If you got it, check out the 3rd edition support book Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book, it has rules for simplified and quicker Rigging and Decking. It's a godsend to the gamemaster for speeding up play.

3rd edition shadowrun is absolutely my favorite edition. I really like how you pointed to at least knowing a section like rigging or the matrix but having the player who is interested in those areas helping you as Gm understand it. I like some advice I got in regards to the matrix and magic. Use Npcs to fill the gaps as the party learns the different systems and start with one area and expand from there. Eventually the party will fill itself out

Playing with a full group of mages and shamans, or deckers, or even riggers, have been the best experiences ive had in 20 years of playing SR3. Specialized characters for specific kinds of missions and learning each subsystem in detail, as if they were different games.

So, I ran (and played) a lot of SR3 and here's what I did. 1) I never bothered to learn rigger rules. Our resident rigger player provided me with everything I needed and they were very trustworthy. That was why I never needed to learn it. 2) I ran radically simplified NPCs. Basically mooks, generalized mass enemies had a level and whenever they made a check, they used that level. No pools, no nothing. Armor? Lvl. Initiative: 1d6+Lvl. Higher level goons might get an extra die or two if that made sense. The only specific thing they got was weapons. Poor Bob the night security guy was L4, trained antagonists got L6 and the system would top out around L8, anything beyond that usually got actual stats. 3) I only ran matrix in detail when it was really central and then I tried to run it concurrently with meat world battles. Same with astral space encounters, but those would usually resolve much faster than matrix stuffs. Everything else was computer checks and seeing if they had the right programs. 4) Don't attempt ban individual items of crunch. If you think a character is too strong due to optimized combinations, talk to the player, but in mostly just let them run what they want. Part of being a bad ass shadowrunner is getting to mow through mooks like butter from time to time. Flex those muscle toners! 5) It's really important to understand how target number modifiers work statistically. Getting +1 TN can have very different impact. Going from 2 to 3 harms your success chances less that going from 3 to 4 and so on, until you hit TN6. TN5 to TN6 cuts your expected successes in half. Going from TN6 to TN8 makes them slightly worse. Finally it bears repeating that this game absolutely requires investment from your players. There is no way around this. If you are not wiling to learn the game, don't play it. You need to be able to carry your own weight or everything will bog down quickly. As an aside, I think this tendency to find players who are unwilling to do their homework and learn the game is almost the only downside to the massive surge in popularity that has engulfed our hobby.

Appreciate the honest review. Sounds like some great advice. I have played later editions (mostly 5th) several times, but have not run Shadowrun as GM. The setting is fantastic and the stories that emerge from playing Shadowrun are very different from D&D. I have had fun with Shadowrun! That's why we play games and Shadowrun seems to deliver. I would like to hear more with your experiences with some of the other Shadowrun books.

If you do plan on running 3rd edition, one of the first things I would suggest is the Shadowrun Companion. It provides more flexible options for character creation.

Great rundown. I also scrounged around online and ordered a bunch of 3rd Edition content as well as some other editions, including 6e. My sense is that with so many contradictory opinions (most people liking 3/4, fewer liking 5, and yes I have found even a couple commentators who like some aspects of 6), the best thing to do is to just saturate in the lore and try as best as possible to take best of breed from each edition, homebrewing liberally. I ran D&D 5e for some time, and even with that streamlined system I used a lot of house rules and handwaved a good amount to minimize out-of-game time.

3rd has some of the best art!

The Shadowrun video game on Genesis was my introduction to true cyberpunk, but I've never spent much time with the pen and paper game. This is a great overview of the system, and I love your input on flow and rule modification. Will definitely take this into account if I ever get around to playing a campaign.

Our group is finally heading back to the shadows. 3rd ed is our edition, we started playing during 2nd, upgraded to 3rd and never saw a reason to change.

I enjoy challenging games, great review, thank you!

That bookmark was from the Shadowrun action figure game. It was a 6 inch figure line that was awesome. The game was made by the same people that made Heroclix. It came with a giant clix base and used all the DnD dice. Game wasn't really playable but the figures were good. Nice review!

Excellent video. Bit of info, that cover was painted by Paul Bonner. It was stolen from FASAs HQ and is still missing to this day.

The issue is not really the crunchiness with games like these, but finding players who are willing to invest. And you funnily said "back in the days where you weren't distracted by many things" and that is true :D There is just too much media out there today, which makes it even harder to find players. I like the dice pool system and regarding the different rules for magic and rigging I think that is why systems like D6 are great. They don't try to simulate everything but just got a pretty straight forward "general way" of how to resolve everything. You won't find much different subsystems. You have to describe things in a way that you can resolve them with the standard way :-) We are playing SR5 Edition and while I loved the feel of SR2 (which I think was the nicest PnP I've ever played, the rule book was just epic) I'm glad that I found a group that is willing to play SR at all :D

I love shadowrun been playing since 1st ed run since 2nd ed stuck with a 2nd 3rd ed mash up a sort of 2.75 (as it's more 3rd than 2nd) with a few house rules and my own version of initiative 👍

SR6 is the DnD 4ed of Shadowrun. 3 is super solid and I think has the better SR feel 5 is my preference, but later 5 lore is getting a bit meh, so 5e but with earlier lore (closer to the UGE/Goblinization) is my sweet spot.

Very nice job with the video!!!!!

My most loathed rule is the 2d6 mini grenade scatter rule. GM: “You land the minigrenade right at the feet of the bad guy 8m away. It bounces …. 9m….. towards you…” Player: “F*ck”

29:25 We had a whole campaign where we hired npc deckers to do their work offsite … we make a request and the decker works on it … 1,000-5,000 nuyen depending on risk is what our GM went with

3e has the best "flavour". Indians, Orcs, Elves... 4e has the better rule system. Point based, with the extra rule books, you can make some outlandish characters. Suffers from "we're trenchcoat mercenaries" and it all gets a bit grimdark in places. Lot's of foreshadowing big events, which is fun for the DM to riff on. 5e. forget about it. 6e shouldn't even have been made.

I want to point out, Catalysts don’t own ShadowRun. Hasbro Topps do. Catalyst are just the publisher, it’s possible that they aren’t the one who block print on demand on drivethrurpg

What's an alternative to shadowrun that includes fantasy races in a futuristic setting?

I'm glad this video showed up in my feed. I've been GMing 5th E for a while but I've been very interested in the older editions. One thing I'd like to know is what can deckers do during combat. In 5e with a lot of things being wireless deckers always have the option of messing with enemy weapons and gear. Is there anything like that for them to do like that?

4ed is my favorite. Priority system drove me nuts because if you wanted to be a mage you were invariable dirt poor every time

Played 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Edition. 3 was great but felt quite dated at some point. The addition of Wifi made things a lot more "integrated". The Decker now can be "in the field" hacking enemy gear. The Matrix is something that every character can use via trodes and is everywhere due to AR. Personally I really love the 5th edition. It's still an incredibly crunchy game and suffers from a lot of the issues you already mentioned here. Namely that the game master needs all the help they can get from the players regarding the massive amount of rules. 6th edition is a real disappointment in my book, even now when people claim Catalyst has fixed it. I don't think they did.

1🇺🇸🌈🎄👊🦁/// GO!!! ., / I GOT THIS!!! RUN SHADOWRUN!!!!

I have heard at least one fellow, channel name TheBurgerKrieg, state the system is poor and he's using a different game system to play shadowrun.

Are you still trying it?