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5E Supplements

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Baron

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« on: <12-29-13/1824:28> »
Hello all,

I have a group of experienced roleplayers picking up the Shadowrun system for the first time.  We have plentiful access to the core rulebook, but I'm curious which of the currently available supplements are worth purchasing. 

I've seen Gun Heaven, the Assassin's Primer, etc.  Which ones are the best, in your opinion?  Which ones would best benefit a group just starting out? 

Thanks in advance!

CanRay

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« Reply #1 on: <12-29-13/1912:53> »
For SR5, I really like Gun H(e)aven 3 and Sim Dreams and Nightmares.

As for supplements, I'm currently on Magnesium in pill form.
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #2 on: <12-29-13/1917:15> »
Sim Dreams and Nightmares, albeit SR4, is very much a fluff book, and the only real crunch in there has been turned into default rules in SR5. As such, I think it's pretty much fully compatible with SR5, and it's really nice for flavor.

Gun Heaven 3 includes quite a lot of tactical options. If you ignore the one rather-overpowered gun and disregard the flavor guns that only a madman would use, you can compare each of the other guns with Core guns and figure out their advantages and disadvantages, then decide what tactical choices you'd like to have available. Purely the stats might already help you look at things from an ingame universe, when you notice a gun that has a few downsides but is Restricted that's a good reason to go "huh, so a Restricted AR is something worth sacrificing stuff for eh?".
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Backgammon

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« Reply #3 on: <01-02-14/1117:49> »
Are you looking specifically for "crunch" (actual stated things, like weapons, spells, NPCs, etc) or are you also looking for "fluff" - descriptions, locations, etc?

Because in terms of crunch, there is very little out for SR5 at the moment, since it just came out. But if you want to look at fluff, there are TONS of books written for SR4 that totally still apply. All of the Location books are great (Seattle 2072, Runner Havens, Montreal 2074, The Land of Promise, etc), . You also have the aforementionned Sim Dreams and Nightmares, but also stuff like Vice and Corporate Guide, which talk about Organized Crime and the Corporations respectively - indispensable info for getting to grip with the denizens of the world of Shadowrun. The 6th World Almanach, of course, good book to have around.

These are all books that are not out of date and well worth reading for new players.

There is also the line of short story fiction, great for understanding the tone of the world.
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Baron

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« Reply #4 on: <01-02-14/1634:02> »
Thank you all for the replies!

I'm looking for anything and everything that you 'experts' would deem useful to new Shadowrun players, so the references to the fluff books are excellent. 

Specifically, is there anything out there that details the city of Boston in any of these books?  I know NeoNet is headquartered there, but not a whole lot else.  Google has been frustratingly unhelpful with this. 

Reaver

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« Reply #5 on: <01-02-14/2349:35> »
Not many cities have been covered in detail... and what details on cities are available is scattered in dozens of books :(

Denver
Seattle
Mexico city
Montreal
Lagos
Tokyo
hong kong

Those are the cities with the biggest write ups currently.. and in some cases (Mexico city) were done for 2e.
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« Reply #6 on: <01-15-14/2349:57> »
They also have a London 2nd edition book.
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