I am musing over the idea of a gritty-cyberpunk style planescape adventure and am wondering what system might be best to use for running it?
Any suggestions?
Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
Wed, 2010-05-19 20:46
#1
Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
Thu, 2010-05-20 11:32
#3
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
I can't think of any reason Shadowrun couldn't be ported over with minor adjustments, seeing as it already has magic fully integrated. Mind you the system emphasizes your criminality in relation to Megacorps, so much of it deals with the security angle and doesn't treat characters as heroes particularly, but that sort of goes with the setting.
Thu, 2010-05-20 23:38
#4
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
Yeah, I thought of Shadowrun as well. You'd be discarding a lot (or all) of its own setting, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The mechanics would work fine as far as I can tell... might have to add some different metahuman types and variants though.
Fri, 2010-05-21 00:09
#5
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
Really the main problem I would see would be the transfer of various monsters to Shadowrun statistics. That would be rather time consuming, making on the fly conversions difficult to do. Also, there could be some balance issues especially if you try to translate D&D spells to the Shadowrun system, as Shadowrun spells work on a very different principle and have a much different power curve. Namely, combat spells are way easier to swing in Shadowrun and can be used very frequently with comparatively high degrees of power (this is to compensate for the existence of firearms), but illusions are incredibly intensive. High level D&D spells essentially would have to be classified as Metamagic IMO as opposed to typical spells. All in all though if you took the time it is 80% ready to go out of the box.
Fri, 2010-05-21 01:17
#6
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
I was thinking about SR myself.
One thing I was thinking of was using the priority system and adding belief as another priority. Belief would be used to give players faction abilities and stuff like that.
Also another priority would add another priority level, which may be good as there are a lot of races in Planescape and someone would want to play a celestial.
Though the magic balance is a bit tricky. Monsters can be worked out if you don't go for a direct "conversion" but instead go for what feels right for the type of monster you're putting up.
Fri, 2010-05-21 01:55
#7
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
| Priorities | Race | Magic | Attributes | Skills | Resources | Belief |
| A | Lesser Celestial | Full Magic | 35 | 75 | 2,000,000 | 5 |
| B | Khaasta | Full Magic | 30 | 50 | 1,000,000 | 4 |
| C | Tiefling, Aasimar | Aspected, Adept | 27 | 40 | 400,000 | 3 |
| D | Elf, Troll | Aspected, Adept | 24 | 34 | 90,000 | 2 |
| E | Dwarf, Ork | none | 21 | 30 | 20,000 | 1 |
| F | Human, Kobald | none | 18 | 27 | 5,000 | 0 |
Fri, 2010-05-21 04:32
#8
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
Personally I hated the priorities system, and tended to use the BeCKs system that a player came up with. Basically you were allotted karma points to build your initial character which prevented min/maxing (it takes huge chunks of your build to max out skills or stats, encouraging a more balanced approach with limited specialties), and allowed for much more realistic character builds since low level skills cost little karma. With a system like that, you could easily integrate faction abilities and simply just have them cost an allotted amount of karma.
If you are interested, here is a link. Mind you it is designed for third edition. I never played 4th and wasn't particularly enamored with the change of the core system.
Fri, 2010-05-21 16:03
#9
Re: Best System for Cyberpunk Planescape.
I once did some cyberpunk in Sigil, didn't make it pure cyber, but futurized the setting a bit with big business, computer systems, modernized security and the like. I simply used 2E DnD and allowed for a broader definition of abilities - thieves could pick locks to hack into computers, find/remove traps to bypass security systems, etc.
Me, I prefer something, simple that I can simply alter through description and flavor text. Any system can be used for just about anything with a little flexibility. I'd be more concerned with Cyberpunking the factions and that sort of thing.
Not sure I could speak to this specifically, but Tri-stat dX and Savage Worlds are both good settingless systems that could probably be adapted to any form of Planescape easily enough. The PDF for Tri-stat might even be floating around free, if not, it's cheap, as is SW.