In Design: Noir Cyberpunk AW-Hack

Jan 13, 2017 4:12 am
Hey all, I thought I would share my latest project here, as there's a good chance I'll do play-testing here at some point in the future.

The game uses Urban Shadows as it's starting point, as I like how that game drives party dynamics, and is well suited for the type of urban story telling that we want in an noir cyberpunk game.

The stats; Skill (the fighting stat), Charm (the talking stat), Focus (the keep it together stat), Sharp (the thinking stat), Spark (the cybernetics stat). I wanted to have a manipulation of the distributions being more of a mechanic then it is in the base game; so at character creation each stat is assigned either the reliable, standard, or swinging quality; that is when you roll with that stat you either roll 3d4, 2d6 or 1d12 respectively. On a 3d4 you are much more likely to get a hit, but it's quite unlikely that you'll get a 10+. On the 1d12 it's a 50-50 to get a hit, but it's 1 in 4 to get a 10+. I haven't decided if I want to include the usual stat modifiers between -2 and +3 that we see in AW hack in addition to this. I'll be rewriting the help/hinder move to play into this greater focus on shifting the distributions, so if you help, the add an extra dice and discard the lowest, and if you hinder add an extra dice and discard the highest. That way reliable effects aren't effected too much by help/hinder, but swinging stats are hugely effected.

Much like Urban Shadows, I intend to have factions. These will definitely only have the reliable, standard or swinging quality. The factions that I'm using at the moment (still not happy with the names) are Glam (the ritzy and well to do), Corp (the corporate faction), Revolt (the outsiders and freedom fighters), Trans (the augmented), Engi (the techie people). Each faction comes with two playbooks; the Blooded (those born into wealth) and the Stringer (the reporter type) in Glam, the Executive and the Security (both self explanatory I think) in Corp, the Augmented (the cyborg type) and the Awakened (the psychic type) in Trans, the Hacker and the Technician (once again self explanatory) in Engi.

I'd like to come up with a good way to do infiltration, does anyone know a good AW hack for this? Also let me know if you think I'm missing any key setting elements in what I've put up so far. I'll share playbooks as I complete them.
Jan 18, 2018 3:41 pm
Hey Gen, are you familiar with The Veil from Samjoko Publishing? Excellent Cyberpunk PBTA hack.
I love the faction flavours and corresponding playbooks you have!

As far as infiltration, are you looking for something to govern infiltrating other factions (double agent, etc.)?

Cheers and happy hacking!
Jan 19, 2018 1:17 am
deo_non_gratias says:
Hey Gen, are you familiar with The Veil from Samjoko Publishing? Excellent Cyberpunk PBTA hack.
Thank. I knew this had been done already, but I was blanking out on the name...
Jan 19, 2018 6:47 am
I wasn’t familiar with it but the veil looks interesting, I’ll have to give it a go! This project went by the way side mostly because I found that Nour World served my needs perfectly for the noir genre in any time setting.

Looking over my notes the infiltration was mostly focused around a mode of play where the tension of the situation is constantly ratcheting up with the GM getting more and more moves each time the players make a move. Following the Urban Shadows model the factions are more broad unifying themes then actual factions, members of the same factions could easily fight among themselves... though playing as plants, double crosses, sleepers is definitely something supported by the moves of the game.

I should get back to working on this, either the core mechanics that I find cool or the game itself

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