Geist

http://neuralarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2016/1...cification.html

Added a brief little something about the police forces of my future London sprawl.

Hurrah!

 

It's only a matter of time until we can recreate the Cyberpunk 100

Only 98 more to go…

Meanwhile, my neural archive continues leaking. Somebody phone tech support.

http://neuralarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2016/1...n-city-kit.html

Although I am struggling to share it on the 2020 G+ page…

EDIT: And it works in the old style. FFS. :roll eyes:

EDIT: AND NOW IT DOESN'T. AAAARGH.

Yep. Only gone and started a new blog.

http://neuralarchive.blogspot.co.uk

Not much there yet (obvs) but hopefully there'll be ACTUAL CONTENT any time now…

Yeah, I like that! I was just considering a 911 table too. And the weather table ideas are great. I can work with those.

Work on the kit has progressed nicely, but I'm away for a few days, so there won't be any updates for a week or so. In the meantime, if anyone has any more ideas, just drop 'em into this thread!

Hopefully, it won't be too long before the document is complete and ready to use at the table.

Here's mine:

D10

1-9: Raining

10: About To Rain

Yep, works for me gents. I'm going to try and a do a first draft in the next few days using your excellent ideas.

Maybe names could be a combination of elements, much like the adjectives in the file you PMed me Mikael? Again, I'll throw a draft table together for you guys to check out.

This is coming together rather nicely.

An amended version of the WIP to date is available HERE

And here's a peak at the edited Infotainment table, using senior officer Mikael van Atta's suggestions:

And a new set of tables:

Still thinking about gangs!

Very well said. Something I need to remember myself, if I want to avoid too much drift.

And can I steal that for the intro gomiville?

I like it even more than the previous one.

One obvious style of marketing I find absent: sex does sell things.

I can't believe I overlooked that! Good catch!

Also - the "product" column on the infotainment does, IMO, require adjustment. 4 of the 10 entries are cybernetics / bioware (cyberlimb, implant, cyberoptics, bioware). Too much IMO.

 

Fold them into one, "cyber / bio /nanoware".

Add entries like:

"drugs / medicines" (depending on the setting, anything from over-the-counter painkillers & dietary supplements to the cutting edge stimulants and hallucinogens, but that is actually up to the GM),

"cosmetics" (from mundane soap & n-th anti-dandruff shampoo to pheromone perfume)

"weapons / armor" (from pepper spray to assault weapons)

Oh yes! I shall do an edit tomorrow. Great suggestions!

On a different matter - once I get done with the gang tables / data, I'll be asking you to turn them into drop tables & the like, deal?

I'm up for a challenge! Not sure how I'd tackle that yet, though…

More work following some suggestions. And now with less pigeon smell!

Edited the drop down pages slightly, added a D100 for building quirks and reconfigured the Senses pages into D100 charts.

A4 PDF version (WIP) available to download HERE

Let me know what you think…

And if anyone has any charts or tables they'd like to share, please do so!

Wow, you work fast, Geist. That's great.

Cheers!

I needed this bad boy boxing off as soon as possible, as I'm going to test it on game night this Friday! Wish me luck!

Inspirational stuff Mikael! Loving the 'what the gang does for a living' table. Handy! And thanks for the kind words so far!

Or, alternatively, the "tableside" version can be spatial (items arranged into a grid, throw three dice then pick the items under each die).

Ask and ye shall receive…

And here's a link if you want to print it and test it - LINK

Yeah… I hear you.

I shall have a play and try and get the three I've done into three D100 tables - two with 100 results, one with 50.

In the meantime, here is number three - the sounds. Listen! Can you hear it?

…and just my curiosity - what does a pigeon smell like?

Sweat and shame.

I was thinking much simplier as all I need is a random building / encounter generator localised for where-ever you happen to be at the time.

Most of the tables I proposed above would be fairly short and simple. The Sense & The City tables just sort of… grew.

What kind of thing would you want to see in that? Can you give some examples?

Are you thinking a couple of tables like What's That Building? and Who's Inside It? Encounters are something I wanted to avoid personally, but feel free to add your own. I can format them and add them to a PDF easily, if you agree.

Here's another sample spread. This time, sights.

And I've had some ideas for tables/charts to include:

• The Street Finds It's Own Uses For Things - alternate uses for tech

• Legacy Infrastructure - the tech that time forgot

• Environmental Maladies

• Local AR

• Social Hazards

• What's Yer Poison? - Peccadilloes and vices, addictions...

• Social Media - Dull, cutesie, political, SJW, work related, predatory, fanboy...

• TV Shows

• Musical Styles

• Traffic Hazards

• Sex Workers - After DnD's infamous Houri table - updated for cyborgs, gender fluidity, implants etc

• The Marketing Department - for random ads - brands & products column - marketing style? eg: hard-sell/loud, cartoony, juvenile, sophisticated, abstract, classy, funny, gender specific, cheap, exotic...

• Mix n Match Headlines

• What's On The Corpse?

• Fixers and Facemen - With particular biz and wares and location? Availability?

• Architectural Styles

• Interior Style - minimalist, chintzy, late 20th C etc.

• Street Objects

• Startups - futuristic enterprises table

• New Industry

• Movers & Shakers - city power players

• Gang Generator

• 911 table - what's the response, how much force available, ETA...

• Netrunners

• Boardroom Manoeuvres - corporate actions affecting the cityscape

• District, Area or Sector Events

• What Does This Robot Actually Do?

