gomiville

The trash list seems well in hand.

WEATHER TABLES:

A. Temperature (d10)

1-4: Unseasonably hot

5-7: Average for the season

8-10: Unseasonably cold

B. Clouds (d10)

1-2: Sunny

3-5: Foggy (+1 Precipitation roll)

6-9: Cloudy (+2 Precipitation roll)

10: So overcast that it seems like night (+4 Precipitation roll)

C. Precipitation (d10)

1: Dry

2-4: Humid but no rain/snow

5-7: Drizzle/Light Flurry

8-9: Rain/Snow

10: Storm/Blizzard

Tends towards hot, cloudy and damp, so maybe change proportions if you prefer a different average environment. But I was going for the nasty, always raining kind of idea.

(Also, maybe the cloud table should apply a modifier to the precipitation table. The cloudier it is, the more likely there will be rain. Added in parentheses above.)

One of the pair of wireless earbuds, but it's mate is missing. (Sorry, couldn't help but make an Apple joke.)

A cluster of cigarette butts as if someone stood in one place for a long time, smoking.

A shoddily made fabbed/3D printed object, made of sub-par materials slowly melting in the acid rain.

An empty metal briefcase, lock pried apart, maybe with half a handcuff still attached to the handle (or maybe a full pair of cuffs, but hand cut off at the wrist still attached).

A small crashed flying drone (quadcopter, single rotor, fixed wing, etc), maybe with signs it was shot down. (There's a camera mount on it. Is there anything in memory?)

A graffitied, malfunctioning and tipped on its side auto-trashcan (follows people around and reminds them to not litter).

A fold-up scooter, missing a component (wheel, battery, etc).

A couple shopping bags from a popular tourist destination, still with trinkets in them.

A single shoe, very high end, from the latest and most popular designer, with scuffing on the heel.

A cluster of old-school ammunition casings, all in a single caliber (or a couple of clusters in close proximity, in different calibers).

Works for me. Other people?

I like the activities for the new professions too.

Some gang type/professions combos are likely to be a little silly (Street fighter / Scavengers), but with creative interpretation, it could give rise to some really interesting ideas (people that make their own weapons from spare parts, primitive skills blade makers, etc).

Some new gang occupations to replace puppetting for someone else:

1. Bootlegging / counterfeiting (anything, from booze to music / movies / software)

2. Scavenging & repurposing

 

but we need more...

Those two, plus the youth chapter, make it a 10 item list. And considering many of them represent multiple possible occupations (drug dealing, gun running, black market cyber, movie pirating, booze bootlegging, jeans counterfeiting, etc), I think that works.

Common gang types (1-7 on a d10, or 1-4 on a d6):

Cybered Boosters - chrome, visible cybernetics

Music-fan Chromers - dressing in thew style of their favorite band, an instrument or two (possibly broken)

Drug junkies - looney eyes, unkempt hair and tattered clothes

Impersonator posers - more or less like their idol

Party gangs - wild haircuts, flashy clothes, glowsticks

Street fighters - leathers, exposed muscles, references to warrior cultures

Skinheads - bald heads, combat boots, racist symbols

Skaters & Rollers - boards/skates/etc, flamboyant or explicitly absent protective gear

Ethnic based gang - appropriate ethnic clothing

Sports hooligans - tracksuits, sports club emblems

 

Uncommon gang types (8-10 on a d10, or 5-6 on a d6):

Mixed (any two)

Nihilist zombies - wear black. Lots of black.

Primitivist Luddites - all natural fibers

Pranksters & clowns - outlandish clothing & face paint or perfectly normal looking, supplies of water ballons, squirtguns or sprays

Street artists - paint spattered clothing, spraypaint, climbing gear, respirators

Religious fanatics - giant signs plastered with icons and quotes, conspicuous religious symbols

Biker moto-gangers - biker leathers & helmets, vehicles nearby

Extended family - generally appear normal

Guardians - semi-military clothing, obvious gang colors or badges

Kids - tattered clothing, possibly a size too small or too big

 

What they do for a living - what they might be doing right now!*:

Petty crime (shoplifting, dealing in stolen goods, mugging) - harassing local vendors, lounging getting drunk/high

Deal in illegal merchandise (guns, drugs, cyber…) - lookouts for cops/rivals, dealers making sales, guards outside stash house

Deal in information - taking pictures/video, tapping into the line box outside a building, staking out a subject

Run a protection racket - demolishing a store, roughing somebody up, setting up fire

Puppet for a corporation -

Puppet for a crime syndicate -

Puppet for another gang (either their bitch or youth chapter)

Hire as muscle (protect, bodyguard, beat up, assassinate?) - walking subject from home/business to car, setting up an ambush

Provide legitimate services (courier, guide, entertain...) - going about their particular business, on a smoke/drink break

Kidnap people (for ransom, organ-legging, slave trafficking...) - stuffing an unconscious person into a vehicle

 

* note - apart form their "professional" activity, any gang is as well likely to be:

- picking up a brawl with somebody they don't like,

- tagging the neightbourhood with their logo,

- harrassing passers-by (especially those who seem to be at odds with the gang's ideology),

- listening to their favourite music and / or propaganda (the louder, the better!),

- getting drunk / high / psyched out, depending on preference,

- participating in skill or dare contests among themselves,

- playing tough toward cops / security / another gang (as far as they can get without starting a fight),

- making themselves visible on the street (especially if this is their turf)

- generally lounging out & having a good time

or any combination of the above.

Filled in the appearances, and a few activities. Thoughts, opinions?

Not sure about some of the activities. What would a puppet gang be doing, in particular?

I remember in the Ocelot gang creation system, puppets were a "roll again" thing, to see what their "front" identity was. A drug gang secretly controlled by a pharma corp, for example, or a booster gang controlled by a megacorp. Maybe puppet shouldn't be included in the profession table, as that's more a GM/plot decision, than a necessary appearance thing.

If you see a gang, do you see that they're a puppet? Maybe youth chapters or something, that are wearing versions of the full gang's colors. But those controlled by corporations or crime syndicates will otherwise look like a regular gang.

Think of the tables like you're a GM. You roll up a gang and get street artists who deal in information. So, you tell the players: "You see a bunch of people tagging a big mural on the wall of the store. <perception roll> You notice a few of them are tacking up mini spy cams aimed at the apartments across the street. <expert: local gangs roll> You recognize their colors as members of the 8th Street Home Improvement Team, also known as 8-SHIT." Maybe they're also a puppet for InfoComp or the Triads, but you can't see that.

And can I steal that for the intro gomiville?

Go for it.

It would be nice to have a list of things the gang is doing at the moment (tagging neightbourhood with spraypaint, picking up a fight with a rival gang, harrassing some passer-bys, vandalizing something, etc etc), but I don't think I'll be doing that one anytime soon (so if somebody has a better idea, take it!).

That could be done as a series of "tags" next to the gang's "profession." A drug dealing gang is unlikely to causing a ruckus by harassing people. They want to keep a low profile away from the cops and keep things cool for customers. A tagging gang is more likely to be spray painting the wall, but others might be tagging too.

Maybe include tags next to the gang type, which could hint at appearance (a combat gang might wear leathers, while a skater gang might have outrageous helmets), and tags next to income generation, which could hint at activity (drug gang standing around watching for cops and rivals).

Something like:

* Combat gang (leathers, exposed muscles, references to warrior cultures)

* Skater gang (boards/skates/etc, flamboyant or explicitly absent protective gear)

--

* Deal in illegal merch (lookouts for cops/rivals, dealers making sales, guards outside stash house)

* Petty crime (harassing local vendors, lounging getting drunk/high)

That way, when the GM does two rolls (or whatever) to create the gang, they also get a little pocket series of suggestions for the look and action for the gang.

(Same could go for other tables in the project too.)

I was thinking about determining wealth level, combat potential and size / numbers of the gang, and maybe "what they're doing right now" tables, but this would require more dice rolls to determine it. More like my usual style, but ill-suited to the flashy, in-media-res style you're presenting here seems I'm an old dog, slow to learn new tricks...

