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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah, so, the thing about the Abyss isn't that it's the tempting deal with evil powers - that's what selling out to the Exarchs is for (join the seers). It's that it's magical crack. The Orders try to keep it secret because of how destructive it is, abstinence doesn't work in a society of incorrigibly-curious egotists, and by the time yonder Rabashakim has realised his Antimonian Rote really isn't worth it, he's addicted - and a bad day from Joining. I know a lot of people here are saying they don't see how the Abyss, with its absolute nihilism and misery and misanthropic paradigm can be at all addictive, but I can absolutely see how it would be for some people. Scelesti are basically accelerationist mages in the Nick Land mould. If you have a certain temperament then it absolutely is weirdly compelling and addictive to immerse yourself in absolute misery and nihilism, and the sense of perverse pride in supposedly knowing better than all the normies about how lovely the world is and how beautiful oblivion is or whatever would just make it more so. It also absolutely makes sense that a lot of sensible, reasonably healthy people would find it absolutely incomprehensible. In short, it's not simply addiction to a drug, it's addiction to a nihilistic world view that feeds ones most self-destructive urges in a perversely fulfilling manner. It's indulging in the thanatos, the death drive. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Mar 28, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 03:27
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Pakxos posted:Can you elaborate on how important the abyss/abyssal touched things are to a nWOD mage campaign? Like if they are just one tool in the toolbox maybe it is ok to have a generic 'hostile lovecraft not lovecraft' force of otherness for the people who like the generic stuff while over on this side of the toolbox is the really cool poo poo. I don't really know the setting that well, aside from the opinions of someone with a major axe to grind against nWOD in general, so I am not sure how easy it is to avoid dealing with the Abyss in an average game. There are enough things in the nMage toolbox to setup plenty of campaigns without ever mucking about with Abyssal threats. Pentacle mages, Seers, apostates, Nameless, cryptids, Tremere, Rapt, Supernal mysteries, other nWoD supernaturals, you're pretty much spoiled for choice.
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Mar 28, 2020 03:56
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Speaking of Mike Pondsmith... Thirty years ago he published a little game called Cyberpunk 2020, set in the dark, far off future of today. And apart from a spinoff in the mid-90s and an flubbed attempt at a third edition in the early aughts, no one's heard anything at all about it in all that time, not even a little. But just a few weeks ago he finally blessed the internet with a brand new edition of the only real competitor Shadowrun used to have. Me, I've always been a huge nerd for cyberpunk of all kinds, and for all its flaws I loved Cyberpunk 2020 when l was a kid, and still love that setting today. And that's why I'm going to be covering the new edition, perks, flaws, and all. So stick around choombas, the future's still pretty loving dark, but at least we've got cyberoptics. Unlike real life, which is dark and doesn't even give us any cool augs, what the gently caress, man. 
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Nov 26, 2020 03:49
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 1: Welcome Back The book opens with Never Fade Away, a short story that originally appeared in CP2020, and right after that we get our first chapter...which is just a run of the mill "What's an RPG?" primer for people who've never played an RPG before, plus a glossary for all of CPRed's slang. Almost all of it is stuff that was in CP2020, but there are a few new bits of slang thrown in too. Our first real chapter comes next: "Soul and the New Machine," which gives us an overview of both character creation and the game's roles. For maximum attitude and edge, the game gives us three rules for roleplaying in CPRed: Style over substance. Attitude is everything. Live on the edge. Again, directly lifted from CP2020. This happens often enough in CPRed that I'm not sure I'm going to bother mentioning callbacks like this from here on out. Who am I kidding, I totally am. Roles!  First up, the Rockerboy. Always iconic, often tricky for GMs to work into scenarios (thought not as tricky as some other roles we'll get to). The description of the role still heavily emphasizes Rockerboys as rebellious punk musicians, but there's also a bit that explicitly talks about how the role fits anyone that relies on sheer personality, charisma, and celebrity, whether it's because they're a musician, a poet, a dancer, a politician, or a cult leader. The Rockerboy's role ability in this edition (we'll get into how role abilities work this time around in the next update) is Charismatic Impact.  Next, we've got the Solo. The most basic of roles, the go-to for anyone who wants something quick, easy, and able to fit into pretty much any kind of campaign or scenario. Badass mercenaries, hired guns, and enforcers, whether they work for a government, a corporation, or themselves. You know the routine. The Solo's role ability in this edition is Combat Awareness.  The -other- basic role that's a genuine cyberpunk archetype, but all too frequently unplayable in way too many cyberpunk RPGs: the Netrunner. Cybernetic hackers that plug themselves into cyberdecks and go head to head with black ICE and enemy hackers. Unlike previous editions, they're no longer able to hack remotely; now they actually have to get relatively close to whatever it is they want to hack, giving them all the more reason to stick with the rest of the party during scenarios. We'll get into that in the chapter on netrunning. The Netrunner's role ability is Interface.  Every scifi game needs someone to tinker with all the guns and gear lying around, and that's where the Tech comes in. Engineers, inventors, and tinkerers par excellence. CP2020 had issues with Techs not being able to contribute all that much to a lot of campaigns, at least compared to other roles, especially in light of their old role ability. This time might actually be different! The Tech's role ability this time around is Maker.  If people are getting shot, stabbed, and otherwise mangled, you need someone to patch them back up, and that's where the Medtech comes in. They're doctors and medics, not much more to it than that, really. They can put people back together, install cyberware, and pump people full of all the best pharmaceuticals. Medtechs have always been one of the hardest roles to work into CP2020 campaigns, and this time around they're more useful in a party, but maybe not for the best. We'll get there. The Medtech's role ability is Medicine.  You can't have that omnipresent mass media and corporate panopticon without someone to direct those cameras in person, and that's where the Media comes in. Reporters of all kinds, with or without corporate backing. You could just as easily be Walter Cronkite or Alex Jones (though Alex Jones could just as easily be a Rockerboy). Medias get a little more to go with this time around thanks to their role ability. The Media's role ability is Credibility.  Now for the one role that's always posed a bit of a tonal clash for a lot of CP2020 campaigns; the Corporate has gotten a facelift and is now called the Exec. Corporate sharks, headhunters, sociopaths with sharp haircuts and sharper smiles, the Exec is there for all your Bob Morton (or Patrick Bateman) roleplaying needs. They've also gotten a pretty serious change in the form of a completely new role ability. The Exec's role ability in this edition is Teamwork.  The other role that was always a tonal clash for most CP2020 campaigns; they used to be called Cops, but now they're Lawmen. Whether they're employed by a government agency or a corporation, they enforce the rules and crack down on anyone that gets out of line. Judge Dredd, Robocop, really you're spoiled for choices. Again, like the Exec, the Lawman has gotten a completely new role ability this time around. The Lawman's role ability in this edition is Backup.  Someone has to navigate the underworld and find all the right people for jobs, gear, services, or more, and that's the Fixer's job. Whether they're filling in as what Shadowrun would call a Mr. Johnson, or they've dug in deep enough to become crimelords all their own, Fixers know the right people for whatever it is you need. The Fixer's role ability is Operator.  The Nomad is a role that's always been a bit particular to R.Talsorian's Cyberpunk setting, representing a parallel society of nomadic packs and clans that roam the highways and seas of the future, originally formed out of families and communities of people who'd wound up homeless and unemployed after serious economic crashes and societal collapses in the 90s and early 00s. They do odd jobs, sometimes criminal, sometimes legit, in order to get by and help keep their families afloat. Nomads used to play as second-rate Solos and their old role ability was largely underappreciated, but this edition's given them a new focus as vehicle-oriented types. The Nomad's role ability in this edition is Moto. After this, we get a brief overview of how character creation works this time around. CPRed gives us three basic options: Streetrats (Templates): You pick a role, then roll once on a chart for that role that gives you an entire stat line. You get starting skills and gear based on your role, plus a bit of extra money on top of that. Edgerunners (Fast and Dirty): A little more complicated, you pick a role and then roll once against that role's stat chart for each stat. You get a selection of skills based on your role, but get a pool of points to spend on the ratings of those individual skills. Finally, you get your gear based on your role, plus a bit of extra money to spend or keep. Complete Packages (Calculated): You get a pool of points to spent on your stats, another pool of points to spend on whatever skills you want, and then you get a bunch of money to spend on weapons, equipment, and cyberware. Honestly, while I can appreciate the effort they made to squeeze in a level of character creation complexity between Templates and Calculated, I'm not sure the Fast and Dirty method really warrants the weirdness involved in stat generation. Next time, we'll take a look at character creation in detail, plus this edition's version of the classic lifepath. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 02:42
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The whole issue where the sort of game you play is largely dependent on the sorts of characters the players make is something that I think stems from what was an older school of game design. Cyberpunk feels more like a game that was designed to be a toolbox that can be used to create any kind of classic cyberpunk archetype, leaving it up to the GM and players to figure out the kind of campaign they want. The idea of making a game have a particular tonal consistency and specifically steering character concepts toward it feels to me like something that only started to come in vogue later, in the 90s and 00s. As for Cop vs. Fixer vs. Solo and all that, the difference made by role abilities will be a lot clearer when I get to them. For what it's worth, Operator works a lot like Streetdeal used to, but with some added functionality. Backup, on the other hand, is a bit more different from how Authority used to work.
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Nov 28, 2020 04:19
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, I got gifted a copy of Cyberpunk Red over Thanksgiving and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it. I feel there's way too much old stuff that won't come up in game and makes it feel like I'm reading a Kevin Siembedia RIFTS book. The book feels like it's 200 pages too long. Rules-wise I think Red is an overall improvement on 2020, but some of the role abilities need work, and they wasted entirely too many pages on a detailed description of the world (and Night City) in 2020, and maps of Night City across the decades, which is pretty useless for a game that's actually set in 2045. It's a seriously baffling decision I'll cover more in depth when I get to that chapter.
