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> Still SR, but just in setting, Using alternate rules for SR
yoippari
post Jan 19 2007, 05:11 AM
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Has anyone tried porting the 6th world over to another ruleset like GURPS? It is generic, and seems like it should be able to handle whatever cyber/bio tech and magic you want it to. I'm interested in this partially because the guys in my brothers current group (my old group) have played gurps before and I would like to GM shadowrun. The DMs of the group don't particularly like DMing, they just want to play. I like creating and so I would like to try my hand at GMing. No one in the group has played SR and I don't want to propose a new campaign with a whole new system that I myself am not the most familiar with.
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Thane36425
post Jan 19 2007, 05:18 AM
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GURPS had a cyberpunk sourcebook that came out in the early 1990's or so. In addition, there are plenty of books on magic for GURPs, some of it applying to modern settings.
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Crusher Bob
post Jan 19 2007, 05:49 AM
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I think people have ported SR over to SilCore. It has some add on rules for cybernetics and had a magic system in tribe8.
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Aristotle
post Jan 19 2007, 06:06 AM
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You certainly can port the setting, and GURPS (although I have no experience with it at all) seems like a logical choice.

I started to brainstorm a d20 Modern Shadowrun port a while back. I know. I'm a horrible, horrible person. I wasn't so much trying to recreate Shadowrun as much as I was using it as a template to create my own dystopian setting. It had similarities, but was a very different beast. I'd go into a lengthy post about the details, but I've found very few people are as excited about a homebrew campaign setting as the author is. :)

More recently I've considered porting that concept to the Shadowrun rules, and running it as sort of an alternate Shadowrun setting.
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yoippari
post Jan 19 2007, 06:27 AM
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I started a Forgotten Realms setting using d20 modern rules. Basicly the world of Faerun advances over the course of a few thousand years to where they have power plants, automatic rifles, the internet, early space travel, and most of these technologies are entirely compatible with the planes. But trying to reorganize the political world of toril was too much and the project never went anywhere. That idea is why someone pointed me at shadowrun in the first place.
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MYST1C
post Jan 19 2007, 09:42 AM
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QUOTE (yoippari)
Has anyone tried porting the 6th world over to another ruleset like GURPS?

GURPS would surely work.
There are books on cyberpunk (GURPS Cyberpunk* & GURPS Cyberworld*), books on fantasy/magic, there's even a setting that mixes our present time with magic (GURPS Technomancer*).
* = 3rd Edition books

Other Systems that could work are TriStat dx/BESM or even Cyberpunk 2020 (it's a cyberpunk system anyway and the alternate horror-ish background by Ianus Games, today Dream Pod 9, adds a psionics system that could be substituted/tweaked for magic). Chromebook 2 for CP2020 even contains cyber/bio/bodysculpt packages designed to resemble various fantasy races (dwarves, orks, etc.).
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eidolon
post Jan 19 2007, 04:35 PM
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I was considering trying a port to Alternity at one point. The rules seem to support it just fine, and there are several supplements for cyber/tech stuff. It was just for S&Gs though, and I never got around to it.

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BishopMcQ
post Jan 19 2007, 05:38 PM
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QUOTE (yoippari)
I started a Forgotten Realms setting using d20 modern rules.

In case you haven't heard, D20 gives you cancer, the flesh eating kind. :D

I had thought about using the Aberrant/Trinity system from White Wolf. The biggest problem I ran into was drain. Initially I had thought to use quantum as magic, which gave you a drain pool of 5 times your magic and using the drain values to determine quanta cost. It changed the dynamic of mages over channeling to kill themselves and everyone else.

Then SR4 came along and stole my idea, but fixed it.
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Thane36425
post Jan 19 2007, 05:43 PM
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QUOTE (eidolon @ Jan 19 2007, 11:35 AM)
I was considering trying a port to Alternity at one point.  The rules seem to support it just fine, and there are several supplements for cyber/tech stuff.  It was just for S&Gs though, and I never got around to it.

One crossover campaign that my players actually liked was one that had the Awakening happen 100 years earlier in 1911. There was no cyberware or computer technology, but it wsa interesting to run some WWI missions with magic. Goblinization came after the war and really caused a stir. I also had the US include in Prohibition a very strict limitation on magic as well. In the Roaring 20's, most mages had to either go overseas or go underground. The players chose to work with the rumrunners and gangs. Then of course there was WWII. I had the Bugs show up during the late 1960's and the Chicago hive knocked out by a couple of nuclear shells from the Davey Crocket nuclear mortar, hand delivered though, not fired. I had plans for much farther on, but by that time the group had broken up.

