| From: | gurth@******.nl (Gurth) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | SR4 Conversion |
| Date: | Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:03:09 +0200 |
street was...
> I'm claiming that a fair conversion system would have
> to allow "Sammy X" to be just as good on the streets
> in 2070 as he would've been in 2065. Otherwise people
> might just throw away their old characters, unless
> they like a roleplaying challenge.
You are talking OOC stuff, but IMHO your initial post gave the
impression you were referring to IC reasons.
> [If what I say is right, Dixons must give Gurth money
> so he can keep up with the SOTA]
Not to keep up with SOTA, but to compensate for things becoming cheaper
over the years :)
> When converting an SR3 character to SR4 the 5 years
> that pass between the "end" of SR3 and where SR4 picks
> up have to be taken into account. The character would
> not sit still in that time and it is unlikely a
> zero-sum would result from its activities; the PC is
> likely to at least try to keep up with the SOTA.
There's an easy trick to do that, which I happen to have used yesterday
in my group's Deadlands game: "It's now a few months [years in SR4's
case) later, and you've made some money and spent some during your
travels -- surprisingly, this has left you with exactly the same amount
of money as at the end of last session :)".
> If conversion rules were to be official, or are
> adopted as a house rule by the GM this might still be
> an issue. I do agree that a dash of common sense would
> resolve any problems here. However, someone might
> claim to be making an SR3 character that is to be run
> through a conversion system for roleplaying reasons. A
> good conversion system should not leave that character
> any better or worse off for having gone through it.
This assumes SR3 and SR4 are compatible enough to allow this to be done
without problems. IMHO this is a slightly unrealistic hope :) Even
between SRII and SR3, where the basic game system remained unchanged,
converted characters were different from their previous incarnations;
with SR4 using a completely different rules set, I doubt you'll be able
to get as close as with SRII/SR3 simply because many things will work
differently, and so various "tricks" you built your character for, won't
apply or work anymore. It will also depend on the basic character type,
of course.
> Perhaps SR3 and SR4 are just mutually unintelligible
> game systems, though...
Only partly.
> I would like to see someone come up with a
> decent way to convert SR3 stats to SR4 to prove that
> SR3 and SR4 are still vaguely related games.
I don't think anybody can just yet, but IMHO character conversions
aren't going to be that hard, as long as you compensate for things like
the changed attributes -- which will throw things off, like I mentioned
above. It's not going to be a change like between AD&D and D&D3, just to
name a case in which really only your basic characteristics, class and
level could be kept when "porting" an old character.
> Where gameplay is concerned, consider that all the
> location sourcebooks (with the possible exception of
> Awakened Lands & Wastelands) could become utterly
> worthless as soon as SR4 hits the shelves. Sure, they
> can still be drawn on for inspiration
Isn't this much the same as using SR1-era location sourcebooks in an SR3
campaign? Before SONA, you had to use books like NAN1&2, NAGNA, Tir
Tairngire, etc. for information about North America, but most of those
were set in the early 2050s, not the early to mid 2060s as the game was.
Imagine taking a trip today to, say, Berlin with only a 15-year-old
guidebook to point out areas of interest...
--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
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