Cyberpunk - Combat Environment

So I am re-watching the original Ghost in the Shell. It is epic. A masterpiece.

I just finished the first fight between the Major and the ghost using high velocity bullets. So many concepts (brain-wiped goons, throngs of people, abandoned quarters of the city) are crammed into this one sequence. More than that, the environment is depicted as a major factor in the combat, as it should be.

To replicate this in my games, I've brainstormed a few tables. A good GM should make a few rolls and determine the combat environment and interpret it for the players. Feel free to disregard or preroll conflicting entries (ie school zone billowing smoke, unless this fits your dystopic future).

SETTING TYPE

1 Sewer. Endless tunnels below the city, huge architecture, deafening echoes and running water, startling vermin.
2 Public transport. A monorail or subway, cramped quarters, good for taking hostages, or blowing up.
3 The docks. Boats and ships to jump between, deep ocean to fall into, sandbars to kung fu on.
4 The factories. Chimneys to climb or jump from, gantries to clomp across, chemical tanks to walk around or shoot holes in, pipes to hurdle or rupture.
5 The canals. Little boats to overturn, footbridges, knee deep water, fish swimming among rusty bicycles and consumer society detritus.
6 A shopping arcade. Shoppers to shove aside, displays to overturn, noisy pachinko parlours to run through, spilling hundreds of little balls behind you.
8 A park. Green spaces and trees to hide behind, civilians to scare or take hostage, duck ponds to splash through, fountains to blow up.
9 A residential area. Houses to barge into, stop signs to chop down or blow past, chest high concrete walls to leap or plough through.
12 Rows of concrete apartments. Roofs to leap between, exterior stairwells to climb on, cramped apartments to blunder through.
13 Parking lots. 50% either cars to crash into or duck behind and fire back from, or else heavy industrial vehicles, cranes and trucks that you can shimmy under or hunker behind.
14 School zone. Uh oh, kids gawking, police boxes on the corner.
15 Highway. Cars and trucks to dodge, or carjack, ramps to jump up or down to, good to parasail off of.
16 Traditional temple, shrine, or palace. Quiet, moss covered, dripping water and clacking bamboo pipes, perfect for silent showdown.
17 Private grounds of a corporation or embassy. Hedge walls, sudden sprinkler systems, security drones with machine-guns.
18 High rise building. Plexiglass to shatter, elevators shafts to fall down, climb up, or throw people into, boardrooms and reception desks to shoot up.
19 Laboratory or computer server room. Climate controlled, needs enviro-suits, fills with deafening alarms and security bots during a disturbance, blast doors also clamp down. Everything that happens is recorded on security cameras.
20 Air strip or space port. Big metal vehicles to hide behind or jump onto as they taxi for takeoff. Security forces arrive quickly - no one wants a terrorist incident.

SOUND (match to above environment or else roll 3d6 for random effect)

3 Deafening roar from machinery, vehicles, or people. Forget listen rolls, easy to get surprised or surprise.
4-5 Loud area, can't hear for shit. Communication only through yelling, gives away your position.
6-8 Loud enough. Can hear if enemy makes a big ruckus, otherwise as pervious entry.
9-12 Normal background noise. You might hear them if you stop everything and listen, then get a lucky roll.
13-15 Quiet. Failed listen roll gives you general direction, a success lets you pinpoint it.
16-17 Very quiet. You can hear each other easily, and pinpoint location with a successful listen roll.
18 You can hear a pin drop. You play cat and mouse game of listening to each other's movement, skulking about, then re-adjusting position before striking.

VISIBILITY  (match to above environment or else roll 3d6 for random effect)

3 Blind after a few inches from smoke, industrial particulate in air, or weather. Irritates eyes, giving a 25% penalty to rolls unless eye protection worn or implanted. Rely on other senses if possible.
4-5 Blind after a few meters / yards from smoke, industrial particulate in air, or weather. Irritates eyes, giving a 10% penalty to rolls unless eye protection worn or implanted. Rely on other senses if possible.
6-8 Intermittent visibility. Can sneak easily, invisible with a good roll.
9-12 Normal urban visibility. Can sneak with a good roll.
13-15 Normal visibility. Can hide with a good roll, hard to sneak about.
16-17 Clear visibility. Can hide with a good roll, hard to sneak.
18 Pure clarity. Everyone gets a 5% bonus to hit each other,

BYSTANDERS

3 Jam packed, can only inch forward, bystanders going to die if shooting starts, easy to blend into though.
4-5 Highly populated, you need to yell or push people aside to advance, but slows you by half.
6-8 Clumps of people milling about. You can run between people if you make an agility roll, otherwise as above.
9-12 Normal, people are witnesses, but not in the way.
13-15 Quiet, 50% chance 1-4 people are around if shit goes down.
16-17 Silent streets. Only 10% chance of a single guard or wanderer on scene when action happens.
18 Abandoned or cordoned off area. No one but us and them.

