Grotesque

In case you haven't noticed, I'm rather enamoured with Technoir. I have rambled on about the game previously, so I won't bore you with another glowing review. Instead I'm going to tell you that I put together a transmission for the game and you can download it right now for free.

For those unfamiliar with Technoir and its transmissions, let's just say that they are a group of NPCs, Factions, Locations, Objects, Threats and Events that a GM links together to create an adventure. Transmissions are intended for use with Technoir, but aside from some NPC stats everything in the transmission could be used in another science fiction/cyberpunk game without issue.

As you may have surmised from the above image, the title of the transmission is Grotesque and it adds a mutant population and biotech industry to any cyberpunk city you want. I wrote the transmission so that you could plug it into any cities you have dreamed up or created using another transmission. It should work okay even if you don't have another city to plug it into, it just might be a little one dimensional.

Alright, that is all I am going to say about this. Take a gander at the transmission and maybe even give it a play. As always, I appreciate and welcome feedback.

You can download and view Grotesque here.

Categories: Adventure, cyberpunk, Technoir, transmission

Cyberpunk Roleplaying with Technoir

I had meant to write this up a couple of weeks back, after doing the session report of my first time playing the game, but ended up procrastinating instead. Better late than never, right?

What is it?

Technoir is a cyberpunk role playing game by Jeremy Keller and was funded via Kickstarter last summer. I'm really impressed with the overall layout of the book. The book is done in a striking blue, black and white color palette which gives it a nice cyberpunk feel and is very easy on the eyes. I do wish there were more pieces of art spread throughout the book, but I'm sure Mr. Keller wanted to keep the Kickstarter goal as low as possible.  The writing is also very concise and clearly communicates concepts with great examples.

The setting of Technoir is generic cyberpunk, complete with cybernetic augmentations. There are more specific setting details to be found in the Transmissions (adventures), but even these snippets could easily fit into just about any cyberpunk game or setting.

Technoir also won a Judge's Spotlight Award at this year's ENnie Awards.

How does it work?

Technoir really shines in this department. Everything from character creation to resolution is well thought out and illustrated with great examples.

Technoir starts with something called a Transmission. You can think of a Transmission as the skeleton of an adventure. It contains key NPCs, events, objects, factions, locations and threats. The GM uses a table to randomly select a number of these, called Nodes, and connects them together in a kind of mind map. This creates the framework for an adventure. A number of other things happen with the Transmission, but let's jump to character creation for now.

While the GM selects and connects Nodes the players should be hard at work creating their characters. Character creation reminds me a little of Traveller in that characters are built out of a number of careers that act as the character's personal history. For example one player might select Criminal, Pilot, Soldier for their character. Each of these careers increases core attributes for the character, called Verbs. These are things like Shoot, Fight, Hack and Coax. They range from 1 to 5 and each point adds one more die that can be rolled during challenges. In addition to the Verbs players also select one Adjective to add to their character from each profession. A Soldier, for example, might select Tough as an adjective. These are called upon during challenges for bonus dice.

Once players have their Verbs and Adjectives sorted out they start connecting their characters to NPCs. These NPCs are listed in the Transmission that the GM is using and the players go through in turn and select an NPC and the kind of relationship they have with them. Each player makes three of these connections. The relationships are very interesting. A player might have a borrowed money from an NPC and this gives them more money to spend on outfitting their character, but leaves them in debt for when the game actually starts. There are a number of other types of connections that can be made and the players also select an Adjective to describe their relationship with the NPCs.

At this point the GM should have a relationship map that connects player characters to NPCs and those NPCs to a number of events, objects, threats, factions and so on. This is where the actual game begins. Usually by this point the GM will have figured out how everything fits together into an adventure and the loans and favours owed or friendships with NPCs are perfect for hooking player characters into the action.

The actual moment to moment game play of Technoir should be mostly familiar to role players. Dice are only ever rolled if a PC is in conflict with an NPC (or another PC). These challenges are resolved via opposed rolls where each side rolls a number of dice equal to the relevant Verb plus additional dice from relevant Adjectives. There is some extra crunch in deciding whether to use the extra dice to get a better result or keeping them in reserve to improve the quality of a success. There is another wrinkle to deal with in the form of negative adjectives, when one is applied to character (through a wound, for example) a red die is added to the pool of dice and whatever value is rolled cancels out all dice of the same value. With negative adjectives stack up this can become quite punishing.

Speaking of negative adjectives, whenever someone wins a challenge (be it NPC or PC) the winner applies and adjective to the environment or target. Someone that was stabbed might have the adjective "bleeding" applied to them and these adjectives can be called on for bonus or penalty dice. This makes Technoir play, revolve around placing and stacking adjectives on things. There are no health points or difficulty targets, the players just say how they want to affect the world and apply an adjective if they win.

One thing about the resolution system that bothered me is that there are no versus environment conflicts. The idea seems to be that if nobody is opposing a character they will eventually succeed at what they are trying to do, but sometimes you want to roll to see if someone can avoid drowning in a lake or something. Luckily, it is very easy for the GM to assign a base difficulty of 1-5 dice to oppose a player in a situation like this.

Final thoughts

I really, really like Technoir. It plays like the halfway point between Fiasco and Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020. It shines as a one-shot game, but I think it should scale into a longer campaign with few growing pains. The Transmissions are brilliant. Not only do they have re-playability due to the random elements, it also takes very little time and effort to create a new one. I can hammer out a new Transmission in less time than it would take me to do more traditional adventure prep. Technoir's resolution is fast and entertaining and any ex-Shadowrun players will still get to use their stacks of six sided dice.I do wish that Technoir had included rules for environmental conflicts as well as a little more direction for long term campaigns and character advancement, but all of these things are easily handled by the GM and unnecessary for enjoying the game.

