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Moonguide @ Moonguide @ttrpg.network
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Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. Never make a deal with a dragon. [Shadowrun]

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  • 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.

    • Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. Never make a deal with a dragon. [Shadowrun]

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  • 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).

    • A lesson so many need to learn

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  • I don't hate 5e, in fact I'd join in as a player very happily, but I wouldn't run it. 5e is geared towards a very specific kind of campaign that I'm not very interested in running.

    I'm more of a social campaign with big action sequences kind of DM and Savage Worlds does that perfectly. It is:

    • Classless
    • 3 actions per turn, going over 1 heightens the chance you'll fail on all actions. Players tend to spend less time thinking.
    • Step die instead of d20, easy math.
    • Extremely easy to make homebrew for.
    • Generic, which means it can do any genre (I've done dark fantasy western and high fantasy medieval, next up I'll do dark fantasy cyberpunk hopefully).

    I tried to turn 5e into something that fit a cyberpunk setting for about 3 months, before just buying SWADE and being able to run every genre I could imagine from the go.