Running Shadowrun in D&D 4E

[Solvarn]

Christmas

have you thought about adding in some 4e Gamma World?

I've pretty much decided that this is what I want for Christmas. I hear good things. I've always wanted to do a d20 Shadowrun, it sounded fun. I bet there is some good stuff in the Gamma World box for it.

 

[Jools]

I'd be interested to hear what minis/tokens/floorplans you used for this. Also, I think we're all dying to know what the twist was now!

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Yeah, I bet there's good stuff in 4e Gamma World to yoink for D&D4E Shadowrun, but I don't have the Gamma World stuff yet, so...

 

[DonAdam]

I was at the next table over playing the excellent Legends & Labyrinths mod of 4e and could tell you guys were having fun.

Long live the rules hack.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I'd be interested to hear what minis/tokens/floorplans you used for this. Also, I think we're all dying to know what the twist was now!

The tokens were just random D&D minis. Unfortunate, but we didn't have any SR minis, so we just made do. I drew the floorplans on the fly.

As for the twist (don't read if you're likely to get a chance to play):

Spoiler

The PCs were hired to extract a scientist who wanted to defect from Renraku to their employer (Yamatetsu, but they didn't know that). The scientist was willing to go, but unwilling to go without his family, his wife and young daughter.

The twist was that his wife was actually a Red Samurai (a member of Renraku's elite security force). He was in love with her, but she was just there to keep him happy and keep an eye on him/protect him from external threats. So when the PCs arrived and tried to extract him, she called in reinforcements and tried to fight them. (Also, the family dog was also massively cybered and designed to prevent any such departures, but the real twist was the wife.

 

[ourchair]

It's been too long since I've played Shadowrun; how fast are the fights? I like fast fights in general, and wonder if 4e D&D/Shadowrun is a good candidate for raising monster damage / lowering monster hit points. The minion concept definitely is awesome for this game. Getting chased across an apartment block by literally dozens of soldiers is pretty damn invigorating.

I'll comment since I'm actually playing the latest edition of Shadowrun on a regular basis. (We basically have about 5 six-hour sessions of different DMs/campaigns every month, and Shadowrun is in regular rotation.)

The speed of combat resolution varies.

Due to the number of dice required to roll ("16 dice of lightning bolt on that sucka!") and the number of situational variables to track ("OK I'll roll 12 dice for dodge and body and armor to determine the number of wounds he takes, while you roll 6 dice for drain") it's technically a long drawn out affair.

But because combat modifiers are usually straightforward (no saving throws, immediate interrupts), all you really need is for players to really know what they're doing at any given turn, and for a GM to be really good at adjudicating things on the fly and with confidence.

Our GM 'complains' that fights are sooo long in Shadowrun, but as someone who GMs at the 4th Ed table, I'd say that they're equally long especially when players are basically trying to exhaust their action economy every round by poring over their character sheet 10 minutes at a time.

Granted, the matters at both tables can be modified by strict table rules, but in any case, my point is that given certain conditions, I think both Shadowrun and 4E are not so far from one another in terms of speed of play.

 

[Negflar2099]

I hear good things about Gamma World as well and I can't wait till I play. I'm especially excited about the ammunition rules which I hear find a nice halfway point between tedious tracking of every single bullet and not tracking things at all.

That said, have you considered taking a peek at Amethyst Foundations? I just got it and I can't say enough good things about this game. While the races aren't perfect the classes are awesome and the way they handle firearms is fantastic. It would be very easy to convert into a Shadowrun game and it's well worth the cost.

 

[Wrathamon]

I believe the ammo rule is

if you use a weapon once during an encounter you wont run out
if you use it more than once then you are out of ammo at the end of the encounter.

I think this works for a world where ammo is scares.

for shadow run, where ammo is easily purchased... I would add in a Saving Throw or something at the end of the encounter.

Create feats or class bonuses for the Save to make this save easier

add in Daily utility power like Extra ammo or something that recharges your ammo when used

you can even have consumables that recharge it

 

[Negflar2099]

I've thought about what to do in a world where ammo is plentiful and I think the rule could still work as is. It's just instead of ammo being expended at the end of an encounter you expend one "encounters" worth of ammunition. So if I have three encounters worth of ammo and I go crazy in a battle and fire off a bunch of shots (which you're liable to do in every single Shadowrun battle) then at the end of the encounter you go from say five encounters of ammunition down to four.

The beauty of that rule is that ammo tracking becomes something to do after the battle is over while still allowing PCs to conserve ammo if they want to and allowing for battles that are over too quickly to use up ammo.

I would even go so far as to separate ballistics ammunition from energy ammunition (like power cells for lasers).

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Negflar2099, I think you're right that that system would work. But I still question whether there's any need for it. You have to assume that (A) characters might run out of ammo, which essentially means that you're tracking encumbrance as well to prevent them from carrying thirty clips with no difficulties; or (B) ammo costs substantial amounts of money, so that you want to be able to track how much money the PCs have at the end of the day. My assumption is that in a typical modern or future game, ammo (even most exotic ammo) is cheap. My memory is that even APDS rounds in Shadowrun, which were I think the most expensive, were cheap enough that you could basically ignore the cost. If you have a single clip of super bullets (the equivalent of enchanted arrows in previous editions of D&D), then you want to track those, but then even tracking them individually makes sense. Otherwise, I just don't see what the gain is. (I suppose if you have a heavy machine gun or something with a truly huge rate of fire bullets can start adding up in cost if they're individually worth anything appreciable--but that seems highly exceptional to me.)