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MetaCyber


Killer Shrike

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  • 2 weeks later...

Re: MetaCyber

 

I updated the look and feel of the MetaCyber site a little bit as part of a bigger more exciting change I'm working on. The new wizbang will come later, but the look and feel is out there now.

 

MetaCyber

 

Amazing site, and so much usable material even if one isn't running a hardcore cyberpunk campaign. Thanks!

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Re: MetaCyber

 

Thanks! I'm really excited about the bells and whistles I'm working on now. I'm implementing the Effect list system I wrote earlier this year (as seen in the Fantasy section for spells, items, feats, etc) for MetaCyber content.

 

The code works and is releasable, but I havent had time to populate the content yet -- I've only put in 7 guns to get the party started. I haven't linked it all up yet since there's not much to see yet, but you can take a sneak peak here:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/metacyber/effects/MetaCyberEffects.aspx

 

 

Once I have the shtuff in the database, I'll go thru the content pages where I have gear write ups and such inline and replace them with feeds from the db, which will be a very good thing from a maintenance standpoint.

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Re: MetaCyber

 

Got the MetaCyber Weapons punched into the db as well.

 

And this is paying off. I'm able to patch into the central db for inline writeups. I went thru the Boomer page last night and replaced the on-the-page writeups with from-the-db feeds.

 

I have a small concern; currently I'm having them do direct fetches from the database per page load vs pulling from the effects cache on the web server, but I'm interested in what impact it will have on performance. In the short term it's more flexible for me to be able to drop any effect I want where-ever I want which is why I went with a direct feed, but its much more scalable to pull from the cache.

 

 

At any rate, its just a couple lines of code difference either way, so I'm going to give it a while and see what kind of load strain it puts on the site (if any) and make a decision.

 

 

Technobabbling aside, here's the page:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/MetaCyber/MetaCyberCharacters_Archetypes_Boomer.aspx

 

 

As time permits I'll roll thru other pages and similarly switch them over, as I get more things into the db (cybernetics, superskills, etc).

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Re: MetaCyber

 

I just got back from seeing Push, and while its not the bestest movie in the history of cinema or anything, it does have some really cool scenes, and more to the point is very good inspiration for certain elements of MetaCyber. Worth a watch at any rate...but you might want to catch it as a matinee.

 

The highpoint scene for me was the blonde Telekinetic going off at the end; very good stuff visually.

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  • 2 months later...

Re: MetaCyber

 

The thing that I always wished you'd change about Metacyber is you've essentially set up "Classes", you call them origins but they do pretty much the same thing. I'd much rather it was just a "Here's what's possible and a background have at it" sort of set up.

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Re: MetaCyber

 

The Origins are one of the things I like the most about MetaCyber. They aren't classes at all -- classes box skills and progression. The origins simply force players to choose their characters focus upfront, but there is still tremendous flexibility in the implementation.

 

I basically wanted to avoid most characters being genetically engineered cyborg ninja mutants, so I boxed them out a bit.

 

Origins are really more analogous to RACE in a fantasy or sci fi game in as much as each character must choose one and only one at character creation, it bundles some things up front, and thats about that.

 

 

Of course, if you really don't like Origins nothing prevents you from using the material sans Origins.

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Re: MetaCyber

 

Origins are really more analogous to RACE in a fantasy or sci fi game in as much as each character must choose one and only one at character creation, it bundles some things up front, and thats about that.

Yeah I suppose Race is a better word.

 

I do love the setting, and wish we could have played. I think I still have Masque rolling around somewhere.

 

That's another interesting thing. When playing was first brought up, both WilyQ and I both came up with a Mystique-Like shapeshifter meta without ever talking about it to one another(mine was my favorite that I'd created, Wily's was Boomer I believe). Then when someone else (don't remember who) started a Metacyber game on Hero Central, one of the players there also had a Mystique-like shapeshifter. I guess the genre is just ripe for that type of meta.

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Re: MetaCyber

 

Sure, the ability to change appearance can be advantaging in this sort of a setting. And its natural for the mind to run in that direction early on -- it's an insidious option with a lot of possible applications both obvious and inobvious. Such characters are particularly dangerous vs large organizations in non-combat time scenarios.

