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I was gonna post today but 36 inches of snow was on my lawn so that didn't happen. However, I finished the suprise and thought I'd show it today. For the last update, I plan to compare and contrast the official power rangers game and a fan hack I made that I believe is closer to what people wanted. I made this hack after my last update and it uses Cortex. You can find it here as a preview. What better way to T Pose and assert my domiance than by making an arguably better game, imo. 
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Jan 29, 2022 22:38
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Infinity RPG: Haqqislam The Dread Pirate Roberts So, assume you've gotten your letter of marque - now it's time to go out pirating. Doing the actual piracy bit is pretty tricky - you have to identify valid targets, take them down with minimal damage (ideally) and then get their poo poo back to port without being shot down, killed or arrested. It's a lot of work! How do you go about doing it? Well, step one is identifying targets. While it's possible to just camp out on a popular shipping route and then just swoop in and capture trade vessels, it's not usually a good plan. It really only works in the early days of a conflict, before the merchants start going around or hiring escorts, and it only works if your target has a lot of merchant vessels in the area anyway. Do it a few times and suddenly the trade lanes are full of naval ships and mercenaries gunning for your head. Too much risk. You can't wait for your targets to come to you - you need to track them down. There's plenty of methods to identify potential targets - ask around at ports if you know who to ask and how, hack traffic control networks to steal their traffic data, infiltrate businesses to steal their shipping records. Often, the preparatory legwork is going to be as time-consuming as the actual attack, and hunting for targets is what corsairs spend a majority of their time doing. Good corsairs maintain informants across the Sphere - dockworkers who can copy shipping manifests or plant trackers, hackers who can send over flight plans, bureaucrats who can reveal key information. Anyone that can help you find wealthy targets that fit your letter of marque's criteria is invaluable. If you're really good, you go even further with it, manipulating your prey into making themselves a valid target. That kind of corsair is equal parts pirate and con man, tricking their targets into changing plans, luring them in with bad deals, manipulating shipping routes through fake businesses. Most of the time these are short cons, building just enough information up to get the target to make a single key mistake, and the corsairs who manage these on the regular often become legendary. While a corsair vessel is usually well armed compared to, say, a trade ship or cargo hauler, they aren't usually up to par with battleships. They might be able to survive a brief skirmish with police ships or system watchdogs, but a full on naval engagement is a losing battle, and ship repairs are expensive as hell. Therefore, the ideal for a corsair is to seize their treasure without having to get into a space battle. This means wielding fear and surprise against their targets. Corsairs need a reputation, either by performing spectacular and vicious raids or using propaganda to make people think they did or are otherwise too dangerous to mess with. Since the Mayasphere loves corsair drama, it can be very useful to get a journalist on your side, to spread the tales of your daring and courage, or you might specifically target your prey, ensuring they - and only they - hear about how nasty you can get and how it's a bad idea to fight back. Surprise comes when performing the actual raid - you never want your target to see you coming. Ever. You can achieve this by speed, hitting hard and fast and getting your work done before the enemy has any idea what's going on, or you can be stealthy, using physical and quantronic disguises, comms jammers or even sensor ghosting. Of course, doing that generally means you need a skilled hacker aboard, but let's be honest - any ship that wants to engage in naval combat does, because ships run on computers. It is possible to physically hide in space, though it's not easy. You could disguise yourself as a merchant ship on a busy trade route, but those are usually the ones with the best protections. Some ships use baffles that deflect active sensors or internal heat sinks to mask their thermal signature. It's never 100% effective - any ship is warmer than empty space - but even a few seconds of confusion for the target is enough to make a difference. Once the raid begins, it ideally goes exactly to plan - you broadcast your intention to the target, they realize they're caught, they understand that if they cooperate they won't be harmed, and their cargo is insured so they're better off surrendering. They do, your boarders take control of the vessel bloodlessly, you secure the quantronic records, and you imprison the crew. That's the ideal raid. It also almost never actually happens. People try to flee or fight, and that means you need a plan to end things quickly if they go bad. Displays of overwhelming force sometimes work - you let off a few shots to convince the target to surrender, but you want to be very precise about where you hit, to retain the captured ship's value. (Many corsair vessels only carry enough ammunition for a few volleys, or only use engines with enough power for a few good shots - a long-term engagement means they have to flee, but it would probably have gone against them anyway, is the reasoning.) You want your boarders on the other ship ASAP, which sometimes means you go for a boarding action as your first shot - if you've got real space veterans on board, you might have them put on EVA suits and lurk off your actual ship, grappling onto the target before you even broadcast your intent. You'd think seizing the target ship would be the end of things, but it's not. Now you need a plan to get it back to your home port - and that's often going to be difficult. Your attack probably got communicated to someone outside the area - it's just not usually feasible to shut down all communications before that happens. That means you've probably got some kind of cops, security or armed forces coming for you, and you need to keep your captives calm and compliant. You also need to decide if you're going to obey your letter of marque and head home or if you're going to try and shortcut that and make a stop at the nearest friendly station - safer, but it risks having the Haqqislamite government not approve of your work. To avoid that kind of problem, corsairs usually invest heavily in high-speed engines. The faster you get home, the faster you get paid and don't have to deal with problems any more. (Plus, they're valuable if you need to fight.) Once you hit port, you're generally fairly safe - though it's worth keeping an eye on the authorities to ensure you don't get scammed by unscrupulous officials, that all bribes are paid as needed and so on, and also that any particularly dangerous captives don't escape or that particularly valuable cargo doesn't go missing. That said, the game notes that getting paid for your work is deliberately straightforward so that you can run a corsair game easily and not worry too much about the handover - the fun part that you're after is in space, after all. (And also, the book notes, to differentiate corsair play from the possibility of merchant play presented in the Ariadna book.) Assuming you don't get too greedy, your pursuit will likely dry up quickly after you make port - most governments and businesses consider the threat of piracy just one of the costs of doing business in space, and most have insurance against pirate action, though insurance companies don't like to pay out if the privateers have been strictly following their letter of marque's rules. However, it's also common for targeted businesses and organizations to hire security escorts. Usually that means mercenaries, and you want to know exactly what kind of guns your target has hired, because no one likes to attempt a boarding action and end up looking down the barrel of an unexpected gun. Really rich targets might even hire mercenaries to go after you proactively, reversing the normal predator-prey relationship. If you're operating in wartime, however, national navies are going to treat you as a military threat. You might end up hunted down by naval forces, or you might run into them patrolling key routes or escorting important vessels. That's pretty much your worst case scenario - they outgun you, after all. Some corsairs will shift to secondary targets if they run into this kind of problem or even give up on the job entirely. Others take it as a challenge, though it requires sophisticated tactics to avoid being captured when a navy decides they want you, and even better ones to take down hardened, protected targets. Haqqislam doesn't really mind if you don't actually accomplish many raids this way - even if you capture nothing of value, you're drawing fleet assets away from the front line, after all. That said, you're also taking a lot of risk - during open war, you can't expect the enemy to respect the legality of your letter of marque, and if you cause trouble, they probably are going to try to kill you, not capture you. It's also easy for a corsair crew to just go renegade and become straight up pirates - either because they get too bloody for the Haqq to tolerate or they don't like working under the restrictions placed on them. Alternatively, the crew may mutiny if they aren't getting paid well or if the rules require them to give up on a really nice payday. Some crews even jump between piracy and privateering frequently, mostly obeying the rules but breaking them when they think they can get away with it. Some even end up forced out of their theoretically legal status by circumstance - maybe the war ends while you're still out hunting and you don't hear about it until you've already seized a vessel, unaware that your letter of marque is no longer valid. Whoops! Now you don't have many options - might as well just go full pirate. Next time: Piracy - A Space History
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Jan 30, 2022 00:00
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Quackles posted:So, during their “Door to Darkness” series of oneshots, one of the players played the Memory as mid-life crisis Tony Hawk. I have to admit, I guffawed at this. Thanks for putting so much effort into these reviews guys, I've loved reading them so far. It's great to read about something that has interesting problems, rather than is just boringly bad. Feels really instructive from a Pbta PoV. Leraika posted:I really dislike PBTA playbooks that require you to spend one of your starting ability choices on something the class needs to function. Never Forget should have been baked into the Memory's default skill. Hard agree. It's always a big red flag for when a PbtA game isn't going to understand the assignment.
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Jan 30, 2022 12:37
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Infinity RPG: Haqqislam When You're A Professional Pirate, You Don't Have To Wear A Suit Because of the rules around returning to home port to auction off booty, most major caravanserais are going to have a corsair ship around most of the time...but given that also means dealing with the Diwan al Jund, tax collectors, the ship's owners and so on, there's also places to go if you just want to be a pirate or corsair hanging out, socializing and not dealing with the law. They're not generally the safest places around, but they're comfortable, friendly and don't ask a lot of questions. Ceres, back in Sol System, is the oldest space pirate haven that humanity's got. The dwarf planet was originally mined for rare earth elements, with its mining tunnels pressurized to make the work easier. When it ran out, the miners left, but the pirate Giacomo "Jim" Argento started hiding out there, and as he became famous, more and more pirates started to gather on Ceres. It's been a haven for about a century now, making it unique for its long history. PanO and Yu Jing have worked together to purge it three times so far, and they tried for four, but a pirate fleet defended the place during the Second NeoColonial War and drove them off. Cerean pirates have their own traditions at this point, including a week-long holiday celebrating that victory, their own unsanctioned version of Catholicism, and a leaderboard for pirates and privateers that tracks who's made the most money each year. Sefurokku, AKA Safe Rock, lies out in the Human Edge system. The Edge is crawling with pirates and corsairs, since so much money passes through it in the form of minerals, it's got tons of places to hide, and no one owns the entire thing. There's actually several orbital stations in the system that are friendly to pirates, but Sefurokku used to be the most popular of them. It's hidden in the Helicon Belt by a Kordylewski dust cloud that blocks most sensors. While it's been a pirate hangout for years, it was recently taken over by the Ikari mercenaries. Colonel Ikari has been trying to keep its location relatively secret, to keep anyone outside his outfit from reaching the Ikari headquarters, and he's instituted strict security protocols for visitors and required them to agree to not reveal much about the station. Many don't realize that it's still possible to purchase preferential docking treatment and better quarters, however - but the prices are quite high, and you still have to put up with Ikari's paranoia. The high cost and annoyance of dealing with the Ikari mercenaries and their rules has pushed Sefurokku to 'port of last resort' for Human Edge piracy. Kosmet, the neutral ground caravanserai near Svalarheima mentioned earlier, is somewhat riskier to use as a base than the Human Edge. Svalarheima is still a hotbed of privateering, but the system is well-traveled by both PanO and Yu Jing naval forces, after all. Neither power realizes that Kosmet is more than just neutral ground for them, but also a perennial safe haven for any Haqq corsairs in the area. The Trade Diwan, Aleah Harrak-Bey, used to be a corsair captain who retired into a political career with the Funduq Sultante. She controls the local Diwan al Jund and allows other corsairs to come and go freely on the station without any of the usual reporting requirements or other responsibilities dictated by their letter of marque. In fact, she's dedicated an entire sector of docking solely to corsairs and forbids it use by PanO or Yu Jingese ships. She is fully aware that she's walking a dangerous line in the conflicts of Svalarheima, though, and she expects her corsair friends to be discreet and cautious when in her territory. Those who disappoint her make a powerful enemy. We then get a list of some major historic conflicts in which Haqq corsairs were heavily involved. In the Phantom Conflict, early in Nomad history, PanO and Yu Jing worked together with ALEPH's agents to try and end the Nomad Nation without having to formally declare war. The Nomads escalated the conflict as much as they could, trying to force their foes to admit their actual goals, which would not have sat well with their civilian populations. Haqqislam was not officially involved directly, as they didn't want to piss off the other powers. However, they were sympathetic to the Nomad Nation, despite being unable to help openly. One particular grand admiral, Turgut Zeybek (better known as Pasha), decided to take matters into his own hands. Pasha Zeybek gathered up a corsair fleet and a team of technically-retired Diwan al Jund legal experts and headed for Tunguska, where they set up a Nomad privateering system and registered the entire