What system to play Shadowrun "setting"?

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Jan 25, 2023 9:57 am
gnomius says:

And what I love about Fate is that you can slot in ANY piece of rules you find missing very easily. :-)

You don't like the magic system, or want to add options to the existing one? You got it. Want a more deadly combat system? Easy peasy. Hacking rules, vehicles, character options... Everything uses the same baseline and it's easy to tweak thanks to the Bronze Rule.
Interesting. Can you give any brief examples what you mean by that? Are there any hacking rules available as modules in this system?
Jan 25, 2023 10:00 am
ctme2000 says:
There's a setting for the Savage Worlds system called Sprawlrunners that I hear is basically Shadowrun with the serial #'s filed off.

Cy_Borg is supposed to be pretty good, a cyberpunk spin on the popular Mork Borg.
And... I think that:
WE HAVE A WINNER
at least for me. I once saw this expansion, but didn't get it so far and forgot about it. I like SW ruleset a lot so it would be a perfect fit to have some crunch but in still reasonable dose.

Did anyone played/used/read this expansion?
Jan 25, 2023 12:21 pm
I have the book but haven't played it. SW is a bit too simple and "heroic" feeling for Shadowrun to me. The great appeal to Shadowrun is how gear and stats and cybernetics increase your dice pool, but SW has a very limited dice range and you just don't get the granularity. But that's just how it feels to me, opinions could differ. Genesys comes the closest because it also has dice pools and there are dice upgrades from green to yellow, so it is easy to see the impact of all your gear and such.
Jan 25, 2023 1:09 pm
Savage Worlds, for me, is really inconsistent with how the dice function. The exploding die mechanic can make for exciting possibilities but the due progression really doesn't make characters more competent as the progress. SW is a good 'pick up game' or one with limited progression and ShadowRun is all about the fiddly details of gear and implies that the Runners are at least consistently competent.
Jan 25, 2023 3:16 pm
Pedrop says:
Interesting. Can you give any brief examples what you mean by that?
This is a sample list of some hacks out there (some of the links are dead, as they used to link to Google Plus content):

Important FATE links

There you can find several examples of almost anything you can imagine, like:

57. Dresden Files Hack

59. Allomancy...the basics

60. Discussion on how to do the Matrix in Fate

62. Magic Of Krynn

65. Avengers(pregens)

75. Magic:The Gathering

77. Rogue Trader Fate Hack

81. Marvel Heroes Statted up in Fate and FAE

82. Dinosaurs

84. Rules for Lost Civilazations

91. Shadowrun Ten Archetypes for Fate Core
Jan 25, 2023 3:48 pm
Those were fan-made, another (more official) example is the Fate System Toolkit, with some example Subsystems:

https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/subsystems
Jan 26, 2023 11:00 am
nezzeraj says:
I have the book but haven't played it. SW is a bit too simple and "heroic" feeling for Shadowrun to me. The great appeal to Shadowrun is how gear and stats and cybernetics increase your dice pool, but SW has a very limited dice range and you just don't get the granularity. But that's just how it feels to me, opinions could differ. Genesys comes the closest because it also has dice pools and there are dice upgrades from green to yellow, so it is easy to see the impact of all your gear and such.
witchdoctor says:
Savage Worlds, for me, is really inconsistent with how the dice function. The exploding die mechanic can make for exciting possibilities but the due progression really doesn't make characters more competent as the progress. SW is a good 'pick up game' or one with limited progression and ShadowRun is all about the fiddly details of gear and implies that the Runners are at least consistently competent.
Those are really interesting remarks about SW. I didn't think about that in that way. And it seems very important. You are right, what is a point of installing an artificial arm if your chances of ripping some monster head will be almost the same? Or you could do it with your previous dice for the stat?
I wonder if Sprawrunners have addressed it even in slightest degree. But it indeed seem hard to do with SW rulesets.
As for Genesys I like a promise of the narrative dice A LOT, but I'm just trying the system in one of the games I'm participating in... and building the dice pool(probably without possibility of having live conversation with GM....) seems like quite a chore right now. Maybe it will go away with time.
From the other side: d6 pools in Shadowrun also seam ridiculous in the number of d6s you will be rolling and compering with other big pools of d6. I haven't ever played it, so it is only my theoretical observation/fear but isn't it that way? But indeed it allows for nice granularity of rising chances with each new bonus from stuff.

So what other rule system could provide proper granularity for such needs of Shadowrun setting?

It looks that Cyberpunk 2020/RED with its stat + d10 AND many numerical modificators can provide enough things to make a proper influence on the chance of each roll, without going "big dice poll" way? Do you agree guys? Or d20 could provide even higher granularity?

And there is this Cortex Prime with more granuality then SW, but would this be enough for Shadowrun? Apart from that it still seems a little convoluted/general for me as system. Will have to check how it works in Firefly RPG... someday.
Jan 26, 2023 11:05 am
Quote:
And it seems very important. You are right, what is a point of installing an artificial arm if your chances of ripping some monster head will be almost the same? Or you could do it with your previous dice for the stat?
The point is flavor. Plus potentially in Savage Worlds, you could have fun little bonus effects, like edges ic you really want.

