White Wolf Magazine #30 had my beloved Bat Shaman (and a few other totems such as Badger, Deer, Dolphin, and Fox!) After much searching, I found a PDF on DriveThru. But this got me wondering: What other White Wolf Magazine issues have your must haves or even fun to haves for Shadowrun?

Refresh an old chummer's memory for me? I ran across them in the 2E Grimoire supplement, but unless I'm blind, I can't find the nuyen cost of one anywhere in the book. For some reason, I feel like it was 3000 nuyen x the rating, but I don't know that this is correct. Lil help for my aging hoop?

EDIT: NEVER MIND! I suddenly remembered Fields of Fire had an updated gear list! Indeed my memory served and those endless hours of character creation are still paying off. It is indeed Rating x 3000 nuyen.

Continuing my series of form-fillable remastered character sheets, here is the Remastered Magician Character Sheet from The Shadowrun Companion.

As usual, this is NOT a scan. It was built from the ground up using Adobe InDesign and Acrobat (for the form-fillable portion).

Almost done with SR2. Just one more official sheet to go...

Continuing my series of form-fillable remastered character sheets, here is the Remastered character sheet from The Shadowrun Companion. It is notable for adding Edges & Flaws, the official logo, and unifying the font style with the rest of the book line.

As usual, this is NOT a scan. It was built from the ground up using Adobe InDesign and Acrobat (for the form-fillable portion).

Continuing my remastering of classic character sheets, here is my re-creation of the Magician character sheet from The Grimoire - 2nd Edition.

As always, this is NOT a scan. This was built from the ground up in Adobe Indesign & Acrobat using the original layout and fonts and is Form Fillable.

...and the players loved it. Most of them hadn't played before, but they had a great time and want to play more. I'll probably convert us to 2E rules, maybe steal some stuff from later editions to polish rough edges, but I think I might be able to run some of the old modules again.

It started a week or so ago when a friend bought me the book as a gift a bit ago, which got me willing to run a game of it. I wrote up a quick adventure and off we went tonight. People had fun, got right into all the same old roles and troubles that runners always do, and generally had a blast. I've learned some good tricks over the years as a GM and player both just in general, and that helped me provide a solid revisit to something I was only a learner at all those years ago. it was like hopping into an old favorite car and showing what it could do.

Just had to share the joy of revisiting 2050 with new friends and old, and having all the same fun as always. Cheers, Chummers!

Continuing my remastering of classic character sheets, here is my re-creation of the Street Samurai character sheet from the Street Samurai Catalog (Revised).

As always, this is NOT a scan. This was built from the ground up in Adobe Indesign & Acrobat using the original layout and fonts and is Form Fillable.

About 3 months ago, I re-created the Second Edition character sheet. This was NOT a scan but a full vector, 1-to-1 rebuild of the original character sheet.

I just wanted to let everyone know that now it's Form Fillable.

I'm a new GM and it's been really hard to figure out the rulebook. Could someone please explain me what is the practical use for the sorcery skill?

The book says it "governs the control of magical energy in form of spells".

Reading the casting spells section in magic chapter I don't see anything about this skill.

Instead, as described in the page 159. I'll be using the force of the spell to cast and resist any spells.

If thats' true, a witch could not adquire any spell skills at character creation and still engage in combat with no worries?

https://discordapp.com/channels/602518187241635860/1284625971667796010/1284625971667796010

It's on the Classic Shadowrun Discord. It uses Libre Office which is free to download. The Chargen is in Beta right now, but I've worked most of the bugs out. I will be adding a couple example characters in a couple days. I want to get permission from the players who made them.

Edit: I have also added a spell spreadsheet as well.

https://discordapp.com/channels/602518187241635860/1284884978458562631

TLDR: Any setting suggestions on moving “Supernova” from 2061 to 2049?

I am planning for a possible SR 3e campaign. I would like to run through the 2050s using the published adventures (1e-3e). (Yes, I’m aware I shouldn’t worry about crossing the bridge of long term planning until I get there and see if a campaign develops and lasts, but, hey, a man can dream, can’t he?).

