The group I game with has decided to make the switch over to 4th edition. We have considered dragging along our old characters and continuing their existing storylines rather than to start all over again. My question is, how many of you folks who switched over from earlier editions either converted your old characters into the new system (adjusting attribute and skill levels, etc.) or simply made them up from scratch and basically started the same character over? What kind of problems did you encounter with either method? Thanks.

We had a cool campaign running in SR3, but decided to start a new one in SR4, so we built new chars.
There hadn't been any problems at all.

We started a new one. It had been quite a while since we
d played the old one, and we may have been close to ending that one anyway.

All new.

10 years (We were only in 60!) is far too long a time to cross. Even 5 years would be IMO.

Some people might make surprise appearance as NPC in the new campaign (including old PCs!) and we'll have fun seeing how life treated them but the current PCs were for the most part bratty teenagers while the previous PCs were in their peak years.

The conversion guide includes rebuilding the characters, then distributing karma.

This works pretty well, you just have to remind you that SR4 values are abou 2/3 of the ones in SR3.

We had intermittent fits and starts of SR3 recently, so when SR4 came out we just made new characters. As with any new system, there is a learning curve, but it is working out well for us.

Haven't actually seriously PLAYED Shadowrun in about 10 years, and my last 3rd ed campaign is about 3-4 years gone. So we're starting over.

I'm actually gonna be playing the son of my original SR chracter, since by the timeline, he's about 17 now.

Just getting the new campaign off the ground though, so...

My campaign started in SR3 and is bridging to SR4: the last episode was in 2063 using SR4 rules (wasn't really a problem except for some gear not being available and the wireless matrix not existing yet- although the players worked for an AI and had access to something similar).
I plan to take those characters all the way to 2070, though I am considering a mcguffin by which they might be 'out of it' for a few years- trapped in a metaplane perhaps (*shrug*).

Yeah character conversion from 3 to 4 wasn't too smooth. I pretty much played it by ear. There were complaints at first, stemming from the different scales- players felt like they were weaker than they had been- but it all worked out in the end.

We're also debating on sticking with our old campaign's date of 2063 and just setting sail from there, or placing things at 2070, but that would no doubt be another thread

I think it would at least be worth carrying the characters forward from 2063 to the Crash 2.0 in '65 and having them witness / try to survive all that.

I'm in the middle of running a bridge campaign using Brainscan and System Failure. We used the Quick Conversion Method on Characters with one house rule, Perception skill was gained at a level equal to 2/3 of the 3rd ed Intelligence stat. We did the same for assensing for characters who had astral perception. Generally it's going pretty well, the biggest problem I've had is having two group member decide to suddenly move to Haines Alaska. I can't imagine what the allure of a job offer to be substitute teachers in Haines was, but they took it.

There was only one other person in the group that had played Shadowrun before, the GM, he hadn't played since SR1, and I didn't even know them when they started the campaign. So yeah, there were no real NPCs, although apparently a few of the NPCs are characters from when the GM played. Although I've never asked him, I suspect that the stats they have are total rebuilds from his old memorys.

Converted the characters......

Things got a little hairy with the Wujen shapeshifter

and

the moon maiden shaman who disliked the changes to her totem. ( They didn't apply to her character image at all )



The biggest problem for me was that the I had houserules that made getting attributes above your racial max (6 for humans) in SR3 very costly and as a result noone had done it. The 2/3 attribute conversion absolutely murdered some characters to the point they were weaker than the SR4 sample starters.

I changed it to a straight -1 unless the attribute was 1 or 2.

I also gave out free assensing and perception and gave them the opportunity to gain and lose qualities and flaws from SR3 to SR4.

I started a brand new campaign, although I've reserved the rights to have old SR3 PCs turn up as NPCs. I've actually placed one already, although the PCs haven't met her, and intend to have her hire the new runners as a Johnson. Should bring a few laughs for those who remember her.

my group had been on a SR (and roleplaying in general) hiatus for a couple years before we decided we'd like to play again. I (as the GM) was the most adamant for switching to SR4 and eventually the players warmed up to it. We made new characters from scratch and I'm currently busting the PC's through some old (converted) adventures (currently it's Dark Angel, rock out). We did scale the timeline back to 2050ish and just pretended the matrix had been wireless the whole time though.