Later I will try to expand on this, but for now I want to write some concerns about martial arts and non martial arts.
There are a few skills I find poorly conceived.
Brawling, Melee, Fencing and Martial Arts ... on one side we have the enormous difference between Brawling and Martial Arts ... on the other the inexistent difference between Melee and Fencing.
As a Skill Brawling is quite mediocre, even easy MA are fairly superior to it and cost the same to learn. Meanwhile, Melee and Fencing doesn't even have a difference apart from name (and ignoring the optional rule from the GM guide).
My proposal is to convert Fencing to a martial arts (Pacific Rim style) so swords become more fearsome and Fencing more useful.
And merging Brawling with Melee ... so maybe you cannot do the same damage, but at least you can fight with anything that comes to your hands.
Atemporal musings about rules and ideas on Cyberpunk 2020
2011-12-14
A little adventure (Part 1b)
I have to continue the adventure, but as the first week ended, so did my free time.
Eventually I will manage to write it XD
The schematics for the adventure are:
Chapter 1: Meeting Jaws - Player's get a contract and find a hacker dead.
Chapter 2: Searching for clues - Player's need to get in a remote datafortress where Jaws stored valuable secrets from a corporation. They are encrypted with strong keys, they will need a supercomputer to read it's contents.
Chapter 3: Creepers - Someone tries to kill the player's using cheap full borgs with brains that self destruct when dead. Attacks repeat during the rest of the adventure at random intervals.
Chapter 4: Light on the matter - Player's infiltrate or negotiate to access a supercomputer and decrypt Jaw files. They learn that a corporation is utilizing a variation of Soul Killer to copy minds to computers installed on full prosthetic bodies. The corporation is accused of kidnapping and killing famous people to acquire his minds.
Chapter 5: Revenge - Player's get to attack/infiltrate the secret laboratories of the corporation to blow of his experiments/projects. Lot's of C6 involved.
Eventually I will manage to write it XD
The schematics for the adventure are:
Chapter 1: Meeting Jaws - Player's get a contract and find a hacker dead.
Chapter 2: Searching for clues - Player's need to get in a remote datafortress where Jaws stored valuable secrets from a corporation. They are encrypted with strong keys, they will need a supercomputer to read it's contents.
Chapter 3: Creepers - Someone tries to kill the player's using cheap full borgs with brains that self destruct when dead. Attacks repeat during the rest of the adventure at random intervals.
Chapter 4: Light on the matter - Player's infiltrate or negotiate to access a supercomputer and decrypt Jaw files. They learn that a corporation is utilizing a variation of Soul Killer to copy minds to computers installed on full prosthetic bodies. The corporation is accused of kidnapping and killing famous people to acquire his minds.
Chapter 5: Revenge - Player's get to attack/infiltrate the secret laboratories of the corporation to blow of his experiments/projects. Lot's of C6 involved.
2011-12-08
A little adventure (Part 1)
INTRODUCTION
Players get a notification from Edgerunners Inc., someone needs a group of edgerunners to check for the welfare of a lost friend. The contact is from Japan, and while he will hide his identity he will pose as Totoro (with according avatar).
Totoro has a friend named George "Jaws" Fredderick who have been missed for a few weeks now.
Jaws was a netrunner from nightcity, he was into something big. Totoro doesn't know if he is alive, hidden or flatlined and frozen in a life support system. Edgerunners should go to the last known apartment, investigate and report to the contractor (Totoro).
It's a simple go and spot mission so the reward is low, 1000 eb. If Jaws has been killed, Totoro will post a new revenge mission for a greater reward.
CHAPTER 1 - MEETING JAWS
Getting to Jaws apartment could be a problem bi itself. Jaws was a resident in Little Italy (A1 in map), the building is the territory of Marchelo's boys a little gang dealing with protection rackets, drugs and muscle bikes ... they inhabit between Mob buildings and under they law. Jaws have done some jobs for them so they don't touch his dwelling.
