Out of Print Shadowrun Books Available as PDFs

The current design team for the Shadowrun table-top RPG, FanPro, has intended to make out of print resources available via the web for quite a while. In what is hopefully the first in a series of such offerings, they've made the Gamemaster's Screen and Critters Sourcebook available for download in PDF format.

Comments

Good for them.

[OneDeeTenTee]

That's one thing that annoys me about most paper and dice RPGs, there isn't any way look at the materials and give them a good try unless you know some gamers or have the willingness to shell out cash for something that you might not use again.

Re:Good for them.

[Dan Ost]

That's why it's so important to support your local gaming shop. When something
new comes out, I always flip through it at the store to determine if it's
something worth buying and I've never been hassled. If you get everything
online and the local stores disappear due to lack of community support, you
will always be at the mercy of whatever content Amazon (or whoever) decides to
make available to you.

Also, people who run local gaming shops are far more likely to have a personal
interest in the material than large retailers (like Walden's). Get to know
them and they can be a wonderful resource for getting introduced to new systems.

The Matrix was based on Shadowrun

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, according to an old CA rumor, anyway:

November 10, 1997... "This film may be based in part on a novella called 'Virtual Realities', originally published in the sourcebook of the same name for the 'Shadowrun' role-playing game. Briefly, it's the story of an entity named Renny which lives in the global computer network called the Matrix. Other people, human beings, are able to enter the Matrix and manipulate data, but Renny is much better at it because he's spent his entire life in the Matrix. Eventually, one of the human beings hired to help 'train' Renny discovers that Renny isn't an artificial intelligence at all, but a real human child that has been cut off from all 'real-world' stimuli so that he focuses solely on the Matrix world -- the only world he knows. The story, by Christopher Kubasik, is excellent and well-told.

"Having spoken with the line developer of the 'Shadowrun' RPG, I know that a film based on this novella is in the works. However, all references to the RPG are being removed in the interest of streamlining the story (and possibly avoiding licensing fees). That would explain some of the plot differences, as well as the fact that the film is set in 2197 rather than 2059 (the date of the game world). It's hard to say what similarities the film will have to the original story, but I'm still looking forward to it."

Also, there was a fantastic "MMORPG" (we called 'em MUDs) located at shadowrun.com:4321, back in the bad old days. Great source material.

ICE are also releasing pdfs of old material.

[rjforster]

And new material for that matter. For example, right now their newest game HARP is available as a PDF for just $2. This is less than I spent on the plastic lyfjacket cover for my printed copy!

ICE

Re:ICE are also releasing pdfs of old material.

[FLEB]

I won't look down on them for opening up the opportunity (both to themselves and to the customers), but I have to say... I don't think I could play a whole game (assuming it was a book of any decent size) through a PDF. When playing an RPG, you need a lot of content, quickly and easily. I suppose a laptop with the PDF loaded could fit the need pretty well, but I'll take dead trees any day.

Although, this would be a good buy for your players, so you don't have to play "Who needs the book this week?" all the time.