Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

[rasmuswagner]

A wholly advantageous form of autism is a mental advantage; the autistic ability to maintain sanity and coherence in the total absence of social stimuli for extended periods of time, without the all-encompassing disconnect from society that prevents any useful work from coming of that isolation. A non-disabled sort of autist would be a sort of savant; able to easily tolerate lengthy periods of isolation and stress while accomplishing useful work in the meantime... without being particularly handicapped in normal social interactions, when they arise.

That suggests an attribute called "Concentration" or "Immersion" or "Focus". Used for slow hacking, research, and lengthy stake-outs.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

That suggests an attribute called "Concentration" or "Immersion" or "Focus". Used for slow hacking, research, and lengthy stake-outs.

In general, it's a lot easier to say "My character waits neck-deep in sewage until his target walks by" than to actually do it. A trait that allows you to do things that suck but don't necessarily injure you, and do them with aplomb, would be interesting.

[violence in the media]

That suggests an attribute called "Concentration" or "Immersion" or "Focus". Used for slow hacking, research, and lengthy stake-outs.

In general, it's a lot easier to say "My character waits neck-deep in sewage until his target walks by" than to actually do it. A trait that allows you to do things that suck but don't necessarily injure you, and do them with aplomb, would be interesting.

I second this wholeheartedly. On a related note, it would be nice to have some sort of mechanic to fairly resolve "we wait for one of the guards to go to the bathroom/nod off/switch on the telly" type scenarios. That sort of thing always seems to devolve to some MTP dice roll bullshit randomization, modified by how easy or difficult the MC wants this to be.

[Username17]

A wholly advantageous form of autism is a mental advantage; the autistic ability to maintain sanity and coherence in the total absence of social stimuli for extended periods of time, without the all-encompassing disconnect from society that prevents any useful work from coming of that isolation. A non-disabled sort of autist would be a sort of savant; able to easily tolerate lengthy periods of isolation and stress while accomplishing useful work in the meantime... without being particularly handicapped in normal social interactions, when they arise.

That suggests an attribute called "Concentration" or "Immersion" or "Focus". Used for slow hacking, research, and lengthy stake-outs.

That is an interesting idea. The name that leaps out at me for the concept is "discipline". I could even see things like reaction triggers and combat drugs shifting points to "reaction" (or "response" or "initiative" or whatever you want to call it) from discipline.

On a related note, it would be nice to have some sort of mechanic to fairly resolve "we wait for one of the guards to go to the bathroom/nod off/switch on the telly" type scenarios. That sort of thing always seems to devolve to some MTP dice roll bullshit randomization, modified by how easy or difficult the MC wants this to be.

The core issue with those situations is that it is a lot easier to psyche yourself up to wait for something to happen for one night than it is to do that every night. If the installation goes on alert, that should have real meaning - it means that at least for the moment the guards aren't dozing off and pissing in corners but are instead listening for noises and paying attention. In short: the discipline and perception advantage that infiltrators normally have evaporates when alarms go off (unless they are the stupid kind of alarm that goes off all the time).

Going over on the Infiltration minigame blows your big advantage that it's "Mission Day" for you and "Tuesday" for them.

-Username17

[Endovior]

A wholly advantageous form of autism is a mental advantage; the autistic ability to maintain sanity and coherence in the total absence of social stimuli for extended periods of time, without the all-encompassing disconnect from society that prevents any useful work from coming of that isolation. A non-disabled sort of autist would be a sort of savant; able to easily tolerate lengthy periods of isolation and stress while accomplishing useful work in the meantime... without being particularly handicapped in normal social interactions, when they arise.

That suggests an attribute called "Concentration" or "Immersion" or "Focus". Used for slow hacking, research, and lengthy stake-outs.

That is an interesting idea. The name that leaps out at me for the concept is "discipline". I could even see things like reaction triggers and combat drugs shifting points to "reaction" (or "response" or "initiative" or whatever you want to call it) from discipline.

What came to mind on reading this:
“I thought you were patient enough to sit in the same spot for three years waiting for a specific person to come along so you could kill them?”
“I did. I never said I found it fun.”
“You sat in the same spot for three years?”
“I even had plants growing on me.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was fairly unhappy at that particular individual and I knew she would be along to that point eventually. She was.”
“After three years, it’s likely that you were no longer that upset with her. Did you let her live?”
“I killed her as soon as she appeared.”

