I've been thinking about systems that would let you hack everything you can see. Partly inspired by Graverobber's Guide's latest about a cyberpunk dystopia. Here are some Powered by the Apocalypse style rules I'm noodling around with.
It's really easy to make hacking this weird mini-game which takes everyone out of the world, makes 1 player the Special Time Person, etc. I think Shadowrun's move to wireless hacking is maybe a try at getting away from this, but I haven't actually read anything from that setting made after 1992, other than some video game stories. But anyway, that's my idea - everyone can do some kind of Hack Thing, hacking is generally something that you're doing locally; you're co-located rather than isolated. In the world rather than hiding in your basement.
Implied Setting Blurb
Everything is wired and rewired, injected with nanomachine dust, measured, monitored. But some in the lost corners of the world have learned to twist this panopticon against itself.
Some actual moves
HACK
When you hack something connected to the Aether, roll + hacking.
10+: Gain 3 hold
7-9: Gain 1 hold
Spend 1 hold to make the target perform a fairly normal action for a few minutes.
Spend 1 extra hold to make them do so for longer.
Spend 1 extra hold if they're doing something complicated or dangerous.
So for instance, if you want to break into an apartment, you probably can hack the door lock for a few minutes by spending 1 hold, then jam the door open. You also need to spend 1 hold to keep the security system offline for a few minutes. You could drop 1 extra hold for a much longer period of this simple control - you find or create a backdoor into the system.
REDACT
When you reach out to corrupt a large number of electronic recording devices in the area, roll + ghosting
10+ It's seamless, it's like your not even there.
7-9: Pick one.
You're not identifiable, but you're definitely there.
The records are completely fragged, which is a red flag right now for someone.
If that house you broke into was remote or in a poor area, REDACT is probably unnecessary. In a rich area dusted with info pollen? You probably can't hack your way out of being seen and identified unless you emit a shriek of EM and bend all the camera-eyes and recording dust to your will.
REMOTE VIEW
When you dream through the datastreams to glimpse somewhere far away, roll + warp
SABOTAGE?
When you destroy something beyond repair, or make it destroy itself, roll + break
Stats so far: hack, ghost, warp, break.
It's all very tentative and hot-takey. I kind of think the 5th (and final) move should be defy danger and that this is really just a weird hack of World of Dungeons. I wouldn't want to get any more basic moves than that, really. WoD style Danger Rolls are great for picking up slack.
Showing posts with label system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label system. Show all posts
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Monday, December 10, 2018
DOOM in an RPG
I wanted to play DOOM as an RPG. (Happy 25th anniversary, DOOM!) There are two things you need: Stay Frosty and Exemplars and Eidolons.
Stay Frosty is an RPG about playing a bunch of Doom Marines or Aliens' Space Marines running around, getting stressed, which makes you more competent until you make an unlucky save and then TENSION EXPLODES and you're murdering everything and ignoring tactics, possibly until you die. It's like if Mothership were about just playing marines and people panic by doing Billy-style last stands from Predator. Remove armor, throw away gun, attack big bad with a giant knife. The reason I don't just use it vanilla, is that the PCs are still fairly flimsy, _especially_ if you want to just run 1 PC against squads of enemies like a Doom Slayer.
To up the PC power level, I use damage, Gifts, and HP/HD from Exemplars and Eidolons.
Exemplars and Eidolons is about playing supernaturally-powerful thieves, wizards, or warriors. Your warrior can take on groups of 1 HD fools and destroy them all, punch through walls, never needs to sleep, that kind of thing. E&E evolved into Godbound, where the PCs are even more over-the-top, but E&E is perfect for what I want to play: solo Doom Slayer vs the first level of that game.
So your PC has 4 stats (Stay Frosty): Brawn, Brains, Dexterity, Willpower. Roll 3d6 and sum. You roll _equal to or over_ your stat: So Brains 9 is like '9+', and you want to roll a 9 or higher. If none of your stats are 5+, set one to 5+. Enemies try to hurt you (or terrify you) by rolling a d20 under your stat, and you subtract the difference between their level and yours from the roll.
Stay Frosty is a Black Hack hack that figured out to make everything the PCs want to do roll over. 20s are good! You use your stats to resolve attacks, unbreaking an APC's engine, wire electricity through a bulkhead, dodge falling rains of fire, that kind of thing.
Tension is as per Stay Frosty - you get tenser and better at kicking ass, until Tension Explodes and you flub your Willpower save and then you're fighting a cyberdemon with a knife. There's also critical hit and critical fail tables in there that I'll use. And enemies, mission generators, pointcrawling advice.
You can carry 21 - Brawn items.
You have 8 HP and gain 4 per level. Monsters use their HD as their HP. Armor is ablative HP that gets ruined and replaced just like in DOOM. Back-and-breast armor has 2 hp, a helmet has 1 hp. You could probably cobble together arm and leg armor and have up to 5 hp - for a 1 HD soldier that's a lot of extra survivability. Perhaps too much, we'll see when I run this more.
