CROSS IT OVER, MASH IT UP!

So, I just finished reading Tad Williams' unfortunately titled "Otherland Volume 1: City of Golden Shadow". It was pretty good, although the fact that the author couldn't provide us with any closure after 900 pages of suspense was a bit of a disappointing end to the folio. (Although perhaps it's a better strategy for pacing than "Chronicles of Amber" which, in my opinion, got worse with each book because so much had been revealed in previous ones. )

In any case, the narrative starts out switching between 5 or 6 different parallel threads from different genres: fantasy, cyberpunk, thriller, sword & planet. Over time it becomes clear how these stories are related and towards the end of the book many of the book's major characters have met one another.

Crossover Time!

So how about this? What games have I DMed/played-in the last few years? WFRP, CP2020, a few different flavors of DnD. What if you're running a session and then suddenly the PCs meet the party from another campaign, possibly even from another system?

For instance, the Basque Pirates piss-off an insane wizard, who blasts them off to WWII Poland where they have to fight alongside Andre and the gang. Or the WFRP party is sailing along the coast of New Tilia when a freak storm blows them off-course. When the seas calm, the stars look different and then they're set-upon by Basque Pirates. Or our Pendragon characters go off and run into some very disreputable characters, including three mohawk-wearing Dwarves...

Yeah, it's a little zany. But that's the wonderful insanity of Pen and Paper RPG's(and anyway, comic books do it all the time so we should get to too!)

Advanced Doggies & Dragons

Well, the kids are older and it's time Doggie Game got an upgrade. That's right folks, we now have character sheets and the kids made them themselves. You Grognards are going to like these character sheets cause they are small, two-sides-of-a-post-it-note small, in fact. That's just how I roll, folks. I like a character sheet that can be filled out and used with only 15 minutes till bed-time!

Boobie & Pooka with Portraits

Stats: Strength, Speed, and Brains

Character generation was 3d6 in-order and your doggie needs a name and your doggie darn-well needs a portrait!

Well, the two little mongrels got started wandering in the middle of the forest when they ran up against the biggest, meanest lion they ever did see! Boobie tried scaring the lion, but hes not very smart and he didn't manage it. Pooka, on the other hand, chose deception and pretend to be a baby lion. She rolled well, despite having a Brains of 1, and pulled-off the scheme. The lion took her away from the aggressive doggie and put her in it's cave. When it went off to bring her food, she snuck away.

Re-united, the doggies were still lost in the forest. They decided to look for a big friendly bird to take them home. After this well-laid plan was executed successfully, they found their home locked and them without a key. After some searching they found a key and opened the door to find...their mother who scolded them and put them to bed!

Little Brainiacs

You may not have noticed, but all the skill rolls were made with the Brains attribute, to the exclusion of Strength and Speed. Yeah, we got a couple of young thinkers here...

Dice Fetishists from Birth

I like on-the-fly rulings, as well as the moderate amount of haggling that tends to accompany it. But the cruel and unrelenting DM didn't give in to the following haggling session:

Player: A lion? Yay! We get to roll our dice now!

DM: First tell me what your doggie does and then you'll get to roll your dice.

Player: Please can we roll our dice first?

DM: No, you need to tell me what your doggie does first.

Player: But I want to roll my dice!

DM: JUST TELL ME WHAT YOUR BLOODY DOG DOES!

A Game Within a Game

Wow, who would have thought that starting a second blog and then starting a new job with an almost 2-hours-each-way commute would have been so detrimental for my "Billy Goes to Mordor" output. I never would have guessed...

But, I'm still hanging in there.

So, speaking of never knowing what to expect, I've been reading Tad Williams "Otherland Volume 1: City of Golden Shadow". I picked up this one, together with Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", while swapping books with a friend. I expected the latter to be great, with it's epic title and cool cover-art, while I didn't have high hopes for "Otherland" with it's over-long title and being by an author I had never read nor had recommended to me. So, of course, I'm loving "Otherland" after I finally gave up on "Stranger" 100 pages in.

