cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/196/p/2013973/on-the-netrules
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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I used to play shadowrun and never understood the rules for rigging and decking
You’re not alone
Did you play 1st edition, circa 1989? The original decking rules are pretty well represented in the recent Sega Shadowrun game from 1994, just a few years ago.
It's an entire solo dungeon sort of experience, while the rest of the group watches the decker and GM play a one on one game.
It was radically streamlined for 2nd edition on, but it took me a while to notice, since Deckers were always NPCs and decking was just exposition for years.
Forgive the formatting, I'm feeling fragile, probably from my advanced age.
Sorry for the late reply. It was in the late 90s, so I guess it was 2nd edition.
The "normal" combat rules where pretty clear to me but like I said, decking and rigging where a total mystery so we basically skipped that whole part and only had fighters and magic users. However, the rulebook suggested rigger and decker type player characters, including the different hardware and implants.
Another thing I remember was that the initiative rules where kind of broken. Players a good reflex booster where extremely overpowered. For me as GM that became a huge realism problem because either enemies had to have reflex boosters as well or appear in huge numbers to stand a chance and to present a challenge.
What I did to offset this is a bit was introducing reflex booster glitches and side effects like making the players extremely twitchy.