I was looking at the adventures in the First Run 3e product.

I’ll probably run the “Prototype Envy” adventure in the 3e QuickStart rules first, but I was planning ahead to try “Supernova” from First Run next.

(I will save “Food Fight” as a fill in if the PCs walk away from a run or there’s going to be a short session and or lower attendance. Actually, I wanted to write another random short where the PCs face off against a sympathetic villain like Michael Douglas in Falling Down).

However, I would appreciate some suggestions on setting “Supernova” in 2049 instead of 2061. There are a few things easy to ignore - the Renraku Arcology shutdown hasn’t occurred, and the subsequent UCAS Army presence can be just left out. Yet, there are some important NPCs and corporations that aren’t period appropriate? Does anyone have any suggestions about what to do about that? The adventure is about stealing a product from a tiny corp (TekLon) to give it to one of two rival megacorps trying to swipe/swallow a smaller fish.

The megacorps are Novatech and Renraku. Should I just switch Novatech to Fuchi? (It wasn’t around back then).

However, what do I do about the important NPCs? Richard Villiers and Miles Lanier? I can’t remember who and what they were a part of back in 2049 and whether it makes sense for them to be there. I’m coming back to SR after a 20 year hiatus.

The easy fix is just to make them two important people - just nobodies in terms of the official setting.

I would prefer the real characters because it could have some cool future leads to other adventures and push the PCs into connecting to the awesomeness of the setting.

Can someone make any recommendations on adjusting Novatech, Villiers, and Lanier to 2049? Swapping or changing to other setting specific NPCs and corporations works too.

Is there a list of all the 3rd edition modules? Starting a new campaign… and these were my favorite.

Looking at hydraulic jacks for a character-build. Would you need to buy them twice (one for each leg) or once (for both legs)? What are peoples thoughts on this.

Pleased to hear.

About a year ago I got ahold of a 2nd Edition Shadowrun Core Rulebook from a thrift store for only a couple dollars. I haven't had too much time to read into the system, but I have played a single 1-on-1 session of 3E about two years ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've read the rulebook a few times, skimming through it a handful of times. I've got a group of 4 players willing to play who are my regular group, and I've got a bit of prep ready. (I came up with a few gangs that are at eachother's throats, like an Irish Elf mob warring with the Yakuza for example). What I want to know is how do I come up with runs or start a campaign? It'll be about a week before we have a session 0 where I can get more info on what everyone's going to be playing as. I'm mostly adjusted to D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1st as well as GURPS 4th, so I'm not as concerned with learning the system as I would be normally. I just don't really know how to plan. Everything I've seen seems to be "do a few non-story runs to let the group get used to it before opening up to a true campaign", which I'm not opposed to. Overall though I just want to hear some wisdom from the classic shadowrun community as to how I can get into running this awesome game.

Hello.

Hope you are all well. Does anyone know which runs Deus features in and a rough chronological order? I am thinking of basing a campaign around Deus and ending with system failure. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Is there any way of "inhibiting" a mages ability to cast spells, e.g. for imprisonment? I mean it as not having him be able to even try to cast a spell for a limited time.

During our visit to the US, I managed to get some very much missed old hardcopies back. I mostly, as many do, use PDFs nowadays, since I bring my laptop to sessions or play online in Discord games. I was missing a bunch of old books I had sold long ago due to moving overseas.

But, now I have them back after finding them at a shop online, and not only that, I managed to procure a 1st edition hardcover copy again for extra awesome! I don't play much 1e these days(I often play 2nd, 3rd, or some amalgamation of the two, like base 3rd rules in the 2050s with older sourcebooks, or 2nd edition using 3rd edition's cyberlimb rules, etc), but I do use 1st's sourcebooks a lot, since the 2050s are my chosen timeline to play in.

collection is far from done, but I hope to procure a few more before we fly home in 2 weeks!

