Are you ready for the most nail-biting, spine tingling and jaw-dropping cyberpunk ride of your life? Dystopia 23 is a dynamic and comprehensive cyberpunk game that will provide you with unprecedented potential to role-play in the dystopian world of the 23rd century. In Dystopia 23 you can play all of the cyberpunk memes that you know and love. But you can also play outside the box. It provides the scope to play post-apocalyptic, sci-fi horror and future war as well.

This is not just a hack'n slash fest. Players will have to be strategic and wily to survive and achieve their goals. If you want to bring down megacorporations and corrupt governments you will have to use your wits, subterfuge and tech know-how.

This is an in-depth game with a rule set that is on the crunchy edge. The 380 page core rulebook covers character creation, skills, combat, vehicles, clandestine operations and operating in the Nexus. The 280 page equipment book will provide you with a mouth-watering array of gear and futuristic tech, from drones and covert equipment through to vehicles, weapons and human enhancement technologies. And the History of the Future, which provides the background to the game setting, is over 150 pages. Dystopia 23 has been developed and play-tested over a 15 year period, so it is skin-slashing bonkers.

The game will be released early in 2020 and a free primer will be available to download in the near future. Visit the website to view a ton of videos and content which will give you a great idea of the setting and game style. You can register on the website to receive product updates and news. The website is: https://dystopia23.com/
   
Inject some combat stims and warmup the over boost engine on your cyber arm; change your appearance with your Nanite facial feature alteration implant and switch on your stealth suit to hide in the shadows; or strap yourself into a mechanised combat walker and strut about the battlefield blowing away enemies with your sonic wave disruptor. The choice is yours, play it how you want. Dystopia 23-the Razors Edge is the future of cyberpunk gaming.

Here's what our fans have to say:

"I have lost 600 characters playing Dystopia 23, and I loved them all."
-   Thomas A. Anderson

"When I played Dystopia 23 the GM cut my arm off and replaced it with a new shiny one."
-   Lori Quaid
 
"My grandma tried playing Dystopia 23 but she s*%t herself and we had to put her in a home."
-   Leon Kowalski

"I went to the sprawl Doctor to get my teeth whitened but I came out with tentacles and a shark head. That's right, a f#*king shark head!"
-   Henry Case

"Dystopia 23 melted my face off."
-   Julius Deane

Tell us about your system. Or better yet, show us an actual play writeup.

The game system is completely original and has been refined through several rewrites. Its origins go back to the early 2000s when I was developing a hyper-realistic system. My group played with the system for a while and I learned some valuable lessons. The most important one being that nobody wants to do complicated maths at 2 o'clock in the morning after a week of work. I needed to get the system out of the way more. However, I didn't want to lose a lot of the realism from the game. In game design, especially in the combat system, it is a trade-off between realism and speed. I got sick of combats that would take a whole night to complete.

During this time I also started going along to gaming conventions and playing with systems where you had to complete a story in 3 hours including learning the system. I was able to take elements from a variety of different games and bring them together with my own original mechanics to create a system with a great combination of realism, dynamism and fun. A part of it is giving the player options to employ different game elements so that the characters feel unique and so that they can have an ace up their sleeve when they need it. So I gave the game a major rewrite and it has been in the same form for over a decade now barring a number of small changes here and there.

At its core all of the skill rolls and combat rolls are based around a small dice pool. You start with 1d10, this is the standard dice. You always get to roll the standard dice even if you don't have any skill. Also, the standard dice explodes, infinitely. This means that when you roll a 10 you get to roll again and add on, and you keep doing this as long as you keep rolling tens. This means that there is always hope. No matter how bad the odds you might be able to pull something out of the hat.

On top of the standard dice you add a progressively increasing set of dice to your roll based upon your skill rank. At skill rank one you add a D6, at skill rank 2 the D6 becomes a D8 etc, all the way up to adding 2d12. The rolls that you make can either be targeted or contested. With a targeted roll you are simply trying to reach a target number assigned by the GM. There are dozens of pages outlining recommended targets for activities in the game. Contested rolls are made for combat and a number of interactive tasks. Both parties roll and the highest roll succeeds. Your character's attributes provide a raw bonus to dice rolls related to that attribute.

