Shadowrun: Street Level Play

Shadowrun forces you to make hard choices before you even begin play. Are you a citizen? Do you have a fake ID card? A real ID card? Can you be tracked? Who do you know? What is your lifestyle? Who are your contacts? Do you have insurance or licenses? How much debt do you want to be in for that flashy lifestyle?

Money is important.

The hustle is what you do to survive.

Do you stay off the radar? How do you deal with sudden notoriety?

How does your life change?

It perfectly encapsulates surviving in today's gig and influencer economy in a world that hates who you are, wants you homeless, and crushes you under the boot of authoritarianism and mee-too-ism any time you begin to find a winning schtick and angle for keeping your head above water. The suits will crush you with the state's authority from above, and your peers will eat you from below by copying your thing and trying to muscle in on you.

And those you wronged, or their friends, will still be after you.

Again, I know SR 6 has SEVERE problems with the rules, but I like the character creation and the trade-offs. Whatever system I play this with, the setting will be classic. The more I think about it, the more Year Zero engine could fix most of the problems here.

In contrast, Starfinder inherits that "D&D social immunity clause" that  PCs seem to have. The game fears to "come at" the PCs this way since that may trigger somebody. Even the starships in Starfinder are "free," and their upgrades are subsidized by the state or the faction you work for in an adventure path. Money only exists in Starfinder to buy personal armor and weapon upgrades. If there are starship running costs, upgrade costs, and cargo tables - I can't find them. The game's starship, trading, economy, and money system have always been my biggest disappointments.

The game gives you boxes of "stuff," but after a while it begins to feel like an overpacked closet. There is tons of junk I never use, and little of it inspires me. Most of it—hundreds of weapons on leveled lists, dozens of aliens, lists of powers—feels like "option filler."

Money feels both scarce and worthless in Starfinder. You only find it to level up personal weapons and gear. I had a group of PCs who owned a starship with only 1,000cr in their pockets. They looked at me and asked, " Can't we run some cargo, passengers, or something?"

I'm like, "Nothing in the rules. Sorry. The Socialist government of Pact Worlds disallows private enterprise. Ship upgrades are given by the state. You need to kill space goblins to find money."

The middle fingers around the table went up, and we all laughed.

Starfinder excludes a lot of the sci-fi genre tropes. I get why they did it, to push "space dungeon crawling" more than any other genre aspect. There is no need to go dungeon crawling if you can haul cargo, score a lucky load, and upgrade all your weapons to level 20 in one great run. Even if you level-limit guns and armor, you will be sitting on 30 million credits in the bank, waiting to buy gear, buying it all, and storing it in your weapons locker.

Starfinder is a fun game but far closer to a video game than many know.

If you want to do "space truckers" games, get yourself Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition (get the B&W version of Deluxe EE), and ignore every other sci-fi game. This game has a chapter - plus examples - of cargo trading, encounters, ship design, and everything to make your space trucker lifestyle go perfectly without fudging anything.

Can I do crazy aliens in Cepheus? Yes, nothing stops me. Can I do lots of weapons? I can, but who needs them? More options to the point of page after page of lists are meaningless chaff and cause choice paralysis.

Magic? A book covers that in a 2d6 framework with Swords of Cepheus. I have options here, in a game that is simpler and has campaign support in the areas I need it. There are dungeons and adventures here too.

With Starfinder, cargo runs are like, "You are on a cargo run when suddenly a dungeon happens!"

"Okay, we got done the dungeon. Do we get paid?"

"No, the faction you are working for says thank you, and they upgrade your ship for free."

"Wait...money! Cash in hand! I need a laser rifle upgrade!"

"Oh? Money? You are in the starport when space goblins attack!"

With Cepheus Deluxe, you break out the calculator and do percentage math, then worry if your 700 tons of computer parts will make it through pirate-infested space or if you will blow more money on repairs than your load was worth. Yes, it is a math game, but your characters stand to lose big if those go into your cargo bay and fry computers like Bitcoin miners powered by lasers.

Then again, business is a math game. Figure this as "life training."

I like sci-fi games with a solid cash-money game, and Shadowrun's setting has one. In fact, the GM knows each character's monthly burn, so judging rewards is easy. While weapons don't "level up"—the good stuff is often expensive—buying influence and keeping the heat off can drain a wallet fast.

Shadowrun and Cepheus - money matters. You spend it to buy, sell, hustle, pay people off, make improvements, reward contacts, grease palms, buy specialty gear for special missions, and blow on lifestyle costs. If you are not spending money constantly in sci-fi, you are not playing sci-fi.

In Starfinder, I feel money is "gear upgrade XP." I spend it immediately to increase weapon damage dice or armor, and then I care not to even pay attention to it. It is both strangely too important and completely forgettable at the same time. I don't need it for a ship or place to stay; no ship upgrades or fuel costs - just gear. We played through the Starfinder Beginner Box, had a starship at the end, and needed more money. The characters felt they should "go back and loot everything to sell" or "they missed their chance to take everything not bolted down."

It felt like they needed to be pack-rat Skyrim characters, taking every bit of armor and weapons from enemies and selling it wholesale by the cart load back in town. And then making multiple trips.

