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I have been playing with the idea of using the CotCT AP as the frame work for a Shadowrun campaign. Obviously not everything as presented in the modules would work in a Shadowrun game, but I’m thinking with a little bit of massaging this could work out pretty well.
I basically envision it like this. Keep in mind this is a pretty rough outline.
When CEO Arabasti II dies the precarious balance of unrest in the city slips and rest on the edge of anarchy. Enter the runners who are united after a mysterious tarot card reader employs them to take out an old nemesis.
Eventually after dealing with this nemesis they meet the new CEO Ileosa who recruits them to aid the corporations beleaguered security force. The security force is a sub company called Citadel Security Force (or something like that). The rest of Edge of Anarchy would play out more or less like the AP with the runners going on missions for the CSF.
That what were I’m at so far. Before I go to far I was hoping to get some of your opinions on what you thought about the idea of trying to pull this off, and what I could use as a real world city for Korvosa? Also, if anyone who was more familiar with the Shadowrun universe could provide some help to make this fit better into the Shadowrun world if needed.
I have been playing with the idea of using the CotCT AP as the frame work for a Shadowrun campaign. Obviously not everything as presented in the modules would work in a Shadowrun game, but I’m thinking with a little bit of massaging this could work out pretty well.
I basically envision it like this. Keep in mind this is a pretty rough outline.
** spoiler omitted **
That what were I’m at so far. Before I go to far I was hoping to get some of your opinions on what you thought about the idea of trying to pull this off, and what I could use as a real world city for Korvosa? Also, if anyone who was more familiar with the Shadowrun universe could provide some help to make this fit better into the Shadowrun world if needed.
Wow I never thought of this, but I can see it fit really well. Yea in general you will need to change things as you'll be doing all of the rules work yourself, but outside of rules and setting (fantasy to future scifi) it will work really nicely. My thoughts?
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I have been playing with the idea of using the CotCT AP as the frame work for a Shadowrun campaign. Obviously not everything as presented in the modules would work in a Shadowrun game, but I’m thinking with a little bit of massaging this could work out pretty well.
I basically envision it like this. Keep in mind this is a pretty rough outline.
** spoiler omitted **
That what were I’m at so far. Before I go to far I was hoping to get some of your opinions on what you thought about the idea of trying to pull this off, and what I could use as a real world city for Korvosa? Also, if anyone who was more familiar with the Shadowrun universe could provide some help to make this fit better into the Shadowrun world if needed.
It has been awhile since I've looked at SR but IMHO I would stick the story in the South West US, Arizona or New Mexico, and make the Shoanti Apache, Navjeho and Ute. (This would cover them being the Sun, Moon and Skull tribes respectively.)
Red Mantis as a Yakuza gang is also my suggestion.
Other than that I got nothing else.
I do hope you keep us posted on your game as this has alot of potential.
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Thanks for the encouragement guys. I wasnt sure of what kind of reaction I would get.
I was definatly thinking Shoanti=native americans. I wanted to retain the Red Mantis as they just sound really cool and seem like they fit the setting. I like the idea of them being Yakuza.
As for the city itself, I wanted to try and retain as much of Korvosa as written in order to retain as much of the campaign and encounters as possible without having to overhaul the campaign more than I already have to.
So that means that Korvosa should be a coastal city (I was thinking west coast)preferably somthing that has an area that can stand in for Old Korvosa. It also needs to be relativly close to a desert area in order to stand in for the Cinderlands.
Im not really familiar with the fine details of the SR world but I was thinking perhaps somthing in the area of southern California, near San Diego.I not sure about the geography but somewhere in the area of Arizona standing in for the Cinderlands.
Thanks for the encouragement guys. I wasnt sure of what kind of reaction I would get.
I was definatly thinking Shoanti=native americans. I wanted to retain the Red Mantis as they just sound really cool and seem like they fit the setting. I like the idea of them being Yakuza.
As for the city itself, I wanted to try and retain as much of Korvosa as written in order to retain as much of the campaign and encounters as possible without having to overhaul the campaign more than I already have to.
So that means that Korvosa should be a coastal city (I was thinking west coast)preferably somthing that has an area that can stand in for Old Korvosa. It also needs to be relativly close to a desert area in order to stand in for the Cinderlands.
Im not really familiar with the fine details of the SR world but I was thinking perhaps somthing in the area of southern California, near San Diego.I not sure about the geography but somewhere in the area of Arizona standing in for the Cinderlands.
Hmmm ... downtown San Diego is nice and "cramped" so that could work nicely for a Korvosa loc. And there's plenty of spots that could be Cinderlandsish. Could work!
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this sounds awesome...
perhaps one of the SoCal sprawl cities, with an Arcology in the center (Palace Korvosa on the big pyramid), and spread out city scape.
Make it post-natural-disaster (nuclear fallout, biotech gone wrong, something similar) to explain the decimated population and nearby desert areas
Suggestions for the Corps involved:
Aztechnology replaces the ancient Thassilonian stuff, especially the Palace Korvosa dungeon and the Sunken Queen area. Also the dungeon place in History of Ashes.
Shoanti=Natives is perfect, with shamanic traditions and survival in harsh conditions
Renraku makes for good imported Boss-Corp-People, as does Ares Macrotechnology. Or, just make one up...an upstart corp, prob based on biotech, zombies, and ancient dragon-based magic. for bonus points make Kazavon the string puller from day 1, he's not dead but just dormant somewhere.
and some things to watch out for, but im sure you already know most if you're familiar with SR.
Fully aspected mages/shamans with focus on spirit conjuration can make short short work of most of the encounters as written. hell, they can probably burn the city down without much trouble
Serethial should probably be a Weapon Focus, just to make it really worthwhile
will keep an eye on this, keep us posted, eh?
