I had started some basics for a Shadowrun conversion of EotE way back and then when this system was announced I put that on pause to let them do a lot of the work for me. I'm most of the way through the Genesys book and thrilled so far. Most of the conversion is probably going to be straight forward and I have pretty good ideas for how I want to build things, but I was hoping for a bit of advice on balancing one of those ideas to keep a bit of flavor of the shadowrun world.

In that setting, there is a bit of a risk/reward aspect to magic. By their default rules, you have a magic attribute and can select how powerfully you cast a spell. If you cast it beneath the magic attribute, any negative hits on the roll do non-lethal damage to you, but if you cast it above your magic attribute you suffer any of those negatives as real damage. Basically you can put yourself on the line to cast a spell beyond what you probably should be able to.

Obviously in the more narrative system I am looking to simplify that a lot. I think the static 2 strain to cast a spell works just fine as the non-lethal equivalent. For the more risky version of casting, I was considering the idea of having them being able to lower the difficulty die by one if they take wounds to do so, however this is where I'm unsure what would be a balanced way of doing this. Changing the two strain to two wounds to lower the difficulty would be the simplest rule, but is that fair or overkill? It gives a chance of success on spells that are harder and also means its more likely you will have advantages left over to trigger abilities, but its a fairly sizable hit. Is a 1 for 1 more in line? Or should we leave some randomness to it and say something like 'you can lower the difficulty of casting by 1, but any uncanceled threat are taken as wounds'?

Love to hear some thoughts and ideas on this!

There is a discussion on Blood Magic that has some of the same ideas. I would approach this as a talent string (Full Commitment, Improved Full Commitment, whatever).

Hello Tarlane,

Let's assume we are old timers. All my shadowrun playtime come from the SR2/SR3 rules. SR4 was broken, and don't get me started on SR5 which is even worse.

I also done some work starting from EoTE :

My current thoughts are :

