Shadowrun

Off-topic => Off-off-topic => Topic started by: Pathica on <04-05-11/1216:41>

Title: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Pathica on <04-05-11/1216:41>
Am really curious how folks found the game. Is it always from playing another game then being 'introduced'?

(Also would be random knowledge for the devs: Who/how to market!)

I know it's been 20 years so word-of-mouth is pretty strong, but the pencil/paper game niche is rather small. (and the cancer causing d20 makes up most of it...)

I found it years ago in college, the 'cool' dorks played it, as opposed to DnD.  :P

Oh and; Anyone start playing solely based SR ecksbawks game?

Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Fnord on <04-05-11/1228:34>
My first contact with Shadowrun came with the 1993 shadowrun SNES CRPG. In late 94/early 95, I bought a large batch of used SNES games, and among them were Shadowrun. My 9 year old self was overwhelmed by this game. It was amazingly good, it had a good story, a setting that made me want to read/watch sci-fi (I watched blade runner shortly thereafter) and the gameplay was fun. Sure, I might not have understood everything that was going on, but what I did understand was great.
 95 was also the year that i started playing pen & paper games, and while I at this point did not know about the pen & paper version of shadowrun, it was an entryway into the wonderful realm of geek culture, with such (Swedish) classics as Mutant and Drakar & Demoner (I have by the way still not forgiven Äventyrsspel/Target games for what they did to Mutant. Mutant Chronicles should never have been made. I am addicted to their computer games that they make these days though (Europa Universalis, Hearts of iron & Victoria an empire under the sun)).
 Early 1999, I was randomly browsing RPGs in my then well stocked RPG/wargame/other geeky stuff store (Tradition, for you swedes, this chain of stores were later bought by EB games and was turned into a pure videogame store, with high prices and a very poor selection of PC games :( ). Among literally hundreds of RPG books was a name that I recognized: Shadowrun. I still remember the feeling of finding this game, it was one of pure joy. 3 days later, and I returned to the store with enough money to buy the game. While I own plenty of RPGs (17 different games), shadowrun is the game which I own most books for.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Nacho on <04-05-11/1248:50>
I had always been an avid RPG player / gamemaster - and my buddies & I were hanging out at the local hobby store back in 1989 when we saw the first book.  It was awesome sounding, so we all bought the rulebook and were playing the next weekend.  I got hooked much more that the others, we all liked it - but I really did.  I have played it off and on again since then.  I have a hard time getting people to play with, but I really enjoy reading the material.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: savaze on <04-05-11/1407:21>
Back at the beginning of SR is when I ran across it, but I came across it a bit backwards...

One of my friends brothers was/is a textbook introvert and was a bit of an antisocial voracious reader.   We use to sneak into his room to get on his rocking 'high powered' computer and to raid his book collection for new pearls.  We came across a huge selection of gaming books, but his brother wasn't a gamer.  We took all of his RPG's to add to what we were already playing and to try out the new stuff (I don't think he ever minded - or at least he never said anything - some of those books are still in circulation with various groups in the CA Bay Area and Central Valley).  Over the years we happened across a nice selection of Battletech, SR, CP2020, and a dozen other systems that our poor high school selves couldn't afford.   

Darksword Adventures was where my gaming started and then it moved into D&D, then not too much later I got into SR.  I played with the same group for around 15 years.  Most of us stuck together through High school, college, and post college until most of us went our separate ways.  We also played Hero's Quest into the ground... That was a good simple fun board game!
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: PeterSmith on <04-05-11/1428:55>
Knew about it from the FASA catalogs that came with my BattleTech purchases, but the first time I played was GC2K as a demo. Only really started getting into the game last year.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <04-05-11/1520:06>
I first ran into it at my FLGS in '92, and it looked interesting, but my group was interested in the other cyberpunk game, so I shrugged and put it back.

Then came the "Shadowplay" and "2XS" novels (Now available in ebook format!), which sold me on the universe.

So I've been waiting to play since 1992.  Still fraggin' waiting!
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: FastJack on <04-05-11/1604:57>
Never Deal with a Dragon

Saw the novel in the book store, read through it in about a day. Then saw the ad in the back of the book about the game based on the setting.

The rest, as they say, is history.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Loki on <04-05-11/1948:43>
 In 89 or 90 a friend of a friend had it and invited us to play.  I tried the decker archetype because it sounded cool and he had a shotgun called  a room sweeper :) , but we only ran the one session with him. However I was hooked on the setting, so I got the core book and infected as many people with the memeplex as I could. Played it off and on ever since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: farothel on <04-06-11/1222:58>
We had just finished a campaign in Exalted and were thinking about what to do next.  A lot of proposals came but there was always one of the group who didn't like the particular setting.  One of my group proposed Shadowrun, explained the setting a bit and we all said, 'ok, we can live with that.'  It became one of the craziest campaigns I've ever played.  Maybe it helped that we were in Lagos.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Simagal on <04-08-11/1649:31>
The cover of the first edition on the new releases behind the counter in the FLGS. It was the elf casting a spell, and the other elf with "claws" plugged into the computer that did it.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Kontact on <04-09-11/0932:19>
I got into RP and Shadowrun in the same way, but not at the same time.  A university near my house ran a camp/afterschool program for kids that doubled as a certification program for education students.  There were a bunch of different groups doing different things like origami or basic chemistry.  Basic camp-style activity, but based on experimental educational techniques.  It was all about the idea of learning without textbooks and chalk.  The dude who was in charge of the whole thing also ran a group which was the RPG/world-building group.  He wrote his own system and built models and such, but kept around books from lots of different systems.  I found the SR 1st edition book and fell in love with the setting.  The combination of real-life anthropology and fantastic struggle clicked with me perfectly.  Must have been around 93.