COVER AVAILABILITY

3 Nothing. Guess you have to stand and juke the shots and hope you get lucky first.
4-5 Shit all. Cover only if you crawl on all fours and hide.
6-8 Kiddie cover. You have to hunker down to get any protection.
9-12 Decent. You can stand and shoot leaning around corners.
13-15 Great. Lots of strategic places to get a good shot from if you take a minute to set up.
16-17 Cover cover everywhere. Alternately, hard to get a clear shot at anyone. Everyone has half cover automatically.
18 Too many places to hide and hunker down. Better use your ears to find your foe and sneak up on them.

COVER DURABILITY

3 Like tissue paper. May hide you, but won't stop a fly.
4-5 Cardboard paper. Might reduce damage if you're lucky, 10% chance.
6-8 Plywood or plastic. May stop the first shot from low caliber weapons, that's about it.
9-12 Wooden or thin metal. May stop the first shot from medium caliber weapons, reduce explosive damage by 1/10.
13-15 Stone. May stop the first shot from high caliber weapons, reduce explosive damage by 1/2.
16-17 Concrete. Reduces damage from heavy weapons, but with a chance of shrapnel.
18 Steel girders, perfect cover to reload or think behind.

SMELL

3 Sickening stench from abandoned garbage, or chemical smells from industrial process. Penalty of 10% to all rolls unless filtration (mask or internal) is available.
4-5 Fetid, penalty of 5% to all rolls unless filtration (mask or internal) is available.
6-8 Dirty city smells, but nothing you can't handle.
9-12 Normal city funk, you don't even notice it anymore.
13-15 Smells clean, like after a rain.
16-17 Pleasant aroma, cherry blossoms in spring or leaves in fall.
18 Clean air, a fresh day your nose will never forget. Small chance to sniff out something chemically, like machine oil or gunpowder.

ENEMY STRENGTH

3 Heavily armed and armoured. Power armour or mini-mech, military grade weapons do 1 shot kill damage. Need to use the terrain and your wits if you want to survive.
4-5 Cyber psycho, 2/3 or more cybernetic. Tough slog head-to-head, needs strategy and heavy weapons to bring down.
6-8 Cyberpunk, 1/3 or more cybernetic. Tough, but can be outwitted and outgunned.
9-12 Combat trained, one implant useful for combat, assault rifle or SMG. Typical guardsman or police officer.
13-15 Trained, fully human. Your gear and implants give you the advantage, but they might have numbers.
16-17 Fully human, but with minimal gear, bulletproof vest, 1-2 reloads. They come in numbers, can be sent packing with a show of force or brutality.
18 Puh-lease. Rent a cops or poser boys, low impact weapons with no reloads. Will run at the first sign of being outmatched.

RANDOM COLOUR

3 Mega passenger plane slides slowly overhead.
4 Giant billboards for old products stand rotting away.
5 Crowds of school kids in uniforms rush by.
6 Traditional festival parade marches by, people in loincloths chanting and lifting a portable shrine.
7 Robot vending machine starts its routine on PCs.
8 A 3 wheeled mini truck blares out advertisements for noodles, baked sweet potatoes, or recycling.
9 Motorcycle punks drive slowly by, revving engines, waving flags, and trying to make eye contact to start a brawl.
10 A politician on a speaker van drones on about his platform while commuters flash by unheeding.
11 A giant hologram Godzilla stomps by, bellowing out an ad for candy.
12 A crane stalks fish in a canal.
13 A line of taxis idles while drivers either sleep inside or chat while smoking.
14 Masked youth spray paint revolutionary slogans on the walls.
15 A riot police armoured bus drives by filled with cops in full gear.
16 Kids in VR helmets chase each other about shooting at each other with fingers and yelling ZAP! BEEYOW!
17 A homeless man with a cardboard sign sits staring at space.
18 A begging monk stands chanting, cup held out for donations, wicker hat obscuring his or her face.

The Cyberpunk Rules

I'm pretty stoked by the gameplay video for the new Cyberpunk video game. As my life is far too busy to play video games anymore, I would dearly like to dust off my copy of Cyberpunk 2020 and run a game with some fellow local gamer papas.

But Rules as Written for Cyberpunk 2020 are less than appealing, especially the clunky hacking section. The genre and its tropes also feel somewhat laughable, considering how technology has advanced and changed society to be more interconnected yet isolating, and how the envisaged nightmare domination of capitalism has been pushed aside by the crises of politics, the environment, and democracy that define our times. (For a good discussion of why cyberpunk is outdated, watch THIS).

With that in mind, I've devised some rules for running CP 2020 that would bring its feel up to date. Some of these are story guidelines, others are for technology that appears in the game. Take a read and see if you can find anything useful.

