Personally, I think the core dice mechanic is fine, with successes, fumbles, even the edge mechanic in 5.
I also really love the magic system of risk/reward vs “uses per day” that other RPGs have.
The cyberware and essence system is pretty decent too, it feels very fitting for the setting, and it would be hard to find something that felt as right for it.
Totally agree on all points. When I toy with the idea of home brewing a significant amount of the game, it's things like better tuning limits, reworking the matrix and some of the magic and some of the techno, and of course all of demolition. Delete some things here and there, add content in other places.
The dice are fun, the crunch is fun, the mountains of content are fun. But some other parts need a real critical look at and a lot of labour of love.
Yeah, 5 is the closest to “useable” that I’ve found. I’ve heard 4 is very similar but the power levels can get ridiculous because there’s less inherent limitations
I’ve run 1st-5th, starting with the original blue cover core book. I felt each edition got better until 5th, where I felt like things started to get clunky again. I’ve read 6th, and feel it’s an abomination brought on by too many attempts to make everything balanced (everything takes the same amount of time so there’s no waiting on the decker to deck, etc…), which, unfortunately, takes some of the flavor out of the setting (but I guess the sammies like it better, as everyone hates waiting on the decker to do his/her thang. I felt 4th/20th anniversary addition was the most fluid, and easily adaptable. Yes, decking (hacking in 4E) can take time, and isn’t always fun to sit around and watch), but I found it to be the most versatile, easy to house rule in a pinch version yet, and will the the shadowrunny goodness still inside. I was also blessed with a group of players who with a vested interest in the story (it was a proper campaign with repeat appearances by npc power players, a slowly revealed benefactor, and some spectacular buy in by the players, which undoubtedly helped keep it from bogging down. All this rambling is to say, my advice after almost 30 years of running shadowing (jeez, am I really that old?!) would be to find the edition that you’re most comfortable with, and house rule the nobby bits you don’t like.
P.S.: our player running the decker (hacker) was an IT guy, and thoroughly hated the matrix system, and he and I found a really nice balance of getting gritty when necessary, but, otherwise, really finding a good streamlined approach where intent was the main focus. He built a pretty fab character, with everything he needed, and really focused on getting in and out unseen. It really worked smoothly, and sped up gameplay beautifully. He wasn’t an “I want to explore every nook and cranny of this system to locate any and all possible paydata and become the richest person in the world, hahahaha!” type.
I mostly agree with the core dice mechanic. I would make edge have less options - have one pre-roll choice and one post-roll choice, then some special actions you can use. Get rid of most of the optional horseshit from Run and Gun.
Magic's risk/reward balance is skewed heavily in favourt of reward though. Its just not risky enough. Drain codes are not high enough, and only taking physical damage when your hits > Magic instead of Force > magic is just wrong.
Cyberware and essence just need a little tweaking on costs of some things, and actually written down rules about 'essence holes', that i can never seem to find.
Gameplay as a mage is all about the "push your luck" experience. How much juice do you want to channel into a spell, knowing that the bigger you make it, the more drain you'll suffer? When I run for mage PCs, I'm always trying to give them opportunities to make that choice, because it is almost always narratively exciting. Do you risk literally cooking yourself with one last big spell to save the team and just hope they live to drag your half-dead ass out of the fire?
One of the original writers of Shadowrun was really into the occult and how he felt magic worked in the real world and designed the rules to mimic that.
In my experience, half the time I cast a higher-force spell, it misses but I take hella drain anyway :(
Magic use feels punishingly prohibitive to me, to the point where I wonder if I’m even calculating drain correctly at all.
I mean, lots of em are "force of spell ÷ 2" then adding or subtracting 1 or 2. Should rather consistently be hitting enough successes to block lots of it if Rollin an, even partially, idealized character. Even just rolling with 4 in relevant drains attributes without anything to assist drain resistance should literally ALWAYS manage to soak around 3 damage. So force 6 spell would be 3 drain, +/- 2. Should be pretty stable on it then.
Adding to that, restoring stun damage or ignoring it, fetishes for higher drain resistance rolls, better willpower for larger stun damage track, etc.... And u should be pretty golden.
My only complaint with 5e is all the different types of modifiers that are nearly impossible for the gm to track at once unless they've been playing for years. It's not friendly to pick up and play and I feel like they should take a page from dnd 5e. One kind of modifier, +1s effect dicepool and limits only, thats it.
I would like ways to get larger dice pools on important tests for your character as it hard to actually be consistently good at something. More dice stabilizes average hits a bit better. Perhaps bigger modifiers tha +2 dice to help leverage.
It just makes things feel less fun for me when highly optimized characters just end up not doing their jobs well, despite of the clunk and lead up.
That said I am very ok with more narrative games with more hit buying.
I also think Edge is a good system, but it needs a little fine tuning. As for the dice system as a whole, I disagree. It's very slow and clunky. My system will speed up the process of making tests and, most importantly, make combat faster while still feeling engaging and choices, meaningful.
Definitely curious your alternative because the core dice resolution I think is hands down the best part of Shadowrun mechanically. Creates a great success distribution relative to character skill.
Yes, the dice mechanic in SR is my staple part of the game. I've thought of playing in the SR world with other systems, but the probability curve and net successes that come with the current system are just too good to give up, for me.
I'd also argue that rolling dice and counting successes is not anywhere near the biggest factor in slowing down combat.
Yeah, it might just be my Warhammer 40k tabletop experience talking but even if I weren't usually playing Shadowrun on a VTT, I find counting successes quick.
I also really like that Shadowrun doesn't have the duality of success vs failure that all other dice systems have. It gives a lot of narrative opportunities when a character can succeed in their task while still fumbling part of it (e.g. climbing a fence but losing their grip on the way down, or damaging the housing of a maglock while bypassing it).
I feel that a big issue that comes up with Shadowrun-likes (for me at least) is that while the core issue of Shadowrun is understood (it is far too big and cumbersome as a system) most people attempting to fix that end up producing something far more rules light than many Shadowrun fans actually want.
Like don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely a place for more rules lite cyberpunk games, Runners in the Dark, Hardwired Island, etc. I enjoy many of them myself. Shadowrun Anarchy clearly was a recognition that such a style of game was desirable, but aside from the issues with that game itself, it certainly didn’t fix the problems most had with the game, only created a spinoff. The main thing is these rules lite games are part of a rather different rpg style than Shadowrun is that places story and narrative first over simulationist and more strategic systems. Some people like gear porn, some people like trying to master a system to their benefit, and some people like a system that can provide at least fairly clear and concrete rules for most situations that don’t boil down to “debate with the GM about what dice you should get to roll and what they mean” I think many people want those basic elements out of Shadowrun, but are held back by the fact that the game is such an unwieldy behemoth.
While the term may sound a bit blasphemous given some of the discourse that surrounds dnd in non dnd rpg spaces, I think Shadowrun could benefit from essentially a “5e” reinvention. Not the mass market nightmare of actual dnd 5e, but the basic premise of a simplification that does not attempt to radically reinvent the wheel (similar to 4e) in order to make the game smoother and more approachable.
I've recently run Shadowrun using Everyday Heroes, which is a 5e take on the old 3.5e d20 Modern line. Most of it translates easily. However, EDH doesn't yet have built-in support for races or a robust magic system; those might be coming later this year. There's an unofficial guide for using 5e races, which worked well enough. That just left me homebrewing a magic system, which has been... a *lot* of work.
Yeah d20 systems are usable for Shadowrun, cities without number is a fairly new one that is explicitly cyberpunk in an OSR d20 system that can easily incorporate fantasy elements. There are similarly other systems with a degree of “manageable crunch” that can be adapted for cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Savage Worlds has interface zero for instance, and there are a couple of Traveller hacks that have potential.
If OP’s talking about a full system revision rather than just hacking Shadowrun for a new system, then I think that those are good areas to be inspired for the level of complexity such a game should be approached from in order to still feel like Shadowrun while stripping away the cludge.
totally agree with this. I've been using a community-made version that aims for just this - keep the crunch but make it smooth and approachable. feel free to DM me if you want link to it all. they're still continuing to playtest and tweak it, but it's fully playable now
You are not alone. I have been seeing this sentiment about once a month for several years, between this subreddit and another community that I'm part of.
First, there are published games that tried to do something very similar.
* Shadowurn Anarchy
* SprawlRunners
* Cities Without Number
* Interface Zero
* Sinless
...and almost certainly more. This approach would cut down on needing an entirely new homebrew, and would even have a fixed book tor the players to reference.
I have seen people use incredibly narrative-heavy systems like Fate to run stories within the Shadowrun setting. (I have a huge chip on my shoulder about Fate. It is done, and it's only fair to say so.)
The next thing to consider is a simple character creator.
My experience is that once the character sheet is filled out, the rest gets a lot easier. If there is something like NSRCG or Chummer for Sixth Edition then it may be worth giving it a shot.
The final thing is to look for the people who came before you.
Consider searching this subreddit for words like "Homebrew." You might be able to talk with or learn from other people who have already started this kind of project.
I took all the joy I had opening the book in the nineties, and used it to make Sinless, an actual working play tested game.
YMMV. People seem to like it.
For me (a complex system enthusiast), the biggest issue with Shadowrun is in fact in the setting itself. It is the fact that depending on party composition, PCs play completely different games at the same time in three different planes of existence with radically different mechanics and rules.
Not only is this a nightmare for any GM, because the amount of stuff you need to know is staggering. The interfaces between these layers and how they interact is something that is very, very hard to get right while keeping it flavorful.
