Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

[Grek]

It might be good to stick a mention of the fact that you can use coinflips in the rules directly. It hadn't occured to me that you could do that.

[DrPraetor]

Sort of like augmentations themselves, people have options that are Covert, Subtle, and Blatant for many tasks. Having Stress penalizes your subtle choices, so you don't do them. Chun is not going to attempt to walk by the guards with clipboard immunity, because his distinct noticeability makes that essentially impossible (or at least: saddles him with enough fault dice that it is a shitty plan). He could try to blast his way through (blatant), or he could try to creep by under the cover of darkness (covert).

The issue then is to have Subtle solutions available for most minigames so that unaugmented characters have a thing to do.

Okay, from the standpoint of writing, I see how this will work. It's easy for spells and powers: each spell is either subtle, covert or blatant. For skills, we explicitly list subtle, covert and blatant applications for each skill, but we need a good, firm notion of what those three avenues really mean in different contexts. Mechanical questions arise, like:
does Stress penalize blatant mind-effecting spells like Word of Command? Or does it penalize them only on the resistance rolls on subsequent rounds?
if a spell is both mind-effecting and subtle, does Stress penalize you TWICE? Or does it penalize you on casting (because the spell is subtle) and on every subsequent resist (because it is mind effecting)?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly how this will work, I have a hybrid suggestion below.

The spell categories, by the way, are Create, Control, Transform, Detect and Destroy. Illusions and Mind Control are both Control, as is Telekinesis. Healing and Fixing things is in Create, but I refuse to tell you why.

e.g.:
Mob Mood (Control, subtle, initial area, mind-effecting), Range Line of Sight, Drain W+L/4[3], Success C+Persuasion/2+SMod[0.5 * (Target W +X)]: Allows the magician to specify an emotional state (e.g. angry, enthusiastic, depressed) for everyone within the initial area. X is the usual modifier for mind-influencing spells based on the disposition of the target, and may as usual vary over the course of the spell. Each time one or more targets initiates a new course of action based on their altered emotional state, roll success again but subtract 1 die from the success pool. On a failure, the spell expires without the subjects realizing their minds were manipulated. On a bust, which occurs on an individual basis at 8 - Target Willpower - X - Stress Mod faults, the subject realizes that their emotions have been magically tampered with and reacts appropriately.

Word of Command (Control, blatant or covert, mind-effecting), Range Personal Communication, Drain W+L/4[2], Success C+Intimidation/2[0.5 * (Target W+X)]: Allows the magician to give an explicit command to an individual target, which they must obey without question, in preference to all other activities. X is the usual modifier for mind-influencing spells based on the disposition of the target, and may as usual vary over the course of the spell. Note that the command must be given in person and will be obeyed only as best understood by the target - the spell is covert if whispers, sign-language etc. are used in an effort to avoid detection, but is always blatant from the perspective of the target. Roll success again each time the target undertakes a new course of action in obedience with the command, on a failure that new course of action is delayed at least a round (roll again), but the spell ends only when it busts at 8 - Target Willpower - X - Stress Mod faults. The target is aware that they are under mental domination the entire time, and is free to react appropriately when the spell expires.

Yeah. Also, I think the threshold reduction with extra penalty dice could be a normal mechanic. Like for autofire and stuff. You reduce the success threshold by 1 and get an extra penalty die (it could even be a worse exchange rate, like 2 points of reduced threshold and 3). So it's more likely that you'll succeed, and by the same amount as if you got more Bonus Dice - but it's also more likely that you'll have net faults. So it's more likely that you'll hit bystanders and stuff. Let loose with a machine gun or something and you could even get a success margin and still have net faults - causing you to hit your target and also hit bystanders in the area.

A crucial mechanic, IMO.

Some Resistance tests, when the effect you resist is identified as Transformation or Mind-Effecting.

And even go the other way too. Your Stress modifier should make other people snap out of your mind control tricks faster. Makes the mind hacker and the mind controller into a defensible medium-Stress build.

-Username17

I heartily endorse this - but how is it going to work exactly?

