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Patrick Goodman

Shadowrun Fifth Edition*OP Hardcover – Lay Flat, September 25, 2013

by Jason M. Hardy (Author), Jennifer Brozek (Author), Raymond Croteau (Author),

4.1 339 ratings

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There are cracks in the world. They’re slender, dark, and often cold, but they are the only things that keep you hidden. Keep you alive. They are the shadows of the world, and they are where you live.

You are a shadowrunner, thriving in the margins, doing the jobs no one else can. You have no office, no permanent home, no background to check. You are whatever you make yourself. Will you seek justice? Sow seeds of chaos? Sell out to the highest bidder? It’s up to you, but this much is certain—if you do nothing, the streets will eat you alive.

You can survive—even flourish—as long as you do what it takes. Sacrifice part of your soul for bleeding-edge gear. Push the limits of your will learning new and dangerous magic. Wire yourself into the Matrix, making your mind one with screaming streams of data. It’ll cost you something—everything does—but you can make it worth the price.

Shadowrun, Fifth Edition is the newest version of one of the most popular and successful role-playing worlds of all time—a fusion of man, magic and machine in a dystopian near-future. With rules for character creation, magic, combat, Matrix hacking, rigging, and more, you have everything you need to face the challenges of the Sixth World.

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Baby - 8 years
Language

English
Dimensions

8.5 x 1.2 x 10.7 inches
Publisher

Catalyst Game Labs
Publication date

September 25, 2013
ISBN-10

1936876515
ISBN-13

978-1936876518
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Catalyst Game Labs; 5th edition (September 25, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1936876515
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1936876518
Reading age ‏ : ‎ Baby - 8 years
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.38 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 1.2 x 10.7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #925,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #26 in Shadowrun Game

Customer Reviews:
4.1 339 ratings

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Patrick Goodman

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Patrick Goodman was born in Amarillo, Texas when the Beatles were still together and Mankind had not yet landed on the Moon. He's a husband, and the father of three children, which are the most important of the many jobs he holds. He's a writer for the best-selling Star Trek Adventures role-playing game, and a former writer for the Shadowrun RPG.

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5th E is worth the dive (despite a few irks)

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2016

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The ruleset has evolved over the years and they've done a lot of 'cleaning house", but as is the case with all RPG products, there is no such thing as perfect. Particularly with this massive tome of rules that could've been paired down a good bit without the fluff text attempting to create atmosphere.

I have to go into that a little: Fluff story text is fine if its a intro to a chapter, and then later on as rules use that scene to show you how the rules would be used to make the scene happen as its written. But the authorship (of which there are several working for Catalyst's titles) all suffer from the "frustrated author syndrome" where they vent their fiction writing urges in various sections of the rulebook, though it creates atmosphere, it does little towards understanding the rules that follow. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, so take that part with a grain of salt if its not something that irks you.

Book Organization: I saw a lot of reviewers grumbling about this, but I was fortunate to have bought a relatively recent release where the authors took a lot of the feedback they got on their forums and cleaned it up. Its not a pure joy mind you, not as clean and concise as something Paizo or WatC typically releases with their books, but it is actually very good (and a damn sight better than anything White Wolf ever attempted with their ham fisted editing).

Rules Content: Here is where I have to knock off a star. While I have that pet peeve nagging at me above, I dialed my peeve down to a dull roar for this section rating as that's a personal annoyance that many don't mind. What I have found is a shared annoyance towards the rules about the various "classes" (there is no class in SR, but it serves to draw comparison to other systems) are basically bare bones. While I understand the need for publishing companies to have supplements to continue to print and drive revenue, the way their rules are sectioned off into splat books that deep dive into the subject has two annoying tendencies.

The first is that the splat books are typically written by more than one author, and then isn't managed properly by a senior editor who makes sure the sections integrate correctly leading to a need for house ruling (most keenly felt in the magic rules supplement). The 2nd is you can clearly see a production pinch raising its head. Printed material is not cheap, and quality books make it even more expensive which causes cash flow problems even with print on demand products. Therefore while gamers love their artwork, and fluff, when you're as challenged as Catalyst is with cashflow giving each rule section more meat is better in the long run and this is what feeds my pet peeve with their flavor chapters, which they do in every book and which tends to bloat its cost. Reduce that fluff and you reduce the product expense and cash flow doesn't hit as hard (note I said reduce, not eliminate).

