Augmented Reality hack for Digital Shades

To make cyber connections more relevant in Digital Shades you can try this rule variant.

EDIT
When playtesting this generated too many things to track and things were not always relevant in the fiction, so this need more work, but still it was an interesting experiment. 

HACK

Each point you have in your competences represent a wireless connection that provide a augmented reality overlay. Like if you have 2 in Detective, this mean that you have two augmented reality connections that help you find evidences.  

When you use a competence, establish in the fiction what these connections and overlays are. 

When you roll for [doing things] you risk of losing your AR connections but you can also gain temporary new ones. 

Use this resolution table to replace the old one:

1: Bad Fail: The action goes wrong and you get

a connection backlash [choose one: trace, hack, virus, feedback] 

2: Fail: You just failed.

3: No fail, but no success either: You may transform it 

into a [just made it] but you lose a AR connection.

4: Just made it: You did it, but one of your AR connection get glitchy and is lost for the scene. 

5: Success: You made it.

6: Good success: You made it! Gain a new AR connection for the scene in a competence of your choice. 

• Losing or gaining AR connections reduce or augment your competence rating by 1. 
• Lost AR connections require taking a scene to refresh your AR connections. 
• If you lost a AR connection in a competence with 0 connections, disable one of your upgrades.  

Backlashes are bad news:

• Trace: something traced you back and his sending assets to investigate the situation. 
• Hack: a asset gained access to your AR network and can now spy on it or modify the data you receive when you use this competence. 
• Virus: a program implanted itself into your AR network and is corrupting it, the virus generate hallucination overlays when you attempt to use this competence. 
• Feedback: your sensory input are overloaded or scrambled for the duration of the scene. 

Getting rid of a hack or a virus require a scene and a hacking or tech test.

While in combat you can choose between [AR Connections] or [Fighting] consequences. 

The hacking competence can be used to apply damage to AR connections. The amount of damage are the amount of connections lost. If you reduce a competence below zero you can disable a upgrade or inflict a backlash.  

Review: Cyberpanky N.O.W.

I discovered Cyberpanky NOW while I was searching for OSR cyberpunk games to write my blog article about trans representation. I had never heard of the game or of it author, I did not knew what to think of the title but the cover illustration attracted me as it did not feature hardboiled cyberpunks showing of their guns, instead it showed two people hugging each other near some disaster or wasteland.

CONTENT WARNING
The game text is quirky and annoying, it insult the reader and it sometime use ableism language to do so. I understand that the game writer is trying to have fun while writing in-character, but I think that this is just too much, you quickly get tired of this pseudo edgy tone. Sadly there is also an other big roadblock for me in the game that also prevent me from recommending the game: in the background section there is a very unsensitive use of rape as a dramatic background element. I did not notice that at first and later when we rolled that result I was so angry that I said ok this is bad. let play an other game. 

This is a shame because the game could have been a fun gonzo cyberpunk game full of interesting quirky features. 

REVIEW
The game follow most OSR conventions, it use some variants of the 6 basic attributes, hit dice, hit points, experience points, hirelings, random encounters, etc.

Three character classes are available: samurai, street doc (who also double as a hacker) and shaman. These are fine even if I find the merge of the street doc and the hacker into a single class a bit strange. Samurai are good at fighting, street docs heal people and hack things, shamans receive help from spirits and cast miracles that work like cleric spells.

The characters health is represented by "hit boxes" that work like hit dice that come in three flavors: physical, mental and cool, so characters starts with three HD. It work but the differentiation between physical, mental and cool damages don't seem to bring much to the table and complicate things a bit. What I liked is that you roll your hit points only when you get hit, I like that as it make fights more unpredictable and keep you on edge.

Weapons have different chances to hit different kind of armors, hitting things is not linked to your level (except if you are a samurai).

The game have a bunch of basic cyberwares but since you have to pay to install them, it is hard for starting characters to start with one, except if you roll very well on your starting money.

The ID generator is a collection of random tables that you can use to determine the age, sexual orientation, gender identity and ethnic backgounds of the characters. There is also some tables that determine your family history and your world view. The tables are fun but they generate a bit too much information and it can be hard to make sense or use of all the thing you rolled.

If you use the table to generate your NPCs, your game will have a lot of queer content as characters have 80% chances of being queer and 40% chances of being trans. Characters also only have 20% chances of being white. At first I was like, well ok this is above averages, but I found that interesting and I was looking forward using those tables. That said, the tables are not perfect and could use some more work. 

