There’s a decent GM advice section with plenty of details on NPCs and campaigns, and then the book rounds out with the details, such as equipment, toxins, drugs, magical gear and critters. The book has the usual structure of a gaming core rulebook it introduces you to the world, takes you through character creation, skill use and combat, and then takes you through the unique aspects of Shadowrun The Matrix, Magic and all that entails. With a book as large and detailed as this, that’s a bonus. The fact that there’s a detailed index at the back of the book means that it’s pretty easy and quick to find what you need when you need it, even in the middle of the action. Once you realise that the contents pages detail every facet of the game then you also realise that it also acts like an index everything is pretty easy to find just by skimming the contents. At first there’s a sense of overwhelming complication there’s a lot going on in this book and the contents page is a bit of a shock, even to a seasoned gamer like myself. Upon opening the book one of the first things that struck me was the contents there are five pages of them and they’re very detailed. There’s also a code to use should you wish to play Shadowrun Online using it will get you an exclusive in-game item, namely a Hammerli 620 handgun, and there’ll be other freebies with other Shadowrun 5th Edition products as they come out. At the back of the book, along with the detailed index, is a character sheet and the primary charts and tables you’ll need to run a game, which is always a good thing. The artwork is of a very high standard and there are some well-written short stories that help to build the background and style of the setting. The print is clear and mostly black on white, and it’s all glossy pages throughout. There are some excellent fold-out pages of cityscapes, certain characters and the previous edition covers including the original Elmore cover for 1st Edition that I recognised immediately. The action-filled cover and excellent interior art really captures the atmosphere that Shadowrun wants to evoke a dark, violent, magic-filled cyberpunk world of secrets and danger. The hardback 480-page full colour book is certainly an impressive thing to behold. I always intended to return to this game some day so now seems as good a time as any but will Shadowrun 5th Edition still have those aspects of 1st Edition I didn’t like? Sadly, this also means that I can’t tell you how this new edition compares to all the other editions, so I’ll just have to try and explain to you what this game did for me. I know that game situations such as this are mostly group specific and can’t be pinned on a facet of the actual game, but I can only go from personal experience.īecause of this I completely skipped the following three editions. It was two genres and two different approaches to the game, and the fact that the rules pretty much divided players up as they did their own thing didn’t help. After the initial excitement of being able to game in such a world the mixing of the two genres started to grate as we had two fans of two different types of creative fiction bouncing off one another the cyberpunk fans who wanted to blast through the neon rain-soaked streets on their Yamaha Rapiers, and the fantasy fans who wanted to cast spells and do the suburban equivalent of a dungeon bash, as best they could in the concrete forest of Seattle, and basically do the things they used to do in the high fantasy games we played. The Shadowrun universe, I felt, was an acquired taste. We got some great games out of it and ran afoul of more than one troll bouncer - and I remember breaking a cardinal rule and being double-crossed by a dragon and vaporised - but quite simply the system and certain aspects of the setting didn’t do it for me. Many were the times when my Street Samurai had to sit back and pick at his fingernails while the GM took a Decker into the net. It felt like two games in one, one for the action monkeys like myself and one for the tech-savvy Deckers. Saying that, I never really got on with Shadowrun 1st Edition as a GM. We got a lot out of that game we were all D&D and Warhammer Fantasy fans and we were also big fans of Blade Runner and Akira, so to have the two genres mixed up in some crazy cyberpunk setting was a great idea for gamers such as ourselves. I’ve not played Shadowrun since it’s 1st Edition release way back in 1989.
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