If we can't have System Shock 3, we can at least play the offline version, damnit!
- Me

Where do I start? If you don't fancy reading my ramblings, just scroll down to the pictures!

System Shock 2 is one of my favourite games of all times. I completed it twice in coop mode and no other game came close to the experience. I remember encountering the small Arachnids for the first time and completely freaking out (it was less than two years ago, and I'm 31 years old ). The RPG mechanics combined with the severly restricted resources and horror atmosphere... Just great. Alas, you already know all that! Without any hope of a System Shock 3 every appearing, I got back to my favourite pastime: Creating games based on my nostalgic memories. Specifically, in this case, creating a boardgame of System Shock 2. I love dungeon crawlers like the old Hero Quest, complex rulesets like Arkham Horror, and generally everything that has light RPG elements.

I envision System Shock: The Boardgame (SS:TBG) as a "guncrawl", a sci-fi dungeon crawl game. Players choose one of the three character classes (Marine, Navy Technician or Psi Specialist) and start a mission. This can be anything we know from the game and more: Destroy 20 Annelid eggs, find an NPC, disable the ship's drive by hacking into the control computer, and so on.

The level layout consists of tiles which in turn contain a 1-inch square grid. There are narrow hallways, storerooms, and security offices scattered throughout. The security stations allow access to the security systems, namely surveillance cameras and turrets whick track and attack the player, and raise the alarm. Accessing terminals and computers also allows hackers to enter Cyberspace, which consists of several System Access Nodes (SANs) leading towards a Central Processing Unit (CPU), with DataStores here and there which contains important files, weapons schematics, and research data that can be downloaded.
A Cyberspace system is represented by a series of cards that are drawn from a deck, with each card representing one node with information about passowrds needed are the difficulty of overriding it, and if any ICE is present. The Cyberspace is basically a sub-game where characters that have high hacking skills can influence the real world by making turrets attack enemies, for example, or stopping an alarm.

Speaking of enemies, every turn there is a chance of enemies spawning. their number and type depends on the current alert rating which in turn is based on wether there is an alarm or not. In quiet turns, there may be none or only one lead pipe-armed hybrid, but if a high-level alert is actice, cyborg assassins might appear.

Also, every turn a S.H.O.D.A.N. event card is drawn. This represents unforeseen events on the ship and intervention by S.H.O.D.A.N.. Enemies may spawn, all cameras and turrets may increase their rating, robots are repaired by nano-bots, etc.

Between missions, in campaign play, characters can try to research new weapons and items with schematics they have found, or enemy organs to gain combat bonuses. Also, weapons can be modified with a high enough maintenance skill, and if they are jammed, they can be repaired.

Some items like powered armor and energy weapons need energy to work; once they are empty, they are useless until they are recharged at one of the recharging stations. There will also be an accumulator/power pack item that acts aas a mobile energy storage.

Ranged weapons will have different ammunition types: Normal, Anti Personell and Hollow Point, with increased or decreased damage versus organic, mechanical, and cyborg foes.

Characters have similar stats to the PC game. I am not sure of the dice mechanics yet, I am tending towards dice pools as seen in Shadowrun and Goalsystem, with the character having a pool of D6 and every roll of 4 or more counts as a success. The number of successes determines wether the whole check was successful. for example, to hit a target in ranged combat, a character has to roll dice equal to his Ranged Combat skil, and the number of successes are counted against the target's Agility. If it is at least reached, the target is hit. Every success above the target's agility increases the damage of the weapon. However, this is just a concept, as is the rest of the game

The game camn be played solo, cooperatively, or like a traditional RPG with one player as S.H.O.D.A.N. and The Many, controlling the enemies and security systems as well as revealing the game board and story, and the rest playing their characters trying to survive. I don't like the strict Overlord vs. Players style of the Descent games. It's better if the GM plays to provide a tough but fun story to play through instead of trying to murder the players.

So much for the concept, on to the physical conponents! Well, they aren't physical yet, as they need to be printed out and mounted on cardboard etc.

If possible, I would like some feedback on the general style of the cards as well as on the different versions.

Sorry for the picture links, this forum only accepts https urls and Flickr, which provides those, deletes uploaded images after a while. SO the best I can do it post the link to my webspace here.

A 1-inch camera token, designed to be glued to transparent plastic sheet and cut out:
Camera.png


A character card for the Marine class (the portrait is just something found on Deviant Art and is a placeholder):
Character_Marine.png


Frontside of an event card:
S.H.O.D.A.N..png


Backside of an event card (the label may be superfluous):
S.H.O.D.A.N._back.png


A weapon card; the weapon stat icons are just placeholder, I have no idea which stats a weapon would need and in which range.
As you can see, there are four different versions of the weapon icon. Which is one the best?
1) Outline only
2) Flat Fill
3) Picture only
4) Outline + image
M-22a.png




M-22b.png

M-22c.png

M-22d.png


A Perk/Ability card. Which style looks best?
1) Pure Green
2) Metal frame with diagonal corners, windows with diagonal corners
3) Metal frame, windows with diagonal corners
4) Metal frame

Sharpshooter_ver2.png

Sharpshooter_ver3.png

Sharpshooter_ver3b.png

Sharpshooter_ver3c.png


[Sample tiles (Some textures are taken from the SHTUP):
shock/tile1.jpg

shock/tile2.jpg


Edit: Various images may have been taken from SS2 mods, such as the weapons, so I thank those people for their contribution to keeping SS2 alive and if any of this boardgame adaption is ever released to the community, all assets will be properly credited and agreements to include those images will be asked for. In the meantime, all images that feature artwork depicting third-party assets are to be considered placeholders

the images must be https to embed properly.

I remember two more approaches to System Shock games, maybe they can give you some additional ideas...
System Shock - The Card Game
The Battle for RecDeck

*hand raise*

Why not make a cut down rougelike? Think DoomRL in that it's comparatively simple, yet you can still research unknown objects, mod items, and so on.

Don't get me wrong, I love the board game concept. It's mostly a case of 'I'm never going to play this because I have no friends.'

Edit: Apologies. I don't want you feeling like I'm knocking what you're doing here. I rather like it since it breaks thins down into simple easy to do in a single setting missions. Reminds me of a future version of dragon strike really.

My chief concern is how are you going to handle board reconfigurations? Have each deck segment then have 'debris' and or 'obstacle' cards Xerxes can lay down before play starts?

Assemble it yourself board.

I like that!

The board reminds me of Hero Quest

Some news on the topic of System Shock boardgames:

Nightdive Studios posted a SS2 boardgame playing card on their Twitter, created by SHODANFreeman.
https://twitter.com/NightdiveStudio/status/1124421001863819264

Ever think about how System Shock 2 would be as a board game?
@SHODANFreeman did! Check out his Cyborg Midwife card. #systemshock2

Can someone make version for Tabletop Simulator? It can be much easier

System Shock 2 Board Game, custom game by SHODANFreeman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZ92hudc2E

https://www.twitch.tv/shodanfreeman