Renaissance Varient, Well, at least I kept SOME of the rules. Options

[nezumi]

My wife has asked me to start a game based in Renaissance Italy. No cyber, no magic (yet), no dragons, and NO stupid hit dice. I figured the best system to use, since we both know it so well (and it really IS the best system to use) would be our favorite Shadowrun system. But I've run into a few hitches, and I'd love some opinions.

1) New equipment. Most of the equipment is listed in our current rules, which makes life very easy for me. However, I don't have rules for muskets anywhere. Do any of the gun geeks have rules for the ORIGINAL firearms? It'd pretty much be a tube with gun powder and a pellet in it, and a small fuse you light. I know there was a great big long discussion on revolutionary war muskets. Would they have about the same damage code? What about cannons?

Similarly, what about armors? We already know clothing is 0/0, and leather is 0/2. What about chain mail? 3/3, half vs. blunt weapons? Plate mail? (I'm guessing like 2/7). I'm sure some of the SCA people here have a list of useful pieces of armor and weaponry Shadowrun has missed.

2) Hidden mechanics. She doesn't like rolling dice and she doesn't like seeing numbers. I did get her to make a character sheet, however I'm not keeping track of karma. Has anyone devised any good ways of increasing stats without bugging the player about it? Right now I've thought of the following:

For Active skills, 4 hours of practice or 1 session of practical use counts as a training session. For knowledge and language skills, 4 hours of learning with a book or teacher counts as a training session.

After a training session, if your current skill level is less than the linked attribute -1, roll 2d6. Otherwise, roll 3d6. If ALL 2 or 3 DICE are greater than your current skill level, your level goes up by 1.

So you're guaranteed to get rating 1 no matter what. Most people will max out around 2 or 3 with skills they use infrequently, and 4 to 5 for people who make a career out of it. 6 is really a veteran. This still allows people to advance without waiting forever.

Does that sound fair?

What about attributes? I was thinkig your attribute will increase when you have two or three linked skills at that level (since the attributes only increase through regular use).


I'm thinking karma pool will go up more or less how the rules indicate, except karma has no use.

3) Magic. I was trying to think how to make magic more subtle. SR does a far better job than the Other Game, but I'd like it to be more fluid still, with your diversity of spells linked to your natural magic rating (since the characters magic rating will go up through plot devices). I'm still debating this, since SR does do a fair job, but I thought I'd leave it out there to see what people think.