I should point out, there was no NAN in this campaign. In this campaign, there was a Ghost Dance, but Aztlan also got an early start. Fearful of Aztlan which coveted a lot of the canon NAN lands, they opted to remain in the US, but got other concessions and such. No TT either, though Ireland still went to the elves. Europe remained as it was, though Hitler went after metas, especially orcs and trolls in the holocaust and Stalin killed them too, plus all the mages and shaman that he could. The rest of the world pretty much went the way of and behaved as per cannon.
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Herald of Verjig...
post Jan 19 2007, 06:34 PM
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Now I want to see if someone can hack the pending SR game and slice in the levels from Wolfenstein.
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yoippari
post Jan 20 2007, 12:17 AM
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QUOTE (Herald)
Now I want to see if someone can hack the pending SR game and slice in the levels from Wolfenstein.
Probably not an issue of hacking but just custom maps, though I don't know the companies stand on the mod community.

QUOTE (McQuillan)
In case you haven't heard, D20 gives you cancer, the flesh eating kind.
Part of why I left d20, brain flesh was withering. Too hokey and clunky.

So has anyone successfully run a shadowrun game under a different rule set or has porting the setting over been too large a task? Probably the main reason I am looking at gurps is because 3 of the 5 people in the group have played gurps games before.
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Kyoto Kid
post Jan 20 2007, 12:40 AM
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...going the other direction , I considered (and even did some preliminary work) porting the SR3 rules mechanic to a far future SF setting. In particular, it was the Rigger concept which attracted me for it worked for an elite class of pilots I had written up who could guide an SS with little need of physical intstrumentalities.

I also liked the fact that combat was more lethal, especially more so when it involved futuristic weapons. The only hangup was ship design and FTL travel. Those needed a "from the ground up" approach.

Of course Magic was the big casualty, and unlike most SF systems before, was not replaced with Psionics (just magic under a different name). I did have a low key ability called Perception, but is was more sensory/empathy based and had no really overt powers like say the "Force" in Star Wars. This did create an issue with the Priority based Chargen system since one option level was effectively removed. It was however later resolved by the BP system in SR Companion.
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Thane36425
post Jan 20 2007, 01:16 AM
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QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)
...going the other direction , I considered (and even did some preliminary work) porting the SR3 rules mechanic to a far future SF setting. In particular, it was the Rigger concept which attracted me for it worked for an elite class of pilots I had written up who could guide an SS with little need of physical intstrumentalities.

I also liked the fact that combat was more lethal, especially more so when it involved futuristic weapons. The only hangup was ship design and FTL travel. Those needed a "from the ground up" approach.

Of course Magic was the big casualty, and unlike most SF systems before, was not replaced with Psionics (just magic under a different name). I did have a low key ability called Perception, but is was more sensory/empathy based and had no really overt powers like say the "Force" in Star Wars. This did create an issue with the Priority based Chargen system since one option level was effectively removed. It was however later resolved by the BP system in SR Companion.

The orginial West End Games version of Star Wars was a lot like SR. It used the d6 for everything, which could mean a lot of dice if you had a powerful character. It really got screwed up when it went d20.

One other thing about that version of Star Wars: they had a chart showing dice penalties, bonuses and cut offs for different sized targets. A personal weapon had a hard time affecting something like a car but couldn't affect a Star Destroyer at all (meaning in terms of actually destroying it as a ship as opposed to knocking out components like computer terminals). That really made it easy to see just what a character was capable of hurting in battle.

It did have a heavy bias against "cyberware" though. People with obvious cyber were generally shunned and it had other negative affects on you.
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Kyoto Kid
post Jan 20 2007, 01:43 AM
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...the only thing that precluded me from using SW was that everything was too tightly woven into the Lucas storyline. It would have required a greater deal of re-writing to make it work for the universe I had designed.
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Thane36425
post Jan 20 2007, 02:11 AM
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QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)
...the only thing that precluded me from using SW was that everything was too tightly woven into the Lucas storyline. It would have required a greater deal of re-writing to make it work for the universe I had designed.

That's a good point. I just played in the established setting, though along the fringes where the main storyline never really had much direct effect.

The only other far future setting I can think of is the old Traveller, MegaTraveller, etc. (it had at least 4 incarnations before going GURPS). Some of the earlier rules were complex with spaceship design rules that were staggering. The GURPS version used the established setting with plenty of room for customization, thanks to the fall of the "Empire" and many worlds having been out of contact for centuries.

Creating your own universe is a big effort. I've only done it once in D&D and that was grown as the characters advanced in levels. That was troublesome enough. Its enough for me to tinker with existing worlds a little, well sometimes a lot as far as existing political entities, borders and such, but creating a whole world is a lot of bother, especially if someone else has done a fairly good job at one already.
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yoippari
post Jan 20 2007, 02:23 AM
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One of the things I hate about the standard SW universe is that species that showup in only one or two places define the entire race. Rodians are hunters, bothans are sneaky, hutts are crime lords. NOT ALL OF LUCAS' CHARACTERS ARE THE EPITOME OF THEIR RACE! Same thing goes with planets, too many "the entire world looks just like this scene from the movies" planets. Sorry, but too much of the core setting is based so much off the movies that you have to re write entire races and planets for them to be believeable civilizations.

Back to SR. Along the same lines has anyone tried a campaign with SR a couple hundred years in the future?
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Thane36425
post Jan 20 2007, 02:43 AM
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QUOTE (yoippari)


Back to SR. Along the same lines has anyone tried a campaign with SR a couple hundred years in the future?