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Nov 28, 2020 19:17
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[bCyberpunk RED, ]Part 2: Birth of the New Model[/b] If you've ever played CP2020 (or CP2013, or Mekton, or the Witcher, or anything else using Interlock), then you're pretty familiar with how stats work in CPRed. There are, however, some differences this time around. Intelligence (INT) is how smart you are. Willpower (WILL) is how well you handle stress and pain. Cool (COOL) is basically how charming, magnetic, and impressive you are. Empathy (EMP) is how well you can relate to and connect with others. Technique (TECH) covers your fine motor skills and ability to handle tools and do fine work. Reflexes (REF) is how coordinated you are and how good your reaction time is. Luck (LUCK) is used to nudge rolls; it basically acts as a pool of points that can be added to rolls, and that refreshes at the start of each session. Body (BODY) is how big and tough you are. Dexterity (DEX) is broadly how athletic you are. Movement (MOVE) is how fast you are. The first change from earlier editions is that we've dropped Attractiveness and added Dexterity and Willpower. This is a pretty good change overall because Attractiveness in CP2020 was the ultimate dump stat; not only was it devalued by players more interested in combat, but it was also the only stat that could be augmented all the way up to the max, and really, really cheaply, too. Adding Willpower means Cool no longer covers things like resisting torture and the like, and adding Dexterity is supposed to reduce the importance of Reflexes (but it doesn't work out as well as they probably intended.) The other big change here is that the unaugmented attribute cap in CPRed is 8, rather than 10. Now as changes go this is pretty minor and wouldn't really be worth mentioning...except for the fact that the Cyberpunk RED jumpstart kit that was released last year uses an attribute cap of 10, and the pregen PCs in that kit all have at least one stat at 10. It really feels like this change was something they made at the last minute in the game's development. This becomes even more obvious in the next part of character creation, where the tables for derived stats show basic stats up to 10. Back to character creation. Stat generation for character creation method 1 uses separate tables for each role, each with ten complete statlines. You just roll 1d10 and use the provided statline for your character.  Method 2 still uses the same tables, but instead of rolling once and taking the entire statline, you roll ten times, once for each stat. I'm not really sure why they bothered with this method at all, and unlike the other two methods, it can create (slightly) over- or underpowered statlines for characters, but not by very much at all. Method 3 is straightforward. You get a pool of points (62 by default) and spend them on your stats, with a minimum of 2 and maximum of 8 for each stat. There's also a small table showing alternate pool sizes that GMs could allow their players to use, ranging from 50 to 80 (wouldn't recommend that last one, but hey.) We also get a short paragraph of "GM advice" that's lifted right out of CP2020, advising GMs to just outright kill the characters of any players that get too far out of line in making powerful characters. Yeah, okay. We also get secondary stats: Hit Points (based on Body and Willpower), Death Save (based on Body), and Humanity (based on Empathy). HP is pretty self-explanatory, Death Saves are made to stay alive when you're close to death, and Humanity is the stat we all know and hate. There have been some changes to how Humanity is lost and regained in this edition that I'll cover in the medical chapter. Some of it's good, but some is pretty questionable.  Before getting to skill generation/selection, we get a list of all of the game's skills along with a brief sentence describing each (but not the role abilities). The game makes sure to point out that some skills are considered hard, meaning you have to spend twice as many points to raise them as other skills. I won't go into all of the skills; the list is similar to the one in CP2020, but shorter, with the devs having made the smart choice of condensing skills as much as possible and getting rid of cruft. But there are still some really weird choices in the skill list; exactly how many players are ever going to pick something like Lip Reading? There are also some other weird development choices on display here that I'll get into in later chapters when they become more relevant. Anyway, skills are rated from 1 to 10 (assuming you actually have a given skill), and at character creation players are restricted to a max of 6 in any one skill. Every character also gets a minimum of 2 in each of a number of skills that it's assumed basically any person can be expected to pick up while growing up, and also automatically get 4 in their native language. The basic skills include the likes of Athletics, Education, Perception, Persuasion, and others, and helpfully includes Language (Streetslang), CP's equivalent of common in DnD. Method 1 characters get their skills picked out for them based on their role. Method 2 characters are a little more involved; they get the skills themselves picked out for them based on their role, but instead of having a pre-selected rating for each skill, they're given a pool of 86 points to spend on the skills picked out for them; they're required to spend at least 2 points on each of the basic skills mentioned earlier. Method 3 characters just get that pool of 86 skills and can then freely pick whatever skills they want, though again, they're required to put at least 2 points in each basic skill. I'm not crazy about this, to be honest. Instead of giving players 86 points and then requiring them to spend 26 of those points on their basic skills, it would've been better to just give players a starting value of 2 in each of those skills and then given them a pool of 60 points to spend. Especially since the 4 points every character gets in their native language isn't included in the 86 skill points they get; those 4 points in your native language are automatic and "free".  Next, we get a listing of weapons, armour, and other gear, but it's a redacted version of the full selection of gear presented later in the book. Right after that comes gear selection for starting characters. Method 1 and 2 characters get a bunch of weapons, armour, and ammo selected for them based on their role, plus 500eb of spending money, and on top of that a selection of clothes, cyberware, and miscellaneous gear, also based on their role. Method 3 characters instead get 2550eb to spend on weapons, armour, cyberware, and other gear, and another 800eb to spend on fashion and "fashionware," which is a category of mostly-cosmetic cyberware (with an exception or two). Each character also gets a home and a lifestyle. Most characters start out living in a rented cargo container in either a combat zone or decaying suburbs, and live off kibble. First month is free for both. Execs, on the other hand, start out living in a rent-free corporate conapt in a corporate zone, and live off good prepak, the first month of which is free. I appreciate that they made lifestyle and housing costs more upfront than in CP2020. I knew way too many players back in the day who completely neglected housing and lifestyle costs when creating new characters, and housing costs were more granular and, by extension, complicated in CP2020. This puts lifestyle costs a little more in line with how Shadowrun does it. Next: Lifepaths. Instead of just trying to describe them, I'm gonna show them in action, and to do that, let's get some reader participation. Give me three character concepts and I'll make each one (and run them through the lifepaths), using each of the three character creation methods. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 20:32
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Tibalt posted:To be clear, despite the many flaws, I'm a huge fan of literally every version of Cyberpunk. I still love CP2020, and Cybergeneration, and I've even grown to appreciate Cyberpunk 3.0. I already appreciate what RED's trying to do, and I think I'm gonna like it a lot, but these are definitely crunchier games than some people like, but hey, different strokes. Tibalt posted:and I'm really excited to learn if they kept the Lifepath system in place. 
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Nov 28, 2020 20:33
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Sounds kind sad. I know the thread has seen a bunch of discussion on how exactly this kind of simplification ("Light Pistol", "Heavy Pistol") with keywording, modding, or other standardised variants actually covers most of the relevant crunch granularity of most gunporn games, but I still enjoy the shopping list aspect of it... That right there is one of the beefs I have with Cyberpunk RED. At the very least they could've included templates representing specific manufacturers like Arasaka or Militech or what have you that could be applied to weapons in order to give them particular bonuses and penalties, something sort of along the lines of Borderlands, but they didn't even do that. It's just generic weapons, except for a few very specific weapons from CP2020...which they just treat as generic weapons with one or two small modifiers. But I'll get to that.
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Nov 29, 2020 01:36
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 3: Savage Streets Alright, let's do some chargen. And that means starting with lifepaths. Anyone with a copy of Cyberpunk RED will immediately notice that I'm doing these chapters out of order; the lifepath chapter actually comes before the character creation chapter. Personally, I think R.Talsorian made some seriously questionable choices with where they put some of the game's chapters. I think this should've been put right after the character creation chapter, or even just included as part of it, and the skill chapter (which includes role abilities) should've been put right alongside the character creation chapter, too, instead of after the cyberware chapter. And the chapter with all of the game's gear probably should've been closer to the actual rules and character creation instead of being stuck in after all of the lore chapters and right before the GM advice chapter. Anyway, let's start with Tibalt posted:Billy Billionaire, an augmented street samurai who looks like a FDNY calendar model and has a soft spot for the geeky hacker type. First, let's figure out Billy's background culture.  We rolled a 6, so it looks like Billy's family originally came from sub-Saharan Africa. Considering how wealthy Africa's grown by the time of Cyberpunk RED, that's not a bad background for someone called Billy Billionaire. Next, his personality. An 8 means he's "sneaky and deceptive." For "dress and personal style," another 6 means he goes for Bohemian clothes.  Yeah, sure, okay. Hairstyle gets a 5, meaning he's bald. A 1 for affectations means he's sporting some tattoos. What Do You Value Most? 3: Your word. How Do You Feel About Most People?: 6: Every person is a valuable individual. Things You Value Most?: 9: A personal hero. Most Valued Possession?: 9: A toy. Family Background: 1: Corporate Execs. Home Environment: 10: A corporate luxury "starscraper." Family Crisis: 6: Your family was killed, and you were the only survivor. Friends: Billy's got two friends. One's an old enemy, and the other is like a younger sibling to him. Enemies: Lucky him, he doesn't have any. Lovers: He doesn't have any former lovers, either. Keep pining for those geeky hacker types, I guess! Life Goals: Cause pain and suffering to anyone who crosses you.  Next, we get something that wasn't in CP2020's lifepaths: role specific paths. What Kind of Solo Are You?: A corporate or freelance black ops agent. What's Your Moral Compass Like?: Always working for good, trying to take out the bad guys. What's Your Operational Territory?: The territory of a single corporation. Who's Gunning For You?: A rival Solo who sees you as their nemesis. As always with lifepaths in R.Talsorian games, they're totally optional and you're free to just pick the options you prefer, or just not roll at all. Now for Billy's stats:  And his skills:  Plus, Billy's also gonna get 4 in a language based on his cultural background. In this case, we're going with English. His weapons and armour: Assault Rifle Very Heavy Pistol Heavy Melee Weapon Basic VH Pistol Ammo x30 Basic Rifle Ammo x70 Light Armorjack Body Armour Light Armourjack Head Armour And the rest of his gear: Agent Leisurewear: Footwear x2, Jacket x3, Mirrorshades, Bottoms x2, Top x2 Biomonitor Neural Link Sandevistan Speedware Wolvers Method 1 is just that quick and easy. Now for Nessus posted:Riss Sagiri, a pissed-off rockergirl with an excellent haircut and a grudge against overmilitarization of the street. quote:Family Background: East Asian For Riss's stats: quote:INT 4 Looks like Riss is pretty good with her hands, stubborn, quick on her feet, and really good at clicking with people. Doesn't hurt to be lucky, either, though she's not gonna be wowing anyone with her brains. For skills, Riss just gets the same skills a Rockerboy using method 1 would've gotten; only difference is we get to set the exact value of each. quote:Athletics 4 Lastly, we've got LatwPIAT posted:Naomi Watts, a bony public watchwoman Lawman with a long coat and glasses, whose authority derives from a mandate issued by the local community worker's council that can be instantly revoked in a direct democracy vote of no confidence. (No relation to the actress.) quote:Family Background: Western European. Cut out the equipment on these last two because this post's going on long enough as is and there really isn't anything terribly interesting about it. As far as lifepaths go, I'm not (and never have been) a fan of the "cultural background" part; it really seems to neglect mixed race and other broadly intercultural people. Next time: Cyberware Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 2, 2020 04:18
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 4: Hard Wired So I said before that this part would be covering the cyberware chapter. The good news is that's technically true. The bad news is that the cyberware chapter is actually incomplete; it gives a basic rundown on how cyberware works, the basics of humanity and humanity loss, how cyberware fits in in the world of Cyberpunk RED, and gives a list of cyberware. The bad news is that, just like with the lists of gear and weapons in the previous chapter, it's incomplete, with the full list of cyberware (along with detailed descriptions of how each implant works) is close to the end of the book, along with the full rules of both temporary and permanent humanity loss, how to get humanity back, non-cyberware sources of humanity loss, cyberware installation, bodysculpting, and therapeutic cyberware. In reality, this chapter is just a direct continuation of the character creation chapter, throwing in separate charts for starting cyberware for new characters made using methods 1 and 2. In light of all this, I'm going to be borrowing the cyberware-relevant rules and info from later in the book just so this post actually makes sense. I seriously hate the goddamn layout of this book. The chapter also begins with what has to be the single worst piece of art in this book.  You really hate to see it. Anyway, just like in Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2020, cyberware in RED has a humanity cost. Not all cyberware this time around, but most of the stuff your average PC is going to be taking. There are two exceptions to this: fashionware, and medical-grade cyberware. Fashionware is a category of implants that's mostly (but not entirely!) aesthetic, and medical-grade cyberware is a generic term for implants that replicate the functionality of natural organs or limbs without offering any enhancements or modifications above or beyond them. The cost of medical-grade cyberware is included in the cost of hospital care in the event of a critical injury that requires a character to get prosthetics. Also just like in previous editions, we still have psycho squads around to take care of anyone that goes cyberpsycho, though because of how messed up the world is in the aftermath of the Fourth Corporate War, many of these squads are either corporate or even community-organized. As for why cyberpsychosis is a thing, the book explains it like this: quote:Cyberpsychosis comes about when the subject begins to compulsively alter the body beyond the human baseline. Seeing the body as a thing — a form of Dissociative Personality Disorder — they change it without thought. quote:It is generally not normal to voluntarily cut off a limb or remove a functioning body part. Putting in an earring involves some self-harm, but on a level that is barely discernible to the person doing it. It also does not require the removal of a body part. However, voluntarily choosing to replace a working part for no other reason than aesthetic or functional advantage requires that the user already be able to get past the qualms of cutting up one's body voluntarily. Now, Humanity defaults to 10 x Empathy, and a character's effective Empathy is equal to the tens digit of their Empathy stat. Mechanically speaking, cyberpsychosis in Cyberpunk RED kicks in when a character's Humanity drops low enough to give them an effective Empathy of 2 or less. At an effective Empathy of 2, a character is said to have "borderline dissociative disorder" and should "roleplay accordingly." At 1, a character is supposed to express at least three traits from the Hare Psychopathy checklist (which CPRed "helpfully" includes), and at 0 they're said to have full-blown cyberpsychosis, exhibiting at least five traits from the checklist. Lastly, if a character has an effective Empathy of 0 and negative Empathy, they descend into extreme cyberpsychosis and become an NPC in the GM's control. Humanity can be regained by going through psychotherapy, which takes a week and restores either 2d6 or 4d6 Humanity (depending on how much they spent on the therapy). However, each piece of cyberware permanently lowers a characters maximum Humanity by 2, including individual options for those pieces of cyberware that have them. But hey, at least you don't have to pay for surgery when you get cyberware. Now for the cyberware categories. First up is Fashionware, which mostly consists of cosmetic stuff like colour-changing lenses for your eyes, light-up tattoos, luminiscent, colour-shifting hair, and subdermal watches and biomonitors. As said before, none of this has a Humanity cost. Next, Neuralware. This consists entirely of the neural processor that acts as the brain for all kinds of cyberware, and a host of options for it, including brain-computer interfaces, reflex boosters, skill chip sockets, and pain blockers. The infamous chipware socket from previous editions is back, but this time around it's been seriously nerfed. Now it can only hold a single skill chip at a time, and each skill chip has a Humanity cost that has to be paid the first time it's slotted into a given socket. Cyberoptics consist of cybernetic eyes and all of the different options that can be taken for them, ranging from the usual image enhancement, IR/UV, low-light, and telescopic zoom options, to things like AR overlays, targeting scopes, radiation detectors, and HUDs. Cyberaudio includes the underlying cyberaudio suite and its options, including the likes of amplified hearing, level dampers, radio communicators, voice stress analyzers, radio scanners, and music players. Cyberlimbs come in both arm and leg varieties, each with their own set of options. Arms can choose from the likes of different kinds of retractable blades, medscanners, pop-up weapons and even shields, while get things like various kinds of feet (including stuff like retractable roller blades). Both include a few different aesthetic options, offering the choice of a simple plastic coating, shiny chrome, or synthetic flesh. The Internal and External Cyberware categories include a pretty wide range of stuff, including things that were classified as bioware in previous editions. Enhanced antibodies, gills, skin weave, subdermal armour, and even the infamous Midnight Lady and Mr. Studd implants from past editions (and just like past editions, they can't even bring themselves to say anything meaningful about those last two.) Lastly we get the Borgware category, which really only consists of implanted linear frames, a pair of flat rabbitear antennae that gives a bunch more cyberaudio options on top of the base, an array of multiple cyberoptic implants that allow you to take even more cyberoptic options. For players who can't afford all of the cyberware they want for their character during character creation, the game again offers the option to sell out. With the GM's permission, a player can get a free Neural Link and an additional 1500eb worth of cyberware for their character. However, unlike previous editions, the player can only get the benefits of this option if they can convince all of the players to take this option. Just like previous editions, this means having spent time in a covert military unit, or having sold out at some point to a corp or organized crime, and also means there's something being held over the character's head, like hostages, blackmail, a killswitch, or more. Because antagonistic GMs are still in vogue for some people.  Me after trying to deal with this poo poo. Overall, the cyberware rules in this edition are a bit of a wash. It's good that they've included therapy rules in the core this time around instead of leaving them for sourcebooks, and it's nice that they finally dropped Humanity costs for medical-grade and therapeutic treatments (the medical chapter even specifically mentions SRS as something that would never incur a Humanity cost), but labelling cyberpsychosis as a cross between dissociative personality disorder and psychopathy is just stupid, and they probably would've gotten away with clinging to their Humanity rules better if they hadn't tried to apply a thin, pseudoscientific veneer to them. Next time: skills.