-t
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well, you could do what i did.
morph dnd, shadowrun, and d20 modern into 1 amalgamation gaming system.
we used the combat rules from 3.5, magic rules from 3.5, guns and vehicles from d20 modern, including the cover and various gun-based rules from modern. and then everything was set in a near-future-shadowrun-esque world.
for the map we used a normal map of the USA, and spent a lot of time driving from 1 point to another.
if you REALLY want to run this as SR 4e, it'll be a LOT of work re-statting everything up and changing all the treasure/etc.
if you kinda smush the setting you seem to want with the ruleset the players are familiar with, you will end up with a happy medium that doesn't eat up all your free time and still gets you the result you're looking for.
-t
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Neat. Its been awhile since I've played SR. My only thought outside of North America would be to look at places like Africa, South America. I don't remember enough of the setting re those continents but theres plenty of potential coastal cities with a vast wilderness/desert outlying. Also the monarchy thing might work decently in places like Morocco. Heck Egypt could work (Alexandria or Cairo) giving the Fangs a bit of pharoah treatment.
Neat. Its been awhile since I've played SR. My only thought outside of North America would be to look at places like Africa, South America. I don't remember enough of the setting re those continents but theres plenty of potential coastal cities with a vast wilderness/desert outlying. Also the monarchy thing might work decently in places like Morocco. Heck Egypt could work (Alexandria or Cairo) giving the Fangs a bit of pharoah treatment.
I actually really like this idea, you could set the "Korvosans" as a corp that moved in and took land from the natives (the shoanti equivelents) and built their megacorp HQ on top of some ancient ruins, setting it all up. And the Pcs could be from the slum section of the city or even there from the US...
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I like that idea. I hadnt really considered setting Korvosa outside of North America. Definatly something to consider none the less.
Just to be clear I wanted to use the 4th edtion of the Shadowrun system, not a D&D 4e. Ive had suggestions that I try to use d20 modern rules but I would like to try and learn a new non d20 system. Also I feel that you lose somthing in the translation when you play any kind of game with a diffrent set of rules. Not a bad thing per se , just diffrent.
As for the conversion work, Im sure it will be tough at some points but Im kind of thinking that since SR dosent have levels I wont have to deal with scaling the encounters as much. Also treasure and xp will be much less of an issue. I also dont plan on converting every encounter. Just what I really need to tell the story, provide some action and keep things interesting and moving forward.
The basic idea is that the campaign framework is there its more just a matter of chaning the flavour to suit the world and to a lesser extent the rules system.
I dont know the sytem to well yet so I could be wrong on this.
Stuff :P
I understood you meant SR 4e, not D&D as an aside. I agree with your ideas and personally I think it would be fine. Honestly non fantasy games tend to stump me as a writer, and while I love SR in its various editions I have always ended back at D&D due to my love of fantasy and my mindset. I think the aproach your taking is the best, as your going to be building encounters regardless you just have a skeleton and a good story to base it on. To be honest I like this idea enough I'm tempted to do the same.
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Stuff :PHonestly non-fantasy games tend to stump me as a writer, and while I love SR in its various editions I have always ended back at D&D due to my love of fantasy and my mindset.
I totally agree with you on this. I think that D&D has a few things going for it that has allowed it to be the top RPG for the last 30 years.
First I think that are suspension of disbelief is able to be stretched a little further in a fantasy setting than say in a modern or futuristic setting just because we tend to know less about that time period. So we allow for over simplifications, and that we let magic account for other discrepancies.
Also, D&D is level based so you always have an incentive to keep playing even if the current adventure or possibly if even the whole campaign is weak. It’s the personal goal of the individual players to get the cool power ups for their characters while at the same time working to complete the adventures milestones.
I could be wrong on this point but I also think that D&D offers a much wider style of adventures than other rpgs. For instance you could play a very simple bash the door down, kill the monsters, and take his stuff, type game. Or you could play more of a political intrigue or tell a story type game.
I think in D&D as opposed to say a game like Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu encounters are designed differently. In D&D you need various encounters to level up. So in D&D you’re looking at something like 13.5 encounters on average to gain a level. In SR or CoC you only need a fraction of that to move the adventure along and provide the proper clues and what not and to keep things entertaining.
One of the other things that I think D&D does really well that other systems tend not to is provide adventures for their systems. D&D has a s%%&e load of adventures and campaigns to choose from. By playing and reading enough of these you can become educated and inspired on how to create your own adventures and campaigns. Particularly published adventures showcase how to use the rules and other conventions of that particular system. This allows you as the GM to come up with your own scenarios filled with cool twists and turns.
Of course this is just my own opinion. And like the majority of gamers I know that after a stint at any other non-D&D game I will so be ready to play D&D again after that. It’s a classic game regardless of edition.
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So after thinking about it a little, and spending some time looking on google maps of the world, I’ve decided that Mogadishu the capital of Somalia might make a good location for Korvosa.
I decided to forget trying to find a city that resembles the city of Korvosa, specifically the Old Korvosa area and work around that section of the campaign a little. I still wanted to retain the port status of the city.
I like the state of conflict that the city represents and it seems like it would be a place ripe for a mega corporation to take over for its own ends displacing many of the native population. That and the number of warlord’s inherent to the area means that they could become the defacto Shoanti replacements.
I also like that the harshness of the area would make a great place for a replacement of the Cinderlands.
I was also thinking that Kazavon would also fit very well as written in the AP as a now forgotten warlord that was taken out in a coup some time ago. Possibly even sometime during the last time magic had empowered the earth.
While I’m not to worried about messing with the cannon of the world, does anyone know if there are any SR source books past or present that discuss this area of the world?