CYBER-PULP FANTASY CORE-Overview

CYBER-PULP FANTASY CORE

© Jerry Harris 2013

Published here as Open Game Content.

(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Index.)

Setting Background

Characters

Game Rules
NPCS

Adventure

OVERVIEW

What do you get when you move a noir pulp fantasy adventure 20 minutes into the future? 

I’m not pretending this is an original RPG setting.  It’s quite derivative.  Those wanting a more complete and well-thought out fantasy Cyberpunk setting should seek out Shadowrun, a game that I have admittedly not played, only read about.  I don’t pretend to be well-versed in this particular setting, but I did buy the Omni issue featuring William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” story new off the rack, Max Headroom was one of my favorite TV shows of the 80’s, and I revere the film Blade Runner.        

Here’s an easily available introduction to this setting, if you’re not familiar with it.

William Gibson short stories in Omni magazine

Burning Chrome July 82

Johnny Mnemonic (Yes, they made a movie based on this) May 81

New Rose Hotel July 84

Other inspirational material 

William Gibson Novel "Neuromancer"

Neal Stephanshon “Snow Crash” The first two chapters of this book are the most entertaining I’ve read in any book.  Unfortunately, the rest of the book couldn’t possibly keep it up.

Max Headroom (“20 minutes into the future” was the show’s tagline, as well as this game’s design ethos.)

Blade Runner

Rollerball (the one with James Caan and John Houseman from the 70’s, though the remake has its merits)

My take on Cyberpunk isn’t going to strictly follow any of these sources.  In fact, some of those takes on the future, as seen from the 80’s, may have been somewhat prophetic, but are downright quaintly naive compared to what has actually happened.  What this game will include is demi-humans, humanoids, monsters, and magic (not sure why, I guess just to provide more character classes and creatures to fight), highly skilled characters living outside of normal society doing questionable things to earn a living, and a smattering of sci-fi high-tech in a low-morality world. 

What this game will not include is an extensive backstory or a world gazetteer.  There isn’t going to be a master list of all evil corporations.  There will be no attempt at being exhaustive in cataloging future technology and it’s impact on society (not to say that this game won’t have a social satire angle to it). 

My take is that this game should be more episodic.  Characters will come into contact with some sort of novel technology or unearthed old magic and will have to deal with it and the people who’ve created it or want to obtain it or destroy it.  Exotic computers, dangerous programs, cloning, replicants, recreated dinosaurs, Total Recall memory manipulation, sentient AI’s, nano-tech, cyborgs, whatever, throw it all in.  Assume that anything really high-tech and exotic is a prototype or in very limited release for the super-wealthy.  Any rule set down here or that is made up in play for how a certain technology or magic works, is ripe for breaking with a new technology.  Combine the new technology with a villain, and you’ve got an instant plot hook.

Of course there should be recurring villains in the setting, but they shouldn’t be the point of it.  Corporate entities are ephemeral at best anyway.  The characters are just trying to get by and survive in a dangerous environment where they have no rights.  Most should be hoping to make a big enough score to retire safely.  They’d only want to seek vengeance on powerful enemies if there was a large profit in it and destroying them is the only way to ensure a safe retirement. 

One last thing this game won’t include is extensive rules for cyber-combat.  I love Tron and Reboot, the evocative symbolic combat of the Gibson’s Sprawl, and the avatars and virtual world of Snow Crash.  However, if I’ve learned anything from reading up a bit on Shadowrun, this is the main problem with the game.  I couldn’t come up with a satisfying solution that wasn’t, on some level, just plain silly.  Hacking is just going to be a skill roll.  If you want more, I suppose you could have your characters roll up virtual characters to take into cyberspace.  Don’t blame me if your head explodes from being too ironically meta. 

Sports Journal 11-17-13

[I got most of the Cyber-Pulp game finished over vacation.  I’ll start posting it as soon as I’m able to get a few posts ready to go.]

