Finally, we come to gear. All gear, no matter what it is, adds dice to your roll if you can explain how it's helpful. Weapons add dice to combat encounter, obviously, but you could add their dice to hunting rolls for a lot of them too. Armor also adds dice to your combat encounters. A fishing rod would add to hunting rolls if you're near fishable waters. Geiger counters add to circumventing radiation hazards. And so on.
Here's the gist of gear: you can make it as specific or as general as you like. If you want a hundred thousand different kinds of firearms, you can have them. Assign them different die ratings as you feel is appropriate. If you want to abstract it to pistol, rifle, shotgun, that works too. Since the mechanics are stripped down to a single stat due to the way encounters are handled, adjudicating gear on the fly should be a snap.
There are two important things to know about gear.
First, gear use is always optional. This includes passive stuff like armor. You don't want to use it in this encounter, then it didn't absorb any punishment. Basically this makes armor piecemeal, but you decide whether the blow lands on the armor. If you want the added protection it affords, add its dice to your pool, and you're more likely to knock out an encounter faster, and thus take less damage. Likewise, you can go fishing and choose not to use the fishing rod, but this means you're wading and trying to barehand the fish instead.
Second, every time you use gear, it degrades. Every single piece of gear you have has its own health meter, and it's damaged with every use. Not a lot necessarily, but it happens. Use gear over and over and it'll become less effective, offering less dice, until it becomes useless. So the decision to use what gear when is an important one.
Finally, a word about ammo. Tracking ammo is important for a game about resource management. But since encounters aren't resolved in a blow by blow fashion, tracking each individual shot isn't important. Instead, ammo counts represent how many encounters worth of ammo you have. Each time you use a gun, deduct one ammo from its score. This is the same for a revolver as it is a fully automatic weapon. And again, just like creating the guns themselves, you can be as specific or general as you like when it comes to ammunition. You want all pistol ammo to fit all pistols? Do it. If you're a gun nut who wants hyper-precision in the game, these mechanics allow for that just as easily.
Showing posts with label Mechanics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mechanics. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Another Day: Failed Rolls
If you recall, I said most of the optional actions you can take during your travels didn't have a difficulty number. Thus, you can't really fail at these actions. If you go hunting, you're going to come back with something. If you try repairing your gear, you will restore it. It's a question of how much, not if at all.
Encounters, however, are different. They've all got target numbers, and until you beat them, they stick around. What's a failed roll mean in these cases?
It doesn't mean failure. It just means you haven't completely overcome the encounter yet. The thing is, if you don't wipe an encounter out in one shot, it hits back. See, in this game, the GM rolls no dice. All he does is slap down cards and narrate. Encounters hurt you when they aren't taken out.
For example, you're wandering through a plague ravaged land. The GM slaps down a 7 of hearts for the encounter, but nothing happens until you bed down for the evening inside the ruins of a building. While you checked it for corpses, rats still infest the walls, and their fleas bite you. You realize it quickly, and roll your medic skill to treat yourself. Unfortunately, you're not a very good medic and you have no gear to aid the roll, so you come up with a high score of 4. The encounter loses points equal to your roll, dropping it to a 3, but it sticks around.
This is your shortfall. You failed the roll by 3, and since the encounter is still alive and kicking, it does its rating in damage to you. In this case, you burn with fever and take 3 points against your health. Tomorrow, you can try again, this time against a difficulty of 3.
This does, however, leave you with another decision. Do you deal with this encounter again and let another day go by, or do you press on and deal with the lingering effects of this encounter while running into another. If you're alone, you're gonna stay put, of course. But let's say you're in a party. Food's running low, but the group thinks it can make it to the next safepoint if they press. They want to go on.
That next day, a new encounter card hits the table. It's a Jack 10 Spades encounter. Raiders rush your position, and your party needs to put them down as fast as possible, because their wild hooting is drawing more of their clan to your position by the minute. But you're still sick. You can either roll against the illness, or you can help the party fight the raiders. That's bad for your health though; you'll take another 3 points of health from the fever. Then again, unless the party can come up with a collective 10, everyone will be taking damage from the raider assault. But remember, you only get one action per day.
Choose wisely.
Encounters, however, are different. They've all got target numbers, and until you beat them, they stick around. What's a failed roll mean in these cases?
It doesn't mean failure. It just means you haven't completely overcome the encounter yet. The thing is, if you don't wipe an encounter out in one shot, it hits back. See, in this game, the GM rolls no dice. All he does is slap down cards and narrate. Encounters hurt you when they aren't taken out.
For example, you're wandering through a plague ravaged land. The GM slaps down a 7 of hearts for the encounter, but nothing happens until you bed down for the evening inside the ruins of a building. While you checked it for corpses, rats still infest the walls, and their fleas bite you. You realize it quickly, and roll your medic skill to treat yourself. Unfortunately, you're not a very good medic and you have no gear to aid the roll, so you come up with a high score of 4. The encounter loses points equal to your roll, dropping it to a 3, but it sticks around.
This is your shortfall. You failed the roll by 3, and since the encounter is still alive and kicking, it does its rating in damage to you. In this case, you burn with fever and take 3 points against your health. Tomorrow, you can try again, this time against a difficulty of 3.
This does, however, leave you with another decision. Do you deal with this encounter again and let another day go by, or do you press on and deal with the lingering effects of this encounter while running into another. If you're alone, you're gonna stay put, of course. But let's say you're in a party. Food's running low, but the group thinks it can make it to the next safepoint if they press. They want to go on.
That next day, a new encounter card hits the table. It's a Jack 10 Spades encounter. Raiders rush your position, and your party needs to put them down as fast as possible, because their wild hooting is drawing more of their clan to your position by the minute. But you're still sick. You can either roll against the illness, or you can help the party fight the raiders. That's bad for your health though; you'll take another 3 points of health from the fever. Then again, unless the party can come up with a collective 10, everyone will be taking damage from the raider assault. But remember, you only get one action per day.
Choose wisely.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Another Day: Them Bones
With all this talk of difficulties and optional actions, it stands that we really need to talk about dice. So let's do that this week .
Another Day is a die pool system. Yes, another. I like them. Sue me.
In this case, it's a pool of d6s. I tried this originally with d10s but didn't like the results as much. Given that target numbers only go above 10 in the rarest of circumstances, it seemed necessary to keep the die to a d6.
Your character has skills. I have a sample, list, and it's pretty specific, but you can go as specific or general as you like. Whenever you attempt to do something, you roll your skill in dice. Look for the single highest die. That's your result.