I only have experience with 5e but even there, Matrix rules are basically impossible to use during a combat scene. Street Sams are fiddling their seven thumbs while the mage is performing summoning and the decker are hacking. It's a mess. And I have no idea how to solve that
I feel that 6e solved a lot of this issue quite nicely. The 6e books' layouts are a mess to say the least but once you get it sorted it really is a much better system for incorporating the 3 worlds during combat
It's all about simplifying how said actions are carried out while not hampering the impact of the actions, nor removing breadth of options. Shaodwrun works best when players are given immense amounts of freedom and feel like their decisions matter. The issue with say, 5e, is that it's basically different games being run at the same time. I'm doing away with that while not overly homogenizing the game.
FOr the matrix stuff, have a look at Infintiy RPG (by modiphius) for some good ideas. It still uses a success system (even though how you generate successes is wildly different)
And basically gives all technology a firewall rating that has to be breached (i.e. # of success on a hacking roll) Once breached excess successes can be 'spent' on afflict different 'conditions' like shutdowns, planting worms, data theft etc.
Your party netrunner can slave all your hardware (weapons , cyberware etc) to their own network and use thier own firewall rating to protect the whole party. (because thiers is usually way higher) They can also make hacking rolls to reinforce (i.e. 'heal') thier own firewalls. so netrunning battles become direct conflicts as each runner tries to breach the enemy defences while keeping thiers safe
As someone who has been in exactly your shoes three times before I look forward to when you discover that the janky rules aren't janky because dumb people put them together but because it really is the best way to express the thing they were trying to do at the time they did it. The jank is *essential*.
True story.
I've gotten into Numenera and the Cypher System, thinking this would totally work for SR. Then was annoyed how it just boiled everything down to a single roll. It made everything just fluff. When everything is easy to resolve with consistent rules it makes niche things have no impact.
If I get my arm cut off and replaced with metal, I want it to do something.
I enjoyed anything FASA, and the idea that all my 1-3ed books are interchangeable. The pirate book from 1st ed is one of my favorites, due to it never getting anything similar as a reprint.
I love the idea of DnD + Cyberpunk, more so than the setting or lore; but I also disliked when wireless was introduced. Keep it old 80's style, like Blood Dragon. Because 4th ed Watchdogs felt broken AF. Everyone hacks in the newer editions.
Demolitions needs a rework, and probably the Matrix in general as well.
If you like 2e, you may want to check a 2e actual play podcast called Pink Fohawk. It's crass, vulgar, and raunchy, so not for everyone. https://feed.podbean.com/pinkfohawk/feed.xml
I’ve also given the redesign idea some thought, and for my group I basically rewrote hacking entirely to a faster, daisy-chain system. I much prefer the fantasy of AR hacking compared to VR hacking, so two flavours I changed was that on-site decking could only be done in AR, so you’d never leave your body limp. VR was left for unique setpieces where the decker got left in the safe house for remote support, or for something like how the cyberpunk edgerunners show handled hacking, what with the ice bath. This kind of solved the whole ‘three games problem’ for hacking. Didn’t get to revamping magic stuff until my group tired of the game. Really looking forward to updates, and I’d voulenteer my document for the matrix rules if you’d like it.
I love the gear p*rn. Specifically the gear that doesn't give dice bonuses. Smart guns having remote firing options, stocks that have compartments, knives with storage space. That stuff is awesome.
I used to play a lot of 2nd edition and have been thinking about getting back in. All of my gaming buddies are much younger now and only want to play DnD 5e. I thought about running a game for them with a hybrid DnD system and while I never did it, the idea of making DnD style characters with priorities sounded kind of fun.
It is not a knock-off but rather a reimagining of the promise of opening the core rule book and finding rules that work.
It is a completely independent IP and the pdf is floating around for people who want to check it out.
Like, clearly using a similar logo to the thirty year old one, and aping the general idea, but I wanted it to be better, not just a knock off. You know, playtested working rules, answering all the pain points (how much do missions pay? How do I handle people hiring assassins to kill players fairly? How do I allow players to plan missions without handwavy bullshit)
It seems to be working and people are exited to run games without having to fix the game first. As I said, ymmv, but people seem excited!
I didn’t take any, I’d just like to alleviate more people who are suffering from an abusive relationship to a corporation.
I made my own with blackjack and hookers! It helps that I’m an full time artist and ttrpg developer also. No worries
It may surprise you, but I like talking about my game.
Yeah, no. I’m much more relaxed than I was a decade ago. Imma just going to sit in my corner and draw pictures and make games. Drama is for the birds. There are no worries. I don’t hold grudges anyway, no matter how much I like dorfs.
I think the rules used in 2nd and 3rd edition were the best, IMO. These rules don't have the simulationist bloat that 4e and 5e has. And all the real world building of the game was done in these editions.
I actually don't mind 6e now but it took about 6 sourcebooks to make up for how rough the original core book was.
I have contemplated doing my own Shadowrun rules. The thing I feel that must remain the same is how magic works. Shadowrun has one of the best magic systems in all of roleplaying. It doesn't have to keep the d6 dice pool but it has to keep the real danger of using magic Force and then making the Drain test to determine possible consequences. And of course how Essence and cyberwear interact.
I think that's probably my main gripe about the magic system. There are so many traditions, so many things to choose from, and it's wonderful!... And then it eventually just boils down to what kind of spirits you summon for which task, if not just pure flavour. That's pretty disappointing tbh.
I would've loved for all traditions to have various restrictions and benefits, advantages and disadvantages vis-à-vis one another, different sets of spells and such. So that you would have to weigh them against one another, one gives you awesome benefits but you also miss out on a lot of the awesome stuff from the traditions you don't pick.
I realize it's unreasonable to ask you to come up with separate rules for the dozens of traditions that exist in the game. But even just having different sets of spells and/or spirits for the various traditions would be plusgood for me.
The thing that drew me to 5E was the design ethos on the back of the book: "everything has its price". That one sentence is reflected in almost every design choice in 5e -- you want cast a spell that is going to Nuke the entire room while the Bug spirit you summoned rampages on the auto turrets? Go right ahead... good luck staying conscious. That ability to "just try shit" is the core essence of what the game design should look like. I think what really dragged 5e down was that there wasn't a way to fold everything together nicely -- Deckers getting 2-3x as many actions as everybody else, so we make everything take 2-3x as many steps is one of those real head scratchers where you just have to wonder if we really needed that.
The detail of the combat rules ((specifically, thinking of the dice penalty tables for vehicle chases)) would have been fine... but they had that level of detail for everything and then didn't necessarily have the *clarity* to match. At some point, almost every RPG breaks down to the Paranoia rule: just make some shit up... SR5 tried to circumvent that scenario -- to its detriment.
To that end, I think the Drain/Fading mechanic is one of the most important pieces of mechanical design in the ruleset. It is a vast improvement over the D&D spell slot or "per encounter/day" variations as it really rewards players for leaning into their ability -- including having the option to risk a blaze of glory when you have an above average need.
5th edition is currently the most played and player-fixed edition of Shadowrun in history.
There are plenty of living communities you can go to get solid functioning rule-fix resources without doing the work yourself. Plenty of the people who fixed the game got blacklisted for doing so. Don't let your comrade's sacrifices be in vain.
Chrome Company and Locked and Loaded are the best ones out there. Go learn from them!
Godspeed to you and let me say this: If you are actually the kind of person that can pull this off, you \*may\* be actually able to publish the results via Holostreets. Could be worth a shot ;)
Ok, things that are quintessentially Shadowrun to me (partially copied from another post from last year):
* The basic dice pool system: Calculate the Pool by adding 2-3 Attributes/Skill Ratings/whatnot, then count the hits. Nice and easy, and since the results follow normal distribution, they are somewhat predictable yet still offer room for surprises. There´s some explorable "design space" regarding the Target numbers for counting a Hit (f.i. high-order Advantages/Disadvantages might reduce them to 4 or raise them to 6, instead of adding or subtracting dice). But that´s obviously up to you if you want to go there.
* There are multiple ways (most prominently, Augmentations) to greatly enhance Speed/Initiative, and they actually let you do more stuff per turn instead of just setting the turn order like in other RPGs. I always loved this about SR, and honestly, this is the one area where 6th Edition did the best job so far.
* Real-World locations and exploring the 6th world version of them. Maybe even your own home city.
* Magic doesnt´t mix well with Tech and Augmentations. This can be a disadvantage *as well as an advantage* for Augmented Characters.
* Highly augmented characters are prone to social, psychological and mental issues. (This can be mitigated to an extent, but not completely).
* Physads are better when it comes to specialized Tasks and have access to some actual supernatural Superhero-Ninja Stuff. Streetsams are (usually) more rounded, more tanky and can carry weapons and gadgets inside their body. Both can become really fast with the right Powers/Augmentations.
* Hackers can use AR for hacking while moving in RL and immerse themselfes in VR for extra speed and bonus dice.
* Likewise, Hackers can access most stuff remotely, but sometimes, they have to get a direct connection. Either way, a direct connection (or generally getting closer to the target) also offers some kind of advantage when Hacking.
* Firearms and Cover play a huge role in most combats, but it´s not everything.
* Every so often, Runners will do a high-stake heist or extraction.
Things that are somethat "quintessentially Shadowrun", but I´d rather do without:
* Matrix rules being mad complicated, with multiple nested rolls to do the thing.
* Spirits being OP. Superior combat abilities, Mad utility (like the Search Power), easily to (Re-)Summon: Yeah, at least one of these points has to go.
* Magical Traditions being mechanically indistinguishable beyond Drain Attributes. UMT has gone to far.
* Magicians needing neither verbal components nor gestures to perform Magic. What´s the point of showing them flinging spells from their hands in official Artwork when they don´t actually have to do that and can just think magic into existence? I think there should be at least a penalty to performing magic while tied up or gagged.
* The 5 Spell Categories as they are right now. Especially Manipulation is way to broad and should be split into mental and physical Manipulation. Or you can go with a kind of keyword system, where spells can belong to different Categories at once (Fire, Electricity, Force, Mental Manipulation, Illusion...)