So, basically, I was introduced to SR through gaming with a doctor of education who stressed the idea of role-play as a teaching tool.
I still subscribe to that philosophy and use character research as an excuse to learn about different places and things. 
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mystic on <04-10-11/0209:46>
It was about '95 and it was the summer just after graduation from high school. My best friend had this book called "Shadowrun". He was reading it, telling me about it, and I started to read through it myself. It had tech, magic, and the oppertunity for badassery. I created a character, a basic Street Sam, and did a sample combat round with another friend. Kicked his ass with a grenade and I was like WOW, this is cool. A couple of weeks later I found "Into the Shadows" and "Night's Pawn". My college years were then spent devouring SR books in my time between classes and playing every other weekend. One of my biggest gripe about games at that point was that none of them had something I completely liked. I was more of a sci-fi geek and liked ships and tech over swords and magic. DnD had no appeal for me and I did not know about Star Wars D6. Now all of the sudden, here was this game that in my view had it ALL! Tech and magic, swords AND guns. It was a burrito of cyberpunk drenched in magical hotsause and wrapped in a tortia of future awsomeness.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: bigity on <04-10-11/2312:54>
I was on vacation in Florida, needed a book to kill some time.  I was like 13 and the 1st edition hardcover caught my eye.  I remember it cost some obscene amount of money for me back then, I keep wanting to say 40 or 60 bucks, but that may be due to inflation in my mind.

Took it back home, showed it to the Star Wars D6/Marvel Super Heroes (the old FACERIP) gang and that was that.  Now I have a shelf of SR books and novels and boxes and I'm hoping the game is still alive and kicking when my son is old enough to enjoy that kind of thing.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: The_Gun_Nut on <04-11-11/0940:03>
In '89, my roommate saw the book and picked it up from the book store.  He ran the first campaign that month and I've been hooked ever since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Dead Monky on <04-16-11/1548:24>
I must have been 12 or 13 (so '94 or '95) and a friend of mine introduced it to me.  It was 2ndEd I think.  I believe he saw it in a used book store and thought it looked cool so he picked it up.  Or he saw it in one of those old FASA catalogs and thought it looked neat.  We were both big BattleTech, anime, and sci-fi fans at the time and thought it sounded fun.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: DesVoeux on <04-16-11/1947:53>
I got into Shadowrun because I was into BattleTech. When I recieved the old BattleTech boxed set as a Christmas present, there was a FASA product catalog inside divided into sections for Star Trek, BattleTech, Shadowrun, and Renegade Legion. I thought Shadowrun looked kind of neat, but didn't end up really thinking about it too much until I found a used copy of Universal Brotherhood at a bookstore and picked it up on a whim. I got hooked into reading Shadowrun sourcebooks, but still didn't end up playing it until years later with 3rd Edition.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Icarus on <04-16-11/2025:35>
We didn't have enough people for D&D, so we tried it instead.

So unfortunately, I've only played it once. They threatened to do an online campaign, but it never happened, so I'm going to try to GM a game and get us playing again.

Very impressed by the one game we played though.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Critias on <04-17-11/1540:56>
Taking a break from Christmas shopping in the Florence Mall in 1989, I spotted it on the shelves at a B Dalton bookstore.  I didn't buy it that trip (because, well, I was supposed to be shopping for other people), but scampered back to the mall and bought it a few weeks later, once I'd gotten together an assortment of cash, gift cards, etc, from family members;  bought the core book in January of '90, and haven't looked back.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Wolfboy on <04-24-11/1916:31>
i literally walked into a 3ed game that had just been started as they crossed over from 2ed.
let me explain:

i forget what year, ('97-'99) but my sister was going to college and i was working and living at home when my sister wanted to go to downtown pensacola for a night out. Now she hated driving in downtown because of the traffic and i agreed to take her so she has me take her to this coffee bar. (the place was unfortunately destroyed by the storm surge of hurricane Ivan) upstairs at this joint she meets her "boyfriend" whom i had no clue about and he and his friends are playing the game. I had never played RPG's before other than video games so i gave it a try and was addicted after the first game.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: savaze on <04-24-11/2050:51>
I miss going to Pensacola... My wife and I would go every weekend right after we got married and get crazy cheap rooms at the naval base, good times! Though I don't miss the over abundance of jelly fish.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: JimJungle on <04-25-11/1600:33>
For me it started in middle school with the SNES game. A friend of mine had rented it from the local movie rental place, (Video Giant). we played it for about 8 hours straight. Since then i've owned it twice and have played it on and off for the last 15 years. Just recently go into the actual Pen/Paper game. Its still one of the funner games for SNES.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARCimedes on <04-26-11/1032:40>
I started playing in '89. Back then I was an avid gamer and after a game of some flavor of GURPS my best friend had to leave to another game. I had nothing better to do, so I went with him. It turned out to be Shadowrun. They game me the Ganger Archetype and while I didn't have much to do while all the street sams took their two to three actions before I could do anything it was still a cool game. So I bought the rule book and Street Sam Catalogue and got the rest of my friends hooked.

-ARCimedes
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Wolfboy on <04-29-11/2107:07>
I miss going to Pensacola... My wife and I would go every weekend right after we got married and get crazy cheap rooms at the naval base, good times! Though I don't miss the over abundance of jelly fish.

do you remember a place called The Secret Cafe, or the Daily Grind? thats where i usually went to hang out and/or game, well there and Ground Zero when it was over on Navy Blvd
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: GeLrIrToCrH on <04-29-11/2224:48>
Back in the day (let's say 1990) I picked up a compilation strategy guide containing several SNES games & one of them was Shadowrun. All the technical jargon got me. Datajack? Cranial Bomb? My mind dreamed up images of this future tech. Fastforward 9 or 10 years later, I'm 19 and playing GURPS with some new friends. As we were coming to the end of our story we started talking about what else we could play. Someone said Shadowrun and that was it. My friend had a good amount of second edition and we started playing. Next thing I know, I own almost all of the third edition books. We played on and off over the years till life caused us to take a hiatus. I continued to check out the SR website on a regular basis and discovered fourth edition's release. A friend was going to Gencon and I asked him to pick up the core book for me, all the while slowly convincing my old group to get back into it. We've been playing monthly ever since the Denver missions. Um, wait...what was the question?   :P
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Rascal on <04-30-11/0813:35>
A friend of mine sold me the concept of Shadowrun around 2003. Something along the lines of "It´s like NeoTech (swedish cyberpunkRPG), only with orcs and dragons. You can be a shaman." I fell in love with the game even before playing it, and it remains my very favourite setting even if I´m getting awfully bored with the dice-avalanches of combat...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Blond Goth Girl on <04-30-11/1112:52>
Years ago, a friend wanted to GM it as a break from Vampire.  I loved the system and setting so I use it.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: DesVoeux on <04-30-11/2306:37>
I fell in love with the game even before playing it, and it remains my very favourite setting even if I´m getting awfully bored with the dice-avalanches of combat...

