Empathy Times Ten

 Cyberpunk 2020 is a very fun game.

Cyberpunk Red could very well be just as fun, but I prefer my equipment options numerous and my Netrunning incomprehensible. One thing about the system, aside from Netrunning, which does raise some ire is humanity loss. People try to explain it away by saying the software infects your brain, or that you should have to take suppressants to avoid ill-effects like in the anime. My view differs somewhat. I can summarize it with a single screenshot from the core rulebook: (Page 74)

Importantly, this is different than the section on post-cyberpyschosis cyberpsychology which comes shortly after. When a character goes over the edge their cyberware must be removed, but in this case the chrome remains, just tracked. The whole debate can be solved with this one paragraph. Humanity loss is not innately tied to having the cyberware. The dark future is just a place where going to a psychologist means that you might end up with a tracker or two, not desirable in an Edgerunner's line of work. This also potentially opens the door for cyberware-heavy police and corporate games, which could be fun in a Ghost in the Shell sort of way.

    Incidentally, this is a good time to discuss the importance of time management in tabletop RPGs. But not in the Old-School sense:

I have learned this the hard way. Do not allow timeskips in Cyberpunk games. It hurts the feeling of the setting, it lets the players breathe, and it puts their enemies in stasis. That last thing can be dealt with by a clever GM, but I am not one of those. Healing takes a long time in Cyberpunk, but if a character is in intensive care then grab a temporary replacement from someone's lifepath or let the player build a temp-merc. Hell, even let them play the opposition for a game or two if they can handle it. Bills pile up, the game is designed to layer weekly and monthly costs on players to keep them striving. If the players have not sold out then they should not be able to relax for long. Resort holidays are for the company slaves. The book knows what it is talking about when it recommends dimming the lights and filling the room with static screens. Style over substance is the motto of the system and it means it. Timeskips cut into that. Plus, leaning into the dark future presentation means I can excuse cheap storebought snacks as setting appropriate.

Confused and Combative Character Creation

 Character Creation is the final hurdle before actually playing, and therefore the most loathsome one.

Ian Cunliffe: Combe Gibbet

I exaggerate, but the sentiment does hold some water. Characters are simply not my favorite part of tabletop games, no offense to any readers who do adore that aspect. The issue is made worse by the frequent repetition of character creation required when dealing with a constantly changing and inconsistently scheduled homebrew system as I do. How about a quick method then? Something tactile too, a sort of minigame.

Imagine wind-swept and barren cliffside. There stands a gibbet, or a hanging tree, or perhaps cages. The party awakens as a distant figure rides away on horseback, just crossing the horizon. About their necks are nooses, snapped or cut. If they were in cages the rusted doors are opened, the locks snapped. On the tree, or gibbet, or a board near the cages is a notice. Well, was a notice. Only the top portion remains nailed, the lower paper shredded and used as tinder for a fire now dying. The top reads:

"CONDEMMED HERE THESE WRETCHED CRIMINALS:"

And nothing more. The characters look down to the scraps of paper, and the game begins.

At this point the game master spreads some lovingly singed and scribbled scraps of paper onto the table. There should be a collection of adjectives, sentence fragments, names, nouns, and crimes. The players then try to piece together a character. Of course, the papers are singed and as such cannot be restored to their original formation, but assure the players that whichever character they reconstruct is a good approximation of the person their character once was, and perhaps who they will soon be again.

After the reconstruction is complete glue the fragments onto a fresh sheet and then pull out a key. It should detail the skill and stat bonuses that each scrap provides. For example:

"Red-River O'Shea: Pernicious Gunner. Condemned for Dueling, Setting fire to The Governor's Mansion."

Assume that the segments are "Red", "River", "O'Shea", "Pernicious", "Gunner", "Condemned for", "Dueling", "Setting fire to", "The Governor's", and "Mansion".

The name establishes background and personality, so to do the particualr targets of the crimes and any other minor details. The adjectives establish specific abilities. Clearly Red-River is a duelist of some renown and a gunner at that. The arson ties together a very explosives-focused character build while being pernicious grants him a deception bonus. But the character could just as easily been known as "The Governor's Gunner", a loyal servant unjustly betrayed perhaps? It is also possible to rearrange the scraps so that the character once set fire to a river, quite an intriguing feat.

There could be issues should two players equally desire a specific adjective. My ad-hoc solution would be to place it in dispute, where neither player receives any benefit from it until they can prove themselves worthy of the title. For example, if two players were arguing over the "swordsman" monicker then one would have to beat the other in a duel, or otherwise accomplish a daring feat of swordsmanship before the other can. Luckily, the homebrew we use allows for these sorts of accomplishments to be dependent on player skill more than luck for the most part.

