running shadowrun with 5e rules?

[CyberThread]

Think it is doable?

[silveralen]

I certainly hope so, I'm currently home brewing stuff to do so a few months down the line. Doesn't seem hard honestly. Some weapons from the DM guide, bit of tinkering with the races, and it should be done.

The only part I'm trying to decide about is how to handle hacking. I'm probably going to move away from the full immersion variation because... It's effectively splitting the party and slows things down, going more AR style where the hacker mostly uses his abilities to change stuff in meatspace, with abstract skill rolls for full immersion hacking.

On the off chance you want to see (or are a player in my group unsure how this will go skeptical of it working out properly) I should have a rough player packet of my variation done in a week or two.

[CyberThread]

I certainly hope so, I'm currently home brewing stuff to do so a few months down the line. Doesn't seem hard honestly. Some weapons from the DM guide, bit of tinkering with the races, and it should be done.

The only part I'm trying to decide about is how to handle hacking. I'm probably going to move away from the full immersion variation because... It's effectively splitting the party and slows things down, going more AR style where the hacker mostly uses his abilities to change stuff in meatspace, with abstract skill rolls for full immersion hacking.

On the off chance you want to see (or are a player in my group unsure how this will go skeptical of it working out properly) I should have a rough player packet of my variation done in a week or two.


Matrix = astral plane

[Flashy]

Matrix = astral plane

But what about the literal shadowrun astral plane?

[AugustNights]

But what about the literal shadowrun astral plane?

With the way it works in Shadowrun, that'd probably actually be the Ethereal plane.

[Knaight]

It might be worth majorly reworking stealth subsystems as well. Shadowrun has a lot more emphasis there, and D&D's method doesn't do it justice.

[TheOOB]

Nononononononono

I can tell you from personally experience this is a TERRIBLE idea. I tried running SR with D&D rules years and years ago, back when I thought everything should use the d20 system, and I found the d20 system in an opposite of what SR needs.

D&D does heroic fantasy, SR is gritty cyberpunk, it just doesn't work. Easy spellcasting, an hp system, fair and balanced combat, none of this has a place in Shadowrun. Shadowrun is a system where a single gunshot can kill an experianced runner, and casting a powerful spell is a risk to your very soul. It's a system where is you are not born special you literally have to tear apart your body and soul in order to even survive.

There's 5 editions of Shadowrun out there, if you want to play Shadowrun, just pick one of those ones up.

Instead of adapting one system and making it do something it isn't good at, it's better to just use a system that was made for that.

[Malifice]

Nononononononono

I can tell you from personally experience this is a TERRIBLE idea. I tried running SR with D&D rules years and years ago, back when I thought everything should use the d20 system, and I found the d20 system in an opposite of what SR needs.

D&D does heroic fantasy, SR is gritty cyberpunk, it just doesn't work. Easy spellcasting, an hp system, fair and balanced combat, none of this has a place in Shadowrun. Shadowrun is a system where a single gunshot can kill an experianced runner, and casting a powerful spell is a risk to your very soul. It's a system where is you are not born special you literally have to tear apart your body and soul in order to even survive.

There's 5 editions of Shadowrun out there, if you want to play Shadowrun, just pick one of those ones up.

Instead of adapting one system and making it do something it isn't good at, it's better to just use a system that was made for that.

I really want to play SR, but the crunch past 1E just kills me.

[TheOOB]

I really want to play SR, but the crunch past 1E just kills me.

It's part of what make SR SR. I won't lie and say it's no over complicated. In paticular the people currently in charge of SR, Catalyst, are basically all completely incompetent. (I a related note I'm not a fan of the new 5e for the most part). I prefer 3e for my part, but any edition of SR is playable.

[Knaight]

I can tell you from personally experience this is a TERRIBLE idea. I tried running SR with D&D rules years and years ago, back when I thought everything should use the d20 system, and I found the d20 system in an opposite of what SR needs.

There's 5 editions of Shadowrun out there, if you want to play Shadowrun, just pick one of those ones up.

Instead of adapting one system and making it do something it isn't good at, it's better to just use a system that was made for that.
It depends on the system. 5e would require some major forcing, but if you dislike Shadowrun's system and like the setting, porting it is a good solution. GURPS could handle it just fine, to use just one example.

[Telwar]

It's part of what make SR SR. I won't lie and say it's no over complicated. In paticular the people currently in charge of SR, Catalyst, are basically all completely incompetent. (I a related note I'm not a fan of the new 5e for the most part). I prefer 3e for my part, but any edition of SR is playable.

