![]() It’s a classic lineup, and one that’s accessible to players who are coming to Shadowrun from D&D or similar party-based games. These cover the main archetypes: street samurai, mage, decker, and face, which roughly correspond to fighter, mage, hacker-thief, and the charming one. Once you’re familiar with the Shadowrun world, there are four 8-page character “dossiers”. It’s a little on the thin side for veterans, but should be just about right for a new player. Trying to encapsulate 30 years of history in 4 short pages is pretty much impossible, so Catalyst has wisely focused on nailing the tone while hitting the absolute highlights of the setting. Something that’s always made Shadowrun stand out is that the game’s history has continuously evolved with each supplement and edition: events that were major plotlines several editions ago are now just historical footnotes from years gone by. This is a crash course to the overall setting of Shadowrun, and it’s perfectly serviceable in that role. The first thing to read, following the basic instructions, is the 4-page “Instant Guide to the Sixth World”. Frankly, it’s a pretty good idea: this game is an evolution of 30 years’ worth of history, and trying to orient yourself around the setting and the rules without any guidance could end up being quite difficult. There’s so much stuff packed in here that it legitimately needed an instruction sheet to point newcomers towards the most important pieces. The Shadowrun franchise has always held to the adage that more is better, and that ethos is obvious when considering the contents of this box. Is it the real deal or a corporate set-up? Let’s find out! While the full rulebook won’t be released for a few months, Catalyst is releasing a Beginner Box this week that should hold everything a new player needs to start their life in the shadows. If this sounds like fun to you – and it should – you’ll likely be wondering how to get started. In addition to being the sixth edition of the game, the Sixth World is the term used to describe the Shadowrun setting, an era in which magic has returned to the world, humanity has evolved to include multiple fantastic races such as elves and trolls, and technology is so far beyond our modern day standards that firing a gun with your mind is nothing special. This year, Catalyst Game Labs is releasing a new edition: Shadowrun Sixth World. First published in 1989, it’s become the gold standard for the genre, overshadowing even the aptly-named Cyberpunk franchise. Set in a near-future “cyberpunk” version of our world, Shadowrun puts its players in the shoes of shadowy criminals squaring off against seemingly omnipotent corporations, using technology and magic to chip away at – or reinforce – the systems that trap most people in a dependent cycle of poverty and complacency. If you’ve never heard of Shadowrun before, you’re missing out on one of the most iconic roleplaying games of all time. Note: Meeple Mountain received a PDF copy of the contents of this box for review purposes, but the opinions herein are our own. If you don't play very often, you're probably better off with a free open-source option like Omae or Chummer5.This box promises to give you everything you need to run the shadows in the Sixth World, but does it deliver? Find out in our First Impressions analysis! If you play SR5 frequently, especially with all of the currently published supplements, it's invaluable as it essentially does all the work for you. The down side is that to get all of this content (assuming you don't already have a Hero Lab license) requires a steep $60 investment ($30 for the software itself, and then $10 for each of the three data packs which add the supplemental content). It's also worth noting that as of the writing of this answer Hero Lab has all of the currently published supplemental material available (including errata) with the exception of Run Faster, which just came out recently (within the last month). There is just no substitute for having a licensed product that can include the entire long-form description of a particular item or ability without running afoul of copyright issues. I find that form-fillable character sheets for SR5 in particular simply don't adequately do the job because either they never have enough room for all the information I need to be able to reference quickly or they aren't flexible enough to accommodate a system with as many bells-and-whistles as SR5. Despite not being free, I personally find that Hero Lab is worth it for SR5, just because there is so much material that it's hard to keep your math straight with other tools or methods. It's easy to use, gives you plenty of options, and gets frequent updates to fix bugs or add more content.
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