One of my favorite things in Cyberpunk is when the PCs cross that line and really piss off a megacorp, and now they've got a full-bore death squad coming after them. Obviously in the World of Darkness, you can do something similar with mortal and supernatural politics.

How do you track and implement these reactions? For vampires, I imagine the vampiric "Heat" meter is going to be shorter than the mortal one - that's the whole point of the Traditions. If it looks like you're going to draw a mortal reaction, the Kindred would rather stake you and leave to burn than risk another Inquisition.

But werewolves? Hell, I could see the Garou's antics getting the National Guard called out in reaction to a "rabid socialist movement that has weaponized bears." And magi are hard to pin down, but given that the Technocracy has all kinds of ways to bring force and violence to bear, I'm not sure it matters. If you piss off the MiB's, they're going to come for you.

So for your games, do you just sort of wing it? Do you mechanize it? Do you put it in the player's hands to determine when they've crossed the line? How do you handle it?

Thanks!

Got a math question for all my real hardcore stats nerds out there.

Question: Is it possible to, while still using the 2d6 roll, affect probabilities in such a way that the ends of the spectrum become more likely than the middle?

Expanding On The Question: As everyone knows, the Critical Injury table is a 2d6 roll, which in a probability distribution looks like this:

My math teacher would be so proud of me!

Right now, the 7 is the most likely outcome. I would like to split this so that the edges of the distribution become more likely (and equally likely) than the middle of the distribution. I know I can affect the center of the curve with a flat modifier, but that doesn't quite do what I want - I don't want a shifted curve, I want a U-shape.

Context: I'd like to try something with Expansive Ammo* (the regular one from the Core Rules). I'd like it to have the standard probability to crit, but to have a more likely probability of inflicting a really nasty crit, which means it would have to fall on either end of the 2d6 table. This is why I don't want to just shift the bell curve. If I say that any Critical Injury inflicted by Expansive Ammo just has a -3 (minimum 2) to the 2d6 roll, then someone could roll an 11, and have that turned into a less-impressive Injury.

*Yes, I know they have Hyper-Expansive in Solo of Fortune, and I really don't like them.

Anyway, let me know if you have questions or if what I'm asking for is impossible. Thanks!

Hey y'all!

Looking to create a fictional city for my prospective 1:1 Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5E game. I'm looking to see if anyone has any fun characters, places, adventures, or ideas they'd like to throw out as inspiration.

I've decided on a mid-size city in the Rust Belt (Illinois or Indiana), crossing neo-noir and punk vibes with themes of fighting decay, trust being earned, and home being the place you choose to make your stand. My wife's character will be the only werewolf in the city to start.

I will take literally anything; any idea you think is too dumb is probably going to sound really cool to me. :) I really appreciate your help, and thanks!

Two cardinal rules here:

One: Always check with the players ahead of introducing anything with this technique. If they say no, that's it - kill the idea.

Two: If the thing you're using from your player affects that player's character, be extremely careful to avoid GM fiat. Any checks to avoid something should be tilted in the player's favor, and it should never remove their agency.

Some folks seem to have misread this post. Let be absolutely clear: My position here is that you should be bending over backwards to respect your players' boundaries for any number of reasons. The first and most sacred is simple humanity. The second is that we're gathering together to play a game, and if we're not on board with what's "out of bounds," that game is going to suck. So yes, absolutely lead with rule 1, and absolutely do a rock solid Session Zero. Period.

Credit to u/Peregrine_GWJ and u/EmperessMeow for suggesting this clarification - it was needed, and thank you for the feedback!

The Actual Post

When I say, "the player's demons," I'm not talking about the character. I'm talking about the player. What are the things that piss your players off? What are the agonies they are dealing with in life? Put representatives of those things in your game and let the players fight them, but never let the players completely destroy them.

For example, if one of your players has a loved one battling cancer, then it's completely OK to drop in cancer diagnoses in your game. Just make sure the diagnoses are rooted in something the player can punch. For example, maybe the wave of cancer diagnoses are related to poisoned groundwater, and Arasaka is trying to cover it up. Or maybe the diagnoses are false positives, used by a shitty doctor to keep people on the hook, paying out for false cures over time. Tailor it to their circumstances in a respectful way.

Just never let them come up with an in-game cure for everyone's cancer. If they find a cure for a specific kind of cancer, then make the cost to get the cure proportional to how important it is to the player. If the player really wants this, then put it on Crystal Palace, behind a firewall, with armed guards on every inch of the place. The more meaningful it is to the player, the more work they'll need to do. If you make it free, you are sort of backhandedly insulting them. After all, if it's free in Cyberpunk, well, that's just great for cyberpunk, isn't it? I guess it's my fault for not being that much of a badass that I can't just solve the problem I'm having - what a shitbird I am.

The point is not to punish the player. The point is to honor the difficulties their life is presenting them with, and give them a chance to really go to town in a way they'll never get to do in real life.

Why should we let our players fight their demons?

Because people occasionally love being able to feel like they can hit back. You and I can't do anything about chronic illnesses and brain fog, for example. But by saying that the chronic illnesses affecting this one group of imaginary folks is being caused by Bad Person X, you give your player a relief valve to let them punch back against a thing that's making their life worse. After all, they're never going to get to strap up and face down Bad Person X in real life. But by letting them do that in the game, you're letting them experience some vicarious amount of hope that things can get better.

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I have seen exactly zero dungeoncrawls set up for RED (although I have created one). This is for the very good reason that dungeons don't really even make a ton of sense in fantasy, much less in Cyberpunk, so the designers haven't included any. However, the designers did include a ton of raids and heists. And the overlap between all three is striking:

Dungeoncrawl: Infiltrate a dangerous, hostile space defended by monstrous alien beings in pursuit of treasure, relics, and (occasionally) information.

