System shock pathfinder style

[Kannachan]

I was playing System shock 2 last night and my wife sat down to watch because she wanted to know what had me so interested. One hour later she wants me to run a one shot set in the pathfinder universe. Pathfinder already has psionics,guns, and crashed spaceships so I figured this might not be as impossible as some may say.

I'm not quite sure on how to get this project started and was hoping somebody could give me a few tips or some suggestions to help.

I tried on another forum while I couldn't access piazo and was told many times not to waste my time trying to run a pathfinder based system shock game. I know it's not optimal but it's what my wife wants to play so I'm doing my best to make it work.

[blahpers]

There's no real reason it couldn't work with sufficient homebrew, but at some point you have to ask yourself whether you're still playing Pathfinder or whether it's simply another custom d20 game (NTTAWWT).

It would certainly be easier with a different system, though.

[Lucio]

Well if you're going to do this, convert the feel and not the mechanics. System Shock at it's core, is a survival horror against a relentless and unforgiving opponent in an isolated environment.

So, things that can be dropped and still retain the feel, with that in mind, I offer the following points to consider

1) Doesn't have to be in space, any isolated environment is sufficient, for example a warded mage's tower, an extra-dimensional pocket or the realm of a potent extraplanar entity.

2) Hacking, this is part of the feel for sure, entering a secondary realm with it's own rules and a set of challenges to overcome. This part will need some basic mechanics, one approach is to make a mini-game, with it's own rules to follow. Popular examples are the Mastermind board-game, Minesweeper, Sudoko or a numbers puzzle (e.g. find the next number 1,1,2,3,5,8,?,?). Another approach would be to treat it as any other dungeon, but give them a limited set of statistics based on Will save, Knowledge: Hacking, and similar. Try not to require too many skill points to be invested unless you grant players the levels for free. Bear in mind however, that this secondary realm does not have to be computers, it could be some form of psionic combat, or a dream sequence, or a dimensional pocket.

3) SHODAN: You can't have System Shock without SHODAN, but the nature of the enemy doesn't have to be a computer, what you select for points 1 and 2 will shape this.

[Kannachan]

It's nice to finally get some encouraging replies thank you.
What I originally had in mind was for the Rickenbacker and/or the Von Braun (system shock 2) to have crashed into a mountain on Golarion along with Tommy & Rebecca's escape pod.
Decades have passed without incident. Tommy has died of old age and Rebbecca has extended her natural life through the use of magic and grafting construct parts onto her body.
Having grown bored of her mortal life Rebbecca sells her construct making services to a nearby warmongering king. In exchange for access to his laboratories and libraries as well as the right to build constructs for his armies, Rebbecca tells him of where fantastic new weapons and armor can be found for his troops just on the far edge of his territory. All he has do do is unearth them and defeat the ancient guardians within.
Being greedier than wise the king sends out a search party to find these mysterious mines and begins plans to excavate them as soon as the search parties report back with news of success.

I figure that the ship's computer systems were destroyed during the crash rendering it little more then a metal tomb for those inside it. The PCs would be party of the search party locating, unearthing, and exploring the ship. Because there is no power to the ship the elevators and doors wouldn't be working restricting the party to certain areas (until they bring in the explosives). After exploring the remains of the first area and finding a hole down to another deck the PCs receive a telepathic message from the king's wizard telling hem to return and tell of their findings.

The party would encounter a few low level maintenance constructs inside the ship and have a few encounters with a tribe of wolf riding goblins that live in the mountains. Once the party gets the message to return to home a small group of people would remain to guard the entrance to the "mines". These people however would soon be overwhelmed by the goblins that live in the area and their kobold allies.

Upon returning to the excavation sites the PCs discover the ships have been turned into a heavily trapped lair that they'll have to clear out in order to continue the excavation. Unfortunately when the goblins dropped into a lower deck they disturbed some annelid Grub Pods causing them to hatch.

Later on Rebbecca will be experimenting with runes trying to find a way to reproduce the effects of electricity. This way instead of hacking computer terminals the party will have to decipher runic letters and rearrange them.

And thus we have: Wolf riding goblins, Kobolds, The reawakening of the many, and an ancient and near mad woman building an army of constructs.

What do you think?