Damage is: weapons do 1d6 to 1d20 damage, a roll of 1 is 0 damage, 2-5 is 1 hp/HD of damage, 6-8 is 2 hp/HD, 9+ is 4 hp/HD. A combat knife does 1d6 damage, a pistol does 1d8, as does a 1-handed sword, as do some cheap assault rifles. A good rifle or two-handed weapon does 1d10 or more damage - a chainsaw might do 1d12, as might a super shotgun at optimal range. A BFG does 1d20 damage to an area of enemies but has like 1-2 shots taking up inventory slots.
So the damage is one huge thing that ups a single PC's survivability. You start with 8 hit points, you can take out 1 HD enemies with 1 hit, you can probably go toe-to-toe with a decent-sized demon/alien monster and survive.
You get 2 Effort, from Exemplars and Eidolons. You spend that to use some of your E&E Gifts.
You get some of the Warrior or Generic gifts - 3 at level 1. So you might be able to fight large groups of your-HD-or-less monsters and only get attacked once, or you can rip bulkhead doors down given a few minutes, or you can spend effort for the combat to nat 20 hit your enemy. To me this is another thing that we see the Doom Slayer do all the time.
Stay Frosty is an RPG about playing a bunch of Doom Marines or Aliens' Space Marines running around, getting stressed, which makes you more competent until you make an unlucky save and then TENSION EXPLODES and you're murdering everything and ignoring tactics, possibly until you die. It's like if Mothership were about just playing marines and people panic by doing Billy-style last stands from Predator. Remove armor, throw away gun, attack big bad with a giant knife. The reason I don't just use it vanilla, is that the PCs are still fairly flimsy, _especially_ if you want to just run 1 PC against squads of enemies like a Doom Slayer.
To up the PC power level, I use damage, Gifts, and HP/HD from Exemplars and Eidolons.
Exemplars and Eidolons is about playing supernaturally-powerful thieves, wizards, or warriors. Your warrior can take on groups of 1 HD fools and destroy them all, punch through walls, never needs to sleep, that kind of thing. E&E evolved into Godbound, where the PCs are even more over-the-top, but E&E is perfect for what I want to play: solo Doom Slayer vs the first level of that game.
So your PC has 4 stats (Stay Frosty): Brawn, Brains, Dexterity, Willpower. Roll 3d6 and sum. You roll _equal to or over_ your stat: So Brains 9 is like '9+', and you want to roll a 9 or higher. If none of your stats are 5+, set one to 5+. Enemies try to hurt you (or terrify you) by rolling a d20 under your stat, and you subtract the difference between their level and yours from the roll.
Stay Frosty is a Black Hack hack that figured out to make everything the PCs want to do roll over. 20s are good! You use your stats to resolve attacks, unbreaking an APC's engine, wire electricity through a bulkhead, dodge falling rains of fire, that kind of thing.
Tension is as per Stay Frosty - you get tenser and better at kicking ass, until Tension Explodes and you flub your Willpower save and then you're fighting a cyberdemon with a knife. There's also critical hit and critical fail tables in there that I'll use. And enemies, mission generators, pointcrawling advice.
You have 8 HP and gain 4 per level. Monsters use their HD as their HP. Armor is ablative HP that gets ruined and replaced just like in DOOM. Back-and-breast armor has 2 hp, a helmet has 1 hp. You could probably cobble together arm and leg armor and have up to 5 hp - for a 1 HD soldier that's a lot of extra survivability. Perhaps too much, we'll see when I run this more.
Damage is: weapons do 1d6 to 1d20 damage, a roll of 1 is 0 damage, 2-5 is 1 hp/HD of damage, 6-8 is 2 hp/HD, 9+ is 4 hp/HD. A combat knife does 1d6 damage, a pistol does 1d8, as does a 1-handed sword, as do some cheap assault rifles. A good rifle or two-handed weapon does 1d10 or more damage - a chainsaw might do 1d12, as might a super shotgun at optimal range. A BFG does 1d20 damage to an area of enemies but has like 1-2 shots taking up inventory slots.
So the damage is one huge thing that ups a single PC's survivability. You start with 8 hit points, you can take out 1 HD enemies with 1 hit, you can probably go toe-to-toe with a decent-sized demon/alien monster and survive.
You get 2 Effort, from Exemplars and Eidolons. You spend that to use some of your E&E Gifts.
You get some of the Warrior or Generic gifts - 3 at level 1. So you might be able to fight large groups of your-HD-or-less monsters and only get attacked once, or you can rip bulkhead doors down given a few minutes, or you can spend effort for the combat to nat 20 hit your enemy. To me this is another thing that we see the Doom Slayer do all the time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)