D20 Shadowrun

[Shadowrun Man]

I still have to question why do it. Beside with the release of 3rd Edition it is more stream lined, but that is besides the point. You either play one or the other. Now don't get me wrong I enjoy playing D&D and Shadowrun, but the systems are exactly opposite, one is for super hero/ villian the other for gritty reality. But that is my point of view.

Now there are some of you out there that say it is imposseble for a mage to be able to fire a gun as proficient as a street sam. I don't know about you, but if you put your mind into doing both you can, none of this you will never be able to shoot as good as me because Im a street sam. Shadowrun = realism, D20 system = super here/villian mega combat (no insult intended, just my point of view nothing more). I don't know where you people get that idea, but I believe skill should be the amount of time you put into, not class.

The hit point system realy doesn't work with firearms in my mind, but does fit well with melee combat though, now if you could combine the two systems and get the to work that would be cool, but I am not going to do that. To much work and I am to lazy to develop my own system. Another problem I have with D20 system is the hit point system, maybe its because I don't understand the hitpoint system and what it represents besides a measure of health, I cant see a human being living after being shoot with a shotgun. The Hit point system allows for people to get up after being shoot wih a shotgun, say owe and go on with his day.

I'll stop here because I can go on, and on but I don't bacause it too much work, and it might offend some people. I like D20 MOdern for its super hero/villian style play, sometime I just need to get away from realism and go to super hero/villian mode.

 

[Ranger REG]

You have a better chance of putting moon and sun up in the sky together than injecting "realism" into RPG.

 

[jaerdaph]

ahhhhh, Shadowrun using the D20 system, why? I don't want to be mean but why the hell would you want to do that.

For the record, this is now the fourth time in a whopping 29 posts you have either started or hijacked a thread with this, at least one of which ended up locked by the monitors.

I suggest you try RPGNet, the home of raining on somebody elses parade.

 

[Felon]

I still have to question why do it. Beside with the release of 3rd Edition it is more stream lined

Does 3e SR still have some characters acting 3 times in a round before other characters get to do anything? Bad design.

Does a character still have to use a "pick" to play an elf, while other characters just use cyberware to get low-light vision? Bad design.

Does a shaman's repertoire of magic seem uncannily similar to a corporate battle mage's? Bad design.

Now don't get me wrong I enjoy playing D&D and Shadowrun, but the systems are exactly opposite, one is for super hero/ villian the other for gritty reality. But that is my point of view.

Shadowrun certainly seems to be marketed as an action-oriented game. Gritty, realistic rules where everyone has a fairly equal chance of being insta-killed discourages characters from getting into vioent situations. Kinda counter-productive.

Now there are some of you out there that say it is imposseble for a mage to be able to fire a gun as proficient as a street sam. I don't know about you, but if you put your mind into doing both you can, none of this you will never be able to shoot as good as me because Im a street sam. Shadowrun = realism, D20 system = super here/villian mega combat (no insult intended, just my point of view nothing more). I don't know where you people get that idea, but I believe skill should be the amount of time you put into, not class.

OK, what I'm hearing here is just outright ridiculous. The "realism" arguement is just an extremely weak rationalization for a very poor game mechanic that encourages mages to be better than everyone else. First of all, the amount of time and discipline that it takes to study magic has no correlation with the real world. That's purely a decision that's in the game designers' hands. Now, if magic allows a spellcaster to do a wide variety things other characters simply can't--which it does in SR even with cyberpunk technology--it should have been regarded by the designers as a major, defining aspect of a character.

If a character is just picking up sorcery in his spare time between trips to the shooting range, then he certainly should not be particularly adept at either magic or gunplay (unless the caster is doing some sort of fusion of the two skilsets, not unlike D&D's arcane archer, which could be interesting). If it was possible to be a magus and a marksman, then why the heck wouldn't every merc study magic? Obviously, spellcasting with more than a marginal degree of proficiency should such near-total dedication that it defines a character0.

And before you say, "well, I just don't agree", please understand that on this issue we've left the realm of opinions. Any arguements concerning so-called "realism" aside, it is flat-out broken for a character to cast powerful spells while simultaneously co-opting the roles of other characters in the group.