Mostly reset in the past. Only once did I do a future version which was sort of like the Terminator, except in addition to machine, people were also controlled just like in Renraku during the shutdown. The players were a resistance movement and had a pretty rough time.
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post Jan 20 2007, 12:56 PM
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QUOTE
Still SR, but just in setting, Using alternate rules for SR


They tried this with limited success. It's called SR4. ;)

But seriously folks, what SR4 didn't do was lessen the dice rolling. If an alternative system kept the SR character but was far quicker to resolve I'd take a good look.
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MYST1C
post Jan 20 2007, 05:37 PM
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QUOTE (Thane36425)
The orginial West End Games version of Star Wars was a lot like SR. It used the d6 for everything, which could mean a lot of dice if you had a powerful character.

The rule system from WEG's Star Wars has since been released as a generic system called - "D6".
(Available in "Adventure", "Space" and "Fantasy" flavors.)
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Thane36425
post Jan 20 2007, 06:14 PM
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QUOTE (MYST1C)
QUOTE (Thane36425 @ Jan 20 2007, 02:16 AM)
The orginial West End Games version of Star Wars was a lot like SR. It used the d6 for everything, which could mean a lot of dice if you had a powerful character.

The rule system from WEG's Star Wars has since been released as a generic system called - "D6".
(Available in "Adventure", "Space" and "Fantasy" flavors.)

Interesting. I hadn't heard of those.
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Kyoto Kid
post Jan 20 2007, 07:49 PM
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QUOTE (Thane36425)
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid @ Jan 19 2007, 08:43 PM)
...the only thing that precluded me from using SW was that everything was too tightly woven into the Lucas storyline.  It would have required a greater deal of re-writing to make it work for the universe I had designed.

That's a good point. I just played in the established setting, though along the fringes where the main storyline never really had much direct effect.

The only other far future setting I can think of is the old Traveller, MegaTraveller, etc. (it had at least 4 incarnations before going GURPS). Some of the earlier rules were complex with spaceship design rules that were staggering. The GURPS version used the established setting with plenty of room for customization, thanks to the fall of the "Empire" and many worlds having been out of contact for centuries.

Creating your own universe is a big effort. I've only done it once in D&D and that was grown as the characters advanced in levels. That was troublesome enough. Its enough for me to tinker with existing worlds a little, well sometimes a lot as far as existing political entities, borders and such, but creating a whole world is a lot of bother, especially if someone else has done a fairly good job at one already.

...ran the "classic" Traveller (also d6 based) for a while. It was better with the Traveller's Aid game mag and various supplements. The original random determination for skills kind of put me off ("I have a 2 Dex and pilot 6?"), however, in later supplements they worked up a character build system that had more logic to it. One of the features I liked about the system is that Psi powers were almost unheard of except in Zhodani circles.

In 1980 Fantasy Games Unlimited released Space Opera which I immediately picked up (boxed set 2 books with quadrant map for a whopping $15.00US). Like most games they had a pretty set universe but it was "big" enough to allow for a more personalised campaign. The two strikes against it. Their FTL drive was clunky (Traveller jump drive was a lot more elegant), and you needed a slide rule (scientific calculators were still in the $70+ price range back then) to figure most of the calculations out (the Chargen for their medieval fantasy game Chivalry & Sorcery was even worse). Another thing, that I tried to move away from was the Anthropomorphic races they used (e.g. "normal" animals with sentience which stood on their hind legs) and more towards the Traveller model of Human/Humanoid variants. With all this I somehow managed to make it work, house-ruling some of the more complex mechanics to keep the game moving.

I had a very detailed area of space, named the Protectorate, that was set in the universe of SF story I was writing at the time. The Terran Union (SO's "Earth-centric" nation) was an "outsider" some two and a half weeks away by the fastest courier (The Protectorate was located in the "Sagittarius Arm" of the galaxy). Yes it was a lot of work especially writing up the various worlds the PCs might visit. I also introduced several new races into the mix (complete with cultural write-ups and even a dash of cosmological outlook in the case of one) as well as a more advanced from of FTL travel. The overall scope of the campaign was basically a political intrigue thriller set in the future.

The most unique component to this was a breed of pilot one race had who could effectively bond with a specially outfitted ship. Using a highly developed empathic talent (the character had to basically roll the equivalent of a Telurgic Adept status on their PSI attribute to become one) they could guide a ship more accurately and thus enhance it's performance potential. In a sense, they were prototype Riggers.

Outside literary influences included the works of CJ Cherryh, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, and a dash of Bob Heinlein just to keep the action interesting.

While I tend to avoid discussion on Earthdawn tie-ins to Shadowrun (since I never really played ED) this campaign was actually tied to a fantasy world I ran several years beforehand in a game system that alas, had a very limited distribution. One thing, The players (some of whom were in the fantasy world) never quite knew if this took place after, or before the previous campaign (heheheh).

It took nearly two years to set up, and I ran the campaign for three and a half years meeting on a weekly basis.
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