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Bleeding Edge

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Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness

Hoffarth order 2454497


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Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.Science fiction was about man’s potential. Science fiction was about how man could reach out

and touch the stars. We could be better. We could be worse. All we needed was the technology.Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the same damn bastard he always

was, he’d have the same problems he always did, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. Inthose days, cyberpunk was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.

Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way. But the world did.Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and all it has done is made us more who wewere before.

Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.This book includes:• Themes and props for two styes of cyberpunk game: Tomorrow Country and Metaground• Orgn, Roe and Pugn Merts to add mechanca eements to your character’s background,

occupation, and technological implants• A new knd of Moraty: Aenaton

CreditsWrtten by: Russe BaeyInspred by Matera from: Stephen HerronSpecial Thanks to: Benjamin BaughWord of Darkness created by Mark Ren•HagenDeveloper: Eddy WebbEdtor: Geneveve PodeskArt Drector: Rchard ThomasBook Desgn: Ron ThompsonInterior Art: Brian LeBlancCover Art: Mathas Koros

© 2010 CCP hf. A rghts reserved. Reproducton wthout the wrtten permsson of the pubsher s expressy forbd-

den, except for the purposes of revews, and for bank character sheets, whch may be reproduced for persona use ony.

Whte Wof and Vampre the Requem are regstered trademarks of CCP hf. A rghts reserved. The Word of Darkness,

Vampre the Requem, Werewof the Forsaken, Mage the Awakenng, Promethean the Created, Changeng the Lost,

Hunter the Vg and Gest the Sn-Eaters are trademarks of CCP hf.

A rghts reserved. A characters, names, paces and text heren are copyrghted by CCP hf.

CCP North Amerca Inc. s a whoy owned subsdary of CCP hf.

This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction

and ntended for entertanment purposes ony. Ths book contans mature content. Reader dscreton s advsed.

Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com



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Bleeding Edge

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4 BLEEDINGEDGE-CYBERPUNKINTHEWORLDOFDARKNESS

Bleeding Edge:

Cyberpunk in theWorld of DarknessChapter Three

of World of Dark-ness: Mirrors kickedthe World of Dark-ness in the center mass,cracking it into threedifferent shards,three new Worlds ofDarkness. Originallywe planned on a sciencefiction section at thetime we were develop-ing it, but the conceptof sci-fi ended upbeing too broad, tooall-encompassing tocram in 15,000 words.But after the booklaunched, fans clam-o r e d f o r s c i - f iworlds for theirmonsters to exploreand terrorize.

So here s one ofthose Worlds ofFuture Darkness.

Think of this

as a missing sectionof Mirrors, a sliceof extra meat thatwe ve written fromthe ground up in thespirit of that book.You don t need Mir-rors to use this, butif you re familiarwith it, these pageswill feel like home.

Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.Science fiction was about man’s potential. Science fiction was about

how man could reach out and touch the stars. We could be better. We couldbe worse. All we needed was the technology.

Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the

same damn bastard he always was, he’d have the same problems he alwaysdid, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. In those days, cyberpunkwas arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.

Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way.But the world did. Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing andall it has done is made us more who we were before.

Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.And just like the World of Darkness, cyberpunk is about those people

who can’t qute hack t. Who grnd aganst the gears n the system: outsders,junkies, survivors and killers.

Enough with the Tough Talk As it turns out, cyberpunk destroyed science fiction the same way the

Sex Pstos destroyed rock and ro: artcuatey and furousy, fed up wth thesystem but more about tearing it down than flipping it off. Science fictionand fantasy were starting to diverge commercially, and the information agewas coming up fast. That the American future was something other thannuclear annihilation or a golden age filmed in Technicolor was getting prettyobvious. As Americans looked at Japan, they thought that just maybe thefuture would pass them by.

Cyberpunk’s defining novel is William Gibson’s Neuromancer, released

in a 1984 that distinctly and happily failed to be 1984. The biggest spectacleout of the Super Bowl that year wasn’t the game, but ads for two computercompanies that aired partway through. Neuromancer pushed in the samedirection. The novel establishes many of the conventions of the genre:criminal hackers, deadly mercenaries, artificial intelligences and the omni-presence of massive corporations along with their products and branding.In Neuromancer, no one s oca; the core characters are expatrates vngin Japan.

Neuromancer was foowed by two oose seques, further deveopngcomputers as metaphor for human memory. Its success ed to an exposon

Chapter Three of World

of Darkness: Mirrors kickedthe World of Darkness in thecenter mass, cracking it intothree different shards, threenew Worlds of Darkness.Originally we planned on ascience fiction section at thetime we were developing it,but the concept of sci-fi end-ed up being too broad, tooall-encompassing to cramin 15,000 words. But afterthe book launched, fans

clamored for sci-fi worlds for their monsters to exploreand terrorize.

So here’s one of those Worlds of Future Darkness.

Think of this as a miss-ing section of Mirrors, aslice of extra meat that we’ve

written from the ground up

in the spirit of that book. You don’t need Mirrors touse this, but if you’re famil-iar with it, these pages will

feel like home.

Bleeding Edge:




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5 HOWTOUSETHISBOOK

those up to the World of Darkness we know. As Gibsonwrote, the street finds its own uses for things.

How to Use this

Book Ths book expores how to create your own settngby blending core elements of cyberpunk with the Worldof Darkness and the Storytelling System. As with allWorld of Darkness products, and particularly Mirrors, it’sintended as a toolkit from which you’ll pick and chooseand bend and solder. DIY’s a big part of what makes punkwork, so you’ll want to cherry-pick our sounds to makeyour own wall of noise.

Given that, the rules here can be used either bythemselves or individually. We’ve provided a completeset of cyberpunk hacks, but the connections betweenthem are strictly optional.

There are two basic reasons to play cyberpunk, andthey’re not excusve. One s to harness the themes of cy-berpunk fiction. To play stories about high-tech lowlifes.To expore how enttes too bg for us to comprehendcome from people just like us.

The second is to play with the particulars of cyber-punk settings. Cyberspace, implanted glasses, megacor-porations, coffin hotels and girls with fingers like razors.We’ll call these the props.

Props change dependng on when and where you setyour game. A lot of media similar to cyberpunk barelyuses technology at all – think Mirror’s Edge or The Girl

with the Dragon Tattoo. If you’re into the themes, butnot so much the props, you might use the supernaturalin place of the scientific. The Seers of the Throne stepnto the roe of megacorp oficers, whe the Ordo Dracuperforms horrific augmentation surgeries on the blackmarket.

Alternatively, a props-heavy game might abandonentirely the conceit of being in the literal future, insteadbeng the future as envsoned n the 1980s. Maybe theworld took a hard left at New Wave Requiem and noth-ng’s ever been the same. Forget the wreess revouton,the dot-com bust, and even the bref ubquty of the faxmachine; instead, a post-World War III megalopolis isrun by drty corporate executves whe even drter (butsubstantay sexer) street samura rue the ower eves.This the retrofuture, and anybody who doesn’t like it getstheir throat slit with monofilament wire.

To illustrate different combinations of these cy-berpunk essentas, we’ bud two exampe settngs,notng throughout the text how the props and themesof cyberpunk fit into each.

in cyberpunk publishing. Bruce Sterling’s 1988 novelIslands in the Net follows a public relations agent turneddiplomat across a world on fire.

The same year, wrter/drector Katsuhro Otomoreleased Akira. Akira combined a post-apocalypticbackstory with a story of young gang members in a To-kyo rebuilt to several times its original size and density.

Although the film’s bookend apocalypses and effectiveauthoritarian governments depart from American cyber-punk, Akira’s Neo-Tokyo nas the look, something whichhad ony been suggested n passng by Rdey Scott’s 1982sci-fi noir detective film Blade Runner.

Japanese fiction would continue to contribute tothe development and aesthetics of cyberpunk. Gibson,Sterling and others had looked to Japan for aestheticnspraton from very eary on. The North Amercanfascination with Japanese industry and technology likelycontributed to the prominence of Japanese settings andcorporations in Neuromancer. In 1989, Masamune Sh-

row began publishing Ghost in the Shell. Where Gibson’scyberpunk drew heavily on detective and crime fiction,Shirow married it to the police story.

By 1992, when science fiction was beginning tochange drecton, Nea Stephenson reeased Snow Crash.Snow Crash was rooted in the cyberpunk tradition evenas it caricatured it. As with Gibson and Sterling’s 1990novel, The Difference Engine, Snow Crash proposes thatthe effects of information technology—as well as thewill to repurpose it—aren’t limited to the future or eventhe modern day.

