[Sarone]

Hey All,

Like the Starcraft Topic, this time I'm looking for advice for using the Shadowrun Rules in the Mass Effect setting.  Big reason is the variance between species as well as the fact there are a variety of corporations to assign gear to.  Has any one done this before?  How did it go?

[Valashar]

I've dabbled a bit with describing ME2+ tech design in SR rules.

Thermal clip weapons  I ended up describing along the lines of the peak discharge power packs used on laser weapons out of Arsenal. Different classes of weapon generate so many 'points' of heat when they fire and different sizes/qualities of thermal clip can soak so many heat points before needing to be swapped out. The way ammo is handled in ME just makes it so you don't really have an ammo count on weapons, just the thermal output to deal with.

Kinetic barriers I transcribed as being a field that countered the armor penetration of a weapon/ammunition type. It had a rating that directly reduced the attack's AP before applying the attack to armor. If the field soaked more individual attacks in a combat turn than its rating, then it would go down for a full combat turn before powering back up in the next. If it took a single attack with an AP rating higher than its own rating it would burn out completely (requiring repair or replacement) after resolving that attack.

Omnitools are at their core a comlink with a good deal of sensor hardware that projects its user interface through a solid light haptic projection. I prefered to pass over the 'minifacturing' aspect described in the ME games' codexes as it just seemed to much like 'handwavium' even when held alongside the rest of the ME tech base. Not to mention that putting what amounts to a tiny nanoforge in the palm of a PC's hand is just asking for horror and pain. Instead, I just added a note that an omnitool could have the equivalent of a toolkit installed to avoid the 'lack of proper tools' penalty to B/R skills.

Armor is armor, no matter how you slice it. Only real difference between ME armor and SR military armor is the kinetic barrier.

That's all I can think of for what I did without having my campaign notes to reference. I do know that I never got very far in trying to translate biotics, although I have been semi-passively toying with the idea of it being some kind of advanced expression of technomancy (Emergence described the nervous system of a techno having various nodules of neural tissue everywhere, which is very similar to how the nervous system of a biotic is described in the ME games' codexes).

[Sarone]

That's some good advice.  As for shields, I was thinking about checking out the various spells for defensive and offensive buffs.

[Neurosis]

The second link beneath this post may be relevant to your interests, and will become increasingly relevant to your interests as time goes on. (The latest game system that I've designed in my off-time from being an SR writer has a setting very similar to Mass Effect, with dice pool systems comparable to a streamlined SR3/SR4 hybrid. It's a few weeks/months out from release, but I still felt the OP made it germane to mention here.)

Don't want to talk about my own non-CGL writing on here too much, though, because Jason Hardy will breathe fire on me and eat me. (Also, Bull might hit me. He's done it before.)

Anyway, also on topic...

* There is unfortunately little overlap between ME biotic adepts and SE magic. There are very few one-for-one spell to biotic talent equivalencies I can think of.
* Unfortunately, SR4 didn't go far enough in streamlining the hacking rules to make ME style omnitool "I point at you and your gun overheats" hacking possible. For that to work, Programs would have to work more like spells.

[Sarone]

A buddy of mine found a site that actually helps out quite a bit.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mass-effect-shadowrun-4th-ed

It's pretty interesting on how they came up with some of the stuff and will definetely be using it and copying the information (in case the original gets taken down for whatever reason).