#ioshi

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 19)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

… sharks and techies …

… transcends and, finally, visionaries.

Then, we did the intro to the equipment section.

Then, some cyberware and bioware stuff.

Then, the rest of the equipment guide!

Then, a bit about how characters earn rerolls through increasing acceptance of (sub)community theses, including traits for the first few theses!

Then the rest of that!

Then some detail on IOSHI itself!

And now, a bit on game structure.

               IOSHI Games

The IOSHI setting attempts to capture a specific and simple storyline. As with the hero’s journey, the universal pulp novel plot, or the Hollywood romance formula, the Game Master can embroider this basic plotline in any number of ways. The IOSHI storyline is compatible with stories of arbitrary complexity and depth, although — as with any other setting — the Game Master and not the setting creates these stories.

[[ This is actually open to argument, and an interesting question, but look it was 2003 and a different time and more importantly this was originally freelance work for Tri-Stat before the Tri-Stat people decided that it would work better financially to keep the money instead of paying people. Ironically, kind of in-genre!

... anyway. ]]

A standard IOSHI campaign follows the structure outlined below. Game Masters can deviate from this structure freely; when doing so, they should keep in mind that the setting is designed for use with this story outline and modify it appropriately to match their own.

               Character Design

By default, characters are savants. They have an inherent knack for one or more key occupation categories and IOSHI training in some subset thereof.

Sometime before the campaign began, the characters made the deliberate choice not to buy into two standard Tartessian assumptions. Rather than accepting the experts’ assurances as to the well’s safety, the characters installed filters. Rather than happily embracing a position as corporate resources, the characters nurtured a resentment against this fate or found some criminal means to avoid it.

             Campaign Structure

First, the system strikes at the characters for refusing it. For some reason — often because of the characters’ choice to use filters or because of their rejection of corporate entanglement — the characters appear on someone’s hit list. The characters defend against various attempts to remove them for a variable number of stories.

As the characters gain experience, they also gain progressive insight into the motivations of their enemies. Even if the characters perform no research, any IOSHI training or brain chip piracy they perform improves their mental map of the world. This allows the Game Master to reveal new truths. To survive, the characters usually depend upon their allies, creating an increasing number of social entanglements.

At some point, the characters have enough information to begin striking back. Some immediately do so. Others must have specific motivation before they abandon a habitual defensive stance. Typically, this motivation derives from the character’s social connections, who also come under threat. The characters’ offensive position also lasts a variable number of stories.

Finally, the characters find themselves in a position to take significant action against the hostile elements of the world’s power structure. This phase of the campaign can begin as soon as the characters have sufficient experience to confront the Game Master’s chosen antagonists — who may be a handful of sharks and other savants or an unstoppable force with practical dominion over all of Tartessos. The confrontation itself has one of four outcomes: the characters win a series of limited victories, win a series of victories, die bloodily, or sell out. The Game Master should not predetermine the outcome, but can eliminate some of the last three options depending on the mood of the game.

       Story Structure

Typical scenarios combine elements of the military mission, the dungeon crawl, and the superhero adventure. The antagonists threaten something the characters care about, such as their own lives. The characters must get that thing to safety or nullify the threat. At the same time, the characters often have the opportunity to kill the story’s antagonists — typically, minions of the overall campaign antagonists — and claim some of their possessions. The characters can then sell off these possessions or — in the case of IOSHI training — install them in a character’s brain.

        Escalation

The security level in Tartessos — the opposition faced by those engaging in illegal or covert action — varies greatly from region to region. As the characters become more powerful, they gain the ability to act against the system or their enemies in increasingly high-security areas. This gives characters a shorthand with which to measure their own abilities: the higher the security level they can overcome, the more practical a direct assault on the bastions of their antagonists becomes.

The standard security level consists of an armed human police force, monitors, a few automated defences, and reasonable software safeguards. The ability of characters to circumvent this security adjusts upwards or downwards based on regional concerns. A Game Master can rate regions on the quality of each important aspect of security, which affects the characters’ ability to avoid that security with standard Skill/Trait rolls. In addition, it adds “security options” to the area that the characters must overcome, invented by the Game Master or selected from the suggestions below.

