Shadorun without the shadowrun rules

[Elf Witch]

Huh. I would have thought that was one of the main reasons to suggest it, not a reason to cross it off.

I don't know of any other system that you can use without a bit of converting; the advantage of d20 is that if you add d20 Cyberscape to d20 Modern and Urban Arcana, you've pretty much already got the Shadowrun setting, but with D&D rules.

I mean, you could pick up a nice generic system like Unisystem, or Savage Worlds or something and make a go with it, but if GM prep in GURPS scares you, converting those generic systems to have Shadowrun specific rules and roles seems much more daunting.

I really can't think of a better system than the aforementioned three d20 Modern books for doing Shadowrun but without the Shadowrun rules.

In the Shadowrun world magic is supposed to be powerful. Rule 1 geek the mage ASAP. I have been looking through my books to see what I think and to be honest I don't see any that would not require a lot of tweaking to get the shadowrun feel. The closest is maybe hero system because you can customize it but it will take a lot of prep.

Things needed to take into consideration when going for the Shadowrun flavor. Cybered characters are more powerful and have a better chance of ssurvival than non augmented characters.

Mages need to have a system that allows them to cast spells all they want as long as they resist drain. And you need to have rules to handle elementals for hermatics and spirits for shamans. Also how to handle astral combat.

You will need to build rules to support both decking and rigging which I think hero system would handle nicely.

Shadowrun is my favorite game and I have tried to play it using D20 modern. hero system and Spycraft the games never managed to IMO capture the flavor of Shadowrun. Of the three hero system came close, spycraft was not to bad D20 modern just sucked.

I dislike 4E the changes in the game changed so much of what I loved about Shadowrun. After playing for six months I just said no this is not fun.

3E is my edition of choice after a while you get used to the rules and I like having a handfull of dice to roll.

I know some people say 2E is the best but I only played that for three months way back in the 90s when we switched to 3E so I don't really remember the rules that well.

 

[Clueless]

If you haven't tried SR yet under 3rd I would. I've played SR under 2nd, 3rd, and 4th - and really prefer 3rd overall. There's a vast difference between 3rd and 4th (almost like the difference between DnD 2nd and 3rd) so you should at least take a shot at it in the older system before spending a lot of time trying to juryrig something to do the same job.

In my experience the two features that make SR, SR - are:

1) A lack of Vancian casting. A mage can keep on trucking so long as he keeps making his drain. But at the same time a mage can wipe out in the first round of the first fight. That's why mages carry guns too. In addition, summoning magic has it's longer durations and more expansive uses than the summoning magics of DnD.

2) The equality of HP regardless of race, level, or relative toughness. Everyone has the same size lifebar - so damage amounts remain constant, but ability to resist amounts change. Nevertheless you don't end up in a situation where a high level character can simply ignore a lower level one in a fight. No more "Heh, it's only one point a round - at this rate it'll be tomorrow before he kills me. I'm gonna work on the dragon."

Those two things result in a vastly different strategic play style.

Re: GURPS - you may be able to pull it off using the magic systems of Voodoo or Hellboy - the idea is to get away from a Vancian memorization routine. And speaking from experience here - you can cut Gurps prep time down a lot by never fully generating characters. Get the numbers you need and leave your NPCs with a pool of points to draw from if the players come up with something really random (What do you mean "parlay"?!). I'd go one step further and not even keep track of the points of opponents - but that's cause I'm really fast and loose behind the screen.

Re: Cyberpunk 2020 - it will be dificult to hook up a magic system.

What was it about the 4th system that you guys didn't like? And what is it you're looking for? That will help a *lot*.

 

[Elf Witch]

2) The equality of HP regardless of race, level, or relative toughness. Everyone has the same size lifebar - so damage amounts remain constant, but ability to resist amounts change. Nevertheless you don't end up in a situation where a high level character can simply ignore a lower level one in a fight. No more "Heh, it's only one point a round - at this rate it'll be tomorrow before he kills me. I'm gonna work on the dragon."

This was a conversation I was having a couple of days ago with my roommate over one of my major frustrations with DnD. The whole you are surrounded by 20 crossbow holding city guards and you just laugh because at higher levels you know that they will only hit you if they crit and you have enough HP to live anyway.

In Shadowrun I have been playing an hermatic mage for years. She has gotten really powerful with her ability to control force 8 elementals with her force 4 power focus she rarely fails on her spells now. But I can pretty much gurantee if she was surrounded by 20 lonestar cops demanding her surrender that refusing would most likely end in her death.

It is what I love about the game.

 

[Clueless]

On the other end of the spectrum it means the mages aren't as breakable. Hence my comment about mages in my game carry guns too.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

SR4 changed all of the core rules. Sure, some similiarities remained - some of the stats still had the same names, you used point buy to create characters, you still rolled pools of d6s to resolve stuff - but the actual mechanics have very little in common with SR3 anymore. No combat pool, set TNs, a completely different wound system - and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Though for the record, I was actually very excited about SR4, when I first heard about it - I thought that (for example) the matrix rules were too complex (or needed an alternate simplified mechanic) the magic rules too binary (characters either ended up shrugging off spells or being dead meat, depending on how they were designed, and God help you if you didn't get your Willpower to 6), and the rigging rules too clunky and unbalanced, so I loved the idea of a new edition... until it became clear they were throwing all the rules out the window, including the ones I really liked.

On top of it all, rather than come up with something new, they settled on a core mechanic that was almost an exact copy of the old WoD rules - except using d6s instead of d10s.

SR4 is like WoD!

I'd say hands down that this was the best change in 4E. Everything else could have stayed, but this was exactly what the system needed. The escalating target numbers and variable dice just caused an unpredictable system. The power of magic (and the importance of Willpower = 6) were very much contributed by this aspect of the system.

