Friday, August 30, 2019

10 Questions for Your SF Game (With Answers for Artificial Sky)

Everyone's seen Jeff Rients' 20 questions for a campaign. To be honest, I don't know if I need to link them in the first place. However, those questions were very, very focused on fantasy campaigns in particular, while I (and many more recent RPG blog-write-people) are more focused on sci-fi and cyberpunk stuff.

And a post of only questions is pretty boring, so I decided to expand on Artificial Sky using them.

Questions

1. What do the PCs do?
The PCs work to prevent the corporations from growing too large and taking control. For all intents and purposes, they're violent terrorists.

2. What's the setting's scale?
Artificial Sky is mostly set on Earth, although some corporations have created orbital or lunar facilities.

3. What level of technology will the PCs generally have?
Chemical-propelled firearms (as opposed to railguns), AR/VR equipment, combat drones, cybernetic augmentation, and automated hacking software.

4. What's the highest level of technology?
Yosef Industrial Augmentation recently released nanotech augmentations, while the U.S. military continues to make strides in man-portable energy weapons and railgun platforms.

5. Are there any psychic abilities, superpowers, etc?
No.

6. How do I improve my character?
Through augmentations.

7. What's the most important faction in the area?
For now, the U.S. government. While the corporations are rising fast, they're still under control.

8. Where can I get normal equipment?
Vending machines are spread through the cities, automatically connecting to a Neuroprocessor augmentation to track purchases (who bought what, when, and from what machine). Even guns and ammunition can be purchased through a vendor without even needing to touch the machine.

9. Where can I get strange or illegal equipment?
Some groups have hacked and restocked vendors, creating their own network of black market machines. Just be careful of honeypots; hacked vendors with a Neuroprocessor tracker left in, reporting directly to the corporation who owns it.

10. How do I heal myself?
Along with more conventional first-aid kits and stimulants, Yosef Industrial Augmentation has repurposed their nanoaugmentation tech into medicine - crack open the round glass container and the nanobots swarm out, repairing injuries.

There's still nothing as good as going to a hospital, but they keep track of everyone who goes in or out.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Cyberpunk Tables 2: Cosmetic Modifications

Otherwise, it's just Cyber.
Cosmetic Modifications
1. All of the character's augmented limbs have been skeletonized, keeping only the bare minimum of components the augment requires.
2. Transparent skin replacements in intricate, curving designs loop across the character's entire body.
3. The character replaced their hair with thin, color-changing wires extending from the top of their head.
4. A nonfunctional, creepily biological third eye has been placed in the character's forehead.
5. Two long, angular metal horns emerge from the front and back of the character's head.
6. The character's otherwise standard leg replacements both bend backwards at the knees.
7. A wide space on the character's torso has been replaced with an advertisement.
8. The character's joints are covered in deep circular scars from the installation of an old I-Pattern exoskeleton, which has since been removed.
9. On the character's back is a ring of damaged robotic arms, constantly shifting through a set of complex poses.
10. The character's veins and arteries have been replaced with a web of plastic tubes above their skin.
11. The character's face is covered in a glass mask displaying a looping video of the night sky.
12. Some parts of the character's skin are dry and mummified, kept under a translucent blue plastic covering.  

Friday, August 2, 2019

GLOG Class: Nanoweapon Poisoned

A recent challenge being pinged across the GLOG-y types over on the OSR discord is the Curse Class, where some outside event (a bite from a vampire, a message from a god) happens to you, and starts changing you. Let's do that, I suppose.

For years, Yosef Industrial Augmentation has sold nanoaugs - instead of a dangerous, time-consuming surgery, they use a set of nanites that enter the user and construct the augment out of supplied materials and pieces of the body.

Recently, they've turned these into weapons; canisters of nanites are fired from mortars into crowds, and released, deconstructing enemy forces and rebuilding them as mindless machines.

However, the weapon isn't perfect - sometimes, people exposed to the swarm have their mind left intact and in control. 



You gain the first template in the Nanoweapon Poisoned class upon contact with hostile nanoweapons. Once you have one template in this class, you must gain another template in this class whenever you level up. If you have 4 class templates already, Nanoweapon Poisoned templates begin to replace your other templates.

To remove Nanoweapon Poisoned class templates, you must destroy the nanites with EMP weapons - however, this will leave you without the parts of your body they have replaced. This is not lethal until class template D - if you remove the nanites before that, you can be saved by future medicine.

A: Zero Hour
B: Nanoaug Armature
C: Swarmform Process
D: Dissolution

A: Zero Hour
The nanites have begun to consume your respiratory system. Your maximum HP is decreased by 1 (if this would kill you, it instead leaves you at 1 maximum HP), and your movement speed is halved. Once per day, you can cough up a stream of nanites, dealing 1 damage to you and 1d4 to everyone in 40' of you as the nanites attack them. The nanite torrent can also consume one object the size of a small dog.

B: Nanoaug Armature
The nanites spread, beginning to consume your skin. You lose all bonuses from armor as it is stripped from you, and your maximum HP is decreased by 1 (if this would kill you, it instead leaves you at 1 maximum HP).

Whenever you are hit with a ranged attack, the nanites extend a tendril to lash at the attacker, dealing 1d6 damage. When you are hit with a melee attack, the nanites swarm the attacker, dealing 1d8 damage and consuming their weapon.

C: Swarmform Process
The nanites have consumed your musculature. You are a mess of organs and bones held together by the nanites alone. Your maximum HP is reduced by 1d4 (if this would kill you, it instead leaves you at 1 maximum HP).

With the extra material, the nanites are able to project copies of you. You can release 2 copies a day. They have 10 in each stat and 4 HP. They can attack with hair-thin tendrils of nanites, dealing 1d4 damage.

D: Dissolution
The nanites have consumed everything, leaving you a cloud of disassociated neurons in the center of the swarm. You can fit through any space, and release a canister of nanites, dealing 1d10 damage at a range of 50'. In one turn you can consume a car-sized volume of inorganic material.

Bullets and other physical attacks no longer harm you, but you take double damage from extreme temperatures and electricity.

Sunless Horizon Beta 2.3 Release

Commissioned from Scrap Princess excited screeching I've been posting about  Sunless Horizon  for about a year, and after finally gettin...