In this third installment I present you the rules for cybernetic enhancements as well as a list of more than one hundred pieces of cyberware.
As I have already stated in Part 1, these are setting-neutral. You can tailor their appearance or functionality according to the specifics of your game world.
And here is Part 2, if you missed it.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Monday, October 15, 2018
An Attempt at an OSR Cyberpunk Game Part 2 - Character Creation
In this second part of my attempt at making an OSR Cyberpunk game I present to you the rules for character creation. Built for Speed!
Learning the Ropes - The DM as Musician
When I first discovered the OSR, a little more than a year ago, and learned about the concepts of sandbox and players agency, I immediately saw the analogy with improvisational music.
One of the players proposes an idea, using the shared language of the genre, to the rest of the band which, in turn, begins to interact with it, establishing a dialog who can take that idea in many different directions, sometimes very far away from its point of origin.
The improvisational aspect engrained in tabletop RPGs is what attracted me to this wonderful hobby in the first place, and just like when I was learning my instrument, I find myself eager to suck up all the information and advice the OSR godfathers share with the community on a daily basis with the intention of applying it at the table as soon as I have the chance.
And here is where the problem arises.
With improvisational music, there's an important lesson one learns at some point along the path: when performing and expressing your creativity on stage, forget about all the practice you've done. What this means is, spend as many hours as you can shredding in your room, developing all possible chops and techniques, but once you step on stage, play the music, do not practice. Let the muscle memory, acquired during practice, kick in but do not think about it, or you won't be particularly musical in your playing. You conversation with the other musicians won't be very fluid nor will it be particularly enjoyable playing with you.
Now, I found this to be true for DMming as well. I often show up at the table with my brain filled to the brim with a never-ending list of advice I've read on the internet (Jeff Rients tweets alone are enough to fill a book of great DM practices, and in fact they did) and the conscious intention of using them in the game. But in the end, between keeping track of npcs, coming up with stuff on the fly and the general effort of imparting a shred of sense into that mess I just made up, I often fail to apply most, if any, of those tricks and tips I so wanted to make use of.
So I came to the realization that I should probably absorb as much as I can while away from the table and then leave it to my brain's muscle memory to bring that stuff up during play instead of trying to force it. This way I can better respond to what my players throw at me and make the experience flow a lot more.
It'd sure be great to find a way to practice DMming away from the table. Anyone does that? How?
One of the players proposes an idea, using the shared language of the genre, to the rest of the band which, in turn, begins to interact with it, establishing a dialog who can take that idea in many different directions, sometimes very far away from its point of origin.
The improvisational aspect engrained in tabletop RPGs is what attracted me to this wonderful hobby in the first place, and just like when I was learning my instrument, I find myself eager to suck up all the information and advice the OSR godfathers share with the community on a daily basis with the intention of applying it at the table as soon as I have the chance.
And here is where the problem arises.
With improvisational music, there's an important lesson one learns at some point along the path: when performing and expressing your creativity on stage, forget about all the practice you've done. What this means is, spend as many hours as you can shredding in your room, developing all possible chops and techniques, but once you step on stage, play the music, do not practice. Let the muscle memory, acquired during practice, kick in but do not think about it, or you won't be particularly musical in your playing. You conversation with the other musicians won't be very fluid nor will it be particularly enjoyable playing with you.
Now, I found this to be true for DMming as well. I often show up at the table with my brain filled to the brim with a never-ending list of advice I've read on the internet (Jeff Rients tweets alone are enough to fill a book of great DM practices, and in fact they did) and the conscious intention of using them in the game. But in the end, between keeping track of npcs, coming up with stuff on the fly and the general effort of imparting a shred of sense into that mess I just made up, I often fail to apply most, if any, of those tricks and tips I so wanted to make use of.
So I came to the realization that I should probably absorb as much as I can while away from the table and then leave it to my brain's muscle memory to bring that stuff up during play instead of trying to force it. This way I can better respond to what my players throw at me and make the experience flow a lot more.
It'd sure be great to find a way to practice DMming away from the table. Anyone does that? How?
