Game: Shadowrun (third edition – FASA, 1998)
My Experience: My claim to playing Shadowrun‘s first edition hinges on the barest of technicalities. It was my second-ever play-by-post game (first honors go to Polis). I made a character and participated until the GM got so tired of our circular planning arguments that hostile NPCs rolled up and fired a rocket launcher into our not-so-safe safehouse. I spent much more time in a long-running campaign that Little Sister ran, starting with the Harlequin published adventure and continuing into the insect spirit outbreak; we started that one in second edition and converted into third about two-thirds of the way through the run. I also got some play time in a campaign Paladin ran before real-life commitments killed that one off. I’ve run a few one-shots and played in a couple more, and I’m always up for going back to the dawn of the Sixth Age.
I don’t typically get involved in edition wars, but for me, there were no editions of Shadowrun after third. The mechanical changes, the massive shifts in the setting, and the movement from cyberpunk to transhumanism all made the later games unrecognizable and unenjoyable for me.
Julien Yoshioka (“Harbinger”), Nocturnal Predator
Continue reading →