That said, the matrix rules are cleaner, the magic rules are less over powering than in previous editions, and rigging without the splat book behind it is to be avoided IMHO. Gun rules are over all better, cleaner, and the flow of action is brisk once the players understand how the mechanics work. Having been a fan of dice pools over the linear nature of a d20 system, it sometimes takes a while for dyed in the wool D20 system players to understand what a "good" die pool is, but most get it pretty quickly if you give them a couple of mock combats with their character with some design tweaks afterwards being allowed. I've found over the past few months that a fair bit of 4th edition's source material is still useable in 5E making all those PDF bundle buys still worth having spent money on.

I'm less pleased with how they handled Technomancers, and that's coming from a guy who favors the Magic slingers. I won't go so far as to say they screwed up, but again, once you get the splat book, and do some house ruling, you wind up with a good fit for your aims, just realize its going to take some discussion after a few sessions to zero in on what's bothering you about it, which i also found applied to Riggers.

Hopefully my review didn't come across as nit picky, over all I do like 5E and feel it has many improvements. Its just got a few areas that require a bit more effort to turn into a ruleset that you will feel completely comfortable with and (naturally) you'll want to invest in the splat books as soon as your budget allows for. It is a wonderful setting, with a metric ton of back material that has built up over the decades and for those of you new to SR, I'd recommend you start with the 5th edition out of the gate, and then start looking for select 4th and earlier editions of various background pdfs that you can find online or in used bookstores. Those new to 5E can pretty much skip most, if not all, 4E's splat books about rigging, matrix, etc as the 5E rebundles their material in a tighter form and anything else you can find on Catalyst's forums as far as the old rules go.

And be prepared to spend some time at Catalyst's forums, they're a good bunch with reasonably good monitors heading them up to clear up any ambiguities of the rules and can offer up solid advice on any possible changes one might consider exploring. While its taken me a number of months to finally review this edition, I'm generally happy with the product, its line, and additional material I've steadily acquired in the meantime (exclusively in pdf format, getting too old to lug around 50+ lbs. worth of books when a laptop will suffice).

2 people found this helpful

Shadowrun Returns with much color

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2013

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I first played Shadowrun back in the early nineties, first with 1st Edition but mainly with 2nd. I recently returned to Shadowrun again with 4th Edition and now 5th.

This book is HUGE. Yes, the all caps is deliberate because HUGE is pretty much the only way to describe it. When compared with earlier editions there is just a lot of stuff crammed into the book, although when it comes down to it the breadth of material is about the same as the other editions (toxic shamen, insect spirits and other setting elements introduced in novels and source books are not included despite the increased page count). And the book is in full color.

5th Edition continues with the 4th Edition changes to the system but (thankfully) brings back the Priority system for character creation. I still miss the flavorful differences between Hermetic Magicians and Shaman of 1st/2nd Edition (including the different types of Spirits they can summon) but can also understand why a more generic tradition system was created for 4th Edition and continued with 5th.

Unfortunately the book's organisation leaves much to be desired. A person unfamiliar with the book will be flipping a lot of pages when creating a character which means it will take a longer time to kick-start a game than expected. I also think the full color pages also will cause problems here as the color charts aren't as readable as black text on white background. I am sure that once a person is familiar with the rules character creation will speed up but good organisation should have been a priority from the get go.

Despite these problems, Shadowrun 5th Edition inspired me to dust off my old novels and read then again, and to finally get Shadowrun returns. And if a re-organised printing eventuates I'm sure I'll pick up a copy too.

21 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2022

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This book had all the general information you need with a ton of side comments and short stories I didnt. Overall a good buy minus the spine not being glued to the hard cover so minus a star for that. With a whole tube of super glue i fixed it and placed it on my shelf. The book is nearly 2 and a half inches thicc!