fleet as corsairs based out of the mothership. Due to their shift in allegiance, each corsair took on a new name - most of them joking references to their old ones or just direct translations into one of the major languages aboard the Nomad ships. The corsairs raided PanO and Yu Jing shipping through the Phantom Conflict, relying on Black Hand intel to target ships transporting black ops soldiers and spies specifically. After the conflict finally ended with a Nomad victory, most of Pasha's fleet returned home and became Haqqislamite again. Not all, however - Pasha himself led the contingent that stayed on Tunguska, joining the Black Hand and rising to significant rank. During the Silk Revolts, a group of rogue Silk Lords attempted to overthrow Bourak's government. Hachib Mudasar and his forces clashed with them mostly in space, all over the Human Sphere. Both sides heavily relied on corsairs, with Bourak's authorities siding with the Hachib and most caravanserais siding with the Silk Lords. It was easily one of the most chaotic internecine messes any corsair has ever had to deal with. Many switched sides multiple times during the conflict based on who had the easiest or most lucrative targets, while others were forced into full military service by the Qapu Khalqi. Some corsairs even chose to leave Haqqislamite territory entirely until the entire thing blew over so they wouldn't have to figure out the mess of politics that might ruin their letters of marque. A few corsairs ended up becoming exceptionally politically powerful afterwards by throwing their total support behind the Hachib, who ended up winning the conflict. The Outer Mercantile Conflict was a set of skirmishes between Haqqislam and PanOceania, mostly fought in the Human Edge or near Svalarheima and Sol. The Haqq navy was horribly outpowered by the PanOceanian one, so their only actual chance at victory lay in attacking PanOceania's economic power. Corsairs were relied on to go after PanO shipping as much as possible, forcing the PanOceanian Defense Fleet to spread itself over large stretches of space in defense of its trade vessels. This, in theory, would keep them from maintaining a blockade on the Human Edge, Sol and Svalarheima caravanserais. It worked amazingly. The corsairs struck PanO everywhere at once, often operating very far from the threatened stations and with little support. It made many of them famous and beloved on Bourak, because the media went out of their way to portray these corsairs as heroes saving Haqqislam from PanO bullies. Indeed, to this day, many corsairs claim to have been singlehandedly responsible for the fact that the conflict ended with a negotiated peace that heavily favored Haqqislamite interests. Most recently, though, corsairs have been heavily involved in the fighting on Paradiso. Ever since the First Paradiso Offensive, it's been very easy to get a letter of marque targeting the Combined Army - the only reason they're still relatively rare is that there's few takers. After all, it means exclusively targeting naval vessels that almost certainly will not surrender, so you only want to get involved if you've got big guns. This means the corsair fleet that has taken up the cause tend to be tough, grizzled veterans, and proud of it. They tend to think they're the best of the corsairs, a private navy with strong bonds to each other. They usually hunt in packs to minimize risk - which in this case still means a lot of risk, given the power of the CA forces. Still, the rewards are gigantic if you succeed - CA captives and captured EI technology are both exceptionally valuable to O-12. (You do have to put up with intense regulations and inspections, though, as O-12 wants none of that stuff hitting the black market.) Most of the Paradiso corsairs operate out of El Arsenal, a Nomad station near the Acheron Blockade. It's a station with extensive repair and salvage facilities, and that tends to mean most of the ships using it end up as Franksteinian monstrosities of patches, jury-rigged gun mountings and so on. Their favorite targets are the Exrah Comissariat ships, which are older than most other CA designs and tend to have only lightly armed escorts, so they're easier to take on than Morat or Shasvastii ships. Bureau Aegis has started to become worried about the Paradiso corsair fleet, however. They're useful...but they represent a very real future risk. If humans win the war or are forced to abandon the system, the corsairs of Paradiso will be a heavily armed and highly trained naval force that might not have any real loyalty to anyone. And now, it's time for rules content! A corsair campaign assumes the party begins the game with a ship, so the party's going to have to figure out how they managed that, given the expense it represents. Generally, it'll be a smaller vessel, with the potential to work their way up to a big one, but the GM can allow whatever ship makes most sense for the party. The game will almost certainly be using the spaceship combat rules from the GM's Guide, and the book provides three more ship profiles to go with it - the Relief Vessel, which is a small freighter designed to mave supplies rapidly between systems but isn't particularly heavily armed, the Colonial Transport, which is a bulk transport for raw materials that isn't very fast but has a lot of cargo space and a thick hull, and the Converted Freighter, which is even bigger, holds even more but has a pretty small crew capacity and not particularly impressive stats. Corsair campaigns, the game suggests, will generally be either Sandbox, with no prefined plotline and focusing on the freedom of being a corsair seeking wealth through the letter of marque. That's generally easier to prep for - build out bunch of prominent locations and NPCs within them, and then react and shift things around based on player action. However, the game notes this can be quite overwhelming given how much freedom of choice everyone has at any given time, and the GM will need to be able to think on their feet to produce ad hoc NPCs and settings when players decide to do something unexpected, which they will. Plus, the PCs need to be comfortable being the proactive drivers of plot. The other option is a Plot Point game, with a full backstory and campaign arc. Players are still relatively free to pursue their own agendas - unlike a Wilderness of Mirrors game, no one's giving them specific missions. However, the backstory is going to tie heavily into the events of the game, and there will be a distinct plot thread throughout it. Even if PCs don't pursue a given plot detail, they should hear about it and its effects on the area around them. GMs, we are told, should be cautious about avoiding the feeling of railroading. If players don't want to interact with a specific plot element, that's okay, and they should be allowed to do something else. If you introduce an event where the Combined Army heads for Ariadna and they don't want to deal with it - fine. That's fine. It happens off-screen and they keep doing what they want. However, it should also have localized effects on things they do care about - for example, local trade will likely be impacted and Teseum prices are going to skyrocket, which might draw the PC crew into an epic war to seize Teseum-bearing ships that they actually are interested in, and then from there be drawn into dealing with a naval rival or whatever. Maybe they unwittingly get involved in the Combined Army's business if they think that's interesting, but their actual goal all the while remains their own profit and they never go to Ariadna. A corsair crew has a special stat - Fame and Infamy. Being famous for mercy towards captives or infamous for never taking prisoners are different reputations...but mechanically, they have the same results: they make people know who you are. Therefore, instead of tracking fame and infamy separately, they are combined into a single combined rating representing your captain and crew's reputation spreading. It starts at 1 and can go up to 10. As your Fame and Infamy increases, you get bonuses on Contracts, Negotiationg Power and Booty rolls - we'll get into those momentarily - but because of your spreading reputation, the GM gains bonus Heat each session equal to half your score, rounded down. (If the crew captain is an NPC, the GM just gains 2 bonus Heat.) PC crews always start at Fame and Infamy 1 unless there's significant background reason for them not to as determined by the GM. After any significant action associated with privateering, during the Carousing part of the game, the captain may attempt a Cultivate Fame and Infamy action to spread word of their deeds. If they succeed, the score goes up by 1. More on Carousing in a bit. Contracts rolls represent the captain's ability to maintain a network of informants and assistants that send them information on good targets. Being famous means you're more likely to just get handed information and not need to dig it up personally as much. Whenever a PC makes an Analysis or Persuade roll to search for a privateering contract or find a viable target, the captain can roll a number of dN based on a table - you get more as Fame and Infamy rises, essentially. The dN roll can come before or after the Analysis or Persuade roll. If before, every two Effects rolled reduces the actual roll's Difficulty by 1, to a minimum of 0. If after, each effect rolled generates 1 bonus Momentum. You may use Contracts dice once per day freely; after that, the roll gains 1 Repercussion per use that day...but I don't actually know what that means, because it's not a system term the book introduces. I checked the GM's Guide and nothing there either. Maybe it means complication range? Or Heat? Negotiating Power represents your ability to wield your fame to influence targets or unfriendly cops when negotiating with either. It's pretty simple - when taking any Psywar action related to Privateering, the captain can roll their Negotiating Power dice after the action, gaining bonus Momentum equal to the effects rolled. Booty dice are also a result of increasing Fame and Infamy, but we'll get into what they do next time, because they're related to the part where you actually make money, and that's a whole subsystem. Before we get there, you need to decide what the PCs are in the context of the campaign. The game presents four options. Corsair Band is the option where each PC is a captain of their own ship, but the game notes that this is extremely rare. Each player chooses their ship type and outfits it on their own, and maybe they're a democracy of captains or maybe one of them is an admiral, their choice. This allows more intrigue and jockeying for power between the PCs as they try to undercut each other on contracts or seize more loot on raids. Since each PC has their own Fame and Infamy rating, as a group they are drawing down a ton of attention as they go, with the group also having its own rating equal to the sum of all the PC ratings added up and divided by 2, rounding up. Individual ratings are used when operating independently, the group rating when at least two PCs are working together. In a Captain & Crew Chiefs game, one of the PCs is the corsair captain and the rest are heads of their respective fields on the crew - piloting, hacking, engineering, intel gathering, boarding or support staff, like a comms officer, doctor or escort fighter. Obviously, the captain may be officially in charge but it's entirely possible the crew is run as a democracy using them as the face and military leader. Alternatively, the party may pass the captain's hat around to whoever is best suited to a given situation. If this is done, Fame and Infamy is used as normal, with whoever is in command at that time making the rolls for it. Crew Chiefs is similar, but the Captain is an NPC, at least to start with. In this case, the captain still gains Fame and Infamy, but its use is fairly limited for the PCs since they're not in command; if a PC takes command of the crew somehow, such as by mutiny, they halve the captain's score and gain it as their own, or drop it all the way to 1 if they take over a new ship and split off on their own. The Bottom Rung is an extreme version of Crew Chiefs - instead of playing the advisors to the captain, you're just randos on the crew. No one has a command position. You have to earn your way up through the ranks, possibly as specialists on a boarding party or a support squadron. You have orders, you follow orders, and your main goal is to survive until you can develop your skills enough to take up your own command. Fame and Infamy is irrelevant until you do that. Next time: Cargo Tonnage and Cash
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Jan 30, 2022 15:47
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Halloween Jack posted:
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Jan 30, 2022 23:38
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Infinity RPG: Haqqislam Get Paid One of the big shifts of a corsair campaign is calculating your profits. You're aiming to maximize that - but that means tracking a number of factors. Cargo space, for one, the value of captured cargo, and then what you can actually get for it. There's a helpful table for what the normal cargo capacity of a ship is - both in merchant use and once it's been converted into a corsair vessel. You start by determining your cargo space from that table, less any cargo you already have. (The numbers build in the assumption that you're carrying ammo, rations and similar supplies - those don't count, that's what the post-conversion numbers are about.) So if you're using a converted colonial transport, for example, you have an approximate capacity of 1500. (1500 what? Standard issue containers, I guess.) From there, you look at the approximate cargo your target is capable of carrying. When doing this, it is assumed that the target is at full capacity, but the GM can say 1/4 of the hold is empty per 3 Heat spent, to a max of half empty. Regardless of how much the target has, though, you can only fit as much as your ship has room for unless you capture the entire vessel. So, assume you go after a similarly-sized colonial transport. Since it's intended for an actual cargo shipping purpose, it has a capacity of 1750. Once you seize it, you're going to have to leave behind 250 crates of cargo, putting your hold at full capacity - 1500. For attacks where the GM does not already have the cargo predetermined, you can roll on the cargo type table to see what you found, with raw materials generally making cargo less valuable and rarer stuff being more valuable - consumer goods are average, but tech, Teseum or Silk derivatives are generally more valuable. You then go through the normal rules for selling goods when you reach your harbor - but you make another roll on the table to determine a random multiplier to apply to the value, ranging from .75 to 2, with the most common results being either 1 or 1.25. This represents market fluctuations. You then total up how much you made, remove 2/10s of it for the fees paid to Haqqislam, and the rest is your actual profit. Corsair games change some of the money rules - your Cashflow does not automatically refresh each session. All Cashflow must be regained through Assets from sale of goods. You can't ever go above your max Cashflow this way, but you can always offload extra into Assets as normal, which you can then spend to increase your Earnings and therefore your Cashflow max. There isn't a hard cap on Earnings, but most corsairs exist at Earnings 2-3 or so, and rarely make much in the way of future investments. This is where the captain's Booty dice come in, however. When making an acquisition roll to sell goods, either before or after rolling, the captain may apply the Booty dice appropriate for their Fame and Infamy. You roll the appropriate number of dN. If rolling before your acquisition check, every two Effects