It's definitely the amazing setting that has kept me loyal, not the mechanics. (Although 4th Edition was a big step in the right direction.)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Somtaaw0 on <05-01-11/0045:56>
I learned of SR from FASA catalogs that came with Battletech products. Don't remember when I first purchased a manual though...had to be around '92 or '93. I still have pieces of that 2nd Ed rulebook (it came apart) though I recently replaced via EBay. I had only played hack 'n slash DnD and tactical combat sims prior to playing SR. I was hooked on the Matrix from the very start.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Pathica on <05-01-11/0107:28>
I fell in love with the game even before playing it, and it remains my very favourite setting even if I´m getting awfully bored with the dice-avalanches of combat...

It's definitely the amazing setting that has kept me loyal, not the mechanics. (Although 4th Edition was a big step in the right direction.)
Yeah, 100% agreed. The source-books are fun to read almost as standalones. The setting/world/mythology is... thick. I don't even play anymore, but still read/buy the books as escapism/fiction.

(Nudge to devs: You have a good thing, don't flood me with shovel-ware please, please, please!)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mara on <05-03-11/0756:22>
The review of second edition in Dragon Magazine WAY back in the day...you know,
when it was not only in dead-tree, but was allowed to admit other game companies
existed.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: jcook119 on <05-05-11/2321:18>
It was summer of 1989. My friends and I had been gaming for a few years, and we had always wanted to go to GenCon. Somehow we managed to pull it off, and had a great time. There was a brand new RPG by FASA that was released there, called Shadowrun :) I had passed it by all weekend, but on Sunday I was giving the dealers room one last pass and I stopped to look at it again. The cool scene on the cover was very enticing, but flipping through the book it looked a bit over-complicated. The FASA booth had a special deal for Sunday: buy the rulebook and GM screen, get the 2 boxed sets of miniatures free. I had some money left in my pocket, and it would have been a shame to leave the con with money, so I took the deal. On the way home, one of my buddies was driving so I sat in the back and started reading. I had had very little sleep over those few days, so reading the stuff on dice pools, matrix running and spell force/drain made about as much sense as Einstein written in Mandarin. I told myself this was probably a waste of money and forgot about it for the next few days.

The next weekend I decided to give it another try. I figured I had to get something out of it for my money, even if just to mine it for ideas for other games. I started from the beginning, and ended up reading it all in one sitting. When I was done, it made sense. I called one of my gaming buddies and said "we have GOT to play this game". And thus began a 5 year campaign. We played all of the published adventures that came out during that time, from DNA/DOA to Harlequin and more. We wrapped up sometime in late 1994-early 1995, and it was a great ride.

Now I am back to the Sixth World, 2 editions later. I am looking forward to it.

Thanks,
James
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: FastJack on <05-05-11/2339:59>
It was summer of 1989. My friends and I had been gaming for a few years, and we had always wanted to go to GenCon. Somehow we managed to pull it off, and had a great time. There was a brand new RPG by FASA that was released there, called Shadowrun :) I had passed it by all weekend, but on Sunday I was giving the dealers room one last pass and I stopped to look at it again. The cool scene on the cover was very enticing, but flipping through the book it looked a bit over-complicated. The FASA booth had a special deal for Sunday: buy the rulebook and GM screen, get the 2 boxed sets of miniatures free. I had some money left in my pocket, and it would have been a shame to leave the con with money, so I took the deal. On the way home, one of my buddies was driving so I sat in the back and started reading. I had had very little sleep over those few days, so reading the stuff on dice pools, matrix running and spell force/drain made about as much sense as Einstein written in Mandarin. I told myself this was probably a waste of money and forgot about it for the next few days.

The next weekend I decided to give it another try. I figured I had to get something out of it for my money, even if just to mine it for ideas for other games. I started from the beginning, and ended up reading it all in one sitting. When I was done, it made sense. I called one of my gaming buddies and said "we have GOT to play this game". And thus began a 5 year campaign. We played all of the published adventures that came out during that time, from DNA/DOA to Harlequin and more. We wrapped up sometime in late 1994-early 1995, and it was a great ride.

Now I am back to the Sixth World, 2 editions later. I am looking forward to it.

Thanks,
James
Coming to GenCon?
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: jcook119 on <05-06-11/1530:49>
Yes, I will be there this year. I am going to play a few of the Missions events.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Ten-Hex on <05-06-11/1631:55>
It was `92 and I was 16. The dying game shop in my town had this big black book outsizing most of the other stuff on the shelf stuffed over by the BattleTech boxes. I picked it up and there was Sally Tsung in daisy dukes and Ghost laying out the mayhem with twin Uzis, plus Dodger as a leathered-up elf plugged in to what looked like an ATM built into a wall.

I think it took five or six years for another game to snag an iota of my attention away.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: SirDelta on <05-29-11/1346:38>
I just started playing this year.  I had remebered reading a review of the Genesis game in an old issue of Game Informer, and I thought, "Wasn't that an tabletop RPG, too?" (I had already read WFRP and Exalted).  So I checked online, got the core book, and hoped that it would be good.  I was not disappointed.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: BlackMyron on <06-07-11/2313:48>
 Okay, I feel really old now...

