Samizdat Vol. 2 Issue 3

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Sickness SpreadingA dry cough is spreading through the sprawl, with sufferers also showing signs of fever, night sweats, weight loss. 

"I'm not sure how this has spread so quickly," said Iago Kuchina, head of the 2nd St Doc's Box. "I can confirm that the disease is very contagious. People with latent symptoms can transmit the disease. Symptomatic people are obviously stronger vectors."


Asked if micropore filter-masks helped, Kuchina shrugged.


"We're still trying to figure out what we're dealing with."


There is no known cure, and early symptoms could worsen over time, Kuchina indicated.


"Or, who knows? Everything could turn out roses." He laughed and peeled off in his mobile operating theatre, swerving around a man who coughed into his hand and held up his bloody palm. 


One anonymous source slaving through mid-management indicated that multiple corps are in meetings with Single Sun, discussing possible quarantine measures. Of course, involuntary quarantining carried out by megacorps would be illegal under territorial law... 

Black Eye for Networked Fabrication Implementations: Prototypes Stolen!!NFI sources indicate that a shipment of prototypes were stolen one week ago during routine transit. NFI CEO, Nathaniel Steele Bengt, has personally executed one of the contractor shipment managers involved in the incident during a debriefing. 

The prototypes are apparently legged armored personnel carriers, though one source indicated this is a misnomer - the vehicles can't transport more than one person and a small cache of cargo.


Such vehicles, armored and likely armed, would pose a serious threat to runners or gangers armed with anti-personnel small-arms, even firing AP ammo! Keep your Kilgore Co. RPG-777 launchers handy should you find yourself hunting this dangerous prey.

Yay another iteration on Apple-Monsanto SmartGrowth!Idiots at E3 are taking their anti-priapism pills, trying to look professional as they whore A-M's SmartGrowth, or iGrowth as cancer-laden old farts call them. They would know, having developed the initial skin cancers the comms-unit ("and so much more") caused as a side-effect of use. 

Though offering a number of (admittedly) useful features, which we won't bother to hawk here, Samizdat Editorial must remind people that SmartGrowth WILL GIVE YOU FUCKING CANCER. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement.

Deprecated Corporate Vat-Grown Bodyguards Apparently For Sale
Corp Fixers are wandering around with these creepy things in their crews nowadays. Apparently a job went very, very right against one of these metal-toothed, dermal armored fellows, and since then corporate mid-level management has divested themselves of their former meatshields. Though 'deprecated,' it's worth pointing out that these identical gents can withstand a surprising amount of punishment. It's rumored that a few have gotten inhibitor chips surgically removed, and are now freelancing. Some runners just made their own competition! Now that's Unbridled Capitalism at it's... finest? Yes. Let's go with that.

Omega 11 Satellite Probably Mind Controlling Us AllIn user-submitted news, the Omega-11 satellite, recently stationed in permanent geo-synch with our lovely patch of sprawl, is beaming down mind-control rays as we speak. These evil rays caused the water riots two years ago which devastated the old Underdock neighborhood. In short, it is to blame for many of our woes, and apparently the Church of Christ the True Flesh will pay for its sabotage. Of course, first you have to find the Church. And convince them that you believe their crazy bollocks. Good luck runners!

-=-=-

I stole this idea from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Samizdat is an underground journalism / conspiracy publication there. Of course samizdat has a very interesting history as well. Anyway, I haven't written up APs from the Sprawl games I've run, but this is some between-session news that reflects both what the PCs have done and what else is going on.

Some Sprawl Enemies / NPCs

Just some NPCs / enemies for The Sprawl. I wrote out 'moves' for these folks - these aren't quite the same as Threat Moves or MC Moves or the like. It's more like how this NPC could Make Their Lives Complicated Now or Inflict Harm or the like. Or just things the NPCs might try to do if the PCs flub hard, which lets the MC offer up a choice - now Sandman and his crew are splitting up, the woman on a folding moped with... a rocket launcher? Or an electric van, or a VTOL 'copter? The Wire Dancers are harassing some merchants and heading your way, maniacal looks in their eyes. A skyscraper's window shatters and you think you see a stealthed microlight whip out into the night, but you can't quite track it without trying to Assess the situation. That kind of thing. Just ways of thinking about how these crews normally operate.

