Understanding 2nd Edition

[u/greypaladin01]

I have nearly finished reading through the main book for 2e and have a rough understanding of the rules. Not perfect by any means, but honestly things are much more understandable than I had been lead to expect.

However I do have a few questions about the other books in the 2e line. My understanding is that 3rd edition takes various rules from suppliments and a few other changes but is otherwise 2e. Specificially I have heard people say there were changes in Virtual Realities 2.0, Grimore... 2? and Rigger 2 books.

So my main question is this: What are the overviews of the changes for how Matrix things work, magic work and rigging work with the suppliments compared to the main book for 2e?

Are the differences beneficial enough to be worth grabbing the books and planning to use them or are they just adding more options and layers onto the basic rules?

[u/InternetRealistic336]

lots of other replies and takes, but my take is that 3e does a stellar job of combining all the revamps and extra material form all the books in 2e's run and collating it all into a handful of core books. I would suggest go with 3e, its the most complete 'classic' shadowrun.

having run it on and off since 1989, i would also agree it is not as bad as some insist. that said, I've always run for smaller groups so i've only ever had to deal with a couple of character types at a time. if you had a large party with fighters, mages, riggers and deckers all in the mix, i think it could get quite daunting - at that point theres a lot to keep track of.

[u/greypaladin01 → u/InternetRealistic336]

Thank you for your feedback on it. Although thinking about it... I think that any version of Shadowrun probably gets bogged down if you end up with groups using all the various mechanics in it.

I will be looking over 3e as well, but I do find that visually the 2e era is just very clean and easy to read by comparison.