[EDITED AND DOWNGRADED] Buy if you already like the game

Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2013

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Shadowrun 3rd edition was the last RPG I played before taking a break from the hobby for about a decade. I've now bought the SR5 core book and played a couple of sessions. My initial, cursory impressions:

As always, the Shadowrun setting is one of my favorites: a combination of cyberpunk and magic. If you're looking for Neuromancer meets Necromancer, Shadowrun is the standard. And as always, the wide variety of gear, weapons, and avenues for character improvement - cyberware, bioware, spells, foci, super-cool guns, etc. - is great. (Of course, this is also the reason SR has always appealed to powergamers, but that's another story.)

In physical terms, the core book is well put together: massive, with good artwork, slick glossy pages, fold-out art, and story insertions to provide local color. It tends to "sprawl" here and there, with information on a single topic appearing in several different areas. This is a classic element of SR sourcebook organization, so it's no surprise that it's still around, if a little toned down. However, there are too many errors. Not errata, rules that need to be changed; errors, things that should have been caught in proofreading. (Like a citation for the cost of fake IDs directing the reader to page 367 when it should be page 443.) As a former copy editor, I know that manuals are much harder to proofread than, say, novels or articles; but for that reason, good proofing is much more important, because there's less context to guide the reader. (And citation proofing is especially important in as discursive a rulebook as this.)

Shadowrun's game mechanics have always been famously (or notoriously) complex. That's both more and less true in SR5. On the positive side, the rules for deckers/Matrix play have been dramatically simplified and made more playable since SR3 (as far as I can tell - I couldn't even read the SR3 Matrix rules without falling asleep). Now deckers can "brick" weapons and be much more of an on-site presence than they used to be. My GM didn't even have to run a decker as an NPC - one of the players chose to be a decker. (Old SR hands know how rare that used to be.) On the negative side, combat rules involve a lot of unnecessary rolls that could be unified into a single test, simplifying game play and speeding up the resolution of big combat scenes.

Also, the "Edge" attribute, meant to represent a character's luck, "hot hand," "on the ball" quality, is too powerful. Using the "blitz" option for Edge during combat, our decker got to react even before our weapons specialist, who has level-2 synaptic boosters. (For those new to SR, this would be like the Matthew Broderick kid from WarGames getting into a shootout with Wild Bill Hickok, shooting first, and winning.) If you're playing a campaign where there's one or two combats a session, that drastically weakens the biggest advantage of any 'wared combat type.

Another, more minor, quibble is with Ares weapons. In SR3, guns manufactured by Ares Macrotechnology were sort of the white bread of weapons: widely accessible, widely used, but neither the best nor the worst bang you could get for your buck. You knew that you wouldn't make a terrible choice if you bough an Ares Predator Heavy Pistol (for instance) but there were more interesting, dangerous, and/or limited options out there. Ares was the default. In the current rules, Ares isn't the default - it's simply the best option. The Predator is better than its nearest rival, the Browning Ultra-Power; the Ares Alpha assault rifle is better than any other except the Yamaha Raiden, which isn't available to new players (and it has a grenade launcher the Raiden doesn't); Ares even makes the best light and machine pistols. Maybe future supplements will restore the gun balance.

It would also have been nice if the (admittedly good) concept art pullouts had included maps of the Seattle metroplex and North America, to orient new players.

The final, most subtle, and most difficult issue is the Shadowrun universe. Back in SR3 days, there were half a dozen interesting, hinted-at conspiracies: What was going on in Tir na nOg (formerly Ireland)? What's the deal with dragons and elves? This dragon has become president! Now he's assassinated! What happens next? But you can't run a game universe for more than a decade and still keep it in roughly the same place. All of these mysteries had world-spanning scope and consequence - but if they were to be fully played out, it would mean massive, unpredictable changes in adventure settings and scenarios. The (completely understandable) result has been a game world with lots and lots of huge, important events in its timeline...but that has somehow stayed essentially unchanged (with the exception of ghouls and wireless technology).