Now, there's one small wrinkle in this. And that is like dice combine to higher number. Add 1 to the result for every like die. That means if you roll a pair of 5s, your actual result is 6. If you roll four 5s, your actual result is 8. Thus more dice is better. Skills top out at 5 dice, by the way.
And this is where cooperation comes in. Players working together on a problem can merge their results, getting more matching dice and driving that final result higher. They don't even have to be using the same skill, as long as they're working together on the same problem.
And that's all there is to die rolling.
Another Day is a die pool system. Yes, another. I like them. Sue me.
In this case, it's a pool of d6s. I tried this originally with d10s but didn't like the results as much. Given that target numbers only go above 10 in the rarest of circumstances, it seemed necessary to keep the die to a d6.
Your character has skills. I have a sample, list, and it's pretty specific, but you can go as specific or general as you like. Whenever you attempt to do something, you roll your skill in dice. Look for the single highest die. That's your result.
Now, there's one small wrinkle in this. And that is like dice combine to higher number. Add 1 to the result for every like die. That means if you roll a pair of 5s, your actual result is 6. If you roll four 5s, your actual result is 8. Thus more dice is better. Skills top out at 5 dice, by the way.
And this is where cooperation comes in. Players working together on a problem can merge their results, getting more matching dice and driving that final result higher. They don't even have to be using the same skill, as long as they're working together on the same problem.
And that's all there is to die rolling.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Another Day: Other Actions
So now we've got how to generate an encounter, and you're always going to have an encounter to deal with. But I did at one point mention ignoring an encounter. Why would you ever want to do that? Because sometimes you just gotta. If you're really ground down, you might not have the juice required to soldier on. You might be out of ammo, or worse, out of food. Someone might be violently ill, while someone else is nursing a terrible gash in his leg which you just know is going to get infected.
And then, worst of all, all these injuries are going to reduce the party's carrying capacity and you're going to have to start leaving gear behind.
*gasp*
Each day, every player gets one action. Dealing with an encounter is an action. But sometimes fate will smile on you and you'll pull a low number. One or two members of the party can probably handle that. That leaves the rest with a free action to do something else. What could they possibly do?
They can scrounge for gear, hunt for food, tend to the wounded, rest for their own recovery, and even try some field maintenance on their erroding stuff.
How's that work? Pretty similarly to rolling against an encounter. You roll the appropriate skill, except in this case there's rarely a difficulty number (occassionally there will be). Your margin of success gives you what you're looking for. Want food? Your roll tells you how many days worth you brought back. Looking to repair something? Your result restores that many points of wear to the thing. Etc.
The thing is, if you're doing that, you're not dealing with the encounter, so make the most of your downtime, because tomorrow you might draw that Jack King 10 encounter.
And then, worst of all, all these injuries are going to reduce the party's carrying capacity and you're going to have to start leaving gear behind.
*gasp*
Each day, every player gets one action. Dealing with an encounter is an action. But sometimes fate will smile on you and you'll pull a low number. One or two members of the party can probably handle that. That leaves the rest with a free action to do something else. What could they possibly do?
They can scrounge for gear, hunt for food, tend to the wounded, rest for their own recovery, and even try some field maintenance on their erroding stuff.
How's that work? Pretty similarly to rolling against an encounter. You roll the appropriate skill, except in this case there's rarely a difficulty number (occassionally there will be). Your margin of success gives you what you're looking for. Want food? Your roll tells you how many days worth you brought back. Looking to repair something? Your result restores that many points of wear to the thing. Etc.
The thing is, if you're doing that, you're not dealing with the encounter, so make the most of your downtime, because tomorrow you might draw that Jack King 10 encounter.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Another Day: Random Encounters
As if there's any other kind!
In this game, encounters are generated on the fly using a standard deck of playing cards, jokers included. Each day, the players deduct from their food/water rations or take starving damage. Then the GM slaps a card down on the table. Everything about the encounter is on that card, mechanically speaking, of course.
The suit of the card tells you what kind of encounter this is:
I know, that doesn't mean much now because you don't know how dice work. That's another post, coming next.
And then there's the face cards. These add certain mechanical twists to the encounter. Grab another card and slap it down in order to get the difficulty, but use the suit of the face card. If you draw another face card, you apply its effects as well and keep going until you get a number card.
In this game, encounters are generated on the fly using a standard deck of playing cards, jokers included. Each day, the players deduct from their food/water rations or take starving damage. Then the GM slaps a card down on the table. Everything about the encounter is on that card, mechanically speaking, of course.
The suit of the card tells you what kind of encounter this is:
- Clubs - nature. This could be a storm, an earthquake, a collapsing building, falling tree, or whatever else tickles your fancy. The one thing it must be though is active. No tree blocking the road or anything like that (though that could be a component, provided there's some other element, like a raging fire behind you). You could even say they've wandered into the middle of a minefield. Not exactly nature, but close enough for me, and I'm writing this game, so if I say it's okay, it's okay. This, like all encounters, must place you in immediate danger.
- Spades - violence. Call them whatever you like, this is a wandering monster encounter.
- Hearts - ancient hazard. The exact nature of this varies according to what ruined your world (no, I'm not talking about the players; be nice). This can be a plague village, spoiled food, parasitic infections, radiation zones, drifting chemical clouds, or anything else that threatens the health of the travellers in a way that doesn't involve cutting, crushing, burning, or shooting them.
- Diamonds - gear. Pull a second card and slap it down on this one. The encounter involves some kind of gear that you might be able to scavange. That doesn't mean it's passive treasure waiting to be harvested. I mean, it could, but what old school GM isn't out to hurt his players in the worst way possible? We're talking Tomb of Horrors here! So instead of putting that fully functioning .50 cal machinegun with pristine ammo in a carrying case and handing it to the party, put it on an automated turret and drop that thing into a plague village. The players trip the automated defenses when the walk in, discover everyone dead from a strange disease, and then face the gun when trying to get out. Apparently someone set the defenses to keep the sick in before everyone died, see. Now, if they can successfully deal with the encounter, they have the added benefit of possibly walking out with the gun too, but it will be shooting them in the meantime....
I know, that doesn't mean much now because you don't know how dice work. That's another post, coming next.
And then there's the face cards. These add certain mechanical twists to the encounter. Grab another card and slap it down in order to get the difficulty, but use the suit of the face card. If you draw another face card, you apply its effects as well and keep going until you get a number card.