           Chart Security Levels

Security Level / Circumvention Difficulty / Roll Bonus/Penalty / Additional Options

Anarchic         Easy                                        +2            0

Criminal          Somewhat Easy                      +1            0

Urban              Typical                                    0            0-1

Significant      Somewhat Difficult                -1            1-2

High                Difficult                                  -2            2

Military           Really Difficult                       -3            3

Maximum       Almost Impossible                  -4            4

END CHART

                 Automated Defence Systems

Some regions in Tartessos have automated or remotely-operated defence systems — electronic barriers, stun fields, and sharpware-targeted machine guns. The circumvention difficulty modifies rolls when the characters try to disable, evade, or endure the effects of these systems. A bank’s key computer systems might have an Automated Defence Systems (High) device that floods the machine room with anaesthetic gas when intruders enter. This imposes -2 to Endure rolls when the characters attempt to resist the incapacitating gas or interfere with its dispensation. Some Automated Defence Systems options follow.

                 Adaptive

The automated defence systems evaluate the characters’ actions in an intelligent way when activating. For example, a defence system that seals specific corridors to channel intruders is adaptive; a system that seals all corridors in order to trap them is not.

          Advanced

Normal defence systems include such things as guns, elevator overrides, and alarms. Advanced Automated Defence Systems employ high-end technology. This allows a range of unusual security effects. It also means that standard countermeasures — such as jamming guns or blinding their sensors — do not necessarily apply.

           Complex

Normally, at most one system guards any given location within the region. Each Complex option allows an additional interlocking defence system per location. For example, a region with Complex Automated Defence Systems, chosen once, can have up to two interlocking defence systems per location. Each has its own purpose and activation methods.

            Guards

In regions guarded by nameless NPCs rather than well-defined antagonists, the Game Master can build and use a standard “guard” template — e.g., a combat-focused ‡30 character. Rather than making the guards more or less competent, the Game Master can apply the security-based roll modifier to the characters’ rolls for combat and conflicts when the characters and guards face off. For example, a maximum security region might have perfectly-trained drone guards. The Game Master can implement this by applying a -4 penalty to the characters’ Action rolls when facing off against the drone horde. Some Guards options follow.

          Numerous

The region employs an atypically large security force — twice what one would expect for a building, borough, hideout, or Project of its sort. Further doublings count as one additional Guards option each.

        Guard Upgrade

The Game Master should design standard upgrades to normal guards based on the needs of the game. Each assignment of this option gives each guard either one standard ‡16 upgrade or an ‡8 upgrade specifically chosen to make the characters’ lives more interesting.

          Guard Leader

The Game Master designs one or more significant antagonists whose primary purpose is to augment the region’s security. Such antagonists may have many more character points than the other guards. The characters do not receive a roll modifier when fighting a guard leader. Guard Leader counts as one Guards option if the antagonists make intrusion more complicated, two if they make it more dangerous, and three if they make it nearly impossible.

            Monitoring

In regions under any sort of observation — whether in the form of patrols or security cameras — the Monitoring circumvention difficulty modifies rolls to evade detection. A ghetto plagued by gang warfare might have Monitoring (Anarchic) on the streets and Monitoring (Criminal) in each gang’s base. Characters would receive a +2 to their rolls when sneaking past patrols on the street, but only a +1 when sneaking through a gang headquarters. Some Monitoring options follow.

             Full Surveillance

Full Surveillance regions continuously monitor or patrol all easily traversable spaces. If the region also fully monitors airspace, ducts, sewers, and other normally inaccessible places, this counts as two Monitoring options.

              Unusual Sense

The region’s monitors employ unusual detection techniques that are difficult to circumvent, such as motion detectors, thermal observation, and particle analysis. Each pair of unusual detection techniques commonly used in the region counts as a single Monitoring option.

          Redundant Monitoring

Multiple independent sources monitor the observed portions of the region. For example, many locations may have both PIPE-manned cameras and patrols.

           Operations

When intruders alert security to their hostile intentions, it starts taking action against them. Apply the circumvention difficulty modifier to the characters’ attempts to interfere with an organized response. For example, in a region with Operations (Criminal), characters might divert guard response to the wrong location with basic electronic ventriloquism. In a region with Operations (Military), this becomes more difficult. Some Operations options follow.

                              Response Time

The local security force reacts to the characters’ actions with unusual alacrity. Guards, software, and the security head’s commands move easily through the region.

      Subtlety

The local security acts with restraint and stealth. The circumvention difficulty roll bonus/penalty applies to the characters’ attempts to discern the current locations and reaction pattern of the security force.

         Support Officers

Officers with IOSHI training bolster local security operations. Having a hunter, librarian, shaman, shark, or visionary on staff counts as an Operations option — rather than participating in combat, these security officers assist the security force in planning its reactions.