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Dec 3, 2020 00:50
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The devs have said that full-body conversions will be coming in a future book, which means even this half-assed attempt at balance is going to get tossed in short order. At last year's Gen Con, Mike Pondsmith was talking about how "Humanity" was being retooled to represent the objectification of oneself in order to do a particular job or task better, and the resulting dehumanization, and not just some weird sort of psychosis stemming from being "inhuman." How we got from that to this is a pretty interesting question, and it feels to me like another point in favour of the theory that R.Talsorian Games was running out of time in developing Cyberpunk RED and ended up rushing things near the end. Either that or they just decided to backslide because...??? There are a lot of things he was talking about, in fact, that are nowhere to be seen at all in the Cyberpunk RED that we actually got.
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Dec 3, 2020 03:50
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Young Freud posted:That's a big problem I have with Cyberpunk RED: the art is really inconsistent. There's a lot of art that got borrowed from concept art from CD Projekt Red's game, which is why there's a lot of photobashes everywhere, because concept artist do that to get ideas out and presentable quickly for the art director, marketing, whoever. And there's fill-in art taken from other sources. For as much poo poo as Cyberpunk V3.0 gets, at least Dollpunk was a consistent look for that book. From what the devs were saying on Discord, they are in fact bringing back full-body cyborgs, which means their new Humanity rules are going to get broken to gently caress all over again in short order. And yes, Cyberpunk RED makes the really questionable choice of hitting characters with Humanity costs for suffering or witnessing traumatic events. I was going to cover that bit of nonsense with the rest of the medical chapter.
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Dec 3, 2020 04:31
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I would absolutely pack myself full of all kinds of augmentations if I had the chance just for fun, but who knows, maybe I'm already a cyberpsycho! I figure if I need modern science and technology just to keep myself functioning well and feeling human in the first place, why not go farther? Nature's boring!
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Dec 3, 2020 22:10
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 5: Raw Power So, skills and general gameplay resolution. The chapter begins by laying out the basics of movement and time, with time in particular being divided into three-second turns. Characters can move MOVE x 2 meters per turn, and initiative is determined by rolling 1d10 + REF. Characters get a move action and a regular action each turn. Why is this in the skill resolution chapter and not in the combat chapter? Good question! Actions themselves are divided into a bunch of discrete categories listed in a short, handy chart, covering things like Attack, Get into a Vehicle, Stabilize, Use an Object, and Use a Skill.  I really wanted an excuse to post this pic, I just love it.  As for skill checks themselves, it's simple. Opposed skill checks are stat + skill + 1d10 vs. the same, while unopposed checks are stat + skill + 1d10 vs. a difficulty value. Standard DVs range from Simple (9) to Legendary (29). A natural 10 on the d10 is a critical success, and allows you to add a second d10 to the roll (which does not explode on a 10). A natural 1, on the other hand, is a critical failure, meaning you roll a second d10 and subtract that from your total (again, no exploding on the second d10). If a GM feels you have additional skills that could complement the roll, they can give you a single +1 to the roll (having more than one complementary skill doesn't improve the bonus, nor does the level of the complementary skill(s) have an effect, either). GMs can also allow characters to take extra time for a +1 bonus, and if you don't have a skill at all you can attempt it with a straight stat + 1d10 roll. As mentioned earlier in this review, characters can spend LUCK points on any rolls they make, treating their LUCK stat as a pool that refreshes each session and can be spent at a rate of 1 point per +1 to a roll. The skill list itself is shorter in RED than in previous editions, but still fairly substantial. I won't list them all, and I think the sample characters from the character creation review I did give a pretty good idea as to what the skills are like. Instead, let's take a look at this edition's role abilities. For starters, every character begins with a 4 in their role's role ability. Period. You can't raise this during character creation. Secondly, unlike previous editions, you can learn the abilities of other roles. If you have a 4 or more in the ability of your current role, you can spend IP to by the first tank in a role ability of your choice. You can freely spend IP to raise either role ability, but you can't buy the first rank in another role ability until all of your role abilites are 4 or higher. Rockerboys get Charismatic Impact, which can be used to influence other people, but only if they're "fans," which is up to the GM to determine. It also determines the size of the venues the Rockerboy can perform in. Charismatic Impact can range from allowing you to play in small local clubs and convince fans to buy you drinks or ask for autographs, to allowing you to play in huge stadiums and convince mobs of fans to literally sacrifice themselves for you...as long as you can beat a Charismatic Impact + 1d10 roll. All in all, pretty similar to previous editions, just with more explicit details and ratings. Solos get Combat Awareness, which gives them a pool of points equal to their rating that can be spent on specific abilities and effects. The point allocation can be freely changed outside of combat, or while in combat if they spend an action on it. Abilities include things like straight up damage reduction for the first hit the Solo takes each round, to initiative bonuses, to straight up damage increases for the first attack the Solo makes each round, and so on. It's a lot more flexible and interesting than how Solos worked in previous editions, and still pretty powerful, too. Netrunners, as usual, get Interface, which basically just lets them do poo poo while Netrunning. It gives them access to a set of specific abilities used in Netrunning (which I'll cover in the Netrunning chapter), and also determines the number of NET actions they get each turn. Nothing much to say here, really. Techs get Maker, which allows them to raise two different sub-abilities by 1 for each level they take in Maker. The sub-abilities are Field Expertise, Upgrade Expertise, Fabrication Expertise, and Invention Expertise. FE just adds its rating to all tech skill checks made and allows the Tech to jury-rig damaged devices in the field. UE allows the Tech to upgrade items, applying a single upgrade chosen from a list of options (as long as they succeed at a check, of course.) FE allows Techs to build items with a check, and lastly, IE allows you to design entirely new devices with the GM's permission; it's suggested that any new design should just be an existing item with a single upgrade already bundled into it as its baseline. Of course, you still have to actually build the device after you've invented it, which requires Fabrication Expertise. Maker is definitely better than the Tech's old role ability, Jury-Rig. It does, however, come at a cost to the existing skill system. In previous editions, the various tech skills (Cybertech, Weaponstech, etc.) allowed characters to build, upgrade, repair, maintain, etc. the appropriate tech. RED improved Techs basically by just taking away the old functionality of the tech skills and giving most of it exclusively to Techs...as long as they also have the relevant tech skills, too, of course. Medtechs get Medicine; similar to Maker, Medtechs get a single point for each level in Medicine that can be spent on one of three sub-abilities: Surgery, Medical Tech [Pharmaceuticals], and Medical Tech [Cryosystem Operation]. Each point in Surgery counts as two levels in the skill, and each point in Medical Tech [Whatever] gives a single point in Medical Tech and also an additional benefit, being either the ability to synthesize a specific medical drug (for Pharmaceuticals) or a piece of cryo equipment (for the other one). Surgery just allows you to perform surgery, allowing you to treat the worst critical injuries, perform bodysculpting, provide psychotherapy, and both implant and harvest cyberware. Unlike in previous editions, the Medical Tech skill is required to use even basic drugs like speedheal and rapidetox. Not a whole lot to say about Medicine vs. the old Medtech skill of Medical Tech. R. Talsorian seems to have approached the old problem of Medtechs being useless in most campaigns by trying to make them essential by restricting the use of medical drugs exclusively to people with the Medicine skill, basically turning Medtechs into low-rent clerics. Not really a fan of this move, to be honest. Medias, like before, get Credibility, which allows them to pick up rumors from their information networks, and to publish their stories. Rumors are governed by a chart listing rumors of different levels of explicitness that the Media can roll against to pick up, while Publishing is a little more like a Rockerboy's Charismatic Impact; the Media's sources, audience, believability, and impact are determined by their level in Credibility, ranging from a 20% chance to convince your neighbourhood of something that might spook a local gang, to a 70% chance to convince the world of something that could topple major governments. This is just the weirdest ability in the book, easily. It feels like R. Talsorian really wanted an excuse to keep Medias around as a role, and tried to ape the design of Rockerboys in doing so...and ended up giving us this. Execs get Teamwork, which is a pretty big change from their old ability, Resources. Each rank in Teamwork gives the Exec various bonuses, like free clothes, a free apartment, free Trauma Team coverage, and so on, improving at higher ranks, and also gives access to the most interesting part of the ability, team members. Every few ranks, an Exec basically gets a follower of their choice, including things like bodyguards, netrunners, technicians, drivers, and so on, with their own stats, gear, and cyberware. The team members have a loyalty stat that's checked whenever an Exec asks them to do something, and the stat fluctuates over time based on how the Exec treats them. At 0, the team member quits. Execs don't have to pay for their team members, but replacing a team member that quits or dies costs a token fee that gets paid to the Exec's HR department. I actually kinda like Teamwork, and personally I like it more than I did Resources, but Execs are still a role that would have a hard time fitting into a lot of campaigns, even with their new ability. Lawmen get Backup, allowing them to...call for backup. Their rank determines how quickly backup shows up, how many of them there are, and how good they are. That's it, nothing else. Honestly, kind of a boring ability, but one that fits probably the least popular role in any Cyberpunk edition. Fixers get Operator, which is basically like their old ability, Streetdeal. Your rank in Operator determines the sorts of clients and contacts you have, your reach, how well you can deal with cultures and groups, and also gives a bonus when haggling. Nothing all that exciting, but it's highly effective, and more detailed than Streetdeal ever was, which used to be "Streetwise, but...better?"  Lastly, Nomads. They get Moto, which both applies itself as a flat bonus to all vehicle piloting checks, and also gives the Nomad access to free vehicles, and vehicle upgrades. Your rank in Moto determines what sorts of vehicles you can borrow from your family (ranging from compact cars and bikes to AVs and yachts). Each time you raise your rank, you can either add a new vehicle to the pool of stuff you get to borrow, or you can apply an upgrade of your choice to one of the existing vehicles. These upgrades are free, and would otherwise cost a lot of money, in addition to being really hard to come by. They include weapons, armour, comms, housing capacity, and more. Overall, it's a lot flashier than the old Nomad ability, Family, and will definitely appeal to more players than that ever did, but I can't help but feel like this both shoehorns Nomad characters into specific roles more than they already were, and also sacrifices some of the flavour Nomads had. Next time: Combat
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Dec 3, 2020 22:17
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Cyberpunk is the result of Pondsmith being torn between two very different creative influences. On the one hand, he's always wanted Cyberpunk to draw heavily from Hard Wired and the like, hence the emphasis he always places in the text on having gritty street-level campaigns with cheap, fast death. But at the same time, he's an anime nerd to the core, and he really loves Bubblegum Crisis and Ghost in the Shell and Akira and the rest, and ends up working elements of those into the game (power armour, full-body cyborg conversions, really cool bikes and guns). But the two tones and themes clash pretty heavily, and there's really no way to resolve the disconnect between the two short of awkwardly working in some sort of escape hatch that ends up undercutting the themes somewhere along the way. Also yes, the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA is loving great, but the anime remake from the late 90s is kinda bad.
