Latest / Sessions Canceled / Tabletop Shout Out: Cities Without Number | Part. 2: Ep. 161

Transcript

Tabletop Shout Out: Cities Without Number | Part. 2: Ep. 161 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:08
  What's up Internet? So the G Ms. gone missing.
• 0:17
  He got his operator squad together to go put a hit out on
• 0:20
  some ice agents and you know we wish him well.
• 0:24
  Wait but session. 'S cancelled.
• 0:26
  Hey hey, Internet anonymity is about to disappear.
• 0:29
  I don't know if you'd be saying that.
• 0:31
  I didn't say any names, I said on some ICE agents.
• 0:37
  I don't know that. That seems dangerous.
• 0:40
  No names, I suppose. Let's play a dangerous game,
• 0:44
  son. The GM concept here is an
• 0:47
  amorphous person who doesn't actually exist, so we're OK.
• 0:50
  Sorry, breaking the illusion for everyone.
• 0:51
  The the the GM we're always referencing doesn't exist.
• 0:53
  That's crazy, I know. When they do exist, it's usually
• 0:57
  me or him. If that person, yeah, OK, yes,
• 1:00
  sometimes we do reference actual events, and usually that's just
• 1:03
  referencing something we actually did.
• 1:06
  Sometimes it depends on the scenario.
• 1:12
  We're back, though. We're back to the cyberpunk
• 1:14
  dystopian future which is ever every day inching closer to
• 1:20
  reality. Yep.
• 1:23
  Every day. Yep.
• 1:25
  You know what? You know what the most
• 1:28
  disappointing part of about it is?
• 1:30
  I don't even get a cool fucking robot arm out of the situation.
• 1:35
  Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Like what the fuck dude?
• 1:38
  I get the I get the mega corporates and the fascist
• 1:41
  governments and the and the no money, but I can't at least get
• 1:44
  a sick cyber arm out of this shit and like a fucking cool
• 1:46
  gun. The fuck, dude?
• 1:50
  Where's my fucking cyber arm, man?
• 1:51
  Can we, can we get throw me a bone?
• 1:53
  Dude, it doesn't even be a good one.
• 1:55
  I just want a cool one. Like, like aesthetically cool.
• 1:57
  It could be a piece of shit. It's fucked up.
• 2:03
  Also, I'm just, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do something I
• 2:07
  forgot to do. Isaiah, if you could just vamp
• 2:09
  for time. Right.
• 2:11
  Vamp for time. OK, yeah, I mean, so if you
• 2:12
  really, if you want to fight off the dystopian future, you
• 2:15
  absolutely should be contacting your senators and all those
• 2:18
  people, because this shit's going to become a reality if you
• 2:20
  don't do something about it. I've done my part and I've been
• 2:23
  telling everybody else to do it. That got.
• 2:27
  That was not what I was. Expecting I didn't know what
• 2:29
  else to do motherfucker, we're kind of I I've been This has
• 2:32
  been the cause of my depression for weeks now.
• 2:34
  I. I, I, I don't know, but that was
• 2:37
  not what I expected you to jump down.
• 2:39
  I I'm sorry, I was kind of expecting you.
• 2:42
  I. Was kind of expecting the suck
• 2:44
  for like a segue to be like you could fight off the dystopian
• 2:48
  future by hitting subscribe or something.
• 2:51
  I mean, yes, you should do that. You should hit subscribe.
• 2:53
  You should also do that. Yeah, You can hit subscribe real
• 2:55
  quick, you know, before. Listen, at least get our funny
• 2:58
  number up before we all get thrown in the gulag, you know?
• 3:01
  Yeah. Right.
• 3:03
  Yeah, right. I feel like that's an OK
• 3:06
  compromise. Not really, but you know.
• 3:07
  No, not at all. But you know.
• 3:09
  Not really, but I'll take it what I can get.
• 3:15
  All right, we're back to Cities Without number Part 2.
• 3:23
  It's the GM side of the game. The I guess I wasn't initially
• 3:31
  planning on doing this, but because the GM ING side of this
• 3:34
  game is is quite a bit changed up from Stars and worlds, you
• 3:42
  know, it's kind of like, all right, it's worth doing another
• 3:44
  part, its own separate part on it.
• 3:50
  It is funny that I mean, it doesn't really matter, I guess,
• 3:53
  but I do find it funny that the the game does not actively tell
• 3:59
  you when you've gone from like player side rules to GM side
• 4:02
  rules. But there clearly is a
• 4:04
  delineation in the book, just like doesn't make a point of
• 4:07
  pointing it out. Yes, yeah.
• 4:10
  I I yeah, is. It goes right from hacking into
• 4:13
  creating a dystopia. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:16
  It goes from hacking and then creating your dystopia, which is
• 4:18
  like the that's the delineation from the player point to the GM
• 4:22
  point in the book. And it's like it's actually
• 4:24
  pretty close to halfway through. Yeah.
• 4:29
  I don't know. It just seems, I don't know, you
• 4:31
  could just mention like, you're entering the GM section of the
• 4:33
  book or something. It may say it somewhere buried
• 4:37
  in the text, like if you're a player, you only need to read up
• 4:40
  to this point or something that may be said somewhere.
• 4:41
  I'm not sure. But either way, it's Cities
• 4:47
  Without number. It's the it's the Cyberpunk
• 4:51
  fucking without number game by Mr. Kevin Crawford.
• 5:00
  I don't have a Segway. We're just going to yeah, we're
• 5:02
  going to do so it opens with creating your dystopia or the GM
• 5:05
  half of the book, as we just established, opens with creating
• 5:08
  your dystopia. So this chapter opens and and
• 5:13
  gives you a, you know, a brief explanation of like, you know
• 5:21
  what what to do, how to do it, like very high level overview
• 5:28
  type stuff. But the the one thing I want to
• 5:32
  take note of on the first page, I just thought I just thought
• 5:34
  was a nice touch is the game specifically tells you if you
• 5:39
  already know what kind of setting you want to play in,
• 5:42
  jump to page 142 and start building adventures for your
• 5:45
  game. I just like that it told you
• 5:46
  like, Hey, if you already have an idea, go to this page.
• 5:50
  It's just nice. It's just nice to be like, you
• 5:51
  could skip all this crap if you don't need it.
• 5:53
  Like, yes, thank you. It's not absolutely vital, but
• 5:57
  you know, it's just a nice little thing when you see it.
• 6:02
  So past the. Yeah.
• 6:06
  So then we get into the the principles of creation, which is
• 6:12
  just outlining advice as with the other games, and you know,
• 6:19
  telling you don't pre plan the story so much.
• 6:22
  Only plan one session ahead. Stop preparing if you're not
• 6:25
  having fun. There's a lot not there's a lot
• 6:33
  it it gives you some broad overview advice.
• 6:35
  This game makes a really, it reiterates the point over and
• 6:41
  over and over again. You only need to plan one
• 6:44
  session ahead. This game, like Cities Without
• 6:48
  Number, even more than than Stars and Worlds, really hammers
• 6:54
  home you only need to prep one session ahead of what the
• 6:58
  players are doing. Just build the train tracks in
• 7:01
  front of you as you go. And I like that he emphasizes
• 7:08
  that over and over again because I think it's an acknowledgement
• 7:12
  that running a cyberpunk game comes with a lot of added
• 7:17
  complications. Because planning missions, like
• 7:21
  a mission, you know, you have like a quest in a fantasy game
• 7:25
  or like an objective or an adventure in your sci-fi game.
• 7:30
  There's, you know, there's a certain degree of work, but a
• 7:34
  mission in a cyberpunk game entails a lot of minute detail.
• 7:40
  You know, you got to you got to have stuff for the hacker to do
• 7:42
  and you got to have stuff for the infiltration guy to do, and
• 7:45
  you got to have stuff for the the guy who's good with the guns
• 7:47
  and you got to have something for the guy who likes to use his
• 7:49
  swords. You know, like there's a lot of
• 7:53
  elements to designing a cyberpunk mission in a tabletop
• 7:56
  game so that it feels a on genre, right?
• 8:00
  It it needs to feel genre appropriate.
• 8:03
  Your mission's not going to be like.
• 8:05
  Save the Princess, save the dragon.
• 8:07
  Yeah, like you're not saving the girl from the burning building.
• 8:10
  Really. It's going to be like, break
• 8:12
  into this guy's corpo, you know, break into this building, steal
• 8:15
  all their data, kidnap a dude, you know.
• 8:18
  So it's kind of feel on genre. And then it also has to be
• 8:21
  complicated. Like it's you.
• 8:25
  You almost can't make a mission simple in the cyberpunk genre
• 8:30
  because that defeats the point of or not the point, but it, it,
• 8:35
  it, it defeats the purpose of having the characters be the way
• 8:39
  they are. Which is to say that cyberpunk
• 8:41
  operators, you know, your edge runners or your shadow runners
• 8:45
  or whatever your particular fiction, your, your fucking,
• 8:48
  your net runners, whatever your fiction calls them in this game,
• 8:53
  operators, your operators are like highly specialized
• 8:56
  individuals. So the idea is they're really
• 8:59
  fucking good at like crazy jobs. So it'd be very disappointing if
• 9:04
  it was just the mission was like kick the door in and shoot
• 9:06
  everybody and that's it, you know?
• 9:09
  So there's this element that is good.
• 9:11
  I was. Gonna say that is something that
• 9:13
  I, I typically, I, I've said this before on recording.
• 9:17
  I find for me personally, settings with modern aesthetics
• 9:24
  to be easier to, to prepare for than something medieval, right.
• 9:28
  This is the, this is the benefit of running your powered by the,
• 9:30
  not by powered by the apocalypse, but your World of
• 9:33
  Darkness, right? Like it's in the real world.
• 9:36
  You know what the real world has.
• 9:38
  That being said, it can be a pain in the ass to be like, OK,
• 9:42
  so I have to think about how the hacker is going to deal with
• 9:44
  this mad, this bullshit. And yes, you have to do this
• 9:46
  with spellcasters, but there's like a certain whimsy when it
• 9:49
  comes to spell casting in games like DND because of free form
• 9:53
  kind of anything. So you can just go, all right,
• 9:54
  I'm just going to throw something at them and see how
• 9:56
  they deal with it. But like if you have to go into
• 10:00
  like an abandoned warehouse with no electronics, your hackers
• 10:04
  fucking useless. So you you got to do something.
• 10:07
  You got to throw them some kind of bone.
• 10:10
  Yeah, 'cause you don't want the hacker player to be sitting
• 10:13
  there with their thumb up their ass, right like that.
• 10:16
  That's not fun. So yeah, it it all this is to
• 10:21
  say the game makes a very, it reiterates the point a lot.
• 10:26
  Only prep one session ahead. And I think that is Kevin
• 10:28
  Crawford acknowledging that the genre itself can be a little
• 10:33
  stressful to prep missions and shit for, which is why he's
• 10:36
  saying only prep what you immediately need.
• 10:39
  Now, granted, you can apply that rule, I think to basically any
• 10:42
  game, but he he emphasizes it for this game.
• 10:49
  So all that being said, we move on.
• 10:53
  He gives you some a very over basically the way the book is
• 10:57
  organized, it starts from like broad to specific.
• 11:00
  So these first couple of chapters are very broad level
• 11:05
  shit. So he explains after the
• 11:10
  principles of creation, which is to say like how you should go
• 11:13
  about thinking and making for the game, making stuff for the
• 11:15
  game. It gives you a breakdown of the
• 11:20
  structure of how it informs you to structure your setting on
• 11:25
  levels going from the broader to the more specific.
• 11:29
  So you work down from the world level to the city level to the
• 11:33
  district level each, with each of those levels as you go down
• 11:38
  having greater relevance to your operators.
• 11:41
  So I, I like the way that this was done.
• 11:44
  I'm sorry, I just want to jump in because I feel like you're
• 11:45
  done. I do like the way this is done.
• 11:49
  It's not typically how I do my world building, But if there was
• 11:52
  a way you were going to describe it to someone like this would
• 11:55
  probably be it. This is pretty much what what
• 11:57
  fabulous says too, right? Like start super broad and then
• 12:01
  work your way in. I don't think I've ever done
• 12:04
  that. I always go, what's this really
• 12:06
  niche part of world building that I like?
• 12:08
  OK. That's my start point and I'll
• 12:10
  just build out from. Well, you, you can work the
• 12:13
  other way, right? You could work from cause 'cause
• 12:17
  essentially what cities without number are saying, start at the
• 12:21
  level of furthest like least relevance to the players and
• 12:26
  then work your way down to most relevant, right?
• 12:28
  That's that's essentially what the game is getting at.
• 12:31
  You can do it the opposite way where you start in the smallest
• 12:35
  area of relevance to the players and build out.
• 12:38
  The only thing is you have to. If you do it the other way where
• 12:43
  you start smallest, that generally means you're doing the
• 12:47
  hardest prepping stuff a little more front loaded, which means
• 12:51
  you're in a position where you're probably not going to do
• 12:54
  quite as much of it right out the gate.
• 12:57
  So you need to make sure, you need to make sure your players
• 13:02
  are not going to move beyond your zone of influence, right?
• 13:05
  Which is to say if you have a, if you're running a fantasy game
• 13:09
  and you start with the town that the players are currently in and
• 13:14
  like the immediate area around the town, that's fine as long as
• 13:17
  you know for a fact they are not going to leave that town
• 13:20
  immediately. Like I have some leeway in terms
• 13:23
  of or not leeway, but I know they're going to be in this
• 13:26
  area. So I only need to worry about
• 13:28
  this area as soon as they move out beyond that, potentially
• 13:32
  that could be a problem. Cities Without Number and the
• 13:36
  Other Without Number games are explicitly designed to be run as
• 13:39
  a sandbox, which means you have no safety net to assume where
• 13:43
  the players are going to stay. Right, and that is that is
• 13:46
  something we can't worth thinking about the the fact that
• 13:49
  it the game does expect things to go in random directions where
• 13:52
  things like Lancer and Hellscapes do not as much.
• 13:55
  Don't. Yes.
• 13:58
  Tries to be a sandbox, but it's not.
• 14:02
  Yeah, yeah, I mean, 5 E likes to pretend like you could sandbox
• 14:08
  it up in that game too, but I would say that's a tall order
• 14:10
  for 5 E also. Yeah, I I think they games that
• 14:14
  use the the DND 5 E systems are really good at low level for
• 14:18
  sandbox play, but the metaplot sort of has to take place at
• 14:22
  some point. At some point, yes, I think yes
• 14:27
  I I could get into hole some hole.