A Story Within A Story

Otherland starts out jumping back and forth between a number of apparently unrelated Cyberpunk and Fantasy stories, each of them quite compelling. But, halfway through, it's clear from a number of hints that some(and presumably all) of the stories are somehow related, though it's still largely a mystery how.

One of the narratives I found particularly compelling is that of Thargor the Barbarian. Thargor is fairly standard Swords & Sorcery Barbarian, off adventuring with his buddy Pithlit the Thief. Not quite Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, but still pretty good stuff. They end up encountering something truly weird and we soon find out that the two are actually young kids playing an MMORPG in virtual reality. The Fantasy adventure quickly becomes a Cyberpunk tale as the kids are sucked into a high-stakes game of intrigue.

The story really plays in with the book's general theme of the strange mixing of realities created by the proliferation of VR and the Net. The youths' RL(Real-Life) personas reflect, but at the same time contrast with, their bad-ass PCs. This is particularly pronounced in "The Deadly Tower of Senbar Flay" where Thargor's bravado and Orlando's cocky confidence as his online avatar, clash so starkly in the following scene where he lies awake in bed, worried his parents will ground him and aware just how vulnerable a child like him would be if the mysterious criminals should come after him in RL.

A Game I'd Like to Run

Typical Gen Y'ers as seen by an aging DM?

I think there's a great basis for an RPG adventure here. Tell your group to make High-Level DnD PCs and start an adventure. Then, once they're sufficiently deep-in (maybe towards the end of the first session) have them hit the anomaly and reveal to them that they are actually kids playing an MMORPG. Then they need to create CP2020 PCs(perhaps using Cybergeneration rules) and they can investigate the anomaly in the MMORPG, online using their computer skills, and in RL. The stakes get increasingly higher since dying in the MMORPG just loses you your current PC, while online activity can get you in trouble with the law and other groups, and in RL you can die, get sent to Juvy, etc.

Tales of Blood and Glory: A Canticle for Leibowitz

Post-Apocalyptic fiction was a big part of the scifi genre from the 1950's-1970's, courtesy of the Cold War and the widespread fear of Mutual Annihilation. Stories of mutants prowling irradiated wastelands and well-meaning scientists whose efforts are too little, too late. I've stumbled across quite a few post-apocalyptic stories the last few years(Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog" and Leiber's collection "The Night of the Wolf" come to mind) but now I finally got to read Walter A. Miller Jr.'s "A Canticle for Leibowitz". It is probably the most highly lauded scifi tale in the genre, winning the Hugo award for best novel in 1961 and remaining a classic till this day.

"Cantacle" follows the Monks of the Order of St. Leibowitz during three successive epochs:

1. A few generations after the first Nuclear Holocaust, where we learn their mandate--to preserve the surviving remnant of Human knowledge for posterity
2. At the dawn of a new Age of Reason, where the Order's mandate approaches fulfillment and it is unclear what the future holds for them
3. Leading up to the second Nuclear Holocaust, where we learn that their new mandate was to prevent a recurrence of Nuclear Holocaust and in case they fail, to launch a mission to another planet, once again, to preserve the remnants of Human knowledge

Ultimately, the book comes off as a deeply thoughtful meditation on Nuclear Apocalypse, largely from a Humanist-Religious perspective. The exploration of suicide and the comparison to "mutually assured self-destruction" in the final part is quite though-provoking, if not altogether profound. Actually, it's all really good. The dialog between science and religion in the second part. The many Humanist vignettes. The tongue-in-cheek humor throughout.

Quite often, I end these posts in the "Tales of Blood and Glory" series with my thoughts on how to apply it to gaming, but here it's a hopeless case. The only substitute for reading "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is reading "A Canticle for Leibowitz". So seriously, if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? It's just that good!

Another Alternate XP System for CP2020

So I'm happy with how the Alternate XP System for Cyberpunk 2020 turned out. It's simple, elegant, and intuitive. I did have to put a bit of thought into how to keep players from abusing the system with extraneous skill checks, but it didn't complicate things too badly.

