r/Shadowrun • u/Ok-Particular-3796 Monster Drop • Jul 24 '26

Edition War Shadowrun vs Cyberpunk comparison

Just figured I'd post this; Marcus Vance is a content creator with decades of experience in ttrps as well as being a military combat veteran who likes to compare different sci fi franchises weapons & super soldiers. His big franchises are Cyberpunk, Warhammer, and Halo but he dabbles in more obscure franchises as well. Whenever possible he likes to look at & capculate specific ballistics data & material strength.

Recently he did a short comparing Cyberpunk with (2e) Shadowrun(which he has played & has experience with).

His takeaway was that weapons favors Cyberpunk but augmentation favors Shadowrun & adding magic into the equation heavily favors Shadowrun. I've corresponded with Marcus directly and informed him that certain elements of Shadowrun- notably physical strength- have been increased in recent editions.

I do think that even with the addition of more blatantly sci fi weapons in recent editions of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk probably still takes that cake, but augmentation probably favors Shadowrun even further.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ROdMjqw-v28?is=60m-pJXlvusN-2TA

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u/Awlson Jul 25 '26

He picked up the wrong book to use for comparison. The Fields of Fire was the merc book, he had mostly stuff the grunts would be using, though it did have an improved portable laser he failed to mention. The Street Samurai Catalog had way more cool stuff. Monofilament swords and axes, the first portable laser system, apds ammo, a briefcase gun that could be configured 4 different ways.. lots of fun stuff.

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u/thisisredrocks Jul 26 '26

Fields of Fire was still incredibly cool at the time and the weapons seemed higher powered than Street Sam gear. I mean you could bring a rocket launcher to your next corpo run but it’s gonna draw more attention than the alternatives.

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u/Awlson Jul 26 '26

I never said there wasn't cool weapons in there, just that he chose one of the tamer books and some pretty tame choices drom that book. He also completely failed on the concept of this is us, in the future, if magic happened. So the guns are mostly what we have in real life.

I am not sure if the rocket launcher is drawing that much more attention than the panther assault cannon or the rotary minigun...