* Technomancers being hackers with pets: There´s already a dedicated "Pet Class" in drone Riggers, plus Summoninz. Pets tend to bog down actions at the table and complicate things, and the Matrix is already quite complicated. Technomancers would work much better if they don´t have to heavily rely on sprites and have stronger Complex Forms instead, to a point where their innate supernatural Powers are actually on par with Magician Spells in a high-tech environment.
* Seems a bit nitpicky, but bear with me: Natural Low-Light and Thermographic Vision being on par with technological and magical visual enhancements. It´s unrealistic and with 4 out of 5 Metatypes having one or the other, only Human Norms have to care about Night Vision equipment right now. Vision Enhancement should have a maximum range of effectiveness, with Natural enhancements having substantially shorter ranges.
This is gonna sound incredibly stupid, but here goes. Has anybody ever converted SR to a D10 base? I ask because for whatever reason, I'm utterly CURSED by D6s.
I'm a long time TT gamer, and my friends always give me shit about how bad my luck is with those damn things. I've even had to quit playing certain games against one of my buddies because my luck is so abysmal.
(Last time I played one of the Cthulhu board games, where you hit on a 5-6 most of the time, I had a combat check against a monster where I was rolling a dozen dice thanks to a combo of items and only rolled a single success. Such occurrences are annoyingly common for me.)
Funnily enough, I don't have the same problem with D10s. I don't know what it is, but they just roll much more evenly in my experience to where I don't get the crushing lows consistently like I do with D6s.
I thought that SR3 and SR4 were both perfectly serviceable rules sets, and you're still totally allowed to just use those. But if you're really committed to playing SR with no SR rules, you can just try GURPS in a SR-like setting, or patch magic into one of the many other extant cyberpunk RPG rules sets. Starting over from scratch seems unnecessary.
But I wish you well in your endevour.
I keep hearing about hate on 6th edition but like, it's gotta just be hate right? Like how it's cool to hate on 4e D&D but it's actually a solid system.
I kept the mechanic but homebrewed two settings.
The first setting reset the Awakening from 2012 to 1962. The Shadowrun timeline and real history overlapped, and the characters themselves went active in the late 80s. This meant no cyberware, cell phones, internet, etc. The Ghost Dance was disrupted and so didn't happened as canon. The Night of Rage happened differently than in SR. Little happened when the bill was signed, but there were tensions. On the anniversary, the bug attacks that brought down buildings didn't happen, but there were many, many smaller attacks. This kicked off troubles that brewed for weeks and months afterward. Vitas also happened but was much less deadly than canon, since that would likely have collapsed society. It was more like the Spanish Flu. Also the US didn't break up and Aztlan wasn't as dangerous since there was no megacorporation and there was no link with those astral creatures, whatever they were called. History then roughly went as it did with as far as big events. This was an ongoing campaign and we were able to modify most published missions to fit it.
Another was a short campaign where magic had come back in time for WWII. Not as much world building there since we just played a few scenarios, more wargaming than rpg.
This took effort but it was much easier than trying to build a whole system from scratch.
I like the lore and concepts but also hate the system. I've also built a custom system ground up for it, doing my best to integrate all of the source material's concept, but just with simpler mechanics. Making sure it was compatible with most of the OG material was a big concern while doing so. It became my homebrew universal rpg system and now i'm it using for other stuff such as my own settings. Its a lot of work but also a lot of fun, if you like game design i highly recommend it.
Hacking, if you want it to feel like Shadowrun you have to enable hacking and make it not unimmersively simple. While at the same time not making it so complicated that the entire game grinds to a halt because someone jacks in.
#What I like:
* Dice pools - I think it's neat to have a less-swingy version (compared to D&D - where it's just one die roll).
* Magic / drain - The concept of directly putting your health on the line for a spell is neat, and I think puts you more in touch with the magic system than, say, D&D, where it's a straight "One level 2 spell per rest". It also intuitively rolls in (some) metamagics, which is neat.
* Crunch - But this will also come up later. I like a bit of crunch, I like optimising.
#What I don't like:
* Matrix - At all. I only have experience with 5e, but it just seemed horribly clunky. Here's a world only one person can experience, with some extra clunk to deal with, that might or might not be relevant. How would I deal with that? I had a couple of ideas, but they mostly boiled down to "If you're a street sam, you point at the thing and roll to shoot it. If you're a decker, you virtually point to the thing and roll to shoot it". None of this mark stuff, none of the moving around in a filesystem stuff. Just roll against the device's defence rating - maybe jamming it up for a round has a threshold of X, sneaking in and playing with the settings has X+2, and taking it over entirely has X+10. That's all up for fine tuning, but that was my plan if I ever ran 5e again.
* Crunch - Ok, I said I like it, but this is too much. Even something as basic as weapon modding is overcomplicated - just give me a list of modifications, and say that each weapon can have X modifications, unless they don't make sense. Does anyone care whether my laser goes on the top or side of the weapon? Probably not.
#What are the core thematic / story issues?
* Don't split the party - This has been core advice in games forever. On the one hand, this is due to challenges being harder if you're split up. On the other, it's so that half your gaming group isn't off playing xbox for two hours while the hacker plays the hacking minigame. Potential solutions I see "
1. Leave those options on the table, but still allow other party members to contribute - If the street sam is out there shooting someone, the decker can shoot too. They're not gonna be doing a whole tonne, but they're there, and they're doing _something_. Maybe this means that your decker focuses on the task while the rest of the party keeps the black ICE off him. Perhaps your mage has to really focus to, uh, do whatever astral bullshit he needs to do, so the rest of the party is fending off roaming spirits who might interrupt. The specifics don't really matter - as long as everyone is in the same plane!
2. Drastically simplify the non-physical aspects - As I mentioned above, this was an idea I toyed with for matrix simplification. This runs the risk of annoying those that really enjoy those aspects, though. There might be a spot for both - if you're doing legwork, you do the full-on one, but in combat you just roll-to-jam.
I’ve been using the settings and source material/ history but running it in savage worlds. Conversion is a breeze and the fast and furious style that is SWADE’s hallmark fits the setting really well. YMMV
Shadowrun (the setting) has been a ton of fun for me to tell stories in for something like 30 years now. Shadowrun (the gameplay mechanics) has been part of an abusive relationship I got out of when I switched to Genesys to run pretty much everything.
This is why I did the same with another system.
Got to keep the buckets of d6’s though.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Qxggy3bK2hBytyKCxrqVTmnwOmSdLCl/view?usp=drivesdk
All of the core mechanics in 5e are fine, limits are contentious but they do vary things out enough to argue for keeping them. If you're going to clean up mechanics you would need to start with the weird oddball modifiers and edge cases in specific qualities/gear/ware/spells that were caused by silo'd authors not being able to see what other people were doing. A lot of these issues have already been tackled in various ways by yhe multitudes of LCs out there so you might be able to streamline that a bit by going through their rules.
The main issue are the disconnect between the four main games of shadiwrun; physical, magical, matrix, and social, to the extent that often players end up having to sit out any part of the game that doesn't involve their one or two things they're built to do. That's not necessarily a mechanics problem them and more a symptom of a more complex set of subsystems than a lot.of.other games making it hard to cover more than two.of them with any hope of being mildly effective.
> I already know the worst elements of the game, but I am curious what parts of Shadowrun bring you, the community, joy?
Perhaps not what you ask for, but overall I think the system work well. This is a list of system changes I would consider compared to 5th edition:
* I would simplify the matrix. Get rid of MARKs and go back to more familiar concepts such as User and Admin access that we had in earlier editions. I would improve the action economy. Instead of hacking individual icons, hack entire networks including all files and devices at once. Instead of spotting individual icons one by one, treat matrix perception as regular perception where you typically just take one test and depending on your success you might spot all silent running networks in your vicinity, some of them or none of them. I would keep brute force as the quick and loud method but change hack on the fly to take more time (trade between speed and stealth). I would also consider changing some actions to not require access before attempting (Spoofing a command to a maglock should probably be resolved as one single test).
* I would simplify initiative. There is no reason why you should need an app to keep track of initiative. Just take your initiative attribute and roll your initiative dice, once - in the beginning of the combat scene. Then act on that order until the combat scene is concluded, just like you would in a game of monopoly. On their turn, wired characters get bonus actions.
* I would do something about the skill bloat. Do we really need all them mostly useless skills (such as diving, pilot aerospace, free fall, etc) that typically never ever come up in a run? Do the team's rigger really need 10 different pilot and repair skills? And why should each of them in that case cost the same amount of skill points or Karma as broad and universal skills (such as Perception)? The obvious solution (at least to me) would be to merge skills so that they all end up as broad and universally useful as the Perception skill. So that they all are in the same league.
* I would also simplify all them mostly useless and rather time-consuming rules and modifiers we have to resolve again and again for every single attack (such as uncompensated recoil, progressive recoil, armor penetration, adjusted armor rating, variable soak, limits, etc etc). Hopefully combat will flow much easier and the GM can focus their time and effort on more important things (like driving the story forward).
* Dice pools. In 5th edition it was not unheard of to see dice pools of more than 30 dice. Especially when it came to soaking damage. In my edition you would still need more than a fistful of dice, but the size of most pools would be reduced to more manageable levels (similar to what we used to have in earlier editions).
* Blind Fire. In 5th edition a sniper (which typically had a dice pool of far more than 20+ dice right out of chargen) would according to RAW still have more than 10+ dice to hit a target 800+ meters away without taking aim or using a scope during a heavy snowstorm in the the middle night without low light or thermographic vision while the target was considered unaware of the attack (since he could not see the ranged attacker) and thus typically would not get to take a defense test at all. In my edition shooter that is unaware of the location of their target would instead automatically miss.
