so as a way to see if I can get the writing juices going I decided to post what I have of a "hacker only" cyberpunk game I'm writing. I am using the method I use on F.O.G. and starting with Character creation first to show me what the rules and setting look like....
character creation:
Choose handle: no spyders is dumb enough to be known by there real name.
Choose background: 5 choices to start with each allowing both character starting options and future connections and information.
The list:
Silverspoon- you were born into a lower to middle corporate management family. You have money but not as much skill or black market access, you do get an ear into the corporate side. Gaining info and jobs for the corps. You are king/queen of the BIG score hack.
Rogue Drone- You grew up in the home life of corporate wage slaves, common level workers. Since you were alone most of the time, your basic skills are above the norm. You have Great skill but little in the way of starting cash or black market access, You do have allot of knowledge and pull in the small time info market. You can find an unending stream of easy low pay work.
Guttersnipe- Regardless of what people think not all jobs are corporate, you should know. You grew up with day worker or poor parents, doing the shitty jobs, which now are civil. They are jobs that the city needs done but the corporations are not willing to pay for. You learn to hack as a coping method. You have better skills than most (not as good as Rogue Drones) and have picked up a little black market pull, but you are broker then anyone else. Even the city governments need a hacker now and then, Your connections make the cops easier to deal with and let you access civil hacking work with ease.
Black Ballers- Not every loving parent stands on the laws side, some grow up in the seeder circles. You are one of them, you hack cause is it a time honored job where you grew up. You have full access to the black market to start with , your cash is basic as are your skills. Because of you life on the darker side you have crossed paths with the people trying to destroy the oppression of corporate rule. You know what these groups are up to and can get the best of their jobs to boot.
Generation 2.0- You grew up with spyders, born a spyder, will die a spyder, and you gravestone will be in L33T. The advantage here is not skill but Raw ability, you start with more points to spend on stats. Your knowledge is based on what the grumpy old set willingly leaks to you, plus from time to time they throw you a bone...just to keep it in the family.
Choose Education/Training :Counter to standard logic this category does not help with skills. Real world skill mean little to spyders, however where they learn does tend to help color there style of hacking. Each choice gives you 5 starting programs picks, you can buy more with money later in character creation. They also tell you what values you may choose from to make up your personal code (see later for more details).
the list:
Public education programing: Public schooling is dead, in its place is a collection of e-shows, e-movies, and Edu-tanment video games. Most kids never leave home or their daly hangouts. Grades are replaced by scores, extra credit is now unlocks, and final bosses the new Tests. Funny enough kids are better educated now then 50 or 100 years ago. Their general education knowledge is vast.
These were your teachers, and from them your view of life. Hard and competitive!
Gain: 2 aggressive programs, 2 defence programs, 1 utility
Values: might makes right, Kill or be killed, Friends first, Deeds not words, Glory-hound.
Private Schooling: it is not only the rich who place their kids in private schools, since the fall of classic education. These are live-on site places, even the poor try to places kids out of sight. Sometimes it is cheaper to pay a flat yearly prices then a day-to-day one. The education here is strict and regimented. Etiquette is strictly enforced, loyalty required. You’re not sent home for being a troublemaker either, these places have their own detention centers. The people that come out of these school are cold, quiet, and sly.
You learned brute force is inefficient!
Gain: 2 passive programs, 1 trap, 1 stealth, 1 automaton.
Values: Honey and poison, Porcelain mask, Manipulation before action, Etiquette is everything, Keep your allies close and enemy closer.
Civil Work-Studies: While most here are poor, some are rich brats that pissed daddy off one to many times. You are picked up and 5am by cops, at 6 there is 2 hours of beautification (city cleaning), at 8 a 15 min break, 8:15 you have 3.75 hours “hard” (math, science, Phys-ed) studies, 12noon is ½ hour lunch break, 12:30 you begin 1 ½ hours Elective work detail, 14:00 begins 3.75 hours humanities (history, Socialites, etc) studies, 17:45 another 15 min break, 18:00 is 2 hours of final beautification detail, at 20:00 you are brought home by the cops. This is your life 6 days a week for school, and your family Gets money for you doing this.
You have learned not to fear work, you have learn to shut up and get the job done!
Gain:1 aggressive program, 1 passive program, 1 defence program, 2 utility
Values: stick to the plan, Luck is fake, Words are Deeds, Work harder, mono-tasking.
Home schooled: it takes 15 minutes to get a teaching licence, legally. Some just prefer to teach their own. It’s rare that you teacher was in fact a direct member of your family, but it was in your living room.
You learn flexibility and value your friends and family above all else.
