Cyber_Peripherals

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

Most of the basic moves are in. I think "Dangeours Neighbour" will be need in the climax moves for bringing in a Sprawl character like a "Declare Contact" move.

Remaining playbooks need to be written. GM moves need to be written. Cyberware will be compatible to the Sprawl, but should be unique I think - basically anouther couple of dozen cyberware options for players to pick from.

First pass of typos in the main book complete.

Playbooks first version completed:
Breaker
Trader
Goon
Prole
Outcast

I've added a sex move. Dammit. If you can't address it in this genre when can you?

Moarrr things! You're probably sick of my waffle at this point but I love your writing style and will probably do another woe-to-go read through as soon as exams are finished*

*Possibly not immediately due to rampant procrastination.

In the meantime, when the Cyber_Peripherals movie comes out, where is it filmed, who plays each of the playbooks, and how much is spent on CGI?

Heh, your waffle is great feedback and has made the other stuff better. That's not something to get sick of:)

I should probably post Piratey Planets here too at some point...

Added the Veteran, NGOwned and Waif playbooks.

NGOwned is probably the most cynical playbook I've ever written.
You looked down from the spire at the heaving heaving jungle and heard a call. Maybe priveleged guilt; youthful rebellion or an eye for an opportunity. Anyhow, you're here and you're going to help.

Waif
Growing up sucks, but so does being a kid. You're relatively powerless, reliant on blunt-nose adults and still finding your way. At least tech is easy.

And so it begins…

- I haven’t played or even read the Sprawl, so I’ll be looking at this as a stand-alone to begin with. Perhaps I’ll mosey on over and check out the original game at some point, maybe not.
- Agenda: “Don’t waste your players time.” Is that a risk here? Or in similar systems?
- “Start with the vertical” seems like something I’m supposed to know, but don’t. Yet?
- Basic moves, here we go. “Profit” seems interesting, seems that the corporations are leaking down into the slums.
- “Figure Someone Out” goes both ways! A lot! Since it can be done at a distance, time-wise as well, it seems that poking around in someone else business will force you to reveal some of your own information. Noice. Keen to see how exactly that plays out at the table though.
- “Play Hardball” seems to be a high risk/reward situation. Am I reading it correctly that if you Play Hardball with another PC, they get a significant leverage back over you? Sweet. A 10+ here is a free-ride, but a 7-9 puts you at their mercy. It’s important that the 6- reflects this. You are all UP in their grill. Turning up the heat seems the only option, heh.
- “Fast Talk” isn’t quite the usual bargaining move. The Favour is paid even if they don’t agree, and the 6- seems very… friendly? There’s probably conditions where it should be impossible to make this move. Maybe ‘When you have time to try and convince an NPC…’ opens things up a little. If they aren’t listening, it’s not going to work out. Depends what you want!
- “Mix It Up” really does match the tone of the game, as you’ve rightly point out. Reminds me of ‘Fighter’ from Escape the Dungeon: Bad things happen to violent people, but they get what they want quite a lot of the time.
- “Do someone a favour” doesn’t have any numbers involved. I like this! “Pay back a favour” involves going back through why they actually owe you something’. If you can’t remember, then maybe it wasn’t that important to begin with… it also means that past sessions come back to life for a second, without excessive flashback-ery. Stolen!
- “Put off a debt” specifically says ‘online’. Don’t think it needs this, unless you are going for a particular tone here.
- “Max moves”? Not sure if I’m missing something here
- “Exchange bodily fluids” heh. So proud of you. I’m changing the Special Moves for AW to include this.
- “Go Under the Knife” the 6- phrasing is utterly perfect. Especially if whichever friend encouraged you to go to the slum-doc is sitting in the greasy waiting area, and the engineer comes out wiping blood off on a greasy rag before sighing.
- Right, time to skim the Sprawl
- Immediately, I can see that you’ve boosted Fast Talk and made Playing Hardball much more dangerous. While I do like the thematic pressure this places, Fast Talk seems to make everyone you talk to very “friendly”. Do you really want this?
- Breaker: the plusses and minuses in the stat-lines are quite useful pointers towards the ‘feel’ of each playbook, but confused me for a moment. Maybe just say, “the core stats of the [playbook] are…”
- “Boxes of electronics” seems a little lacklustre. How about “backdoor to electronics warehouse”?
- Can you use “Try this number” for your own problems?
- I’ve talked about “Red Hot Networker” - style moves in ETD, and I still stand by my opinion that they should be intrinsic to the playbook, not an optional move. A) All Breakers should be doing this, and B) do you want other playbook to be able to take it? And C) They should be doing cooler stuff with their moves.
- “Finger probes” oooooh. Me likey. I’d add a “shoulder drone”, “omni-sensory recorder”, “respiratory suppressor” (for playing possum) and maybe a memory backup.
- Goon: Just some housekeeping, a page break is missing at the end of Breaker, and ROLL + COLL.
- I’d proooobably switch Indian for dark skin. It is 2017 after all.
- “Vigilantes” has a very laid-back feel about most, while the 6- has a sort of… I don’t know how to describe it. Overwhelming? Unavoidable? No, not unavoidable. It’s like a nature documentary where the migratory animals don’t bitch and moan about the changing weather conditions, they just move elsewhere. The natural state of things is terrible, where are you going to sleep tonight?
- “Heavies” but this isn’t really related to the move, it was just the moment when I realised, is the Goon just a Chopper with a patch of territory instead of bikes?
- “Post traumatic enthusiasm” bah gawd. This would need a fair amount of testing I feel. I presume if you don’t choose an option, then the MC is forced to make it a terrible decision?
- “Street Politics” feels just a little bland. Obviously ‘through ritual’ needs to be soaked in blood, but still. I’d add more flavour from the MC’s side of the table, rather than just numbers and maybe a half-hearted attempt at a take-over.
- Goon Chrome looks sweet. “Limb stump” stumped me though XD are you supposed to attach something there?
- “Tradesite” says a huge amount about the setting, much as “Vigilantes” does. Stealing from elsewhere on this site: "Given how terrible people's circumstances are in the post-apocalypse, what do they do to distract themselves from their everyday circumstances, and how fucked up everything is?"
- “Know your customer” has really nice phrasing for the 7-9 ‘the window is closing’ is something I’m going to be thinking about next time someone makes an Act Under Fire roll and gets a partial success: yeah sure. If you do it now. Yes, right the fuck now.
- For Chrome, a hitech dowsing rod would be a classic piece of kit. Or an instant value finder. Something you can just point at interesting things, and it tells you how much they sell for on eBay
- Prole: Quite a wardrobe is missing the numbers. Also, “branding”? As in, with a hot iron? Icky. I like it.
- “Clock off” just doesn’t do it for me. I thought this game was all about “Clocking off”? More detail pleaseeee
- “My other life” is just too real on a 6-
- “This is Scooter” while you’ve already heard my opinions on these types of moves, this one is perfectly written. Gratz.
- Does the Prole not have quite as many moves as the other playbooks? I'd split "Clock off" into a couple different downtime activities with some more involvement, and maybe a "Clock on" move to round it out
- Some of these chromes aren’t quite as self-explanatory as before. Aug-ieball? Slot chip frame? Also, can we get that thing from the matrix with the brain-spike and the kung fu?

