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[–] 15 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Goddammit another game to go on my wishlist apparently.

Goodbye, money

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Like others have said, the rules are... bad. Especially the latest edition. A couple of the older editions are "favorites," but still mixed bags, and lots of people just take the setting and use it in another system entirely.

    There's a Shadowrun actual play podcast called NeoScum that I loved (now concluded), and it began with "It's like D&D mixed with Bladerunner!" and ended with "Fuck this, fuck Shadowrun, the universe rearranges itself so we can play a different game." They even had a goofy recurring bit they would do whenever they had to stop play to look up rules or calculate something, which happened constantly. It's also not a player issue, since they've switched to Call of Cthulhu for another story (Gutter) and just don't have that problem.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Look at older editions. 6th is hot garbage published with criminally low quality material and he didn't pay the freelance writers that contributed to the game.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Also check out the video games Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Shadowrun Returns is part of that trilogy, and pretty decent too.

    They can be played in any order - they're all standalone stories.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Isn't that still what it is? It's just that its understanding of what Cyberpunk is is more than just superficial.

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  • [+] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Hong Kong is exceptionally wordy. That's not necessarily bad, but I spent far more time going through conversations with the party than I did on runs, and I'm a quick reader. They're excellently written characters, but the conversations had little interactivity and were just pages of text with ocassional dialogue options. Conversation in Dragonfall flowed much better.

    Gobbet is still the best character, though.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Still trying to dig through Returns myself, I heard latter two games are even better.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Im considering hacking Into the Odd to rebuild Shadowrun without all the... nonsense. Anyone got advice?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Others have given alternatives, but no one has offered Savage Worlds. It'd probably work great in a cyberpunk setting with magic, and it plays super easy.

    You could just run it straight out of the box with the SWADE rulebook, but there're published books (and free homebrews) that go for that feeling as well (like Sprawlrunners).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    kind of curious to how you think SWADE could be good.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The way it's made makes it accessible to both combat and non-combat interactions, with lots of GM fiat to affect the story in the best way possible. It is very friendly to homebrew and picking whatever rules you want, and adding skills whenever/wherever you want.

    The one thing that makes replicating cyberpunk hard is gear. Since SWADE is a step die you don't have a ton of space to pump weapon numbers up, and the way that Powers work (with trappings), damage types are more of a flavour-turned-into-mechanics kind of thing. Plus, gear does not degrade in SWADE (though that for me is a plus, just more bookkeeping).

    For reference, the thing I like most about SWADE in general, is that I can run almost anything with the same system and that it isn't crunchy. Doesn't matter if its a space opera, horror, sci-fi, dark fantasy or high fantasy medieval. Easier to run the campaigns I want if I don't have to talk my table into learning 5 different systems. The weaknesses of SWADE don't outweigh that for me.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Don't know anything about Into the Odd, but I know Blades in the Dark had some people working on a Shadowrun conversion; the heist nature of that game appealed to them. GURPS also handles Shadowrun pretty easily, you can find other people's conversions online.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I can't comment on Into The Odd, but I would consider either The Sprawl or Runners In The Shadows. The former is a general purpose cyberpunk system built on Apocalypse World and the latter is a Shadowrun hack of Blades in the Dark.

    And I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that I've built my own system for my Shadowrun campaigns, called Straylight. I'm in private playtesting right now, and I plan to have the first public playtest draft up very shortly (weeks or days, depending on how things go).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    I tried to get into Dragonfall for a few hours, I love the setting (and cyberpunk overall) but I can't get into turn-based combat. It's annoying cause I know I'll miss great games like BG3 because of that 🫤

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Did anybody tried :Otherscape? I understand it's a clone of Shadowrun.

    Talking about other games, I love Blades in the Dark and CBR+PNK is really great.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I like the Anarchy version the most. The cover is v4 and v5 is better but it stays too crunchy for me.

    If anybody understanding French wants to start Shadowrun, look at Anarchy and Anarchiste. The second one is the best presentation of the universe of Shadowrun over all versions (over all languages between French and English).

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I felt like Anarchy was a weird system that was harmed by its nature as an extension of 5e, though I get its appeal. I personally prefer the classic FASA editions.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    What made you feel this taste of 5e? I never played 5e.

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  • [+] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)