The idea is in a nascent shape, but I imagine it could be quite fun to try at least once with the right assortment of players. 

Educational Grots

 If only I could post about miniatures more often.

Unfortunately, I do not want every update to be about how I painted zero to six more Afghan tribesmen each week for the better part of a year. Whenever I take a week off from colonials to try something new or strange is generally when a post makes it here. Take these Grots for example. Three are my own and one is a newcomer. There is a fifth painted, but it was unavailable for photography on the day of the shoot. After my first greenskin I decided to teach two of my friends how to paint miniatures, and reasoning that a small figure with relatively simple sculpting and a conveniently low price would be a good starting point I chose to start them with a Grot. Plus, they both like goblins. I have a few takeaways:

-Painting in public at a game store results in lower quality miniatures, especially if you forget a painting cap to glue the figure to.

-If the disparity between two skin highlight colours is great, then a wider coverage of the highlight paint is preferable.

-Blood for the Blood God Technical Paint is very good for goggles.

For context, the Grot with the goggles is the one I did not paint. The difference in appearance between my first and later Grots I assume has to do with the time spent on each figure, and possibly a degradation in Vallejo Park Green after the initial use. I would still highly recommend teaching your friends to paint miniatures, even if they only end up doing it once it can be quite a fun outing.

The Dandelion Offensive

 Strange offshoots of technology are quite fascinating.

M.G. Mangin, Aéronaute

Lighter-than-air travel especially enchants me. While not dead and dusted, the golden age of airships is long since passed. I have much to say about powered LTA vehicles, but why not start with something simpler? This post details a concept I have thrown around a few times in my mind. I call it The Dandelion Offensive.

The idea would be an early attempt at an airborne assault conducted without airplanes, possibly even before their invention. What would carry the forces conducting the assault? Balloons, of course! Benjamin Franklin detailed something rather like what I envison:

"Five Thousand Balloons capable of raising two Men each, would not cost more than Five Ships of the Line: And where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his Country with Troops for its Defense, as that Ten Thousand Men descending from the Clouds, might not in many Places do an infinite deal of Mischief, before a Force could be brought together to repel them?"

The Siege of Paris in 1870 saw extensive use of unpowered balloons to cross enemy lines, perhaps it could have inspired an offensive balloon corps? Though such a body would be much more limited than a parachute corps. They would need to find a wind current which was friendly to their needs, and pray that it remained so during the operation. The balloons would be highly visible on landing, and any weather that could conceal them would likely wreck the small craft. Even before the development of dedicated anti-aircraft weaponry there were numerous instances of small arms and repurposed cannons bringing down balloons. Perhaps sufficient numbers could offset that danger, callous though that may seem. Operation Market Garden and events like it reveal the difficulties in reinforcing and coordinating airborne infantry following a drop, something which could only be made worse in an era without portable radios. After the invention of radios and planes the whole exercise becomes moot, since any enemy air presence would turn the operation into a duckshoot. 

There would nevertheless be advantages to the scheme. With back-of-the-napkin math at a low altitude and light load approximately 200 square metres of material would be needed per balloon. Nowadays 200 square metres of Goldbeater's skin (200 square metres being approximately how much a 2 person Caquot balloon with a ceiling of 500m would require if spherical) costs around 226 pounds, which translates to 1.5 pounds in 1900. Tens of thousands of men could be outfitted for less than the cost of a single Destroyer, each balloon individually being over ten times less expensive than a rifle. And via that same logic, low-cost decoy balloons could be sent at a lower altitude or in a first wave to try and tie up any anti-air assets in use. This is of course assuming the balloons are filled with inexpensive hydrogen, since helium was not widely adopted until the 1920s. 

But even with the advantage of cost this is not an advisable undertaking. That is the idea. Many creative sorts enjoy designing detailed magic systems or top-of-the-line machines. Things of beauty and precision and complexity, form and function melded together as one. I prefer dodo birds. Evolutionary dead-ends and horrible ideas brought to life through the ego of their mad creators. This is why my miniature conversions are so often twisted mutants, or why I find so much joy in a fictional failed state. My tanks catch fire at random, my aircraft tear themselves to bits while turning, and my military strategies are shambolic by design. The Dandelion Offensive is fundamentally a tragedy. It is sending thousands of men aloft on flammable platforms with no way to control their path or defend themselves. It is the sort of undertaking that a general promotes to raise his own standing, that a company undertakes to squeeze profit from war, and that a soldier accepts because he must.

It is hardly a coincidence that I first conceived of it while listening to Curly's Airships.