Hy, after pondering on some questions for a while, I´ve finally kicked laziness ass and decided to start a post on the thing I´m currently working on. I´ll first describe whatI have at the moment, detailing my inentions behind it (or at least trying to), and then asking questions afterwards.

Recently, I had the chance to play in a Shadowrun game once again, the first since quite a while. (Finally found someone to run a game for me.) The campaign went the way of the Dodo, partly because of the group, partly because of the rules, but thats not really the point of this thread. After the game went belly up, I stopped thinking about SR for a while, working on Exalted-stuff or my own setting. A few month ago, I (finally) bought the Heroquest book and lended the "Heros Book", that I had bought earlier (They didn´t have the big one, so I bought the HB to take a look at the rules.) to my girlfriend. She read it and (to my surprise) got quite interested in HQ, asking a lot of questions, making characters, etc. She was the one who convinced me (after I mentioned the idea) that the Heroquest system would be a good fit for the Shadowrun setting and so I seriously started thinking about a conversion.

This conversion, as became soon clear, was going to be more of a revision than an "honest to the source"-conversion, but then I really appreciate the chance to change some things that have always bugged me in the setting. I started thinking about my intentions with the conversion and I came up with some precepts I wanted to base the conversion on.

1. The world is dark, cruel and oppressive place to live in.

There is no place for individuality and freedom in this grim world, where corporations rule everything and a humans life is just another asset.

2. Shadowrunners exist outside of the society that produced them.

Shadowrunners are non-persons, people without identity and life. They lost their place in in society, be it through their own mistakes or through external force, and now they are hunted and killed, like vermin. They have to live in hiding, ever on the run.

3. Shadowrunners are a revolutionary elite.

Not every person who loses their place in normal society becomes a society. Most just die, or live on the street, begging for scraps and change. Some even manage to start a small life again someplace else. Shadowrunner, on the other hand, are something else, something special, an elite. They are the revolutionaries who actively fight against the inhuman society they came from. They live and plan in the cracks of the world, the shadows, the sewers, the con-free zones, all the places where the law long arm can´t reach, and from there they fight the war. Some do it for revenge, some for the kick and some even out of idealism, but they all fight to wrestle every scrap of freedom from the people in charge, giving them shit whenever they can.


I´m sure there will be additions to the three above as the conversion develops, but they are the main points. Some chnages to both the Shadowrun setting and the Heroquest rules will be made trying to incorporate these precepts into the rules.

The Characters:

Heroquest as a system is built (at least in part) with the conventions of Glorantha in mind, some of which don´t fit into my image of a modern day cyberpunk/fantasy mix like Shadowrun. In my notes, I started thinking about the conversion in the same order as when someone starts a game: I started at character creation. (Also, for me, one of the "main-duties" of a game system is the description of the characters, so I started there.)

In HQ, everyone gets three keywords, which I think is a reasonable number, so I wanted to retain that number. But the Homeland/Occupation/Magic-breakdown didn´t really fit. Magic is the first problem, of course. While Magic exists in SR, its not something that everyone has, as in SR, the ability to use magic is a gift and very rare. So I´d need something else...

Homeland also wasn´t quite what I wanted, mainly because I thought it didn´t fit into a globalized, modern world like Shadowrun. The way I pictured it was that, especially in western/industrial societies, the division between for example a japanese buisnessman and an american buisness man is way smaller than between a ganger and a buisness man from the same country, while on the other hand a japanese ganger is going to be pretty similar to his american counterpart.

So with this in mind, I thought about having four categories of keywords, from which a character could choose three, with only some light restictions:

-Background: This represents the characters upbringing, education and social class and replaces the homeland keyword. Under it, there are different generlan keywords with some specialties under them, for example the "Street"-keyword would have "Gang", "Crime" or "Homeless" under it.

-Occupation: Thats pretty much the same as in HQ, only with modern occupation.

-Cyberware: I´m still unsure how there keywords will be structured and if it will be a single, generic keyword with maybe some specialties or if I will have different "archetype"-like keywords, like "Cybersam!,"Rigger" and "Decker".

