I have completed my Shadowrun addon a Touch of Shadows.
I have made these additional classes as supplemental classes. In Shadowrun I always felt the casters mostly just operate as a way to fill the already archetypical cyberpunk roles..just they throw spells in, but you could easily if you wished expand out the abilities to make full playbooks out of them. At a point if you relpicate shadowrun too much though the mage and the shaman basically become the same playbook though which is part of what I was avoiding with that (allowing them to get each others basic power, but none of the increases in potency). You would probabaly if you did so want to make sure to mix up what stat their moves draw upon though so they arent able to rely entirely on Touch for all exchanges.
Additionally I kept the fairly simple move set for racial groups, but if you wanted a more diverse option consider looking into the Sixth World mod for Dungeon World. I dont like all of what it has but it has a great selection of additional optional racial moves.
I did not update the principles, or make new GM moves yet, but it is not hard to presume what youd need to update to make sure as a GM you include tastes of magic and the unnatural in your world as well as the normal cyberpunk themes.
I have opened the file up for comments if you see significant things that need corrected or have concerns about why I went certain directions or balance.
I’ve made a couple of suggestions on the Attuned move, which felt kind of vague to me – in general, the move doesn’t have any specifics as to what happens. I figure the move feels like a mystical version of Assess or Research, and so could benefit from being implemented using a similar structure.
Also, “Accept the Unnatural” seems a bit brutal… “you lose your magic and must change your playbook” on a miss is essentially just forcing ‘touched’ characters to never use cyberware because there’s too much risk.
Instead, consider something along the lines of “your implants have become possessed by rift spirits”… something that represents an interesting complication, rather than writing off the character.
Its a hard choice..in shadowrun in generally a mage based character basically is signing his own death sentence by getting cyberware, and risking his connection to the source of his powers. And generally those who use magic never get cyberware.
I will think about it though.
I’m inspired a little by a recent reading of Urban Shadows, incidentally. A common pattern in their moves is:
10+: you succeed more or less unconditionally
7-9: you succeed with some cost or complication
6-: your attempt has an unexpected and unwelcome result.
So if you were trying to attune the rifts to discover some valuable information, you’re guaranteed to discover something – but on a miss, it’s not good news, and it’s probably not what you were looking for.
Riley Crowder
True, if you’re going for the strict Shadowrun feel, maybe it fits – but in that case, you might as well just declare outright that “touched” cannot use cyberware – because that’s what this move amounts to due to the extreme cost of failure.
But if you did want to introduce some uncertainty to it, I think the consequence needs to be a little less dire… something that will upset the character, but not the player.
I think the “go under the knife” move phases it well… “on a 6-, there have been… complications”. And the interaction of magic and implanted technology has so much potential for complications…
I do like your work, by the way – the playbooks, at first read, look pretty solid. It’s just those two common attuned moves that don’t feel quite right to me…
Simon Geard Hrm…I do like where your going with that. I will have to think about it a while, but you’ve got some good ideas.
Riley Crowder, this is very cool! Thanks for your work on it. I think swapping Cyberware for some special abilities is a great way to do it. Keeping the +hunted, +owned is slick. Keeping the spirits similar to vehicles is a nice touch as well. You really kept the mechanics close to the original game which could be tricky when adding magic. I love the +Inhabited under Resonance Mechanics as well.
Are you the one doing the Touched supplement?
Brian Schoff- Thank you for the compliments. I realized that if I wanted to make spirits work the most logical way would be to keep them working like mounts and vehicles work in Apoc or Dungeon World, to maintain the integrity and flow of the system. And I knew I needed to keep the owned hunted mechanics, because coming into the game with a reason and a burden that drives you to do missions is part of the thematic nature of the game.
I am not actually the one working on touched though I did borrow some things from both Touched and Necropolis to fill in my classes so I wouldn’t have to write too much of my own.