Saturday, October 13, 2018
An Attempt at an OSR Cyberpunk Game Part 1 - System Overview
This is my very first attempt at an RPG design and it's a ruleset I'm making first and foremost for myself. After looking for a simple cyberpunk system made for OSR play and not finding one based on the basic D&D mechanics I'm most familiar with, I decided to make one.
Here's what I'm trying to achieve, more or less in the following order:
- A system that is rules-light, making use of mechanics I like
- A system suitable for OSR style of play
- A system that is OSR compatible, meaning it can make use of OSR fantasy dungeons and monsters
- A system that is as neutral as possible, covering all the commonly accepted pillars of cyberpunk, mainly cybernetic augmentations, cyberspace netrunning and "punk", but without it being tied up to a specific setting or vision of the near future.
- Fast to run and fast to play
With that established, here is Part 1, an overview of the system (if you find mentions of something not yet covered, worry not, for it will be included in a future post, since I'll be posting segments of it at a time).
As usual comments are very much encouraged and appreciated (go easy on me, I'm a newbie!!), especially those suggesting alternative mechanics or ideas I have overlooked or that I might not be aware of.
As usual comments are very much encouraged and appreciated (go easy on me, I'm a newbie!!), especially those suggesting alternative mechanics or ideas I have overlooked or that I might not be aware of.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Knave by Ben Milton - A Review
I had a chance to DM a one-shot for my regular 5e group using Knave and I thought I could give you my two cents.
Premise
5e is the only system I have practical experience with, since I've been DMing it for a good two years now. But I have been following the OSR and its philosophy for at least half that time and when my group showed interest in Knave, I used it to run "The Sky-Blind Spire" by Michael Prescott. Ben Milton's actual play of this one page dungeon on his channel "Questing Beast" was the epiphany that made me fully understand the OSR, so it seemed rather fitting.
The System
Knave is a toolbox, written to cover character generation and the basic mechanics of play. This makes it the lightest of the rules-light, in the best way possible. It doesn't tell you how to handle maritime travel, potion crafting or inter-planar stronghold management. It tells you how to hit things, how to carry stuff, how much stuff costs if you want to buy more stuff, how to cast a spell, how to heal your wounds and how to make a monster quick. And guess what, that is all you actually need in order to have the best fun you could possibly have in a made up fantasy world. At least for as long as it took you to finish Final Fantasy VII, with the advantage that Knave costs 2.99 (at the moment of this writing) and it will always have the best graphics you can possibly conceive.
There's a couple of simple ways of doing AC, encumbrance is done by way of items slots, spells are single use and must be found while adventuring, if you really, REALLY, feel the need to make a skill roll, do it by rolling under the most relevant attribute score. If you want to beat someone up, roll and add your modifier. It has more cool little features and an incredibly clever way of rolling Attribute scores but I won't spoil that, you'll have to buy it to find out.
Character Generation
It's FAST! And COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED! Which means it takes less than five minutes for a group of 4 people to make their characters. Also, it doesn't have classes. You randomly roll your starting equipment and off you go! You wanna be a wizard? Fine then, trade your armor for a spell scroll. Because in Knave everyone is a poor sod trying to survive in a harsh, harsh world.
How Does It Play?
It plays the way you want it to play. It forces you to use your imagination and come up with solutions to problems rather than have you execute mechanics. Eralphus found a spell scroll in one of the towers' rooms. I rolled on the 100 level-less spells table and Gate came up. The description says: "A portal to a random plane opens", so that's what he found. Later on, the party met a bunch of giants guarding a treasure and decided to write them a letter, an insulting one, hoping it would lure them out of their lair. INT scores weren't bad overall and everyone who can write even just a little, gotta be able to write insults, so I let them do it. Luckily for the party, a goblin they had previously captured was unanimously elected as the messenger, 'cause he got thrown out the window as soon as the giants grasped the offensiveness of the missive (it took them a while but they got the "mum" part eventually). When Eralphus, coming out from behind a corner, cast the Gate spell, two of the enraged creatures plunged headlong into the Realm of the Giant Mashroom Dong, while the third one was taken down with wits and teamwork, instead of abilities-that-you-have-to-look-up-three-times-on-the-character-sheet-before-you-can-remember-how-they-work, in a battle the bards will sing about for decades to come.
