So people have complained at me that I have enough Shadowrun material to just rewrite Shadowrun. That is actually true. So sure, let's do it. But on second thought: NO. We aren't going to make a free alternate version of Shadowrun, we're going to give it the After Sundown treatment and write new IP that happens to be a near-future neo-tribalist magic-using cyberpunk cooperative storytelling game. There have been serious suggestions to call it "Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker", but that is silly. That will at most be the subtitle after a colon.

• Basic Themes that make Shadowrun make us happy are in. It takes place in the near future. It has cyberpunk, it has magic. It has tribalism of both the "society has fragmented" and literal Native American influence variety.
  
  
• This is New IP, so all of your beloved characters are gone unless they are historical people or real world nations or proposed real world nations. So Ryan Mercury's brown nipples are out, as is Dunkelzahn, but there can still be an Aztlan and an Amazonia, because those are real proposed nations.
  
  
• Magic comes "back" gradually, with it becoming more and more common as the future history unfolds. Magic is defined regionally by a relatively small number of initial practitioners, and this regional bias makes historical local cultures more important all over the Earth. Spirits summoned in different regions are different, and this difference is readily apparent (mechanically).


• This regionalism is perhaps most acutely felt in the Americas, where large numbers of Americans identify "Americanness" with Native American cultural and religious tropes more than European tropes. There is a complimentary effect where the Europeans of the late 21st century eat less hamburgers and drink less Coke, but this is less of a culture shock.


• The playable demihumans are the Elf, Dwarf, Ogre (hybrid of Ork and Troll), Asura (brightly colored, has four arms), and Deep One (like, from Innsmouth). Possibly an extra one, because there are currently no African examples (we are probably going with Chinese-style Ogres).


• Hacking is something you do on the fly from standing. And you do it with hologram projectors, producing effects similar to that episode of Fringe with the neuroscientist who had the funky Christmas lights.

And because we are starting from scratch, we can go places that SR never went or never went well. So we can pull up Urban Fantasy and Cyberpunk tropes that we like and put them in. This can include:

• Climate Change. Global warming, magic changing weather patterns, and so on. You can have a lot of cities either devastated or forced to adapt substantially to new environments.
  
  
• Oppressive World Government. Sure, individual countries have fallen apart and abdicated much of their responsibilities, but there are still local agencies and supra-governmental institutions. It's like Belgium, they haven't had a prime minister or an executive government for over a year. But the local authorities, corporations, and European Union have stepped in. North America and Europe can be mostly like that, only more so. This has advantages for dystopia because local governments are corrupt, and weird multinational shadow governments are distant and unresponsive.
  
  
• Magic Kingdoms Shadowrun did this a little bit with the Fairy Court, but it was a definitely underplayed trope. There should be magical countries phasing in from the ether that have creatures in there that you can talk to and locations you can adventure in. Avalon, Lemuria, and Xanadu can be in the UN. There can also be nations that are either overtly hostile or simply on a poor diplomatic footing with human society.
  
  
• Magic Swords. Shadowrun enchantments are so limited that they might as well not exist. They are just an alternate way for magic users to advance with their XPs. They aren't really equipment in any meaningful sense of the term.
  
  
• Africa. I would like to include all the continents. Shadowrun really dropped the ball on the Southern hemisphere.
  
  
• Peak Oil. Shadowrun included some talk about barrens and arcologies and stuff, but they never delved into why that happens. It happens because fuel becomes scarce, making horizontal cities unsustainable. This results in the building of higher density residential, industrial, and commercial structures (arcologies) and has people moving out of the vast sprawls made in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to populate the higher density areas. So Peak Oil was always a thing in Shadowrun, they just didn't really talk about it, and the other implications were left to just sit there.
  
  
• Peak Water: Water is a huge deal in much of the world already, and dystopian futures really can and should do more with water shortages. They don't have to go full Ice Pirates, but it should be there.
  
  
• Economic Stagnation. With limited resources and limited demand, industrial capacity can be hugely underutilized. This lets us use genre tropes such as extreme poverty and permanent underemployment without hand wavery.

-Frank

Are you going to give climate change the scientific treatment? There are a ton of RP wanks that think because we had record snowfall in the states, climate change was proven false.

Same thing with the oppressive shadow governments.

The whole thing has this sense of being the worst future imagined by the left and the right at the same time.

Sometimes its hard to get players to be emotionally involved in the game if the game assumes their political or religious views ruined the world.

