Others have given alternatives, but no one has offered Savage Worlds. It’d probably work great in a cyberpunk setting with magic, and it plays super easy.
You could just run it straight out of the box with the SWADE rulebook, but there’re published books (and free homebrews) that go for that feeling as well (like Sprawlrunners).
The way it’s made makes it accessible to both combat and non-combat interactions, with lots of GM fiat to affect the story in the best way possible. It is very friendly to homebrew and picking whatever rules you want, and adding skills whenever/wherever you want.
The one thing that makes replicating cyberpunk hard is gear. Since SWADE is a step die you don’t have a ton of space to pump weapon numbers up, and the way that Powers work (with trappings), damage types are more of a flavour-turned-into-mechanics kind of thing. Plus, gear does not degrade in SWADE (though that for me is a plus, just more bookkeeping).
For reference, the thing I like most about SWADE in general, is that I can run almost anything with the same system and that it isn’t crunchy. Doesn’t matter if its a space opera, horror, sci-fi, dark fantasy or high fantasy medieval. Easier to run the campaigns I want if I don’t have to talk my table into learning 5 different systems. The weaknesses of SWADE don’t outweigh that for me.
I can’t comment on Into The Odd, but I would consider either The Sprawl or Runners In The Shadows. The former is a general purpose cyberpunk system built on Apocalypse World and the latter is a Shadowrun hack of Blades in the Dark.
And I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I’ve built my own system for my Shadowrun campaigns, called Straylight. I’m in private playtesting right now, and I plan to have the first public playtest draft up very shortly (weeks or days, depending on how things go).
Don’t know anything about Into the Odd, but I know Blades in the Dark had some people working on a Shadowrun conversion; the heist nature of that game appealed to them. GURPS also handles Shadowrun pretty easily, you can find other people’s conversions online.
Im considering hacking Into the Odd to rebuild Shadowrun without all the… nonsense. Anyone got advice?
Try Cities Without Number! It’s also an OSR game, and is more well-suited for the Sixth World setting.
Ooh I have WWN rotting apart on my shelf, one of my favorites :) thanks for reminding me!
Others have given alternatives, but no one has offered Savage Worlds. It’d probably work great in a cyberpunk setting with magic, and it plays super easy.
You could just run it straight out of the box with the SWADE rulebook, but there’re published books (and free homebrews) that go for that feeling as well (like Sprawlrunners).
kind of curious to how you think SWADE could be good.
The way it’s made makes it accessible to both combat and non-combat interactions, with lots of GM fiat to affect the story in the best way possible. It is very friendly to homebrew and picking whatever rules you want, and adding skills whenever/wherever you want.
The one thing that makes replicating cyberpunk hard is gear. Since SWADE is a step die you don’t have a ton of space to pump weapon numbers up, and the way that Powers work (with trappings), damage types are more of a flavour-turned-into-mechanics kind of thing. Plus, gear does not degrade in SWADE (though that for me is a plus, just more bookkeeping).
For reference, the thing I like most about SWADE in general, is that I can run almost anything with the same system and that it isn’t crunchy. Doesn’t matter if its a space opera, horror, sci-fi, dark fantasy or high fantasy medieval. Easier to run the campaigns I want if I don’t have to talk my table into learning 5 different systems. The weaknesses of SWADE don’t outweigh that for me.
Shadowrun: Anarchy is rules lite. Apparently a new version is coming this year.
I can’t comment on Into The Odd, but I would consider either The Sprawl or Runners In The Shadows. The former is a general purpose cyberpunk system built on Apocalypse World and the latter is a Shadowrun hack of Blades in the Dark.
And I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I’ve built my own system for my Shadowrun campaigns, called Straylight. I’m in private playtesting right now, and I plan to have the first public playtest draft up very shortly (weeks or days, depending on how things go).
Shadowrun: Anarchy was a rules lite version of Shadowrun. I had to search the name to remember it and apparently 2.0 is kickstarting this year.
Don’t know anything about Into the Odd, but I know Blades in the Dark had some people working on a Shadowrun conversion; the heist nature of that game appealed to them. GURPS also handles Shadowrun pretty easily, you can find other people’s conversions online.
I think Runners in the Shadows has been out for a while
Hah, it was a while ago when I saw chatter about work being done on that. Nice to see it came along so well!