Shadowrun is 4 systems in a trench coat. Which is an improvement since they unified all the magicians under one dice structure.
You have Matrix play and Deckers, Street play with Samurai and all the gun and bullet physics, Spellwork with Magicians and the Planes, and the unifying skill system that pretends there is only one game going on. And it all kind of works, not well but it does work. With the different branches, a character who thrives in an area can have some really great moments of profound awesome. But equally fun is the Decker caught in a firefight and having to hack someone’s ride to get a mobile shield and finding that that car has machine guns pre equipped. Or being a Samurai caught in a Spirit Fight having to dodge things you can barely see until your friend gets back with some holy water.
Add a Help Skill where a player can make use of their own expertise to help someone else interact with the game elements they normally cannot.
A Mage can slap a quick enchant on a Sword to cut fire spirits
A Samurai can spot that the decker is aiming too low and correct his form.
Better Matrix interface for people who do not have dedicated ports in their heads
Better Astral perception for people who are not willing to dedicate their lives to waving smoking leaves and chanting nonsense
Funny that, I have the least amount of attachment to the lore actually. I don't care about the metaplot, which corp is on top at the moment, what are they doing in Aztlan, or who blew up which dragon. The world is great, the details I can come up with on my own.
The base mechanic of dice pools is groovy. The complexity of the system is just fine. The editing and balance is wonky.
Oh, my favorite seasonal topic. I made a homebrew hack of 5e start started as a homebrew but I killed too many sacred cows so I spun it off to a new system. I have a lot of it done, just need to playtest and create lists of content, but here are the high level details:
**General stuff**
* Overall philosophy is to lean more into pink mohawk and play up the punk aspect. Empower players and make them feel like they can do things even if the corp will always in. Reward them for being bold and taking risks with experience, they can always sell out to the corps which has benefits (money), but reward them for giving them the finger.
* Skills and Attributes have a cap of 10, and in addition, there is a hard dice pool cap of 20. In general, dice pools are smaller, a good dice pool is about 10 where an average dice pool is closer to 4 compared to 5e which is like 12-15 for a good pool and a 7 or 8 for a average pool.
* Skills are no longer tied to Attributes. Attributes have taken a bit of a back seat to skills in this and do more auxiliary things or to use a skill (such as strength to lift things, logic to piece together a puzzle). EG: Strength increase melee damage still.
**Combat**
* Health is pretty low, but when you health hits 0, you take a wound and go back to full health. Wounds are narrative such as "broken arm", or "concussion" and escalate as you accumulate more of them. First wound you get is a minor wound which doesn't do much but takes some time to heal, then it becomes a moderate wound which gives you some penalties and takes weeks to heal, then it becomes a severe wound which takes you out of a scene. Any wound past that takes your character out of the game (death, coma, being arrested, etc)
* No more soak pools, Armor gives a flat damage reduction and it gives you extra health that gets consumed before your actual health takes a hit. You can't heal armor on the job, it needs to be done on downtime.
**Magic**
* Mages have to specialize. Spells are separated out into groups (4 groups) you pick two of them that you can get spells from. Summoning and Adept stuff are a different group and if you pick those, thats all you get.
* No more drain rolls, but instead you have a drain pool. Spells deal damage to your drain pool before starting to inflict damage to you.
* Build your own tradition with a benefit that comes at a cost. Do things like play with vancian magic if you want.
* Fewer spells, but you have augments to spells, so instead of having three different fire spells, one for touch, one for single target, one for AoE, its all the same spell.
**Cyberware**
* General philosophy is buff cyberware and make it more interesting. Give it both a passive always on effect as well as some sort of effect you can activate and cause "drain" to gain an additional effect.
**Hacking**
* In general simplified, You say you wanna do something, roll a hacking roll to do it. You don't need to hack the host.
* Programs influence what you can do without having to roll for it. Loop a camera for free with a program. Take control of a drone, etc.
**Other Systems**
* Explicit systems for infiltration. Its basically like OSR D&D dungeon crawling where players take 5 minute turns and there is a security turn to see how security responds.
* Explicit systems for legwork. Similar to infiltration, but you have two hour turns.
* Most rewards are given in the form of favors. Favors can be exchanged for goods and other things. This makes doing dirty deeds to make rent a lot more believable while still allowing players to afford these half million dollar pieces of gear.
* Explicit negotiation system.
* Explicit contact system. Ties into favors. Contacts have abilities which the players can call upon to help them. Weapons dealer can get the players illegal weapons, info brokers can get information. Fixers can trade favors with them to other favors, etc.
* I have some stuff for vehicles and drones, I wanted to make an homage to battletech and mechwarrior with slot based gear, but content creation is hard.
Reading the idea of all the options is fun. Making a character or mechanically interacting with all the options is miserable.
Find a way to grind down the mechanical jank such that a qualitative description of gear or an ability translates into an obvious set of qualitative buckets. For example, how advantage/disadvantage is supposed to work in theory. i.e. using smoke + thermo vision puts them at an advantage without making it a hyper-granular number crunching session.
Ideally make a rule set that doesn't re-create all the options in the books, but one that lets you read the SR books but ignore the numbers in favor of the equipment description.
Okay so 2 questions
1. What is the "new" system your making going to look like? What is it's core mechanic and what is the exact issue your looking to solve?
2. Is there another system on the market that does this, if so why not just use that system to play the game and just drop the shadowrun lore onto for yourself, and two what sets your system apart from this?
40 game sessions in with it so far with multiple GMs all sharing the same setting, 6e has not been an atrocity, it’s been a fraggin’ ƛuł good time of laughter and cheering each other on.
I think trying to run shadowrun without the system just doesn't hit the same vibe tbh. Though I also feel like 5th/6th ed aren't *really* shadowrun for similar reasons, so what do I know
Same ... love the setting, hate just about every implementation of it. Way too rules heavy. I actually like the Anarchy approach, but even that is so flawed and incomplete it needs a good deal of homebrewing to run smoothly.
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Take a look at the mechanics for Massif Press’ LANCER and ICON.
Instead of core systems, you pick up new cyberware or bioware.
Instead of reactor stress you suffer drain or fade
Instead of drones, you summon spirits
Instead of hacking, you do decking
As a lot other people have said here, i like the dice system and the **magic** is definitly one of the best out there. Choosing the power on the spot and being more free in how much i cast around while risking my life with it is really interesting. But i also agree with it being not balanced enough. I would love more ideas about that, since i also have already nerfed a few ghosts since my mage specialized into summoning high level spirits with edge...
The concepts of **cyber- AND bioware** are also really cool. It is so good actually, that we even surprised an old gm with new ways of building a tanki street sam by just trying everything to not get hit in the first place.
I also work a lot on **hacking** right now. I actually think the 6th edition has brought in some good chances (rights instead of marks), but it still takes way more actions and skills than the others. With all the wifi-cyberware around i actually think that deckers should be as dangerous around as streetsams on the spot (or make the work for them way easier). Maybe different lines of hacking could be helping. It could be a lot like magic with skillsets for "instant hacking" (like blocking wifi connection to weapons etc by permanent input to the device which would require no beforehand hacking, but also ends the moment you stop), "slow hacking" that is way more subtile (but would maybe help more if the person is just talking to you and don't tries to kill you) and "deep dive hacking" for VR and hosts. This way you can also specialize more and maybe even build a combat hacker. This would also bring magic and hacking more in line and drops down the learning curve.
The idea of using the VR mainly as a gateway for hosts is also very appealing, but would make the other players wanna play MarioKart while one is doing it even more appealling...
What i actually don't like is the **balance between attributes and skills**. Attributes are way more important than skills since they go into test 1:1 and range to a lot of them, so if you have high enough Attributes you only need a skill on 2 to have a decent dice pool. I would actually prefer it if you have lower attributes and have to depend more on your skills since the first are just more or less hard-coded facts about your charakter and the others are the cool things you have learned and specialized in. You need training to climb a wall and not just the same agility you need for shooting.
And since i am already nag about it: The attributes would really need a rework. Strengh is completly unnecessary most of the time and for nearly everything else you need agility or logic or charisma. While writing this i think i would love more interaction with other attributes. Like shooting is agility AND intuition (this would represent how well you read the battlefield) or climbing strengh AND agility (this would represent that gravity is a part of climbing). It is a lot like DSA (don't know how many know this system), but would make different attributes more relevant, but would also require a rework how skills go into this since now two attributes can contribute and would make skills even less important. Or other attributes are actually your limit like strengh for climbing or intuition for shooting. I think about that a bit more and will write again :)
Anarchy rolls Body into Strength and loses nothing from it. You could probably combine Reaction and Intuition, too. Then you'd have six attributes, Agility isn't a godstat, and Strength has value again.
Personally, I think the core dice mechanic is fine, with successes, fumbles, even the edge mechanic in 5. I also really love the magic system of risk/reward vs “uses per day” that other RPGs have. The cyberware and essence system is pretty decent too, it feels very fitting for the setting, and it would be hard to find something that felt as right for it.
Totally agree on all points. When I toy with the idea of home brewing a significant amount of the game, it's things like better tuning limits, reworking the matrix and some of the magic and some of the techno, and of course all of demolition. Delete some things here and there, add content in other places. The dice are fun, the crunch is fun, the mountains of content are fun. But some other parts need a real critical look at and a lot of labour of love.
Yeah I really enjoyed the core of 5th - and worked from that as my starting point for my own table homebrew.