- Jack - The difficulty of this encounter keeps mounting. Add one to its difficulty every day you don't completely succeed.
- Queen - These encounters are especially punishing. Partial successes still reduce their difficulty, but they deal damage as if 2 points higher if you haven't overcome them yet. Thus if you reduce a Queen encoutner to 6, it deals 8 points of damage.
- King - The difficulty of this encounter isn't reduced by partial successes. You need to clear it all at once or not at all.
- Ace - Draw two cards. Both encounters occur simultaneously. Again, if you draw face cards, keep applying them and draw until you pull a number.
- Joker - There's no cooperation allowed in this encounter. The bandits manage to split the party up and hunt them individually. The fire separates them. Automated defenses in the old tech building seals them in different sections. Whatever the reason, each player is on his own.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Another Day: Wandering the Wastes, Olde School Style
I've already mentioned that play in this game is getting from point A to point B, the assumption being that both points afford safety, and the in between most assuredly does not. Now, travel quests are nothing new, but the way I actually envisioned this was something closer to a dungeon crawl, sans dungeon.
Rather than ask the GM to plot out a map for every session and stock it with a massive number of encounters so that the players will encounter at least some of them, I decided to try abstracting the whole thing. And since old school design received such a hard push in this, I figured what the hell, let's randomize it while we're at it. Old school games loved random elements.
So here's the rundown: at the start of play, you decide how many encounters you'll face before you reach your next safepoint. This could be because the distance is long, but it could also be a short overland trek fraught with extreme danger. Up to you. Also up to you is what "you" means in this case, meaning that the players could request a certain encounter count, everyone could come to a consensus, or GM could just tell the players how many they're facing. He could also not tell them, if he wanted to be like that.
That's so old school.
Then, once you've got the number, everyone plays the journey, day by day, encounter by encounter. Every day you consume some food (or you take starving damage), and you deal with an encounter. That encounter might beat you up, force you to consume some resources, maybe both, and if you don't successfully deal with it that day, nothing says it won't be there tomorrow too. Remember, your journey's only over once you face a certain number of encounters. That could take 3 days; it could take 3 weeks. You've only got enough resources to survive for so long. Now, you can choose to ignore an encounter (and suffer for it) in order to scrounge for food and gear, but that takes time, and time means more food and water consumed.
In essence, the game is one of resource management across multiple spectrums. Health metrics are interlaced, and there's an ever dwindling pool of resources to contend with. Every day is a decision to push forward or break and loot, which comes with no guarantees.
Rather than ask the GM to plot out a map for every session and stock it with a massive number of encounters so that the players will encounter at least some of them, I decided to try abstracting the whole thing. And since old school design received such a hard push in this, I figured what the hell, let's randomize it while we're at it. Old school games loved random elements.
So here's the rundown: at the start of play, you decide how many encounters you'll face before you reach your next safepoint. This could be because the distance is long, but it could also be a short overland trek fraught with extreme danger. Up to you. Also up to you is what "you" means in this case, meaning that the players could request a certain encounter count, everyone could come to a consensus, or GM could just tell the players how many they're facing. He could also not tell them, if he wanted to be like that.
That's so old school.
Then, once you've got the number, everyone plays the journey, day by day, encounter by encounter. Every day you consume some food (or you take starving damage), and you deal with an encounter. That encounter might beat you up, force you to consume some resources, maybe both, and if you don't successfully deal with it that day, nothing says it won't be there tomorrow too. Remember, your journey's only over once you face a certain number of encounters. That could take 3 days; it could take 3 weeks. You've only got enough resources to survive for so long. Now, you can choose to ignore an encounter (and suffer for it) in order to scrounge for food and gear, but that takes time, and time means more food and water consumed.
In essence, the game is one of resource management across multiple spectrums. Health metrics are interlaced, and there's an ever dwindling pool of resources to contend with. Every day is a decision to push forward or break and loot, which comes with no guarantees.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Another Day: Pain is Fun!
When I first started this project, I had the idea that the most robust part of your character should be his capacity to absorb punishment. As I move through this design, I'm all the more convinced of it, because taking damage needs to be somehow interesting too, as that appears to be a big thrust of the game.
And then there's the request that the rules be involved, maybe even a little complicated. Yeah, for real, that was specifically requested.
I'm no fan of making something needlessly complicated, so I'm instead taking that request as permission to go a little more in depth than I might otherwise and not bother sanding it smooth afterward. What's that leave me with?
The damage matrix.
What I've done is create separate health meters for differnet kinds of abuse a survivor might suffer. (Side note: Survivor. I like that as a term for character. I think I'll use that.) So if you're sunburnt and starving, you can't take a beating as well as you normally could. You could represent this from a single damage meter, but that doesn't provide enough detail for a game like this. So instead, you have various metrics of heath: nutrition, health (disease), toughness (physical injury), weathering (exposure), and packing (how much gear you can carry).
As you encounter different hardships, different health meters get assaulted. Tracking damage is pretty easy, and largely similar to how it works in other games. You have a number of levels, and each level can take a number of points equal to your score. So let's say you have 4 health levels in all scores (because it's looking like that's what I'm going to use). If your Toughness is a 5, you can take 5 points in each of those 4 levels. So far, pretty standard stuff.
Here's where it becomes a matrix. As you drop to a new level, you take wound penalties. You wound penalties don't affect your skills or your actions, but your other health meters. You don't take damage in those other meters, but those scores drop. So say you've also got a 5 in Health, and you take a few gunshots that damage your Toughness to the point that you take wound penalties. This drops your Health to 4. Now, you can only take 4 points of damage per wound level. You don't actually take any Health damage, but you're not as resilient to disease until those gunshots heal.
Now let's say that you already had 5 points of Health damage when this happens. Normally that keeps you in the first level, but when your Health drops to 4, those 5 points can't be contained in a single level. Now 4 points fill the top level, and the last point goes into the next level down, which also inflicts penalties. Damage suddenly cascades.
It's a little tricky to track and to explain, but in the sample I showed someone, he got it as soon as he began to use it. I'm thinking this might make a good app for the iPhone to help in tracking, because I've yet to come up with a good way to visually present the damage matrix that makes it both easy to use and understand.
In a nutshell though, that's the core of the character. Survival and pain and suffering, oh my!
And then there's the request that the rules be involved, maybe even a little complicated. Yeah, for real, that was specifically requested.
