Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-34848384-20180522124637/@comment-25396609-20180522231725

I played in a 4th edition game that worked fairly well, sadly it didn't last because the DM was inexperienced.

There IS a dedicated RWBY tabletop that somebody put together, but I've read the rules and it is... just awful. Every character ends up boring and same-y because of how restricted the weapon rules are; plus the Dust is just weird. They decided brown Dust is acid for some reason?

I think Shadowrun or Savage Worlds would be good for RWBY personally, Shadowrun has rules for things like Physical Adepts that would cover Aura abilities quite nicely, good range of guns and melee weapons to pick from for stats. The main advantage for Shadowrun as a medium for a RWBY game, though, is that you don't really get locked into classes, and even if you do spec specifically for one archetypel you have a LOT more room for branching out than in class-based tabletop games.

For those wonder or not aware, the archetypes (called concepts) in Shadowrun are:

Decker: hackers who both literally and figuratively enter the matrix using specialized cybernetics and equipment.

Rigger: Drones/vehicles controlled with full-dive VR, similar idea to Deckerss but using different specifics for their gear. Also tend to be more mechanically handy while Deckers focus on computers. Riggers are a ton of fun because as you get to higher levels* you can end up controlling entire swarms of drones at once, or piloting an entire convoy of combat-equipped vehicles simultaneously. I played Shadowrun once and was running a Rigger, he lived out of what is basically one of those big armored cars they use for transporting money between banks; the van was set up so he could control it while rigging, and he had a milspec drone with a machine gun turret on it that he used for combat. He had painted a smiley face on it and somewhat anthropomorphized it, gave it a personality and treated it like a dog. You can actually get personality modules and AI for your drones that control them when you're not directly piloting, but they're pretty expensive and I only made it through 1 run before the group disbanded.


 * no actual level system but the longer you play the more points you get to upgrade skills and the more money you have for upgrading equipment.

Streat Samurai: non-magical fighters, usually have a lot of cybernetic augmentations to increae their physical abilities. Despite what the name might imply, they aren't even close to actual samurai. They're closer to mercenaries or mob enforcers. Lots of guns and big scary melee weapons. My favorite weapon in Shadowrun is a combat axe. huge Tungsten axe designed for military use with a spring-loaded spike on the bottom for when you feel the need to smash a guy's head in instead of cutting it off.

Physical adepts: Magic users whose powers manifest as superhuman abilities. They can do things like run up walls, spider-man climb, magically control their fall when jumping off buildings so they have a softer landing, or imbue their weapons (be they actual melee weapons or their bare hands) with elemental energy. There's also a set of powers for them that pretty much lets them use a D&D style barbarian rage, but more people like to run them as skilled martial artists rather than HULK SMASH!

Spellcasters: Come in a few different flavors, the closest to your traditional wizards and sorcerors and such, though their specific powers depend on what tradition you take, good example being religion in which case you get healers rather than explosive hellfire.

Technomancers: Similar to Deckers but they don't need fancy computers or cybernetic augmentations to Keanu their way around cyberspace. They can just do it with their brain and nobody knows why.

Face: Your bards or charismatic rogues. The guy who isn't much good in a fight but your party would be screwed without him because you wouldn't be able to convince anyone to hire you. (Or to not kill you after you piss them off. Turns out when the Yakuza decide somebody needs to die because they pissed off a member of the family, they don't much care for it when some random guy in a cafe sees said enemy of the family robbing the owner and kills them with his remote-controlled murder robot before they get their chance to kill the guy themselves.)

I'm probably forgetting one in there somewhere, but there's a LOT of variation in those concepts/archetypes. Street Sams can be anything from pissed off bikers with baseball bats to skilled gunmen, Physical Adepts range from highly trained martial artists to expert assassins and championship football players. Riggers can either focus on controlling a large number of small drones, being god-tier getaway drivers (most people in Shadowrun don't know how to drive anymore because all the cars are smart cars that follow GPS paths; so having a guy who actually can drive on his own, not to mention being really damned good at it, will save your ass when those 'smart' cars get caught in traffic), or saving all their money to pimp the ever living shit out of a single drone or vehicle until it becomes a hilariously absurd death machine.

Did you know in Shadowrun you can equip ANY vehicle with retractable robotic spider legs that can climb walls? Because I did. And it sounds AWESOME.