• 14:30
  I have some game theory about why why DND always ends up on
• 14:34
  this like meta level plot shit but we won't get down that
• 14:38
  rabbit hole right now. Well, I think the simplest
• 14:40
  answer is you. You can't be expected to be to
• 14:42
  be doing your ninth level spells against goblin hordes every two
• 14:45
  minutes like. Yeah.
• 14:47
  I mean, that's a very simplified way of putting it, but yes,
• 14:49
  that's basically what I was getting at.
• 14:50
  Yeah. So yes, the the cities tells you
• 14:57
  go from the world to the city to the districts.
• 15:01
  And the idea is like the world is kind of least relevant.
• 15:04
  The city obviously is more relevant because they live in
• 15:07
  the city. And then the district is the
• 15:08
  most relevant thing because that is their literal like, you know,
• 15:11
  neighborhood. Then we get a page on cyberpunk
• 15:17
  themes. This is just a long list of the
• 15:21
  author's opinions about what kind of themes are relevant and
• 15:26
  come up in the cyberpunk genre, such as alienation,
• 15:29
  commoditization, dehumanizing, despair, escapism, meat.
• 15:35
  One of them just called meat. Yes, I like that one because
• 15:39
  it's not at all what you think it would mean.
• 15:41
  No, for all 80s style cyberpunk dedications to VR, avatars and
• 15:45
  digital hacking, most of the world operates on the principle
• 15:47
  of tangible flesh. Robots are for industrial work,
• 15:50
  not daily labor, and automation is not something that touches
• 15:53
  common life for most people. Jobs are done by people, not
• 15:55
  apps. It's basically saying that
• 15:57
  cyberpunk is not as Wi-Fi and automated as our actual world is
• 16:03
  because part of the part of the conceit of sci-fi is that
• 16:06
  everyone is protecting or part of the conceit of the cyberpunk
• 16:09
  genre is that everyone is protecting their own little
• 16:12
  bubble. So you can't have everything,
• 16:17
  can't be Wi-Fi and automated because hackers are all over the
• 16:20
  place and trying to steal everybody's shit.
• 16:22
  And like, so every little building incorporation has their
• 16:25
  own little protected area. They, you know, it's part of the
• 16:29
  aesthetic and shit. Now, granted, a lot of that
• 16:31
  aesthetic comes from the fact it was made in the 80s, so we
• 16:34
  didn't have things like Wi-Fi. So writers like Neil, like like,
• 16:42
  wow, help Neuromancer. No, no Neuromancer author.
• 16:46
  Oh, I don't remember William Gibson.
• 16:48
  Jesus. Authors like William Gibson
• 16:51
  couldn't didn't necessarily conceive of an idea like Wi-Fi.
• 16:58
  Either way, point being, there's that hard wired, you know, hard
• 17:05
  wired, concrete people doing shitty jobs kind of aesthetic
• 17:08
  that cyberpunk goes, and Kevin Crawford titled that one Meat
• 17:14
  meat meat. One of them is also just sex,
• 17:19
  yes, which is pretty funny. And violence.
• 17:23
  Anything that would make a good devil and chainsaw man.
• 17:26
  It's probably on this list. What an interesting way to think
• 17:29
  about it. You're not wrong.
• 17:31
  I know I'm not wrong, that's why I said it all right.
• 17:36
  So creating your world, as with every cities, as with every
• 17:43
  without number game cities presents you a a step by step
• 17:48
  guide on how to how to build your world and your city.
• 17:52
  And you're this how to build all sorts of shit, right?
• 17:54
  How to make the sandbox so it starts with outlining How?
• 18:02
  It starts with how to outline your world level on your your
• 18:06
  world level of your world, your world level of your setting.
• 18:09
  I should say your world level of your dystopia, I guess.
• 18:12
  The Yeah, the world level of your the world level.
• 18:15
  Of your dystopian setting which it so it tells you to figure out
• 18:21
  a date slash time frame. You don't need to be hyper
• 18:24
  specific, but the idea is that it's, you know, 2077 or whatever
• 18:28
  or 20 XX or something like that. Then you should identify global
• 18:34
  problems, which is what it sounds like.
• 18:38
  What are the major problems of the world?
• 18:42
  There is a there is a table to roll on for that.
• 18:45
  You have such things as balkanization, class warfare,
• 18:49
  climate change, despair, famine, natural disaster, plague, you
• 18:52
  know, the usual fun things. Yep.
• 18:59
  Then you have, Then you want to have regional focus, which is to
• 19:03
  say what major problems exist for the region of that your game
• 19:10
  is set in. So like you have world problems,
• 19:12
  like, you know, I don't know, maybe famine for like the whole
• 19:15
  planet is like low on food. Then your region would be like
• 19:20
  the northeastern United States. What's going on in that
• 19:24
  particular area? Then you want to figure out your
• 19:28
  governmental superpowers, which could come in a lot of different
• 19:32
  flavors. It does mention that one of the
• 19:36
  one of the things it says is you might have rolled the scent, you
• 19:40
  might have rolled the certainty of a global hegemon, or you
• 19:43
  might have found that your world is hopelessly balkanized, which
• 19:45
  is to say, just smashed up into a bunch of little tiny nations
• 19:48
  all over the place. I thought that was just a funny
• 19:51
  one to call out. I it is such a clearly right,
• 19:57
  It's talking about the Balkan nations, but like it is, I mean,
• 20:01
  no. Balkanized.
• 20:02
  I mean no, Balkanized is a word. Right.
• 20:04
  But it's named after, like what happened to the Balkans, where
• 20:07
  they like the. Infrastructure.
• 20:08
  Or is it the other way around? No, it's the, it's, it's the
• 20:12
  the, oh God, what's it called? The word was after the people,
• 20:16
  the place. Yes, the place because that's
• 20:18
  what happened it like it was one, it was 1 country that like
• 20:23
  collapsed. Yeah, yeah, I know about, yeah,
• 20:25
  the Balkan country. I know about that.
• 20:28
  I just wasn't sure which direction that etymology was
• 20:30
  going in. You know what?
• 20:32
  I'm gonna double check 'cause now I don't wanna sound stupid
• 20:34
  on air. I yeah, yeah.
• 20:36
  I, I I don't actually know. Yeah, yeah, Term originates from
• 20:40
  the historical fragmentation of the Balkan peninsula of Europe.
• 20:43
  OK, yeah. So yeah, I feel and then your.
• 20:47
  Your last step on your world level creation is five major
• 20:52
  mega corporations. This is probably the most
• 20:55
  important step on the world level creation stuff because
• 20:59
  it's cyberpunk. You have to have mega corpse,
• 21:05
  which again, yeah, totally very fantasy and not something that
• 21:09
  actually happens. Yeah, yeah, mega corporations.
• 21:11
  Very silly. I mean, who else would you?
• 21:16
  At this point, at this point I might just start running a
• 21:19
  Cyberpunk game and have the corpse just be fucking Walmart
• 21:22
  and the Koch brothers and shit. Like I just might not even
• 21:24
  rename them anymore. I bro at.
• 21:27
  This point. You so.
• 21:30
  Be like be. Like so valid for that.
• 21:35
  Girl, you're so valid like oh, who's the who's the who's the
• 21:42
  evil mega Corp you guys are are doing a mission against right
• 21:45
  now? You know it's fucking oh God,
• 21:48
  what's that? What's the I just blanked on the
• 21:52
  name. God damn it, the military
• 21:55
  company. Oh, Lockheed Martin.
• 21:57
  Yeah, it's, it's just Lockheed Martin.
• 22:00
  Yeah, like, like like cyberpunk Lockheed Martin.
• 22:03
  No, no, it's just Lockheed. Martin, it's just Lockheed
• 22:05
  Martin. Yeah, just did you see straight
• 22:08
  up. Oh, you're not caught up on.
• 22:09
  You're not caught up on Chainsaw Man.
• 22:12
  Definitely not. No.
• 22:14
  There are some theories that maybe the main character of Part
• 22:18
  2 the the the deuteragonist of Part 2.
• 22:20
  She has like a mark on her face that is suspiciously close to
• 22:24
  the Lockheed Martin logo. And.
• 22:28
  She is the war devil. Oh my God.
• 22:33
  And that's not spoiler, that's like literally the 1st chapter.
• 22:35
  It's like I'm hi how's it going? I'm the war devil.
• 22:39
  I bet you're wondering how I got here.
• 22:41
  I I would assume she's really fuck off.
• 22:44
  Powerful. Given the rules of Chainsaw Man,
• 22:45
  yeah. Well, spoilers I guess.
• 22:50
  OK, maybe don't. Maybe don't tie your gun devil
• 22:52
  into a gauntlet and then blew somebody to fucking smithereens.
• 22:59
  All right. As you do.
• 23:03
  So yes, really, fuck off. Powerful.
• 23:06
  Yeah, fun fact, America reinvented nukes despite
• 23:10
  universal fuckery and she was like God I love America, of
• 23:15
  course you rewrote reality so you can have fucking nukes.
• 23:21
  Oh my God. Anyway, so now I have to find
• 23:30
  where I was in my notes. Please hold sorry.
• 23:34
  OK, so yes, at establish your big 5 mega corporations.
• 23:40
  You could do more than five, obviously, but the game is like,
• 23:42
  you know, recommends at least 5 and also pick a different
• 23:46
  country for each of them to have a strong, you know, the German
• 23:51
  mega Corp, the American mega Corp, the Japan mega Corp, you
• 23:54
  know, so on and so forth. You're you're Ren Raku, red
• 23:56
  Samurai and whatnot. Is Ren Raku Shadowrun or Cyber I
• 24:03
  Ron Raku? Is isn't that a?
• 24:06
  Shadowrun, right? Yeah, the red rock.
• 24:07
  Red. Samurai.
• 24:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because in in Cyberpunk it's
• 24:10
  Arasaka. That's right.
• 24:12
  That's right. I constantly take the the the
• 24:15
  megacorps in Shadowrun and the megacorps in Cyberpunk.
• 24:19
  I just mush them together. I can never remember which ones
• 24:21
  are from which. That's valid.
• 24:25
  Yeah, Renrakusik I I do remember that.
• 24:27
  There's a megacorp in Shadowrun run by a dragon named Lofier.
• 24:31
  So that's pretty hype. Yes, yes, I OK, so the same guy.
• 24:37
  Fucking just Seder Krupp. Yeah, yeah, the German Mega
• 24:40
  Corp. Seder Krupp.
• 24:41
  The guy I watched for all my World of Darkness videos did a
• 24:44
  Shadowrun anthology a while back, so I was learning a lot
• 24:48
  about Shadowrun. Yeah, yeah, the Dragons are
• 24:51
  cool. There's a lot of Dragons there,
• 24:53
  yes. And yes, there's a lot of
• 24:56
  Dragons. Video.
• 24:58
  A lot of them just run like businesses and shit.
• 25:03
  A a lot of the videos for his shadowrun is him like talking
• 25:06
  about a thing and then going but wait it gets crazier.
• 25:11
  Yeah, yeah. That's not all.
• 25:15
  It gets weirder. Shadowrun gets wild.
• 25:17
  I mean, I remember when I explained Goblinization to I
• 25:20
  think it was you and Matt, and you're like, Goblin, what now?
• 25:22
  Well, so he literally was like, and then the goblin showed up
• 25:26
  and that was a fucking, that was a clusterfuck.
• 25:31
  Goblinization. Because you're not.
• 25:33
  Born an orc or a troll? You turn into one when you hit
• 25:36
  puberty. Yep, and it's fucking awful.
• 25:41
  Sounds terrible doesn't it? Imagine getting so boned in your
• 25:45
  genetic lineage that you know rather than hitting puberty like
• 25:47
  most of the people you just get small turn to a troll and
• 25:50
  gremlin. Well, no, goblins are not.
• 25:54
  Goblinization is the term for the disease that turns you into
• 25:58
  an orc or a troll. They're not goblins in the sense
• 26:02
  that you are thinking of. They're not little green dudes.
• 26:06
  They actually get bigger. OK, OK.
• 26:09
  Yeah. I don't know if goblins this is
• 26:14
  AI don't know if. Goblins as we know them does.
• 26:16
  They do exist. I don't think they do.
• 26:19
  Hold on. Oh, oh, they're they do.
• 26:24
  Goblins are a a goblin is a dwarf infected with the HMHVV
• 26:29
  virus. It is a one of the many
• 26:32
  variants. There's a there's a virus called
• 26:35
  the human. Yeah, it's a vampiric thing.
• 26:39
  Yeah. So there's the human metahuman
• 26:41
  vampiric virus, which is a disease that affects people and
• 26:46
  turns them into basically, basically they didn't have a lot
• 26:51
  of the old school monsters. So the the metahuman, the human
• 26:55
  metahuman vampiric virus is a way to justify it.
• 26:58
  So like if a human gets it, they become a vampire.
• 27:01
  If an elf gets it, they become a banshee.
• 27:02
  If a dwarf gets it, they become a goblin.
• 27:04
  If an orc gets it, they become a Wendigo.
• 27:06
  And then like a troll can be like a Sasquatch or something
• 27:09
  like that. Yeah.
• 27:11
  So goblins are dwarfs with a virus.
• 27:14
  This knows Firatsu then. Kinda, sort of, but not exactly.
• 27:20
  Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:22
  The human, the human metahuman vampiric virus is like a whole
• 27:25
  thing. It's like a major setting plot
• 27:28
  point thing. I think it was also one of the I
• 27:33
  think it was also a pretty relevant Sasquatch becomes a
• 27:37
  Jabberwocky. What?
• 27:42
  Yeah. Yeah, now we say we're so off
• 27:45
  topic. When you say a Jabberwock, does
• 27:47
  it have the same bullshit abilities as a Jabberwock as the
• 27:50
  Jabberwocky? I think so.
• 27:52
  I gotta. I don't really know what the
• 27:54
  context on Jabberwocky are in Shadowrun.
• 27:56
  I don't remember. I think the I remember the I'm
• 27:59
  pretty sure the virus was a Oh yeah, humans can also become
• 28:02
  loop gurus, which is to say werewolves.
• 28:06
  I I think it was like a pretty major plot point in the novels I
• 28:10
  read, but I don't remember. Anyway.
• 28:15
  So yes, goblinizing doesn't make gobble goblins.
• 28:18
  Dwarfs with the funny vampire virus make goblins.
• 28:21
  Do without what you will. Anyway we can do this?
• 28:26
  We can get back. I I believe us.
• 28:28
  I I believe in us. But.