The game describe and provide stats for a lot of "monsters". Most of them are a mix of gonzo and cyberpunk. A lot of them are also inspired by conspiracy, x-files and pop cultures. I quite like them as they break away from the sometime too self serious tone of cyberpunk games. The random encounters gave me somekind of a Tank Girl comics vibes. But this monster manual have some flaws, it only tell you how many "monsters" live in their lair, the stat blocks don't tell you how many individuals to generate when encountering them outside of their lair. Also a very annoying flaw: the encounters are not listed in alphabetical order and this make finding their descriptions a pain.

The game don't care much about cyperspace and it explicitly state that it find cyberspace crawling non functional for group play. The game offer some uninspired rules about spending money to get information from cyberspace. I understand not wanting to have complex cyberspace crawling rules like in Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun but how uninteresting the alternative rules are is a letdown for a cyberpunk game. That said, the street doc can use their hacking ability to glitch or to control electronic devices or cyberware so there is some form of hacking in the game. But clearly the game don't care much about this.

Being a happy mess of features, Cyberpanky have some noteworthy quirky rules like the possibility of uploading your character to a brain bank to avoid to start back at level one when you die and a clunky but fun "grudge" rule that seem inspired from Shadow of Mordor that let the players nickname a random enemy to turn them into a personal recurring rival that award some special bonuses once defeated.

How cyberpunk the game is? The game is cyberpunk in tone and in color but not much in it gameplay. It don't care much about hacking and cyberspace and the game is mostly about getting in trouble in cities, point crawling in the wasteland and raiding corporate facilities.

In resume I can't recommend Cyberpanky N.O.W for it use of ableist slurs and use of rape as a random background element. If there was a second edition that get rid of this it could be a low-fi post-apo gonzo cyberpunk game that have fun random tables that offer plenty of queer representation. The game lack polish but if it was not for it game text, with some OSR savvy and some homemade random tables it could be a fun game to play in sandbox mode. 

ACTUAL PLAY 

FIRST SESSION

My friend rolled a nihilistic-good trans man who work as a street doc. Jimmy left the mega city to try to find back his mentor who moved to the free city of New Chicago. He traveled through the wasteland and he encountered a pack of raiders, a lair of giant house cats and a small enclave of native Americans who use custom WiFi towers to access the cyberspace.

He traveled with the South Asian lesbian courier that he rescued from the raiders and they scavenged food in a dense OGM forest that grow over a ruined city. He found a way to sneak into New Chicago and got introduced to the local black market by a friendly North-African trans man fixer.

He was later ambushed by street cannibals in the city slums. He visited some cyberware clinics to try find back his old street doc mentor (there was a cute orange cyber cat). He finally found back his mentor, Rosista, a bisexual Hispanic woman good with cyberwares.

She offered him a job about tracking down black market alien tech but he refused because extraterrestrial tech is bad mojo. They talked about providing him with hormones and helping with setting up a new street clinic. I improvised everything by rolling on random tables.

My friend avoided all the fights, there was a lot old school "player skill" fictional positioning and dice rolling and I had a lot of fun improvising with the random tables. Roleplaying wise, I found it interesting to bring up the trans identity of Jimmy in play a few times when he encountered some of the NPCs. Overall I was quite pleased with the game session and the bits of world building we did while playing.


SECOND SESSION
I wanted to try to do some dungeon crawling so Rositsa proposed to Jimmy to organize a run to scavenge a abandoned corporate facility. She gave Jimmy a contact and a budget to hire henchmen. I determined that a heatwave was hitting New Chigago and that there was a blooming street market of water purification and portable air-conditioners. Jimmy explored one of the big street market to try to find some henchmen to hire. We made a coupe of rolls on the henchmen table but finally Jimmy decided to hire the gay samurai sister of a street girl who was selling bottles of water. He also hired a bunch of burned out veterans.

So Jimmy with his contact Mitchel and 4 samurai used a boat to sail on Lake Michigan to reach the abandoned underwater biotech facility. They passed by a bunch of scavengers who were cutting up metal sheets from the ruins of half submerged structures.