Gain: 1 Aggressive program, 1 passive programs, 1 utility, 1 stealth, 1 player choice.
Values: Keep in the family, Beauty is a value not a trait, always have 3 backups plans, Friends before hookups, Dirt stays outside the home.
Moral/ethical training co-op: There are a lot of groups out there that claim they can make your kids better, smarter people. 90% are scams they take your money but in the end your kids are just publicly educated (see above). 9% are Religious based Private schools (again see above). You are the 1%, the ones trained by either criminals or corp black-ops groups. You have learned to be a dangerous creature. A spyder killer.
You have been schooled in counter-hacking, even your friends are wary of you.
Gain: 2 stealth, 1 Trap, 1 defence , and 1 Brain hacking program.
Values: Observer, you can’t kill a ghost, Check twice attack once, take no prisoners, A pocket full of allies.
Choose induction: Every spyder had a “introduction” to the hacker’s world. An event, no matter how minor, that made the older more skilled crowd have to noticed you. Without it you could not of found work, you would be just another Phly trying. You get starting cred and a free patsy out of this....you will be ever known by your entrance.
Thank you for your subscription.....: There are 3 layers to Network computing in SD, you decided to mess with the surface. The “Internet” is what all Phlys deal with, it is the most visible and touched part of it all. Your mark was made by simple programing in well placed locations. You either gain some large funds by rerouting or splitting peoples bank transactions or embraced some large group with false “incriminating” media or made a false version of a popular site and watch as people wasted their time...well more so.
Cred: Flare:+1
Patsy : audio-vidiot- you have gained a loyal member of the media obsession crowd. This person is good for keeping tabs on info leaks the Phly’s have gotten wind of, specially jobs gone bad. If thing take a downward plunge you can burn them to make more public mistakes their fault, making it so you can just walk away.
That Thing where those people lost that stuff: Going deeper into network computing and you find the Cloud layer. This is where alot of hacking takes place, as most of the information storage and processing take place at this layer. Data is fragmented throughout the Cloud, connected by reference codes. You either compiled , deleted, or altered some vital info. ID theft is a common Induction, as is making “hidden” information public. Since anything automated (99% of things are) uses the cloud to process, you could have manipulated or hijacked...the list is endless.
Cred: Skillz: +1
Patsy : Bored Drone- Some dumb corp wage monkey got you to do a job for them. They thought you couldn’t find out who they were.....moron. He/she still keeps in touch, you can use him/her as a water tester for jobs having to do with their “office”. If the corp they work for finds you, burn him/her to make pass off the blame, after all you don’t know them.
Miss Charlotte I presume...: The final layer is dubbed the web, which is honestly the best name of it. If one were to make a visual for it, it would look like a group of various sized balls with millions of threads running to and from them. Basically a spider’s web.The web is the infrastructure, it’s How everything works. The vast collection of processing nodes, Sub-nodes, DNS, relays, the list goes on. You manage to hack the web and alter the data flow. You may have made a city block fail to connect, or use the info stream to redirect trafic into a jam. the stuff done at this level rocks the whole system, you are able to play with lives here.
Cred: Power: +1
Patsy : Phantom server- You have manage to find a lost micro-node, a older style date co-processor they stopped using due to flow limits. This one is still connected and was even updatability. You can use it to track 1 or 2 reference IDs, allowing you to keep track of a users movements on the Internet and where their data is scattered. You can burn to temporarily short out the data flow from a person or device, oops it hit a outdated part of the web and crashed/corrupted.
Hello Neo: By combining a little bit of cloud hacking with web work, one can do some creepy things. Simultaneous Audio messaging, making a street full of cars do ballet, even make a bunch of screens show a live feed of a CEO getting horse whipped while in a PVC dress. These kind of inductions show a little knowledge in both fields, which is as good as alot in only 1. Those Spyders who take this route into the hackers world tend to attract secretive “friends”.
Cred: Creativity: +1
Patsy : Mr. black- You have contact with an anonymous benefactor, a phantom with interest in you. They are no real patsy, but their help is disposable. From time to time they even can be a job source. You can use them to gain access to minor secret info or unknown infrastructure flaws in an area. You can burn your contact with them to have a secondary attack occur on a target. That’s right, you can make a job for others as a cover screen!
And Bill Too: Unlike other spyders you didn’t do some neat hack to get in, someone else just vouched for you. While many might see this as a weakness, it was a great boon. You never had to prove your self, for your abilities were just assumed.You entered with a level of flexibility and a sense of “yeah he’s one of us”. This can give you either a “across the field” advantage or a “outside the box” feel. you can take pieces from other inductions or start with things others just don’t have to start.
Cred: +1 of your choice
Patsy : 1 of your choice