• 28:30
  I am very low level in my knowledge of Shadowrun, but the
• 28:34
  stuff I do know I could yap about for a lot for a while with
• 28:36
  Shadowrun because there is a lot of fun stupid shit Shadowrun
• 28:39
  that. Outlook that that's me with more
• 28:40
  of the darkness. It's you're just like and so
• 28:42
  this thing happened and you're like it's like whatever I tell
• 28:47
  people like oh, you know, like the the leader of the vampires
• 28:49
  world, the darkness Kane, you know, he's actually he he's just
• 28:51
  a taxi driver. He's just a cab driver in LA.
• 28:53
  He just vibes. He's just here for the.
• 28:55
  Vibe not up to anything important.
• 28:58
  No. So after you come up with all
• 29:03
  your, your world stuff, the game then suggests that you write out
• 29:07
  a brief history of your world setting with a list of questions
• 29:12
  that the game provides to guide you along.
• 29:15
  When I say brief history or like like a, a history of your world,
• 29:19
  I, I emphasis on brief. It's like a couple of sentence
• 29:22
  or like, you know, small paragraph answers to a few
• 29:25
  questions to just give you a very general timeline of how you
• 29:29
  got from like now to, you know, dystopian future, whatever
• 29:34
  thing. And then there's a, then you,
• 29:42
  you wrap that all up, you put a little bow on it and yeah.
• 29:46
  And then there's the table on the next page of all the world
• 29:48
  problems, which I mentioned. And then we get into the, then
• 29:53
  we go one level down and you get into creating a city.
• 29:58
  So First things first, you can either use an existing real
• 30:03
  world city that everybody already knows, which is say, you
• 30:06
  know, oh, we all live in California, so we're going to
• 30:09
  set it in LA or you could make it in a city that no one is
• 30:14
  familiar with, which is to say everybody lives in LA.
• 30:18
  We're going to play this game in New York City.
• 30:23
  The the pros and cons there being, you know, if everybody
• 30:26
  knows the city, you as the GM could be like, oh, you go down
• 30:29
  this street in this spot and the players like, oh, I know where
• 30:31
  that is. Khan being you mentioned
• 30:34
  something that's not actually there, such as Manhattan doesn't
• 30:37
  have. Manhattan doesn't have
• 30:38
  alleyways. I wanted to say it's so bad.
• 30:43
  Such as Manhattan doesn't have alleyways, which again, I just
• 30:48
  to be clear, I know that I'm aware really didn't matter.
• 31:00
  Dog, it's, I'm sorry, it's just so funny.
• 31:06
  Bad, so bad. Like, yeah, like there's no
• 31:10
  universal. I'm not smacking the shit out of
• 31:12
  that. Yeah, pretty much.
• 31:17
  Oh God. And then the pros and cons of a
• 31:23
  city far away is like nobody's that familiar with the city, but
• 31:26
  if you as the GM fuck something up for that city, nobody can
• 31:29
  cite your sources. Or if they want, if they want,
• 31:32
  they could Fact Check you, but it's a lot more work for them to
• 31:34
  Fact Check you than the city that they live in, you know?
• 31:38
  And then obviously the third option, but the hardest option
• 31:41
  is just make a city entirely from whole cloth.
• 31:44
  I don't see myself ever going with that option personally.
• 31:47
  Oh really? So that because that's the one I
• 31:49
  would do more than likely. I don't think I would do that.
• 31:51
  I think I would do. I would do were, you know, it's
• 31:54
  New York City. But we're going to adjust like
• 31:57
  we're going to mess with it a little bit, you know?
• 31:59
  Fair because you do get the fun bit where you get to hashtag do
• 32:04
  it to to actual corpos in the real world that you might
• 32:07
  despise in actuality like certain real estate moguls turn
• 32:12
  politicians. Yeah, exactly.
• 32:15
  Or you could just be like, oh, hey, the mission is in Hell's
• 32:19
  Kitchen. And then someone's like, oh, I
• 32:20
  know where that is, you know, or like, oh, we got to go to
• 32:22
  Flushing's Queens. They're like, oh, sick, we're
• 32:24
  going to get some hot pot while we're there, you know, like, you
• 32:28
  know, there's can't. Believe you.
• 32:29
  Remember that fucking hot pot place?
• 32:32
  What do you mean? Remember the hot pot place?
• 32:33
  I remember going and getting hot pot, yeah.
• 32:36
  That's the hot pot place we went with Moogie for her birthday.
• 32:40
  Yeah, I wasn't. I was just, I was just
• 32:43
  referencing that there are hot pot places in that area.
• 32:46
  I wasn't definitely. Fair enough.
• 32:47
  I I thought you were like, because I hardly remember that
• 32:49
  fucking hot pot place. Frank.
• 32:50
  Frank. I mean, I remember that we went.
• 32:54
  I don't remember too much about it or where it is exactly.
• 32:57
  I remember one of our friends spilled something on my brand
• 33:00
  new Perry Ellis shirt and I was going to strangle somebody to
• 33:03
  death in the restaurant. I remember who it was though.
• 33:05
  I. Don't remember who it was it.
• 33:12
  Yeah, so those are your, those are your three.
• 33:13
  Like how to generate a city method.
• 33:18
  Then the game says you want to establish at least two major
• 33:22
  problems with the city to get the turmoil rolling.
• 33:25
  There is, of course, an accompanying table for you to
• 33:28
  roll on to determine city problems because it's a without
• 33:32
  numbers game. There's a lot of fucking tables.
• 33:36
  That's not a complaint, by the way.
• 33:37
  That's just a that's just an acknowledgement.
• 33:39
  No, I mean like, I'm not saying it's great either.
• 33:40
  But back to the matter is there are 22 tables.
• 33:46
  Then he gives you some general advice on establishing your map
• 33:51
  of the city, which is you could steal an existing map or take a
• 33:58
  couple of. So like just steal an existing
• 34:01
  map as is. So just be like, oh, we're just
• 34:02
  going to take the map of Manhattan.
• 34:04
  Or. Take a couple of existing maps
• 34:07
  of real cities and like smash them together and hum, you know,
• 34:11
  smirk them together and make a weird amalgam city.
• 34:17
  Or just fucking sketch out a terrain map of some kind.
• 34:25
  And then once obviously you've got the cities down, you want to
• 34:27
  map out your districts. You can think of the districts
• 34:32
  are going to be the most important elements of the city
• 34:36
  as they are kind of the zones of action that the PCs are going to
• 34:40
  exist in and do shit in. You know, like they're going to
• 34:44
  get a mission and you're going to be like, all right, players,
• 34:46
  you got to go to district A to, you know, burn down XY and Z
• 34:50
  corporal building, you know, so burn down the Walmart.
• 34:56
  So, you know, you want to, you want to think about the
• 34:59
  districts a little bit more. Then obviously once you have the
• 35:06
  disc, you know, once you have all that down, we need some
• 35:08
  enemies. So you need to establish what
• 35:10
  corporations exist in the city because, you know, you could
• 35:15
  have established your five major corporations, but maybe you want
• 35:18
  to make a couple smaller ones, or maybe you want to make a, you
• 35:22
  know, subsidiaries or, you know, or maybe that's a that
• 35:27
  corporation operates in the city.
• 35:29
  You know, if you're in Manhattan and there's fucking Nintendo
• 35:32
  operates in Manhattan in some capacity so you could have a
• 35:35
  Nintendo building. I'm just not going to make up
• 35:37
  names anymore. I'm just going to use real
• 35:42
  corporations. Your your corpos are, you know,
• 35:47
  like your evil Wizards and your fantasy Dragons and shit in a
• 35:50
  fantasy game, right? So like the it's very important
• 35:55
  you have the corporos established because it's the
• 35:57
  shit you're going to be fighting most of the time.
• 36:00
  Not always, but most of the time there is a table to help you
• 36:04
  generate corporations. Then the game specifically
• 36:09
  recommends, and this goes back to only prepping what you need
• 36:15
  for the immediate session. Give a little extra love and
• 36:18
  attention to your starting district specifically.
• 36:21
  So whatever area the players are going to start in, make sure you
• 36:23
  really flesh that one out because that's where the, you
• 36:31
  know, most of the initial shit's going to happen.
• 36:33
  And it might be where your players live or whatever.
• 36:35
  You know, there's a there's a plethora of reasons.
• 36:42
  Then you got to do your first adventure.
• 36:44
  So the game recommends keeping your first adventure to one
• 36:50
  sessions worth of time. As most GMs know, that's
• 36:54
  probably not going to. Happen.
• 36:56
  I can't believe they they have attacked me personally.
• 36:59
  Yeah, you could try though. You should try.
• 37:01
  It's probably not going to happen, but you should fucking
• 37:04
  try. Then the game tells you.
• 37:08
  I put in my notes, I put recommends.
• 37:10
  I wouldn't even call this a recommendation.
• 37:11
  I would say this is a rule the game tells you after they finish
• 37:15
  their first job, give the players 5 potential adventure
• 37:19
  hooks for them to pick on their next mission.
• 37:23
  This is well, so that might sound like a lot, but the game
• 37:26
  gives you an entire system on how to design those adventure
• 37:30
  hooks. And notice I said adventure
• 37:35
  hooks. Right, right.
• 37:36
  You don't have to write. The entire not 5 missions 5
• 37:40
  ideas that depending on which one the players choose, you
• 37:45
  flesh out that one. This is really important for a
• 37:48
  sandbox game because you don't want things to go to like, you
• 37:52
  know, get to a floundering standstill because the players
• 37:54
  don't know where to go. So the game makes a really
• 37:59
  specific point that every time you finish a mission, don't let
• 38:06
  your players off the hook until they tell you what the next
• 38:10
  mission they're going to do is, or what their next action is in
• 38:14
  some capacity. You know what I'm saying?
• 38:16
  Yes, actually, I really love that.
• 38:18
  I like that they they specifically call that out
• 38:20
  because that is the worst shit where it's like OK, we're done
• 38:22
  and go wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, I'm saying this because I
• 38:25
  had to do this where players like, oh, we're going to we're
• 38:26
  heading off to them like don't you fucking dare.
• 38:28
  What are you doing next time? So I need to know yes.
• 38:32
  The game is very firm, like don't let them off the hook
• 38:35
  until they tell you what mission they're going to do.
• 38:36
  Because you gave them 5 adventure hooks, they picked one
• 38:40
  of those hooks. Those hooks are not missions
• 38:43
  yet, they're just hooks. Once they pick a hook, OK, I
• 38:46
  will make it a mission now. You know what I mean?
• 38:49
  Now, this doesn't, this also doesn't have to happen at the
• 38:53
  end of the session, right? You could, it could be in text
• 38:56
  or whatever. Or if you're chatting, playing
• 38:59
  video games the day after, you're gonna be like, all right,
• 39:01
  what mission are you gonna guys gonna go with, by the way?
• 39:03
  But the point is don't let them off the hook.
• 39:07
  Like they need to give you something.
• 39:12
  Yeah, because, and especially because, again, it's a sandbox
• 39:14
  game. If they don't decide where
• 39:16
  they're gonna go in the sandbox, then you can't get the sandbox
• 39:18
  ready. You know, like.
• 39:22
  Then you show up to the next session and everyone feels
• 39:24
  stupid. Yeah, and then you all just sit
• 39:26
  there looking at each other. All right, so we got your city.
• 39:32
  That's, you know, that's the the basic level of setting up your
• 39:35
  city. Again, I'm I am I, I'm giving
• 39:42
  you a broad overview, but there is plenty of detail in the book
• 39:46
  to be had. Don't worry if this sounds like
• 39:48
  intimidating shit, the book has got you, I promise that is
• 39:52
  Honestly, perhaps me and Isaiah will will disagree on this one
• 39:58
  because he he has we have differing opinions on Kevin
• 40:02
  Crawford's writing methodology. But I will say reading through
• 40:07
  the GM part of this game made me like juice me up to make me want
• 40:12
  to run the game. You know, like once you get into
• 40:17
  the because Kevin Crawford is quite good at breaking down how
• 40:24
  to do a lot of this GM ING work and telling you how to do it in
• 40:28
  a very clear, concise way and with good clear, concise steps.
• 40:31
  And him presenting it in that fashion makes me want to run it
• 40:36
  because it makes it seem so much easier when you make it clear
• 40:39
  and concise and have steps to it and everything.
• 40:43
  The funny thing is, most of the shit that he says in these books
• 40:46
  is shit I already know, but the book just laying it out for me
• 40:51
  just makes it that much easier, you know?
• 40:52
  Like, I could already probably assume and would probably do
• 40:56
  most of what he's saying anyway, but it just makes me feel good
• 40:59
  to know that Daddy Game has my hand, you know?
• 41:01
  Is helping me out there. Right, So what I'll say is this
• 41:05
  I definitely reading this chunk and I I I did a lot of skimming
• 41:09
  as as I have to do with these games, but even in the the very
• 41:14
  quick reading that I did do for sure.
• 41:17
  No, I mean I definitely had the juices flow and I was thinking
• 41:20
  about how to run or how I would build out the world to the
• 41:23
  region, to the city, down to the district.
• 41:25
  I was like, Oh, I'd like if I named it this.
• 41:28
  I can't remember what they call the district in when you play as
• 41:31
  a street kid in cyberpunk, the like Hispanic district.
• 41:34
  I was like, Oh, I want to do that with like the the cool
• 41:38
  gangster priest man. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:45
  It just it, he just, I don't know, he puts it out in a in a
• 41:50
  clear, concise way that gets you, gets the juices flowing in
• 41:53
  some fashion. I, you know, I was jokingly
• 41:55
  going to say take a shot every time there's a, a list for
• 41:59
  something, but then I would be like, no, you're going to die.
• 42:02
  You're not going to live through that.
• 42:05
  Yes, yes, you would not live through that.
• 42:07
  There's a lot of lists a. Lot of tables, yeah A.
• 42:10
  Lot of lists, a lot of tables. But that's because that's
• 42:14
  secretly. That's a lot of what jamming is.
• 42:17
  Yeah. Listen tables and then you take
• 42:21
  the things from the list and you connect them together.
• 42:25
  Really. Where's the lie like?
• 42:27
  Yeah, yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying.
• 42:33
  So now we get to building your district districts with an S
• 42:38
  districts. So this starts this chapter's
• 42:44
  about guiding you through setting up your districts.
• 42:47
  You want to start off with deciding 2 notable traits to a
• 42:50
  district with an accompanying 50 entry table to help you decide
• 42:55
  on those traits and or roll for those traits.
• 42:58
  But basically you want to smash 2 traits together to make the
• 43:01
  district, you know unique in some fashion.
• 43:05
  Couple of examples we got. It's corrupt kingpin and
• 43:12
  religious center 2 traits. So you got like a kingpin dude
• 43:16
  who's running things and there's a major religious center in the
• 43:18
  district. There's a.