I'm no fan of making something needlessly complicated, so I'm instead taking that request as permission to go a little more in depth than I might otherwise and not bother sanding it smooth afterward. What's that leave me with?
The damage matrix.
What I've done is create separate health meters for differnet kinds of abuse a survivor might suffer. (Side note: Survivor. I like that as a term for character. I think I'll use that.) So if you're sunburnt and starving, you can't take a beating as well as you normally could. You could represent this from a single damage meter, but that doesn't provide enough detail for a game like this. So instead, you have various metrics of heath: nutrition, health (disease), toughness (physical injury), weathering (exposure), and packing (how much gear you can carry).
As you encounter different hardships, different health meters get assaulted. Tracking damage is pretty easy, and largely similar to how it works in other games. You have a number of levels, and each level can take a number of points equal to your score. So let's say you have 4 health levels in all scores (because it's looking like that's what I'm going to use). If your Toughness is a 5, you can take 5 points in each of those 4 levels. So far, pretty standard stuff.
Here's where it becomes a matrix. As you drop to a new level, you take wound penalties. You wound penalties don't affect your skills or your actions, but your other health meters. You don't take damage in those other meters, but those scores drop. So say you've also got a 5 in Health, and you take a few gunshots that damage your Toughness to the point that you take wound penalties. This drops your Health to 4. Now, you can only take 4 points of damage per wound level. You don't actually take any Health damage, but you're not as resilient to disease until those gunshots heal.
Now let's say that you already had 5 points of Health damage when this happens. Normally that keeps you in the first level, but when your Health drops to 4, those 5 points can't be contained in a single level. Now 4 points fill the top level, and the last point goes into the next level down, which also inflicts penalties. Damage suddenly cascades.
It's a little tricky to track and to explain, but in the sample I showed someone, he got it as soon as he began to use it. I'm thinking this might make a good app for the iPhone to help in tracking, because I've yet to come up with a good way to visually present the damage matrix that makes it both easy to use and understand.
In a nutshell though, that's the core of the character. Survival and pain and suffering, oh my!
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Ideals, take 3
In thinking over the 10s are double successes idea, I've decided that a 10% chance per die of getting a bonus isn't good enough. There needs to be a more compelling reason for hewing to your ideals. Destiny dice need to be that much better when you're following the true calling of your heart instead of just being a big damn hero in general.
The double success idea is a good one. I like it. It's still simple and prevents dice overload. It just doesn't get triggered often enough.
So why not just take out the trigger and make it automatic? Act in accordance to your ideals, and any successes you roll on Destiny dice count as double, up to the rating of your ideals in play. Roll those dice over to 10 if it helps you keep track of them.
I think that's the version of the rules that's going to hit the next playtest session.
The double success idea is a good one. I like it. It's still simple and prevents dice overload. It just doesn't get triggered often enough.
So why not just take out the trigger and make it automatic? Act in accordance to your ideals, and any successes you roll on Destiny dice count as double, up to the rating of your ideals in play. Roll those dice over to 10 if it helps you keep track of them.
I think that's the version of the rules that's going to hit the next playtest session.
Monday, June 27, 2011
New Use for Ideals
With Dreams squared away, we now turn to the action side of the pool: Ideals. Again, no additional dice, so what whole double dice spent thing doesn't cut it anymore. However, my solution for this is much simpler than the whole rigamarole required to fix Dreams (probably because Dreams required that recovery be fixed first, where this is based on action resolution, which required no adjustments).
In short, every 10 you roll on a Destiny die counts as 2 successes, up to the rating of the Ideal, assuming you're acting in accordance to your ideals, of course.
It's simple. It works a lot like talents and trainings. It doesn't add dice. It doesn't require any additional rerolling. In fact the only concern I have with it at the moment is whether it's a significant enough benefit. After all, you only have a 10% chance of getting a 10 on any d10, and that means that there will be plenty of times when you roll in accordance to your ideals and get no benefit. And even if you do get a benefit, will it be powerful enough to make a real difference?
I could say that we need to play it to find out, and that's true, but this is one I think I want to spend a little more time on. It might need another revision before the next testing session.
In short, every 10 you roll on a Destiny die counts as 2 successes, up to the rating of the Ideal, assuming you're acting in accordance to your ideals, of course.
It's simple. It works a lot like talents and trainings. It doesn't add dice. It doesn't require any additional rerolling. In fact the only concern I have with it at the moment is whether it's a significant enough benefit. After all, you only have a 10% chance of getting a 10 on any d10, and that means that there will be plenty of times when you roll in accordance to your ideals and get no benefit. And even if you do get a benefit, will it be powerful enough to make a real difference?
I could say that we need to play it to find out, and that's true, but this is one I think I want to spend a little more time on. It might need another revision before the next testing session.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
New Use for Dreams
With damage and recovery worked out, I feel there's enough new ground laid to take a look at Dreams. Dreams are, in the definition of the game, a way to keep the character going. He can persevere because he still has something to live for.
Well, the old rules lost sight of that, sort of. They could certainly boost your damage capacity by adding Hope dice to your pool, but they were semi-action oriented in the same breath. With the new 10 die maximum mandate, adding dice is no longer an option, so we need some other way of representing hopes.
John, for whom this game is written, gave a fantastic idea: Dreams, when either being defended or endangered, act as trainings for recovery checks, meaning that dice up to the invoked Dream can recover on a 4 instead of a 5. That's some awesome stuff right there. It's simple. It's thematic. It uses the existing rules. We're going with that.
I'm going to throw in one additional bonus for defeding your Dreams: you can recover for free as long as your Dreams are directly in peril. So if your wife is being attacked by crazy cultists, and you're fighting them off her, you can recover for free every single exchange with no need to set aside a success from your pool to activate the ability.
Well, the old rules lost sight of that, sort of. They could certainly boost your damage capacity by adding Hope dice to your pool, but they were semi-action oriented in the same breath. With the new 10 die maximum mandate, adding dice is no longer an option, so we need some other way of representing hopes.
John, for whom this game is written, gave a fantastic idea: Dreams, when either being defended or endangered, act as trainings for recovery checks, meaning that dice up to the invoked Dream can recover on a 4 instead of a 5. That's some awesome stuff right there. It's simple. It's thematic. It uses the existing rules. We're going with that.
