MonSTeR

The discussion moves over a couple of topics, Tony explains that after an intensive "business meeting" with folks who might have had an idea, it seems like there wasn't a leak of information from his organization and that he'd place bets on the team having been followed to the safehouse. He goes on to explain he's not doubting the team's proficiency, and that the heavy hitters involved seemed to be keen on not letting the young lady out of their sight. He's not sure just to what extent these guys would have gone to secure her.

True "cyberpunk" was, 15/20 years ago, stuff like "Blade Runner" and obviously Gibson's books. These days it's come to mean slightly different, broader things to different people. Many of the poeple here have worked the other way, taking elements of the games they've played and looking for those elements in film and TV and literature.

These days I think anything slightly futuristic with a dystopian feel is classed as "cyberpunk" it helps if, like Sgt Savage said, there's some gritty aspect to the plot or characters.

It's that sort of thing that makes films like Terminator at least as equal of the title "cyberpunk" as anything else out there. It's about fighting against "the machine" knowing you're not going to win. Here the machine is a literal machine, the Terminator itself. In other films the machine isn't literal it's a figurative one, such as the laws and codes we all have to live under as portrayed in the movie Heat a film that's chock full of "punk" attitude but almost devoid of any "cyber" type tech.

"If they're coming for you" ?!?!?! WTF ?

As the GM, you can't play wargames against the PCs, it's not fair and it simply makes you a bad GM. The NPCs have to act in character just like the PCs have to act in character.

Sure you can set up building fires and the like.

If you want to simply "take out" gun-happy PCs, as the GM, you can have the planet hit by an asteroid the size of the moon. It doesn't solve any power gaming issues. It just removes a power gamer's current character.

The power gamer's next character will be just the same as the last one only tweaked a little more in an attempt to survive asteroid impacts.

It's not the character who is the trouble it's the PLAYER.

Power gaming is something that has to be dealt with more outside of the game than inside.

Basically that's how I look at it. I usually take the "ROF" of a weapon as the number of bullets that can come out of the barrel after someone has pulled the ftigger in the same round.

It might not be totally realistic, but it'll do me.

We had a BIG discussion about how many actions per round a character can achieve inthe Apo-Stasis forum in the topic Guns Guns Guns, where we were looking at initiative and phases and actions and the like.

Folks seem to feel that 3 is about the maximum number of actions that a character can do while having ANY chance of doing anything successfully.

I've personally currently got that up to a maximum of 5 under the house rules I run at the moment, but that's literally a Ref 10 Combat Sense 10 Weapon Skill 10 Boosted Reflex and adrenal gland toting killer cyborg who rolled a 10 for his initiative, type affair. the most any of the characters in the game can get is 4 actions per turn and that's on a very good initiative roll. There's a HUGE chance that they're not gonna succeed with the final action either

Tony nods at Shrap's technical tale for a moment then catches the attention of a passing member of the bar staff, muttering something about getting a coffee and gesturing slightly towards Thumper. He returns his full attention to the techie as one of his nameless, faceless companions places another order while the waitress is near.

Tony Shrugs his shoulder slightly

"So you guys are gonna go put the squeeze down on this 'Relativity' or stake the place out or what?"

There's no pressure in his voice, just a seemingly genuine professional curiosity.

My first line of action is to take the player aside and talk to them. Explain that what they're doing is wrong and ask them to tone themselves down to the level that the other players are working at for the sake of the game as a whole. It's one of the reasons I like to have character creation as a group effort rather than a competitive process. It helps get rid of power PCs and makes sure everyone is looking at the right power level for the game.

But that's prevention rather than cure.

To cure it, I usually try to avoid fighting fire with fire. I disillusion the power gamer and get him bored with his infinite firepower, simply by making his handheld 30mm gatling gun mundane. When the Power gamer says something like

"I let loose with Ol' Painless and tear 'em up with some 30mm Gatling action"

I come back with something like,

"Ok, your targets die horribly, next PC's action please"

When they don't even get to roll for their "to hit" and "to damage" rolls because they themselves have made tehm superfluous, I've found that they soon calm down.

Tony chuckles slightly, "Yeah he's never gonna be a made man, but doesn't mean he's not one of the family, Danny knows his mother from way back, so here he is,"

He glances over his shoulder as a Harley pulls up outside and then continues,

"So, Shrap, tell me about this AV,"

I love that story Thumper and I don't know if it needs a "real" name, as this way it's easier to move it to wherever the GM wants.

Some folks though may want an exact geographical location, but I like the idea of it being just "Cyber - City" having evolved from the "Borgtown" thing It's very Appleseed-esque if you ask me Like their Olympus

The big guy on the door flashes a white smile across his dark brown face and offers Rat his hand.

"I'm Gianni, Tony hooked me up with this gig when I moved up from LA," he takes the card from the Fixer "They've been expecting you,"

As Gianni moves aside he gestures inside the bar you follow his lead to see Tony sitting in a comfortable looking soft leather chair. He nods to the doorman and  waves to you all. A couple of his companions glance over and smile, one raises a glass inviting you all in.

