Reading Shadowrun 1st Edition

I don't know much about Shadowrun - I read bits and pieces here and there, ran four different short campaigns using a variety of systems because the official rules are insane. Anyways, working on Shadowrun stuff, I decided to read the whole 1E book, not skimming anything, and write down my thoughts and comments, like they used to do on RPG.net back in the days (maybe they still do?)

Dust off your copy and read alongside me so that you can tell me how much I'm wrong/misunderstanding stuff in the comments.

Oh, and of course this is going to be a mess I'm not writing an essay or anything. I'll just be taking notes as I go through the text. Here's the Introduction Chapter, which is some flavor fiction and the basics of the setting, mostly expressed through a summary of the major historical points since the early 90s.

• I love that cover. Anyone with taste knows this cover is great. Moving on.

• Interestingly, Deckers were also called Technomancers back then. It's right in the first introduction pitch that tells you what the game is about (first the setting, then who you play as). Not to be confused with 3E Technomancers, who became 4E Otakus, and then Technomancers again in 5E.

• The three main "classes" are Technomancers, Street Samurai and Mages.

• What's a magesword? One of the characters in the opening story has one.
That sounds cool! I want one. Maybe people had more medieval weaponry in 1E and it just went away as the game evolved. But I'm all about the raw, vintage stuff, so this is my jam.

• Sasquatches play drum and bass in clubs! I thought they were treated as monsters back in 2050! Maybe it's like a variant of Troll and FASA just assumed there were more than the standard versions of each race and just didn't feel the need to specify them all. Maybe you can be a pixie! (EDIT: after checking, turns out they were accepted as a sentient species in 2042!)

• Some Elves talk like they're out of the magical woodlands of Brocéliandre, I swear. "The ice will not concern us, Sweet Lady Tsung. I have the key that will unlock the castle gates. [...]" Then he calls her Lady Fair. I think that's pretty fun. Not sure how it works, culturally, but fun.

• Also Shadowrunners are damned paranoid. There's no such thing as a party. You don't ask questions that you don't need answered and you're constantly bidding and testing each others to keep your street cred.

• Three PCs - one Elf Decker, one Mage or Shaman (I'm betting on Mage) and one Street Samurai. Also, the Elf has no human cultural/ethnicity background in his description, the lady I think is of some asian descent, and the samurai is a native.

• They all have their own bike, which fit their personnalities.

• Damn, "Trog turf" - Orks and Trolls are in ghettos but they're also like, nearly monsters or something? Or is it like, casual racism implied in the writing?

• Oh wow I'm slow. It took me four pages of intro fiction to realize these are the characters on the cover art!

• Astral scanning is spooky on a sixth sense kind of level. Street samurai doesn't feel good when Sally does magic. Also, she's scanning what is basically a USB key! You can jinx a USB key with hexes!

• The setting sounds way more fantasy in its culture and ways of thinking. "as fine as fairy thread" is a descriptor you might use.

• Dozens of Orks swarm the PCs! They're fantasy monsters alright. Implications...

• Trolls are just Orks but bigger. The group of orks had a troll and he's only described as part of that group. These pesky green skins, always trying to take over middle earth and abusing welfare.

• So the first job you're introduced to is as simple as breaking into an ATM machine for some quick cash, and ends with no more money than they started with, but now they also pissed off some Orks and rentacops.

• The basic process for megacorps to become stronger than nations was that they prepared proper armies in third world countries, then "helped" tides of civil disobedience and urban violence explode into near civil wars until the nations had to ask for private security as backup to control the population.

• So in retaliation to Corporate landgrab of federal lands (natural parks and indian reservations), a group of conservationists and indian-rights activists took over a nuclear missile silo, and launched the missile towards the Soviet Union. People didn't know about it at first, but the US president knew and was expecting a nuclear war...and then the missiles just disappeared! This is mysterious and cool. I do not care about the metaplot beyond 1E and even then I'd probably skip the adventures too. I bet there's explanations for this, but as it stands? Very fun. I bet there's a lot of conspiracy theories in 2050 about these missiles. Holy shit and they made concentration camps after that!

• People can interface without a deck, as long as they have interface jacks. It's just very very dangerous.

• What happened to the USSR? Is it still standing in 2050?