They roam on that area and don't let anybody who they don't know to enter the building. There area 2d10 members at any hour of the day. Player's can get violent or try a more stealthy option.
For example they could go to the surrounding buildings and try to jump to the top (if they can jump the gap). Or maybe climb one of the walls on a side street.
The building were Jaw is is the nº 26, it's an empty building waiting for it's proprietary to decide if he want's to build an hotel (with gangs messing with his attempts). Meanwhile it's occupied with the gangs and other nice guys.
The nº 27 houses a series of upscale condominiums. Many upper-level mobsters live here, with the occasional well-to-do outsider thrown in for cover.
The right building, nº 24, it's Balboa Aeronautics. This is nominally a designer and manufacturer of aircraft, but the premises also serve as offices for many illicit Mob enterprises. Most Mob netrunners use Balboa's back room as base of operations.
Jaws was not with the mob so he didn't use those installations. The back building, nº 20, is Tamalpias Crimson Winery a business used by Mob accountants to launder illicit funds. In addition, the winery actually ferments grapes and markets an annual vintage.
Player's should be wary about the Mob goons. They are not particularly dangerous, but making enemies with them isn't a casual affair. Someone with good persuasion and social skills could convince them to access to the top of one of those buildings (dif. 20).
The door on the nº26 roof is closed (dif. 20).
Also, they could provoke distractions on the street and sneak in while they are not watching. This is a stealth check opposed to their awareness roll.
Jaw door is closed with an electric lock with a pad. It's quite difficult to bypass (Dif. 25), and doing so can activate alarms on the building alerting everybody. Breaking the door will cause the alarms to jump too. But the walls between condos aren't worth a shit, so player's could sneak to a side door and break the wall (Strength Feat Dif. 15 ... or SP 2, SDP 20).
Climbing down the wall to enter from the window is a Dif. 17 test. The window is flimsy and can be broken quite easily.
Once inside the air is stale and dust covers everything, although there isn't much to cover. Jaws is sitting on his couch, head hanging inert and with his corpse dried. His interface plugs have signs of being burned and his terminal has a blinking light of an unread message waiting.
The life support seems to have failed, unsurprisingly as it is a cheap replica.
The message is a Watchdog program alerting on an attempt to access a remote Datafortress. This is the only thing in the terminal, all programs have been erased by outside forces and even the terminal is half fried by anti-system programs.
There are a bunch of chips scattered on a table nearby full of documents, reports and forms. The information in them is thick and require long hours of work to understand what they mean.
Contacting Totoro about the fate of Jaws grants them the reward and the next mission.
The files are about brainwashing technology of an undisclosed corporation, there seems to be something odd about them. Someone who has read the files and make a programming dif. 25 check can understand the technology is oriented to some kind of human digital minds.
Players get a notification from Edgerunners Inc., someone needs a group of edgerunners to check for the welfare of a lost friend. The contact is from Japan, and while he will hide his identity he will pose as Totoro (with according avatar).
Edgerunners Inc is a good way to incorporate adventures into a game. They can be exchanged rather easily to conform existing campaigns NPCs, and they are a never ending source of missions for the players. So you should feel free to change them if you like.
 |
| George "Jaws" Fredderick |
Jaws was a netrunner from nightcity, he was into something big. Totoro doesn't know if he is alive, hidden or flatlined and frozen in a life support system. Edgerunners should go to the last known apartment, investigate and report to the contractor (Totoro).
It's a simple go and spot mission so the reward is low, 1000 eb. If Jaws has been killed, Totoro will post a new revenge mission for a greater reward.
CHAPTER 1 - MEETING JAWS
Getting to Jaws apartment could be a problem bi itself. Jaws was a resident in Little Italy (A1 in map), the building is the territory of Marchelo's boys a little gang dealing with protection rackets, drugs and muscle bikes ... they inhabit between Mob buildings and under they law. Jaws have done some jobs for them so they don't touch his dwelling.