• 43:23
  There's a couple of entries on this table that I'm like.
• 43:26
  I'm not sure I know what you mean by that.
• 43:28
  Oh, which one specifically? That now you're putting me on
• 43:35
  the spot or or not, I guess I shouldn't say.
• 43:37
  I don't know what you mean. There's a couple of them where
• 43:39
  I'm like, I don't know what to do with that.
• 43:41
  That's it. Like one of them says
• 43:43
  secessionists. I'm like, what do I do with
• 43:46
  secessionists? Like, you know what I mean?
• 43:50
  Yeah, yeah. And like 1's organ leggers.
• 43:53
  But actually I could think of, I could think of some things with
• 43:55
  that one. I don't know.
• 43:55
  There's a couple of them where I'm like, that's just, I don't
• 43:58
  know. That's something I guess.
• 44:03
  Then once you obviously have your traits, you want to figure
• 44:05
  out your your local government. The game basically tells you to
• 44:13
  set up a couple of local government NPCSI think it
• 44:15
  recommends 3 and it it calls out very specifically do not assign
• 44:25
  these NPCS a job. So like, come up with the local
• 44:29
  government NPCS, but do not say what kind of position they have.
• 44:34
  Instead, when the players need to talk to a guy who's in the,
• 44:38
  you know, banking department or whatever, you scoop one of those
• 44:41
  NPCS from that list. So like they don't have a job
• 44:45
  until you need them to have a job.
• 44:48
  I kind of like that. So that's that's kind of how so
• 44:51
  funnily enough, that's how I did the Monster Hearts game.
• 44:54
  I ran because I had, you know, like I said, I used all the NPCS
• 44:58
  for my Lancer game because it's just a Lancer AU.
• 45:01
  And I literally was like, Oh well, I have this list of over
• 45:05
  100 NPCS. Yeah.
• 45:07
  And I just sort of put them in where I'd like, you know, the
• 45:11
  handlers I turned into teachers or staff, the like the albatross
• 45:14
  who are like of space police. I made the Police Department
• 45:17
  like, there's a lot of fun stuff I was able to pull off.
• 45:21
  Granted, 100 is, you know, probably more than you need, but
• 45:24
  yeah. Right, yes, I mean definitely
• 45:25
  more than I need, but if I had them I might as well use.
• 45:28
  If I got them, then after your your local government, you need
• 45:39
  your local ne'er dwells obviously.
• 45:41
  So you want to figure out your three local gangs slash criminal
• 45:46
  organizations they don't like have to be a gang.
• 45:50
  But it's Cyberpunk. They're they're basically a
• 45:52
  gang. They're gang, yeah.
• 45:55
  Then you want to figure out which major corporations that
• 45:58
  you've already defined for your city are messing with this
• 46:02
  district. You know, you've generated four
• 46:06
  or five corporations, so pick one or two of them.
• 46:11
  Actually pick at least two of them.
• 46:12
  It says to be operating in this district specifically.
• 46:15
  So perhaps, you know, there's a Walmart in the district.
• 46:20
  It could be as simple as that. You know, there's a Walmart Mega
• 46:23
  Corp and then there's the Walmart in this district.
• 46:28
  I don't know why I'm bullying Walmart so much today.
• 46:29
  I'm just, you know, so I'm not fuck.
• 46:31
  Walmart. Yeah, I mean.
• 46:34
  Now look, reading this game turned me into an anarchist.
• 46:36
  Fuck Walmart. I I you needed the game to do
• 46:39
  that? No.
• 46:42
  No, it just it just manifested a lot of by it brings it to
• 46:47
  sociological rage with society and yeah, no, look at this book.
• 46:52
  I was like, burn it all down. I.
• 46:56
  Didn't burn it to the ground. Give me my cool robot arms.
• 47:00
  Just as I'm reading fucking Johnny Silverhan's song, Rebel
• 47:04
  Path starts playing. It's like the.
• 47:14
  Then obviously, so you know you've got your local
• 47:17
  corporations, then you need some local fixers, your Mr. Johnson,
• 47:23
  to set up your players with some gigs.
• 47:26
  The game recommends making at least three Mr. Johnsons.
• 47:30
  I shouldn't say 3 fixers, Mr. Johnson's a Shadowrun term, but
• 47:33
  three fixers. Oh, OK.
• 47:35
  I I was like, are you making a Mr. Anderson joke?
• 47:38
  Like I don't know what this. No, no.
• 47:40
  So Mr. Johnson is what fixers are referred to as in Shadowrun
• 47:44
  because the idea is they don't give their real name.
• 47:46
  So they're all just Mr. Johnson? Yeah.
• 47:48
  I feel like I'd have to make the joke that they're all just
• 47:50
  called Mr. Anderson. I mean, I you could I suppose,
• 47:54
  yes. Did you you?
• 47:55
  You haven't played Cyberpunk, right?
• 47:58
  The video game? No, no, OK.
• 48:00
  So my favorite fixer is the little Chinese lady, Wakaka.
• 48:04
  Oh, Irish. I don't know if she's Chinese.
• 48:06
  She might be Japanese. Yeah, she's named Wakaka.
• 48:08
  And she's just this like, really nice elderly Chinese lady.
• 48:13
  And then she gets mad and she was like, I literally I believe
• 48:16
  she goes, if you betray me V, I'll pop a cap in your ass and
• 48:19
  you're like, Oh no, she's a Black Lagoon character.
• 48:22
  Yeah. I was like I and like V is like,
• 48:26
  I know Wako, I love you too. And she's like, I'll have when
• 48:30
  she's like, oh, come by next week for tea.
• 48:31
  And Masha. No, this character's great.
• 48:35
  I love everything about. It I love this lady so yes
• 48:41
  definitely make your fixers and yeah yeah make them fun.
• 48:46
  It also recommends when you make your 3 fixers to have each of
• 48:49
  them specialized in a different kind of like gig.
• 48:53
  You know, like this particular fixer is knows about all of the
• 48:58
  robbery jobs or as this fixer knows all the jobs that need
• 49:00
  like a major hacker type, you know, part aspect to the team or
• 49:04
  whatever. You know that kind of bud.
• 49:08
  And then lastly, SketchUp the district and slap a name on that
• 49:12
  bitch. As you might imagine, there's a
• 49:16
  or no actually did. Did he give it a district name
• 49:19
  generator? I don't remember.
• 49:21
  Hold on. No, that one he actually didn't
• 49:23
  have a table for, hilariously. Yeah, no.
• 49:26
  Which is surprising, actually. Did he sit?
• 49:32
  Where is it? Yeah.
• 49:34
  Oh yeah. He just gives it.
• 49:35
  He gives you some general advice on how to think about the name.
• 49:42
  Then creating your mega corps, which I feel like this one
• 49:48
  arguably the most fun. Again, you could just steal real
• 49:53
  ones and just skip all this, so you.
• 49:55
  Know what's funny? It could be the most fun, but it
• 49:56
  could also be the most rage inducing because then you'll
• 49:58
  start thinking about the real world.
• 50:00
  Thinking about it too much. And then you're like.
• 50:02
  Yeah. Then you just start proxying all
• 50:06
  your problems into the tabletop game.
• 50:09
  I remember I was actually watching, I was watching a
• 50:12
  cyberpunk actual play and one of the corporations was Alphabet
• 50:17
  Bezos. And it was it was what if
• 50:20
  Alphabet and Amazon. Merged.
• 50:23
  Why? Oh.
• 50:27
  That make me angry. Yep, Yep.
• 50:33
  Anyway, so we, we need, we need to come up with corporations
• 50:39
  because your mega corps will serve many, many elements of the
• 50:42
  game, right? They can be enemies, they can be
• 50:44
  allies, they can be patrons, they can be setting movers.
• 50:46
  They could be all of the above. You know, mega corps are going
• 50:50
  to be doing all sorts of shit in a cyberpunk game.
• 50:55
  Sometimes you're, you know, it's a cyberpunk game.
• 50:58
  You'll take a job from them, and then the next mission you'll do
• 51:00
  a job to fuck them over. That's how it goes.
• 51:04
  It is you know, what's funny is I I have that exact thing going
• 51:07
  on in my Lancer game and my players are always like, Oh no,
• 51:11
  we can't, we can't do a job or like, you know, they'll fuck
• 51:15
  someone over and go like, Oh no, we, we can't, we can't trust
• 51:17
  that faction anymore. They're going to betray us.
• 51:18
  And it's like they really won't though, right?
• 51:21
  Because the mixer that you hire that hired you, like, yes, you
• 51:25
  fucked them over, but they're all aware that this is about a
• 51:28
  payday. Like fixers aren't taking this
• 51:31
  shit seriously. It's it's, it's transactional.
• 51:35
  Well, you know, it's it's funny you say that too, because
• 51:37
  somewhere, somewhere in the city's outnumber book, I forget
• 51:40
  exactly where it said it, but it specifically says, I think it
• 51:43
  when it's talking about the heat section, it brings it up where
• 51:45
  it's like, you know, the idea of the idea of the heat meter,
• 51:51
  which we'll get to is that it's for operators that are are
• 51:57
  particularly loud or like dangerous in some way, right.
• 52:02
  Like the idea is they do the job messy.
• 52:05
  You don't just accrue he automatically because all of the
• 52:09
  mega corps know that operators, one, they know that operators
• 52:13
  are both a problem and an asset. Like they understand that they
• 52:17
  are both sides of that coin. And two, they know the mega
• 52:21
  corporations are aware that trying to track down every
• 52:26
  single operator team in the city and stamp them out would be
• 52:29
  basically impossible. So they're not going to spend
• 52:32
  the time to try and like shut them all down.
• 52:35
  So instead they do, they use the operators as a tools against
• 52:39
  each other because if they could shut down their corporate
• 52:42
  opponents, that will get them a lot more mileage than trying to
• 52:45
  chase down losers in the street with pistols, You know?
• 52:49
  So like, yes, it's very much on genre to acknowledge that the
• 52:54
  corporations, like the operators are screwing the corporations
• 52:57
  and working for the corporations and the corporations are
• 52:59
  screwing the operators and working with the operators.
• 53:01
  And everybody knows what we're doing, but there's also not
• 53:04
  really an alternative. So we're all just going to keep
• 53:06
  doing it. I one of my favorite parts about
• 53:09
  the the new Armored Core game is when that shit happens and you
• 53:13
  know, the the handlers are just like, are you fucking kidding me
• 53:17
  right now, my guy? Really.
• 53:20
  Really. You try to be that fast.
• 53:22
  Yeah, you're like sorry bud, it it was for a payday.
• 53:29
  And they're like, no, I know, but fuck you for that.
• 53:33
  You're like yeah, you still need that job.
• 53:38
  And they're like yes, we do, unfortunately.
• 53:43
  Are you offering your services like?
• 53:47
  Yeah. Thank you, Sir.
• 53:50
  Yeah, All right, fine. Here's the contract.
• 53:52
  Yeah, all right, here's the money.
• 53:53
  Shut the fuck up. So step one in defining your
• 53:57
  mega corpo that you're going to take a job from and then steal
• 54:00
  from the next next day. Wait real quick, I'm sorry, I
• 54:03
  just thought of the Randy felt face.
• 54:04
  Is it still available? Is it still available?
• 54:09
  Yes. So you start by determining the
• 54:14
  main focus of business and influence that the corporation
• 54:20
  has. You know, what's their what's
• 54:22
  their deal? Are they Lockheed Martin?
• 54:23
  Do they make weapons or are they Walmart?
• 54:25
  Do they make shitty shirts? You know, hey.
• 54:28
  Hey, hey, look, I hate Walmart, but them shirts are good.
• 54:30
  I'll give you. I'll give them that.
• 54:32
  I don't think I'm going to give them that actually.
• 54:35
  OK, maybe not their shirts, but they're cargo pants.
• 54:37
  Fuck I wear those pretty much everyday $20 best pants I ever
• 54:40
  bought. Fair enough.
• 54:44
  I mean, they don't even make them.
• 54:45
  They're just the they're just the seller.
• 54:46
  Right. Yeah.
• 54:47
  I mean, it's a it's a sweatshop somewhere in Southeast Asia.
• 54:49
  But like, you know what? I mean, yeah.
• 54:55
  Then you want to come up with the style of your corporation?
• 54:58
  Like, what's their vibe? You know, what do they are they,
• 55:02
  are they ruthless? Are they bureaucratic?
• 55:04
  Are they a cult? Are they hateful?
• 55:05
  Are they haughty? Haughty.
• 55:09
  You know what's their? What's their stat?
• 55:13
  As you might imagine, we have a table to roll on both of these
• 55:15
  things. Oh God, Can you imagine?
• 55:18
  You're going after like the corporate was Chick-fil-A and
• 55:21
  you're like, guys, come on, they can't be that bad.
• 55:24
  And you find out they're just like ragingly homophobic, like
• 55:27
  Chick-fil-A and you're like, suddenly I feel a lot less bad.
• 55:30
  Racks gun. Yeah, you know, actually, fuck
• 55:33
  it, rob them. Then, of course, you want to
• 55:39
  determine what the corporation's strength is, which is to say,
• 55:44
  like, how are they in business? What makes them, you know, what
• 55:48
  are they good at? All of the, all of these
• 55:52
  elements to the corporations, by the way, have accompanying
• 55:54
  tables. Then you want to figure out a
• 55:58
  big a big event that recently happened to the corporation that
• 56:02
  is influencing how they're currently behaving, which is
• 56:07
  like, you know, actually let me look at let me just look at the
• 56:11
  events table. It has serious problems with the
• 56:15
  local government or a product recently backfired direly.
• 56:20
  Well, that's a good one. I immediately just imagine like
• 56:22
  someone putting people putting skill, the skill chips in and
• 56:25
  they like fry their brain stems or some.
• 56:28
  Shit. God, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:29
  Yeah, that's a classic. They were driven out of the
• 56:33
  market recently. You know what?
• 56:37
  What a big major event that happened to the corporation to
• 56:40
  like fuck things up. Or maybe it's going well,
• 56:42
  depending. The CEO died and was or was
• 56:44
  forced out. Then you want to determine what
• 56:48
  the corporation's goal is. Like, what are they trying to
• 56:51
  accomplish right now? This one is especially important
• 56:56
  because goals are also a mechanic that is gonna come into
• 57:00
  how you design missions because this game doesn't have a faction
• 57:05
  turn. So goals and what are called
• 57:08
  schemes are going to be your like replacement mechanic for
• 57:11
  the faction turn. We'll get into that in a minute
• 57:14
  in a little bit. And then lastly, you got to name
• 57:19
  your corporation. There's a fun table to roll on
• 57:22
  where it's name element and then Corp element.