And the name of the game is:
Frank's Cyberpunk Fantasy Hearbreaker, or
F'sCPFHB for short, because you live in Eastern Europe and you're not allowed to have vowels.

-DrP

[Username17]

So far I'm going for:

Heartbreaker: Asymmetric Threat
Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

Because then we can talk about it as "H:AT". (pronounced "hat")

does Stress penalize blatant mind-effecting spells like Word of Command? Or does it penalize them only on the resistance rolls on subsequent rounds?

Stress penalizes holding people under mind control. Not putting people under mind control. So blatant stuff like WoC, where you don't get an escape roll, doesn't care about the caster's Stress.

The thing I would like is for the escape rolls to be single-roll. So they should probably be maintenance rolls with extra Penalty Dice for your Stress, for the orders you are giving them, and for their own mental resilience.

-Username17

[jadagul]

Separate point: would it be better to look for 4-6 on penalty dice as well? I get the thematics, but looking for all instances of 4-6 is easier than looking for 4-6 and red or 1-3 and black (or whatever color your dice are).

That would have a certain ease - you count all the 4-6s and then do it again. But I still think it is easier if 1-3 is "bad" and 4-6 is "good" in all instances.

I agree with that reasoning, but that's not what you set up. 1-3 is sometimes bad and sometimes neutral; 4-6 is sometimes neutral and sometimes good.

I'd probably do it different, but I'd also probably find a bunch of tarnished and a bunch of new pennies, and flip them instead.

Unless I'm doing the math wrong, when you don't care about the actual number of fault dice you can just roll all your bonus and fault dice together, add up all the 4-6 results, and subtract the size of your poolof fault dice, and that'll give you your net hits. So that's an advantage.

[Endovior]

That would have a certain ease - you count all the 4-6s and then do it again. But I still think it is easier if 1-3 is "bad" and 4-6 is "good" in all instances.

I agree with that reasoning, but that's not what you set up. 1-3 is sometimes bad and sometimes neutral; 4-6 is sometimes neutral and sometimes good.

I'd probably do it different, but I'd also probably find a bunch of tarnished and a bunch of new pennies, and flip them instead.

Unless I'm doing the math wrong, when you don't care about the actual number of fault dice you can just roll all your bonus and fault dice together, add up all the 4-6 results, and subtract the size of your poolof fault dice, and that'll give you your net hits. So that's an advantage.

You are doing the math wrong. As stated, you're rolling all the dice, assuming every fault die was successful, and seeing what's left. That is a totally different operation then the one proposed, in which the successes in one pool are subtracted from those in the other; and it will produce markedly less successes.

[A Man In Black]

Unless I'm doing the math wrong, when you don't care about the actual number of fault dice you can just roll all your bonus and fault dice together, add up all the 4-6 results, and subtract the size of your poolof fault dice, and that'll give you your net hits. So that's an advantage.

You are doing the math wrong. As stated, you're rolling all the dice, assuming every fault die was successful, and seeing what's left. That is a totally different operation then the one proposed, in which the successes in one pool are subtracted from those in the other; and it will produce markedly less successes.

Jada's right. d/2 - f/2 = d/2 + f/2 - f

Either way, the average number of hits (and the probability table for any possible value of net hits) is exactly the same.

[Username17]

Yeah. Let's do a simple case: you have one die in each pool. Your maximum net hits is 1 and your maximum net faults is 1.

If you roll a 1-3 on one die and a 4-6 on the other, you have yero hits. If the Bonus Die rolled good and the Penalty Die rolled bad, you have one hit and one fault for zero net. If your Bonus rolled bad and your Penalty rolled good, you have zero of each and it still adds up to zero. If both dice come up good, you have one net hit, if both dice come up bad, you have one net fault. That's the sum of possible answers, and in all cases it adds up to precisely the number of 4-6s rolled minus the number of penalty dice in the pile.

It's actually easy to see why that would be the case, since a Penalty die is rolling on the same numbers but provides a result of -1 or 0 instead of 0 or +1. So it's literally the same as a regular die if you subtract 1 from the final number of hits.