 I discovered SR mainly because a trip to the FLGS was a weekly ritual by the end of the eighties, and I'd go through whatever games they had - picked up Paranoia, Shadowrun, and Call of Cthulhu all within a few months of each other after having played DnD exclusively for a decade or so.  First book I got wasn't the main rulebook, but the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America (which I still have, taped up a little) because I liked the writing.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Laurentius on <06-12-11/0113:43>
I joined through word of mouth. A friend's family played third edition, and I joined for the few sessions that were played while I lived there. Became a fan, and when I saw fourth on the bookshelves, my brother and I decided to pick up the books. I now put together sessions for a small group that runs over Skype.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Red Canti on <07-27-11/1649:02>
Some friends came over to my place and we played a bunch of games, amongst them one game of Shadowrun using the pre-set characters. Highlights of the game were my Dwarf rigger expressing concern for the GM's character "Never going out drinking or bringing home a nice girl.", and him replying "..My character is a girl.", hilarity ensued. We didn't follow up that oneshot. Which is good because I never wanna play a Dwarf again, I always end up talking like a Dorf.


Later, I was at another friends house and bored waiting for everybody to wake up (we usually stay overnight on the weekends), I spied a Shadowrun corebook and started reading, what I read there is really what got me intested.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Seeker on <07-27-11/2022:40>
My brother was playing it when I was... 6 or 7?  I don't remember, all I remember was being the beta tester for all of his games.  Man, I thought the game was sooooo awesome.

Then I spent about 20 years playing anything but, until finally, some thing got under my skin and I came back to it, at 4th edition.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: AJCarrington on <07-28-11/1249:30>
Local game store, when it was first released by FASA...man, guess I'm getting old  ::).  My brother and I were huge fans of BattleTech, and gave FASA pretty much a free pass..."if BT is good, then this will be too".  Over course, it didn't hurt that we loved D&D and I was just discovering "cyberpunk"...ah, those were the days.

AJC
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: BSOD on <07-30-11/1334:44>
Read some of the 3rd ed stuff years ago purely because my mums boyfriend left it lying around and I had nothing better to be doing at the time.
Suffice to say when I decided that I was going to run a game at my university club, and I started looking through their, slowly dating, rulebook library. It was obviously a badly damaged copy of 4th ed that caught my eye.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: MadMaddy on <08-10-11/0133:36>
First I feel like a child...but I found Shadowrun last year in the form of my lab partner in my college biology class. He was deep into some cool looking book that was obviously not biology...a few weeks later he finally asked if I wanted to really play the game. Next thing I know I'm in a dorm lounge getting written up for A being in a guys dorm and B waking up part of their floor because we're laughing so hard. I must say the geek tag that I believe labeled all gamers was so far off, I love it and we have since infected more young minds including my 12 year old cousin and his friends.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: beowulf_of_wa on <08-10-11/1417:48>
1989: I'm turning 15 and my younger brother gives me the original Street Samurai Catalog (gray cover). after having it a week, i had read it thru a couple dozen times and then had to get the core book.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Dysth on <08-10-11/2128:33>
it was in the summer of '97, back when i was in the german equivalent of the boy scouts (pfadfinder) one of our groupleaders proposed a roleplaying weekend. first game was shadowrun and at the end of the evening i hated it.
no suprise though, the rules not explained (apparently they were too complicated for our fragile elementary school minds) my char was promptly arrested for driving around with an unconcealed missle-launcher. in the subsequent firefight with the cops he got shot and nearly died, my char being out of the game. later my so called teammates busted my char out of prison and of course used him as an IED -.-
Basicly a bad GM drove me away.
Years later i discovered d&d crpgs, playing planescape:torment, fallout 1&2 combined with the discovery of shadowrun novels at my library sparked my interest. i loved the setting of shadowrun, but the rulebooks were a little on the expensive side and with no one back then to play with i didn't bother with them.
Now i have some of the books as pdfs, way cheaper than a hardcover and easier to transport  ;D gotta love technology.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Fallen on <08-13-11/0001:08>
Summer of 1990, I was 14 at the time, and just happened into a comic book store that had only recently opened.  I spot a copy of Shadowrun and, somehow, the cover art appealed to me a great deal.  I pick it up and browse through the pages, suddenly getting the urge to buy it.  It took me about a month to put enough money together to actually get it.

At the time, I had never really gotten into any gaming universe enough other than AD&D 2nd ed. to pick up an actual copy of a core book.  I instantly fell in love with the setting and system -- It has ever since been my favorite rpg.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Totes on <08-19-11/2135:01>
I've known about Shadowrun since I got into table top RPGs in 2000, but I started with Werewolf and never had anyone that wanted to play SR. :(

It wasn't until the end of last year that I decided to spash out on the core book and a lot of the add on books, and I haven't really played much else since. :D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <08-19-11/2229:20>
Try hunting for a good since 1992.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Prime Mover on <08-19-11/2231:06>
Finishing up a 4 yr Greyhawk campaign and attempting to layout my own game S.O.D. I was leafing thru my summer copy of the wargames west catalog and spotted cover and blurb for a new game Shadowrun.  Right place right time and 21 years of running the Shadows. 
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Ranger on <08-20-11/0021:19>
1989 I was in the bookstore about 40 miles from home (I live in rural South Dakota) looking for probably a source book for one of the games I was playing at the time when I came across Shadowrun.  I had enough money to almost get it so I had to beg my mom for the rest of the money.  I spent the rest of the shopping trip and the ride home reading it and have been playing or more accurately GMing it ever since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: usefulidiot on <08-20-11/1423:18>
I was introduced to shadowrun around when I was in the 5th grade. Its was 2nd addition. One of my friends intoduced it to me because I was always into RPG games and war games, it was the first time I ever played a pen and paper game. We started getting some of our other friends to play and I also spent some time playing with the group that got him into Shadowrun. They also introduced me to a few other pen and paper games, but Shadowrun has stuck around the longest. My friend who got me into it stopped playing after a few years into it and gave me all of his books. It wasn't many, but they were a few 2nd addition books. Still have them and the core book is in very rough condition from being passed around and borrowed so much. It has duct tape on the binding keeping it together, but I will never get rid of it. After he stopped playing I took over the GM role and introduced some of my other friends to it. Now after many years of playing, everyone growing up, and life happening we are down to a group of 3 1/2. I say 1/2 because my cousin has been a part of our group the longest next to me as a player and sometimes a GM, but he is in the Army and spends a lot of time over seas. So he only gets to play on rare occasions.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Bane on <08-20-11/1825:04>
Played very little DnD with friends, then someone had Shadowrun books somehow, we started with that. That was maybe 6 years ago?

