Shadowrun's Harlequin's Back

[gleichman]

There used to be some Shadowrun players hanging around here. Maybe not
many, but this question has elements that is open to those who never
looked at the game.

In the perhaps near future I'll be running the Harlequin's Back module
for my group. I've already had to make any number of serious changes
to it to fit it in with my own 're-imagined' Shadowrun setting.

One of which is booting Harlequin himself :)

In any case, the module itself is rather typical. Good basic idea with
so-so execution. The basic concept is a quest through the metaplanes
to assemble a defense of Earth from an invading horde. Sort of close
off the hot gates instead of holding them.

The metaplanes can be just about anything, each it's own self-
contained world. The module uses steam-punk wild west and gothic
mystery as a couple of examples. Others are less... interesting.

In any case, I'm looking for suggestions for what to swap in for some
settings I'm going to swap out. Plus would like to hear from anyone
who ran the module before- what worked and what didn't stuff.

[Simon Smith]

Post by gleichman
There used to be some Shadowrun players hanging around here. Maybe not
many, but this question has elements that is open to those who never
looked at the game.
In the perhaps near future I'll be running the Harlequin's Back module
for my group. I've already had to make any number of serious changes
to it to fit it in with my own 're-imagined' Shadowrun setting.
One of which is booting Harlequin himself :)
In any case, the module itself is rather typical. Good basic idea with
so-so execution. The basic concept is a quest through the metaplanes
to assemble a defense of Earth from an invading horde. Sort of close
off the hot gates instead of holding them.
The metaplanes can be just about anything, each it's own self-
contained world. The module uses steam-punk wild west and gothic
mystery as a couple of examples. Others are less... interesting.
In any case, I'm looking for suggestions for what to swap in for some
settings I'm going to swap out. Plus would like to hear from anyone
who ran the module before- what worked and what didn't stuff.

Are you familiar with Torg? That has an interesting mix of settings. And
some good ideas on how to produce mixed settings of your own.

I remember them vaguely as

There was the Cyberpapacy - medieval religious intolerance + shadowrun-style
cyberpunk trappings.

Call of Cthulhu/Primitive (Orrorsh)

A relatively straightforward d&D style fantasy setting (Aysle)

A sort of mixture of Egyptian mythos + superheroes setting (The Mummy meets
The Rocketeer, sort of.)

And a really quite cool Feng Shui/Blade Runner mix.

If you want more (accurate) details, shout, I will have to look them up.

[gleichman]

Post by Simon Smith
Are you familiar with Torg? That has an interesting mix of settings. And
some good ideas on how to produce mixed settings of your own.

I played Torg a few years back, I had forgotten about it.

Interesting game. Suffered a couple of serious mechanical problems-
why too much variance in it's core dice mechanic resulting in
characters that came across as undependable and thus incompentent and
unheroic. The other use was the card mechanic, it came across to us as
a get out of jail free system intended to in at least part manage the
messes the first problem got you in.

Setting and background were rather cool however. There might be
something to steal from there. I'll dig out my old books and take a
look.

[Simon Smith]

Post by gleichman

Post by Simon Smith
Are you familiar with Torg? That has an interesting mix of settings. And
some good ideas on how to produce mixed settings of your own.

I played Torg a few years back, I had forgotten about it.
Interesting game. Suffered a couple of serious mechanical problems-
why too much variance in it's core dice mechanic resulting in
characters that came across as undependable and thus incompentent and
unheroic. The other use was the card mechanic, it came across to us as
a get out of jail free system intended to in at least part manage the
messes the first problem got you in.

<snip>

That was very much our impression too, although my group only played a
couple of sessions. We didn't much like the drama deck; it struck us as too
obvious a fudge, but without it at the very least you seemed to need to
spend possibilities like nobody's business. A system that needs two
different sets of fudge factor rules is obviously a bit of an oddball.

And while 'spending a possibility point' was fine as a concept within the
Torg setting, West End Games then tried to export it into the second edition
of their Star Wars rules. Along with the 'screw-up' mechanic from
Ghostbusters, of all things. No wonder SW Ed II was a such a camel.

(As in: Camel (n): a horse designed by a committee.)

[gleichman]

Post by Simon Smith
A system that needs two
different sets of fudge factor rules is obviously a bit of an oddball.

Indeed :)

The possibility points at least had a in-character reason for
existence, although I'm not sure how the characters were suppose to be
aware of them. Perhaps a serious gut feeling or something.

Post by Simon Smith
And while 'spending a possibility point' was fine as a concept within the
Torg setting, West End Games then tried to export it into the second edition
of their Star Wars rules. Along with the 'screw-up' mechanic from
Ghostbusters, of all things. No wonder SW Ed II was a such a camel.

They were Force Points there right?