But then I had another alternative idea for a similar system, which is a little bit simpler. I'm not sure which system I prefer--I think I'd like to try this one out first and see how it works in practice...

The Rule

Every time you succeed in a skill check by rolling exactly the minimum number you needed for success, you improve 1 point in that skill.

• No more than 1 point can be gained in this way for a particular skill in a single game session

Exceptions

This rule only applies for real, challenging applications of a skill, not practice or low-difficulty activities. For example:

• Skill checks as part of training/practice can't be awarded a skill point. Instead the GM should come up with an alternative ruling. (If you want to increase your Karate skill by 1, spend a month in training and then roll 1d10 vs your current skill level, etc.)
• The same applies to Knowledge Checks, which just verify if the PC knows a particular domain-specific fact. This, as opposed to cases where the PC actually spends time/effort researching or figuring out something novel.
• Making a Personal Grooming/Wardrobe & Style check every time you dress in the morning doesn't cut it. You need to use your looks on a real goal--get the girl, get the bouncer to let you in without checking ID, buy the right clothes for the event in a time-consuming/expensive shopping trip, etc.

Examples

Mad Dog shoots at the security guard from close range, so he needs a 15 to hit. His REF is 6 and his Pistol skill is 5, so he rolls 1d10+6+5. He rolls a 4+6+5=15 which is the minimum roll he needed to hit. As such he gains 1 skill point, bringing his Pistol up to 6.

The guard's partner get's the jump on Mad Dog, grappling with him. Mad Dog draws his knife and attempts to stab the guard. The partner rolled a 2+5+2=9 on his Dodge & Escape. Mad Dog has a knife skill of 9, so he rolls 1d10+6+9, so there's no way he'll roll exactly a 9, so the task is too easy for a blademaster of his talent to possibly gain a skill point from the encounter. That's fine--he may want an easy win. If, however, he wants a chance improve some skill, he should pick something more risky, like using his boxing skill of 1 to punch the guy. Then he'll roll 1d10+7+1 and if he gets a 1 on the d10 then he'll gain a skill point in boxing. These creates an interesting strategic trade-off between higher chance of success vs. improvement.

Later on, Mad Dog gets in a knife fight with a rival gang-leader. Mad Dog chooses to fight left-handed(-4) to challenge himself more, thus increasing his chances of improving his knife skill.

Concerns

I like the simplicity of this system, but I have a few concerns. For one, I'm not crazy about the fact that a higher roll loses me the skill point. BUT, it's OK, I think. When I just barely make a roll, there is something more exciting/significant about that for me than if I make it by a lot.

I'm wondering if this is going to result in my players getting way too many skill points(1-2 on average per 2-3 hour session makes sense for me). I don't think it's going to be a problem, since at best they will have a 1 in 10 chance of success per skill test, but I'd like to see how it goes in an actual play test.

I'm also worried that players will get too caught-up in trying to gain skill points and will lose focus on the game. This might also be a reason to cap the number of points you can gain per session, so that players can focus on in-character concerns once they've earned their skill point for the session...

Alternate XP System for Cyberpunk 2020

Improvement Points--they're such a pain! The DM has to award them. The players have to spend them. It's a lot of bookkeeping to for everyone to spend time on.

I always liked XCOM's character improvement system. Your attributes improve as you use them. So successful shots improve your accuracy, carrying heavy loads improve your strength, etc. So here's a similar, simple system for your Cyberpunk 2020 game:

The Rules

Every time you succeed in a skill check AND the number on the d10 is greater than your level in that skill, you improve 1 point in that skill.