In addition Dystopia 23 uses a number of mechanics to give the game an enormous amount of depth and variety. There are special points which can be expended to gain a bonus to a roll. These can also be used for a number of other purposes. Skill affinities come in 3 different types and can permit exploding rolls and rerolls.

Combats are intense and you will need to use tactics to gain the upper hand. A hex grid is recommended to get the most out of fights. Time is dealt with using an action point system. Weapon characteristics in the original system were based upon real-world ballistic data. This generally made combat lethal and led to a lot of paranoia. In Dystopia 23 that data is still used, but the real world deadliness has been toned down so that characters can generally survive a number of hits. Combat comes with a critical system and it can be brutal, especially if you get caught out in the open in a gunfight. However, the game aims to enable characters to be heroic so they shouldn't die from one or two gunshot wounds (depending on the gun).

In terms of complexity the game is not that difficult to learn. You can comfortably pick up the basics of the system in one session. But there are a variety of combinations of options to explore which give the game a lot more depth. It is certainly not the simplest game on the market, but nor is it the most complex. I do however believe that it provides an excellent balance of realism, fun and speed.

I can confirm that Dystopia 23 is ball-bustingly awesome. Don't believe me, here's what the fans are saying:

"Little Jimmy was having trouble concentrating at school. But my doctor prescribed Dystopia 23 and now he's hacking at an eighth grade level."
-   Claire Underwood

"The last I heard from Dystopia 23 it was rolling on the craps tables and drinking from one of those oversize cocktail tubes in Vegas."
-   Oswald D. Chalmers

Would you be interested in doing a Q&A in my RPG chatroom, #randomworlds?

Hi Dan. Sure. PM me and we can discuss details.

Like any RPG characters and their stories are at the heart of Dystopia 23. But making characters with real personality and theme doesn't come easy so the game uses an involving and in-depth character creation process. Dystopia 23 encourages players to build characters with unique personalities and strong connections to the world around them.

Character creation uses a development points system where you buy everything using the points allocated, from skills and attributes through to gifts, contacts and currency. You can start creating a character from any point, but we also provide a logical character creation process for those who are just getting started.

The theme of a character starts with selecting a youth package and continues on through the archetype and profession that you choose. Characters become further customised through choosing gifts and burdens that not only influence gameplay but can also thread the character into story arcs that become major features of the game.

During character creation players purchase from a selection of skill packets related to the character's profession. Contacts are extremely useful in the game providing you with jobs, connections to get gear, and a way to acquire useful information. You decide how much money you want for purchasing equipment, weapons, vehicles and human enhancement technologies by allocating development points.

Starting characters are competent, and depending on how you build them, either have a broad range of skills or a strong capability in a few areas. As with all things in Dystopia 23 the choice is yours.

Building your first character might take some time as you will no doubt want to hunt through the equipment book to explore your options, but once you have your technique down character creation should take about half an hour. At the end of the process you will have a unique character to interact with the world of the 23rd century. No two characters are the same.

Let's see what the fans have to say:

"I tried walking the razor's edge, but I cut my foot, and it really hurt."
-   Max Headroom

"I tried Dystopia 23 and my whites have never been whiter."
-   Happy Housewife

Happy New Year. We have just put 2019 behind us which was a historic year in the genre of cyberpunk. It was the year in which Blade Runner came to pass. Okay, I guess some people's estimates of the future are a little off, well, you can't win them all. But 2020 is upon us and this can be the year in which you learn to play Dystopia 23 and embrace the essence of cyberpunk. Check out the Introduction video to Dystopia 23:

[video=youtube;TbI4PitA2C0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbI4PitA2C0[/youtube]

