Under The Hood 1: The Open Action System

The rules used to create a role playing game, sometimes referred to as the engine, set up the dynamics of play and provide a structure for interaction. In a lot of cyberpunk fiction, what could be considered as traditional action is fast and brutal, often over before it even began. The threat of violence is ever present, but violence, when it comes to that is often quick, bloody, and more often than not it’s the repercussions that have the greatest impact.

 

For these reasons we are using the Open Action System. The rule set allows for intense action but doesn’t penalize players for not focusing solely on their character’s combat capabilities. Characters inside the Open Action System are defined by a set of key words or Characteristics. The system allows for dynamic social gaming as well as the fast paced action of the cyberpunk genre. The OAS rewards rich character histories and diverse game play.

 

In addition to the core rules, Glass Shadows introduces a new system of Actors and Operators that allows players even greater control of their character’s fates. Dynamic networks of contacts allow players to quickly pull in the best people for a job, without having to worry that their character has every skill and all the best gear. It’s about having the right person for the right job.

 

There are a million stories under the Glass Shadow, why should players be limited to just one?

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Character Narrative 1: Cyril Trinidad

The wind felt wild against his steel skin tonight as Cyril cut through the skies in his scout Dart.  With the odd spatial awareness granted to him by the radar unit, he could sense the heavy transport carrying ground assault battleframes miles behind his nearly invisible body.  Smiling inside, he nosed over and started checking his assigned grid for thermo signatures.  The mission brief stated that they could expect stiff resistance to the raid from the Techdowners, but he really didn’t see how a few neo-luddites with light weaponry could ever hope to stand against a battleframe, much less a full fire team of four.

“Target cluster sighted,” he transmitted over the datalink to control.  “27 signatures, tagged tango-1 through 27.  Moving on to next.. SHIT!”  He reacted with blind panic and speed impossible for any normal pilot as a heat bloom streaked up from target tango-8, straight at his wildly jinking body.  “Control, they have at least one missile launcher, where the fuck did they get a launcher?”

He dumped chaff and shot for higher altitude as the missile shot through the space he had recently occupied.  His frame protested loudly at the sudden acceleration, warning him that he was pushing it near the red line.  He ignored it, continuing to curse and wondering how they had even seen him.  His Dart was equipped with top-line thermo-optical camouflage!  More missiles were launched, but he was already far from the target zone.

“Let the assault team deal with those bastards,” He thought as he sped away.

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Technology: Vehicles and Frames

Civilian ground vehicles are sleek and streamlined futuristic wheeled machines, with very little wasted space.  Cargo compartments are much smaller than modern vehicles, the average consumer has little need for cargo, almost everything can be fabbed at home.  All civilian vehicles are electric, drawing supplemental power from a citywide grid embedded in the road surface.  Travel off-grid is facilitated by high-availability recharging stations and extremely efficient batteries.

Elevated Mag-lev trains provide low-cost public transportation within and between urban areas.  Most civilians travel long-distances via sub-orbital space-planes, which also do double-duty as transport to Lagrange stations and the moon colonies.  Routine transport between colonies in the Inner System is accomplished via large transport ships which carry passengers in cryo-stasis.

Frames are available in civilian and police/military models.  A Frame is a single-pilot vehicle approximately 3 meters tall, operated by neural interface with the pilot, in effect becoming an extension of their body.  Civilian Frames are used for heavy lifting and construction job, as well as for sports such as the Frame Football league.  Fire Departments deploy Frames to assist with difficult fires.  Aeroframes are frequently purchased by executives to provide transportation between home and work sites.  There is also an active Aeroframe racing circuit.

Battleframes are employed primarily by the military, and the Cybernetic Enforcement Division (CED) of local police departments.  Battleframes come in many varieties, for ground, air, and space.  A basic ground battleframe can be refitted with a variety of weaponry to deal with any situation.  All battleframes are designed as sealed, self-contained environments.  Ground-based battleframes are commonly called Gorillas.  Combat aeroframes are commonly called Darts, and can be equipped for scouting or combat.  Scout oriented battleframes are equipped with thermo-optical camouflage, which makes them very difficult to spot when stationary.  Thermo-optical camouflage is not as effective when the user is moving, causing a faint distortion to be visible at their location as the camouflage adjusts to the changing environment.  Police battleframes are deployed to deal with criminals riding weaponized Kits.  Many spacefaring ships carry vacuum-adapted bipedal battleframes called Shrikes.  They are heavily armored andequipped with reaction drives, rail cannons and missiles.  Shrikes are designed to act as fighter wings, closing with ships at speed and attacking at close range, or defending their carrier from other battleframe wings.

In some areas, heavier military equipment is employed by the CED for urban pacification duties.  The most commonly used heavy combat vehicle is the spidertank; a three-man vehicle outfitted with either a non-lethal crowd control package, or a heavy weapons package.  Spidertanks are armored 6-legged walker vehicles.  Each leg has a retractable wheel for use when the legs are locked into position.  With the wheels retracted, a spidertank is capable of scaling vertical surfaces and traversing broken terrains.  Rhino heavy transports, large armored VTOL aircraft armed with a single spinal cannon, are used to deploy 4-man battleframe fire teams.  Rhinos are slow moving, and are always deployed with a wing of Darts for defense.

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What’s in a Name?

You may ask, “Where did you come up with the name Glass Shadows?”   Dave actually suggested it, with the rationale that “You can see through both glass and shadows, but they distort what’s inside.  You can never really be sure of what you’re looking at.”

In Glass Shadows, the Player Characters interact with a world that is dominated by secret conspiracies.  Often, the view they have of reality is distorted, the effects of their actions either completely misunderstood or totally concealed from them.  The power-players in these global conspiracies move behind the scenes, acting through proxies and moving people around like pieces in a grand game, of which only they understand the rules and no one can see the entire board.

Player Characters can work knowingly or unknowingly promoting a larger conspiracy, or be a ‘free agent’, but they always have their own agenda.  Whomever they are working for also has their own agenda, which will almost always be unknown to the PCs.  A mission as simple as infecting a traffic control node with a virus can have far reaching consequences which the PCs may eventually piece together, revealing a grand scheme that they unwittingly took part in.

Posted in Open Development | Tagged as: , ,

What’s this all about, then?

Welcome to the development blog for Glass Shadows, a Cyberpunk RPG that I am writing in cooperation with Dave Silva.

Glass Shadows is heavily inspired by cyberpunk-style animes, such as Ghost in the Shell and its sequels, Appleseed, and Bubblegum Crisis, as well as the western movies Bladerunner, and Johnny Mnemonic.  Literary inspirations include Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Diamond Age, and Charles Stross’s Accellerando.  Additional inspiration is drawn from the Eclipse Phase RPG, from Posthuman Studios.

I’d like to follow an open development model, posting the concepts that we’re working on as we go along and accepting feedback on what you, the fan and future player, like and don’t like.  Of course, all feedback will be tempered against the overall vision, so we may not take every suggestion, but we will read and respond to them.

So, settle in for the long haul, friends!

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