[Rosa]

@Mirikon - Good introduction to the game, however you forgot one rule "Always, i repeat, always trust an Elf" ( Thats how it goes---seriously )

@CrimsonY - You bring a blade to a gunfight when you don't want to leave a lot of evidence behind, like spent bullet casings and bullets and all that, that criminal investigators and corp security can use to run ballistics profiles on and Thus tie you to various crimes where you have used those same guns...etc. Sometimes the old fashioned ways Works just fine, is it necessary - no as you said you can do just fine without a blade, but when we are speaking of Shadowrun and the archetypes, then the Street Samurai is called Thus because the idea is that they follow a sort of code and they have traditionally been depicted as carrying a Katana to signify that. There are other names Associated with other types of "warriors" in the shadows like Gunbunny and Razorboy/girl..etc.

Also an enemy hacker can't hack a sword, they can and will ( if they get the opportunity ) hack your guns.

[falar]

The main thing a melee weapon means is that you have to have a way to close the distance in the fight. In general, most fights take place in the under 15 meters range. Most melee-oriented characters are going to have high Agility, which means they can close that gap in a combat turn and a bit.

Even if it is at longer range, you have the options of Sneaking and/or running to close gap while shooting.

I have a Missions-legal character that can close a gap of around 70 meters in a single Combat Turn. It helps that he also has a soak pool of something like 40, so even if he does get shot on the way, he likely isn't taking a ton of damage.

[Marcus]

Hello, my name is Yanick.

I recently joined a group of friends who are already running an active Shadowrun campaign and I'm looking into ways to spare them some time on running me through the basics of just about everything "shadowrun", I'm pretty sure they will love to tell me everything they know about this fascinating world within the game, but I'm also curious about this forum and the resources it has to offer, as I'm new here as well.

While ever games comes from the base setting ever game will naturally be different, taking the time to hear how your table spins things is of course important. Background wise I'd recommend reading the first chapter of the CORE, as it gives you a good idea of the base concept.

So far all I know is... and correct me if I'm wrong. The steam game Shadowrun returns is great fun, I like it so far, about midway through the story dead man switch. Shadowrun is a Cyberpunk meets medieval high fantasy in a near future era where anything can happen, no one cares about you and are ready to do anything to take everything you have include your body parts, this also mean there's quite a few career opportunity for those not too concerned with moral issues.

The Steam Game is pretty good, it hits most of the high points though it fails to give you a good idea of the scope of things. But I totally recommend all of them.

I've already started browsing the forum for character creation tips and such, but I would greatly appreciate if anyone who's used to the forum and knows a few good pages or article about good guidelines or interesting summary of what to look for at first, as getting starter can become quite a chore when facing several pages of content all seemingly equally important.

I'm thinking links towards pages you found interesting or helpful.

Most important of all: if you take the time to answer me, thank you for your time.

In the end you have to triage what you find valuable. The fact is many posters disagree on many basic issues. Which is simply natural.
Some things are simply mathematical realities, Keeping body and will as odd numbers etc. My suggestion is search for concepts that are similar to yours, and follow the examples you like. Once your about done post it and say what your going for.   

[Senko]

The main thing a melee weapon means is that you have to have a way to close the distance in the fight. In general, most fights take place in the under 15 meters range. Most melee-oriented characters are going to have high Agility, which means they can close that gap in a combat turn and a bit.

Even if it is at longer range, you have the options of Sneaking and/or running to close gap while shooting.

I have a Missions-legal character that can close a gap of around 70 meters in a single Combat Turn. It helps that he also has a soak pool of something like 40, so even if he does get shot on the way, he likely isn't taking a ton of damage.

40 . . . I swear sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game to other people.

[anchoress]

(...) I have a Missions-legal character that can close a gap of around 70 meters in a single Combat Turn. It helps that he also has a soak pool of something like 40, so even if he does get shot on the way, he likely isn't taking a ton of damage.

40 . . . I swear sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game to other people.

It took me almost a year to come to the same conclusion. It is incredible how different the experience of power levels in SR can be. Only look at the example characters in the CRB with their DPs around 7-8 (for Technomancers, which has parts in his background story where he hacked megacons... sure, go ahead ^^). For me, it felt strong to have DPs around 10-14 in my core skills. And now, like i said after one year of practice with a group, i'm convinced that i will make sure to have at least 15+ (better 18+) dice in my main skills. Just to make sure, that my char makes an impact and is not useless.