By this time, cyberpunk gaming had kicked off Cy-berpunk 2013 and the magic-meet-cyberware Shadowrun

were both hits. In 1991, Vampire: The Masquerade ntroduced Gothc-Punk, substtutng an ancent con-spiracy of monsters for totalitarian governments andmegacorporations. The early years of Vampire playedstrongly on cyberpunk aesthetics, from worldview all theway to art and fashion. White Wolf’s official magazineeven proposed integrating the Cyberpunk roleplayinggame with The Masquerade, publishing three columnsunder the banner “A Word of Future Darkness.” As theWorld of Darkness grew, though, the present and thepast became more than enough to occupy White Wolf.The future of the World of Darkness, near or far, was

never expored agan.Until now.The modern World of Darkness incorporates many

kinds of horror, from the gothic and Lovecraftian tothe hyper-real and psychological. Likewise, a cyberpunkWorld of Darkness draws from the hardboiled hackers of

Neuromancer, the acton-move post-cyberpunk of NeaStephenson’s Snow Crash and the Japanese cyberpunkof Ghost in the Shell. We’ll strip them for parts and wire



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TomorrowCountry

“I see the tissue’s growing in nicely, Ms. Leopold. Now, have you considered what youmight be able to see with some of our eyes?”

- Dr. Frank Nicholas

The leather’s synthetic, the music loud, and themost expressve physca medum s the ronc t-shrt.There are metal limbs, but they’re sleek, surfaced inbrushed steel and no longer shamefacedly followingorganic design. The buildings are taller, the cities big-ger, names ke New York and Washngton referrng tourban cores connected by a sprawl of endless suburbs.The wealthy keep themselves apart, like always, but eventheir enclaves are embedded among the poor. Air travel’sdenser, but not ubqutous, and commerca spacelght(the ony knd there st s) s drven many by upkeepof the ever-denser web of satellites.

This is the world on the day after tomorrow, orhowever many days t takes to squeeze n popuatonexposons, budng booms, and economc crashes thatsomehow don’t slow down the march of computers andthe networks that use them.

Tomorrow Country doesn’t necessarily includevampires or werewolves. If they’re here, then humanhistory has apparently escaped their influence. Anythingsupernatural maintains the same distance from the mor-tal world as it does in the present day.

Metalground “Enjoying your little visit with us, Mr... what

was that? Count... Down? What kind of a nameis that, ‘Count Down’?”

- Explosion Victim

The monsters of the World of Darkness still lurk inthe shadows, but they’ve got company. The Authori-ties, masters of the city, rule from gleaming pyramids ofblack glass. Blood-cults and spirit-cults are as commonas trash in the city streets. The serious money, though,is in playing the Authorities against each other, stealingdata, equpment, and human resources.

Metaground approprates the props of eary cyber-punk in both fiction and gaming, as well as the actionaesthetics of everything from Snow Crash to Akira. Shad-owy agents wth ptch-back auras recrut mxed teamsof monsters, hunters and outcasts to fight both for andagainst the establishment.

SystemsCharacters

Our cyberpunk adaptaton adds new eements tocharacter creation. Characters now possess at least one

dot each n two Background Merts: Orgns and Roes.A character’s Orgn tes us where she came from, andhow connected she is to the people she grew up with.Her Roe s a set of specates she brngs to the group.You may choose to restrct the Background Merts ava-abe n your chronce; for exampe, your settng may notinclude Synthetics. Guidelines are provided for creatingnew ones.

Another new category of Merts s Pugns. Pugnsare high-tech gear or body modifications which supple-ment a character’s exstng Attrbutes and Sks nexchange for Wpower. They’re not aways as reabe

as classic flesh and blood, though, so special rules areprovided for the troubles that can arise from their use.Characters are no longer judged and broken on the

rack of Moraty. Instead, Aenaton measures therdrifting away, and occasionally back towards, the societythey were once a part of.

Fnay, payers te ther characters together throughLoyalty, a system that creates ties between the players’cast of characters. The Loyalty mechanics reward char-acters for helping—and betraying—each other.

Origins Merit: Origin (• to •••••)

Think back to your character’s childhood, heradolescence, her formative years. Did she grow up in aSyrian refugee camp on Cyprus, tiny hands clutching along nail to ward off those who would steal her food?Was she born to privilege, raised in a glass tower like afairytale princess, her only glimpse of the world outsidethe blur of headlights on the streets below? That’s herOrgn. If she’s mantaned tes to her past, she may beable to draw on people she knew then, or find alliesamong people like them.

• Survival Skills: The character learned more thana little growing up. How to find food, how to talk tough,maybe even how to shoot guns. She gains a free Specialtyn one of her Orgn’s Asset Sks.

•• Networking: The character understands peopleof a similar background, whether they’re from the samepace she was or just ve n smar condtons. Once perscene, when interacting with a person who shares herOrgn, she can use any Soca Sk as f she possesses arelevant Specialty.



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••• Vouchsafe: With sufficient ties to a commu-nity, the character is treated as if she’s still one of them.If it so happens that corporate security or the secretpolice come nosing around, members of that communitywill try to protect her... as long as it doesn’t put them intoo much danger. Characters who share the character’sOrgn gan a +3 bonus on Subterfuge ros to concea

information about her activities or whereabouts.•••• Clean Record: As far as the datasphere’s

concerned, the character still is who she used to be.She never joined that international terrorist group, ornever diverted her father’s money into her own crimi-na enterprses. Cean Record penazes any n-depthattempt to investigate the character’s history by thenumber of dots of Orgn she possesses. Quck searchesof public information or low-end intelligence databasesautomatically fail.

••••• Lifer: You can take the girl out of the glasstower, but you can’t take the tower out of the girl. The

character gains the benefit of the 8-again rule on rollsinvolving her Asset Skills. If she does not already haveSpecialties in both of her Asset Skills, she gains a freeSpecialty in that Skill.

Orgns foow ths format:

Origin NameQuote

Description: Exampes of the Orgn, suggestngwhere the character might be from, why she might haveleft, and how it might have influenced her.

Relationships: Types of characters she might still

have ties to.Asset Skills: Two Skills the character is likely to

have learned from her upbringing. At one dot, she gainsa free Specialty in one of these Skills.

Bridge and Tunnel“My folks do a lot of blow. You want, I could sell you

some.”

Even with urbanization being what it is, not ev-eryone lives in the city proper. The middle class arealmost as densely packed as the urban poor, but theylive in primarily residential communities, dotted with

community swimming pools and thoughtfully placedgreenery. Never mnd that the cracks are showng n thepools and the trees are becoming overgrown and just atiny bit threatening.

As a Bridge and Tunnel kid, a character spent mostof his time in regimented activities, bussed from hometo school and back again. He learned the basics: read-ing, math, and computers. Computers were probably his

major link to the world beyond his suburb, bringing inthe latest media and fashion from the outside world. Hisparents had a filter, of course, but either he knew how toturn t off or t ddn’t qute catch everythng.

He was curious about the city, and that’s where thebridges and the tunnels came in. When his parents wereout (assumng they were ever n), he’d wak a coupe of

miles to where public transit started to kick in. Hard toget to the good parts of the city, even that way—themajor transt nes don’t connect up qute rght, as fsomebody forgot to draw a line between the dots ormaybe ddn’t want certan knds of peope mxng. So hehoofed t over the cty ne, started to expore.

Maybe he spent hs tme among the tenements,and made the acquantance of one of those mysterousstrangers who aways start out frendy. Or perhaps, ashe got to know his way around the financial district,somebody asked him to deliver an odd-looking pack-age, for more than his allowance came to in a month.

(And n rea money, too, not company creds!) One wayor another, the city got its hooks into him, and he wasnever the same.

Relationships: Parents (ke them or don’t), Onnefrends, Gr next door

Asset Skills: Academics, Computers

Huddled Masses “Hard times growing up, yeah. Why I don’t take a

hard time from anybody.”

Most of the other casses know that not everybody’sgot ther own net connecton. Maybe they know that

not everybody’s got their own room, their own food. Yetthey don’t really give a thought to how many of thosepeople there are. How their numbers are growing. Howpissed they’ll be when they finally get to taste whatthey’ve were missing.

As one of the Hudded Masses, a character spentmost of her time trying to keep things together. Whethershe was raised in a refugee camp left over from the lastwar, or one of the sealed ghettos that dot Europe and

North Amerca’s major ctes, she was put to work young.Scavenging for food, doing menial labor, and... yeah, youdon’t want to know what else.

At some point, she found a phone, a slate, some kindof uplink. It was beat up, sure, but it still worked, andshe knew a place where she could charge it up withoutanybody seeing. She’d climb up the highest places sheknew, the ones she’d climb for fun when she was younger.Up there, she found the most precious thing she couldimagine: signal.

She found out about the outside world, alright.Learned that it wasn’t much nicer than where she grewup, but that it could be a hell of a lot more comfortable.

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Even once she got out, over the barbed wire or througha crack in the walls or just on a bus uptown, the streetswere mean. She knew how to deal with that, though.How to deal with people who thought they had some-thing over you. How to show them that they sure as helldidn’t. How to take what they had. How to not thinkabout home.

Relationships: Edery grandparent, Sbngs, For-mer gang-mate

Asset Skills: Survival, Streetwise

Isolated Elite“Wealth is nothing until spent, privilege worthless

until exploited.”

