Project Darklight

So Conpulsion, a fine convention held in Edinburgh’s Teviot Student’s Union this Easter just gone, was the latest and possibly last outing for my con game Operation Wolverine.

Armed with a selection of character sheet’s now graced with Steven Austin’s fine character art work, a two page summing up of the WordPlay system (which I’ll get proofed and post here ).

Here’s the pitch:

New Shanghai 2223 AD. So there you are lazing away surfing the Data Sphere, when up pops the alert on the old inbox. Tony Deals wants some ‘punks for a private client wanting to front the cash for a hush-hush no questions asked job and you and your posse happen to be on planet. A quick scan with the keyword-sniffer doesn’t pull up any more ‘nfo surrounding the job. No biggie you’ll get the word from Tony when you meet. Ok it’s time to tool up, look sharp and make the meet with the sleaze bag.

A stylish cyberpunk thriller, filled with twists, explosions, personal dilemmas and more shiny cutting edge tech than you can shake a cyberleg at. So come surf the net with me, like you did in the 80s/90s….but only better

Highlights of the game

• No stand up fights of “I hit you, you hit me” type. Players phrased Challenges so that they either avoided violence outright or got it over and done with, for example the final Challenge was phrased “I hit the Colonel to get him out of the way and then fly off using my space suit”.
• The players were fairly relaxed and laid back , I blame the big  low leather sofas and chairs we were forced to use   Challenges , thrown on both sides of the table, were an excellent way of picking up the pace and getting a bit of life into the game when things were flagging.
• The players all new to the system, and previously unknown to me,  took to it like ducks to water.
• Game slots were 3 hours long, so I tightened up the plot and trimmed the fat. As a result a game that in the past has rambled at time, was much puncher and got to the big end (one group failed to do this). I’m more than happy I’ve got it in the shape I want. I can now start writing it up so it can go in the rule book as the introductory adventure.

Ok here’s a few notes from the first round of playtesting.

1. TomCon (Feb 2010?)
This was the proof of concept game, i.e. run a quick 4 hour game with a group and see if it survives contact. I have a short intro scenario called Operation Wolverine which touches all the key points of the game; Street Level Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality/Net running, Cyberpunk in Space, and the big themes of what Project Darklight is. The group was all friends of mine who I regularly play/meet with at cons, and they were quite pumped to play because as one player Elaine put it “its Cyberpunk”. The game didn’t disappoint and I was grinning like a Cheshire cat afterwards. The setting flowed nicely and the players enjoyed the scenario. So all good there.

One fly in an otherwise perfect ointment was the use of Cyberware as powers. On one hand it made them easy to keep track of and tie into the character’s personality

For example the group’s street Samurai David “Pitbull” Smith’s cyberware was as follows

Cyberware: Military Issue Full Metal Jacket 6D (Chrome dome, IR-Cyberoptics, Military Grade Cyberaudio, Kevlar Skin Weave, Camouflaged Right Cyberarm, Military grade Neural interface with Gun Chip, Quick release Adrenalin Speed booster, Interface plugs)

While the sleazy Hacker of the group, Winston “LadyKiller” Hamilton III has the following loadout.

Cyberware: Mr Atlas Body Sculpt pack 6d (Kevlar Skin weave, Mr Muscles, Stud o rama implant, Charm eazee pheromones, Artificial Chin 3D,Fast scan Cyber optics, Brainjack Internal Cyberdeck, Wireless modem, Interface plugs )

But on the other hand it made cyberware very much the deal breaker of the game, and made the action a bit more superheroic than I had anticipated. All fun in a one shot but I could easily see it being tiring in a campaign game.

2. Continuum (July 2010)
Ran Operation Wolverine for a group of six players as a convention game. This group took it in a very different direction, perhaps only getting through 50% of it, but all in all we had fun.

However the use of Cyberware as powers really unravelled here. In the final scene of the game a grand total of 23 dice were thrown in a crack shot vs the scenario’s archvillian. A combination of cyberware, equipment, skill traits, personality traits, situation modifiers (and the player had to his credit expertly set up the situation in his character’s favour ) which has been bunked up to this level by cleaver use of invoking a Goal, “Revenge for the massacre of the 46th Mechanised Regiment in the aftermath of the 5th Corp War”, which the player had attached to the archvillian (basically you can invoke three goals per session and each time it doubles your basic hand of dice). While wonderfully epic in context of this game doubt was put in my mind, and I resolved to use Cyberware as equipment the next time I rand Project Darklight.

3. Short campaign with my home group
Talked through the campaign set up with my home group and we decided on a street level game were all the characters where ‘freelancers’ out to make their mark on a once prosperous planet that had been abandoned by the corps during an economic downturn. Again overall the five session mini-campaign game went great guns.

Highlights

• Life events as part of the character creation process – taking a leaf out of Cyberpunk 2020′s book. Very much freeform, as in you have 6d to spend on Life Event Traits (“Took part in the 5th Corporate War 4d”, “Nomad childhood 2d”), but in the final game will be more tied to profession/places.
• A nice little “Gang War” mini-game, basically using the Multi-round challenge rules with Gangs as characters and the success of player character actions, played out as separate one shot challenges
• The ease and freeform nature of the game. If you could think it up, WordPlay let you do it

Cons

• Still not 100% with Cyberware, still an area that needs attention. I’m beginning to think that using the Powers rules, without scaling maybe the way to go.
• The game needs some firm guidance about creating opponents on the fly or at least ready made rosta of example characters that can be quickly added to in play.

All in all we played around 8 sessions of this game, which saw the characters go from humble beginnings as Punks on the street, to Corporate Masters of their planet We agreed that this was a good place to stop Part 1 and for me to have a think about Part 2 aka Punks in Space.