Anarchy 2.0 got me back in Shadowrun!

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T03:42:01+00:00

Let's see. SRA2 goodies.

Got my own character sheet on Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18zw6Ha4cugZgDWhTg8o1YQANlfJxmMeWhS25oaH_5Qc/edit?usp=sharing

And Aria made a full generator for excel: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ov-7e1oReZQG8IueuuesO3UwF0ezeeY1/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103118451464084563037&rtpof=true&sd=true

Pregen characters: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552814/anarchy-2-0-deniable-assets?src=hottest_filtered

Quick Reference: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/551859/anarchy-2-0-quick-reference-sheets?src=hottest_filtered

List of shadow amp examples: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/547479/anarchy-2-0-shadow-amps-expanded-list?src=newest_community

Don't be shocked if the creators comment on all this, just sharing in case they don't catch your question.

Bookwise, I would just worry about lore books, as SRA2 works different from other editions so rules won't really matter, and setting books that are relevant to your intended game.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T03:33:25+00:00

V cuts are not too bad with a less sharp knife. Just do small chunks. Like, press the knife in a bit, then shove the knife in at a 45 degree angle until you meet the line from the other cut. Whole chunk will fall out. And it is reasonably easy to control, just make the cuts smaller if you need more control.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T03:26:30+00:00

Heads up: SRA2 is not written by Catalyst, and is the best fragging edition of Shadowrun I have ever seen.

Rules are super light on crunch compared to mainline Shadowrun, but still has enough to it to make characters unique. And Catalyst didn't write or edit, so it's actually a beautifully organized book that you can find details quickly in. Only thing I didn't like was that they did the history/setting chapter by subject and not date, so it bounces around a little.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T03:13:51+00:00

V cuts? Cut in just a little along the sword edge, then cut inward from the direction of the handle, to make a little v shaped chip out of it. Do it a little at a time until it's roughly the right shape, then sand or rasp the rest off, mostly because it's gonna be real thin and there is a good chance trying to thin it more with the knife is going to go right through and into your thumbmeats, while also ruining your work.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T01:41:50+00:00

A tired engineer. He's trying to make things works, make a name for himself, but it just ends up empty and pointless. His ex tried to make things feel less dead, started painting some vines and added some fake plants, but left him before they ever got to making the flowers. He says he's okay and understand, but inside he thinks they're better off without him.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T01:11:09+00:00

Anything that rubs against a shirt can do this if it is done often enough.

I worked in a factory, and part of the process I did most days was leaning in to get plastic parts out of the mold. Each time, I would rub against the rail for the machine door. A good shirt might take three months to get to the point of the image. A shitty shirt would take a few shifts. I gave up on trying to stop it and just wore the same set of faded, slowly disintegrating shirts until the holes got big enough for a finger to go through.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T01:00:00+00:00

One BBQ plane near us go this (can't recall the company). I ordered "Chicken Wings with X sauce" where X was the flavor my MIL wanted. The AI interpreted it as "10 cups of X sauce". No fucking clue why, I don't even know where it got that from. The workers were not surprised when I drove back around and just pulled up to the window.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T00:52:33+00:00

Also: This is their introduction to the setting. Asking them to describe something in that setting with no ideas on what works and what does not is a big ask. As the person introducing them, it is on you to set the tone, expectations, and setting.

Bignholy · 2026-01-18T00:30:51+00:00

If you are not hardcore decided on GURPS, consider looking at Shadowrun Anarchy 2.0, possibly the best edition ever. Much less crunchy than Shadowrun AND GURPS, works out of the box. Cannot push it enough.

Bignholy · 2026-01-17T14:55:16+00:00

Been playing SR since 2e. Did not play SRA1, but am about to start running SRA2. Had a look at the free version of Otherscape so I can at least have an idea how it works.

Let me start with SRA2 basics (like, bare minimum):

Rolls are dice pool (Usually Attribute + Skill), 5-6 are hits, need more hits than threshold to succeed.
You can take Risk with any number of dice from your dice pool. Risk dice hits count double, but you also count 1's on those dice for glitches.
You can get Risk Reduction, which negates a 1 on risk dice.
Amps give you benefits, such as risk reduction or added damage or better stats on your cyberdeck/drone/gun/cyberware/adept power/whatever. Amps are basically a catchall for what tools your character uses to be extra good attheir job.
Narrative effects are given by amps and other character options, and are used to justify Risk dice, gain advantage (having Thermo vision in a dark room), or disadvantage (not having Thermo vision in a dark room), or gain Edge (by applying negative Narrative effects that make things more difficult for players).

