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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tsyr" data-source="post: 420863" data-attributes="member: 354">Re: Continuing This Topic DriftOf course, you eventualy reach the point where you have to stop and ask "What's the point?".For example, say I wanted to do a d20 Shadowrun. Mind you, that's the last thing I'd want to do, but theoreticly.First of all, I would need to go ogl, not true D20... actualy, I might be able to keep d20 there, I'm not sure... I've never been a student of the OGL and d20 licenses... would the classless system Red Leaf put out be legal under d20? Because shadowrun isn't a class-based system, and wouldn't really work that way. Skills are designed to be totaly seperate of what people might think you are. Your mage could be a crack shot with a pistol, for example. As good as a fighter type, maybe even better. Granted, probably only in that weapon, but there it is. But there is no effective way to represent that in D20. And I'm not talking something that would be true after taking XX levels of feats either, it should be that way from level 1 to represent the game properly. An entire system for cybernetics would have to be thought up. A new stat would have to be introduced (At least one, actualy, possibly two)... Shadowrun is very specific on this point, and it's very, very important to the game. It's a critical balance point, preventing people from becomming total cyborgs, forcing mages to be really wary of cybernetics, and giving deckers and riggers something that they can do better than anyone else. And more than that, it figures prominently into the "setting story" too... things like cybermancy, for example, would exist without the essense scores. Nor would things like alpha through gamma wear, or the vast majority of biotech. You would have to invent a new magic system... actualy, you could probably rip the basic system from Soverign Stone, there are some similarities, but it would still need a lot of revision. You would need to invent several new interacting systems for dealing with decking. Decking is a major aspect of Shadowrun, and reducing it to a "do I deck in?" skill check would absolutely ruin it. New rules for making decks. Rules for making programs, running programs, loading programs, etc. Rules for headwear and otakus. A new health/damage/armour systems would be needed to reflect the way damage works in SR... It's very lethal, and even if you survive the first shot, your wounded badly... and that impacts everything you do in some fashion. And this has to interact with the new way of handeling BAB that I alluded to above, since the game doesn't link "ability to get shot" and "ability to shoot" in some arbitrary fashion. Armour absorbs damage, it doesn't make it easier to miss you. It absorbs different amounts of damage depending on what type of round you were hit with, where you were hit, etc. Rules for armour layering.And more. Much more. Rules for point-buy gun creation. Rules for knowledgesoft chips. Rules for rigging, and building rigging vehicals. Rules for astral traval. And still more.Yes, you could do it.But if you didn't do all of that, you wouldn't have Shadowrun. You would have a generic cyberpunk game with a different rule system. Shadowrun is as popular as it is mostly BECAUSE if it's rule system. But like I said, yes, you could do it.But why? I mean, after you go to all that work, what's the point? You still darn near have to learn a new system, so why not just play Shadowrun? Really, it doesn't take long to learn to use a dice pool. Many, many games use them. Believe it or not, one system is not ideal for everything, no more than one car is ideal for everyone, or one computer, or one hobby.</blockquote>

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