Quote from: Cranewings;467287Are you going to give climate change the scientific treatment? There are a ton of RP wanks that think because we had record snowfall in the states, climate change was proven false.

Yeah, the plan is to do global climate change as an actual scientific thing. So pick a moderate-bad scenario and go with it. So sea level rise isn't one hundred meters and you don't have New York inexplicably turning into a glacier, there is a one foot increase in sea level by 2075. That's a loss of about 5000 square miles of US coastland, but coastal cities still exist.

Same with economic collapse. Go with actual Intro to Macroeconomics predictions rather than ad hoc scare stories. So government transfer payments are zero because the federal government has collapsed, demand is therefore proportionately low. Combined with resource limits that prevent full industrial capacity utilization, and unemployment is at levels that are simply inconceivable, even in the current environment where both political parties are telling us we should accept 9% unemployment as the new normal.

QuoteThe whole thing has this sense of being the worst future imagined by the left and the right at the same time.

In order to do Cyberpunk, you probably have to have the US collapse. For this project, the US collapses with a whimper because the Federal government is in gridlock and ceases being able to pay for things - causing various agencies to shut down and/or go rogue piecemeal over a period of years.

The different regional governments mostly claim to be the rightful government of the United States in absentia. And they are largely new currency zones based around the different mints (in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington DC, and Kentucky). The exceptions being the regions that actually secede and don't claim to be the United States: Utah, Texas, and the southern half of Florida (which takes this as an opportunity to conquer Cuba and some of the other islands).

But yes, the goal is to take the more scientifically plausible dystopian scenarios imagined by the left and the right in order to construct the future history. It's cyberpunk and fantasy, which means that it is asking the reader to give a lot of willing suspension of disbelief. I would like to spend as little suspension of disbelief as possible on creating the required political system that allows there to be multiple competing governments and lawless zones and an entire class of people who are mercenary covert ops teams. So anything that can be scientifically plausible should be.

Because you still have wizards and combat cyborgs, so a lot of things can't be remotely plausible and you're going to have to ask the reader to just go with it.

-Frank

Perhaps it could be left ambiguous as to whether The Man is a government, a corporation, a religion/ideology, or just Randall Flagg.  That way, DMs and their groups can tailor their dystopia to fit their underlying assumptions and prejudices.

I would like to see truly alien Fae that are different from the mutant elf PCs, just as true Deep Ones are different from Innsmouth Lookers.

I would also like to dispense with mundane hacking completely.  The way to keep some of the hacking tropes and make them interesting is to turn it all into a Psionics system.  The rich have defenses constructed by psychic sararimen (psararimen?) in their minds.  This would also allow for the return of proximity hacking, which I always thought was dramatically useful although technologically indefensible.  Dreamscape and Inception are helpful models.

Everything from Grant Morrison's The Invisibles should be considered.

Quote from: Esgaldil;467336Perhaps it could be left ambiguous as to whether The Man is a government, a corporation, a religion/ideology, or just Randall Flagg.  That way, DMs and their groups can tailor their dystopia to fit their underlying assumptions and prejudices.

Diverse ideology pushing should definitely be part of it. Having rules for effecting political change with actions can allow the players to pick any side. They could be political agitators or even doing counter-espionage to discredit political agitators. If the goal system is sufficiently dynamic, you could consider any particular slider to be a progress bar or an Arkham Horror style doom track that determines when you have to move to Canada, depending on your own views.

QuoteI would like to see truly alien Fae that are different from the mutant elf PCs, just as true Deep Ones are different from Innsmouth Lookers.

On a game mechanical note, there's the concept of Stress. Having more permanent augmentations (cybernetic or magical) increases your Stress. Being the subject of temporary buffs (chemical, nanite, spell, or simply using magic items) causes you to get Temporary Stress at a rate. There is a maximum Stress you can have before you just stop (pass out, go crazy, get cancer, or in some other way stop being playable, at least until your Temporary Stress goes back down). Having a higher Stress rating weirds people out, and having a stress that is high enough makes you start counting as a non-human for legal purposes.

What this means is that there are several supported Cyberpunk and Fantasy archetypes that don't have much or any augmentations. You have Bane (Juicer), King Arthur (Magic Item Wielder), Sangamon Taylor (Political Activist), and James Bond (Face). But while getting "no augmentations" is optimizing yourself to be good at specific tasks, various magical and cybernetic augmentations are the way to optimize yourself for other tasks. But for the people who are getting augmented, they still want to get Stress or things that make them actually better at what they want to do. So Captain Kirk doesn't get a cyber heart because he wants to keep his Stress low so that he stays good at the persuasion mini-game. Robert Olmstead doesn't get a cyber heart because he wants to get more Second Sight options off the Deep One list. Hsu Hao actually does get a cyber heart, because he is a grappler and wants to utilize super strength on a regular basis.

