In taking a look at converting Aberrant to the 'Storytelling' rules, the first thing I wanted to do is to do is make a listing of the 'core' parts of of the nWoD system and write out some notes as to where the Aberrant bits would fit in there. Not sure I'll ever run this game, but White Wolf has one of the easier character creation systems so a 'write up yourself as a character/here lets add some powers' might make for a fun time at a Con game. (Down side: 15d10 per player)

This will cover the Supernatural add-on books that I have. (I have core rules for Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, and Changeling... no Promethean nor Hunter). Changeling breaks more of these rules than the other systems but it still generally keeps with a number of these conventions.

Supernatural creation for Storytelling involves a human side of things and then the addition of a template on top of that. Aberrant pretty much used to work that way anyway so no real change there. I'm going to call this the Nova template, just because no other world uses the term 'Nova' which makes it that much more tied to the world.

Fans on the Message boards tend to refer to three 'axis' of character creation. The X-Axis is what the character innately is. Werewolves have an Auspice for instance which is tied to the phase of the moon. The Y Axis is the social aspect of the character. The Changeling version is court which is seasonally based (Spring, summer, etc). Finally there is the Z Axis which isn't part of character creation but rather something to aspire to later in your career. For Vampires this is 'Bloodline', a mutation of the blood that sets the vampire apart from other members of their clan.

So here's what I'm thinking for Aberrant. The defining moment for Novas is their Eruption. This is the point where thy go from being completely normal to something that might not even be human anymore. Usually it is an adrenalin fueled event that causes the 'node' in their brain that controls reality to suddenly become very active. The book lists off a number of examples that with a little grouping and resorting could become a list of nova 'types'. It wouldn't be too hard to add some mechanics to them. That is the X-Axis. Once I have that however, the Z axis becomes easy. The teregen have a method that they use to deal with their taint where they go into a coma and have a second eruption where in their powers evolve. It is called Crysalis like a butterfly. (It may actually involve making a cocoon out of your superpowers). If Eruption is the X axis, then Crystalis makes for an obvious Z axis.

As for social groupings, there are a number in the core Aberrant book complete with examples of how different allegiances could be on the same team. Personally, I'd like to see the allegiances shift to having more in common with philosophies than actual government agencies. The goal being to have an Utopian member and a Teregen member on the same team without having to do back-flips to justify why they shouldn't be in active combat... though allowing them to be tense with each-other is perfectly ok.

Each of the various templates grants something of a bonus based on the choices made during character creation. Usually this is some sort of trait or skill bonus. In the original Aberrant, all Novas gained a bonus to Stamina and Endurance. No matter what they were tough and healthy. Resisting poison and disease in nWod is Stamina + Resolve so either one of those. I'm also leaning towards allowing them to pick a bonus based on one of the trait categories depending on eruption. So Physical, Mental, or Social (on the Vertical) or Power, Finess, or Resistance (on the horizontal).

Each of the Supernatural types in nWod get a trait that determines how generally powerfully they are, a pool of points that they can use to power their abilities, and a modification to their mortal morality to indicate what happens when they get on the 'dark path'. There were some fairly straight correlations in the original Aberrant. The power trait was called Quantum and the Pool of points were called Quantum Points. Muddying the waters was an additional background trait called 'Node'. Node indicated how 'developed' the organ in your brain that alters reality is. I think it would make sense to combine combine node and quantum into a single 'node' trait and then make 'quantum' the energy that the character has access to.

The Morality replacement is more complicated. All of the existing Supernatural templates use a positive scale. Humanity, Wisdom, Clarity.. those are all things that you want more of. With Aberrant, the defining trait was 'Taint' but you don't want more taint. (Ok, so there were lots of reasons why you might want more taint but those were sacrifices, not voluntary.) Its difficult for me to think of Aberrant without thinking 'taint' so its not something I want to get rid of. One option might be to invert the standard Morality chart and call the whole thing 'Taint'. Another might be to just suck it up and call it 'Humanity' but then call the effects of degeneration 'Taint'. They were called 'Aberrations' in the original Aberrant book.

Last but not least is Powers. The basic nWoD powers are generally 5 ranks of powers with a different effect for each level of the general power. There is also a side set of abilities called Rituals that involve individual sub powers being purchased. The Mage game takes this a step further with 'Rotes' being the main set of powers that characters can learn.

The original Aberrant was pretty fancy in terms of what sort of powers a character could learn. With 3 different levels (and 3 different cost rates). In addition to regular powers there were also Mega-Attributes that were bonuses to the character's normal trait. Mega-Traits had multiple 'enhancements' that could be purchased. For instance the Mega-Perception ability has the ability to track like a bloodhound and to see the electromagnetic spectrum. Each enhancement is similar to a 'ritual' that can be purchased off of the main power. It might be worth it to flatten out the various powers by theme and then make general 'enhancements' to the base power work like rituals that the character can learn. Probably getting the first 'enhancement' for free of course.