The US Grand Prix, live from Austin, Texas!  Yee haw!  I was really looking forward to watching this race.  I’d hadn’t seen the native track before, and also it was going to be on live at a pleasant hour.  The first thing you can’t help but notice is that giant observation tower on track.  I didn’t hear a proper name for it.  It’s like a massive Olympic diving stand.  The view up top is very dramatic with the “sky walk” clear floor looking straight down.  The anthem singer, whose name I missed, had no problem with the heights, as she belted it out with a Country-Western twang.  What the tower needs is “Big Tex” standing out in front of it.  Hey, he’s not doing anything when the state fair’s over anyway. 

NBC, anticipating my viewership (or alternatively hoping race fans waiting for the final NASCAR race, might tune in because the race is here in the US), went all out.  The race was on the main network and included a one-hour pre-race show.  The announcers made a concerted effort to be new fan friendly during the broadcast.  I liked the way they were unapologetically enthusiastic about F1 and promoting the sport.  It’s the same thing I like about the MLB Network.  Listening to sportstalk radio all week has a way of making every other sport outside of football and basketball, seem unimportant or fundamentally flawed.  It’s annoying as hell if you’re a fan of those other sports. 

The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and Demarcus Ware were there, as the Cowboys are on a bye-week and therefore, can’t lose this week.   The Texas Longhorn band was there.  Ron Howard, in a bit of cross-promotion for his F1 racing movie, read a dramatic intro.  Jay Leno took a test drive around the track, and there were other celebrities in attendance.  Will Buxton attempted to speak to a couple during an embarrassing Grid Walk.  Michael Waltrip and NASCAR stole this bit from F1 at the beginning of their season.  F1 has returned the favor, by dumbing theirs down to match them.  Where’s Peter Windsor when you need him?   

The big paddock news, as the championship has already been decided, was the firing of Sergio Perez by Mclaren.  I agree with the commentators, it’s a bad move.  Sergio has had some trouble finishing races, but he clearly has talent and is racing better than his teammate, Jenson Button.  He’s being replaced another F1 legacy driver.  I’m sure Sergio will get picked up for another team.  If not, what a catastrophe for the Mexican GP next year.  Mexico City has spent millions to upgrade their track to get a race, just to see him.

There was a great crowd, and it was a beautiful day in the Texas state capital.  The track itself is a bit of a roller coaster of elevation changes and lots of turns.  Turn 1, drives straight up hill and goes into a hard, blind left.  The drivers seemed to really like the course and were soaking up the energy from the crowd and the city’s hospitality.  Everyone is shocked that F1 could find an audience in the US, much less in Texas. 

The race summary is simply, Vettel, sitting on pole, leading all the way, and winning without any serious challenge.  I could’ve wrote that out that as a prediction a month ago.  I don’t know why F1 lets him use a jet car, with afterburners no less, and everybody else has to use a regular car.  There was actually plenty of action for other positions and some good moves, but so long as Red Bull is this dominant, you’re not going to see too many great races.  I did get to pick up a cool new term to go with “Box this lap,” which is, “Pit Lane Delta.”  It’s a bad sign for the racing, when you’re watching pit stops that intently.  

“The tires aren’t bulletproof, Sebastian,” warned Red Bull pit control late in the race, concerned about tire wear.  Vettel then proceeded to set the fastest lap.  I kinda like this kid.  Before the race, they played the admonishing he got for doing donuts right after winning the championship.  He proceeded to do it again, after winning this race.  I’m sure the Texas crowd appreciated that.

My guy, Jenson, did finish well, in spite of a bad qualifying.  He made a good move to end up 10^th to snag a point.  His best moment was his commercial with Tony Stewart.  I had heard about it, but this was the first time I’d seen it.  “Soda cookies. . .” Heh, heh, that was funny. 

Coverage was Side-by-Side or “Non-Stop.”  The commercial breaking wasn’t terrible, certainly better than NASCAR.  Weird hearing the commentary in English, after watching several races on Uni-mas and hearing their constant encouragement for “Checo” Perez.  NBC skipped over some of my favorite post race parts, walking past the line of sponsor girls and the podium drivers chatting in the waiting room.  I was happy to see Mario Andretti there doing the post race interviews.  Good call by the race organizers.