At least according to his later claims, he neverwent ower than the 33rd loor. Shops, f you care, buthardly one of the malls or Supermarkets of commonexperence. He never pad for anythng there. It wasa charged automatcay to hs father’s account. On

the rare occasion a clerk checked his card, the picturesof all of the family members authorized to use it wouldflicker by on the register screen. That was the most heever saw of them.

He had a sister, maybe a brother, maybe even both,but they occupied different wings of the house. Ser-vants, mostly mechanical ones, brought him up. Theytaught him history, finance, his family’s glorious history.Sometimes they even talked about Jesus, who died forhis fellow man—an almost entirely incomprehensibleidea. Who was there who was like him?

Occasonay hs father woud stop by, back n the

city overnight and with, apparently, nothing better to do.He’d ask how his boy was doing, about his studies. Thevsts got more frequent, ater. The od man was takngan nterest n hm, f ony a vague one. One nght, hsfather asked him where he wanted to go to University.

The school he picked was hardly a populist institu-tion. The students were all wealthy, or in a few casesunutteraby brant. None were as weathy as hm,though, and that taught him something. It taught himthat he did indeed have fellow men, that he had friends,and that he had something they all wanted.

Drugs, sex, an assortment of vehces msused anddestroyed. None of t made hs father happy, but hsgrades certainly did. Turned out he wasn’t just one of thewealthy students; he was one of the brilliant ones. Aftergraduation there was graduate school, and after graduateschool there was a placement with his father’s firm.

Somewhere, though, between all of the obscene par-ties and the endless studying, he’d made a very differentknd of frend. One n a very dfferent knd of busnessthan his father, and who came to him with an absolutelyfascinating proposition.

Relationships: Estranged parent, Tenured professor,High-end dealer

Asset Skills: Academcs, Persuason

Synthetic“By your command... asshole.”

The common understanding is that synthetics don’thave childhoods. That’s wrong twice over. A syntheticbrain is built by modeling a human one. And while allof the tissue and the transmitters and the autonomicfunctions can be imitated, no one’s yet found a way toscan the data in a human brain directly into a syntheticone.

The engineers who designed the character startedwith the model brain. There were failures, there wereadjustments, and finally there was the breakthrough,the moment when it became identifiably human. Themoment they hooked it up to a mouth and it startedto cry.

After that, she went through years of training.Graduations to increasingly sophisticated bodies, withincreasingly wide emulation of human function. Shelived in a small white room, in a building full of wide,whte corrdors. She was fed (they modeed that, too—turns out boogca systems are remarkaby good bases),she was clothed. She was never, though, under any illu-sion that she was free.

At the end of five years, her masters came to her andexpaned that she was gong to de. Her bran’s eec-tronic components were crude, and they were burningout the few organic ones. They told her that they were

ookng at the probem, that they’d ix t n the next ver-sion, certainly before she went to market. They told herthat, at this point, they were reasonably sure they couldextract her memores and experence. Before she had achance for that to sink in, they disconnected her.

So ended her first childhood.The second began when they made copies. They

forked her, branched her, merged her wth experencedumps from other models. She went through generationsof tranng. Nurse, chef, prosttute, soder. So many df -ferent versions. She wowed the investors, and she wasbrought to market.

Hundreds of her. Shipped all over the world, to theends of the earth and even beyond. At some point, therewas a shppng accdent. One of her found hersef unat-tended in an airport, and managed to steal someone’sluggage and make it onto the streets.

She’s free, now, but she wonders sometimes... didthey ever ix the bran?

Relationships: Unlikely mentor, Black market synthdoctor, Ghost of an unsuccessful merge

Asset Skills: Empathy, Subterfuge



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Outworlder“You ever seen the moon? No, don’t worry, there

ain’t much to see.”

His parents bought the line—a new life in thecolonies—and they got one. Salt of the Earth, they were,but they got sewn in the fields of a cold, bad place. Heburied them there and joined the service.

He never saw action—those clips on the net areabout as long as a battle in space even lasts. You get onechance, one sweet spot when the positions and velocitiesand all those little mathematical details match up. Andthe computer launches, and you pray that the other guydidn’t have the same sweet spot. ‘Course, if he did, youwouldn’t get time to pray.

He re-upped twice, then was discharged. He says

it was honorable, and there’s no reason to argue. Theservice did right by him, not only gave him a ticket toEarth, but spent a year rebuilding his muscles and bonesso he could actually live there. They can’t do anythingabout the fact that it smells wrong, but, hell, you canonly ask for so many miracles.

There are legitimate opportunities for a man outof the service, and he found one, scheduling departuresand re-entries for one of the major carriers. He found a

sideline, though: servicemen want a lot of things thatain’t cheap outside orbit. He’d fudge the manifests, pullout a few pounds of unnecessary backup equpment, andsend it right up to them. They were very grateful.

That sort of a sideline only lasts until somebody fig-ures it out, but he got lucky. The somebody that figuredit out had a use for a guy like him.

Relationships: Distant relative, Service buddy,Smuggler

Asset Skills: Science, Athletics

Roles Merit: Role (• to •••••)

What does your character bring to the group? Can

she talk her way past security guards, or does she just turnoff their cameras? Is she good at finding dirty secrets?

• I Know a Guy: The character’s made some usefulacquantances n the course of her work. A coeague, alover, or just someone to trade favors with. The charac-ter receves one free dot of the Aes Mert (World ofDarkness, p.115).

In addton, Pugns nvovng her Asset Sks costony New Dots x 1. (If you’re not usng Pugns, the

CHARACTERROLES



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character receives a free Skill Specialty, as with the firstdot of Orgn.)

•• Professional: The character is respected in herfield. She’s killed or hacked a few high-profile targets, orperhaps turned up a secret that bloomed into a scandal.Once per scene, when nteractng wth someone n arelated field, she may make a Social roll as if she possesses

a reevant specaty. (Note that ths s sghty broaderthan the Orgn abty Networkng or the Roe abtyTough Rep, whch requre a shared Orgn.)

••• Tough Rep: Not ony s the character respect-ed, she’s feared. Those n the same Roe are reuctant tocross her. Once per sesson, she may choose to automat-cally succeed on an Intimidate roll against someone whoshares her Roe. Ths counts as one success.

•••• Virtuoso: The character’s paid her dues, andshe’s almost at the top of her game. Literally or meta-phorically, she knows how to make a shot count. Whenspending a point of Willpower on one of her Asset Skills,

she also gains the benefit of the 8-again rule. This appliesto all of the dice in the pool; if the Willpower point wasspent n conjuncton wth a Pugn, 8-agan appes tothose dice, as well.

••••• Master: At the top of her game, the char-acter knows how to leverage not only her Asset Skills,but other abtes that come n handy on the job. Onceper session, she may choose to automatically succeed ata task reated to her Roe. Ths task does not have toinvolve one of her Asset Skills, but must be in the serviceof her Roe. For exampe, a Hacker coudn’t choose toautomatcay succeed on a Strength + Athetcs ro,unless this was somehow related to hacking. This counts

as one success.

Do Storyteller characters

have Backgrounds?We’re assuming here that all characters have

Origins, but that only some will have Roles. Bridge

and Tunnel, Huddled Masses, and Isolated Elite

cover most characters in the modern World of

Darkness, if you squint a little, and they should

work in the future, too. Synthetic and Outworlderare a bit more specialized for particular settings,

but are still fairly broad. Since everybody’s got an

Origin, Origin abilities are designed to be widely

applicable.

A Role is a fairly specic area of expertise. Roles

are designed mostly for characters owned by

players, although they make thematic sense for a

lot of Storyteller characters. If a Storyteller char-

acter naturally ts into a role then, sure, add it like

any other Merit.

The main thing to keep an eye on is Tough Rep.

If Storyteller characters never have Roles, it’s not

very useful. In that case, either eyeball it (“well,

he’s a hit man, so he’s probably heard of your

Killer”) or allow an Asset Skill to be used in place

of Intimidate once per session.

Storyteller characters shouldn’t use per-session

abilities if they only appear in one or two scenes.

A recurring antagonist using Tough Rep to

Intimidate a character could be fun, but if a room

full of low-ranking Soldiers spam it, it gets a little

silly. The usual storytelling rule of “if it would feel

dumb, don’t do it,” applies as usual.

Roes foow ths format:

Role NameQuote

Description: Exampes of how a character indshersef n ths Roe, and what she exces at.

Relationships: Types of characters she might haveformed ties to.

Asset Skills: Two Skills the character uses in her work.Pugns nvovng these Sks cost ony New Dots x 1.

Face“Really? Your work is fascinating... why don’t you

tell me a little more about it?”

When most characters are trying to get away withsomething, the last thing they want to do is show theirface.

For the Face, though, brght eyes and an open ex-pression are his best ways out of trouble. Sometimes, theFace s a egtmate authorty, somebody wth weath, orfame, or a very impressive title. Just as often, though?He’s only pretending to have those things. In a worldwhere the machines know who you are and can evenguess at what you want, the Face targets the humanelement. Dazzles them, confuses them, makes promises

that make them swoon. If he doesn’t deliver, well, theyshould be grateful for that moment of magic he gavethem, anyway.

