Shadowrun conversion discussion (split)

[Gizmo]

reading this thread made me also want to try to use HQ system for shadowrun.

is this thread still alive?

[Scripty]

is this thread still alive?

If by "alive" you mean that the discussion is still ongoing, then the answer would be "I don't think so." It appears that Aaron got what he needed and moved off thread to continue working. I corresponded with him a few days back and he said he was still working on Shadowrun-HQ. You can always PM him to find out how that is progressing.

Scott

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Welcome to the Forge! You'll see a whole lot of recent good threads on conversion (if that's even the right word) to HeroQuest.

Everyone: Gizmo's post was split from [Shadowrun conversion] How much is a keyword worth, anyway?, which I decided was just past its sell-date, especially considering the recent threads on similar topics. Gizmo, this is no big deal - just let us know what features of Shadowrun you'd like to emphasize in your HeroQuest version, and we can proceed from there.

Best,
Ron

[Minx]

Hy!

As for me still working on it: Yes. No. Well, in a way, I guess.

The works is on ice insofar as that I´m not actively working on it, but now and then I add a paragraph or two when the muse hits me. I hhave bits and pieces all over the place that aren´t in the thread, but other stuff (both roleplaying related and not) have been more important in the last months.

On the other hand, I´m more than interested in other peoples opinions and plans for something like this. ^v^

Aaron

[Gizmo]

Ok guys.

no problem for the thread split.

I will post today or tomorow some of what i've written so fare, which is not a lot, but mainly ideas that need to be slightly ordered for other to read them.

read you soon ;)

Aaron: ok, i just thought your vision of shadowrun is too nice, not in the bad sense, but I don't see runners as heroes, more as efficient in both mind and muscles, and therefore taking the most interesting job, shadowrunning. But this is a point of view which isn't topic-related, so if you want to talk about it i think we should go in pm.

[Gizmo]

So as i explained in my post i aimed for a more dark/low level play in my conversion. This will imply also a change in the experience system, with improvement being more expensive, for higher characteristics.

Character creation:

The player will have 3 keywords at disposal, of any nature.
It is strongly advised to the player to use a social origin keyword and a Shadowrun talent keyword.

the social origin keyword are those you could imagine:
Criminal organisation (mafia, yakuza, ...)
Official organisation (UCAS, equivalent of the USA; Magic order; ...)
Corporation (level of the corporation, knowing that they are AAA, AA or A and only 10 AAA exist)
Street (gang, survivor, ...)
Amerindian nation (tribe, ...)

and so on.

The Shadowrun talent are a kind of occupation keyword, but will be used mainly to describe the fact that in shadowrun, you usually specialise for the sake of the group, among specialisation you have magic, cyber, matrix, rigger. To allow cross-specialisation, the player may choose 2 Shadowrun talents during creation, but it will reduce them a bit.

Magic:

Need to choose Mage, Shaman (totem), Adept (way),...
Mage and shaman gives invocation, sorcery, and a certain amount of spells. The shaman have similar power but different spirits and specific advantage and disadvantage.
The Adept need to select a way, which will enable him to have access to specific powers, such as enhanced senses, improved reflexes, 6th sense,...

Cyber:
NB: any number of cyber on a human being reduce its social and magic activity by the higher score modified by ALL the lower scores.
This rule is set to reflect the loss of humanity when you become a machine.
The cybernetics are specific in their use and effect, and i won't describe them here, but classical things, eye/ear replacement, bone modification, enhanced reflexes, muscle replacement, ...

Matrix:
The decker will have 6 basics abilities:
Analyse
Browse
Decrypt
Mask
Attack
Defense
He will have a certain amount of points to distribute to increase them. Each of these abilities cover important areas of the decking but for simplicity, which is what i am looking for, i reduced decking to these 6 actions.

Rigger:
I don't know the shadowrun rules, so not done yet.

Now my problem is with the number of point to give in each Talent to avoid having unequilibrated creation processes. And also i would like to redo the difficulty table to have more human level difficulties.

So is it clear, any comment?

[Mike Holmes]

Cyber:
NB: any number of cyber on a human being reduce its social and magic activity by the higher score modified by ALL the lower scores.
This rule is set to reflect the loss of humanity when you become a machine.
The cybernetics are specific in their use and effect, and i won't describe them here, but classical things, eye/ear replacement, bone modification, enhanced reflexes, muscle replacement, ...

The "humanity" rule here is unclear. At a guess: you reduce all social and magic abilities by the highest cyber rating augmented with all of the lower ones? Is that it?

