Shadowrun 4e system in D&D setting?

[vollmond]

I expect this has been done, and wanted to see how it turned out. My group is the most familiar with Shadowrun 4e, though we're a few adventures in to a microlite20 (with lots of imports from 3.5) campaign.

I'm really very partial to SR, so I was thinking of trying to run SR in a no-tech setting, probably very D&Desque.

You'd have to drop the SR things relating to tech, like the Technomancer quality and all the 'ware and a large portion of the canon gear. This leaves non-magic characters at a bit of a lost, since they can't boost themselves with 'ware. Would it be enough just to give non-magic users a boost to physical attributes or something like that?

I think SR's spell selection works well enough. There aren't any teleportation/time-manipulation effects, but that's probably not a huge loss. Shamans can handle some druid-style animal interactions, and of course there's the Ally Spirit rules.

The other thing is, SR is pretty short on loot, since the magical gear falls into one of a handful of types of focus. This could be ok, depending on the group (I think it would be fine for mine).

So, thoughts? Input? Memories?

[kc0bbq]

I expect this has been done, and wanted to see how it turned out. My group is the most familiar with Shadowrun 4e, though we're a few adventures in to a microlite20 (with lots of imports from 3.5) campaign.

Earthdawn is the same world as Shadowrun in a different age, the system is a bit different, but there are points of continuity that are amusing if you know the shadowrun world well enough.

The wikipedia page isn't great but it gives a decent overview.

It's coming out of the age that the shadowrun world was being brought into prematurely in the Harlequin's Back mini campaign.

[vollmond]

Oh, I hadn't even thought of Earthdawn. Thank you!

[SatyreIkon]

Why don't you play Earthdawn?????

EDIT: OK, too slow!

Okay, seriously: Me and my group once tried to run a Planescape campaign on the Shadowrun 3rd ed. rules, and it worked quite well - once we used the expanded close combat rules, that is Shadowrun is just too focused on ranged combat.

Well, it was not too hard combining the principle of metaplanar travel with a setting like Planescape - the body stays in the Prime while the spirit travels the Planes. Worked quite well, as did the magic system. While they may be different in shape, a yugoloth is still nothing more than a modified shadow spirit, after all

About the loot thing: The rules for crafting magical items, anchoring spells and such like, are so extensive that it would not be a problem. Use your imagination, and everyone will be happy with their focus or their magic sword with anchored flame aura

One suggestion: Allow adept powers for all characters to buy at character creation. That balances things a bit

[Winterwind]

I imagine it might be useful to remove the limitation of foci (especially weapon foci) to awakened characters (if such a limitation still exists in 4e; I'm only familiar with 3e myself). That, or just have everybody be awakened to some degree.

[nows7]

I've been thinking about this off and on for about two months now...

I was thining about setting it in Ebberon actually.

The AAA mega corps are now the Dragon-mark houses (without the divine mandate of the actual dragon marks)
Dragon marks are just the "spell knack" quality.
Cyber-ware and Cyber doc's become magic items, and Artificers
Bio-ware becomes "bio-thramaturgy"
The matrix becomes the "aetheric".
Drones to Constructs.

I honestly don't care about ebberon enough to make the full conversion, but that's my 0.02 nuyen.

[vollmond]

Ok, obviously it's been entirely too long since I played Shadowrun. I had forgotten about most of this... ugh.

Many thanks all for your input, and I'll definitely be looking into Earthdawn as well.

[GreyMantle]

Shadowrun 4E being as well-designed as it is, it is quite possible to adapt it to a more traditional fantasy setting.

However, there is one major problem that a few people have noticed: without things like cyber or bioware, magic users will totally own just about any mundane. There are, however, a couple of possible solutions.

(1) As someone else said, give every non Magician the Adept special quality. (Though, seeing as a lot of adept powers are woefully overpriced, you might need to do a bit of adjustment there as well) This will really help comparative power levels, but will most likely make your games feel like (dare I say it?) a Naruto or something esque world as opposed to "Ye Olde European Fantasy." (This is obviously not a necessarily bad thing)

(2) Hugely overhaul the magic system so that it can't really do much in-combat (maybe ditch all damage dealing spells and make mind-controlling or whatever take a much longer time to complete). Mainly, sorcerers would be good at divining information and other tasks. This has the advantage of really giving games a myth-esque feel (like, say King Arthur) as opposed to a high fantasy game. But it means that magic users are probably going to be stuck doing very little in any combat encounter.

(3) Use most bioware and cyberware as written, only say that they're some sort of "magitech" or whatever. Maybe they're artifacts from a bygone age, or secret angel/demon technology (some groups could be radically opposed to their use). This probably requires the least amount of work, but would still force you to make certain assumptions about your setting that maybe you don't want.

[vollmond]

I think refluffing 'ware as magical items could work well. Could let Essence be a total replacement for D&D's body slots... you can only wear so much magical gear before it saps you completely. Wizards are restricted from using as much, because the gear derives it's power from the user's aura? I think this has promise. Maybe non-worn stuff (like the aforementioned flaming sword) is different in that it has it's own magical connection, not needing to go through the user.