Eclipse Phase: Stars Without Number. I've wanted to convert EP since I first tried making a character. Between the SWN expanded core (rules for AIs and robots), the Mandate Archive: Transhuman Tech (body-swapping and memetics) and Polychrome (cyberware and hacking), I think I finally found the right one. I might actually get around to doing this one... Hell, one could even use the pretech and maltech bits for alien and TITAN tech.

A Song of Ice and Fire: RQ6. If someone else easn't already running a Westeros RPG in our group, I might have tackled this one already. Very little magic to worry about, so most "cults" would probably be non-magic-working factions. I'd use MRQII Empires provinces as a template for noble house stat-ups. Not too labor-intensive and a great fit for the trademark GRRM brutality.

Tékumel: RQ6. I don't really like any one of the several systems attached to Tékumel throughout its publication history (Dave Morris' Tirikélu is the one that comes closest). I think RQ6 would be just perfect (I understand there's a RQ2 conversion floating around but it's far from complete for my purposes). But of all the conversions here, this one would probably requires the most actual work — so many monsters to convert and cults to stat up.

Totems of the Dead: RQ6. Notice a pattern here? I blame CRKruger for getting me to buy this and much as I enjoy SW, by God I cannot imagine a better fit than RQ6. It seems made-to-order for RQ6 character generation and magic systems.

Unhallowed Metropolis: Savage Worlds. Old RPGnet darling impulse purchase. Very nice setting with thorough worldbuilding. Great fit for SW in my book, and a much better setting than Rippers which kind of weirds me out. Another easy one I might end up doing, especially if my wife is psyched about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (I suspect she will be).

Quote from: The Butcher;884757Unhallowed Metropolis: Savage Worlds.

Wouldn't work. UM's mechanics and settings supplement each other very well. you'd have to skip plenty of game-specific content and it would be a butchery...

QUOTE=The Butcher

...

Oh.

Proceed, citizen...

Quote from: JesterRaiin;884774Wouldn't work. UM's mechanics and settings supplement each other very well.

Care to elaborate? It's been a long, long time since I read the UM rules.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;884774you'd have to skip plenty of game-specific content and it would be a butchery...

QUOTE=The Butcher

...

Oh.

Proceed, citizen...

Quote from: The Butcher;884777Care to elaborate? It's been a long, long time since I read the UM rules.

Hmmmm, where to start...

Let's pick Corruption. It's probably the most iconic element of UM's character generation process. Without breaking it down to a tiniest details, Corruption is the dark side of a PC. It grows stronger with time, each "evil" deed makes it more powerful and this, in turn, changes the PC on many different levels. Pick Desire as your Corruption path and you become addicted, depraved and ultimately a beast driven purely by your desires. Pick Drive and you're slowly becoming a walking automaton, inhuman, precise, cold, distant. Select Physical... and you're on your way to become a monster. Literal monster, not unlike a Nosferatu.

What's peculiar about Corruption is that it can't ever be totally cleansed away. No matter what you'll do, no matter how saint you strive to be, Corruption is there to stay.

This reflects on the way you treat UM's characters and how you play them. You know they are cursed characters, doomed to end as monsters one day, unless they'll keep their inner demons on a leash... Which is pretty much impossible to do given the reality they live in and the career choices available to them. One day you're gonna lose control over your character, see him become everything he once stood against. All you can do is to postpone the inevitable, and hope for a glorious death on the battlefield, and since it's pretty much "zombie" setting, it means that being eaten alive isn't that bad option to go.

Now, let's say you're converting the game to SW ruleset. No problem about that, it can be done. It's just that Corruption is so powerful part of mechanics that you can't simply banish it away.

Get rid of it, and you're playing entirely different game, one that's not without some spark of hope, with characters that might be actually successful and cheat the death and become successful (whatever it might mean in context of the setting). When characters embark on an adventure, they aren't risking anything more than their hides, which is ok for any adventurer, it comes with the territory, after all. But for you, the player it means that's no longer a tactical choice, that you don't have to evaluate the risk of coming back alive, but so horribly twisted, so... alien.

So you're gonna add it to SW's ruleset. And then you're gonna see that UM is full of such parts, certainly smaller, less powerful than Corruption, but still meaningful, still singing unisono (pardon the expression) and thus making UM the game it is.

Point is: in case of UM, the ruleset and setting form a synergy that results with one of most cruel, dirtiest, unjust RPG experiences ever. If you want to assure it works "as intended", then you're better off with just playing the original game.

