[Pathica]

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. 

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

[Fnord]

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.

[Nacho]

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.

[savaze]

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!

[PeterSmith]

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.

[CanRay]

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!

[FastJack]

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.

[Loki]

 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.

[farothel]

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.

[Simagal]

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.

[Kontact]

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. 

[Mystic]

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.

[bigity]

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.

[The_Gun_Nut]

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.

[Dead Monky]

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.