If you want to roll multiple dice based on skill, either add the numbers, or have a set DC. Avoid mixing this too much.

And 4E at leasts allows you to reduce the number of dice rolled by simply adding one automatic "hit" for every 4 dice.

The only thing they kept (and actually made worse) was my least favorite aspect of the old system - the need to roll stupidly large (even bigger in SR4 than in SR3) amounts of d6s. At least in SR3, there was some point to it, because of the way variable TNs and success tresholds worked (even if it wasn't the most elegant system in the world), but in SR4, it's just a useless hold-over. The system could have been replaced by M&M style tresholds and opposed rolls, but they decided to stick with it to hide the fact there was nothing left of the old game anymore.
Hell, when they first did PR for it, they had so few things they could list in the FAQ under "What stayed the same?", they actully put down "you still roll tons of d6s" as one of the handful of answers. (most of the others had to do with the fluff, and not the crunch, too)

Funny how opinions can differ...

The worst thing they didn't change in SR 4 was the "multiple initiate phases per round".

Shadowrun is also a game that seems to suffer from the "slow-wandering spot-light". Matrix and Astral Space are two parts of the game that don't interface well with the rest, and usually put the spot light on a single character too long. And it's sometimes worse then in D&D, since the Decker often isn't fit for physical/firearms combat (off course, most people will play combat deckers who have at least a decent weapon skill). But without cybernetic or magically enhanced reflexes, combat for a decker is like playing a Rogue in a fight against undead. Except that there are no fights without undead...

The initiative thingy is a game system issue, the combat vs astral vs matrix issue is result of trying to emulate the world of Shadowrun. Whatever system you use, you will have to find ways to both emulate the divide, and to make sure it doesn't hurt. The first is easy (4 editions of SR prove it), the second is harder (ditto).

 

[Desdichado]

I have been looking through my books to see what I think and to be honest I don't see any that would not require a lot of tweaking to get the shadowrun feel.

If you (or the OP) is going to be such a stickler for what the feel is, then converting it to a non-Shadowrun system is always going to be a bad option. You've gotta accept a bit of give and take as a few things play differently in the new system.

Mages in d20 Modern are still pretty powerful. You can take up to ten levels of what is almost exactly the D&D wizard, and you've got incantations to provide you with higher level spells as needed.

But again; if you want it to play exactly like Shadowrun, then... just play Shadowrun. For my money, Urban Arcana was already too much like Shadowrun to convince me not to just play Shadowrun instead.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This was a conversation I was having a couple of days ago with my roommate over one of my major frustrations with DnD. The whole you are surrounded by 20 crossbow holding city guards and you just laugh because at higher levels you know that they will only hit you if they crit and you have enough HP to live anyway.

In Shadowrun I have been playing an hermatic mage for years. She has gotten really powerful with her ability to control force 8 elementals with her force 4 power focus she rarely fails on her spells now. But I can pretty much gurantee if she was surrounded by 20 lonestar cops demanding her surrender that refusing would most likely end in her death.

It is what I love about the game.

Yes, that's definitely a strength of systems without ablative hit points.

 

[Urizen]

We (our group) really love the shadowrun world, we tried 4e SR and were less than impressed with the rules. Can anyone recommend a good ruleset to play SR with?

Here are ones that are crossed off the list

d20 modern - as the magic in d20 modern is quite weak

GURPS - it might be a great fit, however GM prep time scares me away.


Other than that give me your suggestions

Check out the True20 rules.

I think you'll love them. They fit perfectly with the Shadowrun feel. There aree No hit points in favor of a damage track.

Incidentally, my company, Reality Deviant Publications, will be releasing Interface Zero , a True Cyberpunk game setting next month.

You can find out more informatrion about it at our website; www.realitydeviants.net

 

[Gundark]

I think it'd help if you explained what aspects of SR make it SR for you.

For example, I've played SR for a while, and for me, more even than the power of the magic system, one of the most important trademarks of SR is the crushing superiority of cybered-up characters over non-augmented folks. But none of the systems listed here can handle a character with (for example) Wired Reflexes adequately. (except GURPS, maybe, but it'd take so many build points it'd be like creating a character for a Supers game)

...out of curiosity, why try to go with SR4 instead of SR3? The clunkiness of some of the SR3 rules? Or is it that none of you have the older rulebooks?

Well we choose to go with SR 4 for a couple of reasons. First it was a new edition, 2nd it won an Ennie and I usally trust the ennie winners. I played SR 3rd ed. once or twice.
Overall it was the mass loads of dice that turned us off. Mass load to hit, mass load to dodge, mass load to resist. Combat seemed to be horribly bogged down.

However 4e seemed to be a step up from 3e

 

[mmu1]

The worst thing they didn't change in SR 4 was the "multiple initiate phases per round".

Well, they did their best to screw it up, though. For me, the initiative system is one of those key non-negotiable things that make SR what it is.

Playing a guy with Wired Reflexes without multiple actions per round is just lame. SR3 made some adjustments for the sake of balance that were unfortunate but probably necessary (specifically, that everyone gets to go at least once before the ultra-fast guy gets his remaining actions, so he only gets to shoot at the slowpokes twice, rather than 4 or 6 times) but getting rid of multiple actions altogether just turns the game into playing make-believe. You pretend that your character has reflexes three or four times as quick as the human norm, and everyone else more or less humors you even though the rules don't support it.

Yeah, it's not "balanced", but that's only an issue if every run is best solved by a lot of shooting, which has never been the case in the SR games I played. No SR character is balanced, when it comes to their area of expertise, and they're all actually useful. That's the charm of the system.