-Magic: These are pretty simple and while I´m still thinking about the best way to modell the way the Shadowrun fluff describes magic, I think it´s going to be very easy to make up keywords, as there are already different categories of magic and magic users with easily identified attributes.

A player could then choose a specific combination of keywords that represents his character. I´m still unsure, but the way I plan it there will be very few guidelines that restrict the players choices. One keyword should represent the characters past life, when he was still a functioning part of society. (To incorporate precept #1.) Mostly, this is going to be a Background keyword, but it could just as well be an occupation or even a cyberware or magic keyword, depending on what the player thinks is more important for the character. An Ex-cop gone rogue could have an occupation keyword as his "past life", while "someone who worked his way up" would probably have the "Street" background keyword.

Another keyword should show why the character is something special, why he didn´t simply run or drank himself into the grave when he lost his previous life. What makes him able to fight against the system. Often, this is going to be a magic or cyberware keyword, or an additional occupation keyword.

There is more to it, but it´s already pretty late here, so I´ll quit for today and add more stuff tomorrow. Until then, here are some questions for you people:

What do you think? Do you think the keyword-breakdown I´m planning could work? (Did someone already try this once?)

Another thing (and what inspired the thread-title), I´m thinking of allowing to option of exchanging a keyword for a number of heropoints at character creation, so that, for example, a normal, non-magical human without cyberware could trade his third keyword for a number of Heropoints to "boost" the abilities he gets his other two keywords, making him extraordinarily talented in an are, which would then be what makes him "special". Now I´m, on one hand, not sure if this would work without "breaking" the system and on the other hand, I don´t know how many HPs a typical keyword would be worth, or more general: "How would you trade breadth for depth?" :)

Aaron

Aaron,

Your approach looks pretty good to me. I recently went through something similar when I converted a d20 campaign to Heroquest. As in your case, not every character needed a magic keyword, so, while they each had a background keyword (in most cases a homeland) and an occupation, I was really flexible about the third keyword. Two characters got a second occupation, one of them a magic keyword, and the third a keyword based on his relationship with the demon living inside him.

I don’t know if you’re planning to write up all the available keywords, but I wouldn’t go to all that trouble. As was suggested (by Scott/Scripty) on this thread, you can easily negotiate the associated abilities with your players. We did something like:

Player chooses 5 abilities, GM chooses 4
Player chooses 3 personality traits, GM chooses 1
Player chooses 2 relationships, GM chooses 1

You get the idea.

As for creating more specialized characters with only two keywords, it’s hard to say how many points a keyword is worth, though you could argue that if you had two identical keywords, they might augment each other to the tune of +2 to each ability.

This is not how I’d go about having more specialized characters, however. Instead, I’d keep with the three keywords, but make the third one a more specialized version of the second, if you see what I mean.

For example, say the character is meant to be a great cat burglar: instead of having a single occupation keyword of ‘cat burglar’, she might have one keyword, ‘thief’ that covers the general occupation, and then a second, related keyword ‘cat burglar’ that would have related, but more specialized, abilities. It would work better if none of the keywords in the specialized keyword are exactly the same as one in the general occupation. With this method the character would have lots of related abilities that would augment like crazy when she was really following her speciality.

Any use to you?

Charles

CCW wrote: ...relationship with the demon living inside him.

I don’t know if you’re planning to write up all the available keywords, but I wouldn’t go to all that trouble. As was suggested (by Scott/Scripty) on this thread, you can easily negotiate the associated abilities with your players. We did something like:

Player chooses 5 abilities, GM chooses 4
Player chooses 3 personality traits, GM chooses 1
Player chooses 2 relationships, GM chooses 1

You get the idea.

As for creating more specialized characters with only two keywords, it’s hard to say how many points a keyword is worth, though you could argue that if you had two identical keywords, they might augment each other to the tune of +2 to each ability.

This is not how I’d go about having more specialized characters, however. Instead, I’d keep with the three keywords, but make the third one a more specialized version of the second, if you see what I mean.

