I was a fairly hardcore DnDer (with some WoD thrown in the mix) when I was introduced to Shadowrun. Luckily, the GM I had could spin a damn good yarn, and so my first experience with the system was excellent.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After our characters rode off into the sunset, it left a large, gaping hole in our Saturday schedule, one that I wish to fill. I came up with some game ideas that were typical Shadowrun pulp, but then something hit me... what if, instead of taking inner-city street jobs, the Shadowrunners were third-world mercenaries (ala Blood Diamond and Rambo and such)?

I created this whole idea for a game taking place in these poor, deadly, low-tech, uber-violent third-world countries. Obviously, your Street Samurai and Gunbunny would fit right in, as would mages and adepts. There's not much room in there for technomancers, hackers, riggers, faces, and investigators though. Still, the idea of gun-toting orks and crazy combat mages being hired to take out pirates, rebels, and arms smugglers has, I believe, a lot of promise. Rather than being your typical hack in/shoot/slash/get out runs, it would put the players in a much deadlier, much more tactical world that would see them running through the jungle rather than through the city streets.

So here's my question:

Would Shadowrun support a low-tech game, or would taking out the high-level technology (maybe make it low cyberpunk, rather than high cyberpunk, and take away stuff like bioware and cyberware) cause too much imbalance in the rules to be enjoyable?

I rely on your advice, since I'm new to the system.

I think it would work just fine...

You could successfully run an SR4 campaign with no cyber or matrix and have all mundanes, if you wanted. The mechanics are still there and you'd be dealing with a lot smaller handfuls of dice, but it wouldn't be bad. If you stuck to the normal chargen rules, you'd end up with characters having higher skills because they wouldn't have to spend so many BP's on nuyen.

Find yourself a copy of fields of fire...then have fun. Don't discount a properly built hacker/rigger for any mercenary company. When one guy can churn out the firepower of 15 with a handful of drones you win!!

Glad you think it will work. I may cut back on starting BP, if that were the case. I mean, I don't want a bunch of Navy SEAL equivalents running around - I'd still like that low-level mook to be SOMEWHAT of a challenge.

The one thing I'd be concerned about is dropping too much 'ware. If you take out all the 'ware, then magic would quickly become the way to go as it can be extremely pokey as it is.

The low-tech merc outfit campaign should work just fine. As another poster suggested, see if you can find a copy of Fields of Fire, an old SR sourcebook. It dealt primarily with mercenaries. And, its pretty good read too, IMO.



At the risk of spiraling wildly OT...

Shadowrun's core game mechanics, while not "universal" like GURPS or HERO, are pretty modular and can fit a number of non-canon settings. I've see (or read about) people using them for Victorian Steampunk, pure/non-magical Cyberpunk, modern day Horror/Occult, Hardboiled/Noir Mystery, Hong Kong Martial Arts/Action, and so on.

Just my 2 .

-paws

*Squints across the electronic divide at the OP*

That's a mighty familiar name you got there stranger... Got a bit of a Leas "problem"?

Whatever the case may be, I think you'll find that the Shadowrun rules do allow for a great deal of flexibility. The Blue Planet conversion I'm working on will probably be right up your alley (even if it's lacking magic). Playing with the bp allowances alone is enough to dramatically change the flavor of the game, lower dice pools and some skill tweaks can dramatically alter the campaign as well.

Someday, I'm planning on dropping Troubleshooters from Alpha Complex into Shadowrun Seattle.

Or, perhaps, Shadowrunners into Alpha Complex!

We'll see.

When you remove the setting and fluff Shadowrun is basically a game mechanic which can be used however you like.

Heck, I ran a game once where elves were aliens who came to Earth in sleeper ships, had Orks and Dwarfs as races they conquered and enslaved. Trolls had hidden themselves under the mountains for centuries but when the elves arrived and started conquering the trolls helped the poor humans by introducing them to magic.

Create your own fluff and use the shadowrun mechanic if it pleases you. FASA was the company that had gaming police. Catalyst won't care as long as you keep buying your stuff.

Whoa FASA really had gaming Nazi's? How the hell did that work?

It was kind of like the SS, but without the snappy uniforms. Fortunately, Indiana Jones pwnd them.