Meanwhile in NASCAR, in a race I didn’t get to watch, Jimmie Johnson won his 6^th championship.  NASCAR fans (other than myself), once again, swore off watching anymore NASCAR in disgust.  (“Junior!  Wherefore art thou!”)  I like Jimmie.  Does this make me a bad fan? 

Why am I so critical of this league, which generally has better races, and am so effusive about F1 and sportscar racing?  Think it’s because my expectations for a good race are so low in those series that I appreciate all of the little things I like during the race more.  So, all NASCAR needs to do is put on even worse races, that way, I’ll like them more. 

Jimmie and Dovovan McNabb got into a bit of a tiff this week.  As near as I can tell, it was the only NASCAR news this week, in spite of the championship being decided on Sunday, so thank goodness they got some press.  True story, I didn’t find out what happened in race until 10:40 that night.  Lacking Internet, I couldn’t find anyone on TV or radio reporting the results until the late local news.   

McNabb said drivers aren’t athletes, apparently especially Jimmie Johnson.  Jimmie was graciously terse in responding.  If I’d known about this, I would hacked his Twitter account and posted, “I don’t think athletes who’ve never won a championship are really worth listening to as commentators, sincerely 5-time Champion JJ (Spoilers.  Soon to be 6-time).”  Actually, I often listen to McNabb’s radio show, and I’ve seen him on TV sportstalk.  He does a pretty good job.  The rest of sportstalk looks down on NASCAR.  He’s just trying to fit in and stir the pot.  NASCAR drivers are not as athletic as NFL, NBA, or NFL players, but if drivers aren’t athletes, then neither are golfers (and maybe even baseball players).     

I feel bad for Fox TV, almost.  After roughly one million promo’s for Almost Human, cluttering all of their baseball and football coverage, the show debuts at the same time as the “Game of the Year” in the NFL, Broncos vs. Chiefs on Sunday Night Football.  And this, after they’d already delayed the premiere of the show for a couple weeks.  (It was okay.)  Another true story, this is the first time I‘ve been able to watch Sunday Night Football, ever.  I acquired an old antenna last week, which was somehow able to bring in the NBC affiliate, where my current antenna couldn’t.  Pity that the game wasn’t very engaging (translation: I didn’t have any money on it).    

Artifacts: Dell Huckleberry Hound #8

[I'm out Friday and all of next week.  Cyber-pulp development continues.  Hopefully, I'll be doing plenty of writing during that time.  So far, the classes are ready: Urban Ranger, Psi-Hacker, and Occultist.  Each has three race choices, along with several Artificial Upgrades.  I've shown Playtester Evan some of the NPC's, and he's quite jazzed.  I may have gone overboard with the Nazi Dwarf Stormtroopers riding T-Rex's.  (Yes, I've really stat'ed that out.)  I plan on resuming posting on Monday the 18th.] 

Yogi Bear is one of my favorite cartoon characters.  Here's the Yogi story from this issue.

Yes, I'm doing the voices while I'm reading it.  Hey, hey, hey!

Artifacts: Dell #1141 Huckleberry Hound for President

Well who better for president?  This issue was an anthology.  The framing device shows Yogi Bear and Huckleberry on the campaign trail.  Yogi will start a story about Huck to highlight his virtues.  Some of these stories seemed familiar.  I think these are comic versions of some Huckleberry cartoons.  (Lord, it's been a while since I've seen those.)

Here's the punchline for the issue.

I think Yogi's got some potential here.

Radio Sports Talk and Baseball

All national sports talk radio follows the same format when the subject of baseball eventually comes up.  One, ghetto the coverage into its own special segment, unlike other sports, which get stream-of-conscious coverage throughout the show.  Two, apologize to the audience for talking about baseball, instead of some more important sport.  Three, assure the audience that you will quickly return to talking about those more important sports immediately after this segment.  And finally four, make sure the audience knows how little you care for baseball and how you totally empathize with them. 