• Shadowrun used to have 8 stats. I think we can either add the missing ones or keep to the Genesys way. My notes said to change the stat to take the Shadowrun standards.
• Add Essence in, this Shadowrun stat is essential to the shadowrun feel
• Initiative passes, the Genesys rules don't cover ultra fast character. Spells, or powers for physical adepts, or augment spells can increase the number of actions you take each round. I think I'll go up to 4 additional passes, but remember that the feel will be different: after all SR rounds were 3 seconds or so and Genesys rounds are 3 times longer. There is a call to make there, either going the SR2 way; the SR3 way or the champions way : prepare a table with the number of actions each character has showing 5 columns (for 1 to 5 actions); 1 action going only on 3rd. 2 going either 3 and 4, 3 going 2,3,4, 4 going 2,3,4,5 and 5 having an action each column. Then depending on your number of actions, you go when you have to. So, you can only act in step 1 if you have 5 actions per round; you can act in step 2 if you have 4 or 5 actions etc. I think that faster character should act before slower ones. It's bad game balance but life isn't always fair.
• Cybernetics, I would use simplified cybernetics rules, with SR essence costs, and keeping in mind the alpha/beta/gamma levels dramatically increasing costs and rarity.
• Bio, using the Stamina stat as upper limit, again inspired by the SR3 material.
• Races
  • I would simply drop the "special" powers of races; grant them the talents that fit
  • Stats increase and stat max are racially impacted
  • as we added more stats, it might be smart to increase available xp at chargen
• Soak / Defense / Wounds
  • SR2 soak rolls - gosh this is a tough call. I LOVE this system but it will generate a lot of narrative dice rolls using Genesys so I came to be in favor of dropping it altogether. But I would prefer revamping the wound system of Genesys to get a more SR-y feel.
  • The dice system is designed to generate extra effect from rolls, so rolls are to be kept to a minimum. Thus an Attack must resolve damage immediately.
  • I would love keep the L/M/S/D ratings for weapons, but then how to apply soak ? My notes read as follow : adv to activate passives; threats can be used to reduce damage if there is armor, Fumbles can also used to generate glancing hits on armor (aka no damage). I used to think that weapons should do Lx/Mx/Sx/Dx damageM second number being the number of successes required to increase damage level. Thus, L1 means each success increase wound taken by one, which is really strong, and L3 requires 3 successes to increase wounds. Amors should also have a level Lx/Mx/Sx/Dx; number of threats to use to reduce damage inflicted. That might actually work... The L/M/S/D level indicates the max level of wound the armor can stop. A heavy duty combat armor could stop an armor penetrating round. I clearly do not see a leather jacket doing so. Thus, a reinforced leather vest with titanium braces, might, if you are Lucky, stop that Deadly round to kill you outright. Of course, I'd drop soak entirely, but would increase Defense ratings of sample armors a lot to compensate. Stamina/Body will give you more wounds to take before dying.
  • I would bring back the wound levels. 4/3/2/1 with 2 body, each additional points grant an additional wound of increasing level. 3 -> 5/3/2/1; 4 -> 5/4/2/1; 5-> 5/4/3/1 and 6 -> 5/4/3/2. The human maximum grants you the ability to survive one Deadly wound while staying concious.
  • Each wound you sustain of each level gives you penalties. L is just a scratch. M + 1black die. S one upgrade. Deadly... one upgrade AND 1 black die, usually at this step you are unconscious.
  • When you run out of wounds of a level, next wound of that level is crossed out on the next level. if you have 4 light wounds, the 5th is automatically a Medium wound.
  • I've just had an idea : in combat rolls, advantages DO not CANCEL threats. Use them to trigger passive (maybe dropping the system entirely?); weapons use advantages to generate more damage, threats are used to improve the victim's defense. As I am thinking of bringing back the L1/2/3 system, defenses might also have different ratings. Thus, threats protect the target... It might work.
• Reaction per se can be dropped, using the Genesys initiative system modified for faster character as described above. We have to find a way to get faster character to be penalized somehow sometimes...
• Hacking / matrix
  • I hate the SR4 way, and hates even more the SR5 way. Now all depends if you want to play in 2050 or in 2065. I have run a LOT of games in 2050, my campaign started in 2050 and we stopped playing ca. 2056. It's not a complicated hack to bring back some of the SR2/SR3 rules in Genesys.
• Magic
  • Drop spell strength from all spells, to keep things simple, you learn a Template of a spell and that includes any strength. When you use that spell to make an Attack, you choose the strength you cast it at, as usual with Shadowrun. You then compare that strength to your essence/magic, if it's higher your 2 strains to cast spells just became Wounds. If it's below, it's per Genesys, so Strain damage. Drain could be resisted with advantages; I would use the difficulty guidelines to determine strain.
  • Spells are resisted, ignore range bands (range is line of sight as per SR). Mana spells target willpower, Physical spells target body. All spellcasting is done through opposed rolls.
  • Astral Space: no change required as per SR3
  • Astral pollution augments spell defense.
  • Foci / Summoning / etc: not a lot of work there neither.
• Defaulting
  • there is something we can bring back from SR2. Each black dot upgrade difficulty. This is SO nice and SO easy... Just have to grab the old table from my SR2 rules Defaulting gives you more chances to fumble this is just perfect.
• Karma
  • Number of story points you can spend on a roll; 1 karma per 50 xp; also increase story points available to players at start of game : 1 per 50 points.
  • Don't forget the infamy/reputation rules; you start the roll at 5 purple, decreasing it once per 100 xp.

Google doc anytime to start working more seriously on it, if you think my ideas match yours.

Take care,

François

I actually would not mind seeing a shadowrun conversion as two of my players are big shadowrun players/gms. I myself only played never ran the game but do like the older editions did play 4th edition was ok but i think 2 or 3 was better.

I would try and do a conversion but my hands are pretty full right now working on two different conversions myself one is battletech and the other is dragonstar...

