Product– Shadowrun Sixth World Beginner Box Set
System-Shadowrun 6th Edition
Producer-Catalyst
Price– $30
TL; DR-Strong start to the six edition. 95%%
Basics-What’s old is new again! Shadowrun celebrates its 30th anniversary with its 6th edition. Let’s dive deep into the new edition and see if its wizzer or hot drek.
base mechanics-attribute + skill, roll that many six sided dice, count 5s and 6s for good, over half 1s is bad. Same dice pool mechanics you know and love and most likely won’t ever change under the current Shadowrun development team.
So What changed?
Edge– Edge is one of the two MASSIVE differences in 6th Ed. In 5th Edition, you rerolled dice or rolled extra dice at the start of a pool. Now, edge is more an ala cart menu where a character choices to reroll extra dice, add successes, or even change the critical glitch range of an opponent. You can only choose one option each round, but now edge begins to flow a lot more. Gear, items, and even differences in ability between you and your opponent will earn you up to two edge an ACTION. That means some people with impressive defences being fired at by multiple opponents will earn edge each attack, not each round! So edge is gonna flow quickly.
Combat-Combat keeps the spirit of the previous edition but massive changes to how actions work and the nature of killing each other. For actions, there are two types of actions: minor and major. Minor are smaller actions like moving while major are your spellcasting and attacking. This ties into initiative. Initiative is still reaction and initiative plus a d6. A character gets two minor action to start and one more minor action for each d6 beyond the first. This ties into multiple attacks. Four minor actions can be converted to one major action meaning if you have 3d6 or more dice for initiative, you can make two attacks a round.
In addition, initiative isn’t rerolled nor do we ever remove counts as we go through a round of initiative. Initiative is just rolled once, play moves from high to low, and goes back to the high. Just like most other RPGs.
Killing People– The bread and butter of Shadowrun is shooting people, and this is still strong in 6th Ed. When you want to kill somebody, you now compare the attackers attack value (determined by the range of the weapon) vs. the defence value of the target’s armor. If someone has an advantage of four or more in this comparison, that character earns one edge. In addition, both people may earn edge based on situational modifiers such as darkness and abilities. The target of the attack rolls a number of d6s equal to the reaction and intuition while the attacker rolls a number of d6s equal to their agility and firearm skill with both sides counting fives and sixes as successes. The side with more wins with ties now going to the attacker. If the attacker wins, the difference in hits is added to the attackers weapon damage. A massive change is now the defender only rolls a number of dice equal to its body attribute with the five and sixes reducing damage as in 5th edition. Since the defender doesn’t have many dice to reduce the damage, weapon damage is also reduced as well.
Magic– Magic is also revamped. When you cast a magic spell, you no longer choose a threshold as thresholds are no longer part of the game. You roll a number of d6s equal to your magic and spellcasting attribute. Each spell has a number of success needed to cast the spell and expressly indicates how a target avoids the damage. It’s clearly written and I not
Skills-Skills are massively reduced with multiple skills being rolled into one skill
Ok, now let’s look at my thoughts.
Mechanics or Crunch-The crux of the game is the d6 rolling system, and that doesn’t change. I love the reduced skills and faster flow of the game. The flow of edge is fun as it provides more player control over the game and less like subjective story candy. The nature of magic and matrix actions also works well. The one thing I’m kind of iffy on is the nature of armor. Armor and weapons having a separate state is ok, but I don’t like that armor is divorced from reducing damage. That feels off. But otherwise, the nature of quick play becomes central to the gunfight nature of the game. I’m optimistic about the nature of the full game’s mechanics. 4.75/5
Theme or Fluff-It’s Shadowrun. You like corporate dystopia and Tolken fantasy, you’re going to like what 6th edition still is. This is more awesome future fantasy in Shadowrun 6th edition. 5/5
Execution-The box set is well put together. I like the layout of the books. The character sheets teach the game well to new players. The biggest issue I have with the quick start rules is I would like a few more pages of explanation to some of the materials. I discussed the materials with a few other Shadowrun GMs and those discussions really helped me solidify the rules. Most people will not have that luxury. The full rules will clear up those issues, but for now, a few more pages would help tie the material together. In addition the art looks amazing, so that gets me ready for a whole new attitude to play. If you want to see a full breakdown of the product check out my unboxing here:https://youtu.be/ruxgYe5usLw 4.5/5
Summary-I’m looking forward to this edition. The changes look good and thought out, for the most part. I think it’s gonna take me a few games to come around on the armor thing. It’s not bad, but it is different. Good different? We’ll see. The rest looks like well done, modern game design streamlining the process and avoiding the random crap that really don’t make a game fun. The physical product is amazing as well. Solid cardboard and writing help get me into this one. I just need more of it to really make my life as a gamer easier. That said, I’m in. I’m invested in the 6th edition of Shadowrun. 95%
Throat Punch Games 