GURPS Shadowgun [Brainstorm]

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As for magic, RPM is probably best for the high energy magic of Shadowrun. Path/Book magic is too subtle and standard magic is just too clunky. Of course, you could just transfer Shadowrun Magic, giving a Magic attitude equal to Magery, and adding skills as needed.

The problem with RPM, as I understand it, is that unless you know exactly which spells your going to need and hang all of them or make charms for them, you have the issue that a lot (most?) of the really useful spells have a very high energy cost, and even with Ritual Adept, you need a lot of time to accumulate all that energy (and if you don't have very high effective skill, you run a significant risk of getting halfway there and then failing badly enough that you need to start all over again, or taking long enough that you're killed by the problem you were trying to solve before you have enough energy to solve it - see this application to try it; EDIT: The risk of critfailing and needing to start over remains even if you're preparing in advance, it just has less immediate consequences if you're doing it where and when nothing is trying to eat you).

Regular Path/Book Magic with Path/Book Adept works better than RPM for a lot of adventuring games, especially Effect Shaping (and even if it's Energy Accumulating, it still works better, because regular PBM has much lower average energy requirements). About the only advantage RPM has in this context is a defined 'new ritual development' system (I make no judgements on whether it's a good development system or a bad one, I've seen arguments for both sides and haven't tried it enough to develop an opinion there).

There are games where RPM works quite well, but I don't think Shadowgun is one of them.