I've had this idea in my head for some time, thought I'd put it into action, now that Strange Eons 2.00 is up and running.

This is just a call out to fans of Bioshock for now, any ideas/concerns/queries? All are welcome.

Right now I'm just fiddling with a few cards and locations, just to get the idea of the language and what parts of the game will stay and what will need to be modified.

I'll throw up some of the things I've been tossing around soon.

Here are a couple of early ideas -

It will be set somewhere just before the civil war of '58 (for those who know the game.)

Gates and clues will be replaced with something like problems and influence. You are a gang/group/organization in Rapture, trying to gain some territory to call your own. You gather influence, by helping out certain causes, solving mechanical problems, etc. Then when a problem (Gate) arises, you use your skills to get rid of it, and cash in some influence to gain 'control' of that location.

Flying creatures could be replaced with 'hiding' monsters. Those sneaky Splicers sneak off into the darkness then drop on you when you least expect it. Maybe multiple 'hiding spots' around the board?

Two forms of currency - Cash and Adam. Eve could replace sanity?

As I've said, these are just rough, rough ideas.

I'll post some things soon, and thanks for reading!

Well, having finished a full conersion game of this sort recently, it is a lot of work.

Here's the finished product:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

And here's the discussion section:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

If you're setting it in the civil war, maybe you want to ditch cash altogether. Adam is the only currency anyone cares about.

-Frank

I'd have 'Adam' as Stamina and 'Eve' as Sanity. Cash can be exactly the same.

A few thoughts.

The main game rules work pretty well for describing splicers wandering around rapture. The neighbourhoods just invent themselves: Arcadia, Point Prometheus, Fort Frolic etc. You can replace the shops with specific locations for the vending machines - so there's only one 'Gatherer's Garden' location, for example. That doesn't really represent what Rapture is like, but unless you integrate commerce into the rules more fully, you're going to have to put shops on the board somewhere so - actually wait, aha! Inspiration strikes! Don't have 'item decks' - the decks represent the machines you use, which are present all over Rapture. So there's a Gatherer's Garden Deck, a U-Invent deck, an El Ammo Bandito deck, etc, etc. Sometimes they malfunction, or are rigged - so there are one or two 'event' cards in each deck which drop live grenades on you, like that rigged machine in Hephaestus Core. There could also be blank 'out of stock' cards.

You could just replace 'spells' with 'plasmids', but that might be a bit less interesting since all you'd really be doing is renaming everything. So instead, you could reorganize the skills and change how they work and what you use them for. Different plasmid types can become skills, so there's a sort of 'elemental' theme to the combat. For example, the six paired skill tracks could become Telekinesis & Mind Control (an amalgam of hypnotize big daddy and the other behaviour-changing powers, security bullseye and whatever), Fire & Ice, and then a third set of slightly odder ones - probably Electricity & Bees.

Monsters mostly represent other splicers and security machines. Re-balance the game so that monster-fighting is a bigger deal, then instead of monster movement types, the monsters' borders dictate a more complex system of resistances and immunities. For example, the monster's border indicates what plasmid (skill) it's most vulnerable to, and It's resistant to three of the others and immune to the remaining two. (You'd probably need to put a diagram on the board, showing this; alternatively, it could be more easily done if you plan to completely design the monster markers anyway).

Players are playing as Splicers (rather than investigators). The Ancient One is replaced by a 'King of Rapture' (needs a snappier name). This could obviously be Andrew Ryan or Fontaine, but it's not hard to imagine alternative scenarious. Really it's just a question of who controls the Adam supply. Obviously it could be Tenenbaum, Suchong, Sander Cohen, or just some other ones you make up. The AO awakening represents that person becoming the Ubermensch, or whatever that final boss is meant to be. Big Daddies and Little Sisters are distinctive monster types which are 'modified' by the AO, so they basically fill the role of Cultists, albeit much more dangerous.

Disfigurement / insanity cards ought to be built-in punishments for over-splicing, so when you run out of Adam or Eve, you draw a card, and they work like injury/madnesses combined with black goat corruptions.

Frank's right though, these total conversions are a lot of work... in many ways it might be easier to make a Bioshock board game from scratch...

@Frank Yeah, I downloaded your Shadowrun Horror as inspiration, stellar work! And this is just a side project for me and a couple of my friends right now. It's just fun brainstorming ideas!

@TheCorinthian Jeepers, you've got a lot of ideas there! Thats awesome! I like them, but changing the skills tracks to represent different plasmids doesn't seem like the best route. I'm placing the game pre-civil war, not everyone was a full blown cracked out splicer. Though I like the madness/injury for splicing too much. "I'm TOO spliced up... I'M TOO SPLICED UP!"

A "Hack" Skill or ability will be a must.

I thought plasmids could be more like weapons, but that require the Eve to function. Also I thought they could be scaleable, more Eve you put in, the more powerful the effect, to sort of represent the different levels of the Plasmids. Or when you shop at a gatherer's garden, you can choose to upgrade a plasmid you already have instead of shopping for a new one.

And REALLY sweet idea with the booby trapped vending machine decks, truly truly inspired man!

ADrivenMan said:

Yeah, I was pretty much just thinking things up as I typed them... changing the skill tracks into plasmids probably wouldn't work, if only because you wouldn't have anything left to use as movement/sneak etc. Still, you could always replace the Lore/Luck track with something plasmid-related and you wouldn't have to change anything fundamental about AH in order to make it work. Maybe the last skill track should be 'Adam/Eve' - although it wouldn't make much sense for them to be opposed to each other.

The more I think about my vending machine idea, the more I think it really might work. It might restrict the types of encouters you could create (since vending machine decks would replace item decks, so if an encounter required you to just find an item on the ground it wouldn't make much sense for you to draw an 'out of stock' card) but that's the sort of problem you could just ignore. It's not like it'd make any less sense than the idea of finding tasks and missions lying on the ground in ordinary AH.

(Word of warning though: I don't know if you read the Strange Eons thread, but Frank's 'Shadowrun Horror' game conversion just got served with a cease-and-desist letter by FFG. Total conversions like this one might have to tread carefully in order to avoid making FFG's legal bods nervous. I'm not saying you shouldn't go for it, but proceed with caution. I suppose if they do tell you to stop making a total conversion, you could always just make Rapture as an expansion board for AH. It wouldn't make much sense, but it'd be better than nothing, and like I say, the AH rules do lend themselves pretty well to Bioshock-style wanderin' and splicin'.)