 

In practice however, infiltration \ impersonation is just one of many competitive concepts that are viable in the MetaCyber milieu.

 

There is definitely room for very different takes on the concept, but the focus of MetaCyber per my interpretation is expressly and purposely on gritty cinematic squad-level combat action. Any character that short circuits that focus via abilities that resolve out of combat time is of less relevance than they would be in a campaign that favors narrative resolution in a Face to Face run.

 

Masque was good in this regard IIRC because you successfully combined practical combat skills and training with his infiltration abilities making for a solid and relevant character for the campaign as I intended to run it. WilyQ's shapeshifter was far more dedicated to the infiltration / fantastical aspects of such a concept and while well done, didn't fit the vision I had. That's why Masque got a green light and WilyQ's character (whose name escapes me if it even progressed that far) did not.

 

Having said that, if I were to run a MetaCyber game via play by post the focus would be less on the actual missions and combat-time resolution of Runs, and more on the planning, roleplaying, and dirty dealing of the setting -- far more narrative, so as to mesh with the strengths of play by post (opportunity for fully formed plans and narrative without "slowing" the game with exposition) and avoid the weaknesses (the excessive time it takes to resolve reactive mechanical outcomes). A more narrative oriented and less combat resolution oriented character would be better suited to such a play by post environment.

 

In such an environment the GM, myself or another, would need to be careful to allow one sort of approach such as "social chameleon" to be _too_ good or "attractive" to players to avoid stretching plausibility too far. Alternately, if the players collectively wanted to explore that aspect -- say, all or most of them wanted to play faceshifter type characters -- the GM could write it in to the backstory -- rather than being meta's they could be products of a specific technology designed to create people with such abilities; a new Origin outlining a Package or a pick-list of possible abilities and spelling out some baked in downsides easily allows for such an outcome to "make sense" internally. This also allows the GM to bake in any controls they want in place to keep the set up from getting out of hand.

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Re: MetaCyber

 

I found this version of Masque on my harddrive. He's incomplete (no background, notably), but the mechanics look solid on a quick scan. Not sure if there was a later version (the file was named Masque_orig which makes me suspect there was a later version that I don't seem to have on my HD).

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Re: MetaCyber

 

Yeah I suppose Race is a better word.

This reminded me...I actually directly addressed Origins as a parrallel for Races in this document:

 

Paradigm: Races

 

The primary purpose of Origins is not to straitjacket; its to focus the types of characters that start play and represent unlocked allowances for exceptional abilities.

 

A secondary purpose of Origins is to establish a level playing field, performing a sort of balancing act.

 

Rather than thinking of the setting in terms of a superheroic milieu where practically anything goes, MetaCyber is a cinematic but ultimately heroic milieu. Runners and the sorts of opposition they sometimes face are pretty butch, but there is still some grounding in heroic sensibilities. Physics-bending or outright breaking super powers are not available by default. Neither are uber-genetic enhancements, or extreme cybernetics / bio-ware, or when you get right down to it over the top "skills" that are clearly bs in realistic terms. The average person, the vast bulk of humanity are not genetically engineered heavily borged out mutant savants; rather they are the sorts of people that inhabit the real world.

 

 

What each Origin does is unlock a means to unusual and notable competency, selectively allowing certain types of abilities.

 

Meta's get the most obvious unlock -- they can have full on no horse puckey super powers; some restrictions apply, but in a largely "normal" setting the ability to fly by will alone or generate a personal force field or control machines mentally is very advantaging and very cool and special. The trade off is that a) Real Cost caps apply to starting powers B) you get less gear than everyone else starting and c) you can't have super-skills -- this forces the focus onto the "meta" powers vs "skills" or "gear" and helps keep the playing field level with non-powered characters.

 

Tubers get the next most obvious unlock -- the over-NCM stat boosts and miscellaneous improvements they can get are very real and can be very advantaging. They can also have a super-skill or two and be very competent at their specialization. Some of the boosts are even border-line / low powered "meta" abilities. The trade off is their boosts are random, and they have to pre-commit to how much they want to invest into them prior to determining any of them. The Tuber Origin has been very well received, and really seemed to strike a chord with some folks. It also demonstrates that the HERO System can do random if you want it to. I'm not a big fan of randomness, but it works here for me and I like how the Origin turned out.