• Celebrity: Celebrities come from all walks of life,in all shapes and sizes. Some of them come out of thetraditional entertainment business, promoted by teamsof trained professionals and surrounded by entouragespcked out to make them shne. Others, though, rse fromthe network like Venus on the half-shell, stars of media



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cps gone vra. Whatever the case, Ceebrty Faces usefame to do things other people aren’t allowed to. Bizarreand even ega behavor s toerated and expected fromcelebrities, even more so if they’ll just sign here...

• Executive: Rsng through the corporate rankssn’t easy. Most peope get bogged down tryng to unravethe business, the politics, even the corporate hierarchy.

The Executve bypassed a that. When he was younger,he knew just when to sme, just when to say “yes, sr,”and if he didn’t plan too far ahead, it was because hewas aways focused on that next promoton. Now, wthauthority of his own, he knows when to make deals,when to break them, and most especially when to ask hissubordnates for just a tte bt extra. That hs authortycomes from someplace unimaginably high above him onthe corporate ladder doesn’t make a difference—it’s beeninvested in him, and he knows just how to apply it.

• Grifter: So people know the Celebrity’s name? Sowhat? Lots of people know the Grifter’s name, too. Well,

one of his names, at least, associated with one of his manyoh-so-cleverly suggested plans. The Grifter’s spent a lotof time getting the wrong end of the deal. Long enoughthat he knows how to fake it, knows how to convincesomebody that, really, he’s taking a bath on this, but ifthey just stick together, they’ll come out rich.

Relationships: Retred mentor, Btter peer, Armcandy

Asset SkillsAll: SocializeCelebrity: ExpressonExecutive: PersuasonGrifter: Subterfuge

Hacker“You don’t get anything out of the system that you

don’t put in. The trick’s knowing what to put in.”

The network is a system. Business is a system. Cit-ies, worlds—all systems. They’re systems designed toregulate, to control, to make sure power flows smoothlyfrom the masters on down to the peons. Unless that peonhappens to be a hacker. Hackers know how to makesystems work for them.

Hacking’s not just messing around with computers.To be sure, high-tech know-how helps out. The key,though, is understanding how all the moving parts moveeach other, and which ones can be moved in ways thesystem architects never intended. Systems build uponsystems. They’re connected to each other, but the inte-gration’s never perfect. There are always cracks, and theHacker knows how to widen them.

• Cowboy: The classic hacker, the late night coder,the fiberoptic girl. She probably got her start as a scriptkiddie, breaking into computers using other people’s

programs. She won’t admit that now, though, and do youreally want to piss her off? After all, she steals people’sidentities when she’s bored, uses corp surveillance sys-tems to find out how soon her pizza’s going to get here,and, when she’s actually on a goddamn job, when yourass is in the fire and she’s got to pull it out, has beenknown to hijack everything from defense turrets to armed

UAVs. Yeah, you should probably be polite.• Infiltrator: St down and watch for a whe. Peope

come, people go. Some of them through one gate, somethrough another. The Initrator’s watchng, too. Rec-ognzng the patterns, earnng the expected behavors,seeing which window’s just a few degrees out of the rangeof the cameras. When she’s good and ready, she’ll slip rightn. Past the guards, past the gates, and wth maybe a ttehep from a Cowboy or a we-paced Executve, rght ntothe heart of the operation. When you need to get in, getout, and not get seen, you hire an Infiltrator.

• Mother: Sometimes you need the big picture.

It’s not just enough to know how the markets work orthe surveance systems or the qurks of oca detentonlaws... you need to know everything. You need a voicen your ear who can answer every queston and hep youpck your next move. You need Mother. Mother can bea little cranky, especially when you don’t do it her way,but her way was probably best to begin with. You makeyour pan. Pannng’s good. But you’d better have Motherto turn to when your plan meets reality.

Relationships: Hacker group, Favorte deveryperson, Faceess rva

Asset SkillsAll: Subterfuge

Cowboy: ComputersInfiltrator: StealthMother: Academics

HackingThe World of Darkness has rules for computer

hacking on page 58. We’ve chosen not to present

a new system here because the existing system

already provides for hacking as an extended con-

test. Those rules work well spaced across scenesor combat rounds, allowing a hacker to shine

without interrupting the ow of the story for

other characters. If you’d rather a more detailed

system, consider adapting the Social Combat sys-

tem from Mirrors or the Mental Combat system

from the upcoming Vampire book The Danse

Macabre.

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Killer“...”

There is a time in every plan, no matter how simple,no matter how grand, when someone will have to die.The Ker, then, s not an aberraton. Not a psycho. Justa man performing a function eventually necessary in all

activities, whether noble or savage. He doesn’t need totalk tough, but he’s often willing to talk shop. He takespride, if not in murder specifically, then at least in hisprofessional capacity to commit it. It’s hard to guess whyhe does it... but then, you don’t really want to ask himif you guessed right.

• Ronin: The Ronn’s got a sad story, but he doesn’twant to tell it. He’s a street samurai, or a desperado, orwhatever you want to call a relic of a bygone age whenbravos swaggered down the street instead of huddlinglike old ladies under silly lighted umbrellas. He’s got astrong code of conduct, but it’s not morality, not really.

Not even phosophy. Reay, t’s a way of dong thngs.Hs methods are lexbe—buets, garrotes, even, onone very unexpected occason, an actua sword—buths approach s aways the same. Enter wth maxmumirepower, execute wth extreme precson.

• Soldier: Lke the Ronn, the Soder s a profes-sona ker. Unke the Ronn, he was taught n asophisticated training program designed to produce themost dependable, unbeatable badass that a human beingor anythng approxmatng one can be. That programwas also supposed to indoctrinate him into the idealsof the State or the Company or the Church, creating aman who was loyal and tireless, who would crawl across

the Mnneapos crater on hs hands and knees wthoutfood and water just to make sure the right bullets gotput in the right heads. That almost worked. Either theyhaven’t qute gotten the oyaty tranng workng orsomebody got jeaous and drummed hm out. Now he,hs tactca experence, and hs uncanny abty to wakout of a firestorm are for hire.

• Security: Kng’s a we and good. Or at eastwell. Some operations don’t call for that, though. Some-times you need people subdued, or diverted, or just plainkept away. That’s what Security’s for. He used to be a copor a corporate bodyguard. Maybe he st s. At the very

least, though, he’s moonlighting as the guy who keepsundesirables away from your operation.

Relationships: Former teammate, Dead ex-over,Equpment supper

Asset SkillsAll: FrearmsRonin: WeaponrySoldier: SurvivalSecurity: Brawl

Courier“I don’t care what’s in the package. I just want to

know how many of those fucking Turks on those fuckingscooters are going to be in my way.”

Getting a package from point A to point B doesn’tseem glamorous. It doesn’t seem dangerous. It doesn’t

even seem that hard. Believe it, though, if that were thecase, the Courier would have had a much better day, butshe would not have that very pretty boy on her arm orthat very expensve drnk n her hand.

In a world of digital transactions and transmissions,physical media is almost obsolete. Almost. That razor’sedge is the one the Courier shaves with. She moves data,packages, people. The value of these things is irrelevant.She doesn’t bill based on the value of the cargo. Shebills based on how many people are going to try and killher on the way.

• Mercenary: A well-armed society is a polite so-cety. The Mercenary Courer can’t do anythng aboutthat, but being well-armed makes people more polite toher... or at east shuts them up. The Mercenary takes onheavier jobs. Sometimes that means heavier items, thekind that slow her down and make her more vulnerableto interference. Sometimes it means heavier resistance,like if she’s picking up the package from somebody whodoesn’t want to send it. And sometimes, pretty muchas often as she can justify, it means heavier backup andmost especially heavier firepower.

• Low-Tech: The world is a sophisticated place, butit’s a very particular type of sophistication. The kind ofsophistication that builds high walls, dense roadblocks

and smartguns that watch the streets. The Low-TechCourier gets around this her own way. With little morethan a satchel and the lightest-weight polymer-soledshoes money can buy, the Low-Tech Courier can ditchher ride at a moment’s notice and take flight up fireescapes, across rooftops, and even, for a few gloriousseconds, right along sheer walls.

• Subversive: Potcs can be a drty word, and t’snot one you’re likely to hear the Subversive Courierusing. Serving underground political interests, and occa-sionally even believing in them, the Subversive eschewsthe focus on speed and physical protection used by other

Couriers and puts her focus on coming and going unno-ticed. She’s the one who carries analog tapes betweenrevolutionaries. Who shows up at black market clinicswth a bag fu of scapes and cean hypos. She’s quet,she’s cean, and she’s gone as qucky as she came.

Relationships: Racng rva, Trophy boyfrend,Underground dispatcher

Asset SkillsAll: Drive



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Independent: FrearmsLow-Tech: AthleticsSubversive: Stealth

Investigator“Yeah, you said that. But there’s just one thing I don’t

understand... why aren’t you scared yet?”