Here is a general Shadowrun conversion that someone did for SW. I don't know if it is still valid as I can't access dropbox from this computer. If not, let me know and I will set something up.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1okuloxoon884s9/Edge of the Shadows V1.3.pdf?dl=0

It feels like the author took his inspiration from SR5, but kept a class system; that might work for star wars but does not fit my take on shadowrun, where classes where just character models. The Genesys way IS better.

The author did put a lot of work into that document, probably some ideas could be stolen. I missed it, but I don't really like what he did... Thanks for the link, anyway. I did catch the medieval hack (Edge of aquilonian empire it was I think)-

François

I have also thought about using it for Shadowrun, though it was sidetracked as we've played so much sci-fi lately that there was a want for more standard fantasy.

I don't think I'd use Essence. there's already a limiter to the amount of cyber the characters can have in the system, and that limiter would hold for me. I would just add that each cyber upgrades the difficulty once or add a Setback.

I'd also not do much with the initiative system. I hated running SR and just watch the non suped up players sit down with their smart phones while the rest cleans out the room. I'd rather just give them the ability to use a second maneuver without getting soak and a Boost or two to Cool/Vigilance. I really think everyone should have the same amount of time to shine and be able to do cool stuff.

Spells I also feels like fits as is. How horrible you want the spell to be decides the difficulty pretty much like Force. If they roll a Despair, that's when the magical energies are hard to control and ends with wounds.

But I'd love to see your google doc. The great thing about Genesys I feel, is that it is an elegant system that works as a blueprint. There's lots of ways to end up at the same place.

Concerning essence : I feel it's fundamental to the way the universe works and how technology and magic interacts. It's one of the defining point of the shadowrun universe whn you compare it to the Humanity stat in Cyberpunk 2020. Of course, in Cyberpunk, cyberpsychosis is the consequence, in SR, death is. There is no loss of "humanity" and a cybered person behaves like any other person...

Concerning Initiative : Ultra fast characters ARE supposed to shine in combat. The magicians shine in magic. The hackers in Cyberspace, etc. Let the combat monsters BE combat monsters and shine in combat. It's not like combat was THE most important part of the game anyway.

Concerning spells : I am trying to keep the spirit of shadowrun. It's not just Genesys with fantasy toons and magic. It's Shadowrun, magic has come back, Earthdawn is its past (even if it was dropped later)...

I won't do the work all alone, don't have the time. As a cooperative project without deadlines, why not

I still have 2 companies to run, support my customers etc.

François

On 12/20/2017 at 10:35 PM, fuldry2 said:

Initiative passes, the Genesys rules don't cover ultra fast character. Spells, or powers for physical adepts, or augment spells can increase the number of actions you take each round. I think I'll go up to 4 additional passes, but remember that the feel will be different: after all SR rounds were 3 seconds or so and Genesys rounds are 3 times longer. There is a call to make there, either going the SR2 way; the SR3 way or the champions way : prepare a table with the number of actions each character has showing 5 columns (for 1 to 5 actions); 1 action going only on 3rd. 2 going either 3 and 4, 3 going 2,3,4, 4 going 2,3,4,5 and 5 having an action each column. Then depending on your number of actions, you go when you have to. So, you can only act in step 1 if you have 5 actions per round; you can act in step 2 if you have 4 or 5 actions etc. I think that faster character should act before slower ones. It's bad game balance but life isn't always fair.

Hi there!

I can see a good alternative to this. During the imitative phase, a player can spend triumphs to gain extra actions. Magic, and cybernetics can add to this , but incurring a setback the the character has more extra actions then he/she has Agility.

This I think is in keeping with the spirit of SR.

The Narrative Dice System does not care about micro-managing seconds like Shadowrun does. Instead it uses Boosts and Upgrades and things, and has Qualities like Linked and Auto-Fire, etc. and Talents that trigger /facilitate those things, to let the different Archetypes and playstyles shine.