rolled reduce its Difficulty by 1, to a minimum of 0. If rolling after, each 1, 2 or Effect gives that many bonus Assets for use on the roll, on top of any other benefits the roll has. (Effects count as a 1 for this.) So you've made all your sales and are now dividing up the loot. Corsairs don't work for free, and the actual profit represents a shared pool of Assets for the crew to repair and resupply. So before any divvying up, you take your pile of Assets and pay for the ship's repairs and maintenance, which costs (Class+1) Assets - so for a colonial transport, 3 Assets, as that's a Class 2 ship. For each attribute or feature that has been damaged, you pay that amount again - or you don't and the damage isn't repaired. (You can also not pay regular maintenance, but doing so increases all future maintenance fees by 1 cumulatively each time you do it and the GM gains Heat equal to twice the unpaid fee. Further, you must randomly select one attribute or feature of the ship per unpaid maintenance period since your last, and all rolls using that system get increased complication range until you next do maintenance. This will add up quickly. Do not skip maintenance.) Once all that's paid for, you have to pay your crew. For NPC crew members, the cost of salary to maintain morale at a reasonable level depends on the ship's Class. On a Class 2 ship, you're going to need to spend 2 Assets, plus another 1 per crew role being filled by an NPC. For Class 3 ships, it's 30 plus 1 per crew role being filled. That seems a lot and I think might be a typo? But it might not, a ship going up in Class is a significant size boost. Note - when I say filled, it includes if you have more than one. So if you have two NPC hackers, you pay 1 Asset to each of them, even though only one can be active at a time in the crew roles. At that point, what's left over is available to split between PCs. The Captain may technically take as much as they want, but good practice is that on a Class 2 vessel, each PC will get about 1/5 of what's left, and 1/10 on a Class 3. If the NPC crew goes unpaid, it increases the Complication range of all Command and Persuade rolls towards them for each point of shortfall towards what they're owed until the next payday. PCs can choose how to respond if they don't get paid. At that point, the captain and all PCs assign themselves the appropriate number of Assets, and can immediately spend them to regain Cashflow 1 for 1 without rolling. If Cashflow is not raised at least to equal your Earnings, you immediately suffer Shortfall, but you never need to have more Cashflow than that, technically. At that point we enter the Carousing phase. Carousing is basically the catchall for anything the crew does during downtime between raids. Unless the captain explicitly forbids it, any time booty is divided up, the Carousing phase begins immediately after. Carousing costs, though - specifically, it costs Fervor. Fervor is kind of like lifestyle expenses from the core, in that it covers your gambling debts, food, alcohol, use of VR suites, non-specialized ammo replacement and similar. To determine how much your Fervor cost is, you take the sum of your Clothing And Fashion and Entertainment lifestyle costs, then add 3. You pay Fervor costs with Assets first, and then Cashflow if you run out of Assets. If you cannot afford this, you can get your friends to give you Assets to pay for it. If you still can't afford it or they won't help, you suffer 2 Shortfalls. However, spending your Fervor cost isn't all downside! When you do it, you heal all Stress damage for free, before doing anything else, and all your gear is repaired and refitted and otherwise cared for (outside of specialist ammo or other stuff that you need to buy separate). Anything that was on your inventory sheet at the start of the mission is restored, basically. Once you've spent your Fervor cost, if you have any Assets leftover, you can take part in Carousing Activities! Carousing for each PC is assumed, as a rule of thumb, to last a number days equal to the total number of Assets spent. So what can you do while Carousing? Meet A Benefactor: If you have a benefactor and they're in the same place, you can meet with them! The GM may have provided one as part of the campaign, or you can seek a new one. Finding a new benefactor costs 10 Assets, representing bribes and middlemen and so on, but if the benefactor is inclined to like you, the cost goes down by your Fame and Infamy rating. To meet an existing benefactor, you spend 5 Assets to get in touch with them, again possibly modified by Fame and Infamy if they're happy with you. (If this reduces your cost below 0, they will literally pay you to meet with them.) This is generally a way to get the GM to drop hints to you and give you access to resources normally outside your scope, such as refitting and upgrading your ship in return for some favor. The downside, obviously, is your benefactor has their own agenda and their own enemies, and they want your help with that. Acquisitions: During downtime you can buy and sell gear as normal! This is noted as a Carousing action solely for determining how long it takes during Carousing and for the fact that in normal circumstances most corsairs can't buy stuff when outside of downtime because they're in space. Gambling: You can try to make some money! To do this, you declare how many Assets your wager is, and then roll that many dN. You lose the wager, but gain Assets equal to the total rolled on the wager. (This is not great odds, since remember, the results 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, Effect.) If you choose to cheat when gambling, Effects count as a 1, but if you roll more Effects than your Thievery Expertise, you get caught and gain nothing at all and maybe get a side encounter where you have to deal with whoever you tried to cheat. Rumors: You can trawl Maya and listen to local gossip seeking information. There's always gossip - your rolling is to determine how much of what you learn is useful gossip and how well you're doing at taking part in it and seeking it out. Assets spent on this represent bribes, hospitality and finding the right people. You spend 1 or more Assets, then roll that many dN, with the total result being how many local rumors you discover, and make a Difficulty 3 Lifestyle or Persuade roll. (The rumors are not reliant on succeeding on this - you learn them either way.) If you succeed on the roll, however, each point of Momentum gained becomes one piece of valuable knowledge on top of the local rumors. If you fail, you check the Unwelcome Attention table. Depending on how many Effects you rolled on the rumor dNs, you end up getting into a fight or argument and having to pay out a number of Assets in bribes, repairs and similar. Rumors are not useful but are local color, basically. Valuable knowledge, on the other hand, points you to important info on a new target, a potential ally, a notable foe or something else that the party will really appreciate. If several pieces of valuable knowledge are gained, the GM may choose to leave them undeclared and instead allow PCs to ask a number of questions next session equal to the pieces of info, which the GM must answer truthfully. Recovery: You can spend 1 Asset per Harm to remove Harms, and 1 Asset per poison or disease you suffer from to remove those, too. No rolls needed. Cultivate Fame and Infamy: The captain is the only one that can do this, and it's basically telling tall tales and spreading the news of your raid. You spend 1 or more Assets and make a Difficulty 3 Lifestyle roll. If you succeed, you roll dN equal to the Assets spent. If the total is higher than your current Fame and Infamy, you get +1 Fame and Infamy. If you fail the roll, you just waste the Assets but still roll the dN. Success or failure, if you roll any Effects, you also suffer on the Unwelcome Attention table as per Rumors. Note that your deeds do have to rise in scale to qualify for this action at all - at Fame and Infamy 1-3, a simple raid or successfully avoiding being captured by cops is enough. At 4-6, you need a notable cargo haul, escaping from a group specifically hunting you, or getting a second ship. At 7-9, you're going to need to capture a major politician, escape from jail or blow up a warship to qualify. If your deed is above your Fame and Infamy weight class, to to speak, the GM may reduce the difficulty of the Lifestyle roll because of how impressive it is. GMs can give various local events during the Carousing phase to add color to the events, and these might lead to actual plot afterwards. But once Carousing is over, it's time to figure out the next job. The captain and crew might agree to do this once everyone's out of Assets, may give a specific timeframe, or whatever they choose. Either way, Carousing is mostly a way to do downtime that builds up character and reputation, reveals rumors and helps push you towards the next score, and it ends when you leave port. Next time: New gear.
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Jan 31, 2022 00:55
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Humbug Schoolbus is a better person to ask than me, but I'll say this for Nightlife: 1. You have a lot of freedom to do stuff that isn't attacking, but there aren't a lot of different combat maneuvers to keep track of. Between your martial arts skills, Edges, and weapons you might have a handful of different attack options. There isn't a big table of situational bonuses and penalties, either. I wouldn't expect a great deal of analysis paralysis. 2. Your Combat Skill is also your initiative, so that's a die roll saved. Damage is a set value, another roll saved. The defender only rolls if they declared Evasive Action. Assuming everyone's trying to kill someone, a combat round is a die roll for every character involved. 3. Starting PCs should reliably be able to take out a mook in one (gun) or two (baseball bat) hits. The easiest way to drag out combat is if everyone takes cover, since that's a straight penalty to the attack roll.
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Jan 31, 2022 06:27
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 America After Dark, Part 5: Sparkle Motion  When the PCs arrive in Chicago, they’re already in deep poo poo. Unbeknownst to them, Black Solstice has just put a $50,000 bounty on their heads–and that’s in 1991 dollars. Every lowlife in the city knows somebody who knows somebody who was at the meeting where they flashed the cash. When the PCs ask around about sparkle, they get nothing. Nobody knows anything and nobody wants to talk to them. Then they’ll notice a young man who looks excited to see them and immediately runs to a pay phone. If they interrogate him, they’ll find out about the bounty. He says he’ll keep quiet if they let him go, and he’s lying.  Soon the PCs will be accosted by another gang, depending on what area of the city they’re in. If they run into a human gang, it’ll be a fight. If the PCs are a Commune cell and they run into the Suicides, it’ll be a fight. But Deathclown’s Mutants and the local branch of the Limbo Wolves are ready to talk. The Wolves will even be willing to send some guys to help. Later on, the PCs will be attacked yet again, in a drive-by shooting by a handful of gangbangers with AK-47s. The shooters will come back around to finish the job and claim their bounty. If the PCs attack, they have the advantage–most victims of a drive-by shooting don’t immediately charge their attackers with fangs bared. The PCs already know the location of the Chicago Sparkle lab. They’ll find that it’s one of the last houses standing in a desolate and nigh-abandoned neighbourhood on the edge of the Block Fire. It looks like yet another drug lab hidden in yet another lovely desolate house–but this one is defended by 5 Black Solstice Sorcerers and Simon Madrigal himself. Simon is centuries old, with an impressive array of offensive spells. (He also carries an Enchanted 9mm pistol that the PCs may be able to claim at some point.) When the fight starts going against him, he’ll use his Limo spell to summon his means of escape and leave his comrades to die. This leads to a set-piece battle as the Sorcerers make a fighting retreat through the area ravaged by the Block Fire. Every round, every character in the fight has to make a LUCK roll not to plunge into a poorly-covered basement. Any surviving Sorcerers will, of course, refuse to talk or just immediately die anyway. (I haven’t discussed it much before, but a Sorcerer who dies from the Omerta spell comes back again like any Sorcerer. I wouldn’t be surprised if the PCs were willing to take the humanity hit to just burn the bodies. Most of the time, some helpful NPC like Golgotha or Frostbite will do it to Clean and Floss after their fights anyway.) The PCs will find out where to go next when they search the Sparkle lab. Unlike the other labs, this one has its own incinerator for disposing of garbage. But there are metal and plastic containers that weren’t burned perfectly, and they contained some of the rare industrial chemicals that were used to make Sparkle. The name of the manufacturer is burnt away, but they came from a company in Houston. It’s their only lead.  The adventure assumes the PCs are traveling to Houston by car or motorcycle. On the road south, they’ll be overtaken and surrounded by a gang of bikers whose jackets identify them as the Steel Gods. Very soon, the road will be blocked by a fallen tree. The Steel Gods have set the trap well–the road is bounded by a steep hill on one side and a sheer drop on the other. The PCs will probably have to fight their way through a big gang of shotgun-toting bikers (3 per PC) and a Sorcerer named Jimmy Skin. If they’re smart enough to double back, which is easy if they’re on motorcycles themselves, at least they won’t be fighting on two fronts and can fight the Steel Gods in two waves. If everyone in the party has some Edge that allows them to fly, you could maybe just skip this one–as long as you can make Houston by daylight and you don’t mind losing your wheels. When they get to Houston, the PCs will find that for once, they can’t get a lead just by asking around. No one in town has even heard of Sparkle. The only thing they learn is that someone’s been asking questions about a group of strangers like themselves, and they can’t get a lead on who it is. If they take the container to someone who knows their Chemistry, they can identify the chemical and tell them that it’s an insecticide that causes eye problems. The only place you can get it is a local company named Oxydine Chemical Imports. That lead can take them straight to enemy headquarters. Failing that, the PCs will probably just bumble around for a while having no luck. A stuttering Vampyre called Tuh Tuh Tim will direct them to the Zombie City Club. Tim takes them to Film Freak, the horror movie nerd store that houses the Zombie City Club in its basement. They’ll meet the owner, Chainsaw Feldstein, who they may know because his brother owns a similar place in New York. Chainsaw will get cagey if the PCs ask him about Black Solstice, because he defected from the cult years ago and took the Omerta oath. But he will point them in the right direction by telling them about Mister Adonis, the local crime boss. Chainsaw will warn them that Adonis is an evil motherfucker, but if anyone can tell them about Kin trying to move drugs into the city, it’s him. Chainsaw doesn’t realize that he’s sending the PCs into a trap. The shadowy figure who’s been stalking them is none other than O Twisted, Adonis’ Demon bodyguard. Adonis is Black Solstice’s partner in the Sparkle operation. Adonis will receive the PCs warmly at his office. The pretense is that, like FrostBite, Adonis is just a businessman and happy to let the PCs wipe out an intruder on his turf. He’ll even invite the party to help themselves to the bar (complete with chilled blood) and step away. O Twisted will arrive in his usual disguise, a cute little boy. (HIs alias is Oliver, if you remember The Brady Bunch.) He’ll try to distract the PCs with the kind of babble he thinks is stereotypical of a little kid, but he’ll quickly veer into talking about stuff like how much fun it is to see a gruesome car crash. Then he’ll melt into a giant blob of goop and try to melt them to death. If the PCs are getting their asses kicked, Chainsaw Feldstein will show up with the cavalry. He’ll come clean about his past ties to Black Solstice. (He’ll also explain that he realized his mistake when O Twisted came around looking for the PCs.) Defeated, Twisted will melt away and be exorcised to the Twisted Dimensions. Adonis is defenseless, and will off the PCs his information gathering services in exchange for his life. It doesn’t take him long to find Oxydine. Oxydine’s whole operation is housed in a single facility. It has way too many guards for an ordinary warehouse full of insecticides. There are a dozen Black Solstice human guards with Uzis, plus a half-dozen rent-a-cops with pistols. Simon Madrigal is here, but he won’t engage the PCs if they don’t force him to. Black Solstice has already decided that Sparkle is a bust, and all that’s left is to erase the evidence. He’s lined the warehouse with C4 and will blow the place up once he’s a safe distance away. After defeating the guards, the PCs will hopefully raid the office before they make their escape. They find computer disks and other records which will make it clear that Sparkle was invented by Dr. Henry Conroy, a professor at a public university in a little town named Olds-Camp, PA.  