Orks in pinstripe suits with uzis – mohawked dwarves jacked into vehicles racing through megasprawls at breakneck speed – humans casting fireballs at corporate-trained paracritters – elves hacking the Matrix for a datasteal of the latest tech or working to topple an upstart corp: The Sixth World of Shadowrun is where man meets magic and machine. Dive into a cyberpunk dystopia and become a shadowrunner, a deniable asset who does the jobs no one else will. It's not an easy life, but it beats selling your soul to the megacorps. You'll break into top-secret labs, stand up to gangs bent on destruction and chaos, encounter dark spirits hiding even darker secrets, and come face to face with some of the infinite dangers the Sixth World can throw at you. And you'll come out on top – because if you don't, you don't get paid.
Shadowrun: Anarchy is a fast-paced, easy-to-learn standalone version of the full Shadowrun experience. Shadowrun's complete rules let you simulate your character's choices with significant depth, but in Anarchy the story comes first. Your contributions to the story can stretch beyond the actions of your characters. Player Narration can add story elements, from the arrival of new characters to the existence of strange magic to descriptions of strange objects. Everyone can throw in ideas that make the game exciting and memorable, to help them experience one of the roleplaying field's most enduring settings: the Sixth World.
Anarchy adapts the Cue System (seen in Mechwarrior: Destiny and the Valiant Universe RPG) to a D6 dice pool system like Shadowrun, and adds Plot Points and Glitch Dice that introduce narrative twists. In combat, the attacker rolls skill + attribute dice vs. the defender's Agility + Logic dice, looking for hits (dice that beat a target number). Damage is tracked on a character's Condition Monitor flowchart. Damage inflicts die roll modifiers. Anarchy abstracts many of the full game's rules as Shadow Amps (amplifications), catchall effects that cover magic, Matrix, cyberware, and vehicle actions. By default there's no initiative, recoil, damage soaking, Draining, or Fading, though there are optional rules for some of these.
The Anarchy rules are almost disconcertingly short for an experienced Shadowrun GM: Character creation system runs 12 pages, and the rules proper are 22 pages. The corebook discusses at length the ways players (not just the gamemaster!) can use Narration to influence the action. Anarchy games have different power levels: Gang, Street Runner, and Prime Runner. Each of the 30 pregenerated character sheets lists "Cues," lines of sample dialogue that can guide roleplaying. The core rulebook presents 30 one-page, three-scene Contract Briefs (plotlines) that help keep the gamemaster's prep quick and easy.
Anarchy helps you let loose a blood-dimm'd tide of stories in the Shadowrun universe, to see just what kind of chaos you can unleash.
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