Tag: RPG

The sequel to one of this site’s most popular posts BITS of Mörk Borg, CY_BORG brings the grimdark futile fantasy kicking and screaming into a dystopian cyberpunk future.

Recommended that you read the Borg post above – it covers concepts like what “OSR” means and will be referenced a few times in regards to mechanics, stats, and other concepts CB shares.

I will interject this way when I have something to say design-wise, a la some redesign or special consideration.

Regarding Notes

Without further ado, a mechanical look and critique of CY_BORG, a “nano-infested doomsday RPG about cybernetic misfits and punks raging against a relentless corporate hell:”

1. Stats, Mechanics, and Resetting the World
2. Do It Again, This Time With Guns!
3. Friendship Is Magic 🌈
4. Pharma and Product
5. Paying For It
6. –
7. PS: Another Way to Start a Campaign
8. PS: Never Too Late for a Wishlist
9. PS: Small Is Fast, Nimble

Stats, Mechanics, and Resetting the World

Same song, second verse as it comes to stats (numbers to add to various challenging rolls):

• Agility (moving, piloting, autofire [going all out])
• Presence (precision, Nano-magic-powers, society)
• Strength (pushing, pulling, throwing)
• Toughness (surviving the environment)

Notice that MB‘s Agility now controls the use of CY_BORG‘s automatic weapons (and in general going all out). Further, a fifth stat arrives: Knowledge, science, deduction, and the use of software and apps.

I praised Mork Borg for only using 4 stats that I then worked to cram into BITS’s 3. Adding Knowledge in CB rubs me the wrong way, so instead, I would use stats like:

Body (hitting, moving)
Sense (shooting, piloting)
Mind (science, software)
Will (charisma, nano-/bio-/exotic-magic)

Survival being a natural toughness using the highest-valued BSMW in the survival roll. Same survival consideration with a BITS conversion:

Body – Average Toughness and Strength stats
Insight – Agility, Knowledge
Thought – Presence, Knowledge

Or the work-in-process BMW:

Body – Agility, Strength
Mind – Presence, Knowledge
Will – Presence, Toughness

Putting 5 Stats into 4

As for basic mechanics, this game operates the same way: Roll a D20 at or above a target number, adding the applicable stat to it. (BITS 2D6 conversions over in the MB post and elsewhere.)

The end of the world functions similarly too: depending on how fast folks wish the game to implode, roll a die; on 1, a disquieting headline hits the news that harkens a crash of the system. At the 7th headline, everyone everywhere sees the message that the system will reboot in 12 hours, wiping away all the player progress, restarting the misery that festers in CB.

If the end comes quickly enough, as a Game Moderator, I would suggest adding some kind of ‘cache’ or ‘store’ to survive the reboot. Too small or too dangerous for a living thing to survive in, the cache – once recovered or built – allows player characters to leave behind resources and information about the nature of the world of CY_BORG, encouraging continued play in the world (and perhaps rewarding future players by what was left behind!).

Persisting the World

Do It Again, This Time With Guns!

MB introduced black-powder as a supplement. While powerful, they were expensive, finicky, and ultimately secondary to the spiked chain flails of the game.

Firearms in CB fit the sci fi vibes, being used just like any other weapon. The exceptionality of firearms is that they all have the chance of running out of ammo (done after a critical failure or a fight, though big things like rocket launchers may only fire once a fight), some attack multiple foes at a time (going all out), and can come with special abilities.

CY_BORG switches the kind of die to check for reloading (D6 for autofire from any time during a fight, D8 for single-shots only), with a 1-3 resulting in a reload required. I would amend for a D6-based system as so:

Roll D6 if ever checking to see if a reload is required.
Roll to check if a reload is required when: 1) end of an encounter where the weapon was used; 2) critical failure when using the weapon with a backpack-fed or large-mag ammo reserve; 3) use of suppression fire (shoot at everything and anything that moves).
Reload is required after: 1) use of a single-shot device [rocket launcher; larger missiles only after an encounter]; 2) critical fail when using a standard weapon and ammo reserve.
When rolling to check for a reload, a reload happens on a 2 or less.
Consider what happened after the most recent of either the last reload or the start of the encounter in which the weapon was used: +2 for backpack-fed weapons; +1 for large-mag weapons; -1 for autofire; -2 for white-hot barrel overkill onslaughts.

Reloading

Read more about my thoughts on reloading and resource management.

Friendship Is Magic 🌈

Wrong.

Nanotech, bio-mods, and exotic-McGuffins are magic 🔥🤘💀🤘🔥

A little more reliable than pure scroll magic from MB, “nano” are still overpowered abilities to wreak havoc on the game, balanced in part by how terribly they can go wrong. Their use also corrupts a person, playing into the trope that magic users are pariahs.

Regular tech – software, apps, drones, etc. – is pretty streamlined. Simple use is no difficulty, yet the opportunity is there to stress the systems at risk of burning the programs out. A fine middle-ground between physical equipment and reality-bending magics!

