfuck. Is there errata for it, at least? And what is the benefit of using meatspace when no-sell astral exists?

>>53282594
>a single throwaway sentence buried in a paragraph of the core rulebook
God the debate about whether walls exist in the astral plane raged for months with my group. We came to the conclusion that they did.

>targeting via astral
>insta-lock bullshit
Yeah basically.

>>53282686
The chummers that didn't prepare a counter to spirits deserve an asskicking desu

The worst part of Shadowrun is that is clearly obvious someone could go through the trouble of clearing and streamlining the ruleset, or remaking it from the ground up so it could actually work, and it is also clear that the book was never intended to work as a ruleset, because over interacting rules are very far from each other, or doesn't reference adequately.

>>53282959
And thus my point of needing magic to counter magic is proven. Thank you.

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>>53282982
Come on anon, that's just crazy.

>>53283063

You know what? Those rules are so bad that they wouldn't work if the game were just about hackers being hackermans hackering hackavel stuff on hackerspace.

Good Lord, those designers really need to put their shit together.

I played it with my group (4e) and it was really awful, both crunch and fluff. The rules are generally terrible and seem purposefully obfuscated and muddled at times. The lore is raw sewage. I like the concept of cyberpunk, but Shadowrun doesn't appeal at all. The setting seems to suffer from utter lunatics slapping ideas together and running with whatever incoherent bullshit sticks.

On a fundamental level I found a lot of it cringeworthy from a philosophical viewpoint.

The Matrix rules for 4e are a horrendous, hard to comprehend bunch of overly complicated drivel that I would not wish upon my greatest enemy.
Fucking around with account privileges, matrix IDs, DDoS attacks, botnets and all kinds of insane tricking, switching IDs like they're going out of fashion and leaving the Corps running after some poor tool whose Commlink you've jacked.
It's just sad that I actually like them.

5e is about throwing matrix juice at each other and trying to unleash your true hacktitude to fry their cybereye motherbox with a bad cookie mode switcheroo, because they left their WiFi mode on, because their gun only sends targetting data efficiently through a remote cloud server run by a Corporation, and not through a fucking wire you fucking installed in your cyberarm.

>>53283063
I hate this so fucking much. I'm considering trying to rework the entire game to work on a D% system similar to the 40k RPGs. Still no fucking clue how to make hacking good.

>>53283143
>On a fundamental level I found a lot of it cringeworthy from a philosophical viewpoint.
Like what?

I really like the thing of mega corporations dominating everything and trying to outwit them for a while

>>53283210
What if hacking worked like this:

I want to hack that security camera

Rolls hacking dice and gets x number of success needed

You hacked the camera, nice!

>>53283391
Oh god, you just reminded me how difficult it is to loop a camera in 5e.

>MODERN
>CYBERPUNK
>MEMES

>>53276617
We are hardly living in a dystopic cyberpunk world you nerd

>>53283391
In 4e, you can just be not a complete tool, grab one of your wire-tap microdrones, send it walking up the wall to the camera with its gecko-tips, then perform the very simple, singular, roll to intercept and loop the feed going through the wire.

Alternatively, you can do the longer, more boring task of hacking the camera's node, then fucking with everything from there. But that might be harder, especially if they've just slaved it, as they would usually do when it's a peripheral controlled by a more powerful node... Which would mean you'd have to go straight for the node controlling likely all of the cameras in the building.

Which if you're hot shit, and they're cold diarrhea, won't be a bad move.

>>53280926

Or astral hazing, but no GM will let you take it because it's a (very effective) counter to magic.

>>53283555
Plus some faggot will always ask if they can aspect it.

>>53283008

Judicious use of WP grenades could've solved that problem, though.

>>53281567
No they can't, if you bothered reading the spell at all you'd know that.

>You call forth spirits to protect you. They flit around you to a distance of 15 feet for the duration. If you are good or neutral, their spectral form appears angelic or fey (your choice). If you are evil, they appear fiendish. When you cast this spell, you can designate any number of creatures you can see to be unaffected by it. An affected creature’s speed is halved in the area, and when the creature enters the area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, it must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 3d8 radiant damage (if you are good or neutral) or 3d8 necrotic damage (if you are evil). On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage.

>>53283629
see
>>53281138

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I don't think it's that bad, granted I only played the videogames.

This pic is from Shadowrun right?

>>53283701
You...
Are either very dumb.
Or think you're much funnier than you are.

>>53283831
It's the latter, but getting a response was all he wants.

>>53283701
Wrong anon?

>>53283709
>>53281138

Personally I feel a team when compromised in that way should really be prepared to go loud like it's the apocalypse. SA grenade launchers, incinerators, electric weapons (you should already be loaded down with these) all work.

After all I want you to lay down a pattern of suppressing fire with the incinerators and fall back to HQ.

>>53276558
What do you mean?

Because if you're the rules lawyer type, then I don't think you'll have much fun. I tend to run it like >>53276768 said. Fast and loose.
>>53279440
wut?

>>53279957
I've read a decent bit. While it hits some of the important bits, I'd say it's overshadowed by the whole "magic and monsters" thing.

>>53280984
>perfect
No, but I would say it isn't as bad as some bill it as. You just need to realize what you are getting into.

>>53283323
Simple, fuck the system and make every roll a more simple pass/fail. They want to attack a program or similar? Have them roll like it's an attack.

>>53283701
Wait, this is a troll right? No one can be this dumb.

>>53282594
Astral targeted spells were extremely efficient with a few drawbacks.

They only work on targets within their specific spell text. Eg; the base spell in question (manabolt and its family) can't target non-living things. Also using this type of spell had double drain on the caster. And drain can and would knock your ass down. (at least when i played. Shadowrun is hard.)

>>53281037
Sauce on the webm? Looks neat.

>>53284474
The Raid 2, I think. First is better, but the second is still good.

>>53280637

>Comparing guitar skills to magic
I don't think you know how magic works.

HEY ASSHOLES
How do you feel about ripping the fuck off of midgar from final fantasy?
Giant monolithic energy core at the center, over city to keep the plebs in the shadow forever. Seems like an instant hit and I am butthurt to this day ff7 ever left it.

>>53276617
with how genetics are stompin' forward I'll expect metahumans by 2030

>>53285177
You'd need to explain more to be anything but another boring shitposter mate.

>>53276558
I'm definitely not a fan of Shadowrun (system got way too complex since 1st edition, not a huge fan of having orcs and trolls in a cyberpunk game, and I'm sold to Cyberpunk 2020), but I kind of like the esoteric and cartoonish ambient/aesthetic it has.

>>53276610
fpbp