So it's coming soon.  Have you heard about it?  Kept up on it?  What are your thoughts and impressions?

In reply to pdboddy (msg # 1):

I've heard nothing but pessimism from the Shadowrun community, but to be fair...that's about all I ever expect out of the Shadowrun community. I've never met a fanbase so devoted to criticizing the thing they claim to love. And while I'll gladly admit Shadowrun has its flaws in every iteration, nobody seems to talk about what they do like in it, at least in my experience.

I, for one, am excited. From what catalyst has said, they plan to focus on reducing the sheer crunch involved in encounters. So hopefully I no longer need to make 4 different rolls every time I fire my gun. And from the roadmap they released, it looks like there's going to be a lot of setting books, which I'm always willing to take a look at.

That's something I have always loved about Shadowrun: its setting.

They need to make more setting fluff.  Not more crunch. :P

I am excited to see 6th edition and I am already prepared for it.  Every edition has improved things in places, annnd found new things to screw up.  So not going to worry about it unless it's a complete mess.

I'd really like them to start making books about the setting separate from the mechanical bits. I mean, yeah, include the things necessary to run a game in (say) Denver or Shanghai or Dubai -- but we really need a book that is all about the Sixth World in general terms. Likewise, the main rulebook (where the crunchy bits are) shouldn't have stuff about the setting scattered around all over it.

Try looking through the SR5 Core Rulebook and tell me about the setting. Yes, there's that chapter at the beginning that summarizes the history and overall stuff, but then there's little scraps of detail and useful info spread all around, in sidebars and short stories. It's maddening.

Yeah, it's a far cry from the books in previous editions.

I think that if they are going to bloat the number of pages in the core rulebook, they'd best be bloating it with more setting.

And better cross-referencing.

Honestly though if you dig into it Shadowrun is not lacking in setting. If you go on the fan wikis you can just bury yourself for hours in the setting. Considering the sheer volume of books, novels, video games, RPG materials etc. the setting is quite rich.

What I think they need is more GM aids to help create better missions and a player checklist to streamline heist planning.

In my opinion Shadowrun has always failed me in two ways

1) Extreme crunch. Trying to figure out the interactions between hacking and devices and magic and explosions can grind a game to a halt really easily as you flip through about 6 different chapters OR just say "screw it" and hope nobody gets upset when they realized they were somehow screwed by streamlined rules.

2) Players planning missions. I can come up with a target and populate the map and the security involved just fine (there are tons of resources to do this) but then the players just get paralyzed by decisions. They just sit there and spend hours reconning and hacking and bribing and observing and questioning and arguing about their plans.

I think what would really help is if they gamified/created mechanics around information gathering versus a time limit. I.e. each of you can do one thing to prepare for the mission and rules to allow those "things" to be quickly handled via some dice rolls.

I remember playing in a game with solid players and literally 2 sessions in a row were planning the mission and when the mission finally happened like 90% of our prep work was wasted or didn't matter because in the first 5 seconds someone botched a roll, alarms were sounded and we ended up just gunning through the place anyway.


Trust me, the setting doesn't need more fluff. I mean it needs the game world to continue but saying that Shadowrun lacks in fluff makes me think you don't even begin to realize how deep the lore of the game goes...

I don't know if the 6th edition will have anything like that, praguepride, but I think I could hack in some rules to simulate that process.  The "you have one thing you get to do to prepare" system.

Shadowrun has been my favorite game since 1989.  I have played every edition except 4th and 5th ed (even with its typos) is my favorite so far.  I even still have my 1st and 2nd ed hard cover books.  I love the lore, the system, the crunch, all of it!

My problem with 6th ed isn't the books or the system.  It is the fact that Catalyst has proven with 5th edition that they do not care AT ALL about the fans.  Their lack of errata for any of their books (except the core book) proves that.  The only reason they are making a 6th edition is because they want to take more money from the SR community and I for one will not be buying it on principle.  If they had actually provided errata for their books then i would at least buy the core book to see if I liked the changes (from what i hear they are going to try to take a lot of the crunch out however, which is why I love making characters for the system).

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 8):

I stopped playing back in 3rd edition.   I took a look at fourth and decided that they'd moved in a direction that I didn't like.   Second edition was the best, imo.

I have played a few games of Shadowrun throughout the editions since 2nd.
we never get many hours under the belt before we moved on to something else.

In 5th edition they did really well to keep the setting true to it's soul, while making most of the 'tough to manage mechanics' a hell of a lot easier to work with.
I and the group of players I play with are keen on looking at 6th edition

I haven't read the recent q&a/marketing blurb they put out, but I haven't seen anyone point towards a commitment from CLG to try and be better at the nuts and bolts of actually putting out game books.

Their stuff has a history of being poorly edited, poorly laid out, and poorly organized.  It doesn't matter what the quality of the content is if it's either hard to find or missing from the books altogether.

I will probably eventually invest in the line as it is one of my favorite settings, but currently I don't have plans to buy anything at launch.

The fact that I buy everything in digital format now and the last CGL PDF book I bought on the day it was released didn't even have bookmarks, just reinforces the benefits of waiting.

I would have been livid and demanded a refund. Wow that is just bad. Now I am spoiled if I can't click on lines in the index or table of contents and get hyperlinked to the page but not having bookmarks? Absolutely ridiculous quality of digital product right there.

I'm like you hunter, I stopped playing back in 3rd edition when 4th ed jumped the proverbial shark. Just got a little bit too out there to be enjoyable.

My only thing they could do is learn to condense their mainbook better. While more fluff sourcebooks would be nice it would be nicer if they streamlined that unorganized mess we have to suffer through for character generation.

Xiphoniii that is because those who like, love, or are satisfied with the system rarely ever comment to that effect in public or if we do we usually do so privately to those involved in creating the game.

Thus creating the disproportionate representation on various forums.

However, this is often true of many things not just Shadowrun.