There's already a gang generator out there (Ocelot's, I think?). You could add on to, or adapt, that, if you wanted something with more depth.

I feel like we're looking at two different generator concepts here, that's been referenced before, but I just thought of a new way to look at it.

This project is the surface generation. Your characters are walking down the street and they see (smell, hear, etc) *something*. They see buildings, but what are the buildings? They see a advertising vidscreen, but what's on the screen? They see a couple of gang members hanging out, but what do they look like?

There's also the depth generation. You're plotting a campaign, or writing a large background, and you want to supply details about the *things*. This building is the headquarters of XYZ corp, which has N floors, walls with M SP and A number of guards carrying B types of weapons.

Depth generators are the standard we've all worked with. The Vornheim city kit is surface generation. It's all flavor with little substance. If you want substance, use a depth generator, but this is quick and dirty surface.

It's like a film or theatre set. Buildings represented by painted flats, without any actual interior behind them. If you want an interior, you'll need to build it. But we're just creating the illusion of an actual building that'll fool the front row.

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

And I like the "what gang does for a living" table too, Mikael, especially because it includes some "legitimate" employment, beyond simply "drug dealing," petty crime and extortion.

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

The "off-site" version can be a large table, or tables, requiring multiple die rolls. Because, also, if anyone is converting this to a spreadsheet or code, a bunch of die rolls isn't that troublesome or slow. The "off-site" version can be turned into "tableside" for a "GM tablet" or something.

I kind of like the huge versions of these tables. They're not quick and fast, which is a major point of this project, right? But, at the same time, they are great inspiration fuel.

Maybe we need to have two versions of each table, in two portions of the book.

First, there's the Quik-E version, with maybe 10 or 100 options in a simple d10 or d100 table. Quick, fast and easy to use at the gaming table.

Second, there's the Bells & Whistles version, with 10 tables of 100 options each, requiring three rolls and a differential equation to use. Bigger, slower, but fully of crunchy goodness to get ideas from when you're not actually at the gaming table.

That looks like fun.

Poor Gary. I think Steve is looking at a promotion.

I was thinking about that. Why not have a square grid with big (like 3" across or something) squares with the centre point marked in red ink?

 

Grab a scoop of multi-coloured dice of different sizes, the more random the better, and roll them across the grid.

 

The centre point is whatever building the characters are casing/targeting/running away from.

 

The dice land on the grid determining the rough location of buildings surrounding the target. The colour of the dice indicates type, while the number on the dice might be an indication of size? Height? Something like that .

I like the physical relationship aspect of that idea (and seen at the end of the Firefly city kit), but, at the same time, I don't see it in a city. Many cities are likely on a grid system, and those that aren't are generally pretty densely packed. The random distribution of buildings doesn't work with that.

I had plans on my to do list to do this and get the tables into excel so that could have a simplified front end where you'd select the zone, freeway, shopping, industrial or whatever and with a few dropdown choices would spout out a random encounter or location at the other end. No dice rolling and just a tablet next to me while GM'ing. The future..

That sounds great, and also something Malek77 could help with (he's a great exponent of the "GM's support tablet").

I like the idea of such a tablet, but I think the core output should be text tables, as in a PDF or book. I use Excel (or LibreOffice) for a lot of stuff, but I also code some things up in Python, or just reference the text. Text would be the most usable across platforms.

I like the idea of making it a generalized cyberpunk resource. Not CP2020 specific, but probably more CP2020 than Shadowrun, for example (no magic, no elves, etc). Something that can be used in a variety of games, but is still within the scope of Gibsonian, Pondsmithish, Sterlingesque cyberpunk. Leave out direct brand names (Militech, Arasaka, etc), so it's not tied to CP2020, but keep it in the same basic universe.

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 second all of this. A good grab-bag of "future stuff" would be handy, just to help maintain the flavor. We all know what we might find on a city street in a city we're familiar with, but it's not cyberpunk.

Also, the Sense & The City table is a great idea. "You pause by the front door of the apartment building. You smell <roll> a mix of hot pepper stir-fry and long chain monomers."