 

Anyone can have some BodyTech (with the exception of some Meta's whose powers preclude it), but on top of the character point costs the monetary costs involved (deliberately) make it difficult to have a lot of it. The Amper Origin unlocks the capability to have an excessive amount of BodyTech, via the expedient of waving a lot of the monetary costs involved as part of character creation. The trade off is an inability to have super-skills. This, again, forces the focus on the character's augmentations vs "skill" and helps keep heavily augmented starting characters on a level playing field with less augmented characters. Ampers really give up the most of the Origins, since all of the benefits they gain are up-front, and other characters can get BodyTech during play at full normal cost; however there are some very potent genre-appropriate starting character concepts that are only possible via the Amper Origin, and also the extra point gains possible by selling back resource pools for more BodyTech during character creation (which was Checkmate's excellent idea and contribution to the Origin, fyi), allow it to remain competitive.

 

The Adept Origin might seem like the fall-thru case -- if you are not superhuman, genetically enhanced, or excessively technologically augmented then I guess we need a name for that right? However, this is not the case at all. The Adept Origin unlocks the ability to start play with pretty extreme levels of material resources (as measured by gear, bases, vehicles, and networking) and in particular specialized focus on the area that makes the most sense to the character due to their ability to move points around between their resource pools, as well as extreme levels of "skill" as they have a generous allowance to take "super skills" pending only GM veto power. Adepts can also start with BodyTech if they like; they just don't benefit from the cost subsidies of Ampers and thus can have far less of it, starting (however long-term a successful Adept could get just as cybered up as an Amper if they spend the credits and character points to do so). In return the only thing they are giving up is that they don't have super powers or genetic enhancements or extreme levels of tech augmentation. In practice, Adepts are very competitive with the more visibly extreme Origins, as the sample characters demonstrate. Personally, it's the Origin that appeals the most to me as a player.

 

 

 

Origins are also an open ended concept, though the fewer Origins there are, the better it works IMO. As I allude to in the linked doc, and in a previous post, the Origin concept is very malleable to add additional facets of extreme abilities to the milieu.

 

 

All of the Archetypical characters (the characters not in the GM's Vault) are starting level characters and usable as pre-mades. In addition to giving glimpses into the setting via their backstory, and serving as practical demonstrations of playable concepts, they also exist to be compared against each other. I've spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting the pros and cons and capabilities of all the pre-mades, cross cut by both Archetype and pertinent to this conversation -- Origin. I'm very satisfied where they sit in comparison to each other, particularly across the Origin axis. The only real balance issue I have in a broad sense is around Pharmitech, which seems to work at the low end but might need to be scaled down or controlled in some way at the high end; the difficulty in assessing it is determining how limiting the long-term side effects really are in practice which is hard to do in a vacuum; thus I've let it ride until such a time as I have a chance to tax it in play and see what comes of it.

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  • 1 year later...

Re: MetaCyber

 

I finally got around to overhauling The NET documents.

 

Way back in the beginning, I implemented The NET using Mental Powers. The NET was basically the equivalent of a psychic plane, Mindscapes were Mental Illusions, and Avatars used Telepathy, Mind Control, etc to get things done. It worked pretty well in general, but it never quite felt right for MetaCyber to me. It was extremely complex, and required an amount of explanation completely out of line with its level of relevance to the setting.

 

So, a good while back I switched it over to a far simpler approach, and started updating the documents. However, I got busy and distracted by other shiny's and never finished.

 

Cleaning out some boxes from my last move, I stumbled across a pad of paper containing my notes on the subject and remembered that I never finished typing it all up. So, I've chipped away at it the last few nights before going to bed and have the various documents in The NET section fleshed out. I also made some alterations as I went as new ideas came to me.

 

Here it is:

 

The NET

 

 

Remaining TODOs:

I need to write up a new document explaining what kinds of things a Decker can do in the NET to make it relevant to Running and doing hackerish activities.

I need to go thru the rest of the MetaCyber site and look for any old references or material that was relevant to the original Mental power based version of the NET and revise or remove them.

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