Honestly tragic to find out this wasn’t an ironic Jon Lajoie post.

Oh yeah, the setting is fine, but the rules of the RPG itself are tough to get into.

I knew he was who the original was about, but I didn’t realise that was him in the picture. My bad.

Yeah, I like it a lot better with an outside ruleset

He is some kind of dystopian

Ok, but do you have a Shadowrun tattoo like I do?

Ok, but do you have a Shadowrun tattoo like I do?

So, I regularly run Shadowrun as a “My first RPG” and as a “Wait, D&D isn’t the only game?”, but I do it by replacing the mechanics entirely.

If you want something official, Shadowrun Anarchy is actually pretty good. Otherwise, look at The Sprawl, or Runners in The Dark (A Blades in the Dark hack). And I guess at some point I’ll get around to actually releasing the custom system I’m using to run it for my current games.

It looks so good! Now I want one too

If you “run Shadowrun” by “replacing the rules entirely” you aren’t running Shadowrun. You’re running a different system with Shadowrun’s setting.

I’ll stand by until the day I die that Shadowruns magic allows for some of the best punk aspects for Cyberpunk. Just like the Fantasy genre uses supernatural and extreme settings to explore things easier than real life, a magic system that’s foundationally opposed to the technological exploitation of Cyberpunk has amazing storytelling potential.

A lot of folks want a cyberpunk fantasy game with decent rules. Good luck

That seems to be entirely missing the point of RPGs, to my mind. What exactly are the limits of this logic? If I use house rules, am I “not running Shadowrun”? What about if I use an older system? Shadowrun has 6 editions, some of them very different from each other, plus a complete alternate rules set. Anarchy is at least as different from 6E as anything I’m doing with it, so why does Anarchy get to be canonically Shadowrun, but my game doesn’t, even though neither of them are using anything like the mainline rules?

Cities Without Number’s paid version has what is very clearly “Shadowrun without the Shadowrun rules.” I haven’t tried much of the system, and none with the magic stuff, but it might be pretty good?

I really like the treatment of metahumans in the earlier editions. I really like orcs getting the short end of the stick in terms of lifespan and appearance. It makes a dark setting even darker.

Ok, tbh what I really want is something closer to cyberpunk starfinder

Shadowrun Anarchy v2

If you use an older edition of Shadowrun, you’re running an older edition of Shadowrun, like how people say they run PF2e. Or you saying you’d run Shadowrun Anarchy. But you wouldn’t say you’re running Shadowrun at a LFG forum and expect nobody to ask or care what edition.

House rules are house rules. They’re expected, but usually minor in the scope of the system.

Both are a far cry from “replacing the mechanics entirely”. There’s only so much you can replace or scrap before you cross a line of it not being the same system anymore, and “replacing the mechanics entirely” definitely crosses that line. It’s like when you see someone say “Yeah I’m running D&D5e but I replaced the combat rules and added Draw Steel’s negotiation system and reworked all the proficiencies and changed to Vancian spellcasting”. At that point, you’re basically playing your own system where the stats and classes are inspired by D&D5e, but nobody would call that “D&D5e but with house rules/homebrew”. There’s more stuff that isn’t D&D5e than that is.

This is exactly the kind of thing that people get annoyed at D&D people about, just sort of in reverse; D&D people run different settings with a 5e ruleset and call it a “new system”. You’re running a system’s setting with a different system and calling it “the same system”. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pasting Shadowrun’s setting onto a new system, but if I run a campaign in Shadowrun’s world but I replace the mechanics entirely with D&D5e, I’m not running Shadowrun. I’m running D&D5e.

You’re running a system’s setting with a different system and calling it “the same system”.

But I’m not.

At absolutely no point did I say it was the same system. At absolutely no point did I say “I’m running the Shadowrun system.” My exact words were “I run Shadowrun.” You added “system” entirely in your own head.