It took me a few playthroughs to learn that you could make your own characters, then longer to figure that out...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: entropy on <08-26-11/0711:13>
My then-boyfriend brought me along to a game when I was 16. It was my first tabletop game, too - I'd been interested in tabletop RPGs for quite a while but had never known anyone who played, given that most of my school "friends" thought role playing was uncool, so you can imagine my excitement when he asked if I wanted to come.
It was pretty fun, too, I was a decker and my ex was a troll shaman. A drunk, Russian troll shaman wearing a dirty, ex-blue bathrobe. Good times... Too bad that group died of the GM not feeling up to it after one or two sessions.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Star Debut on <09-25-11/0746:53>
I started in the early 90s, I was young, money was easier to spend, because it was my parents money theoretically, and whilst I was in a weekly Roleplaying Group, I brought the 2nd edition core rule book and enjoyed the setting. It can be a nose dive into an unfamilar setting as I quickly found out. Some years later in my early twenties I brought the 3rd edition book, found it much the same but did not get to play it. I am onto the 4th edition, and will be looking to get a game running in the near future with my current roleplaying buddies! Just needs some careful planning, some of them only know the D&D 4ed rules and need to ease them in slowly and gently as not to upset the Shadowrun atmosphere.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mason on <09-25-11/1722:08>
ARC introduced me to it not long after I met him on a bus. I got his email and we continued our bus chat online, then he invited me to come play a game of SR at his house. I looked over the rules and made my first attempt at a combat mage, which was kinda suck compared to some powergamed characters in the group, made a better character for the next game (my account's namesake), and the rest, as they say, is history.

Credit where credit is due: The street name of Mason was Arc's idea when i described him as a wall-building mage specialized in Manipulations. Although I shot down the extended version of the name Free Mason.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <09-25-11/1818:30>
After he gets nicked and spends some time in prison, and busts loose, we can call him Free Mason.  ;D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARC on <09-27-11/0102:57>
After he gets nicked and spends some time in prison, and busts loose, we can call him Free Mason.  ;D

LOLZ!  At least that is what the media will call him, I'll just call him a flying brick, that SOB is harder to kill than a cockroach.  Him and One of our other players is ridiculous to try to take down.  Believe me, I've tried, and no I don't specifically target a players character unless there is a good reason storywise for it.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mason on <09-27-11/0108:45>
Geek the mage. That is all. Remember the Noticing Magic rules? Most of Mason's spells are Force 8, so that is Threshold -2 for people to notice he is the source :D.

Just...good luck actually geeking the mage.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <09-27-11/0110:49>
Two Words:  Drop Bears.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARC on <09-27-11/1244:42>
Yeah, but you have seen his signature, yeah that really happened.  Right now, as it stands, Mason ic a slippery git.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mason on <09-27-11/1442:35>
DM: "Mason, dodge 3!"
Mason: "4"
"Now dodge 5!"
"3"
"Soak 10!"
"Edging. soked 11."
DM facepalms.

Mason has only been hurt by a mundane opponent once. He took 2 stun from a bullet. The only other time he was injured was fighting an insect spirit, or from Drain. It doesn't hurt that the DM has terrible dice luck :D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <09-27-11/1729:48>
Dump truck full of sand down a hill.  Physics is never on your side. (http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20110919.html)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARC on <09-28-11/0126:58>
Nah. Got some ideas, hopefully I can pull them off without a hitch.  If I can it will be a glorius day.   Besides I really hate killing players.  At least without epic scenes.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Usda Beph on <10-26-11/1207:04>
I found it by playing BattleTech. I didn't get into it at first because I wasn't into the cyberpunk look (80s ya know). Finally sat down last year and had fun playing.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARC on <10-27-11/0101:33>
Hey USDA, is it you or your character that's in Seattle?
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Pyromaster13 on <10-27-11/0443:28>
I was an AD&D player beforehand, and I was looking into the new 4th edition books in Barnes & Nobles, to which I was sorely disappointed at the new system, my opinion at least.  And next to the AD&D books were the Shadowrun Books, so I took a look and thought 'Hey, this isn't a bad system, it's not like DnD where you act perfectly fine until you reach 1hp, you can die if you're stupid!'.  So yeah, now I am a Shadowrunner.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Chaotic Insane on <10-27-11/1213:42>
His character's in Seattle. We're all Michiganders. XP

I remember Dad picking up a shadowrun book at somepoint and drooling over the pic of an Elf biker bitch with a machine gun but never played it until last year with Dad, Doom, and Codac.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mirikon on <10-27-11/1828:23>
I found Shadowrun through my local gaming group. We were doing Hero System, and the DM asked if we wanted to try some Shadowrun for a change of pace. (Or maybe it was to give himself a break from my character, who was a shapeshifting dragon-type character with a personality like a six year old girl.)

That campaign was a lot of fun, and the (many) mistakes we made helped teach me a whole lot of things not to do. One of the other player's characters in the campaign was a magician who spent most of his time as a monkey via a shapechange spell. I drek you not.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Phylos Fett on <10-28-11/0408:02>
I actually found SR at the local Gaming Store - just happened to have some money, and the cover art (this was the SR2 BBB) really caught my eye. Read the blurb on the back, flicked through and looked at some of the art, and thought to myself - "yeah, this looks cool!"

Two years later, I had a group of friends that wanted to get into (and back into, in some cases) some gaming, and I had just re-read the book again, so I thought I'd give it a shot. And then, of course, the purchasing of sourcebooks began...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: TennyJaden on <11-03-11/0628:00>
It was quite funny how I found out about it.

It was during a period where there was no D&D group to play with me, so I derped around on all possible RPG pages and there where a couple of funny stories about other peoples games. And then there was one about a so-called "Shadowrun" in which guns, "troll-gangers", grenades and cars where all at once and I was like "WTF MoFo?" how come a troll drives a car? *5 minutes later, after looking Shadowrun up on Wikipedia* "Holy shit! Fantasy AND Cyberpunk, my two favourite ganres in one game?". And that's when I started getting the books :D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Zilfer on <11-03-11/1840:16>
DM: "Mason, dodge 3!"
Mason: "4"
"Now dodge 5!"
"3"
"Soak 10!"
"Edging. soked 11."
DM facepalms.