That breaks down the moment you add in explosive dice (a type of test for which I do not yet have a name) or separate fault counting (as is the case with fragile tests). But yes, with the basic test you really could flip a number of coins equal to the number of Bonus and Penalty Dice together and then subtract the number of Penalty Dice from the answer and call it a day.

I should probably make a note of that under basic tests, to be honest.

-Username17

[fectin]

Huh. That's actually really clever.

If you do write it up, put it in a sidebar though, as "here's a neat trick", not in the rules proper.

[Orion]

Frank, something just occurred to me. We originally needed to have separate bonus dice and penalty dice because we wanted to track faults even on successful rolls, but you needed a way to add bonuses that didn't increase the rate of faults. But now that we have the mechanic of buying extra hits, is that really necessary? What if you dropped the idea of good dice and bad dice and replaced it with a "dice are bad" paradigm. You could do:

1-3: -1
4-6: 0

OR

1-3: -1
4-6: +1

OR

1-2: -1
3-4: 0
5-6: +1

In all three cases, rolling more dice is either neutral or harmful toward your chances of success, but increases your risk of fault. In this system, all effects, including skill that would grant bonus dice grant extra hits instead. In 2 set-ups where dice are success neutral, the math on your autofire mechanic feels a lot smoother.

[Orion]

Also, please don't call your game "Heartbreaker," because that's stupid. People familiar with Forge lingo will expect your game to be classical fantasy and/or a "retro" homage to mechanics from the 80s. People who aren't will expect it to be about vampires or sex demons or something.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

I agree with Orion here.

[Endovior]

Well, damn. I did not at all believe it until I ran the probabilities myself. That is indeed pretty fucking clever; the numbers are different, but the probabilities work out the same.

I tried a more complex case, of 1 bonus die and 3 fault dice, presuming that the greater number of faults would mess things up.

If you're counting successful bonus dice and then subtracting successful fault dice, the numbers look like this:

Code: Select all

---- : 0
---F :-1
--F- :-1
--FF :-2
-F-- :-1
-F-F :-2
-FF- :-2
-FFF :-3
S--- :+1
S--F : 0
S-F- : 0
S-FF :-1
SF-- : 0
SF-F :-1
SFF- :-1
SFFF :-2

+1: 1/16
 0: 4/16
-1: 6/16
-2: 4/16
-3: 1/16

If you're just adding up all the dice, good or bad, and then subtracting the fault dice directly, they look like this:

Code: Select all

---- :-3
---F :-2
--F- :-2
--FF :-1
-F-- :-2
-F-F :-1
-FF- :-1
-FFF : 0
S--- :-2
S--F :-1
S-F- :-1
S-FF : 0
SF-- :-1
SF-F : 0
SFF- : 0
SFFF :+1

+1: 1/16
 0: 4/16
-1: 6/16
-2: 4/16
-3: 1/16

As shown, the two produce exactly the same probability distribution. Jagadul, my hat is off to you.

[OgreBattle]

Also, please don't call your game "Heartbreaker," because that's stupid. People familiar with Forge lingo will expect your game to be classical fantasy and/or a "retro" homage to mechanics from the 80s. People who aren't will expect it to be about vampires or sex demons or something.

and Snowcrash wasn't about avalanches.

[Lokathor]

Also, please don't call your game "Heartbreaker," because that's stupid. People familiar with Forge lingo will expect your game to be classical fantasy and/or a "retro" homage to mechanics from the 80s. People who aren't will expect it to be about vampires or sex demons or something.

and Snowcrash wasn't about avalanches.

Nope, Orion has this one in the bag. Heartbreaker is a terrible primary title for a game of this nature.

Edit: Unless there's an actual plan to eventually release other Heartbreaker games such as "Kitchen Sink Fantasy" and "Space Adventures", in which case it's still mostly bad.

[fectin]

Well, damn. I did not at all believe it until I ran the probabilities myself. That is indeed pretty fucking clever; the numbers are different, but the probabilities work out the same.

I tried a more complex case, of 1 bonus die and 3 fault dice, presuming that the greater number of faults would mess things up.