No futuristic game is complete without ground-breaking technology. Whether you want cybernetic and biological implants, holographic stealth suits, drones, synthesised creatures or a plethora of weapons you can find them in the 290 page equipment book. Each weapon in Dystopia 23 is unique with its own table and special capabilities. Check out some of the weapon tables here: https://dystopia23.com/equipment-inside-look/

If you need to hack off your arm and attach a new one you want to make sure that it doesn't come from the local $1 shop. Dystopia 23 has all sorts of Cyberware from the standard cybernetic limbs, eyes and ears through to compliance saturators, which produce chemicals that make people more cooperative, and cyber stim cords that enhance your reactions. You can have decentralised optics for that all-important eye in the palm of your hand or to literally have eyes in the back of your head. Don't forget about a hardwired positronic brain controller for controlling robots and drones or a LiveWire to create muscle fibre spasms which increase your attack capacity. If you want to bring the weird you can attach a ripper tail, zap tail or even have a composite total skeletal replacement. You can get Wraithsight to see through walls, a secondary positronic brain or even a Wetwired molecular difference engine.

The history of Dystopia 23 is rich and deep. All starting with a global economic crisis that rips the heart out of the world's economy, the story of Dystopia 23 follows many twists and turns. All of this is described in great detail in the 3rd of the 3 core rulebooks; the History of the Future. Get a brief rundown on the background to the game in the History of the Future video:

[video=youtube;z1GcLzjN_hw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1GcLzjN_hw[/youtube]

looks like a labor of love! The weapons listings are both awesome and intimidating. :-) Looking forward to taking a look on release. I have a special place in my heart for Kiwis...  :-D

If you are going to be in Wellington, New Zealand next weekend for Kapcon I will be running 3 sessions of Dystopia 23 there. In sessions 1 and 5 I will be running "Facing the Mirror" a hacking mission based entirely in the Nexus. Naughty Celestium have developed an artificial intelligence. Who would have guessed that it would go rogue. Now you have to go inside the mind of the virtual beast to try and tame it. In session 2 I will be running "Rememberance" a mission about CogniZance, a corporation involved in memory extraction and trading. Is their trading legit, or have they been selling memories on Blemish, the memory blackmarket.

If you're going to be there please sign up and come along to try out Dystopia 23. The Kapcon registration page can be found here: http://kapcon.org.nz/?q=regform

Come and join me on the 28th of January on #randomworlds where Dan Davenport is going to interview me about Dystopia 23. The interview is scheduled for 7:30-9 p.m. Central time, or if you live in the fantastic southern hemisphere 2:30-4 p.m. New Zealand time (UTC +13).
I have no idea what I'm going to be asked, but tune in and you might learn something new about the game.

Quote from: Ferocious Games;1119536Come and join me on the 28th of January on #randomworlds where Dan Davenport is going to interview me about Dystopia 23. The interview is scheduled for 7:30-9 p.m. Central time, or if you live in the fantastic southern hemisphere 2:30-4 p.m. New Zealand time (UTC +13).
I have no idea what I'm going to be asked, but tune in and you might learn something new about the game.

Here's the shortcut to the chatroom: https://tinyurl.com/randomworldsIRC

[Q&A] #randomworlds welcomes Jason Carruth (Dystopia 23) 01/29/2020 7:30 p.m. CST!

https://dystopia23.com/

To join: https://tinyurl.com/randomworldsIRC

Log to be posted at: https://gmshoe.wordpress.com

Ferocious Games are excited to announce that the Dystopia 23 Primer is now available for download from our website. https://dystopia23.com/

The Primer contains an abridged version of the rules and a free mission to give you a taste of the game. It is available as a 124 page downloadable PDF.

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Shell Games is a four act mission based in 23rd century Chicago. At the auspicious opening of GenaTec's new Janus Tower, something sinister is about to happen. Characters must investigate this mystery and get to the bottom of what happened.

The Dystopia 23 Primer is available for FREE so that you can try out the game before you buy.

Don't forget to register on the website so that you can receive information about our products.