Yes, obviously, if I was advertising a public game at an LGS, I would state up front that I’m not intending to use the Shadowrun system. I wouldn’t want people to be caught off guard by that. And even when I run these games privately, I still tell people ahead of time that I won’t be using any of the stock mechanics. Even for players who’ve never played Shadowrun, I still put that information out there so that they don’t wander into another Shadowrun game expecting the same experience.

But the thing you objected to was me saying “I run Shadowrun.” And you immediately assumed I included the word “system” and launched your entire objection on the basis of that.

And this is where I think we have fundamentally different philosophies about what roleplaying is, as a hobby. Because when I say “Shadowrun” I mean a fascinating world of alt-history near future cyberpunk mixed with Tolkien-esque fantasy that really shouldn’t work, but somehow manages to actually use the disparate elements to reinforce one another, turning magic and monsters into new layers on cyberpunk’s existing themes.

And when you say “Shadowrun” you apparently mean “One or more entries in a very specific list of different d6 dice-pool based systems”.

Yes, obviously if someone said they’re running D&D and then it turned out they were running Dungeon World, I’d be kind of perplexed. But that’s because D&D itself isn’t a setting, it’s a system. On the other hand, if someone said they were running Eberron, and then it turned out they were running it in the Gumshoe system, I’d be fucking psyched. That would be such an awesome way to explore that particular world. Imagine how cool it would be take the 1920s vibes and shades of cosmic horror and turn them into an investigative mystery story, without all the combat heavy D&D mechanics getting in the way.

In the case of Shadowrun, yes, it is both a world and a system. But of those two things, the world is far more important. The system only exists as a framework through which to explore that world. Shadowrun as a world can exist in any system (that doesn’t mean it will feel the same in any system, but it can exist), as evidenced by the fact that its official systems have taken so many different forms over the years. But the Shadowrun system without the Shadowrun world is nothing. It’s meaningless. A useless appendage lacking the story that gives it form.

This is not to say that changing the system will not change the world in certain ways. Systems shape the rules of a world. They are instrumental in defining many elements of tone and genre. But lots of things change the feel of a world, first among them being the GM. Even if you and I both run Shadowrun using the same edition, with scrupulous attention to exact implementation of the rules as written, we won’t be running the same Shadowrun. We’re each going to have our own ideas about how that world operates, about what is and isn’t possible, or normal. We’re going to describe characters in different ways, play out interactions in different ways, put emphasis on different things. There is no pure, unadulterated version of a setting in roleplaying. So why get so hung up about adherence to specifics of the mechanics, when everything else is already up for grabs?

I think at this point I need to ask you to take a step back and remember where this conversation started.

I opened by saying that Shadowrun is not an entry-level system because the rules are hard to understand. What it seems you did was take me saying “Shadowrun is not an entry-level TTRPG” and append “setting” to that, which is ironic given this post.

I never meant to imply that the setting was hard to understand. It’s the rules that were the problem, and I apologize if that wasn’t clear enough. But from my perspective, I said “The rules are hard for a new player to understand” and - again, from my perspective - your response was more or less “The rules are fine if you change all the rules”. So you can imagine why I was blunt in my responses. This whole thing has been in the context of the rules system from the start, so yes, I am focused on the rules at the moment.

But I do stand by the fact that Shadowrun’s setting with different rules is not “running Shadowrun” the same way running a D&D5e ruleset in a modern setting is still “Running 5e”. It’s the rules that matter in the context of statements like these, not the setting. You don’t say “I’m running Forgotten Realms” You say “I’m running D&D.” Sure, sometimes you specify modules but those modules are known to exist in a specific system so saying “I’m running Rime of the Frostmaiden 5e” is redundant. What you’re doing is “Running [system] with Shadowrun’s setting” or perhaps “Running Shadowrun’s setting with another system.” The distinction is still important, and anyone who reads “I’m running Shadowrun but I changed all the rules” will likely interpret that in their heads to mean “Shadowrun['s setting] with different rules” anyway.

Or TL:DR; you “Run” rulesets, and your campaign takes place in a setting.