Another problem I have with D20 system is the hit point system, maybe its because I don't understand the hitpoint system and what it represents besides a measure of health, I cant see a human being living after being shoot with a shotgun. The Hit point system allows for people to get up after being shoot wih a shotgun, say owe and go on with his day.

All right, I agree with you here. There are some mechanical problems in d20 with firearm combat, especially when one guy's using a firearm and the other's using a melee weapon. Character A has a shotgun out and Character B has a knife. They spot each other from 60 feet away. They roll initiative, and Character B wins, allowing him to cover the distance with a charge and stab A with his knife while the latter is still flat-footed. Even from a cinematic standpoint, that's rather silly. And sillier still is the exchange of stabbing and point-blank range shooting that occurs afterwards.

I have to house-rule the above scenario to allow characters with Combat Reflexes to get a special kind of Attack of Opportunity on attackers that charge them from more than 30 feet away. I also rule that if you do enough damage to force a Massive Damage Threshold check, then even if a character makes his Fort save, he's still staggered the next round.

 

[Felon]

For the record, this is now the fourth time in a whopping 29 posts you have either started or hijacked a thread with this

Oh, OK, so I'm not saying anything he hasn't already had explained to him several times before? I have basically zero-chance of getting through to him? Ok, thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Corinth]

d20 CoC and d20 Modern already addressed the damage problem: drop the Massive Damage Threshold.

As it is, d20 Modern (and Spycraft, for that matter) already has everything but the cyberware and Matrix rules needed to run a d20 SR game.

 

[EdwardForrester]

Thanks for the links

I just wanted to thank those who directed me towards the Shadowrun D20 conversion page and CYD20 ( that rocks). I really like the idea of Shadowrun and think it wouldd be cool to try and now with Urban Arcadia boom you got your non human species. I have never played any version of SR, I have friends who told me about some of the details and what not. And according to everyone of them it takes a lot of effort to stick with it due to game issues. I just think the setting rocks and I was looking to see if there was anything out there using D20 Modern. Thanks again to all.

 

[supdegrave]

Does 3e SR still have some characters acting 3 times in a round before other characters get to do anything? Bad design.

Actually, they fixed that one in 3E. Now each actor gets a single action before starting in on the additional actions.

Still an overly complex system, IMO.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Now there are some of you out there that say it is imposseble for a mage to be able to fire a gun as proficient as a street sam.

I say so. And there's a perfectly simple explanation for it: The day's only got 24 hours.

The reason you can't be an Ace of all Trades is that the better you want to be the more time you have to put into exercising. You can be an ace in one thing, and dedicate most of your time into that, which means that you won't have many other strengths (and even a couple of weaknesses), or you can be a jack of all trades, which means you have no real weaknesses and no real strenghts (except versatility): you ain't as good at spellcasting as a wizard, but better than the fighter, and you can fight better than the wizard, but the fighter still outfights you.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Does 3e SR still have some characters acting 3 times in a round before other characters get to do anything? Bad design.

No, It doesn't. Everyone gets a go, then extra actions get extra goes. I think it probably works a bit better than the only "extra actions" rules that d20 has - haste and timestop aren't exactly paragons of balance.

Does a character still have to use a "pick" to play an elf, while other characters just use cyberware to get low-light vision? Bad design.

Except that an elf's lowlight is a step above that gained by cyber, and that the money used to buy the cyber cost a "pick" in itself. Compare to D&D where you can buy magical items to give you darkvision or blindsight, and there's not really much that you can call "bad design", that's present in SR, which isn't in d20, is there?

Does a shaman's repertoire of magic seem uncannily similar to a corporate battle mage's? Bad design.

Now you're just getting silly. Adding 'flavour' restrictions is an example of bad design. Under D&D I can never make a healer who can throw fireballs, regardless of my justification. Why is that? Why are all clerics eerily alike? Is it bad game design?

Shadowrun certainly seems to be marketed as an action-oriented game. Gritty, realistic rules where everyone has a fairly equal chance of being insta-killed discourages characters from getting into vioent situations. Kinda counter-productive.