If so, there are several problems with this, as I see it. First, it creates an unneccessary rule that' just too harsh. That is, if I have Cyber Muscles 10W, then all of my social and magic are reduced by 30? That's the same as saying, effectively, that you can't have both sorts. In effect, players will have one, the other, but never both. Actually they may have to take high social skills just to stay alive. That is, with even a 17 in "likable" a 30 rated Cyber would reduce a character to -13, or automatic failure in everything cybernetic.

Why not allow combining abilities as an option. The much simpler thing to say is that all cybernetics count as negative augments against magic and social skills, all the time. This means that the cyber muscles are a -3. Not terribly limiting, but not great. Now, if a character takes ten modifications at 10W, then he'll have -30, and have the real humanity problem.

Incidentally, an ability that can always be used as a negative augment in lots of situations is about the definition of a flaw. That is, you should allow players to take cybernetics for free at whatever level they like. So, sure I can take Cyber Muscles 10W6, but it means a -13 on everything to do with magic or social abilities. This way you keep the scale appropriate, too - Shadowrun characters should have abilities like this. No, it's not unbalancing. I think you'll find that when that character can come up against a robot with Large 10W7 or whatever, that it'll be precisely those human relations skills that prevent people from sending said robot against you that are most important in staying alive.

If a player doesn't want the humanity problem, they can buy the ability normally, not as a flaw, and not have the downside. This represents cyber that's small and well enough designed so that it doesn't have the dehumanizing effect.

Another way to go is to make people pay for their cyber, and just allow them to take a "Cyberpsychosis" ability (from Cyberpunk), that is a flaw that has the social problem. It also gives bonuses in situations like combat where the character has less compunction against killing. And it can be rolled against at times to see if the character goes crazy, too.

You can probably mix and match these, as none of them void the rules in any way.

Mike

[Bankuei]

Hi,

Of course, there would also be a couple of cybernetic options that offset at least the social problems, such as synthetic skin that looks and feels real, voice modulators, and for the real cyber-spy types, a program that analyzes the heartrate & breathing of the people you're talking to, so you can figure out if what you're saying is going over well or poorly.  So, like anything else in HQ, you'd just use them as positive social modifiers, even if they don't help your actual humanity overall.

The other neat thing that can work with HQ is that having specified tech knowledges can produce augments whenever dealing with such things.  So having Cybernetics Lore 10W2 means you get an automatic +5 in dealing with cybernetics in any fashion- including tricking out your own cyberware, or recognizing and taking advantage of the flaws in other people's gear.

"So, I'm walking down the street, and my Norton Megadaemon (10W) subroutine picks up this guy trying hack me wireless.  Too bad he didn't know I snagged some old code from way back and totally retooled my ICE(Programming Lore 10W3, +7 Augment).  Blinked my eye 3 times, counter-hacked him, took his cred card, and now he's playiing Tetris in his head for the next 3 days."

Chris

[Gizmo]

For cybernetics and social skills and magic,

yea i meant negative augment, sorry for the confusion.

I think i will use this rules:

cyber and magic: use the sum of his cyber score as a negative augment to any magical activity of the character, and health spells.

cyber and social: the cybernetic equipment being rather rare, most people will fear a man with a chrome arm or chrome eyes, depending of the situation PC can suffer from negative augment from their cyberequipment.

Cyberpsychosis: this trait is representing how much the mental status of the PC is affected by being more robot than human, its value is 0 augmented by all cybernetics. Whenever the character is suffering lethal damage or when he is facing a critical situation the Narator may ask for a cyberpsychosis roll, depending on the result the player may fell in madness or be simply berserk/catatonic/other for a period of time.

This sounds like a nice mix of your suggestions and my original idea.

Now my main problem is how to take in account the multiple actions possible with cyber-enhanced reflexes? allow double roll, and choose the best, allow double roll with defender penalised for the second, other suggestions

[Minx]

Now my main problem is how to take in account the multiple actions possible with cyber-enhanced reflexes? allow double roll, and choose the best, allow double roll with defender penalised for the second, other suggestions

My suggestion?

I wouldn´t bother...

Seriously, I think in most cases the standard HQ rules would suffice to describe CP combat. Incorporating specific Multiple Action rules isn´t necessary and would, IMO, only hinder the system...

M

[Mike Holmes]

For Cyberpsychosis, use the rule for defaults, 6, and modify up from there, not zero (this way, it's just a use of the rules, and not an unneccessary new rule).

Also, Minx is right. Does a character in HQ with Fast 10W4 get to roll any more than anyone else? Keep in mind that simple contests include all actions in the contest, and that "rounds" of extended contests are of abstract length. Speed is an advantage to succeeding simply because you, in fact, get to do more in the same amount of time that your opponent does.

