As I mentioned in another thread, I am looking to run some SR2/SR3 adventures (Harlequin, Corporate Punishment) in my current SR4 game. While most things are very easy to convert, I have found that the Matrix stuff is not.

The SR4 books mention that many secure sights (which is most of those runners try to get into ) may be blocked from wireless, and use hard-wired lines and wireless-blocking building to secure from outside intrusion. Thus, it seems that most of the matrix sites from earlier editions should work quite well in SR4 from a world-consistency viewpoint - these are sites that the owners chose to make hardwired to improve security. So they only have one or two external links to the outside world (the SR2/3 RTG connection), and everything else is accessible only from internal terminals or through the external link.

The problem is with the game mechanics - the SR2/SR3 modules write-up the matrix sites in great detail, but I don't know how to convert them to SR4 terms. What does Red-4 or Orange 5 mean in SR4 terms? What should the Firewall/System/Response ratings be? What kind of ICE to put where?

I could of course just re-write those portions, but if there's a simpler way to convert, that'd be great. Maybe someone put out a guide at some point?

The fact that I haven't played SR2 in over a decade, and never touched SR3 doesn't help, as I don't recall what those designations mean, and don't really want to dig out the old books to relearn the old systems...

Thanks,
Juliean.

I have started with something similar (see sig for details), but havn't really got around to flesh it out further.

Bye
Thanee

The opposite question has been rattling around in my head. If I want to go back to the variable TN of earlier editions, but keep the ubiquity of wireless hacking, what changes need to be made.

For SR1&2 - Look at the CPU, whatever the number is, that is your system+firewall

For SR2 V2.0 and SR3 - Look at the first number (the one right after the color), that is your system+firewall

That helps. What about color? Does that determine white/gray/black ice?

The closest equivalent to "color" is the Device Rating of a device. Red is a rating 5-6 Device Rating (although Rating 6 is reserved for Deltaware and Credsticks only, it can be seen as an equivalent to secure commlinks with a System and Firewall rating 6), Orange is a rating 4-5 Device Rating, and Green is a 3 Device Rating. Blue is 1-2, but most things worth hacking would be a Green or higher. You can also just use the color to determine the System and Firewall rating of other systems (by following the above recommendations)

VR 2.0 makes a further distinction of Easy/Average/Hard system ratings. You can just say that Easy has a Firewall of System-2, Average has a Firewall of System-1, and Hard has a Firewall equal to System.

I find that 1st and 2nd edition Shadowrun matrix hosts are more amenable to be converted to 4th edition networks/nexii than 3rd edition writeups. You can preserve the topology there by simply saying that the central CPU node is the main node and that SANs and SPUs are slaved to the CPU. For 1st edition stuff, I'd say that a "Red-3" SPU would be a node that has System 5 and Firewall 3, using the color as the relative system rating and the number as the Firewall rating.

However, I will warn you that early edition Shadowrun adventures were written with the decking portion as a "mini dungeon crawl" for just the decker. This is a major problem in most tabletop games (not so much on Play by Post or other online games, where time is asynchronous), as it means everyone else will be falling asleep while the "decker does his thing". You might want to tone down the detail to keep the game moving and just have a single central node to hack for any given encounter rather than preserving the 1st/2nd edition details.

3rd edition mostly used a security sheaf/tally and the ACIFS structure, which I've found to be very quick to resolve by itself (I think it's better than the crappy 4th edition mechanics, personally, although 4th edition topology and flavor is better). For converting 3rd edition, you'd just use the main System rating as System + Firewall. Easy peasy.

Here's a more detailed look at converting SR3 to SR4, at least in my opinion. Feel free to trash/insult/destroy this as you want. This took all of 15 minutes to figure out for me, and I'm sure that I'm missing things.

For example, in Brainscan p 21, a 3rd edition SR adventure, there is an easy computer station that can be hacked by a script kiddie labeled:
Green 5/9/9/10/8/10 with a Security Sheaf of:
4 Probe-4
9 Probe-6
13 Crippler (Marker)-6
17 Passive Alert, Killer-6
21 Tar Pit-6
25 Active Alert, Killer-8

In this situation, you'd just use the first number of Green 5/9/9/10/8/10, which is 5 and the main system rating for the node. This means that when the device rolls its System + Firewall, it rolls a total of 5 dice. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty of ratings, you can use the Green rating to indicate a SR4 System rating of 3, which means it has a Firewall of 2 (since System (3) + Firewall (2) = Number of dice rolled (5)).

What about the security sheaf? Just run them as IC with the appropriate programs installed. You don't actually have to follow the sheaf... just consider it a list of IC resident in the system. Killer is IC with Attack installed. Probe is IC with Analyze installed. For the IC's tests, just roll the indicated number (6 for a Probe-6, 8 for a Killer-8). Ignore any IC that you don't understand (the system is bogged down with too many IC anyway, so just use a couple from the sheaf instead of ALL of them).

Later in the adventure, there's a secure private Red host run by "Tin Man Scrap Works" built by otaku and Deus. It's not quite milspec or top of the line (since it's out of the arcology), but it should be a formidable hack.

It's listed as a Red-9/13/15/15/15/13
2 Trace-6
5 Trap Probe 6 (Blaster 8)
9 Passive Alert
12 Trap Trace 8 (Killer 8)
16 White otaku
18 Active Alert
20 Sparky 8
22 SK
30 Shutdown

So, this thing is a Red-9. It is run as a System + Firewall of 9. As a Red host, you will have a System rating of 5 or 6, so it's most likely 5, giving a System 5 and Firewall of 4. The IC in the node are Trace (IC with Trace installed, rolls 6 or 8 dice), Probe (IC with Probe installed, rolls 6 dice. Ignore the Trap part.), a Killer 8 (rolls 8 dice, Attack) and White otaku and a SK. The White otaku is a "security decker", while the SK would be a high powered Agent. Or perhaps even a proto-AI itself (not unreasonable for this particular adventure).

What hahnsoo said...

The colors were thresholds in SR1&2. For VR2.0 & SR3 the colors were more of an abstraction on the difficulty. Either way its much easier just to ignore them unless for some reason you need to split up system and firewall or need to add thresholds.

for colors you have
blue = threshold 1, easy system
green = threshold 2, normal system
orange = threshold 3, hard system
red = threshold 4, highest security (ok not really)
ultraviolet = threshold 5, theoretically doesn't exist but watch out security.
you may want to multiply the thresholds by 3 or something if your doing extended tests.