This is all stuff we can come up with on our own, but it's handy to have a reference when your brain goes dry.

First item I'd put on the list is a "rapid environment generator."

It's a awfully broad category and obvious for the topic, but part of the problem I always have with urban games is the speed with which characters (and players) move off the beaten path. A "car chase suddenly turns left when I meant for them to turn right" kind of situation.

The character is running down an alleyway, evading corporate security, and comes out into the street. What's on the street? What storefronts are there? Are there vending carts? Is it crowded? Is there a complication, like a protest, traffic jam or film set?

The character pursues their quarry into a shopping mall. Is it one level or two or three? What are the stores? Is it crowded?

The assassination target has an office in a large multi-use building. What offices might be around that office? If there's a shopping gallery on the first floor, what are the storefronts? Is it crowded (huh, is there an echo)?

Just some way of quickly rolling up a basic street or mall or multi-purpose office building or whatever. Obviously, as a GM, you'll custom make the important ones (like maybe the office building I used as an example above), but sometimes you just need to suddenly create a new one.

People say the city is a character in many novels or movies, so we need an "NPC" generator for locations in that city.

I'm going to add my vote to the "add cyberpunk to the world as it is" idea.

I tend to base my games in places I already know (Boston, New England, Chicago, etc), that have maps and buildings already in place. Sure, there's new construction, and maybe entirely new areas (like floating arcologies in Boston Harbor), but it's more about adding flavor to existing locales than creating an entirely new city.

There could be an additional "Build a City" section, to create something completely fresh and new (like Night City), but even then, you likely already know the climate and topology, because you, as the GM, know where you're placing the city. It's not a completely alien landscape (like Vornheim's fantasy world, or the planets of Stars Without Number).

As for naming, Mikael has a point that it will differ from place to place, making it too unwieldy to include. Maybe we could create a "generic multicultural" naming table, reflecting the kind of "people from all over the place" environment of most cyberpunk. Include large proportions of Chinese and Indian names to reflect future demographics. Maybe smaller but still large chunks of American, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil, to reflect the projected seven largest countries in 2050. Throw in a little Japanese, just because it wouldn't be cyberpunk without some Japanese flavor (for some reason). Then include a lot of empty spaces in the table for the user to fill in. That way, if you're in the US, like me, I could include the most common US and Mexican names. Or, Mikael, in Poland, could include Polish names, plus some German, Russian, Baltic and others.

Create a naming table to that's adaptable to the user's locale, but also includes the cyberpunk multicultural globalization ethos.

Speaking of defensible places, there was an article awhile back about discrimination in urban planning in a number of US cities.

Not sure if it's directly translatable to a city kit like this, but it might spur some ideas for how deeply unequal and corrupt future city might look like.

http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/pol...t-city-planning

And I like the idea of coming up with some new businesses. I imagine we could come up with three categories of businesses: Timeless, Old But Updated and Entirely New. Timeless businesses are things like high end retailers or restaurants. Old But Updated might be a bespoke tailor using 3D printing and auto-looms, or a robo-mart convenience store or robo-chef burger joint. Entirely New might be urban farm or something. Come up with good lists of all three, mix them together, and you can randomly generate the storefronts along a city street.

Holy crap, the GM Resources section of Stars Without Number is amazing! Person names, place names, both in multiple languages. Corporation creation, sure, but also religion and political party creation! There's even a random architecture table! This could be a fun resource for any kind of world building. Thanks for the tip.

I was considering trying to make one of my own, though I've only looked at the Shadowrun and Firefly fan-made ones, not the original Vornheim kit.

First step might be coming up with a list of tables, a table of contents of the kit, before creating the tables themselves.

I like the idea of things like a "city block generator" or some quick and dirty NPC background/motivation generator. Maybe a side-mission, "jobs on the dataterm" kind of generator.

This isn't related to the game, but this line made me laugh. I've been one of the crows in this description more often than not, with some brightly dressed friend looking a little lost hanging out with a crew of goth/cyberpunk/rivethead folks.

