Geist

Out of curiosity, are you using the rules from the Elysium Pattern article? I wouldn't be remotely offended if you weren't - if you are, are they useful, readable, helpful, etc? I've never really had an opportunity to properly playtest them.

Indeed I am using the rules as presented in your article. Admittedly, I've not done any frame-on-frame combat, and the player wearing the frame is quite… cautious, but the rules seem to work well. Dave has only had two issues with the frame over nearly 20 sessions; once when the right arm snapped, and once when he got the catastrophic fail result lifting a server. The first time it got damaged he just printed out carbon-fibre replacement parts and repaired it. Now he needs to buy a new one. He'll probably go for the Elysium again. But yeah, so far, so good! I'm still waiting for him to throw a motorbike at someone though.

Vornheim is sooo good. I brought a copy when it came out and then when it was reprinted sent one to Malek77 . People have spoken a-bit about doing a version for a future city - i'm one of those people! - but I keep getting stymied by my crappy map-making skills (at least the way I want to do it).

 

Mike Evans made a quick (system agnostic) Shadowrun version which is quite fun, although it lacks the sheer style of the original: https://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2...un-city-kit.pdf

I've got the Vornheim book myself, and think it's great. Both useful and atmospheric and chock full of ideas to riff off. A cyberpunk genre equivalent would be fantastic. I do have the Shadowrun City Kit PDF too, but, like you, find it lacks something. Don't get me wrong, it's useful, it's just seems weak in comparison to the original Vornheim. Could be that it is too generic? Isn't Mike the guy who did The Black Hack: Cyberhacked? (Which I bought thanks to your review… )

On the OSR front, have you seen Stars Without Number? I honestly think I've got more cyberpunk RPG inspiration and ideas out of the Darkness Visible book than any other sourcebook. The Maltech Cults tag section is practically an "evil megacorporation" generator .

I adore the whole Stars Without Number/Other Dust stable. The books are full of brilliant concepts and setting ideas. I even considered running a trad cyberpunk game with the SWN engine, without changing anything bar ditching the high tech, but ended up going back to 2020. Some of my players prefer the crunchiness of Interlock over the more abstract D&D engine. Following your recommendation, I think I'll go back to Darkness Visible and Polychrome and see what I can lift for inspiration.

…is it just me or does Militech own the Houses of Parliament according to your map?

Doh. Er… they're just practically next door. Which is handy. Anyway, the British Union are converting it into a themed tourist attraction. Come and watch two parties of indentured bioroids engage in elaborate debate for smiling American tourists. Please activate your AR filters for fun historical factoids. The exit is through the gift shop.

That is a sweet map

Cheers chap. It's simply a Photoshopped photo of the city. I wanted something a little different to my previous, more graphic maps.

I DEMAND TO HEAR EVERYTHING. (also I think I lost the link to your campaign page, which makes me very sad)

 

That sounds like so much fun. Like Richard Kadrey comic book or something. Actual cyberpunk instead of a paramilitary Clancy-thriller with metal arms .

Really? Maybe I should start a 'campaign log' deets thread. I don't have a campaign page, so rest assured you haven't lost it! Perhaps you're thinking of someone else's game? I can be a bit derivative, as long as my players don't know where it's all come from… But I do think I've talked briefly about our South Africa games on these boards before, so maybe that's it? And yeah, I go out of my way these days to set up campaigns and in-game situations that avoid the spy-fi tropes that a lot of my earlier Night City games were saturated with. My group much prefer a high-stakes yet street style game these days. Grubby and with everything to lose. Maybe it's an age thing? A collective mid-life crisis?

…and written loads, both for projected home campaigns and stuff for the blog.

More stuff for the blog makes me very happy indeed! The Vircades Project articles have been inspirational when constructing 'the feel' of my game. I like your implied aesthetic of a sort of post-cyberpunk Cyberpunk, if that makes sense. A lot of Malek77's posts on here give me the same feels too. I also intend to use your Ruralpunk concepts, tweaked for some odd scenarios north of the M25 at some stage. Incidentally, one of our PCs, Hydraulic Dave, is a morbidly obese tech from South London, who uses your Elysium Pattern linear frame for mobility; he broke it picking up a rather large cortical server last session. How will ever he get to KFC now? He's got withdrawal from a lack of those eleven herbs and spices.