And disintegrate does what? Only in SR, it's quite likely that you will survive to see medical attention, while in D&D you're just dead.

Finally there's the fact that not everyone has the same chance of being instakilled. Karma tends to see to that.

That's purely a decision that's in the game designers' hands. Now, if magic allows a spellcaster to do a wide variety things other characters simply can't--which it does in SR even with cyberpunk technology--it should have been regarded by the designers as a major, defining aspect of a character.

Actually, magic isn't necessarily that much more powerful than tech in SR. Theres very few things it does which tech can't, and it tends to do most things a little bit worse than equivalent tech. Furthermore, it does require a serious expenditure in karma. In D&D terms, SR has unlimited multiclassing, and a wizard can stop learning to cast spells in order to learn to use a gun. The only real difference is that if you don't start as a wizard in SR, you can't ever multiclass into it.

And before you say, "well, I just don't agree", please understand that on this issue we've left the realm of opinions. Any arguements concerning so-called "realism" aside, it is flat-out broken for a character to cast powerful spells while simultaneously co-opting the roles of other characters in the group.

Bollocks. I've yet to see an RPG where everyone is so tightly typecast that they can NEVER step on one anothers toes, or one where it's not advantageous to have multiple characters capable of the same thing. Furthermore, if any RPG is guilty of allowing a single character to make the rest of the group extraneous, then D&D is that game.

All right, I agree with you here. There are some mechanical problems in d20 with firearm combat, especially when one guy's using a firearm and the other's using a melee weapon. Character A has a shotgun out and Character B has a knife. They spot each other from 60 feet away. They roll initiative, and Character B wins, allowing him to cover the distance with a charge and stab A with his knife while the latter is still flat-footed. Even from a cinematic standpoint, that's rather silly. And sillier still is the exchange of stabbing and point-blank range shooting that occurs afterwards.

Actually, that pretty much occurs in any RPG, SR included. I have seen games which fix it to some degree, typically through an 'action point' system, where each action taken has a fractional round measurement.

I have to house-rule the above scenario to allow characters with Combat Reflexes to get a special kind of Attack of Opportunity on attackers that charge them from more than 30 feet away. I also rule that if you do enough damage to force a Massive Damage Threshold check, then even if a character makes his Fort save, he's still staggered the next round.

While admittedly Shadowrun Man isn't the best arguer, you're not much better yourself felon. Your bias against, and lack of knowledge of Shadowrun clearly shows in your own posts. Finally, if you're going to comment on game design, then I suggest you think some things through before you post. Flexibility is not a design flaw. Tradeoffs are not a design flaw. Things which no longer exist in a system are not design flaws.

Right, now that that's over, here's my take on d20 Shadowrun.

You could do it. However, there would be some significant changes from basic SR, flavour changes which spring from the mechanics of d20 modern. The system DOES impact upon the style of play.

At low levels (1-5 or so), play would be very much the same as SR.

However, at higher levels d20 shows a far more intense escalation than SR does, due primarily to the advancement mechanisms of the two games.

For instance: In SR a 2000 karma character (at a rate of about 1-10 karma per adventure) is STILL roughly comparable with a starting character. They're a bit more survivable (but only a little bit), and probably a bit broader, but the two can still continue in the same game without one completely overshadowing the other.

Try that in d20 with a first level character and a 200-encounter of equal level character (ie - a character of 15th level). Let alone a 200 adventure character. Chances are you can't. The 1st level character will simply be unable to contribute, and he will likely be crushed like a bug on his first outing.

To challenge the rapidly advancing characters of d20, you need to rapidly advance the opposition. 15th level characters are simply no longer scared of 2nd level gangers or security guards.

In SR's background, there are a number of legendary individuals who rose out of relative obscurity onto the world scene.

In regular SR, this is likely to never happen to the PC's.

In d20 SR, the PC's would almost HAVE to be these characters.

That's the primary difference, one of flavour. Rapid advancement versus slow development.

Which is probably why a lot of the SR community doesn't like the idea of d20 SR - they play SR because they like the flavour of it over d20.