Okay, the teasing and previews are done! You want Shadowrun 2050? It’s here, now available for PDF purchase and print-pre-order in all its full-color glory (Battleshop, DrivethruRPG). Take your Fourth Edition games into Shadowrun’s past and explore the setting that started it all! Here’s the full run-down:
Rewind and Reload
Chrome eyes. Computers called “decks.” Big hair, big cyberlimbs and bigger guns. It’s Shadowrun in the year it all started. Take a step back to Shadowrun’s roots with Shadowrun 2050, a book that combines Fourth Edition rules—the smoothest, most accessible rule set Shadowrun has ever had—with the setting that first made the Sixth World a legend.
Shadowrun 2050 has everything players and gamemasters need to dive into the grimy beauty that kicked off one of the greatest roleplaying settings of all time. With information on how to adapt Fourth Edition Matrix, gear, and magic rules for the 2050 setting, as well as in-universe information about the powers of the world, what shadowrunners will be up to, and who they’ll be running into, Shadowrun 2050 puts a new twist on the classic setting.
Captain Chaos. Maria Mercurial. The Laughing Man. Sally Tsung. JetBlack. Hatchetman. Nightfire. And the Shadowland poster who just called himself The Big “D.” These people and many others are waiting for you in the year that started it all, a setting brought back to life with new, full-color artwork showing the chrome, dirt, neon, and darkness that was in the heart of Shadowrun when it started and remains at its core today.
Shadowrun 2050 is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.
30 Comments
Oh man. There goes more of my credits!!!
Such amazing book that is not useable to play 2050 as written. Please catalyst staff offer suggestions to fix? SR4a Chargen does not offer enough money for street Sam, rigger, decker to function well in this environment.
It’s a different environment, and it calls for different balancing of your skills, attributes, and gear. Remember that the NPCs you face will be functioning with the same limits.
The problem is that you let the magic PC’s start at full strength. So when I sit my PC’s down for a game I have to tell half of them they have to choose useing an archtype that is at full power and one that suffers because there is no CHARGEN rules to handle the flash back in time?
You are wrong about the NPC’s having the same equipment…..your own Archtypes use Alpha WR2 worth 165K*2=330K. There is a mistake made with this product, one that needs to be addressed please?
The archetypes were not necessarily designed to be beginning characters. We wanted gear prices to be more reflective of the balance from the 2050 era. If you instead prefer 4th edition prices, you are free to substitute in those prices. We did not feel the need to repeat those prices, as they already exist.
Not designed as starting characters? The introduction begs to differ:
“here are some characters designed to work in the particular circumstances that 2050 offers. They are entry-level characters”
I’m not seeing the link to pre-order/purchase the book/PDF.
Go to the Battleshop link.
I haven’t seen the book yet. My main concern is that the balance struck in the 2050 book feels the same as the balance in 2nd edition Shadowrun. If a street sam can’t buy the equivalent of what he could in 2nd edition then there’s a definite problem (eg does max pts spent on money buy the equivalent of an A resource pick in 2nd edition?).
Please start adding ISBNs to the product pages and announcements of (printed) books. It’d be much easier then spotting the rule book between the novels and most likely I’ll use a webshop with lower shipping costs to my destination (ie. one closer to my country of residence).
Apart from that – and more specific to this announcement – when will the printed version be shipped?
I’ll see if I can do that. We don’t have a definite print release date, but it will be coming in the next few months.
Just to make sure you don’t misunderstand me: I meant “please add ISBNs to all product pages describing and announcements for printed books”.
That’d be a great service for people living outside the USA who wish to use a “local” web shop or book store (lower/no shipping fees, no issues with customs, shorter time to delivery).
(And no, the PDFs aren’t an option as far as I’m concerned, I like physical books better for gaming.
)
I can’t guarantee I get to them retroactively, but I’ll try to do it as new print products come out.
Admittedly I have not seen the book yet but in the original priority system from the 2050 era books the maximum amount of Nuyen you could start with was 1 million. When they moved to 4th ed they scaled that back to 250k and the lowered the prices of all the gear to go along with that. If they have the original prices listed for all of the goods think about multiplying starting cash by 4 (both the max and the amount per point). See if that gives you a good balance and adjust as you see fit.
Couldn’t find the purchase price for a program carrier in the gear section, and I need that for my decker! Otherwise, this is awesome. Brings me back to when I first started playing the game.
Oh, and extra storage memory for my cyberdeck. Also not covered in the gear section.
Go with Rating x 200¥. We’ll get errata and/or updates out to that respect.
Slot and run, chummer.
This brings back fond, chromed memories.
Awesome!
Errata as in updated PDF or a document?
There will be updates to the PDF, and a bit in a document.
Good cause I already printed it out and put it into a binder.
I looked through the book it was good, but I was saddened they only brought over half the matrix. I saw nothing about ai’s or the otaku.
Glad you liked some of it! Otaku and AIs didn’t appear in the rules until after the 2050 setting, so we didn’t put them in the book.
I have this sourcebook, and it is great. It’s a wonderful trip down memory-alley (no, the one on the left….that other one has toxic mutated devil rats in it…..) for those of us who have been reading/playing SR from the beginning back in 1989, and it’s also a great source for newer, 4th-edition-only gamers who used to roll their cyber-eyes at the saying “Back in *my* day, we didn’t have your fancy, newfangled Wireless doo-dads. Jacking-in cables were SOTA, chummer!”
Hopefully you enjoyed The Matrix Chapter.
Any chance of a reprint of the Tom Dowd virtual realities novella. Great story. Needs to get out there for a proper 2050 setting, Renny is the ghost in the machine.
Any chance this will be added to HeroLab?
And, will the printed version contain said errata?
The printed version will include program costs, and a note on using SR4A equipment costs.
There better be the best spell ever put in to a game system in this book…..Urban Renewal….in this book or i’m crying foul!