Razor: Stealth melee assassin type

• He's armed with a sword, wearing a stealth suit, grav harness, and has a microlight and a briquettes of hexa-C4. 
• He has dermal armor, exposed in places like his cheekbones and knuckles, and stainless steel teeth. Can survive 4-5 harm. (Deprecated corporate vat-grown security.)
• Helpers: Meeks and Scoot, tazers, knives, stealth suits, microlights.

Moves: 

• Ambush suddenly at hand range 

•  Cause an explosive distraction

•  Misdirect the players from something Meeks and Scoot are doing

Bristol: Owned Pusher working for a Corp hunting a PC

• Implanted weapon, holdout gun, armored coat, flashy methane-powered car
• She squats with the Upstreet Folks in Lower Downtown, a gang of entertainers and technical kids run by a real fucker, Harvard
• Works for <BIG CORP> and her fervent beliefs are related to their goals

Moves:

• Use Vision Thing / Fast Talk against a PC. The PC can mark experience if they do what she wants or are Acting Under Pressure to deny her, for Fast Talk. Vision Thing would give her hold and let the MC hand out +1's or -2's. I don't want to track hold, but if you feel like you're giving out XP like candy, it's an option.  

•  (Anyone trying to Fast Talk or use Vision Thing against Bristol has to Act Under Pressure first. Good luck!)

•  Rouse up an angry mob and send it after the PCs. Medium gang 0-harm, close, 0-armor, can take 2 harm. Of course as a medium gang it'll do 2 harm to any one PC who gets in range of it.

• Send some technical Upstreet Folk against the PCs, directly or indirectly 

Crash and the Boys: Hacker collective

• Fights as black ICE (Crash) or Red (the Boys)
• (Note: I have no deckers in my game presently, so, most of their moves are about what they can do in the world. Also, not much info on who they are. The PCs would have to do some investigating, these guys are pretty obscure / intentionally anonymized.) 

Moves:

• Take over something in the immediate environment which can't hurt the PCs, but they can tell something is strange as cameras glitch out and then focus on them 

•  Announce themselves with old school animation cutups  

• Take over localized gun turrets 

•  Set off alarms and direct security towards 'heavily armed bath-salts-smoking thieves/murderers/barbarians/raiders' - the PCs

 

Devona and the Wire Dancers: gangers, protection rackets and combatants

• Small gang with monofilament weapon implants, cybereyes with night vision mods
• Armored clothes, can eat 4 harm, have 1 armor
• Nikki and Mina: VTOL bike riders with molotovs 

Moves:

• Blow lights in the immediate area 

•  Set up an ambush with some stolen incentive (weapons, cyberwear, etc) 

• Fall back, hide in dark decaying buildings, lay mines and noisemaker traps 

•  Interdict trade in their territory

Sandman and Spotters: Snipers

• Sandman has a 4 harm far/extreme rifle with thermographic, night vision scope. 
• Sandman has carbon-fiber and anodized titanium eyes and an old chrome prosthetic hand which belies her seeming youth. 
• Sarah and Sleeper are spotters/backup. Sleeper has a 3 harm far/extreme rifle with a regular glass scope. Sarah has a micro-missile launcher (near/far 3-harm breach) and a flechette pistol.
• Sarah's chipped with skillwires around rocket launcher use and breaking & entering. Sleeper has 4 prosthetic limbs of varying length, and cybercoms.
• VTOL 'copter, electric van, foldable scooter. They don't travel together if they can help it.

Moves:

•  Announce themselves as a laser beam traces over someone's face  

• Kill from extreme range - someone the PCs can see

• Kill from extreme range - someone the PCs know  

• Fire on the PCs from extreme range

• Split up and disappear  

The Sprawl in Space: Firefights

I don't want to run Firefly or Alien in The Sprawl, but I wouldn't mind my PCs heading up a space elevator for a mission, like Case and Co. in Neuromancer, or the last episode of Cyber City OEDO.