Coming into Olds-Camp might be surreal for PCs who have lived most of their unlives in the big city. There are trees everywhere, and everything seems to move slower. Their outrageous punk garb will turn a lot of heads. Finding Dr. Conroy is a piece of cake. He’s a respectable citizen with nothing to hide, after all. He’s listed in the phone book, his office address is public, and even people they ask on the street might have taken a class with him. If the PCs go to his office, they’ll find it unlocked and abandoned. There’s a message on the answering machine from Simon Madrigal, warning him that he’s in trouble and Simon is going to come evacuate him by plane. They’ll also find Conroy’s computer–he hosed it up by pouring coffee in it. Since Tommy’s is right on the main street through town, the PCs might stop in at the local Commune headquarters before they do anything. Tommy will invite them into his office for a chat, sending his eyeballs on a tour of the room to prove he’s Kin, and introduce them to Coalshute. Coalshute will let the PCs know how close Madrigal has come to reaching Conroy, and point them to Conroy’s home. When the PCs go to Conroy’s house, Madrigal has just barely beaten them there. The two men take off with a crew of fellow Sorcerers in a Cutlass Supreme. The car will end up driving right through the OCSU campus and onto the sidewalk in front of a row of frathouses. The Sorcerers will try to lose the PCs by fleeing on foot through the Alpha Sigma Sigma house. With a successful PER test, they’ll notice that Conroy is holding a spray bottle, not that they’re likely to be able to do much about it. The bottle contains a new, aerosolized form of Sparkle that works on contact. While running through the frat house, Conroy will dose about 30 frat boys and sorority sisters, and the Sorcerers will make a fighting retreat while the PCs deal with the freaked-out coeds.  Hopefully the PCs can either calm the crowd with an Edge like Crowd Control, or just escape the crowd and chase their enemies down. It would be a shame if they committed mass murder to save themselves the indignity of getting glassed by a cheerleader. Meanwhile, Black Solstice will try to hotwire a car and flee. The end of the module hinges on how the PCs chase them down. As a last resort, Madrigal will use his Limo spell to escape and try to take Conroy with him. If they’re quick on the draw, he probably won’t be able to pull it off in the middle of combat. They could also just beat him to the airport and stop him from getting on the plane there. The mission is effectively over when they kill Simon Madrigal, and I recommend dusting the bastard.  If Madrigal and Conroy get away, the PCs will get to see his plane take off only to be destroyed by Coalshute. Concretes don’t like to meddle in wars between the Kin, but he felt compelled to act against the cancer in his city. So if the PCs gently caress up, their punishment is watching a corny NPC do the job for them.  The PCs get their epilogue back in NYC. Assuming they’re a Commune cell, Golgotha will invite them to Club AfterDark to give them his thanks and congratulations. He’ll also show them a videotape that was dropped off at AfterDark recently. The videotape is of a man in a conservative suit with his face digitally blurred out. He delivers a brief message to the PCs. It goes something like this: “Greetings, this is Malcolm DuLac. You might be wondering why I disguised my face only to give you my legal birth name. Anyway, the Sparkle operation cost us millions of smackeroos to set up, so I hope you had a good time ruining it. It’s the last good time you’ll ever have, because you’re #1 on our shitlist. We won’t rest until we kill you and replace every community center with a strip mall.” The PCs are now Black Solstice’s enemy number 1. If they killed the cops guarding the first Sparkle lab, they’ll have to deal with a citywide manhunt to find the killers. O Twisted might come looking for them, too…but Mister Adonis will actually try to hire them for contract killings in Houston. On the plus side, the PCs will get +16 Humanity for stopping the Sparkle threat, in addition to any other gains. Another +5 if they got past the Alpha Sigma party without hurting anyone. If the PCs recruited Joe Fellers, he’ll become a Crowley they can turn to for help with computer stuff. Protecting Joe from Black Solstice can be the seed of future adventures involving the cult. The beginning of the adventure mentions the promise of a reward from their faction leader. That never gets brought up again. This does seem like a good excuse to give the PCs some kind of reward that will bind them together, like their own superhero hideout. That’s the end of Deadly Sparkle. Remember kids,  So what do I think of America After Dark, all told? I’m not the best person to make that judgment, since I rarely or never buy “city sourcebooks” for my own use. My gold standard for location sourcebooks in the urban fantasy genre is Damnation City, which is more a manual for giving your city setting its own character. I think I would’ve liked to see the cities exemplified through the locations and NPCs that are relevant to the Kin. For example, there’s a Morningstar executive in Chicago who leaves the office early to go see baseball games. Examples like that stick out less than someone like FrostBite, who is certainly a memorable character but isn’t exactly an avatar of Cleveland. On the other hand you have places like The Squat. Besides feeling like a Mortal Kombat arena, a mansion surrounded by blocks of nothing is something you couldn’t just transplant to New York City. Deadly Sparkle is a fun adventure. I think it’s important for any game to have some kind of published adventure to show how the designers expect you to run it. If Deadly Sparkle is an example to follow, Nightlife is about punk rock monsters who are do-gooder vigilantes, hanging out and looking cool in-between action movie fights. Rule-wise, it’s a lot of combat encounters and the occasional common-sense skill roll. I’ve had some fun with this book, especially its over-the-top NPCs. But I’ve really been looking forward to getting through this and to the next book in the line. While Deadly Sparkle is a sample adventure, In The Musical Vein is a model campaign. The PCs audition for a band at a popular new club, and wind up drawn into a creepy mad science plot worthy of a Resident Evil movie.  And after that, the last book in the series is Kinrise, a sourcebook which asks “What if we toss the whole setting and do Mad Max with vampires?”
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Jan 31, 2022 06:53
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Halloween Jack posted:Humbug Schoolbus is a better person to ask than me, but I'll say this for Nightlife: What Jack said, when you get in the rhythm the system plays very fast.
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Jan 31, 2022 07:11
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 For fans of Nightlife, I'm doing a quick one post F&F for a game that's basically Nightlife but Better and Modern! Nightcrawlers is a rad Queer Splatterpunk RPG heavily inspired by Nightlife, built on Blackhack 2e's system. This means a stripped down game based on B/X D&D, but with a lot of smoothing. You're a crew of Kindred Monsters, trying to survive in the hostile Underworld while living your lives. The basics of the system are familiar to anybody who's read Black Hack. You got 6 stats (Muscle, Nerve, Flesh, Brains, Guts, Blood), roll under them on a d20 to Succeed at a Roll. Sometimes you roll twice and take the better die. Characters are based almost entirely on their Brood, the type of monster you are, but you also have a player defined Background (get Advantage on rolls relating to it), Contacts (NPCs you know and can get to do favors for you), Goals (Player defined goals that when fulfilled earn you XP), Power Die (It's a variable dice size based on your Brood, whenever you use a supernatural power roll it, if it comes up 1 or 2 it drops down to the next size. If you get a 1-2 on a d4, you're out of juice until you do your Brood's special recharge ritual to bump it back up) and Humanity (Act like a hero or just a decent person, get bennies that can be spent for various mechanical bonuses like re-rolls). The Breeds are very cool: they consciously try to both hit every major niche, while also making them highly flexible. Every Brood has access to any supernatural power (called Edges) so they're hyper customizable. Your Brood defines your HP, Nature (Living or Unliving, ie "do I care about breathing and sleeping?), and Damage (weapons are for narrative flair and story logic, no need to min-max the benefits of a revolver vs. a semi-auto). They also give you your starting Edges, Power Die, and several special abilities and weaknesses unique to each Brood. Created These are your Frankenstein Monsters, Golems, Robots, and Homonculi. They start with Olympiad (Superhuman Strength) Edge, are hard to kill, and get natural body armor. Their weakness is a weakness to fire, and they can't handle large crowds. They recharge by getting electrocuted. Demon Satans, Cenobites, and Possessed people. They start with Mask (Shapeshift into another person), can fly with their devil wings, and are immune to fire. The drawbacks are a weakness to holy or blessed weapons or objects, and if someone knows your secret true name they can command you (you do get to roll to resist). To recharge you gotta corrupt or tempt a mortal in some way. Faerie They're Faerie, changelings, etc. Their starting Edge is Glamour (mess with a targets sight and hearing), get a once a day re-roll due to supernatural luck, and get two tries to resist any mental or emotional manipulation and to influence others. Their drawbacks are extra damage from iron, and if they break a vow or promise they get disadvantage on all rolls until they make it right. Recharging is through pranking or tricking a mortal. Ghost Incorporeal dead people. They get... Incorporeal (What is a says on the tin) as their Edge, but it works backwards: you're *always* incorporeal, and have to use Power to become corporeal. You also are really hard to paralyze or petrify too. Downside, weak to salt and you're linked to a Fetter (a place or object important to you in life) and if it's destroyed you get sent to Hell (though you can roll to bind a new Fetter.) Ghosts get their mojo back by spooking someone. Gillman Your creature from the Black Lagoon, Deep Ones, and Abe Sapiens. You get Claws (Natural Weapons basically), are Amphibious and are good at dodging traps and explosives. Weakness, Electricity fucks you up and if you get wet you look obviously inhuman cause your gills start flapping or something. Gillmen gots to smash and destroy the works of man or cause pain to others to recharge. Mortal Yep, you're a regular human who still got involved in all this spooky poo poo. Mortals get a lot of special exceptions: Instead of a Power Die they start with 1 Humanity and get another one free every level. You get a second background too, explaining why you hang out with Kindred, and get a free bonus Contact. Your only Drawback is you're... a mortal human so stuff like the flu and getting old matter. Mortals can actually get Edges too on leveling up, but to use them they burn a Humanity point. No power die, so you need to do good caring and heroic stuff to get your special sauce. Revenant Corporeal undead, your zombies and mummies and Crows. You start with Necropathy (ask three questions of a Corpse), regenerate health and get bonus resistance to intimidation, fear, and similar effects. The drawbacks are you go up like kindling when exposed to fire, and if you aren't wearing some sort of disguise or mask you're obviously a walking corpse. Revenants can suck the life out of people with a touch to regenerate their Power. Vampire I do not need to explain Vampires. They get Mesmerize (make a Humanoid obey a simple command) to start, are good and moving around and being sneaky, and can do double damage in a sneak attack. Drawbacks is sunlight burns you and you get all weak and pathetic if you don't drink blood every 24 hours. That's also how they regen their Power Die, but it has to be fresh. Warlock Your witches and wizards. Instead of Edges they get Magick, a cool freeform spell system. You get to pick a Realm (Energy, Fate, Space, Matter, etc) and Action (Destroy, Transform, Control) and create an improv magickal effect from those.You get more Realms as you level up. Warlocks also get bonuses to resist magick, and you get a familiar that you can talk to telepathically and see through the eyes of. Their drawback is meteoric iron is poisonous to them, and you have to choose to use White or Black magick: If White you can never harm anyone with Magick, and if Black you can't heal people. They recharge by doing a magickal ritual or sacrifice. Werewolf Or technically any Were-whatever. You start with Shapeshift (Turn into your Animal Form), get extra melee attacks after taking someone out of a fight, and are really good at hunting and tracking and wilderness survival. Downsides are of course silver allergy, and if you're angry you have to roll Guts to not freak out and bite someone's face off. Besides the base game you also get a lot of cool tables to roll on, like Gang Generation ( Electric Lords who Follow a complex honor code), Nightlife (Tommyknocker's, Hosts great metal acts the rare times it's open), and has a writer curated playlist:  It's a cool game that's only 6.66, check it out: https://tanneryea.itch.io/nightcrawlers
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Jan 31, 2022 10:18
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gently caress, I'm speechless. I'm going to write up some house rules for Nightlife and I'm planning to use the Black Hack as well. (D20 roll-under is just a compressed percentile roll after all.) This looks very thorough. Going to buy it just to see the magic system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF-ZRdVakTw These men fought for your right to get gay-married in Texas Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 15:52
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Are the original Nightlife books available for sale in PDF anywhere?
