Hello everyone,
I am planning on start a new SR4 campaign, and consider the option of playing a non standard setting. I have some ideas for a post nuclear setting, but I was wondering if there is one unoficial for fallout or something like that. If someone here already try this idea, I want to ask how matrix stuff could be handle.

Appreciate some references/ideas.

don't know if it's out in english, but in german there's the SOX book, that's more or less pretty close . .

Yes if you want to play in a Post-Nuclear setting while still playing canon Shadowrun just set your game in the SOX. I've played one a few weeks ago, and it really felt Fallout-esque to me.

Watch the jeremiah series S1 and half S2(writer had creative diffrances with the network and it got canceled) Very nice post apoc setting.. =)

short story that will spoil nothing..

Big ass virus kill everyone who have gone throu puberty.. =)

SOX isn't available in English, but there's a French version (with a slightly different regional focus) AFAIK.

Tripolis Hot Zone would be another possibility, but there's less available material (and its practically a no-magic-zone due to high background count...plus, desert wars tournaments are held there).

My favourite post-apocalyptic setting, however, has always been Bug City.
Which is admittedly much more fun if played in the late 2050s.
But it's a great sourcebook and with Street Magic (and the upcomming RC to stat out the ghouls in Cabrini Green), converting it to SR4 should be no problem.

In all honesty, you could just whole-sale convert SR to Fallout by saying, "one morning you wake up to see a bright light, followed by an odd mushroom cloud and...darkness."

You can tweak any pre-existing campaign world by adding a disaster - nuclear, magical, biological - anything. Bioengineered weapons programs running amok and breeding. Zombies appearing that defy magical and technological analysis - maybe religion is more than just aspected Awakenings?

If your players scream "that's not how it works!", you can point out that the experts are pretty much screaming the same things.

-Siege

wasn't fallout based on the GURPS system?
and aren't there Gurps Shadowrun Rules ?
if so, could one not simply combine those ?
(yes yes, i know, nothing to do with SR<.<)

Or, you can run "Bug City".

It has Nukes and Giant Cockroaches!

And in SR4, it can also have giant locusts!

That was the original plan, but the Steve Jackson Games and Black Isle Studios couldn't come to an licensing agreement. Black Isle came up with a system they called SPECIAL (from its basic attributes).

It is legally distinct, but it does remind me of GURPS.

Back on topic, A new strain of VITAS could easily lead to a post-apoc, setting. What if the previous VITAS plagues were effectively spike babies of the plagues emerging in 2072...

The existing strains killed roughly 30% of the world population, right? An awakened VITAS IV could reasonably have extremely high casualty rates, and the viral reservoir could feasibly be anything with an astral signature.

Just for the irony, I would give ghouls much higher than normal resistance.

As has been said, transferring Shadowrun mechanics (or even the background world) to post-apocalyptic is basically a no-brainer. There are some concerns, however, in regards to archetypes;

1) What is the background count? That determines how powerful mages are. Many methods of blowing up the world will result in a significant background count. Some not so much. Speaking for myself, I'd probably put it around 1-2 generally, partially for balance, partially for splat.

2) How many people and how much gear is left around? If not much is left, your street sams are going to suffer because of cyberware maintenance. You can hand-wave this or, perhaps even smarter, one of your PCs can take up cybertech repair skills, and you can just say you pick up pieces as you raid old bases. Just something worth considering. Street sams stand to do pretty well, since their business is always in demand.

3) Deckers stand to suffer the most, for obvious reasons, but deckers/electronic experts can significantly aid the team in unusual situations. Ancient military base you can't get into? Get over here, decker! Evil brain-washing cult built under an ancient cathedral, run by an evil biological computer? Satellite uplink? I think a decker would still be useful, but decking shouldn't be his sole focus. In SR3 this isn't a big deal. All a decker is is the Computer skill and a deck. Let him take a trashy deck and I'm sure he'll scrounge up something nicer later.

4) Since their powers aren't affected by background count, and they don't need gear or gear maintenance, adepts stand to rule the day. Depending on how the world is set up, this may be a good or a bad thing. You may want to institute a house-rule, adepts temporarily lose a number of power points equal to Background Count/2, the particular powers are the character's choice. This will keep adepts in the specialist role, and make sure they have something to stress out about, while allowing sams to be more adaptable in their own way.

It's in the works but it isn't out yet.

The SPECIAL system was, I thought, an almost generic attribute system seen in several games. I must do reeeesearch.

