D&D 4E OT: Shadowrun 4E announced

[Ottergame]

Dual-stating doesn't seem like a great idea; I don't know that it's ever really worked out long-term for any game. You usually end up with only one supported system, or sometimes no supported systems (because framentation killed an already small market).

Exactly. As I pointed out earlier, AEG tried this with their L5R RPG with the Rokugan books. They wanted to pick up new players, but it ended up distracting them from their original fans. No one new came to the game from it, but they managed to splinter their fans into people who played L5R, and those who played d20. The overall quality of the books suffered, because they had to playtest for 2 utterly different games. Quality suffers when you pull something like that.

And FanPro is a smaller company then AEG, and there's fewer Shadowrun players then L5R ones. The end result would be exactly the same. Rules that do not translate well to d20, so you end up with a game that plays and feels nothing like the real thing.

 

[Klaus]

Hm, you know, in terms of intellectual excercise, doing a conversion of SR into d20 is kind of old hat. All sorts of things have been converted in that direction. Instead, why not try it the other way?

Take D&D, and create a version of it that runs under Shadowrun rules!

Done it about 10 years ago. One-shot that never went anywhere.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Silhouette? That one from Dreampod9?

You must be kidding!

That's one of the worst systems I know.

Bye
Thanee

What don't you like about it?

It's simple but detailed, fast and has an extremely elegant advancement and stat system.

I'm not familiar with the older versions, but the current edition is my game of choice.

 

[drothgery]

And FanPro is a smaller company then AEG, and there's fewer Shadowrun players then L5R ones. The end result would be exactly the same. Rules that do not translate well to d20, so you end up with a game that plays and feels nothing like the real thing.

See, here's where I kind of disagree (though I've never played Shadowrun, so take my opinion for what it's worth here). The enormous breadth of high-quality d20 games* -- D&D, Mutants & Masterminds, Blue Rose, Call of Cthulu d20, Star Wars d20, Spycraft, d20 Modern, and a whole lot of games I haven't mentioned -- make it hard for me to believe that there are very many genres that couldn't be done well as d20 games. So if game is getting a new edition, and that new edition is done as a good d20 game, the transition will probably work (as per Star Wars).

* I'm including d20-based OGL games as d20 games, which isn't completely accurate, but they're close enough.

 

[Felon]

To me, the biggest draw about SR is that anyone can be good at anything, and that it is not defined by a class what a person can and cannot do. If you want a mage that is just as good with pistols as the Gun Bunny, you can be every bit as good skillwise, and if your willing to sacrifice a bit of essence you can even get the wizbang cyber gear too. If you want your Decker to be a face man, well, you can do that. The freedom of not having your concept screwed by a class system that says you have to be bad at fighting if you can do magic, or that you cannot be a hulking tough as nails combat biker & a darn good decker to boot.

If a system isn't defined by classes or levels, then it's defined by points or some other finite resource. Your mage may be as good with a pistol as the "gun bunny", but is he as skilled at everything else the gunner can do? How about those high-power asault rifles? And to actually be as good with a pistol, wouldn't you also need all of the cyber-enhancements that increase the gunner's accuracy, which would consequently impact your spellcasting ability?

At some point, there are sacrifices to be made and you are limited in what you can do by the resources the system allots you. Shadowrun offers a sufficiently generous allotment that you don't have to make huge sacrifices right away in order to co-opt aspects of someone else's archetype (and we can reserve the topic of whether or not it is too generous to the minmaxers for a different debate).

In d20, these resources consist of levels and class options. If you start a character at 1st level, then the options are limited indeed. If you boost those levels, you get more feats, more skill points, and you gain the ability to multi-class, including access to advanced classes. There are means to be a spellcasting warrior or a technician with social skills, it's just a matter of what you're willing to trade off, just as in SR.

 

[Greg K]

I think a d20 Shadowrun that captures a feel close to that of the original can be done, because d20 is a flexible system. The key is going OGL and not only borrowing from other d20 games, but redesigning aspects of the d20 system rather than clinging so closely to either the DND or d20 Modern models as most d20 designers do.

A perfect example of d20's flexability is Mutants and Masterminds. The designer went OGL and abandoned both the class/level system and hit points (including WP/VP) which are two elements people tend to associate with d20 games (I would also have stressed armor that makes you harder to hit rather than harder to hurt as a third, but some other companies have also done this).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I think Shadowrun could be done reasonably well with d20. I just don't see the point of doing so.

I think once you change d20 enough to capture the mood of Shadowrun, you would wind up with an entirely new system that only has superficial resemblance to "standard" d20 (like Mutants and Masterminds). So why not stick with the original Shadowrun system? Sure, the system has its rough spots, but the same spots are even rougher in all the current incarnations of d20 that I know of...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

And FanPro is a smaller company then AEG, and there's fewer Shadowrun players then L5R ones.

FanPro is not that small - IIRC they are the biggest German RPG company (I think sales of "Das Schwarze Auge" still top those of D&D around here). And I have my doubts about the number of SR versus L5R players - SR is big in Europe. I don't know any role-player who plays L5R, but pretty much every role-player I know ever plays Shadowrun or has played it in the past...

 

[Greg K]

I think Shadowrun could be done reasonably well with d20. I just don't see the point of doing so.

I think once you change d20 enough to capture the mood of Shadowrun, you would wind up with an entirely new system that only has superficial resemblance to "standard" d20 (like Mutants and Masterminds). So why not stick with the original Shadowrun system? Sure, the system has its rough spots, but the same spots are even rougher in all the current incarnations of d20 that I know of...

I don't think it is worth doing a d20 Shadowrun if the designers are going to heavily rewrite d20, but a heavy d20 rewrite is what I think it would take.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I think Shadowrun could be done reasonably well with d20. I just don't see the point of doing so.

I think once you change d20 enough to capture the mood of Shadowrun, you would wind up with an entirely new system that only has superficial resemblance to "standard" d20 (like Mutants and Masterminds). So why not stick with the original Shadowrun system? Sure, the system has its rough spots, but the same spots are even rougher in all the current incarnations of d20 that I know of...

Jürgen...in the eternal words of Meat Loaf..."You took the words right out of my mouth"
That's what I actually keep saying all the time the discussion comes up. I mean, it can't be harder learning a new system (which is not THAT hard with SR as I know it so far) than getting used to a completely reworked OGL ruleset.