Raid: Violently enter a dangerous, hostile space defended by able opponents in pursuit of some singular goal (a person or thing) with the objective of extracting the goal before opposition reinforcements arrive.

Heist: Infiltrate a dangerous, hostile space defended by overwhelming force (or defended by a regular force capable of bringing overwhelming force to bear very quickly) in pursuit of some singular goal (a person or thing) with the objective of extracting the goal without raising the alarm or pursuit.

The primary difference between the three scenario structures is that a raid or heist is targeted - you know what you're going after, and thus, exploration during the event is unnecessary and sometimes counterproductive. However, because they are targeted, raids and heists have the opportunity for preparation (especially reconnaissance). The tension is thus between the players' plan vs the reality of their execution. The dramatic question can be phrased thusly: Can the crew get the (thing) in time / without raising the alarm / before backup arrives?

That difference aside, all three scenarios still rely on getting into a place that they shouldn't be defended by people who don't want them there. You know what's evolved almost 50 years of procedures to help run exactly that?

Dungeoncrawls!

The primary three mechanics we can bring over from dungeoncrawls into RED are time tracking, random encounters, and encumbrance. Let's examine what all three do in their original context, and then we'll port them into a cyberpunk system inspired by Cities Without Number.

Time Tracking

Ah yes, the ticking clock!

STRICT TIME RECORDS MUST BE KEPT! Fully sounds like something a German quartermaster would yell at his clerks, no? But sadly, that's E. Gary Gygax admonishing new DMs in the very first iteration of the Dungeon Master's Guide. In this instance, he actually had a point. Time tracking is vital to maintaining the sense of danger in a hostile environment. Communicate to the players when you've started tracking time, as it will give them a sense that they are "on the clock." Let them know when you're going to roll for random encounters (this helps random encounters fulfill their function, too, but more on that below), as well. Tracking time also helps you as the GM - it's a lot easier to say "Reinforcements take 5 minutes to arrive once the alarm goes off," or "Benny dies at 11:59 PM unless someone stabilizes him." Time is the skeleton from which you can hang all manner of muscles and sinew.

To aid in time tracking, use these tips:

• Figure out a mid-range speed for any activity. I usually use a minute, as it's easier to roll random encounters once every five minutes. That one minute becomes my turn length.
• Anything they do takes about one turn (for me, 1 minute) to accomplish, but assume that they are being thorough enough to at least attempt to find anything hidden (they roll automatically to find anything located in the area they are checking).
• If the task is too large to accomplish in one turn (say, searching a medium-sized room top to bottom), it takes however long you say it should take - I rarely go above 5 minutes. If the task they are proposing is ludicrous, say "No." This encourages players to be specific in what they're going after, which forces them to really think about what they want to check.
• Combat is exempt from this structure - it's so fast that it doesn't eat up its own time; it folds into an existing turn.
• To run this smoothly, have all your players roll initiative before the run begins, and run all turn interactions in initiative (so player 1 declares what they're doing for the turn, you resolve it, then player 2 declares and you resolve it, etc.)

Random Encounters

WRONG ENCOUNTERS!!!

Random encounters get the worst press of any mechanic except encumbrance. I literally had to stop listening to Mastering Dungeons because anytime Shawn Merwin mentioned random encounters my blood pressure would spike. However, they're there for two very good reasons: GM ease of play and player risk-aversion.

Players hate taking risks, but in a dangerous environment you kind of need them to. But given the tactical infinity, players have a tendency to freeze up and get analysis paralysis. Random encounters are intended to solve for that by being a prod - "get moving or your chances of being found loitering in the hallway go up." Random encounters are an opportunity for escalation, especially during heists, if the players screw up handling them.

For GM's, random encounters ease play because you don't have to keep track of every single guard in the place. Simple as.

Some folks accuse random encounters of being adversarial GMing. I'm going to take that argument seriously, because it is really easy to have your NPCs "reverse metagame" the players. Instead, focus on this: The only person who should be screwing your players is your players. Random encounters are not a gotcha. They are a complication thrown in the players' path. Use common sense and give some forewarning (boots echoing in the hallway, someone talking on the phone as they approach, etc.) to give your players a chance to prepare.

To make random encounters pop to the PCs, you need them to be unexpected but completely explicable. Random encounters should not be random in the sense of being weird or out of sync with the environment. They are intended to model people's behavior, first and foremost. After all, you don't know that guard's life. What if he ate a really dodge McMuffin and now he's really gotta shit? Hence why a guard busts in the bathroom while the PCs are there. If you roll a random encounter and it comes up positive, you must place it in context. If you roll a guy who comes into the secure computer room before the PCs can touch anything, he's not tipped off by the alarms or anything. Instead, he's the engineer who's come back here to smoke a joint under the exhaust fan, or a woman sexting her side piece.

How the PCs deal with a random encounter is up to them. Be up front about any costs involved in their plan. If they're going to kill the doobie-engineer, let them know that if they screw it up, he may yell for help or run away. If they try to outwait him, let them know how long it looks like he's taking. It is OK for a random encounter roll to spark more random encounters - that's an escalation spiral, and it results in interesting actions from the PCs as their options narrow.

Personally, I roll for random encounters once per five minutes. This gives the PCs plenty of time to do stuff while also bringing the place to life. I roll 1d6. On a one, the encounter happens. On a two, they get a hint of an encounter (a guard patrol walks nearby, but not directly where the PCs are). Loud noises (like gunshots) spark an immediate random encounter roll where a 1-3 result in an encounter, and they come expecting trouble.