Which brings me to the Deep One list. If you're Robert Olmstead, you have a basic set of abilities and a Stress cost for being an Innsmouth Looker. But you can buy more Deep One powers (that each raise Stress) and get more inhuman Deep One-ish. So the folks at Devil's Reef have very high Stress ratings and a lot of magic powers, and it's not really clear if they were ever humans who shifted over or whether they are just lie that normally and the humans who started shifting when the Stars Were Right are all just hybrids.

QuoteI would also like to dispense with mundane hacking completely.

I don't think you can do cyberpunk if you don't have hacking of some kind. It doesn't have to be remotely realistic, it doesn't have to be especially useful, but it has to exist. The key is that Hackers have to be doing something which makes them adventure with the rest of the team. One possibility is to make remote hacking essentially impossible and require people to bust out screwdrivers to hack machines. In this model, the hacker has a bunch of other skills and does other things in the rest of the mission, and periodically you get your hands on a black box that is hackable and you make a skill roll at it - kind of like lock picking.

But the method I prefer is to go into GitS/Fringe/Snowcrash territory where hackers have short-range holographic projectors that change what people see and give them seizures. So hackers go on missions because they can make light flashes that make people flop around on the floor like a fish and mimic retinas of guards and stuff.

But one way or another, the "Hacker" has to be set up in such a way that he is in no way encouraged to sit in his basement eating cheetos.

-Frank

To clarify what I said about hacking - I'm fine with a guy who has mad computer skills and some sort of device he's connected to.  What would be interesting to me is if that device, and those hacking methods, gave him direct access to human brains, augmented or not.  I just don't buy the importance or feasibility of hacking into a computer system with everything else that's going on, as it seems like it would be too easy to shut the system down or equip every system with Ultimate Defenses.

I think Hacking should mainly be the equivalent to Lock Picking. That said, it needs to be wireless and it needs to be be able to done over the internet. You can't revert computer technology back to the 70s and expect people to take your supposed science fiction setting seriously.

However, what it definitely should not be is a long and involved sub-system for which only one player can participate. Actually in D&D terms, it might be better off making it more like the the Gather Information skill (I.e. lose D4+1 hours, gain information, then go on mission).

Quote from: jadrax;467392I think Hacking should mainly be the equivalent to Lock Picking. That said, it needs to be wireless and it needs to be be able to done over the internet. You can't revert computer technology back to the 70s and expect people to take your supposed science fiction setting seriously.

Eclipse Phase has a nice, credible (as of 2011...) system for this.

Quote from: The Butcher;467398Eclipse Phase has a nice, credible (as of 2011...) system for this.

Really? I found Eclipse Phase's hacking to offend my sensibilities on many levels. I can wear a wrist computer that will broadcast sense data directly into my brain that replaces the blighted cityscape with a lush forest to calm my nerves. I can backup my entire conscious existence and reupload it into a robot or a biological clone. And I can do any of these things without crazy levels of info skills or special mojo or anything. I don't even need to roll dice. It just happens.

And yet... as a hacker, someone who is actually defined in life by my ability to subvert the electronic systems in use in this society, I can't turn someone's vision off? I can't read someone's mind? People can replace their visual stimulus with entertaining distractions with the touch of a button, why can't a genuine bona fide secret agent whose entire job is fiddling with those exact machines do that to those people by pressing the exact same button?

That's I think the bottom line on hacking. Anything computers can do for you, they should be able to do against you as well. So if the setting has the ability to use a mind/machine interface to send commands to the computer, unscrupulous hackers should be able t use mind/machine interfaces to steal your thoughts and memories. If the setting has the ability to use computer generated virtual reality to replace your sensory stimuli with other stuff, then a unscrupulous hacker should be able to use computer generated virtual reality to replace your sensory stimuli with a nightmare world.

Quote from: EsgaldilTo clarify what I said about hacking - I'm fine with a guy who has mad computer skills and some sort of device he's connected to. What would be interesting to me is if that device, and those hacking methods, gave him direct access to human brains, augmented or not.