          Software

Characters invading a secure region may wind up in conflict with the software therein. As with guards, the Game Master can apply the security-based roll bonus/penalty to the characters’ rolls for combat and other conflicts when the characters and the software face off.

           Black ICE

Some software can initiate mind combat with any character with a net-enabled datajack. This counts as one Software option.

          Hardened

Unless the character has direct physical access, Hardened Software imposes an additional -4 penalty on rolls to defeat it in network combat.

                 Software Upgrade

The Game Master should design standard upgrades to software “character sheets” based on the needs of the game. Each assignment of this option gives the region’s important programs either one standard ‡16 upgrade or an ‡8 upgrade specifically chosen to make the characters’ lives more interesting. For this purpose, “important programs” are those whose destruction or defeat would meaningfully reduce the area’s security.

           Software Guard Leader

The Game Master designs one or more significant antagonists whose primary purpose is to augment the region’s security. This functions as with the Guard Leader option save that the antagonists exist in the net rather than in physical reality.

         What’s Left?

That’s pretty much it! I’ve managed to get ahold of a pre-editing version of some of my fiction for the thing, which I’ll share next, and then there’s a “GMing cyberpunk” that I might or might not bother to share, and then we’re done. ^_^

[yorkieeevie]

Minecraft time

[geostatonary]

[Reads IOSHI] This is good, but much less weird than I expected going in

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 16)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

… sharks and techies …

… transcends and, finally, visionaries.

Then, we did the intro to the equipment section.

Then, some cyberware and bioware stuff.

Then, the rest of the equipment guide!

Today, let’s get started on a particularly tricky bit:

How characters wind up adopting the theses of Tartessian core culture or its subcultures!

          53LF

The last of Li Po II’s paths to power is the understanding of the self; and, to aid in this endeavor, each character in IOSHI has a set of traits representing their acceptance of each of the major subcommunity theses. One of these traits starts at 1—normally, “core culture,” but it’s up to the player; the rest, at 0.

The way this works is, when a character fails at something, when they lose a roll, they will have a chance to overcome it. A character crashes their motorcycle. Or fails a stealth check. A decker fails to get crucial data, or raises an alarm. A character tries to rescue someone, but the conversation goes poorly, and their target thinks they’re being assassinated. Whatever.

... in all these cases, if the player doesn’t like the outcome, that player will have a second chance.

Characters have a number of rerolls stocked equal to their highest subcommunity thesis—so, initially, 1.

If a character needs more, after using those up, the character will need to temporarily raise one of their theses to do so. Each thesis can only be raised once per adventure.

Notionally, when rerolling using a community thesis, a character must use the strategies that that community favors. Thus, a character who wants to reroll a failed stealth check by raising their artistic thesis has their eye drawn by beauty, and so hides somewhere differently than they otherwise would have; or remembers a stealth technique from a favorite book; or conceals themselves in a group of artists discussing something; or, if the player is desperate, uses a keenly trained artistic eye to spot hiding places callow, untrained, and philistinic guards are unlikely to notice and appreciate. A character who wants to reroll a conversation using the maenadic thesis catches the character’s opposite number in the conversation up into their flow.

After the adventure, the player rolls once for each hypothesis they raised, using its starting rating—as it was before the mission—as its value. If they fail, the temporary increase becomes permanent.

For instance, a character might end the first adventure having raised Core Culture temporarily to 2, Anthropophobic Culture to 1, and Technical/Research Culture to 1. The player rolls against a skill of 1 to see if the character’s Core Culture goes up; let’s say, rolling 1 4 4 4 5. That’s a triple, a success, so it falls back to its original value, 1. They roll to see if Anthropophobic Culture increases, rolling a skill of 0 and getting 4 4 5 5 6. That’s a failure, so it stays at 1. Finally, they roll to see if Technical/Research Culture increases, and get 1 3 3 5 6; another failure, so it stays at 1 too. The character now has Core Culture 1, Anthropophobic Culture 1, and Technical/Research Culture 1—that character is now just a little less human-identifying and a little more technocratic than they had been.

The traits below are paired, set up so that a character cannot increase both traits in a certain pair arbitrarily. This is not a perfect rule—the reader may find the opposition established here between core/artistic and floating board/maenadic culture particularly suspicious, but even the other pairs are not exact; nevertheless, it is the recommended default, lest players find themselves driving their secure and criminal culture theses upwards to the point where they see security as an intrinsic violation and yet are desperate to surround themselves with it, a hardened criminal themselves yet ever-fearful of the nebulously heinous criminal beneath every bush and hiding inside every unsecured toilet paper roll, and so forth.