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Dec 4, 2020 23:02
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FMguru posted:My favorite weird quirk of CP's rules is how Empathy is the critical stat for determining how much cyberwear you could jam into your body without uncontrollably flipping out. So if you are a corporation looking for subjects to be maximally cybered up as your ruthless elite combat storm troops, the last thing you want is a bunch of gung-ho hard asses - you should be selecting for sensitive, sympathetic, poetic souls with lots of friends and a tendency to adopt adorable puppies. I'd actually love to see a cyberpunk game that had something like cyberpsychosis paired with Delta Green's rules for bonds. A game about clinging to human connections and emotional intimacy in the face of dehumanization and objectification at the hands of a rapacious capitalist world order. It wouldn't be anything like Cyberpunk 2013/2020/RED, but it'd be cool all the same.
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Dec 4, 2020 23:23
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 6: Overkill I already covered the basics of initiative, movement, and actions in the last post, so I'm just going to dive right into the meat of the combat chapter. Ranged weapons are pretty straightforward. As combat-relevant stats go, they've got damage, rate of fire, magazine size, hands required, and firing modes (which can be single or automatic.) Ranged combat is a simple roll versus a DV determined by a handy chart, unless the target has a REF of 8 or higher, in which case they can choose to dodge, turning it into an opposed roll instead. Autofire is simpler than in past editions; it costs 10 rounds and the damage is equal to 2d6 x the amount by which you beat the DV for hitting the target. Suppressive fire, on the other hand, also consumes 10 rounds, but instead of simply doing damage it forces everyone within about 25 meters to make an opposed Concentration vs. Autofire check; failure means they have to run for cover. I actually really like this, because I've played too many crunchy games that make suppressive fire useless beyond possibly hitting enemies with stray bullets.  Shotgun shells and explosives get their own rules. Shells other than slugs work by making a roll against a pre-set DV and then automatically hitting everyone in a short cone in front of you if successful. Explosives, on the other hand, automatically hit everyone in the 10m blast radius; failing the attack roll means the explosive was off-target and lands somewhere else in a 10m radius of the original target. Melee weapons are even simpler than ranged; they get damage, rate of fire, and number of hands. Attacks are made with opposed rolls. One thing melee weapons have over ranged weapons is that they ignore half of the victim's armour. Bare-hand attacks do damage based on your BODY and whether or not you have cyberarms, and do not get to ignore half of the defender's armour. However, brawling can also be used for grabs, chokes, and throws. Martial arts are treated pretty similarly, but have their own (better) scale for damage, ignore half the defender's armour, and get various special moves divided into different styles. The book only offers four styles: Aikido, karate, judo, and taekwondo. Simple rules are given for handling damage from fire, drowning, suffocation, electrocution, exposure, falling, radiation, and poisons and drugs (which are simply divided into mild, strong, and deadly.) As for soaking damage, RED offers cover, shields, and armour. Cover is broken up into 2m squares and has an HP stat that has to be depleted before you can be hit. Cover is also rated as either thin (meaning it might be possible to move it) and thick (not happening unless you have superhuman strength.) Shields are basically treated like portable cover. On the topic of shields, though: quote:We all knew it would come to this. If you are already the Attacker in a Grapple, you can use the Action to "equip" the defender as a Human Shield.  Armour has only two stats: stopping power (SP) and an armour penalty. The armour's SP is deducted from incoming attacks, and the armour penalty (if there is one) is deducted from your REF, DEX, and MOVE. Armour is also ablative; every time damage manages to bleed through your armour, its SP is reduced by 1 until it's repaired. If it hits 0, the armour falls apart. Wounds are handled simply; at less than full HP you're lightly wounded, at half HP or less you're considered seriously wounded, and at 1 HP or less you're mortally wounded. Dying only happens if you fail a death save at 1 HP or less. That said, while characers are a bit harder to kill with straight up damage than in past editions, they've still got crits to worry about. Any time a damage roll has two or more 6s in it, the target suffers a critical hit to the location that was hit (Cyberpunk RED only has two locations: body and head.) Taking a crit does an additional 5 damage on top of whatever nasty effect you get from it, ranging from dismembered limbs and damaged organs to broken bones, collapsed lungs, and concussions. At mortally wounded every attack is considered an automatic crit. As for dying, death saves are made every turn once you're mortally wounded, and they get progressively harder for each one you make without treatment. Failure means death.  Vehicles are rated according to SDP, seats, combat speed, and narrative speed. SDP is the vehicle's HP, and vehicles are toast as soon as they run out of SDP. Vehicles also have weak points that can be attacked for Finally, we have reputation. Characters start with 0 rep by default, and gain rep whenever a GM feels like they've done something worthy of it. Rep goes up to 10, and is used in facedowns with other characters, which are opposed COOL + rep checks. The loser either backs down or takes a -2 to all actions against the winner until they manage to beat them at least once. Overall, I'd personally say the combat rules are an improvement over the old ones. Simpler and more game-y, but also a lot more playable for most gaming groups. Next time: Netrunning
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Dec 5, 2020 00:13
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LatwPIAT posted:I think this would be interesting and explore some themes I think are neat to have in cyberpunk-y fiction, but I can't stop thinking about the sheer comedy of someone going "Egads! Replacing my arm with a prosthetic with a machine gun in it has strained my relationship with my wife!" "Look I just think it's really funny to scare the neighbours by firing my cybergun over their heads when they're too loud, I don't get why she's so mad about all this!"
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Dec 5, 2020 04:33
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 7: Technoir So for starters, the NET in RED has changed dramatically from how it was in 2013 and 2020. Not only was a lot of the infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the Fourth Corporate War proper, but what was left of it was then infested by a bunch of malicious AI programs designed by Rache Bartmoss, called RABIDs. The RABIDs not only trashed any data they came across, but were also more than happy to fry the brain of anyone they saw, and what's worse, the RABIDs have been multiplying. After a lot of failed attempts to kill off all of the RABIDs, Netwatch just gave up and shut down all links to the old NET. In its place are more local networks connected to one another by dedicated laser and land lines. That's not all, though. The familiar Neuromancer-style VR computer interfaces of the past are gone, replaced by a two pronged NET. Most users just experience a something almost exactly like the modern web, with hyperlinks, pages, embedded media, and the rest. And as for professionals and enthusiasts, well, they get to experience the NET in the form of local AR overlays that are coterminous with whatever site houses the architecture of the network or system they're engaging with. This AR interface is called Virtuality, which is a direct call-back to one of Mike Pondsmith's earlier games, Cybergeneration, which also featured an AR NET called Virtuality. Why did the VR NET of old get replaced by a more primitive hypertext and page-based NET? Well... Someone seriously wrote this in Cyberpunk RED and thought it was a good idea posted:About 2035, a new programming language was developed. This was designed to unify all the different operating systems that were still in existence. This new language is called META and could be used in place of everything from C++ to simple Phone apps. META is what the current NET works on. Because it is a patch language much like LINUX, META is not very good at supporting graphics, so the graphical interfaces of the old NET couldn't be supported. I didn't think I could be more offended by bad science after they tried to give cyberpsychosis a "scientific" explanation, and yet...here we are. Sometimes it's better not to try to come up with a lovely, half-assed technobabble explanation instead of just handwaving things. Anyway, interfacing with the NET in general requires a computer or phone, but if you want to work with the specific NET architectures on a more direct level, you need a cyberdeck (which is a specialized computer about the size of a pack of cards), and to use a cyberdeck you need a neural link and interface plugs. And since the NET is displayed in AR, you also need some way of seeing the AR overlay on meatspace, and that means a pair of Virtuality goggles at the very least, which allow you to see the AR overlay of the NET projected over the real world. No more jacking in and going limp as you do a run...unless of course you forgot your Virtuality goggles and don't either have cyberoptics with a built-in Virtuality interface, or Smart Glasses with the same. What's more, you can't jack into a system from afar anymore, either. Since most systems are no longer connected to larger networks, you need to reach a more local access point, and the access points themselves can only be connected to as long as you're within 6m of the AP. At any rate, cyberdecks have been greatly simplified from previous editions, and now only have a single stat, that being the quality of the deck, which determines how many "slots" it has. Slots themselves are used by both programs and upgrades, because this time around programs aren't software; instead, they're hardwired circuit boards that are physically installed in the deck.  Completely and totally inaccurate! Programs come in three types: boosters (which enhance your abilities in the NET), defenders (which protect you from harm in the NET), and attackers (which better enable you to damage or disrupt ICE, runners, and programs.) Each program has several stats, too: ATK is added to attacks made with it (if any), DEF is added to defense rolls made with it, and REZ acts as the program's HP. Existing programs in RED do everything you would expect; they can make you harder to detect, increase your speed, make it easier to crack passwords, reduce the damage you take from hostile programs and ICE, improve the damage you can deal to programs, runners, or ICE, force runners to log out, and more. Note that a program can only be used once per turn for each instance of it that's installed on the deck, and since netrunners get multiple actions per turn, there's a good reason to pack multiple copies of the same attack program. Also, a program isn't destroyed when its REZ hits 0; instead, it goes offline until the netrunner spends a few actions to bring it back up. Getting rid of a program permanently requires special programs, or ICE. And of course, since programs are no longer just software, you can't create backup copies on chips or other computers. Hardware upgrades are simpler, and there are only a few examples in the RED core. The more interesting options include a backup drive that can save programs that would otherwise have been destroyed, hardened circuitry to protect the deck from EMPs and the like, and insulated wiring that can prevent the deck from catching fire or setting its immediate surroundings on fire. Now as I mentioned in a previous post, netrunners get a number of NET actions each turn determined by their Interface, going as high as five actions each meat turn at 10. The list of NET actions is short: Jack In/Out, Use Interface, Activate/Deactivate Program, and Miscellaneous, which is a catch-all for any specialized function unique to a given system that the GM may have come up with. Unlike previous editions, movement no longer takes an action; netrunners can move as far as they like in a single turn without using any actions. Interface abilities are more detailed; they all require an Interface + 1d10 roll to use, an include things like using a basic attack on netrunners/programs/ICE, scanning for access points, mapping a system, manipulating devices connected to a given system, and so on. Yes, for the first time ever, you don't need to install a specific program just to do something like attack someone, crack a password, use cameras, or what have you; any netrunner can do all that by default. NET combat is pretty much like regular combat, using opposed rolls of Interface + ATK/DEF + 1d10, or just ATK/DEF + 1d10 in the case of black ICE. Now black ICE is the real kicker that any netrunner is going to have to worry about, and probably the main thing a netrunner's going to worry about having to fight in any given system. Black ICE acts like a souped up program with ATK, DEF, REZ, and a special stat called PER that's used to prevent netrunners from escaping. See, simply moving to another level of a system will just result in the ICE following them. If a netrunner really wants to get away without just logging out (which will cause the ICE to automatically get a free hit on them in the process), they can use an Interface ability called Slide that's opposed by the ICE's PER. If the netrunner succeeds, they can skip to the system level of their choice and the ICE will stop following. If you'd ever played Cyberpunk 2013 or 2020, you probably remember systems having maps that looked something like this:  That's no longer the case. Gone are the days of having to track a netrunner's movement on a special map from turn to turn. Instead, system architecture is now simplified into just being a series of abstract "floors" or "levels," which may or may not branch at one or more points. It starts with the Lobby (the first two floors), which tends to be lightly protected if at all, and then all floors below those are more challenging, and rated according to difficulty (from Basic all the way up to Advanced.) RED offers a couple of tables for GMs to roll against to randomly generate the floors of a given system, and whether or not branches exist and what they look like. The longest branch of a system has a "bottom" level at which a netrunner can leave a Virus that can alter the system in some way and persists after the netrunner leaves. Among the things that can inhabit the system are Demons. In previous editions, Demons were special programs also called compilers, that were artificially intelligent and could be loaded with other programs in order to both grant the Demon their functionality and also save on overall memory usage. In RED, Demons are instead a type of simple AI that simply exists to control specific real-world defense measures from inside the NET. They have REZ and an Interface score that can be used either to control the real world devices they're charged with, or to defend themselves with basic netrunner attacks. The defenses in question consist of either active defenses (various kinds of drones) or emplaced defenses (automated turrets and melee weapons emplacements.) And if you were hoping to be able to play something like a rigger in Cyberpunk RED with your own drones in combat, guess what, you can't unless you go through the trouble of buying or building an entire NET architecture of your own, and the active defenses in question...and then you've got the problem of somehow dragging around a massive computer system on missions, and somehow using drones that are specifically designed to only watch over a small area and attack intruders within it, as opposed to moving about under your direct orders. So much for keeping up with the times, guys!  Pictured: something you'll never get to play with in this game. The new netrunning rules are an overall improvement, and a whole hell of a lot more playable than in any previous edition, even if the specific lore justifications they gave for some of their changes are hilariously terrible. That said, at least for my part I feel a little disappointed just because my conception of a cyberpunk net was always shaped by Neuromancer. I like my classic cyberpunk settings to have a net that can be interfaced with in full VR, full of abstract geometries and glowing neon lattices and constructs. Losing all that in favour of some much more abstract and limited AR net feels like a real loss, and I get the impression that this is something that Mike Pondsmith is really personally committed to for creative reasons of some sort, given that he did the same thing back in Cybergeneration over twenty years ago. Next time: Medicine Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 04:36