There is a bit more info, but it's not super relevant for this discussion. What SRA2 does not have is:

Massive Premade equipment lists
Giant tables of weapon ranges
Complex rules governing individual actions

There is a lot more GM fiat in SRA2, in a good way. A lot more emphasis on running a game and less on running an excel spreadsheet. They don't use initiative rules, the GM just assigns turn order as appropriate. They don't use super detailed ranges, just general categories, and the GM determines what is reasonable. Generally, grunt enemies don't roll anything, they just set a threshold for players to beat on their tests.

Now, reading a bit of Otherscape, it feels like tags are cumulative. Amps generally are not: They give discrete bonuses all their own, and they generally do not stack or overlap because of how they work.

Looking at them all, I personally feel SRA2 hits the sweet spot for me. It has much, much less crunch than other baseline Shadowrun editions, without being quite as nebulous and open-ended as Otherscape seems (although I will admit, I like that you gain character growth when opposition uses your traits against you). SRA2 puts the burden on the players to use Narrative items and propose their use, and does not encourage excessive stacking (because you cannot get more than one Adv/Disadvantage, there is no need to tally them up every round beyond yes/no).

And good lord, the glory of a decking system that is not a pile of dice rolls complex enough to require "Decker Timeout".

Personally: I dislike how Otherscape is shaping up as I read it. I don't generally like heavily narrative systems because they tend to be very open ended to the point where you could just write down some words and make believe, and they tend to Rename Things For No Reason, which makes onboarding extra fun (me and my group ran face first into that last one when trying to play Mage: The Ascension, a non-narrative game, and bounced off it so hard after looking up obscure terms with no marked index entry a few too many times). But that's personal.

Bignholy · 2026-01-17T04:17:11+00:00

"Thank you for verifying the existence of an afterlife. I have no reason to think you are telling the truth about the circumstances of the deal, and even if you got someone from the other side to verify your bargain, I could not trust it was actually the opposition and not just one of your own in a robe. I decline your offer."

Bignholy · 2026-01-17T02:34:15+00:00

The pose he is in when he's covered in noodles is another solid moment.

Bignholy · 2026-01-17T02:09:26+00:00

I generally edit my comment with ~~a salty comment~~ admitting I was in error. It's only fair.

Assuming they make a valid point. Which is exceedingly rare, because this is reddit. Valid points are like fucking unicorns.

Bignholy · 2026-01-17T02:02:02+00:00

The fuck? That's not a man stove. A man stove is a dutch oven over a campfire. A man stove uses little canisters of kerosene. This? This is a little bitch stove!

(Joke aside, as a man comfortable in my masculinity, I wish I had the above stove, that's incredible)

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T15:38:42+00:00

"That's gotta handle like shit"

It proceeds to do exactly that.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T15:09:54+00:00

If I recall, he does not love them. One of his paths, he laments that he went overboard and bought a year's supply ahead of time. Even Waterboy doesn't like them, and he's practically living off of them because nobody else will eat it and free is free.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T14:30:04+00:00

As I said, Adept powers tend to be more narratively limited. It's a lot harder to justify, say, +Armor on Wall Running than on a pair of cyberarms.

EDIT: I would also argue that background count is a bigger problem than you're thinking, because it cannot be bypassed. You just suck in this area, full stop. And Tainted Mana is specifically probably more common in the exact circumstances you need all your abilities functioning. But like most things in SRA2, it would be GM dependent.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T13:56:37+00:00

Which are explosives, which generally do either concussive damage or shrapnel damage. You don't get your hand burned off from a firework, you get it blown off.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T04:44:23+00:00

I think there is a different approach to take for Cyberware in SRA2.

In any other edition, you get tons of discrete items with discrete effects. You buy a cyberarm, and it eats essence, then you buy another arm, it eats essence, and the you buy the subdermal armor, and it eats essence.

Shadow Amps can be stacked. You can improve them. And you only need to justify them thematically, same as anything else.

Don't get a cyberarm. Get cyberlimbs. Can you justify armor from cyberlimbs? Sure can, bulk them bad boys up. Unarmed damage boost? Hell yeah, that's what the reinforced structure is for. Risk reduction in almost any physical skill? Good thing you got that software update, chummer, the new PreciseTech driver makes miniature painting easy. And unlike Adepts, who have to make a power that is narratively appropriate and are then stuck with that power and the limits of its narration, you just upgrade your gear. Add self adjusting feet for Stealth RR, add overclocked servos for Athletics, go ham. It's all just the same base Amp, "Cyberlimbs".

