Shadowrun

> probably 1989

I think that's probably a good guess, given the '89 next to Elmore's signature, unless Larry decided to mess with us.

@bezt Man I didn't even notice his signature.

@snarkout Also note the smeared graffiti FASA immediately to the right of the signature.

One of my RPG groups attempted a Shadowrun game about a year ago. We got maybe three sessions in but especially with the inauguration of Trump the whole crushing corporate dystopian future just hit way too close to home and we abandoned the game. (The outrageously crunchy game mechanics didn’t help)

We have instead started playing Wildsea and it is such a refreshing change of mood.
https://youtu.be/c29Ecut4...

(Yes it’s a half hour long video review and yes I have watched it probably a dozen times and yes I messed with the url metadata to confuse Google’s algos)

I used to have this book. We never played it.

@BennyTheIcepick you can just remove the question mark and everything after to anonymize a YouTube link.

https://youtu.be/c29Ecut4K_E

I worked at a game store in '89 and I remember this art.

@urlnotfound
Right right, I used to do that, then realized it’s more fun to feed junk metadata into Google.

@urlnotfound My general sense is that the various versions of Shadowrun are more fun to read than to actually play.

@bezt In, like, 1995, I did a play-by-post campaign (really just one game, a heist) that was really fun. I remember one of my players' character (an illusion specialist) was a consultant for Industrial Light & Magic, which I thought was inordinately clever. (But yeah, the combat is too crunchy for me.)

"JUST LET US PLAY ROBOTRON:2084 IN PEACE, YOU FUCKING PIGS!"

@BennyTheIcepick This exact book was my real introduction to TTRPGs. We played it OBSESSIVELY in the early 90s. It was the brief era of my life where the extreme crunch was a feature rather than a bug. Now I am much more likely to run rules light systems. I have recently been running a version of game I hacked together that is the CYBERPUNK game world, but with the mechanics of BLADES IN THE DARK underneath, which I find to be a really fun combo if you like the cyber future vibes but don't want to spend 5 hours choosing which machine guns you're bringing on a score.

Shadowrun is now on edition 5? This cover we are looking at is 2. The companies plural that have owned in since 89 have struggled updating the mechanics in a way that satisfies anyone but the nichiest of niche Shadowrun heads (my olde friends and I for example, don't play it partially BECAUSE the rules updates somehow manage to have changed drastically but not simplified in any good ways).

It's a shame the game is so hard of a climb to pick up and play because it's got lots of amazing flavors inside of it (early adoption of Native American visibility, if still pretty off by today's standards, fun supernatural options like ghouls and evil insect shaman taking over Chicago...Dragon President, etc).

@minimumsafedistance
I really appreciate just how popular the mechanics of BITD have become. Beam Saber and Wildsea are just two of the systems I know that employ it.

More than the rules though it was the sense of dread that turned us away from the game. I have been fascinated by the setting since I first discovered it in the mid 90s (I even bought a few decks of the trading card game back when everyone was trying to ride on Magic’s coattails). While I still think the marriage of fantasy with cyberpunk is terrifically compelling, I just needed to break away from the endless cycle of games where the theme is “sooner or later the oppressive force crushing society unstoppably will catch up to you as well.”

this version of shadowrun was the most fun campaign i ever played. I had to roll 20d6 a lot, i recall.

@BennyTheIcepick yeah totally fair. I guess personally getting to kill corporate villains is worth it for me, lol.

@BennyTheIcepick My kid just got a 5E setting from Kickstarter, "Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass", which shoots for a Miyazaki aesthetic.