Average member:
INT 5, REF 6, TECH 4, COOL 6, ATTR 6, MA 6, BODY 6, LUCK 6, EMP 5
SKILLS: Awareness 4, Melee weapons 6, Handgun 5, Brawling 6, Intimidate 7, Human perception 5, Persuasion 7, Dodge 5, Stealth 7, Streetwise 5
CYBERWARE: Optishields (ChrBk1, pg31) are common, and other usually low-level modifications, ciberaudio, etc.
They roam on that area and don't let anybody who they don't know to enter the building. There area 2d10 members at any hour of the day. Player's can get violent or try a more stealthy option.For example they could go to the surrounding buildings and try to jump to the top (if they can jump the gap). Or maybe climb one of the walls on a side street.
The nº 27 houses a series of upscale condominiums. Many upper-level mobsters live here, with the occasional well-to-do outsider thrown in for cover.
The right building, nº 24, it's Balboa Aeronautics. This is nominally a designer and manufacturer of aircraft, but the premises also serve as offices for many illicit Mob enterprises. Most Mob netrunners use Balboa's back room as base of operations.
Jaws was not with the mob so he didn't use those installations. The back building, nº 20, is Tamalpias Crimson Winery a business used by Mob accountants to launder illicit funds. In addition, the winery actually ferments grapes and markets an annual vintage.
Player's should be wary about the Mob goons. They are not particularly dangerous, but making enemies with them isn't a casual affair. Someone with good persuasion and social skills could convince them to access to the top of one of those buildings (dif. 20).
The door on the nº26 roof is closed (dif. 20).
Also, they could provoke distractions on the street and sneak in while they are not watching. This is a stealth check opposed to their awareness roll.
Jaw door is closed with an electric lock with a pad. It's quite difficult to bypass (Dif. 25), and doing so can activate alarms on the building alerting everybody. Breaking the door will cause the alarms to jump too. But the walls between condos aren't worth a shit, so player's could sneak to a side door and break the wall (Strength Feat Dif. 15 ... or SP 2, SDP 20).
Climbing down the wall to enter from the window is a Dif. 17 test. The window is flimsy and can be broken quite easily.
Once inside the air is stale and dust covers everything, although there isn't much to cover. Jaws is sitting on his couch, head hanging inert and with his corpse dried. His interface plugs have signs of being burned and his terminal has a blinking light of an unread message waiting.
The message is a Watchdog program alerting on an attempt to access a remote Datafortress. This is the only thing in the terminal, all programs have been erased by outside forces and even the terminal is half fried by anti-system programs.
There are a bunch of chips scattered on a table nearby full of documents, reports and forms. The information in them is thick and require long hours of work to understand what they mean.
Contacting Totoro about the fate of Jaws grants them the reward and the next mission.
The files are about brainwashing technology of an undisclosed corporation, there seems to be something odd about them. Someone who has read the files and make a programming dif. 25 check can understand the technology is oriented to some kind of human digital minds.
2011-12-07
ACPA Base Suit
I find ACPA designs quite questionable ... if you draw one of the models presented and a human silhouette on top of it, there is no way it can be operated without crushing every bone of that unfortunate pilot.
Landmates, from Masamune Shirow, are a more realistic approach.
Datafortress have some interpretations on Landmates using Maximun Metal rules. But I found them to exaggerated ... if you read some of the data notes about Landmates by Masamune, you can read a 20 mm canon is a serious menace for a Landmate.
I don't think a 50SP, -11 Toughness "light" Landmate has that much of a problem with a 20mm auto-canon (8d10) which average 44 points of damage (you should do a 8 on every d10 to do something).
Even more, I find them expensive ... I know it's cool to pack the better gear when mounting something. But haven seen how real manufacturers work, is safer to assume the designers will go for the cheapest components.