I don't see how this kind of granularity like in SR adds any fun, but through a number of debates on the topic of SR replacements and mech games, I have realized that I am by far in the minority there.
Jan 26, 2023 12:44 pm
SR does indeed get to pretty high dice pools where some characters are basically guaranteed success, while other characters have almost no chance of success. You'd need to introduce caps (which I believe some editions of SR uses) that limit the amount of dice any pool can get. You could also limit stats as well. I don't know of many systems that can handle SR other than SR. My best advice is to find one of the many editions that seems the most useful and then add some house rules to fix whatever doesn't work for you.
Jan 26, 2023 12:59 pm
I once considered doing a splice of Modern AGE, Fantasy AGE and Cyberpunk Slice (a Modern AGE sourcebook) to run Shadowrun but as most such ideas I never got further than buying the books and reading them (well... some of them... Modern AGE at least... Skimmed it).
Jan 31, 2023 6:20 am
Furmyr says:
I once considered doing a splice of Modern AGE, Fantasy AGE and Cyberpunk Slice (a Modern AGE sourcebook) to run Shadowrun but as most such ideas I never got further than buying the books and reading them (well... some of them... Modern AGE at least... Skimmed it).
Interesting as... from the QuickStart rules for Modern AGE:
Quote:
Sometimes the circumstances of a test will make it easier or more difficult than normal, giving a bonus or penalty to the total. Such bonuses are rarely greater than +3, and penalties rarely worse than –3.
Doesn't seem as too much granularity - that we are talking here about?? So where have you seen it? In stunts and stunts points? Hmmm... seems as possible to work out. How did they approach it in this Cyberpunk Slice book?
I mean: The granularity of incorporating many kinds of augmentation at once in one test?
Jan 31, 2023 6:29 am
And there is this Fragged Empire system - that seems a little similar in setting assumptions to what we have in SR - and it also use 3d6 + have interesting combat, so maybe they figured it out in this system for "just" 3d6 ruleset?
Jan 31, 2023 12:50 pm
Having strongly tried as many cyberpunk games as I can get my hands on, my resigned conclusion is that nothing really replicates Shadowrun. But that's an answer I personally dislike, so I've rationalised that which setting to play SR with depends on what you're hoping to get out of an SR game.

If it's the crunch that matters most in giving the full flavour of a cyberpunk game, it's best to play something like Cyberpunk Red (or an older edition of it). If it's the classes and archetypes that give the most feel, (ie street sam, hacker, decker, adept, etc), then most of the PbtA variants work pretty well, especially if it's one whose character moves define and characterise distinctly what those characters mean.

It's the magic part that I find hardest to attempt to replicate from another system. A powers-based system like Savage Worlds I feel puts too much focus on the distinctness of the powers, ie, the crunch is in the customising of the powers, not so much the gear and equipment. Lots of GM restrictions are needed just to say what is allowed to work and what is not. I like your example about installing a cyberarm: functionally in SW it makes no difference whether we call it a cyberarm or not, it's just a strength or speed boost of some sort.

Having most recently tried to run 6e, I'd fall back on 4e/5e, but be very specific about what to allow and what not, and I'd throw away a bunch of ovely specific rules. The complexity of too many rule interactions and number of splatbooks make it very hard to play a 4e/5e game enjoyably.
Jan 31, 2023 12:59 pm
Splatbooks are often the downfall of many systems. They usually add too many new systems and rule interactions to incorporate into already complex systems.
Feb 2, 2023 3:02 pm
And now - coincidentally - we have this Cities Without Number campaign on KS. Do you think it could be any good for Shadowrun? It is supposed to have magic also. Anyone played Stars Without Number?
Feb 2, 2023 3:05 pm
I saw the KS for it advertised and now I'm curious about how SWN plays as well.
Feb 3, 2023 9:29 am
It runs very rules light and set up to play it hexcrawl style with tables to randomize most everything the group comes across. I got the chance to play in a sadly short lived SWN game last year. There's also Worlds Without Number as a fantasy version which can be a source for metatypes. I don't know how compatible the three games will be.
Feb 3, 2023 11:58 am
Savage Worlds also has a setting called Interface Zero 3.0 for SWADE. It’s a very cyberpunk game with oodles of high tech gear, human augmentation, hacking, and all of the other good stuff. The only thing missing is magic and meta humans. This being Savage Worlds, however, you can very easily port those elements into the game. Obviously, SWADE is nowhere near as crunchy as Shadowrun, so it won’t really feel the same. Still, it’s a setting that I recommend checking out. Might be able to combine it with Sprawlrunners to get the most out of the SW cyberpunk material.

Savage Worlds also has a setting called Nova Praxis which has strong cyberpunk and transhuman elements, though that game is much closer to Eclipse Phase than Shadowrun.
Feb 3, 2023 6:00 pm
I even have Interface Zero 3.0 for Swade. When did I get that? Sept 2021. Interesting...
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