r/PinkFohawk

I have nearly finished reading through the main book for 2e and have a rough understanding of the rules. Not perfect by any means, but honestly things are much more understandable than I had been lead to expect.

However I do have a few questions about the other books in the 2e line. My understanding is that 3rd edition takes various rules from suppliments and a few other changes but is otherwise 2e. Specificially I have heard people say there were changes in Virtual Realities 2.0, Grimore... 2? and Rigger 2 books.

So my main question is this: What are the overviews of the changes for how Matrix things work, magic work and rigging work with the suppliments compared to the main book for 2e?

Are the differences beneficial enough to be worth grabbing the books and planning to use them or are they just adding more options and layers onto the basic rules?

This week I scored a bit of a rare find. Thanks to a rog forum, I had the chance to get my hands on the 2e core rules in Czech translation. The book came out in 1995. The translation is a bit clunky at times. Then again, it was shortly after the fall of socialism and the split of Czechoslovakia, so the translators weren't very familiar with English slang. For instance, the Czech translation of Neuromancer is really hard to read if you know your way around the terminology. Even though I've only been playing Shadowrun since the 4th edition... but this was a must-have :)

https://preview.redd.it/2gp2y44hc91h1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7231085bab92cbb9f009d94557c52d3fea258fe9

Reading through 2e core rules and trying to learn them. So far I am liking the system much more than when I tried to read 6e, at least I feel my players will take to the mechanics better.

However I do have a question (preferably for those that have played 2e at the table and/or used these optional rules). On page 194 they list Optional Lethality Rules... mostly raising or lowering the effects of armor, damage and spell casting force/resist to make the game more or less dangerous.

My question: For those that played 2e more or less as is... how lethal is it really? I can see in the mechanics that it COULD be lethal... but is that really how it plays out? Secondly, has anyone used any of the variants listed on p194? If so, which and how much did it really effect things?

I know it is a strange edge-case question... but I am trying to wrap my brain around the core set but would like SOME understand of how things change. Other than the obvious things like making things more lethal pushes Black Trenchcoat while making it less lethal pushes more Pink Mowhawk play.