So...there it is. Shadowrun is worth playing, and the SR5 core book will become even more useful as the errata and sourcebooks on things like adept powers and new weapons emerge. For people happy with an earlier edition of SR, I'd say wait a little bit until SR5 is more fully supported; for those thinking of playing for the first time, I'd say it's a good game, a lot of fun, but be sure your group can commit to the game mechanics of this complex system.

**************************
ETA: I've now had some time to review and use the current edition of the rulebook, and I have to remove *at least* one star from my review. Here's why:

1. The organization of the manual is actually more scattered and user-unfriendly than I thought at first. It's not uncommon to have to jump to three different locations in the manual to find all the information you need on a particular subject. On the same lines, the citations and the index have more mistakes than I thought at first. Add this to the difficulty of the rule system, and you can have new players hold up the action for ten or fifteen minutes, looking for the info they need. (My GM, who has been playing Shadowrun since at least the Second Edition, believes that the quality has diminished since the FASA team left active development of SR.)

2. Although the manual is physically impressive - as I mentioned above - it's also very heavy, making it hard to use easily and carry to and from games. It's also unacceptably fragile: I actually saw a couple of pages come loose from the binding in my GM's hand. This is really shoddy for a newly printed book.

With all of this in mind, here's my current, REVISED recommendation:

SR5's setting and character options are still terrific; we just finished a fun session. If you decide to play the game, don't get the expensive, real-world book; buy the e-book (when available), which won't fall apart on you and makes finding the right information much easier. (Search Function, anyone?) Also, if you're going to be old school and use real dice (my personal choice) instead of an electronic dice simulator, get a block of 12mm (NOT 16mm) dice with rounded edges. You roll a lot of six-sided dice in SR, and this is a necessity. And finally, raise your voices - for a better organized, better produced, better proofread manual. Let Catalyst know that shoddy is NOT acceptable.

SECOND ETA:

I've also found that the prose can be confusing, leading to legalistic debates - for instance, using game terms without defining them.
And, for those folks reading reviews, I have a suggestion: Ignore those reviews written within a week of receiving the book. Only trust the reviews that were written after a few weeks or months of game play. Why? Because initially, the book looks very good; it takes a few weeks for the flaws - poor binding, poor organization, poor prose - to become obvious.

THE LAST ETA [I HOPE!]:

I'm adding this final edit to describe something that happened during game play yesterday; I'm doing it because something comparable will probably happen to you if you play Fifth Edition.

Midway through the game, I discovered that I would have to use something called a "physical limit" during some activities that didn't involve gun combat (my character's strong suit). Physical limits are the maximum number of hits your character can roll for some physical tasks. So these limits are clearly pretty important. Fair enough; I looked up the "Limits" section to find out how to derive my physical limit from my character's physical attributes.

It wasn't there.

So I went where the Limits section told me to go - page 51, the "Attributes" section. It wasn't there, either. So I went to the index to look up every place in the book that uses the word "limits" - no joy.

THIRTY minutes of leafing through the sourcebook later, and in the middle of the game, I finally find out how to derive physical limits. It's in a single table in a subsection of the Character Generation chapter entitled "Final Calculations." I found it through sheer luck. There were only 3 players in the game who knew its location before I did: one is a lawyer; one is the game master; and one is a guy who's read the manual cover to cover at least three times. There was no obvious, easy way to find this very important rule. The same thing happened, during the same game session, with the rules regarding armor and spirits - a very important armor rule was hidden in the "Materialization" section of Critter Powers.

Sorry, guys at Catalyst Games - this isn't acceptable. Better editing. Better proofreading. Better organization. Better production values. Simpler game mechanics. More thought to world improvement. If these issues aren't addressed, I'll vote that we turn back to Third Edition, not forward to Sixth, if our group moves on from SR5.

403 people found this helpful

Good quality and fast delivery

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2023

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Only have very minor damage but overall is it in very good condition.

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Great RPG, Great World, Sub-par Book.

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2015

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*NOTE: The pictures attached are after getting it rebound at FedexKinko's as it arrived with the binding falling apart (both times).

