Review of Shadowrun, Sixth World Core Rulebook

Firstly who am I? At the time of writing, I've been GMing solidly for over 30 years. Shadowrun was one of the first games I GM'd as an ongoing campaign back when both Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were shiny and new. I've GM'd it on and off over the years through all it's editions. So Shadowrun has always had a special place in my heart, there's a lot of memories and nostalgia tied up in it.

In my youth I was an art student, so I appreciate good design, good art, don't enjoy maths, am not a fan of crunch for its own sake. I do enjoy stories, and being able to make and share my own with my friends is what makes the hobby for me. 4 out of 6 of my regular players have been playing as long as I've been GMing. You don't tend to see me on forums or social media as I don't see social media as a net positive. Me writing reviews is a good example of 'Do something right and the client tells two people, get it wrong and they tell ten'. If I'm taking the time to write a review, that's me telling ten.

So, foreshadowing over, here's the review.

This is the Shadowrun 6th Edition Core rules and it's purple.

I have to agree with the others on the errors (which are all over beginner box too), and that stops me buying the 1st print run of the print book, but not as much as all the purple.

It's in the logos, page layouts, and chunks of the art have been chosen to highlight yet more purple - It's like the art director only had one pen and in a fit of pique took the other pens away from everyone else in the art team. Art quality is ok in general, but a step down from 5th. Overall though, all that purple is so offputting I'm gonna stick with an older edition until there's an anniversary edition or somesuch that doesn't make my eyes bleed. I mean, even the branded dice are purple!

So, it seems I'm a purpleist! Beyond my passionate and unreasoned hatred of purple?

Errors everywhere - which can be fixed in later print runs and pdf updates sure. It's annoying, sloppy, and considering what a long-running, venerable game Shadowrun is, it really does feel inexcusable! I'm not keen on some of the world advancements either - this is mainly stuff introduced in 5th that sucked but stuck. Now we have space elevators and solar colonies - which all detracts from what made Shadowrun unique for me. The CFD/MONADS are now built into backstory - could have seen them just disappear happily to mars and never be spoken of again - in fact, I'd hoped that was the point of the whole mars connection, to lose them - apparently not!

The great thing about Shadowrun was that the world had everything! The bad thing about Shadowrun was that that meant that everything had rules. So, in principle, I like the idea of simplifying the rules. I supported it in 4th and believe that is still a worthy goal for future editions. However, being as I've just been rereading 3rd as well as 6th, there's no denying the unique flavour of SR has been badly diluted. That has been happening steadily since 4th, but its a prominent theme in 6th. Shadowrun is starting to feel like a zombie brand - it says Shadowrun on the label, but there's very little of it left inside.

New mechanisms in 6th feel like a gimmick. Spending edge for boosts? Uh, all this actually achieves is a few extra net successes. Shifting the target number up or down to reflect different circumstances and then spending karma pool on your roll in 3rd ed was simpler and the same end effect - what have we really achieved here?

So far that's a fairy shallow criticism perhaps, I'm arguing against change for its own sake - but the new edge system has also affected game balance in how actions per turn and things like wired reflexes happen. If I was a player using a street samurai, I think I'd be enraged - my actions per turn have been nerfed to death, the benefits of superior strength now utterly irrelevant. And now there's only one firearms skill, so it is much easier for other less specialised characters to match you in combat as they only have to invest in the one skill now. Critics of 5th called it 'magicrun' the same follows in 6th it seems.

So in retrospect, I'm sorry to say that at this point I'd prefer a reboot of 3rd over 6th. The SR world at the end of 2nd ed and into 3rd was really it's golden age - by far preferred over where 5th left it. I'm sorry, but 4th and 5th just didn't add anything worthwhile for me in new additions to the world, only detriments. Given where the path from 4th-5th-6th has ended up rules-wise, I'm extremely tempted to just go back to 3rd, I feel that done with nuSR. To reengage me? I'd like to see some of that old flavour and nostalgia back in here. This no longer feels like Shadowrun to me. I get the impression a *lot* of players said this back when 4th was released, finally I'm with them.

If Shadowrun was d&d, the whole SR4th-6th era feels like the D&D 4th ed debacle. Roll on SR7 and bring it back home the way D&D5 did. If the devs are determined to bury the old game, then I would rather see a separate Shadowrun classic product line, an SR3.5 if you will, to a continuation of where 6th is now and we'll see which one has most fans and players.

My take on a SR Classic? Take 3rd ed, slightly simplify some of that into a 3.5. I'm choosing 3rd because that collating everything that had been spat out under 2nd pretty efficiently, and when I say slightly I mean just little things to make the GMs life easier: quicker villains (yes, NPC Decks are a good idea), rewrite the critter descriptions so everything I need to know is in one entry without having to flit back and forth to look things up from a separate section of critter rule entries (just as a for instance).

Reissue classic material with modern production standards, and some of the nuRPG things that will make running 'complex' old Shadowrun easier. Things like spell cards, NPC decks, summary sheets for game systems. Visualise a runners toolkit from 4th ed, but for 3rd, and then go further. Those things are valid innovations that go a long way - if these things had been done for Shadowrun 2nd or 3rd, it would have been more accessible to new players without reinventing the wheel with 4thed in the first place.

I think it's also worth bearing in mind that in today's RPG market attracting new players is a goal of course, but the vast majority of us are in fact old and pretty discerning hands now - most of my regular group played SR1 at launch! So its actually about enthusing old players with a high bar and a taste for nostalgia. Look at what the recent Battletech clan invasion Kickstarter raised, a good example of the same but better rather than trashed and changed for no valid reason.

To follow the same lead?

Give us new art - some of the art from 4th and 5th was jaw-dropping.

Give us new play tools like spell and NPC decks, summary sheets etc.

But stick to the things we remember as being core, which is the classic world, and the classic rules. When we come back to Shadowrun and the shadowrun we remember isn't there? Not a good place to be for a product line. Lastly, but most importantly (for me at least) no purple.