I'm going to throw in one additional bonus for defeding your Dreams: you can recover for free as long as your Dreams are directly in peril. So if your wife is being attacked by crazy cultists, and you're fighting them off her, you can recover for free every single exchange with no need to set aside a success from your pool to activate the ability.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Recovery without Die Status
Chucking the whole healthy to bloody and then back to bruised thing for dice means the entire way that health is measured in Heroes of Destiny is up for grabs. Not just health, but damage, damage recovery, and no small number of potencies. There's a whole web of interconnected concepts that need to change together.
Today, I'm dealing with the matter of getting your dice back. Wounding seems pretty simple. You take damage, dice drop out of your pool. That part can stay the same. 2 points knocks loose a Hope die, while a single point bloodies a Destiny die.
The question is, what happens then? How do you get them back, in the middle of things I mean? And make no mistake, you need some manner of recovery, otherwise this is just another death spiral game, and I know of few people who enjoy death spirals.
So, first things first: all dice of a type are the same. This means that all d6s in play act the same, just as all d10s in play are the same. What this means is that a die is in play or it isn't. If you recover a die, it's a full fledged member of your pool. You can roll it, but you can also use it to take more damage. Recovery means you're getting some of your damage capacity back too.
Now that we've got that, how do you get those dice back into your pool? An idea that one of my players had was to roll your injury dice (the ones knocked out of your play, bloodied to use the old nomenclature). For every die that comes up a success, you return it to your pool. Anything that doesn't come up 5 or better stays where it is.
I like that. It's pretty simple, and it uses the existing rules. Yeah, okay, there's an additional die roll in that, but it's not too bad, is it? Bears testing to find out; I'd like to keep additional rolling to a minimum, but this particular roll might work out. However, I'd like to add one wrinkle to this: recovery isn't automatic. You need to expend a little effort. So, on any given round you can allocate a single success from your pool to recovery. That lets you recover at the end of the exchange, and those dice return to your pool for use at the beginning of the next exchange.
That's complete enough to begin play again. I'll let you know how it works out.
Today, I'm dealing with the matter of getting your dice back. Wounding seems pretty simple. You take damage, dice drop out of your pool. That part can stay the same. 2 points knocks loose a Hope die, while a single point bloodies a Destiny die.
The question is, what happens then? How do you get them back, in the middle of things I mean? And make no mistake, you need some manner of recovery, otherwise this is just another death spiral game, and I know of few people who enjoy death spirals.
So, first things first: all dice of a type are the same. This means that all d6s in play act the same, just as all d10s in play are the same. What this means is that a die is in play or it isn't. If you recover a die, it's a full fledged member of your pool. You can roll it, but you can also use it to take more damage. Recovery means you're getting some of your damage capacity back too.
Now that we've got that, how do you get those dice back into your pool? An idea that one of my players had was to roll your injury dice (the ones knocked out of your play, bloodied to use the old nomenclature). For every die that comes up a success, you return it to your pool. Anything that doesn't come up 5 or better stays where it is.
I like that. It's pretty simple, and it uses the existing rules. Yeah, okay, there's an additional die roll in that, but it's not too bad, is it? Bears testing to find out; I'd like to keep additional rolling to a minimum, but this particular roll might work out. However, I'd like to add one wrinkle to this: recovery isn't automatic. You need to expend a little effort. So, on any given round you can allocate a single success from your pool to recovery. That lets you recover at the end of the exchange, and those dice return to your pool for use at the beginning of the next exchange.
That's complete enough to begin play again. I'll let you know how it works out.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
A Few Rules For The Other NPCs
One of the characters in our playtest is a former lawman who's given up the badge and moved out west in order to start a new, more pedestrian life with his wife and child. His ideal is Champion, which he defines as standing up for other people when they're in trouble, while his Dreams include his wife, child, and a new, quiter life.
In the train ride out to Redemption, AZ, our family of east coast transplants ran into no small amount of trouble when something possessed a passenger and turned him into a near unkillable creature that was doing awful things to the rest of the people. You can read all about it in the prior playtest reports to Heroes of Destiny.
As you might imagine, our lawman found himself called into action again, and the player found he really hit a groove with the character taking control of situations on the verge of panic and enforcing order while wrangling posses to hunt down the supernatural terror. He found a joy and a sense of purpose in it that he imagined his character had as well, and said that's clearly why he became a lawman.
This put him in conflict with his wife, who he described as nervous and clingy. She was always asking him not to get involved, to stay with her and protect her, just her. In the process of saving the train, he endangered his relationship with her quite a bit and heeded destiny's call just as much. Every time he lost Hope, he dropped his Dream rating for his wife. By the time they rolled into Redemption, she'd gone from a 3 to a 1, and that 1 was damaged down to a temproary 0.
So when he arrived home at one point, she greeted him by throwing crockery at his head. He was confused at first, until I explained to him that their relationship had been damaged both in the long term and short term, at which point he perked up and made the following suggestion:
In addition to providing some personality notes about each NPC that's a Dream, all Dreams should have a health status of sorts. This has nothing to do with combat and everything to do with their relationship to the character. At each rating in Dream, make a note of some change in the relationship. So if your wife is one of your Dreams at rating 3, define a telling point of the relationship at ratings 3, 2, 1, and 0. If your dream is a business, define what your relationship to the business is at each point rating.
Another fantastic idea. I think I'll have a hard time getting the guys to make those charts up mid-play, but for future tests, it's totally on.
In the train ride out to Redemption, AZ, our family of east coast transplants ran into no small amount of trouble when something possessed a passenger and turned him into a near unkillable creature that was doing awful things to the rest of the people. You can read all about it in the prior playtest reports to Heroes of Destiny.
As you might imagine, our lawman found himself called into action again, and the player found he really hit a groove with the character taking control of situations on the verge of panic and enforcing order while wrangling posses to hunt down the supernatural terror. He found a joy and a sense of purpose in it that he imagined his character had as well, and said that's clearly why he became a lawman.
This put him in conflict with his wife, who he described as nervous and clingy. She was always asking him not to get involved, to stay with her and protect her, just her. In the process of saving the train, he endangered his relationship with her quite a bit and heeded destiny's call just as much. Every time he lost Hope, he dropped his Dream rating for his wife. By the time they rolled into Redemption, she'd gone from a 3 to a 1, and that 1 was damaged down to a temproary 0.
So when he arrived home at one point, she greeted him by throwing crockery at his head. He was confused at first, until I explained to him that their relationship had been damaged both in the long term and short term, at which point he perked up and made the following suggestion:
In addition to providing some personality notes about each NPC that's a Dream, all Dreams should have a health status of sorts. This has nothing to do with combat and everything to do with their relationship to the character. At each rating in Dream, make a note of some change in the relationship. So if your wife is one of your Dreams at rating 3, define a telling point of the relationship at ratings 3, 2, 1, and 0. If your dream is a business, define what your relationship to the business is at each point rating.
