D&D 4E OT: Shadowrun 4E announced

[Felon]

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).

I take it you haven't really been following the thread all that closely. The comment you're making has already been made and has been addressed ad nauseum. In short, you don't overhaul the system just to mimic another system. You marry the system to the setting, and it's pretty to hard to argue there's anything in the "mood" of Shadowrun, which certainly borrows heavily from D&D, that can't be handled in d20. Most of the cyberpunk elements--guns, vehicles, cybernetics, cyberspace--has been or will be covered in future d20 products. Really, a d20 Shadowrun book would just unify a lot of extant material and adapt it to the setting.

That's what I actually keep saying all the time the discussion comes up.

Do you ever actually qualify the statement of what has to be "reworked" to reflect the setting (which, as has been stated quite a few times now, should not be confused with the system).

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Do you ever actually qualify the statement of what has to be "reworked" to reflect the setting (which, as has been stated quite a few times now, should not be confused with the system).

Heh...sure, I could. Don't think it'd bring any enlightenment to you, judging from that quote up there. I actually don't care who states that system and setting should not be confused...I'm talking neither. I'm talking a game. A game as a unique blending of rules and background. A game whose flair and feel are derivd by that mix of rules and background. It's fine if you prefer to separate both, and argue that one set of rules is easily exchangeable with another without problems...which it certainly can be, no argument there. You still are creating a different game with that process.

Or would you rather discuss my subjective opinions of how for example, going from SR's d6 mechanic to any variant of the d20 mechanic will change the feel of the game? That'd be like arguing with somebody who doesn't like the taste of shrimps why he doesn't like the taste of shrimps. Quite useless in all regards. All these discussions if or if not are useless...everything is possible. I just say that the game created is a new game, not a d20fied Shadowrun.

 

[Vocenoctum]

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.

I bought Rokugan stuff I otherwise wouldn't have bought. (I don't play L5R setting.)
The Rokugan books didn't seperate D20/ L5R rules very well IMO, but they were mostly setting material, so it wasn't a big deal. I think dual statting them did bring in the casual gamer.
Like Polyhedron in Dungeon though, I think the L5R folks couldn't handle peanut butter in their chocalate, and were very vocal. The casual D20 Guy like myself never commented at all. That's not based on any evidence though. If sales didn't increase for a dual stat book, it's because L5R players were probably boycotting on principle, rather than quality.

But realistically, SRd20 doesn't need dual-stat books. If you made one stand alone that could... stand alone... then it wouldn't matter. Most of the setting stuff would flow easily, and the second a new SR product came out, D20 Conversions would hit the internet by nightfall.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I love the karma(experience) system, you can learn what you want to learn, spells, skills, raise your attributes, you can spend your karma on whatever you want, and because its a cyberpunk world that devalues human life, you can even sell your karma to mages and spirits.

Actually, that was always one of the problems I had with SR, good karma was never a good system for advancement IMO. Saving up to buy a high ranked skill was tedious. Saving up to initiate was tedious.
The other main problem I had was the disparity between Karma (Mages, Otaku) and Cash (Samurai, Decker) advancements. The Street Sam has 1 million nuyen worth of cyber at char-gen, and in general will NEVER get his core systems upgraded. Giving him 3.5 mil in order to upgrade his wires would require the Mage to also get it for fairness.
Besides, if a runner got 3.5 million nuyen, he's better of retiring.

If the Mage gets a Focus worth 3.5 million, he probably still can't Bond it, so it's less useful to him. His core skills also suffer compared to the Cash guys, who blow GK on skills & att's at will, while he needs spells, initiation, foci bonding and spirits.

Shadowrun would work fine in Mutants and Masterminds, actually, there is a game just like that going on right now in play-by-post. The problem I have with a conversion to "D20" is that people don't mean that, what they actually mean is shoe-horning it into Classes and Levels which takes the fun out of it for me. I can like the setting but if the rules are clunky or a pain to play, as classes are to me, I'd frankly rather not play it.

Not really, you can just asign a setup, say "you all get 3 feats and 50 skill points" or whatnot. Levels are tied to Advancement, not the rules.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

In short, you don't overhaul the system just to mimic another system. You marry the system to the setting, and it's pretty to hard to argue there's anything in the "mood" of Shadowrun, which certainly borrows heavily from D&D, that can't be handled in d20. Most of the cyberpunk elements--guns, vehicles, cybernetics, cyberspace--has been or will be covered in future d20 products.

OK, let's take a look at it.

First of all, Shadowrun has a completely different concept of "game balance". At character creation, you split your priorities five ways between Attributes (raw talent), Skills, Resources (equipment, money, cyberware), Race, and Magical Abilities (if any).

In d20, the prime factor of game balance is the "character level". And this is where things start to get problematic. Race is easy to balance with effective character level, but how do you model an inexperienced character with lots of raw talent (=high attributes) verus an older character whose body has been ravaged by age or substance abuse (=low attributes), but lots of experience (=high skills)?