I've used the SR3 Rules-set to play a game set in the Aliens universe (Colonial Marines all the way...), in the Wild West, and in the World War Z-verse (that one's still ongoing). In my humble opinion, 90-100 build-points with a max of 20-odd going to resources is a mighty nice level for a non-magic, non-meta, non-cyber game. It lets you build capable characters, but no one is a total beast. I would, however, suggest that you try writing up some characters yourself with whatever Chargen rules you come up with for your setting. If you feel they're too powerful or too weak, tweak the BP total and try again.

While I like the SR4 system, it does have it's flaws, for highly tactical games, it's abstraction, which is usually a good thing, really hurts gameplay. I actually prefer the SLA Industries system (with some minor adaptions) for tactical games because it fairly easy and has localized hit points, which makes taking out someones leg much mechanically easier. If you take out the magic and cyber, you should work in a way for characters to get extra actions without having to spend edge.

Roadspike's 90-100 points in SR3 should translate to somewhere around 320 BP in SR4 terms.

Here's a thread dealing with characters in that BP range: Wakshaani's 320 point Challenge

-paws

I'm of the opinion that even the poorest third-world shitholes in the midst of bloody genocidal civil war should have ubiquitous, though unreliable, matrix access. It just shows both how pervasive the technology is and how messed up things can be. It helps if there is a well-meaning government minister who explains "We could feed the starving or we could give them internet porn. We could not do both. No one could have predicted that our choice wouldn't work out."

I'm presently trying to take the SR*3 game engine in three different directions in testing and will probably settle on something a bit other.

I've been trying to adapt it easily to a mythic past, a Traveller 2300 like future and something like "Dark Conspiracy" set in the early 90's with more Dark, more Conspiracy and without as much alien fluffiness.

What I'm beginning to think of now is closer to CoC, but set 12 years from the present day, but with a very slight "D C" twist, in that the major world governments are trying, desperately, for an undisclosed reason, to hush it all up. For this the SR*3 engine works wonderfully.

Point Buy: 90 basic, up to 30 extra points obtainable through flaws and a cap of 25 that can be spent on enhancement therapies, no cyberware available, Genetech that's in the Shadowtech book plus a few additions of my own from GURPS BioTech for starters and with the full line of Bioware available for volunteers to test it for those folk who join the "Harvard/Princeton/Lyon Research Association". Yep, the HPL Research Association will make a new man, or woman, of you if you're the sort who wants to play guinea pig.

Isshia

That was a secret I told you in confidence, asshole!

Indeed this is "Old Man Man."

I didn't know you had your Blue Planet game already up and running! This makes life easier for me, which is good. When is it starting? I want to be a Orca rigger.

@ornot

You're right - mages would be pretty killer in a low-tech world. I may make provisions for minor bio enhancements. The biggest thing I have a problem with, though, is infection. I'm still not too keen on the world of SR yet, but I imagine that cyber and bioware is implanted surgically. If this was the case, no one would survive with bioware or cyberware past a few weeks, because they'd all die from septic shock.

@ArkonC

I'd probably formulate a few advantages they could purchase with karma and BP to allow them extra initiative passes. And, when it comes to taking out someone's legs rather than shooting them in the head, I hear called shots are nifty... though they could stand to be tweaked a little more.

@hyzmarca

Well, porn is important. Plus, if the government keeps the people starving, they're less likely to have strength to do anything other than look at porn, meaning that the business would thrive.

I think that limited matrix access would be fine for this kind of game. Maybe there are matrix "hotspots" or something where people can jack in.

@Cantankerous

Definitely thinking of opening up SOME enchancement therapies to even things out. Also, I've figured that 320 BP would be ideal.

And any game with the name "Conspiracy" sounds aboslutely killer.

Ah, that looks just about spot on. Since we're using a variation fo the Blue Planet chargen system we might end up with an even lower starting bp number.

I once used SR3 to run a game of grand theft auto, the RPG. Worked quite well.

I've used Shadowrun 'ware, created a team in, and even ported the whole SR Sol system into Star Trek (most of it for freeform play, but I have a tendency to create sheets for everyone anyway). The system's just friendlier than the more recent Trek ones... plus I like the idea of Borg derived cyberware...