And thus:

                   Core Culture

Core culture solutions involve outsourcing, mobility, proud Tartessian identification, and not identifying overly with one’s work, one’s stuff, or one’s employer. Classic core culture rerolls involve outsourcing parts of a stealth mission, heartfelt speech, or sexual encounter; abandoning things one would normally go back for; or having a rideshare deliver extra ammunition during a firefight.

          Core Culture 0 allows a disregard for the basic thesis of Tartessos. Perhaps the character doesn’t see labour as fungible, or, perhaps, as objective, measurable, or good? Do they resist default Tartessian mobility and have trouble acquiring Tartessian cred?

Core Culture 1 gives some level of Tartessian identification—a character who considers the ideals of Tartessos good.

Core Culture 2 gives at least one (1) standard unit of Tartessian identification.

Core Culture 3 pushes a character to perfect their Tartessian qualities—to feel shame when they cannot separate their person from their work (or whatever they construe as their work, for a character of atypical employment) or are unable to be detached and objective in the pursuit of the same.

Artistic culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Core Culture 4 inclines a character strongly towards core culture solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Core Culture 5 is beginning to push a character past willful blindness towards the delirium of the heartland Tartessian—the notion that that which earns is inherently virtuous; that if a mindless leviathan were to rise within the heartland of Tartessos, pouring all its funds into market manipulation to create ever-more wealth in an endless, ever-escalating cycle, that that fell beast would rightly be named the holy, the most blessed, the good. For if the works of the beast yield profit asymptotic, then that beast is all efficiency within the world.

Core Culture 6 drives a character to abandon their own ego to that beast; to dance the movements of the markets, to be nothing but the tendrils of their economic god. Wealth is a magic that flows through such a character, though it does not stay; their flesh dissolves into the engine of the world. If the character retains any personhood, it is a personhood of masks, a personhood adopted in the name of the so-called irregularism heresy, the idea that the bumpiness and ill-fittingness of human bodies and human minds, their inability to serve it perfectly, provides a certain friction that the grand machine requires.

               P.S. I tried to cling to the “he or she” thing that Guardians of Order forced down my throat for the original draft, for consistency and to let you share in my outrage at how unnecessarily awkward it is, but ultimately it’s rude to nonbinary people and I just can’t keep it up any more.

                      Anthropophobic Culture

Anthropophobic solutions involve alien or animalistic patterns of behavior. A classic reroll is succeeding at a decking attempt by dodging the portion of the security software that evolved from human-detecting captchas.

                    Anthropophobic Culture 0 allows a character to be pretty confident that humans are cool and being human is OK.

Anthropophobic Culture 1 makes anthropophobes seem interesting and cool, as well.

Anthropophobic Culture 2 imbues the character with a willingness to become a little bit alien themselves.

Anthropophobic Culture 3 pushes the character to reject the human form and human nature; gives them ... an active ideological drive, to leave humanity behind.

Physical idealist culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Anthropophobic Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to anthropophobic culture solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Anthropophobic Culture 5 is beginning to push a character into radical departures from humanity, putting even basic notions of personhood on the table.

Anthropophobic Culture 6 drives a character to become something that can no longer be even plausibly construed as human: pushing them not merely to physically modify themselves, not merely to mentally identify as something else, but to change to the point where reconstructing the original human is impossible and applying human norms is pointless.

            Artistic Culture

Artistic solutions involve aesthetics, the knowledge of art, the practice of art, and the artistic community. At low levels, the standard solution simply takes inspiration from art or from artistic experience; at high levels of community identification, the character instead relies on the monomania of an artist who can subordinate their life entirely to their craft.

               Artistic Culture 0 allows for a character with mild or negative affect towards art.

Artistic Culture 1 gives the artistic culture a certain sparkle in the character’s eyes.

Artistic Culture 2 pushes the character to practice art.

Artistic Culture 3 pushes the character further, making them ashamed to have income outside of art, life outside of art.

Core culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Artistic Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to artistic culture solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Artistic Culture 5 makes it actively harder for a character to keep track of the world outside their art—pushes them to detach from conventional reality, in the name of their artistic conceits. The milder end of this is the painter uninterested in the world beyond the brush; the more extreme end, the revolutionary idealist whose revolutionary zeal is turned towards achieving cubism in life.