The Good:
I love the ShadowRun Universe for its rich cyberpunk lore and background. The game itself is solid and while the 5th ed rule book might scare you away at 400+ pages i recommend you still get it if you also are interested in ShadowrRun or are looking for an alternative to fantasy worlds and want something nitty, gritty, and constantly beating down on you ShadowRun is for you. The book is filled with flavor, foldouts, and examples (some are suboptimal if you love min/max your character). It's definitely meant to be a 2nd ShadowRun book as the starter i think is perfect for new players and is great for when you want to graduate.

The Bad:
The reason why this didn't get 5 stars is two fold. The first is that the binding is garbage on the book. My first book arrived with the binding already falling out and the pages warped because of it. I returned for a 2nd book that arrived with the binding falling out as well. I figured i'd bothered Amazon's Customer Service enough about it so i kept the second book and went to Fedex Kinko's and had them spiral bind it for me. Cost me bucks and some change but i HIGHLY recommend you do this to any players handbook if the binding starts to give. It'll allow you to keep the pages together and leave it opened to any page. The loss of the hardcover after being rebound is lamentable but i rather have functionality over a pretty cover and pages falling out.
The other reason why i deducted a star is because the book is a bit confusing at times. Some of the rules were a bit unclear when first introduced. As other reviewers mentioned the rule on limits isn't where you would think it would be. Also the index is abysmal for when you really need to find a rule that is less than obvious or common. For things you already know it's great, not that it helps that much.

Conclusion:
Great world, terrible binding, manual needs to be better organized or a new editor. If you buy one from Amazon or another retailer the binding will give eventually. This isn't amazon's fault as the books binding is cheap and unable to deal with the 400+ heavy glossy pages. Go to a local fedex kinko's and get the thing spiral bound to save it and to get extra functionality. I do this with most my tabletop manuals, eventually.

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18 people found this helpful

Jonathan Snyder

Book looks great, but does not hold up as well as I'd like.

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2017

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I'll start off by saying that my rating has NOTHING to do with the overall Shadowrun experience. THAT I definitely like.

This review is specifically about the physical book itself and some general comments on content.

Out of the box the book is impressive. Lots of great looking artwork on the cover and throughout the book, and the pages feel weighty as you flip though it. Each chapter also has some very entertaining short stories that help you get the feel for the world you will be playing/GMing in.

After some use though...things are a little different.

The biggest physical issue with the book is the binding. I know several others have commented on this as well. After less than a month of pretty light use (its been sitting on my desk almost the whole time.) the binging is already breaking. The book tends to sit open as its used for game prep and during play for easy reference. I haven't had pages start to fall out yet, but I figure its only a matter of time. For the price of the book I'd have liked to see it hold together longer. It really is to bad someone can't come up with a better way to bind large rulebooks....

There are several places that have foldout artwork, of either pieces to big to fit on a singe page or just several smaller ones. I've found that many of mine are starting to get extra creases or dogeared since they are slightly smaller than the normal pages and don't always fall back into place properly as you leaf through the book. Not a huge deal, but one worth noting.

The last note is on the page references provided as you read over the material. For example a brief overview of a mechanic is provided in the Character Creation section and helpfully the editors provide a page number for the section of the book where that concept is explained in more detail. The problem is, sometimes those references are right....but usually they are wrong, and so is the index listing for that topic. It usually isn't by much more than a few pages, but it still makes things a bit of a hassle. I've found it easier a few times to google the mechanic I have a question about rather than finding it in the book.

In short. if you absolutely MUST HAVE the print book just be aware that even with gentle use it will start to show signs of wear quickly. If you just need the reference document. I'd look at spending 20 bucks at DrivebyRPG (or similar site) and just pickup the PDF.

2 people found this helpful

Prohibitive Organization Disguises Brilliant Game as Repulsive

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2014

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I found a PDF file of this and wanted the hard copy because it was personally easier for me to browse hard copies of books instead of PDFs, so I knew exactly what I was getting into when I bought this.

