Not Converting Underground to Cyberpunk 2020

 

(You have to love the art, by Geoff Darrow, colours by Florence Breton)

I’ve written several conversion procedures, but here’s one from my folder I never really came back to after finishing. As it’s blatantly broken and an example of how I failed to make the conversion work. My notes will be in Bold so they can be seen.

 

Lower power but keep the theme that vets are emotionally unstable and very powerful.

This turned out to be an exercise in number management, as in the Cyberpunk/Interlock system where humanity loss was random, the loss here ended up being very fixed. So, it was open to min-maxing.

Converting rolls

P/F rolls become Opposed Tasks

F-D-C-B-A rolls start at F = Failed to roll above the Task Difficulty, D = rolled above Task Difficulty but not 5 above Difficulty, C = rolled Difficulty +5, B = rolled Difficulty +10, A = rolled Difficulty +15

So since Interlock had +10 being the max for skills and stats, the only way to get an A rank would have been to max out these things or get massive number of stat enhancements and then roll a 10.

Nothing on damage though, the core system proved too much before I could tackle it.

Converting Characteristics

Underground	Cyberpunk 2020
(STR+RES)/2	BT
DEX	REF
SPD	MA
INT	INT
WILL	COOL
AURA	EMP

TECH, ATTR and LUCK will have to be determined as normal

Units generally don’t convert well but assume that the Unit value of 0 is Cyberpunk value of 5 and each new Unit is +1.

A complete lie, I was trying to cram a logarithmic system, where every 3 points doubled into a linear system. But eyeballing it meant 0 = 5/6 and 6 = 10.

New Role

Surp-Super

Special Stat: POWER: This skill is the cap on the number added when rolling to use super-power and also determines how much money was spent on surgery and psychological treatment.

Skills: Can take one of the Solo, Cop, Techie or Med-Tech Career skill lists assuming that no specialized military Roles are being used from a supplement.

Very broad and if I had come back to it, I would have made a custom skill or told everyone to use the Solo skills.

The Surp-Super gets R&D money according to his POWER like a Solo but at x 10, his actually starting money is 500eb per month from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I could have done a proper conversion of Underground to EuroBucks, but I think that would have been just eyeballing it.

Acquiring Powers

The future surplus hero divides the money between the different Enhancements that he was granted and as a bonus to the psychological treatments that followed each.

Each enhancement from the Underground book costs Base Cost + (Number of Units above 1 x Potency Value) x 100, If the bonus or limitation is taken the Base cost is doubled or halved (rounding down).

More mangling of a logarithmic number scale into a linear process. Especially as this isn’t even how the power-buying in Underground worked. You paid Base Cost + What the Rank/Potency chart said.

Every Enhancement has a Stress Rating which factors into determining Humanity Loss during the psychologist phase. This rating is always a minimum of 1. The Trauma listed for each enhancement is a helpful roleplaying guide.

Psychological Consoling

Every enhancement has a separately track stress rating and the Surp-Super must pass a roll with the help of a Psychologist to reduce them. The Surp-Super rolls d10+ COOL +1 for every 1000eb spent of psychological treatment vs Task Difficulty 10 + POWER. For every 5 more the Surp-Super exceeds the Difficulty, reduce the stress of that enhancement by 1.

Making everything in blocks of 1,000eb instead of $100,000 ended up massively inflating the number of powers someone could have. It also meant Cybernetics remained a vastly cheaper option, especially BOD-boosting stuff like Muscle and Bone Lace.

Once all psychological treatment rolls have been made, multiply the stress by 10 and round to nearest 5, and count that as Humanity Loss.

Isn’t it easier to Boost them?

Yes, many Surp-Supers have cyber-ware or bio-ware implanted as well to be cost effective. However this still comes out of the money allocated to enhancements.

May as well made the power of these superhero to take Cyberware as half cost-Bioware.

Activating an Enhancement

When a Surp-Super uses an ability, they roll the Most Relevant Ability (usually listed in Enhancement Description) + Enhancement Bonus (up to a rating equal to the POWER special skill). If an Enhancement grants Stress, the Stress builds each round activated the power is activated until it reaches the POWER rating and starts translating into Humanity Loss.

Doesn’t match at all how Underground powers were bought or used and since I was relying on the Unit total straight from Underground, restricting things POWER (capped at 10) made this completely unworkable.

The all powerful Benchmark table, which drove Underground and I would have to refit for Cybewrpunk if I was to do this again.

Sample Surp-Sup

Man-Dar, the Human RADAR, Stats 6s across the board

POWER 6

R&D money 3,000 x 10 = 30,000

6,000 set aside for Psychology treatment

5 + (6 x 3) x 100, bonus x 2

23 x 100 x 2 = 4600 to install 6/3 = 2 Stress

Rolls 10 + 1d10 vs Whatever the Referee decides for each item

D – TN to TN+4: 2 Turns

C – TN+5 to TN+9: 10 Minutes

B – TN+10 to TN+14: 1 Hour
A – TN+15: Permanent

5 + (6 x 1) x 100, bonus x 2 = 1100 to install, 6/6 = 1 Stress

Range Unit +5 = 15 on the chart is 100 yards/metres

5 + (6 x 1) x 100, No limitation = 2500, Stress 6/8 = 0.75, Range 40 feet/12 meters

(The colour is becuase I copied it from the corebook not the players handbook, which was a worse scan)

5 + (6 x 2) x 100, bonus x 2 = 3400, Stress 6/5 = 1.2

30,000 – 2700 – 2500 – 3000 – 7000 = 14,800 – 6000 (therapy) = 8800 for cyberware

Neuralware Processor -1000/ 1d6

Sandevistan Speedware -1600/ 1d6/2

Smartgun Link -100/ 2

Vehicle Link -100/ 3

Linear Sigma -6000/ 2d6

Way more effective in game than buying up powers with the exception of the Awareness-replacing powers since that just automatically overruled and won a portion of the combat procedure.

d10+ COOL (let’s say a generic 6) +(1 x 6[000]) vs Task Difficulty 10 + POWER (6) For each enhancement. For every 5 more the Surp-Super exceeds the Difficulty, reduce the stress of that enhancement by 1.

EM Pulse 4 + 6 + 6 vs TN 16, No change

Energy Detection 6 + 6 + 6 vs TN 16, No change

Night Vision 4 + 6 + 6 vs TN 16, No change

Danger Sense 8 + 6 + 6 vs 16, No change

Once all psychological treatment rolls have been made, count stress as Humanity Loss.

(2 + 1 + 0.8 +1.2) x 10 = 50 before Cyberware (2+3+[5]+[2]+[8]) = 20

So, a total of 70 HL or lowering the rolled EMP by 7. Poor Man-Dar is a Cyber-Psycho and should have pumped up that EMP to 10 at start of play, as per Cyberpunk 2020’s meta.

The exact flaw of this attempt right here. Enhancements make high EMP mandatory much more than Cybernetics for not as much benefit.

The Overall flaw was having figured out that I wanted powers, not bothering to actually see how powers worked in relation to the rest of the rules. And then trying to cram it into a system where the baselines were totally different.

Will I do this again? Who knows, I have other things that take a higher priority.