Chummers, the new rules-light take on the Sixth World is here. Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 hit DriveThruRPG this week as a PDF, and the print edition hits retail on November 11…
It was built by Black Book Editions, the team that has handled the French edition of Shadowrun for over 20 years, with Catalyst Game Labs publishing in English. It funded on Kickstarter earlier this year.
What you need to know:
- Standalone. The book and a handful of six-siders are all you need to run it.
- Newcomer friendly. It includes a setting primer, so you don’t need decades of metaplot.
- A big NPC gallery to fill out your sessions.
- A four-part campaign for beginners and veterans alike.
- Works with every edition. Shadowrun books from any edition can be used alongside it.
How it plays
Anarchy 2.0 keeps Shadowrun’s signature pools of six-sided dice, with 5s and 6s counting as hits. You build a pool from an attribute plus a skill, then roll against an opposing pool or a set number of dice. It’s built to cut bookkeeping compared to the full Sixth World rules. New to this edition are risk dice, where a 5 or 6 counts as two hits, but a 1 is a critical failure.
The bigger shift is how the story gets told. The GM sets the scene, then each player narrates what their character does, and the dice help decide how well it works. Players steer the story with a personal narrative resource, earned through legwork and spent mid-run to overcome obstacles on the fly. The group can also build a shared pool during planning. The default is classic GM-led narration, with optional rules for shared narration or even playing without a GM.
At the table, that means less book-diving and more “what do you do?” Expect fast action and loose scene structure. It isn’t exactly rules-light, but is a lot easier to learn than any of the core editions of Shadowrun, so think of it as the middle ground.
PDF: DriveThruRPG
We’ll be digging in and sharing more soon. Stay frosty out there.