[jcook119]

It was summer of 1989. My friends and I had been gaming for a few years, and we had always wanted to go to GenCon. Somehow we managed to pull it off, and had a great time. There was a brand new RPG by FASA that was released there, called Shadowrun I had passed it by all weekend, but on Sunday I was giving the dealers room one last pass and I stopped to look at it again. The cool scene on the cover was very enticing, but flipping through the book it looked a bit over-complicated. The FASA booth had a special deal for Sunday: buy the rulebook and GM screen, get the 2 boxed sets of miniatures free. I had some money left in my pocket, and it would have been a shame to leave the con with money, so I took the deal. On the way home, one of my buddies was driving so I sat in the back and started reading. I had had very little sleep over those few days, so reading the stuff on dice pools, matrix running and spell force/drain made about as much sense as Einstein written in Mandarin. I told myself this was probably a waste of money and forgot about it for the next few days.

The next weekend I decided to give it another try. I figured I had to get something out of it for my money, even if just to mine it for ideas for other games. I started from the beginning, and ended up reading it all in one sitting. When I was done, it made sense. I called one of my gaming buddies and said "we have GOT to play this game". And thus began a 5 year campaign. We played all of the published adventures that came out during that time, from DNA/DOA to Harlequin and more. We wrapped up sometime in late 1994-early 1995, and it was a great ride.

Now I am back to the Sixth World, 2 editions later. I am looking forward to it.

Thanks,
James

[FastJack]

It was summer of 1989. My friends and I had been gaming for a few years, and we had always wanted to go to GenCon. Somehow we managed to pull it off, and had a great time. There was a brand new RPG by FASA that was released there, called Shadowrun I had passed it by all weekend, but on Sunday I was giving the dealers room one last pass and I stopped to look at it again. The cool scene on the cover was very enticing, but flipping through the book it looked a bit over-complicated. The FASA booth had a special deal for Sunday: buy the rulebook and GM screen, get the 2 boxed sets of miniatures free. I had some money left in my pocket, and it would have been a shame to leave the con with money, so I took the deal. On the way home, one of my buddies was driving so I sat in the back and started reading. I had had very little sleep over those few days, so reading the stuff on dice pools, matrix running and spell force/drain made about as much sense as Einstein written in Mandarin. I told myself this was probably a waste of money and forgot about it for the next few days.

The next weekend I decided to give it another try. I figured I had to get something out of it for my money, even if just to mine it for ideas for other games. I started from the beginning, and ended up reading it all in one sitting. When I was done, it made sense. I called one of my gaming buddies and said "we have GOT to play this game". And thus began a 5 year campaign. We played all of the published adventures that came out during that time, from DNA/DOA to Harlequin and more. We wrapped up sometime in late 1994-early 1995, and it was a great ride.

Now I am back to the Sixth World, 2 editions later. I am looking forward to it.

Thanks,
James

Coming to GenCon?

[jcook119]

Yes, I will be there this year. I am going to play a few of the Missions events.

[Ten-Hex]

It was `92 and I was 16. The dying game shop in my town had this big black book outsizing most of the other stuff on the shelf stuffed over by the BattleTech boxes. I picked it up and there was Sally Tsung in daisy dukes and Ghost laying out the mayhem with twin Uzis, plus Dodger as a leathered-up elf plugged in to what looked like an ATM built into a wall.

I think it took five or six years for another game to snag an iota of my attention away.

[SirDelta]

I just started playing this year.  I had remebered reading a review of the Genesis game in an old issue of Game Informer, and I thought, "Wasn't that an tabletop RPG, too?" (I had already read WFRP and Exalted).  So I checked online, got the core book, and hoped that it would be good.  I was not disappointed.

[BlackMyron]

 Okay, I feel really old now...

 I discovered SR mainly because a trip to the FLGS was a weekly ritual by the end of the eighties, and I'd go through whatever games they had - picked up Paranoia, Shadowrun, and Call of Cthulhu all within a few months of each other after having played DnD exclusively for a decade or so.  First book I got wasn't the main rulebook, but the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America (which I still have, taped up a little) because I liked the writing.