Artistic Culture 6 increasingly erodes the character’s ability to communicate outside the context of their art—in time, they will be unable to express themselves outside of their manifesto’s terms, and perhaps even then only in movement, or in paint, or in song. If at that point they appear able to interact with citizens outside their community, it is faked; they may portray a role that is capable of doing so, but it is not them, and it may well not share their interests.

                      Corporate Communities (Floating Boards)

Floating board solutions may involve exploitation of corporate power, but are more generally things of pure abstraction—just as a core culture solution involves rejecting overt identification with one’s stuff, one’s work, or one’s employer, a floating board solution involves disidentification from ordinary human notions of purpose and strategy. A classic floating board reroll in a car crash is not to have been personally driving around in the first place, but rather to have abandoned the whole plan that involved driving not long before that in pursuit of an approach theoretically 0.002% better. A second option is to assume that if one is driving and crashing then it’s an expression of one’s destructive corporate ideology and not an accident and that one is almost certainly crashing into a corporate resource belonging to a notional ideological opponent in a fashion that will not seriously injure oneself. Pick oneself up, get out of the car afterwards or as it spins out, and keep participating in the board meeting you’re in over the phone!

                      Floating Boards 0 allows a character to anthropomorphize corporations as having motivations and purposes—as existing to do things, rather than as notional structures that distort the vibrational exertion of power.

Floating Boards 1 gives the sense that that viewing corporations as motivated or purposeful is dangerous—an irreal perspective that comes with the risk of potential personal losses. To see such illusions, in short, is to open oneself up for exploitation; this is a sense that nags at the character, even if they do give in now and then and think that, e.g., Convem’s Cow on a Stick Subdivision exists to make cows on a stick.

Floating Boards 2 pushes the character to implement their ideological agenda through floating boards on the local corporate ecosystem. It makes them want to do that, to see ways to do that, whether or not it’s a practical option at that particular time.

Floating Boards 3 makes it actively difficult for the character to conceptualize a company as “for” a thing, and puts them on intellectually and emotionally shaky ground when they attempt to implement a practical agenda through one.

Maenadic culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Floating Boards 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to floating board solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Floating Boards 5 makes it actively harder for a character to grasp the idea of actions or ideas that are abstractly rather than situationally wrong—their moral compass begins to fade, along with such ideas as “permanent losses,” “absolute truth,” and “things that are dangerous to mess around with.” Their sense of social constructed reality sharpens and becomes more acute than their perceptions of reality proper; they may not yet have lost their sense that the underlying truth exists, but the constructed narratives recorded in digital evidence and interpersonal communication are taking on a truth-like valence for them.

Floating Boards 6 alienate the character from truth and morality; they become an instrument of the corporate engine, the movements of market forces as the inputs to the scientific calculator remaining of their soul.

                    Next Time

... further enlightening studies of the 53lf!

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 18)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

… sharks and techies …

… transcends and, finally, visionaries.

Then, we did the intro to the equipment section.

Then, some cyberware and bioware stuff.

Then, the rest of the equipment guide!

Then, a bit about how characters earn rerolls through increasing acceptance of (sub)community theses, including traits for the first few theses!

Then the rest of that!

And now, some more detail on IOSHI itself!

        Training

The development of human knowledge is strictly limited by the sophistication of the techniques used to organize and convey that knowledge. Thus, oral tradition gives way to writing, private collections to libraries, libraries to digital libraries and the web, the web to the worm, and the worm to IOSHI (a.k.a. the well). Similarly, tools such as books, software, and formal techniques become an ever-greater part of the learning process. In the late 21st century, a short period of machine-assisted training can produce understanding far more advanced than a lifetime of ordinary study.

An advance to the next stage in automated education seems imminent. Librarians acknowledge that IOSHI has only a few years of life left to it. The well helps researchers maintain a broad mastery of their field, so they can pursue ever-more-complex studies. The point at which IOSHI can no longer present the results of these studies in a sufficiently intuitive fashion is now in sight. The librarians hold frequent private conferences on prospective replacement technologies. Until the next technological leap appears, however, IOSHI is a significant boon to just about anyone who can afford personal or professional access. A solid grasp of the state of the art makes them just plain better.

Not everyone has access, of course. Some people cannot afford it. If someone has the raw talent, and can prove it, they can get a sponsored education. If someone has the money, they can go to the well and learn pretty much anything. For the poor and average, access is slightly harder. IOSHI has finite processing power. Its computational power is growing fast, of course, but so are the demands on the system. That means that an advanced education has a price tag attached. Plus, of course, limiting access is to the short-term economic benefit of everyone but the poor and the average.

