Shadowrun

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Shadowrun can best be described as Cyberpunk meets High Fantasy. Or what would happen if William Gibson and Anne McCaffrey had a love child.

It's set in a dystopian near future where megacorporations have taken over as the superpowers of the world, the world's political boundaries are shaken and fragmented, and Dragons and Magic play just as big a part of life as computers and guns. In fact, they often overlap.

Shadowrun was created by FASA games in 1989. It is currently in it's 4th edition, being published by Catalyst Game Labs.

Story

In wake of several injustices, a group of Native Americans began the Great Ghost Dance, which brought magic back to the world and generally fucked shit up. After a while people started growing long ears and horns and being unusually short. Then a company sued for the right to carry mil-spec weaponry and won. then Dragons woke up. All in all the basic gist is that it's about 60 years after now, magicians, dragons, big guns, immersive internet, extraterritorial corps, and lots and lots of violence.

Gameplay

Contrary to the convention of most RPGs, Shadowrun doesn't have a class system. Characters are basically the sum of their skills, although some people may gear towards playing a particular archetype. People use a priority system or a point build system (depending on edition and sourcebooks in play) to create their characters, assigning values to racial features, magic ability, and statistic values. All functions in Shadowrun are based on a related skill or stat rating, or a combination thereof. To resolve issues, people roll a number of dice equal to their rating, and resolve successes based on that.

Editions

First Edition

Released in 1989. The introduction to the world of 2050. The games basic mechanics are introduced, the tone is set, and along with it come a ton of sourcebooks.

Second Edition

Released in 1992. The year is 2053 now, updates some equipment for the players, tweaks a couple of rules, removed some unbalanced spells and equipment. Basically a refined 1E Shadowrun.

Third Edition

Released in 1998. The year is 2063 and more new goodies are availiable. Magic and Matrix rules were altered in this version, but all sourcebooks from all editions still work with no serious hassles.

Fourth Edition

Released in 2005. The year is 2071. This version is totally different than the other three versions. It does simplify a lot of mechanics, but it makes the character mechanics a bit more clunky, and tends to be a bit more restrictive in the resolution of conflicts.