This game is incredible. The mechanics are sound and "more realistic" than Dungeons and Dragons in some respects. The setting and the lore are great, and incredibly creative and including an amazing cultural dynamic to expand upon. The dice system may be a bit weird, but for players new to the genre it might be less confusing than the multiple polyhedral dice that are required for others.

First off, one of the great things about Shadowrun is that nobody is immortal. Sure, you can rank up your skills over time and become stronger, but there are caps and even at the height of power you can be taken down by the lone rent-a-cop if he's lucky and plays his cards right. It's balanced, unlike Dungeons and Dragons where if you're a level 20 fighter you can just laugh as the level 1 warrior orcs attempt to break through your armor and then they have to chop for five consecutive minutes just to dent your health.

Second, it encourages teamwork on a greater scale than Dungeons and Dragons. You have to be smarter about what you're doing in Shadowrun, otherwise you'll end up with a bullet in your head.

There is so much to do in Shadowrun, and so much to explore, but it is definitely not for everyone for one particular reason: Organization.

When it was suggested by my Dungeons and Dragons Gamemaster that we take a break to play Shadowrun during the Summer, I took one look at the manual and immediately thought "This is going to be a collaborative effort to figure out" and I was right.

The dense manual took at least a week to figure out, and I'm usually able to sift through confusing information relatively quickly. Unless you're willing to spend a week in prep just to figure out how to build a character or play the game, this manual is not for you. The index is only partially helpful, too, as the other reviews point out.

26 people found this helpful

Great setting, but suffers from a poorly made source book

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2017

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Let me just preface this review by saying I love Shadowrun and have enjoyed playing since 2nd edition. I would give the setting 5 stars, but the book itself suffers quite a bit.

So, Shadowrun is a cyberpunk roleplaying game utilizing 6-sided dice to determine the results of your actions. Think Bladerunner with typical fantasy characters (i.e. elves, orks, dragons) and magic. You can pretty much customize your character however you want since there are no classes, though there are several archetypes most characters fall into. Street samurai are your physical combatants usually specializing in weaponry and cybernetic augmentation. Mages can heal, sling spells, and summon spirits. Deckers/Technomancers are the hackers of the game. Riggers specialize in the use of drones. And so on.

The downside is that since there are lots of options, there are a lot of rules. As a player, it's not too bad - you can just learn your own part. But as a GM running a campaign, this can be extremely daunting. Mages have their own rules regarding magic. Deckers have their own rules for hacking. Riggers have their own rules for using drones, but share some similarities with deckers. The technomancer mechanics fall somewhere between mages and deckers. The book also does not do a good job of consolidating relevant information. You'll often find yourself flipping from one part of the book to another in order to figure out how one thing works. And some rules aren't even clarified very well (though the published errata can sometimes help). On top of that, the physical book itself isn't great. The glue used on the spine of the book is incredibly weak and fell apart when I started to read through it.

On the plus side, the pages look great - images are colorful and crisp. The artwork is amazing and the short stories inserted throughout the book really help flesh out the feel of the setting.

It's a bit of work, but I find it worthwhile. I still highly recommend giving the game a try, though you may want to invest in the PDF version if you're not a stickler about having a physical book in your hands.

16 people found this helpful

Good to see an RPG Staple refreshed

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2017

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Didn't play Shadowrun when it first came out in the 80's but the genre did excite me greatly. Now, two decades later I have decided to introduce the fun of Shadowrun to my play group. For me the play is the thing and I have recently spent a lot of time utilising player forward, rules lite games such as those embodied by the Apocalypse Engine (Dungeon World, tremulus, Worlds in Peril, etc) but I still enjoy the games that have a richer character development behind them. I also love games where the unwary can get screwed over very quickly. And Shadowrun has that in spades. Expect in any plot a double cross, in any meeting a hidden agenda, in any prize a trap, and revel in these difficulties.
For anyone unused to Shadowrun each character has base Attributes (such as Strength) and skill (such as Pistol). To succeed in any endeavour a player rolls a number of d6's equal to his attribute number plus his skill. For each 5 and 6 in the dice pool he gets a hit, the mor the better. Obviously there is more to it than that and you can get plently more information from the free download which gives you and example of the rules and one encounter. But for my money definitely well worth it

DIsorganized book - be prepared to turn a lot of pages and use the index a LOT.