It's all well and good to try to port over the feel and flavor directly, but to try to do a direct translation of every Shadowrun mechanic to a system with a wildly different gameplay ethos is folly in my opinion.

Whats the point of just switching out d6s for the narrative dice?

Just play Shadowrun if you want the mechanics of Shadowrun. Better to embrace Genesys for what it is (narrative focused, and cinematic), and figure out how Shadowrun looks under that ethos, IMO.

Additional "IPs" in this system is so massively broken.

Could you just offer them a guarantee from the advantage chart for one wound each? So instead of trying for an extended range spell and maybe not getting enough advantage you could spend a wound for it to just be extended. You still have to hit mind so it would be a gamble still but with a guaranteed payout in exchange for more risk.

I agree with Emsquared that you should translate the "feel" of Shadowrun and not necessarily every single facet. I can think of two ways to simulate improved reflexes:

1. Someone with wired reflexes (or some other initiative-boosting power) upgrades all dice pools dealing with reflexes by 1, including combat checks and the difficulty of combat checks made against them.

2. Someone with improved reflexes gains the Linked quality on their normal attacks, or perhaps reduces the Advantage cost to activate multiple hits with Autofire, Linked, two weapons, etc. They also waive the strain cost to gain a second maneuver in a turn.

I got pulled away by the holidays and haven't been able to respond to my own thread! Love the discussion in here though.

For myself, I admit that I am aiming to get the feel of Shadowrun, but without pulling too far away from the Genesys rules to do so. My group loves the Shadowrun setting, but tend to get a bit bogged down by the rules. On the other hand, about half of the group isn't as big on Star Wars as a setting(much to my sorrow) but love the narrative dice system. This seemed like a good way to combine those loves, hopefully without adding so much of the complication.

With that in mind, I'll try and get up a proper document(currently half my notes are hand written and the rest are scattered) that people can comment on and give their opinions, but just so I am contributing to the discussion, here are some of my ideas in summary-

Races: This one is pretty straight forward. Pinching and adjusting a bit from the vampire in the gencon adventure for HMVV, though those tend to just be NPCs in our games anyway.

Careers: I was using the genesys system for this, and have built names and skill list with about 4 examples for each of the categories 'Combat' 'Magic' 'Tech' and 'Face' . As a sample, for combat I've got careers of 'Ganger' 'Street Samurai' 'Mercenary' and 'Corporate Security'.

Skills: Currently working off the more modern skill list. I've included the distinction between 'Hacking' and 'Sysops' for computers, though I might adjust the phrasing on that a bit. I currently have 'melee' as a singular category and 'ranged' divided into both heavy and light. I've also got Arcana as the one magic skill. I considered using one of the other's for Adepts, though I'm leaning towards a different path as explained in Magic later. For magic skills I tried to take kind of broad strokes- Academic, Corp, and Lore. I also tentatively have a knowledge skill called 'Language' right now though it is one I am debating how I want to use. Each rank adding another language? Or perhaps scrapping that and making it a ranked talent?

Gear: The first area I am adding a little bit of complication since gear tends to play a pretty prominent role in Shadowrun. To keep it from getting overly complex, I am mostly just porting over the hardpoint/accessories system from Star Wars. I'm working on the idea of pre-building modded gear for flavor, though I keep going back and forth on whether the work to do so is worth it, but I think the flavor might pay off. Right now the thought is to have the standard categories of things 'Light Pistols', 'Heavy Pistols', ect. But then to also have a more specific sub-list. An Ares Predator is just a heavy pistol with a smart-link already built in. The objective of that is just to give the flavor of the brands and to save players the effort of needing to mod out things themselves to have starting gear that feels more individual. One small change to weapon qualities I am intending to make is using 'Slow Firing 0' to weapons that would have traditionally been single shot, this will allow for firing every round but serve as a limiter on cyberware below.