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I've always wanted to know more about Red Markets and I can't wait to see more.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:10
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 8: Bio-Mechanic I already covered the basics of wounds and crits earlier, and now I'm gonna take a look at healing and trauma in more depth. Cyberpunk RED has four(!) separate skills for healing. Cybertech is treated as a healing skill only because it can be used to treat damage done to cybernetic limbs and organs. Past that, we have First Aid (used for stabilizing wounded characters and providing quick fixes for mild critical injuries), Paramedic (used for stabilization and treating or fixing more serious crits), and finally Surgery (used for treating any and all crits, as well as cyberware installation and bodysculpting.) Crits are taken care of using either a Quick Fix (which only takes a minute and only lasts for a day) or a proper Treatment (which takes a few hours and can't be done to oneself, but is permanent.) It's maybe a bit much to have this many skills just for healing, but at least each skill gets a well-defined role, and if nothing else, First Aid is a required skill, so every character will at least have two levels in it. If you don't have a Medtech on hand, you're going to need quick treatment delivered straight to your door (or warzone, as the case probably is.) Shadowrun has DocWagon, and Cyberpunk has Trauma Team, as always. For a monthly fee you can ensure that Trauma Team will send someone to patch you up and/or take you to a hospital, no matter how badly off you are or how sticky of a situation you're in. You can either call them directly or you can just tie your subscription to a biomonitor (if you have on implanted), in which case they'll dispatch a team to you automatically if your HP drops low enough or you lose a limb. Trauma Team doesn't just send your run of the mill paramedics, either; each team consists of a doctor, their assistant, a pilot, and two soldiers, all of them armoured and armed to the teeth, and they show up in an armed AV loaded with medical gear. They'll patch you up as best you can, but if you're badly injured enough they'll still have to get you to a hospital.  Like everything else this edition, RED simplifies the book-keeping where hospitals are concerned. There's a flat fee based on the severity of the injury being treated, and medical-grade cyberware (or cloned replacements) is included in the price, as is the price of any drugs or other things needed to get you back on the mend. And speaking of replacement parts, bodybanks are still around, but the 4th Corporate War was enough to completely crash the market for spare human parts; because of this, they no longer pay for human parts. Also, while cyberware installation at a clinic or hospital is included in the cost of any given piece of cyberware, "harvested" cyberware obviously needs installation paid for separately. Critical injuries and cyberware installation aren't the only things done at hospitals. If you thought cosmetic surgery was radical in 2020, it's gotten even more sophisticated by 2045. Gone is the complicated table of bodysculpting options with different costs and surgery grades from the Chromebooks; in its place, RED just has two classes of bodysculpting, each with a flat cost covering whatever package of modifications you wanted: standard and exotic. Standard is cheapest and easiest, and can be done in a clinic; it covers most of the cosmetic procedures you can think of, and also things like SRS, and thanks to the medical tech of 2045 with its cloned tissues and microsurgical techniques, it's impossible to distinguish from people who haven't been bodysculpted. Exotic bodysculpting goes farther, though, and covers the sort of things that were called Exotics in 2020. Fur, horns, tails, muzzles, fangs, hooves, whatever you want, you can become your own fursona. Of course, it's twice the price of standard bodysculpting, and it's more difficult, and what's more, it has a goddamn Humanity cost. Either way, bodysculpting only takes a few hours, and happens to be a walk-in procedure. Speaking of Humanity, cyberware and exotic bodysculpting aren't the only things that carry a Humanity cost. In Cyberpunk RED, all forms of psychological trauma and stress will cost you humanity, whether it's torture, kidnapping, imprisonment, deprivation, living in a stressful situation, or witnessing a violent death. Yes, all of that apparently saps your humanity and puts you a step closer to cyberpsychosis. Luckily, whatever the source of your trauma (whether it's that shiny chrome arm you got, or the fuzzy tail you had grafted, or the fact you were homeless for a month one time), you can always get therapy from anyone with the Medical Tech skill. Therapy takes a week and a skill check on the part of the doctor, and can restore either 2d6 or 4d6 Humanity (depending on the whether you paid for Standard or Extreme therapy.) Therapy can also be used to treat drug addictions, if you have any. I appreciate the lack of stigma attached to therapy and the fact that they included rules for it, but I just cannot get over how loving stupid the rules for Humanity are. It's nice that they dropped the Humanity cost for medical-grade prosthetics and things like SRS, but framing cyberpsychosis in a deeply ableist and unscientific way, and then attaching Humanity costs to things like exotic bodysculpting and even every kind of psychological trauma or stress is just a terrible, terrible idea, regardless of whatever theme they were hoping to justify. Next time: History and the 4th Corporate War
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Dec 5, 2020 23:03
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Zereth posted:so Yes, RAW, you can develop cyberpsychosis without ever installing cyberware. Good work, devs!
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Dec 6, 2020 07:13
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Everyone posted:Figure basically if Cyberware is basically equipment/stuff than Wealth is the ultimate advantage if there's no downside to piling it on. "Yeah, I'm maxing my money so I can turn myself into the T-1000 from the Terminator franchise." That just sounds like the ultimate cyberpunk statement, if you ask me. And as for practical concerns, the players only get as much money as the GM allows them to, in any event. Edit: And hell, that also leaves out things like access and availability. You don't just need money, you also need the right connections, licenses, backers, or what have you. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 16:48
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 9: Days of Thunder The world of 2045 is the mess it is because of a whole chain of dominos falling. As early as the mid-90s, homelessness in the US skyrocketed as the economy collapsed due to both economic warfare from the European Community and the destruction of downtown Manhattan by a suitcase nuke. The economic crash of 1994 led to the rapid decay and collapse of American urban areas, and the simultaneous rise of combat zones in most American cities, where law enforcement and public order completely broke down and a state of open warfare existed between gangs. This also hastened the exodus of now-homeless families out of the cities and into suburban and then rural areas, where a lot of them ended up joining with rural homeless populations that had been created by the new dustbowl and its consequences, eventually forming what are now known as the Nomad families. The dustbowl itself was caused by rampant pollution, acid rain, and poor land management. This led to serious food insecurity issues that were only alleviated by the creation of kibble and various soy, algae, and kelp based food products, while the land itself got bought up by massive agricorps, leaving farmers and their families to join the homeless population. All of this was happening alongside, and in many cases because of, the hijacking of the American government by what was called the Gang of Four; a conspiracy between the NSA, CIA, DEA, and FBI that manipulated US government and foreign policy along imperialist lines, starting wars, manipulating stock markets, and more (because god knows the US would never get involved in anything like this without a sinister deep state conspiracy!) This led to a ramped up drug war that ended with the release of a biological weapon in Asia and Latin America designed to destroy opium and coca plants, and after this ended up pissing off the cartels the US wound up putting boots on the ground in a series of Central American Wars. If that wasn't enough, the US was caught manipulating European stock markets in order to undermine the EC, leading to open economic warfare between the Euros and the Americans. This also led to geopolitical realignment, as the Soviet Union sided with the EC and Japan sided with the US. In the midst of this ongoing collapse and corruption, the states of California, Texas, Oregon, Washington, and both Dakotas effectively seceded, becoming "Free States." The US was in no position to contest any of this in the face of widespread economic and societal collapse, and the hopeless wars in Latin America, and a brief US-Soviet skirmish in high orbit that ended with the Euros dropping a massive rock on Colorado Springs. By this point the Gang of Four had been exposed and uprooted, but it was too late for American prestige, power, and stability. Adding to the American malaise was the outbreak of the Wasting Plague in 1999 (which disrupted the body's ability to draw nutrients from food) and the much briefer and smaller outbreak of the Carbon Plague in 2020 (which left the bodies of its victimes as piles of carbon nanotubes).  Now before we get to the 4th Corporate War, we should probably first cover the first three Corporate Wars. The first one was a two year conflict between EBM and Orbital Air over the remains of TWA, and mostly fought in orbit and the NET. The third was similarly limited, lasting less than a year and just manifesting as a series of conflicts and terrorist incidents on the NET as Merrill, Asukaga & Finch duked it out with the Rothstein Fund over a scam the former had been running. But it was the second war that presaged the fourth most of all; for two years, SovOil and Petrochem fought extended naval battles in the South China Sea and later all across the Pacific, causing tremendous economic and environmental damage before throwing in the towel. The 4th Corporate War began in 2021 as the Euro nautitech corp CINO tried to buy out a bankrupt Euro rival, IHAG. An American aquacorp called OTEC intervened, and the two began squabbling over the remains of IHAG, all the while secretly being egged on by EuroBank, which had been IHAG's creditor and wanted to drive up the value of IHAG's stocks and assets. As the CINO-OTEC conflict heated up, they began looking to outside contractors to handle their respective security and military concerns. CINO hired the Japanese security corp, Arasaka, while OTEC hired the American defense corp, Militech. Initially the two were simply responsible for providing training, advising, and eventually personnell for CINO and OTEC, but as things continued to escalate, Arasaka and Militech increasingly found themselves fighting one another directly. Unfortunately for everyone, Arasaka and Militech had long been rivals of one another, and by 2022 the conflict between CINO and OTEC had taken a backstage to direct and open warfare between Arasaka and Militech. Cities around the world turned into warzones, international shipping was completely disrupted, the NET was rife with cyber attacks...only Earth orbit was spared fighting between the two, as the Highriders (the shared culture that had developed between space workers) launched an attack on the various groundside space agencies using salvaged deltas and mass drivers. The Seven Hour War ended with the US and Japan recognizing the independence of the Highriders, and while the EC and Soviets disputed this, eventually they, too, had to grudgingly recognize it. The final major incident of the war was a raid on Arasaka Towers in Night City (led by Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand) that ended with a nuke being detonated, wiping out downtown Night City and plunging the city into chaos. The US government (weak as it is) finally had enough and stepped in, reactivating the commission of Militech's CEO, Donald Lundee, and effectively nationalizing Militech and forcing it to stand down. The combined Militech and US military forces then stepped in to restore order in the US. As military forces across the world did the same and tried to restore order within their borders, the situation on the NET continued to go from bad to worse. Earlier in the 4th Corporate War, an Arasaka hit squad had taken out famous netrunner Rache Bartmoss. Following his death, a deadman switch Bartmoss had programmed back in 2013 was activated, unleashing a plague of autonomous AIs called RABIDs (previously mentioned by me in my netrunning overview) that killed any humans and trashed any data they came across. Between the RABIDs, Arasaka's rampant use of the Soulkiller program during the war (which had spawned countless AI ghosts all by itself), and widespread damage to and destruction of physical infrastructure, the NET effectively went down by 2023. From here on out came a period of rebuilding around the world as people tried to pick up the pieces and recover. Local VPNs (called CitiNets) replaced the NET of old, the Nomads established new trade and communication networks across the globe, new corps were born (and old ones rebuilt as best they could), and cities were slowly rebuilt.  As of 2045, the US is effecitvely a dictatorship, with martial law having been implemented by President Elizabeth Kress back during the 4th Corporate War, and still ongoing. The federal government's grip is weak for the moment, but slowly regaining strength, while for the time being most of the country is fairly decentralized. The European Community has managed to rebuild despite the painful loss of its vital orbital assets, and its economy is now stable outside of the PIGS and the UK, which (while having restored democracy and the monarchy in 2021 after a decade of military rule) is a violent, lawless mess like the US. The Neo-Sov is now Soviet in name only, its ruling Neo-Soviet Party having given rise to a class of oligarchs that lord over Russian society and live it up like megacorps do elsewhere in the world. The Middle East is still a quiet, irradiated wasteland following the Mid-East Meltdown of the 90s, with only Egypt, Syria, and Israel still standing. Africa is booming, with its various nations having escaped most of the ravages of the war and having strong, vital ties to the Highriders (most of whom were from Africa). Central and South America are also going strong, having taken control of the Organization of American States and now forging strong ties with the Highriders themselves. Asia is also rebuilding, though Unified Korea has again broken in two, and Japan is only finding its feet again after its near-collapse in the war. Offshore, ships of refugees, floating shantytowns, and abandoned corporate oil rigs and floating cities have banded together to form Drift Nations that form crucial linchpins of global trade, while the cities on the ocean floor (the Deepdown) have fallen silent out of lingering fear of corporate reprisals like those they faced during the naval battles of the war. Finally, Earth orbit has become home to the Highrider Confederation, as the Highriders have strengthened their position in space in the years after the Seven Hour War. Next time: Night City and the Corps
