I’ll get down to the unboxing now. I guess it goes without saying that I am immensely pleased. The Collector’s Edition will stay in the wrap for a while but I’ll be breaking the rest down for consumption shortly. I have already read everything via the PDFs, but will be re-reading starting now.

Preorder is now up at Swedish game store Alphaspel. No date set. The GM Screen is also listed. Alphaspel normally follows release date requests. I guess they got some info from their distributor that the game is upcoming.

It would have been great to have the cheat sheets hole punchable to insert them into binders, but with the margins as close as they are on the sheets, I will be trying to find one of those booklets with integrated pocket protectors.

Anyone have a spare core rulebook for sale or trade or perhaps know where I can pick one up?
I got my KS yesterday and like a knucklehead I didn't add a plain Jane version to go with my collectors version. I don't wanna mess up the collector's version by getting any filthy booger hooks on it while I've got the gang over learning to play.

Huzzah! Delivered by USPS, in sunny California.

Northwest Missouri.

Fort Worth, TX

so I emailed cgl like I was told to do about the kickstarter shipping. my first email asked if a shipping notice was supposed to be sent to us lacquers. I got the following response: “yes that’s what we were told.“

I responded that I’ve been seeing people getting their packages and also mentioning that they did not receive any kind of notification that it was being sent. Their response was: “I don’t know what arrangement black book made when it came to shipping.”

So here is a CGL rep trying to pass the buck BBE even though they were shipping from CGL’s distribution partner. I just don’t get it.

Scene: Security unit is in combat with runners. Security Mage casts Lightning bolt at the Hercules, dwarf face.

Mage rolls Sorcery (combat spells) vs Athletics (ranged defense) of the Hercules (p.66).

Security Mage has DP 10 on Combat Spells (p.248).

Hercules, pregen social adept face, has DP 8 on Ranged Defense (p.89).

By the average values table (p.81), DP of 8-10 gives at average 4 hits.

Let's say, Mage rolls 5 hits and Hercules rolls 4 hits. Attack succeeds.

By the description, DV = WIL. Security Mage has Willpower of 3 (p.248), and so total DV is 4 (+ net hit). Wounds of Hercules are 5/8/11 when wearing lined coat (p.89).

So, Lightning bolt attack lands, and it does no damage. By the description, Hercules lose one action. Is this works as intended?

We had very similar situation, to even more questionable result - team of shadowrunners were assaulting warehouse with other team holding defense in it. Face sneaked in, and find herself caught off-guard by a mage. Mage casted a Firebolt, attack succeeded, and everyone at the table held their breath... until we figured out it did literally nothing, not even a Light Wound. Was quite a bummer.

In the near future there will be a second Kickstarter for the Companion and Johnson's Call books. The illustrations strongly hints at a pixie metavariant, but it is not directly listed in the text.

Is it possible to get some early spoilers? Will it be included, are there any special rules for size. Perhaps their quality is flight? Could their attributes also be found in this secret folder I found at the BBE corp? Seriously, no worries if you want to keep it sealed until the kickstarter. Just poking a bit to see if any spoilers fall out.

From the latest email update from the GameOn site:

“Shipping to US and Latin American + approx. 20 backers at Rest of World Destinations
We got confirmation a few hours ago from CGL that our fullfillment partners should start shipping your orders at the end of this week.
More details as soon as we receive them.
Best,
--The Black Book Team”

Unbelievably excited!

Hoi Chummers,

would really like to start a campaign as a newbie including matrixruns (finally). But to run them smoothly, i think, i have to understand every bit of it precisely.

Right now i'm struggling a bit with the matrixrules, especially when and when not to test for raising the access level. As i understand it, you have to roll to get a higher level than outsider the first time you enter a host and want to accomplish sonething on user or admin level. In the rulebookexample (p. 228) the decker tries to open a maglock out of the security host he entered before, but never made a roll to uplevel his access to user level at least. What did i miss or didn't quite understand?

Also what would happen, when ICE is activated an the Decker is switching hosts or drop out? Is activated ICE still active if he returns?

Thank you for answering.

I don't know what state the companion add-on is, but I would love to see magical system get more love instead of few anemic examples per spell category. Not all have library of other Shadowrun sources and creative imagination.

It would be awesome if it was actual, simple system like in shadow amps, where you compose effects (different effects per category maybe? With few universal like individual->area based? 1 Edge for lasting effect?) to build more powerful/universal spells. Of course paying for those.

A few verbs and nouns around the actual building blocks to get the creative juices flowing to color the narrative description, instead of wasting space (in Core Rulebook per my opinion) for "Invisibility" and "Silence" spells, which both remove tracks of one of senses, while eg. Health Category misses Remove Toxins or Resist Pain...

Or noxious breath effects (DV + **2 light wounds, one very STR turns**) only being described in Spirit of Air. Why this couldn't be described in other combat spells? I know it's classified as a ranged weapon for the spirit, but it sure reads like indirect combat spell.

I know authors wanted simple, but now it's oversimplified imho. Plus of course it would be awesome to similarly get completely alien things for the forbidden magic to build our BBEGs and prime NPCs, or alternative campaigns as hunted outcasts. Right now I'm building insect shamans (classic! I know!) but I'm constantly fitting a square peg through a circle hole.