Both are pretty typical cyberpunk archetypes, but hard to model in standard d20. You could do something like in Mutants and Masterminds, but that's a first major system change.

Then there is Resources. Yes, it is possible at character creation to model cyberware by some sort of "cyberware template" - you "spend" one of your initial character levels and get some cyberware in return. But do you also require them to spend additional character levels on cyberware if they get additional cyberware in play? To me, this seems to be antiethical to the cyberpunk genre - someone who gets cyberware does become more capable than someone who doesn't, and does not magically cease learning new skills for a while.

And that's only cyberware. Are you going to charge someone effective character levels because he has some very neat vehicles? Which might be lost or destroyed during the course of play?

Magic in SR has quite a few differences from "standard" d20 as well. Standard d20 magic is rather mechanical - you expend your spell slot/energy point/whatever, and then the spell works. In Shadowrun, casting spells is always risky, the actual results of the casting are highly variable, and there are few spells that are permanent - and spells that are supposed last for a certain amount of time will need to be concentrated on constantly. Trying to capture all this with d20 would again require a major re-work of the d20 rules.


In summary, I repeat my position: Yes it is possible to do Shadowrun in d20. But to capture the mood of Shadowrun properly, you would have to create so many new rules that it would be like effectively learning a new system, negating the advantage of using d20 in the first place.

And I think the D&D-Shadowrun comparison is silly. Yes, you have magic and fantasy races in Shadowrun, and you occasionally break into buildings to loot them. But that's about it. I've played both Shadowrun and D&D extensively, and the mood in those campaigns couldn't be more different.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Or take a look at how damage and damage resistance is handled.

d20, at least all examples of what I've seen so far, which excludes M&M, goes with a system of increasing hit points to represent how tough, resilient or lucky (or a combination of all three) your character is in avoiding to get killed. That ability goes up with levels, and accordingly, the damage of the opposition goes up as well, as does the Armor/Defense Class of the character, aided by feats, magic and whatsnot else. In short, the higher the levels, the harder to kill.

Shadowrun leaves it up to you to decide how hard it will be to kill you. And you don't get much better during your career. You don't have hit points, the amount of hits needed to kill you stays the same. Your experience in dodging bullets doesn't lead to better dodging..that's done with your combat pool. Your exprience in getting punctured doesn't lead to a much tougher hide, except if you spend prescious Karma to up your Body once. You can implant cyber-/bioware to get more protection, and wear armor, but that is not a function of experience, but of money. A street sam, maxed out on resources from the start, will be as hard to kill during his first run as he will be after 50 Karma points, or 100.

Same goes for the versatility of the characters. In Shadowrun, I know I can create a magically talented character who's also good with firearms, and can easily keep up with the street sam in that regard, if I devote my Karma to it. d20 doesn't give me the chance to up my BAB with a group of weapons and still stay "the same class", as BAB is mostly tied to the class choice. And yeah, I know multiclassing is available...which isn't the same either, because then I'd give up my spell prowess, which I don't have to in Shadowrun, where I can simply pump some Karma into my Rifles skill and my Sorcery skill and my Conjuring. The street sam does have more than two or three weaponry skills he has to keep up, too, so there's not much of a difference. And nobody said saving up Karma for Initiation should be easy, either. Initiation isn't like gaining a few "power-ups" by pre-planning my feats and skills and then taking a prestige class at level 6. It's a long-term personal sacrifice the character actually feels, because he slows down in advancement in other areas of development for the time. Even if it's just 1 or 2 Karma points per run.

So yes, you can easily model a d20 or OGL ruleset to handle the setting of Shadowrun...but in effect, you'll either have a new game, or you're just as well off playing the original.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Actually, that was always one of the problems I had with SR, good karma was never a good system for advancement IMO. Saving up to buy a high ranked skill was tedious. Saving up to initiate was tedious.

Yes because {diety} knows that waiting to level up is *never* tedious. It's a matter of increments and subjective opinion. SR you improve a little after every encounter, d20 you improve a lot after several encounters.

The other main problem I had was the disparity between Karma (Mages, Otaku) and Cash (Samurai, Decker) advancements. The Street Sam has 1 million nuyen worth of cyber at char-gen, and in general will NEVER get his core systems upgraded. Giving him 3.5 mil in order to upgrade his wires would require the Mage to also get it for fairness.

Very valid point. We dealt with it by eliminated the 1,000,000Y creation option. It's a real pain for the 1MY samurai to upgrade; the costs are exorbitant to retrofit gear to alpha/beta/delta/gammaware to support additional hardware. Riggers & Deckers also tend to have so much gear that they can't be stopped or aren't getting paid enough for the risk. But at around 500,000Y the sams are still plenty tough but not invulnerable, the tech-heads have gear commensurate with their skills & paygrade, and the mages aren't so squishy in comparison.