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Dec 7, 2020 00:19
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 10: Corrupted by Design The 4th Corporate War may have killed off a bunch of megacorps (including one-time luminaries like International Electric Corporation and Infocomp), but plenty of megacorps have survived, and new ones have joined their ranks in the decades since the war. They're now called neocorps (but the text also calls them megacorps, and interchangably, at that), and while they no longer have armies like they did back in 2020, they're still forces to be recokoned with. They've also gone through a bit of restructuring in how they tend to work, and every neocorp now has what's called a Face; international corporate laws have been rewritten such that the single largest shareholder of any corp is considered responsible and liable for anything that their respective neocorp does, and any punishment or penalty that the neocorp might incur is applied to the Face.  The Faces, from left to right: Olivia Forsythe, Nicolo Loggagia, Michiko Sanderson, Artyom Sokolov, UR, Drs. Lachanan and Jones, Anatoly Novagargov, Jacinda Hidalgo, Angus Youngblood, Samantha Lee, and the head of Netwatch, Magnificent Curtis Arasaka is still around, although it still hasn't really returned to Night City (or the United States at all, for that matter (except it has, despite other parts of this book saying otherwise, and Cyberpunk 2077's background, too)). It's currently split into three factions, each controlled by one of Saburo Arasaka's heirs, and Saburo's eldest daughter, Hanako, is Arasaka's current face (though Saburo himself is still alive.) Her rivals are her younger brother Yorinobu, who just wants to bring down Arasaka, and her younger sister Michiko, who currently acts as the Face of another megacorp and who doesn't really care to take over Arasaka, though a faction has formed behind her nonetheless. Biotechnica is another old megacorp that survived the war. The world's largest biotech firm, responsible for having developed CHOOH2, the biofuel used by almost everything in the world of Cyberpunk RED. They're also heavily involved the engineering of species for reintroduction into the wild, and the resurrection of previously extinct species, too. Their face is Nicolo Loggagia, Biotechnica's founder and one of the few well-meaning corporates in 2045, who mostly just wants to repair the environment and resurrect extinct species, though not without modifying some of those species to have certain "improvements," like koalas with venomous fangs. And he wants to bring back dinosaurs, too, because of course. Continental Brands is one of the newcomers of the corporate world. Formerly a brance of Petrochem, some corporate shenanigans ended with it claiming its independence, and now it stands as the world's largest manufacturer of kibble. Also various other foods and drinks, but mostly kibble. Their Face is Olivia Forsythe, who dreams of nothing more than taking complete control of the world's food supply and does everything she can to make communities ever more dependent on her company's kibble, and establishing Continental brands stores in communities, called Oases: quote:Once an Oasis is established, the community is entered into the Oasis Community Loyalty Program. Pleasing the Kibble Queen by purchasing large quantities of foods or electing local representatives supported by Continental Brands earns points for the whole community. Likewise, displeasing the Kibble Queen by importing food from outside the community, growing your own food, or publicly organizing against Continental Brands results in a point penalty. Danger Girl is...ugh. Danger Girl is a private investigation and security firm founded by Michiko Sanderson (nee Arasaka), who now acts as its Face. They provide security and investigation services to high profile clients, especially celebrities of all kinds, leveraging Michiko main strengths: she's "young, adorably cute, and possessed of a high IQ [and s]he already [has] thousands of devoted young fans all over the world..." Her corp is also just a front for her real, super secret mission: she's being funded by President Kress to undermine the plots and conspiracies of Arasaka.  Someone at R. Talsorian Games really, really likes Danger Girl. Militech is also still around, and has been re-privatized since the war's end. Nothing much to say about them, really. Donald Lundee's retired and now General Samatha Lee is the corp's Face. Network 54 (or Network News 54, the book seriously can't make up its mind) is the largest broadcaster in the US. Their face is Michelle Dreyer, a woman trying to keep her late husband's dream of a lasting media empire alive by battling the onset of aging by any means necessary...and she's since transferred her brain into a Gemini full-body conversion cyborg. Petrochem had already survived the 2nd Corporate War, and had no trouble surviving the 4th. They're still the world's largest supplier of CHOOH2, and are involved in all kinds of other petrochemical and agricultural products and businesses. They're led by Angus Youngblood, who finally succeeded his rival after inheriting the stock share of his late wife, Ellen Trieste. Rocklin Augmentics is a new competitor in the field of cybernetics, founded by a veteran of the Central American Wars. They specialize in cutting edge prosthetics that are obviously artificial and at the same time highly artistic and creative. Some of their more recent designs have come under scrutiny for being entirely too sophisticated, however, as rumors have emerged that they may indicate the use of AIs in ROA's RnD work. ROA is led by Jacinda Hidalgo, adopted daughter of its founder, and she's only too happy to use her body to show off her company's products. SovOil had no more trouble surviving the wars than its arch-rival, Petrochem. They remain the top producer of traditional petrochemicals, and are responsible for most of the world's few remaining oil wells. They've since expended into other industries, too, diversifying into mining, agriculture, synthetics, and more. Their Face is Anatoly Novagarov, who looks every bit the part of a brash, boorish Neo-Soviet oligarch, though rumors exist regarding how different he looks and acts from the Novagarov people remember from years ago, who was a dour, quiet bureaucrat completely unlike the garish, nouveau riche man he apparently is now. Trauma Team has no shortage of clients and work in a world as violent as the world of 2045. They're still providing the same high-power, high-impact paramedical support they always have. They have two Faces, the husband and wife team of Drs. Carrie Lachanan and Bob Jones. Ziggurat is the premier telecommunications company of 2045 North America. They've set up CitiNets all across the US and the Free States, spreading outward from Night City, and have also gotten into the business of creating all kinds of apps and social media services for the Data Pool. Ziggurat's founder and Face is UR (pronounced You Are), a non-binary person of completely unknown background and origin. They have an inordinate fondness for bodysculpting, and are constantly tweaking and adjusting their appearance, undergoing a constant gradual change that manifests in major changes to their appearance over time. Lastly, Zhirafa Technical Manufacturing is a major Neo-Soviet corp that manufactures and designs robots, drones, and construction mechs of all kinds. They got their start with the GRAF3, a cheap, durable construction bot that was used to clean up cities all over the world after the war, and they've only grown since, though word has it they get some support from the Bratva. Their Face is Artyom Sokolov, a former Edgerunner.  The chapter on Night City goes a lot longer than it really needs to, especially since it contains an in-depth description and overview of Night City as it was in 2020 in addition to one of Night City in 2045. I'm going to simplify things by just explaining the broad zones into which Night City's neighbourhoods are divided. The Hot Zone takes up the city's centre; it's still irradiated and mostly just rubble and debris. The Rebuilding Urban Zones mostly make up the core of Night City, and while still damaged and being restored, they're better off than many other parts. The Executive Zone is a small pocket just east of Night City's core that is walled off and populated by the managers and Execs of megacorps, and anyone else sufficiently connected and/or wealthy. The Combat Zones are areas that are run-down, desperate, and full of trigger happy boostergangs, mostly on Night City's south side. Lastly we have the Overpacked Suburbs are former corporate zones that got overrun by the newly-homeless urbanites after corporations abandoned most of Night City following the nuclear destruction of Arasaka Towers. It's crowded and messy, but not completely lawless like the Combat Zones. Night City is currently ruled by a makeshift conglomeration of several factions: the previously mentioned megacorps, the remnants of the city's old government, Edgerunners, and the Nomad families. They more or less manage to function as a junta of sorts, with plenty of politicking and jockeying for position amongst themselves. Despite everything they've managed to carry out Night City's reconstruction, and they've kept some level of public services still running. Data Terms can be found on most street corners, the Data Pool is fully functional, there are two whole hospitals (and a cryobank), and the NCPD is still on the beat, though they're supplemented by both corporate security services and rent-a-cops. Night City even has a working transit system in the form of NCTC, and Orbital Air is working on a shiny new spaceport for Night City, too. As for life in general in 2045, the United States (and the Free States, too) is still following the Uniform Civilian Justice Code, which mandates essentially military penalties for most crimes. Of course, with law enforcement stretched thin, you probably don't have to worry about the cops if you aren't messing around with the wealthy or political/military elites. Punishments for those who do end up being arrested range from personality adjustment to electro-flogging to exile to braindance -- getting stuffed into a cryotube with your brain wired into a VR prison of sorts. And of course there's always the death penalty, too. On the lighter side of things, the average person now carries a personal pseudo-AI assistant of sorts called an Agent, that learns the personality and habits of its owner and adapts to them, learning to anticipate and facilitate its owner's needs. On its most basic level it functions a lot like a smartphone, but it also manages all those functions and requirements (and more) by itself, and can carry out queries and the like on request. It also develops a pseudo-personality of sorts based on its owners preferences (and whatever upgrades the owner chooses to get), and can assume a name, avatar, and voice of its owner's choosing. And if relying on your Agent for keeping up with the news or getting your media fix isn't enough, there's always Data Terms (street corner computer terminals) and Screamsheets (newspapers printed on demand from street corner newsboxes). RED is nice enough to include a little table for generating random screamsheet headlines, too. Where food is concerned, most people have little to no choice in the matter. The majority of people get by on kibble, a synthetic food made from a mix of soy, kelp, and plankton, that generally looks and tastes like its namesake, though a lot of manufacturers offer different flavours that may or may not make a difference. The slightly luckier and wealthier sorts live off prepack, microwavable meals made from soy and various grains and textured and flavoured to resemble "real" food, in addition to having morsels of real food mixed in, with higher-grade prepack having more of it. Only the wealthy can generally afford real food on a regular basis, though urban farming has come in vogue in recent years and might start to make a dent in things. A lot of this material has been lifted straight out of 2020 and is weirdly unchanged despite the passage of time and overall creep of technology. And a lot of the corporate stuff is honestly a complete mess if you've been following Cyberpunk since 2020; Michiko Sanderson's age is completely off by a decade or two in the write-up for her, Danger Girl is a weird outlier, and Arasaka being in Night City in 2045 runs counter to everything else written about them in the book, as well as the background material for Cyberpunk 2077. All of this just makes the game feel even more rushed and confused. Next time: Economics and GM stuff
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Dec 8, 2020 02:49
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:In Bleeding Edge, a cyberpunk game from Sanguine that I was involved in, all cybernetics have the same downside: they reduce your Dexterity. Now, you can always buy your dexterity back up, but... ...Yeah, we just targeted the godstat directly. Wait, Sanguine has a cyberpunk game? The Sanguine that made Ironclaw? Really? How have I not heard of this.