Narrative rules for Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is its own genre of story, but there are certain rules that must be followed to create game stories that match the cyberpunk feel. Here are a few suggestions:

1 No moral repercussions, only power plays

In the CP world, there are no moral repercussions for any actions the PCs or NPCs take. Whereas in the fantasy the Guard steps in when the PCs start tolchoking townsfolk, in the CP 2020 city, the cops are just as likely to ignore any violence they happen upon as they are to cheer it on.

That is unless the violence is done to someone with power. If PCs cause problems for people in power, they will instantly regret it and permanently feel it. Hurt a cop and every law officer will be on the lookout for them, while municipal authorities will cut off their utilities. Goodbye electricity and internet! Rough up a black market dealer and PCs can get blacklisted, with no access to new gear, or places to offload loot. This is a death sentence for solos, and could only be remedied by doing someone a big favour. Get caught with their fingers in the mafioso cookie jar or backstab a corporate psychopath, you can expect these organizations to turn their might towards wiping out the PCs. Every NPC solo, crooked cop, and corporate suck up will be gunning for them.

That is why the default mode for Cyberpunk isn't the power trip, it is minding your own business, because the penalty of failure is...

2 You can always fall lower

The PCs may seem to start at the bottom of the ladder, ready to climb up and out of the gutter. But just as in the real world, there is always someone in a worse situation than them, and their desperation knows no bounds. There are street rats who are a day from starving and ready to stab someone for loose change; subhumans dwell in the sewers, ruled by despotic leaders who don't mind throwing their slaves at PCs who stumble into their domain; slaves who owe their body and soul to someone entirely legally. Even cyberpunk bible Neuromancer had characters who logged out of consciousness while they sold their bodies to make cash or pay off debts. The threat of falling lower should be omnipresent, and means that...

3 Everyone wants a piece

One surprising thing in most CP is that although the games, films, or books focus on advertising as the ubiquitous sign of capitalism's complete dominance of the urban cyberpunk world, these are always for trivial products. Living in Japan, the reality is that the most visible and insistent advertising is not for things, but for high interest loans. Go read the amazing manga Yamikin Ushijima kun. It is a shocking and depressing depiction of the ruthlessness of Japanese payday loans, and the desperation of their so-called 'slaves' - debtors who give everything to pay back what they owe, but only dig themselves deeper in the hole. Just as Japan was the inspiration for much of William Gibson's visions of the cyberpunk future, the bleak worldview of Ushijimakun is a perfect fit for CP2020. There should be ceaseless ads for 20, 000 credit loans, payable in 10 days, conditions negotiable, which turn out to be the entrance to what Japanese call 'shakkin-jigoku', or 'debt-hell.' And if PCs try to the out their loansharks, they should quickly learn...

4 Some people are untouchable

In sci fi or fantasy games I have run, PCs don't mind taking a swing at the king that hired them. In cyberpunk, anyone doing this is signing their death warrant. First, no one savvy enough to gain power in such a dystopian world would let anyone armed or dangerous near them. They'll communicate through holograms, or have PCs naked in a pit when talking to them, or only talk to one PC, preferably a heavily outnumbered Fixer, and refuse to meet anyone else. Second, they should also have enough defence prepared to take on any threats. They should have surveillance, hidden weapons, and cybernetic implants that ensure their survival and safety. This means that the GM should not feel constrained to determine the gear and preparations of any VIP meeting PCs in advance, but should feel free to give them what they need to survive on the spot. The GM is only one person, but are representing someone much smarter than they are, and with the resources to keep them safe. Giving VIPs instant access to gear is a natural technique in running an unfair world.

Tech Rules

1 Everything is Hackable

That palm link to your gun? Hackable. That memory insert with all your skills? Hackable. All cybernetics should be hackable, and even the strongest security should be limited. You could delineate levels of security, much like the adblocker, VPN, or antivirus software of our times. You could have 1) freeware, buggy and easy to hack; 2) adware, harder to hack but rife with ads and with limited functions; 3) pay ware, decently hard to hack, but requiring large resources to keep updated; and finally 4) corpware, top of the line security that is virtually unhackable, but with ties and backdoors to the corps or military research labs that develop it and allow their agents to use. These different levels of cybernetic defences give many storyhooks and reasons to gain wealth, power, and connections to organizations. Speaking of hacking...

2 Hacking is Another Game

As mentioned, the CP2020 hacking rules are both clunky and laughably outdated. Instead, make hacking a game, any game. Got an old Rock em Sock em Robots lying about? Bust it out and play Player vs GM, require one win per level of security hacked, with 1 round or minute spent for every game played. You could use Jenga to represent keeping a database open, or hand them a dollar store pinball game and time how long it takes them to get all the balls in the baskets. Use your imagination, rifle your kid's toy box, and enjoy a quick game that gets the pulse going instead of a tedious hacking dice fest.

How were these suggestions? Do you have any of your own? If so, leave them below!