Besides, if a runner got 3.5 million nuyen, he's better of retiring.

And DnD characters wouldn't be better off by retiring on the thousands of GP they pick up? All RPG characters are either a bit warped in the head or in an unenviable situation because any "normal" person would not volunteer for the kind of crap they deal with.

[/QUOTE]Levels are tied to Advancement, not the rules.[/QUOTE]

I don't understand this statement. Levels are part of the rules while advancement is a concept the rules try to model. Levels and Karma are both methods of advancement but they are tied to different rule sets.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Yes because {diety} knows that waiting to level up is *never* tedious. It's a matter of increments and subjective opinion. SR you improve a little after every encounter, d20 you improve a lot after several encounters.

No, CoC you advance a little after every adventure (not encounter). SR, you save up for 4 runs so you can increase SMG skill to 7. (you never get GK per encounter in my experience, just per adventure.) But obviously it's subjective, hence IMO.

Very valid point. We dealt with it by eliminated the 1,000,000Y creation option. It's a real pain for the 1MY samurai to upgrade; the costs are exorbitant to retrofit gear to alpha/beta/delta/gammaware to support additional hardware. Riggers & Deckers also tend to have so much gear that they can't be stopped or aren't getting paid enough for the risk. But at around 500,000Y the sams are still plenty tough but not invulnerable, the tech-heads have gear commensurate with their skills & paygrade, and the mages aren't so squishy in comparison.

You've addressed a different issue then what I'm talking about though. Now, the Samurai still can't advance his cyber, but he also starts with less gear. A decker can spend time (instead of money) to advance programs and such, but I dislike Time as a cost. A system whereby the player could spend feats as he advances, that'd work better...

And DnD characters wouldn't be better off by retiring on the thousands of GP they pick up? All RPG characters are either a bit warped in the head or in an unenviable situation because any "normal" person would not volunteer for the kind of crap they deal with.

Ah, but see, D&D character's rewards escalate as they advance. Sure you get 100,000 gp for that adventure, and could buy a nice castle... but if you invest in OmniPlatinum Armor +6 Weaponbreaker, then you could go whack a dragon or something to earn 200,000!
It's a return on your investment, and is totally logical... or at least justifiable.

But, SR characters in general can't get 3.5 million every adventure without changing the entire dynamic of the game.

Levels are tied to Advancement, not the rules.

I don't understand this statement. Levels are part of the rules while advancement is a concept the rules try to model. Levels and Karma are both methods of advancement but they are tied to different rule sets.

D20 is a ruleset, with the base mechanic of 1d20+blah to beat DC. Advancement by level is one sub-rule of that ruleset, not the entire thing.
If you're running a D20 Modern game without magic, that does NOT mean you're suddenly not playing D20. You've simply removed one of the subsets. Advancing by levels is the default, since it fluidly escalates power, and it works for D&D. Power in SR doesn't scale like that, making it harder to judge the power level of a group once they've been running for a while.

It'd be just as easy to start at a given level (say, 5th) and provide those benefits as a baseline for a Starting Runner (which is assumed to have previously been running for a bit.)
Then a simple system that lets you earn Skill points, and trade Skill Points for Att's & Feats.
You've changed the advancement mechanic, not the actual D20 Rulesset.

TO be perfectly clear though, my problem with SR4 is due to FanPro, not it being it's own system. The system always worked fine for me. I'm not argueing that SRd20 would be a good idea, but to say it's impossible lacks imagination. You just have to decide what makes SR what it is. For myself it was a rich setting with a lot of inspiration and potential. Sure I like the SR mechanic for spellcasting, but my spellscasters were generally abusive.

Seperate the System from the Setting. You can't make SRSystem in D20, but you can make SRSetting in D20.

 

[Blood Jester]

I only have one thing to say about this attitude that all flesh must be d20.

If every person were the same, the world would be easier, and boring.

If all games used the exact same mechanic, they would be easier to learn, and boring.

Thank all that is good that people still use different rules sets to model their games feel.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I only have one thing to say about this attitude that all flesh must be d20.

The presence of SR20 does not invalidate the existence of SR3.

If all games used the exact same mechanic, they would be easier to learn, and boring.

Or perhaps setting material would be more important to differentiate a game from the rest of the pack. Perhaps quality of execution would drive the industry, instead of Different For The Sake Of Different.

Thank all that is good that people still use different rules sets to model their games feel.

The entire idea of new editions of games is to improve the mechanics of What Came Before. It is better to use well-polished rules (D20 or otherwise) rather than come up with something different.

As I mentioned, the parallel is easy. When Polyhedron was added to Dungeon, the Poly guys didn't like it, but were happy they had material. The Dungeon folks couldn't stand it and revolted.
Those folks that want SR20 are not saying make ONLY SR20, but the folks that oppose it want ONLY their favorite version. If FanPro can't handle it, a fan conversion could, or perhaps a deal could be reached with WotC like CoC20.