          Data Taint

Only the librarians understand what data taint is, and most of them deny its existence. Like believing in UFO abductions in the modern day, believing in data taint can cost someone a great deal of face. So many credulous people have spread so many hysterical superstitions on the subject that most Tartessians have difficulty taking it seriously. Some say that IOSHI is an AI out to mind control everyone it can. Others assert in all seriousness that monstrous god-kings rule the corporations and spread data taint as their blasphemous seed. Occasionally, one hears that Elvis’s brain[*] is behind it all.

[*] the famous lover of Alexander the Great

There is only one good reason to believe in data taint: a handful of people with a great deal of credibility and intellectual maturity loudly claimed it existed. Some of them vanished. Some of them retired. Some of them, much more loudly, changed their minds. The rest died violently.

The explanation of data taint made available to the laity as a whole runs like this. Data taint is a sickness coded into IOSHI training. Infection changes the structure of the victim’s mind, stripping from the victim a portion of his or her humanity. This produces minor but systemic alterations in the victim’s personality and may adjust memories or cognitive capacities. The taint defies full analysis, having in itself complexity equivalent to the human mind. Accordingly, no reputable source has yet established whether data taint has a purpose or whether it simply derives from a software bug.

            SIDEBAR Data Taint in Play

IOSHI campaigns assume that somewhere in the society, economic infrastructure, or power hierarchy of the late 21st century a deadly cancer lies. A major component of the “system” is inherently hostile. See the material on IOSHI campaigns, in our next post, for the reasoning behind this assumption.

The Game Master has three options when connecting data taint to this antagonistic force. First, they can make it a minor flaw in IOSHI’s design without significant effects in play. Second, the Game Master can implement it as one of the system’s tools for controlling or influencing the population. Third, data taint can be the root of the problem, an epidemic with IOSHI and the librarians as its primary vectors.

In all three cases, any IOSHI-derived ability can suffer data taint. This yields a limited mental distortion that affects the character when they use the ability in question.

The Game Master determines the conditions for acquiring data taint. Characters who obtain IOSHI training without a filter make themselves vulnerable, as do characters actively afflicted with data taint by a librarian. In addition, the Game Master can implement other sources of taint. Unless the player group wishes to play a horror game, these sources should be fundamentally fair — characters should have ample opportunity to realise the taint’s source before it completely overcomes them, and they should have the ability to avoid it thereafter. Some possible sources include television broadcasts, BIE-targeting software viruses, and intimate contact with the tainted.

The Game Master also determines the effects of data taint. However, the most common effect is taint-driven mental distortion. The first time the character uses the tainted ability in a given scene, they must roll a Trait or succumb to this effect. The Trait chosen is thematic; Connect is the default, but the Game Master could reasonably substitute Endure or Perceive instead, or vary between traits, and does not necessarily need to decide before the game. The duration of the effect is normally the level of the tainted ability in minutes, but can last hours or days in the event of a critical failure or scale upwards if the Game Master imposes a relatively minor effect. Possible taint-driven distortions include drug-side-effect-style results like obsessions, compulsions, phobias, or delusions; perceptual distortions or compulsions deliberately engineered to create a specific effect; or a twist in the character’s use of that ability. Characters with data taint also frequently discover that they know things they had no way to learn — a technically harmless but potentially dangerous trait.

Characters can also remove data taint. This normally requires the services of a trustworthy and untainted librarian who accepts data taint’s existence. If the character can find such a librarian, typical payment equals one tenth the tainted ability’s purchase cost. The Game Master can also institute other methods for removing data taint, such as long periods of meditation or careful application of electroconvulsive therapy.

END SIDEBAR

        Author’s Note: this was such a sucky project to work on. Having to just calmly write about ECT. Jeez. I can’t believe I didn’t even get paid for it!

                 Filters

People who want IOSHI training but fear data taint buy filters — improvements to the datajack designed by the librarian who first reported data taint’s existence. A filter allows a character to study at the well without suffering taint. Unfortunately, a number of experts assert that it is training through a filter that permanently warps a student’s mind.

The IOSHI license forbids training people who have filters installed. One can circumvent this license in a number of ways. Obtaining pirated access to the IOSHI servers, bribing the facility that provides training, or hand-altering one’s filter to conceal its existence often suffices. Characters receive a filter for free at the beginning of the game. Afterwards, filters cost ‡.72.

