So, a number of years ago, some friends and I used SR3 rules to run various alternative settings, including modern times, steampunk, modern military, etc.

We found that as soon as you put magical characters in the setting it kind of screwed things up because there was no way to counter them. Astral projection, for example, was always pretty much the ultimate recon.

But now I realize that SR3 rules would be ideal for a present day or recent past setting IF you ran a first earth battalion campaign.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Earth_Battalion#_

You do know what First Earth Battalion is, right? The US government, for a while, tried to have some new age psychic super soldiers, basically.

You could have a campaign about First Earth Battalion vs. Soviet psychic soldiers, and simply use the magic rules for all the hippie stuff.

Don't forget to look up First Earth Battalion on YouTube.

The first thing that came to mind was film The Men Who Stare at Goats, which I see from your wiki link is the same story. After seeing Avatar the opening of The Men Who Stare at Goats is hilarious.
SR3 rules seem a solid base for such a game, perhaps introduce an alien menace to illustrate the unified planet ethos of the FEB.

Yeah, after I saw TMWSAG I did further research and found out about First Earth Battalion. My next thought was, "Why even make a comedy movie and change the names, when a documentary about FEB would probably be even more far out and funny?"

Let me tell you, I actually went and bought the PDF of the First Earth Battalion manual. It was worth every penny. It will blow your mind. It's filled with 1970s-type drawings. It would be the ultimate prop for the gaming table in a FEB campaign.

Once you start to actually read up on FEB it's even better than watching that movie.

Perfect timing; I was just reaching this with another game I'm running. I may have to consider picking up the book. I love reading those military manuals

I'm just re-reading it this morning. Page 23 depicts, among other things, how FEB personnel will carry "ginseng regulators" on their left upper arm.

Now I want to sit down and write SR3 rules for how a "ginseng regulator" gives you extra dice for Athletic tests and toxin resistance, or something.

EDIT:

From page 38, "Earth Battalion soldiers will be encouraged to represent themselves well in their dress, and wear a 12 pointed star with each axis clipped to reveal a dimension on a standard personality inventory test."

You could really have fun with props for this. Find a 1970s personality test, some 12 pointed stars, and let each person fill it out in-character so we can know what kind of clipped star their character wears.

Also, the skill areas of FEB are Bodywork, Biowork, Headwork, Heartwork, Spiritwork, Psiwork, Ecowork, Peacework, and Framework, and guess what? They're rated at levels 1-6 in the manual. It would be hilarious and awesome to replace or supplement the standard SR3 skills with those skills.



EDIT 2:

I've got a scenario. Have to check the years that FEB actually was active in the US military. The US government wants to investigate reports of a Chinese recon team doing something in the jungles of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. But Micronesia has recently become a soverign nation, so instead of sending a special forces team to investigate, they send FEB.

However, it turns out that the Chinese recon team has actually stumbled on the Lovecraftian "Ponapae" scripture and have awoken Lovecraftian horror in the jungle and at Nan Madol, the ancient ruins on Pohnpei which may have inspired Lovecraft's phrase "non eucledian geometry".

It turns out that FEB is the only force in the world, due to training in new age psychic techniques, that has a chance of containing the problem. Since FEB is all about teamwork and love and all that, maybe certain members of the Chinese recon team have gone over to insanity, and a few are left who have remained sane and who would be willing to work with the player characters to try and contain the horror.

Ginseng regulators, when turned on, add 1 dice to sanity-related rolls. However, they only contain a certain number of units of ginseng. More ginseng can be acquired from a Chinese store in the town of Kolonia.

Other players include the locals, the Peace Corps, the US embassy, the Chinese embassy, and the Jesuits.

I could totally write this, too, since I served in the Peace Corps on Pohnpei.

I think you could have the Japanese EDF (Earth Defense Force) as a rival organisation of the American FEB
While the FEB rely on magic, the EDF relies on tech, and has advanced guns and armors as well as mechas.

Goddamn it, I want to play this game so bad now...

I agree. WR, if you write it, I will run it, maybe even as a drop game at GenCon. I so want to play this.

Wow, that is some very high praise and encouragement. Let me see if I can get this pulled together. When is GenCon?

Mid August this year. I will be thinking of a mystic adept pacifist now. This sounds like one of the best games I've ever heard of.

The only qualification I'd include with that is it needs to use as few rules as possible (so I can run it with people with limited SR experience), and I need pre-gen characters (which I can do myself). But yeah, it's good to have a few games in the bag you can toss down at a moment's notice. It wouldn't be a registered game, but I have no question I can get some players.

Well, I am going on a camping trip for a week, so I will try and come up with some notes. Since I won't have my SR3 sourcebooks with me it will be rules-light indeed.

I think I'll focus more on the setting and situation, instead of spending my energy on writing up stats, in this case, since any SR3 GM could do that.

I'll post more when I get back in about a week.

I finished reading the book. I was actually a little disappointed in the lack of details in a lot of areas, but the core ideas of this small, special ops cell working to do good, using paranormal abilities and super-high-tech equipment to get it done is still pretty cool.

One thought is, to stay true to the book, eliminate having to purchase magical ability. Instead, every character is a magical adept by default, but she has to buy up her magic attribute, just like everyone else.

Additionally, since this is a government-sponsored program, I'd consider setting Resources as it's own attribute and handle it more generically (sort of like what CoC does). If you have Resources 1, you get the standard kit. At 6, you can get basically anything with an availability of less than 12 and a price of less than $600k (obviously you'd need it a little more refined than that, but you get the idea). Alternatively, given the setting you're going for, remove most of the cyberware and just have a standard squad kit. Characters have what they're provided, and they won't be able to call out for more because they're in the jungle.

Funny enough, this would be a great run to apply some of those rules from Shadowbeat, given how much FEB relies on leveraging the media and public attention.