• 57:25
  So it's like, you know, one on the left side, it'll say like
• 57:29
  family name in the in the right side it'll say like incorporated
• 57:32
  industries, LLC product sciences.
• 57:34
  And then it'll be like on the left, you know, nation name,
• 57:37
  natural disaster number, political group.
• 57:40
  So you roll on that and smush them together.
• 57:43
  Great idea for a name generator. I feel just because rather than
• 57:47
  just giving a list of names, it's like prompts to be like
• 57:51
  religious term universal, OK, Christian, universal, the
• 57:57
  corporation, you know, like. Or Sage Universal, maybe you can
• 58:01
  do a lot. Like I always like when I'm
• 58:03
  naming things, I like to give them little cheeky references
• 58:06
  to, like, what's actually going on.
• 58:09
  So you can, you know, do like, you know, probably incorporated.
• 58:15
  And you're like, oh, this is a cult.
• 58:16
  This is a cult, isn't it? Yeah.
• 58:17
  Yep, Yep. And you're like, oh, it's like,
• 58:21
  oh, well, they're they practice, they do practice allergen.
• 58:23
  What's it called by Lima? It's a cult.
• 58:26
  God the all right. What the fuck is Philema?
• 58:29
  Philema that's that's the actual cult that Aleister Crowley in
• 58:32
  created. It's literally just hedonism
• 58:38
  with extra steps. It's literally it's actual
• 58:41
  motto. I'm pretty sure Majora stole
• 58:43
  this from Berserk. You know for Berserk because
• 58:45
  it's the the actual tenet of Philema was do what thou wilt.
• 58:50
  I see. Well, yeah, I mean, Crowley was
• 58:54
  a chaos magician too, so you know.
• 58:56
  Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot of
• 58:58
  baggage on that man. Did you know that he he
• 59:02
  apologized for all the cult shit and like at the end of his life?
• 59:06
  No. He he was like, yeah, maybe I'm
• 59:09
  fucked up. I feel a little bad actually.
• 59:14
  That's interesting. Yeah.
• 59:20
  Sure, after your corpose you need your gangers.
• 59:27
  Honestly creating the creating the gang section is is almost
• 59:32
  identical to creating a corporation, which I thought was
• 59:35
  kind of funny. I have a feeling that was
• 59:36
  probably on purpose. Right.
• 59:37
  Yeah, because you're you're, you're just creating two sides
• 59:40
  of the same coin. The only difference that is the
• 59:42
  scale at which they operate. Yes, although arguably a scale
• 59:46
  could potentially be on a corporation gang if they're big
• 59:48
  enough anyway. Like there's a couple or a
• 59:51
  corporation level. I meant to say gang could be on
• 59:53
  a corporation level. Like there's a couple gangs in
• 59:58
  Shadowrun. They're like like basically
• 59:59
  worldwide famous. Like they're basically a
• 1:00:01
  corporation at that point. You know what?
• 1:00:03
  I. Mean Yeah, yeah, the mob, right?
• 1:00:06
  Like the mob was a business as much as it was organized.
• 1:00:08
  Crime. Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah, exactly. So first you want to figure out
• 1:00:15
  the the gang's main method of income, which is to say what
• 1:00:19
  business do they do? What kind of crime are they up
• 1:00:21
  to? You know, assassination,
• 1:00:23
  blackmail, cyber trade, drugs, extortion, fraud, hacking, Yeah,
• 1:00:27
  punch it. Then you want to decide what
• 1:00:30
  kind of style the gang has, again, like the corporation.
• 1:00:33
  And then you want to pick what is their strength, which is
• 1:00:36
  determines, you know, how is this gang actually been
• 1:00:38
  successful and been able to stick around and exist.
• 1:00:42
  Then you want to pick a major event that happened to them
• 1:00:45
  again, just like the mega Corp. And then also like the mega
• 1:00:48
  Corp, what kind of goal are they currently working towards?
• 1:00:52
  And then name them. So yeah, it's the same steps.
• 1:00:56
  And yes, I think that was very maybe a little bit of a
• 1:01:00
  political commentary by by. Kevin Crossword.
• 1:01:04
  Yeah, making them identical. Then there is a Creating NPCS
• 1:01:12
  section, which follows a very similar flow as the previous two
• 1:01:17
  sections. But because it's just basic NPC
• 1:01:22
  creation, I'm just going to kind of skip over this bit.
• 1:01:24
  Like, there's not, there's not much to say.
• 1:01:26
  It's the same idea as the corpos and the gangs where you, you
• 1:01:30
  know, you go through each section, roll on the table, put
• 1:01:33
  them together. Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  I mean, as far as I could tell, and I didn't.
• 1:01:37
  To be fair I didn't look at it super closely, but it seems like
• 1:01:42
  mechanically it's just the exact same as the other games in terms
• 1:01:44
  of NPC generation. It is basically, yes, yeah.
• 1:01:48
  Like I don't notice any big shifts to their.
• 1:01:50
  Sheet. Or anything like that.
• 1:01:55
  Oh, well, you're talking about stat blocks.
• 1:01:56
  I'm, I'm talking about just like generating their like name and
• 1:01:58
  their look and all that stuff. Oh, yes, then yeah.
• 1:02:00
  Like the character more so. But either way, yeah, it's still
• 1:02:04
  it is still very similar. Then we got creating and running
• 1:02:10
  missions. So the this particular chapter,
• 1:02:18
  you start with what a mission is in this game.
• 1:02:22
  In case you're just not totally clear, I mean, nothing out of
• 1:02:25
  the normal weird here. A mission is basically an
• 1:02:28
  adventure slash job that the operators have chosen to take on
• 1:02:31
  for some you know on for some reason, you know goal that is in
• 1:02:37
  their interest. It does does recommend that you
• 1:02:43
  always design your missions in such a fashion that the
• 1:02:47
  operators like your operators, your players would actually want
• 1:02:52
  to do and would reasonably jobs they would take.
• 1:02:55
  So for example, if you design A mission that requires a hacker
• 1:03:00
  character and none of your operators are a hack, like none
• 1:03:04
  of your players made a hacker operator, then don't give them
• 1:03:08
  hacker jobs, right? Like make sure the jobs actually
• 1:03:12
  pertain to their strength. Because a from a gameplay
• 1:03:15
  standpoint, obviously that's more fun and from an in universe
• 1:03:19
  standpoint, a fixer is not going to go to a gang of operators
• 1:03:23
  that can't do the job he wants. Right.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah. It's like, you know, we're
• 1:03:28
  master thieves. All right?
• 1:03:29
  So I need you to blow up a bridge.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah, you're like, that's not our thing.
• 1:03:34
  Yeah. This one, also known as Isaiah's
• 1:03:38
  Blades in the Dark Dilemma a. Little bit that wasn't.
• 1:03:43
  You always make that sound way worse than it was though.
• 1:03:44
  No, it wasn't as bad. I there was like a couple weeks
• 1:03:49
  or I was like, I genuinely do not know what I'm doing right
• 1:03:52
  now. But no, I mean, we figured it
• 1:03:54
  out. I, we managed.
• 1:03:55
  But here's the thing. We were just unstealthy enough
• 1:03:57
  to where violence became necessary every, every mission.
• 1:04:00
  So I was fairly happy violence was.
• 1:04:05
  Do you remember that one time Sam rolled 3 ones despite it
• 1:04:09
  being his best stat on in stealth?
• 1:04:11
  And we were just like Sam, how did this happen?
• 1:04:14
  What did what? What God did you anger?
• 1:04:18
  Bro fucked up so hard. Trauma doubt tapped out.
• 1:04:21
  Like, yeah, no, I I definitely remember.
• 1:04:26
  We called those massive L stuff. And massive.
• 1:04:31
  So here's your here's your basic prep sequence in terms of, you
• 1:04:38
  know, designing a mission. So first you want to have 5
• 1:04:42
  schemes going on. Now, like I said, schemes are
• 1:04:46
  kind of what replaces your faction turn in this game.
• 1:04:48
  We'll get to that after this. So you want to have 5 schemes.
• 1:04:54
  Then you want to create a mission hook related to each of
• 1:04:57
  the schemes. This will make more sense in a
• 1:04:59
  minute. Third, for session 1, you want
• 1:05:05
  to try and make a very simple one session introductory mission
• 1:05:11
  that you will present the five scheme mission hooks at the end
• 1:05:16
  of. Again, do you want to try to
• 1:05:20
  keep it to one session but you know, good luck.
• 1:05:26
  Then we have 4th is just let the players, you know, choose a
• 1:05:30
  mission step #5 whatever mission they choose.
• 1:05:37
  Downtime you prep that mission. Step six, pick at least one of
• 1:05:44
  the mission hooks that they didn't choose and drop it.
• 1:05:49
  Get rid of it. Either it got completed by
• 1:05:51
  another MPMPC operator team, or it's just not relevant or
• 1:05:57
  something happened. Kick out one of the mission
• 1:06:00
  hooks, then after you 7th step, after you've gotten rid of one
• 1:06:05
  of the mission hooks, replace that mission hook with a new
• 1:06:08
  one. Then, eighth run the current
• 1:06:13
  mission that the players wanted to do.
• 1:06:15
  Present the mission hooks once again for the next session.
• 1:06:19
  Step #9 Let the PCs select the mission hooks.
• 1:06:22
  Select the next missions, the next mission again, go back to
• 1:06:26
  Step 5 and repeat again. Real simple bulleted lists.
• 1:06:30
  Guess the point across. There is further breakdowns for
• 1:06:35
  each of the steps if you get confused or whatever.
• 1:06:37
  But yeah, any any particular question or issue with the the
• 1:06:45
  list there no a listicle. OK, So what the fuck are the
• 1:06:53
  schemes? So he made the decision to take
• 1:06:59
  out the faction turn from this game.
• 1:07:03
  I initially was a little bit against that idea.
• 1:07:10
  I felt like I was like, well, I think faction turns actually
• 1:07:13
  could make a lot of sense in the Cyberpunk game.
• 1:07:16
  But after reading the bit about schemes, this does kind of, I
• 1:07:23
  kind of get what he was getting at.
• 1:07:24
  I faction turns like factions were perhaps too much.
• 1:07:31
  Whereas the schemes thing I think can work especially
• 1:07:33
  because it can operate on multiple different levels of
• 1:07:39
  like influence, right? You can have little tiny local
• 1:07:43
  gangs doing a scheme and you can have the giant megacorpose doing
• 1:07:46
  a scheme. You know it can.
• 1:07:47
  It can scale pretty easily. Right, and they'll both feel
• 1:07:49
  valid. Yeah, they'll both feel valid.
• 1:07:53
  And also the scheme system is like, it's pretty, it's, it's,
• 1:07:58
  it's easier to use than the faction turn system.
• 1:08:03
  And I do love the faction turn system, as I've said many times,
• 1:08:05
  but it does take a little getting used to.
• 1:08:07
  It's a little complicated the first time you go through it.
• 1:08:09
  Your brain is like who? That's a lot of numbers and
• 1:08:12
  shit, you know, So I, I, I warmed up to the schemes thing.
• 1:08:19
  So schemes are basically your background mechanism for
• 1:08:22
  tracking what your various factions are trying to trying to
• 1:08:27
  accomplish. So the the movement of your
• 1:08:34
  schemes like whether they're doing well or doing poorly.
• 1:08:37
  I also think it's funny that they're called schemes just like
• 1:08:39
  as a name, right? Because it's scheming.
• 1:08:42
  It's very, yeah, it's very evocative.
• 1:08:43
  It's like, all right, what are these people scheming?
• 1:08:46
  Yeah, they're scheme. Like when you say what are the
• 1:08:49
  factions doing? That doesn't necessarily mean
• 1:08:50
  that there is any ill intent, but no one is the good guy in
• 1:08:54
  cyberpunk so they are literally scheming.
• 1:08:57
  They're all scheming, yeah. So, yeah, the movement of the
• 1:09:05
  schemes is measured by progress points, which can basically move
• 1:09:09
  up and down based on operators doing missions.
• 1:09:13
  Could be, obviously you know mainly your player character
• 1:09:18
  operators, but it also can be NPC operators can also fuck with
• 1:09:23
  schemes because the game does talk about having background
• 1:09:27
  operator teams doing shit and influencing things.
• 1:09:33
  It ranges. The progress count ranges from
• 1:09:36
  10A. A small local scheme only
• 1:09:39
  requires 10 points of progress and then like a big regional
• 1:09:43
  wide scheme requires 50 points of progress and you're you're
• 1:09:47
  only going to get between one and five points of the scheme
• 1:09:56
  per. There isn't like AI was going to
• 1:09:59
  say per turn. There isn't really a turn so
• 1:10:01
  much but like after basically the turns in this game is when
• 1:10:05
  the players do a mission is kind of like your faction turn
• 1:10:08
  counter right. So it's.
• 1:10:10
  It's a little in between jobs, is essentially what they're
• 1:10:13
  saying in. Between jobs, although it
• 1:10:15
  doesn't have to be in between jobs, right?
• 1:10:18
  Like, you know, it can. You can shift around.
• 1:10:21
  It's a little less. It's less strict than the
• 1:10:24
  faction turns were, which can be good or bad depending on what
• 1:10:27
  you want. But the idea is that you have,
• 1:10:33
  you know, milestones that they accrue progress points and work
• 1:10:36
  up towards milestones. The the game also points out you
• 1:10:42
  should always follow the fiction in terms of what the operators
• 1:10:48
  are doing. So if the operators do a really
• 1:10:52
  big mission that would potentially bring an entire
• 1:10:55
  scheme down in one fell swoop, like fell swoop, you should let
• 1:11:00
  them do that. Like if they do a crazy mission
• 1:11:02
  where they blow up the the headquarters, Johnny Silverhand
• 1:11:07
  blown up that. At All over Osaka Tower, yeah.
• 1:11:11
  Yeah, if they blow up our Osaka tower, that's probably gonna
• 1:11:15
  shut down our Osaka's entire scheme in the region, or at
• 1:11:19
  least, you know, in the city. That's a valid thing.
• 1:11:22
  Let the players do that. So don't be 100% beholden to the
• 1:11:25
  point system necessarily. Like do let them do crazy shit
• 1:11:28
  like that. When you do the schemes they
• 1:11:35
  basically, or when you, I should say when you create the schemes
• 1:11:39
  they, they operate on three different levels, which is to
• 1:11:44
  say actually I said 3-4 different levels.
• 1:11:48
  Really there's a petty local scheme, district wide schemes,
• 1:11:56
  citywide schemes and then regional.