Now, this particular example really isn't doable by those who lack something akin to the Patience of the Mountains, but the concept is conveyed.

[Grek]

Someone without a ridiculously high discipline stat would, of course, get the more normal response of "No, I gave up after a week of it."

[Judging__Eagle]

Hacking could actually be a realtime affair,

[...]

So, in this case, entertaining rules may very well reflect reality to some slight degree.

This is incredibly entertaining. As it turns out, there are circumstances under which you can hack in realtime. According to their twitter and IRC conversations, LulzSec has gained access to a few newscorps' servers are are fighting with the admins for access. I don't know why the admins haven't shut off the boxes or at least disconnected the internet service (host or CDNs in the way?), but for whatever reason, admins and lulzsec are fighting for control over some data. Coming up for mechanics for it will be hard, but it's possible.

It's a form of diplomacy, contested actions, or the like.

The reason they have to keep it up is something that both sides can affect, but would be costly if completely shut down. Knowing what the process actually is would make it easier to figure out the mechanics.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

“I thought you were patient enough to sit in the same spot for three years waiting for a specific person to come along so you could kill them?”
“I did. I never said I found it fun.”
“You sat in the same spot for three years?”
“I even had plants growing on me.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was fairly unhappy at that particular individual and I knew she would be along to that point eventually. She was.”
“After three years, it’s likely that you were no longer that upset with her. Did you let her live?”
“I killed her as soon as she appeared.”

What is this from? Because I want to read it now.

[Endovior]

“I thought you were patient enough to sit in the same spot for three years waiting for a specific person to come along so you could kill them?”
“I did. I never said I found it fun.”
“You sat in the same spot for three years?”
“I even had plants growing on me.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was fairly unhappy at that particular individual and I knew she would be along to that point eventually. She was.”
“After three years, it’s likely that you were no longer that upset with her. Did you let her live?”
“I killed her as soon as she appeared.”

What is this from? Because I want to read it now.

That's from New Beginnings, which is Pokegirl fanfiction written by Kerrik Wolf; the fourth in the series he's writing. Personally, I find it to be among the best fanfiction on the Internet, but YMMV. This is a link to the start of the series.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

...What the fuck is a Pokegirl. :| Do I even want to know?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

...What the fuck is a Pokegirl. :| Do I even want to know?

Does it involve some Gardevoir on Lopunny action?

EDIT: I just googled what I just posted. I didn't realize that was a thing

[Chamomile]

"What if every Pokemon was made of sex?!"

I question the wisdom of keeping secondary traits of several Pokemon, such as being an insect or actively on fire, and then still expecting the majority of your readers to actually want to read a story about a guy who has to have sex with them on a regular basis.

[Endovior]

Was not wanting to thread derail, merely making a reference to illustrate the point at hand. The better writing, such as what I was referring to, takes these issues into account in a fairly intelligent manner, telling a good story in the process. The worse writing... well, you don't actually want to read the worse writing.

[A Man In Black]

pokegirl.org

[RiotGearEpsilon]

I will elect to allow that single segment of excellent writing to stand alone, I think. I suspect that context would not assist me in this matter.

Anyway, I'm pumped that people like the 'Discipline' idea. :3

[Aryxbez]

My post doesn't pertain the current discussions at hand, haven't the time to comb through all of the pages yet. However, I would like if this version of Shadowrun of sorts wasn't as lethal as the current version, grained less in real life-ish actions, and doing more cool stuff. Such as dedicated runners, or people with Cyberlegs actually keeping pace with people on motorcycles, able to jump from car to car, building to building in practical manner, are example of making whole athletics skill thing useful. Can actually take on more than maybe 1-2 guys in Melee combat, actually can sweep to 3 or more combatants at a time, helluva awesome when your niche is melee combat. I suppose in this case I'm saying that cybernetics/Street Samurai Archtype should be capable of more "over the top" kinds of things, instead of just adding some +3's to your dice rolls on some skill, actually impact them in more exciting ways.

