So, I had wanted to do a in depth comparison between Shadowrun 3rd Edition and Shadowrun 4th Edition for quite some time and just never really got around to it. Now that Catalyst Games has the reigns and has released the 20th Anniversary Edition I’ve been inspired to make and attempt at comparing the two.
Originally I had toyed with the idea of comparing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions but aside from being entirely masochistic I also have very few of the 1st Edition books as I had just started playing Shadowrun right before it transitioned from 1st to 2nd Edition. In addition, the changes from all previous editions of Shadowrun were actually relatively minor compared to the transformation of the game with 4th Edition.
First off, this article is going to focus on the crunchy bits of the game. Because when it comes down to it, game mechanics are a huge factor in the playability of a game. Too few and the game lacks structure, to many and the game requires a PhD to play. Something I had to consider was weather to use any of the supplements available in the comparison. If I do include them then I’ll need to compare both official character generation methods available in 3rd Edition.
Because most of the comparisons I’ve read are basing character generation comparisons on only the core books I ultimately decided to use the supplements to be completely fair in comparison. The greater majority of games I’ve played in all used the Point Based generation systems from the Shadowrun Companion, which is more similar to what 4th Edition uses. So, for the initially comparison of character generation I’m going to actually give three examples.
I’m using an Ork Rigger as my example through out this article. Orks get a bonus to Body and Strength while suffering a penalty to Charisma and Intelligence. They also get Low-light Vision but that’s not important right now. I basically assigned 3 points to each attribute to make them the racial average then split the remained between primarily between Quickness and Intelligence then tossed a point into Willpower to help resist dumpshock.
