Corinth
First Post
cybernetic said:
I owned this game once. I ran a six-month campaign with it, and it's still one of the best campaign that I've run to date. I still look back on that time, and the game, fondly.
That said, this game had severe flaws with it. As pointed out previously, the powers were not at all tested for game balance. Amongst the worst were poor quality control, non-existent game balance overall and flawed mechanical implementation of setting concepts.
The first point is easy to demonstrate. The first two releases--the rulebook and Secrets of Shadoloo--were quite good overall, and there was nothing (other than some lame adventures and some extrapolation stretches) disappoining about them. The Player's Guide was the break-point, as it introduced Cartwheel Kick--based off Orchid's combo manuever from the Killer Instinct series--and failed to make it a straight-line only move. This meant that, prior to actually going into the attack, the fighter could move wherever he wanted; afterwards, he could keep going until he ran out of move points. With a high Dex and Athletics, which was common in gameplay, this one move slaughtered scores of NPCs right dead. After this came the lame Duelist(weapon) rules, animal powers (ditto), elementalists (ditto), cybernetics (ditto) and some new moves that no one in their right mind took because they were suboptimal. In the end, with The Perfect Warrior and the book of fighter NPCs to beat up (because their stat blocks weren't properly designed), my PCs shot up to World Warrior rank at the end. There were looking for Dee Jay, so they could take turns challenging him until he lost (and the winning PC would automatically become a World Warrior).
*sigh*
This was distressingly common, as there was far more fun to be had in fighting tournaments than in doing any other form of adventuring with this game.
The worst example of the second point is this: Dexterity was the God Stat for all stylists because it determined how fast your fighter acted. The faster your fighter acted, the better he'd do in combat because he could interrupt slower fighters during their turns. This made grapplers and most focus fighters worthless, forcing the gameplay to shift over to speedy strikers and God-of-Speed combos. (All combos became Block-<BIG MOVE HERE>-Move because of the speed advantages involved, and it was the best trade of speed for damage while remaining able to get out of Dodge come the turn after the big hit.)
This made several PCs and NPCs suboptimal, while others were overpowered for where they stood. As the gamers attracted to this game are gamist first, this really pissed off the fanbase; cries of "BROKEN!" roared forth, and many others shied away as a result.
The last point is that the RPG had a mechanic for Honor and Glory, one more-or-less identical to the Werewolf version in how it worked. (The specifics varied, of course.) The concept was that PCs would be Honorable, and work to gain it at every opportunity. This precluded sensible combat tactics, such as striking a foe when he was Dizzy (stunned, in D20 terms), and sensible battle strategies (Kill The Bad Guy).
Naturally, none of my PCs gave a damn. Honor gain was a by-product of their Glory-mongering, which was far more important in the long-run as Glory was the meter by which a PC's fame was measured; it usually matched his ranking in his primary form of Street Fighting.
And don't even think about getting the usual SFRPG gamer to do anything heroic outside of the ring.
That said, it's easy enough to put into a D20 game. What needs to be done is to forget any concept of making this into a D&D campaign option; wait for D20 Modern because that will probably be a better foundation for such a conversion effort. After that, use the new martial arts rules from OA to simulate the learning and mastery of the various styles of combat in the SF setting. Soon you'll have players bellowing SHO-RYU-REPPA! as loud as they can.
I'd think the powers could be done best as feats though Fireball, Improved Fireball, etc. It could probably be done much easier on another system though.
P