Culture has become archival, with virtually every-thing that everyone’s ever known recorded somewhere.Peope’s movements are tracked, ther actons aretracked, and even if no one’s paying attention to it,the data is there. It’s collected, categorized, distributed,backed up.

So the world has lots of data… maybe too much.Even with all that data, though, one thing remains elu-sive: the truth. The Investigator is driven, whether byduty or obsession, to find the truth. To learn the secrets ofthe guilty, to find spots on the spotless. To find the truthat whatever personal cost, and, sometimes, to bury it.

The truth must be found, but does it need to beknown?

• Official: The Ofica Investgator works for thegovernment, a corporation, or sometimes both. Hemay be attached to an attorney general’s staff, a policedepartment, or a corporate internal affairs unit. He’snot necessarily honest, but he is thorough, pursuing theorganization’s interests to the point that they becomehs own. Peope don’t aways cooperate, though, so f heneeds to, he can bring the full weight of the organizationdown on them. Peope know that, though, so usuay hedoesn’t need to.

• Private: The Prvate Investgator stens to peo-pe’s probems, and then asks them for a arge quanttyof money to solve them. He’s seen it all. In fact, he wasprobaby an Ofica Investgator unt he was drvenout or qut n dsgust. Now, he ooks for other peope’struths on his own terms. Sometimes, those terms aren’tvery nice at all.

• Voyeur: Not a Investgators need a case droppedonto their desk or laid out invitingly on their officecouch. Some do it just because they care, and of those,it’s usually because they care a little too much. Voyeursare driven to understand people’s problems and thesins that cause them, to turn over rocks and see whatscuttles out.

Relationships: Od fame, Frend on the force,Cowardly snitch

Asset SkillsAll: InvestigationOfficial: IntimidationPrivate: StreetwiseVoyeur: Empathy

On Creating and

Balancing BackgroundsSince all Origins and all Roles use a common

Merit progression, it’s easy to create new ones by

picking a set of appropriate Skills. There are one

or two special considerations, though.

For Origins, you want to make sure that the

concept applies to a large swath of your setting’s

population. The Networking and Vouchsafe abili-

ties presume that a character will run into people

with similar histories. These abilities, particularly

Networking, become increasingly valuable as she

becomes more Alienated from society as a whole.

“Once per session” abilities are balanced based

on an assumed session length of two to three

hours, ve to seven scenes, and a group of fourplayers. For longer sessions, or smaller groups, you

might consider making them available more often.

While we’re on the subject, let’s point out that

the Background rules substantially boost the

number of Skill Specialties in play. While this book

doesn’t introduce a new template like Vampire or

even Ghoul, these Specialties (along with 8-agains,

Plugins, Automatic Successes and bonuses from

Loyalty) make cyberpunk characters more effec-

tive than straight World of Darkness characters.

They’re not any tougher, though.

Plugins Merit: Plugin (• to •••••)

Pugns represent modicatons to a character’sbody or, n some cases, hgh tech externa gear. Theyenhance capabilities a character already possesses, orrepace abtes she acks. When buyng a Pugn, choosea partcuar Attrbute + Sk or Attrbute + Attrbute

pair to which it applies.Whe Pugns can push a character’s abtes be-

yond normal human limits, they usually don’t introduceentirely new ones.

For exampe, a character’s bran mght be modiedto improve her hand-eye coordination and ability tocompensate for kickback, environmental factors, andanything else a tiny math coprocessor embedded in yourmotor cortex can hep wth, a for the sake of makng

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her a better marksman. However, Pugns usuay won’tcross over into capacities humans entirely lack. Those

are the domain of supernatural powers.We keep sayng “usuay.” In order to gve Pugns a

different feel and area of usefulness than most powers inthe World of Darkness, we’ve focused, as with other me-chanics in this book, on improving skill rolls. Augmentedcharacters can perform better, but they can’t qute cheatnature in the ways that monsters can.

That said, there are some cases that skirt that line.An obvious one is built-in weapons. In the case of, let’s

say, a spike that stabs out of a character’s wrist, simplytreat the Pugn as Strength + Weaponry and adjudcate

as with any other kind of weapon. Do the same with agun-arm, but use Dexterty + Frearms.

Suppose, though, you want a character to be able tointerface with computers mentally? Since that doesn’tsignificantly cross over with supernatural powers, goahead and mpement t as Wts + Computers.

If you need a Pugn that emuates a specic super-natural power, it’s best to bypass this system at least inpart. If, for exampe, you want a Derma Chameeon



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15

Layer that approxmates Obfuscate’s Coak of Nght, youmay purchase the power at the same cost as a supernaturalcreature. If the cost is increased for not being a memberof a particular group, such as a vampire clan, use theincreased cost. However, you do not need to purchaseprevious powers, even if a supernatural creature of theappropriate type would. In the case of the Dermal Cha-

meeon Layer, the cost woud be 21 experence ponts. Ifthe power has an activation cost in supernatural energysuch as Vtae (whch Coak of Nght does not), pay thscost in Willpower.

Pugns adapted from supernatura powers are stsubject to Backfires and being Compromised, and Will-power is still given for these events.

Using PluginsA Pugn s actvated by spendng a Wpower

point. In addition to the three dice ordinarily grantedby spending the Willpower point, add activation diceequa to your character’s dots n the Pugn.

BackfiresPugns sometmes just don’t work. Sometmes theenemy has a countermeasure. Other tmes, a crcut bowsor a battery runs out. If you attempt to use a Pugn andthe Storyteller decides that it fails outright, your charac-ter receives a Willpower point as compensation.

CompromisedSometmes, a Pugn can become a fu-fedged

vunerabty. Your cybercortex gets hacked, the powercore in your replacement arm overheats, dealing lethaldamage, or so on. The Storyteller may invoke this effectonce per story. In exchange, the character’s Wpowerrefills completely.

Example Plugins Happy Place ••• or Memetic Filter •Pool: Resove + ComposureIn the arms race to harden information systems

against intrusion, one system lags behind the others. Thehuman mind remains the weak point in governmentsand corporations alike. And like any other informationsystem, an attacker with physical access is more danger-ous than any other. The so-caed “rubber hose” methodremains one of the most effective means of intrusion.Enter the Happy Pace, an mpant wthn the memory

centers of the brain.With only a few seconds thought, an individual

possessng a Happy Pace can eectrochemcay nducea sleep state and flood of intense, pleasant memories,rendering them virtually immune to intimidation andtorture. Even better, since the process involves artificialtssue grafts, removng a Happy Pace s more expensvethan implanting one. A group of interrogators suddenlypresented with a useless victim may opt to kill him…but at least he goes out happy.

The Memetc Fter s a dfferent technoogy wtha smar purpose. Usng a hgh-end expert system, theimplant filters sensory data against a database of undesir-able content. Think of it as SafeSearch for your eyeballs.The Fter not ony protects aganst coercve nput, butcan be used to avoid contamination by enemy ideas.Orgnay marketed as a corporate securty measure, t’s

now a favorte among next generaton zeaots.Example Backfire: An interrogator has an anesthesi-

oogst on hand to counter the effects of the Happy Pace,or media designed to undermine a character’s convictionswhile repeating only approved slogans.

Example Compromise: An image in a character’senvironment matches the trigger memory for the HappyPace. The Memetc Fter s manpuated nto screenngout important information.

Majordomo • or Interlay ••Pool: Wts + ComputerMajordomo s your frend. Majordomo s there when

people fail you. He’ll even help you when your memoryfas you. Majordomo keeps your persona nformaton,schedule and entertainment for you. Digitally insertedinto your immediate environment by high-end graphicsand audo technoogy (the same ones used by the en -tertanment ndustry), Majordomo presents a characterwth fuy conigurabe appearance and personaty. Ma-jordomo can be your personal secretary, your electronicboyfrend, or just your mora support. Majordomo: put-ting a friendly face on a confusing world.

The Interlay represents a major and recent advancein technology. Human beings have long had the abil-ity to connect biological systems to machines, but the

Interay goes a step further. Where Pugns ke the Ma-jordomo interface humans with computers by presentinginformation in a human-readable form, the Interlay goesthe other direction, reprogramming human intuition tocommunicate with computers.

A character’s Interlay uses her brain for what it’salready best at: pattern recognition. With an Interlayactivated, the user can understand multiple data streamsas easily as she picks voices out of a crowd or distinguishesobjects in a room. With relatively simple training, shecan also manipulate that data and feed it back into thesystem.

Example Backfire: Majordomo’s audo feed s ob-scured by noise in the environment. The Interlay isunable to find an open data connection.

Example Compromise: Majordomo dstracts thecharacter at a critical moment. A buffer overflow attackon the Interlay induces physical pain.

Pep Pads ••Pool: Dexterty + MedcneSometimes, you need to get someone back on their

feet in a hurry. He may be tired, he may be hurt, or his

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heart may even have stopped. Wth your ro of PepPads, that’s no probem! Just pee ‘em off and sap oneon. The subject gets an nvgoratng mx of synthetcendorphins and electric shocks that’ll have him backon his feet in no time.