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Jan 31, 2022 16:47
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Sadly, no. It's ironic, because Nightlife had PDF distribution through Tri Tac Games, which built a little online store long before sites like DTRPG were a thing. Two of the three cocreators vanished from the RPG business, and Bradley McDevitt says he was quoted $50k to get the rights back. Nightlife is basically abandonware. Pirated PDFs of the books are mostly easy to come by. I was able to get hard copies of most of them back when used book prices were a few dollars lower. The only book I'm not going to cover is NightMoves, a scenario book. It was the last thing Stellar released, and as far as I know, the author barely did anything else in the industry. I just don't feel like paying around $30 to post about an old supplement I'll never use. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 17:11
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A great thing about living in a socialist utopia is that you can borrow roleplaying games from the local library. For free! That's awesome because I came kind of close to just impulse buying this next game, and now that I've had the chance to read through it, I'm not sure I will. It's not bad. I just don't like it.  Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit #1: Unboxing Cyberpunk is a scifi RPG written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian. The first edition came out all the way back in 1988 and was soon followed by Cyberpunk 2020 in 1990, which is probably the edition most people recognize best. Cyberpunk v.3.0 came out in 2005 and apparently wasn't very good? I never checked it out. To celebrate the real life cyberpunk future of 2020, Pondsmith wrote a new edition titled Cyberpunk Red. This is the 2019 starter box set for that game.  Maximum Mike Pondsmith Cyberpunk the game is kind of important because the first edition came out when cyberpunk was still a hot new genre. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner came out in 1982 and William Gibson's Neuromancer in 1984, for example. The game wasn't just looking back at an established genre, it was itself part of the genre's evolution. Or something. I wasn't actually around back then. I'm a huge Ghost in the Shell fan so I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the genre, but I've never gamed it nor have I read much beyond Gibson's Neuromancer. But I'd love to run something other than D&D for my group of relative rookie gamers, and so I've been window shopping for beginner-friendly games. What's in the box?  The stuff in the box, plus our kitchen table. The box is very heavy compared to other box sets I've handled. Most of the weight is due to the two 50-page softcover books inside: They are perfect bound, incredibly glossy, and the pages are ridiculously thick. The starter sets I've seen tend to settle for saddle-stitched booklets to keep the costs down. There's a cheat sheet for the rules and some pregen characters. For the inevitable gun fights there's a whole bunch of cardboard standees and the tiniest grid maps I've seen in print: 17x11 one-inch squares. A printing mishap's left no margin for the cutting die and as a result all the character standees have had the tips of their hair clipped off. And of course, there's a handful of dice. The d10s are fine but the d6s are almost illegible.  Cover by Anselm Zielonka She's got the look I'm not really a fan of the game's graphical design. The bright red on bright glossy white really doesn't do it for me. Sure, it stands out from everything else by being all-caps-RED, but I dunno, I'm too used to greyscale books and background textures I guess. Also the character sheets are printed in a different typeface than the books, and I can't get over this. The book covers are both pretty nice, but too much of the interior art is indistinguishable from all other #cyberpunk #conceptart on Instagram or Deviantart. It's technically very competent, but I've seen enough Blade Runner skylines, cybertanks rolling through cyberstreets, and Tacticool By Razer™ for now. There must be room for something more imaginative in cyberpunk (someone please review Ettin's game).  Art by Helio Frazao. My first impression is that there's a lot of stuff in this box. At 33€ at my FLGS it's more expensive than many other starter boxes, but the difference in book quality alone explains the price difference. I might not like the visual presentation, but on the other hand, I don't like most RPG art! Ask me about my opinions on Pendragon.  Next time: We crack open the rulebook and travel back to 1988.
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Jan 31, 2022 17:27
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Oh, I'm interested to see how much of what dissuaded you from RED aligns with what made me dislike it while playing it. It's not a bad game per se, just not for me. We used the full book though, so I have no idea what the jumpstart kit entails. Side note: Deniable Assets finally released, and I'm actually impressed enough by it (despite a few serious reservations) that I may do a test run of it and report back with a review at some point. Yes, I know literally one or two chapters max of Red Markets are still not covered, but there's jack poo poo interesting in them and I don't really want to dredge it back up just to cap off with "let's look at optional rules nobody uses and random tables".
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Jan 31, 2022 17:38
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Are those novelty dice? I am inherently prone to inching away from anything that you can't just play with standard d# dice.
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Jan 31, 2022 18:44
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That's just an illegible 1, an illegible 4, an illegible 2, and what I thought was another illegible 4 that turns out to be the CP logo. I read the quickstart and I thought it was...alright. I'm wondering if this game has the same basic problem someone mentioned about Witcher, where the basic combat mechanic requires an attack roll, a defense roll, a damage roll, and a soak roll.
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Jan 31, 2022 18:48
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They look like standard d6s, just with the Cyberpunk RED logo in place of the 6. I have played the actual released version of the game, and combat is your attack roll vs. either the target's defense roll (if in melee combat or the target's cybered enough to dodge bullets) or the Difficulty Value based on your gun and range to target. Then damage roll, which gets reduced by your target's armor. I do appreciate that this is one of the very few games I've ever seen where if damage gets through your armor, your armor becomes less useful over time (even if it costs money to get your armor fixed/replaced.) I THINK Blood & Bronze and various rules mods for The Black Hack have similar rules. I am disappointed that the "If one of your limbs takes 8 or more damage after armor and damage reduction, it gets blown off/blown apart/loving ruined to the point where you need a replacement, oh, and 'your head' is a limb too" rule from CP2020 is missing, though. The critical damage tables just aren't the same.
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Jan 31, 2022 18:56
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SkyeAuroline posted:Oh, I'm interested to see how much of what dissuaded you from RED aligns with what made me dislike it while playing it. It's not a bad game per se, just not for me. We used the full book though, so I have no idea what the jumpstart kit entails. Yes, I got a copy of this from a friend and I have a feeling that I had the same reaction as I did: they made some changes to fit current gaming design (sorry Snorb, but the "limbs get blown off at 8pts, btw head is also a limb" needed to be removed for player survival), but pursued some weird choices both gameplay-wise, world-wise, and presentation-wise that didn't sit right with me. If I was to run a Cyberpunk2XXX game now, I'd probably mix what I found best from RED and 2020 and not run RED straight.
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Jan 31, 2022 20:55
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If my head were blown off by eight points of damage, I would simply purchase a cybernetic replacement 
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Jan 31, 2022 22:01
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Jan 31, 2022 22:15
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Wait, so you can actually buy the Cyberhead of Vecna?
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Jan 31, 2022 22:20
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That's probably internal skull armor from one of the Chromebooks. It's not a replacement head or brain; the limb loss rule says that if your head is the limb that's getting wrecked, your character dies on the spot. (Arms and legs are "make a death save; you fail, you die. Either way you(r corpse) is minus one limb.") Considering how much damage guns can do in CP2020, and also considering head shots do double damage, helmets/subdermal armor are a pretty smart investment! Snorb fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 22:26
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I vaguely remember this is from a Shadowrun equipment book which included advanced rules for cyberpsychos to replace every part of their body except the brain. The corps who did this to people could only keep them alive using blood magic. It was sloppy and excessive and poorly thought out, but thaaaat's Shadowrun for ya.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:34
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I think, ever since i learned GURPS and kinda know how it does things, i've felt it to be really good at cyberpunk type settings if you just work out exactly what cyber-augmentation is doing to use for advantages- it fits right in, and doesn't come baked with assumptions like the things sapping humanity or magic or whatever. And GURPS is really good for combat where people shoot guns at each other, especially compared to other games trying to be tactilol about it. This is probably a cliche, though. There are definitely things GURPS does badly, but a crunchy near-future game is not one of them.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:42
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Not so much the main 'villain' but the main 'dude you fight' in the CP2077 game is a dude who's only remaining fleshy parts are the skin over his metal skull and the brain, the rest of him is just a top spec combat robot.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:57
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Kurieg posted:Not so much the main 'villain' but the main 'dude you fight' in the CP2077 game is a dude who's only remaining fleshy parts are the skin over his metal skull and the brain, the rest of him is just a top spec combat robot. Ahhh, robocop. Actually, I think having a complete brain makes him still more human than robocop
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Jan 31, 2022 23:01
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Mirage posted:I vaguely remember this is from a Shadowrun equipment book which included advanced rules for cyberpsychos to replace every part of their body except the brain. The corps who did this to people could only keep them alive using blood magic. It was sloppy and excessive and poorly thought out, but thaaaat's Shadowrun for ya. One of them could join your party temporarily in Shadowrun: Dragonfall. The optimal outcome for that mission was your team hacks his OS and restores his humanity and free will, and the first thing he does is put his hydraulic piston arms up to his head and crushes his skull flat.