For example, say the character is meant to be a great cat burglar: instead of having a single occupation keyword of ‘cat burglar’, she might have one keyword, ‘thief’ that covers the general occupation, and then a second, related keyword ‘cat burglar’ that would have related, but more specialized, abilities. It would work better if none of the keywords in the specialized keyword are exactly the same as one in the general occupation. With this method the character would have lots of related abilities that would augment like crazy when she was really following her speciality.

Any use to you?

In the Shadowrun universe, wouldn't 'race' be a potential keyword?

For Trolls, Dragons and so on, it's a major part of who they are, for humans, not so much.

Also, how about 'job'? If you have someone in the campaign actually formally employed (say a corporate liason to a runner group), then they would have all kinds of access to resources and authority, on a much bigger scale than someone who was just 'calling in favours' from a previous occupation.

soru

soru wrote: In the Shadowrun universe, wouldn't 'race' be a potential keyword?

For Trolls, Dragons and so on, it's a major part of who they are, for humans, not so much.

Also, how about 'job'? If you have someone in the campaign actually formally employed (say a corporate liason to a runner group), then they would have all kinds of access to resources and authority, on a much bigger scale than someone who was just 'calling in favours' from a previous occupation.

First, I think you're generally on the right track. That is, what I've discovered is that applying HQ to other settings brings out thematic content of those settings - something the original system never does. Shadowrun is almost emblematic of this, I think. That is, you've done a spectacular job of identifying the premises intrinsic to the setting. These are in the books, but the problem is that between the system and the adventure structure that's standard, one never really gets to examine these premises. Instead they're just backdrop for action.

With HQ, I think these have a chance. But here's the thing - I think you've missed some of the connections between the system and the setting in this case.

For instance, in HQ one of the premises is that things are changing, and it all has to do with belief systems. Whose will win out as dominant, and what will it be like? This is why everyone has magic as a keyword. Because magic indicates the "third level" of what the character's belief is. That is:

Homeland = "What I believe in about where I come from."
Occupation = "What I believe in about what I do to survive."
Magic = "What I believe about the nature of the universe beyond me."

Note that homeland and occupation overlap here a tad. That is, they both are about the religious beliefs that the characters have.

From this perspective, Cyberware is magic. A belief in technology as the way to take on the world. As opposed to magic. Rigging is an occupation, but Decker is "magic" , too.

Check out how well the keywords map to your premises.

1. Cruel/Dark - I think your background hits this perfectly. Was the character's background cruel and dark? How so? I think Gang, Criminal, Homeless should be three different keywords to represent the shades of these things in detail.

2. Shadowrunners exist outside society - this is about ocupation. They all have occupations that are "outsider" occupations (or, with this conversion, you could allow other types, too). Is the character a theif? A warrior type? These all relate to how "legitimate" the character is.

3. Shadowrunners are a revolutionary elite - how does their belief system translate into special abilities? What is their magic? Not sure about this, but how about calling this their "survival" keyword. Basically, what special stuff has the character learned in order to be able to be a revolutionary (or, if not a runner, how do they make their way as a normie)?

So, while this encompases magic, it covers special technological abilities as well. Cybernetics, decking, and probably others I'm not remembering. That "something special" that you mention.

Given this breakdown, I wouldn't make any of these optional per se, no "trading." That sort of thing is dangerous with this system, and really not needed, IMO. Instead each character gets one of each keyword. Note, however, that when push comes to shove, in regular old HQ, it's possible to essentially skip taking a magic keyword. That is, the "specialized magic keyword" is sorta optional in that if you take the "base" level of any religion, you don't really have anything more than what the homeland gives you for free.

This can continue to be an option. Simply say that a character hasn't decided on which way he's going to be special yet, and let them develop into it. The basic tradeoff is between a more potent, less flexible character, one who's decided what means is best for survival in their revoliutionary environment, and one who hasn't yet decided, and could go many ways yet.


