My favorite Decker from 3e, and one of the most fun characters I've ever played, now has an opportunity. A member of my table is dropping out for a while--he has to take overtime on that night--and he's being replaced by someone else who's been waiting for a slot. That leaves us with no hacker. As the GM, I can solve this problem easy with a GMNPC. It seems a shame to waste one of my best character concepts on a GMNPC. On the other hand, I may not live long enough to actually play Shadowrun at someone else's table, and it could be so satisfying to give my guy some air. I've converted him to the edition we're playing (4e) and I'm ready to launch him on Saturday. But, as I said, I'm torn. Any other GMs ever have this sort of dilemma?

I'm trying to find the best edition for a group of players who have very limited time and are poorly educated (not exactly dumb, but not ready for the full game). With that in mind I have decided to simplify the matrix to ultra-easy mode and (mostly) have riggers as NPC's.

They want magic, but the rules are too far beyond them and I don't have time to teach it — that's every edition, so one player is very frustrated. Straightforward magic is out, but once I explained Adepts almost all of them wanted to play adepts.

I don't know the editions all that well (last time I played was 3rd), but I know Adepts work a lot like cyberware, so I can handle that. Mostly hack 'n slash game anyway, because they're not ready for intrigue.

Now I need to find the best edition for fully-realized adepts and the important supplements.

Ideas? Something I didn't think of?

And Street Samurai, too.

ECM exists, which means that anti-vehicle guided munitions can be neutralized with that. But an Adept or Street Samurai could be built to specialize in using any of the line-of-sight weapons - HMGs, chainguns, rocket launchers, miniguns, rotary cannons, CRB, FS, DA, there are plenty of options.

That person could then do a pretty good job shooting down aircraft, and have no worries about ECM at all.

I read Dead Air and enjoyed it but have questions

- did SK's magic computer research bear fruit

- did Jonathan love Tamara like family or romantically or was it more complex

- did Dougan spare Nightfeather out of guilt for getting her brother killed

- if this was like a Simsense movie was any of it "real" especially since Jonathan's "death" was faked by MCT to make him into Dougan Rose and play for them

Right, so I have recently moved from playing mostly in person to playing mostly online, which means that a number of physical maps that I love and have been using are no longer available, because I cannot find digital versions of them. While I am admittedly not great at google-fu, I am hoping one of you know where I can get digital versions of the maps in the 5E Runners Toolkit: Alphaware box.

Found this in a corner in a warehouse. Sure it's seen better days.

Worth picking up? (I'm in a small game that's mostly homebrew but we do use the Seattle book and some other supplements.).

Explosive Decompression just dropped on drivethrurpg.com.

So I'm trying to run a game with more restrictive magic (too complex for my players) and my solution is having all the awakened using adept powers only.

However... I'm not really familiar with the different editions and various supplements, so I'm hoping the community can help with two things: suggesting the best edition for adept rules, and which supplements would be the most important.

I have riggers mostly covered by NPC's and matrix entirely simplified to one skill — my players are poorly educated (not stupid, just not ready for the full game) and the games can last no longer than 90 minutes.

situation - two guys meet each other in a middle of nowhere (desert). they see each other from very long distance say 1000 meters, they know that they are enemies and they roll initiative. one has sniper rifle other is a mage - both can start shooting. but a mage has two elementals bound to him and they are in astral. mage orders elementals to melee attack the enemy. how fast they will move? can they use the endless speed in astral to immediately move in close contact with enemy or they will have to use combat speed of 100 meters per turn and it will take them 10 turns to move into melee?