Encumbrance

If you know what this is from, congratulations on not dying yet

Yeah, I know, I know. But just like with random encounters, encumbrance is there for a reason. In dungeoncrawling, it was there so PCs didn't take everything that was nailed down - you had to be strategic about what you wanted to get out of this place. In a raid or heist, encumbrance works the other direction: you have to be strategic about what you're bringing in.

Limiting their options forces players to get creative. Yes, you could just accept that you have a limited amount of items to bring in...or you could set up a drone to air-drop additional items once you're inside. Or you could sneak in additional gear ahead of time and stash it for later! Or you could rig a zipline to a nearby roof and have your buddy carry in extra stuff strapped to them like a criminal pinata.

Most people hate encumbrance because it's a pain in the ass to track. Fortunately, a lot of people have thought about this a lot, so I'm just going to borrow one of their solutions: slot-based encumbrance. You have slots equal to your BODY score. Armor and two-handed weapons take up two slots. Everything else takes up one slot. Cash is free; ammunition (except grenades and rockets) is considered part of its weapon. Use common sense to adjudicate edge cases, giving the player the benefit of the doubt.

If a player goes over their encumbrance, they take a -2 to DEX, REF, and MOVE.

Putting It All Together

Before the run begins, let your players know that because they are going into highly controlled territory, you'll be running with some additional mechanics in play. Let them know you'll be counting minutes, that you'll be rolling random encounters every (X) minutes, and let them know that they'll be limited in what they bring in.

This lets the players know that this one will be dangerous, and some decisions that ordinarily don't matter (what you bring with you) will matter on this run. They will likely opt to do some additional surveillance - this is good; let them! If they get stuck or take too long, have the Fixer or client call and prod them along.

Have them decide what to bring in, check to see if anyone's over their encumbrance, and apply penalties as need be.

As soon as the players hit the location they are raiding or infiltrating, start counting turns. Note that this should start when the players reach the main objective area (so if they are infiltrating the 30th floor of a skyscraper, don't start the clock until they hit the 30th floor). Nothing kills the tension like rolling for random encounters during an elevator ride.

Put the map in front of the players and guide them through what they're seeing the same way you would in a normal gig, adjudicating as necessary. Maintain turn order and roll for encounters as appropriate. Random encounters must make sense in the context of the action. For example, if the PCs came in hot and smoked the entire guard force, then the random encounter isn't from the guard force, it's from the nearby Nomads who heard the explosions and came down to investigate.

The Cumulative Effect

The goal of these mechanics is to provoke players into gathering information, making quick decisions, and accepting some degree of risk in their endeavors. For you, it provides a mechanical structure to hang specific developments from, apply consequences without being adversarial, and cheer your players on while also giving Night City a voice in the action.

But What About Flash Of Luck Mechanics?

Don't use them with these mechanics. The point of these mechanics is to prioritize player agency and give weight to their decisions; if you're substituting planning with improv and dice rolls, you're going to be fighting yourself. Doesn't mean the Flash of Luck mechanics are wrongbadfun (some folks hate planning), but it does mean they won't mesh well with this approach.

Alright friends - let me know what you think!

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Before anyone immediately dives to the replies, I'm going to rephrase the question, define what an "OSR-style game" means to me, and then ramble for a second.

Has anyone tried running any of the 5th Edition games (specifically Werewolf: The Apocalypse) using an OSR style? I'm looking to examine other people's experiences running this game in my preferred fashion. This is because I intend to run this game in an OSR style and I'd like to see if there are any major pitfalls I should be aware of before doing so.

OSR Definition:

There isn't an agreed-upon definition of OSR-style play, but I'm going to take a stab at defining what it means to me so it's easier for y'all to respond. To me, OSR-style play focuses on a set of principles, including:

• Giving players as much freedom to make informed choices as possible, including those choices which would require adjudication outside the existing rules set
• Relying on open-ended scenario design and requiring players to engage with the world, not the rules ("The answer is not on your character sheet")
• Rewarding ingenuity and imposing consequences on players where appropriate
• A Game Master who does not act as a storyteller, but rather as a referee for the world and the NPCs, arbitrating the players' impact on both; the goal is to free players to act with the knowledge that the world is dangerous but they have a fair shot
• Creating a responsive, dynamic world which reacts and presents consequences to the players' choices, and must be taken seriously
• Treating combat as a failure
• Using dice as an oracle to aid in discovery about the world (which therefore means the dice should never be fudged)

A Bit Of A Ramble:

I personally love OSR-style play. It saved D&D for me (by preventing burnout for me and my players), and I carried it forward into every other game I've played. However, it's not suitable for everything. I don't know how I would use it in Blades In The Dark, for example.

Reading Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I thought, "Oh great! I can run this OSR-style, no problem." Sure, the focus on exploration is removed, but everything else is there. Combat isn't quite a fail state, for example, but it's usually a sign that things aren't going well. Werewolf is quite loose with its rules, but that actually helps with the "Rulings not rules" concept for OSR, and the fact that it's set up so loosely because the system isn't simulationist lets you throw literally anything at players.

Then I read The Coming Destruction, and thought, "What the actual fuck is this?"

It read more like the draft notes from someone's screenplay. Choices that matter only in a cosmetic way, scenarios that use the wrong structures, and bad guys that just leave me cold.

There's a whole-ass dungeoncrawl in there ('Turning the Tables,' p 71) that has no map, no concrete ideas around what actually might be stored inside (the best they've got is, "this is a great place to find a klaive"), and only sparse notes on opposition.

