Please stay with me and, if I've posted in the wrong forum, please feel free (mods) to move it to the appropriate forum.

The SR universe, more particularly with its integration with the ED universe, is for me perhaps one of the most dynamic and interesting game universes out there. I am, however, not a great fan of the game mechanics, even if they are wonderfully evocative of the universe in general. I'm also a bit of a slave to jumping from one system to another as a matter of course, hence my selection of a generic system. (Mea culpa.)

Does anyone know of a decent conversion of SR to GURPS? I've obviously Googled and found several possibilities, but one of the great things about a given system that is linked to a universe is that it is designed for that universe. I'm just trying to save myself the leg time.

As an addendum, and unoriginally and 'cliched' as one gets in the SR universe, a part of this results in the fact that I want to integrate both ED and SR into a single campaign.

I appreciate your time in making a response to something that has probably been posted over and over again.

Kage

Two or three times a year, I try to convert SR to Gurps. I had a long post here, but what it boils down to is that it's very difficult to get magic to feel right. The default Gurps magic system is somewhat too consistent; a mage always knows exactly how many more spells she can cast, and of what kinds, before she's tapped out for the day. SR magic lacks that certainty, but isn't truly random: if you've got 15 drain dice against a code of 4S, you're probably fine, but every once in a while the dice will bone you.

You can rearrange the magic colleges if you want to, but it's not worth the trouble IMO. SR's categories are just so damned weird that leaving behind is more liberating than troubling. Similarly, the fact that Gurps!SR mages will know many more spells than their Real!SR counterparts always feels like an improvement to me. You'll have to pick a spell list yourself, though.

Notice that I haven't touched on spirits yet. You will have to invent their rules and stats from whole cloth. I've tried this a dozen different ways, and liked none of them. A single M/VH Conjuring skill, with a penalty based on the power of the spirit? One skill per spirit type?

Ally Spirits: use the Ally rules.

Ritual Magic: Gurps Spirits, Gurps Voodoo, Gurps Cabal? Lots of good far-reaching subtle stuff in those books. If you just want to synechdotally cast normal spells, have a Ritual Magic skill, require everyone in the ritual to make it, and bound the spellcasting roll at the lowest RM skill in the group.

Enchanting is mostly handwaving in basic Gurps. Who am I to break with that? Well, a lifelong devotee. But besides that...

Traditions: make mages pick one when they take the "I'm a Mage!" Advantage, or go the SR4 route and ditch 'em.

I don't know whether you plan to use Gurps 3 or Gurps 4; my experience is mostly with 3 (I'd recommend 4 if you're confronted with a choice, though; everything I've seen and heard has been positive). In either case, the "Full Magician" advantage probably wants to cost 35-40 points, if not more (this depends on your starting point total; figure 1/4 of that as a minimum, and price the pieces (casting, conjuring, perception, projection) from there). Above and beyond this, a "magical power" advantage that adds to your magical skills is handy; it gives you an analogue for initiatory grade when you're converting things like masking. You can part out the magical advantages and sell them separately (10 for just Astral Perception, 20 for just Conjuring, whatever), but I don't think it's wise; any single component is one hell of a deal for a mostly mundane character, and you wind up having to do SR4's shitty "don't take these advantages unless you mean it" thing.

Adept-ness can be handled as an Unusual Background that lets you purchase a range of nifty advantages. This gives you an obvious and natural way to implement Magician's Way adepts, but makes initiation nigh-useless to them. This mostly isn't a problem, as most metamagics can be modeled as Advantages, but what do you do with Masking? Adepts won't have the Magical Power advantage described above, and keying its power off of the number of points spent on Adept advantages feels clunky. Best solution: divorce Masking from initiatory grade and make it the right to purchase a special (M/VH) Masking skill, which contests peoples' perception when they try to Assense you.

Geasae: Just steal them. The SR rules for these are flavor heavy and rules light.

You have to steal SR's essence mechanic outright, it's connected to too many other things to go the Gurps Cyberpunk route and leave it out. Figuring its interaction with magic is sorta tough (-1 skill/essence or fraction thereof lost works reasonably),

The whole exercise reminds me of Gurps In Nomine. Great setting, weak ruleset, but it's too idiosyncratic for Gurps to really work for it. I have about ten thousand thoughts on this, and I'll share them if you ask, but I don't think a clean Gurps Shadowrun exists.

