Welcome to the Shadows

/// Shadowrun · Fifth Edition ///

Magic came back in 2011. The corporations took over shortly after. You are one of the deniable people they hire when something needs doing that cannot be traced back to a boardroom. Start at the top and work down — each lesson assumes the ones before it.

Start here

01

Welcome to the Shadows

The Sixth World in one sitting: the Awakening, the Big Ten megacorps, and why anyone would take a job that pays this badly. Includes the timeline of how it all went wrong.

Building a runner

02

Characters & Archetypes

Street samurai, decker, mage, rigger, face, adept — what each one actually does on a job, and which gaps a team cannot afford to leave open.

03

Game Mechanics & Character Creation

Dice pools, hits, thresholds and glitches, then the Priority system that turns a concept into a character sheet.

04

Worked Character Examples

Complete builds walked through decision by decision, so you can see where the points actually went.

05

100 Ready-Made Runners

A hundred character concepts to steal outright, whether you need a PC in a hurry or an NPC with a reason to exist.

06

The Shadow Registry

150 street names with the profession and speciality attached — because "Bob the decker" has never once sounded right.

Running the shadows

07

Contacts, Lifestyle & the Shadow Community

Your fixer, your doc, your lifestyle costs. The social infrastructure that decides whether you get work and whether you survive between jobs.

08

Planning & Preparing a Run

Legwork, casing the site, and building a plan that survives contact with the opposition. This is the part of Shadowrun most tables skip and shouldn't.

09

Concrete Jungle

Urban sprawl and street life: the neighbourhoods, the gangs, and what the city does to people who have no corporate address.

The two great powers

10

The Matrix

Digital warfare, hosts and ICE, and what your decker is actually doing during the twenty minutes everyone else is waiting.

11

Magic & the Awakened Arts

Spellcasting, summoning, astral space and Drain. The other half of the setting, and the half that ignores most of your armour.

Going deeper

12

Living Legends

Advanced campaigns and long-term character development — Karma, reputation, and what happens to runners who live long enough to have a past.

TOOL

Dice Roller

A Shadowrun dice-pool roller: counts hits, flags glitches, and handles Edge. Built for use at the table.