Mason has only been hurt by a mundane opponent once. He took 2 stun from a bullet. The only other time he was injured was fighting an insect spirit, or from Drain. It doesn't hurt that the DM has terrible dice luck :D

Haha! Sounds like my mage there.... xD he's only ever knocked himself out, though I tend to dream a "little bigger" with a F12 being thrown out on occasion. xD

Found out from a friend. Didn't think I'd like it at first, though of course i was proven wrong for the second time. (the first one was being introduced to DnD the first time)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Mirikon on <11-03-11/2038:55>
Heh. My first run, we were doing the run where you gotta get across Denver to deliver the treaty between the Koshari and the Mafia. At the place where the Yaks and Triads catch you, my combat mage got caught in the blast when the troll decided to throw a grenade into the middle of everyone. So I was hurt bad, natch. We come along later, and some go-gangers are on us. Well, deciding that we didn't have time for this, I laid down an Ice Sheet  in the middle of the road behind us. The gangers went flying every which way (one went through the window into a Troll nightclub), but my mage knocked himself out from the drain.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Xabulba on <11-04-11/0950:50>
I first found Shadowrun huddled up under and overpass trying keep out of the rain. It was shivering, fur all wet and a forlorn look in it's big brown eye's. It looked so sad that my heart melted and I took it home with me and has been with me ever since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: KarmaInferno on <11-07-11/2254:17>
Um. That's not Shadowrun.

That's a bear.




-k
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: FastJack on <11-07-11/2348:09>
Um. That's not Shadowrun.

That's a bear.




-k
Shh! The dropbear is sleeping! If it want's to be called Shadowrun, then I'd call it Shadowrun too!
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ARC on <11-07-11/2351:00>
Um. That's not Shadowrun.

That's a bear.




-k
Shh! The dropbear is sleeping! If it want's to be called Shadowrun, then I'd call it Shadowrun too!

Well as long as it's not Pedobear...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: beowulf_of_wa on <11-08-11/0046:44>
no no no no, if that bridge is in fremont (seattle) it's a troll, probably HMHVV infected, and you shouldn't have brought it into your flophouse if you want the house to stay whole.

(http://raincityguide.com/files/2011/06/fremont-troll.jpg)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Zilfer on <11-08-11/1159:50>
Whoa.... o.O' I haven't seen that thing before.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Malex on <11-24-11/1151:29>
I was introduced to SR3 in high school, it was one of several settings my group played when we were letting our lead GM take a break from his decade long 2nd edition dnd campaign. When SR4 came out I began buying into the system and have become my groups default source for info and games, which blows because I never get to be a PC.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Unwirklich on <11-27-11/0532:23>
We're a group of friends, we share many hobbies (all playing Magic, Warhammer 40k and League of Legends, for example) and we somehow got the collective idea 'Hey, let's play an RPG'. Contenders were DSA, D+D and Shadowrun. The last one won, as we preferred the futuristic setting. I also really loved to play the Netrunner TCG a couple of years ago. My gamemaster career has its root in my passion to flatline deckers (yes, I really liked my ice, the blacker the better), so to say. Nowadays, we have two groups running, a friend GMing the one and me GMing the other.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: rasmusnicolaj on <11-28-11/0828:55>
One of my oldest friends has always had a fetish for picking up strange RPG systems and then playtesting them on the rest of us. He started a group back in 95'ish I think in 2nd. edition and I played a soya-burger eating japaneese combat mage. Lots of fun.
Later I got 3rd. myself and has run several campaigns. And now we are talking about getting a group together and try to play 4th.

Rasmus
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Keita on <12-01-11/1601:29>
CanRay's fanfic.  :P He showed it to me, and I loved it. I loved the world and wanted to find out more. I had no idea what an RPG was at the time, so it was pretty tough going for me, even after I got my grubby paws on the core rule book. Anyway...Ray felt bad because I couldn't play it, so he offered that we do a fanfic together. That led to the creation of my first character...and that's now Shadowrun got its claws into me. I've been an addict ever since, even though I've never played a single game.  ;D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <12-01-11/1700:34>
Speaking of, where's your latest work?  :P
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Keita on <12-02-11/1211:22>
Hopefully to be finished this weekend. I think I finally plugged the most glaring plot holes.  ::)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Serious Paul on <01-01-12/1600:26>
A friend of mine snagged it in the late summer/early fall of '89. He stopped one night, and since we'd played TMNT, Robotech and at the time 2E D&D he was thought i might be interested. Been hooked ever since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: MisterJohnson on <01-02-12/0213:19>
As a way of making my first post to the forums here, I thought this thread might be a fitting "hello" format.

I started playing Shadowrun in its first edition form back when it first came out.  My friends and I in high school were big gamers - mostly D&D, BattleTech and a few others.  When Shadowrun came out - everything else went to the way-side for quite awhile (other than the WEG Star Wars RPG - which we played a lot)... anywho...  Been playing SR a long time.  Picked it up on a whim as I scoured the local game store for new things.

I have played each edition and have just about all the books up to what is current.  I love the atmosphere, the mixture of tech and magic and the cool near-future aspects.

Looking forward to reading and contributing to this group.  Thanks, chummers.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Wakshaani on <01-02-12/1326:19>
Another FASA junkie here. We'd been playing Battletech, and when Shadowrun came out, the gaming group grabbed it for a spin. We were playing stock characters out of the book, with me getting the Mercenary, and his light machine gun, Sarah Jane. Of particular note was the first bar we went into requiring all weapons to be dropped off at the 'coat check' room. Everybody dropped theirs off, and when it was my turn, I got to do a two minute routine of pulling guns from holsters, throwing knives, grenades, more knives, more guns, etc etc etc. Then picked up the LMG to go inside.

"Hey!" says the bartender, "You can't take that gun inside!"
"She's not a gun," I reply, "She's my baby!"

Good times, good times.