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2014

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I am a newcomer to the Shadowrun world and as part of a return to PnP games, I chose to start with 5th Edition, hoping to lend some support to the game as many people stay with 4th.

While Shadowrun is a very interesting setting and game and the Core Rulebook has well-written, well-detailed stories to color the information given inside, it has serious weaknesses that should be taken as object lessons in the construction and editing of main rulebooks.

Firstly, the core rulebook is badly organized. I found myself, and still find myself, jumping from character generation sections to GM sections to Magic or Matrix sections and even individual Role sections and equipment sections for clarity and complete understanding and reference for rules. This is a rather frustrating thing to do when someone needs clarity on rules or procedures. It is the most glaring weaknesses of this book and players that commit funds to this hobby should feel let down.

Secondly, the book contains a number of typographical and editing errors. This is a professionally published hardcover book with glossy pages that won't stand the test of time due to its own errors and will likely be replaced by players who bought it. If that was the plan by Catalyst and Topps all along, I would feel deserving of a bit more than a mere refund.

Overall, I give the book 3 stars. This book and the books that surround it speak loudly about the increasing difficulty of spreading this genre of game when the products end up like this. I would hope the product that replaces this one serves its audience much better, but it stung badly to acquire this book and find I would have to buy another just for the sake of some organization, clarity and hopefully fewer errors.

6 people found this helpful

Left feeling cold and bitterly disappointed.

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2016

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Poorly constructed for a $50 book, poorly organized and absurdly defined mechanics. This book has infuriated me (and my group) to the point of potentially burning it in effigy as protest to its very existence.

I am a fan of the Shadowrun universe. I haven't played the game since 1st Edition and gave this 'latest and greatest' a try (along with my whole gaming group). Here are a chronicle of my experiences:

Many of the mechanics of the game are presented in flavor text. Lengthy flavor text, which shows examples of the mechanic in question but fails to define the specifics of said mechanics.

Some mechanics of gameplay, were not there. Or we just couldn't find them (poor editing/organization). Many rule entries seemed like they were written as if, they (the author/designers) understood what they were talking about, but didn't clue the readers in.

All of our bindings (our group consists of 5, four of us bought the book) every single one, began to tear away from the pages. Mine was the last to go.

The index sometimes sends you to flavor text (see above) or is a few pages off of the topic one is looking for. Poor editing.

The Shadowrun world of the game itself is, frankly, dated. The whole game has a weirdly retro feel, circa 1993, about what the idea of the internet, cyberspace and technology is, was and will be (which is NOT how it actually is BTW). Stylistically, this seemed a strange choice that did not work for me. The whole idea of Shadowrun was cutting edge. Now it seems dusty and clumsy.

The mechanics of the game also seem very dated. We have come so far as a Tabletop RPG culture with superior systems like Hackmaster, Pathfinder, D&D 5e, FATE, Gumshoe, etc. yet this rule system is so odd and often obtuse in the way it handles combat and weapons that it feels like a crappy 80's TSR variation. Running combat seemed archaic in all the wrong ways.

It is a nightmare of formatting for new or casual players. The formatting is such that if you don't want to read the book, cover to cover, you will likely have a much more difficult time trying to use the book at all. Even then, it was a challenge just trying to figure out how to make a character.

My overall impression is this book was made for long-time Shadowrun players and fans (correct me if I am wrong) and is put together in such a way that it alienates those unfamiliar with Shadowrun at all. While a counter argument could be made, suggesting all that flavor text was meant to draw one in, I would then counter that as being a failure of formatting.

Indeed, it seems like, seeing many other reviews, that I am wrong, but then again, how many players has this edition introduced or brought into the game, cold?

While my group is relatively experienced (3 of the 5 have over 20 years of RPG experience while 4 of 5 have over 10 years experience) we were all completely unfamiliar with the Shadowrun rules, and even myself, having played first edition, only played it a handful of times when it first came out. So, this is my frustration with this book and how cold it left us all feeling.