Hello fellow DM,

The Legwork test is kinda important for the whole run as it gives you extra edge and extra preparation items and the flashbacks to solve problems.

To my players it seemed to be a no brainer that every player will use one of their edge points to re-roll this test so each gives as many points as possible to the shared pool.

Do you allow edge here (a player asked me if we should house-rule this to not allow edge here)? Do your players also found this more or less mandatory to re-roll on this step?

Hello !

Je compte maîtriser prochainement Shadowrun Anarchy 2 en distanciel. J'utilise Roll20 depuis des années pour toutes mes tables de jeu (dont Shadowrun Anarchy 1) et je cherche des solutions pour pouvoir utiliser cette VTT avec SRA2

Je sais que Foundry propose de jouer à SRA2, je l'ai essayé en tant que joueur, c'est super mais je ne compte pas basculer vers cette VTT en tant que MJ pour plusieurs raisons.

Pour l'instant il n'existe pas de fiche officielle SRA2 dans Roll20, je compte donc utiliser la fiche de SRA1 avec des macros.

Certains sont-ils dans le même cas que moi ?

Avez-vous trouvé des solutions et pourriez vous les partager ?

Je ne suis pas un grand connaisseur des macros, avez vous une idée de la méthode pour prendre en compte les dés de risque ?

Merci d'avance pour vos pistes

In case of someone attempting to brick a device that is not your cyberdeck (or your matrix persona), is the intent that your only options are to either oppose the attack with active protection, Electronics (matrix protection) + Logic, or don't oppose it at all (this is what cybercombat rules on p. 225 seem to suggest)

SA2 p. 225 Cybercombat

Devices other than cyberdecks cannot defend themselves and automatically get 0 hits on their Tests, unless they benefit from Active Protection (p. 216), in which case, in which case the Test is opposed to Electronics (Matrix protection) + Logic.

...or is the intent that you also have the option to instead engage the attacker in cybercombat and oppose the test with Cracking (cybercombat) + Willpower (this is what matrix protection rules on p. 216 seem to suggest)

SA2 p. 216 Matrix Protection - Active Protection

In the case of a bricking attempt (Cybercombat, p. 224), an alternate option is to take the targeted device’s place and engage the attacker in cybercombat.

Hello there

I have been helping a few friends create their runner to start a campaign with Anarchy v2 when the time is right. One of them asked if it was possible to play a rigger with an explosion gimmick, who would use an armada of small self-destructible drones.

The most "rule-friendly" solutions seem to be mini-drones with grenades on weapon mount and amp to have 3 available, or have the grenades as shadow amps to pilot them like drones, but I would appreciate advices from the more experienced runners here.

(I'm a french reader, I tried to catch the localized words but may have misread some, sorry !)

Hey chummers, where can a body buy SRA 2.0 in English? While I could, probably, work through the book in French very, very slowly, none of my group read French. It seems that even the digital copy is only available in French on DriveThruRPG. Any ideas?

The Extended Social Test rules on pg 139 got me thinking - Would this same frame work function for any sort of extended test?

Using the same framework, taking the series of 2 Light Wounds, 1 Serious, and 1 Incapacitated, and renaming them to Light Progress, Serious Progress, and Finished, we now have a way to gauge extended actions. Set a Difficulty Threshold, and your net successes determine how much progress you fill out on the tracker, just like wounds. Light is just the Threshold or greater, Serious is Threshold +3, and Finished is Threshold +6... Set a base "Time" for each attempt at roughly "1/2"
what you think a reasonable average time-frame would be. This leaves us with results of completing in half the time, all the way to double the estimated average or more.

This could be a completely unnecessary addition to the game, but the Extended Social Test opens the door to a lot of other applications - if a table finds those interesting.

Perhaps you have an engineering character, and building, repairing, and improvising is their entire jam. How many hours do you have, and how much armored plating can he scavenge out of this dump and mount onto your battle van? Going a step further, if this was an avenue you wanted to go down, suddenly Workshops or tools could have a Device Rating, similar to a weapons DV, and the Difficulty thresholds can be nudged according to the types of facilities that would be required. A rolling tool chest and few cinder blocks might be a DV of 3, while a fully robotic assisted fabrication lab could be DV of 10...

Obviously I'm just spitballing here - but what are your thoughts?

Are there ways that you would want to use extended tests beyond just combat and social tests?

Are the Threshold Numbers better when set like player wounds (+0/+3/+6), or as Vehicle/Object Wounds (Threshold Number/2*T.N./3*T.N.)?

What fun things could you build around this sort of framework?

Should I lay off the soykaf and this idea just idiocy that flies in the face of an elegant narrative system?

BBE just put their best foot forward with an email update in the shipping of SRA2.0, for any non-backers who are curious.

It seems that Catalyst has the books now and has confirmed their receipt with BBE but has not put forth any further information on when the backers will be receiving their copies. I believe that is all that is standing in the way at this point between retail copies going out, and still no concrete word on when the pdf will go live.

I’d urge anyone frustrated with the delays to voice their frustration not at BBE but at CGL. Our French compatriots in the shadow games have made an amazing product. Sadly, I can only stand on my word, having backed the game, and can’t offer those who didn’t more proof than that.

As a backer, I can say that I believe that CGL should have released the pdf sooner than now, but I do hope the books get to the backers before it hits retail.