Cyberware: Here is one of the biggies! For Cyberware I am leaning close to the Star Wars method where you can have a number of cyberware pieces up to your brawn, but with a few variations. To try and represent essence being a bit of body and spirit, I am going to let them take cyberware up to either their brawn or the willpower, whichever is higher. I'm also going to give each bit of cyber/bioware an essence cost rather than having them cost one each, so we can vary things up a lot and each piece of cyber don't have to be created equal. I do want to address the loss of humanity that comes with cyber. My intention is to balance a setback die added to social by or certain spell checks against that character every other point of essence spent.(To be adjusted as it is tested). When casting a spell yourself, every two points of essence add 1 difficulty die to the spell casting.

DarthCredulous above nailed one of my ideas for the equivalent to wired reflexes in this setting since they are always the first thing people imagine with Shadowrun cyber. I pictured 3 levels of wired reflexes- First, gain a free movement manuever. Second, add 'Linked' to any weapon or brawl attack that does not have the slow firing quality. Third, add 'Autofire' to any weapon or brawl attack that does not have the slow firing quality. I have some concerns about that third one, because I know how easily Autofire can break, but that seems more tied to being able to trigger it for 1 advantage, so I am just going to be cautious of that. This makes the cyberware useful, but also encourages building skill so you can trigger these things and that downward slide into more cyber(I am close to that essence cap, but a smartlink would give me a blue dice on those attacks and that might be another hit...)

Magic: One of the other spots that gets some attention! This is one of the tough ones because there are a number of factors that feel important to Shadowrun but still need to be balanced. In broad strokes, the things I am trying to balance out is Spellcasting, Adepts, Summoning and the Astral. This is the part that I feel I am going to have to pry apart the most, but my current thoughts are below.

• Spellcasting- This will come mostly from the Genesys book. Building a Grimoire of spells to choose from. I think that I am going to give an addition of allowing a character to take a wound when casting to add a boost dice to represent mana burn by being risky in your casting, the boost die will give the players a better chance to cast a harder spell, or be more likely to be able to activate the special traits on a lower spell which seems to fit the intended feel.
• Adepts- I'd really love some opinions on this, but in Shadowrun generally Adepts use the same Magic stat that caster's do, but splitting your focus tends to make you a little weaker at both. To represent this, I am going to build adept powers in two ways. Passive ones will be talents that simply have an arcana requirement(that way I can make more useful ones that require a few ranks), active ones will be built similar to cyberware but you will have to commit arcana points to them. You purchase the ability to activate them like you would a spell, and then you lock away points from your arcana skill while you have them turned on, much like force powers in Star Wars may make you commit force dice. As an example, the Adept version of wired reflexes may cause you to commit 1, 2 or 3 arcana ranks to activate the different tiers. You can move -fast- but while you are concentrating on that, your casting abilities are diminished.
• Summoning- This is another tough one. My current intention is to have a ranked talent. First rank allowing a watcher spirit, each rank beyond that allowing for a slightly stronger spirit. I think that as above, forcing one to commit an arcana dice per spirit summoned is going to be our best balance for this. In Shadowrun spirits can get powerful, and if we are going to allow them to be summoned more freely we would need to tone that down a great deal. This way, as they move up the talent tree they can pull out a good spirit and only take a small hit in their spell casting, or they could pull a couple and use them to do most of the work.
• Astral- I'm looking at a series of talents here. First giving ability to see the astral plane, then higher tiers giving similar things to the 'farsee' force force power. Much of the astral plane can be narrative.

For other aspects of magic, I think Genesys does a good job of covering foci and talismans in magic items so not many changes would be needed there. Ritual casting is something I've never seen a lot of use out of in my Shadowrun games, so I haven't come up with a great equivalent for that. Talents that add range brackets to spells seem the easiest equivalent, but that one is going to require thought. Finally, Initiation can be a big deal in higher tier Shadowrun play. I figure that can be represented by some high tier talents that work similar to metamagics, and perhaps one that allows you to commit a dice to an adept power or a summoning without it costing you an arcana point.

