Yeah, I'm glad that is coming across already.

A lot of people have found the Psychic Maelstrom plays the part of a framing character in the stories that emerge in Apocalyse world. I'm looking to run with that, and beef it up for the Dungeon. It's a game about instituionalistion, and the seductivieness of giving up your identity to be part of the bigger whole, so that bigger whole really needs to have character. At the same time, apart from pressing in the dungeon always acts indirectly, through the enviroment or minions.

The demons are a more personal thing, with real bonuses for players to hunt them down. So they can be working with and against the dungeon sometimes but they're always fighting their own demons.


So sometimes the GM move is pyschics engine or simple threat modelling, sometimes the longer term Dungeon, and sometimes just pushing the story where the players seem to be interested through any of the above.

What is this?

Cyber_Peripherals is a stand alone game of stories for 3-5 players in a cyberpunk world. Most of you will play the roles of neon slumdogs and one of you will be the Master of Ceremonies (MC for short). The game is a conversation between you all, with the MC to facilitate and fill in what is needed for the story. From time to time, the story will reach a point where the outcome is interesting and uncertain. The dice help out here, and add a sense of tension as their fall changes the fictional world and sparks new directions for the conversation.
The story will center around a community of individuals and how they live under the various pressures of a Zaibatsu dominated future. You're unlikely to be pulling off Shadowrun type missions, and if you are, you'll want to take a  look at the rpg The Sprawl, which is built for that. This rpg is designed to be compatible, but is more interested in the kind of stories that came later in the cyberpunk genre, those of Greg Egan or Tricia Sullivan or Nalo Hopkinson.

In fine cyberpunk tradition, this book is pirated hackjob. Bits of the Sprawl, Urban Shadows and Apocalypse World have been recycled, paired up and duct taped together with Simple World. The playbooks are mostly original, but precious little else is. A favour is owed to the designers, testers and editors of those books.

Why play Cyber\_Peripherals?
Play if you want to play to find out what happens in a neon and chrome cyberpunk future.
Play if you want to create a story about everyday folk living on the peripheries.
Play if you are playing the Sprawl, and want to follow your Killer character home to see how they do the groceries.
Play if you want to struggle against the Man, in a world where 'Man' needs citation marks.
Play if you want to win sometimes, lose sometimes, and explore the future twenty minutes from now.


How does Sprawl compatible work?
The hack is focused on community not missions. So the world where your contacts live, where your
sprawl characters crawl home to sleep in. Not mission based, more episodic drama than heist film. Mechanically, it is to be AW gangs and holdings, Urban Shadow Debts and Sprawl Stats and Cyber/synth. Play centers around community storytelling, from the favela to the spires. It's only a vertical klick after all :)

I am thinking it needs to use the same stats and handle item/cyberwear the same way. Even the basic moves would be different. The questions Mega3 the infiltrator asks when looking at a target are very different to the questions they ask when doing their groceries...

There's a bunch of new playbooks, becuase I was thinking almost all Sprawl characters would fit inside a single archetype playbook in the hack - "the Professional". No stat assignment because you bring it over. 'Moves' focusing on the nature of your safehouse, garage, dependents ect...This would be in addition to straightforward slumlord characters who in turn are the people who turn up in the Sprawl when you Hit the Streets.

If the table is approaching it the same world from a different viewpoint, "Dangerous neighbour" might be the  move to establish your Sprawl character's presence nearby, equivalent to  "Declare Contacts" in the sprawl does the reverse.

Written in Tufte-Latex, hosted on github. As always, this link should always point to the latest pdf.
https://github.com/cromlyngames/Cyber_Peripherals/blob/master/cyber_peripherals_text.pdf

https://github.com/cromlyngames/Cyber_Peripherals

thoughts as I read through it.

Oh. A map. That's unexpected. Is this a locked setting, or just inspiration fodder? Never mind, I'm going to change the setting anyway to this thing I want to run..

page 3.
Basic moves.
Traits and modifieiers. I'm going to assume stats are called traits in this game...

Take a Risk - can always use your best trait (as long as you can justify it) - awesome. Play to your strengths, do what you should...
(also, don't let the brute player 'take a risk' when trying to charm the lord into paying us instead of killing us. Again, that apprehension fits the genre.)