• You can only gain 1 skill point per game session(or perhaps 2 for really long game sessions)
• You can choose to not receive the skill point, in hope of improving some other skill later in the session
• The player needs to declare they're adding the skill point at the time of the roll. Otherwise it's assumed they chose not to recieve the skill point now. (If your players are a bit absentminded, give them leeway of a minute or so)

Exceptions

This rule only applies for real, challenging applications of a skill, not practice or low-difficulty activities:

• Skill checks as part of training/practice can't be awarded a skill point. Instead the GM should come up with an alternative ruling. (If you want to increase your Karate skill by 1, spend a month in training and then roll 1d10 vs your current skill level, etc.)
• The same applies to Knowledge Checks, which just verify if the PC knows a particular domain-specific fact. This, as opposed to cases where the PC actually spends time/effort researching or figuring out something novel.
• Making a Personal Grooming/Wardrobe & Style check every time you dress in the morning doesn't cut it. You need to use your looks on a real goal--get the girl, get the bouncer to let you in without checking ID, buy the right clothes for the event in a time-consuming/expensive shopping trip, etc.
• No skill points can be gained for skills of less than Average Difficulty(less than 15)

Example

Mad Dog shoots at the security guard from close range. His REF is 7 and his Pistol skill is 5, so he rolls 1d10+7+5. He rolls an 8+7+5=20 which is a hit.

• Since his die roll(8) is greater than his skill level(5), his Pistol skill increases to 6
• But, really he wanted to improve his Hacking skill and he's planning on doing some hacking later in the session. So he chooses not to receive the skill point now to Pistol, in hope of possibly gaining a skill point in Hacking later on.

Advantages

1. You no longer have to deal with experience points
2. Skill improvement is more natural, since you generally will have to use the skill fairly often to get better at it
3. Skill improvement gets progressively harder as your skill level increases, since you need to roll higher than your level
4. It creates an interesting meta-dynamic--players have to use skills they're bad at to improve them. Also there's a gambling element involved, giving up the skill point now for the one you might potentially get later in the session.

Upgrade My Cyberpunk!

One of the problems with Cyberpunk 2020 is how quickly it has become filled with anachronisms. There are the obvious ones, like how internet/telephony technology have evolved. There are also the less obvious ones, like how our outlook has evolved regarding current technological revolution or how the Martial Arts world has changed.

In any case, it's a bit of a challenge creating a Cyberpunk setting without the anachronisms but that still remains interesting. So let's look at a few general approaches towards tackling this:

Patch-Punk!

So the most obvious solution is to just patch-up the most anachronistic stuff. Modern cellphones/computers/internet exist, but the world is still ruled by the Zaibatsus, and humanity still finds themselves increasingly objectified by the technology that becomes an essential part of their lives/bodies. Classic cyberpunk with a few minor tweaks.

Post-Cyberpunk!

Here, you don't just lose the anachronisms, but you update all the technology/society for what the speculative near-future looks like.

Viracades project, a relatively new CP2020 blog, is building-up some really great material informed by the latest and greatest in Post-Cyberpunk Literature.  He's got a society where 3D Printing has reached maturity and  robotic drones are ubiquitous. He's got a Music Dealer trying to evade the DRM police. I really like his updated vision of the Cyberpunk setting and I'm sure there's a lot more good stuff to come...

Mytho-Punk!

This one's inspired by Gardner Dozois' short story "Recidivist". Wintermute succeeded in it's mission to merge with Neuromancer and the AI's have ascended to godlike status. They're like the pantheon of Greek myth: decadent, perverse, omnipotent, and thoroughly superior. Humanity is completely at the mercy of their whims and, in fact, it seems like the only reason we still exist is that we amuse them.

Here, the world is post-apocalyptic, the technology from the AIs is inscrutable in it's working, in fact it might as well be Magic. Ultimately, this setting feels more like a Fantasy set in the Post-Apocalypse than a Scifi game.

Cthulhu-Punk!

I imagine an alternate, subtler vision of the Recidivist Universe, where the AI's are more like Lovecraftian Old Ones. They're largely indifferent to Humanity(so not post-apocalypse), but vaguely malevolent. There are cults that worship them whose rituals risk the entire world as we know it. There are places where their influence is felt, where a sort of gateway forms between our Dimension and others the AI's find more interesting. Basically Cyberpunk but with a pall of Lovecraftian Horror spread wide over the Sprawl of Corporations and Runners and Hackers and bizarre Techno-Punks.