I was wondering if anyone has added Magic in to their games? I'm about to start playing a campaign and a couple players are really big in to shadow run and liked that it had magic blended in to the futurist world. So I wonder if any of you have added Magic in the game, and if so how did it turn out? Or is there is a good reason you recommend not to include the magic rules in the game?

Thanks!

I created a custom psionics "magic" system for a SotB game. Haven't gotten to use it yet, but it's a dialed-back version of something like Terrinoth's magic. The Skills are only accessible by Tier 1 Talents (and can be improved with Tier 3 and 5 Improved and Supreme versions), you only get 1 Skill per T1 Talent, and each Skill only has 1 "Spell". So it's pretty limited.

But I've definitely also just contemplated smashing Terrinoth and SotB together to make Shadowrun.

The main complication that I can see with that approach is that Shadowrun prevents magic and tech synergy by having tech reduce your magic capabilities, right?

You need to do that here too, otherwise you'll have super-arcanist-hackers, and ultra-cybered-primalists, and so on that will completely dominate their areas of expertise.

If you're looking for quick and dirty, no fuss no muss solution to put the two together, I would 1. just maybe make it so that for every Body Mod a character has installed, any magic casting Difficulty is increased by +1 and upgraded 1, and 2. when porting over magic implements, I'd increase their costs by... I don't know, maybe double?

Furthermore, you'll need to use narrative controls, like societal magic norms, licensing, proper counter-magic NPCs, so on so forth.

Even with that, I could see running into unforeseen synergy "problems". Something like Terrinoth's magic is REALLY good (for instance, 4 out of 5 of the characters in the Terrinoth game I'm playing in are magic users), so you just have to be very forward thinking in how it's gonna combine with "normal" play-styles.

But also, have you looked at any of the community-made Shadowrun hacks of Genesys?

I am playing in, essentially, a Shadowrun game using SotBS as the main book plus bits from SotC and Rot. We left magic unchanged for RAW and it works well since its really just RoT reskinned (guns instead of bows, cars instead of carts). We added a few new rules regarding having cybernetics and using magic (or be healed by magic) to keep some of the flavor of Shadowrun.

As far as not including a mechanic in the game (ie Magic), it depends on how your world works. Magic should be included if it exists in the world (or can be reskinned to be something like controlling nano-robots). If you are running something like Blade Runner, then zero magic. If you have a Eldritch Cyber setting, then maybe instead of having access to entire magic actions, characters can only learn individual spells found in hidden books since magic is truly rare. It depends on the world. Change or modify magic (or anything) to fit your world vision. Unlike magic in D&D, which has the same magic rules/implementation in every setting (when used at all) due to the entire mechanics system being so fragile due to being so tightly interwoven, you can have as much or as little as you want without worrying about breaking the basic mechanics just by making changes.