SR3E is pretty good. Unlike D&D there's a lot of stuff to do outside combat. Adventures (runs) usually see players spending a lot of time doing legwork. (Uncovering details about the security they're goign up against, discovering irregularities and puzzling out what's really going on if their Johnson is trying to set them up etc.) Character progression also works pretty well, with skills improving gradually over time rather than huge jumps in power whenever an arbitrary experience treshold is crossed. I've had a lot of fun as a GM simply handing out a blueprint of a building where I had decided on security systems and watching my players formulate a plan on how they wanted to infiltrate it and doing mini-runs in preparation to gather the materials they needed. The biggest problem SR3E faces is hacking. There are pretty complex and time-consuming rules for running entire runs in the matrix and one player will usually want to roll a decker. Since mages can't go on the matrix ('cept cold-sim with trodes) and most non-deckers having no hackign skills whatsoever, you usually end up having to run seperate sessions for the hacker player to keep things flowing for everyone. I once tried running a simultaneous meatspace/matrix combat scenario where the hacker was trying to shut down alarms/security systems while the players were fighting. It was a horrible, horrible thing to keep track of and I wouldn't reccomend it.
Anecdote time! said:The last campaign I played n was a 4E "superheroes" campaign, where our regular Johnson was a billionaire who fancied himself the next "Doctor X" or whatever. He gave us missions to clean up crime and help innocents in the best superhero fashion. I was playing anevilcolourfully pragmatic AI. Our group decided we'd start out by cracking down on Bunraku business in seattle. Bunraku brothels being run by the Yakuza feature prostitutes with personality-chip software slotted into them and extensive cosmetic cyberware to change their appearance and behaviour to conform with whatever fetish the customers might have. (and have their memories erased at the end of the day so they can't remember if they slept with someone who wanted to remain anonymous). My AI, "The Colonel" Nathan R. Jefferson convinced the group that what we needed to do was find out who the anonymous bunraku customers were and leak the information to break the brothels reputation for discretion and removing their customer base. Everyone agreed that this was a good, non-violent solution that would remove the problem instead of jsut relocating it. We located a recycling clinic where prostitutes who got "broken" went to have their cyberware removed for reinstallation into new "employees". Since the cyberware wasn't likely to have its memory flushed until just before being installed in someone else, our first "superheroic deed" became breaking into a hospital to steal the still-warm body of a hooker off the slab.
Shadowrun 4th edition cleaned things up a lot and I'd actually go as far as to say it is the superior product. I lament that the matrix became wireless since lugging around huge, armored keyboards and having wires poking out of your skull added a lot of flavour to shadowrun. On the other hand, hacking on the fly means that deckers integrate much better into the gameplay now, and the way skill tests (standard, opposed, extended) are the same across all disciplines makes it a lot easier to teach new players. If you want to poke around shadowrun, I reccomend the quite excellent dumpshock forums. Besides reading up on rules/fluff they have a thriving play-by-post section akin to our playground where you can kibiz on ongoing campaigns and get a feel for how the game flows. (although play by post is obviously different to playing it live).
Dumpshock -> http://forums.dumpshock.com/
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and times clashed so never got farther than a couple half-done campaigns. Some memorable moments though including setting fire to a town of the imperium after trying to flush a heretic (who wasnt even there) out of a house, and then being struck down by the the cleric in our group for gross incompetency. Who was also kinda indignant over the fact that I had inserted a hallucinatory bomb or something simliar into his backpack earlier on and then accused him of heresy and sabotage. 
fun times
