[Relic]

Hey guys, totally new here. Also new to Shadowrun, but i've been gaming and GMing for 10+ years.

My group and i are transitioning from a d20 d&d campaign into a Shadowrun campaign and i want to go with zero magic. No spells, dragons, and especially no elves. I'm pretty sure this has been done many times before so im hopeful that you guys can steer me towards some resources. A non magic timeline/history would be amazing, it will take a concentrated effort to re-write the 4th edition history that i have.

If anyone has any experience running this sort of campaign i would love to hear any tip, stories, recs you might have.

Thanks in advance, hope to talk to some of you soon.

[deathwishjoe]

the game your looking for is cyberpunk 2020.  its a little old but should be exactly what your looking for.  No magic elves trolls dwarves or anthing like that.  from what I remember of it it was a decent PnP game

[The Seven]

the game your looking for is cyberpunk 2020.  its a little old but should be exactly what your looking for.  No magic elves trolls dwarves or anthing like that.  from what I remember of it it was a decent PnP game

Agree.

C2020 has the best combat system I've ever seen. You can literally die from almost any kind of injury (I had 5 chars in three months' game) and it's almost totally based off the "classic" cyberpunk scenario (think William Gibson). It also has a rather decent random character generation system.

The whole flavor of Shadowrun, for me, is the salad it has with magical elements. Take it off and it's no longer Shadowrun.

[edited for additional details]

[Critias]

Ditto with the above.  A large chunk of the fun, flavor, feel, and balance, of Shadowrun comes from the integration of magic, and the timeline is enormously affected by magic, as is the very geo-political situation in The Sixth World.  Playing a campaign with low magic or running a team without a mage is one thing...but trying to remove magic as the integral part of the setting (and mechanic) that it is?

Just play CP:2020, instead.  It'll be a whole, whole, lot less work.

[Loki]

I agree, to remove magic you'd have to write an entirely new history.

As much as I like cyberpunk, Shadowrun's blend of cyberpunk+magic is like solo chocolate or peanut butter vs peanut butter cups. Mmmm, peanut butter cups.

[CanRay]

And now they've added Steampunk into Shadowrun.   

[Mystic]

Yeah, but that's the great thing about SR; it's like the swiss-army knife of gaming: you have so many tools and methods for customization that there is always SOME way of working whatever you want in.

[Relic]

well, thanks for the feedback so far guys. I checked out Cyberpunk 2020 and didn't love what i read.

Has anyone here tried running a low magic SR campaign?

[DesVoeux]

Running a low magic campaign is an entirely different than trying to eliminate magic from the Shadowrun universe.

Most people of the Sixth World don't deal with magic on a daily basis, and only 1% of the population worldwide is Awakened. You should be able to go entire runs without magical opposition, depending (of course) on the target. It also depends on what you consider magical opposition... you'll find awakened critters guarding installations far more often than actual combat mages or bound spirits.

[CanRay]

Note that the 1% is people that have any magical ability at all.  Even if it is minor.

An actual, useful in combat or security magician?  High prices, man.  Very high priced.

[DesVoeux]

Also: I (and a lot of others, I'm sure) used to run campaigns that were virtually Matrix free back in the SR3 days when no-one wanted to be a decker. The Matrix was still there, and still a major part of the game universe, but we would avoid actually having to deal with the nuts and bolts of it. (Usually by having an NPC decker.) I see no reason that you can't just minimize having to deal with magic without actually eliminating it from the universe.

[Charybdis]

Also: I (and a lot of others, I'm sure) used to run campaigns that were virtually Matrix free back in the SR3 days when no-one wanted to be a decker. The Matrix was still there, and still a major part of the game universe, but we would avoid actually having to deal with the nuts and bolts of it. (Usually by having an NPC decker.) I see no reason that you can't just minimize having to deal with magic without actually eliminating it from the universe.

Ditto on this one.

If you just exclude PC's from taking Awakened archtypes, you can still have an excellent campaign.

Just define for the group how limited you want it to be?
- No mages?
- No Physads?
- No Awakened Races? (ie everybody's human? Hmmm...smacks of Humanis...)

If this is just a PC limitation, but the world itself continues with it's magic levels, I think you're in for a really fun campaign...

[Chaemera]

Set your game in the Zurich Orbital would eliminate most effective magic

As to getting rid of the metatypes &c, you can do it, it does take away from the flavor of Shadowrun, but if you like the system & are willing to invent your own history, you can make it work.

Alternatively, pick a random sprawl in a poorly detailed country (Say, Charleston, South Carolina, CAS) and decide that somehow, someway, they've purged themselves of magic & non-humans. Keep in mind that, from a metaplot perspective, this can invite the wrath of those very elements you're trying to avoid, but maybe they found a sufficiently "peaceful" path to their segregation.

[Makki]

just make the teams fixer a Humanis prejudiced against magic. Voila, he's only gonna hire non-awakened humans. But ofc you would run against metatype friendly organizations.

[DesVoeux]

That idea for a space campaign could be interesting... I've always wanted to send a team up the well, but never had a good enough reason to. (Plus, any Awakened player is going to want to sit out the mission.) If you can scrounge up a copy of Target: Wastelands, it has a lot of information on space and how to run it.

I really don't think you should take out the metatypes, however. (Even if you want to play Humanis... you're still going to be dealing with metas.) The various races are a "core" part of the Shadowrun universe. As someone already said: if you're taking those out, you may as well just play Cyberpunk 2020.