Thor's Day trope! - Cyberpunk

As a writer for the upcoming Interface Zero 2.0. I find I'm thinking more about Cyberpunk now than I ever have. Which is cool, because I still remember my first encounter with Shadowrun, that Larry Elmore cover blew me away. Magic and high technology, I was smitten right away, I couldn't wait for our world to get to this point, now I'm kind of afraid that it will. So Today's trope will be Cyberpunk. I ran a fun little playtest scenario called "The said it would be easy". Nothing in a cyberpunk setting is easy...It's dark, it's gritty, and altogether depressing. Interface Zero comes at Cyberpunk from the more transhumanist viewpoint. Simulacrums, Androids, Dubbing to the Deep, Full conversion Cyborgs, Hyper-Reality, and more.

AShowrun cover by Larry Elmore, I do not own this artwork, and make no claims to said artwork.

Some of the Art for Interface Zero 2.0...All artwork is copyright GunMetal Games.

So The trope from TVTropes.org says...(as always, check out TVTropes.org for the full list of references for the tropes, and how those tropes can help your game.) Although after looking it over it is missing some key titles. For one under Music, it doesn't list the Cyberpunk album by Billy Idol, which I have always liked...I'm one of the few.

Cyber Punk

"Transhumanism is about how technology will eventually help us overcome the problems that have, up until now, been endemic to human nature. Cyberpunk is about how technology won't."— Stephenls of RPG.Net, on the relation between transhumanism and cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a Speculative Fiction genre centered around the transformative effects of advanced science, information technology, computers and networks ("cyber") coupled with a breakdown or radical change in the social order ("punk"). A genre that is dark and cynical in tone, it borrows elements from Film Noir, hard-boiled Detective Fiction and postmodern deconstruction to describe the Dystopian side of an electronic society.

The plot will more than likely take place Twenty Minutes into the Future in some City Noir, Industrial Ghetto or Crapsack World that tends to be marked by crime, cultural nihilism and bad weather, where cutting-edge technology only ends up being used by everyone for the sake of selfish profit and pleasure ("the street finds its own uses for things").

Heroes are often computer hackers or rebels, antiheroes almost to a man. These characters — "criminals, outcasts, visionaries, dissenters and misfits" — call to mind the private eye of detective fiction. This emphasis on the misfits and the malcontents is the "punk" component of cyberpunk. On the other hand, major villains are almost inevitably Police States or multinational conglomerates led by powerful businessmen with a number of gun-toting Mooks and corrupt politicians (or even an entire nation) at their beck and call.

If the work dates from The Eighties, there's a good chance that there will be a theme of East Asian economic dominance, with the evil corporations being sinister zaibatsu (possibly masterminded behind the scenes by yakuza) and Asian-sounding brand-names liberally scattered around. Many anime have at least a hint, perhaps due to the fact that Japan is closer to actually being cyberpunk, and many animators are interested or critical about Japanese consumerism. Examples from the Turn of the Millennium and beyond are likely to swap Japan out for China.

Expect the scientific philosophy of transhumanism to be a feature, what with Artificial Limbs and cable jacks in the skull that allow access to artificial realities. Artificial intelligences and artificial humans (sometimes corrupted) are everywhere, while Everything Is Online. This leads to a theme of "loss of distinction between real and artificial" on which philosophical and existential conflicts about transhumanism can arise, such as questions on the nature of identity and "What Measure Is a Non-Human?."

The genre's vision of a troubled future is often called the antithesis of the generally utopian visions of the future popular in the 1940s and 1950s, but keep in mind that it is not a term that should be applied to every Speculative Fiction dystopia or Bad Future ever in the history of the genre, and does not need to always have an anvilicious Science Is Bad message to it.
See Cyberpunk Tropes and SoYouWantTo.Write A Cyberpunk Story for Cyberpunk's characteristic tropes and what sets it apart from other dystopias. The story may fall on the Romanticism end of the Romanticism Versus Enlightenment scale.

Not to be confused with the roleplaying game Cyberpunk

As a movement, it was the successor in some sense to the New Wave Science Fiction movement of the sixties and seventies. Related to Post Cyber Punk and Cyber Goth. Of course, several works fit on a continuum between the two tropes. See also Cyberspace, Dungeon Punk, Punk Punk. Compare also with Steam Punk, which shares some similarities with cyberpunk. See also Neo Africa. 

Thor's Day Trope - Post Apocalyptic

After the End

The End Of The World

Of course, with out development of the Gamma Crawl Classics idea, I'll be talking about post-apocalyptic tropes.

Post-Apoc has had lots of great games, Gamma World being the most well-known, followed by Deadlands Hell on Earth, and the amazing yet less well known Atomic Highway. Car Wars is post-apocalyptic as well, based upon Mad Max of course. WarLands is a great miniature game set in a Post-Apocalyptic world. My personal favorite is Rifts for setting.

Post Apoc is my favorite type of game, it not only has wide open variety of encounters from mutations, but it can be an effort just to find enough to eat, and keep yourself well-armed. Exploration of high-tech sites is always fun as well. Rifts takes it a step further and brings supernatural elements into the game, from magic to demons, to the rise of Atlantis. Rifts has EVERYTHING, except a system which is fun to run. (Ran it once, when I figured out that I had to track 700 MDC on a Robotech mecha that I used to bring the characters into the game, I realized I didn't like that so much...Also 1 MDC destroying a 10,000 SDC building...)

I'm a huge fan of the Fallout line of video games, and now I'm playing Borderlands (first one).

Anyway, back to writing....Enjoy checking out the tropes!! Lots of fun stuff on those links.

