Aberrant Conversion

[nexus]

I'm planning to convert some Aberrant characters to Fifth Edition, basically as an excerise. I was wondering if there are any guidelines for this or does anyone have any suggestions?

[Killer Shrike]

Take 2 Aspirin and call me in the morning

[Solomon]

Micheal Surbrook's excellent site features notes about conversions from the Storyteller system.

 

Surbrook's Stuff

 

I'd suggest you take a look at his work; it's a good start for basic things like characteristics.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Be prepared for characters that are way over 350 points in some cases. I've generally found it difficult to translate my Aberrant characters over. It's not that Hero can't handle it ... it's just that the points really add up fast.

 

Things like Warp, Weather Control, Magnetism, etc. are point monsters even at the Aberrant one dot level. Temporal Manipulation and Gravity Control don't translate over well at all.

 

IMO you also tend to get vastly different types of gamers going for Champions vs. Aberrant.

 

I'll also note that the link posted above is purely WoD not Aberrant and the conversions are to Hero 4th edtion not 5th ... but even so it might be a reasonable place to start.

[James Gillen]

Some of the high Quantum characters give you a chance to break out those MegaScale rules. Especially Divis Mal...

 

JG

[nexus]

I was going to try Divis Mal as the first character, but the more I look at him the less likely that becomes. He's less a character and more a plot device.

[James Gillen]

Well, that was just the extreme example.

 

JG

[nexus]

I understand, didn't mean to come off argumentative. I was agreeing. He's a monster.

[Armitage]

Originally posted by nexus

I was going to try Divis Mal as the first character, but the more I look at him the less likely that becomes. He's less a character and more a plot device.

 

That was the case for most of the significant NPCs. That way the players couldn't disrupt White Wolf's pre-planned storyline.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Sure you could.

 

"But some of the NPCs are powerful...." Just like 350 point champions nothing forced PCs to start at the base level or stay there. Many games had PCs as powerful or moreso than the NPCs.

 

"But the storyline had *this* happening...." And in the main Aberrant book and the APG GM/Storytellers were flat out encouraged to changes things to suit their own games.

 

Divis Mal was pretty much the only plot device NPC though Pax came pretty close. Of course in the section devoted to customizing your own game there were suggestions for how to replace Pax with a PC....

 

If, in your game, the NPCs and storylines were untouchable then it was the fault of the person running the game, not the system or world itself.

 

Generally the *only* place where cannon rules all is on the net based forums where you have to have some sort of common reference frame since there is no GM.

[Tom McCarthy]

So which products had Divis Mal and Cestus Pax in them ?

[nexus]

Pax was in the Project Utopia sourcebook. Divis was featured in the Teragen book. You got more information about both of them in Aberrant Worldwide:Phase 1 where they fight. You never do get many hard "stats" for them, just a general suggestion. Telekinsis/Kinetic control "brick" powers for Pax, Mal...well any power he wants essentially.

[Armitage]

Originally posted by Vanderbilt_Grad

"But the storyline had *this* happening...." And in the main Aberrant book and the APG GM/Storytellers were flat out encouraged to changes things to suit their own games.

 

But all of the other sourcebooks were written using the assumption that you were following the official timeline.

They did the same thing with the World of Darkness.

 

"But I like the Ravnos."

"Tough. We destroyed them all. They're never going to appear in a published book again." (exaggeration, I know)

 

"I like Project Utopia. I want to use them as a straight heroic organization."

"Sorry. Every book we publish is going to depend on the fact that they are a secret cabal of megalomaniacal fascists."

[starblaze]

Not to get on to a White Wolf riff, but this is what I have always hated about most of thier products. They seem to have this 'Moses coming down the mountain', kind of mentality about thier campaign setting so that if they say such and such happened then you are out of line for changing it.

 

Another thing I disliked intensely about their World or Darkness was how every important historical figure was either a supernatural being or influence by one. It's like plain ordinary non-powered humans cannot do anything without being helped by some Mage, Werewolf or Vampire. I read the Children of Gaia tribebook and according to that the Children were responsible for every major accomplishment in the world.

 

That's all for now.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Just like Hero and Champions WW developed a game world with Aberrant, Adventure, and Trinity … however unlike most game worlds that only get updated when a new edition comes out and xx years have passed changing x, y, and z (or changing everything aka. sorry Solitaire you are out) … WW published updates to their base world regularly *without* new game editions. Sure if you changed things in your game that might invalidate something published later, but most games I’ve seen folks go ‘so what.’

 

Champions gives you the ground world at Date YY and you get to decide what happens there. Supplements may give more info on groups and individuals … but they don’t really change anything and time doesn’t really pass. Once written in a book things are pretty much set in stone.

 

Aberrant assumes that, just like in our world, time passes and things change. When a supplement comes out a year after the core book you can generally bet that around a year has passed in the game world and that some things have changed.

 

When publishing living updates like that they *have* to have some sort of baseline and have the ability to build on what was published before.

 

However in the end it really isn’t any different than the Champions model in that you can change *anything* you want in a game world with either sort of publishing model. Sure if you change something big then a later book may not really make sense in your game but I’ve met few folks that really care about that sort of issue. Most gamers expect the GM to alter the world both in Champs and Aberrant … or any game for that matter.

 

Just because a ‘published book’ says that Divis did this or Defender did that it doesn’t mean that it is so in a given GMs game.

 

I will say that I’m not a big WoD fan, but that’s part of what really like about Aberrant. It’s not in the World of Darkness. Some of the issues you may have had with the WoD are simply not there in the Trinity universe. Here is a pertinent quotes from the core Aberrant book (just substitute “official timeline†for “Trinity timeframe†… and note the quotes around “official†below the Aberrant developers put them there not me….) :

 

…players and storytellers are free to include as much - or as little - of the “official†Aberrant-Trinity metastory as they like. Aberrant can easily be played as a stand-lone game without the need of Trinity, or the characters’ actions may forever alter the Trinity timeframe to come. It’s all up to the players and the storyteller.

 

To close Aberrant *really* is different from the World of Darkness. It is well worth a look.

[Bengal]

I miss the Street Fighter II RPG.