During "Shadow of the Black Spiral," a Black Spiral Dancer attacks a location on the pack's turf. Only, instead of just delineating which structure it is, the book lists three based on what turf the pack chose - effectively making the choice of territory meaningless. Whatever happens, you're still going to have your territory messed with. Not to mention the choice of territory (presented in 'Staking Claims,' p 51) is this entire problem all over again - there's no benefit associated with the territories, just a choice on who they have to deal with to claim it.

This doesn't seem like the adventure writers care about supporting player agency and freedom of choice, but maybe that's a problem with the adventure. Besides, I think I can get the material to do what I want. Before I expend the effort, though, I guess I just wanted to know...am I wasting my time? Has anyone else tried to run this in an OSR vein and found it just doesn't work?

Thanks, and sorry for the ramble!

So my player loves using random tables to discover things about her character. Does anyone have any random tables to help generate Touchstones for a Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5e game? Or, Hell, a lifepath system?

Hello, friends. I'm here today to get back on The Discourse:

Blucher!

This is the second solid principle that's stood me in good stead while running Cyberpunk RED. Offer players tough choices, and reward them for creating new ones.

Defining A Tough Choice

A tough choice is one in which there are:

• at least two obvious options
• the outcomes of those options are known (or can be guessed)
• the chances of the outcomes are known (or can be roughly estimated)
• the outcomes affect the characters in a meaningful way
• and they can choose to walk away (which is not one of the at least two options, above)

In addition, the obvious options should come with heavy costs (undesirable prices attached to those outcomes) the players cannot remove from the obvious options.

Why They Matter

Tough choices do three things: they provoke, they reveal, and they create ownership.

By only giving your players options with heavy costs, you provoke them into looking around. "Surely," they say, "there has to be a better way!" We'll get into that in a second.

But even if they fail to find or implement the better way, a tough choice reveals something about the character. If you have to take one of the two obvious options, it reveals to the players something about the character making that choice - which of the two costs do they choose to pay? Why is this one the better option? Is the choice self-sacrifice to protect a loved one? That's a pretty revealing moment for a character! Even if the PCs' try to innovate their way out of the dichotomy, that in and of itself reveals something about these characters - they are determined to create a better world for themselves!

But the biggest advantage tough choices have for our games is ownership. A player who has to look around at what they've done and say, "I chose this," is a player who accepts that they had a hand in creating the game world. They're bought in, even if they hate the outcome.

But of course, if you give someone two options...

...Expect Them To Choose A Third

By provoking the players into looking for another choice, you accept that the outcomes will fundamentally change from the paradigm you've set. For example, maybe when your dying-of-an-involutary-personality-replacement PC links up with some Nomads, they might help him out with storming Arasaka Tower! By setting an initially harsh choice, you've almost guaranteed that the players will try to break out of that mold.

Let them try, and if they succeed, reward their creativity (or blind luck).

However, don't give it to them for free. If they genuinely outsmart you, congratulate them and let them have the easy win. But otherwise, make them work for it. If the players think it was too easy, they won't feel that same sense of ownership we discussed above. If they fail, do not increase the penalties for the base options - instead, put the option they wanted to take on the table...with a cost that's just a little bit less bad than the initial choices. This validates to the players that they were right to try, even if they failed. It also validates that their actions can change things around them (if they had succeeded, it wouldn't have cost nearly as much!).

And of course, if they succeed in creating their new option, reward them and be generous. We want our players to innovate, to refuse to accept the world on its terms and force it to accept them on theirs. That's putting the punk into cyberpunk!

It's All In The Follow-Through

Follow-through, for a GM, is all in the consequences. If the PCs come up with a plan that would wind up burning down Night City, let them burn down Night City. If they would reasonably know that, tell them the probable consequences up front, and if they do it anyway, then make the consequences as horrific and random as seems reasonable.

Remember, the outcomes have to be known before the choice is made for it to impact the players. Mrs. O'Leary's cow inadvertently burning down Chicago is a tragedy. Mrs. O'Leary setting her barn on fire to collect the insurance money (even though she knows fire can easily spread) is a choice. You don't get players to accept that they did this unless they actively choose to risk it.

And besides, there's plenty of things that can go wrong even if the players get a "good ending." We see this in 2077 - that fucking chip is still going to kill you in a few months. The whole point is to save yourself; surviving it is the cherry on top.

A take I see get circulated every so often is that Trauma Team are super-badasses; juiced-up cyber-commandos who can mow down legions of bad guys as they clear a path to their client while leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them.

And that's just wrong.

Fluffy Bois

The stats for an average Trauma Team are in the Core Rules on page 224. And they fucking suck. They all have a Combat Number of 10, which per Danger Gal Dossier recommendations, puts them on the low end for a mook. Not a hardened mook, but a standard-ass mook. Their offensive potential is vastly limited. The Security Officers carry Assault Rifles, sure, but even against non-bullet-dodging adversaries, they have at most a 70% hit chance (and that's only against enemies which have no cover, concealment, and that are between 26 - 50 meters away).

Everyone else except the Medical Assistant has the same problem, having at most a 70% hit chance at point blank range. The Medical Assistant cleverly avoids this issue by not carrying a gun.

We bow to your wisdom, Brother-Apothecary

"AhA!" The fanboys scream, "ThEy HaVe A TsUnAmI hElIx!" Yes, they do. Except that the Helix can only fire in Autofire, and its lowest DV is a 17. So they have a 30% chance to deal damage...and only ~15% chance to really lay into someone, assuming they can stay in an optimal range bracket. So you can expect that Helix to maybe lay out one guy if they get lucky.

Even worse, they don't have a lot of buffer before their effectiveness gets nerfed by wound penalties. I'll discuss the Doctor and Medical Assistant below, but the Security Officers require about 28 points of damage to become Seriously Wounded (13 SP + 15 hp). That's one decent Autofire hit, or a volley of Very Heavy Pistols.