Matrix: This one I think is actually fairly straight forward since the Matrix is much more narrative than it is mechanical. Effectively you are just hacking from a distance, so we just want to expand the hacking rules a bit to allow for different actions. Because of the importance I'll be expanding on cyberdecks similar to weapons, giving the hardpoints and attachments, building some cyberdeck qualities to allow for some more variation in what could be done taking inspiration from programs. I am trying not to overcomplicate it, so I figure something like an agent can be accomplished by something like 3 advantage on an extended check having that check continue to work on its own without your attention.

Technomancers would be another tiered talent, allowing you to use computer skills without a deck, then increasing your 'decks' stats as you move further.

Other: To touch on a few other aspects of Shadowrun that I don't want to ignore-

• Karma/Nyuen balance- In Shadowrun missions, there is often a bit of focus on rewards between doing things a more honorable way vs doing things for the money. This is primarily just something for the DM to consider, but I am wanting to make a note of it. Giving specialized weapons and cyberware a higher cash cost, and having magic have a wider XP cost in wanting to pick up a lot of different talents plays that up. Making that more explicit can be a fun way to encourage players to different types of missions based on their goals. I suspect that this setting may make it more reasonable to have some sort of exchange of cash for xp, call it purchasing training or building up your lodge, greasing contacts palms, ect. This way you can more reasonably allow the group to score a good payday and not have the combat monkeys or techies benefit far more than the casters.
• Obligation- I'm intending to bring over the obligation system from Edge of the Empire. It feels like it fits very well in this setting.
• Edge- This isn't really a change in the mechanics, but if edge represents luck then that seems like a perfect name for story points.

Phew! That is a lot, but hopefully it helps some folks out there and I'll try and get some more concrete info soon. The goal right now is to find some time to just crack down and start putting together talents and spells, putting stats to gear and looking at how it seems to work in practice so I can adjust it.

Adepts have Magic tattoos in 5th edition that gave them extra powers. You could do “magic” augmentations as alternatives to cyberware but work the same way. There could also be talents for Adepts (“Initiate Grade”) that lets them ad “hard points” to the tattoos for more potency or increase the cap on “magic” augmentations.

On 12/30/2017 at 3:25 PM, Tarlane said:

Technomancers would be another tiered talent, allowing you to use computer skills without a deck, then increasing your 'decks' stats as you move further.

The only issue with this approach would be the lack of being able to use programs to help you, as you have no deck!

I would approach Technomancers as a spellcasters. The Resonance Library would be Spells, and then use Summoning rules for Sprites.

It is probably a fairly complicated task converting though, and finding balance with other spell casters at the same time...

i've seen a lot of threads like these over the years since eote came out, and as a longtime shadowrunner (started with 2e) i can tell you with 100% confidence there are only 2 things you need to do to play shadowrun using the genesys system

1 - Just port the setting, throw away the SR mechanics.

The strength of shadowrun has always been the amazing setting. The mechanics of shadowrun have always gotten in the way of that setting. It's something players tolerated instead of enjoyed in order to play shadowrun.

2- Use/create genesys styled mechanics to handle what you feel absolutely needs to exist for the "shadowrun feel". This is explicitly not directly porting shadowruns bad mechanical nature.

Examples pulled out of thin air as i write this -

With overcasting (the SR name for it) just use the rules for Blood Sacrifice . Instead of a t2 talent, it's just a thing all spellcasters can do, with a limit equal to X. Where X is some limiting factor that would need to be play tested. I would personally suggest starting with casting characteristic/2 round up. So a character with Intelligence of 5 using the default arcane school from the CRB. could add 3 successes for 3 wounds as an overcast. That gives you room to increase or decrease it, or change what X is after some testing.