See the Truth - again, feels really genre approrpaite questions, and focus on socail interaction, not things like traps and loot. Conan the leader. I like. Need to see it on the table, but it feels right on first read, which after all is the first battle.

Seduce ect. - hmm. Looks like Contact and Reputation will turn up again in the rules. Lots of words, but good clarifications. Mind if I copy them?

Do Battle - I understand exhange harm from other games. I don't know how apparent it is here. Good Variations. Nice way to expand the move but keep the bullet point list short. Now I realise the variations on Take A Risk have naturally captured all the help and hinder, and it's a simple +1/-1. Elegant.

Ambuscade? - spelling intentional?. This feels weaker than a straight Do Battle. I can't reduce the harm i take on 7-9, I can't knock them off balance or seize their purse or rescue a captive. Suitable for an honourable hero perhaps, but what if I want to be a dirty villian?

The Hunt - odd paragrpah alignment on the options.  The hunted and Hunting options mirror each other, so perhaps could be condensed?
"If two PCs are hunting each other, they both roll,
and the MC says who catches whom, and how
much the other gets to say about it."

WOAH - this is a big change in a pbta game. Opposed rolls is a very different dynamic to the 'conversation'.

--
Magic Moves - Conpanions typo. Also, first appearace of Companions as a player character caterogory name type. Says a lot about the mood and ethos of player interaction intended. Or the typo is Champions, in which case the same applies, but its a very different mood (and perhaps more Conan? Champion is a more Id driving force,)

Hedge Magic and High Magic - based on the Monster of the Week magic?

Establishing Harm - huh. ok weapons in caterogries. What sort of weapon isn't 'deadly' ? (and by Apocalypse world, NPCs only have 2 health, so I'm mildy confuzzzled at this point. Examples would be good. What is a dagger? a weapon or a deadly weapon?)
"Melee weapons are deadly at a specific distance" - so I immedetly asked, "what about ranged weapons?"
Examples make sense. Presuambly a dagger is is good for "infighting" as well as the more spacious situations? Can a weapon be used outside of it's range slot with the GM able to drop bad fiction on you? (You close but his reach with the spear means you can't get close enough for your dagger, you're too busy trying to stay alive vs The fighting in the barn is intense. Coming down for a heavy two handed blow, his longsword gets caught in a rafter, What do you do?)

Take a blow: Oooh, sheilds compplicate the rules. and no rolling for very low harm when you are wearing heavy armour - is that thematic, or just to make the game run faster with less 'very low chance of things happening 'rolls?

Harm Boxes - Day and Night are capitislaed. Are they specific game phases? I note that wounds don't get worse if untreated, and even the near dead can keep going util they find a healer. I guess that's thematic.


More later.

the only issue I see with that draft Spwack is that the angel I'm currently playing has none of those moves! Give me my weird-ass battlefield healer!


I shared the palmcards on the RPG talk discord to general love. One request was edit and choose font to ensure can be read in dim lighting.

I still think freedom isn't the Driver's "thing" or else the Driver's freedom wouldn't be a hindrance from the sex move. Freedom should be revelatory, not anxiety-ridden. Or maybe it should have the freedom to be either, but the Driver playbook makes your interpretation of freedom almost obligatory.

The Driver is Driven: Is she charging into danger, or running from herself?   :)

I'll have to play as a Driver in the next game. I've got one in my heavily influenced Utopia game, but that's not close enough mechanically for true comparisons. That player ended up using the environment a lot though, most notably by using his knightrider like bike to catch a monorail train that was falling down the outside of a skyscraper, and a second time where he used a mammoth pileup (caused by the Gunlugger) as a ramp to launch himself, snagging a wrecked bus and swinging it into the warlord firing grenades at them before crashing into a skyscraper himself.

I think that's maybe it. More than other playbooks, the Driver brings a sense of spectacle. If they want to be effective, they need to escalate, accelerate, make the jumps, stunts and explosions bigger until the others are left behind. They need to bring the situation up to their level and then beat everyone.

I've got a fairly heavy edit coming up - mostly done, just a couple of moves left to rewrite and then the whole thing needs typing up.

Mind holding off till then?

note for myself: two examples of grouping MC moves: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=7219.0