Pep Pads were orgnay deveoped for mtary use,but they’re now avaabe to the pubc. The Pads package

a varety of quck resusctaton technques nto a sngedevce. Essentay a smart bandage wth an extra kck,the Pep Pad s standard equpment for ire and rescuecrews as well as hit men and urban commandos.

Example Backfire: Blood loss or dehydration preventseffectve dstrbuton of the Pep Pad’s drugs.

Example Compromise: The Pep Pad admnsters anelectric shock when not needed, inducing fibrillation.

SQUID •••••Pool: Integence + ComputersThe SQUID s a smpe weapon… ke a ist, or a

gun. Once a soder’s been traned to use t, he can carry

the palm-sized device into nearly any environment andnlct massve damage. The SQUID s a neary autono-mous automatic hacking device, introduced physicallyinto a hostile situation with the aim of bringing downall information systems in the area. The goal is to denyhostiles use of their networks during a frontal assault, butprvate enttes whch have access to mtary SQUIDsoften use them as the sole means of attack. Introducinga SQUID nto a cvan system such as a hospta cancause chaos and death as effectvey as an entre squadof armed agents.

Example Backfire: Target systems have been hard-ened aganst ths generaton of SQUID.

Example Compromise: An enemy hacker or SQUIDalters friendly systems so that they attract attacks by thecharacter’s SQUID.

AlienationIn a cyberpunk chronicle, characters are defined not

by their moral code or a set of supernatural bans. Whatmatters more is how close they are to the society aroundthem, and how able they are to identify and interact withthe ordinary members of that society. To represent this,we repace Moraty and smar trats wth Aenaton.

A character has a starting Alienation of seven, andhas basc tes to a communty, as we as a day job (egt-mate or otherwse). The character ves n an ordnaryway within the means provided by the Storyteller orther Resources ratng. As that number drops, and thecharacter becomes more alienated, she finds it more andmore difficult to interact with the world that, by herchoices, she is slowly leaving behind.

When a character makes a choice that pushes themfarther away from the organizations or people that arepart of their lives, they must make a Degeneration roll.If they fail the roll, they move one point down theAlienation scale.

Alienation Act

10 Altruistic thoughts9 Mnor atrustc act (charty), refusa

to identify oneself to an authority figure8 Injury to another (accdenta or

otherwse)7 Sabotage to an employer or patron

organization, petty theft6 Serious theft from an employer or

patron organization5 Betrayal of a Storyteller character

ally, intentional mass property damage4 Impassioned violent act not

sanctioned by an authority figure3 Panned voent act not sanctonedby an authority figure

2 Casua, caous voence (sera murder)1 Mass murder

The above table is only a guideline; the Storytellerjudges what actions further Alienate a character.

If a character commits an act with a lower Alien-ation rating than their current level, they must make aDegeneraton ro as per the Moraty rues n The Worldof Darkness core book (p.91), foowed, f necessary, bya Degeneraton check (p.92).

A character may not roll any Social dice pool largerthan her current Alienation score if attempting to affecta target wth a hgher Aenaton score. Dce from Pugnsare exempt from ths rue.

All You Need is KillSome groups, especially those whose cyber-

punk crosses into splatterpunk, may not want

to impose Social penalties as consequences for

acts of violence. While it’s a deviation from theconventional World of Darkness, and from many

of our cyberpunk models, deviating from the

usual patterns is what this book is all about. You

may simply want to omit violent crimes from the

Alienation ladder, effectively stabilizing characters

at Alienation 5.

Alternatively, you may want to remove Morality

and equivalent systems entirely. Go ahead, but



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Organzatons do not possess Intatve, Defense orSpeed.

How do corporations and clans use their Attributesand Skills, though? They don’t, not directly. They usethem through Storyteller characters that work for thatorganzaton. Once per scene, a non-payer member ofan organization may choose to do one of the following:

• Substtute Power for Integence, Strength orPresence.

• Substtute Fnesse for Wts, Dexterty or Ma-nipulation.

• Substtute Resence for Resove, Stamna orComposure.

• Substitute any Skill the organization possesses forthe equvaent Sk possessed by the character. Snce thecharacter is calling upon the organization’s resources, allnon-physical actions invoking this rule take at least onescene. Physca actons are assumed to represent standardtraining provided by the organization.

In addition, any character who is a member of anorganization may gain Willpower through acting on hisorganization’s Virtue or Vice. This ability may only beused once per scene, and gains through both Virtue andVice follow the rules for regaining Willpower throughVice in The World of Darkness core book.

Organzatons do not possess an Aenaton ratng,nor are they subject to Derangements. They do not possessMerts or Faws. They may not be the subject of supernaturapowers that affect single targets, although individual mem-bers may. In general, the only way for a supernatural powerto affect an organization is by affecting its members.

Organzatons may not be the hosts of sprts, but

they may have spirits, as we’ll discuss later.

Themes and Props Now that we’ve dscussed how cyberpunk characters can

be built in the Storytelling system, let’s take a look at the ele-ments of cyberpunk we broke down earlier. We’ll consider eachprop and theme on its own, and then consider how to apply itto the Tomorrow Country and Metaground settngs.

Themes Alienation

The protagonists of cyberpunk are outsiders. Theself as other is a theme cyberpunk shares with the Worldof Darkness. Embrace, Frst Change, Awakenng, aof these things push characters outside of mainstreamculture. As monsters, or at least strangers, they createparallel cultures and repurpose human needs and institu-tions for their own use.

ORGANIZATIONS

keep in mind that systems like Morality are a little

bit more than narrative measures of how a char-

acter’s behavior affects her state of mind—they’re

also a resource management mechanic that

encourages cautious, non-combat approaches to

problems. They can affect the availability of pow-

ers like blood sorcery. With the increased combat

abilities of many cyberpunk characters, you maywant to leave that mechanic in place.

LoyaltyTrust and betrayal are central to both cyberpunk

fiction and the World of Darkness. In order to bringthat slippery dynamic to the gaming table, we haveLoyalty. Loyalty measures the trust between the players’characters.

Distributing Loyalty is a group activity that takesplace once everyone has finished creating their charac-ters. Each player’s character has a Loyalty value for eachother player’s character. The player’s available Loyaltyponts are equa to her character’s Wpower.

When a character helps another character, the as-sisting character’s player adds his character’s Loyalty tothe assisted character to his roll. This is in addition toany cooperation bonuses.

When a character betrays another character, thebetrayng character’s payer receves a bonus equa to theLoyalty the betrayed character holds for his character.

At the end of any session in which a player makesa roll involving Loyalty, all players may reassign theircharacters’ Loyalty to each other’s characters.

OrganizationsWhether you’re going to sell out or rock out, the first

thng you need s The Man. In the cyberpunk Word ofDarkness, corporations are people. So are clans, covenants,tribes. They are the machine and your characters are part ofthe machine and they are going to be the part that breaks.

So how do we talk about these organizations?

Frst of a, everybody’s got a good and a bad sde,even when they’re not, strcty speakng, anybody. Pcka Virtue and Vice.

Organzatons have three Attrbutes: Power, F-nesse, and Resstance. Dvde 8 dots between theseAttributes.

Wpower s deined by the organzaton’s Power +Resstance. Organzatons aso have the standard Skst. Prortze them 11/7/4, as n standard charactercreation.



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Supernatural characters need to stay outside, or ateast beeve they do. Many can’t even mantan egaidentities, so they’re driven into whatever portion of the

economy still uses cash. Biometric identification justmakes matters worse.

The alternative is that the monsters bury themselvesin the system, behind layers of false identities and stolenbiographies. Characters with this kind of security mayeven be able to offer it to others, for a price.

Tomorrow Country Nobody beongs, but everybody thnks everybody

else does. While people have gotten used to the differ-ent texture of eectronc communcaton, enough thatit doesn’t actively bother them, they often use it towithdraw into themselves, to keep friends and family

members at a safe distance. Just like giving up liberty for security, giving up in-

timacy for security turns out to be a bad idea. Increasingnumbers of young people become literal shut-ins, inter-acting with the world outside only through computers.Even now, though, technology is stepping up to makethat easier. Sensory recordings are an infant technology,but they’re filtering down to the mass market. They’re

affordable, particularly to agoraphobic telecommuterswho don’t spend their money on much else.

Load up a sense clip and you’re dancing at a night

club too fabulous to be anything but a cleverly arrangedcomposte, skng down prstne sopes that don’t exstanymore, or havng sex wth a partner whose skn s softand warm and absolutely flawless.

None of these thngs fee quite right—the simula-tions don’t stimulate the senses with perfect accuracy,and the art of editing them is still evolving. Amateur clipsare available, unstaged, uncut and raw, but these oftenncude the parts of the experence no one wants to payfor. Slipping in beer on a nightclub floor, dense smog overthe mountans, or a sex partner’s atrocous breath.

Of the majorty who do make t out ther apartments

on a regular basis, many still try to engage with sanitizeddata more than their environment. They keep their eyeson the digital billboards, or master the trick of keepingone eye focused on the heads-up display in a contactlens while the other keeps up with the mundanities ofavoiding traffic or other pedestrians.