I can have a million credits in Cepheus, but I still need more for my ship. I will need even more to make great cargo runs, and that money goes back into more giant starships and escorts, along with paying crew.

I can have a million newyen in Shadowrun and cause a lot of trouble, or live the high life for a few weekends, or spend it on one car.

In Starfinder, a million credits can be spent maxing out weapons and armor and then feel strangely useless. Could I spend it on the above things? I could rule it, but the game's focus is different. Starfinder doesn't even encourage you to gain wealth and status. It is like 5E, where the designers made a conscious decision to deemphasize wealth and focus the game purely on personal power as the metric of success.

Socialist game design theory has replaced a few roleplaying games, including New School and OSR. Games where money does not matter, and the focus is almost entirely on "my personal power" - that can strangely never be taken away once accumulated, give people this false sense of empowerment. Worse, it acts as an opiate for not improving their real-world situation. Some games stick to the capitalist ideal, and in Shadowrun's case, it is more used as an enemy and simulates a capitalist nightmare - but the capital system is still needed to create the dystopia.

And this gets repeated in the media: my power, having power, getting power, getting power, power, power. Power. That childish notion of "muh powahs" is almost a joke at this point, and I get the feeling any game or movie telling you "this is about power" is lying to you and telling you that you have none, and why try?

When they tell you one thing, believe the opposite.

And all of today's superhero movies and role-playing games are about gaining power that cannot be removed or lost. It gets silly, childish, and stupid at a point. In life, there is an end - no more power. There are no immortals here. And beware of "opiate fantasy" removing you from the real world.

Fantasy is good, but too much is a bad thing.

You cannot remove capitalism from Shadowrun and make it a "5E game" where "my powers are all that's important to me" since that would lose the entire point of the setting. Taking capitalism out of Shadowrun would be like taking Cthulhu out of Call of Cthulhu.

Ask yourself this? Can I lose it all in a game? Not just death, but most all of my power? I expect skills, ability scores, and knowledge of magic to stick around. If you have money, do you always need more? If I lose all my wealth and influence, the crash and burn, will my personal power eliminate the pain?

In 5E, if my 10th-level thief is locked away for 10 years, on his second day of freedom, he will instantly return to where he was regarding money, gear, and power. This is true in some OSR games, too, like DCC.

In Shadowrun or Cepheus - I can't say that.

You can lose it all.

Starfinder: Is it Too Much?

Most Starfinder books don't bat an eye at throwing a half-page weapon chart at you. Want some more weapons? Sure, here is a massive list of them! Here are a few dozen races. Here are a half-dozen more character options. I have a shelf of Starfinder books, and none feel compelling.

It is funny. I don't feel the same way because I have two shelves of Pathfinder 1e books. Fantasy is a genre you can instantly narrow down to a simple, core story and theme. The village is under attack. The heroes pick up a sword and cast a spell. The adventure that lasts a lifetime begins there.

99% of the time, I could play with the core rulebook and pull in a few things from one other.

With Starfinder, they give me a ton of stuff, but finding something to do with it takes time and effort. The game expects you to know and use the conflicts of Pathfinder 1e in this new world, so you need knowledge the game doesn't provide. The book describes gods and races and expects you to make that 1:1 jump yourself. Orcs hate elves in fantasy, so orcs...? Dark elves worship demons, so...?

Thousands of years have gone by.

I wanted a new world with new conflicts.

One of Starfinder's huge problems is it requires you to be a Pathfinder fan. Only some things translate, and the stuff you think would - doesn't.

Shadowrun does Starfinder a lot better. What? That makes no sense. Different games! Let me explain.

Both games are about a team of characters in a futuristic setting who are motivated to solve problems and follow their motivations. The structure of the parties' relationships and goals are the same. The environments they operate in (dungeons, cities, wilderness, and vehicles) are the same. While one setting has starships, the other setting has hover vans. You get in a thing and go to a place.

Where Shadowrun beats Starfinder is in story motivation. The world is a fantastic sandbox filled with conflicts, factions, societal forces, and stories waiting to be told. Everything you learn unlocks a new secret and a new chapter. Deep conflicts are built into the setting. The tradeoffs, like magic, are built into the rules. Even cultures and races are in conflict.

Starfinder books are content to give you more and more until the game becomes an unintelligible, muddled pile of confused lists. They will list the original Pathfinder gods, but I need to see conflicts built into the setting or rules. There are hundreds of races in Starfinder, and in Shadowrun - there are five. If I play one of those, I feel special. If I add a few - each one of those is special.

Add too many, and nothing means anything.

What is the point of a dozen cute races? Marketing?

Quality over quantity is one thing that escapes Starfinder. It is different in Pathfinder 1e, despite having twice the books. In fantasy, I have a world model in my head. That takes precedent. With Starfinder, I have no frame of reference, and every time I try to settle on one, a book contradicts me. I override 90% of my reading, and my mind goes, "Why bother?"