I tend to run the rules as written + Run.Net…

Yep. The wonderful Run.Net has basically reinvigorated the entire game for us. Three of my group have various levels of Interface skill at the moment, yet none are 'pure netrunners'; the Fixer, the Techie and the sorta-not-quite Prowler. On the go, they can tackle drones, nobble cybernetics, trigger weapons, infiltrate systems, sift and search, and it works beautifully. In a previous game, a PC in South Africa was taking doses of Mockery's 'Bluebird' to ramp up her INT for increased actions, until she started pissing kidney chunks and needed them replacing with cheap Korean implants. Fun times.

I'm a little concerned my games have been too Five Minutes into the Future, lately. I want more hi-tech technocolour 'punk lunacy and less BDUs in my next CP2020 campaign

Some of my games have felt a bit like they're drifting into modern techno-thriller territory too. It's something I actively have to keep a check on. I try not to give too much of a crap about realism, concentrating more on plausibility and a healthy dose of cyberpunk genre verisimilitude. I like to throw in detail, unusual tech, subcultures, social evolution and a lot of weird. The NPCs, I find, are absolutely key to this - the more memorable, odd and scary, the better. I learned a lot from Zak S of OSR and Vornheim fame when running a Labyrinth Lord game a couple of years ago. I'm rather enjoying the lunacy at the moment, and don't miss the competent professional edgerunner thing at all.

Bless you Master_Drow!

Been playing on and off since 1990. Went to university, got the job, got married, had two kids and then rediscovered 'Old Faithful' again. I've run canon-ish games in Night City, drifted to a more freeform style in Capetown, South Africa for a while, went back to a heavily modified Night City, the PCs ended up in home-brew Tokyo, my mate ran a Cybergeneration-esque game for a time, then back to South Africa and now we've recently started a new campaign in London (but still canon to our older campaigns - we now have quite the meta-plot!). Currently discussing moving over to a co-GMing set up.

This map is displayed on my mate's big screen while we play…

As I steal ideas from anywhere and everywhere, I guess I'd characterise our game as Cyberpunk+. The rules are pretty much as written, apart from using the excellent Run.Net, as well as fudging and houseruling a lot of the outdated 80s/90s concepts out. As for the gameworld itself, if it's cyberpunkish or transhumanist, in it goes.

In London, my players have encountered militant implant-fetishist skinheads, infosocialist media pirates, East End gangsters, jacked-up Mods, shiro-nuri go-gangers and been attacked by autonomous HGVs; they've stolen neural archiving technology from Apple, kidnapped an AI masquerading as an autistic 11 year old, had a firefight with bioroid zero-hour-contract workers in the food court of the local Consumertopia, tracked an Arasaka employee undergoing a narcotic psychosis to a Gynoid Row brothel using hijacked drones, visited the bloated tech-queen of the Central District, Moby Shaz, in her floatation tank, and they are about to perform a hit on the local Yakuza Kumicho, for a teenage girl, at a party in a Yakuza owned hotel!

And so far, as usual, it's been a fucking blast.

If it wasn't for some of the more creative and prolific posters on this site, particularly those who push beyond canon limitations, I guess we may have moved on to something else. So, THANKS GUYS!

A good point, well put. I was just putting it out there…

Mainly because we could call our OSR the CyberPunk Renaissance. Or CPR for short.

Here's some CP2020 stuff on the always enjoyable Monsters and Manuals blog: LINK

So that's, like, 1.5.

Maybe we need our own OSR-style rebirth?

I'll fire up the exo-womb…

malek77 is right.

And none of my adventures would make any sense to anyone else, unless rewritten. I have a tendency to have a lot of overlapping plots going on at any one time for maximum head-mashing stress. Plus, I'm a make it up as you go kind of CP GM, with a loose but overarching Big Picture that is prone to periodic revision.

Companero - you need to finish those and update Vircades! Your public needs you!

