Shadowrun: I Quit at the Right Time?

From the reviews, Shadowrun 4th Edition looks like the most loved edition of the game. I went all in with 4th and never really got a chance to play. I had a big campaign planned, and it never panned out.

I love the setting, but my ideas of Shadowrun go beyond what is in the books, and it delves more into post-apocalyptic themes mixed with magic and the rise of darkness. My views are influenced by the classic World of Darkness setting, with an awakened class dealing with powerful cabals and magical world-ending threats.

My Shadowrun has demons, devils, fae, undead hordes, vampires, dragon factions, beast races, druids, dark elves, eldritch horrors, and ancient gods. There is a lot the governments and corporations never say, and life outside the enclave cities is impossible since the lands are overrun and destroyed.

Corruption was everywhere, and factions themselves could be corrupted from within.

My world is closer to Aftermath using their Magic sourcebook than Shadowrun, to be honest. I could use the Other Dust rules to fill in the areas between the cities if I wanted to stick to Sine Nomine rules. The world was not a nice place, and even though the megacities were run by corporations and their puppet governments, nothing could survive in the wilderness for long, and it was too expensive to mount protracted military campaigns to take worthless, destroyed, and empty land.

Other Dust is a game that I would love a second edition for that goes all out.

Society moved on to the urban model, and governments found it cheaper to have everyone close and on top of each other, heavily taxed, very few services for the poor, and keeping people in line by keeping them at each other's throats. Very few knew what was happening with magic, and it had to be this mysterious force that people feared and dreamed of controlling.

Magic could not be commercialized, bought and sold, and under anyone's control.

Using magic was like opening Pandora's box, much like the magic in Dungeon Crawl Classics; it could corrupt the user and the area it was cast in. A summoning spell misfire could open a gate to the infernal realms, and demons would pour forth, take over a neighborhood, and turn it into a war zone. You were thinking hard if you wanted to risk magic. There were reasons for corporations and governments to stop people from using magic and crack down on its teaching.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

This differed from the predictable modern game McMagic (D&D, Pathfinder, and many other games), which gets tedious, mathematical, and uninteresting. When spells become a part of your damage-per-turn calculations, throw the system out - you are playing an MMO, and that is NOT magic. Game designers creating mobile phone pen-and-paper games should be the ones who 'can't leave the hobby soon enough.'

But SR 4 is the peak, and the following games went downhill - based on reviews. Still, my version of the setting differs quite a bit, and this is one of those games, "The more I bought, the worse it got." My ideas got pushed to the back burner, and the official setting started taking over. My ideas of a destroyed world with powerful 'non-canon' factions seemed like a significant divergence from the setting. I outgrew their books - and the expansion books started limiting me severely.

My world wasn't theirs anymore.

Whenever other players tried it, they had those by-the-book expectations broken, and I began to feel the game's lore limited what I could do. I was way more imaginative than what they gave me, and with every book I bought, my setting slowly became theirs.

Not mine.

My setting felt like a drag racer burning its tires. The only thing their setting had going for it was I paid a lot of money for it, and I felt I should use it. I have this inverse-fun rule for RPGs and settings: the more books you buy, the less you use them - and the more you resent the purchases.

One-book games are the pinnacle of game design.

This is why I don't go back to Shadowrun 4th Edition, and I would use Cities Without Number and some B/X books to add in the missing parts, like monsters and magic. Spellcasting would require a skill roll to check for misfire and crit failure, and those consequences could be severe. Even a typical failure could bring on a minor effect, a change in the caster, area, or effect of the spell on the target.

Magic needs significant risks. These need to be high enough that the practice and use of magic are hidden and secretive. If you are open casting in a city, you could be disappeared by a corporation, government, or criminal gang. CWN has a concept of heat, and a concept of 'magical heat' would be applied to casters who were too out there with their spells. There are likely 'mage cops' who hunt down unregistered people with magical abilities, like Blade Runner.

A careless mage could burn a skyscraper down, permanently warp reality, or open a gate to Hell downtown. These events can change the campaign world permanently, and an entire city-hex may become a war zone and off-limits.

That mystery, danger, paranoia, and suspicion are pure story fuel. Seeing a magical creature show up has an air of fear and the unknown. Mages live dangerous lives with high risks, but powerful mages become game changers who can face down all but immortal dragons.

You can't have a gritty, Noir, and mysterious cyber-fantasy setting with familiar and accessible McMagic free from consequences. The setting doesn't work.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

I outgrew Shadowrun the moment I laid my eyes on it. Over the years, the game held me back more than it allowed me to explore that world. It is a great experience and world, but the default setting meant one thing to the designers and an entirely different thing to me.

Learn to recognize this dissonant feeling. When that disconnect happens between you and a game or a setting. When that happens - walk away.

Explore those feelings.

Stop buying books and discover the fun inside your head.

Looking back, I left Shadowrun at the right time and should have left earlier with just my inspirations intact. All those expansion books throw a wet towel over my ideas. I can explore these better in other games without the official world hanging over my head and telling me I am playing the game wrong.