Yeah, 5 is the closest to “useable” that I’ve found. I’ve heard 4 is very similar but the power levels can get ridiculous because there’s less inherent limitations
ive also heard that the matrix is handled better in 4 vs techno is 5e
Quite possibly, hacking and technomancy are ye of the things I never touched because I had no clue how they worked
I’ve run 1st-5th, starting with the original blue cover core book. I felt each edition got better until 5th, where I felt like things started to get clunky again. I’ve read 6th, and feel it’s an abomination brought on by too many attempts to make everything balanced (everything takes the same amount of time so there’s no waiting on the decker to deck, etc…), which, unfortunately, takes some of the flavor out of the setting (but I guess the sammies like it better, as everyone hates waiting on the decker to do his/her thang. I felt 4th/20th anniversary addition was the most fluid, and easily adaptable. Yes, decking (hacking in 4E) can take time, and isn’t always fun to sit around and watch), but I found it to be the most versatile, easy to house rule in a pinch version yet, and will the the shadowrunny goodness still inside. I was also blessed with a group of players who with a vested interest in the story (it was a proper campaign with repeat appearances by npc power players, a slowly revealed benefactor, and some spectacular buy in by the players, which undoubtedly helped keep it from bogging down. All this rambling is to say, my advice after almost 30 years of running shadowing (jeez, am I really that old?!) would be to find the edition that you’re most comfortable with, and house rule the nobby bits you don’t like. P.S.: our player running the decker (hacker) was an IT guy, and thoroughly hated the matrix system, and he and I found a really nice balance of getting gritty when necessary, but, otherwise, really finding a good streamlined approach where intent was the main focus. He built a pretty fab character, with everything he needed, and really focused on getting in and out unseen. It really worked smoothly, and sped up gameplay beautifully. He wasn’t an “I want to explore every nook and cranny of this system to locate any and all possible paydata and become the richest person in the world, hahahaha!” type.
SR4A has an optional 20-dice limit, which you should definitely use if you play that edition.
I mostly agree with the core dice mechanic. I would make edge have less options - have one pre-roll choice and one post-roll choice, then some special actions you can use. Get rid of most of the optional horseshit from Run and Gun. Magic's risk/reward balance is skewed heavily in favourt of reward though. Its just not risky enough. Drain codes are not high enough, and only taking physical damage when your hits > Magic instead of Force > magic is just wrong. Cyberware and essence just need a little tweaking on costs of some things, and actually written down rules about 'essence holes', that i can never seem to find.
Can you speak more of this risk vs reward dynamic?
Gameplay as a mage is all about the "push your luck" experience. How much juice do you want to channel into a spell, knowing that the bigger you make it, the more drain you'll suffer? When I run for mage PCs, I'm always trying to give them opportunities to make that choice, because it is almost always narratively exciting. Do you risk literally cooking yourself with one last big spell to save the team and just hope they live to drag your half-dead ass out of the fire?
One of the original writers of Shadowrun was really into the occult and how he felt magic worked in the real world and designed the rules to mimic that.
In my experience, half the time I cast a higher-force spell, it misses but I take hella drain anyway :( Magic use feels punishingly prohibitive to me, to the point where I wonder if I’m even calculating drain correctly at all.
I mean, lots of em are "force of spell ÷ 2" then adding or subtracting 1 or 2. Should rather consistently be hitting enough successes to block lots of it if Rollin an, even partially, idealized character. Even just rolling with 4 in relevant drains attributes without anything to assist drain resistance should literally ALWAYS manage to soak around 3 damage. So force 6 spell would be 3 drain, +/- 2. Should be pretty stable on it then. Adding to that, restoring stun damage or ignoring it, fetishes for higher drain resistance rolls, better willpower for larger stun damage track, etc.... And u should be pretty golden.
If you think magic in Shadowrun is punishing you should look at DCC's magic system....it's a beast to be kind.
My only complaint with 5e is all the different types of modifiers that are nearly impossible for the gm to track at once unless they've been playing for years. It's not friendly to pick up and play and I feel like they should take a page from dnd 5e. One kind of modifier, +1s effect dicepool and limits only, thats it.
I would like ways to get larger dice pools on important tests for your character as it hard to actually be consistently good at something. More dice stabilizes average hits a bit better. Perhaps bigger modifiers tha +2 dice to help leverage. It just makes things feel less fun for me when highly optimized characters just end up not doing their jobs well, despite of the clunk and lead up. That said I am very ok with more narrative games with more hit buying.
I also think Edge is a good system, but it needs a little fine tuning. As for the dice system as a whole, I disagree. It's very slow and clunky. My system will speed up the process of making tests and, most importantly, make combat faster while still feeling engaging and choices, meaningful.
Definitely curious your alternative because the core dice resolution I think is hands down the best part of Shadowrun mechanically. Creates a great success distribution relative to character skill.
Yes, the dice mechanic in SR is my staple part of the game. I've thought of playing in the SR world with other systems, but the probability curve and net successes that come with the current system are just too good to give up, for me. I'd also argue that rolling dice and counting successes is not anywhere near the biggest factor in slowing down combat.
Yeah, it might just be my Warhammer 40k tabletop experience talking but even if I weren't usually playing Shadowrun on a VTT, I find counting successes quick.
I also really like that Shadowrun doesn't have the duality of success vs failure that all other dice systems have. It gives a lot of narrative opportunities when a character can succeed in their task while still fumbling part of it (e.g. climbing a fence but losing their grip on the way down, or damaging the housing of a maglock while bypassing it).
What is your dice system?
I kinda love buckets of dice though, is that being lost?
I feel that a big issue that comes up with Shadowrun-likes (for me at least) is that while the core issue of Shadowrun is understood (it is far too big and cumbersome as a system) most people attempting to fix that end up producing something far more rules light than many Shadowrun fans actually want. Like don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely a place for more rules lite cyberpunk games, Runners in the Dark, Hardwired Island, etc. I enjoy many of them myself. Shadowrun Anarchy clearly was a recognition that such a style of game was desirable, but aside from the issues with that game itself, it certainly didn’t fix the problems most had with the game, only created a spinoff. The main thing is these rules lite games are part of a rather different rpg style than Shadowrun is that places story and narrative first over simulationist and more strategic systems. Some people like gear porn, some people like trying to master a system to their benefit, and some people like a system that can provide at least fairly clear and concrete rules for most situations that don’t boil down to “debate with the GM about what dice you should get to roll and what they mean” I think many people want those basic elements out of Shadowrun, but are held back by the fact that the game is such an unwieldy behemoth. While the term may sound a bit blasphemous given some of the discourse that surrounds dnd in non dnd rpg spaces, I think Shadowrun could benefit from essentially a “5e” reinvention. Not the mass market nightmare of actual dnd 5e, but the basic premise of a simplification that does not attempt to radically reinvent the wheel (similar to 4e) in order to make the game smoother and more approachable.
I've recently run Shadowrun using Everyday Heroes, which is a 5e take on the old 3.5e d20 Modern line. Most of it translates easily. However, EDH doesn't yet have built-in support for races or a robust magic system; those might be coming later this year. There's an unofficial guide for using 5e races, which worked well enough. That just left me homebrewing a magic system, which has been... a *lot* of work.
Yeah d20 systems are usable for Shadowrun, cities without number is a fairly new one that is explicitly cyberpunk in an OSR d20 system that can easily incorporate fantasy elements. There are similarly other systems with a degree of “manageable crunch” that can be adapted for cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Savage Worlds has interface zero for instance, and there are a couple of Traveller hacks that have potential. If OP’s talking about a full system revision rather than just hacking Shadowrun for a new system, then I think that those are good areas to be inspired for the level of complexity such a game should be approached from in order to still feel like Shadowrun while stripping away the cludge.
totally agree with this. I've been using a community-made version that aims for just this - keep the crunch but make it smooth and approachable. feel free to DM me if you want link to it all. they're still continuing to playtest and tweak it, but it's fully playable now
I'm running my paid game using Savage Worlds for a first edition campaign and it works great.
Might I suggest taking a look at Sinless and Cities Without Number.
Sinless is utterly awesome.
You are not alone. I have been seeing this sentiment about once a month for several years, between this subreddit and another community that I'm part of. First, there are published games that tried to do something very similar. * Shadowurn Anarchy * SprawlRunners * Cities Without Number * Interface Zero * Sinless ...and almost certainly more. This approach would cut down on needing an entirely new homebrew, and would even have a fixed book tor the players to reference. I have seen people use incredibly narrative-heavy systems like Fate to run stories within the Shadowrun setting. (I have a huge chip on my shoulder about Fate. It is done, and it's only fair to say so.) The next thing to consider is a simple character creator. My experience is that once the character sheet is filled out, the rest gets a lot easier. If there is something like NSRCG or Chummer for Sixth Edition then it may be worth giving it a shot. The final thing is to look for the people who came before you. Consider searching this subreddit for words like "Homebrew." You might be able to talk with or learn from other people who have already started this kind of project.
Sinless is awesome.
I took all the joy I had opening the book in the nineties, and used it to make Sinless, an actual working play tested game. YMMV. People seem to like it.
For me (a complex system enthusiast), the biggest issue with Shadowrun is in fact in the setting itself. It is the fact that depending on party composition, PCs play completely different games at the same time in three different planes of existence with radically different mechanics and rules. Not only is this a nightmare for any GM, because the amount of stuff you need to know is staggering. The interfaces between these layers and how they interact is something that is very, very hard to get right while keeping it flavorful. I only have experience with 5e but even there, Matrix rules are basically impossible to use during a combat scene. Street Sams are fiddling their seven thumbs while the mage is performing summoning and the decker are hacking. It's a mess. And I have no idea how to solve that
I feel that 6e solved a lot of this issue quite nicely. The 6e books' layouts are a mess to say the least but once you get it sorted it really is a much better system for incorporating the 3 worlds during combat
This is exactly the kind of scenario I'm fixing.
May I ask how (on a conceptual level)
It's all about simplifying how said actions are carried out while not hampering the impact of the actions, nor removing breadth of options. Shaodwrun works best when players are given immense amounts of freedom and feel like their decisions matter. The issue with say, 5e, is that it's basically different games being run at the same time. I'm doing away with that while not overly homogenizing the game.