• 1:12:01
  Regional just means really big. It could be a country or it
• 1:12:05
  could be potentially world affecting a, a world affecting
• 1:12:09
  scheme. And it depends on what they're
• 1:12:11
  doing. If if Arasaka, you know,
• 1:12:17
  releases their new product that is wrist mounted nuclear bombs,
• 1:12:23
  that's probably going to affect the whole world.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah. You know, so it it depends.
• 1:12:32
  I haven't. I'm actually going to hold it on
• 1:12:33
  to the very end because it's very funny and SU is hard, but
• 1:12:36
  I'm going to hold it. I mean, do we, is there some
• 1:12:39
  reason that you're holding on to it?
• 1:12:41
  Because it's it's there's no point in like tangenting as we
• 1:12:44
  keep, we trying to stay on task. I'm just letting you know there
• 1:12:47
  is a tangent and there's a tangent in the worst.
• 1:12:50
  It's locked and loaded in the in the chamber.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah, so at the start of so you have the different, the varying
• 1:13:02
  levels of scheme the game recommends at the beginning of
• 1:13:06
  your campaign, at the beginning of the campaign, focus only on
• 1:13:13
  district level schemes. Don't you know, you can, but the
• 1:13:18
  game recommends not having the players fight, you know, a
• 1:13:22
  regional worldwide mega Corp right from the jump.
• 1:13:25
  That's, you know, a little crazy.
• 1:13:29
  If you have some sort of wacky woo Hoo pizza man, plan for why
• 1:13:33
  that might be fun. You know you can, but it
• 1:13:35
  recommends against it. Sorry, I was just reading
• 1:13:45
  something. Also keep in mind that when the
• 1:13:54
  players do missions, they are their actions are the ones
• 1:13:59
  nudging the schemes around themselves.
• 1:14:02
  So depending on what they do, they can nudge it up and down a
• 1:14:06
  lot or a little. And the schemes, A scheme can go
• 1:14:11
  negative, which is interesting. It can drop below 1.
• 1:14:15
  It says schemes can actually be brought down below 1 progress
• 1:14:19
  point by mission results even reaching negative numbers to
• 1:14:22
  represent a scheme that's so far behind that it needs help to
• 1:14:25
  even get to the starting line. If the situation is really
• 1:14:28
  bleak, the the GM might decide the organization gives up on it,
• 1:14:32
  gives behind it, gives up on it as a bad job and starts a new
• 1:14:36
  scheme with a different end. Well, I kind of like that
• 1:14:39
  though, because that that means you can do a lot of really fun
• 1:14:42
  interplay by like if you know, input input generic electric
• 1:14:50
  vehicle company here and you fuck their shit up so bad that
• 1:14:54
  they're like, well, that roll out of input stupid truck name
• 1:14:58
  here and then they go, all right, well, we're just not
• 1:15:01
  doing that anymore. Yeah, fuck it.
• 1:15:03
  We just Yeah, we just give up. Yeah, you, you done BRS too
• 1:15:06
  hard. You burn down too many
• 1:15:07
  dealerships. Yeah.
• 1:15:11
  Yeah. And I also like that it can go,
• 1:15:13
  I think it's funny that it can go negative because that means
• 1:15:16
  that you could fuck up, you know, generic EV company and
• 1:15:22
  then and then generic EV company could be like, hey, hey, we, we
• 1:15:28
  need you to do a job for us to get us some money to steal from
• 1:15:31
  one of our, our, our enemy corporations.
• 1:15:33
  Could you do that for us? And you're like, didn't we just
• 1:15:36
  burn down all your dealerships? Yeah, we need help now.
• 1:15:40
  You did, and we are ridiculously angry, yes, but we desire money
• 1:15:45
  more than anything else. Yes, we need assistance.
• 1:15:49
  At least you're on us. Yep.
• 1:15:53
  So the the you basically have when you're creating the
• 1:16:04
  schemes, there's like there's little templates that guide you
• 1:16:08
  on the steps. So for a district scheme, 1
• 1:16:14
  progress point is the start of the scheme, and then five points
• 1:16:17
  is a milestone, 10 points is a milestone, 15 is a milestone, 20
• 1:16:21
  is the goal. If you go for a citywide scheme,
• 1:16:25
  it goes, you know, it starts at 15 is a milestone, 10 is a
• 1:16:28
  milestone, 15 is what it calls an instrumental goal, and then
• 1:16:31
  you have two more milestones and then the final goal.
• 1:16:34
  So just kind of breaks it down on how you might want to pace
• 1:16:38
  out. Basically how are you going to
• 1:16:41
  pace it out fictionally? Like, OK, this company just hit
• 1:16:45
  15 on this particular scheme. I'm going to let the players
• 1:16:49
  know that they hit like a really important goal.
• 1:16:52
  So the first prototype of said generic truck with EV company
• 1:16:57
  has just rolled out. For example, I I don't know who
• 1:17:02
  we could mean, but you know, insert whoever you might think
• 1:17:05
  of. You know, there might be an
• 1:17:09
  emerald mine somewhere in there, is that?
• 1:17:13
  Yeah. That person's family owns but
• 1:17:15
  like, it's fine. Yes, yes.
• 1:17:18
  Also their logos, like a, it's like a, it's a muskrat for some
• 1:17:20
  reason. I don't know what that's all
• 1:17:21
  about though. Anyway, idios creature.
• 1:17:26
  I actually think muskrats are kind of cute.
• 1:17:29
  I wasn't talking about the muskrats.
• 1:17:31
  OK, fair enough, got it. Fuck I keep, I keep losing where
• 1:17:38
  I'm at in my notes. I mean, look, we we are.
• 1:17:45
  When you when you create your scheme, you want to decide what
• 1:17:51
  their ultimate goal is from the start.
• 1:17:53
  This is kind of similar to what you would do with faction turns
• 1:17:56
  where you would decide like what is their primary faction goal
• 1:17:58
  thing they want to do and then work backwards through the
• 1:18:02
  scheme to decide how they're going to achieve it and what the
• 1:18:06
  milestones are. The of the scheme are going to
• 1:18:07
  be based on what the ultimate goal of the scheme is going to
• 1:18:10
  be. Which is again, pretty into or
• 1:18:17
  not intuitive, pretty like like you could come up with that idea
• 1:18:20
  on your own. It's but you know the game is
• 1:18:23
  spelling it out very clearly for you.
• 1:18:24
  I. Would say, yeah, I'd say it's
• 1:18:26
  intuitive. I think it's it that's.
• 1:18:27
  Yeah, intuitive wasn't the word I wanted though I wanted it was
• 1:18:29
  pretty. I wanted to say self-explanatory
• 1:18:31
  but like not self-explanatory like pretty.
• 1:18:34
  Evocative. Self-evident.
• 1:18:36
  Maybe self-evident was the word I want, and maybe that's the
• 1:18:38
  phrase. I don't know.
• 1:18:39
  Anyway, it's an intuitive idea, but the game is just spelling it
• 1:18:45
  out very clearly. And then of course you have a
• 1:18:51
  big table of goals that you can roll on or choose from
• 1:18:55
  naturally. We really were a joke.
• 1:18:59
  There's if you try. To take a shot, you will die.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Table and listicles, Yeah, there's also a big several
• 1:19:09
  tables of milestones that you can roll on.
• 1:19:13
  So NPC related milestones, resource related milestones,
• 1:19:17
  business related milestones, and those are the milestones that
• 1:19:20
  you slot into that scheme counter when they get to the
• 1:19:23
  various progress points. So more tables to roll on, just
• 1:19:30
  in case you were feeling like there wasn't enough tables.
• 1:19:35
  You know, Josh, I was. There wasn't enough tables.
• 1:19:38
  I don't believe you. Then we get the NPC operators,
• 1:19:50
  NPC operator teams. This is like a brief little two
• 1:19:54
  page thing, but basically the idea is he gives you, he gives
• 1:19:59
  you an order of operations to come up with an operator team,
• 1:20:03
  some tables to roll on. For how this team works, like
• 1:20:08
  what they, you know, what kind of like weapons or tactics do
• 1:20:11
  they employ? What, what do they look like or
• 1:20:17
  what are what's, what's their vibe?
• 1:20:19
  I should say like there's a big D20 table and 1 is a combatant
• 1:20:23
  with and then it's the table and it's like lethal fist, a
• 1:20:26
  sniper's eye, terrible scars, a secret death witch, and it says
• 1:20:29
  a hacker with and then you get another table to roll on and
• 1:20:31
  then a tech with a face with. And then there's The Who and is
• 1:20:37
  currently basically you can roll on these tables to to roll to
• 1:20:40
  roll up a sentence for each operator.
• 1:20:43
  So you know a combatant with lethal fists who is a secret
• 1:20:48
  corporate mole and is currently trying to shake off a drug
• 1:20:51
  addiction. So you just like you roll on
• 1:20:53
  those 3 tables and smash it all together and you get an
• 1:20:54
  operator. You do that a couple of times,
• 1:20:56
  you get your operator team anytime and then you want to
• 1:21:01
  choose stat blocks for the operators that relate to you
• 1:21:06
  know what you rolled and what makes sense in your head.
• 1:21:09
  Give them names obviously. And then basically the immediate
• 1:21:18
  chapter after is NPC scheme results.
• 1:21:21
  So you have your operators or your your NPC operator teams if
• 1:21:28
  you want to keep the results of missions like the, so the
• 1:21:33
  players didn't take mission A, they took mission C.
• 1:21:36
  So you're like, all right, what's going to happen with
• 1:21:38
  mission A? And you know an MPC operator
• 1:21:41
  team is going to go after mission A.
• 1:21:43
  If you want to throw in an element of randomness like you
• 1:21:45
  don't want to make a decision yourself, you want to see what
• 1:21:47
  happens, You can roll on a 2D6 table with a bunch of modifiers
• 1:21:53
  to a company said table and you know, you can see, you see if
• 1:22:00
  they succeed or not, and then if they fail you have a table of
• 1:22:05
  unfortunate consequences and a table of why did they fail.
• 1:22:10
  So for example, unfortunate consequences A-Team member
• 1:22:15
  suffered a major injury and they failed because they got cocky
• 1:22:19
  and went into the situation with less force or care than was
• 1:22:21
  wise. So basically it lets you have
• 1:22:26
  other other operator teams moving and shaking and doing
• 1:22:31
  shit and, you know, causing chaos because again, that is a
• 1:22:36
  big element of cyberpunk, you know, other other runners doing
• 1:22:41
  shit. I.
• 1:22:43
  Think it's just it's really good to have for tabletop in general.
• 1:22:45
  Like having rivals is fun. Yes, yeah, for sure.
• 1:22:49
  Or they could be teammates too, right?
• 1:22:51
  Like that's not like true. They could be enemies.
• 1:22:53
  They could be somebody you work with.
• 1:22:54
  They could be somebody they could be like, you need to hire
• 1:22:56
  their hacker to help you with something.
• 1:22:58
  Like, you know, there's all, there's a lot of good reasons to
• 1:23:01
  come up with a bunch of operators in the background and
• 1:23:03
  then you can give them cool names like Scorpion, Viper,
• 1:23:06
  Strike. That is a wild name.
• 1:23:10
  Or Cortana blade swing squad. I don't need it.
• 1:23:19
  I would bully the shit out of any gang.
• 1:23:23
  Who? Rolled up on me Cortana blade
• 1:23:24
  swing swat. I like.
• 1:23:27
  Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, you're.
• 1:23:31
  Scary. How tight were your jeans when
• 1:23:33
  you came up with that one, huh? And then, and then of course,
• 1:23:38
  you would have the most fearsome operator team of all the Honey
• 1:23:41
  Badgers. Nah, see, look, no, here's the
• 1:23:44
  thing. That would be some shit.
• 1:23:46
  You're like, Oh, yeah. All right.
• 1:23:48
  Well, the Honey Badgers, Oh, what's their whole thing?
• 1:23:50
  Well, they don't leave anyone alive.
• 1:23:53
  Yeah, yeah. No one survives, no one in the
• 1:23:55
  the entire building. No, they they like stream it
• 1:23:58
  too, like it's it's a whole thing.
• 1:24:00
  They they try to make it kind of like an E sport.
• 1:24:02
  The only reason why we know is because they stream and no one
• 1:24:05
  walks. Out they keep score actually of
• 1:24:07
  who killed the most people, including the hacker.
• 1:24:09
  They have the hacker in on it too.
• 1:24:11
  Yeah, yeah. Did you ever see some dudes
• 1:24:14
  neural implant boil his brain? I have wild.
• 1:24:20
  They love, they love buildings with automated turrets.
• 1:24:22
  That's the hacker's favorite anyway, the honey Badgers.
• 1:24:33
  Then we get into how to create a mission, which, as you might
• 1:24:39
  imagine, is kind of important. Naturally.
• 1:24:43
  I want to read this first paragraph verbatim on this page
• 1:24:48
  'cause I thought it was really funny that Kevin Crawford took a
• 1:24:51
  took a few shots, took a few digs at some other games.
• 1:24:55
  Many Archie RPG source books go to great lengths to present AGM
• 1:24:59
  with countless NPCS, organizations, background
• 1:25:02
  conflicts, Mac Guffins, and other grists for their creative
• 1:25:05
  mill. What they often neglect to
• 1:25:07
  provide, however, is a step by step procedure.
• 1:25:09
  With Whistle, GM can actually turn that material into a
• 1:25:12
  playable night's gaming. This section will give you the
• 1:25:15
  necessary tools with which you can hammer your raw inspiration
• 1:25:18
  to something you and your friends can enjoy at the table.
• 1:25:22
  Wow, just just attack Wizards like that, huh?
• 1:25:24
  Just. Yeah, just a soft dig.
• 1:25:27
  Just do it to him like that. All right?
• 1:25:28
  All right. Mr. Crawford, I was unaware of
• 1:25:30
  your game. Yeah, I just thought that was
• 1:25:32
  funny. I was like all right dude, damn.
• 1:25:36
  So the game breaks up mission design into 3 stages and then
• 1:25:40
  the three stages have their own like sub categories basically.
• 1:25:46
  So stage 1 is a basic outline and facts of the job so you can
• 1:25:51
  pitch it to your players. This is another game, another
• 1:25:56
  another game. This is another place where the
• 1:25:58
  game is very firm about not letting your players leave
• 1:26:02
  before knowing what the next plan is so you can prep.
• 1:26:06
  This is another place. It's reiterates that in a bunch
• 1:26:08
  of places stage 2 is making the meat and potatoes after the
• 1:26:13
  players who confirmed what their plans for the next mission is,
• 1:26:16
  and then stage 3 is the clean up in the aftermath.
