The Culture: Cutting Out The Corporate Gatekeepers, Part Three (#Shadowrun)

Catalyst also controls Shadowrun. The same problem is present, and the remedy is also the same.

• Buy Used
• Play Older Editions
• Ignore Metaplot
• Share The Tapes

Shadowrun doesn't have the online tools that BattleTech does, or is as visible as BattleTech, but you can find some stuff out there- starting with PDFs of the character sheets for the edition you prefer to play and runs.

You will need more than a rulebook; FASA bought into the Supplement Treadmill hard, to the point where the game wasn't complete until a handful of vital supplements hit the shelves- one for each core activity in the game (Magic, Matrix, Combat) and resources for both Runners (Gear, Vehicles) and OpFor (Monsters, Gangs, etc.) as well as places to go do stuff.

That varies by edition, and I suggest using First or Second Edition, but Third is okay.

Tossing the metaplot tosses all of the problems that the game has ever had, such as Stupid Ideas (Harlequin, et. al.) and Publisher Inserts being more important than what you do at your table.

All of this also applies to R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk (even now, most prefer 2020 over Red) despite Maximum Mike being far more reasonable than Catalyst's Poz Parade, and running them as proper games is a lot easier when you take the inhibitors off.

You'll find this to be a persistent pattern when cutting corpo gatekeeping.