Thor's Day Trope #2 - PLUNDER

So one of the fun things about doing this specific series of articles is actually exploring TVTropes.com and then thinking about how to implement a specific trope into gaming. Since I'm working on the Interface Zero 2.0 Equipment chapter, and starting design work for the Gamma Crawl Classics equipment section, I think I'll cover the Trope of Plunder. Tonight it's just rambling as type what comes to mind, so please excuse me. not a lot of time tonight (had to go to the kid's High School Orientation....thing....not really an orientation, more of a "start thinking about extra-curricular stuff display, for when the kids come here in August" thing.)

From TV Tropes.org

"The Heroes may be saving a Distressed Damsel. They may be fighting against The Empire. Being a hero is a hard job. But it has its perks. And one of the biggest is...
PLUNDER!*

Yes, indeed even our heroes need something to satisfy their sense of mischief and avarice. They need to take joy in depriving their foes. For our heroes make money the old fashioned way: they steal- wait- plunder it. When done by soldiers in a war, this is sometimes called "Spoils of War"^note However, the Geneva convention actually allows for soldiers taking anything necessary for warfare from the enemy. That is, you can plunder ammunition, guns and fuel (as it allows you to keep on fighting and prevents the enemy from doing so) but you can't steal someone's watch, food or valuables, for example.

Within games, it is like Experience Points (and commonly both used, as well) - a reward from defeating your enemies. The difference may be generally more less certainty in what you may get from your enemies where with Experience Points, it is generally clearly aligned by certain parameters.

Related to this is Pirate Booty which is a treasure hoard gathered by pirates when they do this.

Compare Kleptomaniac Hero and Rewarding Vandalism, which are the video game equivalents of this trope. The villainous equivalent is Rape, Pillage, and Burn, where stolen property is not the only offense. As well, the common gaming term of this trope is "loot, lewt, or 13\/\/7"."

For hilarious and insightful examples of said Trope, visit their site. 

Now if you're a gamer you know how treasure hungry adventurers can be. And if you read the other tropes in the above quote, you get a good idea of the bad kind of treasure related rewards. If the enemy has a +2 dagger, well you just gave the group a +2 dagger, what the enemy has, the players will take and sell.

In old-school games, decent items were squirreled away in hidden places, as characters weren't expected to have access to "Ye Olde Magick Shoppe" in which to sell all their ill-gotten gains, nor were they expected to be able to throw gold at the GM and say "I make a +1 brilliant fire burst long sword". In published adventures, treasure could be had by mucking through the middens, or the otyugh's bed (a trash heap). A shiny sword might lay hidden in the depths of the well that the water weird was lairing in.

Plunder is really the reason for adventurers, one of the great things about Dungeon Crawl Classics, is that it is actually ALL ABOUT PLUNDER, Gold and Glory, winning it by sword and spell. But get too powerful and the gods will be jealous!!

Plunder is rampant in online games, you loot pretty much every monster in games like, Everquest and The Old Republic, and can even randomly get really good items off of 'yard trash'. Fallout is all about stealing people's stuff, aka, possession is 10/10th of the law.

Some games are good at plunder, or loot. Others are better at far ranging stories, FATE system is more about stories, DCC is about Loots, but also about the high strangeness of magic. Monty Haul is a trope I'll cover on another day.

I personally prefer the old school way of loot management. The game master puts the treasure in, the players discover it, they use it. I also like adding in valuables in a dungeon that are very expensive, but are possible trophies as well. A 20' tall tapestry hangs from the wall, well made, depicting a scene from history, possibly the history of a character in the group. In games where characters can't spend all their cash on upgrading their gear, they tend to decide they want a castle, or a manor house, start a town, attract some followers etc.

Whatever way you run your game you're going to run into Plunder. Decide how you want to do it, and which system works best with how you've decided. Don't run Pathfinder RAW if you want control over what your characters have. Though if you want, you can easily house rule all the item creation rules into oblivion.

Well this little speed of though session is at an end. I have design work to do.

Thor's Day Trope - The Quest

So starting a new series. TV Tropes for Role-Playing Games

Let's Start off with the biggest part of Role-Playing games...

The Quest

Obviously the two most popular "Quests" right now are
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, J. R. R./ Lee, Alan [Boxed Set] [3 U (Google Affiliate Ad)
and The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by Tolkien, J. R. R./ Lee, Alan [H (Google Affiliate Ad).

Tailoring a Quest in a Role-playing Game that is ACTUALLY meaningful can be difficult. The easiest way to get players to care about a quest is by the characters being real. Meaning they have family they care about. They have a home, they aren't just wandering adventurers. Wandering adventurers are driven by money. Being driven by money and more lootz is very Video Gamey. So having a home is important.

Have the characters all sit around and design the town they live in, tie them together. Are they childhood friends? What was their first significant loss in their life? Who trained them? Where did they get that sword they're carrying?

I remember one of the coolest things about Dane in City of Towers was that he had the his sword from Cyre, with the crest on it, his only real link to his past from the destroyed nation. It was important because it reminded him of what he had lost. But it also marked him as a "mourner" so he kept the pommel covered.

When characters are invested in their background, they are easy to motivate to a quest. A sibling stolen in the night by raiders might take them across the world, trying to recover and free their enslaved sibling. A dragon has been destroying nearby towns, the players must go on a quest to defeat the dragon or lose everything.

Don't be afraid to give players a base of operations, if it's just their parents house and farm, that's fine, it's a place to call home. It will give them access to some free gear as well, food, water, family. What happens to the town while the players are away? A group of orcs began raiding? Did the Caravan to Midnight steal all the children? A new Taxmaster came and began taxing the town of 90% of its wealth, with a group of corrupt guards?

Think about these things next time you start a Fantasy game...