When discussing baseball, make sure to mention its low ratings, unpopularity, how boring it is, how meaningless the regular season games are, and all the things that the MLB does wrong.  Dump any baseball coverage to talk about the Olympics or the World Cup, if they’re taking place.  Offhandedly mention that you were a baseball fan as a kid.  This implies that baseball is somehow a sport that you outgrow, like soccer.  When you're an adult, you watch football, golf, and the basketball.  Somehow these sports are more mature.

Baseball is a hard sport for general sports talk radio.  They play every day and the players and teams will invariably have winning and losing streaks during the season.  This completely works against the sports talk format.  Sports talk is all about endlessly hyping upcoming events, endlessly analyzing those events, assigning blame and heaping praise afterward, and pronouncing trends from the smallest evidence.  The NFL gets the in depth coverage.  NBA coverage consists of talking about the Lakers and whoever the best player in the league is and only doing that for the entire season.  With baseball, you can’t quite get away with that.  Certainly they try.  Sports talk thinks that just mentioning the Yankees somehow constitutes worthwhile coverage.   

You can't really hype a daily event.  Baseball players who are goats one day, may be the hero the next.  A player hyped as the next big thing, enviably goes into a slump, or the team they play for will, negating their great performance.  A great baseball team will slump.  Even if they keep winning at a prodigious rate, after a couple of months, you can't keep on hyping them endlessly. 

Simply, cogent baseball talk, like on the MLB network, requires paying daily attention to the actual games and looking at them from an historical perspective.  General sports talk cannot do either reliably, which make them the perfect vehicle for the PGA, NBA, and the NFL (which is the ultimate in reality television, in that they don't use Writer's Guild screenwriters to script their events either). 

It could be worse.  I’m sure hockey fans would love to get baseball level coverage.  I don’t understand why hockey isn’t more popular.  It’s sport that can truly appeal to men and women.  They should adopt my motto: Hockey-Come for the fights, stay for the figure skating.

Baseball Journal 11-2-13

I apologize for that last baseball post.  I had just meant to jot down a few notes and write it out later.  Then I heard Cowherd’s “interview” with John Lester and was suddenly motivated to express myself.  I mean, really, talking to a World Series winner a day later and asking if his teammate is doing steroids.  This would be like right after the last Superbowl, asking Joe Flacco about Ray Lewis’ old murder charge.  No, most of the media forgot all about that story.  Before and after the World Series, I kept noticing little hit pieces on baseball being put out for no apparent reason.  The sports media sucks.

On that subject, on to Buck and McCarver.  No successor has been picked for McCarver that I know of.  I wasn’t kidding about getting rid of Joe Buck as well.  His constant histrionic dramatic inflections would be better placed in his NFL gig.  The play-by-play guy should be meat and potatoes, just calling the game, tossing out a few relevant stats, and tee’ing up topics for the color man.  They should not be trying to be the center of attention.  The color commentator should be telling stories, highlighting strategies, and adding depth and explanation to the stats, not just constantly criticizing the players and the coaches.  I suppose it’s too much to ask.

Forgive me a little more.  I have a few random notes that I made during the season that I’d like to empty out.

How hard could playing right field in Yankee Stadium be?  All you do is stand there and watch balls clear the fence.  Well, you do have to listen to those "bleacher creatures."

My favorite quote this season came from http://www.halosheaven.com/ It made me giggle insensibly. 

“The Texas Rangers beat a triple-A baseball tam in Anaheim tonight, giving their bandwagon fans undeserved confidence in their cheating-scarred baseball team. When they face actual major league opponents after Wednesday night their gaggle of pimply jocks will go back to the gutless hackathon wimps that have defined Texas baseball this season.”

During a Fox broadcast of a Dodger game, they discussed AJ Ellis’ name.  I don’t remember the game really, so it was either a really bad game, or the announcer was just desperate to work in their research.  AJ’s grandmother had emigrated from a Slavic country and had a typical Slavic last name with a bunch of extra consonants.  After a couple of frustrating tries at spelling it, the Ellis Island interviewer announced that her name was now, “Ellis.”

