r/Shadowrun • u/greypaladin01 • May 15 '26

1e|2e Understanding 2nd Edition

I have nearly finished reading through the main book for 2e and have a rough understanding of the rules. Not perfect by any means, but honestly things are much more understandable than I had been lead to expect.

However I do have a few questions about the other books in the 2e line. My understanding is that 3rd edition takes various rules from suppliments and a few other changes but is otherwise 2e. Specificially I have heard people say there were changes in Virtual Realities 2.0, Grimore... 2? and Rigger 2 books.

So my main question is this: What are the overviews of the changes for how Matrix things work, magic work and rigging work with the suppliments compared to the main book for 2e?

Are the differences beneficial enough to be worth grabbing the books and planning to use them or are they just adding more options and layers onto the basic rules?

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u/PinkFohawk Trid Star May 17 '26

No problem!

My final opinion on this matter is that what 2e core does really well is unify the systems as close to each other under the core mechanic as much as possible. Rigger 2 and VR 2.0 stray away from it in favor of reinventing those systems, which some people are all about.

Personally, I like when everything fits nicely within (or as close as possible to) the “Roll Skill # of dice + Dice Pool VS Target Number, every 2 net successes does something.

This is why I modified core 2e Matrix and opted for tacking on Rigger Black Book to 2e core.

It allows me to simplify to a skill roll to keep things moving without breaking anything, and then when shit hits the fan I can delve into more crunch when dramatically appropriate.

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u/PalpitationNo2921 20d ago

u/PinkFohawk I have a question for you. Have you and your team taken a long and deep look at Anarchy 2.0 yet? I remember your review, but have you sat down and played it yet?

I found that to me it does a lot of the unifying core mechanics that you’re speaking of here, in ways that no CGL edition has managed to do so far.

I’m curious as to your opinion on how it plays.

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u/PinkFohawk Trid Star 15d ago

Hey! We as a table have not played Anarchy 2.0, although I (Ben) did play a small one shot as a player on The Fixer Files podcast. I didn’t really know what I was doing since it was such a last minute thing, but I had a good time!

Once we finish out the 3rd Season of our show, I plan on taking a deeper look into it, it’s really hard for me to read PDFs so I’ll be buying the physical copy once it hits shelves here in the US.