        Dead Libraries

One can salvage an IOSHI library from a dead person’s brain. In that library, one finds a holographic record of the departed’s understanding of their training. Feeding this data into a living person’s brain chip — through a filter, if desirable — is possible. Outside of Tartessos, it is even common. The living character receives some portion of the training just as if they had studied that topic from IOSHI directly. Over time, they may recover more. When drawing on these talents, the character understands that topic as the dead person saw it. For example, a shaman’s stolen insight trickles into the character’s mind through the lens of the dead person’s faith and not the character’s own.

The cost of a dead library is, naturally, the cost of the abilities purchased through it. If a certain ability is unreliable even on success and comes with pain, nightmares, and non-taint-related perceptual distortions, a character may acquire it at half cost; they may later buy off this disability with time and effort.

                SIDEBAR Installing Dead Libraries

Note that as a fungible good, dead libraries salvaged by the characters have a certain currency value. The Game Master should assign this value, setting it at a modest fraction of the value of the dead person’s training. If a character installs rather than sells such a library, they realize that value as character points rather than as money. The character must spend these points in an appropriate fashion.

Installing a dead library successfully requires a successful Perceive roll. Learning from a dead library requires one day per character point recovered. Halve this time if the installation critically succeeds; success with a quadruple or quintuple makes the dead library data instantly accessible, and may retroactively increase the number of character points received therefrom.

END SIDEBAR

            Self

Above Li Po II’s three triads [Author’s Note – I should probably go back and make that other thing called self “community”] sits the integrity of the self. Many forces of the late 21st century pressure humans and anthropophobes to fade into the crowd around them, abandoning their notion of individual value. Loss of identity is a real and deadly danger. To illustrate that danger, most of Li Po II’s modern followers point to the “drones.”

Corporations created the first drones shortly after IOSHI’s completion. They were force-grown genetically engineered infants, brought to physical maturity in a matter of months, their brains almost entirely devoid of experience. Training at the well allowed them to develop an immediate understanding of the world and specialised talents, making them useful workers for the corporations that designed them. IOSHI did not give them an ego or identity, however — if anything, it stunted that development. It has taken years for the first drones to approach the concept of the self.

In that time, a number of Tartessians developed an admiration for the innocence and dispassion the drones possessed. Hundreds had their minds deliberately wiped clean so that they could join them. Hundreds more were “volunteered” for the process by their enemies.

The drones represent the completion of the core culture philosophy, human beings who have transcended into economic goods. Those who accept this philosophy have nothing to fight for. Drones readily accept even the most horrid assignments on behalf of IOSHI and the biological laboratories that designed them. Characters who fall too far into this way of thinking have sold out, whether they realize it or not, and have essentially lost their conflict with the forces arrayed against them.

[[I’m not sure whether I like this or the existing Core Culture 5-6 better.]]

          The Net

Laptops and desktops have gone the way of the punchcard, but computers are ubiquitous in the era of the well. Clothing, walls, appliances, furniture, and most people are wired for computation and the net. Even the air performs calculations on the wireless signals passing through it.

Terminals still exist, but only as anachronisms and affectations. In some regions, a decker can look impressively technical by unfolding a terminal and setting it down as his or her workspace, typing on a keyboard and watching the world through a monitor like some 20th century purist. Most other places, it just looks dumb. One can purchase shades or contacts with a net display for the cost of a fancy meal, and in the unlikely event that the air isn’t wired for sound, even the trashy used clothing sold at a charity lets you type on its sleeve. People unwilling to deal with even the most transient difficulty connecting install a wireless datajack in their brain and piggyback their thoughts through it directly into the net.

                 Latency and Intrusion

Even in the era of IOSHI, however, the net is not perfect. The speed of light imposes a strict limit on how fast individual packets of information can travel. Further, between security and the need to relay signals, packets usually cannot just leap straight to the destination hardware; they have to pass through a number of checkpoints. This creates a condition of “latency.” Every command a user sends takes time to reach the machine that processes it.

For ordinary users, latency is an annoyance. Information freely available to them takes time to access. Work computers they have access to respond sluggishly when they are too far away. Depending on network usage and current efficiency, this delay ranges from unnoticeable to interminable. For unauthorized users, latency is far more dangerous. The further they are from a piece of hardware, the larger their effective reaction time, and the greater the advantage that security programs have.