• So, I Got Wasted… - a carousing chart

• Cabbie Generator - inc. conversation topic, demeanour/attitude, ethnicity, appearance

• Baseline Citizens - bit like Comp's Entry Level Jobs

• Distinguishing Feature - pink mohawk? oversized arm? bug eyes? might be too much like the affectations table in the rules, or good be an update?

• What's On The Stolen Device?

• Tech Condition - Used, state of the art, buggy...

• What's That In The Sky? - AVs, blimps etc.

A sample spread of smells!

Plus, maybe we could crowd source something regarding the five senses; hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. Sense & The City table anyone?

 

I LOVE THIS <3

 

One of the most inspirational lines I ever read in a cyberpunk novel was in Ken Macleod's Cosmonaut Keep, where it has the following paragraph (italics are mine):

 

Our stuff... I can smell it on the wind. New tech, wet tech: bioelectronic manufacture, with its whiff of acetone and alcohol, Edinburgh's familiar technology of brewery and distillery and refinery expanded to produce a whole new range of hardware kit, as cheap and disposable and recyclable as paper.

 

I adore the way that sentence provides a visceral sense of the setting's biotechnology while linking it to the history of the city, making it seem like a lived in continuation of something old and street level.

 

A Sense and the City table would be perfect for doing the same thing.

 

I'm personally poorly qualified to write it, though - i'll leave it to you guys

Currently scribbling stuff down for this. Got scents, sights and sounds - just need taste and touch.

And then some sort of format. Got a couple of ideas.

But I'm on it.

Chris is pretty cool with that. For now.

Yep, it looks like we agree on creating urbancentric environmental imagination fuel. Of the future!

I'm sorry to observe, gentlemen, that I do not follow Can't keep it up with you these days.

 

I thought it was intended as a Cyberpunk 2020 resource, but from what Companero writes, he intends to make it a general cyberpunk (perhaps even transhuman?) role-playing resource...

 

Which means I'm going to watch this project from a sideline, at least for a time.

What I think Companero means is that we want to create a cyberpunk genre resource for adding a variety of cyberpunk elements to any of our campaign cities, sometimes in-game, much like rolling for encounters. So, we would be creating a game reference we could all use to add interesting futuristic elements, on the fly, to any city, such as London, Night City, Dubai or Constanța.

Although Vornheim keeps being referenced, I think the main things to take from that book (whether you've read it or not) and to put into our document would be it's utility, it's clever immediacy, and how everything it does is meant to add atmosphere and character to a city.

write down the problems they have when running urban environments

One of the issues I find when GMing is, like gomiville, that I need a way to generate what is around the players when they find themselves in random parts of the city. Not just what is physically around them, such as buildings, vendors, vehicles etc., but what activity there is; in any city there are always people and they're doing things. And when there's an absence of people, it's very noticeable, and sometimes worrying!

Also, what is inside a random building? Who is inside? And why are they there?

Now these are fairly easy to make up on the go, but sometimes I find that they're not as interesting or flavoursome as they could be. That's where that horrible 'too much like it is now' thing creeps in. It would be great to have a way of reinforcing the verisimilitude, even when caught off guard by 'free wheeling' players (the bastards).

I'd like to be able to generate it all quickly and not just get a result like 'd6 hobos' or 'office workers'; are we talking Deus Ex style augmented homeless, drug addicted burglars, an office of bored AR coders, an illegal 3D assemblery staffed by the indentured poor, a crime scene crawling with forensic drones, teenage junkies, a Russian PA suit under a tarp…? I want to see results that reinforce the fact that this is The Future™, as well as cool shit for my players to mess with or get involved in because they couldn't ignore it.

Augmented Reality and advertising/media are sometimes tricky to describe. So I'll add those to the list too.

Plus, maybe we could crowd source something regarding the five senses; hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. Sense & The City table anyone?

I also like Comp's earlier suggestion of yet-to-be-invented businesses. It'll be interesting to come up with the sorts of NPC reprobates that run them too.

To be clear, I had no intention of creating a companion to the Night City Sourcebook, I was using it more as a common point of reference, a jumping off point so to speak. Most here would know what it is and most here would know what they felt it was lacking.

I think gomiville is right when he suggests coming up with a table of contents and working from there.

In a way, I think the goals of a CP city kit… should be to add cyberpunk to the world as it is.

Exactly. And taking Companero's thought process further, it would be cool to call the kit 'Augmented Realities' or something, to suggest that the kit is designed to add layers to your cyberpunk setting, rather than being a city generation book.

If we can actually make something like this happen, I'm more than happy to do layout and PDF duty on it? I'm a graphic designer by trade.

<slopes off to take a fresh look at Stars Without Number>

There's this Shadowrun version here: Shadowrun & NYC Kit

But it's a bit weak and lacks any near-future verisimilitude or cyberpunk exoticism. I may use it as a basis for something and try and jazz it up some.

After a brief discussion with Companero about the utility of Zak S's Vornheim City Kit for OSR D&D games, I got to thinking about how to do something similar for our Cyberpunk games. The idea is a resource that is able to breath life into futuristic urban environments, often through the medium of random generation (so, lots of tables), and for it to be fast and easy to use at the table.

The content of a book/PDF like this is key; every aspect needs to be eminently useful, during a game, with a minimum of rolling. But what to include?

Anybody here have any thoughts on the kind of material they would like to see? What would make running a vibrant cyberpunk city easier? What do you feel was missing from the Night City Sourcebook?

'Dutch butter smuggling' sounds a bit pervy...

But I do like the idea of smuggling using cutting edge Chinese stealth boats... on the Thames!

Thought this was quite interesting...

https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-game...cyberpunk-2020/

CP2077 still in the works, I assume.