Another fantastic idea. I think I'll have a hard time getting the guys to make those charts up mid-play, but for future tests, it's totally on.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Scene Structure in Heroes of Destiny
One suggestion that came out of the last playtest was to add a formal finish to any scene. Most time, play just flows from one person to another, one locaiton to the next, and from scene to scene. That's all well and good, but given that certain mechanics apply for one scene, he asked that we formally declare the end of a scene to clear up any ambiguity.
It's a small thing, but I like it. I think the appealing part of it is that by asking for scene close by consensus, it gets the players thinking about story structure and pulls them into more of a director stance, even if subtly. Anything that helps bridge that divide between players and GM is a good thing in my opinion. Many games have suffered when players show up with no sense of responsibility beyond attendence and playing their own character in a vacuum, and the GM runs games and plots with no eye toward engaging the players, instead looking at their characters as his own playthings. It's gone bad from both ends. Meeting in the middle, even in small ways like this, brings everyone closer together, and I really look forward to seeing how this easily implimented practice changes play.
It's a small thing, but I like it. I think the appealing part of it is that by asking for scene close by consensus, it gets the players thinking about story structure and pulls them into more of a director stance, even if subtly. Anything that helps bridge that divide between players and GM is a good thing in my opinion. Many games have suffered when players show up with no sense of responsibility beyond attendence and playing their own character in a vacuum, and the GM runs games and plots with no eye toward engaging the players, instead looking at their characters as his own playthings. It's gone bad from both ends. Meeting in the middle, even in small ways like this, brings everyone closer together, and I really look forward to seeing how this easily implimented practice changes play.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
NPC Special Abilities
Now that I've got the new way potencies work, in a general sense, I can return to NPC spceial abilities. I still don't want resources to manage on the NPC side. We've seen how well that worked. However, creating interesting opposition requires something that can do more than deal damage. No, this game isn't super-meaty in terms of combat, but still, you do want to mix up the violence now and again. Descriptions are great, and I intend to use them quite a bit, but since a player experiences a game in large part through how it affects his character sheet, I want to put in a few special abilities, similar to potencies, that NPCs can use to make them stand out as different from one another.
In the interest of keeping all the calculations on the player's side, however, I'm staying away from the idea of activating them on my own somehow though. I'm not sure if I'll keep the encounter pool, or how it'll work if I do, but I do know that's not going to be the way that I'm going to invoke their abilities.
So how to do it? The same way we're trying to do everything else in this game: margin of success/failure on the player's roll. Since an NPC's stats are the target numbers for attack and defense rolls made by the players, the special abiltiies can things that trigger when certain margins are hit.
For example, a brilliant swordsman NPC might have a riposte abilitiy that kicks off with a margin of 3. He has a defense of 5. A player takes a swing at him, but only comes up with 2 successes for the roll. That triggers the swordsman's riposte ability, which means he gets an automatic, free attack against the player. This happens whenever anyone misses him by 3.
Like potencies, these can be tiered as well, with greater effects triggered by greater margins. And there's nothing that says a player has to utterly fail in order for a special condition to kick off.
For example, a cultist has a special ability that allows him to call for aid from others in the crowd when he's in trouble. When a PC makes a successful attack with a margin of 3 or less, the cultist successfully calls another member to his side to stand against the PC.
Now, I thought Gifts as NPC stats was a good idea too, so this sounds nice in theory, but the only way to be sure is to test it. I'd like to say I'm confident, but the last idea worked out so poorly I'm instead going to say I'm cautiously optimistic.
In the interest of keeping all the calculations on the player's side, however, I'm staying away from the idea of activating them on my own somehow though. I'm not sure if I'll keep the encounter pool, or how it'll work if I do, but I do know that's not going to be the way that I'm going to invoke their abilities.
So how to do it? The same way we're trying to do everything else in this game: margin of success/failure on the player's roll. Since an NPC's stats are the target numbers for attack and defense rolls made by the players, the special abiltiies can things that trigger when certain margins are hit.
For example, a brilliant swordsman NPC might have a riposte abilitiy that kicks off with a margin of 3. He has a defense of 5. A player takes a swing at him, but only comes up with 2 successes for the roll. That triggers the swordsman's riposte ability, which means he gets an automatic, free attack against the player. This happens whenever anyone misses him by 3.
Like potencies, these can be tiered as well, with greater effects triggered by greater margins. And there's nothing that says a player has to utterly fail in order for a special condition to kick off.
For example, a cultist has a special ability that allows him to call for aid from others in the crowd when he's in trouble. When a PC makes a successful attack with a margin of 3 or less, the cultist successfully calls another member to his side to stand against the PC.
Now, I thought Gifts as NPC stats was a good idea too, so this sounds nice in theory, but the only way to be sure is to test it. I'd like to say I'm confident, but the last idea worked out so poorly I'm instead going to say I'm cautiously optimistic.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Potencies Redeux
With the idea of splitting your main pool into tinier ones and then rolling them separately, potencies need a rework. However, the new combat method does lend itself for a pretty easy conversion. Instead of allocating dice pre-roll to a potency, you allocate successes from your roll to potencies in order to activate them. In fact, this allows for more robust potencies that exist in tiers. For one success, you can get X benefit, but for two successes, you get Y, and for three you get Z.
That's all nice and vague, so let's slap some examples down on the page.
That's all nice and vague, so let's slap some examples down on the page.
- Flashing Blades - you can make an additional attack against a target in the same exchange. This action costs 3 successes. Upon activation, you can apply an attack you've already made a second time against the target. In effect, you deal damage two times from a single attack.
- Pain Rage - the pain of your injuries burns red, granting you furious strength. This action costs 2 successes. Upon activation, you may add any current damage you are suffering (in dice, not points) to the damage of an attack.
- Wild Aggression - you throw yourself on your opponent, heedless of danger to yourself. This action costs 1 success. Upon activation, you can apply an attack you've already made against the target. You may not defend or recover this exchange.
- Take It - you steel yourself to take a hit. This action costs 1 success per level; there is no limit to the number of successes you can give to this potency. For each level, you steel a single die by increasing the amount of damage required to knock it out of your pool. Thus it takes 2 points to knock out a Destiny die and 3 points to knock out a Hope die. You can only apply this potency once to a since die, but may apply it to multiple dice.