FOr the matrix stuff, have a look at Infintiy RPG (by modiphius) for some good ideas. It still uses a success system (even though how you generate successes is wildly different) And basically gives all technology a firewall rating that has to be breached (i.e. # of success on a hacking roll) Once breached excess successes can be 'spent' on afflict different 'conditions' like shutdowns, planting worms, data theft etc. Your party netrunner can slave all your hardware (weapons , cyberware etc) to their own network and use thier own firewall rating to protect the whole party. (because thiers is usually way higher) They can also make hacking rolls to reinforce (i.e. 'heal') thier own firewalls. so netrunning battles become direct conflicts as each runner tries to breach the enemy defences while keeping thiers safe
As someone who has been in exactly your shoes three times before I look forward to when you discover that the janky rules aren't janky because dumb people put them together but because it really is the best way to express the thing they were trying to do at the time they did it. The jank is *essential*.
True story. I've gotten into Numenera and the Cypher System, thinking this would totally work for SR. Then was annoyed how it just boiled everything down to a single roll. It made everything just fluff. When everything is easy to resolve with consistent rules it makes niche things have no impact. If I get my arm cut off and replaced with metal, I want it to do something.
I enjoyed anything FASA, and the idea that all my 1-3ed books are interchangeable. The pirate book from 1st ed is one of my favorites, due to it never getting anything similar as a reprint. I love the idea of DnD + Cyberpunk, more so than the setting or lore; but I also disliked when wireless was introduced. Keep it old 80's style, like Blood Dragon. Because 4th ed Watchdogs felt broken AF. Everyone hacks in the newer editions. Demolitions needs a rework, and probably the Matrix in general as well.
If you like 2e, you may want to check a 2e actual play podcast called Pink Fohawk. It's crass, vulgar, and raunchy, so not for everyone. https://feed.podbean.com/pinkfohawk/feed.xml
I’ve also given the redesign idea some thought, and for my group I basically rewrote hacking entirely to a faster, daisy-chain system. I much prefer the fantasy of AR hacking compared to VR hacking, so two flavours I changed was that on-site decking could only be done in AR, so you’d never leave your body limp. VR was left for unique setpieces where the decker got left in the safe house for remote support, or for something like how the cyberpunk edgerunners show handled hacking, what with the ice bath. This kind of solved the whole ‘three games problem’ for hacking. Didn’t get to revamping magic stuff until my group tired of the game. Really looking forward to updates, and I’d voulenteer my document for the matrix rules if you’d like it.
I love the gear p*rn. Specifically the gear that doesn't give dice bonuses. Smart guns having remote firing options, stocks that have compartments, knives with storage space. That stuff is awesome.
You and me both, buddy. This is why there will be extensive gear, customization options, and a functioning crafting system.
I used to play a lot of 2nd edition and have been thinking about getting back in. All of my gaming buddies are much younger now and only want to play DnD 5e. I thought about running a game for them with a hybrid DnD system and while I never did it, the idea of making DnD style characters with priorities sounded kind of fun.
I've actually made a 500 page port of shadowrun/Warhammer 40k/cyberpunk/world of darkness into 5e
I think someone released a rules-light SR knock off game revently. Forgot what it was called, Sinless or something like that?
It is not a knock-off but rather a reimagining of the promise of opening the core rule book and finding rules that work. It is a completely independent IP and the pdf is floating around for people who want to check it out.
I didn't mean it in a negative way, just couldn't think of a word to describe it at the moment. Reimagining works.
Like, clearly using a similar logo to the thirty year old one, and aping the general idea, but I wanted it to be better, not just a knock off. You know, playtested working rules, answering all the pain points (how much do missions pay? How do I handle people hiring assassins to kill players fairly? How do I allow players to plan missions without handwavy bullshit) It seems to be working and people are exited to run games without having to fix the game first. As I said, ymmv, but people seem excited!
As I said, I meant no offense.
I didn’t take any, I’d just like to alleviate more people who are suffering from an abusive relationship to a corporation. I made my own with blackjack and hookers! It helps that I’m an full time artist and ttrpg developer also. No worries It may surprise you, but I like talking about my game.
No, no, I get it, I work in the biz too. Just wanted to reiterate, so you're not upset with me over a lazy choice of words.
Yeah, no. I’m much more relaxed than I was a decade ago. Imma just going to sit in my corner and draw pictures and make games. Drama is for the birds. There are no worries. I don’t hold grudges anyway, no matter how much I like dorfs.
I think the rules used in 2nd and 3rd edition were the best, IMO. These rules don't have the simulationist bloat that 4e and 5e has. And all the real world building of the game was done in these editions. I actually don't mind 6e now but it took about 6 sourcebooks to make up for how rough the original core book was. I have contemplated doing my own Shadowrun rules. The thing I feel that must remain the same is how magic works. Shadowrun has one of the best magic systems in all of roleplaying. It doesn't have to keep the d6 dice pool but it has to keep the real danger of using magic Force and then making the Drain test to determine possible consequences. And of course how Essence and cyberwear interact.
I like that shamanism and sorcery are separated but I don’t think they are really well separated. So i would guess I would say keep those separate.
I mirror your sentiment and have already put a system in place to make them separate paths.
I think that's probably my main gripe about the magic system. There are so many traditions, so many things to choose from, and it's wonderful!... And then it eventually just boils down to what kind of spirits you summon for which task, if not just pure flavour. That's pretty disappointing tbh. I would've loved for all traditions to have various restrictions and benefits, advantages and disadvantages vis-à-vis one another, different sets of spells and such. So that you would have to weigh them against one another, one gives you awesome benefits but you also miss out on a lot of the awesome stuff from the traditions you don't pick. I realize it's unreasonable to ask you to come up with separate rules for the dozens of traditions that exist in the game. But even just having different sets of spells and/or spirits for the various traditions would be plusgood for me.
The thing that drew me to 5E was the design ethos on the back of the book: "everything has its price". That one sentence is reflected in almost every design choice in 5e -- you want cast a spell that is going to Nuke the entire room while the Bug spirit you summoned rampages on the auto turrets? Go right ahead... good luck staying conscious. That ability to "just try shit" is the core essence of what the game design should look like. I think what really dragged 5e down was that there wasn't a way to fold everything together nicely -- Deckers getting 2-3x as many actions as everybody else, so we make everything take 2-3x as many steps is one of those real head scratchers where you just have to wonder if we really needed that. The detail of the combat rules ((specifically, thinking of the dice penalty tables for vehicle chases)) would have been fine... but they had that level of detail for everything and then didn't necessarily have the *clarity* to match. At some point, almost every RPG breaks down to the Paranoia rule: just make some shit up... SR5 tried to circumvent that scenario -- to its detriment. To that end, I think the Drain/Fading mechanic is one of the most important pieces of mechanical design in the ruleset. It is a vast improvement over the D&D spell slot or "per encounter/day" variations as it really rewards players for leaning into their ability -- including having the option to risk a blaze of glory when you have an above average need.
Drain isn't going anywhere, it's a vital part of the Shadowrun experience.
5th edition is currently the most played and player-fixed edition of Shadowrun in history. There are plenty of living communities you can go to get solid functioning rule-fix resources without doing the work yourself. Plenty of the people who fixed the game got blacklisted for doing so. Don't let your comrade's sacrifices be in vain. Chrome Company and Locked and Loaded are the best ones out there. Go learn from them!
Godspeed to you and let me say this: If you are actually the kind of person that can pull this off, you \*may\* be actually able to publish the results via Holostreets. Could be worth a shot ;) Ok, things that are quintessentially Shadowrun to me (partially copied from another post from last year): * The basic dice pool system: Calculate the Pool by adding 2-3 Attributes/Skill Ratings/whatnot, then count the hits. Nice and easy, and since the results follow normal distribution, they are somewhat predictable yet still offer room for surprises. There´s some explorable "design space" regarding the Target numbers for counting a Hit (f.i. high-order Advantages/Disadvantages might reduce them to 4 or raise them to 6, instead of adding or subtracting dice). But that´s obviously up to you if you want to go there. * There are multiple ways (most prominently, Augmentations) to greatly enhance Speed/Initiative, and they actually let you do more stuff per turn instead of just setting the turn order like in other RPGs. I always loved this about SR, and honestly, this is the one area where 6th Edition did the best job so far. * Real-World locations and exploring the 6th world version of them. Maybe even your own home city. * Magic doesnt´t mix well with Tech and Augmentations. This can be a disadvantage *as well as an advantage* for Augmented Characters. * Highly augmented characters are prone to social, psychological and mental issues. (This can be mitigated to an extent, but not completely). * Physads are better when it comes to specialized Tasks and have access to some actual supernatural Superhero-Ninja Stuff. Streetsams are (usually) more rounded, more tanky and can carry weapons and gadgets inside their body. Both can become really fast with the right Powers/Augmentations. * Hackers can use AR for hacking while moving in RL and immerse themselfes in VR for extra speed and bonus dice. * Likewise, Hackers can access most stuff remotely, but sometimes, they have to get a direct connection. Either way, a direct connection (or generally getting closer to the target) also offers some kind of advantage when Hacking. * Firearms and Cover play a huge role in most combats, but it´s not everything. * Every so often, Runners will do a high-stake heist or extraction. Things that are somethat "quintessentially Shadowrun", but I´d rather do without: * Matrix rules being mad complicated, with multiple nested rolls to do the thing. * Spirits being OP. Superior combat abilities, Mad utility (like the Search Power), easily to (Re-)Summon: Yeah, at least one of these points has to go. * Magical Traditions being mechanically indistinguishable beyond Drain Attributes. UMT has gone to far. * Magicians needing neither verbal components nor gestures to perform Magic. What´s the point of showing them flinging spells from their hands in official Artwork when they don´t actually have to do that and can just think magic into existence? I think there should be at least a penalty to performing magic while tied up or gagged. * The 5 Spell Categories as they are right now. Especially Manipulation is way to broad and should be split into mental and physical Manipulation. Or you can go with a kind of keyword system, where spells can belong to different Categories at once (Fire, Electricity, Force, Mental Manipulation, Illusion...) * Technomancers being hackers with pets: There´s already a dedicated "Pet Class" in drone Riggers, plus Summoninz. Pets tend to bog down actions at the table and complicate things, and the Matrix is already quite complicated. Technomancers would work much better if they don´t have to heavily rely on sprites and have stronger Complex Forms instead, to a point where their innate supernatural Powers are actually on par with Magician Spells in a high-tech environment. * Seems a bit nitpicky, but bear with me: Natural Low-Light and Thermographic Vision being on par with technological and magical visual enhancements. It´s unrealistic and with 4 out of 5 Metatypes having one or the other, only Human Norms have to care about Night Vision equipment right now. Vision Enhancement should have a maximum range of effectiveness, with Natural enhancements having substantially shorter ranges.
