Has anyone updated Harlequin to 4th Edition? Or, similarly, any of the other classic modules?

I seem to recall a thread talking about that once upon a time, but my search-fu failed me and I couldn't find anything.

I'm going to be introducing a whole new group to Shadowrun and was just trying to think of some stuff that might be a fun intro. So, if someone has other suggestions, I'm open to those as well.

FYI, I'm trying to stay away from the Dark Artifacts stories because I keep hoping I can convince someone else to use them to GM so that I can actually play.

There is a stat block for Harlequin in Street Legends Supplemental.

I'm talking about the adventure module, not just a stat block for him.

I was unaware that there was an adventure named Harlequin. I was only aware of the immortal elf named Harlequin. I don't think the adventure has been updated.

It is an OLD adventure series that has not been updated as an official product.

I'm asking the player base if someone out there has done it, or any of the other similar products.

I started on a conversion of Missing Blood at one point. I'll have to see if I can dig that up.

I believe he means these: Harlequin; and Harlequin's Back which were, as I recall, each contained an interlinked series of adventures.

By the way you can snag them for the cheap on Amazon. Well I take it back you can snag the first one cheap.

I came *this* close to nabbing Harlequin's Back for like, $8 at my local Half Price Books. Just FYI (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

(Didn't, because I got Aztlan instead (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

I got Harley's Back for a pretty good price awhile ago.

One of the few old books I have.

I have had hard copies of both for a long time, I'm just wondering if anyone had tried to update them to 4th Ed, and if so how it went.

Caadium--I've run sections of them. Converting the stats takes a ton of work if you want to convert exactly. My suggestion would be to use the framework and if you are comfortable with NPC creation just make new ones based on the style of the published stat blocks.

Using the Crawlers from HB, p. 25 as an example
B - 7, A - 6, R - 5, S - 9, C - 4, I - 4, L - 4, W - 6
Natural Armor 6/7
Claws 8S, Venom 6P, Nausea
Init 11, 3 IP
Unarmed 6, Dodge 4, Athletics 4

If you don't mind juggling numbers and going for intent rather than perfection, it can be fun.

Oh, to my knowledge no. For a while, and I can't say this necessarily remains completely true, some of the people writing the game really hated the 4th world connections and magic in general in Shadowrun. So they tried really hard to throw it out of the way for their version of the game. Luckily it wasn't completely successful-but to my knowledge beyond the Street Legends spot Harlequin hasn't seen much mainstream action of late.

One of our GM's has been running Harlequin for 4thA Edition. Has been a real blast, especially since I missed it in the Previous Editions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yes, but not in the way you are thinking. I have done Mecurial, Dreamchipper, and Harliquin but I changed the names, factions, and locations a bit. For example replace Aztechnologies with Horizon and replace Mecurial with the Wild Cards for the Mecurial module. Of course I made some improvements to as the old system maps are not fun and I also don't like forced outcomes. The Harliquin rewrite is actually rather interesting as your hired by Mr. Darc not Harliquin to get revenge on Harliquin. It starts off with a mission to steal Harliquins guitar (instead of the book) and then follows the Harliquin plot from there sort of. Its really made for people who have played through Harliquin and Harliquins Back

/edit

I'd post them online but I think theres too much of the original content in them still as you could run them with out the original adventures pretty easy.

That sounds quite neat.

Doing Horizon in place of Aztech in Mercurial is brilliant! Now I may just have to go and do something similar myself (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Thank you!

There are several of the old adventures that I'd love to 'do over' as GM. I have a long-standing plan to set up an 'SR History' campaign going over all the iconic metaplot stuff from 2050 through to today with one team of runners. Now, if I can only find the time and a group of players that haven't gone through it all before...

Both adventures are a lot of fun. Give them a shot - updating them for 4e isn't too difficult, just a bit of a slog. They're actually the adventures I enjoyed the most for Shadowrun.

HB is one of the best modules out there, for any game.
Im running it in fits and srats for my sr3 group and the farther I get, the less I really need the stats. Its all about flavor, and story.

If you read French, Harlequin and Harlequin's Back have been bundled in a single Harlequin book, updated for SR4, in the "Shadowrun Vintage" line.

The only problem is that they weren't allowed to do any major change so for the Matrix side they had to take the existing VR 2.0 systems and turn each node into a SR4 node, making the Matrix systems very complex and long to hack.

Ouch. OUCH.

While I wouldn't oppose an update of the existing adventures-it seems like it could be done pretty cheaply (but obviously I have no idea what it'd really cost or entail)-but I'd also love to see some of the existing plot hooks either tied off or updated. Shadowrun is a big world, so obviously that's a pretty tall order but I don't think it's impossible.

I ran my SR players through Euphoria a few years back using 4E. It was a pretty simple to just take the stats for Bugs from Street Magic. Other than that I pretty much kept the fluff the same and everything worked out great.

I think for the most part those great runs are great because the writing and fluff are good and have withstood the test of time. Most of the crunchy bits get updated with each edition in some form or another through the books or fan projects.

Yeah, some of the early stuff is pure gold...

There are exceptions, of course, but many of the old adventures really captured that cyberpunk dystopia perfectly, yet incorporated magic and other strangeness in a way that made total sense to me. Not much of the newer stuff (and I'm talking from 2000 and onwards) 'live up to' the feel of early SR. That statement should not be take as writer critique, though - far from! Had things stayed the same Shadowrun would probably have stagnated, become hopelessly behind the times, and lost a lot of it's appeal. A game world that advances for 25 in-game years has to evolve and move in different directions in order to stay relevant, and fun.

The other side of this-- and I say this as someone who owns a lot of old modules, has played through and run them, and love them dearly-- is that there were parts of those modules that were just bizarre. There's the obvious scene in Harlequin that destroyed more than one group I played with (not the characters mind you, but actually drove the players into near homicidal fits of rage). But my favorite has to be from the Mercurial module that includes a scene where an npc breaks into a runner's apartment, threatens them with the notion that he's planted a bomb and then quote, "leaves before anyone can react." This particular npc had a 5+1d6 initiative.

There were some good modules, but you had to keep your eye on them.

Bastards the lot of you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)