I generally keep abreast of games, and the rare release that startles me I find interesting. Well this is it. Shadowrun is now in its 4th edition, and boy did it need it. 3E was a nightmare, 400 pages of densely packed material supplemented by 5 intrinsically important sourcebooks. The new SR is supposedly simplified, although I havent actually bought it yet.
Its available now on Drivethroughrpg for 25 dollars.
I plan too however.
SR and I have a history.
It goes back to Washington State, where I lived for 2 years (Tacoma to be more precise) I had a buddy who got me back into RPGs by the name of Charon Macdonald. He ran some of the best games ever. Anyhow he got me into a lot of obscure stuff. Because of him I played Synnabar, Traveller, Champions, Gurps, TFOS, Robotech, Hunter Planet, Rifts and a whole slew of other games. Our Robotech game lasted years (Invid Invasion)
So, we started this hot new game called Shadowrun, that was set... well pretty much where we were. Sharing a common geography was cool, but playing Cyborgs and Mages and Elves and dwarves was way cooler.
My buddy Tom and I formed a team, him a mage (hermitic thank you very much) and me a Private Eye (think Deckard, only more Sam Spade and less trigger happy retirement plan.) Charons occasional character was a rigger, Ken played a Decker and Tony played a Street Samurai on the edge and Ben played an orc strongman (and Biker) . Charon mainly stuck to the modules because he had 16 irons in the fire, and oddly enough we played at school, because we all had a free period together. So, we hung out by the Atrium and got a good solid hour of gaming in 5 days a week an hour a day for 2 years. Not to mention Tom, Ken Charon and I rode the bus for those years and it was an hour ride to and from school. It was awsome 2 games (the bus game was Robotech) and the other game was ... well whatever we wanted to go with. Even cooler the school we went to had a week in the winter where students made up their own curriculum so my second year there we took the week and gamed. It was like a marathon weekend session, only we played Gurps for 10 hours a day for a week. It was great!!!!
Shadowrun sticks out in my head for a lot of reasons though. Computers, once just a tool for typing term papers were starting to really become something cool and the art of SR at the time had a lot of CG which was awesome (dated now, but awesome none the less) It had a cool history, and the idea of Coastal Washington becoming surrounded by strange indian cultures, and an elven kingdom, and have the US fall apart was really cool.
Also we started getting in to cyberpunk.
Mainly though it was just a good group and a good dynamic. And we had a good GM who not only could save games, but make them just that much more dramatic. Take the closing scene in Dreamchipper (one that wasnt in the module) Our PCs finally tracked down Cleopatra and her bodyguards, but in the end decided to let them go because we didnt feel like murdering an innocent (Ghengis Khan and jack the Ripper were dangerous unstoppable menaces who couldn't be reasoned with Cleo, well she was sexy and devious but not dangerous per se) . A few minutes later we realized that our Mr. Johnson was going to kill us if he didnt get the last chip. But we didnt want to kill her.
She was going into Puget sound by boat, so we got our rigger to ferry us out in his helo, and my character made the jump from helo to boat by an arm (holding on to a rail) while our mage floated down only to get shot to ribbons by Cleo's orc bodyguard. Which is when I swing onto deck hand cannon blazing catching him right in the throat. The other body guard looks at the scene and jumps ship, and Cleo and I have a battle of wills to see who gets who to back down. I win, because she doesnt know our Orc also jumped on board. So he hit her, hard, in the Kidneys (dont want to damage the chip right?) and I eject the darn thing, while our orc buddy bandages up our mage and checks to see if orc with the lmg is still alive (he isnt so off into Puget sound he goes along with my unlicensed hand cannon). We ended with me visiting the rigger gal (Cleo) in the hospital (where we left her to recover, Chip trauma and internal bleeding) where we mistily said goodbye.
Anyhow like I said good game.
I plan to buy the hard cover in sept, but if anyone gets the Download, tell me how it is ok.