One of the neat things in creating a character with this system, IMO, is in how Homeland is linked to magic, but occupation is only secondarily linked. That is, one tends to learn their special abilities from a set based on where they come from, not on what they do for a living. Which means in practice that you get all manner of interesting "crosses" in terms of occupation/magic. For example, you create the typical "paladin" type guy in HQ by making a warrior who is an initiate of a warrior diety, or an orderly of a warlike order, or somesuch. But a warrior could also have Lanbril magic, making them more "brigand-ish". Basically, every archetype that you can imagine, and more, come about through these cross-types.

In your game, what that would mean is that you might have a warrior/decker. You might have an entertainer/cyberchick.

Note that for occupations, you should use things more like HQ - occupation should answer the question what the character does for money. Note that sometimes occupation and magic match, and sometimes they don't. For example, one can be an Adept, and be a Wizard as an occupation. Or one can be an Adept, and a merchant for occuptation.

The point is that "Decker" is not an occupation. It's like being an Adept, it describes a special ability. So the occupation in question might be "Burglar" with Decker as the special ability? Basically, what does the Guy with Decking use it for? Heck, on the other side with a matching occupation are "White Hats" who are also deckers protecting corporations. OTOH, one could have a non-matching occupation, like entertainer/decker.

I think going with this sort of designation system, you'll get the ability to do all of the archetypes that you would normally have, and a ton more to boot. Basically, instead or one-character/one-archetype, you get one-character/three-templates. Which leads quickly to far more combinations.

You're right on with the species keywords, IMO. That said, the player should consider his background and species together to see if any tailoring is needed. That is, while the species keyword itself probably won't change much, an Orc Ganger may, in fact, be slightly different from a Human Ganger. Given that they probably run mostly with their own race - depends a lot on how egalitarian you want to make the world seem.

One thing you may want to think about is whether there's some connection between background and "Survival Keyword" to parallel HQ. For occupation, I think it's obvious that there's a connection with the "allowed occupations" still being valid. That is, a ganger can become a thief or a warrior, etc, but not a decker or mage. That sort of thing.

With Survival, it's a tad more complicated. Essentially, each background would have to have a basica outlook on life. Note, this assumes that backgrounds are specific, not generalized. So no generic "ganger" would exist, instead you'd have "Seattle Slayers Ganger". That organization might be partial to cyberware as a special ability. This would inform the player's basic choice, his character's "religion" parallel. Then this would tend to produce characters who were cyberguys (though they can start at that default level, and move to something else during play).

As far as enumerating abilities in the Survival areas, you have a choice of how complicated you want to get. The simplest way would just be to say that, like any other keyword, it simply allows you access to the abilities underneath it. That is, you buy them just like anything else, none of the complexity of, say, an Adept learning grimoires and spells, etc.

OTOH, it might be fun to come up with the Cyberware mode, too. Perhaps there are certain categories of equipment that one can get into parallel to affinities in theism, from which the character can "stunt" (feat) different things. That's probably a terrible way to look at it, but you can see the required analysis emerging, no?

To match the "flexible" vs. "invested" character types, I'd keep at least two levels of investiture in each type. For example, for Cyber folks, they'd have a low level where maybe they've got some basic hardward plugins implanted, but few "real" abilites (like, perhaps, the augments of tradition charms). At the higher level, active use kicks in along with specific abilities impossible for a normal member of the species. Again, the lower level means that one can still make the easy choice to go one way or another in terms of overall Survival Keyword, but is somewhat less powerful in the interrim.

Secondly, and similarly, I'd keep concentration, for costs, and have it mean some sort of dedication to the process such that "retreat" is difficult. For the cyberguy, perhaps it's some framwork put in that makes other additions easier to install, but removal of which would be hard.

Just what occurs to me. Sounds like you have a good start on something that could be very fun.

Mike

Wow, great reply...

Mike, your Background/Occupation/Survival-spread was pretty much how I wanted to d it, although I may not have stated that outright. I totally agree with you about the "Survival is a matter of belief", that was pretty much my thought too.