Love the universe, hated this book and edition of the system. The gameworld could also IMHO stand an upgrade in how technology works today and how to push the idea of how it may work in the future.

14 people found this helpful

Despite an amazing setting and a devoted fan base

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2016

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Despite an amazing setting and a devoted fan base, this book is full of complicated (often needlessly so) rules and is poorly edited and poorly bound. I bought my copy and within 2 days the binding had come undone and completely separated from the pages. I returned it and amazon promptly sent me a replacement that has the same problem.

I bought this book out of nostalgia after having played an earlier version of shadowrun 15 years ago or so. I remember an amazing setting and a few really cool rules concepts, I also remember my friend's book was falling apart. Is it really that hard to bind a book properly?

Binding aside the book is a standard RPG book with loads of setting info and rules. The rules are fairly simple at first but there are so many minutiae and they're spread all over the place. As you're reading it, you find yourself flipping pages to follow references - some of which are inaccurate (it refers you to a page to find a rule and the rule is not there). This is because many of the rules are split into 2-3 sections spread across different chapters of the book. This results in needless repetition of the same information with crucial portions of rules (like how much money a certain upgrade costs) being buried in unexpected places. There are also references to things that are never explained in detail - for example, healing can be aided with medkits and autodocs...what's an autodoc? No idea, no one bothered to give a description or any rules for it. Turns out it's almost sort of defined in a later supplement "Bullets and Bandages".

From the perspective of a new GM, it's awful. I'm playing a game with my local gaming group and find myself just making up rules right and left because I don't want to waste 20 minutes looking them up...and I don't want to destroy the book's binding any further by opening it! Want to cast a firebolt spell? Ok look at the spellcasting rules to see what you have to roll and in what order, then look at the specific spell description for firebolt then look at the combat spell section to see the difference between indirect and direct damage. Once you have the rules memorized you can skip several or all of those steps, but there are SO many rules!

Character creation is long and involved and takes at least 2 hours. I have new players trying to drop in and I have to either give them premade players or stop the game entirely to walk them through it.

The game setting is amazing, and it's the main thing keeping me and the players invested so far. Still, I keep wondering when I'm going to snap and just start using the setting and character concepts with a much simpler and intuitive rule-set like Fate Core.

One person found this helpful

Great gaming system. Poor book with incredibly poor editing.

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2018

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The game system itself I enjoy quite a bit. And 5th edition seems a bit more streamlined and easy to follow for "newer" type players. If you are a hardcore gamer you might like SR3 or even SR4 a bit more. If you are already familiar with the system its and easy transition to 5e. The mediocre rating is not due to the game system though. The book itself has some issues. The most glaring is that I honestly had to ask myself if they had an editor at all! There are many in game examples that they use where the math is clearly incorrect, which can lead to a LOT of confusion especially if you are unfamiliar with the game system. Also there are many page references in the book that are just completely incorrect (like not even CLOSE to the right section of the book). Again, if you are familiar with the system and know what you are looking for you can reference the section fairly easily, but if you get a page reference and get the wrong page number to flip to (especially on the fly/during a gaming session) it can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating. Also, I have 2 other friends that have a copy of the core book and although mine is only slightly flimsy, the bindings on theirs is almost completely coming apart.

Play the game. If you want a physical copy and can afford it, go for it. If you are new or undecided...find the .pdf somewhere and start there!

2 people found this helpful

I like the game

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2017

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I like the game, but I have to say, this book is horribly organized, with a terrible index. In my experience, the further you get into the book, the larger the disparity between the pages the index says the subject should be on, and where it actually is. It's like they wrote the book, complete with stories, indexed it, then added the art, and forgot to go back and account for page changes because of it.

Also, and this is important, this is a rules change only - you get some information on the game world itself, but barely enough to start a game. This game truly requires an investment in time in reading previous edition setting books, to get an idea of what is going on, who the players are, and what is going on. Worth the investment, if it's something you can do....but it's a steep curve.

6 people found this helpful

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