Only played a game or two of the original Star Wars game. If anything
I was less impressed with it than I was Torg. The invincible wookie
problem sucked the fun out of the system from the start. Some people
loved it, can't figure out why.

[Simon Smith]

Post by gleichman

Post by Simon Smith
A system that needs two
different sets of fudge factor rules is obviously a bit of an oddball.

Indeed :)
The possibility points at least had a in-character reason for
existence, although I'm not sure how the characters were suppose to be
aware of them. Perhaps a serious gut feeling or something.

What, like indigestion? :-)

Post by gleichman

Post by Simon Smith
And while 'spending a possibility point' was fine as a concept within the
Torg setting, West End Games then tried to export it into the second edition
of their Star Wars rules. Along with the 'screw-up' mechanic from
Ghostbusters, of all things. No wonder SW Ed II was a such a camel.

They were Force Points there right?
Only played a game or two of the original Star Wars game. If anything
I was less impressed with it than I was Torg. The invincible wookie
problem sucked the fun out of the system from the start. Some people
loved it, can't figure out why.

Ah, no, you had Force points a la Edition I /as well/.

(Disclaimer, West End Games sent me a draft copy of the rules, and I never
bought the final version. I don't think they changed in any significant way
before publication, but I might be slightly off-base on some of the below.)


A Force point doubled all your skills and attributes.

A character point added 1D to one skill or attribute of your choosing, to a
maximum of +5D. And you couldn't use both at once, because that would be
unbalancing. Heh.


What that tended to mean in practice was that getting hit in combat
generated an XP penalty, because character points were also what you used to
increase your skills. The lower your strength code and the less armour you
wore, the greater the likely XP penalty for being hit. Because Ed II also
introduced instant kills if incoming damage exceeded your strength by enough
points, when you rolled badly on strength you really needed to spend at
least enough character points to get your strength roll roughly equal to the
average damage of whatever weapon just hit you. So, worst-case, if you had
2D strength and got hit by a weapon doing 5D damage, that could cost 3-5
skill points. Er, character points. If you had 5D strength, you could
probably get away with just 1-3 character points under the same
circumstances. Maybe none, given a good strength roll.

The practical upshot was that Bounty Hunters (decent strength+armour) and
Wookies became even more effective combat characters than they were already.
Low-strength characters, you really needed to be a non-combatant. Like
that's fun, in Star Wars.

Oh, and as an aside, a low-strength character getting hit might be better
off in the short term spending character points to boost strength rather
than spending a Force point.

I can't imagine this helped the tone of the game any.

And at this point, with the system already down on the ground bleeding from
a grevious foot wound, along came the GhostBusters-inspired Wild Die
mechanic. Every time you made a skill roll, one die was 'wild'. If it rolled
a six, you rolled again and added, and kept going on further sixes. This
allowed characters to achieve spectacular successes if luck was with them, -
and allowed fluke damage rolls to insta-kill characters. That's the second
foot gone. /And/, pure genius, if you rolled a one on the wild die, you lost
it, your other highest die roll, and something bad happens causing your
skill roll to be a failure (or at least, not an unalloyed success) even if
you had otherwise rolled high enough to succeed. So now characters with 2D
strength can roll zero. Combine that with a damage roll rolling up and
scratch foot number three. And as the Wild die was rolled with every skill
roll as far as we could see, and an attack, dodge, damage and strength roll
is four rolls, this mechanic would intrude on average once in each combat
attack. Funny, I've never heard of anyone who actually used the Wild Die
in their games.


I do agree in principle on the invincible Wookiee problem, but I was lucky
to have players who did not take undue advantage. A 50-50 chance of walking
away from a thermal detonator explosion with just a Wound? Wow, that fur
must be asbestos.

And after a large number of iterations, I eventually found a house-rule
Wound system (which I'm very proud of) that cures the problem. Although
there are some other changes to other parts of the system - force points,
medpacks/healing, the melee rules, and I suppose armour, cover and grenades
- which also needed adjusting to get, erm, 'the most harmonious combination
of rules'. Admittedly, you can cherry-pick some of what I've come up with,
but even though I'm biased I have to say I really like the way they work
together.

[gleichman]

Post by Simon Smith
(Disclaimer, West End Games sent me a draft copy of the rules, and I never
bought the final version. I don't think they changed in any significant way
before publication, but I might be slightly off-base on some of the below.)

So they basically (like Torg) had two fudge sub-systems. How silly.


There was a break in game design as rpgs moved from former wargame
designers to... well I guess one can call them fans of rpgs who went
on to design them. Star Wars, Torg, White Wolf, Deadlands, etc.

All attempted various genre or dramatic style mechanics, and all
didn't seem to have a clue as to what those mechanics actually did.
The designers seem more in love with the concept than aware of the
result.

Fumble chances that increased as skill did. Wild swings in expected
results. Mechanics easily broken with characters stated toward the
edges.