"When my family gets together to go out, we all have a tendency to wear black leather jackets and black clothes. We’re very cyberpunk and very Goth and monochromatic. My son’s fiancé, however, is very fond of sunshine yellow, so we look like a group of crows with a lost duckling in the middle."

Ooh, the boats are fun. I'm picturing Thelas-affiliated smugglers operating along the coast, docking in camouflaged inlets, like DIY sub pens. Midnight runs out past the 12 mile limit to container ships in international waters, like 21st century rum runners. Normally running mid-grade contraband at the darker end of grey market, but nothing to threaten the more funded cartel smugglers or really attract federal attention. Corporate hired PMCs as their primary antagonists. The players need to sneak into the country? Here's their ride. Or maybe they've been hired to shut a ring down. Or are two Thelas tribes going to war over territory or markets?

Or, rather than smuggling, jacking offshore aquaculture pens. New age fish rustlers.

Hell, you could have LUCK change from session to session with a random die roll.

Oh, there's an idea. I know some people use LUCK for "spending points," where you use LUCK as a pool to tweak roll results in a game session. So, next session, depending on how much luck was left in the pool after last time, you can improve your random luck roll. That way, if you "bank" your luck, you can get "luckier" each time. Over the course of a multi-session game, heading towards a climactic boss battle scenario, you can "save" your luck to have LUCK 9 or 10 for that last climactic session.

Say, 1-3 points left in the pool is +0 on the random LUCK die roll. 4-6 points left in the pool is +1 on the roll. 7-9 is +2 and 10 is +3. That way, if you just don't use your LUCK stats, you're likely to be able to bump your next roll, which makes it likelier to bump the next one more, and so on.

And even if you were homebrewing some rules, I would say the timespan would be too long for most games.

You could improve the physical stats (BOD, MA, REF) through exercise and conditioning, but it would take time and have some kind of upper limit. We're not all capable of Olympic feats, even with heavy training.

The emotional stats (EMP, COOL) could be improved through therapy and maybe meditation or something, but it would take a long time.

The mental stats (INT, TEK) could maybe improve with training too, but that's pretty iffy. You can improve memory or computational speed through exercises, but that's not intelligence, exactly.

The other stats (ATT, LUCK) are too iffy. ATT could maybe improve with exercise too (slimming down, toning up, etc to approach a physical ideal) but not entirely (can't fix facial asymmetry without surgery, for example). Luck is just too nebulous to change.

Overall, it might never improve and if it does, it would take a long time. If you want it to be faster, use technology (how very 'punk).

Been playing bit-by-bit since sometime in the mid-1990s, but mostly use it as a framework for creating things. Write the occasional story, make game content, etc. A sandbox to play around in, rather than a game to play, sort of.

Unless I'm playing under other GMs, I've never liked strictly canon CP2020. I tend to "smooth" out some of the canon extremes.

For example, my nomads aren't Mad Max rejects in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but migrant workers, Gypsies, carnies and off-grid types that have turned inward against a society that neglects them. (Since I'm a New Englander by birth, and tend to base material there, I have a lot of "nomad" societies among the old-school fishing communities along the coast. Thelas nation nomads who live in houses [some of the time], but are culturally "nomad.")

I also tend to tone down the corporate warfare. No outright corporate wars, but lots of basically criminal actions between powerful corporates. Thefts, murders, sabotage, etc, paid off the books, but not as overt as canon. As a result, a lot of crossover and blending between corporates, crime lords and corrupt politicians. Power corrupts, and absolute power just attracts more enemies.

Fewer AVs in the skies, but more Ospreys. Fewer FBCs, but more ACPA (and light hardsuits). Less VR-style netrunning, more traditional hacking.

Overall, the game world is more "five minutes into our future" and less "neon and chrome fantasy land."

And in the past few years, I've been preferring the IU mechanics, and player-created addons, to give the world more flexibility and granularity.

I like this. I might tweak the probabilities a bit for my games, but like the potential for both abandoned and populated spaces. I don't have the abandoned countryside, quasi-Mad Max thing in my standard canon, but some smaller towns have dried up, as the corporations move the factory or buy up the farms and the kids move to the city for work.