(My first original character was Sundown, a native of the Makah tribe. Still in first edition, so no concept of physical adepts yet existed, but that's what he would have been. All organic, not a shred of tech, ate real food (Paid a fortune for it, too!) instead of soy crap, operated as a bounty hunter since he could freely move from Seattle to the countryside and back. Darn cool guy.)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Fatal Error on <01-03-12/2135:43>
Since this was just brought up in another thread as well, why not?

I first stumbled across Shadowrun back in '94 playing the SNES Shadowrun game and later the Sega one as well. Completely confused by the disparity and occasional similarities between the two games and already an avid RPGer, I started looking around at local hobby shops to see if I could find Shadowrun books. Before long I found a Shadowrun 2nd ed. and the rest is history.

Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: EclipsiumRasa on <01-18-12/2039:33>
First heard about it from a friend who wanted to start RPing. SR4 is my first role playing game.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: All4BigGuns on <01-18-12/2055:32>
I first discovered Shadowrun via the video game on the Sega Genesis. God I miss that game.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: MisterJohnson on <01-18-12/2102:11>
First heard about it from a friend who wanted to start RPing. SR4 is my first role playing game.

YAY!!!  Welcome.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Black on <01-18-12/2102:14>
1st edition, way, way back in the day.  played mecurial, the vampire rockstar one, a few others.  Our first campaign ended when we had the metahumans riot and take over the city (!), but then, we were only 11 years old.  First characters were a... hmm.. cannot remember, its been far too long.  We also played battletech around the same time, and also MERP.  We started RPGing with MERP, tried out the old marvel superheroes and Champions .... 4th ed.  Cannot remember how we got into Shadowrun, really can't, but I do remember how exited I was when I would order source books through mail order (Military Sims for those in Australia, still going strong :) ).  Once, I  got NA Guide to North America, and even though I was at some sort of BBQ with my folk's friends, I hid myself in the back of the car and read the thing.  Aahhhh.... those were the days when each  new book was like christmas :)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ArkangelWinter on <01-18-12/2156:24>
When I was about 12 and first getting into DnD and Mechwarrior, I saw Shadowrun figurines in the old Ral Partha catalogue. They were kinda cool, so I ordered SR2, and the same with Earthdawn. Been into SR since.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: CanRay on <01-18-12/2203:30>
I first discovered Shadowrun via the video game on the Sega Genesis. God I miss that game.
Yeah...  Too bad M$ really slotted the hellhound when it was their turn.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Malex on <01-19-12/2056:39>
1st edition, way, way back in the day.  played mecurial, the vampire rockstar one, a few others.  Our first campaign ended when we had the metahumans riot and take over the city (!), but then, we were only 11 years old.  First characters were a... hmm.. cannot remember, its been far too long.  We also played battletech around the same time, and also MERP.  We started RPGing with MERP, tried out the old marvel superheroes and Champions .... 4th ed.  Cannot remember how we got into Shadowrun, really can't, but I do remember how exited I was when I would order source books through mail order (Military Sims for those in Australia, still going strong :) ).  Once, I  got NA Guide to North America, and even though I was at some sort of BBQ with my folk's friends, I hid myself in the back of the car and read the thing.  Aahhhh.... those were the days when each  new book was like christmas :)

Still is like that at times.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Lysanderz on <01-19-12/2307:53>
Alright, so believe it or not my Math tutor introduced it to me in 7th grade. He heard that I was interested in Magic the Gathering and brought me 2 boxes of cards. In one of them were some second edition books, I picked at them and said I loved them. So he brought me his collection in a box and said he didn't need them anymore. From there it was me devouring books as I could find them and carefully trying to figure out the rules. It was AMAZING that he was just like "Here you go... have fun."
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: rasmusnicolaj on <01-20-12/0114:31>
Cool guy  ;D

Rasmus
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: street.mage on <01-30-12/1653:16>
A GM friend introduced me in 3rd edition.  It was OK, but after playing it and WoD, D&D was never the same.  I volunteered to play in a game for 4th edition, bought a 4A book, and after playing, haven't really looked back.  Good times.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Red Canti on <02-09-12/1536:32>
At school, there was this Half Black Otaku guy that I got along with pretty well. He mostly turned our group of friends to RPGs, including Scion, Exalted and of course Shadowrun. Our first game was done at my house, in the basement using pre-gen characters. He played an Elven Adept, another friend played a Street Samurai and I played a Dwarven Rigger, complete with awful scottish accent.

We robbed a bank. I drove the Wagon into some security guards when things started going south. Which didn't take too long.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Parker on <03-18-12/1622:35>
Was my first RPG back when I was in my teens.  Fell in love with it, (2nd Edition at the time), and been playing since through 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th.  And, hey, loving every game, whether I just playing or GM'ing! :D
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Furmyr on <04-02-12/1001:12>
I played the SNES game many moons ago and i fell in love with it (even though I had it in Swedish). Fast forward a couple of years until I was on a summer holiday in New York. Walked into a bookstore and saw a book with the Shadowrun logo, I remembered the game and I had to try it. Don't remember which book it was. But when I got home, I wanted to check out some of the other books in the series online and discovered the PnP game.

Was another few years until I finally bought it. Finally got 3rd edition and a few weeks later 4th edition was announced (which is typical of me. HERO System, GURPS, AD&D was all bought a few weeks before a new edition was announced). And now I run 4th edition once a week :)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Ajax on <04-02-12/1341:51>
If no one minds, I'm just going to cut and paste my introduction from my Shadowrun 2050 (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=6676.0) post.

I am not as old as some of the members of this forum, and I'm not as young as most of them. But I was younger than most when I got my start in the roleplaying hobby, back in 1988 I was introduced to an odd little game called Dungeons & Dragons. No, not AD&D (that came latter) much like FastJack and his dinosaurs, I had an instant fascination for the hobby - these were the King Arthur stories I loved to read, the incredible tales out ofLord of the Kings my mother had read me to sleep with in kindergarten, the He-Man adventures I loved to see on TV every Saturday... but I got to be the hero.

