Why you should take away your players' toys, reading articles on cyberpunk Options

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

[Mercer]

Even if loss wasn't a theme of cyberpunk (as well as, uh, everthing else), it'd still make sense to occasionally deprive the characters of their stuff. Because shit is temporary.

Its also worth noting that in all the examples of Cyber Cinema Classics about people losing their neat gear (all those examples I can think of, anyway), those character's still prevail. Dutch kills the predator. (Uh, spoiler.) Snake Plisken comes out on top, and on his own terms. Welcome to the human race.

Taking away a character's gear isn't just about making an interesting tactical challenge or highlighting a theme. Its about how creative thinking on the part of the players can always trump mechanical strength. We improvise, we adapt, we overcome.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

And I don't disagree with any of that.

I only disagree that, as the title of this thread suggests, "you should take away your players' toys" in order for your games to be cyberpunk (or more cyberpunk than without doing it).

[Critias]

So if the thread was called "why you shouldn't be afraid to take way your players' toys" instead, everyone would be smiling and hugging right now?

[ShadowDragon8685]

Sure we would. Don't be afraid of the DSMO w/narcojet "palm buzzer" in my hand that I pat you on the back with.

Also, my whole back is armored with a reactive ceramic armor.

[mfb]

[lorthazar]

In other words you are trying to be a Cyberpunk elitest. Well just got one thing to say to that. It's your opinion and your opinion and fifty bucks is worth fifty bucks.

[Mercer]

Actually, most of the movies covered in the Cyber Cinema Classics don't have cybernetics in them. Mad Max, Predator, Batman, The Crow, Escape from New York, The Professional, La Femme Nikita, and on and on and on. Cyberpunk has always been a fringe player and movies are by their nature pretty mainstream-- even independent films require a ton of money and the people who put up that money generally want some assurance people will end up paying to see the movie. My point here is just that its apparently pretty easy to have a cyberpunk story (or write 24 or so essays about cyberpunk movies) and involve relatively little cyber, by sticking to the themes.

I think its always tricky with implied settings. Take Yo-Jimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, and Last Man Standing. The first is a samurai movie, the second a western and the third a gangster film-- despite the fact they all have the same central storyline adapted or derived from either the same source material or each other.

[ Spoiler ]

A Fistful of Dollars was an unlicensed remake of Yo-Jimbo, substituting cowboys for samurai. Last Man Standing was a licensed remake, subbing gangsters for samurai. Yo-Jimbo was in fact an unlicensed adaptation of the Dashielle Hammett novel Red Harvest, which was actually about gangsters-- Last Man Standing however gives the "Story By" credit to Kurosawa. No real point here, just some more trivia. Miller's Crossing was a homage to Red Harvest, for those of you still interested.

You throw a cyberspur into The Man with No Name, and it's cyberpunk. (All of these protagonists do spend a key scene of the movie deprived of all gear, generally getting their ass beat in a cellar.)

It's interesting to note (maybe only to me) that in these movies, when the hero is deprived of his gear, we're generally only talking about an item or two. A gun (or a pair of guns), a katana and so on. Snake Plissken has five or six items in EFLA, that's probably the limit of what you're typical viewer is willing to keep track of. Even a character that has a "bag of tricks", I'd consider the bag a single item-- its just a plot device that says "I'm versatile.". My current SR character is what you'd call gear dependent (he is a 60k samurai), and my gear list is on notebook paper and its spilling over into two columns. For a gear heavy characer, we're generally talking pages of gear. Also, in the movies, typically any gun will work for Blondie, any sword will work for Yojimbo, but characters in games pay through the nose for their stuff. So admittedly, it is a bigger deal for a character in a game to lose something than it is in a book or a film.

But back to my original point that I was making in my head when I was thinking about this a little while ago. To me, cyberpunk is about a loss of control and a loss of humanity (like Johnny Mnemonic, who literally does not own the contents of his own head). The reason the characters lose their cool tech tends to be that its one of the things thats keeping them from being truly human. (Cyber tends to make them both more than human and less, and ulitmately its their humanity that's at stake.) As is pointed out in the Cyber Cinema essays, these protagonists tend to prevail by regressing.

The ugly truth of the role-playing experience is that though we talk a lot about themes and stories, the games have as much in common with wargames as they do with books and films. How your character thinks, feels and acts is narrative; whether your character lives or dies is tarted up Chainmail rules.

Mutants and Masterminds has an interesting take on gear, as a superhero game. Essentially, there is no gear, its all powers. Characters can't go out and buy a bulletproof vest-- or rather they can, but they still have to pay the points for the Armor Power. (Making it a vest that can be taken off or lost makes the power cheaper, but that's neither here nor there.) Also, I've only played a few games of M&M, but my friends are into it so if I'm getting the details wrong I apologize.