"But what about Suppressive Fire?" Oh, Trauma Team Strawman, you're adorable. Suppressive Fire works on anyone that's within 25 meters of the firer, and in their line of sight. So if you use Suppressive Fire from that AV-4 that's hovering overhead, guess who you're also Suppressing? That's right - your own teammates! Better hope they roll real good on that Concentration check.

And ditto for the Security Officers - unless they get about 25 meters away from their teammates and each other, they're going to risk Suppressing their own people. You know what clients love? Watching the people that are supposed to rescue them run away! Investor Relations is gonna love that.

Pictured: The TT Doc after the third Suppressive Fire attempt

Even the AV-4 isn't great. It has 100 SDP, which is going to get Swiss-cheesed hard as soon as anyone with decent aim hits it. That holds up against 8 hits with a Very Heavy Pistol, and God help you if your opponent has rockets or grenades. And since Trauma Team "prides themselves on arriving in their AV-4 as close to the action as possible," even handguns can be a serious threat.

All of this means that against anyone able to put together solid resistance, Trauma Team is well and truly screwed.

Bad At Their Jobs

And that's not all! In order to stabilize someone, you need to make a First Aid or Paramedic check, with a DV 13 (Seriously Wounded) or DV 15 (Mortally Wounded). This means that Trauma Team only has about a 70% stabilization success rate under ideal circumstances - if the patient's already making Death Saves, there's a 50% chance they can't stabilize them.

Now a Cryopump does help with this, as it requires no Action to put the client into stasis - but you get the same problem if they have to transfer the client to a Cryotank (which requires a DV 13 check to operate). Better hope that hospital is less than an hour away!

Even better, it's entirely possible that if Trauma Team gets into a serious firefight, that these numbers get worse. For example, if the Doctor takes 21 hp of damage (the average for a grenade, and well within the power of an Assault Rifle or even a very good roll on a Very Heavy Pistol), he's now Seriously Wounded. The Medical Assistant only requires 19 hit points (after you break their shield). Now we're talking 30 - 50% stabilization chances - not good!

Send this guy instead - he's guaranteed to be more fun!

Should You Use Them?

This is a question with two answers: one Watsonian (from the perspective of the actual characters themselves) and the other Doylist (from the perspective of the person creating the characters). Fortunately, it's the same answer - yes!

Even if they suck, they still have a shot at extracting a badly injured client. Their famed neutrality also helps keep them from being a priority target - even people shooting at Trauma rarely want to hurt the team members; they're trying to kill the client. All of this means that from a Watsonian perspective, people who can afford it should definitely buy the best coverage they can afford. From the Doylist perspective, Trauma Team is a random variable that adds tension to the situation. A Trauma Team arrival fundamentally changes the scenario, and keeps things interesting - all good things from a GM's perspective.

So How Do I Make Them A Challenge?

A good start would be to ditch the standard Trauma Team and use the one from Danger Gal Dossier, Trauma Team Squad NC 4-2. Even better, you can build a relationship with these guys the more often your PCs run into them. And because 4-2 is so tight-knit, if your PCs kill any of them, the rest will come looking for payback - which is great from a character-development standpoint.

Another way is to make your Trauma Team squad act like a completely different Trauma Team squad. Hell, maybe you key these by district, so there's a different squad that responds in each district. Possible examples include:

• Los Pájaros Furiosos: This squad is coming straight out of Santo, with a risky gimmick. The leader owns a chicken farm, and has been training old roosters for use as a distraction. When this squad pulls up, they immediately drop 1d6 + 1 roosters hopped up on Black Lace into the area. They attack anyone attacking the Trauma Team squad (treat as a Mini Air Drone with a Heavy Melee Weapon, MOVE 8, CN 14; they explode as an AP grenade on death).
• Payable On Death: A Trauma Team squad formed exclusively of MAXTAC washouts (reasons for the washouts vary). This squad has issued a formal declaration - anyone who can kill members of this squad can collect half the life insurance money from their death. But anyone who the squad kills has no cause for vengeance - a move that drew challenges from some cocky gangoons at first, but which prevented any feuds from starting with the local gangs. All members should be treated as hardened mini-bosses (see the cyberpsycho stat block, but increase EMP to 2).
• MFK: A boy band on the make, working for Trauma Team to make ends meet. Frequently enjoy showing off their dance moves and their music while their pilot films them. These clips get uploaded to the Garden Patch (much to corporate's chagrin), and have gone viral a few times when they were too busy dancing to save the client. However, when they lock in, they are an effective unit - CN 16, use shotguns with Incendiary rounds for the Doctor and Medical Assistant, and Flak armor with Heavy SMGs and Flashbang Grenades for the Security Officers. They can also use their Combat Number for any roll associated with their performance.

The goal is not to be random or silly, but to give them a gimmick that makes them feel different than a regular Trauma Team squad. If the PCs take the time to learn their motivations, they can use that information to their advantage. Until then, you get to drop something on them that they can't guarantee will be the same old shit - which is always good for your game!

Anybody have any good resources for research into company or charter towns? Looking to make one the centerpiece of my next campaign (tentatively called "Small Town Cyberpunks").

Looking to mine stuff for ideas, so articles, books, shows, YouTube essays, etc. Are all helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Questions:

• The Core Rules recommend that a combat only last three rounds, but it seems like even mooks are way too sturdy for that. Am I doing something wrong?
• In a real scenario, I would have just had the opposition flee, but if anyone does fight to the death, combat looks like it's going to take forever. Has anyone else had this problem?
• Does a character gain 1 Rage every combat turn, or none?
• Can you make more than 1 Rage check to regenerate at the start of a turn?
• Since Armor makes all Aggravated damage into Superficial damage, using the Crinos bite against armored opponents seems kind of useless - am I missing something else?