You climb the few steps up to the door itself and venture inside.

Taking in the sights of the bar there are a couple of huge sized canvases of semi-nude women in flowing silk. A venetian blind hangs in the full length window of the bar the faint orange glow of the streetlights seeping in between the slats. The overall theme is very contemporary, lots of white and chrome and more lilac with yet more uplighting and the starkly contrasting big black leather armchairs. The bar iself is in the left rear corner as you enter the place through the doorway on the left front of the bar. There's a corridor off to the rear right hand side of the bar leading presumably to the bathrooms and next to that are some open stairs leading down to a restaurant/dining area situated under the front lounge.

Tony and his men sit in the front lounge of the bar, around a low table of chrome and glass. Several shot glasses are strewn over the table along with a few beer bottles of various brands and fullness.

Humans have been cloned for years, the embryos are in cryonic storage until the legislation catches up with thte science. Adolf Hitler and Elvis are amoungst the icecubes in question

Yep, that's the sort of thing I'm on about, (it's actually one of the things that gave me the "stacking" idea I proposed in the inititive system I posted.

I reckon you could add all the relevant modifiers for things like "anti-personnel" or "evasion" programs to the relevant skills and stat, and then just have single d10 rollo-offs to see which side wins...

That sound about right? The only thing is it'd need to be able to come from a more detailed and realisitc system to allow netrunners to play that part of the game in detail

I want a system that can easily and at least semi-accurately be converted between just a couple of rolls of "attack programs" vs. "defence programs" to a proper "netrunning" system.

So that in the middle of combat the netrunner can make a "combat" rolls initiative/to hit type rolls to see if he can shut off the automated gun turrets or open the code-locked door.

But using exactly the same deck the same character can also go on a proper netrun in complete detail encountering and dealing with each and every firewall and code gate etc.

Top Jimmy moves skillfully through the evening traffic, giving the finger at appropriate intervals and yelling abuse at drivers he deems careless or just plain dumb.

It's not long before the van pulls up outside the mafia hangout "Gandolfini's"

Looking through the windows at the brightly lit interior it's not what folks might have expected. It seems to have a vague art-nouveau theme, with stark contrasts of white and black offset by the soft pale purple. You can all make out several figures inside sitting in rather than on what seem to be huge soft black leather armchairs.

There's a typical gorilla on the door standing inside the bar's entrance, he's of afro-caribean descent and has a smoothly shaved head.

Thumper looks at Neko, and then half to his fellow samurai and half to the others notes that the doorman seems to be packing a heavy pistol under his coat, but doesn't seem to be carrying anything heavier. He also points out that they've all been on camera for a while as the establishment has them mounted high upon the building surveying the whole street.

I definately think that it's interesting that the hit locations are allocated as they are when I'm fairly sure even untrained folks tend to fire at the obvious target (ie torso)

I'd be tempted to have the torso occupy at least 50% of the hit locations and maybe tag the "extra" bits on for the sake of "randomness".

1 = head

2-6 = torso

7 = r. arm

8 = l. arm

9 = r. leg

10 = l. leg

Or something similar.

Massdark, you're going to need to explain where you got the numbers over 10 from though?

I think it's important to balance realism with the fact that cyberpunk is a literary and cinematic genre.

The sun has vanished from the sky now, a hazy yellow glow bleeds into the deep blue sky just over the horizon but where you are in the city everything seems to maintain that familiar orange glow of the streetlights.

Rat directs Top Jimmy through the streets to the Live Wire as he talks to Nine-Mill

"It's getting around, but you and yours weren't the story. It's the Mob slant that's causing the explosion, someone hit one of Danny Vito's places and survived and that he's looking for blood. Wasn't till later we found out that it was a freelancer's score that got lifted. We knew that you had stuff going down and it was't long 'fore we pieced it all together."

"Yeah we got it brained out!" Top Jimmy chirps in obviously pleased that the 7th Street Mission  jumped to the correct conclusions.

"Can't say how far it's spread, Rat but most folks seem to think it's all Mob related. I don't think your rep's on the line yet."

Rat knows Nine-Mill well enough to know she's not pulling punches, his rep's safe for now, and Vito's organisation that's taken the hit. The Mafia Don won't mind that for now, it'll mean that when he gets to "cement" his relationship with some wannabes it'll reaffirm just how tough he is. But he's not gonna let this transgression go unresolved for long.

The van pulls up smoothly outside the techie bar where Neko and Shrap are waiting outside in the cool night air and neon glow, slight condensation forming from their breath.

In Little Italy Thumper's cab pulls up a little down the street from Gandolfini's a known Mafia hangout. The area is mostly 3 and 4 story brownstone apartments converted into chic offices on the first floor, bars here and there on the lower floors and expensive apartments remaining on the top floors and the occasional whole building.

Thumper can make out Gandolfini's 50 or so yards down the street. There's a small sign with a flowing script bearing the establishment's name hanging on the side of the building, it seems to be a ground floor (GM Note - do you guys in the US call that the first floor?) place. The sign is white with a pale purple logo, illuminated in soft ambient light.