• 1:26:19
  You determine the heat generated, what schemes moved
• 1:26:22
  forward moved what schemes moved forward.
• 1:26:26
  Yeah, as well as what happened to NPCS because of the job.
• 1:26:31
  So in stage 1, you want to start with by rolling 2 mission tags
• 1:26:39
  from the table to add in, you know, things like antagonists or
• 1:26:46
  patrons or complications, shit like that.
• 1:26:50
  Then you roll up what the type of mission actually is, what the
• 1:26:54
  patron needs done. So you know, this is a, you
• 1:26:59
  know, this is a stealth mission, this is a violence mission.
• 1:27:02
  This is like a hack job. You know this is a stealth
• 1:27:05
  mission. Then obviously you need to
• 1:27:09
  determine the payout of the mission.
• 1:27:13
  Also with tables provided of course.
• 1:27:17
  Of course, I probably shouldn't stop even mentioning the tables.
• 1:27:20
  You can just assume that if the game needs you to generate
• 1:27:23
  something, it also probably gave you an accompanying table.
• 1:27:26
  It gave you several, in fact. More than one sometimes.
• 1:27:30
  Lastly, summarize the info into a hook that the operators are
• 1:27:34
  actually receive right. So come up with all the bits and
• 1:27:36
  bobs and then what does Mr. Johnson actually tell them for
• 1:27:40
  the gig? You know, what does he explain
• 1:27:44
  to them? So then we have stage 2 of
• 1:27:47
  creating the mission itself. First, obviously you need
• 1:27:51
  important NPCS, the characters that are making things happen.
• 1:27:56
  The game doesn't recommends the thing that I also always
• 1:28:00
  recommend, which is reuse NPCS when it makes sense and don't
• 1:28:05
  make new ones from whole cloth every time.
• 1:28:11
  You know, basically it says reoccurring encounters with the
• 1:28:14
  same faces helps give a sense of a place to your gaming and can
• 1:28:18
  inspire personal animosities or friendlier ties with PCs.
• 1:28:22
  A big fucking agree. Like, yeah, it's gonna I say
• 1:28:27
  this. I'm.
• 1:28:27
  Gonna go sit in my hidey hole real quick.
• 1:28:30
  I yeah, I know you need to get into this habit.
• 1:28:32
  I say this all the time, right? If the players are like, hey,
• 1:28:38
  all right, we need, you know, we just did a mission to help out
• 1:28:42
  the blacksmith. And then their next mission,
• 1:28:44
  it's like, man, we need to find somebody who knows where these
• 1:28:48
  ancient ruins are. The blacksmith.
• 1:28:50
  The blacksmith knows where the ancient ruins are.
• 1:28:52
  It's the make it the same person.
• 1:28:53
  Don't make a new NPC same person if it makes sense, obviously,
• 1:29:00
  like don't do it every time to the point where like the
• 1:29:03
  blacksmith also knows the president.
• 1:29:05
  That might not make sense. But yes, reuse NPCS.
• 1:29:13
  It's super fucking helpful. Of course, obviously.
• 1:29:19
  Yeah, I, I know, I know. One of these days you'll get it.
• 1:29:22
  In my defense, the Lancer game made it real hard space.
• 1:29:29
  You can still make it work. Then of course once you have
• 1:29:35
  those NPCS you need to give them stats so your operators can
• 1:29:39
  shoot at them. Because Cyberpunk, then you want
• 1:29:48
  to make a list of important locations, places of importance,
• 1:29:52
  right? I said, I said list the game
• 1:29:54
  said inventory, the places of importance.
• 1:29:56
  You know, if they need to go to a, a, if they're going into a
• 1:29:59
  corporate facility, detail the facility.
• 1:30:01
  If they're meeting somebody in a bar, detail the bar.
• 1:30:04
  Like, you know, that kind of gig, like important points of
• 1:30:06
  interest. Then you need your battle maps.
• 1:30:15
  The game, the the way the game describes it is map the
• 1:30:18
  tactically important places. If the PCs are going to be
• 1:30:21
  infiltrating a site, use the guide for creating infiltration
• 1:30:24
  missions if you expect them to get into a firefight in the
• 1:30:27
  location sketch A4 plan or at least some have some kind of
• 1:30:29
  idea of how the area is laid out.
• 1:30:33
  But yeah, which is another way to say, make battle maps right?
• 1:30:37
  In the, in the DND, in our common DND parlance, make battle
• 1:30:41
  maps again so your operators can shoot at things or stab things,
• 1:30:48
  I suppose. You know I'm not, I'm not.
• 1:30:50
  I shouldn't be weaponist. Equal opportunity in these
• 1:30:53
  parts. Yeah, equal opportunity,
• 1:30:55
  bludgeon, stab, shoot, you know, whatever you like.
• 1:31:00
  And then the game. Then the game says do a mental
• 1:31:02
  walkthrough. Basically, it's just saying know
• 1:31:06
  your players better than you know your players better than
• 1:31:08
  the author does, and you likely have a general idea of how
• 1:31:11
  they're apartment to approach the mission.
• 1:31:14
  Start from the hook, walk through the events and
• 1:31:16
  challenges of the mission. Make sure it makes sense.
• 1:31:19
  And if you're certain your group is going to take a particular
• 1:31:22
  course of action, plan out for basically you know your players.
• 1:31:25
  So figure out what your prayers are probably going to do.
• 1:31:29
  Take you know, think about it, and then once that you know
• 1:31:34
  you've gone through the mission, clean up.
• 1:31:38
  So all that's said and done, the clean up stage, first you want
• 1:31:41
  to determine if they got a little too rowdy during the
• 1:31:44
  mission and if they added to their heat score or not.
• 1:31:49
  If they get their heat score too high, you know, the SWAT teams
• 1:31:52
  might start kicking their doors in on a regular basis and you
• 1:31:56
  got to deal with that. Then you want to decide what to
• 1:32:04
  do with the, the, the unchosen mission hooks.
• 1:32:08
  So whatever mission hooks the players didn't take, decide what
• 1:32:12
  you want to do with them, which ones you want to get rid of,
• 1:32:14
  which ones you want to keep. If you want to roll to see if
• 1:32:16
  the if and you know another operator team did it or didn't
• 1:32:19
  do it, you know that kind of shit.
• 1:32:22
  Then obviously you're also going to need to make new mission
• 1:32:26
  hooks because they just because A, you just removed a couple and
• 1:32:30
  B, they just completed 1. So you're going to have to make
• 1:32:32
  some new ones and then progress the world, which is to say show
• 1:32:38
  the consequences of what the PCs did.
• 1:32:40
  Give them a news broadcast, social media post St. rumor or
• 1:32:43
  something like that to let them know that they're, you know,
• 1:32:47
  they're making shit happen. Like the the missions they are
• 1:32:51
  doing are having repercussions. Shit is going out again.
• 1:32:57
  Stars Without Number and Worlds without Number basically said
• 1:33:00
  the same thing. Like when the faction turn
• 1:33:03
  happens, tell the players what was going on, why the faction
• 1:33:06
  turn did XY or Z or what it caused or so on and so forth.
• 1:33:15
  There's. And of course then after it
• 1:33:18
  describes you how to make all the missions, you get several
• 1:33:21
  pages of mission tags. So many tags mucho Tagarinos I
• 1:33:27
  was. About to say please regale me
• 1:33:29
  how you're going to hit him with this.
• 1:33:32
  No, I mean, I'm not. I'm not going to read them all
• 1:33:33
  if that's stressed. No, just how you were going to
• 1:33:35
  say in Spanish when you said mucho.
• 1:33:37
  I was like, oh. Please, mucho Tagarinos, that's
• 1:33:40
  how you say it, right? You know, can't say that it is
• 1:33:43
  no. No.
• 1:33:46
  You sure? I'm damn near positive.
• 1:33:50
  Damn. With my very limited knowledge
• 1:33:52
  of Spanish, pretty sure. All right.
• 1:33:57
  And then there's also a page of mission types.
• 1:34:00
  So you can roll on the type of mission defense, espionage,
• 1:34:03
  murder, rescue, retrieval. And then once you've rolled on
• 1:34:07
  the once you roll, now we got tables within tables, right?
• 1:34:10
  So you roll on the table for the mission type.
• 1:34:12
  And then once you roll on the table for the mission type, you
• 1:34:15
  go to the page that describes the mission type.
• 1:34:17
  And then there's more tables to break down.
• 1:34:19
  What's going on with this specific mission?
• 1:34:23
  So like if you roll the fence and then you roll on the defense
• 1:34:25
  mission and you go to the page and then you have tables for why
• 1:34:29
  can't they do it themselves? What kind of patron put them up
• 1:34:31
  to the job? How afraid is the target?
• 1:34:33
  What needs to be defended? Twist in the situation.
• 1:34:37
  So you got tables within tables. I just want you to know you the
• 1:34:40
  cadence in which you describe that was the so the horse heresy
• 1:34:43
  is yes, correct. And then now I think this is
• 1:34:51
  going to be, this is probably something that will a lot of
• 1:34:53
  people will like, but I'm not going to go into it right now or
• 1:34:58
  I'm not going to go into a period because it's just it's
• 1:35:01
  dense, it's a lot and it's getting, it's really into the
• 1:35:05
  weeds. But there is three whole pages
• 1:35:09
  dedicated to infiltration missions, slash intrusion
• 1:35:13
  missions because they are such a staple of the genre.
• 1:35:17
  It literally says at the very top of the chapter.
• 1:35:20
  The stealthy infiltration of a hostile corporate facility is a
• 1:35:23
  mainstay of the cyberpunk genre. It can be a little tricky to
• 1:35:26
  build out a proper intrusion mission, however, so the
• 1:35:29
  guidelines of this section can help you to streamline the
• 1:35:31
  process. It is 3 pages dedicated to how
• 1:35:34
  to do the whole breaking into the building and trying not to
• 1:35:37
  the raise the alarm and all that, yadda yadda.
• 1:35:39
  Right? I'm gonna skip over this section
• 1:35:42
  because again, it's really in the weeds.
• 1:35:45
  It's like it gets really detailed, but I will tell you,
• 1:35:50
  you can be rest assured, Mr. Mr. Kevin Crawford once again has
• 1:35:53
  your back. It's very thorough and has all
• 1:35:56
  of the elements you need to create said intrusion mission.
• 1:36:02
  And then there's also a little bit, there's also the playing
• 1:36:07
  the mission part, which is basically guiding you, guide you
• 1:36:11
  through how to literally, literally run the mission.
• 1:36:15
  Like so it says like the set up, give them a mission brief, give
• 1:36:19
  them an obvious first step. It says, you know how to handle
• 1:36:23
  negotiating with MPCS on a mission.
• 1:36:25
  Like reaction rolls, let the PCs make their ask, let the PCs give
• 1:36:30
  a reason, set a difficulty, blah blah blah.
• 1:36:33
  Then like generating favors from contacts, moving around the
• 1:36:36
  city, keeping track of time, but like all that shit.
• 1:36:41
  And then there is a page called the Run which is really similar
• 1:36:46
  to the dungeon rules from Worlds Without number where you would
• 1:36:50
  track how long the various actions the player characters
• 1:36:55
  were doing. So for example, pick a lock at
• 1:36:59
  normal speed is one minute search, a desk costs a minute
• 1:37:02
  search, an office room costs 5 minutes.
• 1:37:05
  And then you, you know, you, you compare that list of time to
• 1:37:13
  alarms or encounter checks or reactions on the, you know, from
• 1:37:18
  the area itself, like security or whatever, all that shit.
• 1:37:22
  Again, it works. It's very similar to the dungeon
• 1:37:25
  rules that worlds without number had.
• 1:37:30
  Again, all good stuff. It's just really in the weeds.
• 1:37:32
  So I'm, I'm skipping over it for the sake of you don't need me to
• 1:37:36
  tell you how long everything, every little 5 minute this and
• 1:37:39
  that takes, you know. But yes, if you're worried about
• 1:37:43
  the infiltration bit, the breaking and entering aspect,
• 1:37:47
  the game's got you covered, dawg.
• 1:37:50
  Which is good 'cause I do think that is a place where cyberpunk
• 1:37:52
  games often, despite the genre, again, as this game says, being
• 1:37:56
  really heavily centered around that doesn't doesn't a lot of
• 1:38:03
  games don't give you a lot of good advice on how to do it.
• 1:38:05
  Yeah, the the actual how is typically, yeah, quite skinned.
• 1:38:10
  It's sparse often, you know, because essentially the
• 1:38:13
  infiltration in the cyberpunk game is the same as running the
• 1:38:18
  dungeon in the D&D game, and the the D&D games give you all sorts
• 1:38:22
  of information about how to run the dungeon often.
• 1:38:25
  So it's kind of weird that a lot of the Cyberpunk games don't
• 1:38:27
  seem to do the same for the breaking and entry, even though
• 1:38:32
  from a gameplay standpoint it's like kind of the same idea.
• 1:38:36
  I don't know, just just things, just just funny game design.
• 1:38:40
  Things, I guess just stuff and things.
• 1:38:43
  Just yeah. And then we have the rewards
• 1:38:45
  page. So rewards, you know, rewards
• 1:38:49
  and experience. Basically the payout, this is
• 1:38:53
  super easy. The payout is determined by the
• 1:38:56
  teams level, so you know if they're all Level 3 they get a
• 1:39:00
  Level 3 worth of payout. Team Level 3 worth of payout
• 1:39:03
  which is $30,000 which might sound like a lot, but shit's
• 1:39:07
  expensive in this game. It's expensive in all those.
• 1:39:13
  Games. Not necessarily.
• 1:39:14
  Depends on what you're getting. Listen, if you want to be an
• 1:39:18
  operator with a cool robot arm and a sick gun, it's going to
• 1:39:20
  cost you some money and. When you tell me I got to pay
• 1:39:23
  for my cool Malorian Arms pistol, unfortunately.
• 1:39:29
  And then there's some modifiers to go with the payout table that
• 1:39:33
  can adjust. So for example, if the client is
• 1:39:38
  a subsidiary of the mega of a mega Corp, they get a 1.5 times
• 1:39:42
  modifier for the for the job because the, you know, the
• 1:39:46
  providers got a little extra cash.
• 1:39:50
  Or if the client is genuinely desperate, they get a two times
• 1:39:53
  modifier. It's generally assumed that
• 1:39:57
  fixers will give operators jobs that they think they can
• 1:40:01
  actually succeed. So that is why from a fictional
• 1:40:05
  and mechanical standpoint, that is why the the payout section is
• 1:40:13
  is based on. It's based on team level.