I could play Starfinder with one book and focus on a core conflict, but I am doing a lot of the heavy lifting myself to create deeper conflicts and stories. Evil and good get along together. Space goblins exist to season dungeons and abandoned starships with cheap combat encounters. The gods are meaningless since magic comes from anywhere. Why even have them? Fantasy races are tossed in the back of the book like an embarrassment.

They wanted a sci-fi game but needed to learn how to build a universe. They had to do a 'great reset' and wipe memories. What Hollywood wishes they could do with the last few years of superhero entertainment. It is a universe built upon a deus ex machina.

For all its "D&D with guns" feel, Shadowrun feels plausible. It has a history. You can have a dragon as the head of a megacorporation, an orc street gang, or an elven Yakuza. It oozes style and panache, and those tiny examples create a thousand stories in my mind.

They are the same game, but instead of throwing more and more at you to justify hoarding and collecting, Shadowrun focuses on story and conflict first. Nothing works in Shadowrun unless the core story conflicts are solid. In Starfinder, there is always another book of stuff I always need help with.

And three or four more tables of weapons.

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.

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.

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.

You Play What Your Friends are Playing

One of the terms popularized during the D&D 3 heyday was "the network effect" - or, you play what your friends are playing. This is one of those "no duh" theories, but there is a lot of truth to this congealing force between players, groups, and what's hot.

There are groups that follow along with similar games, such as Savage Worlds or FATE, and finding a group for those two games is typically more difficult than Pathfinder or D&D 5. The Internet, of course, makes everything easier, and you can find a pick-up group for almost any game and any past version of it somewhere online. But that "walking into the hobby store" moment where you look around on a Saturday and see what people are playing? This is the Network Effect.

It's What's Hot

In a way, it's like having a smartphone that can run the game everyone's talking about versus having a flip phone. You are in, you can talk about the game, and you are a part of that 'water cooler' crowd that can talk about the game. Older versions of the game, or lesser played games? There's less of a discussion, and you may find yourself talking to a smaller and less-interested group.

You buy the game, and that gives you a 'golden ticket' to participate in the social interactions surrounding that game. In a way, it is why you pick up the new version, to be a part of the fun.

There are a couple things to consider, for example, with Tunnels and Trolls the version 5.5 of the game is the one most all of the solo adventures (over the last 20 years) were written to support, and the newer version 8.0 changes things. A lot of people online see 5.5 as the version they still want to play, since the solo adventures are still a huge attraction in playing the game. This may change if 8.0 takes off, but that many years of solo adventures is hard to walk away from in just a rules-compatibility standpoint. There are still holdout crowds like this with other games, such as Shadowrun 4th vs. 5th, and possibly about every version of Traveller ever published.

It's What You See People Playing

We walk into hobby stores, and people are playing D&D 5 and Pathfinder. A lot of people play Magic the Gathering and Warhammer as well, along with games like Warmachine. You see those games, and you want to join in the fun. It is harder to get people interested in a niche or smaller-fanbase game. You have to work harder at it, and there may be some cross-interest (such as old-school D&D groups forming around the current edition players).

I play with some stubborn players with strong opinions about games, and that is cool, but sometimes this limits your options. I have some players that refuse to play Pathfinder because of the complexity, and others that feel D&D 5 isn't for them. Some don't have the money to play some of the games I would like to play with them becuase of the cost to buy books. I think this is about the trickiest part of our hobby, we have a lot of players with strong opinions and it isn't always easy to get people together.

But It Isn't Always So

I ran a group once where it was tough to have the rules keep us together. We 'thought' the rules were the driving force behind keeping the group interested, but in the end, it turns out some of our home-brew ruled games were more compelling than the latest version of the D&D. For some players 'new and shiny' doesn't matter at all, and they are there for the interaction and the fun.

This was a D&D 4 game, and the rules here I feel let everyone down. When a computer program is needed to do things right you take away a lot of player interest and investment in learning the rules. It's part of our struggle with Pathfinder and HeroLab, part of me wants to go back to basics with that game and ignore a shelf worth of expansions, but another part of me says 'investment made' and use everything. Granted, sticking with a smaller set of Pathfinder books probably means a larger player-base as well, so there is that.

When a set of rules goes bust for a group, adjust quickly. This can even happen with the 'newest and latest' so the current version isn't always a sure thing. The latest version gets your foot in the door, but always when you deal with a group of people individual tastes change. Some players care, some champion their favorite version, and others will go along with everybody else thinks. You may have some players more involved with a totally separate genre than what is being played, we had a subset of that group that loved superhero gaming a lot and that resonated with them.

Know Your Group

The hobby is diverse, and the people who play tabletop games are even more so. The best advice is to know your group, and also to play games that you love and your group loves as well. In the best of all worlds, everyone could come together based on our common interests regardless of time and distance. In the real world, there are times when we have to make due with groups that may not play the things we like to play, and we have to make due - because playing something face-to-face is better than sitting at home in front of a computer or television.

You have to put yourself out there to find those people though, so sometimes a couple dull weeks playing at the hobby store is worth finding that group which brings magic to the table and your gaming life. Be a fan of everything, open to new things, and join groups which you may not think you would like, and things may eventually come your way.