I'm happily tooling away at a CyberPunk AGON conversion when I got to weapons. I'm planning on doing like the DAGON conversion and making cards for the weapons (but doing the illustrations with Pimp My Gun).

But I realized I am not sure what to do about defensive dice. Shields don't suit the genre at all, so I'm trying to figure out what to do instead. I'm thinking that perhaps automatic weapons will provide two dice that can be shunted around (like the sword) on the basis that you can either send out a hail of gunfire (2 attack dice) or try to suppress your opponent (1 attack, 1 defend).

This is the only part of the conversion I'm having issues with so far. I've even figured out how to stay true to the CyberPunk 2020 "flaw" of "the shopping game" where you constantly find the characters shopping for cool hardware mid-game by using "Toys" instead of "Divine Favor" and "Shopping" instead of "Sacrifice".

Hi,

happily, I'm working on a "modern" Agon hack too, based on the world of the videogame Unreal Tournament. About the shield, I'm using "dodge" instead. Dodge is the ability, like the DAGON hack, and the "weapon" too: you can choose to.. Let's say... "fight defensively", using Dodge like a weapon in one of your hands (as a shield in the original game), that is good enough for the science fiction/cyberpunk/gladiator genre.

To simulate modern combat I use the fallowing rules changes. First I have a change to positioning rolls. You may position your token, another token that has already went before you, take cover, or remove cover from a token that went before you. Instead of shield you have a defense skill. Cover starts as a d4 the first time you take it and move up or down die codes to a maximum of d8 depending on whither you take or remove it during the positioning step. Fate is relabeled Edge so when a character loses all of his edge he retires. Oaths are renamed favors.

For example.

John has a street Sam and Jenny has a detective, they are working a case against a lone Yakuza hitman that has been causing troubles in the city.  When they catch up to him a gunfight happens. The GM determines the range band and they start in is 4. The players and the GM place there tokens on the board. The players and the gm then take there weapon dice and place them in the appropriate hands. The three characters all have guns. Sam and the hitman have a heavy pistol(damage 2d8, range 2-6, Shots 7, AP2) and Jenny has a light one(Damage 2d6, range 2-6, Shots 6, AP1). So Sam, jenny, and the hitman place their dice in there attack hand. For the position test the characters roll athletics Jenny is first up and decides that she would like to not get shot so she choses to take cover giving her a d4 cover die which she places it in her defensive cover hand. The second person up is the hitman and he decides to remove Jennies cover, so she removes the d4 cover she had. Last is Sam who asks Jenny if she would be willing to owe him a favor in exchange for Sam giving her cover. She agrees, and gains a d4 cover again. After the position test player's divide there dice. Jenny decides she wishes to be defensive so she rolls her name, cover and defense ability when being shot at or attacked.

what do you all think?
Red

Sounds good. I suggest a different approach to the cover die: let people take a an action to find/move to cover, and that action success determines the size of the die.

I like the idea of the cover as a positioning option, but wonder if it would lead to more static combats.