- Berserker - you throw yourself into a howling rage, allowing you to temporarily overcome your injuries. This action costs 1 success. Next exchange, you may roll all your dice, including the injured ones. However, you may not recover or defend in that exchange.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The New Combat Procedure
In theory, combat already works the same way that non-combat checks do. In our playtest, however, the players never tried to do more than one thing at a time when making non-combat checks, so that similarity never appeared. However, once we got into combat, people were splitting their pools and rolling all over the place, which was exactly how it was supposed to work.
Fluidity was a problem though, so this is an attempt to make it a faster, simpler resolution system. Here's the new proposed combat procedure:
Fluidity was a problem though, so this is an attempt to make it a faster, simpler resolution system. Here's the new proposed combat procedure:
- Declare your actions
- Roll your Pool
- Apply modifiers for talents and trainings
- Sort out your successes
- Allocate your successes toward your declared actions
- Compare them to your target numbers
- Record the consequences based on margins of success and/or failure
Monday, May 30, 2011
The 10 Die Limit
One of the things all three playtesters wound up begging for in unison pretty quickly when we got into discussing what worked and didn't in our playtest was a cap on The Pool. 10 dice, they said. 10 dice was a great number. Don't mess with it. Take away from it for injury if you like; that's okay, but please, dear G-d please, no more. Between endangering dreams, seeing your dreams in actual harm, and acting according to your ideals, you could wind up with a mountain of dice. Mountains of dice are nice in theory, because everyone loves powerful characters, but in actual play mountains of dice suck. They're too much to manage, and the game becomes more about moving dice around than playng the game.
Please, Cliff, they begged, keep a hard cap of 10 dice for The Pool, and find another use for all that other stuff.
A rough rule I've picked up for evaluating playtest feedback is that if one person says something needs to change, but the other two seem not to care, I'll make a note about it but won't necessarily do anything right away. If two people seem to think there's something wrong, however, it needs to change. When all three agree there's a problem, it's a big problem.
Thus, without any further hint of consideration, there's now a 10 die limit on The Pool. You don't add to it. Nothing grants bonus dice. Maybe some things can grant bonus successes, meaning it's still possible to score more than 10 successes in a single roll, but you will never have more than 10 dice in your pool. Ever.
Please, Cliff, they begged, keep a hard cap of 10 dice for The Pool, and find another use for all that other stuff.
A rough rule I've picked up for evaluating playtest feedback is that if one person says something needs to change, but the other two seem not to care, I'll make a note about it but won't necessarily do anything right away. If two people seem to think there's something wrong, however, it needs to change. When all three agree there's a problem, it's a big problem.
Thus, without any further hint of consideration, there's now a 10 die limit on The Pool. You don't add to it. Nothing grants bonus dice. Maybe some things can grant bonus successes, meaning it's still possible to score more than 10 successes in a single roll, but you will never have more than 10 dice in your pool. Ever.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Diceless NPCs, Done Better
In the last playtest report of Heroes of Destiny, I noted that the method by which I set up NPCs to not use dice wasn't effective. Upon reflection, I believe a large part of this is because while I did remove the physical act of rolling dice, I didn't substantively remove the need to manage resources enough from NPCs. In effect, I took out the time required to generate the resource, but the real work in running NPCs remained. Thus in play they weren't any easier to adjudicate.
So, in redesigning them, what I really need to do is take the work out of running the NPCs, not the dice. They're not the same thing. How to do that? Well, if my goal is to make combat roll just like non-combat actions, it means they need to work like any other obstacle. That is, NPCs aren't lists of stats, but target numbers that the PCs need to hit. An NPC's attack score is really just the TN the player needs to make on his defense roll, and his defense score is the difficulty for a PC's attack roll.
In theory, this removes the resource management problem from NPCs. Instead, the GM just needs to get the roll tallies from each player in turn, compare them to the target numbers that are the NPC's stats, and give back the information. Damage is based on how much the PC fails his defense roll.
What about special abilities? Well, I don't know yet. I'll get back to that. Not forgotten, but not for now. That's a little detailed given that there's a lot of basic system work that still needs rework.
So, in redesigning them, what I really need to do is take the work out of running the NPCs, not the dice. They're not the same thing. How to do that? Well, if my goal is to make combat roll just like non-combat actions, it means they need to work like any other obstacle. That is, NPCs aren't lists of stats, but target numbers that the PCs need to hit. An NPC's attack score is really just the TN the player needs to make on his defense roll, and his defense score is the difficulty for a PC's attack roll.
In theory, this removes the resource management problem from NPCs. Instead, the GM just needs to get the roll tallies from each player in turn, compare them to the target numbers that are the NPC's stats, and give back the information. Damage is based on how much the PC fails his defense roll.
What about special abilities? Well, I don't know yet. I'll get back to that. Not forgotten, but not for now. That's a little detailed given that there's a lot of basic system work that still needs rework.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Other Mechanical Changes
With that core engine in place, I can begin looking at the rest of the Shadowitz system and see what needs adjusting. The answer is a whole hell of a lot.
Remove Methods
First of all, it's now gone to a roll over vs a roll under system, and Punk and Demon have become the core character attributes. Methods don't mix into that well, and so I think they've got to go. Just straight out gone. A character now has knacks and a single target number he's looking for on all dice, regardless of his approach.
New Dice Rules
Speaking of which, impairment dice need an overhaul too. If higher dice are better, and the target number is 5, what do we do about injuries. I still think changing the pool composition to keep the possibility of action alive but less likely is a solid mechanic. So let's change the target number to 4, make d6 the base die, d10 the edge die, and d4 the impairment die.
1s glitch instead of 6s.
Finally, I'd like to shift the degree of success away from luck and into the realm of player choice. So I'm going to take the raise mechanic I used in 7th Sea and introduce it here. Any roll gives you basic success, regardless of the margin by which you beat the target threshold. If you want to achieve more, you need to raise.
Remove 1 die from your pool for each raise; it doesn't matter if it's a d6 or a d10, but you can't remove d4s to raise. You're stuck with them. If you succeed in your roll, you can get additional levels of performance based on the raises you made. In combat, this means raising is the only way to deal additional damage. An attack deals base damage + raises.
Fewer Aspects
In the original game, you started with 5 aspects. That's a lot, and they didn't get used much because there was a lot else going on. Now, you get 2 plus your demon. If you want more you can get more later, but start with 2 and learn to work them both.