Because in game terms, that's what gear is; Powers. Armor is a defensive power, guns are an attack power, they're Powers you can go out and buy with in-game currency, Powers that are sold in stores, but they're still Powers. Sometimes characters will have to get through something without their powers, but they should generally get them back. Most of the time, lost gear is just tides of war. A character rat screws a Control Test and rolls his Eurocar Westwind into Puget Sound-- that's not my fault. (The character will be looking to replace his ride and there'll be some mechanical challenge to that, but its the cost of doing business.) If however I specifically design an encounter to deprive the characters of their gear-- like an EMP blast or something, assuming those still work on gear-- then they'll get it back at some point, either handwaved ("You replace all your gear, no problem.") or as part as an upgrade.

There was a good quote somewhere about this dynamic. Basically, you should give your players almost everything they want, and then put them through 1,000 Chinese Hells to get the rest of it. (It was gamer blog post called "How to Awesome Up Your Players", but I'm too tired to look it up.)

H.L. Puttgrass signing off and heading for the tub. (Bonus points for whomever gets that reference.)

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

[nezumi]

No one said cyberpunk does not or cannot share themes with other genres.

Secondly, cyberpunk brings in LOSS. If you know of a way to take gear without it feeling like a loss, I'm curious to hear what it is.

Now that isn't to say that the loss has to happen in game, in the back story or in the wrap up (although, this being an RPG we're discussing, we should probably focus on what happens in game), as long as the character feels a sense of loss. If a character plays a rigger with resources E, he's probably already feeling a pretty profound sense of loss, and stealing his dumpster, while funny, may not contribute so much to that. Nor does the thing lost need to be equipment or magical powers. NPCs or memories would make good sources for 'loss'. Reputation, settings... Anything that gives the character something that he feels he wants to strive to recover or make up (which is just about everything of value).

[Moon-Hawk]

[gknoy]

[Kyoto Kid]

[gknoy]

[mfb]

[Kyoto Kid]

[Adarael]

[Kagetenshi]

I think your suggestion isn't very cyberpunk because you imply that the hypothetical individual didn't kill the cop in a drug deal gone bad.

~J

[Mercer]

Never have anything in your life you can't walk away from in 30 seconds. (Apologies if I've mangled that quote.)

Typically, the things that happen in the stories are for the emotional consequences. There's not much emotional cost to losing gear, other than it can make the players mad.

For me as a player, I already think of gear as disposable. That's how I design my characters. But I have friends who think of gear as a part of the character, and so its a much bigger deal for them to lose their stuff than it is for me. (And this is related but not exclusive to characters like riggers and hackers, who are pretty gear dependent.) As a GM I can be pretty rough on gear, not because I'm out to get anybody, but just because gear is not up in the front of my brainpan. Its a tool, a tool for the job.

Personally, I like setting up hopeless situations for my characters. If you're going to give a character a reason to shadowrun, it probably shouldn't be something he can achieve on the 3rd mission.

[Adarael]

[Moon-Hawk]

That's better.

[mfb]

added cyberpunk: the drug deal actually went just as someone intended.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Mercer]

You may be misunderstanding me slightly. "Hopeless for my characters" means for the characters I play, not for the characters in my game. Bringing up a big "T" Theme of loss is pretty pointless if its just the GM trying to force it on the players for the same reason its pointless for the GM to try to force anything on the players; ultimately, the game is about what the players choose to care about.

The loss of one's humanity is an important theme in cyberpunk, however you choose to define the genre. And since I like playing cyberpunk characters and I like playing cyberpunk games (although ironically, not Cyberpunk), that's usually the jumping off point in my mind for the character. What has he lost, and what is he never getting back?

To that end, I can't think of anything a GM has done to me in SR that has been worse than the stuff I've done to myself. And I don't even mean the stuff like rat screwing a scatter roll and having the grenade land at my feet-- I mean the plot devices I've come up with myself and said, Wouldn't it be cool if my character got completely screwed by this!

[Kyoto Kid]

...ahh, thanks for the clarification. Yes it did seem when you mentioned about setting up hopeless situations for your characters I read it as you being the GM (I have heard other GMs speak that way about the PCs in their campaigns). As I have seen in the groups I have been with, that is fairly uncommon for players to do (as a GM though I have been known to be rough on my NPCs at times).

The only time I set up plot a PC of mine was when I pushed my little musical demolitionist Leela (yeah, yeah #15) on the path to retiring from the shadows and returning to the concert stage because the story behind it all was just too cool to not see play itself out.