I´m not sure about linking Survival too heavily with background, though. I´d probably do it (Because the idea of even more specific backround keywords is cool.) but only with "These are just guidelines and if the player wants to have a Survival keyword not fitting to his Background, I´d just let him." printed in bold. (I´m also stealing the name, by the way. ;) I know that most GM would allow something like that, even though it´s not outright stated, but I want to make sure. (Had too many discussions about stuff like that with pigheaded GM/Players.)

The same with Occupations. One thing I liked about the background keyword was that it made characters possible who, while now working high-pay jobs, still remember their necessary street-survival skills. (They are going to need them when they hit the street again.) It IMO fits the genre quite well.

As for specific organisations: While these can certainly be a background (as I said, great idea) I´m also playing with the idea of using organisations, gangs, rebell groups, etc. like Herobands. I mean, probably not with a guardian, per se, but similar. I thing the Abilities one gets for being part of a heroband (Awareness/Blessing/Defense) could equally work for gangs and such. This could represent unique fighting styles, technical gatchets one gets (or that the leader can use), hell, even things like reputation. So an especially cruel gang could have the Blessing (Or maybe Defense) "Intimidate through Reputation", simply becauseof their name. These gifts could even come from an actual guardian, if the group is magical in nature. (Free spirit, anyone?)

To match the "flexible" vs. "invested" character types, I'd keep at least two levels of investiture in each type. For example, for Cyber folks, they'd have a low level where maybe they've got some basic hardward plugins implanted, but few "real" abilites (like, perhaps, the augments of tradition charms). At the higher level, active use kicks in along with specific abilities impossible for a normal member of the species. Again, the lower level means that one can still make the easy choice to go one way or another in terms of overall Survival Keyword, but is somewhat less powerful in the interrim.

Secondly, and similarly, I'd keep concentration, for costs, and have it mean some sort of dedication to the process such that "retreat" is difficult. For the cyberguy, perhaps it's some framwork put in that makes other additions easier to install, but removal of which would be hard.

Minx wrote: I´m not sure about linking Survival too heavily with background, though. I´d probably do it (Because the idea of even more specific backround keywords is cool.) but only with "These are just guidelines and if the player wants to have a Survival keyword not fitting to his Background, I´d just let him." printed in bold. (I´m also stealing the name, by the way. ;) I know that most GM would allow something like that, even though it´s not outright stated, but I want to make sure. (Had too many discussions about stuff like that with pigheaded GM/Players.)

As for specific organisations: While these can certainly be a background (as I said, great idea) I´m also playing with the idea of using organisations, gangs, rebell groups, etc. like Herobands.

I mean, probably not with a guardian, per se, but similar.

I thing the Abilities one gets for being part of a heroband (Awareness/Blessing/Defense) could equally work for gangs and such.

Yeah, something like that could work for most "magical" Survival keywords (ie.: Actual magic, cyberware, decking, rigging...). On the other hand, "mundane" Survival stuff would probably work best as one keyword with mostly normal abilities/relationships/virtues attached. For example "Hotshot" could be a "mundane" S-keyword and describe a guy whose dedication to his gun-skills has reached a fanatical level, so that he can, partly, compete with cybered or magical people in his field.

I mean, I can understand how this can prove usefull, because it leads to this "dilemma" of "should I specialise and loose every other magic or should I keep my diversity, to be prepared...", but I´m not sure if this fits. But then, I have a hard time coming up with a way to do "two level keywords" without a concentration meachnik of some sort...

But I´m still figuring ot HOW I really WANT to do magic/cyberware/stuff, so...

Mike Holmes wrote: Well, again there's the school of thought that says just do one overall mechanical method. For example, it has struck me that the animist method really can represent anything well. For example, as mentioned above about "demons," the cybernetics have their own objective rating, but your relationship with them determines how well you can unleash them properly. Y

ou could use this for everything except Magic, which could use the Adept method.

Minx wrote: Of course, but then I´d have to try and think how Strong is a Cyberarm and really how Hard is dermal lacing... :/ It was an idea I´ve had quite early, but because of this problem, I didn´t really pursue this line of thought further.