This I certainly agree with. It's a bit hard for me to imagine doing cyberpunk without augmented and virtual reality. And really, once computers are replacing your sensory input voluntarily, the hacker should be able to replace your sensory input involuntarily. Which makes the Hacker occupy a position analogous to the AD&D Illusionist. He controls the vertical, he controls the horizontal, and he can generate seizure-inducing holograms. On top of that, he has brain-reading tech, he can unlock magnetic doors, and he's probably a wiz with Google. So like a 3.5 D&D Beguiler: Illusions, Divinations, and Trap Finding. That sounds like a playable character in a mission-based RPG.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;467442Really? I found Eclipse Phase's hacking to offend my sensibilities on many levels. I can wear a wrist computer that will broadcast sense data directly into my brain that replaces the blighted cityscape with a lush forest to calm my nerves. I can backup my entire conscious existence and reupload it into a robot or a biological clone. And I can do any of these things without crazy levels of info skills or special mojo or anything. I don't even need to roll dice. It just happens.

And yet... as a hacker, someone who is actually defined in life by my ability to subvert the electronic systems in use in this society, I can't turn someone's vision off? I can't read someone's mind? People can replace their visual stimulus with entertaining distractions with the touch of a button, why can't a genuine bona fide secret agent whose entire job is fiddling with those exact machines do that to those people by pressing the exact same button?

That's I think the bottom line on hacking. Anything computers can do for you, they should be able to do against you as well. So if the setting has the ability to use a mind/machine interface to send commands to the computer, unscrupulous hackers should be able t use mind/machine interfaces to steal your thoughts and memories. If the setting has the ability to use computer generated virtual reality to replace your sensory stimuli with other stuff, then a unscrupulous hacker should be able to use computer generated virtual reality to replace your sensory stimuli with a nightmare world.

"Brain hacking" is covered in game by psychosurgery, not strictly part of the hacking rules, but if you want to connect the two I don't see why it can't be houseruled with very minor effort.

Interesting stuff, far more interesting than a straightforward clone.  Good job.

RPGPundit

We have different currency regions, and you can even take it upon yourself to crash the value of one currency or another. But we still need an international "Reserve Currency" that prices in the book can actually be in.

Are there any objections to using the IMF's shadow currency: the Special Drawing Right?

It has the advantage that the acronym is "SpDR" so people can call them "Spiders". Also, it starts with an S, so the symbol can be a "$", which makes it easy to type on an American keyboard.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;467550We have different currency regions, and you can even take it upon yourself to crash the value of one currency or another. But we still need an international "Reserve Currency" that prices in the book can actually be in.

Are there any objections to using the IMF's shadow currency: the Special Drawing Right?

It has the advantage that the acronym is "SpDR" so people can call them "Spiders". Also, it starts with an S, so the symbol can be a "$", which makes it easy to type on an American keyboard.

Sounds good, but then I am always in favour of something that is both real and that sounds cool.

So we need political entities for Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Hartbreaker. And we need quasi-apolitical economic syndicates. And we need futuristic ideologies. The first part includes regional and multiregional governments. The second part includes multi-national corporations and organized crime. The third part have associated armed pressure groups. Because collectively, those are the three things that will have Assets and Agents.

[size=16]Governments[/size]

Governments come in two flavors: Regional Governments (that are small and corrupt), and Transnational Governments (that are implacable, distant, and uncaring). The interplay between these creates work for Assets, and the general level of lawlessness that multi-jurisdictional existence entails provides people a place to hide in a suitably cyberpunk fashion.

At the top is the International Monetary Fund. They are the ones who decide whether your money is worth anything, and also issue $piders, the only universally accepted currency. Their agenda is make things better for investors who happen to have accounts with the International Monetary Fund. This means that sometimes they try to improve the economy of your region (because a growing economy raises the value of investments), and sometimes they try to bottom out your region's economy (because a prostrate economy is cheap to buy into on the "ground floor"). It all depends on how much of your region the bankers interested in your region who happen to have voting shares at the IMF already own in your region.

Regionally important for North America is the North American Union. It's a trans-governmental government agency that was agreed upon by Canada, Mexico, and the US back when they were all coherent countries. Today it extends all the way to Panama and includes most of the Caribbean. Their agenda is to bind regions in North America closer together and eventually stage a complete unification where they become a super empire that would be a real country. Thus they sponsor any and all proposed inter-regional trade whether or not it makes any economic sense, and attempt to fight separatism and external threats to the North American states.