Likewise, starting karma (which used to be called Edge) now starts at 2 points, not 5. A smaller pool means you're more likely to work those compels more often to earn more karma.
Shot Clock Revision
I've rejiggered the shot clock to give it multiple tracks. Now, your initiative score doesn't reduce the number of shots an action takes, but tells you which track you're on. Higher tracks have more spaces, meaning you still proceed around the clock more slowly, and thus get to act more often than slower opponents. This lets everyone use the same list of shot costs without the need to do any calculations that might foul things up or slow them down.
Knack List Revision
Resources is gone as a knack, since it's now based on your Worldliness score. The knack pyramid remains, but with the loss of methods, I'm wondering if making knacks more specific and increasing their number is a good idea. When making a few NPCs, I ran out of knacks to take a few times. Food for thought.
Contacts Overhaul
With Fixer gone, there needs to be some other way of making contacts important to the characters. Fixer was a neat idea, but it always bothered me that contacts were still only capable of doing the things characters could do already.
So now, every character gets 5 contact aspects. They can use these to build their contacts, giving them access to knacks (probably different ones than the character has himself), as well as certain other abilities like resources and position. These are part of the character sheet though, and a character can spend money and experience to increase his contacts just like he can himself. While the GM might play the contact when the character speaks to him, the player is responsible for the mechanics, advancing the contact, and making all the necessary rolls.
Remove Methods
First of all, it's now gone to a roll over vs a roll under system, and Punk and Demon have become the core character attributes. Methods don't mix into that well, and so I think they've got to go. Just straight out gone. A character now has knacks and a single target number he's looking for on all dice, regardless of his approach.
New Dice Rules
Speaking of which, impairment dice need an overhaul too. If higher dice are better, and the target number is 5, what do we do about injuries. I still think changing the pool composition to keep the possibility of action alive but less likely is a solid mechanic. So let's change the target number to 4, make d6 the base die, d10 the edge die, and d4 the impairment die.
1s glitch instead of 6s.
Finally, I'd like to shift the degree of success away from luck and into the realm of player choice. So I'm going to take the raise mechanic I used in 7th Sea and introduce it here. Any roll gives you basic success, regardless of the margin by which you beat the target threshold. If you want to achieve more, you need to raise.
Remove 1 die from your pool for each raise; it doesn't matter if it's a d6 or a d10, but you can't remove d4s to raise. You're stuck with them. If you succeed in your roll, you can get additional levels of performance based on the raises you made. In combat, this means raising is the only way to deal additional damage. An attack deals base damage + raises.
Fewer Aspects
In the original game, you started with 5 aspects. That's a lot, and they didn't get used much because there was a lot else going on. Now, you get 2 plus your demon. If you want more you can get more later, but start with 2 and learn to work them both.
Likewise, starting karma (which used to be called Edge) now starts at 2 points, not 5. A smaller pool means you're more likely to work those compels more often to earn more karma.
Shot Clock Revision
I've rejiggered the shot clock to give it multiple tracks. Now, your initiative score doesn't reduce the number of shots an action takes, but tells you which track you're on. Higher tracks have more spaces, meaning you still proceed around the clock more slowly, and thus get to act more often than slower opponents. This lets everyone use the same list of shot costs without the need to do any calculations that might foul things up or slow them down.
Knack List Revision
Resources is gone as a knack, since it's now based on your Worldliness score. The knack pyramid remains, but with the loss of methods, I'm wondering if making knacks more specific and increasing their number is a good idea. When making a few NPCs, I ran out of knacks to take a few times. Food for thought.
Contacts Overhaul
With Fixer gone, there needs to be some other way of making contacts important to the characters. Fixer was a neat idea, but it always bothered me that contacts were still only capable of doing the things characters could do already.
So now, every character gets 5 contact aspects. They can use these to build their contacts, giving them access to knacks (probably different ones than the character has himself), as well as certain other abilities like resources and position. These are part of the character sheet though, and a character can spend money and experience to increase his contacts just like he can himself. While the GM might play the contact when the character speaks to him, the player is responsible for the mechanics, advancing the contact, and making all the necessary rolls.
The Inner Demon
Let's move on to the second aspect of the mission statement: the inner demon. This is the means by which the characters maintain their individuality. Characters in Neuromancer did it through drug addiction, death wishes, isolation, extreme body modification, and sheer insanity. There wasn't anyone in that book who was just a little quirky. They were either faceless and forgettable, or they had something really wrong with them. So we need something similar for this game, something to give players the power stay themselves, but to do so in a way that breaks them.
Okay, so there's clearly got to be some kind of disadvantage tied to a character's inner demon, but again, it needs to be mechanical. The 90s were strewn with RPGs that introduced disadvantages that you were just supposed to role play, and while they were a big step in the direction of thinking about your character's personality and not just his combat stats, too often these disadvantages were banks of points that you got for free and proceeded to ignore in actual play. A character's inner demon needs to inflict a mechanical penalty to the character, while at the same time it needs to provide some mechanism by which a character can increase his punk rating.
So, each character has a demon, defined along theme appropriate lines. This gets a variable rating (um... 1-5 maybe?) defined by the player at the start of each adventure (I'm still assuming this being a Shadowrun game, that it will be built around specific missions/jobs). The rating determines how hard the demon is kicking at that particular time. Sometimes it's nice and placid and behind the scenes, and sometimes it's a raging beast. Take for example the demon "drug addict." At a rating 1, the character might feel the occasional pang, but he can pretty much white knuckle his way through the job. At rating 5, he's jonsing for a fix constantly. Time that should be spent gathering intel on the team's target is spent instead scoring a fix and blissing out. He's walking into firefights high, and he's going through withdrawal when they need him driving the getaway car.
A character's Edge is equal to his Punk + Demon. Yes, this does mean that the more messed up a character is on any given run, the better he'll be performing, but we're going to chalk that up to him being less distracted by all the trivialities of the world. Demons are an aspect with only a downside. The GM can compel the aspect, just as any other, and you are free to resist if you like. However, it costs you a number of points equal to your demon rating to avoid succumbing. When it's really kicking, you're going to be spent just keeping it at bay, and if things get too rough, you are going to give in.
That should make the "brokenness" of cyberpunk characters a more front a center thing in this game. With rare exception, players want their characters to be good at what they do. That means high edge. But that high edge comes with a price, and I'm willing to bet people will pay it, which hands the GM the tools necessary to help players explore the dark parts of their character's unique snowflake of a personality.
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