Sterile technique is a pretty well understood technology. It's not something that can only be done in 1st world university hospitals, it takes pretty minimal stuff to produce a clean surgical field if you have people who know what they are doing and care. And mercenary units that want loyalty hire competent medics and doctors, then buy them autoclaves and betadine. Not to mention using the sterilize spell.

Plus most of the descriptions of cyberware installs suggest that it mostly involves nanites constructing it inside your body.

Shadowrun is a remarkably versatile system. I have a half finished conversion for it that was inspired by an odd combination of Mass Effect, Warhammer 40K, a D20 future campaign setting I read about on ENworld years ago, Pandora's Star and a hefty dose of my own 'ideal' Sci-Fi/Space Oprah verse.

It never got off the drawing board but the mechanics held up pretty well in the test combats/one shots I ran.

God I hope that you meant Sci-Fi/Space Opera-verse.

Why do I have terrible visions of the Mojo-verse running through my head.


Isshia

The Shadowrun game mechanics can be easily adapted to the following:

Any high-tech/magic world - changing the setting is almost all that is required, usually.
Any high-tech world - change the setting, remove the magic.
Any low-tech/modern world - change the setting, reduce the tech, remove the magic.

The only setting you really begin to have problems with is low-tech/magic. This basically requires you to have everyone (or at least the PC's) be awakened, or provide mundane characters a way to obtain Adept-like abilities & remove the Adepts.

The magic system can be easily adapted for most magic-like settings (psionics, the force, etc). The only one I can think of off-hand that is not a straight conversion is the Mage: the Awakening magic system, and even then it is close. I am currently brainstorming methods to adapt the Shadowrun magic system to the M:tA lore, and have a basic layout for a more complex Star Wars 'Force' conversion.

You can probably tweak the drain codes for a low-tech world so that it's a very risky proposition to throw down that manabolt

When I did it I simply did away with the Combat Spells list (mine was based on 3e) and used elemental Manipulations to simulate the ones I wanted most to keep. Like an Air Bolt (or really, "Lack of Air Bolt", which actually created a very small, very temporary vacuum that interacted directly with the target) for Stun Bolt. It worked quite well in the limited testing I did. Mana spells were only available to Initiates though that harassed Elemental "Akashic", or Spirit Energy and stood as the fifth element.


Isshia

Ah, that'd work well too.

As a quick advertisement and so as not to high jack the thread, anyone who is interested in some of my crazy ideas should head over to the General Gaming forum to check out how I'm presently morphing 3E for a CoC-esque, Post Modern game.

Isshia

btw, if one want a low tech counter to magic or cyberware, look no futher then drugs.

lets say that some tribe out in nowhere have used a local plant for "cultural" reasons for generations, but with the awakening it turn into some kind of cram, jazz or even kamikaze?

sure, it cant match wired reflexes 3 or move by wire, but it sure can produce a surprise on the mercenaries coming in to clean up something for a local government or corp installation (all via third parties for plausible deniability and all that).

also, mother nature have become a bit more dangerous after the awakening

nothing like a small rodent that goes nuts if it smells blood...

When I ran my WWIISR game (aka Shadowrun 1942, for SR3), it was no cyber, limited magic. Drain was not halved and Phys Ad powers cost double. That seemed to work pretty well for me, although I had planned on letting in cyberware at a later point (whenever the Nazi Ubersoldat programs got introduced). Mechanically, that's probably the route I would go if I was going a Weird West or other pseudo-historical SR mod. As a friend of mine pointed out one time, SR as its written makes for a good STAR WARS system; all the Jedi force powers have spell equivilents. For me SR3 works with minor tweaking for anything on the Cinematic to Gritty side of the spectrum.

As for low-tech SR games, I've run a lot of "SR in the Jungle". My African game was run pretty much out of Fields of Fire and Cyberpirates (and an old Top Secret supplement called "Brushfire Wars"), and my current SR4 game is set in Cartagena, Aztlan (nee Colombia) which has convenient jungle access. So from my perspective, SR works great even in non-urban settings.

We used SR2 rules for a Bubblegum Crisis campaign, and SR3 rules for a campaign set in the Outlaw Star Universe, as well as a camaoign in a similarly themed, if home brewed, SF universe.