So here comes my approximation for a basic Landmate without extras, with the following annotations : Pilot resides only on the torso+legs area of the Landmate. Impacts on arms/head won't touch the pilot. Likewise, while I'm not posting control arms as external devices, they are considered part of the torso ... if the impact touch a pilot arm, it is supposed to impact the control arm (with the same SP as the torso).
CARIOCCO
Chassis : STR 25 Militech's Gunslinger
Toughness : -7
Punch : 3d10; Kick : 4d10; Crush : 4d10
Capacity : 1250; Carry : 375
Trooper Size : 110 kg reserved space.
Weight : 413 kg
SIB/DFB : -2/+1
Armor : Militech's KromGear (SP 30)
Head : SP 30, SDP 6 (2 spaces)
- Wideband aperture SDP 15 (1/2 space)
- Sensory Extensions (external) SP 15, SDP 15 (1/2 space)
Torso : SP 30, SDP 19 (4 spaces)
- Advanced control system (no space)
- RussianArms KwikFix SDP 15 (1/2 space)
- Escape Hatch SDP 30 (1/2 space)
- Military radio SDP 10 (1/2 space)
Arms : SP 30, SDP 6 (3 spaces)
Legs : SP 30, SDP 13 (3 spaces)
Price : 48.000 eb
That's it. I find in a more manageable price range, and combat wise it isn't that powerful it could obliterate a whole city. After all, a STR 52, SP 100 machine is impressive, but boring.
It's important to note that usually I tend to halve SP numbers on most armor because they are to powerful compared to the examples provided in the book. This Landmate is made with low SP in mind ... if you want to halve SP remember to equip it with a heavier armor or it will be vulnerable to small arms fire.
Landmates, from Masamune Shirow, are a more realistic approach.
Datafortress have some interpretations on Landmates using Maximun Metal rules. But I found them to exaggerated ... if you read some of the data notes about Landmates by Masamune, you can read a 20 mm canon is a serious menace for a Landmate.
I don't think a 50SP, -11 Toughness "light" Landmate has that much of a problem with a 20mm auto-canon (8d10) which average 44 points of damage (you should do a 8 on every d10 to do something).
Even more, I find them expensive ... I know it's cool to pack the better gear when mounting something. But haven seen how real manufacturers work, is safer to assume the designers will go for the cheapest components.
So here comes my approximation for a basic Landmate without extras, with the following annotations : Pilot resides only on the torso+legs area of the Landmate. Impacts on arms/head won't touch the pilot. Likewise, while I'm not posting control arms as external devices, they are considered part of the torso ... if the impact touch a pilot arm, it is supposed to impact the control arm (with the same SP as the torso).
CARIOCCOChassis : STR 25 Militech's Gunslinger
Toughness : -7
Punch : 3d10; Kick : 4d10; Crush : 4d10
Capacity : 1250; Carry : 375
Trooper Size : 110 kg reserved space.
Weight : 413 kg
SIB/DFB : -2/+1
Armor : Militech's KromGear (SP 30)
Head : SP 30, SDP 6 (2 spaces)
- Wideband aperture SDP 15 (1/2 space)
- Sensory Extensions (external) SP 15, SDP 15 (1/2 space)
Torso : SP 30, SDP 19 (4 spaces)
- Advanced control system (no space)
- RussianArms KwikFix SDP 15 (1/2 space)
- Escape Hatch SDP 30 (1/2 space)
- Military radio SDP 10 (1/2 space)
Arms : SP 30, SDP 6 (3 spaces)
Legs : SP 30, SDP 13 (3 spaces)
Price : 48.000 eb
That's it. I find in a more manageable price range, and combat wise it isn't that powerful it could obliterate a whole city. After all, a STR 52, SP 100 machine is impressive, but boring.
It's important to note that usually I tend to halve SP numbers on most armor because they are to powerful compared to the examples provided in the book. This Landmate is made with low SP in mind ... if you want to halve SP remember to equip it with a heavier armor or it will be vulnerable to small arms fire.
