Showing posts with label Gutterpunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gutterpunk. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 November 2016

Black Hack (Cyber) Bestiary









Way back when I reviewed The Black Hack Cyber-Hacked, one of my (few) disappointments with the system was its short "bestiary" - just the usual gutterpunk suspects.


Well, there's a simple solution to that.

Lurking below are over fifty new antagonists for a Cyber-Hacked, Mirrorshades or modern-day Black Hack game, giving the player characters targets to shoot from the blood soaked streets to the ash-coated wastelands. Not just criminals and cops and cartel soldiers 'neither - there are some surprises down the list!

I couldn't resist putting in (entire sentences of) fluff into this table, nor pretty-ing up this post with pictures. If you want a google-doc in the usual Black Hack format, unpolluted by images or unnecessary ink-draining descriptive words, there's a link at the bottom of the post.

A couple of the entries here use rules from David Black's Additional Things PDF, available free on his blog here, most notably the Panic! rule.


Black Bagger: a corporate spook, a government kidnapper, a paranoid fantasy.
3 HD
Pistol (2d4), electronic B&E tools, thermoptic camo (disadvantage to detect), Cyber-Optics, Cyber-Audio
Bounty Hunter: hunting your contacts down one by one.
4 HD 6 AP
Pistol (1D10), taser (CON test vs 1d4 rounds stun), tracking device, flashbangs (con test vs disadvantage on all tests 1d4 rounds), hand-cuffs, gas mask with in-built NVG, Cybernetic Grappling Hand, range truck, custom armour
Bubblegum Knight: neon super-vigilantes chase down hi-tech threats to society (like you), while looking super fabulous (I've never watched Bubblegum Crisis).
6 HD 10 AP
Hardsuit (AP10 articulated armour suit, with Knuckle Bombs (2d12, 2 uses), Laser Sword (2d8), Pulse Laser (2d8), full suite of visual and audio options, no disadvantage for running in high heels), high performance motorbike, preposterous/wonderful pop star costume, mic
Cartel Witch: the heady atmosphere of casual violence, superstition and religious fervour pervading Cartel culture inculcates a particular terrifying brand of esper. 
4 HD 4 AP
Machete (2d6), kevlar vest, ritual components, level three psychic powers: Hold Person, Terrify, Silence, Darkvision. Can cast Enhance and Cure Light Wounds as rituals if provided with the right cocktail of drugs, blood and ritual components
Chipped Serial Killer: a sabotaged skill chip or a black market personality reboot can turn an ordinary person into a terrifying, remorseless killer.
4 HD 2 AP
Fire axe (1d10), tranq pistol (1d6, CON test vs paralysis), Chip Socket, stab proof vest, advantage to strength tests, immune to most mind-affecting and charisma effects. Human victims must test vs Panic! upon first seeing the serial killer's eyes
Chipped Triad: the right skill chips can turn any teenage wannabe into something straight out of a Hong Kong martial arts flick. Almost, anyway.
2 HD 4 AP (Dodge)
Butterfly swords (2d4, two attacks), submachine gun (d6), d3 cyberware items, Chip Socket
Corporate Bodyguard: standing between you and the hostile extraction target.
4 HD 4 AP
Pistol (1D10), expensive taser gloves (unarmed attack, CON test vs 1d4 rounds stun), expensive armoured suit, iShades with visual enhancements, Cyber-Audio
Coyote: it seems like new walls rise every day - mental, physical, national, commercial. Good business for skilled blockade runners; their skills always come at a price.
2 HD 4 AP
Night-scoped rifle (2d6), electro-prod (1d4, CON save vs paralysis) range truck with search light and night vision windscreen, binoculars, flash-light, armoured thermoptic camo (advantage to stealth tests) with kevlar inlays
Coywolf: increasing numbers of feral coyote-wolf hybrids prowl the desiccated high plains, desperate for ecogee meat.
1 HD
Teeth and Claws (1d6). Gains another 1d6 if one or more other coywolves are attacking the same target
Crom Cultist: a few slabs of grafted muscle and black hair extensions freely available in any salon can turn the lankiest nerd into Conan the neo-Barbarian.
3 HD 1 AP
Carbon Steel Claymore (2d4 - two handed), Sub-machine gun (2d4), biker jacket, Dermal Weave Flesh, Bone Enhancement, 2x doses of +1 Str drug
Death Squad Paramilitary: when corporations, governments or the DEA want someone dead in the slums, they send in their latter days Contras.
2 HD 4 AP
Sub-machine gun (d6), machete (d6), binoculars, kevlar vest, NVG night-scope, lots of drugs, Adrenal Enhancement. Squad may have flamethrower (2d6, dex test vs catching fire), Humvee or aggressively ordinary sedan with AP4 bullet proof windows
Dolphin Prophet: the rumours about the underwater research lab were true. 
2 HD
Unarmed attack (1d6), advantage against landlubbers in water. Level four psychic powers: Clairvoyance, Sleep, Feeblemind, Telepathy, Screech (as Mental Blast)
Droog: those crazy nadsat spouting teens, spent too much time in the milk bar listening to classical music.
2 HD
Big stick (d6), fancy hat, advantage on melee attacks against enemies with lower HD.
Exterminator: someone has to deal with the sewer-gators.
1 HD 1 AP
Shotgun (d4) with bean-bags (d4, CON save vs d4 rounds stun), hardy work-wear with head-mounted flashlight, rebreather, unnecessarily loud motion-sensor, tool kit, small but vicious enhanced dog (HD2, AP1, teeth (d6) )
Feral Child: whether Area Boys in Lagos or Corner Boys in New York, syndicates and armies are always willing to exploit lost children. Meanwhile, gangs of dispossessed kids struggle for what they can take to survive.
1 HD
Knife (d4), d3 doses of random combat drug. Depending on local circumstance, may have rifle (d4) or kevlar vest (AP2)

