Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Extras, part 1: Cyberware

I said at the beginning of this that I wanted to account for cyberware without a lot of detail, but still have it in there. So what I've done is make cyberware its own category of qualities, and you get access to them if your Runner Type is one that has cyberware. These are free qualities, by the way, equal to the rating of your Runner Type quality. So, if you have a +4 in Street Sam, you get 4 cyber qualities.

And that's that. It's pretty easy to model cyberware as qualities, since qualities are free form and descriptive. All you've got to do is describe the implant's benefit. Dermal Armor can be used as a physical resistance quality. Smartlinks add their score to gunplay rolls when using smartguns. Wired Reflexes add their rank to your initiative total and give you one additional action per round per rank. Etc.

What about essence? Well, what about essence? Forget essence. It's a setting particular part of SR that's there to instill game balance. It's been worked into the game fiction, but really, it's not important. With a one shot kind of setup, advancement's not a concern, and now that ware is represented in qualities, it's going to be bought with xp, so essence isn't as important, since he has to advance at the same rate as everyone else anyway. Essence is one of those details we can stop tracking. Away it goes.

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