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Working Title: The Grey City Machine

In the streets of Grey City, a thousand mysteries lay in wait. They are like sharks awaiting their prey; those who seek them out are consumed.

And they're not the only sharks in this neighborhood.

There used to be such a thing as right and wrong. There used to be order and scruples. Now there is neither certainty nor government to speak of; the world is ruled by the massive corporations, who are fed constantly by the bribes of vast, criminal enterprises. The two have become indistinguishably entwined. The little guy is powerless against them. These feudalistic titans of commerce may wage war for control of the Cyber and Genetic Modification industries, but they all pay fealty to the Glorious Benefactor Corporation (GB Co). Any spirit of revolt or freedom is crushed beneath the heel of its CEO-- President Keeton.

Few have morals... and those that do have a habit of imposing them on everyone else. Ethical people don't tend to survive long unless they are strong-- in body, mind, or spirit. And the spirit bit counts for a lot less than you might expect. Everything is twisted and wrong. The occult waits on the edge of the city for the day when the towers of business and technology fall and we all return to the old ways.

Businessmen scheme, grub for money, and accept bribes.

Vigilantes patrol the streets, enforcing an order and morality that might only exist in their minds.

Movers do the dirty work for criminal organizations, acting as spies, assassins, thieves, and general thugs.

Occultists perform strange magics and await the day of their grand rise.

Detectives seek truth in a world of lies-- either out of a misguided sense of justice or for the highest bidder.

Ghosts move through computer systems like... well, you know, gaining access to almost anything.

Slashers, conversely, have nothing to do with computers. They literally hack things to bits, and are usually
completely insane. But everyone keeps them around, because everyone needs at least one.

Insurgents attempt to bring down the corporate machine threatening to suffocate them.

However, there is something like hope in this world of shadow and gray. There are a few people still trying to make a difference; they are burdened by their own code of ethics in an utterly immoral landscape. They have the potential to rise to great power, but only by slowly becoming more and more like the people they despise and oppose. By the time you reach the top of the Corporate/Occult/Criminal Machine, you make a terrible realization-- you are the Machine.


This game will focus primarily on Cyberpunk's roots in Noir-- specifically a black and gray morality that forces good people to slowly sell out for power. However, it will remain firmly fixed in the Cyberpunk genre due to its futuristic setting, revolutionary and corporate themes, and fantastic elements.
The game will be based on a system created by my good friend Alex D., who is a great designer and sometimes poster on Story Games and the Forge. The core mechanics of the system are based upon D. Vincent Baker's brilliant Otherkind Dice (though notably distinct from it) and John Harper's Lady Blackbird.

welcome! All your ideas sound really nice. Keep us informed on how you're going.

Thanks, Maledictus! You rock.

So, I've started a blog specifically to document the game's progress. You can find it at . I hope to get some good feedback!

The blog is a great idea! I will read avidly, and i look forward to the finished article.

Looks interesting; any updates to share with your ravenous fans?

I hope this game comes with scales.

Stuff like
Health - Illness
Virtue - Vice
Idealism - Cynicism
Restraint - Cruelty

Then, after you roll, when you are deciding how to arrange your dice, after the GM has made it clear, your ideals are at stake here, are you going to put your low roll into protecting your ideals? Is giving up your ideals important enough to win this conflict? But like on another roll, your cynicism could be at stake, like if you are trying to convince a cop to look the other way, maybe with a bribe, if you put your low roll into protecting your cynicism, your character might feel bad about what he did, and vow to be better.

Maybe every roll could be about those scales. The nurse is trying to raise your health, and you are trying to lower her virtue, etc.

Just tossing around some stuff that I thought might be cool in a noire game, and trying to fix one of the things that annoyed me about Otherkind (characters really only moved in one direction, towards more decrepitude).

Thanks for the idea, SheikhJahbooty! I'm definitely considering something like that, although the direction I'm headed is more based on the idea of keys and aspects. You see, in Lady Blackbird, you gain a benefit whenever you perform a behavior that you have as a key. Similarly, in the FATE system, you gain a benefit when an aspect of your character forces you to do something or complicates your life. I'm adapting this idea by making it so that, whenever you advance (gaining a new talent; I'm also considering having this be whenever you gain any card, including equipment and secrets about other characters) you gain a new Key, representing a new vice or depraved aspect of your character's personality. The idea is that the more powerful you get, the more corrupt you become, until you can hardly be called anything but a villain by the time you reach the top, no matter how good your intentions were. Very noir. In addition, a character can gain a short-term benefit by "selling out" one of their virtues (or "good" keys), but in the long term, they lose the benefits of that key.

I've been really busy with school recently, but the time has come to crack down on the RPG once more. Thanks, everyone!