At destination they dived in the water to reach the abandoned facility. They had to avoid a flock of brain ducks to reach the entry hatch. Inside there was no power and they explored the facility to hopefully loot some medical gear, drugs and research data. I randomly generated the corporate facility and the loot. They encountered a alien device, a drone made of alien tech cubes. They tried to fight the thing instead of retreating and the alien device cut two henchmen in half with it laser. The fight was deadly but the survivors were able to defeat the alien drone. Jimmy tried to hack it but it alien matrix was too complex for him. They powered back a section of the facility and were able to find more loot. They accidentally activated a security android. Jimmy was tempted to try to hack it but having lost two people they decided to evacuate the facility with their loot.

The second session was ok, but there was less emergent world building and the random corporate facility crawling was not super interesting. Overall I have to admit that near the end I was very bored. The queer content was also less relevant. If I had continued to play the game I would have to craft some random tables and to write some interesting locations and situations to put in the sandbox.


JIMMY
Level: 01 Street Doc
Alignment: nihilist

HD: 1/1/1
POWER 10
AGILITY 12 (+1 ranged)
CONSTITUTION 7
INTELLIGENCE 14
CYNICISM 12
CHARISMA 12

ID

• 18 year old tansgender male (pre-op)
• Family: homeless parents who dealed with the Illuminati and were killed by the local mafia over debts.
• Sibling: lesbian sister, still alive, actively trying to kill her brother.
• Childhood: drinking and drugs use problems.
• Attitude and outlook: friendly, most important thing is kicking ass, it's all the aliens fault, i resolve problems by doing free trade.
• Mentor: Rositsa M, hispanic bisexual street doc.

ABILITIES

• First aid: 1d4 HP
• Medical care: 3d6 HP
• Drug making (AGL)
• Hacking (IQ)
• Languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian

GEAR

• 1100$
• Medium Armor: -300$
• Shiruken (20) - 200$ (1d6+1)
• Daily Ration Tablets -100$
• Cyber Bedroll -200$
• Dagger -75$ (1d6 / 2d6 backstab)
• GPS
• 8 daily ration tablet
• 1 dagger
• 1 heavy armor

Transgender representation in OSR cyberpunk games

The last trailer of Cyberpunk 2077 and it in-game advert depicting a trans woman showing off her HUGE cyberdick with the slogan "MIX IT UP" made me think about the cyberpunk genre and about transgender representation. 

I revisited some relevant articles like Why ins't Cyberpunk Better at Trans Representation? and "Is Every Woman Here A Sex Change?" - Trans in Cyberpunk RPG.

There was also some discussions online about Cyperpunk 2077, some of them, where people were not super defensive, were interesting and made me want to respond in the classic OSR/DIY fashion: by crafting my own thing, so I started working on a trans positive Cyberpunk zine. 

While working on my zine I acquired a bunch of cyberpunk inspired OSR publications and I used the PDF search function to check how trans people are represented in them. Since there is a lot of trans people in the OSR scene, I was wondering if the representation would be stronger and more positive or creative.    

I checked Black Hack Cyber Hacked, Mirrorshades (Black Hack), Cybernetica, Deep Morphean Transmissions, Mirrorshades Adventurers Rules, Cyberpanky_NOW, Extinguish the Sun #02, Polychrome Cyberpunk (Stars without number) and Augmented Reality. 

There was no results for the words sex, trans and gender in these publications, except for Cyberpanky NOW, Polychrome and Augmented Reality.

In Cyberpanky NOW there is a gender identity table that you can roll on when you create a character:

Gender Identity
1. Straight male
2. Gay male

3. Transgender male pre-op

4. Transgender male post-op

5. Bisexual male

6. Straight female

7. Gay female

8. Transgender female pre-op

9. Transgender female post-op

10. Bisexual female

If you use this table, your character have 40% chances of being trans and 80% chances of not being straight. This is kind of interesting but there is no other context and this is the only place were the word "trans" is mentioned. 

Polychrome have "biosculpts" and mention that gender reassignment is relatively simple. 

"Biosculpt: Available in two different varieties, a biosculpt job involves the implantation of immuno neutral tissues and artificial implants to produce a desired appearance. Gender reassignment is relatively simple (...)"

Polychrome also mention the existence of "other" genders but they are relegated to sex work. 

"The Nightingale: On the surface, the Nightingale is a typical,
slightly upscale underhab knocking shop, with the almost 100%
artificial madame Miss Cecilia overseeing a stable of men, women,
and other genders available for varied entertainments." 