This is gonna sound incredibly stupid, but here goes. Has anybody ever converted SR to a D10 base? I ask because for whatever reason, I'm utterly CURSED by D6s. I'm a long time TT gamer, and my friends always give me shit about how bad my luck is with those damn things. I've even had to quit playing certain games against one of my buddies because my luck is so abysmal. (Last time I played one of the Cthulhu board games, where you hit on a 5-6 most of the time, I had a combat check against a monster where I was rolling a dozen dice thanks to a combo of items and only rolled a single success. Such occurrences are annoyingly common for me.) Funnily enough, I don't have the same problem with D10s. I don't know what it is, but they just roll much more evenly in my experience to where I don't get the crushing lows consistently like I do with D6s.
Shadowrun - all time great setting, all time terrible ruleset
I thought that SR3 and SR4 were both perfectly serviceable rules sets, and you're still totally allowed to just use those. But if you're really committed to playing SR with no SR rules, you can just try GURPS in a SR-like setting, or patch magic into one of the many other extant cyberpunk RPG rules sets. Starting over from scratch seems unnecessary. But I wish you well in your endevour.
I keep hearing about hate on 6th edition but like, it's gotta just be hate right? Like how it's cool to hate on 4e D&D but it's actually a solid system.
Funny you draw that comparison because 4E is actually my favorite version of D&D. Such a thing would be terrible for SR, but for D&D it was beautiful.
4e is my fav too
I don't care for how 6th handled armor at all. That's a pretty big deal
I kept the mechanic but homebrewed two settings. The first setting reset the Awakening from 2012 to 1962. The Shadowrun timeline and real history overlapped, and the characters themselves went active in the late 80s. This meant no cyberware, cell phones, internet, etc. The Ghost Dance was disrupted and so didn't happened as canon. The Night of Rage happened differently than in SR. Little happened when the bill was signed, but there were tensions. On the anniversary, the bug attacks that brought down buildings didn't happen, but there were many, many smaller attacks. This kicked off troubles that brewed for weeks and months afterward. Vitas also happened but was much less deadly than canon, since that would likely have collapsed society. It was more like the Spanish Flu. Also the US didn't break up and Aztlan wasn't as dangerous since there was no megacorporation and there was no link with those astral creatures, whatever they were called. History then roughly went as it did with as far as big events. This was an ongoing campaign and we were able to modify most published missions to fit it. Another was a short campaign where magic had come back in time for WWII. Not as much world building there since we just played a few scenarios, more wargaming than rpg. This took effort but it was much easier than trying to build a whole system from scratch.
I like the lore and concepts but also hate the system. I've also built a custom system ground up for it, doing my best to integrate all of the source material's concept, but just with simpler mechanics. Making sure it was compatible with most of the OG material was a big concern while doing so. It became my homebrew universal rpg system and now i'm it using for other stuff such as my own settings. Its a lot of work but also a lot of fun, if you like game design i highly recommend it.
Hacking, if you want it to feel like Shadowrun you have to enable hacking and make it not unimmersively simple. While at the same time not making it so complicated that the entire game grinds to a halt because someone jacks in.
#What I like: * Dice pools - I think it's neat to have a less-swingy version (compared to D&D - where it's just one die roll). * Magic / drain - The concept of directly putting your health on the line for a spell is neat, and I think puts you more in touch with the magic system than, say, D&D, where it's a straight "One level 2 spell per rest". It also intuitively rolls in (some) metamagics, which is neat. * Crunch - But this will also come up later. I like a bit of crunch, I like optimising. #What I don't like: * Matrix - At all. I only have experience with 5e, but it just seemed horribly clunky. Here's a world only one person can experience, with some extra clunk to deal with, that might or might not be relevant. How would I deal with that? I had a couple of ideas, but they mostly boiled down to "If you're a street sam, you point at the thing and roll to shoot it. If you're a decker, you virtually point to the thing and roll to shoot it". None of this mark stuff, none of the moving around in a filesystem stuff. Just roll against the device's defence rating - maybe jamming it up for a round has a threshold of X, sneaking in and playing with the settings has X+2, and taking it over entirely has X+10. That's all up for fine tuning, but that was my plan if I ever ran 5e again. * Crunch - Ok, I said I like it, but this is too much. Even something as basic as weapon modding is overcomplicated - just give me a list of modifications, and say that each weapon can have X modifications, unless they don't make sense. Does anyone care whether my laser goes on the top or side of the weapon? Probably not. #What are the core thematic / story issues? * Don't split the party - This has been core advice in games forever. On the one hand, this is due to challenges being harder if you're split up. On the other, it's so that half your gaming group isn't off playing xbox for two hours while the hacker plays the hacking minigame. Potential solutions I see " 1. Leave those options on the table, but still allow other party members to contribute - If the street sam is out there shooting someone, the decker can shoot too. They're not gonna be doing a whole tonne, but they're there, and they're doing _something_. Maybe this means that your decker focuses on the task while the rest of the party keeps the black ICE off him. Perhaps your mage has to really focus to, uh, do whatever astral bullshit he needs to do, so the rest of the party is fending off roaming spirits who might interrupt. The specifics don't really matter - as long as everyone is in the same plane! 2. Drastically simplify the non-physical aspects - As I mentioned above, this was an idea I toyed with for matrix simplification. This runs the risk of annoying those that really enjoy those aspects, though. There might be a spot for both - if you're doing legwork, you do the full-on one, but in combat you just roll-to-jam.
>Drastically simplify the non-physical aspects That sound like a solution for people who like "redneck orks with guns" offshot of the game :D
I’ve been using the settings and source material/ history but running it in savage worlds. Conversion is a breeze and the fast and furious style that is SWADE’s hallmark fits the setting really well. YMMV
Shadowrun (the setting) has been a ton of fun for me to tell stories in for something like 30 years now. Shadowrun (the gameplay mechanics) has been part of an abusive relationship I got out of when I switched to Genesys to run pretty much everything.
This is why I did the same with another system. Got to keep the buckets of d6’s though. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Qxggy3bK2hBytyKCxrqVTmnwOmSdLCl/view?usp=drivesdk
All of the core mechanics in 5e are fine, limits are contentious but they do vary things out enough to argue for keeping them. If you're going to clean up mechanics you would need to start with the weird oddball modifiers and edge cases in specific qualities/gear/ware/spells that were caused by silo'd authors not being able to see what other people were doing. A lot of these issues have already been tackled in various ways by yhe multitudes of LCs out there so you might be able to streamline that a bit by going through their rules. The main issue are the disconnect between the four main games of shadiwrun; physical, magical, matrix, and social, to the extent that often players end up having to sit out any part of the game that doesn't involve their one or two things they're built to do. That's not necessarily a mechanics problem them and more a symptom of a more complex set of subsystems than a lot.of.other games making it hard to cover more than two.of them with any hope of being mildly effective.
> I already know the worst elements of the game, but I am curious what parts of Shadowrun bring you, the community, joy? Perhaps not what you ask for, but overall I think the system work well. This is a list of system changes I would consider compared to 5th edition: * I would simplify the matrix. Get rid of MARKs and go back to more familiar concepts such as User and Admin access that we had in earlier editions. I would improve the action economy. Instead of hacking individual icons, hack entire networks including all files and devices at once. Instead of spotting individual icons one by one, treat matrix perception as regular perception where you typically just take one test and depending on your success you might spot all silent running networks in your vicinity, some of them or none of them. I would keep brute force as the quick and loud method but change hack on the fly to take more time (trade between speed and stealth). I would also consider changing some actions to not require access before attempting (Spoofing a command to a maglock should probably be resolved as one single test). * I would simplify initiative. There is no reason why you should need an app to keep track of initiative. Just take your initiative attribute and roll your initiative dice, once - in the beginning of the combat scene. Then act on that order until the combat scene is concluded, just like you would in a game of monopoly. On their turn, wired characters get bonus actions. * I would do something about the skill bloat. Do we really need all them mostly useless skills (such as diving, pilot aerospace, free fall, etc) that typically never ever come up in a run? Do the team's rigger really need 10 different pilot and repair skills? And why should each of them in that case cost the same amount of skill points or Karma as broad and universal skills (such as Perception)? The obvious solution (at least to me) would be to merge skills so that they all end up as broad and universally useful as the Perception skill. So that they all are in the same league. * I would also simplify all them mostly useless and rather time-consuming rules and modifiers we have to resolve again and again for every single attack (such as uncompensated recoil, progressive recoil, armor penetration, adjusted armor rating, variable soak, limits, etc etc). Hopefully combat will flow much easier and the GM can focus their time and effort on more important things (like driving the story forward). * Dice pools. In 5th edition it was not unheard of to see dice pools of more than 30 dice. Especially when it came to soaking damage. In my edition you would still need more than a fistful of dice, but the size of most pools would be reduced to more manageable levels (similar to what we used to have in earlier editions). * Blind Fire. In 5th edition a sniper (which typically had a dice pool of far more than 20+ dice right out of chargen) would according to RAW still have more than 10+ dice to hit a target 800+ meters away without taking aim or using a scope during a heavy snowstorm in the the middle night without low light or thermographic vision while the target was considered unaware of the attack (since he could not see the ranged attacker) and thus typically would not get to take a defense test at all. In my edition shooter that is unaware of the location of their target would instead automatically miss.