Allthough i really have to admit, that i would love to tryout street level instead. A big part of RPGs for me is character developement. And to start at a lower level leaves you so much more room to improve and shape your char. No need in stupid min-maxing and leaving out skills every idiot would have points in just because he uses the related devices/tools every day. Like Computer and a Commlink. Everybody has one, everyone uses matrix search. Like we call it "to google" today if we are searching something. I think, the idea of life modules covers this very good (not perfect though, but it let's you get into the karma based char creation with big amounts of background (knowledge) skills...!). Really, if i would start in a total new group, i would highly recommend that system. You can still debate with the GM if you really have to take a point in Archery, only because you were born in a NAN state. But this has nearly no impact. Flavorwise, fluffwise, backgroundwise - realistically - this is IMHO the best char gen system i've seen in a long time. Only exception to make is maybe, that there are so few modules. But i guess if you get the idea of the system, you can make some by yourself. It is still your game. So do whatever you enjoy the most. This would be my approach. If i will ever GM a round, i will try it that way.

[Rosa]

In the same train of thought as the melee weapons issue, i would recommend any Street Sam kind of character to also have some proficiency in unarmed combat. Again the same reasons exists as for using melee weapons. Additionally there are many Places in the 6th World where you can't Count on being able to bring your guns with you and many Places where it is considerably easier to bring a knife than to bring a gun. But perhaps the biggest reason of all is that as a mundane unarmed combat is the way you survive ( or atleast try to ) encounters with spirits. Sure if it's a relatively low force spirit you can bring it Down with your guns, if it's a high force spirit you're better off smacking it in the face with your fists using the Neijia technique from run and gun, of course that does demand a relatively high willpower stat

[gradivus]

@Rosa- if you're gun fires cased ammunition, you had best get a new gun.

Which is why I don't understand the fascination with the Warhawk- policing your casings is bah humbug.

Give me a caeseless semiautomatic or automatic any day.

[Sendaz]

@Rosa- if you're gun fires cased ammunition, you had best get a new gun.

What if its a gun that fires cases of ammo?

[cantrip]

... I was wondering why anyone would bring a sword to a gunfight....

There are many a time that you shouldn't bring a gun to a sword fight as well!

We've flipped that saying in our games many a time. Guns are definitely a serious threat in the SR verse, but in close combat, edged weapons and unarmed do just as well if not better at times. An adept focused on close quarter combat is extremely dangerous (or awesome if they are on your side).

Here are some links to resources, some may be dated, but should give you a springbooard. As mentioned above the shadowrun wiki is good as well. I also second the Sixth World Almanac.

Catalyst Labs Game Resources

GM Resources

Cheat Sheets

This thread has some good stuff in it as well! 
[edit] Just realized anumber of the links are broken - but still some useful stuff. Ah, here is the stickied thread . Check out the stickied threads in the various forums - lots of good info there.

There is tons to dig through out there - welcome to the sprawl chummer! 

[MijRai]

@Rosa- if you're gun fires cased ammunition, you had best get a new gun.

Which is why I don't understand the fascination with the Warhawk- policing your casings is bah humbug.

Give me a caeseless semiautomatic or automatic any day.

You can get a caseless Super Warhawk, actually.  Most people like cased ammunition because the tinkling of brass falling as you dump the cylinder is music to their ears (and tells the bad guys you're out of ammo, but style is never wrong!).  Also, if you are firing cased ammunition, the Super Warhawk and other revolvers are better.  A revolver doesn't spray the casings around for you to pick up, it holds them until you take them out yourself.  I've also never gone into a fight where I used a full cylinder from a Super Warhawk, but hey...

[Jack_Spade]

True, if you have to reload the Ruger you should have switched have the weapon out two rounds ago.

[falar]

It took me almost a year to come to the same conclusion. It is incredible how different the experience of power levels in SR can be. Only look at the example characters in the CRB with their DPs around 7-8 (for Technomancers, which has parts in his background story where he hacked megacons... sure, go ahead ^^). For me, it felt strong to have DPs around 10-14 in my core skills. And now, like i said after one year of practice with a group, i'm convinced that i will make sure to have at least 15+ (better 18+) dice in my main skills. Just to make sure, that my char makes an impact and is not useless.