As the three walk out to the van Nine-Mill turns to face Rat and walks backwards,

"Yeah like we heard 'bout that badness! How you's get mixed up in that anyhows?! But that's mob-land and just a lil bit too North for us or..." Her voice trails off and she opens her arms apologetically.

"But yah business is business y'know and no juicers' gonna get the best of us, right TJ?"

She turns her shaven head to her second in command who nods furiously and smiles in a mildly psychotic but none the less contented way.

I've used a few of good sources. The first is "Sprawl Sites" which is a Shadowrun source book plenty of locations described and drawn out there. The next is anything "Twilight 2000" the 2nd (I think 2nd) edition rulebook had lots of great and well detailed floor plans all in 20mm figure scale (very prevalent amoungst "ultra-modern" wargamers) Lastly for if you need to cover big areas of anonymous city, I recommend Steve Jackson Games' old Car Wars maps. They did a series called "City Blocks"  which work nicely. I've no idea where to download floorplans though I'm afraid.

I'm another one reading to be entertained. It's fun and exciting and not dangerous. I mena yes I read to learn as well, but it's a wholly different mindset I'm in. I guess I read sci-fi/cyberpunk stuff, because my imagination and the authors' words usually do a better job of making a movie than anything other than a HUGE budget Hollywood flick can.

Nine-mill makes her way through the bar, followed closely behind by Top Jimmy. Neither of them are old enough to be here, but they both move in the public house with a familiarity that belies their age, and is testament to thier upbringing.

Nine-mill drags up a stool to tthe table and sits down with her mentor, three generations of the same family in everything but blood.

She chirps up as the tow grown men pause intheir conversation for th children's arrival.

"Hi, ready to go?"

I'll extend Booywyrm's original advice here again.

Likewise they shouldn't be smarter. Independence is the key here, the game world should be exactly the same no matter what the PCs are doing. Security guards are still security guards, they should act in a fashion appropriate to their role. NPC IQ and skill levels like their firepower should not be directly proportional to anything involving the PCs, it should be wholely dependent on thier role.

If the challenge has gone it's not that the combat sucks, it's that the PCs have come up against folks who offer them no challenge. Yes the players might get bored, but then they should be hitting higher risk scores not knocking over the 7-11 again. The whole premice of the adventure needs to change not just the power level of the NPCs.

Personally (and psychophipps will probably flame me for this) I think Wolverine has had some great Cyberpunk storylines. I'm not talking about stuff where the X-men jet off into space. I'm talking about some of the stuff centred around the Weapon X project, his missing memories, and him being used as a pawn by various agencies and the like. Yes it's still very definately in the traditional comicbook style, but some of these stories have a very dark slant to them. There was a great story that ran in X-men 4-7 (the new volume, not The Uncanny X-men) and asome great stuff recently in his own book.

Bloodbath finds his bike in good time, and the old Harley starts like a dream it's engine rumbling to life as only a Harley does.

Checkinghis watch he realises he's going to have to hurry if he's to make it on time for the drinks with Tony Benedetto and he knows it won't be long before the other members his team will be making their way to Gandolfini's back in Little Italy.

In MonSTeRPunK the city is pretty much LA from the movie Heat. Like Pixel [T][9][4] says, it's not changed that much, architecture is not a transient medium.

I'd like to say I do exactly what Chrys does, but I can't It is along similar lines though, when I'm creating a character, often I'll have a stereotype in my head, coupled with an idea of where I want to go with the character. It might be based on an existing character from Films, books, TV or comics, or it might be someone I've met and so on. Then I'll do a basic framework of Chrys' system.

I'm perhaps not so specific as to have a rigid set of questions and sometimes the character gets bent about a bit to fit it into the games' setting, age changed to remember certain key events or escape others and so on.

I also try to avoid completely outlandish features and like to talk with the GM and other players in order to make sure that there's some commonality between the group of PC. I think it's very important for a group of characters to have at least a 50% or so overlap with each of the other characters in the group, not in skills and abilities, but in terms of styles and outlooks and backgrounds and the like. There's got to be a half decent reason for folks to stay together as a team other than "You all meet in a bar" or "you all wake up in the same jail cell" or "you've all recieved a letter from the same mysterious person who's told you to meet here under this bridge at the stroke of midnight"

Then I'll try and shoe-horn the character into the system. I'll look at skills and stats at the same time,  balancing the two out within the given levels and then play around with them till I get a balance.

On the other hand sometimes I'll just roll up a character exactly as per the rulebook and fit a background around those events. I Think it's handy to be able to do both.

As a GM, I like to encourage a lot of conversation between the players and myself as to their PCs. It avoids the unbalanced characters, with one character who has combat sense +10, Rifle +10, SMG +10 and Martial arts TKD +10, but still can't switch on a microwave, and the other 4 characters interested in playing the stock exchange and running the net to find blackmail info

I'm not saying I design the characters for them, but I do tell them when something is going to adversely affect the gameplay or isn't in keeping with the rest of the game.

I think conversation on the topic of team creation rather than character creation is useful reinforces the group's "togetherness" not just in terms of the characters, but also the players themselves.