And then there is the notion of cyber ninjas undergoing biosculpting gender reassignment to better approach their target.

"Some specialists take regular biosculpt jobs to alter their
appearance and gender so as to optimally appeal to a target, getting
close enough to execute them in an unguarded moment. These
“Judiths” or “Judies” can easily command as much as 50,000 credits
for the successful assassination of a mid-level corp manager."

Undergoing gender reassignment procedures just to better approach a target is a pretty problematic trope, I guess that cyber ninjas don't really care about their gender because ninjas only exist as assassins, not as people. Maybe only gender fluid people become cyber ninja, but the text don't go there.

Deep Morphean Transmissions don't represent any trans character but it feature artworks by Scrap Princess. 

Extinguish the Sun #02 don't feature anything trans related but it credit two trans women: I did some commissioned artwork and there is a character class written by Fiona Maeve Geist. There is also a interview with Daniel Sell who mention that he often work with queer and trans people.  

"HOW INCLUSIVE DO YOU THINK THE OSR COMMUNITY IS AS COMPARED TO TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AS A WHOLE?It’s inclusive for sure, but compared to games as a whole I have no idea. As a rule I don’t engage in the broader community; I’m already too busy and I don’t need to deal with rubes on top of that. I work with more trans and queer people that not, and am openly gay myself, but I don’t seek them out.Most people I work with come to me with their projects in hand, or I find them because I know I’ll enjoy working with them."

Augmented Reality The Holistic City Kit for Cyberpunk Games was the most interesting to check out as the book attempt to breath life to a cyberpunk urban sprawl through the use of random tables. 

While searching the PDF for the words trans, sex and gender I found these results:

• There is a Transvestite entry in the looks table for cabbies.
• There is trans man and trans woman entries in the sex workers table.
• Street gangs can roll transgender as a descriptor.
• Street gangs also feature this entry: Premier suppliers of street level gender reassignment technology.
• The random table for the Fixers have this entry: Hormone-locked teen transsexual; outrageous flirt.
• A random trait for NPCs: Substandard gender reassignment.

Trans identities are relegated to the margins and are mostly sexualized and kind of othered. The book can generate trans sex workers and outrageous transsexual fixers but it won't generate cool transgender agents, gun slingers or slicers or maybe just a trans barista who can serve you a warm cup of soy café and chat about her favorite trid shows. Representation wise this is a let down.

My observations...

Transgender characters are pretty absent from the Cyberpunk OSR publications. When transgender characters are represented, like too often in the Cyberpunk genre, they are sexualized and are othered instead of being normalized or being cast as positive or significant characters. The only exception was Cyberpanky NOW who somehow subtly suggest that trans and queer people are often the main characters in the game.

But that said, there is very few cyberpunk themed OSR products and some of these publications don't really present a setting. I hope that more cyberpunk stuff will emerge. 

About Transploitation 

So there is a lot of transploitation in the Cyberpunk genre as trans identities are often used by the genre as a tool to sell a edgy, transgressive and decadent future. In the discussions I had about Cyberpunk 2077 and it big dick MIX IT UP advert, a lot of people told me that this is transploitative but it is on brand for the Mega Corporations. I agree but the issue is that Cyberpunk generally use a straight cis white male gaze to explore the future. Most cyberpunk protagonists are generic cis male characters, "broody Tintins" who are used as point of view characters to give to their audience a familiar perspective that let them explore the weird cyberpunk stuff. These point of view protagonists are not transgender characters who can address how the corporations use their image. If this was the case, maybe it could be something interesting to explore. If not, it is just exploitation.

The main advantage of roleplaying games is that you can author your own character but I appreciate it when the game's writers are able to add some nuanced diversity on their own. Like everyone else, I like it when I find stuff that inspire me in a game or when I can identify with some elements of the setting.

Transgender Representation

I think the key, as always is to present a good diversity of characters. I want my cyberpunk games to present multiple trans characters, so that some of them can be ordinary trans folks while others can be more marginal people. I want to see cool and flawed cyberpunk characters in the same book. Don't forget that trans people network a lot to find info and to support each other, before, during and after our social and/or physical transition. That gothic trans girl who record porno simsenses certainly know a quiet corporate trans woman, a pre-op net slicer who don't care about their meat body, the cute non binary barista who take a bit of estrogen and that cool street samurai trans man who kick major asses.