Also felt to mention how Killer Instinct video games, was a somewhat nifty setting idea. There you had Demon pact ninjas,undead pirates,Human intelligent raptors, heavy suited Cyber soldiers, and hell, laser blades fighting each other and Demon warlords from limbo. Course that setting also clearly came of an earlier period of cyberpunk, where one of the character's backstory got kicked out of a boxing title, because of "cybernetic enhancements".

[Murtak]

Well, considering a cybered athlete can already chase down cars in traffic, climb 10-story buildings in under 20 seconds, treat most walls as hurdles and, with a point of edge, have a decent shot at not only jumping from building to building, but actually jumping to the building on the other side of the street ... I don't think much more is actually needed as far as athletics are concerned.

As for mechs, dinosaurs and Le Chuck, how the fuck do any of those belong in the genre? I'll give you melee - Shadowrun melee is kind of weak and melee definitely belongs to many archetypical cyberpunk stories. Heck, I'll give you spears and bows. These need to come with some sort of advantage to make them worth using, if only for a select few characters or occassions. But lightsabers and chaos demons? Please.

[Username17]

Shadowrun has always been extremely schizophrenic about what they want cybered people to be able to accomplish physically. It leads to wild fluctuations in movement rates between editions and even rules "clarifications" within editions. When you get extra initiative passes that has in various incarnations:

• Multiplied your movement by the number of passes.
• Nothing (movement is divided between the number of passes).
• Added extra potential die rolls to linearly add bonus movement (sprinting is an action that adds to your normal running speed).

So some versions of the game have allowed a cybered character to run a 100m dash in 3 seconds (120 KPH), but in others it takes 6 seconds (60 KPH) or even 12 (30 KPH). It's... a really big difference.

In any case, I think that establishing that heavily augmented individuals can chase down cars is important. In 2075, people with entirely covert augmentation have run a 2 minute mile, I see no reason why people with subtle or obvious augmentations shouldn't be able to beat that trivially.

As for Mecha: yes. Sort of. The Mechs we're looking at are going to be more like Hard Suits from BGC. This is for a number of reasons. BGC is cyberpunk and Voltron is not for starters. But also becauseKnight Saber-esque power suits is extremely in-genre and extremely plausible given current military progressions.

For the other things: yes to dragons and other dinosaurs, and yes to demons. Those are pretty much necessary if you're going to have magic along side your cyberpunk. There needs to be magic-equivalents to the armored vehicle, and that's stuff like the dragon turtle. I don't see any specific need for Lightsabers or WH40K Daemons though.

-Username17

[kzt]

There should be a good number of power mad Dragons. Virtually of whom have received a lethal dose of depleted uranium, died of 4th degree burns from gigawatt orbital lasers, found themselves spread over a few city blocks by a bunker buster or otherwise killed by modern technology.

[A Man In Black]

Killer Instinct's cast, such as it was, consisted of:

• Chun Li with laser tonfas and the most terrifying boobs ever
• A ninja who is blatantly and cheekily derivative of Ryu and Ken
• A werewolf
• A former boxer drummed out of pro boxing because he had covert, illegal arm augmentations of some sort
• A Native American chief, of the sort you'd get when English guys make a game with a Native American chief in it
• The Human Torch, accidentally transformed by Evil Corp.
• An anthro dinosaur, gengineered by Evil Corp.
• An alien made entirely of ice and mix-ups, probably the most overpowered character if you outlaw infinite combos
• A pirate's skeleton, reanimated by Evil Corp.
• A prototype combat robot, made by Evil Corp.
• An ettin

I don't think any of these would be out of place in Heartbreaker, save the alien and possibly the Human Torch. A couple of them would probably not be playable characters, though.

There is a sequel, but it is explicitly set in the distant past and has a handful of new characters based on that theme.

[Stahlseele]

Have you seen the images Knasser did to showcase what the reality of augmented attributes really meant?
And those were only the kinda meh basic guys, not specialized or optimized.

[Aryxbez]

As for mechs, dinosaurs and Le Chuck, how the fuck do any of those belong in the genre? Heck, I'll give you spears and bows. These need to come with some sort of advantage to make them worth using, if only for a select few characters or occassions. But lightsabers and chaos demons? Please.