That’ll do for now. Ow. My eyeballs.

You know what? I think you're right. Xp moves for free for everyone!

I'm trying to keep the game sprawl comaptible, and the sprawl takes 10xp per upgrade move. Sources of xp in the sprawl are rolling fails, certain playbook moves and hitting directives ( these are mini keys setup when you create the character, designed to create tension between 'optimal' play for your character progression and 'optimal' play for team mission completetion).

So there's quite a few sources of xp flowing into that 10xp per upgrade slot, and I want to stay aligned with that. I wanted them to be optional so people could choose if they wanted their character to go down that narrow path implied by the move.

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"Start with the vertical" - whenever i set the scene in a cyberpunk game, there's a ceiling, or spires, or balconeys overlooking you or fog rolling below, or a nest of gunky pipes above...

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Basic moves - credit on nearly any of these goes to Lumpley, Magpie Games and O'Connel. There's very little of my own work in here. I agree the 6- on Fast Talk is a bit friendly, but at the same time this is a story about a community, not an action film. You can play a fast talking salesman or a stern old grandmother who both get by with their tounge not fists. It needs testing.

"Right, time to skim the Sprawl
- Immediately, I can see that you’ve boosted Fast Talk and made Playing Hardball much more dangerous." - what edition of the sprawl do you have? I may be out of date (much like the sprawl Driver is based on 1eAW, not 2e).

'Max moves' - Section could be called Rare Moves. It was Climax Moves, but then I added "exchange bodily fluids" to the main basic move sets.

Playbook typos - noted. will fix. Will take out the +- row, didn't realise the potential confusion there.

Goon - Chopper with territory? pretty much. The Werewolf of Urban Shadows was a key inspiration, along with some anachist friends and VA-11 HALL-A. Agreed that Street Politics is weak in falvour at the moment.

Prole -  Clock off is weak. agreed. Prole has same number of moves but less starting crap/text at this point in time. This is beacuase there's the option of the vehicle and I've not written that section of rulebook yet :)
I'll probably replace Clock Off with a Late Night Cabbie type move.







 

further note to self. add this approach to aid/interfere: https://plus.google.com/+JeremyStrandberg/posts/4jG7t9GUzUU