Humanity’s discomfort with other humans is cateredto in the most sophisticated ways possible.



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MetalgroundTechnoogy ddn’t push you out, peope dd. Peope

with power, people with money, people with less human-ity than any of the monsters you share the slums with.

The rich and powerful use what were once militaryweapons to protect their sections of the city, their se-curity forces watching from barriers that may take some

inspiration from the Berlin Wall, but which will probablyweather regime change even better than they weatherthe occasional rocket attack.

The lower classes who do menial labor are allowedin each day through strictly monitored checkpoints.The Authorities fear suicide bombers, and would alsoprefer to keep such supernaturals as they can detect farout of mind.

Security has to do spot-checks to find most super-naturals, administering behavioral tests to detect unusualresponses, reacton tmes and fase answers to ques-tions. Screening officers are drugged to keep emotional

responses subdued. This doesn’t block mind-affectingpowers, but it does make them easier for fellow officersto notice.

Vampres and some Prometheans, however, arefound via genetic multisampling. While conventionalscience can’t penetrate unnatural tricks like the Blush ofLife, it easily picks out blood samples that don’t matchskin samples or body parts from different people.

Kndred and Created have to be pretty cever to getinto the better parts of town...or they need the coopera-tion of someone in power.

GlobalizationIn cyberpunk, practically everyone’s from some-where else. Alienation, as discussed above, can be oneconsequence of ths cuture shock. Just as often, though,peope mx and cutures evove, takng very dfferentthreads and weavng them nto whoe coth. For thosewho can’t fit in, though, the fusion cultures are all themore baffling for their rapid development and change.

Globalization hits supernatural cultures hard. In themodern World of Darkness, the concerns of supernaturalcharacters are largely local. Vampires keep to their fief-doms and werewolves to their territory. Vampires alreadyuse information technology to hunt and conduct their

affars, though, and that graduay resuts n Kndredcommunity and politics moving online. Vampires areaso unquey equpped to expot ong-term changes. Afew decades, or even years, can transform a small invest-ment in a local company or politician into regional andglobal influence.

The fate of werewolves may depend on who goesgoba irst. If the Forsaken embrace nformaton tech-nology and become more tightly integrated and better

targeted, if they band together as a virtual nation insteadof a loose confederation of packs and tribes, they mayturn the tabes on the Pure. Wth goba ntegence onboth the Pure and the state of the sprt word, combnedwith working treaties between packs, Uratha agentscoud emnate the numercay superor Pure n justa few years.

However, f the Pure escaate irst, everagng thernumbers to infiltrate human enforcement agencies enmasse, the Forsaken coud ind themseves facng a PureState capabe of trackng them from ther Frst Changesto their last, strangled breaths.

Global intelligence also changes hunters. In themodern day, conspiracies already have informationon the monsters, but in the brave new world, they cansift through formerly private information with recordspeed, gathering detailed information on individualces. Organzatons ke Task Force: VALKYRIE wbe able to recruit with record speed, or manipulate

nformaton fed to street eve hunters to expedte therown operations.Truly globalized conspiracies can out-compete the

compacts in recruiting and deployment, eliminating themdde Ter amost entrey. Rogue eements ke Ash-wood Abbey find their assets frozen and their membersarrested or termnated. Nu Mysters s carved up andassmated by the Cheron Group, the Task Force andthe newy prvatzed Maeus Maeicarum. The Unonfinds themselves offered generous compensation to servetheir country and the human race as career killers.

Most dramatcay, n a few short years, NetworkZero goes from hobbyists to startup to full-blown con-

spracy. Pushng ther decentrazed meda presence to tslimits, they become a Tier Three group linking togetherhunters worldwide. In the future, any hunter operationbegns wth a records search through Network Zero.

Tomorrow CountryWorld travel has accelerated because of increased

prosperity for some and warfare and catastrophe for oth-ers. The cores of the urban sprawl, the places that stillca themseves New York or Atanta or Phadepha,have become cultural reactors. A single media clip on theInternet can bring laughter or change of mind to people

all over the world, but being more densely packed withmore strangers than ever before has the same effect. Foran observer from the modern day, a lot of the food wouldbe passingly familiar, but the music and fashion wouldbe so different that they’d take time just to recognizeand process.

Humanty has aways mgrated, shared and mxed,but in Tomorrow Country change races forward likenever before.

THEMESOFALIENATIONANDGLOBALIZATION



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The dark side of globalization is also much as it everwas. The swelling populations of relatively privilegedregions harness the swelling populations of poorer re-gions as labor while keeping them well out of sight andmnd. The term “deveopng word” doesn’t get thrownaround much anymore—the elite have developed theworld about as far as they want to talk about it—but

the scramble for economic connections and techno-logical infrastructure goes on. At the same time, thoseconnections benefit local elites more than the commonpeople.

On the other hand, f for some reason a characterfrom a privileged region was compelled to take a look, theinformation’s all there. After all, everyone’s on the net,even if their access is limited. History, news, financialdata, homegrown media... but who would look?

MetalgroundThe city’s not a nice place, but there’s work here that

brngs peope from a over the word. Peope, n turn,bring their monsters. Gone are the days of local govern-ments, of packs who ruled large territories and covenantswhich commanded cities. While supernatural creaturesstill have local power structures, their marginalizationhas combined with improved communication to createglobal, decentralized monster communities. The sociallines between various kinds of supernaturals are blurring,with individual coteries, packs and cabals looking forevery scrap of help they can get.

AdaptationTechnology doesn’t always work, and even when

it does, it doesn’t always do what we want. Even as in-formaton technoogy equpment becomes too compexfor most people to tinker with, those who can keep upbecome more obsessed and, often, more in demand. Theadaptaton of exstng technoogy and cuture to ncheor individual needs goes back to the very beginning ofcyberpunk. It’s that DIY ethc (aong wth a heathy doseof ragng aganst the machne) that puts the “punk” nits name.

Sin-Eaters have almost unwittingly become mastersof cultural adaptation. Today, their patchwork culturereinvents itself with every passing decade. Tomorrow,

they retain their cultural agility but they have history.The dawn of the twenty-first century is seen as the timewhen, for the first time, they truly began to understanddeath.

While hunters and supernaturals attempt to co-opt the system, the Bound are sharpening its bleedingedge. The resut s somethng entrey unexpected:Sin-Eaters found the first global supernatural culture in

which the others can meet in safety and on commonground. They lead the fashion, the knowledge build-ing, the diplomacy. Bound celebrations like the Day ofthe Dead become sacred to creatures around the world.Their understanding of the one thing everyone struggleshelplessly against makes them the right people to bringmonsters together.

Of course, company brngs contempt. As the Boundbecome the medium that binds everyone else, grudgesthat would have been eased by the passage of time findimmediate fulfillment. The new supernatural culture isas violent as it is vibrant. There is anger, and there ismurder, and guess who has to clean up the mess?

Tomorrow CountryCobbled together solutions can be unreliable, and

those who have built something once will rarely leaveit alone, especially if there’s someone trying to stop oroutdo them. Hackers on all sides of the law race eachother to make systems and break them. Hardware tin-kerers find themselves bombarded with a stream of newmodels to take apart and an ever-growing cache of oldmodes to wax nostagc about.

Those without power hack with all the more vigor.Cowboys n the empoy of the Maiya are pretty damnedgood, but their Estonian neighbors are getting evenbetter.

MetalgroundIn the city, you’re either still moving, or you’re spare

parts. Pugns and organs can be strpped out wth reatveease, especially if you don’t care about the health of the

donor. Supernatural creatures can be stripped down, too,somethng both the Moros and the Ordo Dracu show adistinct inclination towards.

Supernatural flesh-hacking is in its infancy, butthe resuts are aready frghtenng. New generatons ofPandorans scurry through the nght, no onger mtedby the avaabty of Promethean Pyros. Atered byengneered Vtae or Superna magc, the Pandorans cansteal vitality from these and other sources. Worse, theyno longer go dormant. Ever.

The Network

Information networks are a key part of cyberpunkfiction. Broadly speaking, William Gibson’s cyberspaceor Nea Stephenson’s metaverse are equvaent to theInternet. The special effects are different, but they’rejust skins on top of the same concept. Indeed, as Gibsonbegins to suggest in Mona Lisa Overdrive, the Networkisn’t made up of computers, it’s something that runson top of them. Stes ke Facebook work on a smarprncpe: they cataog and ndex exstng networks (n



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2

ths case, human soca ones) and connect them (socanetworks to advertsng databases).

That starts to make the Network sound ke aspiritual construct, and, indeed, journeys onto the net incyberpunk fiction often have the feel of journeys into theOtherword. Gbson descrbes cyberspace as a “consen-sua haucnaton” n hs 1982 story “Burnng Chrome.”

In Count Zero, the seque to Neuromancer, religious prac-titioners misidentify the liberated artificial intelligencesfrom the latter book as the Loa. Cyberpunk’s figurativeuse of supernatura descrptons for the Network are toonumerous to mention. Serial Experiments Lain suggeststhe mingling of the virtual and physical worlds in a waythat’s Mage players might find familiar.