Continued below the jump! Juicers! Cyborgs! Things that should not be!



Wednesday, 11 May 2016

The Black Hack CYBER-HACKED

There are all sorts of reasons why the cyberpunk genre tends to generate complicated games, and why the most popular RPG in the genre is a byword for unnecessary, brain-smashing complexity (here's looking at you, Shadowrun!). Even Cyberpunk 2020 requires hours and hours and hours to generate characters, adding up all the finicky skill-points. What rules-lite genre games there are tend to be FATE-y things like Tech-Noir: great game, but I honestly prefer more traditional rules-systems.

Cyberpunk attracts people into technology and detailed future speculation (also people into drug literature and JG Ballard and weird intersections between fashion and art and the military industrial complex, but they're unfortunately less represented in the gaming culture...). There's a drive there towards "accurate," detailed technical simulation, with lots of dice modifiers and reliability stats and ammunition counts. I confess I like that stuff. On the other hand I hate maths and can't remember equations for shit, which ruins most cyberpunk rules systems for me. 

I've been thinking about - even drafting - D&D derived rules ideas for cyberpunk for awhile now. D&D sits at an intersection between simplicity, technical detail and fast play. That last part is less because of any inherent virtue of the rules and more because everybody knows the system. Even I know the system (I can only retain 1.5 rules systems at a time. 0.75 of those systems will always be my beloved Cyberpunk 2020. Right now the other 0.75% of my rules retention capacity is taken up with D&D 5E).

So, I was genuinely excited to hear about Mike Evans' new old school D&D hack cyberpunk game, not least because I only heard about it about a week before it came out.


Fittingly, it took several attempts to actually buy the game because my bank interpreted a £1.43 payment to DrivethruRPG as evidence my account had been hacked (exactly how many purchases do I have to make from that place in one week before it realises I'm a regular customer?).

...£1.43? Yeah. The Black Hack Cyber Hacked is a complete game including bestiary and hacking rules and the Open Game License all in 21 pages, has no art except what you see on the cover above and has been testing my assumptions about exactly how much mechanical detail you need to represent the genre all evening.