I "grew up" on SR2, and actually really liked SR4, and ran that for a year. SR5's a bit of step backwards IMHO, but I haven't been keeping track of it that much, though I know the trend over in the Other Games board here is pretty negative on it.

Not sure that D&D 5th edition mechanics would work for SR. Actually, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work at all.

[silveralen]

Matrix = astral plane

There just isn't much need for that if I use the most recent setting. Just like I'm limiting the effect of astral space. They are clunkier portions of the rules that I'd rather not deal with, part of the reason I'm using 5e is due to simplicity.


D&D does heroic fantasy, SR is gritty cyberpunk, it just doesn't work. Easy spellcasting, an hp system, fair and balanced combat, none of this has a place in Shadowrun. Shadowrun is a system where a single gunshot can kill an experianced runner, and casting a powerful spell is a risk to your very soul. It's a system where is you are not born special you literally have to tear apart your body and soul in order to even survive.

Instead of adapting one system and making it do something it isn't good at, it's better to just use a system that was made for that.

My group is mostly brand new role players who are finally getting settled into 5e dnd. Pretty much any version of shadowrun is going to be matching 3.5 in the complicated system test. Using one isn't an option, I'm not going to subject my table to that. It's give use 5e or pick a different setting, and I'd like to try something different.

A lot of the DM rules (health kits to heal, modified rest systems) go along way towards bringing the gritty element in, and as for the "not born special" bit, physical adepts tossed that out years ago (in some editions being better than Street Sams ever could). I'm also okay lowering arbitrary death slightly, I'd rather have a system where I can toss the players in dangerous situations and not feel like I was dooming half of them. I haven't run the most recent shadowrun, but some earlier editions felt alot like that.

[TheOOB]

I'd rather have a system where I can toss the players in dangerous situations and not feel like I was dooming half of them.

Then you aren't playing Shadowrun. That's kind of the point. That's like trying to play Paranoia without humor, it's missing the point.

I understand your desire to stick with what your group knows, but I've broken a number of players, even new ones, away from D&D, and they've been happier for it. D&D is great at playing a certain type of game, but not other types of games. If all your group plays is a hammer, all your games look like nails, but there are better systems for different campaigns.

[Z3ro]

Then you aren't playing Shadowrun. That's kind of the point. That's like trying to play Paranoia without humor, it's missing the point.

I understand your desire to stick with what your group knows, but I've broken a number of players, even new ones, away from D&D, and they've been happier for it. D&D is great at playing a certain type of game, but not other types of games. If all your group plays is a hammer, all your games look like nails, but there are better systems for different campaigns.

Completely disagree; there's plenty of pink mohawk Shadowrun games out there, and it's perfectly possible to run a combat heavy, action-paced SR game. I should know, my group's done plenty. The system handles it just fine, as long as the players are prepared and know it's combat heavy going in, especially 4th edition.

ETA: 5th edition D&D should work fine, as long as you're going for a combat-focused game, rather than the more typical sneak in and sneak out, don't fire a shot game. I'd probably refluff a number of spells for hacking, like knock, arcane lock, and locate creature.

[silveralen]

Then you aren't playing Shadowrun. That's kind of the point. That's like trying to play Paranoia without humor, it's missing the point.

I understand your desire to stick with what your group knows, but I've broken a number of players, even new ones, away from D&D, and they've been happier for it. D&D is great at playing a certain type of game, but not other types of games. If all your group plays is a hammer, all your games look like nails, but there are better systems for different campaigns.

Not really, shadowrun is about magic meeting technology in the near future. Or that's what it is too me. The lethality is a minor issue, and considering how inconsistent the setting is (weird how anyone who has enough hacking ability to access the shadownet suddenly has their expected lifespan expanded dramtically) I can't say I consider it particularly needed.

Now, that's not to say shadowrun should be a game where they routinely escape unscathed, and I think the DMG more than allows an increase in lethality appropriate to what I'm looking for.