I read somewhere that flechette weapons were really designed for space, because they can kill without catastrophically compromising a space habitat. So the rules reflect that. I also wanted decompression to be orthogonal to winning or losing a fight. You can win and still have your AP rounds pass through your enemy and hit a silk flexiwall just wrong.

When you shoot people in a space habitat using non-flechette weapons or ammo, roll + the number of people you shoot. Add +2 for a breaching weapon, +2 for explosive or airburst ammo, +1 for AP ammo.

10+ Catastrophic decompression event. Nearby pressure bulkheads fling themselves shut to isolate the damage, as atmo fires itself (and any loose contents) out into the void.

7-9 Slow leak. You're going to need to a suit, a leak seal kit, a route away from the area, or some combination of the above, and very soon.

6- It's all good.

Anyway, I feel the breach/explosive/airburst/AP is maybe a bit too fiddly. At the same time, I don't want those things to automatically cause problems. Will try to run this sometime and see. I also need to come up with decompression rules. Act Under Pressure seems like a good enough fit in most ways.

In the spirit of being a fan of your edge runners, they'd probably know going up to space that regular weapons are extremely dangerous to use inside a space hab. Unless they're already wearing pressure suits...

THE SPRAWL

(Art is from here.)

The Sprawl is an outstanding RPG. A Powered By The Apocalypse game, it provides a strong mission-based structure to sessions. This isn't just a conceit about why all the PCs are together (missions and paydays) - the game is split between doing legwork and carrying out the mission. Custom moves around getting the job and getting paid bookend it all, with the PCs picking whether they get paid in full, betrayed or set up, and whether they can identify their employer.

Legwork is about planning, but the PCs can't sit around in a squat or atop some abandoned building and Make a Perfect Plan. They drive around and get into rolling gunfights and get caught surveilling places. They make up contacts and hit them up for gear or rumors. They throw parties and start whisper campaigns and replace fallible flesh with machine. They hack corporate subsidiaries and buy guns and wire up knockout gas satchel charges.

The Legwork clock reigns in the PC preference towards a perfect plan. Unused portions of that clock get added to the Getting Real Paid roll at the end, which determines if the PCs get paid and get away, or are on the run, chased by vat-grown assassins. The legwork clock can also advance the mission clock, which, when filled, means they have failed.

Legwork lets the PCs pick up gear and intel, which are specific, game-mechanicy things. If you have a move that gives you [gear], it's abstract until you need it. If you have [gear] and get up to a sealed blast door, it's a D4 charge and a remote clacker to detonate it. If you come across a keypad-blocked entryway and have [intel], you know the passcode, or you know how to blackmail a security guard, or you know the walking route and schedule of the armed patrols.

The mission clocks lets the failure of an action ratchet up tension wherever the mission is. Alarms go off, people go on the alert, guards start searching for fake ID passes. You get to the end, the mission is a flub, and people either escape or get caught or killed. As it goes up, security locks down the building, calls in armed assets, and the MC moves get harder and harder.

(Art from here.)

Surrounding the missions are clocks for corporations and threats. Corp clocks let you know if they're aware of the PCs, and if they're hunting the PCs. Threats are non-corporate antagonists - lone gunmen, aggressive hacker collectives, replicants coming into the workforce, grey goo or plague outbreaks. They let the MC create ongoing consequences for people the PCs screw over in the course of their work. They might kill some random wannabe runner asshole, only to find out his cousin and said cousin's gang are looking for who did it. Maybe some corporate wage-grubber the PCs charmed into helping them gets cyborged out and trained as a corp sniper, thrown into the corp penal legion, but given enough spare time to start hunting the PCs. Maybe giving Mr Johnson those blueprints will let him test nanohive builders on the a PC's apartment block, killing hundreds.

The playbooks are quite fun. There's a few that might not fit with every group - a legit Reporter hanging with Killers and Soldiers? - but in general they're easy to throw in wherever, and lots of fun. Techs and deckers will get people past ubiquitous electronic surveillance, infiltrators will do the same against humans, killers will kill, drivers will drive, pushers will brainwash people with their fervent beliefs. The damage model is much closer to classic Apocalypse World than Dungeon World, with health countdown clocks and a harm move.