I find that the way genesys handles cybernetics works quite well for shadowrun. Using brawn as a limiter for cyber instead of an essence stat kinda makes sense to me. However a large part of shadowrun has always been magic vs machine, which genesys doesn't address, and is quite important for the setting. Now you could go about adding an essence stat, and trying to rejigger a bunch of genesys' system to work with that. OR, you add a simple line to the cyber section using systems genesys already has in place.. "for every 1 brawn you have of cyberware (round up), add one downgrade for all magic checks". Now we can make burnout mages. 2 points of cyber, 2 downgrades on magic checks. This doesn't try to use the same mechanics as shadowrun, but instead captures the same feel. The less meat and more machine, the less the connection with magic.

Technomancers? make a new magic skill, let them use that skill for hacking via the hacking rules. And, figure out what magical actions make sense for a technomancer, as well as nay restrictions that should apply. resonance? we can cover that the same way as we covered essence for magic.

Adepts? those might need some trickery " these are not jedi " No seriously, steal from SWRPG. Give them Power points, which are just SWRPG force points. and give them adept powers, which are just the SWRPG force powers that make sense for an adept to have. The essense problem? reduce their maximum (and/or current) "power points" by the amount of cyber they have.

Now these are just starting points, but it's capturing the feel and flavor of shadowrun (a system i really really hate, but a setting i love ) within the amazing toolbox that is genesys. Don't port mechanics, port the setting.


or ya know, i could just be spewing crazy all over and should be ignored. Both are equally as likely.

Concerning spellcasting:

This is what i have done:

Spell force = number of difficulty dice.

Spell cast force equal to or less than ranks in spellcast skill = 2 drain.

Spell cast force over ranks in ranks spellcast skill = 2 drain + 1 wound per dice over.

Drain counts down from your max Strain.

Strain taken countgs up from 0 to your max strain.

Should you ever have more strain then Drain, you fall unconscious.

You can recover strain as normal

You can only recover drain from a long rest.

Spells cast from a lodge incur no strain.

Spirit summoning lasts until services spent. and costs DD to cast. If you want to cast a higher lvl spirirt each difficulty dice adds 1 to all spirirt stats (Brawn, Agility Wound threshold etc)

I am 3 sessions in on my playtest with a crow shaman and works great, gives the flavour, causes him to pause and think if he really needs a spell to accomplish his goal, but allows him to still fling spells as required and summon his spirits.

23 hours ago, Wisconsen said:

Technomancers? make a new magic skill, let them use that skill for hacking via the hacking rules. And, figure out what magical actions make sense for a technomancer, as well as nay restrictions that should apply. resonance? we can cover that the same way as we covered essence for magic. 

I like this. I might have a go at it this weekend.

Skill: Technomancy (replaces - Computers)

Spells: TBA

1 hour ago, Andreievitch said:

I like this. I might have a go at it this weekend.

Skill: Technomancy (replaces - Computers)

Spells: TBA

I wouldn't replace computers, just let it function as computers for a technomancers. That leaves the option open for the technomancer who knows how to do technomancy things, also know how to do computer things the mundane way. Of course that also depends on the level of granularity you are going for in that particular game. For example deckers and riggers will need the computers skill (though i would consider doing what it looks like android is doing and split it into 2 skills Hacking and SysOps).

but ya, it's a super rough idea, but i think it could work really well with some refinement and is a pretty elegant way to handle techomancers within the genesys system.

Wow, I hadn't predicted this thread getting necroed.

I had done some work on this which I can scrounge up and post around here if folks are interested. I had simply put a pin in it for a while now since I figured between Terranoth and Android 90% of the work would end up done for me and my group started a Star Wars campaign that has been taking up my design time.

Without having my notes off hand currently, I had tried to adopt a pretty light conversion strategy, making heavier use of the Genesys system and just trying to bring some of the flavor of Shadowrun over than I had seen in other conversions.

Obviously selected archetypes and talents and skills that fit the SR theme. Some additions mentioned below, as well as some custom talents for mentor spirits, ect.