Didn't Bladerunner whole theme involve cloning, and the movie itself actually had a guy with reptilian scales going on? Shadowrun also has cloning, so just extend that outward to stuff like dinosaurs, and somehow bringing back the dead. If nothing else, there's also the "magic" aspect of this game, as Frank had pointed out. Hell Shadowrun also has the whole portal of super Cthulian horrors that'll murder everyone, and even Great Dragons know not to mess with, so don't see why in this case can't have demons from Limbo..

As for Lightsabers, don't find it that important, just figured would naturally be progression of military technology in the future (and jetpacks dangit, the game mentions one as an exotic vehicle, but yet to find a supplement that actually has one). As for the whole "mech" deal, the whole combat robot by evil corp, was supposedly a "cyborg" so I figured was the essential equivalent of a cybered to the teeth Street Sam with Heavy Military Power Armor going on.

A Man In Black, I don't see how some any of those would be improper on the list as characters. With the Dinosaur, you have human intelligence thing down so it can use Commlink-esque devices, perhaps even something like thumbs for finer manipulation to use guns, or use excuses like in Jurassic Park to open the door. Sounds like it'd definitely be something along lines of "Runner Companion" kind of races, where might have penalties involving legwork on you, for attracting attention easier. Hell, the Pirate Skeleton even had his non-canon humorous ending being an actor in movies.

Also, the second game's new characters were dumb and basically can be ignored, save did further the ettin's whole backstory giving him a rival he fought with.

[Murtak]

It may be important to note that the whole cyberpunk genre is not just as much about sawed-off shotguns, knives and rotting skyscapers as it is about nanotechnology, brain implants and space travel. Adding magic to the mix - especially magic that looks and feels differently to different practioners - already taxes the limits of the setting. You can't just throw everything you can think of into the game, and that goes double for anything that is either bullshit (chaos demons) or that invalidates pieces of the setting you really want to keep (light sabers - add them and knives and swords are out).


Seriously, we already have troll samurais, cyborgs, brain hackers and norse mages in the setting. Ascended fucking dinosaurs? Pirate skeletons? At that point, why not go for broke and add time and dimension travel to the game, so you can add medieval knights and vulcans? The very idea of a fucking dinosaur even existing in a cyberpunk setting, much less doing anything at all apart from trying not to get captured and dissected is ludicrous.

Literally the entire setting is about crazy people existing in the cracks of society. By definition, if you look too weird, you are not a player character. Granted, "too weird" is pretty damn weird in a setting that includes cyberlimbs and freaks who think scales are way more rad than tattoos. But dinosaurs and skeletons are not only far beyond even that, they are so far beyond weird, they end up deforming the entire setting. Look at the basic Shadowrun setting: huge parts of the game are about the interaction between human subraces, racial tensions, about how large parts of the population think trolls are dangerous freaks. Anything more exotic is not considered playable, and rightly so. Even assuming that, for example, ghouls are not universally persecuted they are still going to stick out like a sore thumb, are still blind and have a weird diet. Probably workable in some campaigns I guess. Ghouls are already borderline as a player character, and that is being kind. And ghouls are humanoids that can pass for regular humans with make-up, perfume and a bit of acting. Now I would love to compare ghouls to dinosaurs, but I really can't. Where ghouls have trouble passing for humans, dinosaurs flat out can not do it. Where trolls have trouble purchasing clothes, dinosaurs have troubles finding someone capable of making clothes for them and then they have to persuade them to not run away screaming and then they have to avoid getting captured in the streets. And you are going to have literally thousands of these issues every single fucking day.

Dinosaurs are not PCs, they are not NPCs and they sure as hell don't belong into a cyberpunk setting. Not even close.

[Stahlseele]

Well, a pack of Velociraptor Biodrones would be pretty horrible to face ...

[Vebyast]

There won't be dinosaurs. Dinosaurs would be too expensive to revive, their biochemistry wouldn't work with modern environments, and they evolved to hunt a type of prey/eat a type of plant that doesn't exist anymore. Instead, biodrones will have been built from the ground up for their intended purpose, just like robots. The raptor body layout is pretty good for running fast and attacking stuff much larger than you are; there won't be any actual velociraptors, but there may well be things like them for hunting down down cybered ogres.

Low-end guard biodrones would replace guard dogs and guard crocodiles, high-end biodrones might have limited access to magic and would be competitive with high-end combat drones.