SR5 vs IZ2, Rules v Backgrounds.

I recently decided to try to re-start my roleplaying night, so I thought about what game would attract people. Shadowrun5 had just come out and I know one of my people adores that, so off went the offers. I posted to about a dozen people and got 4.5 bites, which is a pretty good result. So a date has been set and we are off.

In the next coupla weeks I picked up another player but lost the 0.5. At the same time I got back a 0.5 as a wife of one of the players has a little interest, but probably not everytime.

Then I actually thought about, and started reading the new ST5 rules... err thats a lot of reading and there's no way my people are going to read all that. So what normally happens is that I spend 2-3 sessions just explaining all the rules to sufficient level that we can play. Nahhh! Some of us are getting just a little too old, some of us have new kids, some of us can't be bothered.  The more I thought about it the more discouraged I became.

But, as fate (not Fate), would have it, Interface Zero 2.0 KSer came along using the Savage World rules, which all my players know. So because I had already used SR as a lure I compromised and announce that we will use the IZ2.0 rules (due out soon), but I would run it in Seattle using as much of the SR world as possible.  Everyone seemed ok with that, and a couple even said it was a great idea.

We won't be using Magic, we will use the psionics/zeeks rules instead and cut out all the complicated astral/spirit stuff. But where-ever possible we will retain the look and feel of the SR world, which is a really good background.

So what we will end up with is a "FFF" rule set that everyone knows (Savage) and a world background that everyone knows.  It actually sort of suggests to designers that it might be a good idea to break your background out of your game system as much as possible. Good backgrounds appeal to me regardless of the rule set they come with.