In the late spring of 1990, I was nine years old and a seasoned veteran of D&D. I'd even built my very first few dungeons, having left my original group behind when my parents moved to a new city, I had put together a new one from the kids in my new school. So a few weeks after my ninth birthday, I rode my scooter to the comicbook shop on the other side of the subdivision with a pocket full of grandpa's birthday money. I was a kid on a mission: cherry slurpee, the newest issue of Batman, and a new book of monsters for my dungeon. I didn't get my frozen sugaar water, or the comic books, or even that new monster book. I blew every dollar I had on a $28.00 hardcover book with a feathered serpent on the back, a hardcore trio of punk rockers on the front, those immortal words about dealing with dragons on page six, and a logo that fascinates me to this day: a circuit-board imprinted scroll, an American Indiant serpent coiled around a celtic knot, a ram's skull, and a new word: Shadowrun.

To a kid in subrban Detroit, in the world of 1990, the city was as dark and shadowy as any dungeon. A corporation as mysterious and arcane as any evil wizard. Japan was an exotic realm of ninjas, robots, and Nintendo. We thought that Cyndi Lauper's new video on MTV was the epitome of punk rock... I wouldn't pick up my first William Gibson novel for another four years. My introduction to the world of cyberpunk, neo-anarchy, and transhumanism had two elves on the cover, a chapter on magic, and a map of a Seattle on the inside cover. Seattle, five years before Starbucks and Kurt Cobain put it on the map, a city as fantasic for me as Lankhmar or Minas Tirth.

Shadowrun has changed a lot over the years, as our real world has changed so has the Sixth World. New editions, new technology, a better understanding of how players interact with roleplaying games, and even a better understanding of how those games interact with us. I love Shadowrun Fourth Edition and the world of 2072... But, all these years latter, I still have that old copy of the original Shadowrun. On that eternal cover, Dodger is still cracking the Ice, Ghost's twin Uzis are still covering their escape down the alley, and Sally Tsung is still preparing to weave her spell... and I still want to join them.



Mod Edit: Fixed Formatting
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: mortonstromgal on <04-05-12/1530:53>
The 1st edition Street Samurai Catalog at the B Dalton Book store, it looked to cool not to buy. I didn't really know anything about RPGs at the time. I had played D&D a couple times, but fantasy wasn't really my thing. I prefered sci-fi and I didn't know there were other roleplaying games. Heck I probably didn't even know the term roleplaying game.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Angelone on <04-06-12/1222:40>
The Genesis game first introduced me. Shortly after that I was talking to the friend about it and they told me it was an pnp game and got me hooked on the real thing.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: ArkangelWinter on <04-08-12/0148:27>
Ajax, +1 to you for conveying exactly how I hope all roleplayers feel about their favorite game, in that almost surreal way
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Lacynth40 on <04-18-12/0001:13>
Sega Genesis game when I was 11, the Shadowrun novel "Never Deal With a Dragon" when I was 12, and that same year, I got into a table-top game of Shadowrun 2nd Edition. I played an Elven Decker, of course...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Black on <04-18-12/0042:11>
Sega Genesis game when I was 11, the Shadowrun novel "Never Deal With a Dragon" when I was 12, and that same year, I got into a table-top game of Shadowrun 2nd Edition. I played an Elven Decker, of course...

I liked the street sam from Never Deal with a Dragon. Ghost was the real hero.  Honorable, supremly good at combat and he even killed a Great Dragon.  Of course he was also a slightly sad character... Twist never realised he stole his girl.
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Atrox on <04-26-12/0727:39>
My first contact was actually the Street Samurai Catalog. Back then - this was 1990, and in the hinterlands - there were virtually no sourcebooks available for Cyberpunk (2013, if I need to spell that out), and a gun catalogue came in useful, even if I had to assign CP stats. A couple of months later, I read Into The Shadows . . . a week later, I had the SR core rulebook.

While I sat out 3rd Ed., SR/SR2 has been one of my mainstay games, along with V:tM. Interestingly, both combine a strong story with sub-optimum mechancs . . . ;)
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Lacynth40 on <04-27-12/2307:26>
Sega Genesis game when I was 11, the Shadowrun novel "Never Deal With a Dragon" when I was 12, and that same year, I got into a table-top game of Shadowrun 2nd Edition. I played an Elven Decker, of course...

I liked the street sam from Never Deal with a Dragon. Ghost was the real hero.  Honorable, supremly good at combat and he even killed a Great Dragon.  Of course he was also a slightly sad character... Twist never realised he stole his girl.

I never got the feeling Haesslich was a Great Dragon. Did they mention his status somewhere? Lofwyr seemed to be awfully quick to dick around with Haesslich's business, which I think he wouldn't have been so obvious if Haesslich had been a Great. Or anywhere near Loffy's status. Also, Ghost was the man. Wanted more stories about Ghost. Of course, I want more stories about all of the old 2050's runners...
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: Black on <04-28-12/0046:34>
Sega Genesis game when I was 11, the Shadowrun novel "Never Deal With a Dragon" when I was 12, and that same year, I got into a table-top game of Shadowrun 2nd Edition. I played an Elven Decker, of course...

I liked the street sam from Never Deal with a Dragon. Ghost was the real hero.  Honorable, supremly good at combat and he even killed a Great Dragon.  Of course he was also a slightly sad character... Twist never realised he stole his girl.

I never got the feeling Haesslich was a Great Dragon. Did they mention his status somewhere? Lofwyr seemed to be awfully quick to dick around with Haesslich's business, which I think he wouldn't have been so obvious if Haesslich had been a Great. Or anywhere near Loffy's status. Also, Ghost was the man. Wanted more stories about Ghost. Of course, I want more stories about all of the old 2050's runners...

It was early days for Shadowrun, but he did walk around in human form and he was far more powerful then the feathered serpent dragon in the book...   but then your right, Lowfyr did stick his snout in very quickly and Haesslich was hurt (if not killed) by fairly mundane attack... so it would be easy to retrospectively say he was a powerful western, but not a Great. 

On a side note; Dragons have got progressively more powerful in the setting over the years. 
Title: Re: So, how'd you find Shadowrun?
Post by: JustADude on <04-28-12/0133:52>
On a side note; Dragons have got progressively more powerful in the setting over the years.

They're mana-powered. The mana level is still rising.

Ergo, they have more power as time goes on. ;)