(Side note: WHY did 2nd edition do away with 1st's language rules? That's one rule we carry over to our 2nd games still-3rd gives its own points for knowledge and language, so its not an issue there, but 1st language rules were really cool the way it gave Int points toward other language families.)

https://preview.redd.it/7nepxsmvbsbd1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54e69fe99fcd8283a35d09577e31520f0c56f9bd

https://preview.redd.it/9ru4nvowbsbd1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5abb947f122161db4d64d42987db7703f838639d

I remember seeing a document someone posted on here about revamping the 2e magic rules for mages and I thought I book marked it but to my surprise I did not, can anyone point me to a link or the posting? I did a search but couldn’t find it. Thank you.

New to SR and just grabbing some SR3 books - grabbed target:matrix and it mentions SR3 core AND “Matrix” - what’s the difference between Matrix and Target:Matrix?

I was chatting with u/AsrovaakMikosevaar about some resources, and then got distracted (sorry) and didn't post them - so trying to fix that. But then I thought that these might be useful for other people too, so decided to put a post together for them

We run a modified version of 3rd ed - more a "3.5" if you will, for a number of games ranging in style from Pink Mohawk to Black Trenchcoat and some Mirrorshades. Along the way we've changed some stuff to suit us, and what we saw as some issues with how the game played. It works for us, YMMV - but even if you don't like all of it, maybe some of it will suit your table.

Magic
We expanded the number of metamagic techniques to add some interesting flavour and extend some things to make them more useful (like we never, ever, found anyone using Anchoring, as we don't think the rules would work for any sane mage - but when you add additional levels to it, then it becomes much more useful.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hxvehg176a2fdipjgpflm/Metamagic-techniques.pdf?rlkey=jabtvgtezm868cnms35461ee1&dl=0
A PDF showing the layout of the techniques, which are pre-reqs for others, what the limitations are etc.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dae13b0o7x7er79hhkq30/Metamagic-techniques-rules.pdf?rlkey=o7ctutlkppirme8mx4jwzafsf&dl=0
The rules in a summary form, good as a quick reference, including all the new stuff we invented - we got fed up searching through the SOTA books and trying to remember what was in the core book, what was in MITS and what was in some other splat book - so they're all in here, along with a reference to their rarity (which we assigned based on our needs, tables - so whatever works for you!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aw8mbf97q1u8w20r0qvit/Types-of-magical-characters.pdf?rlkey=p227kikq74x2n7nd3pokk9bnm&dl=0

A series of slides showing the choice between various different types of magical characters, and their build point costs (again, modified for our table - change to suit yours and how much you want to run magicrun!

NPC
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dl7snaoxmlunzd5lxqvvf/NPC-Quick-generator.xlsx?rlkey=ny8kxz34z22be4xfta0y1z314&dl=0
A very simple NPC generator in MS Excel - press F9 and it will generate 3 random NPCs, if you ever need to sprinkle in a quick bit of flavour. All the data is from tables in the 2nd tab, which can be extended to suit your purpose. I often find that even if I read one of these and think "that's not right for this area", it's enough to nudge my neurons to understand why it's not right and then riff off of that into something better - good for getting the creative juices flowing.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mq90zophv6b9zcd8qoozg/The-percentage-of-the-population-that-has-implanted-ware.docx?rlkey=lyawq13hfsxaq6bpulg4d4x9y&dl=0
A couple of page document with my thoughts on how many people in the world have cyberware, and of what type - trying to work out what is "normal" and what is not.

GM Aids

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9mxwpbwmuau7zkr3uyc7n/SR3.5-Combined-calculators.xlsx?rlkey=rhj9ydlu7t9tzh2yued9t6zd3&dl=0
A bunch of calculators in Excel, that covers a variety of stuff that I find useful in my games. There's a table of contents in the file, but briefly:
Speed, distance and time convertors - put in a tilt-wing's speed in metres per combat turn, and the distance from one smuggler stop to another, and it will tell you what the flying time is.
Ramming damage - a quick lookup chart to save working it out mid-combat
Ammo - a bunch of new ammo types we invented, alongside all the regular stuff in a handy lookup table (can be easily filtered to exclude the custom stuff)
Healing calculator - works out the TN and time to heal wounds for different circumstances
Skillsofts - works out the size and cost of different chips, along with the street costs
Totems - a list of all the shaman totems from the core rules, MITS and all the splatbooks I could find, along with advantages and disadvantages.
Phys-ad powers - as above, along with a bunch of custom / fan made stuff that add lots of flavour.
Weapons - as above again, along with a whole chunk of custom creations to suit our campaign needs and add more options. Many of them are *not* great, or super weapons - but the stuff you might find on cheap guards. Great for providing a less-lethal alternative for starting players to run up against!
Summoning - both normal and invoked spirits, with target numbers and drain codes
Magic groups - TNs for designing different magical groups and recording strictures etc
Magical design - ordered list for designing spells and learning them
Warding - gives you size of buildings and max possible warding size calculations
Countries - details of borders between countries, radar ratings etc. Still very much a WIP