Test Combat

Ran a test combat in Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition, and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. I'm running one test character I made (Ragabash, Glass Walkers, Dex + Brawl 5, Health 6, Willpower 3).

The test was against three chuckleheads using the PMC / Riot Cop statblock (p 291 of the Core Rulebook). This will be important: they have Health 6. This is basically a white room setup, I'm just trying to get a handle on the mechanics.

The larger context here is that I'm planning to run a 1:1 game with my wife eventually, and I'm still feeling out what difficulty looks like and what's deadly vs a light-hearted romp.

Try 1:

Starts with Rage 2, tries to go to Crinos, and fails both Rage checks - immediately loses the wolf. Since he's a Ragabash, I figure he probably surrenders. Because he hasn't done anything obviously supernatural, the PMCs take him in.

Try 2:

So I restart it - the character is now in the back of a prison transport the next night, with the same three PMC guys. He's got three levels of Superficial damage. As he's restrained, he sees the moon through the truck's window and howls at it, regaining 1 Rage. The PMC guys mock him and beat him - +2 Rage, three additional levels of Superficial damage.

The character is now Impaired (p 128 of the Core Rules), so he shifts to Crinos, automatically breaking his restraints...but the PMCs don't break, they just start fighting back (again, trying to learn the system - otherwise I'd have them jump out of the transport). This costs him one Rage point (failed one of the two checks).

This is where it starts to get frustrating.

Round 1:

Shapeshifting is a two-dice minor action, so the character's dice pool is 7 (Dex + Brawl = 5, +4 from being in Crinos, -2 for the shapeshift). The character targets one PMC guy, and inflicts 7 damage with his claws, which deal Superficial damage. That translates to 4 points of damage to the first PMC. PC also regenerates two points of damage with a successful Rage check.

Now the other two PMC's go. They have Melee 6, but no weapon listed, so I'm assuming it's +0 (small knives or batons). They inflict a total of 2 Superficial damage to the character.

Round 2:

The character heals 2 points of damage with a failed Rage check. (Rage is now 1). Given the advice on page 132, they do not gain additional Rage. Now with their full Brawl attack, the character attacks the same target with their claws and gets 6 Superficial damage - halved to 3, dropping the first PMC to 1 Aggravated damage - he's Impaired.

Now the other PMC's go. They inflict a total of 4 Superficial damage to the character. The character is now Impaired again.

Round 3:

Character doesn't heal up, and inflicts 4 more Superficial damage on this NPC. The NPC now has 5 levels of Aggravated damage. The other PMCs inflict 1 more point of Superficial damage, with becomes Aggravated since the character is Impaired.

Round 4:

At this point, I realized I had screwed up - the character should have been burning Willpower to avoid Frenzy. Since he only had three WP, I figured he had to enter Frenzy now. Since he's already in Crinos, his Rage goes to 5 and he can't use Gifts. He regenerates 2 Superficial damage, which gets him above Impaired.

Since we are still trying to kill the same freaking guy, I target him with Bite and go after him. However, since his armor reduces Aggravated damage to Superficial damage, it's basically less effective than the claws are, which seems...counterintuitive? I did kill the first guy, but the other two just keep whaling on him, which results in more Aggravated damage.

End of Combat

At this point, I figured I was doing something wrong and I came here to ask for help. I've got to be misinterpreting something in the rules - no way a Crinos locked in a van with three ordinary dudes fails to take them out. Yes, he started wounded, but he's also a nine-foot-tall death machine.

Any assistance is huge helpful - thanks so much!

So I was reading Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th Edition, and I noticed the rule about Critical Successes counting as double successes, but only if you rolled two of them. So if you roll one Crit, it just counts as one success. If you roll two Crits, it counts as four successes, and if you roll three Crits, it counts as five successes.

This seems unnecessarily fiddly to me, and since the guys who wrote this game know their stuff (and I don't), I figured I'm missing something. Why do this? Why not just let every Critical Success count as two successes? Have the devs talked about why they do it this way? What's the game design goal being served here?

Thanks!

Just now getting into the 5th Edition WoD games, and Mage was always my favorite since Dark Ages. Are they working on that, or have they said they won't touch it?

Thanks in advance!

Looking for advice. I'm looking to get my wife into a Werewolf 5th Edition game. We've played D&D 5e and Cyberpunk RED together. I currently own the WtA5 core book and that's it.

Any advice welcome about starting scenarios, campaigns, other books to buy and onboarding tips for new players and GMs.

Advice about what to avoid is also welcome, but I'm committing to 5e, so please don't tell me to run Werewolf the Forsaken or oWoD.

Thanks!

I keep seeing new GM's asking for help on here, and I wanted to add to the discourse

Blucher!

around that conversation by laying down a series of good, basic principles that have stood me well during my time GMing in Cyberpunk RED. The first and most important of these is this: prep an interesting situation that will impact your players, and let your players interact with it however they like.

This tends to get cited across a ton of GM advice. Gus L calls it "Play The World, Not The Rules." Milton et alia refer to it as "Build Responsive Situations." And of course, the Alexandrian just advises to "Don't Prep Plots." There's a reason all these guys talk about this principle: it works real good.

How It Helps You

By divesting yourself of the responsibility for "cRaFtInG tHe StOrY," you're free to unleash your players on the setting, thus letting them make big swings - and then feel the consequences of those choices, which is what an RPG is all about. Because you're not trying to plan for three sessions from now when they'll discover who really is an AI, you're free to follow the players and let them take center stage.