Paranoia certainly features humor, but to what degree? Are you familiar with the latest editions three different modes of play, allowing for varying degrees of weirdness, lethality, humor, and grittiness? Nor is humor required, once I took part in a campaign where the humor gradually dwindled, the DM gradually showing the implications of friend computer unfortunate situation (really think about the sadness of a computer programmed to help people, who genuinely wants to help people, so twisted by constant butchering of his code, a nuclear war, and ill maintenance that he is functionally driven to a barely functioning paranoid schizophrenic). Not every setting has to be run by the book.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Initially I thought this was just in the wrong forums, given there is a recently published SR 5e.
It depends on the system. 5e would require some major forcing, but if you dislike Shadowrun's system and like the setting, porting it is a good solution. GURPS could handle it just fine, to use just one example.This is one of the few times I would recommend GURPS to port something, due to its flexibility.
There just isn't much need for that if I use the most recent setting. Just like I'm limiting the effect of astral space. They are clunkier portions of the rules that I'd rather not deal with, part of the reason I'm using 5e is due to simplicity.



My group is mostly brand new role players who are finally getting settled into 5e dnd. Pretty much any version of shadowrun is going to be matching 3.5 in the complicated system test. Using one isn't an option, I'm not going to subject my table to that. It's give use 5e or pick a different setting, and I'd like to try something different.

A lot of the DM rules (health kits to heal, modified rest systems) go along way towards bringing the gritty element in, and as for the "not born special" bit, physical adepts tossed that out years ago (in some editions being better than Street Sams ever could). I'm also okay lowering arbitrary death slightly, I'd rather have a system where I can toss the players in dangerous situations and not feel like I was dooming half of them. I haven't run the most recent shadowrun, but some earlier editions felt alot like that.If they're new and averse to complication, how about running a simple system like FATE? A friend of mine ran a rules-lite shadowrun before and made it work pretty well.

[silveralen]

This is one of the few times I would recommend GURPS to port something, due to its flexibility.

If they're new and averse to complication, how about running a simple system like FATE? A friend of mine ran a rules-lite shadowrun before and made it work pretty well.

I fail to see any reason to use gurps, both in this situation and in a general sense. I've yet to find a game clunkier and more annoying to use game than gurps, and learning one system rather than several loses its appeal when the one system takes about the same time to learn yet is clunkier in actual play. D20 modern was a much better take on the universal system, and with 5e being a fairly simple d20 alteration it seems simple to go down the same path.

As for FATE, I don't own it and know little about it.

I honestly don't see any reason DnD 5e won't work. Guns are easy to add, and magic items can easily replace high tech items (magic item attunement can stand in for essence loss for example, and a taser could cast wand of shocking hands x times before needing a recharge) and the only real losses are those things which I actually want to avoid (the segmented play and to some degree the lethality). Some homebrew, but just minor modifications to races and maybe a few tiny changes to classes.

[TheOOB]

I fail to see any reason to use gurps, both in this situation and in a general sense. I've yet to find a game clunkier and more annoying to use game than gurps, and learning one system rather than several loses its appeal when the one system takes about the same time to learn yet is clunkier in actual play. D20 modern was a much better take on the universal system, and with 5e being a fairly simple d20 alteration it seems simple to go down the same path.

As for FATE, I don't own it and know little about it.

I honestly don't see any reason DnD 5e won't work. Guns are easy to add, and magic items can easily replace high tech items (magic item attunement can stand in for essence loss for example, and a taser could cast wand of shocking hands x times before needing a recharge) and the only real losses are those things which I actually want to avoid (the segmented play and to some degree the lethality). Some homebrew, but just minor modifications to races and maybe a few tiny changes to classes.

You can't replecate the feel of shadowrun with game mechanics designed to make players feel like heroes. If you really want cyberpunk d20, just make it, but you're not playing Shadowrun. Core mechanics like drain, spirit binding, recoil, weapon modification, drones, astral projections, multiple initiative passes, ect, just don't work with the d20 rules.

[silveralen]

You can't replecate the feel of shadowrun with game mechanics designed to make players feel like heroes. If you really want cyberpunk d20, just make it, but you're not playing Shadowrun. Core mechanics like drain, spirit binding, recoil, weapon modification, drones, astral projections, multiple initiative passes, ect, just don't work with the d20 rules.

You've never played a high karma shadowrun campaign?

As for the others, recoil can literally be negated to zero with a fully automatic assault cannon in some editions, with the right addons and/or stats, much less normal weapons, so this won't actually matter in many games.

Weapon modifications can be folded into magic items. All a smartgun system adds is a bonus to hit afterall. The vast majority of modifications big enough to matter can be added in.

Spirit binding... can be replicated using the summon elemental spell, including the potential to lose control. Which actually reminds me, I remember in 4th you could actually bind spirits to yourself (I think it was channeling maybe?) to become a walking tank if you knew what you were doing. Literally immune to small arms fire, quite hilarious.

