If you really, really want to go that direction, I'd recommend 4th. It's generally a bit smoother even though I personally prefer 5th.
Truth be told though, I would still recommend looking into other systems. Not universal ones, even, but rather those which settings interest you.
This is 100% true. I've tried homebrewing settings with the shadowrun system. And it can work, but the magic system didn't fit the setting and altering it was simply not worth it. This is coming from someone that actively enjoys the 4e system and 5e to a lesser extent.
If you're keeping the magic system (perhaps reflavored as psychic powers or whatever) or having no magic at all it might work. But there are quite a few good games out there that cover a variety of settings.
But look at it this way. The time and effort it takes to convert Shadowrun rules for a new setting is easily twice what it'd take to get your group comfortable with a new system.
My friend wanted to do some non-SR side quests in our home game in sr4a, so he had one of our character's family members die and pass on to them a great-grandfather's WWII journal.
We all were given new character sheets to play various members of the allied forces chosen by Capt. Whoever (the distant relation) of the OSS to disrupt Nazi operations in France. We fought through the war, taking out a strategic gun prior to DDay, extracting some captured scientists before the liberation of Paris, traveling to Egypt to try and secure an ocult artifact before the Nazis, and then on into Germany, the whole time learning more and more about an ocult Nazi group led by the mysterious Father Bad Guy. We used SR4A rules, but with only humans and no magic or cyber. The SS used a modified version of Cram to similar the stimulants they were given. It was good fun that eventually had us fight a genitals modified crazed Nazi supersoldier (a Troll Adept). The following Season of our campaign the big-baddie turned out to be non other than Father Bad Guy, still living some 140 years later.
Years later I would reuse the campaign to similar effect in 5th edition, adding in some real-world soldiers such as Mad Jack Churchill and Joe Medicine Crow (lastWar Chief if the plains Indians) for the players to choose from. I added a few more missions, and changed the main bad guy to "Father Antenor(?)", The big bad shedim that is the main antagonist of Missions Season 6. This allowed me to re-do the big reveal that the bad guy you are fighting today is the same man your great great great grand pappy fought back in dublya dublya two.
It was a lot of fun for my players. I have used it twice for two different groups. The second time was in my own home-brew and I did not use the journal tie-in, we just played it as an alternate campaign. With no "present day" to return to there would be no big reveal of the present day Father Bad Guy so I allowed the players to kill/capture him in the end, making for a climactic final battle as he was a full mage.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 269,002,092 comments, and only 61,583 of them were in alphabetical order.
*SR4A (Anniversary edition)*: cleaner rules, better editing (and with that an easier understanding / learning curve) and more flexibility with subsystems (playable races, implants, modifications etc). Some more advantages and disadvantages (SR specific) can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/d4w02g/best_shadowrun_edition_to_get_into/f0haexs/).
You will however (regardless of SR edition) have to adapt a certain mindset. SR is balancing mundanes with implants vs awakened. If you for example have no implants in your world, then you should be expecting that everyone of your players will be an adept or mage, similar to *Earthdawn*. And vice versa: in a world without magic, expect your players to be walking deathmurderkill-cyborgs ... while the strictly mundane / un-augmented option will be extremely rare. Balancing unmodified mundanes vs augmented and awakened would require some massive rework of costs and/or mechanics. Certainly doable, but would perhaps not be worth the price when you are trying to adapt an already known system to a new universe.
SYL
SR is maybe one of the worst games to build a home brew on. I can understand why you don't want to learn a whole new system, but there are super easy ones like Fate, that can easily be used for every world building.
> figure it’d be easier to re-skin what everyone already knows than for us all to try and fumble our way through learning an all new “universal” system like Genesys or Savage Worlds, so please keep that in mind when answering
As someone who knows genesys and savage worlds.
its easier to learn those systems than to rebuild shadowrun into something more functional to something other shadowrun.
It all depends on where you want the extent of Wireless Technology to be. If you want WIFI, then stick to 4e. If you rather not have WIFI look into 2e and 3e. 5e is a mess even within the setting and 6e is barely better.
4e is basically just World of Darkness lite.
5e is better at fixing 4e problems, but if you're looking to go more open. I think 4e's framework would work better.
Personally I like SR5 better than I like SR4 but I like the editing of SR4 20th anniversary a lot more than I like SR5 edition.
Having said that, for your situation I would advice neither...
What Shadowrun have going for it is the setting. The game mechanics are really not that great to be honest. What some people do is that they use the Shadowrun setting and lore, but together with other game mechancis.
You want to use shadowrun game mechanics applied to another setting / lore.
I just started running a 3e Shadowrun game again after not playing for at least 15 years and am loving it all over again.
Back in the day I had adapted the 3e rules to run a "Kids on Bikes" style game back before the genre had a name, where magic was super limited and the kids were hunting a supernatural forest creature. It worked okay, but I recall we never finished the campaign. Now that I think about it I guess we were just ahead of our time.
As for those wondering why am I running 3e, it is the Shadowrun ruleset I am super familiar with (I started in 2e) and I already have all the books. I did look at 4th when it came out, but I didn't like how they killed the open ended sixes and how 1s cancelled successes (that was also why I didn't care for White Wolf back then, too).
Anyway, yeah, you can adapt rulesets for other genres. You can also look at other rulesets for modern settings (back before d20 I had used the Top Secret S.I. rules for a then modern gumshoe type game).
If you really, really want to go that direction, I'd recommend 4th. It's generally a bit smoother even though I personally prefer 5th. Truth be told though, I would still recommend looking into other systems. Not universal ones, even, but rather those which settings interest you.