If it's about the setting alone, then I'd rather suggest tweaking RunePunk,  Necropolis 2350, or even attempt to work with some scraps from either Broken Earth or The Kerberos Club. Yes, I'm fully aware about settings' differences, but I feel they aren't that bad at emulating "ruined earth with a taste of Steampunk".

That'd be my 5 cents of input. Please don't get mad and put that chopping axe away.

P.S.
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies?

How about Dark Streets? It's Lovecraftian Horror, but I think it'd suit the premise better than UM, which (IMHO) doesn't leave plenty of room for good endings...

Well, I'll agree, that's what Corruption is billed as, but in application it's a little Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, because at the core, it's an attempt at a ex post facto in-game rationalization of a simple, bog-standard reroll mechanic.

If only SW had a simple, bog-standard reroll mechanic you could limit and control with Corruption values...:hmm:

You see, Mr. Weyland, the Butcher is a real Butcher, but his weapon is not an axe or a cleaver, but a scalpel and I think he could easily excise that mechanic which tracks Second Chance Spends and Devil's Luck Spends and use it just fine to track Bennie Spends.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884793If only SW had a simple, bog-standard reroll mechanic you could limit and control with Corruption values...:hmm:

Like I've said, it's not the problem of Corruption alone, or whether it's possible to simulate it under a different ruleset. I think that UM is one of these games that works best when left as it is. It takes a moment to appreciate its cruelty, understand what it means to visit its setting, but in exchange players get something... "Uncommon" (for the lack of a better description).

Quote from: CRKrueger;884793You see, Mr. Weyland, the Butcher is a real Butcher, but his weapon is not an axe or a cleaver, but a scalpel (...)

Hmmm, a specialist surgeon... :hmm:
I think we might have an open position in one of our labs.

Let me contact our Weapons Division... :cool:

BTW, why did Rippers creep you out?

Quote from: CRKrueger;884816BTW, why did Rippers creep you out?

Isn't that the game where PC can tear off bits of monsters and attach them to their own bodies as upgrades? That bit always struck me as a bit silly, but not 'creepy'.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;884781Point is: in case of UM, the ruleset and setting form a synergy that results with one of most cruel, dirtiest, unjust RPG experiences ever. If you want to assure it works "as intended", then you're better off with just playing the original game.

Fair enough. I admit to not having run it. A friend ran it once and I admit I was unimpressed at the time. But I am impressed by your spirited defense.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;884781If it's about the setting alone, then I'd rather suggest tweaking RunePunk,  Necropolis 2350, or even attempt to work with some scraps from either Broken Earth or The Kerberos Club. Yes, I'm fully aware about settings' differences, but I feel they aren't that bad at emulating "ruined earth with a taste of Steampunk".

The idea has not escaped me. I even considered an Anno Dracula-esque sort of game where Dracula succeeds, not by marrying into royalty but by spreading the sickness of the Nosferatu upon unsuspecting London, with feral vampires overrunning civilization not unlike zombies in UnMet, resulting in a similar world.

I also considered, under the "ruined Earth with a taste of Steampunk" descriptor, a Girl Genius-inspired post-apocalyptic steampunk scenario, with Europe torn apart by the wars of mad scientists.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;884781P.S.
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies?

How about Dark Streets? It's Lovecraftian Horror, but I think it'd suit the premise better than UM, which (IMHO) doesn't leave plenty of room for good endings...

I was under the impression that Dark Streets had its own, distinctly Lovecraftian flavor.

Quote from: CRKrueger;884793You see, Mr. Weyland, the Butcher is a real Butcher, but his weapon is not an axe or a cleaver, but a scalpel and I think he could easily excise that mechanic which tracks Second Chance Spends and Devil's Luck Spends and use it just fine to track Bennie Spends.

Appreciate the vote of confidence, old chap. Alas, devoting my better years to the rearranging of human innards has left me with precious little time to the subtleties of rearranging game mechanics (it's been a mere six years since I've finished my graduate education and started looking at "new" RPGs). But at least as far as UnMet Corruption is concerned, yes, sounds like a straightforward transplant.

Quote from: Simlasa;884840

Quote from: CRKrueger;884816BTW, why did Rippers creep you out?

Isn't that the game where PC can tear off bits of monsters and attach them to their own bodies as upgrades? That bit always struck me as a bit silly, but not 'creepy'.