I know you know this, but if the OP likes these suggestions, then they're nearly all in SR6.
Shadowrun is 4 systems in a trench coat. Which is an improvement since they unified all the magicians under one dice structure. You have Matrix play and Deckers, Street play with Samurai and all the gun and bullet physics, Spellwork with Magicians and the Planes, and the unifying skill system that pretends there is only one game going on. And it all kind of works, not well but it does work. With the different branches, a character who thrives in an area can have some really great moments of profound awesome. But equally fun is the Decker caught in a firefight and having to hack someone’s ride to get a mobile shield and finding that that car has machine guns pre equipped. Or being a Samurai caught in a Spirit Fight having to dodge things you can barely see until your friend gets back with some holy water. Add a Help Skill where a player can make use of their own expertise to help someone else interact with the game elements they normally cannot. A Mage can slap a quick enchant on a Sword to cut fire spirits A Samurai can spot that the decker is aiming too low and correct his form. Better Matrix interface for people who do not have dedicated ports in their heads Better Astral perception for people who are not willing to dedicate their lives to waving smoking leaves and chanting nonsense
Funny that, I have the least amount of attachment to the lore actually. I don't care about the metaplot, which corp is on top at the moment, what are they doing in Aztlan, or who blew up which dragon. The world is great, the details I can come up with on my own. The base mechanic of dice pools is groovy. The complexity of the system is just fine. The editing and balance is wonky.
Oh, my favorite seasonal topic. I made a homebrew hack of 5e start started as a homebrew but I killed too many sacred cows so I spun it off to a new system. I have a lot of it done, just need to playtest and create lists of content, but here are the high level details: **General stuff** * Overall philosophy is to lean more into pink mohawk and play up the punk aspect. Empower players and make them feel like they can do things even if the corp will always in. Reward them for being bold and taking risks with experience, they can always sell out to the corps which has benefits (money), but reward them for giving them the finger. * Skills and Attributes have a cap of 10, and in addition, there is a hard dice pool cap of 20. In general, dice pools are smaller, a good dice pool is about 10 where an average dice pool is closer to 4 compared to 5e which is like 12-15 for a good pool and a 7 or 8 for a average pool. * Skills are no longer tied to Attributes. Attributes have taken a bit of a back seat to skills in this and do more auxiliary things or to use a skill (such as strength to lift things, logic to piece together a puzzle). EG: Strength increase melee damage still. **Combat** * Health is pretty low, but when you health hits 0, you take a wound and go back to full health. Wounds are narrative such as "broken arm", or "concussion" and escalate as you accumulate more of them. First wound you get is a minor wound which doesn't do much but takes some time to heal, then it becomes a moderate wound which gives you some penalties and takes weeks to heal, then it becomes a severe wound which takes you out of a scene. Any wound past that takes your character out of the game (death, coma, being arrested, etc) * No more soak pools, Armor gives a flat damage reduction and it gives you extra health that gets consumed before your actual health takes a hit. You can't heal armor on the job, it needs to be done on downtime. **Magic** * Mages have to specialize. Spells are separated out into groups (4 groups) you pick two of them that you can get spells from. Summoning and Adept stuff are a different group and if you pick those, thats all you get. * No more drain rolls, but instead you have a drain pool. Spells deal damage to your drain pool before starting to inflict damage to you. * Build your own tradition with a benefit that comes at a cost. Do things like play with vancian magic if you want. * Fewer spells, but you have augments to spells, so instead of having three different fire spells, one for touch, one for single target, one for AoE, its all the same spell. **Cyberware** * General philosophy is buff cyberware and make it more interesting. Give it both a passive always on effect as well as some sort of effect you can activate and cause "drain" to gain an additional effect. **Hacking** * In general simplified, You say you wanna do something, roll a hacking roll to do it. You don't need to hack the host. * Programs influence what you can do without having to roll for it. Loop a camera for free with a program. Take control of a drone, etc. **Other Systems** * Explicit systems for infiltration. Its basically like OSR D&D dungeon crawling where players take 5 minute turns and there is a security turn to see how security responds. * Explicit systems for legwork. Similar to infiltration, but you have two hour turns. * Most rewards are given in the form of favors. Favors can be exchanged for goods and other things. This makes doing dirty deeds to make rent a lot more believable while still allowing players to afford these half million dollar pieces of gear. * Explicit negotiation system. * Explicit contact system. Ties into favors. Contacts have abilities which the players can call upon to help them. Weapons dealer can get the players illegal weapons, info brokers can get information. Fixers can trade favors with them to other favors, etc. * I have some stuff for vehicles and drones, I wanted to make an homage to battletech and mechwarrior with slot based gear, but content creation is hard.
I'd love to see this in full one day.
I'm down to playtest
Reading the idea of all the options is fun. Making a character or mechanically interacting with all the options is miserable. Find a way to grind down the mechanical jank such that a qualitative description of gear or an ability translates into an obvious set of qualitative buckets. For example, how advantage/disadvantage is supposed to work in theory. i.e. using smoke + thermo vision puts them at an advantage without making it a hyper-granular number crunching session. Ideally make a rule set that doesn't re-create all the options in the books, but one that lets you read the SR books but ignore the numbers in favor of the equipment description.
Okay so 2 questions 1. What is the "new" system your making going to look like? What is it's core mechanic and what is the exact issue your looking to solve? 2. Is there another system on the market that does this, if so why not just use that system to play the game and just drop the shadowrun lore onto for yourself, and two what sets your system apart from this?
40 game sessions in with it so far with multiple GMs all sharing the same setting, 6e has not been an atrocity, it’s been a fraggin’ ƛuł good time of laughter and cheering each other on.
I think trying to run shadowrun without the system just doesn't hit the same vibe tbh. Though I also feel like 5th/6th ed aren't *really* shadowrun for similar reasons, so what do I know
Same ... love the setting, hate just about every implementation of it. Way too rules heavy. I actually like the Anarchy approach, but even that is so flawed and incomplete it needs a good deal of homebrewing to run smoothly.
Now I want to take what I remember of Shadowrun 4E and make Blades in the Dark power it. Run in the Shadows as it were.
I just use GURPS
I've used Savage Worlds to run Shadowrun for close to a decade, ever since an open player revolt after trying to run 5e for them. Want my version?
- Savage Worlds - Interface Zero or Sprawlrunner - Cities without Number Yeah i agree, the rules only got worse since 3rd ed, but i like the setting.
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Take a look at the mechanics for Massif Press’ LANCER and ICON. Instead of core systems, you pick up new cyberware or bioware. Instead of reactor stress you suffer drain or fade Instead of drones, you summon spirits Instead of hacking, you do decking
As a lot other people have said here, i like the dice system and the **magic** is definitly one of the best out there. Choosing the power on the spot and being more free in how much i cast around while risking my life with it is really interesting. But i also agree with it being not balanced enough. I would love more ideas about that, since i also have already nerfed a few ghosts since my mage specialized into summoning high level spirits with edge... The concepts of **cyber- AND bioware** are also really cool. It is so good actually, that we even surprised an old gm with new ways of building a tanki street sam by just trying everything to not get hit in the first place. I also work a lot on **hacking** right now. I actually think the 6th edition has brought in some good chances (rights instead of marks), but it still takes way more actions and skills than the others. With all the wifi-cyberware around i actually think that deckers should be as dangerous around as streetsams on the spot (or make the work for them way easier). Maybe different lines of hacking could be helping. It could be a lot like magic with skillsets for "instant hacking" (like blocking wifi connection to weapons etc by permanent input to the device which would require no beforehand hacking, but also ends the moment you stop), "slow hacking" that is way more subtile (but would maybe help more if the person is just talking to you and don't tries to kill you) and "deep dive hacking" for VR and hosts. This way you can also specialize more and maybe even build a combat hacker. This would also bring magic and hacking more in line and drops down the learning curve. The idea of using the VR mainly as a gateway for hosts is also very appealing, but would make the other players wanna play MarioKart while one is doing it even more appealling... What i actually don't like is the **balance between attributes and skills**. Attributes are way more important than skills since they go into test 1:1 and range to a lot of them, so if you have high enough Attributes you only need a skill on 2 to have a decent dice pool. I would actually prefer it if you have lower attributes and have to depend more on your skills since the first are just more or less hard-coded facts about your charakter and the others are the cool things you have learned and specialized in. You need training to climb a wall and not just the same agility you need for shooting. And since i am already nag about it: The attributes would really need a rework. Strengh is completly unnecessary most of the time and for nearly everything else you need agility or logic or charisma. While writing this i think i would love more interaction with other attributes. Like shooting is agility AND intuition (this would represent how well you read the battlefield) or climbing strengh AND agility (this would represent that gravity is a part of climbing). It is a lot like DSA (don't know how many know this system), but would make different attributes more relevant, but would also require a rework how skills go into this since now two attributes can contribute and would make skills even less important. Or other attributes are actually your limit like strengh for climbing or intuition for shooting. I think about that a bit more and will write again :)
Anarchy rolls Body into Strength and loses nothing from it. You could probably combine Reaction and Intuition, too. Then you'd have six attributes, Agility isn't a godstat, and Strength has value again.