For gear, I added in hard points similar to what they use in Star Wars and cribbed a bunch of star wars attachments to fit the SR theme better, then kept the equipment itself pretty straight forward. Light pistol, heavy pistol, ect. Want an ares predator? Its just a heavy pistol that comes with a smart link already attached. Same for the waves of other gear, I mostly just grouped 5-10 items you would use for a similar job into kits. Most of which I gave two ratings/prices, one just let you do the task and the other added a boost to it. Want to climb the face of a building and go through a window quietly? A cat burglers kit probably has rope and a glass cutter.

For the matrix/technomancers, I primarily used the hacking rules out of Genesys but had made a few minor alterations. The biggest thing was that I made 5 different tiers of cyberdeck. Each tier would add 1 hard point to the deck(I had gone back and forth about other bonuses but I think I settled on that being the most balanced). I also made a list of programs that worked with attachments but for cyberdecks. Mostly they added boosts or removed setbacks from different computer actions, but I had made a few that took up additional hardpoints that gave a couple extra options. For technomancers, I made it a ranked talent, each rank treating your head like it was 1 tier higher of a cyberdeck. I also made a talent that could be taken multiple times to add 'programs' to your head. I can't remember off hand whether I just made it something you could retake as is, or if I made it a ranked talent just so it didn't have its own unusual rule and just said you got as many programs as the rank of the talent whenever you took it.

Essence was something I went back and forth about, but eventually instead of trying to truly emulate it I would say that everyone could take six points worth of cyberware. Every two points you took would add a setback die on any spells you cast or healing done to you.

Magic itself was simple, I took three spell categories, Arcane, Shamanism, and Adept. The first two are straight forward, for Adepts I had gone back and forth about how I could replicate them and then finally just decided that with how varied magic was in this system and how much of it was based around fluff I may as well just make use of that. For Adepts I gave them a few less spell trees than the others, but on the charts for spending advantages I added a few adept only abilities. I think most of those were just under augment to let them pull some more impressive skill feats, but an adept being suddenly fast and dodging a bullet seems like a perfectly reasonable use of barrier, or a bullet ricocheting and hitting an enemy could be covered under attack.

There was still a lot for me to add in but spells and cyberware were the two spots I still really felt I needed to flesh out a lot more. I feel like the best route to go for cyber is to just have every piece cost one point of essense so they are more evenly balanced and if you wanted to include things like alphaware, just have it add a boost or something to show its quality, or if I wanted to have alphaware do something like double cost, +2 rarity but only cost .5 points of essence. That may be additional complication that is unnecessary though.

Most cyberware feels like it can port pretty directly, but shadowrun did have some iconics. For wired reflexes I made two of them, requiring the first to take the second. First gave +1 success on initiative checks, and +1 free maneuver(still 2 max). Second gave an additional +1 success on initiative that stacked, and you could take two strain to use an action as a maneuver.

To wrap up what turned -way- longer than I meant it to, the rest is mostly minor stuff. Instead of a destiny or fate pool you have edge. Build out some spirits and add some talents for them, though summoning spell covers that well. Add in obligation from Edge of the Empire just because it fits the setting so well. And I was working on a balance that could be had between cash and karma. In SR there was always a bit of attention given to the idea of taking a mission that was more for 'the good of it' and getting more karma out of it, or dropping some money on a trainer to level up easier. With deckers and technomancers, and cybered folks and adepts all being on a pretty even playing field in this system, just using the opposite resources I thought it would make sense to have something in place to either buy karma with cash or drop karma to get cash, an exchange. So half the group isn't screwed when you go for a big money mission. To me it makes sense from the standpoint of paying for training, or making use of some of the positive perception people have of you in order to score a piece of gear at a price you could afford. When trying to balance things out having those two resources be exchangeable helped a lot.

Hopefully that wasn't too boring a block of text. I still had a lot more to add in before I paused it, I more had outlines than all the granular details, but if folks want to discuss it further I'm certainly down.

Edit: I'm just realizing that I put most of this in a previous post in this thread. I'm not sure what was the same and what had changed at that point so I'll leave this up instead of wiping it.