This helps you because it massively reduces prep time and vastly opens the possibilities for play. All you need to do is worry about what's happening this session. If they're going to rob a Tyger Claws' den, for example, all you need to worry about is keying the map, prepping a handful of statblocks for opposition, and deciding how fast the Claws can call for backup - and who shows up. As they play through the situation, you'll get ideas for how this can come back to bite them in the ass. Did the PCs let the Claws' techie go? Guess who's about to call the Claws with full descriptions of the crew!

Going into a session blind? Prep a gig - I prefer Red Chrome Cargo for new crews - and use that as your tentpole. Give your players a goal, some opposition, and let things develop from there. Always close out the session with a choice of what to do next so you know what situation to prep next time.

If their choices introduce new characters, you can incorporate those by either relying on pre-published NPCs (Danger Gal Dossier, for example) or just straight up improvising (and then writing down whatever you improvised so you can use it again later). But most times, when the players try to rope in new elements to the game, you don't actually need stats, just a motivation and a very basic description. During downtime, you can flesh out what you think you might need. But it's way easier on you to wait until the players decide to interact with someone and then flesh that person out.

Consequences Are Hammers, And All The PC's Are Nails

Nope!

As the PCs interact with these situations, consequences will start to arise. I think of these as hammers waiting to fall on the PCs' toes. For example, maybe you channel Training Day during a game and you put a gang leader's daughter in a dangerous situation. The PCs' save her - now there's a consequence in play. That gang leader is going to hear about the PCs, and his reaction is... (rolls reaction roll) ...neutral. OK, so the gang leader is more pissed at his kid than happy the PCs saved her. That's OK - he still knows their name. This is now a hammer waiting to fall. The next time the PCs go looking for recon, this gang leader pops up. He's heard of them, and he'd like to offer them a job / has rare information to sell them / vouches for them with someone else. The fact that this arises out of the PCs' decisions makes what might otherwise seem random fraught with meaning - what if they had just killed the girl? Now every action seems more consequential, the world seems more real, and the rules fade into the background a bit.

The Art of Interesting Situations

Developing interesting situations is usually genre-dependent, and obviously subjective. What's interesting to me won't be interesting to you. But if you know your players, you can usually come up with a situation that's going to speak to them. Maybe one of your players is a new parent - child-in-danger is a great stake to deploy. Maybe one of them hates snobby rude people - make a snobby, rude person the antagonist. Find what your players care about, and either poke them with it, dangle it in front of their noses, or light it on fire and dare them to save it.

From there, build outwards. Add layers, misdirects, ulterior motives, etc. The old noir stories are replete with these. For example, Spider-Noir is a great exploration of noir themes precisely because it deploys this kind of central mystery in its plot. Basically every Harry Dresden novel is great for the exact same reason.

Our snobby rude antagonist (named Karen) wants to hire the PCs to find her missing kid (Kyle). She's not actually worried about the kid, but she has to make it look like she's trying to find them so the insurance company will pay out. Karen's bodyguard (Ken) kidnapped the kid because he thinks Karen will run away and marry him if the kid isn't in the way (Ken already killed her last husband because Karen convinced him to). However, the gang he sold Kyle to promptly got jumped by Maelstrom and wiped out, so Kyle's in the wind. Even worse, the insurance investigator is being paid by one of Karen's corporate rivals to kill Kyle and frame Karen for it!

From there, sit back and take notes. It really is that easy.

I really love adding animals to my games (see my post on cocaine hippos, for example). Rather than write up a bunch of new statblocks, I thought I would post a series on variant animals that let you come up with brand new creatures by modifying existing statblocks and reskinning the result. Let me know your thoughts, and have fun!

>The Black Lace Emu ("El Pollo Loco")

• Description: Looks like a regular emu, but has a hateful aspect that infects all its dealings with anyone who approaches it. Regularly coughs up bright green spatches of phlegm. Incredibly vicious, will try to kill anyone who approaches it without a DV 30 Animal Handing check.
• History: Artificially bred by a rogue BioTechnica exec as a way to synthesize Black Lace, the Black Lace Emu was created in Colombia, where most of the surviving members of the species are kept in captivity. The Emu coughs up raw Black Lace as bright green phlegm, and people compete to harvest it, then dry and process the Lace into its final form.
• Stats: Use the Utahraptor statblock from the Fossilized Violence DLC, and make the following changes:
  • Coughs up 1d6 doses of Black Lace every week
  • Immune to the Seriously Wounded Wound State

>Drug Dealer Tiger

• Description: About 600 lbs and nearly 4 feet tall at the shoulder, these guys are a little bigger than a regular Bengal. For all that, they are generally friendly (DV 13 Animal Handling to approach outside of combat) and their temperament has been modified to prevent them mauling the person they imprint on. However, the tiger comes with a special implant that can drive it to a berserker-like frenzy at the owner's behest.
• History: Bred by some asshole in Florida, these little guys come special order for anyone willing to shell out the 10,000 eb purchase price and 1,500 eb per month to feed them. Imprint on the first person they see, and follow them around for the rest of their lives. Every wannabe drug kingpin has "own a tiger" on their bucket list, so the market provides.
• Stats: Use the Obsidian Ocelot from the Your New Best Friend DLC but make the following changes:
  • Swap out the Chameleon Coating for a Berserk implant (CEMK) that can be triggered by the owner without using an Action
  • Combat Jaw deals 5d6 damage, not 4d6