If you're counting successful bonus dice and then subtracting successful fault dice, the numbers look like this:

Code: Select all

---- : 0
---F :-1
--F- :-1
--FF :-2
-F-- :-1
-F-F :-2
-FF- :-2
-FFF :-3
S--- :+1
S--F : 0
S-F- : 0
S-FF :-1
SF-- : 0
SF-F :-1
SFF- :-1
SFFF :-2

+1: 1/16
 0: 4/16
-1: 6/16
-2: 4/16
-3: 1/16

If you're just adding up all the dice, good or bad, and then subtracting the fault dice directly, they look like this:

Code: Select all

---- :-3
---F :-2
--F- :-2
--FF :-1
-F-- :-2
-F-F :-1
-FF- :-1
-FFF : 0
S--- :-2
S--F :-1
S-F- :-1
S-FF : 0
SF-- :-1
SF-F : 0
SFF- : 0
SFFF :+1

+1: 1/16
 0: 4/16
-1: 6/16
-2: 4/16
-3: 1/16

As shown, the two produce exactly the same probability distribution. Jagadul, my hat is off to you.

It's because you're thinking about it wrong.
I'm using this notation for now:
- B is total bonus dice
- B46 is number of bonus dice that turn up 4-6
- B13 is number of bonus dice that turn up 1-3
P is total penalty dice
- P46 is number of penalty dice that turn up 4-6
- P13 is number of penalty dice that turn up 1-3
O is Outcome

From these definitions, we know that [ B = B13 + B46 ], and that [ P = P13 + P46 ].

Given that [ O = B46 - P13 ], we can find all kinds of ways to count to O.
Specifically, this one:
1. [ P = P13 + P46 ] from definition
2. [ P13 = P - P46 ] rearranged
3. [ -P13 = -P + P46 ] multiply both sides by -1
4. [ O = B46 - P13 ] from given
5. [ O = B46 + (-P13) ] same thing written different
6. [ O = B46 + (-P + P46) ] substitute in from 3.
7. [ O = B46 + P46 - P ] Rearrange terms

[Orion]

When you have a title which is either a multiple word phrase or a compound neologism, the title operates on two levels. On the one hand, you have the denotation of the phrase as a whole--what you would expect the phrase to refer to if it cropped up in the middle of a sentence in plain english. However, each individual word also brings with it associations with related concepts and with a register of speech which imply a genre and some of the content.

The thematic resonance of title words is so strong that your title doesn't have to literally make any sense. Often it's a phrase which only makes sense in the context of the game world itself, or in a specialized field. (Asymmetric Threat is a preexisting phrase but most people, including me, aren't sure what it means.) But you can actually do fine with literal nonsense. I could borrow a page from Noam Chomsky and write an RPG called Colorless Green. That doesn't actually refer to anything that makes sense, but it still communicates and impression. I think most people who saw that book on the shelf would expect the game to be about some combination of:

--drugs
--philosophy
--environmentalism
--Lovecraftian monsters
--reality shaping

So let's take a look at "snow crash." Sure, the phrase by itself might sound like an avalanahce, but it's also two words that can be considered in isolation.

"Snow" : mystery, danger, the west, "snow job"
"Crash": computers, economic crises, action

So when you look at it that way, I think Snow Crash. is a fine title. Heartbreaker doesn't work so well. Taken literally it sounds like it refers to a manipulative sex partner, which has nothing to do with the game, but how about the connotations?

Heart: romance, teenagers, medicine, spirituality, the band Heart, hippies
Break: tragedy, moral ambiguity, goths& emos, decay, "used future," political strife

Both of these words have some associations which are appropriate, but more prominent ones which aren't. For that reason, I can't recommend it.

[Grek]

When I hear the word heartbreaker, I imagine some sort of mediveal torture device that literally breaks hearts into crushed chunks of heart meat.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

"Asymmetric Threat" is good, though, for all the reasons Orion mentioned.

I'm imagining a logo that incorporates a perfectly symmetrical summoning circle being rent asunder by a morass of circuitry.

