Converting the X-crawl setting to 4e

[HandofCrom]

I recently picked up the x-crawl campaign book, and realized 4e would be a perfect system for running it, so I was looking for tips on converting it. X-crawl takes place in a some what modern world with magic, where the big thing on TV is the extreme sport x-crawl, where teams of players do dungeon crawls for fame, glory, and soda endorsements.

1. Firearms are going to be important, though since they can't be enchanted or used in legal games, players probably won't use them much. What are some good resources for representing them, like if players help regular military in monster hunting or have exciting altercations with police or state sec?

2. What would be the best way to apply the tier system to this setting? For 3e, it recommended various divisions for players from levels 3 to 15, with the notorious and lethal unlimited league dungeons at higher levels. Can I adapt this same kind of system? Would play break down in paragon or epic tiers?

3. The main country of the setting is fascist, and players will inevitably have conflicts with it. What's a good way to represent it's forces and scale them appropriately? The government will have arcane and clerical support, but it will feel silly sending waves of epic super soldiers against epic level PCs.

I'm inexperienced with 4e, so I will appreciate any advice.

[Adoendithas]

Sounds cool.

1) Try using the various ranged-weapon enchantments, with some refluffing.

2 and 3 I'll need to look up some stuff before answering.

[M.c.P]

Funny, there's a game on another board I frequent that's actually running a 4e X-crawl game. (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3440749) (Caution! Bad language and rude people!)

But as for your questions...

1) I agree with Ad, picking out a nice ranged-weapon enchantment to represent "gun-ness" is a way to make guns special, but won't greatly overshadow melee types if guns are on the table.

2) Paragon and Epic tiers are pretty different from heroic, especially while building encounters, but the basic premises should work. I'd say that heroic through paragon work as the variety of leagues, but by Epic tier, the heroes have become global figures with attention from Emperor Ronald Himself, so perhaps it branches from straight dungeon crawl bloodsport at that point.

3) Depends on how far you want to run the game. If its 1-30, heroic I'd use generic local law enforcement and bureaucrats, with specialized counter-insurgency teams as the bigger fights. By Paragon, you've got significant army forces (Divine, arcane, and magical creatures!) as a threat. At Epic, the army is small beans, so you get the attention of the most elite of the Empire and the best Dungeon Crawlers from around the world, culminating in a fight with Robo-Ronald riding an ancient dragon in his grand court.

[HandofCrom]

I'll definitely look into how the goons are running it, that will give me some good solid advice for running.

I don't see guns being very viable for players, as they will be unavailable in the games, hard for them to acquire, and kind of outmatched by magical weapons, but the biggest thing will be creating powers for enemies that use them, like powers called suppressive fire, burst, sniper shot, etc.

If I want to keep it going to epic tier, I'll need to get them going crawling underground and fighting dark elves I think.

Thanks for the advice, it gave me plenty of ideas to play with.

[Gillric]

One thing you may want to take a look at is the 3rd party books -> Amethyst
It is 4e but modern/future so it would be able to give you actual guns to use.