Regional Governments include:

[size=14]Aridoamérica[/size]

It is a band across what is now Northern Mexico and including tiny parts of Arizona and New Mexico. It includes Deming, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona is a disputed border city that is largely depopulated because of regional instability. They embrace the magical traditions of traditional Chichimecan Shamanism and Nuevo Anasazi. It is largely a Mad Max wild land where the three main drug gangs (based in Tijuana, Juarez, and Reynosa) wield more real power individually than the government in Chihuahua.

[size=14]Aztlan[/size]

This is Central and parts of Southern Mexico. Ciudad de Mexico has been renamed Tenochtitlan and they lay claim to everything that used to be in Mexico. That includes California. The embrace the magical traditions of Nahuali (Aztec Magic) and Curandera (a more Spanish-Mexican form of sorcery). They are aggressive, and they play court ball.

[size=14]Maya[/size]

The Yucatan gets it right in the wang when sea levels rise 30 centimeters, and when the central government of Mexico does fuck-all about it, the Mayan people secede. Maya united Belize, Guatemala, and the Western half of Honuras. They embrace the magical traditions of

[size=14]Mosquito Union[/size]

The Mosquito Coast is unified, largely under the guidance of Miskito sorcerers, but also with the guiding interest of a group of British biotech firms. The national language in Mosquito is English. Mosquito includes Eastern Honduras and all of Nicuragua. Costa Rica is a Spanish-speaking protectorate. The Miskitians embrace the magical tradition of Miskito and Mosquito, the former being based on traditionalist tribal beliefs and the latter being based heavily in modern theories of biotech and insect-grafts.

[size=14]Colorado[/size]

Denver has the all-important economic infrastructure that allows the people who think they are still in the United States and live in the Mountain Time Zone to continue functioning. They embrace Nuevo Anasazi and Navajo 'áńt'įįzhį.

[size=14]California[/size]

As the Colorado state government is the defacto national government for Albuquerque, Kansas City, and Omaha, the state government in California provides administration and currency for Portland and Las Vegas. Those who submit to Californication embrace the magical traditions of Aquarianism and Western Technomancy, which are rooted in Hippyism and high energy physics, respectively.

---More to Come---

-Frank

[size=20]Secessionist American Provinces[/size]

[size=16]Lone Star Republic[/size]

It's pretty much Texas. They added a bit around the ArkLaTex, and they moved the capital to Dallas after generally horrible things happened to Austin and Houston. Many Texans follow Curandera, but most local Brujahs follow Fenomeno.

[size=16]Conch Republic[/size]

Miami needs dykes to keep the ocean out of its streets and there is a lot missing from the Everglades. And Jacksonville is a non-city. But being cut adrift from America, South Florida was free to do what it always wanted to do: Invade Cuba. Also what's left of the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Local magic is Santeria and Voodoo. Since the world is severely oil-short, the fact that the Conch Republic is rich in "white gold" (biofuel made from sugar cane) means that they are able to maintain relatively high employment and output, making them one of the richer countries.

[size=16]The Republic of Deseret[/size]

It's basically Utah except for a bit in the Southeast that is Navajo and is part of Greater Colorado instead. Non-Mormon magic is illegal in Deseret.

[size=20]Corporations[/size]

Corporate actors are very powerful because they can take over part of another region just by paying market value for them. This isn't the 20th century though, and industry just isn't worth much. Industrial capacity utilization is incredibly poor because demand is perpetually depressed and resource shortages are a constant concern. So all the companies like Lockheed just don't even matter any more. The Megas are based on one or more of the following:

• Resource monopolies. Resources are scarce, and if you have a stranglehold on a resource needed for production, you can command significant concessions. An example is the Rare Earth mine in Mountain Pass, California. Once it is online, it provides a majority of the world's rare earths. Almost all of the rest come from a couple mines in Mongolia (that is not a joke - mines in other countries comprise 3% of global rare earth production).
  
  
• Medicine. Biotech speaks for itself.
  
  
• Telecommunications. People can't go anywhere, but they still need to talk, so telecom is about as powerful as it was during the early days of telegraph.
  
  
• High Tech With energy in short supply, people need things to be lighter and more fuel efficient all the time.
  
  
• Energy. He who has the hydro-electric dam has the aluminum processing plant up and running shortly. People need[/] energy for everything, and companies that can provide it are required for everything else.

You also want to have companies representing every part of the world and the new economy. So something that is a recognizable Gazprom would be good. Meanwhile, the companies in the Americas need to be reshuffled. There's no anti-trust legislation that affects anything, so we can have Standard Oil back.

-Frank