>Dire Pigeon

• Description: It's a gigantic pigeon, originally bred by Arasaka scientists who were looking to adapt carrier pigeons to contested airspace as a way to carry supplies to troops. Naturally, this didn't work. But the test subjects got loose, and they've established a small colony in Night City. They're friendly (no check to approach them peacefully), and can carry one person in their claws.
• History: The Dire Pigeon has been said to kidnap hobos, depositing them out of harm's way, usually seconds before a firefight. It's usually seen as a sign of good luck, and some hobos leave small offerings to it lying out.
• Stats: Use the cyberwolf statblock from Your New Best Friend DLC but make the following changes:
  • Remove all cyberware except the Combat Jaw
  • Fly speed equal to an AV-4 (can carry one person in their claws)

>Mecha-Gorilla

• Description: It's a gorilla with an augmented linear frame, Tsunami Arms Helix, it's own personal NetArch, and an Imp daemon. Very bad news. Mecha-Gorillas are not well-equipped for peaceful interactions with people, either (DV 17 Animal Handling check to approach peacefully).
• History: Designed by Petrochem to counter BioTechnica's CyberPet line, the Mecha-Gorilla was originally designed as a heavy home security model targeted towards senior executives. A pop-up Tsunami Arms Helix was built into the gorilla, run by a NetArch operated by an Imp daemon. This wound up killing most of the beta testers, and the others reported waking up at night to find the Mecha-Gorilla staring down at them while they slept. The project was scrapped, but 150 models were still sold world-wide.
• Stats: Use the allosaurus statblock from the Fossilized Violence DLC, but make the following changes:
  • It has a Tsunami Arms Helix, autoloader (so it automatically reloads without needing the Mecha-Gorilla to use its Actions), and a +14 to Autofire
  • Armor for both locations is boosted to SP 15 (Augmented Gorilla Hide)

Hey y'all!

Quick question: how do you use the CEMK? Have you been using it to introduce more new players to the game, or have you used it to run your existing group in the 2070's?

I know for most folks it'll be "both," but if that's the case, I'd love to hear if you lean one way or the other.

Thanks!

As we all know, the 2070's chooms have their cyber more wide open than a Denny's at 2am. In fact, in 2077, we hear tell of neuroviruses. We don't have much information on them except that they appear to be some kind of combination data / biological disease that can mess with someone a bit.

I'd like to create a neurovirus threat in my Night City. It would start up around the late 2060's, when Neuroports have really taken off but their security flaws are just becoming glaringly apparent.

>What Is The Murder Plague?

The Murder Plague is a particularly insidious neurovirus, likely coded by scavs or former Bozos. It is almost undetectable on a regular scan, but it aggressively spreads to anyone or anything that an infected host connects to. Holocalls, interface plug connections, shards, infected terminals, all are vectors of transmission.

The Murder Plague is asymptomatic (but highly contagious!) for the first five days, focusing on slowly working its way to the bottom floor of its host's NeuroPort. If it cannot do so while remaining undetected (Self-ICE, etc.), it deletes itself. But for those individuals it can get to, it begins spiking cortisol levels, causing adrenaline releases, and generally damaging the host's ability to remain calm. As the host gradually loses their mind, becoming cyberpsycho, the Murder Plague sends them on a killing spree, especially targeting the host's loved ones at first, then causing random acts of mayhem.

>Murder Plague Rules

Anyone exposed to the Murder Plague must succeed on a DV13 Cybertech check or become infected. Once infected, anyone they connect to via Neuroport (interface plugs, holocalls, etc.) become infected as well. Any interfaces (dataterms, etc.) that they link to now are also infected.

Over the next five days, at the start of each day, the infected character must make a DV11 Concentration check, with the DV increasing by 1 for each failed Concentration check. If the character succeeds at three of the five, the Murder Plague is removed and they are no longer infected or contagious. This does not confer immunity against future infections.

If they cannot remove the Murder Plague, the Plague corrupts their Neuroport and will begin affecting their behavior. Each day after the Plague has corrupted the character's Neuroport, the infected character must succeed at a DV 19 Resist Torture / Drugs check or lose 4d6 Humanity. That day, they will have an episode (lasting up to an hour) of rage. The less Humanity they have left, the more intense the rage. The GM runs the infected character during these episodes.

If the infected character's Humanity reaches zero, they become a violent cyberpsycho, intent on killing the people they cared about the most.

A MedTech can remove the Murder Plague with a DV 15 Surgery or a DV 21 Cybertech check, but on a natural 1, they are infected by their patient. Those who know about the Murder Plague will recognize when they are exposed to it, and have a +2 to all Cybertech and Concentration checks made to resist the Murder Plague.

***END***

Thoughts? Looking for something that's more "really dangerous, even to the well-prepared" than "zombie apocalypse."

Got to thinking - why is there no martial art for Netrunners to battle in Netspace? This is my (probably very dumb and bad) idea for implementing that.

Net-Fu

Cyberfists of Fury

Requirements: INT 8 or higher, WILL 8 or higher

When Jacked In to a NetArch and targeting a Netrunner, make a Martial Arts Special Move Resolution as a NET action against your enemy's Evasion check. If you succeed, you may inflict brain damage against your target as per the Martial Arts Damage table (p 179, Core Rules) but you substitute your Interface rank for BODY (so a rank 10 Netrunner inflicts 3d6 damage, while a rank 4 or lower Netrunner inflicts 1d6 damage). If you fail, your target can make one Zap attack against you as part of your Action. This can only be used once per round.

Never Let 'Em See You Bleed

Requirements: Interface 4 or higher

When you would take brain damage while Jacked In to a NetArch, you may attempt a Martial Arts Special Move Resolution against a DV 19. If you succeed, the damage is reduced to zero. This ability can only be used once per round.

***END****

Alright, wireheads - how bad is this?

EDIT: Clarified some language.

EDIT to the EDIT: Changed some language per feedback from u/viperianti and u/Reaver1280 - thanks, gents!