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Jan 31, 2022 23:03
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Infinity RPG: Haqqislam Turning Gears This book introduces two new subtypes of gear - AR Programs, which apply a digital layer to reality for you and can be turned on or off as a Free Action, and i-Kohl, a form of cosmetics that mix synthetic pheromones and psychotropic chemicals to induce specific cognitive and hormonal responses. i-Kohl was a brand name but has become genericized. All i-Kohl types have Subtle 2 and take five minutes and a Difficulty 1 Lifestyle roll to apply, and complications on that roll reduce its Subtle due to smudging or similar. If it hits Subtle 0 or less, the chemicals dissolve uselessly and are consumed for no benefit. So, what've we got? For new Ammunition, we only have one item: Azelik Shells: They take their name from a uranium-rich region on Earth that the Tuareg reclaimed and rebuilt, though its radioactive components are taken from Bourak's moon. They are illegal to use in most circumstances, since they're explosive shells containing depleted uranium, which burst into toxic and radioactive clouds. This gives Area (Close) and Radiation 2, and inflicts Azelik Syndrome as a Wound effect. (It's a nasty form of radiation poisoning, notoriously difficult to treat.) New Armor: Ad-Qali Armor X: Ad-Qali armor is meant for bikers, and it sacrifices coverage for fashion. It gives +X bonus Momentum on social rolls related to street fashion or Kum biker culture as long as you have higher Pilot or Lifestyle than your target. However, you also roll for X hit locations - the armor does not provide any benefit to those locations, though it otherwise is solid light armor. Khafiin: Literally 'covert' or 'hidden,' Khafiin armor is lightweight microservo-driven powered protection initially created for the Hassassins. When not in use, it folds into a backpack, and if you have at least Agility 10, it's pretty fast to put on compared to normal armor. However, it also has reduced protection compared to most powered armor and has reduced capabilities - only the Comms Equipment, Exoskeleton 1 and Self-Repairing tags. Derivative designs from the original Hassassin ones are more common off-planet, but usually more costly due to neomaterial components and often of much less elegant-looking design. New Augmentations: 360 Degree Vision: Developed based on biosynthetics research for Lhost design, this augment requires an invasive operation to install cybernetics replacing your eyes, but it lets you see in all directions at once, giving a bonus die to all Observation rolls. You can also get an unimplanted visor version, but that's less intuitive and easy to use, giving increased Complication range on all Observation rolls, as well. Bio-Invulnerability Augment: This is a Silk-based fully-body augment, using a mix of genespliced autoimmune boosts and artificial antibody factories embedded through the body. It gives you +6 BTS vs Biotech only, but also causes mild inflammation in all tissues, giving -1 max Vigor while it's installed. It also requires regular updates as new biotech threats are identified and developed against, so the longer you go without paying its maintenance upkeep, the more its protections are reduced until you pay for the updates. (Also, it's Comms Equipment - the augment has to tie into your personal network to identify threats.) Djanbazan Regeneration: This is the signature augmentation of the Djanbazan Tactical Group - advanced regenerative Silk augments. Full-Body, of course. As a Minor Action, you can heal 2dN physical damage, and if you roll any Effects you can heal 1 Wound. You also get +5 BTS vs Biotech, but the rapid tissue regeneration makes it impossible for your body to integrate biograft and cybernetic augments. Further, once you are injured, you suffer from adrenaline spikes and increased hormone production, giving +2 Complication range to all Willpower rolls until you next sleep. Mantella Poison Augment: This is a biograft implant devised from the toxins of the Malagasy frog, allowing your knuckle or fingertip skin to secrete a potent neurotoxin at will. This allows you to poison food or drink with a touch and causes your unarmed strikes to gain Toxic 2. You're immune to the poison, but it places great stress on your immune system, so while you have the aurgment, you get -1 max Vigor. Odalisque Augmentation: This is a full-body augment, the final step of training as an Odalisque at the Cember Odalisques Academy of Dar el Funduq. It includes massive cosmetic surgery, rendering you a vision of unearthly beauty that transcends gender. You gain Superhuman Personality 2 and all of your Psywar attacks gain Grievous. Due to the delicacy of the Silk-based augmentation, while it can be combined with other Silk Full-Body augs, it is entirely incompatible with cybernetics and biografts. Non-Haqqislam characters can get it, but the prices are massively inflated, and outsiders do not receive the extensive training in seduction that helps integrate the augmentation mentally. Therefore, non-Haqq characters must have Agility 10+, Intelligence 10+ and (Personality+Discipline Expertise) 12+ to receive Odalisque augs. Runihara Augmentation: Another full-body Silk augment, this one is a supersoldier enhancement intended for the Khawarij. The word means 'destroyer' in Arabic, and the augmentation was developed by a classified team of scholars and doctors to wholly rewrite the human genome and replace 60% of the subject's tissues with custom-made xenografts. It is wholly incompatible with any other Large, Full-Body or Replacement augments. Further, it requires the subject's body be in peak physical health - unless their (Brawn+Resistance Expertise) is 13+, installation rolls have +3 Complication range. But for all that trouble, you get a ton of power - subjects gain Inured to Aging, Disease, Pain and Poison, Superhuman Agility and Brawn 2, the ability to secrete a mild poison at will (giving Vicious 2 to unarmed strikes), the ability to leap over obstacles up to their own height without penalty, and -1 Difficulty to rolls to move through Difficult Terrain. S-Beacon: Our final full-body Silk augment. This is an advanced locator beacon that is grafted into your tissues. They're very expensive, so only the wealthiest ever use them. They're Comms Equipment, since, well, locator beacon. Rather than checking for friendly networks periodically, an s-beacon turns on when you perform a Difficulty 1 Brawn-based Athletics roll to perform a specific set of muscle movements, or if you take 4+ physical damage. Once triggered, it transmits your location for a full round, then turns off until activated again. S-Beacons can only be detected by a Difficulty 3 Medicine roll unless transmitting, at which point a Difficulty 1 Hacking roll will detect them, too. Disabling and preventing the transmission requires a Difficulty 4 Hacking or Medicine roll. New Weapons: Bardom Rifle: The name means 'red' in the language of the Hunzakut, because they tend to be heavily oxidized from exposure to the desert sands. They're fairly standard medium-range rifles, but they're designed with few quantronic components, so they're Non-Hackable, and they incorporate a wide-bore grenade launcher. Also, the grenade launcher can fire off deployable repeaters as if they were grenades, but the repeaters aren't super aerodynamic and doing so has +2 Complication range. Blitzen: An anti-hacking weapon from the Silk Revolt, this is a variant Panzerfaust that fires off EMP bursts rather than explosives. It incorporates two Reloads, and once they're used, the weapon's spent and must be disassembled and manually reloaded as a Difficulty 2 Tech roll. Boarding-Colt: These are heavy revolver variants heavily favored by corsair boarding parties because they're versatile and hit like a truck. Each one incorporates a single-shot shotgun tube under the revolver barrel, compatible with any kind of shotgun ammo. The revolve itself is just a nasty, big handgun, but the shotgun tube can't be loaded normally - you have to manually disassemble it with a Difficulty 1 Tech roll and a standard action to reload it. (It also has the Improvised 1 tag, but can use any kind of shell.) E/Marat: Marat means 'power' in Arabic, and an E/Marat is a short-range EMP gun that uses parabolic deflectors to channel the pulse. It doesn't have standard ammo, but instead a battery pack, and the battery runs dry on a Complication, requiring a Difficulty 1 Tech roll to recharge. Matulid Rifle: Matulid is Tuareg for 'hello' or 'how do you do?' It's a joke. The guns are produced in small factories in the Taba subcontinent, and built for its needs first and foremost. The stocks are often decoratively carved in local geometric designs, the sights are top quality and entirely non-quantronic, and they might an underbarrel light shotgun that's sealed against radiation so that the user is safe from their own Azelik shells. The weapons are non-hackable thanks to the lack of a quantronic interface, just like the Bardom. Vrabec Pistol: These are small, silenced Breaker pistols; the word means "sparrow" in Czech. They were bulk-purchased in the Silk Revolt by the Silk Lords from Zeva CZ manufacturies on Sol. The revolt may have failed, but the Vrabec proved its worth as a holdout weapon and is quite popular with Haqqislamite criminals. There's a bunch of knockoffs, but the original Zeva Vrabec is still the top dog if you want a concealed, nasty handgun loaded up with some truly vicious ammo. Oddly, the gun itself? Not illegal. New Programs: IC-X Haboob: The name is taken from Bourak's dust storms, meaning 'drifting' or 'blasting' in Arabic. The program is designed to camouflage a quantronic zone's data flux, making it harder to find. All Observation rolls to discover the zone are at +X difficulty while the IC is active. SHIELD-2 Taharat: This is a supportware program meant to counter biological weapons. You need Medicine Expertise 2+ to use it properly, but once it's active, all allies in Long range that have a Bioscanner equipped get +2 BTS against Biotech or Toxic attacks until the start of your next turn. (The AR indicator for an active Taharat system is usually a rain of pure water.) SWORD-X Sama: The sama is one of the spinning dances practiced by certain Sufi groups, and this program uses it because that's what victims seem to be doing. Specifically, the Sama targets the vestibular system of the body of its target as long as they have at least one piece of Neural gear. Targets gain Security soak based on their Acrobatics against the attack, but if they are hit, the hacker can spend (4-X) Momentum to deal nasty physical damage with the Knockdown, Nonlethal, Stun and Vicious X qualities and may inflict Dazed or Knockout as Wound Effects if they cause a Wound, as they force the victim's body to suddenly spin around. UPGRADE-1 Bendelladj Archive: Technically, this is an X-class program, but only the level 1 version is available for purchase - anything better must be earned via impressing the chief librarians of the Bendelladj Archive. The Archive is an extremely deep library of code exploits, overflow cascades, digital attack tactics and biometric exploitation algorithms, and access to it is very carefully controlled, saved for those the archivists and librarians deem worthy. The library access upgrade can be installed on any hacking device, and it gives +X Authentication Quality when you successfully perform a Spoofing or Authentication hack, and give -X Difficulty to Gain Difficult Authentication rolls. New Drugs and Poisons: Azelik Poison: We discussed this above - it's radiation poisoning delivered through a form of powdered uranium, favored by the Tuareg and extremely hard to cure. Blu Khat: Also known as hagigatto among the dealers of the Jewish Quarter, this is a chewable leaf or herbal pill made from biohacked African and Arabian plants. Unlike normal khat, it isn't carcinogenic and has few cardiovascular risks, but it is quite psychologically addicting. Once you take it, you are not going to fall asleep for at least four hours, can ignore all sleep deprivation rolls for that period, heal 1 Resolve every 10 minutes and get a bonus die on all Observation and Personality rolls. However, withdrawal can cause you to lose your inhibitions, compulsively seek out the drug, and suffer from occasional hallucinations. ExcelRate: This is a highly illegal and degenerative drug that's popular among corsairs and mercenaries because it massively increases the brain's ability to process stimuli for a brief period. It's most commonly delivered via combat autoinjector, but there's also a dermal patch variant produced by Beyhan Resources STI to help you track dosages in battle. It's not too addictive, but the drug itself is nasty - once taken, it gives a bonus die on Coordination and Awareness rolls for 1d6 rounds, but once that's over, you're Dazed for 1d3 rounds. You can stack multiple doses to get even more dice, but if crash periods overlap, you become Staggered, instead. Withdrawal symptoms cause +1 Difficulty on Coordination rolls due to involuntary tremors. Fasji: This is the poison of Fasji sea snakes, and while their meat is delicious, you have to be careful not to pierce their venom sacs during preparation or you'll poison the food. (Or you can do it deliberately.) It's not too bad and has to be ingested for it to do anything, but if you roll any Effects on its damage, you also become Staggered for three rounds. Fayudan: This is a sweet-tasting liquid poison made from synthetic proteins and beta-blockers. It is placed in food to target the victim's amygdala, rendering them calm and reducing inhibitions. They get +3 Morale soak against intimidation and coercion, but whoever poisoned them can make a Difficulty 1 Psychology roll against them. On a success, they can spend 2 Momentum to get -2 Difficulty to all rolls to gain information from the target via friendly conversation for an hour. Once that period ends, the victim must make a Resistance roll or take some physical damage and become Dazed for two rounds as the psychotropic purges itself violently. If they succeed at the roll, they are aware they were drugged rather than naturally talkative and take no damage. Hofrehgiyahi: A poison derived from the plants of the same name, which fire hallucinogenic pollen clouds into the air after rainfall. They're more notable for their role as contraband storage due to their hollow taproots, though, since the poison helps keep folks away. If collected and used itself, the pollen is an inhaled poison that does some pretty nasty physical and mental damage and causes Dazed and nasty hallucinations, but collecting pollen isn't easy. Pop-pod: This is harvested from pop-grass pops, and is a cyanotoxin that causes respiratory failure. It can be easily detected and filtered against, so any BTS renders you immune to its effects. That's good, because it causes some nasty physical damage, causes Dazed, and if you're already Dazed triggers suffocation unless you pass a Resistance roll. SHVYY: This is a poison developed by the chemists of the Yuan Yuan pirates originally, and now sold by its street name, shiv. You buy a spraycan and spray it on a knife or other melee weapon just before a fight, requiring a Difficulty 1 Tech roll to apply correctly. For the next 1d20 rounds, plus 1 per Momentum spent, your weapon gains Biotech and Grievous but has +4 Complication range, and on a Complication on the Tech roll, you cause a wound to yourself. Steady: This is a drug produced for the Qapu Khalqi, intended as a stimulant to give pilots hyperfocus on motor control. It comes on little blotters and tastes like motor oil, dates and regret. It's not at all addictive, possibly in part because of how bad it tastes. Once you take it, you get a bonus die on all Coordination rolls for 6 hours, but +1 Difficulty to Brawn and Agility rolls for the same period. Tariki: Derived from a toxin of the Ezdeha Tariki pack hunting lizards, this is heavily used by Haqqislamite forces for toxic munitions and nanocoatings, though it can also be bought in ingestable oil form. (It doesn't have a taste.) It's pretty good damage and causes Dazed or Staggered (if the target is already Dazed), so it's basically your standard issue Good Military Poison. New Remotes: Fanous: These are meant for use by hackers as remote repeaters. The name means 'lamp' in Arabic, and they're lightweight, doglike drones that move quickly on most terrain. They have a consumer-grade stun pulse mounted on them and a flash-pulse projector mounted on their chin, which can be replaced by a manipulator arm if you want. They're very fast, and more importantly, they have a military-grade