Shadowrun d20???
- Thread starter Axegrrl
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Thanee
First Post
Hehe, yeah. Shadowrun is a realistic RPG (as realistic as it can get with magic, elves and cyberware, anyways 
). Levels simply don't work in that context.
Levels are why Cthulhu doesn't work as D20 and also why Shadowrun will never work as D20.
Not without creating a completely different game, that is.
While it is certainly possible to make a D20 Shadowrun game, which has some similar ideas and is also fun to play, this wouldn't be Shadowrun.
And Karma Pool, while it certainly is a measure of how experienced a character is, hardly resembles the level concept of D20.
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Thanee
). Levels simply don't work in that context.Levels are why Cthulhu doesn't work as D20 and also why Shadowrun will never work as D20.
Not without creating a completely different game, that is.
While it is certainly possible to make a D20 Shadowrun game, which has some similar ideas and is also fun to play, this wouldn't be Shadowrun.
And Karma Pool, while it certainly is a measure of how experienced a character is, hardly resembles the level concept of D20.
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Thanee
VorpalBunny
Explorer
Thanee said:
Exactly. I wouldn't go as far as to say Cthulhu d20 "doesn't work", but when you take a classless/level-less system and convert it to a class/level system, something is bound to get lost in the translation. Shadowrun d20 might be fun to play and have some merits that the original didn't have (like CoC d20) - but it wouldn't feel like Shadowrun IMO.
Cergorach
The Laughing One
If you have X amount of karma pool, then you've got atleast (X-1)*10 karma spent on new skills, spells, attributes, etc. Same as with levels, only more batch like.Thanee said:
But i've got to agree, if Shadowrun D20 wouldn't be Shadowrun D6, rules mechanic wise, but to me Shadowrun isn't all about the rules mechanics...
Henry
Autoexreginated
Cergorach said:
And that's me, too. I LOVE the setting, but it swears me off the second I would get into ANY situation where dice would have to be rolled. Rolling 7 to 12 dice (skills + pools) and counting successes and misses just jars me so much that I'd be playing Yahtzee than an RPG. It was bad enough with Star Wars D6, but with Storyteller and FASA's system, counting successes, negating successes with YOUR successes, etc. just annoy me, not to mention if 6's or 1's come up on ANY die, not just the wild die like in Star Wars D6.
Oh, well. Runner's gotta know when a Johnson's sold 'im short and cut the 'run before the Lonestar bites and Docwagon won't have a shred to pick up, as they say.
Thanee
First Post
Cergorach said:
And that's quite a big difference.
Of course not. The Shadowrun background is what makes the game so great, but still you can't just take the background, rip it from the game and put it into another game and say the flavor is still there.
The mechanics do have quite a bit of influence there, too.
I certainly can see how many people don't like the game mechanics of Shadowrun (altho, they really are not any more complex than D20, just different). It's not that I love everything about the mechanics. In fact, I have written a huge amount of alternate mechanics for Shadowrun, some with drastic changes to the basic system even. But I wouldn't want to swap out the mechanics as a whole, because to me they simply are part of what makes Shadowrun such a great game.
It's the same reason I wouldn't want to play D&D with the GURPS or HERO or Storyeller system. It simply wouldn't be D&D anymore.
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Thanee
Ranger REG
Explorer
Actually, CoC d20 is classless.VorpalBunny said:
Of course, I would never play a game in which the PC is already in a hopeless situation "so you just have to make the best of it while you're still breathing and sane." I get more than enough of that in my real life.
As for SR d20, I'd give it a shot at playing such a game, using 2nd- or 3rd-gen d20 rules engine.
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VorpalBunny
Explorer
Ranger REG said:
Technically. However, the "Offense" and "Defense" Options have set BAB and save progressions (depending on which save "tree" a player takes). In this respect the options mimic classes. Shadowrun, being totally skill-based has no attack or save progressions.
RangerREG said:
You don't know what you're missing.
Besides, reports of CoC being a character shredder are vastly exaggerated (especially CoC d20).
Cergorach
The Laughing One
If 7 to 12 dice buckets where my biggest problem, i could life with it, but encounters where people buckets with 21 dice for the first shot, things get ugly very vast. Combats 'deteriated' into one strike one kill situations. Sure i could (as the GM) have created a 'monster' but that was just plain scarry, if they couldn't kill it in the first round, they couldn't kill it at all. That might be 'realistic' but it wasn't as much fun.Henry said:And that's me, too. I LOVE the setting, but it swears me off the second I would get into ANY situation where dice would have to be rolled. Rolling 7 to 12 dice (skills + pools) and counting successes and misses just jars me so much that I'd be playing Yahtzee than an RPG. It was bad enough with Star Wars D6, but with Storyteller and FASA's system, counting successes, negating successes with YOUR successes, etc. just annoy me, not to mention if 6's or 1's come up on ANY die, not just the wild die like in Star Wars D6.
Oh, well. Runner's gotta know when a Johnson's sold 'im short and cut the 'run before the Lonestar bites and Docwagon won't have a shred to pick up, as they say.
One of the kewl things about SR D6 mechanics was that it didn't have levels or real classes, i found that this was also it's greatest weakness. Extreme specialisation was possible, hence the 21 dice buckets for certain tasks. Classes and levels still create a focus for a character and make controlling relative powerlevel a lot easier (both for the GM and the players).
btw. you forgot to throw the term "chummer" around... ;-)
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