From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:24:27 -0700 (PDT)

--- Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:

> --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>
> > According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 24-7-05
> > 23:40 the word on the
> > street was...
> >
>
> [pre-crash = post-crash stuff]
>
> 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.

Errr... nonsense. A street sam who was cutting edge in 2065 might
well be obsolote in 2070. By the logic you just put forth, some
"fair conversion" in the capabilities of computers should have
existed so my spiffy new Pentium 100 with piles (16Mb) of RAM, a huge
(1.2Gb) hard drive, an amazing (Diamond Stealth 64) graphics card,
and other amazing peripherals (those "cool" speakers) was still worth
the metal and plastic it was made of a year later. In point of fact,
that computer (vintage 1996) slid from "wow" to "blah" faster than
its 100 Mhz clock could change a 1 to a 0. Moving a game setting
ahead an appreciable amount of time is the simplest caveat for game
designers, allowing them to specifically ~avoid~ having to provide
"fair conversion" rules. In the high tech setting of SR, an
"appreciable time" can be a couple of years. Now, what SR4 needs to
provide is a metamagical ability that allows a good healer magician
to ritually repair someone's Essence score. Thus, the once SOTA
sammie can get his now obsolote tech ripped out, his aura repaired,
and new nanotechnological wonders installed. That would be a fairly
generous, fairly logical, and fairly simple way to ease the SR3 to
SR4 conversion for those character that just can't be retired. You
could also use my solution for said conversion. Don't. Stick with
SR3 as long as possible. Hold out until your players beg and plead
for you to change. Keep holding out. Eventually, they will buy you
one or more of the core books for the new edition. By then, you will
have had time to kill all the old PCs, and you can start the campaign
from scratch. Thus killing both headaches (the cost of new books and
the PC conversion question) with one placebo.

======Korishinzo
--feeling particularly cycnical today *grin*



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