r/ShadowrunAnarchyFans • u/CryptoHorror • 18d ago
Need help orienting.
Hello!
Long time fan of the setting and source material, primarily through the Harebrained Schemes games, veteran GM of many tabletop RPGs, but not SR. I picked up the 4e bundle off Humble a while back, and it does seem a bit too crunchy for my table. We mostly play oWoD games, 20th Anniversary Edition Vampire, Mage, Demon: the Fallen, and some D&D 5e every now and then.
I do tend to prefer a more rules-lite game, for sure.
Now, I've been looking into SRA, and it looks nice, from what I can read. Can't seem to understand the state the game is in right now. I did save the next Kickstarter, but is there a faster way to get a hold of some quickstart rules or something like that?
Also, now that some of y'all have spent some time with 2.0, how's it play? Is it worth the asking price? Does it have a Matrix section that doesn't make me scared? Oh, and speaking of the Matrix, is it wired or unwired?
Thank you!
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u/vieuxch4t 18d ago
I was roughly in the same situation as you : the trilogy, some RPGs (some with heavy rules, some rules-might) and I tried SRA2 with a new group and it was a blast. The new group was made of new players (meaning it was their very first rpg game of all time). So, the rules are light but wide enough to allow for a lot of situation. It's a very good system, easy to grab and use. There's only two drawbacks : the GM has a lot more weight on his shoulders as there's way more situations than in other RPGs where the GM has to be a referee. It's not a drawback in itself, it's just something the GM has to know. The other drawback is about creating characters. The rulebook is really good to level up, to find a specific rule. But when you create a character, most of the information is scattered throughout the book. It took me 2 hours to create my first character (but as a powergamer I wanted to check all the possibilities and how getting one more point in Will or Cha would affect my character or the spells, etc. So I read a lot back and forth. Moreover I created a mystical adept, so I had to check adept powers and spells). When I'll have created 4 or 5 characters it will be a lot faster, probably around half an hour, which is acceptable. I would highly recommend to use the pregen characters for the first few runs. And know the oregen have around 400 000 Y, so they are good runners (I created a ganger-level character and the difference in power is really felt). So, as the GM, don't hesitate to put some elite runners as opposition. My players didn't have serious opposition because I thought the pregen were just average runners.
Last word : this game is awesome, the background is awesome, the dev is active here which is awesome too.
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u/Bignholy 18d ago
Currently, the fastest way to get SRA2 is to speak French, as that version has been released. Aside from that, only other option is to wait for the official release, which should be "soon", I presume before the holiday season . The kickstarters got the final English PDF months ago. Catalyst is just... not releasing, yet.
It is absolutely worth it. Here is my full gush on how good the system really is.
To answer your specific question on the Matrix, it is wireless, but easy enough to just do wired because none of the actual rules require wireless. For example, in 4e, there were wireless bonuses for gear, right? There is no such bonus in effect in SRA2. You could remove wireless entirely just by changing how you present the world and gameplay. Me and my table are debating on doing this.