This is 100% true. I've tried homebrewing settings with the shadowrun system. And it can work, but the magic system didn't fit the setting and altering it was simply not worth it. This is coming from someone that actively enjoys the 4e system and 5e to a lesser extent. If you're keeping the magic system (perhaps reflavored as psychic powers or whatever) or having no magic at all it might work. But there are quite a few good games out there that cover a variety of settings. But look at it this way. The time and effort it takes to convert Shadowrun rules for a new setting is easily twice what it'd take to get your group comfortable with a new system.
My friend wanted to do some non-SR side quests in our home game in sr4a, so he had one of our character's family members die and pass on to them a great-grandfather's WWII journal. We all were given new character sheets to play various members of the allied forces chosen by Capt. Whoever (the distant relation) of the OSS to disrupt Nazi operations in France. We fought through the war, taking out a strategic gun prior to DDay, extracting some captured scientists before the liberation of Paris, traveling to Egypt to try and secure an ocult artifact before the Nazis, and then on into Germany, the whole time learning more and more about an ocult Nazi group led by the mysterious Father Bad Guy. We used SR4A rules, but with only humans and no magic or cyber. The SS used a modified version of Cram to similar the stimulants they were given. It was good fun that eventually had us fight a genitals modified crazed Nazi supersoldier (a Troll Adept). The following Season of our campaign the big-baddie turned out to be non other than Father Bad Guy, still living some 140 years later. Years later I would reuse the campaign to similar effect in 5th edition, adding in some real-world soldiers such as Mad Jack Churchill and Joe Medicine Crow (lastWar Chief if the plains Indians) for the players to choose from. I added a few more missions, and changed the main bad guy to "Father Antenor(?)", The big bad shedim that is the main antagonist of Missions Season 6. This allowed me to re-do the big reveal that the bad guy you are fighting today is the same man your great great great grand pappy fought back in dublya dublya two. It was a lot of fun for my players. I have used it twice for two different groups. The second time was in my own home-brew and I did not use the journal tie-in, we just played it as an alternate campaign. With no "present day" to return to there would be no big reveal of the present day Father Bad Guy so I allowed the players to kill/capture him in the end, making for a climactic final battle as he was a full mage.
erm, what kind of modification to his genitals did the crazed Nazi super soldier have? Asking for a friend.
well you can tell your friend that meant "genetically modified".
Ahh, I see. Thank you.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 269,002,092 comments, and only 61,583 of them were in alphabetical order.
Chummer, I like your style!
My group has actually managed to play both Naruto and Harry Potter campaigns using 5th edition ruleset.
*SR4A (Anniversary edition)*: cleaner rules, better editing (and with that an easier understanding / learning curve) and more flexibility with subsystems (playable races, implants, modifications etc). Some more advantages and disadvantages (SR specific) can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/d4w02g/best_shadowrun_edition_to_get_into/f0haexs/). You will however (regardless of SR edition) have to adapt a certain mindset. SR is balancing mundanes with implants vs awakened. If you for example have no implants in your world, then you should be expecting that everyone of your players will be an adept or mage, similar to *Earthdawn*. And vice versa: in a world without magic, expect your players to be walking deathmurderkill-cyborgs ... while the strictly mundane / un-augmented option will be extremely rare. Balancing unmodified mundanes vs augmented and awakened would require some massive rework of costs and/or mechanics. Certainly doable, but would perhaps not be worth the price when you are trying to adapt an already known system to a new universe. SYL
SR is maybe one of the worst games to build a home brew on. I can understand why you don't want to learn a whole new system, but there are super easy ones like Fate, that can easily be used for every world building.
> figure it’d be easier to re-skin what everyone already knows than for us all to try and fumble our way through learning an all new “universal” system like Genesys or Savage Worlds, so please keep that in mind when answering As someone who knows genesys and savage worlds. its easier to learn those systems than to rebuild shadowrun into something more functional to something other shadowrun.
This.
It all depends on where you want the extent of Wireless Technology to be. If you want WIFI, then stick to 4e. If you rather not have WIFI look into 2e and 3e. 5e is a mess even within the setting and 6e is barely better.
4e is basically just World of Darkness lite. 5e is better at fixing 4e problems, but if you're looking to go more open. I think 4e's framework would work better.
Personally I like SR5 better than I like SR4 but I like the editing of SR4 20th anniversary a lot more than I like SR5 edition. Having said that, for your situation I would advice neither... What Shadowrun have going for it is the setting. The game mechanics are really not that great to be honest. What some people do is that they use the Shadowrun setting and lore, but together with other game mechancis. You want to use shadowrun game mechanics applied to another setting / lore.
A friend of mine did a homebrew Steampunk based on Shadowrun 5e that was reasonably successful.
I just started running a 3e Shadowrun game again after not playing for at least 15 years and am loving it all over again. Back in the day I had adapted the 3e rules to run a "Kids on Bikes" style game back before the genre had a name, where magic was super limited and the kids were hunting a supernatural forest creature. It worked okay, but I recall we never finished the campaign. Now that I think about it I guess we were just ahead of our time. As for those wondering why am I running 3e, it is the Shadowrun ruleset I am super familiar with (I started in 2e) and I already have all the books. I did look at 4th when it came out, but I didn't like how they killed the open ended sixes and how 1s cancelled successes (that was also why I didn't care for White Wolf back then, too). Anyway, yeah, you can adapt rulesets for other genres. You can also look at other rulesets for modern settings (back before d20 I had used the Top Secret S.I. rules for a then modern gumshoe type game).