hardened repeater, which takes two Breaches to suborn rather than one and can be deployed out of their body as a minor action. You could do far worse for a hacker's pet drone. New Tools: Akbar Kit: The standard medkit of the Akbar Doctors. Akbar means 'great' and is a title given to those doctors who swear an oath of service to the faith and the Sword of Allah. The kit is given to them when the oath is taken, and it requires Medicine Focus 3 to use properly, but gives -1 Difficulty to Medicine rolls of all kinds and comes with six loads of Serum, 3 loads of Silk and a dose of Psychotropics. It also lets you halve the time needed for a Serious Treatment if you do it within an hour of the injury being caused, which you can reduce further with Momentum to a minimum of 15 minutes. Chisis Ark X: This is a container of variable size, a luxury safebox made from hardwood concealing a high-tech lock. They're a status symbol, with simpler versions in common use with high-class couriers and Hassassins. Opening an ark requires careful manipulation of its concealed pressure plates in a timed sequence. If you don't know the combination beforehand, this requires a Difficulty (X+2) Intelligence-based complex Thievery roll that requires 2*X Momentum total and can only have 6 failures. Djinncloak: These are lightweight cloaks made from a protein webbing coated in digital ink with a large texture library. Basically, you wear them and they blend with the scenery to make you nearly invisible, counting as a Kit for Stealth rolls against those at least Medium range away and give you bonus Momentum as long as you're prone or not moving, and they provide bonus Cover Soak as long as you aren't Revealed, even if you are Detected. Djinn Kit: This is a Hassassin-made biokit that can be used to grow a djinncloak, make a d-charge or brew Tariki-based spray that can be conealed as a cosmetic kit. The entire kit appears to be innocuous, requiring a Science roll to detect its true purpose and a slightly easier Science roll to actually use. The kit's one use, though, and the generated item is imperfect, gaining the Fragile and Improvised 2 traits. The kit can also be completely dissolved into amino acids by mixing it with basic cleaning supplies, if you need to get rid of it. Gallabeyya: This is just traditional Egyptian-style or Sudanese-style clothing, but because Farad Khadivar liked it, it's very common among Haqqislamites. Modern cuts and materials make them differ slightly from the traditional versions, but they're almost always in fashion, and most variations have climacool threading, giving them the Adapted (Desert) quality to help you handle the heat and sand. Hawala Dot X: A Hawala dot is the visible injection site of a custom virus, a common service on caravanserais. All it does is make a benign discoloration, which represents a deposit of 3*X Assets. The Assets plus a mix of the viral genetic code and a random sampling of the user's DNA are then deposited in Raqib/Atib, a heavily secured Tunguskan banking datasphere. This serves as proof of identity at all caravanserai and can be used to withdraw the deposited Assets at any of them, minus a small fee of X Cashflow. This is intended to allow you to transfer funds with no identifying information or quantronic trail. Hafza Holomask: These are given to the Hafza, the graduates of the Al-Khaafdif Military Academy. They receive extensive training in tactics and psychological warfare, and because they're high value targets, they are also trained in the arts of disguise and deception. The holomasks help with this, using military biometric archives to create a more effective illusion. When you use one, you get bonus Momentum to rolls to try and appear as a generic Haqq soldier or Amir and bonus Momentum based on your Psychology Focus to imitate anyone you know personally. i-Kohl Athnansaa: This i-Kohl disrupts the 5-HT neurotransmitting receptor bindings via paired formulation that dissolves when it contacts its binary. (To prevent accidental discharge, it is usually applied to opposite hands.) When you activate it, you can make a Stealth or Close Combat roll to get your target to breathe in the vapor, causing them to become Staggered for two rounds, plus two per Momentum spent. This also disrupts their short-term memory formation, giving them +2 Difficulty to any rolls to remember what happened during those rounds. Anyone with their own air supply, BTS of 4+, or Brawn+Resistence Expertise of 14+ is immune. i-Kohl Bilqis: This is the most common form of i-Kohl, and you need a gene sample or genetic data on your target to make it work. Basically, the cosmetic perfume is specially tailored to enhance your hormones via targeted cues, functioning as a subtle aphrodisiac that only works on the specific target it is gene-tailored for. If you can make physical contact and a Persuade roll, you spend up to 3 Momentum to get that many bonus dice on future rolls to seduce the target or to use affection, physical attraction or the promise of sex as part of a negotiation - which you need not be telling the truth about, of course. This lasts until the target next goes to sleep. However, if the target would not normally be attracted to you based on gender presentation, species or similar, the Persuade roll is much, much harder. If you fail the roll either way, the target is immune to any further use of Bilqis. i-Kohl Carron X: Carron was an early use of this i-Kohl, who famously was able to use it to walk unharmed out of a terrorist attack, and her name has stuck to it. Essentially, it produces a serotonin cascade triggered by high adrenaline levels, flooding a target with relaxing sensations that inhibit aggression. As a Reaction, a user can make a Persuade roll against a target in Reach, who must then make a Discipline roll at Difficulty (X+Momentum spent). If they fail, they can't take any aggressive action against the user unless the user attacks them first. If they succeed, they are immunized to Carron's effect for the scene, and even if they fail, they can attempt further Discipline rolls at the same difficulty, though at +X Complication range, as a Standard action to break free on later rounds. i-Kohl Concealer: While i-Kohl is very subtle in use, it can be detected by certain chemical sensors or people who know what to look for. Concealer servers as a catalyst for other i-Kohl products disguising them chemically so that they become Subtle 3 instead of Subtle 2. As usual, this can be reduced by Complications, but until it is gone, all rolls to notice their use or find any evidence left behind, including via the Microscopic Threats Analysis Talent, is at +3 Difficulty. (Noticing the effects is still just as easy as normal - this only prevents people from noticing what's causing them.) i-Kohl Ta'riya-T [Animal]: Ta'riya-t means 'to place one animal besides another' in Arabic, apparently. Each formulation is tailored to suppress aggression instincts and produce a familiar smell to a specific animal species. When wearing it, when the user encounters a new animal of the appropriate species, they can make an Animal Handling roll as a Standard action. On a success, they can spend 1 Momentum to create a special Metanoia Effect in the animal, making it consider them a friend. If it's a guard creature or working one, it won't alert handlers to their presence, and if it's a pet, it gives bonus Momentum to social rolls with its owner when present. Tohaa creations, uplifted animals and any animal with Intelligence 6+ is immune. Ihya Pendant: Ihya is the act of bringing life or using barren land, we are told. These pendants are sold by the Gardener Guilds as fundraising for difficult terraforming projects, and they contain an image of a tiny landscape - specifically, the area the fundraising is for. The image receives regular updates as terraforming continues, encouraging a personal connection to the project. Once complete, pendants are often framed or embedded in stone as art pieces. Wearing one gives bonus Momentum to social rolls against Gardener Guild members or terraforming enthusiasts, as they know you have helped fund a project. Meltsand: Meltsand is sold in a meter cube, a sort of coarse and electrically charged sand mixed with semistable smart solvent into a solid brick. A simple quantronic command will cause it to dissolve into slurry. It's mostly used by criminals to conceal their operations or to spring ambushes. I'm sure you can find creative uses for self-dissolving brick cubes. Noor AR: This is an AR program designed to incorporate the Search for Knowledge into daily life. It means 'light' in Arabic and embeds virtual tokens around your environment that, when discovered and opened, teach various brief lessons on a topic. Topics can be anything from basic knowledge to highly specialized academic disciplines. Use of Noor AR reduces the XP cost of a specific Education Talent by 50 XP, chosen when you purchase the AR overlay, as long as you use it at least a few hours a day for at least a month. Only one Noor overlay can be used at a time, and because it's somewhat distracting, you get +1 Complication range to Observation rolls while using it. Rihla Rations: These are survival rations; rihla is Arabic for journey. They are typically created as part of communal gatherings, made in large batches for friends and family that have long journeys to go on or live in harsh areas. They're like normal survival rations, but tastier and more nutritious, with that personal touch. Because of this, as long as you're eating them, you get a bonus to Morale soak. Each purchase is a month's food for a single person, and they come in many regional variants using local recipes. Saifari AR: This AR program is often sent as a gift as part of a fruit basket, and it's very popular with stressed out government workers. Essentially, it transforms your surroundings into a relaxing, algorithmically generated verdant garden based on the Impossible Gardens of Saif. The calming effect heals 3 Resolve every half hour you spend in it and, if used daily, give you one bonus die on a single Discipline roll each week. Sniffer X: This is a tool that scans the area for suspicious particles or signals using a number of sensors, helping to set up and monitor a safety perimeter. It's essentially a sensor suit containing X+1 sensor types that can all be deployed as one Standard action. They're made to be easy to set up in the field, and once deployed, all networked allies can use them. They have an internal battery that last 12 hours, and anyone networked to one can treat targets in Close range of the Sniffer as being in Close range of them for purposes of Observation rolls, plus they get -1 Difficulty and bonus Momentum to those rolls. They come in sets of three, but they're pretty breakable. Theraic Pod X: These are the core of Haqq medical tourism businesses. They're facilities for Medicine skill use, using long-term therapeutic medications and Silk-based therapies to reduce aging effects and speed up healing. It's almost impossible to get one for private usage, but it's pretty easy to get access to one for treatment if you're on Bourak. A physician can use a Theraic Pod to allow a patient to use the physician's Medicine skill in place of their own Resistance for recovery rolls, which they can still assist with Resistance, and the Pod also gives X bonus Momentum to recover from Harms. A week of treatment and a Medicine roll will also allow a user to restore up to X stat loss from aging, to a max of the original value. New Vehicles: Akrep TAG: The XPR-5 Akrep (literally 'Scorpion') is piloted by the Maghariba Guard primarily and is a recent replacement for the PanO design that Haqqislam licensed previously, the Artefaktech XPR-1 Bokbocegi ('Beetle'). The new model is so heavily refitted that it has almost no relation to the old one. It has extremely advanced 360-degree optical systems, plus a fully articulated tail that mounts a MULTI heavy machine gun and anti-ballistic defense missiles. It dropped two legs, moving to a four-legged design to easier maintenance and wider range of movement, but retains grip-tracks on each limb to improve speed and stability. It also has modular 'claw' weapons on the front to add tactical flexibility - they can be unmounted and replaced with other weapons easily. Most often, they are deployed with a heavy flamethrower and two heavy pistols. The multi-leg design allows it to ignore difficult or hazardous terrain easily with a simple Pilot roll, and also allows it to avoid any problems from being knocked over. Indeed, it can drop "prone" by planting its body and bracing to allow easier fire of its tail gun. It's very much a ranged combat TAG, though, lacking much in the way of melee options or modifiable hardpoints. Also, don't expect them to win many speed records. Jamal Transport: The KAVM Jamal Transport is named for male camels. They're huge three-tier hovercrafts that were originally used in Bourak's initial settlement to move cargo and passengers between different sites. They're efficient and longlasting vehicles, and many are still in use as overland freight carriers, especially to supply terraforming projects. They don't see much passenger use, since Bourak now has widespread public transportation. They aren't very fast, but they're big, tough as hell, and have plenty of space you could use to install equipment hardpoints. They come equipped with three cargo cranes that can grab stuff, but they're not designed for delicacy and can't really deal with stuff smaller than a meter cube. The prow zone where the pilot, copilot and quartermaster sit is reinforced and armored, but the rest is just normal tough. The modular interior at least makes it fast to modify internal stuff. Kum Motorcycle: The Kum bikers customize their bikes heavily, and they're highly valued by anyone with an interest in motorcycles. They're pretty fast, all things considered, though they're not really able to handle sustained fire, so must riders carry smoke grenades to help cover them. There's a fair amount of room to modify the bikes, especially the chassis, and it has hidden compartments that can be used to stash weapons or small cargo for easy and fast access as a Minor action. A good rider can push them to their limits with a Pilot roll, boosting their speed massively for several rounds. Olabisi Board: These are windsurfing boards used for annual races on Olabisi. All must be built to identical specs so that the race is purely a matter of skill. The boards are common along Bourak beaches now. They're...they're windsurfing boards. They're not super fast, they can't take much of a hit, but they give Superhuman Agility 1 due to their maneuverability and you can make a Pilot roll as a Standard action to engage the smartsail, which lets you speed up the board by catching more wind. The goal of races is to keep doing this and not fail - you can keep increasing the speed until you fail, but the roll gets harder the faster your board is going. Next time: Making Haqq characters
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Jan 31, 2022 23:14
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Wapole Languray posted:Nightcrawlers Thanks, this looks interesting for when the mood inevitably sours on sweetly pastoral anime heroism and my group gets back into murder Siivola posted:Cyberpunk RED I tried to play this and I still don't think we got the rules right but the way it was presented to us at the time Armor made the combat an intensely unpleasant slog or else instantly and irreducibly fatal, which is very true to the Cyberpunk Legacy ("everyone who didn't buy a helmet at character generation, go ahead and roll a new PC") but was no fun at all to play. Snorb posted:Shadowrun: Dragonfall Robocop 2 is an underappreciated work of cyberpunk mastery. Spoilered I guess for the game and not for Robocop 2, which turns 32 this year, marking yet another grim stone on the abacus of mortality
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Feb 1, 2022 00:31
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spider bethlehem posted:I tried to play this and I still don't think we got the rules right but the way it was presented to us at the time Armor made the combat an intensely unpleasant slog or else instantly and irreducibly fatal, which is very true to the Cyberpunk Legacy ("everyone who didn't buy a helmet at character generation, go ahead and roll a new PC") but was no fun at all to play. There's a house rule I like for RED's armor that makes pistols dangerous and tamps down on indestructible PCs (or NPCs). Instead of like normal just give the armor ratings of 1-4 (1 for like Nomad leathers, 4 for the heavy stuff) and subtract that from each damage d6 rolled.