Number crunchers probably won't like Technoir, it isn't a game that concerns itself with stats or bookkeeping of any kind. Everything is handled through adjectives and that includes cybernetic augmentations as well as vehicles and weapons. If you are the type that likes to know how much faster that upgraded engine will move your motorcycle then this game isn't going to scratch that itch. If, on the other hand, you are someone that likes the idea of Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, but is intimidated by all of the numbers and rules or just can't be bothered with keeping track of that stuff then you will love Technoir.

Technoir is available in print from the official website and in PDF from DriveThruRPG. Player's guide handouts and Transmissions are also available as free downloads, but do not contain all the rules you will need to play the game.

Categories: cyberpunk, Jeremy Keller, Review, RPG, Technoir

Technoir Session Report (Hong Kong)

Over the last few months I have supposed to have been playing/running a Dresden Files RPG in which the player characters uncover a conspiracy involving John Murray Spear's "God Machine". We play weekly, but have only played three or four actual sessions due to player illness, thesis demands and a variety of other commitments and events that just plain got in the way. Since we have been regularly short one or more players we have been filling out game nights with board games and Fiasco. Last night we decided to mix things up and take Technoir for a spin.

 Technoir is actually the very first Kickstarter that I backed, way back in June of 2011. I have since received the physical book along with all of the other rewards as well as the stretch goals that Jeremy Keller has been pumping out. More than a year after I read the beta PDF I have finally gotten around to actually playing the game. I had a blast.

I picked up the Hong Kong transmission, one of the backer rewards, and fleshed out what was happening in a cyberpunk version of Hong Kong while my two players built their characters. The actual feeling of building up the adventure felt a lot like the first phase of a game of Fiasco. I rolled up three "plot nodes" to get things started: a motorcycle grand prix, clear weather (unusual in future Hong Kong which is normally a nightmarish haze of pollution) and a location called The Peak. The Peak is an elite part of the city where a bunch of humans specially augmented to survive in the pollution live and is a pristine, gated community. I connected these plot points and decided that the race is going to draw out the elite into the dirtier parts of the city. I couldn't think of much to do with the clear day, so it was mostly ignored.

While I built up the adventure my two players were hard at work building their characters. One of them built a hacker, Jack, that was decked out with cybernetics that allowed him to jack into The Interface (future Internet) and hack like nobody's business. The other player built a courier, Pad, with cybernetic legs and a lot of shady contacts. Both of the player characters were indebted to a variety of major players in the city due to taking out loans for their augmentation.

Once we had the characters finished and new their connections I was able to add them and their associates to the plot and determine how they linked into the existing plot points. This is how we ended up with a black market cyberware dealer that had sold faulty augmentations to the elite living on The Peak (known as The Clean). Since The Clean were going out for a day on the town for the HK Grand Prix he was understandably worried about what might happen when they found out their lung-scrubbers didn't actually work. This is when the cyberware dealer decided to call in a favour that our resident hacker owed him. The Grand Prix wasn't the only event going down that day, though. A heavyweight title match was also happening and it was being broadcast as an Immatrix production (Interface users can "ride along" and feel as if they are the boxers in virtual reality).

How does that title match factor into things? Jack was using some, let's say experimental, cyberware while enjoying the match and when he was interrupted by a call to hack The Peak it glitched out the Immatrix broadcast and inflicted seizures on everyone experiencing the broadcast. Oops. Now it just so happens that the producer of that Immatrix broadcast happened to know Pad quite well and since the courier is well connected (and owed him money) he contacted the courier and asked him to find the responsible party.

That's the setup. One player needs to hack The Peak and prevent The Clean from leaving so they don't discover they faulty augmentations. The other needs to track down the first player and bring him to justice.

Things took off from there. Jack was riding high and managed to worm his way past all of the high level ICE protecting The Peak's systems. While Jack was deep in this project Pad was chasing down leads. Using his connections he is referred to one of the best "Interface Guys" in the city, a hacker that goes by "Jack" that works out of a motorcycle garage.

Pad headed to the garage and tried to meet with Jack, but due to his previous engagements was unable to meet with him. Not to be discouraged Pad tried to convince one of the mechanics to get him a meeting and ended up on the wrong side of a wrench. Meanwhile Jack finishes a flawless series of hacks on The Peak successfully locking in all of The Clean and diverting communications. He even managed to install a backdoor to allow him easy access in the future. Jack's job finished he leaves the back room to grab a drink and comes across Pad. Pad then hires Jack to find the culprit behind the Immatrix incident.

Jack was unaware that they had inadvertently caused the seizures, but soon realizes that they were the source. Thinking fast, he tampers with the evidence and frames a rival hacker (Mei Mei). He then packages everything up with a bow and delivers all the evidence that Pad and his employer need to escape the inevitable media shit-storm. Pad, unfortunately, is unable to get the hacker's fee expensed and ends up with a pair of broken legs.

Afterthoughts

The game played out really well and very quickly. All three of us had a great time, even the player of Pad who had been unlucky enough to not succeed at a single challenge throughout the entire game. The actual game play was fast and light with minimal fuss, even though none of us really knew the rules. Everything played out in a kind of Fiasco meets Shadowrun kind of way, which is fine by me. I am enamoured with how the transmissions fit things together and I hope to play Technoir again soon.

I'll probably put together a more formal review of the game in the coming week. This, by the way, is my first time writing a session report for my blog. I hope you found it entertaining.

You can get Technoir from DriveThruRPG for $10 and you can take a peak at some the player handout and a transmission for free on the official website.

Categories: actual play, cyberpunk, session report, Technoir