Drain is hardly needed, having a variation where the simply run out of juice to toss magic is perfectly acceptable to me. I'm not trying to port the entire system to 5e, the entire point is the systems have a lot of chaff I can weed out. Same goes for multiple initiative passes, that can be stripped out. My opinion on astral projection has already been noted.

I like the setting of shadowrun. Magic meets technology, Cyberneticaly enhanced samurai orks, mega corporations that practice blood magic hiring black ops teams to sabotage rivals. Those are the cool things about shadowrun. The actual system? Meh, never impressed me. Having to track multiple initiative passes across astral space , cyber space, and meat space concurrently was painful, and doing them separately simply left a good bit of the party twiddling their thumbs. The games I enjoyed most as a player tended to home rule a lot of that stuff out, or heavily simplify it.

[Serafina]

I definetly agree that Shadowrun doesn't have to be gritty.
And a game doesn't have to be highly lethal to be gritty either.

That being said, i still think that D&D 5E is a horrible system for Shadowrun.

Thematically, magic is not an ability everyone can have in Shadowrun. You're born with it, and this luck-factor can cause a lot of resentment towards mages.
In D&D 5E, you're hard-pressed to find a character that doesn't cast some form of spells. And Ritual Casting is available to everyone for just a feat. Which is fine, but not really setting-appropriate for Shadowrun.

Magic items don't really have the modularity or versatility of the huge variety of equipment you can find in Shadowrun. Nevermind modifications - something that is often done on the fly by certain runners, impossible in D&D 5E.
You could heavily houserule it of course, but more on that later.

How are you going to represent augmentations?
They represent a large part of the "intersection between technology and magic" theme Shadowrun has, what with reducing essence to the detriment of magical ability (and depending on edition being affected by beneficial/healing magic).
Even for a purely mundane character, you have to budget your Essence. Atunement is somewhat comparable but...hardly gives the same feel to me.

A lot of activities Shadowrunners engage in just isn't supported by the skill system in D&D 5E either because no skill really covers it, or because its something that requires heavy specialization, something that D&D 5E doesn't really do with skills (the gap between untrained and untalented and "best possible" is not that large - again not bad, but not Shadowrun).

Spirits, Matrix, Drones, Augmentations, Gear, Skills....
All of those things would need heavy houseruling. And if you need THAT many houserules it's usually best to ask yourself "what is the system giving me" and if there is not a really good answer to that, chance to another system.

That system doesn't have to be any edition of Shadowrun.
Use GURPS or any of the other versatile systems.
If you don't want to overwhelm your players, use a simple generic system that doesn't carry as much baggage as D&D does. Go rule-light.
Use another Cyberpunk-game and houserule the magic (as opposed to almost everything).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

+1 to Serafina.

I will once again suggest taking a brief look at FATE (http://fate-srd.com/), a simple RPG that can handle most genres well by virtue of being generic and generating a good bell curve with FUDGE dice. Here's a blog post (http://mazecontroller.blogspot.hk/2013/07/fate-core-shadowrun-2050.html) detailing one successful attempt to convert Shadowrun into FATE rules.

[silveralen]

Well, I suppose I might as well just not do shadowrun. My group wants to keep with 5e as they really like the system and have started to get used to it, and they seemed excited to try out the shadowrun setting, but you all talked me out of it. I guess back to forgotten realms or something else similar to what we've been playing.

[Person_Man]

I played a lot of Shadowrun in the 90's (I have no idea which edition) and the video games that came out recently as well. Looking back on those experiences, my opinion is that the Shadowrun campaign setting is awesome, but the game mechanics are freaking terrible. They were really fiddly, simulationist, difficult to learn and manage, encourage min/maxing, encourage repetition of the same actions that you are optimized for over and over and over again, etc.

My opinion is that you should take the setting you enjoy most and move it into whatever game system you enjoy most. If that happens to be the Shadowrun world in 5E, then so be it.

Having said that, I would encourage you to take a look at Star Wars Saga Edition, since its easy to learn (its based on d20 system), the math is solid, and it has many of the same features as Shadowrun (technology, drones/droids, magic/The Force, a separate set of rules for playing in the Matrix/spaceships).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Simulating that fiction with fiddly bits is the point of Shadowrun's rule set. So if you don't like to get bogged down in those sorts of details, then yeah, you're not going to like those rules, but it's not like it failed at its goal. Game balance, on the other hand, I will give you.

And I will say, if you do want to stick with d20, I agree SWSE is your best bet.