Dog, your ideas make me think of some of the Ruralpunk concepts on Comp's vircadesproject, as well as his balkanisation of the States articles. In fact, when I think about it, it all meshes rather well, and could well be the embryo of my next campaign setting.

And that's a pretty great game idea there, with some potentially difficult moral choices to vex the players. I like it!

Keep rambling man… it's all good stuff.

Except Judas didn't have a cortex bomb to worry about.

Actually LOLed!

Yup. That's some more awesome right there Comp!

You had me at 'I just posted…'

More awesome!

I think I boo-booed there. The Glass Road is from Datafortress2020, but it's down at the moment.

Apologies.

A cyberpunk setting should capture a transitional moment of chaos…

That.

People's biggest problem with THS - and why many more people admire it than play it, I suspect, is that the setting is almost too functional to provide space for player characters with real agency.

Yup.

I've been playing a lot of Shadowrun lately, and along the way discovered that the system is a horrifying abomination that should have been shot at birth.

That too.

I like Eclipse Phase a lot, but our GM runs it a bit too cyberpunk and not enough bat-shit-crazy transhumanist mental. GURPS cyberpunk and THS both have some nifty ideas too. I steal from everywhere when I'm running a CP2020 game.

ISIS? Not long for this world I imagine. Islamic nutters in my cyberpunk? Oh yes. I like me some When Gravity Fails but cranked up to 11. Blackhammer's Glass Road is a nice addition.

I ran a campaign in the South African Cape Republic, a fragment of the old South Africa. With the help of the old guard here, I managed to keep a flavour of the Cape post-war. One of my players grew up there and another had spent a while in Jo'berg, so they kept things in check. Not too many comments from either though, which was nice, as I've never been.

Thank you interwebz.

I should do a Cyberbear-style write-up of the campaign some day…

The PCs moved to Night City for a time and my next campaign looks like it might be in Liverpool (UK) or Bucharest in Romania (either will be set up as third-world style shit holes). Not sure yet which to go with though.

As for the CP2020 timeline, I tend to ignore it. Too much has happened for it to be credible. I tend to roll with the rule of cool. If it sounds and feels cyberpunk enough, it probably is. My players are a very accepting bunch!

There is nothing bad in going down in a blaze of glory itself - but taking down the whole campaign...?

My players usually ice the PC themselves before that happens. They can't wait to screw each other over. Luckily, we've all been very close friends for around twenty years (some more), so, even if there's some sulking, it rarely lasts long. In fact, I have two payers who have been good friends for over a quarter of a century, and they are always the first to screw each other over in our Cyberpunk games. Wish fulfilment fantasy?

Maybe.

Of course, as the ref, I would never encourage such behaviour…

I know what you mean. I'm a Marketing Manager.

I just play the ludicrously over-the-top pantomime Cyberpunk version of office politics occasionally.

I'd like to add how important a measure of autonomy is, to allow a player to get the most from a corporate PC. As artificial as it is, it's not much fun playing three hour departmental meetings, working through lunch or staying late because your boss "just remembered" a deadline.

It is fun, however, to talk your way past company security at two in the morning to lift something from R&D because your solos 'insisted' they can't complete the op without the deadly maguffin.

In our games, most corporate characters end up as go-betweens and trouble-shooters for some douche with a bigger pay cheque than theirs. This then gives them some sense of responsibility, for good or ill.

…and they're useful to show the huge difference between have, and have-not.

I'm a very generous GM - I always make sure a corporate PC has all the trappings; some pull, the great car/AV, the swanky pad, hot partner addicted to the lifestyle, access to some sweet resources. It makes them work harder to keep it. Without the job, they're just little people and I make sure that concept scares them.

Then, of course, the ruthlessness tends to come naturally…

@Companero: And it's bloody hard work. But it's worth it. My player group can't function in Cyberpunk games without that kind of anxiety. It seems to have become their natural state. I just get the NPCs to fan the flames a little… I figure it's obvious to outsiders how fragile the team's relationships are, particularly as they're sometimes not very subtle about it.

I must say that the player of the Felix character did agonise a lot about doing the right thing during the campaign, it was just very difficult for him. And he usually regretted it (plus the other PCs would give him hell for his apparent inconsistency - lots of "who's fucking side are you on?" style comments.