Pretty much this. Pilfering the corpses of Nature's abortions like a common graverobber is no way for a gentleman to carry himself; let alone maiming them and having their limbs stitched to one's body. Dreadful business, that.

Quote from: The Butcher;884757Tékumel: RQ6. I don't really like any one of the several systems attached to Tékumel throughout its publication history (Dave Morris' Tirikélu is the one that comes closest). I think RQ6 would be just perfect (I understand there's a RQ2 conversion floating around but it's far from complete for my purposes). But of all the conversions here, this one would probably requires the most actual work — so many monsters to convert and cults to stat up.

THIS is a great idea. The Tekumel people should talk to the whoever-has-RQ6-now people.

This may just be me, but I've never considered conversion the horrible, barely-possible chore a lot of gamers think it needs to be.

I'm not a RPG rookie, and I'm pretty confident in my ability to pick up a game, thumb through the rules, and figure out quickly enough what means what.  "Might 80" means you're a strong dude, "6th Circle" means you can kick the ass of anyone not named Conan, "Evocation of Violet Tumescence" appears to be the system's list of temporal spells, and "21 xyw" means you're an outstanding fireballing pitcher with control issues ...

(Oh, wait, I just lapsed into APBA baseball speak.  Anyway ...)

Converting this isn't tough.  I know, in GURPS, what a strong dude looks like: he's got ST of 13-15.  I know what someone who can kick the ass of anyone not named Conan looks like; we're talking maybe 350-400 pts.  I know how to make up a wizard with a good command of temporal spells; that'd be a dozen Gate spells, say.

I refuse, and always have refused, to worry about whether I get the equivalencies "exactly" right.  The guy who wrote the original supplement isn't running the adventure, I am.  If the original NPC could beat down three starting characters in that system 75% of the time (not that anyone's particularly run the numbers), and the eventual NPC in my system could do it 50% of the time, who's to know, and who's to care?

Never said it was "horrible and barely possible" — it is time-consuming, though. A bit more so than "straight" campaign prep. And with prep time at a premium, I often default to working on a setting that doesn't require quite as much mechanical design. It's one thing to stat up a couple of new monsters for a D&D campaign, or even a dozen NPCs for a Vampire game. Converting the whole Tékumel bestiary to RQ6 is another.

Of course, there are easier conversions (EP to SWN probably fits the bill, hence "I might actually get around to doing this one").

Quote from: The Butcher;884873Fair enough. I admit to not having run it. A friend ran it once and I admit I was unimpressed at the time.

But I am impressed by your spirited defense.

Thanks. It took me almost one hour to produce that text, so if the message might be understood in spite of all errors I might have made on the way... Yay.

I don't want to sound like a pretentious poseur, and it isn't my purpose to prevent people from tinkering with the game, but I really think that UM is a bit underground and it's exactly where it should stay. It's not that it's especially good, oh God, how speshul, please hand me some more lubricant, or something. It's just that it aims at very specific experience and devs worked very hard to achieve it by constructing a synergy of world and mechanics. I feel it's very fragile construction, better left untouched.

Even its authors expressed in Corebook's foreword that there are better games covering similar territory, filling similar purpose and they should be preferred over UM. I agree with that. It's not the best cup of tea ever. It's merely not everyone's cup of tea.

Quote from: The Butcher;884873The idea has not escaped me. I even considered an Anno Dracula-esque sort of game where Dracula succeeds, not by marrying into royalty but by spreading the sickness of the Nosferatu upon unsuspecting London, with feral vampires overrunning civilization not unlike zombies in UnMet, resulting in a similar world.

I also considered, under the "ruined Earth with a taste of Steampunk" descriptor, a Girl Genius-inspired post-apocalyptic steampunk scenario, with Europe torn apart by the wars of mad scientists.

Good idea. Especially since the scenario of LHC going haywire (or actually "doing stuff according to the Plan") and reproducing event Horizon-like scenario on the Earth is still a possibility. Funnily enough, some people really consider it a plausible future.

As for Dracula.... Perhaps you know it already, but there's a tv series, considerably 'fresh", very relevant to the idea you're speaking about. It's not a especially good tv series, but like many others, it's a great source of inspiration.

Quote from: The Butcher;884873I was under the impression that Dark Streets had its own, distinctly Lovecraftian flavor.

Of course. DS is Lovecraftian horror, but the background seems very relevant to B&P&Z (I think) and therefore it might work better, almost out-of-the box, with only a slight reskinning (undead in place of Lovecraftian henchmen), and such.