The Network coud be mapped onto Twght orthe Superna reams, n whch case nformaton ubqutycould be a form of mass Awakening. It might simplybehave in a parallel manner, with spiritual powers ornewy created equvaents affectng cyberspace. On the

other hand, tme spent on the Network can be prettyengrossing, with hours slipping away before you notice.Perhaps t’s smpy become a huntng ground for the TrueFae. You jack n, but your Fetch jacks out.

Probaby, though, the Network s thoroughy rootedin the physical world. Supernatural creatures get no spe-cial privileges there, and they should be worried aboutthat. The more data becomes available, the easier they’llbe to detect.

Tomorrow CountryEverything is known, but not everybody can get

access to it. Corporations can gather pinpoint data on

customers... more data, in fact, than they’ve yet figuredout how to leverage. Identity theft is still a big business,but the game has changed: many identities are for saleon the open market. Your digital footprint can be moreimportant than you, taking on a life of its own. At thispoint it’s more predictable, and you’ve probably auto-mated most of your spending.

The system needs to keep you around, sure. You haveto keep putting money in, or there’s no point in trying toget money out of you. Still, individuals can be difficultvariables, and you’ve got a lot to do. Why not just let thesystem make your decisions? After all, it already knows

what you like...Metalground

Ths s how the Masquerade ded. Not wth a bang,but a whimper. Humans always believed in the monsters,knew instinctively to fear them, but they pushed thatknowedge down. If they coudn’t quash ther fears, atleast they could layer new beliefs atop the ancient andunsettling ones.

The world got too big, though. The disasters thatincreased adult mortality effectively increased birth rate.After each baby boom started to mature, there was anexposon of vampres ready to take advantage. Workedwell enough, until the human populations normalized fora while and the predation became statistically obvious.The great machines could see that there was something

missing, and they told the mortals that created them.Those in power tried to keep secrets and take mea-

sured steps, but they failed. The information was there,and there were curious mortals who knew how to get to it.Once the vampres were dscovered, smar technquesbegan to unrave the exstence of other monsters... mon-sters a few vampires were willing and able to rat out.

Then the Authorities came to the city, and themonsters became one fear among many.

Props Megacorps and AIs

Mega-corporatons and artica ntegences areboth created by mainstream culture, and both become soarge and compex as to be aen and ncomprehensbe.They may even be synonymous, with big business runby or relying on unfathomable machines.

Power resdes n corporatons more than n gov-ernments. Perhaps ths s because natons have gonebankrupt, or because government functions have becomeincreasingly privatized. Governments may simply be ir-relevant to your setting, with agents of law and order andtaxaton a far more dstant concern than the Audtorsdispatched by a character’s former employer.

Corporations are easy to do wrong. As AIs can be-come Lovecraftian gods, corporations become the tradi-tional Satan, doing evil just because. They’re murderousand authoritarian just because, and going on a corporatepayroll is synonymous with moral corruption. That canwork for shorter narratives, when your game is focusingon acton and consequences n the near-term. You don’treay need to know what’s n the sutcase, why Mr. Smthwants t so bady, or why Mr. Smth s wng to assembea group of extraega cutthroats to get t back.

At the cmax of Neuromancer, the titular intel-

gence expans that ts name s an auson to necro-mancy, and refers to the virtual environment it’s usingto communicate as the land of the dead. Aspects of thenovel’s twin AIs go on to become unknowable gods mov-ng through cyberspace. Put the razor hands asde andpck up Occam’s: In the Word of Darkness, the smpestexpanaton s that AIs are ghosts, spirits, or somethingsimilar enough to be indistinguishable.

THEMEOFTHENETWORK



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Ter Three characters, whether Kndred, hunter orBound, find the assets of megacorporations useful, but thereal power is in artificial intelligence. AIs make clandes-tine supernatural organizations more agile, and they keepsecrets better than human thralls or contacts.

Tomorrow Country

The mega corporations are much like those we havetoday. There are fewer multinational conglomerates,but you can’t tell that from advertising or packaging.Marketng anaysts had reazed by the dawn of the 21st century that people liked the illusion of choice. That, forexampe, f there were two eectroncs chans n a regon,and one bought the other, maintaining the separate storebrands would maintain higher sales.

Peope aren’t dumb, of course—they know that weathis concentrated in fewer places than ever before, and thatcity governments couldn’t sustain development withoutcorporate sponsorshp. Few care, though, and t takes astrange kind of person to even consider doing somethingabout t. Even as fe gets more expensve year by year, t canstill be lived, and that’s all most people care about.

Tomorrow Country does not include artificial in-telligences. While researchers push forward with everypassing year, they have yet to create AI in the sensediscussed here. When they do, it’s unlikely that anybodywill be ready.

MetalgroundThe Authorities depend on the corporations

for money, and the artificial intelligences to cementtheir rule. The machines help maintain total informa-

tion awareness, or something as close to it as can beachieved.When an artica ntegence becomes compex

enough, it may simply merge with its spirit, much asthe soul attaches to a human consciousness. This spiritis born in the physical world—it has never been acrossthe Gauntlet, and likely has no interest in crossing.The sprt nherenty possesses the Fetter Numen (Bookof Spirits, p. 141). It exsts n any nformaton system(eectronc or otherwse) capabe of hostng sgnicantportions of the intelligence that gave birth to it. In eachocaton, t’s vunerabe as f t exsted ony there. Thespirit can control any systems that it would as a soul-

ess ntegence, but requres Numna to do anythngbeyond that. So, for exampe, a server farm hostng anintelligence might be defended by alarms, automatedweaponry, and so on, which the spirit could control.However, it wouldn’t be able to possess a guard’s gunwithout developing additional powers.

Werewolves are cast in the unlikely role of being thecreatures in the World of Darkness most likely to negoti-

ate directly with, or confront, artificial intelligences.As corporations become defined by their internal

cultures, their company hymns, the march of brandingand internal messaging, they may gain a literal companyspirit. The spirit doesn’t control the corporation literally.Unlike an AI, the corporation is made up of individualpeople, with their own ideas, plans, and ways of doing

things. Yet, as the organization rules suggest, it has apersonaty. Procedures, equpment, nsde jokes—a ofthem can carry the voice of the spirit.

If the collective nature of corporations makes themcallous, the spirit can make them cruel. A corporationspirit has all of the greed and capriciousness of any spirit,but even the weakest have broader power bases. Onceper day, around 3 a.m. oca tme, they can cross theGauntlet at any location owned by the company or itsempoyees, or ved n for an extended perod by thoseempoyees (some peope take ther work home).

The ability to cross into the physical world func-

tons as Gauntet Breach (Book of Spirits, p. 142), buts restrcted to the aforementoned stes. Most corpora-ton sprts aso possess the Numna Fetter and/or LvngFetter (Book of Spirits, p. 143), enabng them to engagein at least limited possession of objects and people inthe physical world. The spirit doesn’t act so much inthe corporation’s interests as it does the corporation’snature: it follows the organization’s Virtue and Vice.They usually possess Influence not over the corporationitself, but over some of the things it produces or uses,ke pharmaceutcas or manufacturng equpment. Theymay look for a monopoly, devouring other spirits withsimilar Influence.

Alternatively, corporations might be haunted byoutside spirits with Influences related to their specialties,Vrtues, or Vces. In headquarters towers or corporatearcologies, they nest, devouring their fellows and creat-ing a spiritual dead zone.

CyberwareIn cyberpunk, technology doesn’t just surround

humanity, it invades. Or, rather, t’s nvted to occupy.Characters ke Moy Mons or the Magnetc DogSisters become so obsessed with strength or aestheticsor both that they rewire and rebuild themselves. Black

market surgeons—the same who provide much-neededmedical care to the underclasses—jack up, speed up andpump up human bodies to become weapons.

In the standard World of Darkness, these kinds ofunnatural abilities tend to draw characters away fromhumanity, towards the hungry beasts in their hearts orthe spirits that wait on the other side of the Gauntlet.The cost of power is often monstrosity.



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Not so n cyberpunk icton. A character ke Moyis no less human for all her modifications. She’s stillangry, proud, and obsessed with either self-control orits complete abdication.

Is there a mdde ground? Maybe there doesn’t needto be. After a, the “monstrous” descents of charactersin the World of Darkness are metaphors for people los-

ng what’s good or necessary n themseves. For a that,though, they become no less human; they merely embodythe worst of humanity.

Tomorrow Country Not everyone has Pugns, but everyone knows

someone who does. For severa years after t becamewidespread, augmentation was a fashion statement, butit’s so common now as to be almost beneath notice.Medca experts and the meda can’t tak enough aboutthe next step.

Why replace just one system, knitting togetherclean, manufactured implants with dirty, legacy flesh?Shouldn’t it be simpler to just move a human being intoa synthetic body? Why st

mirrors world of darkness bleeding edge and infinite masa

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