It would be refreshing to have a corporate character who was forthright, honest, and/or ethical.

In my game, he/she would be unemployed.

Love the latest blog post and the adventure ideas. Sterling stuff sir.

I did play a corporate in a game some time ago. I was the go-between for Militech who'd hired (press-ganged) the team. I was privy to things the other PCs were not and was using them for my own agenda (taking down my immediate line manager). They loved the resources I could provide for them, which created an artificial trust that I used to my advantage.

The character had the face changing tech outlined in When Gravity Fails. I presented as two different people - one to the company, one to the team. The alterations took some time and were incredibly painful, which made for some interesting tactical decisions.

I must say that I really enjoyed playing the team off against my boss and vice versa.

I also GMed a successful game with a Biotechnica corporate PC called Felix Winter. His starting write up is in Reservoir Dogs here: http://vfte.cyberpunk.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=7885

The team was constantly pulled between Felix and the group's fixer, Matt Black, who had history. The power plays were brilliant. Our corporate also had to deal with his department manager, his dubious agenda and the manager's cronies and loyalists. They made him dance like a puppet as he lied to the rest of the team so that he could hand over the twin combat clone PCs to the company. Happy times.

And yeah, he thought he was the team leader. He didn't survive though…

I find corporate PCs are best played by your most ruthless, conniving players, the ones who really enjoy the duplicity, conflicting agendas and are loyal only to themselves. Like me!

Surely a FB page would just distract discussions away from VtfE even more?

I like the pod hotel!

Thanks!

There's a lot more to come. I've been busy running the game and I've had some serious deadlines at work. More soon.

I'm having a lot of fun spotting the references

Er, yeah… there's a few. Think of it as an homage to the VtfE creative hive-mind.

I really love it when people put this much effort into thinking through the atmosphere and the science fictional elements of the CP setting.

The atmosphere is one of the most important element in my games, on a par with the story. I want my players to be there for a few hours on a Sunday night. And the science fiction is key, otherwise the game can feel too contemporary; 2012 with implants. Which bugs the crap out of me.

I'm actually really interested in how you've handled the plague elements of the setting. It's something i'd really like to explore a lot more in my next campaign.

Initially, I just described the symptoms and the suffering. The players did the rest by running like hell, or putting the carrier down. I also made sure, as in real life, that outbreaks cropped up with no rhyme nor reason. People got sick at random, or so it seemed to the (non-CDC) PCs. News media helps ramp up the threat factor.

Mechanically, depending on the disease and it's pathogen, I utilised the existing rules for gas, drugs and physiological addiction.

So, if a disease or virus has a vector based on contaminated water for example, such as HIST, I'd go with the physiological addiction mechanics in the Drugs chapter on page 124. The character is infected, and must roll lower than Body Type each hour after contamination (for 48 hours). On a failed roll, early stage symptoms will become apparent (effects and/or damage vary per disease type). The character gets one chance at a Very Difficult Endurance roll. This is, in effect, the PC's immune system fighting the infection. Certain implants may give a bonus at the referee's discretion.

Then the fun stuff starts - stats decrease, sickness or bleeds begin, respiratory problems etc. All the good stuff to get the players to panic and be all WTF?! OH SHIT! MEDIC!!

I don't have an extensive list of stages of infection, or symptoms. I sort of wing it. I use common sense if an airborne pathogen comes into contact with a character with nasal filters; they get a small bonus to the Body Type roll, or the normal filter % roll.

Sprayed with the blood of a VT-HIV sufferer? % chance (or roll under Luck) to determine if the virus has entered the body.

For things like The Creep, I just pile up the rads following Near Orbit's guidelines.

And sometimes I just make it up to frighten them. I don't think gaming internal bleeding and your body being eaten by aggressive bacteria is that much fun as a player. Believing it's going to happen is another thing entirely… The plagues are really background colour and an environmental threat after all.

There are some good rules at The Cutting Edge website regarding disease, based in part on rules from Twilight:2000 http://www.shoestring-graphics.com/CP2020/...res/disease.htm

I've started to collate some bits on my South Africa campaign:

http://vfte.cyberpunk.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=8166