Pharma and Product

This game has super-drugs. They do terrible things to characters and can bloom into things much worse.

But drugs are a small part of the housing, food, gear, armory, armor, ammo, robots, vehicles, and more the core CY_BORG rulebook has to offer.

If a player wants their character to have it, something is going to sell it.

Paying For It

A fun aspect to get characters moving: be in debt at the start of the game to a random antagonist that wants their money.

Nothing comes for free – even a life. When dying, there is a chance emergency responders will get to the character in time. Rebuilt (sometimes) smarter, better, faster, the debt will pile on in a blink, keeping characters thirsty for more work and bigger and bigger scores.

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Mörk Borg is full of cool ideas. CY_BORG adds onto that in spades.

CB taught me a lot about certain game design topics that have been evident throughout the year. It continues to inspire as I play other roleplaying games and build better RPG experience systems.

With a trim here, a consolidation there, CB becomes a game fit for any table seeking to eek out a life in a techno-rich, quality-of-life-poor future. Pick up the rulebook for a bunch of details, killer visual aesthetic, or reference the base rules for free.

What are your impressions of the system? I am here to both commiserate and weigh-in on CY_BORG‘s approaches. Hit up the comments, follow every Friday below, and all cheers to your dreary dystopias ~

PS: Another Way to Start a Campaign

CY_BORG sets itself up with end-game powers and gadgets (ahem, “EndGame-Class Exosuit”).

That in mind, start the first session of a campaign using the famous Metroid video game method: Make ’em overpowered and then take it all away.

After character creation, give every player character double stats, free picks of any 4 items or powers, extra money, and put them in the final battle inside the 12-hour reboot window (or 6 hours, each real-world hour corresponding with an in-game hour). Give them some allies too. Pit the characters against the figurative big-bad Satan in Hell itself, yet even if they defeat the boss, the key to stopping the cycle of misery is broken or missing.

Reset the game, reroll character traits, and get after it!

Idea that strikes me: The allies can be abstract entities. Not actually present in the final battle, each yet has a personality, name, and specialty. Let the players kill a character of their choice in some ignominious sacrifice (with the chance they actually betray the party) that guarantees some effort for that player’s character in the fight. This may happen automatically before a player character is killed – the NPC intervenes just in time to take the bullet.

NPC Allies

PS: Never Too Late for a Wishlist

What I would like to see (or create) for the game that allow for all sorts of cyberpunk, dystopian foulness:

• Super Tanks that are moving, fighting dungeons (e.g. Bolos)
• Mechs of all shapes and sizes (e.g. Gundam, MechWarrior, Evangelion, Pacific Rim, etc.)
• Incarnations of the twin-headed Basilisk monsters (the prophet creatures from Mörk Borg)
• Cities besides the megapolis of Cy (e.g. Half Life‘s City 17, WH40K hives, Judge Dredd‘s Mega-City One, etc.)
• Space everything: void combat, space stations, orbital economies, getting up and down to orbit, Luna rules, everything
• Alien invasions and extraterrestrial encounters
• Merge the MB dark fantasy and as-of-yet-unexplored astropunk along with space fantasy with the cyberpunk aesthetic
• (In)Famous cyberpunks from: Blade Runner, Cyberpunk Netrunner, Neuromancer, Snowcrash, Akira, Deus Ex, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Elysium, Tron, Robocop, Judge Dredd, Serial Experiments Lain, and so, so many more

PS: Small Is Fast, Nimble

For gear doing D4 or less in effect (i.e. Tier 1 and impromptu BITS weapons), allow a player to use Agility or other speed-based stat instead of Strength or body stat.

Sometimes the swiftest shiv outpaces the grandest maul.

We already talked at length about when and why and how to reload when things go wrong in RPGs.

This post takes a look at when the tools a fictional character uses runs out of gas / bullets / arrows / batteries / fuel / et. al. From single rounds to bottomless bins of bullets, the BITS system has it covered. Tiers are for reference only, but could be applied to a game’s economy for availability or cost:

Nothing New Under the Sun

Games are but levels of abstraction.

When it comes to kinds of expendable resource, abstraction needs to play a key role.

Video games do this excellently – at most, they tie ammo to a very small set of weapons (e.g. round X goes to weapon X), or abstract the kinds of available resource to the broad category of the tool.

‘Batteries’ or ‘power packs’ for flashlights and sci-fi gadgets alike, liquid ‘fuel’ for flamethrowers and cars, ‘shotgun shells’ for all gauges, ‘bullets’ for small arms, ‘artillery shells’ for tank main guns and recoilless rifles. Rockets, missiles, and torpedoes (I make this mega-missile category for the likes of cruise missiles). Grenades, charges, bombs.

Just as how ‘coin’ can be split into gold, silver, copper, and more, just as how ‘grain’ becomes wheat, maize, barley, and more, when it comes to deciding on resource types, do what feels right. Always seek to KISS, and things will go swell!

In This Economy?

