[Omenowl]

Ok, many many months later and having a couple of books come out to help I will give my overview of SR4

First off I liked the change from 1st and 2nd edition to 4th edition. I never played 3rd edition so I can't comment on that one. Instead of having higher target numbers and then requirring X successes this just goes by X successes. It also allows provides a clear determination on number of successes and time between rolls (30, 1 week means you need 30 successes and each roll for an extended test takes 1 week). It takes a bit of getting used to and a willingness to guess modifiers, but overall a competent GM should have no problems making it quick. I do like the WoD of style rolling so even if it is a ripoff I like the system.

2nd the Character creation while it takes longer than the previous system does not take so immensely(10-15 minutes more). My recommendation is pick your race, money, stats and skills. Then worry about spells, powers, sprites, free abilities, etc. The majority of your time is spent on gear so best to pick that first then go back to skills and stats. Character creation is no harder than previous incarnations and compared to buying and picking gear from the other editions it should take about as long. I can easily create a character within an hour and a very complicated character in under 2. My recommendation is if you expect to be gear and essense heavy then do the gear/cyberware before you meet to play and flesh out the character from there.

The reviewer of this article expect players to have a much higher level of experience. In the old editions compared to the new editions a player is much less experienced. A fairer representation between the old systems would be using 650-700BPs. This only uses 400. Skill and attribute caps I believe are a nice way to limit overzealous levels (humans simply are not as strong as bears). The old levels were more like Rambo and the new ones are more like Indiana Jones.

So for older players who want the insanely high levels of skills and attributes just assume you use
350BP for priority 1
250bp for priority 2
100 for priority 3
magic and metahumans you buy first and then subtract if from priority 1.


The core rules take a bit to learn. I believe this is true of all systems. This is more complicated then WoD, but much less complicated than D20. I recommend reading combat several times and even then you will probably mess it up for the first few games (same is true of most systems).

I like the new take on edge. It gives beginning characters 9 lives or luck factor. It can be used to add dice, prevent death, prevent bad happenings or allows them to get an pass per turn. Most characters with a high edge will be lacking in the skill or stat department. So it balances them out a bit more. It also burns out quickly so it has its own limits. It is especially nice for humans as they get a +1 to starting edge.

Essense is the same as other editions. Cyberware/bioware decreases it, and it hurts resonance and magic.

Magic and resonance are completely different. You start at 1 and must buy it up like a stat. This makes adepts cost as much as a street samurai.

The setting still feels like shadowrun. I think it has just as much background material as it had for the previous corebooks. Riggers, technomancers and hackers are all pretty similar. They just specialize in different things. It makes it easier, but loses some of the flavour of earlier editions where there were clear delineations between them.

I think for beginning players who want a Robocop feel then shadowrun still does it better than the rest. Throw in magic and you get DnD meets Robocop. I give it 4 out of 5 stars (earlier versions got 2 or 3 stars). Street magic and Augmentation deserve 4 and 5 stars respectively (I am biased against magic so street magic may deserve 5 stars) so pick those up as well.