[Laurentius]

I joined through word of mouth. A friend's family played third edition, and I joined for the few sessions that were played while I lived there. Became a fan, and when I saw fourth on the bookshelves, my brother and I decided to pick up the books. I now put together sessions for a small group that runs over Skype.

[Red Canti]

Some friends came over to my place and we played a bunch of games, amongst them one game of Shadowrun using the pre-set characters. Highlights of the game were my Dwarf rigger expressing concern for the GM's character "Never going out drinking or bringing home a nice girl.", and him replying "..My character is a girl.", hilarity ensued. We didn't follow up that oneshot. Which is good because I never wanna play a Dwarf again, I always end up talking like a Dorf.


Later, I was at another friends house and bored waiting for everybody to wake up (we usually stay overnight on the weekends), I spied a Shadowrun corebook and started reading, what I read there is really what got me intested.

[Seeker]

My brother was playing it when I was... 6 or 7?  I don't remember, all I remember was being the beta tester for all of his games.  Man, I thought the game was sooooo awesome.

Then I spent about 20 years playing anything but, until finally, some thing got under my skin and I came back to it, at 4th edition.

[AJCarrington]

Local game store, when it was first released by FASA...man, guess I'm getting old  .  My brother and I were huge fans of BattleTech, and gave FASA pretty much a free pass..."if BT is good, then this will be too".  Over course, it didn't hurt that we loved D&D and I was just discovering "cyberpunk"...ah, those were the days.

AJC

[BSOD]

Read some of the 3rd ed stuff years ago purely because my mums boyfriend left it lying around and I had nothing better to be doing at the time.
Suffice to say when I decided that I was going to run a game at my university club, and I started looking through their, slowly dating, rulebook library. It was obviously a badly damaged copy of 4th ed that caught my eye.

[MadMaddy]

First I feel like a child...but I found Shadowrun last year in the form of my lab partner in my college biology class. He was deep into some cool looking book that was obviously not biology...a few weeks later he finally asked if I wanted to really play the game. Next thing I know I'm in a dorm lounge getting written up for A being in a guys dorm and B waking up part of their floor because we're laughing so hard. I must say the geek tag that I believe labeled all gamers was so far off, I love it and we have since infected more young minds including my 12 year old cousin and his friends.

[beowulf_of_wa]

1989: I'm turning 15 and my younger brother gives me the original Street Samurai Catalog (gray cover). after having it a week, i had read it thru a couple dozen times and then had to get the core book.

[Dysth]

it was in the summer of '97, back when i was in the german equivalent of the boy scouts (pfadfinder) one of our groupleaders proposed a roleplaying weekend. first game was shadowrun and at the end of the evening i hated it.
no suprise though, the rules not explained (apparently they were too complicated for our fragile elementary school minds) my char was promptly arrested for driving around with an unconcealed missle-launcher. in the subsequent firefight with the cops he got shot and nearly died, my char being out of the game. later my so called teammates busted my char out of prison and of course used him as an IED -.-
Basicly a bad GM drove me away.
Years later i discovered d&d crpgs, playing planescape:torment, fallout 1&2 combined with the discovery of shadowrun novels at my library sparked my interest. i loved the setting of shadowrun, but the rulebooks were a little on the expensive side and with no one back then to play with i didn't bother with them.
Now i have some of the books as pdfs, way cheaper than a hardcover and easier to transport  gotta love technology.

[Fallen]

Summer of 1990, I was 14 at the time, and just happened into a comic book store that had only recently opened.  I spot a copy of Shadowrun and, somehow, the cover art appealed to me a great deal.  I pick it up and browse through the pages, suddenly getting the urge to buy it.  It took me about a month to put enough money together to actually get it.

At the time, I had never really gotten into any gaming universe enough other than AD&D 2nd ed. to pick up an actual copy of a core book.  I instantly fell in love with the setting and system -- It has ever since been my favorite rpg.