Conclusions
Pros
Premise
5e is the only system I have practical experience with, since I've been DMing it for a good two years now. But I have been following the OSR and its philosophy for at least half that time and when my group showed interest in Knave, I used it to run "The Sky-Blind Spire" by Michael Prescott. Ben Milton's actual play of this one page dungeon on his channel "Questing Beast" was the epiphany that made me fully understand the OSR, so it seemed rather fitting.
The System
Knave is a toolbox, written to cover character generation and the basic mechanics of play. This makes it the lightest of the rules-light, in the best way possible. It doesn't tell you how to handle maritime travel, potion crafting or inter-planar stronghold management. It tells you how to hit things, how to carry stuff, how much stuff costs if you want to buy more stuff, how to cast a spell, how to heal your wounds and how to make a monster quick. And guess what, that is all you actually need in order to have the best fun you could possibly have in a made up fantasy world. At least for as long as it took you to finish Final Fantasy VII, with the advantage that Knave costs 2.99 (at the moment of this writing) and it will always have the best graphics you can possibly conceive.
There's a couple of simple ways of doing AC, encumbrance is done by way of items slots, spells are single use and must be found while adventuring, if you really, REALLY, feel the need to make a skill roll, do it by rolling under the most relevant attribute score. If you want to beat someone up, roll and add your modifier. It has more cool little features and an incredibly clever way of rolling Attribute scores but I won't spoil that, you'll have to buy it to find out.
Character Generation
It's FAST! And COMPLETELY RANDOMIZED! Which means it takes less than five minutes for a group of 4 people to make their characters. Also, it doesn't have classes. You randomly roll your starting equipment and off you go! You wanna be a wizard? Fine then, trade your armor for a spell scroll. Because in Knave everyone is a poor sod trying to survive in a harsh, harsh world.
How Does It Play?
It plays the way you want it to play. It forces you to use your imagination and come up with solutions to problems rather than have you execute mechanics. Eralphus found a spell scroll in one of the towers' rooms. I rolled on the 100 level-less spells table and Gate came up. The description says: "A portal to a random plane opens", so that's what he found. Later on, the party met a bunch of giants guarding a treasure and decided to write them a letter, an insulting one, hoping it would lure them out of their lair. INT scores weren't bad overall and everyone who can write even just a little, gotta be able to write insults, so I let them do it. Luckily for the party, a goblin they had previously captured was unanimously elected as the messenger, 'cause he got thrown out the window as soon as the giants grasped the offensiveness of the missive (it took them a while but they got the "mum" part eventually). When Eralphus, coming out from behind a corner, cast the Gate spell, two of the enraged creatures plunged headlong into the Realm of the Giant Mashroom Dong, while the third one was taken down with wits and teamwork, instead of abilities-that-you-have-to-look-up-three-times-on-the-character-sheet-before-you-can-remember-how-they-work, in a battle the bards will sing about for decades to come.
Conclusions
Pros
- Really fast to teach and play.
- It doesn't get in the way of your imagination and it's never bogged down by book-keeping or mechanic-recollecting, even more than any other rules-light OSR book that I have read so far
- Requires you to make rulings for almost everything, the OSR way. All hail rulings.
- It's perfect for someone like me who can devour the OSR primer along with 400 posts by Jeff Rients but can only remember 1/3 of what's in the Dungeon Master Guide and uses 1/10 of it on his best day. Knave it's 7 PAGES LONG!
- It has designer's notes
Cons
- It requires you to already have a knowledge of D&D in one form or another. I very much doubt that someone who has never heard of it (or RPGs in general) would be able to pick it up and play it.
- In the text, Attribute scores are sometimes referred to as "Defenses", and although I can see why Ben would see them that way, I still think it's a little confusing. But we're just nitpicking here. This game is so cool he can call them "puppies" for all I care. In fact, this last point is not even a con. And even the first con is not really a con. F**k it, this game has only pros as far as I'm concerned.
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