Shadowrun 3rd Edition

The Setting

The backbone of any successful game is its setting. Shadowrun takes the cliches from two completely different genres, fantasy and cyberpunk, and combines them in a way that is both familiar and wildy new. To summarize: for reasons unknown, elves, dwarves, and orks have returned to the world and magic is once again possible. Corporations rule the world as national governments are largely ineffectual. Peoples who did not forget their mystic roots, such as Native Americans, have harnassed the power of magic and forged it into political and economic muscle. The trappings of a typical cyberpunk dystopia are all there: ridiculously wealthy coporate elites dwell in isolated enclaves while the vast mass of the poor eke out a miserable existance in post-industrial ruins. In short, the world is a grim, gritty place.

The Characters

Players take on the role of shadowrunners, mercenaries employed by corporations for covert illicit activities, such as sabotage, assassination, and theft. Character creation uses a simple set of priorities. Players begin with five priorities and assign one each in race, magic, skills, attributes, and resources. The race priority determines whether the character is a human, elf, dwarf, ork, or troll. Magic controls what kind of spells, if any, a character has access to. A higher priority in skills, attributes, or resources gives the character more skills, higher attributes, or more cash for equipment, respectively.

Shadowrun allows for a very wide variety of character types. For example, players who want a spell slinging character can choose to become a mage, traditional pointy hat and wand types; a shaman, holistic spell workers who choose an animal as a totem; aspected magicians, specialists in a particular type of magic; or adepts, warriors who use magic to enhance their physical abilities. The character creation rules allow for a lot of flexibilty without much complexity.

The Mechanics

Shadowrun uses dice pools for task resolution. To do anything, players roll a number of six sided dice (usually equal to a skill level) and count up the number of dice that come up equal to or higher than a GM-selected target number. The basic mechanics are simple and apply to everything, from writing a computer program to whacking someone with a samurai sword. What's puzzling is that, with such a simple basic rule in place, FASA went on to pile loads of specific sub-rules on top of it. The game system tries to cover ever conceivable action or event with specific rules. Maybe I'm a bit used to making stuff up on the fly, but most of the rules I'd never use, since they are too specific and non-intuitive. That being said, the basic mechanic is solid enough, and simple enough, that I don't see any need to play Shadowrun with a different set of rules. Just keep in mind that, if you're like me, there's going to be a lot of rules that you'll have no use for.

Playing the Game

There's not quite a full set of tools in this book for the novice Shadowrun GM. Shadowrun includes a nice overview of typical shadowrunner activites, from breaking and entering to industrial sabotage. This is fertile ground for adventure seeds and gives a beginning GM a clear picture of what Shadowrun adventures entail. That being said, the sample background included in the book is short on really useful data. While Shadowrun is set mainly on the streets of the urban sprawl, the write-up on Seattle as a sample setting is curiously high level, taking a very general overview on the city and the area around it. I would have much preferred a sample city neighborhood with gangsters, street samurai, and thugs rather than a general overview of the city as a whole. Aggravating the problem is a complete lack of stats for adversaries. There's no sample NPCs or monsters (besides dragons) for the GM to use, a serious failing, especially for beginning GMs. There are sample characters in the character creation chapter that a GM could adapt for his own uses, but there should be at least a basic overview of the typical security grunt or Mafia goon.

The Verdict

Overall, the Shadowrun game packs a very fun setting, a simple basic mechanic (even if at times the rules are bloated), and flexible character generation rules into a quality package. I recommend this game but caution you to expect to fork over money for a few supplements if you do not have the time or inclination to create a lot of your game from whole cloth.