Runner's Heaven: Shadowrun General

[Octopus]

I've seen enough talk of my beloved Shadowrun to make a general for it I think. Discuss whatever floats your boat about the beauty that is Shadowrun. Lore stuff, rules talk, art, questions, some hilarious cyberware combinations, your favourite edition; have at it.

I'll start with something that's always gotten me; some of the sick art throughout the years of the rulebooks. I still vividly remember when I first saw some of the iconic splash pages of 4th and 5th Ed, so here's some book art I was able to quickly find and take a terrible photo of.
From the 4th edition 20th anniversary book;

The prebuilt character section has some pretty good art too, the girl ork gunslinger adept here has stayed rent free in my head for about a decade.

And here's a splash page for one of the also great stories in-between the chapters, I've always liked this one; reminds me of Darick Robertson's work on the comic series Transmetropolitan. Also, ignore the messy TTRPG gaming table.

And some 5E love too, including one of my favourite splat book covers of all time; how could you not like a cyber-centaur flying fist first at a horned oni.

Here's the two page splash of some average runners, and why yes my 5E book is so well used it's literally fallen apart at the spine.

And last but not least, here's a reprint of the most iconic art of all; the original edition's cover page, 1989's Shadowrun.

 

[fake-kun]

Hand reveal.

 

[Octopus]

Hand reveal.

Ah shit, now everyone's going to know I actually have hands and not tentacles. I've been a poser this whole time.

 

[Varyag]

Oh, I absolutely love the world of Shadowrun, I played the CRPG games a while ago. Well, anything cyberpunk tends to stick with me a lot, and mixing fantasy races and magic with it? Now that's kino. Never really got into the actual tabletop tho.

Also, none of your pictures is loading for me. I'm gonna blame the CloudFlare outage right now.

 

[Octopus]

Never really got into the actual tabletop tho.

I'm entirely biased of course, but I highly recommend it if you're into TTRPG's. It's such a beautiful system. It's a little dense in that there's a lot of mechanics layered on top of one another (magic, meat, matrix, martial arts, essence, 'ware; there's alot) but once you get the general gist of them it starts clicking.

Also, none of your pictures is loading for me. I'm gonna blame the CloudFlare outage right now.

Sad. But I guess my accidental hand reveal has been censored.

Well, anything cyberpunk tends to stick with me a lot, and mixing fantasy races and magic with it? Now that's kino.

That's probably the best thing of Shadowrun is the concept itself. It's such a wild look to have an elf black mage casting manabolts next to a troll in full cyberware, who's so much more machine than metahuman that his soul is screaming from his essence loss. Such a cool concept.

 

[Vardalis]

I really like the world of Shadowrun and the concepts, and I've read chunks of various editions of the core rulebook, but I've never managed to play (or run) a game of it. I am trying to read 3E again in hopes I'll stick with it long enough to get a game going. I've also read Renraku Arcology: Shutdown and Universal Brotherhood.

I did play Shadowrun Returns, which I really enjoyed, but Shadowrun Dragonfall didn't hook me (despite people saying it's the better game) so I stopped playing that one.