1. I'm not touching that one with a 10' pole. Depending on the nature of the apocalypse, there might not even be a background count. I'd say tailor the numbers to match your world view - some areas being hotter, some areas being quieter and the occasionally rare, blissful silence.

2. Another excellent point - determine your relevant tech level and what kind of maintenance your gear and especially your cyberware will require. Are there still towns with functional centers of technology? Existing stores of parts? Production facilities to produce more gear once the existing stocks are depleted?

3. In any kind of meaningful apocalypse, the decker is just hosed. The net will likely no longer exist in a meaningful form - although it could be adapted and re-introduced as something else.

4. Yeah, adepts will rock. Moreso than before. "Long live the adepts!" I've never liked the house rule for background affecting adepts because that runs counter to the entire notion of a physical adept. The same basic rules will apply - a very generalized adept will only be marginally better than an unaugmented human. A very specialized adept will absolutely rock, but likely crash and burn in anything outside their specific field of expertise.

You can introduce monsters that hunt magically active characters - it isn't inconceivable in the nuclear melting pit of the irradiated waste something was born that feeds on the magically active.

You may want to check out "Deadlands: Hell on Earth" for one perspective on high tech apocalypses.

-Siege

Oh yes, oh very very yes for Deadlands: Hell On Earth!

The Spirits of Nuclear Bombs are very, very nasty indeed!

I threatened to send "New York" after my group if they didn't behave on more than one occasion.

Actually, though it's less post-nuclear, I'd recommend using SR4 rules and the DeGenesis world.

The first leg of Harlequin's Back is set in a SR post-apocalyptic setting. It's pretty gritty too. You could certainly use what was written as a baseline for a whole campaign set in such a setting.

Will there be Vindicator Miniguns?

fuck that shit, gimme gatling-lasers and plasma-rifles, everything else is allready in SR4 ^^

I guess second edition is just too old school for some.

DegEmoSys...well, don't say i didn't warn you...

I cannot stress this point enough : stay the hell away from the DeGenesis rules!!!
If you dig the setting (see below), play it with anything except the given rules, unless you either enjoy suffering PCs and have a strong desire to see even the most minmaxed starting characters fail pathetically at everyday tasks or prefer handwavy freeforming anyway.


The setting is, as hermit pointed out, not post-nuclear.
The game takes place in the ruins of western Europe and northern Africa, around 500 years after the collision with several meteors carrying mind-controlling alien spores and the simultaneous, mysterious collapse of the worldwide computer network.
Most of Europe ranges from barbaric to medieval, with some lostech enclaves and a slave-trading merchant empire from Northern Africa on the rise.
There's also the remaining alien spore fields, spore-ridden, mind-controlling and mostly naked mutants accompanied by swarms of vermin, rampaging, rotten robots and cryogenically preserved pet-NSC commandoes, plus WoD-esque descriptions of the various factions running around.

Options for PCs range from whacky bunker cultists, crusaders, badass wildwest judges and zealous medics bent on eradicating the spores to rogue like nomads, pseudo-muslims, barbarians and paramilitary goons from Switzerland, from bums sifting through the trash of fallen civilizations to millionaire slave traders.

I must admit that it is quite intense, colourful and moody, albeit it has extremely strong emo/goth/self-hurter tendencies.
There is something vibrant and powerful to the whole setting, a very strong focus on atmosphere that permeates the entire book and really manages to draw the reader in, but at the same time, i find something about it extremely repulsive.

Because of the strong mood focus and the prevalance of ingame-texts as descriptions (often mixed strongly with personal issues of the narrator), it's also kinda hard to filter out any information that is of actual use for a GM.
Large parts of the setting descritiption boil down to a cornucopia of whiny, angsty drivel, esoteric blathering and irrational, authoritarian fantasizing with latent sadomasochistic tendencies and cryptoxenophobic brooding mixed with a truckload of biblical clichés and overly depressed cultural determinism.
The developers also hint at an extremely important, wanky metaplot all the time, without giving away anything tangible about it.

In other words, your typical German post-doomsday-scenario (yes, i know, i should be more supportive of our domestic gaming industry).

The artwork is good, however.

The publisher offers a free PDF version of the game here :
http://www.degenesis.de/download/DEGENESIS...ndregelwerk.pdf

Unfortunately, unlike the print version, it is only available in German (at least as far as i know).
For all the bashing the system gets from me, i must admit that it is at least worth a look.
I don't like the direction it is going in at all, but it is quite captivating and one should probably judge for himself what to make of it.