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Feb 1, 2022 00:50
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Mirage posted:I vaguely remember this is from a Shadowrun equipment book which included advanced rules for cyberpsychos to replace every part of their body except the brain. The corps who did this to people could only keep them alive using blood magic. It was sloppy and excessive and poorly thought out, but thaaaat's Shadowrun for ya. Yeah, using blood magic, you can make it so that someone can survive having negative Essence, so you can just cram in as much cyberware as you want. The costs? Well, it's ridiculously expensive and the patient might just die. And anyone who makes eye contact with them will immediately know they're some kind of movie monster. And they'll be full of tubes feeding them nutrient paste. And they'll need a special brain implant to stimulate their memories from time to time. This prevents them from just losing the will to live and dropping dead at the least convenient moment. Which they will eventually do. It's not like Night's Dark Masters, where they give you the rules to play vampires, tell you not to do it, but you totally can.
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Feb 1, 2022 02:37
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Hams vamps are having a good time. Shadowrun vamps are mostly having a good time, especially if they're runners that are already tough enough to deal with the downsides. (A vampire adept is one of the only two ways to get 5 initiative dice, meaning they are incredibly fast and will clean up a whole room full of rentacops on their own.) Cyberzombies are absolutely not having a good time and creating one is a crime against metahumanity.
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Feb 1, 2022 03:04
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wiegieman posted:
Are they also 'interesting' to astral entities and such? Because that would be another reason to not drag one along with you.
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Feb 1, 2022 03:21
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a part of me really loves that cyberzombies almost literally exist because some computer scientist somewhere in the back of yet another talk involving the numerical quantification of essence asked "so what does -1 mean on this scale" and inbetween people making fun of him a bunch of Very Important People got very quiet and several trillion nuyen of arcanotech and blood magic later Sader Krupp or Ares or whoever was looking at their negative pressure soul trap abomination with proud approvalBy popular demand posted:Are they also 'interesting' to astral entities and such? Because that would be another reason to not drag one along with you. IIRC, depending on the edition, somewhere between "very yes" and "doing their absolute best to be aware of all of them at all times so they can stay as far away from them as possible" there are editions where cyberzombies get made a threat to mages by having their anti-soul generate a negative background count that just absorbs and destroys the astral around them like mobile pockets of deep space this is understandably upsetting to the various free spirits and the like
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Feb 1, 2022 03:43
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By popular demand posted:Are they also 'interesting' to astral entities and such? Because that would be another reason to not drag one along with you. The scariest enemies in Shadowrun are the Horrors, deep astral entities who feed off of pain and misery. They love cyberzombies and would be happy to sponsor the creation of more. In fact, they do! A few of the smarter Horrors are actively supporting Aztechnology, the world's foremost experts in blood magic.
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Feb 1, 2022 03:56
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"The doctor told me that the voices were to remind me of who I was. I asked him why he thought I might forget, and then he said the voices were there to remind me that I was alive. Of course I'm alive, I said. We're talking, aren't we? He agreed, but said some people would argue the point. Not that we were talking, but that I was alive. I told him I didn't understand. He said that death is traditionally defined as the cessation of certain kinds of brain activity, and that was there the definitional problems came in. I think I held up my hand as I told him to stop, because he sounded surprised. I couldn't see my hand. I couldn't even see him-it was one of those days where I could only hear. The told me later it was a cable problem. I told him I didn't care what the definitions were, and asked him if I was alive. He said yes. I asked him if I was going to stay alive. He said yes, as long as I remembered. Remembered what, I asked. Remembered that I was alive, he answered."
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Feb 1, 2022 04:01
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 Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined Part 5 - Sticking To Our Principles  I say we ‘should’ start, because for some reason, this is after the GM guide/principles/moves sections. That’s why it says “Just like GMs” at the top, there. Let me compare to the short list of Agendas for Monster of the Week players.  Now, in PbtA, Agendas are more high concept than Principles, but this game doesn’t have Agendas. And there aren’t player Principles in MotW. Now, I’d say we should go over these and explain what we think they mean, but… the page actually does that.  Which remains an amazing pitch, and is the reason we’re doing this review in the first place: for all this game’s bumpy mechanics and design flaws, it has something special at the heart of it.  In this book, the GM Principles are just that list, and I couldn’t tell you what the motives behind them were.  quote:Have fewer NPCs than you think. Why? I can get not having everyone from an movie or series until they come up, but this just feels like a way to push to limit the Links players get, so they don’t get overwhelmed. I think we threw this out the window pretty early, given that our Links lists were at like 30+ Links once the dust settled. quote:Let good emotions stay constant. I’ve openly admitted I’m a Masks man. And Masks is all about interpersonal drama, especially with PCs. This second tenet seems to enforce that drama until it explodes, and I worry there might be more bad interpersonal feelings coming from doing it this way, perhaps even out of character. But for there to be bad feelings in-character, the players have to want to explore such arcs as a natural consequence of their characters and their interactions in the world. And it doesn’t matter because all of this is player-side RP, unless you want to make an NPC an rear end in a top hat. Anyway, next up we have... quote:Every Link is important to someone. This feels like a good sentiment, but I don’t understand what it actually means. Though the mechanics don’t seem to agree with that. quote:Make the small things large. Meanwhile, I actually don’t understand why 'make the small things large' is here. Especially since it’s not a low-key game of interpersonal drama like Masks, where you’re supposed to make these low-key things something that a teenager would think is the whole world. quote:Each world is temporary, but come back to visit. I mean, not a lot to say here. Pretty self explanatory, and honestly the most Kingdom Hearts-feeling of them all, at least on a player level. quote:The big picture plot is always happening behind the episodic. Hold on a second. I thought no one was coming into this with a plan of what happens? But what do I know? I had a pretty solid overarching plot idea in our campaign, and let you react to the specific worlds and the macguffins instead. quote:Darkness lingers in every heart. What’s that supposed to mean? Like, it’s very Kingdom Hearts, but to make it a principle that your game should be guided by feels… a little disgusting. quote:Drop them right in the thick of it. quote:Canon is nebulous. This one I really like, because it encapsulates the fun parts of the Kingdom Hearts experience. In simple terms: “don’t let canon get in the way of making the toys kiss”. quote:Make it seem like it was planned all along. Lastly, we have 'make it seem like it was planned all along'. Because every good GM knows what they're doing the entire time. /s Though, I’ll say… no shame in saying “that caught me a big off guard. Give me a moment.” Of course, PbtA games do give the DM a second set of tools to help with that. These are ‘GM Moves’; typically done on failing a roll, or when the game specifies, to help prod the story forward and answer ‘what happens next’ when the players can’t. Unfortunately, I’m not really as much of a fan of Interstitial’s GM moves as I am of its GM principles.  Like the GM principles, these don’t come with explanations. quote:An unexpected visit. So someone visits you out of nowhere and that’s a bad thing. That seems… like a thing. It’s just weird, and a weird start. quote:Reveal a new question. Unless it’s reveal a question the PCs have to answer, which is an entirely different can of worms and… honestly more tolerable than what I just gave you. That sorta thing. quote:Answer a question. I suppose 'answer a question' fits into the same bucket. A mystery has been driving the PCs along, now they come upon the answer, and they’re not going to like it. So it’s their problem to fix. And if you didn’t know the answer, maybe whatever’s going on can give you an idea. Anyway, next item… quote:Capture someone. Ooooh, harsh. This feels potentially very nasty. quote:Do something offscreen. This one isn’t bad. It’s actually one I’ve seen in a few PbtA games. Though most games specify “Offscreen Badness.” To sort of be like how the villains are still making moves while you’re off seducing Helga Sinclair and kicking Darth Vader in the peen. The next move, though, made me laugh, because it’s… quote:Ask them what they do. Here we go, folks. The question. The one that’s defined DMing since time immemorial. “What do you do?” It is not supposed to be here. This should be a folio of DM reactions. What’s this question doing here? ...with the principle of the move and the description of the move literally saying, “Do this after you do something first. Keep the action in their hands. This is the punctuation to your action.” quote:Change the answer. Since we’re being pretentious, I can only assume it’s to life, the universe, and everything. Yes, canon is nebulous. Don’t get attached to canon. You’re writing fanfiction. But how about you don’t have an entire move devoted to actually actively retconning the canon you established with your own “answer the question” move. Especially in a game where you aren’t supposed to lie to your players out of character. I dunno. This feels like it’s poorly explained. If it were, “elaborate on the answer”, or “the situation progresses”, would that feel better to you? This establishes a precedent of retroactive lying, and part of PbtA is that you don’t lie to your players. It makes their in character knowledge and experience useless. It makes their narrative contributions useless. And it makes your answers to future questions mean less. We’re probably not going to actively mention the main GM page, but one of the pieces of advice there is literally that you should be honest with your players. And honestly? Pulling out a rug you said was nailed to the floor is bullshit. Unfortunately, it’ll probably be my turn to complain next, because the next move is... quote:Make them lose something. This will never not feel bad. I don’t like using this one without a relatively clear way to deal with it, even if it will take some time. Or by spoiling them first. Give them 200% and then take away 80%. (it’s worse if it’s “make them lose someone”, which I admit I thought of at first.) quote:An unexpected exit. Up next is 'an unexpected exit', which is… well, the reverse of the first one. Someone leaves without saying why. quote:Give a PC a Link. quote:Do Harm as established by fiction. And 'do Harm as established by fiction' seems like an obvious and unpleasant negative consequence, but I don’t really have any issues with it. quote:Unlock a Link. No. Don’t do this. This is mean and takes away a lot of power from the players. This is mean. No. quote:Remove a Link. quote:Remove a magical condition. I mean, of course they could, that’d be stupid, but word choice is a thing. There’s a bit more of the GM section, but it’s just basic advice. “Be honest. Figure out what world to go to.” Things like that. And then there’s Tags.  This was a stretch goal, and basically it’s a general list of genres with examples of varying quality and rules/tone advice. They’re kind of… I get the idea. Like most other things in this game, it could have been designed a lot better. Why don’t we show you some of the weirdest?  First, notice the mix of locations and media names. Mad Max, Sonic DX and 9 are all the names of media. The Domed City of Corinth is a setting name, specifically to Power Rangers RPM. And Corinth is still a deep cut. I only know it from the podcast playthrough where they went there.  All settings. And a focus on violence. The Shire. Not anywhere else in Lord of the Rings.  We could go on, but you probably get the idea. The tags list isn’t a bad setup, but it feels like it was half-baked. There’s one thing I think would have fixed it, and that’s making it more... be like Action Movie World and have small sets of custom rules for each genre. Instead it’s just… “this exists as a genre you could explore, maybe.”  The setting itself is… weird. With weird names. An evil dictator that was defeated was named Anapest Foil. The new dictator who runs the “Sovereign Force” is Edict 563, and he forbids traveling to other worlds. The other group, The Other, is all people who chaotically travel between worlds and wreak havoc in the name of punk, lead by Vendetta Mondata. And there’s the subheading of the Minit organization, which is actually just a hamster, her dead friend, and some third party character, basically there to be the balancing force that the PCs might rally behind. Armed with lambdabraces, our heroes travel between the worlds and kick rear end. To my knowledge, this setting has never been used. Even in the creator’s podcast where they played two full campaigns and a few oneshots, none were ever directly tied to Lambda. There’s really not enough there, three organizations with three NPCs each, and enough vague information tucked into the descriptions of NPCs that maybe there’s a setting there. I’m sorry. I can’t be bothered to give the setting any attention. I’m too busy playing with We have one final part left in our review. In it, we’ll recap the campaign eliasswift ran using the system. It’s time to see what Interstitial can do in the right hands.
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Feb 1, 2022 04:26
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Cyberzombies are such nightmares that they generate a magical background count just by walling around existing. The sort of thing you normally only find at the site of particularly nasty atrocities. Your soul long ago decided that it wanted no part of this and attempted to gently caress off to the afterlife, only to be shackled to your should-be-corpse by chains of blood magic. They're pretty much Deadlands cyborgs but somehow even worse.
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Feb 1, 2022 04:54
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wiegieman posted:The scariest enemies in Shadowrun are the Horrors, deep astral entities who feed off of pain and misery. They love cyberzombies and would be happy to sponsor the creation of more. Are any horrors ever statted up in any SR edition or are they just "eat 1d6 runners per round, you lose" if one should happen to pop up? Mind, how can a horror support a corporation? Are the horrors actually rich? Do they have political influence? Or is it a "kill political opponents, offer tech support when a blood ritual won't work"-sort of support?
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Feb 1, 2022 04:59
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