Hoy, chummer! Through Monday, September 21 we present the Shadowrun Anarchy 1E Bundle featuring the 2016 First Edition of Shadowrun: Anarchy, the rules-light, narrative-focused alternate version of Shadowrun, the classic cyberpunk-fantasy RPG from Catalyst Game Labs. The year is 2077. Magic has returned and creatures of myth and legend walk among us as megacorps bleed the world dry. You’re a shadowrunner – a deniable asset, a corporate pawn – using bleeding-edge science and magic to make your meat body and mind better-than-flesh. Stay on the edge, and you may survive another run on the mean sprawl streets.
Shadowrun: Anarchy First Edition (2016) is a low-friction way to get into the Awakened World. Based on the rules-light and easy-to-learn Cue System (seen in Mechwarrior: Destiny and the Valiant Universe RPG), Shadowrun: Anarchy is a standalone game experience that has everything you need to quickly grab some gear, load up on spells, and get to throwing the dice. With loads of characters and dozens of “contract brief” scenarios (many based on classic Shadowrun scenarios like Harlequin, Mercurial, Dreamchipper, and Queen Euphoria), Anarchy makes it simple to start running the shadows.
This new Shadowrun Anarchy 1E Bundle helps promote the newly released Shadowrun: Anarchy 2.0 from French publisher Black Book Editions. Crowdfunded to great success in August 2025, the new Anarchy adds risk dice and new rules for legwork and Drain. But it’s the same game, and the First Edition titles in this offer will get your runners up to speed when Black Book launches its Kickstarter campaign for the new Anarchy 2.0 expansion, Over the Edge.
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.
Anarchy adapts the Cue System 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. The corebook discusses at length the ways players (not just the gamemaster!) can use Narration to influence the action.
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. By default there’s no initiative, recoil, damage soaking, Draining, or Fading, though there are optional rules for some of these. 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. Pay just US$14.95 to get all three titles in our Anarchy Collection (retail value $55) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Shadowrun Anarchy First Edition corebook, Anarchy 2050, and Chicago Chaos.
Move fast, chummer – this new Shadowrun Anarchy offer vanishes into the astral plane Monday, September 21.