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x9rwklh367n2bmk0wedao/02-Lifestyle-master.xlsx?rlkey=uq6h9jtfx0ncowhrhcon737wz&dl=0
Lifestyle calculator, using the expanded rules

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9algxhhs0mzajccx26msf/01-Master-character-sheet-v2-19.xlsx?rlkey=9zr6yppj815a44m4j51ks3bp7&dl=0
Character sheet generator.
This is what I use to generate all of my characters, and ask most of my players to use. It's an excel sheet, with a whole bunch of "modules" that can be dragged into position, to allow you to build pretty much most characters you might want to play. Like the other sheets I have, there's a data tab, so you can see and amend the source data for drop-downs and add in your own data if you wish. It does a bunch of the calculations and lookups for you. In some ways it's like a simplified version of Chummer - but I think it provides a nicer/neater output, that is easier to work with and keep up to date.

Hope these prove useful to someone - happy to answer questions or get feedback on them.

He everyone. Just noticed that there are these 3 programs listed in the core book gear section (pg262) but we can't seem to find details on them anywhere?

Is it a relic of SR1 that wasn't updated in 2e?

Intuitively Sift would be browse right? Armour = shields and Restore would be Medic? But these are listed in addition. Making 16 programs in the gear section but only 13 in the matrix section.

I have checked the sourcebook updates and there is nothing. I've glanced at Virtual Realities 2.0 and there are no programs by those names either

Hi all,

Been working on my own homebrew system for Shadowrun for a while - getting into the earlier editions, I feel the retro-tech solves alot of the issues that the modern versions run into regarding security systems, AR everywhere etc etc, so I intend to write my system with the retro-tech vibes of early editions instead of 4e/5e (which I've mostly played).

To justify the retro-tech vibes, I've come up with a simple hand-wavey reason: Background Magic counts degrade data dense signals, so that irl Wi-fi / blue tooth tech cant exist within the 6th World.

So commlinks are mostly just audio with bad video feeds, smartlinks are wired, matrix is decks jacking into access points etc etc. My only big concern is the Drone Rigger archetype - using short range radio signals allows RCCs to send commands to drones, but the Rigger wouldn't be able to "Jump In" to the drones anymore

What do folks think/feel on this?

21st Century Boy by Sigue Sigue Sputnik

I've been playing Shadowrun since the early '90s and sometimes it's fun to reflect on what our vision of the future was like compared to what the world has actually become. This is a music video from 1986 that I think is a pretty good representation of the early cyberpunk aesthetic. It could be the trailer for an SR Rocker campaign (surely, we've all run at least one of those), or it could be the fever dream of someone who is read too much Gibson and eaten too much bad sushi.

In any event, enjoy...

Hello,

I play 3rd edition.

1. Initiation does not improve a magician's magical defense capability. While the initiation grade allows increasing the Magic attribute, this attribute only accounts for 1/3 of the Magic Pool used for the magical defense test. Therefore, an initiate has the same magical defense capability as a non-initiate. In the last session (the Total Eclipse scenario), the group's magician put Eclipse and his bodyguard to sleep. This bothers me. :) Do you have any house rules regarding this ?
2. What initiation grade does an NPC have ? What level is reasonable to assign to them ? Do you have any examples to share ?

update: I thank those who replied to me. Your knowledge of the rules and your gaming experience are superior to mine, it's invaluable! I hope this will help others as well! :)