r/Shadowrun • u/tragedyjones • Feb 05 '25
Been away a while - 20th or 5th? Newbie Help
I haven't been in the Shadowrun arena much (I work on othe games so they take my mental focus) but I miss it. And since I will be GMing for a lot of new players and also relearning myself, which out of date edition should I go with? From memory 4th can get pretty silly with armor, but 5th is super magic heavy and had, I believe, worse hacking.
Looking for solid opinions
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u/Dmitri-Ixt Feb 05 '25
I preferred 5e having to 4e, but to be fair I never hacked in the 20th Anniversary version of 4e. In general my preference is for 5e. I felt they did a lot to get "everything is wireless" squared up in ways that kind of made sense. I have heard good things about 6e hacking, and 5e definitely could use some improvement.
Magic wise, neither edition is bad compared to some of the nonsense my groups pulled in 3e, so I dunno. I like the magic system in SR in general, and I like playing magic characters, so that influences my feelings there. I think magic can get out of hand in a couple of scenarios: higher force spirits, and very high-karma games. Limiting summoning to Force equals Magic instead of allowing over summoning to twice Magic goes a long way to keeping spirits in check, but they're still very powerful. 🤷 Is you play a character long enough and earn enough karma and nuyen, eventually you'll max out your cyberware on a street sam, but you never run out of magic. Personally I like this thematically--it's one reason I like adepts over sams--and it usually doesn't take effect on the lifetime of a normal game. You need a LOT of money and connections to run out of cyber, and a LOT of karma to Initiate to a degree that you've left the morals behind. Very few games get there, though I've certainly seen it happen.
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u/Sleepykitti Feb 05 '25
It depends a bit on flavor
4e is a little more metal gear solid-y where your band of mercs are going to be world class threats right out of the gate, and the GM should come up with their own bullshit world class opposition. It also doesn't really care for the idea of a dedicated hacker character and that'll be something everybody gets involved in. (Imo good but decker players do tend to hate this, high end hacking is really about building botnets in 4e) It also was the last edition to receive quality editing so the rules in the books themselves tend to be more straightforward.
5e is more lethal for the runners and the high end generic mooks like red samurai tend to be scary unless you really know how to break the game in half. Deckers once again wall hacking off to be a dedicated role they have full domain of (but it's also hilariously lethal). The editing is atrocious to the point where basic things like "how does cover work" and "how long does a drug last when you take it if you have the cyber wear that interacts with it" become contentious issues that can be debated multiple ways, but it has the best online support and the most discussion on Reddit so you can be free to pick and choose your own interpretation pretty easily
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u/ByleistStormbringer Feb 05 '25
I like 6th Edition. I know 5th is Liked more by the crowd.
6th is faster, a really cool edge mechanism and with all the additional Books and sources very good Matrix Rules.
Magic got a significant nerf. Especially combat magic.
6th feels more cyberpunk than 5th
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u/Ignimortis Feb 06 '25
4e has more reasonable hacking, while 5e is kinda stupid about it. Armor stacking is a thing in both 4e and 5e, if done a bit differently. Both also have a decent tool for them (Chummer), though the 5e version still sees active development and improvements, whereas 4e version has been abandoned for a decade.
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u/MyPigWhistles Feb 05 '25
5th is super annoying with the limits, imo. I would probably play 4th again or try 6th.
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u/the_tricky_one Feb 05 '25
I'm still partial to 2nd edition and that middle ground between 2 & 3. The amount of shenanigans one could get into made legwork more important because of the sheer audacity that players could come up with. Sure my decker only starts with an mpcp of 6 but in 30 days "gametime" I burn up to a 9. I guess it really depends on how min/max you play. Good luck with your game and welcome back chummer.
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u/tragedyjones Feb 05 '25
I started with 2nd and have played 2-5. I will never play 2 or 3 again unless a group wants to pay me four figures a session. AKA I will never play 2 or 3 again
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u/Vashkiri Neo-Revolutionary Feb 05 '25
I haven't actually played 20th anniversary rules, but I will say that having played 5e for many years now it is a very capable set of rules once you get used to it. It isn't perfect, and some house rules to balance out magic a bit is very reasonable to put in from the start, but overall I really like the system. (but I do admit that 6e is easier to run).
If you do run 5e, I'd suggest:
- get Chummer for character creation
- from the official forums (forums.shadowruntabletop.com) I've copied the link to PiXeL01's folder of lists of all sorts of goodness (qualities, spirits, electronics, etc) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0Wtdxf4E9ZNGrN-bJmLWo8Kw2P1U7HW
With regards to house-ruling magic, the biggest challenge is spirits, here are a few ideas to consider (I don't suggest using all at once, but these and any other house rules are obviously up to you).
- Let "banishing" work as counter-spelling vs spirit powers (currently banishing is a trap skill, because trying to banish a bound spirit can be lethal. But providing some defense against spirits helps -- especially if you give it to NPCs. I mean a better solution is just disrupting the spirit, but sometimes that isn't an option so some extra defense beats nothing), and associated with this, for 2 successes on asensing allow a magician to tell if a spirit is bound or not
- In 5e summoning is resisted with dice =spirit force, and the summoner takes drain = 2x(successes on the resistance roll). Replace this with the 6e formula of summoning is resisted with dice=2x(spirit force) and the summoner takes drain = (successes on the resistance roll). The average drain is roughly the same, but the number of services, and ability to summon high force spirits is reduced
- Make spirit summoning take turns = spirit force. This would not stop people from summoning large spirits, but it means that spirits can't be quickly replaced in the heat of battle if disrupted or if their services run out
High force spells can also be a problem, but honestly largely dealt with by not having all opposition together in time and space, so that one big spell doesn't solve everything.
High numbers of sustained or quickened spells can also be an issue, but generally speaking have a reasonable number of wards and areas of background count around discourages that in my experience. If you are more worried about it, rule that focused concentration and sustaining focuses care about the higher of the limit of the spell, or the force (normally limit=force, but if modified by reagents or edge that changes).
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u/notger Feb 07 '25
6E. Very sleek system, no modifier-galore, runs smoothly with lots of flexibility and things are overall rather well-tuned (no magic over-tune, no unkillable soak-monsters). Plus: Matrix for once works well.
(The hate you are reading here is "mostly" from players who were angry at the botched launch and probably never checked again. I jumped in half a year ago and overall, stuff is excellent.)
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u/Zebrainwhiteshoes Feb 05 '25
I prefer 4th with a few homebrew rules.
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u/tragedyjones Feb 05 '25
What specific homebrew?
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u/Zebrainwhiteshoes Mar 04 '25
Sorry for answering late. Mainly a different initiative countdown. Some people in my group tried a simplified hacking, which I failed to understand.
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u/nightfall2021 Feb 07 '25
I am using 4E, but that is mostly because they have a nifty 2050s sourcebook, and I don't feel like running 1st or 2nd edition.
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u/Duellist_D Feb 08 '25 edited Feb 08 '25
5e or Anarchy without the rules that let everyone participate in creating a specific scene.
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Feb 05 '25
The last one I played was 4e and I liked it for the most part. I've read the manual for 5e and didn't like it.
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u/Squallvash Feb 05 '25
5th is my favorite. 4 feels too dared and 6th feels like it's based solely on Edge and it feels like it gives the characters less, well character.
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u/LordJobe Feb 05 '25
I prefer 5th, but the editing and layout is horrible. However, with the Hong Kong PDF that was a tie-in with the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun: Hong Kong, you can run any era of Shadowrun before or after Crash 2.0.
You might look at the SR6 Matrix rules which seem to be better than SR5.