I've made a SR/d20 Modern/Future conversion.

It's a PL 6 campaign (7 for cyberware).
Characters start at level 10.
Characters can get +1 LA in exchange for +16 Wealth. They can do this twice.
The assorted traditions are determined by what magical Advanced Classes you have.
Incantations from Urban Arcana are used.

Nick, please redirect your post to the Drop Bear thread where your unho*cough* err... Ingenious conversion of SR to The Other Game can be appropriately rewarded.

So much Hate...

*Single Indian Tear*

You could also give magicians a disadvantage bonus for losing magic when they take cyberware.

For GURPS, isnt there already rules, try using a search&download program, like limewire or morpheus, there should be one there to look at.

First off, thank you for your helpful replies and your patience. Conversion is, indeed, a nightmare and the online resources that I've found always seem to come off a bit... short. While it is easy to have a 'cyberpunk fantasy' crossover it definitely doesn't have the rich flavour of the Shadowrun universe. Yet at the same time, the SR game mechanics are for me overtly complex from an online gaming point of view (a point of view perhaps somewhat hypocritical given that I'm talking about GURPS in the same thread!).

Perhaps I am going about this the wrong way? Rather than throwing out the game mechanics that in many ways record part of the distinctiveness of the Shadowrun universe, perhaps I should be asking on advice for removing or refocussing some of those aspects that I'm not overtly fond of. For example, the various 'pools' and the resultant book-keeping (remembering the old Threat Ratings), or the combat that seems to inherently require a mechanised approach rather than a more narrative one...

I really don't mind getting back into the SR mechanics, but since online gaming is my only means of RPing I've found that it doesn't quite work without spending several evenings, for example, rolling out a single combat. So advice on speeding up this would perhaps solve the situation, allowing me to step back into a rich system.

The only other reason that I play around with GURPS is that I like to play with historical settings. The inherent focus of Shadowrun on the 'now' of the setting doesn't usually allow this. So, another question, if you will: Are people on the boards aware of expanded rules (online or otherwise) for integrating SR with earlier periods? E.g. 'historical settings'?

Finally, the ultimate of cliched evils for the SR universe. I know you've seen it hundreds of times, but has anyone interpreted the other universe into SR? (I hesitate to mention it, but the abbreviation sounds like a talking horse... )

Once again, thank you for your patience.

Kage

Rather than attempting to make a Shadowrun GURPS you may want to look at new World of Shadowrun ...err... Shadowrun Fourth Edition.

It is already a complete rules conversion so you'll have no problem there. As much as I dislike it, SR4 does streemline the rules so much that you may as well give it a look if you're willing to throw the old mechanics out anyway.

There are no plans for historical SR settings. There are also problems with converting them. If I had to guess, I'd agree with what other people have said, SR4 may be easier to convert to historical settings than SR3. My personal problems were two fold when converting SR3:

1) Initiative and pools are a bit off. Because most people will only have one initiative pass, splitting up your pool is generally pretty easy. This, of course, isn't a problem in SR4.
2) Magic is far more powerful than mundane weapons in most settings. This is easy to scale, however. This IS a problem with SR4, bu tstill easy to fix.

If you hunt around, I'm sure you can find more threads on the forum about conversions (including one I started).

Once again, thank you for your time in replying to the thread. Would you advise a particular thread, or threads, for a discussion on the relative changes in SR4. The only thing that I have heard about it was, erm, not favourable... As above, I've been reticent at merely importing the setting into a non-SR system, but the person problems with the SR system - the sea of dice, the pools, etc. - are something that have stopped me completely coming back.

Many thanks.

Kage

Well, despite having to buy a new computer today (laptop died after 5.5 years) I splashed out for an eBook version of SR4. That's the first RPG book that I've bought since the last one 2-3 years ago, and that was the physical SR3. Says a lot about the SR universe and what I think about it!

Well, hopefully it will be able to fix some of the issues. Glad to see that FanPro have borrowed from the Cyberpunk/Cybergeneration setting with wireless access, etc.

Anyway, back to the reading.

Kage