I have been getting a few prods lately and people asking if this game is still in the works.

I've been distracted by reality and thus have not have had the time required to post so much about this game. But it is very much alive, and I'll have a little update for you soon.

So thanks for caring :)

Love

k

This is the clincher. This is where all the custom moves comes in, and the hack really shapes into my own thing. Some of you may remember I wrote this in the origianl Source Code thread:

Lifepaths
Design goal:
I love the way the playbooks take you by the front of your shirt and trust you through character generation. This isn't really obvious until you play the game. But it is there and it works like hell. So I got this idea.

It starts, for the moment, with the ideas for some templates. This will be important later. They are:
o   Warewolves – augmented soldiers and veterans.
o   Ghostwalkers – manipulators of the Floating World.
o   Hard Cases – street operators and muscle.
o   Runners/Transporters – movers of information and hardware.
o   Negotiators – settles scores, one way or the other.
o   Players – true manipulators of people and the hidden market.

Right now these are more placeholders for my concepts. I really want to take that shirtgrabby bit from the playbooks and add a bit of lifepath (think old CP 2013/2020) touch to it, with choices made opening some doors and closing others.

What follows is where this has led me.

This thread is all about small mental images from the Sprawl. Be they art, or written word. Part to keep the fire alive. Part to have fun with it.

Snapshots 01:
Ghost smirkes and scans the area. Hir wifi.3 picks up at least a dozen local nets. Half of them unprotected. Traps. Anyone with net access knows that. Memetic viruses, thought bombs or worse are paraded out there. Yet the 4.th tier, the unenfranchised, the SINless, the fugees, the poor and the downtrodden, the grime in the cracks of society, desperate for net access, they may chance an unprotected net. Ghost got milspec barriers. Sie need not fear the depravity of trapped netspace. But her code is hot. Why risk it when she slices through the barriers of the local supermart and rides the signal into the cloud.
Sie runs interface. This is what sie does. It takes 0.3 seconds and the local surveillance cameras give her a location of the missing CIP. .1 second later the team has the loc on their GPS. Before she logs out a masking virus begins battling the different vid-caches. That should delay the competition an additional 30 sec. The hunt is on.


Cage’s reflexes kick in. Hir system is flooded with milspec enhancers and cutting edge synthroids. Sie grabs the offending pistol and ducks left out of its kill-arc. Somewhere in hir hand it discharges, killing a random wall, then it jams. It’s of no consequence as sie jams his elbow into the gunners arm, snapping the cheap cy-arm in two. Cage then proceeds to beat the corp-cop to death with hir own arm before the ware lets him go.
For a second sie looks at the mess and considers a software upgrade.

Token is too slow. The chaingun catches hir in the alley. It is with clinical brutality it rips hir milgrade shell to pieces. Even SOTA creamics cannot stand up to 30 mikemike ap rounds pounding it at a rate of 1200 bullets a minute. Somehow hir braincase survives and bounces towards cover. There might be hope LazRUS thinks, before the gunAI corrects its aim and the disembodied head vaporizes in a concrete and red mist. As the 30 mikemike rounds begins chewing through the wall behind hir LazRUS legs it.

end transmission

I got to thinking about the stats, and found that I had to change one. As soon as I did that the basic moves just came to me.

The basic stats of a Source Code Operator are now:

Edge – Chipped skills just can’t compete with the true edge, sie tagged and took out the security detail without breaking hir stride. Just like that.
When you live on the edge, the City needs to be cut. Hard. Your operator’s Edge gives you how hard, violent, aggressive, strong-willed, mean, cold or simply tough sie is.

Style – Zeiss optics, AR augmented hair implants, and a sleeve built for speed. Sie would kill any room she walk into.
Style over substance is the key. In a world where beauty is of the rack, it’s how you wear it that counts. Your operator’s Style tells you how hot, sexy, provocative, subtle, beautiful, inspiring, exciting or radiant sie is.

Attitude – I don’t care if sie bought the smile of the rack, sie wore it like a gun. And sie would cut you deeper than any monoedge ever would. Just for fun.
Attitude is everything. In the concrete jungle every predator may be prey. Your operator’s Attitude tells you how unfazed, cool under fire, rational, calm, calculating, rational or ice cold sie is.

Street – Sie wasn’t born there, but sie took to the Fourth World like it was her own. It kept hir alive for those first years, and it honed hir edge, monosharp. The streets do that.
The street is where the action is, the Fourth World huddled in the shadows of the Arcologies. Your operator’s Street is tells you how quick, adaptable, innovative, observant, enduring or clever sie is at living there.

Ghost – Sie would weave through the City like a hot virus through a firewall, untraceable and lovely. Bending the floating world to hir will. Making the alternate reality real.
 Everything is interconnected. Our souls digitzed, reduced to ones and zeroes. Ghost opens you to the AR, the floating world. Your operator’s Ghost savvy, skilled, trained, perceptive, innovative, clever or simply fluent sie is in the AR of the floating world.

From here came the Basic Moves:

I boldly pronounced a while back at Story Games my intention to Hack ApW to:

... a Cyber/noir/punk setting. Think Ghost in the Shell meets Bladerunner while doing lines of Richard Morgan spiced by some District 13 parkour (or maybe I should say some Dead Weight Parkour.)

Some other projects have gotten in the way, but now my sourcefile is growing exponentially, and it is time to make this official. I am doing it. It is official, and I am now committed.

And I am integrating this with my Moby Dick idea: Source Code (the original idea so boldly stated at the Forge many, many years ago under a different title). So this will eventually be a stand alone game. But I'll develop it like a hack, being the sneaky little idea thief I am.

I'll share more as I concretesize the ideas I have.

Pax.

K