Let’s get rid of the DH.  Just add an extra player to the roster.  Nobody wants to be a DH. Little Leaguers may love “Big Pappi,” but none of them want to be a DH.  Organizations don’t bring up minor leaguers to be DH’s.  Major Leaguers will only accept being a DH if they can’t play the field anymore. 

Let’s put in an electronic strikezone right now.  There’s no downside to it.  There could probably be electronic foul lines and fences too.  Let’s make the batter stay in Batter’s Box for the entire at bat, and let’s force the pitcher to deliver the ball to the plate quicker.  Limit visits to the mound to one per batter, including catchers and coaches. 

Eliminate throws to bases by pitchers (call it the CJ Wilson Rule).  Runners may only take a 10' lead off of their base (marked on the field), and may not leave until the pitcher begins his windup.  The runner is not allowed a running start.  The set position requirement may be removed for the pitcher (in other words, the Balk). 

MLB Fan Poll, the pre-pre-game before the Fox Game of the Week, is typically not appointment viewing.  At some point, they’ll put This Week in Baseball back on the air (though probably not before trying a MLB Fan Cave show, which wouldn’t be a bad idea). In the meantime, we get this low-production cost filler show.  I usually don’t bother watching it, but I was kicking myself for missing it one week.  I only caught the end of it, but that was all I needed to see.

The poll was, “What was your favorite baseball team growing up?”  The results of that poll were a hanging curveball right in the wheelhouse of my own theory about national, daily team broadcasts.  Yes, the Atlanta Braves were the players and fans’ favorite.   They all cited that it was because they were a really good team THAT WAS ON TV ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, EVERYDAY.  Now, MLB, make sure you don’t learn any lessons.  You keep right on regionalizing the sport and lamenting the playoffs being marginalized because of it.

Baseball Journal 11-1-13

It’s over. 

Baseball season is over.

Life now becomes just a sad, passionless existence, until spring arrives.

Try as I might, though I was certainly partisan for the Cardinals in the World Series, I can’t hate the Red Sox.  Since they’ve broken the Curse, the Red Sox are every bit the big spending, pointlessly game lengthening bunch of bastards that the Yankees are, but they’re not a bad bunch of guys.  Somehow even now, the franchise has an inherent charm to it, in spite becoming indistinguishable from the enemy of all baseball (again, the Yankees). 

You have applaud the Red Sox move to rid themselves of another self-inflicted Curse last year, by getting rid of Bobby Valentine and unloading a bunch overpaid, cancerous players on to those dimwitted Dodgers (enemy of all baseball in training).  Certainly they made some great pickups in the off season, such as Mike Napoli and Kogi Uehara, vital contributors to the team.  Yeah, the Rangers only brushed those guys off their team like lint, but I’m not bitter or anything.   

I fear that this World Series victory may somehow validate American League East style baseball and cause it to spread.  You know, the batter OCD, fouling off a million pitches, the pitchers deliberating over each pitch like it’s of national importance, the reason why everyone says that the baseball is boring.  All it takes to create a non-fan for life is to show a potential new fan a Yankees-Red Sox game.  Couple this with instant replay and you’ve got four-hour nine-inning baseball on a daily basis, whether the Yankees and Red Sox playing each other or not.  Soon, more teams while have the potential of hitting a 0.0 TV rating like the Astros got this year for a game.  

I’d like to thank ESPN for their tremendous post World Series coverage.  Why just today, I was listening to Colin Cowherd talking to John Lester.  Their entire conversation focused on whether World Series MVP, David Ortiz, was doing steroids or not.  That’s just feel-good coverage there.  Good thing Colin wasn’t talking to me.  “I’m glad we’re just discussing PED’s in my sport, as opposed to the murderers and thugs in the NBA and NFL.”  Cue apoplectic fit from the host.  And one last thing while we’re on the subject of the media, goodbye forever Tim McCarver.  Feel free to take your overbearing, useless opinions and Joe Buck with you.