All in all, quite a fun system. I've an AP with my brother-in-law and nephew to write up, and am running this on Roll20. It's been a great deal of fun so far.

Savage Rifts Sample Characters: Juicer, Crazy, TechnoWizard, Burster, M.A.R.S. Mercenary

Had fun making some more Savage Rifts characters, with more to come.

All the sample characters so far

Crazy Vs Juicer

Juicers feel very focused - they're kinda high all the time, they can't use psionics or magic (high. all the time.) and they just seem like super warriors. They're a bit simpler to make - just throw in some Underworld / Thiefy skills on top of a lot of combat edges, and have a blast. You're physically somewhere near Captain America. So you're not great at doing math anymore, so what? Trade-offs. 

Crazies are a bit more diverse in their skill set. They can Frenzy, they have guns and psionics, but can't use either when berserk, by default. They have Edges to change these things - you can be a berserker gun-bunny or a frenzied psi-assassin. This really changes how their frenzies play out, which is very neat. And unlike Burn, there's far less of a downside to one Frenzy per session, especially if you pick the right Edges. Their physical attributes are up there with the Juicers, though they get fewer free physical edges, which seems to fit what I've read about Juicer sporting events in the Rifts universe. Juicers tend to have a bit of an edge at Deadball.

Using Juicer Burn in Fun New Ways (Is Not Where I Went With This Juicer)

Maybe I'm somewhat conservative in my meta-gaming - you might notice I almost always send out magickers / psychics with Armor, in later posts. I also didn't look at a lot of Juicer 'Use Burn In New Ways' Edges. There are a bunch, but you only get to use them 8 times by default, so, yeah. People have complained that a Juicer using these Edges a lot will die quickly - they're right! That's the point! Don't use Burn every session! Not until you want a new character to play.

There are still some nice Juicer-centric edges which don't draw on Burn (Splitting the Seconds being my favorite sp far). That said, if you're playing this as a one-shot, plan for a Juicer Viking Funeral.  Give her some different Edges around going out in style.

Techno-wizards are Unique and other non-surprises

There's a section in the player's guide around making Techno-Wizard (TW) mods to other items. You're going to want to read that (around page 106) if someone plays a TW. It's a really cool spellslinger class. Most require you to pick 3-5 starting powers, and the TW framework is this way (3), but you also have access to all your unchosen spells, thanks to the magic of making TW gizmos on the fly. The sample character can do this 5 times a session, which is going to throw some awesome wrenches into some GM's plans. New players will probably need a GM who can prompt them a bit, because they won't have much exposure to all the Savage Worlds powers. I imagine at least the list as a handout would help, and maybe have a spare to eyeball during any time the players are having trouble planning their daring heist/escape/attack/etc. I didn't recapitulate the list on the character sheet, because I am cruel.

Techno-wizards also wind up having a lot of skills, a lot of Knowledge (Scientific Things), a high Repair. So that's also different, an Iconic character who starts out with a lot of skills freebies.

Bursters Know What to Do

They're going to light everything on fire and watch it burn. Seriously, what an insane psychic combatant. They're on fire (and armored, often to Mega-Damage levels). They're starting small fires as free actions. They're shooting bolts of fire. They're taking half damage from laser weapons, you know, one of the most common Rifts small arms. They have so many Iconic Framework bonuses I ran out of room and had to format things in a different, possibly better way. They don't start out with a lot of other psychic powers, but hey. No one is going to mention this when a flying, burning crazy person floats through town looking for CS Deadboys to wail on. 

Finally a M.A.R.S. Character

I imagine MARS characters will take longer to generate than other Iconic Frameworks, because you get Hero's Journey tables to roll on, a Novice character, 4 advances, and another table to roll on that will probably up your Traits in awesome ways. You wind up with a character who will surprise you in some way, having gained some unexpected (and useful) skills or Edges. They're going to start out with a much broader base of ability than most of the other Icons, even if they are a little less hyper-focused on, say, lighting everything on fire.

This Mercenary is a keen-eyed Investigator, a decent warrior, and a divine Champion who is great at killing supernatural evil. Naturally, he believes that God wants him to do this all the time, and that whenever he finds supernatural evil, it's Fight Night. Hopefully he'll level up a lot before going anywhere near Mexico.

