Shadowrun 6E RPG: Core Rulebook

It's pretty sweet. Some things that were rough got smoothed out for 6th world, some things are new, and the spirit of the game is preserved. Mind countrol spells are still broken.

I can't wait to play this new edition! But the book is great.

Could have used a bit more editing and playtesting but it is heading in the right direction. Make sure to download the latest errata!

Could have used a bit more editing and playtesting but it is heading in the right direction. Make sure to download the latest errata!

This edition is likely the worst version of Shadowrun yet (even compared to Anarchy or 1st ed). First of all, the editing, typographical, and ommission errors make this game almost impossible to play if you are new to the franchise. Several KEY systems are simply ommited (yet are referenced and form the backbone of the game). I only assume the "authors" forgot to copy/paste the relevent core components of the rules while ensuring they copy/pasted sections of 4th and 5th edition that do not have systems to support them anymore. If you are a veteren of the Shadowrun franchise and can infer what systems are missing from previous editions then you are still left with rules contradictions, rules that don't do anything, terrible editing and great writing like this direct quote in the rules text "argle bargle foofraraw hey diddie ho diddie no one knows". The rules are mixed in with fluff and flavor text on every page and are hard to parse. Core systems are presented and then never used. Core systems from 4th and 5th edition are referenced but are explicitly meant to be removed from 6th. The editing and blatent copy/pasta makes this feel like a minimal effort product. Game design wise the authors attempted to streamline the game (5th edition is notoriously unwieldy and pointlessly complex). However they seem to have missed most of the game design theory that has come about in the last 20 years and never reach their goal, arguably making it even harder to play rules as written. Its obvious they intended to do away with dice pool modifiers and streamline all advantage/disadvantage through the "edge" system. Then they cap how dynamic edge can be during confrontations severly limiting granularity. To increase rules granularity they add in dice pool modifiers. Therefore we have the same previously clunky modifier system with another system layer added on top. Streamlined it is not. To add to this, the edge system is intended to be a constant engagement loop for the players but the book outright tells the GM to keep the players from engaging in the loop unless it meets GM fiat. They also tried to make combat simpler via the edge system, but in doing so added an extra stat to all weapons that must be compared to the targets armor and cover to see if either the attacker or defender gets edge. This stat constantly flucuates based on range, ammo type, fire modes, etc. It adds yet another pause in an already several step and multi roll process to fire a bullet. The worst part is the comparison of these numbers only has 3 possible outcomes (despite the numbers going from 1 to almost 20) and in the vast majority of cases this comparison is meaningless. Because armor is rolled onto this design, it gives the impression that armor is usually meaninless, and at best only provides one "edge point" regardless of the defender wearing a leather vest or SWAT armor with riot shield. This also perversly applies to vehicles (which do not have enough rules to play any vehicle based character and rigger archtypes are essentially not supported) meaning that most dog sized drones are as "tough" as literal tanks. Magic has always been a staple of the franchise, and in the last 2 editions has become very unbalanced in its power level compared to non magic characters. Instead of using this edition to correct this, the authors decided to double down. Mages can now turn an entire city into ash with a single spell and spirit summoning lost what fragile gates it had to reign in its power. Now any mage can summon a team of magical super soldiers who are immune to weapons and can trivial take on any opposition. Alchemy and ritual magic are not even functional under the rules, yet get several pages dedicated to them. Speaking of pages, the GM section is very small. Compared to modern games that develop rich and robust GM sections to help GMs out as much as players this feels shortsighted. Shadowrun isn't an easy game to run and only dedicating 2 pages to actually running the game feels phoned in (the rest of the GM section is stats for detectors and traps). As much as I love Shadowrun, this edition really feels like a weekend of copy/pasting previous editions together with a "good idea" tossed in and no thinking or plan of how it interacts with the rest of the system. When presented with that challenge it looks like seperate freelancers took individual action across the book resulting in a chaotic and non cohesive mishmash of potential ideas, all held together by absent editing and poor typography. Given that this game has 5 previos editions, any of those are a better way to spend your money and time.

This edition is likely the worst version of Shadowrun yet (even compared to Anarchy or 1st ed). First of all, the editing, typographical, and ommission errors make this game almost impossible to play if you are new to the franchise. Several KEY systems are simply ommited (yet are referenced and form the backbone of the game). I only assume the authors forgot to copy/paste the relevent core components of the rules while ensuring they copy/pasted sections of 4th and 5th edition that do not have systems to support them anymore. If you are a veteren of the Shadowrun franchise and can infer what systems are missing from previous editions then you are still left with rules contradictions, rules that don't do anything, terrible editing and great writing like this direct quote in the rules text argle bargle foofraraw hey diddie ho diddie no one knows. The rules are mixed in with fluff and flavor text on every page and are hard to parse. Core systems are presented and then never used. Core systems from 4th and 5th edition are referenced but are explicitly meant to be removed from 6th. The editing and blatent copy/pasta makes this feel like a minimal effort product. Game design wise the authors attempted to streamline the game (5th edition is notoriously unwieldy and pointlessly complex). However they seem to have missed most of the game design theory that has come about in the last 20 years and never reach their goal, arguably making it even harder to play rules as written. Its obvious they intended to do away with dice pool modifiers and streamline all advantage/disadvantage through the edge system. Then they cap how dynamic edge can be during confrontations severly limiting granularity. To increase rules granularity they add in dice pool modifiers. Therefore we have the same previously clunky modifier system with another system layer added on top. Streamlined it is not. To add to this, the edge system is intended to be a constant engagement loop for the players but the book outright tells the GM to keep the players from engaging in the loop unless it meets GM fiat. They also tried to make combat simpler via the edge system, but in doing so added an extra stat to all weapons that must be compared to the targets armor and cover to see if either the attacker or defender gets edge. This stat constantly flucuates based on range, ammo type, fire modes, etc. It adds yet another pause in an already several step and multi roll process to fire a bullet. The worst part is the comparison of these numbers only has 3 possible outcomes (despite the numbers going from 1 to almost 20) and in the vast majority of cases this comparison is meaningless. Because armor is rolled onto this design, it gives the impression that armor is usually meaninless, and at best only provides one edge point regardless of the defender wearing a leather vest or SWAT armor with riot shield. This also perversly applies to vehicles (which do not have enough rules to play any vehicle based character and rigger archtypes are essentially not supported) meaning that most dog sized drones are as tough as literal tanks. Magic has always been a staple of the franchise, and in the last 2 editions has become very unbalanced in its power level compared to non magic characters. Instead of using this edition to correct this, the authors decided to double down. Mages can now turn an entire city into ash with a single spell and spirit summoning lost what fragile gates it had to reign in its power. Now any mage can summon a team of magical super soldiers who are immune to weapons and can trivial take on any opposition. Alchemy and ritual magic are not even functional under the rules, yet get several pages dedicated to them. Speaking of pages, the GM section is very small. Compared to modern games that develop rich and robust GM sections to help GMs out as much as players this feels shortsighted. Shadowrun isn't an easy game to run and only dedicating 2 pages to actually running the game feels phoned in (the rest of the GM section is stats for detectors and traps). As much as I love Shadowrun, this edition really feels like a weekend of copy/pasting previous editions together with a good idea tossed in and no thinking or plan of how it interacts with the rest of the system. When presented with that challenge it looks like seperate freelancers took individual action across the book resulting in a chaotic and non cohesive mishmash of potential ideas, all held together by absent editing and poor typography. Given that this game has 5 previos editions, any of those are a better way to spend your money and time.