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Dec 9, 2020 00:01
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Cyberpunk RED, Part 11: The Equaliser No art for this post because the art in these two chapters ranges from forgettable to just plain awful, and not in an entertaining way. The gear chapter only really focuses on Night Markets (which we'll get into shortly), but I'm also including two other kinds of stores that appeared in the previous chapter instead for whatever reason. In addition to the Night Markets, the world of 2045 has two other major sources for getting all the goodies you might need: vendits and bodegas. Bodegas are pretty self-explanatory, and Cyberpunk RED includes a table for randomly generating the overall character of any given bodega you might visit. Vendits are basically fancy vending machines that sell almost anything, and they also get a little table for randomly generating the contents of a given vendit. Cyberpunk RED, in case you haven't twigged to it yet, really, really loves random generation tables. On to the Night Markets. Since global shipping is still a complete mess and factories are only coming back online piecemeal, supplies of stuff that would normally be more reliably available in other scifi (and even cyberpunk) settings are much less so. Everything hinges on TEUs of goodies coming in to a given community, whether that's because of a new shipment of goods fresh off the lines of some factory, or an old TEU that was left stranded after the war and has since been salvaged by some enterprising individuals, most places have impromptu markets that pop up when something worthwhile comes along. These are the Night Markets, and they come and go in the blink of an eye, never quite the same from one occurence to the next. Once again, Cyberpunk RED includes a bunch of tables for generating the contents of a given Night Market, running the gamut from food to drugs to clothes to electronics to weapons to cyberware and more. Beyond that, the rest of the chapter is devoted to a full listing of all the game's weapons, armour, cyberware, drugs, and other gear...all of which was printed earlier in the book, sometimes several times previously. I already covered the basics of most of this in previous posts, so there really isn't anything much to say. This book is just terribly laid out; I can see why they wanted to reprint the same goddamn item listings multiple times throughout the book, but it's a bad idea at the end of the day, and just drives up the page count needlessly. About the only difference between the item listings here and elsewhere in the book is that they devote a whole 1-2 sentences to describing each item here, as opposed to the lack of any descriptions in earlier uses of these listings in the book. This chapter also takes the time to include a handy listing of all possible expenses that could come up during the game, including hospital costs and the like, which is the one thing I appreciate. It's always a pain having to look up this kind of thing in the middle of a game, randomly flipping through a chapter's worth of text for the one line that gave a cost for whatever just came up. The only completely new expense here (relative to the rest of the book) is a detailed explanation of the different types of housing in the game, and the mechanical consequences of living either on the street or in a too-crowded home. Besides living on the street and living in a vehicle, the game also includes things like cube hotels, cargo containers, conapts, apartments, penthouses, and mansions (for the wealthiest and most influential of Execs). The game also handily includes something I wish more games would: hustles. Cyberpunk RED assumes that characters don't just sit on their asses during downtime between adventures, and assumes that even between big jobs, the average PC is still working some kind of hustle and trying to make money on the side. For each whole week that a PC has free, they make a randomly determined amount of money, rolling a d6 on a table that's role-specific. The higher their role ability, the more they make. A chart is also included for how much PCs can expect to make by selling off looted gear and the like, and a simple chart showing the average payouts for different types of jobs, for the GM's convenience. The payouts are hilariously terrible, ranging from 500 eb for an "easy" job (protect this VIP with your life; armed resistance is not expected but who knows) to a very generous 2000 eb for a "dangerous" job (sneak into a military facility and blow up its armory, then escape; armed resistance is overwhelming and you will die without luck and major preparation). Really, prices in general are completely messed up in Cyberpunk RED. The devs seem to have gone down a route where they wanted costs to use numbers that are smaller and more approachable for the average person, and also wanted to standardize prices according to general rankings of availability and/or quality. As such, prices for most things range from 100 eb to 5000 eb, with the sole exception of vehicles, which have prices in tens or hundreds of thousands of eb, completely outside the sort of budget pretty much any PC will ever be able to manage in a game run using the sorts of payouts Cyberpunk RED suggests. I've seen this kind of half-assed economic logic before and I do not like it one bit. Really, I expected a lot better than this from veteran game designers, but then again that could go for a lot of things in this book. The GM chapter contains all the things you would expect. Setting mood, establishing themes, encouraging teamwork, managing players effectively, designing encounters, campaigns, and adventures, etc. You've probably seen this countless times before (god knows I have). I'm going to skip all that and instead focus on the most interesting part: how Cyberpunk RED handles character advancement, and how they want GMs to handle it, too. Cyberpunk RED focuses on what it calls "playstyle-based improvement." The GM is expected to basically conduct a simplified personality test for each player, slotting them into one of four archetypes: Warrior, Socializer, Explorer, or Roleplayer. Warriors are combat-oriented players, Socializers are socially-oriented players, Explorers like to poke around the game world, and Roleplayers just like to roleplay their characters. The book includes the test in question, which is a series of four boxes (one for each archetype) filled with action statements associated with it, like "Defeat an enemy in battle" and "Have a picture of your character." Each player picks out the five statements that they find most important, and select the archetype for which they have the most selected statements as their "primary" play style, and the one with the second most selected statements becomes their "secondary" play style. The GM allocates Improvement Points for each player at the end of each session using a table (of course). If the party accomplished its mission that session, IP is determined by how well the group did in finishing the mission and going after its objectives. If the mission was not completed that session, players are instead individually allocated IP based on how well they hewed to the expected objectives/goals of their primary or secondary playstyle, according to the table. Now, I appreciate the desire to accomodate the different playstyles of different kinds of players, but the table just doesn't work because of the huge disconnect between the rankings of different objectives across archetypes. It's going to be easier for someone to join in a battle in the average session for most games than it will be for someone to give a stirring, dramatic speech, to borrow from examples in the table. As for actually spending IP, there are two uses for it: improving or buying new skills, and improving or buying new role abilities. That's it. No methods are given for improving attributes, even though other games using Interlock have had rules for it (like The Witcher, which only came out a couple of years ago and is a lot better edited and designed that Cyberpunk RED, frankly.) Some of the devs have suggested house rules for raising attributes with IP, such as using the role ability advancement scale for it, or using that but doubling the costs, but those are still house rules. I would've expected movement on this sort of thing in the last 30 years, and judging by The Witcher (and Fuzion before it) they're fully capable of having more flexible and capable character improvement rules, but for some reason they just decided to backslide for Cyberpunk RED. It's seriously baffling. And that's it. I'm done reviewing Cyberpunk RED. I was seriously hyped for this game for the past couple of years, because I grew up playing Cyberpunk 2020 and I've been wanting a modern edition of the game ever since, but as much as it hurts for me to say it, this isn't it. There's a useable core here, but playing with it would mean my having to massively houserule a lot of things, starting with Humanity at the very least, and also covering things like the seriously anemic equipment selection and rules, among others. That's also not even touching the setting material, which is peppered with lots of really weird and inexplicable choices that either feel like they were last minute decisions thrown in at the end or just awkwardly crammed in elements that the devs really liked but couldn't squeeze in more organically. And of course there are things that only exist to (poorly) justify mechanics the devs wanted to use, like cyberpsychosis and the NET as it exists in 2045. I was really pumped at the start of this review and now I just want this to end. We're done here. The end.
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Dec 9, 2020 00:02
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Young Freud posted:omething that I wanted to bring up but didn't discuss in the last review: I heavily dislike the personalization of the corporations through Faces. I would have rather they just give the rundown on the corporation and the market it dominates instead of giving half-page, small-type biographies on someone most player-characters will not have any interaction with save maybe putting them in their crosshairs. What's good with all their lifestyles, family drama, and motivations if a PC is just going to empty all of it onto the hardwood deck of their yacht? It feels like that type of internalized billionaire worship you see with Elon Musk. They feel like something that was added to help generate metaplot. All that poo poo with Faces really reminded me of Silicon Valley billionaire celebrity bullshit, and I couldn't stand it. It felt like the exact opposite of what a game that's supposed to be cyberpunk should focus on, especially one that always focused as much on being rebellious and antisocial as R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk. Young Freud posted:You need to read "Black Dog". I, uh, don't know what that is!
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Dec 9, 2020 05:34
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Everything Counts posted:I know no one has reviewed Ray Wininger's Underground--or at least it's not in the archive--but ever since I saw the first magazine ads for it nearly 30 years ago I've been very curious. Does anyone have a copy and the will to do a F&F? I know someone at least started (but never finished) a review of it for F&F. I've got a copy, and if no one else digs into it I might start reviewing it in a couple of weeks if folks wanna see more of it.
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Dec 10, 2020 02:38
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Well poo poo, I knew about Mardi Gras krewes but never knew the word was spelled that way. That is actually really cool and I'm putting that down as another point in favour of Geist (which is already my third favorite CoD game after Mage and Promethean.)
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Dec 13, 2020 01:12
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Hostile V posted:Part of me wants to write up a summary of the various factions of Delta Green enemies because you have a mixture of insufferable untouchable plot elements (Stephen Alzis), the interesting and kind of approachable (the Ghouls of Manhattan), the jerks you can hurt (Karotechia), the jerks you can't hurt (The Cult of Transcendence) and the really weird and kind of stupid (the narcocartel of heroin addicts who are immortal due to anal snakes, the ghouls of Louisiana who are trying to normalize vore culturally through porn). I really hope they put out a book on villainous factions for the 2016 Delta Green at some point, because if there's one thing wrong with the new edition it's that they've wiped out all of the old major antagonist factions (MAJESTIC, the Fate, the Cult of Transcendence, the Karotechia) and provided only the tiniest bit of detail on the new major antagonists (the Yithians/Motion and the Lloigor). And speaking of the 2016 Delta Green, I've been thinking about reviewing the new core books, since the last Delta Green review from a few years ago petered out before ever getting that far.