2011-12-06
Less combat ready borgs
Full body conversions are a quite combat focused (SP 25 alpha model?), so I put a version more suited for domestic use.
Model: DOMO CP2060 series
Physical Stats: REF 6, ATR 6, MOV 6, BOD 8
Option Packages: None
Physical Structure:
- Head : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (Optic 4+4 options, Audio 6 options)
- R.Arm (w/hand) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (3 options)
- L.Arm (w/hand) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (3 options)
- Torso : SP 0, SDP 30/40 (4 options)
- R.Leg (w/foot) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (2 options)
- L.Leg (w/foot) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (2 options)
Total package cost: 20.900 eb
Humanity cost: 9d6+3
The DOMO model comes in a few varieties, Merlin, Jack, Tetsu, Susan, Annie, Mya. All models from the DOMO series have the same faces/body types ... is virtually impossible to distinguish two Jack models (to name one of them).
If you want custom face, voice and body you will need body-sculpting.
DOMO series uses realskin, it's a DIFFICULT check to spot it's true nature (although anybody who have seen the ads will recognize them). This only means plastic flesh, no body temperature, no breath simulation, etc
If you want to really feel "human" buy Gemini.
Model: DOMO CP2060 series
Physical Stats: REF 6, ATR 6, MOV 6, BOD 8
Option Packages: None
Physical Structure:
- Head : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (Optic 4+4 options, Audio 6 options)
- R.Arm (w/hand) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (3 options)
- L.Arm (w/hand) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (3 options)
- Torso : SP 0, SDP 30/40 (4 options)
- R.Leg (w/foot) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (2 options)
- L.Leg (w/foot) : SP 0, SDP 20/30 (2 options)
Total package cost: 20.900 eb
Humanity cost: 9d6+3
The DOMO model comes in a few varieties, Merlin, Jack, Tetsu, Susan, Annie, Mya. All models from the DOMO series have the same faces/body types ... is virtually impossible to distinguish two Jack models (to name one of them).
If you want custom face, voice and body you will need body-sculpting.
DOMO series uses realskin, it's a DIFFICULT check to spot it's true nature (although anybody who have seen the ads will recognize them). This only means plastic flesh, no body temperature, no breath simulation, etc
If you want to really feel "human" buy Gemini.
French are cool people
Today I discovered a weird thing. Cyberpunk v3 looks better in french. It still have a weird setting and dumb assumptions (paper virus and all), but at least no french can call it "barbiepunk".
The small handgun
I'm looking at you little 5mm handgun.How many time have you seen a gun like BudgetArms C-13 used as a handgun, even a secondary one ... or emergency ... or whatever. Not much I believe.
One of the problems it's Cyberpunk 2020 armors being a little bit overpowered,in fact it's not hard to see people halving armor SP (a rule I myself have applied more than one time).
But even shooting against someone unarmored it's not going to do a lot of damage, unless you point it between the eyes. And even there it will hardly kill anyone.
There are inventive ways to use small handguns. One of my personal uses (in game of course) was a hidden gun in a flesh pocket packed with acid ammunition to soften hard targets.
Sadly small caliber guns cannot be used with Chromebook weapon modification for militech 25 pistol grenades (image on right is based on this). Which is a shame, it would be ironic to pack HEP ammunition with such a small pistol and to blow up a heavy cyborg with it.
Well ... I suppose small caliber is relegated to specific targeting and special ammunition. A shame really.
It's a shame because there are a series of implants that utilize small caliber ammunition. And ... to be sincere, are quite useless. Well, not useless at all, but only useful in certain specific context.
Let's look at One-shoot special from Dynalar Techonolgies series "Digits". You have only one shot (unless you have more than one finger installed), so we have to make it count.
From all ammunition, Acid, API and Fragmentation Flechette seems to be the more dangerous, but still won't make your day ... maybe you could use it to break a lock, blow someone eye or some thing like this. Still ... missed opportunity.
Of course I could make some special ammunition, but it would feel cheap ...
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