[DrPraetor]

If we're worried about the subtle implications given by titles of games - "Assymetric Threat" is going to imply that the game is about non-conventional warfare! Then all of this stuff about how "Heartbreaker" means... some hybrid of Tunnels & Trolls with Toon?

That said, I think "Assymetric Threat: Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker" sounds cool, which is much more important than what it means or implies.

Fectin is correct, the math works out the same if you have only negative dice and your skills simply give you hits.

For explosive dice, a 6 gives you an extra hit but you have to roll another die.
For fault-tracking, you keep track of the number of faults

But this is going to be harder for people to wrap their minds around than having both types of dice, I think.

[jadagul]

DrPraetor: Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that we actually ditch fault dice. The existence of two types of dice allows you to construct more interesting and subtle modifiers to your tests, and do other cool things like the "thin ice" mechanic. But it is kind of nice that for the basic test you can just put all your dice in a pile and roll them.


Orion: of course, "Snow Crash" as a title came from the on-screen static you'd get when an early Macintosh crashed. So if you were a computer geek in the 80s it probably had another initial meaning to you entirely.

[Username17]

Also going to have "Open Tests" where the 1s explode on Penalty Dice and the 6s explode on Bonus Dice. People really like exploding dice, sometimes. It gets tedious as hell if it happens every test, but people love it when a major roll turns into like 17 hits because the 6s keep coming or something. So major turning point rolls get to be Open Tests.

Anyway....

Land Use
“It's the only thing they aren't making more of.”

The world of 2075 simply does not have as much usable land as the world had a hundred years ago. Climate change has turned vast areas into deserts, as even places that got more rain became inhospitable to the plants that lived there and suffered severe vegetation die offs. Places that dried up and had their top soil blow away in great sun obfuscating clouds became deserts for reasons that are perhaps more obvious. The Alignment brought with it a considerable number of extra pieces of land, in the form of new islands, mountains, and forests. But the amount of territory that has been lost to humanity since then is much much higher. Foul beasts, strange plagues, and even the raids of R'lyehan pirates have driven the nations of man out of many rural areas.

Even as sources of food and fuel are lost to climate and monsters, the needs for food and fuel continue to mount. In 1875 the world's population was a billion and a half, in 1975 the world's population was 4 billion, and in 2075 the population of the Earth is nine billion people. And while the rate of population growth has been slowing for a century, there are still more mouths to feed today than there were at any previous time in history. The strain on resources is tremendous. There isn't enough to go around for people to have lives that are similar to the lives of yesterday.

No Light Districts
“If it costs more to protect than it is worth to own, it has already been abandoned.”

One of the most noticeable casualties of the resource crunch is the horizontal city. Developed urban sprawls made so popular in the Americas are simply a thing of the past. There simply isn't enough spare oil to send cars this way and that across 200 kilometers of continuous Los Angeles as part of a regular commute. Which is not to say that the seemingly endless expanses of buildings all spontaneously reverted to forests or something – they didn't. It's just that most people moved out of the suburbs and into the higher density urban cores, and when that happened it was no longer economical to provide basic services to the suburbs. And when water and power and police protection and such were no longer being provided for those areas, it drove the exodus to an even greater degree.

The old suburbs are mostly now what is known as NLDs: “No Light Districts”, called that because of the conspicuous lack of electric light in these shabby ghost towns. But they are also bereft of running water, regular cleaning, functioning sewers, and fire protection. When it rains, the unkempt drains overflow and the floodwaters rise into unoccupied buildings, and when the floodwaters recede the mold grows up unchecked over everything. The places are filthy, diseased, and being reclaimed by Mother Nature as fast as weeds can overgrow an untended lawn. But that doesn't mean that no one lives in the NLDs. It's just that no one legally lives in the NLDs.

There are lots of reasons for people to prowl the NLDs and a significant number of people do. While the roads are full of potholes and barricades, the rent is free. Not merely that you don't have to pay very many dollars to sleep in a building there, but that it literally doesn't cost any money at all. Furthermore, while the lack of police protection and roving packs of hell hounds are a deterrent for many, there are people for whom the lack of credible law enforcement is a selling point.