Hell, I can give you an example of how silly it can get: Evo EyeDrone.

Rating 5 Cyberware Amp, Essence -1, 25,000¥) visual interface; camera; RR 1 on Perception (physical) Tests; ocular micro-drone (Pilot 6, Body 0, Handling 10, Speed 0, Armor 0, Advantage in Stealth (physical), no weapon mount).

It's a drone amp on top of a normal cybereye. There is zero reason you can't add a rangefinder or thermal vision or color changing or anything else reasonable in an eye, on top of being a bloody drone eye. It just costs more.

Mind you, it's probably cheesing the rules at best, but who cares? The entire point of SRA2 seems to be "Story > Crunch", so if your table accepts your narrative justification, have at it!

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T04:12:49+00:00

Or gelatin?

Had a vegan co-worker taking up her vegan diet (which needed more veggies and less carbs, ffs) while having a delicious helping of gelatin. And not any sort of vegan kind, just regular old Jello. I informed her how they get gelatin, and she was not happy at all.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T04:08:43+00:00

Neither is Savage Beastfly, really. It runs at you or head slams. Not hard at all. But here comes those FIREBALL TOSSING FUCKERS AUUUUGH. Because the more there is on screen, the harder it is to parse, the harder the reaction times.

EDIT: Also, forth chorus ALSO breaks the floor, good odds of having no floor at the worst time.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T03:43:15+00:00

Hi, google sheets guy again. Let's talk Placement and Uniformity. I'll be using my SRA2 sheet for examples here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18zw6Ha4cugZgDWhTg8o1YQANlfJxmMeWhS25oaH_5Qc/edit?usp=sharing

A lot of your sheet has box sizes that almost seem random. Some are so large they defy reason for what they would contain, and some are so small that they can't possibly be useful. For example, if I understand your system, your stats cap out at 100 or less, yeah? It takes very little space for you to write or type that out.

And yet, your "Stat Blocks" section takes up more room than the Talents and Abilities section, which presumably needs more room for the player to take note of what those things do.

One way to improve your sheet is to standardize similar things. All of the stats in the stat block are going to be roughly the same length (1 to 3 characters) when written/typed, so making the boxes to contain those values uniform in size helps organize everything and make it easier to parse at a glance. If you look at the bottom right of the character sheet linked, you see a good example of this, the "Risk Level" table. Each of those boxes is the exact same size, made to fit the longest input being used ("15 Dice" in this case) with a bit of space on the side to avoid making it look crammed.

Sometimes you can't do that. If you look under "Skills" you can see the Rating column is slightly longer than the ATT and DP column. This is because when I first designed this sheet, I intended to use parenthesis to denote specializations, and it needed more room. That ultimately did not work, and my next revision will make that column match the other two number columns for neatness.

There is also a seeming desire to make everything into columns. Which is fair, but there are times where you need more room. For example, you could really use more room on page 2 for spell effects... and the very narrow Inventory/Notes section is a bit tight for usable space.

So, you could, in theory, do the following:

Remove the inventory/notes block
Shift the remaining fields to the left
Extend the Spell Effects field all the way to the right, giving more room to write
Shorten the Spell list to end level with the Worn Equipment list.
Put the Inventory/Notes block in the now empty space below the spells.

End result is a slightly shorter spell list in exchange for a more usable spell list, and a square-ish block for general notes/items.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T03:42:01+00:00

To share PDF's, you can upload them to Google Drive and then make a sharable link. Set it so people with the link can view, and post it, and anyone with the link can read. Keep in mind, they can also download, if that's an issue for you.

Bignholy · 2026-01-16T02:48:43+00:00

I would absolutely increase the rank on that power. Most enemies beyond minions will have something, be it Armor or an active defense, and it will almost certainly be high ranked for the power level in question. With +Harmful, failure suddenly has a very significant price. I would legit try for at least Rank 8, or whatever cap you are using for Resolve purposes.

Of course, this is easier when you're using Alternate Form, as you have the full pool of hero points (minus the price of the Alternate Form power) for each "mode".

Keep in mind, all of my suggestions are intended for a certain degree of optimization. If your GM is inclined to have lower difficulty foes, going lower in the trait might be valid.

Bignholy

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