Just don't use the Priority/Sum-to-Ten systems and you'll see a lot more sanity. Although you can get super-whack results with Life Modules if you try for it.

I must admit that the 40 armor Missions Legal character was because literally everyone had told me that Convention games were a meatgrinder and my character would die in the first fight unless I brought some serious character optimization to the table. At a normal table, I probably wouldn't do that unless it was a hardcore charOp table, which is not usually where I run.

EDITED TO ADD: That was also a lie. I had to play down my character to fit in with most people, who were using characters out of the book.

[Glyph]

It took me almost a year to come to the same conclusion. It is incredible how different the experience of power levels in SR can be. Only look at the example characters in the CRB with their DPs around 7-8 (for Technomancers, which has parts in his background story where he hacked megacons... sure, go ahead ^^). For me, it felt strong to have DPs around 10-14 in my core skills. And now, like i said after one year of practice with a group, i'm convinced that i will make sure to have at least 15+ (better 18+) dice in my main skills. Just to make sure, that my char makes an impact and is not useless.

7-8 isn't indicative of the dice pools for all of the characters in the CRB.  The street samurai and the decker, for example, throw down a lot more dice than that for their specialty.  Shadowrun really lets you build to concept.  Unfortunately, not all concepts are going to be equally kickass in a game, at least measured solely in combat effectiveness.  Also, a high dice pool does not always mean someone powergaming - there are some trap options in the game, but you can also easily wind up with a high dice pool just by making a few logical choices.  Say, you're building a street samurai.  You want him to be good at hitting and shooting things, so you give him an Agility of 6.  For one of his skills, you take pistols at 6, specializing in semi-automatics.  When you pick out his augmentations, you get cybereyes with a smartlink, and rating: 2 muscle toner.  So that's 18 dice to shoot your trusty Ares Predator, 16 if your wireless is turned off.  And that's a character who is still far from fully optimized.

[Dinendae]

As for Wish, woe be to the players who think they can get cute with that spell. For every such player, there is a GM who has perfected the art of Wish-twisting. Sure, you get what you wished for. But didn't anyone ever tell you to be careful what you wish for?

One of the best things for budding GMs who want to figure out how deal with the wish spell is to watch the Wishmaster horror series of movies. Yeah they're cheesy, but without a doubt they give excellent examples of how to twist an innocent wish around into something horrible.

With my background at with the star wars universe, I was wondering why anyone would bring a sword to a gunfight, while a light-saber has an obvious explanation, I thought there was just no logical reason to use an ordinary sword in this world, given that in the game you just end up getting a full auto unload to the face and silencers exist for stealth missions, or just a plain knife and rifle combo.

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to bring a sword to a gunfight. All depends on how you use them. A sword never runs out of ammo, and is quiet. And while I wouldn't want to cross the width of a football field to get into range of someone with a gun, understand that a great deal of the fighting in Shadowrun is in fairly close quarters, which enforces some parity. I could go on, but suffice to say that for any combat-focused character, it pays to have both melee and ranged options available.

Something to keep in mind for 5th edition: If you close into melee range, people using ranged weapons start taking penalties to shooting. Also, never underestimate the intimidation value of someone swinging a combat axe, claymore, or vibrosword, especially if they're an ork or troll! 

[Marcus]

The main thing a melee weapon means is that you have to have a way to close the distance in the fight. In general, most fights take place in the under 15 meters range. Most melee-oriented characters are going to have high Agility, which means they can close that gap in a combat turn and a bit.

Even if it is at longer range, you have the options of Sneaking and/or running to close gap while shooting.

I have a Missions-legal character that can close a gap of around 70 meters in a single Combat Turn. It helps that he also has a soak pool of something like 40, so even if he does get shot on the way, he likely isn't taking a ton of damage.

40 . . . I swear sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game to other people.

You are playing a different game then other people. Some like a more mechanical take on the game then others.  Doesn't make on way better then another. There is not point in judging how another table comes together. As long as you have fun playing at your table, what does it matter how others have fun at theirs?