This all comes out in the narration. So if your character has something like "Cybersynapses 10W3" then describe his success as, "You respond to his actions as though he were standing still, and land five blows before he even knew what hit him. He crumples to the ground bleeding from several well placed cuts." Or, failure against some "brick" would be, "You run circles around him trying to find some weak spot, attacking everywhere with no effect. As you come around he places his blade at just the right height to catch you, and even your hightened reactions can't stop you from running into it. You collapse in a bloody heap."

Mike

[NickHollingsworth]

Can I underline Mike's and Minx's warning.
Do not try to give extra actions to players just because their PCs have extra actions within the setting.
More to the point do not add any rules that try to simulate the way any specific powers work.

(1) There are infinite possibilities. It will be a load of effort and then wont cover all the situations you need in play. HQ is designed to allow whatever you want to be improvised in play *at the moment you need it*.

(2) You run the risk of concentrating on what these things mean in combat. This will distract you from the fact that combat is now relegated to just one of the huge number of possible contests. Players, especially ones that hae played CP etc,  may be bringing a mindset that says combat and or two other things are the real contests and the other stuff is winged. Avoid like the plague anything that could appear to confirm this mindset.

Re Humanity. If you were going to introduce any new rules this would be the place to do it as its the central theme of the game IIRC.
But avoid extra rules if you can and keep it simple.

If you are going to use Cyberetics as flaws then loss of humanity has to be a real and constant problem.

If you are going to let any cybernetics enhance social contests you must make a very clear dividing line between social contests and humanity issues. Humanity is the individuals self view, all cybernetics damage this and none can improve it. Anything else messes the theme up.

[Gizmo]

ok.
you 're right about the bad idea to enter the a new rule.

I'll stay to cybernetics being a flaw, whatever you have, using the base 6 augmented by all cyber implants. True for also the social enhancing implant, cause if the player will have just them, it will be its main implant, and therefore wont have a lot of them, so the flaw will be small.

I'll also abandon the possible multiple actions, as you mentioned, it will just give more problems and might risk to focus player on the fight rather than the adventure.

Else, i will soon post more exact keyword definitions.

thanks for the feedback. :))

[Gizmo]

Magic:

Need to choose one of the following keyword, with its specialisation in the case of the shaman and the adept:
Mage, Shaman (totem), Adept (way)

Mage:
->abilities: sorcery, invocation,  magic theory, astral plane
->knowledges: arcane knowledge, 6th world knowledge,
->Personnality trait: either discrete, simple, low profile or excentric, flashy style, look-at-me style
->Relationship: Talismonger, magician, shaman, fixer,
->Followers: spirits, pet
->Standard of living: average
->Equipment: small gun, hermetic library, magic fetish, magic focus
->Magical abilities: still to decide. not sure yet.

[Bryan_T]

I'd been wondering about this sort of conversion myself.  I'm trying to tempt my old gaming friends into a game of HQ, but I'm not sure that the Gloranthan background would be as easy a sale as the Shadowrun type world.

Thinking about cybernetics, I think to make cybernetics both appropriately powerful and appropriately detrimental, some should have multiple ratings.

For example, to show the difference between wired reflexes and boosted reflexes:

Wired reflexes: hair trigger reactions 5W, quick 5W.  

Boosted reflexes: quick 5W

In combat that augment is +6 versus +3.  In some other situation only quick would matter.  In other only hair trigger reactions would matter--and not always in a positive way, so this would simulate the described jumpiness of the street samauri.  Also, of course wired reflexes would contribute +6 to cyberpsychosis, while boosted reflexes would only contribute +3.

But you might not need Cyber-phychosis to simulate this, if you just give most gear appropriate, package-deal, limiting factors.

So a simple, discrete, cyber-arm might have:  powerful grip 5W, resist damage 17, lacks human sensitivity 5W.  A monstrous array of pistons and titanium plating might have: powerful grip 1W2, strong arm 10W, resist damage 10W, lack of human finesse 10W, scary 10W.

A simple cyber-eye might have: fine vision 15, low light vision 1W, resist flash 1W, lack of human response 1W.  While the super-tricked out eye might have: perfect vision 10W, telescopic vision 10W, infrared vision 1W, flash resistance 10W,  lack of human response 10W, obvious implant 10W, makes strange motions and noises 15.

Now, when you start augmenting the strangeness together....that will give you your penalty on social skills right there.  Of course you could just use the negative augment, but this way gives each piece of equipment its own quirks....gazing into your loves eyes is not the same when they are say "made in China", the pupil don't dilate, etc, but maybe the wired reflexes don't matter so much there.

You could also do this a bit like a key word: cybernetic arm 10W (mighty grip, resist damage, lack of human finesse), and then let heroes improvise (and possibly even cement with the right narration) other abilities from there.

Just some thoughts.

--Bryan