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Dec 24, 2020 16:56
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mellonbread posted:They did. It was called Labyrinth. It had a couple duds, a few inspired choices, and a lot that was just ok. Definitely no Countdown, but I've come around to liking it since it was released. The Labyrinth didn't really do it for me. It wasn't as good as Countdown or even Targets of Opportunity, and for all the work they've done painting the Yithians and Lloigor as the new big bads for Delta Green in the 2016 core and The Fall of Delta Green, Labyrinth didn't touch on the Yithians or the Motion at all, and didn't give any details on the larger Lloigor cult(s) that I was hoping for.
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Dec 24, 2020 17:39
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mellonbread posted:I think someone upthread said they wanted to review the new DG books, so hopefully we'll have that to look forward to. Speaking of the new DG books, would people here like me to start with the Agent's Handbook (which is heavier on the new system's mechanics, and covers a bunch of US federal agencies) or the Handler's Guide (which is heavier on the setting, background, and plot through 2017)?
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Dec 26, 2020 16:42
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Midjack posted:They went and did “you were working for the bad guys all along”? That’s disappointing. It wasn't even that straightforward. The guy's recruitment wound up being a long con that led to a double/triple/??? cross that ended with MAJESTIC getting torn apart and the remains devoured to form a new DELTA GREEN. Most of the former MAJESTIC people and resources got spun off into a private defense company called March Technologies, which keeps crossing paths with and making trouble for the Program, but the Program gets pressured by their funders into not digging into March. It's a whole new source of tension and trouble. mellonbread posted:I think every RPG that doesn't take place 100 percent in the real world has some version of this. Whether it's asyncs in Eclipse Phase or sorcerers in D&D, you're always going to have something that's supposed to be ultra rare in-setting, but ends up being a dime a dozen among the player characters. You can explain it as those people being drawn toward adventuring/espionage/super crime as a profession due to their weird powers and thus being overrepresented compared to their rarity among the population at large, but there's always going to be a disconnect. The only exception to this is those games that make you roll for whether or not you can use magic/psi/whatever, but those don't tend to be too popular nowadays. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 27, 2020 |
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Dec 27, 2020 01:34
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Rifts did it for characters that didn't take explicitly psychic classes, and 1e ADnD did it for psionics, too.
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Dec 27, 2020 01:56
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 Delta Green: Agent's Handbook It's been a few years since this thread covered any actual Delta Green books, and since those reviews of the original Delta Green sourcebook and Countdown, a full, standalone edition of the game's come out. Originally a Kickstarter in 2015, it was finally completed and published in 2017 as a two volume set consisting of the Agent's Handbook and the Handler's Guide. We'll be starting with the Agent's Handbook, and I'd like to get as far as covering the Handler's Guide, The Complex, and maybe even The Labyrinth if I make it that far. This thread's also never gotten as far as covering two other older Delta Green sourcebooks, Targets of Opportunity and Eyes Only. Delta Green sourcebooks used to be pretty hard to come by, but nowadays you can get all of them on DriveThruRPG. Chapter One: Overview Right out of the gate, the first chapter makes no bones of the essential fact that Delta Green is not a game about blowing away monsters and aliens, or being a badass tier one operator, or even about figuring out what's really going on and being able to make sense of the world. It's fundamentally a game about fear, and the end of everything and everyone. It also covers the basics of Delta Green itself and how the Agents (players) factor into things, though in all honesty it presents a distorted and not entirely accurate depiction of Delta Green itself that fails to reflect the distinctions between the Outlaws and the Program, and the gap in their respective resources and operational standards. Of course, that's also completely fitting for a game like Delta Green, and especially for the one book that's supposed to be in the hands of the players themselves. Key points for Delta Green, as far as the average Agent should be concerned:
Delta Green operates in secrecy, and reappropriates government resources and cases or investigations for its own purposes. They hijack existing investigations whenever those collide with supernatural threats. And since they're operating in such total secrecy, when their own get badly injured or end up as mental wrecks, Delta Green tries to cover up the real cause. There's a lot more to all of this, but the details (and the truth, such as it is) is left for the Handler's Guide to cover. Beyond this, the chapter just covers the basics of roleplaying, and horror roleplaying in particular. Next: Agents Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Dec 27, 2020 |
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Dec 27, 2020 18:52
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JcDent posted:So is Agent's Guide lying about DG or is it just bad editing/incompetence? It gives a pretty good overview of what life is like for agents working for the Outlaws, and the sort of experience a low ranking newbie just brought into the Program might have at the very start. The Program, however, has far better resources and significantly more formal organization than the first chapter of the Agent's Handbook suggests; just nothing that a rookie could probably hope to know about, much less access. I'm pretty sure this is a deliberate choice on the part of the devs.
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Dec 27, 2020 19:18
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Delta Green: Agent's Handbook Chapter Two: Agents In short, the new edition of Delta Green defines Agents in terms of stats, derived attributes, profession, skills, and bonds. If you've ever played DnD, the stats in this edition will be perfectly familiar. We've got a total of six, Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Constitution (CON), Intelligence (INT), Power (POW), and Charisma (CHA). They range from 3 to 18, with 10 being average for an adult human. Stats are generated either with your old-school "roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die" or by taking a pool of 72 points and dividing them between the six stats on a 1-to-1 basis. Derived attributes consist of Hit Points, Willpower Points, Sanity Points, and Breaking Points. HP is exactly what you expect, WP is used for spellcasting, to resist interrogation, exhaustion, fear, and insanity, and also a few other cases. SAN is that Call of Cthulhu standard we all know and love, and the Breaking Point is the value at which SAN loss inflicts a long-term mental disorder on the character. A character's profession is used to determine their starting skills. Professions include things like Historian, Computer Scientist, Federal Agent, Special Operator, Program Manager, and so on, and each is defined by a set of skills with starting values, a selection of additional skills that the character can choose from, and a number of Bonds that the character will begin with. A later chapter in the Agent's Handbook covers a number of federal agencies and the sorts of professions each one employs, and The Complex covers even more federal agencies and private companies with government ties. Skills themselves are pretty similar to how Call of Cthulhu uses them. They're rated from 0% to 99%, and Agents also get to add 20 points to eight skills of their choice. The Agent's Handbook includes a list of (optional) packages of skills to make things easier, including things like Athlete, Veteran, and Urban Explorer. Bonds are something that's new to Delta Green, and a really great addition as far as I'm concerned. They represent the most important people in a given character's life; children, partners, parents, mentors, friends, you name it. Each Bond has a value representing its strength, and Bonds can be used to better resist trauma of all kinds, but at the risk of weakening and possibly destroying them altogether. Lastly, depending on the sort of game the Handler is running, players can choose to have their Agents be Delta Green veterans. This has a few different options that cover the sorts of messed up stuff Delta Green agents could've been subjected to, such as Extreme Violence, Captivity, Hard Experience, and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Each gives additional skill points and possibly even immunity to specific sources of SAN damage such as violence and helplessness, but at the cost of SAN damage and either disorders, weakened Bonds, or lowered attributes. Now for a little demonstration. Meet FBI Special Agent (and Delta Green veteran) Angela Reyes. She's a pretty well-rounded person, so to make her stat generation quicker we're going to take the "Well-Rounded" stat spread; two 13s, two 12s, and two 11s. STR 11, DEX 11, CON 12, INT 13, POW 13, CHA 12 Since she's an FBI special agent, we'll go with the Federal Agent profession, which gives her: Alertness 50%, Bureaucracy 40%, Criminology 50%, Drive 50%, Firearms 50%, Forensics 30%, HUMINT 60%, Law 30%, Persuade 50%, Search 50%, Unarmed Combat 60%; and from the list of additional skills, we'll take Accounting 60%. The Federal Agent profession also gives her three Bonds, which we'll fill in later. As for bonus skill points, we'll allocate them the old fashioned way instead of taking one of the bonus skill packages, and give her +20 in each of Bureaucracy, Criminology, Forensics, Firearms, HUMINT, Law, Persuade, and Search. Now for her Bonds. She got married back when she was still in college, and while it didn't work out for them, she's still good friends with her ex-husband. She's also close to her partner in the Bureau, even though he doesn't know anything about Delta Green. Finally, there's her best friend from high school that also went to her alma mater. Reyes starts with a value in each of her starting Bonds equal to her CHA of 12. Finally, Reyes isn't exactly new to all this. She's been on Delta Green ops before now, and on one of those ops something happened. She doesn't remember what happened, hell, she doesn't even remember most of what happened before, during, or even after the op. Coming face to face with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and learning just a little too much gave her +10 to Unnatural and +20 to Occult, but it's left a hole in her mind. She lost 13 SAN from the experience and now suffers amnesia surrounding the event, and is prone to future episodes of amnesia if she should suffer too much SAN loss in a short amount of time. And that leaves us with with our Agent and future casualty: quote:Angela Reyes Next: The Game
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Dec 27, 2020 22:19
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Delta Green: Agent's Handbook Chapter Three: The Game An important thing to note about Delta Green is that skill rolls are only called for when the situation is particularly difficult, unpredictable, or failure could have serious consequences. Otherwise, the Handler just doles out clues or information based on what they feel a person with a given level in a given skill could reasonably know or figure out, or the Handler just sets a flat threshold for a given task, and anyone meeting or exceeding that skill value automatically succeeds. Skill rolls, when they do happen, are just d100 rolls versus a percentage. Bonuses or penalties can be assigned to rolls depending on the circumstances, and are either +/- 20% or rarely +/- 40%. If someone has a 0 in a skill, they just can't do it, and if they try to do something that should be possible for anyone regardless of skills, the Handler can call for a stat roll, in which case they roll d100 vs. the relevant stat x 5. Lastly, the Handler can always call for a Luck roll when things come down to pure chance (or fate), in which case there's a flat 50% chance for things to go the Agent's way, or not. Critical successes and failures are always possible for any roll. A critical success happens on a natural 01, or any success where the two dice match (11, 22, etc.) Critical failures happen on a natural 00, or any failure where (again) the two dice match. Critical successes are usually twice as good, whether that means inflicting double damage, or completing a task in half the usual time. Critical failures, on the other hand, are a little more varied, and a few possibilities are listed, mostly amounting to things like temporary stat loss from strain or burnout, minor HP or WP loss, exhaustion, confusion, pissing off NPCs, etc. Opposed tests involve both parties rolling skill tests. It's simple enough if one party succeeds and the other fails; if both parties succeed or both fail, things are a little different. Critical successes beat regular ones; beyond that, if only one person can reasonably win the contest, and if both parties pass the test, then the higher of the two rolls beats the lower, while if both parties fail, the lower roll beats the higher one and succeeds. Chases and pursuits of all kinds are treated as opposed tests using either Athletics if both parties are on foot, or other skills depending, such as Drive, Pilot, Heavy Machinery, Swim, or Ride. Coordinating multiple chasers is worth a bonus for the pursuers, and either party can use skills like Navigate or Tactics to try and get an edge over the other (forcing another opposed test). Willpower Points basically function as mental juice for Agents; if WP drops to 2 or less the Agent takes a penalty to all tests until their WP rises above 2, at if it drops to 0 then the Agent is completely incapacitated. A proper night's sleep will restore some WP, as will properly roleplaying and pursuing one of the Agent's motivations. There are two other status effects covered in this chapter. Exhaustion kicks in when a Handler thinks its appropriate, usually if an Agent has gone too long without rest, or has neglected to get any rest after losing HP or SAN. Exhaustion inflicts a penalty to all checks, and costs the Agent some WP if they keep going despite everything. Stimulants can offset the penalty, but will cost WP if the Agent keeps taking successive doses. Sleeplessness is a risk when an Agent tries to sleep for the first time after experiencing temporary insanity or gaining a disorder; the Agent must succeed at a SAN test or they snap back to wakefulness from nightmares, and fail to get any WP back from rest. Sedatives can be used for a bonus to the SAN check, but if the Agent fails despite sedatives then they also end up sick the next day and take an additional penalty to all rolls. Next: Combat
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Dec 28, 2020 17:59
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