A hierarchy of value exists in all things.

Resources apply the same way. While more thought needs to be put into this, a simple split would be:

• Sufficient Shot* – This is cheaper-than-cheap resource. Rocks for a sling, potatoes for cannons, grass for alternative fuels, or bullets in a bullet factory having a fire sale.
• Cheap Shot – Mundane fuel and resource that comes standard in both civilian and military use (context depending).
• Money Shot – High-value, high-impact ammunition. Jet fuel, missiles, you get it.
• Such Shot – Exotic. Best of the best. Fusion cores,blessed silver bullets, nuclear bombs, et. al.

* I was going to call this “S- Shot” and I choose to be less vulgar 🙂

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Simple, right? That is what BITS works to be.

No need to overthink what tools gobble-up what they use to run, how to keep the fires going. Determine if a tool ever runs out of uses and if that is after every use, every critical failure of use, multiple uses / failures thereof, or never!

I hope you take benefit from this synopsis in your own game designs. This is yet another page into my own compendium of game design reference, so expect to see design themes from here echoed in future work.

Cheers to all you do in the meantime ~

A big time commitment to any roleplaying game is almost always the combat.

Roll to hit, roll how much was hit, repeat.

While simple in process, this becomes a slog when characters in games have buckets of hit points (HP, the equivalent of life). Each mighty cleave of a sword or bullseye from a rifle does but a chip of damage from the HP block. Again. And again. And again.

Ew.

Others and I agree – fewer hit points makes for better play. One might even try to put the “hit” back into “hit points” 👀

Premise of Hits

HP represents how many hacks a character can take or effectively avoid to prevent their own demise. Depending on the type of game, 0 HP either means a character cannot prevent others from working their will on them (no fight left) or could mean they are dead (this time, the sword block is too slow, the swing finding mortal purchase).

How many hits a thing can take then can vary. You might have seen the videos of people about to fight, but one clip of the chin puts a fighter down. Remember Julius Caesar? He took over 40 (!!!) stab and slash wounds before finally going down.

Caesar aside, most combatants can only get in a bout for so long, minutes at most. This has been found out by the RPG community: A good rule of thumb is that a sturdy human being without special training can withstand about 3-4 hits before a ‘this-settles-it’ hit lands home.

The Old-School (OSR) RPGs hold this as fact: Fewer HP is better play. Whether that is some max HP of 12 or 20 for a player’s character, it undermines the hundreds of HP even moderate-level play in a game like Dungeons & Dragons can introduce.

Excessive, eh? Some solutions to high HP:

Crafting Better Dungeon HP

Professor Dungeon Master over at Dungeon Craft on YouTube introduces a great rule of thumb for D&D -type monster blocks:

Every attack that lands does 1 hit’s-worth of harm. Sword or fist, all the same. Criticals, heavy weapons, and especially high rolls (e.g. naturally in the top 25%) count as an additional hit. Spells do hits equal to the level of difficulty they are +1 (levels exist from 0 to 9).

As for HP, take a monster’s health, round to the tens-digit, and divide by 10 (minimum 1 HP). Thereby, a monster with 84 average HP can take 8 hits.

Professor Dungeon Master (minorly paraphrased)

This is a great quick-and-dirty way to reach the same conclusions of regular D&D combat, but only faster.

Assuming a group of four adventurers though, 8 HP still requires at least two rounds of combat with every adventurer landing a standard hit (8 HP / 4 hits-per-round = 2 rounds).

Can this be better?

BITS of HP

My own homebrew wraps as much as it can into the standard 1-2-3-4-6-10 scale of effectiveness.

Tier 1 characters can only take 1 and give 1 hit (and are easier to hit – that is a separate discussion). Tier 2 gives and takes 2 hits. Tier 6, 6 of each.

Player character weapons and armor also exist on this scale: Tier 1 does 1 hit’s-worth of harm (e.g. knives), tier 4 does 4 hits-of-harm (e.g. halberds, especially heavy weapons). Characters themselves have the ability to sustain ~7 hits of harm on average.

But what if players still want to roll their damage?

Layering on the HP

(The following is a thought exercise – I have yet to test in actual gameplay.)

Keeping the difficulty tiers of BITS, what if HP scaled by double or by 4s?

e.g.

This way the chaff of low-level minions can still be swept away, but more bossy characters can take a few blows before being made low.

When players strike, a success gives them 1 hit. When they roll damage, they get an extra hit for, say, every complete 5 or 10 points of damage rolled in the D&D fashion.

Players get to roll more of their dice, folks are rewarded for high rolls, and combat remains quick (but not so quick as to be a wash!).

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Simple reduction of HP, HP by tiers, or HP by scaling? Or just keep D&D -style massive blobs of hit points, why does this article even exist? 😜

I am curious: Tell me what you use for HP in play and share what you think could go better in the fictional combat of roleplaying games.

Anyways, stay tuned for from-the-field reports as I experiment with different systems. Cheers to your characters coming out on top!