• 1:40:18
  Sorry my fucking my phone went off and completely cracked my
• 1:40:21
  train of thought. You're good.
• 1:40:26
  And then you have an additional loot table, which will, you
• 1:40:32
  know, because obviously there's the payout for the job, but
• 1:40:35
  there's also the stuff you can steal while you're doing the
• 1:40:38
  job. So there's a little additional
• 1:40:40
  loot table that you can roll on to give you a percentage of like
• 1:40:44
  how much extra loot could the players potentially find on the
• 1:40:46
  job? And that's pretty much it for
• 1:40:50
  money. They got the payout of the job
• 1:40:52
  and what can they steal? You know, like you don't need a
• 1:40:54
  whole lot out else. This isn't, again, not a fantasy
• 1:40:58
  game, for example. So you don't need to worry about
• 1:41:00
  like magic items or, you know, weird Mac guffins or some shit.
• 1:41:05
  They're basically just going to steal, steal and get paid
• 1:41:11
  because Cyberpunk. In some ways running a cyberpunk
• 1:41:14
  game is, I think, more difficult, but in some ways it
• 1:41:17
  is a little bit easier. No, right.
• 1:41:20
  This is what I was talking about, right?
• 1:41:21
  Where it's like I don't have to worry about how characters are
• 1:41:23
  going to get information. They have the Internet, right?
• 1:41:26
  Exactly. Or some sort of like approximate
• 1:41:28
  or cell phones or whatever. I don't need to worry about
• 1:41:31
  giving the players cool magic items if I give them money, they
• 1:41:35
  can buy their own cyberwear and cool guns and shit.
• 1:41:38
  Honestly, that's the nicest thing.
• 1:41:40
  That's one of the things I love about Lancer is I like, I give
• 1:41:43
  them resources because the game tells you to.
• 1:41:45
  But a lot of the time it's like, you know, I got to think about
• 1:41:48
  what they want, what they need. I don't.
• 1:41:51
  I have to do it so, so much less when I go here's a bunch of
• 1:41:55
  money. Yes Sir, very nice, makes life a
• 1:42:01
  little easier. It really do.
• 1:42:06
  Then we have the experience point system of the game.
• 1:42:08
  So the other without numbers games give you like multiple
• 1:42:11
  options. This one only presents you one
• 1:42:14
  primary option within with a optional different experience
• 1:42:18
  rule, but the primary one gives you.
• 1:42:24
  Basically the method is to reward basic mission completion.
• 1:42:30
  Gets you 3 XP for a job well done.
• 1:42:34
  This amount can shift up and down based on circumstances.
• 1:42:37
  If it's a long or particularly difficult mission, the amount
• 1:42:41
  can shift up that you earn, that the players earn, or if it's an
• 1:42:45
  easy mission or if they fail, the amount of XP they earn will
• 1:42:49
  shift down. Even if operators completely
• 1:42:53
  screw the pooch and just fuck it completely, they still get one
• 1:42:57
  pity XP for their for their lesson learned and their ass is
• 1:42:59
  beat. Got to love that.
• 1:43:01
  I love hazard pay, so yeah. Even if they completely screw it
• 1:43:05
  they still get one. And then the optional.
• 1:43:10
  The optional rule is you tie level up to cash accrued.
• 1:43:14
  So how much money they get where basically the credits they earn
• 1:43:19
  are experience with set thresholds.
• 1:43:22
  So from level one to two you have to earn $5000 or 5000
• 1:43:27
  credits. I don't remember what they call
• 1:43:28
  the money. Then from level 2 to three, you
• 1:43:30
  have to get 30,000. But this is technically an
• 1:43:35
  optional rule and seems a little, I don't know, seems a
• 1:43:40
  little like unnecessary personally.
• 1:43:42
  Like it's a little more noodly and I just, I don't know, it
• 1:43:45
  doesn't seem worth it to me personally, not for this
• 1:43:47
  particular game anyway. Other games I could see it.
• 1:43:52
  And then we have one little extra new GM mechanic, which is
• 1:43:56
  Heat. And heat is just a score.
• 1:43:59
  It is measured from zero to 10. It is tracked for the whole
• 1:44:03
  group of operators, not for any individual player and not for
• 1:44:08
  any. It's not based on individual
• 1:44:10
  enemies. So it's not like I have 5 Heat
• 1:44:13
  with Renraku Corporation. It's like we have 5 Heat period,
• 1:44:18
  which means like heat is a measure of how much everyone is
• 1:44:23
  aware of what the PCs are doing, like what they're up to.
• 1:44:28
  Right. It's, it's literally what they
• 1:44:29
  did with blades, although when no was blades limited to just
• 1:44:34
  the enforcers or no, right? It was just everybody knew that
• 1:44:37
  you were packing. It was kind of just everybody,
• 1:44:38
  yeah, yeah, same idea. I think you could no 'cause
• 1:44:43
  blades had Blades had faction favorability and right, right.
• 1:44:49
  So it was kind of operating on both paradigms.
• 1:44:52
  This game just worries about heat.
• 1:44:53
  It doesn't necessarily say you have to do it like by faction.
• 1:44:56
  I suppose you could if you wanted to get a little more
• 1:44:58
  nudely, like if the players pissed off a particular fashion
• 1:45:01
  faction like especially bad like these motherfuckers just keep.
• 1:45:07
  I know that you could do, Yeah. I mean, I, I think the whole
• 1:45:11
  it's just a business thing does go out the window when you keep
• 1:45:14
  fucking them over. Right, right.
• 1:45:16
  That's what I mean. Like if if your players push it,
• 1:45:18
  then I could see an argument for you splitting off a separate
• 1:45:21
  heat meter. But broadly speaking, the heat
• 1:45:23
  is intended to just apply to the group.
• 1:45:29
  And yeah, basically there's a table of heat gains and it's
• 1:45:33
  just what did you do? And then how much heat does it
• 1:45:36
  add? So for example, if you if on the
• 1:45:40
  job you use frag grenades or small lethal explosives, you
• 1:45:44
  gain plus one heat for you know, going loud.
• 1:45:47
  And if you kill a corpo CEO you get plus 10 heat.
• 1:45:50
  It's just a simple. Yeah.
• 1:45:52
  Yeah. I mean, don't, Yeah, don't do
• 1:45:54
  that. Little bit little bit risky.
• 1:45:57
  Oh, I mean, but those EV company CEOs aren't I get themselves.
• 1:46:02
  I know, I know, it's true. Those health insurance CEOs too,
• 1:46:05
  you know. Oh yeah.
• 1:46:06
  I mean, they're, yeah. They they got to fear the Mario
• 1:46:11
  Bros team. Hey, and don't forget about the
• 1:46:14
  the real estate CEOs, Yeah. They got to feel their.
• 1:46:19
  They got to fear their own. Corporate workers, I swear to
• 1:46:26
  God the new and improved photo quote new and improved FBI is
• 1:46:29
  going to be knocking on our tour this week.
• 1:46:32
  New and improved, That's a strong word.
• 1:46:35
  I mean. New I guess.
• 1:46:39
  Did you want me to say Gestapo 2.0 'cause I could have?
• 1:46:42
  Yeah, sure. You could call that.
• 1:46:46
  And then so once you've accrued heat, you can shed your heat.
• 1:46:50
  Basically there's just a table of various actions you can do
• 1:46:54
  such as laying low, paying fines, or turning yourself in
• 1:46:58
  and that will take your heat down.
• 1:47:01
  Just like blades. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:47:04
  Nice, nice, simple system. Like there's it's, there's not
• 1:47:07
  too much to it, but it gets the job done right.
• 1:47:09
  It's a notoriety tracker. You don't need it to be too
• 1:47:11
  crazy. And that's actually kind of
• 1:47:17
  where we're going to stop because the last two major
• 1:47:23
  chapters or the in the free edition, this is not where this
• 1:47:28
  is not the deluxe edition has more chapters after this, but
• 1:47:32
  the last two major chapters in the free edition of the game is
• 1:47:36
  Faces on the Street, which is basically your bestiary chapter
• 1:47:41
  with your NPCS and your stat blocks and everything.
• 1:47:44
  And the only thing you really need to know, like worry about
• 1:47:50
  extra with NPC stat blocks in cities, is that the you know
• 1:47:59
  you're dealing with, you're dealing with cyberpunk enemies,
• 1:48:03
  so they're going to have cyberwear and guns and shit.
• 1:48:07
  So you have to pay a little more attention to their equipment,
• 1:48:12
  which is something to keep in mind, you know, like what what
• 1:48:15
  kind of equipment is this particular NPC using is
• 1:48:18
  something that you have to pay a little more attention to than
• 1:48:20
  you would in like stars or worlds.
• 1:48:24
  But other than that, the stat blocks are the same.
• 1:48:26
  They did. He did add a thing called danger
• 1:48:28
  value, which is basically just CR.
• 1:48:31
  He added ACR scale to the game. That's it.
• 1:48:36
  He kind of already had it in worlds and stars.
• 1:48:38
  It was just based on Hit Dice before, whereas with cities he
• 1:48:43
  broke it out into its own number.
• 1:48:47
  But it does. It does the same basic idea as
• 1:48:50
  CR and then the section after that is the city chapter, which
• 1:48:56
  is the. If you don't want to make your
• 1:48:58
  own setting, here is the setting that the book provides you.
• 1:49:03
  That's all that is. So basically I'm saying there's
• 1:49:08
  not much new in the last two chapters is the point I'm
• 1:49:11
  making, right? The one other little, the one
• 1:49:17
  other little tidbit that I did like is the where is it?
• 1:49:25
  Yes, at the very, very end there's a chapter called Mixing
• 1:49:30
  Sin Nominee Games together. I did see that, yeah.
• 1:49:34
  Yeah, it just gives you some rules on how to mix and match,
• 1:49:40
  like the cost of things and throwing in mages from Worlds
• 1:49:45
  Without Number and dealing with trauma dice and how to slap
• 1:49:49
  those in the other games. It's just like how to mix and
• 1:49:52
  match the kits together. And then it gives you a table of
• 1:49:55
  all of the gear from the other two games and how to use them,
• 1:49:58
  how to use classes cause cities doesn't have classes.
• 1:50:02
  It has the edges. So if you want to bring the
• 1:50:03
  classes in, how you bring just a chapter on on all that working
• 1:50:08
  all that shit together. It's not like 100% comprehensive
• 1:50:12
  obviously, but you know, it get it gets you off the ground.
• 1:50:15
  So maybe my how to run a Borderlands tabletop game dream
• 1:50:19
  is just to run worlds and cities at the same time.
• 1:50:25
  No, I think you're how to run Borderlands is to going to be to
• 1:50:28
  run Ashes and maybe one of the others.
• 1:50:34
  Most because you need the you need the space travel thing.
• 1:50:36
  Like that's a necessity in Borderlands.
• 1:50:39
  There is a cyberpunk aspect to Borderlands so.
• 1:50:44
  Sure, but Ashes Without Number also has rules for mutants and
• 1:50:48
  psychic powers and all that shit too.
• 1:50:50
  True, I I did forget about the siren.
• 1:50:55
  Yeah, that's all in there. Ashes.
• 1:50:57
  It's funny because I was looking at Ashes without Number a little
• 1:51:00
  while ago when it was still in beta before it fully came out
• 1:51:04
  and I noticed as I'm looking at the game I was like this game is
• 1:51:08
  exactly what Isaiah was asking for when he ran Hellscapes.
• 1:51:13
  You told me when it comes to ashes, Yeah.
• 1:51:15
  Yes, it has literally everything you wanted.
• 1:51:18
  Just thought that was really funny.
• 1:51:20
  I'm almost scared to read it. It it, it, it might make you a
• 1:51:25
  little mad, it might make you be like, why couldn't it come out
• 1:51:28
  sooner? Right.
• 1:51:29
  That's kind of my my thing. And as I'm like, is this going
• 1:51:32
  to make me fucking Madge? You know it might.
• 1:51:36
  It could. Happen.
• 1:51:37
  Yeah, at it. But yeah, that's that is Cities
• 1:51:43
  Without Number, the third entry in the without number games.
• 1:51:51
  This game I think shifted things up the most after like stars to
• 1:51:58
  worlds feel pretty like simpatico cities now from those
• 1:52:04
  two games. Feels like it's pushes it
• 1:52:06
  further from those two games, mostly by mostly because of
• 1:52:10
  necessity for the, you know, cyberpunk is very much its own
• 1:52:14
  beast. So from the design standpoint
• 1:52:16
  owners, I get it. And then funny enough, basically
• 1:52:19
  worlds and stars are similar to each other and then cities and
• 1:52:24
  ashes are similar to each other. But then they kind of, they all
• 1:52:29
  can work together, all four of them.
• 1:52:31
  But there's like a, there's like a pairing thing that happened
• 1:52:33
  design wise. Right.
• 1:52:36
  Which is not, I'm just not necessarily bad or good, I just
• 1:52:39
  was sort of an observation I noticed.
• 1:52:44
  Do I ask what your tangent before was?
• 1:52:47
  Oh yes, fun fact, did you know Johnny Silverhand did not
• 1:52:52
  actually pull off the Arisaka job?
• 1:52:56
  Yes, I remember you telling me this.
• 1:52:57
  OK, yes, it's him creating a fucking mental like his his and
• 1:53:03
  Graham creating like a mental fantasy because he was like,
• 1:53:07
  Nah, I'm as cool as Mork in black hand.
• 1:53:11
  He wasn't and he was like I pulled that job off.
• 1:53:14
  He didn't. He did not.
• 1:53:16
  You ran distraction Yeah, he was there, but he didn't carry the
• 1:53:22
  nuke. He wasn't with like Shaitaan and
• 1:53:24
  them. He he just he just they were
• 1:53:26
  like you go off with B team and do your own thing, bud.
• 1:53:29
  That's rough, bud. That's rough.
• 1:53:31
  Look, I love the I I love that Jonny Silverhand because of the
• 1:53:35
  game has this like Omega legendary status and he's just
• 1:53:39
  less cool Morgan flag. Yeah, it is kind of funny.
• 1:53:45
  It's very funny. All righty, that has been us.
• 1:53:53
  Follow us on the social medias in the description if you so
• 1:53:57
  desire and go shoot some corpose.
• 1:54:05
  For legal reasons, this is a joke.
• 1:54:07
  Yes, in game. Yes, for legal reasons, this is
• 1:54:10
  a joke. Mostly.
• 1:54:15
  Yeah, Mostly. Mostly, bye bye.
• 1:54:20
  Bye, bye, peace.