Shadowrun First Ed was the second tabletop game I played and I am impressed that it has lasted. The Second Edition started streamlining the game and it certainly hasn't gotten old.

A good, solid introduction to the core mechanics of Shadowrun v 4.0 in 24 pages, covering basic character generation, tests, combat and the basics of magic in the Awakened World.

Pre-generated characters include Bounty Hunter, Hacker, Street Samurai and Combat Mage, covering as many bases as possible.

Spell casting, Augmented Reality and a combat scenario set in a Seattle streetsde Stuffer Shack follow, with a chest sheet and advertisement for further SR4 products such as the Sixth World Almanac and Runner's Toolkit, as well as for the Shadowrun website.

A good, tight but limited product. A taster, as it were, to get the reader to open up to the much wider range of possibilities available in the basic Shadowrun 4 core rulebook and supplements.

If you haven’t played Shadowrun before, you are seriously missing out on a good game. ‘Where man meets magic and machine’ is the tagline and it is a gritty, dark-edged game of cyberpunk and street magic in a world ruled by corporations. Taking a page from William Gibson’s vision of a dystopic future, where technology has failed to give humankind a better life, (meta)humanity instead wallows in it’s own decline – and likes it. Rather than the shiny, hopeful theme of the science fiction genre, cyberpunk punches your dreams in the teeth and watches and they fall bleeding to the pavement.

In 2074, governments have little to no authority, as the megacorporations have taken over the world. In fighting their clandestine wars against each other, they need deniable expendable assets – you. As a Shadowrunner, you live off the grid; nameless in the Sprawl with only your Ares Predator and your rep to protect you.

‘Foodfight’ offers (unsurprisingly for Catalyst Games) high production values and attention to detail. The writing is concise, and offers an decent explanation for a world that would otherwise require a lot of reading to understand. The rules are explained well, with marginalia and examples of the mechanics in action. Like the Battletech product 'A Time of War Quickstart', the character sheets are succinct, the artwork evocative and everything logically loaid out for the novice player. The back of the book offers a quick-reference chart for most of the common rolls you’ll make. The module is short, but to the point and you’ll never look at fast food the same way again.

While you’re at it, pick up the GM Screen for free too!

From: http://www.miragearcana.com/news-a-blog/40-game-night-blog-1 2-free-your-mind

Shadowrun was my first tabletop game (I mean, theoretically I played Battletech as a wargame before that, but I didn't do the Mechwarrior Roleplaying Game), so I've always had a soft spot for it. However, I will admit that I consider myself a 3rd Edition purist (it's what I have all my stuff for, and the edition with which I am most familiar with the lore and setting of).

So, when I was invited to review the Quick-Start Rules for 4th Edition, I decided to finally relent and review the rules. I like them in some ways, and not in others. It's both more complex and more simple at once; it divides a lot of stuff (i.e. the statistics, of which there are now 9 on the character sheet, as opposed to 3rd Edition's 6) and also seems to categorize some stuff.

All-in-all, though, I take away a more polished, if less free system that is certainly not as bad as what I've heard about it. It seems a little different, and I don't care for the setting as much, but it's certainly one of the better games out there.