Those people living in the No Light Districts are an odd mix. There are “urban miners” (those who search for recyclable metals, plastics, and rare earths in the wreckage of abandoned civilization), and there are radical individualists drawn ideologically to the challenge of living in a town without government or regular food shipments, but amidst the Wild West homesteader analogs there are also career criminals: terrorists, hackers, and child pornographers who hide from the law behind a shield of hard living. And the living is quite hard: residents need to provide their own power and water somehow, but they also have to figure out how to eat and clothe themselves. And even how to protect themselves from the elements, as even the newer buildings are now twenty years old with few repairs and the broken windows let in quite a draft.

[A Man In Black]

Heartbreaker and cyberpunk just reminds me of the cover this (admittedly terribly obscure) comics anthology:

[Grek]

Why Swords?

It's common conceit of both the Cyberpunk and Fantasy genres that people will wield swords (and other melee weapons) as mainstay weapons for serious, life or death combats, despite the fact that no real world military has done so for over 250 years. This requires a bit of explaination as to why melee combat has seen such a sudden resurgance.


A Matter of Stealth

Melee weapons are much, much more stealthy than most firearms. Not in that a sword will draw less attention than a gun will, or that a beheading someone with a sword is at all quieter than shooting them with a silenced pistol, as neither of those is the case, but in that a melee weapon is harder to track using modern forensics, both technological and magical. Once a bullet is fired from a gun, it is almost always impractical to retreive and dispose of it, and once the investigation has a bullet, they can use it to identify the model and make of the gun that fired it using ballistic analysis and, worse yet for an interprising criminal, track down the gun that fired the bullet using auric analysis. This isn't the case for a sword, as the brief contact between blade and flesh leaves little for the investigation, be it medical or magical, to use in tracking down the killer. The same is also the case with arrows, since it is much simpler to extract an arrow from a body than it is to remove a bullet.

A Matter of Cost

Beyond the concerns of stealth, there is also the issue of cost. With motherboxing and modern fabrication as advanced as it is, getting a high quality sword or knife is almost universally cheaper than getting a gun of equal killing potential. This holds doubly true for enchanted weapons, as almost all of the "phased in" nations of the worlds have maintained large stockpiles of enchanted weapons and armour crafted using Bronze Age technology for facing off against Bronze Age foes, as well as spells for enhancing swordsmanship. Moreover, the various spirits that can be called upon to wield, teach or craft weapons of war almost universally know practically nothing about modern tools of warfare, requiring that any enchantment for a firearm be made from first principles by a highly trained professional, rather than some wage mage getting paid to magic them up with known spells.

A Matter of Effectiveness

The degree by which augmentations can enhance the damage done by a man with cyberarms swinging a katana has long since exceeded what it can do for a man shooting a gun. In the end, the force behind a single bullet is limited by the strength of the explosion propelling it, and getting an ever bigger boom requires exponentially bigger bullets with bigger guns to shoot them from, stronger arms to carry it with and more and more money to pay for it all. In the end, the amount of improvement than can be bought by buting ever more powerful guns caps out long before you run out of strength and accuracy enhancements for a man with a sword, an axe or a bow.

[kzt]

You are pretty much always going to get at least microscopic transfer of metal from the sword to the victim. This is able to be linked to the sword in a lab. And worse you can trivially magically link a victim to the sword.

And no, they are not cheaper. You can buy a crappy sword shaped piece of sharpened pot metal fairly cheaply, but a sword forged out one of the correct steels, with proper heat treatment and properly sharpened is not cheaper then a used Glock. Or, for that matter, cheaper than a new Glock.

[Username17]

Disposable knives are probably easier to fabricate though. No ammo to worry about, no moving parts, just a big blade. Stab a fool with it, and dump the blade into a recycling tank.

I can't see a lot of reason to have an heirloom katana, but for killing people and getting away with it, it's hard to beat a sword made out of recycled parts that is subsequently recycled again.

-Username17