Savage Rifts: Combat Cyborg Sample Character

I've been messing around and making characters in Savage Rifts; this is my clothes-hound former-mechanic-turned Combat Cyborg. The Juicer Uprising was rough on Kal, or rather, the Coalition Shattered Earth campaign against some Juicer irregulars.

Combat Cyborg Sample Character

I originally had one of his edges as Acrobatic, but that seems to go against the spirit of the 'war only, otherwise not dexterous' nature of the Icon. On the other hand, it could be fair enough - it's not going to help with lockpicking, but it definitely applies to moving about the battlefield efficiently and safely. I'd imagine agility tricks would be not hindered by their lack of skin sensitivity and such, but that's subject to your GM. Though I would argue that throwing sand in someone's eyes isn't so different than hurling a grenade at them. Just cheaper.

Regardless, I picked Brawny, Battle Hardened, and Elan instead. This cyborg is going to kick ass at soaking hits, and is still going to be fast enough to maneuver, flank, and even swim. And strong enough to club someone with a tree, doing Mega Damage!

Hindrances were fun. The fellow is a clothes-hound, kitted out like Punished Snake in fancy load-bearing harness, fashionable military fatigue pants, and an over-sized, antiquated hat. So a mix of Snake and Ocelot? Anyway, the clothing won't stand up to a grenade very well, unlike the cyborg, but that's just a good excuse to get revenge on your enemies (who are also the enemies of fashion). Heroic was somewhat obvious what with the Tomorrow Legion, and this borg's background as an aid to the Juicer Uprising. Wanted by the Coalition - I imagine this minor hindrance being that he's wanted for petty smuggling - they didn't find out he helped get Uprising prisoners out of detention blocks, much less that he fought against the Coalition. This may be a weak excuse - maybe he broke some Federation laws traveling through there at some point. Maybe the Coalition isn't sure that he did anything because many combat cyborgs look similar.

Cyborg attributes feel like they're stamped from a common piece of MDC metal - which is the point, after all. Skills and edges allow for more variance, though you're not playing a Lord of War to shy away from being good at fighting. I could've increased one more stat rather than take those 3 edges, but I love the way Elan and Battle Hardened work together, and skipping BH now would mean my novice character couldn't grab it for a long time. And I can't resist the boulder-hurling implied by Brawny. I'd probably want to have this character spend his downtime doing yoga, meditative handstands, climbing, leaping, rolling, etc, such that picking Acrobat in the novice rank would make sense. I've read a lot of Battle Angel Alita, and love the idea of a somewhat-graceful cyborg.

Savage Rifts

I have no idea why Savage Rifts has captivated my imagination so much. Perhaps it's how the game strives to let these three characters run in the same group, and all have things to do. The vagabond, basically a hobo


 A full-conversion cyborg


 Oh you know a FUCKING DRAGON

In the original game you can take a look at the equipment for starting characters. Glitter Boy pilots start with a Glitter Boy, a 10-foot gleaming power armor suit with an incredibly powerful Boom Gun. Juicers start with their biocomps and their US-football-pad-looking armor and their variable beam rifles. Vagabonds have like a laser handgun and soap. There is a long list of Vagabond gear and it reads like the kind of thing a homeless survivalist might have. We can safely assume the Glitter Boy pilot doesn't smell terrible (unless she's been stewing in her armor for a week), but with the vagabond, we have to be reassured, and the equipment list does that. Soap.

Anyway, marrying this insane setting to Savage Worlds meant that our author, Sean Fannon, and his cohorts and compatriots were going to balance out these different OCC/RCC classes. Dragons and vagabonds, living together in harmony, both contributing to a party of adventurers.

Having made some characters with the Player's Guide, they may be getting there. I doubt a vagabond or a wilderness scout can punch-out a combat cyborg, but that's not really what their role is. But it does seem like the MARS characters (Mercenaries, Adventurers, R?, Scholars) are seasoned skill-hounds compared to the other characters, who are quite gifted within their narrower focus.

I'm really looking forward to more; I hope to start posting some sample characters I wrote up, trying to learn Savage Worlds and the Rifts-specific rules.