“Distance” in the net derives from two sources. First, raw physical distance slows messages down. Whether a machine lives in Europe, America, or a satellite in low earth orbit matters. Light speed alone can add a fractional second to each message’s latency. In addition, messages need to pass through a number of relay points. For example, accessing someone’s project notes from outside their office building may require that signals pass through the building’s central computer systems and the server for the relevant department before reaching the whiteboard where the notes are stored. Each of these steps adds network distance, slowing the message down. Accessing the notes while standing directly in front of the whiteboard is a simpler matter: while the whiteboard may still consult security programs, the intruder and intrusion software act in real time.

Any intrusion software worth the name can make intelligent choices while it counts out the endless milliseconds between a sudden change in situation and its user’s reaction to it. Good deckers partially overcome latency by training an intrusion PIPE. Great deckers integrate SNAIs with their own thoughts so that they can process net events with software speed, then they break in physically. Usually, the availability of computer resources strictly limits the effectiveness of human guards, making this practice safer than it was in the age of the web, and it gives them peak access to the system they wish to invade.

                      Online Environment

The online world divides roughly into two regions: pseudospace and cyberspace. Pseudospace locations map strictly onto real-world locations. The pseudospace of an office’s internal network, for example, corresponds to the physical office. In scientific circles, any online environment that combines with the environments around it to form a consistent three-dimensional area is a pseudospace. In practice, most people use the term for places where the online world has some visual resemblance to the physical place to which it corresponds. Maintaining a close correspondence between pseudospace and physical space allows visitors and employees to alternate between the two without stumbling over things. Businesses often idealize their pseudospaces — most pseudospace malls, for example, are immaculately clean and full of architectural details impossible on their real-world budget.

Cyberspace is entirely virtual. Cyberspace regions exist only in the memory of their owners’ machines. They range from the fantastic to the utilitarian. Some businesses and individuals develop cyberspaces to free themselves from real-world spatial and financial limitations. Others consider cyberspaces inherently easier to secure than pseudospaces. If nothing else, humans can practically guard every machine involved.

In both pseudospaces and cyberspaces, software manifests in a mock-physical form. In some cases, it interacts essentially as an equal to the humans there — lacking the full breadth of human intellect, but fully capable in its areas of expertise.

                         Visiting the Net

To see and hear the net, characters must use a display and earphones or a brain-installed datajack. In either case, the character can flip between one of three modes: direct viewing of the real world, simultaneous viewing of the real world and a pseudospace or cyberspace, and focused study of the net. Goggles can display the local net as a shadowy overlay on the real world, a technique most effective when the user works with personal software or walks through a pseudospace. Datajacks allow either an intelligent overlay or direct parallel visualization of two environments.

Once able to view the net, characters can interact with it. They can pick up and manipulate virtual objects, wrestle with software, and track other visitors by their software traces. Basic physical interaction with the presented pseudospace or cyberspace requires standardised net-access sharpware. Acting outside the rules of the local pseudospace or cyberspace, as by tracking someone in a place where no one leaves footprints, requires specialized software.

           Combat Against Software

Characters can purchase software as toys, cool things, or minions of any level.

Combat with software takes three forms. Abilities such as Decking allow direct combat between the human mind and software, giving a character the ability to probe or corrupt the code. Rare software can return the favour, striking at the minds of characters with a net connection in their brain. Software can also strike physically at the characters through automated defence systems. Finally, virtual combat occurs entirely in the net. Humans cannot participate in virtual combat, but their software can, and virtual combat otherwise behaves exactly as combat in the real world.

For example, a decker purchases a ‡4.25 SNAI. The SNAI is built on ‡20.4 and can participate in online combat on the decker’s behalf. If the SNAI dies, the decker is unharmed but — unless the decker negotiated a price for some kind of reincarnation ability with the Game Master — the SNAI is forever lost. If the decker had eight minions, two of which were SNAIs, then the decker could continue the combat using the other SNAI; meanwhile, the other six minions could more physically throw in their weight.

[There were originally rules set up to buy powers “online only,” which I might want to restore.]

END SIDEBAR

                        Next time: the structure of IOSHI games!

... AKA, the part I was really irritated that Guardians of Order took out and then everyone was all “ah, that Jenna and her mysterious games that have no obvious structure! I guess we just have to admire this from afar without actually playing it!” ^_^

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 17)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

… sharks and techies …

… transcends and, finally, visionaries.

Then, we did the intro to the equipment section.

Then, some cyberware and bioware stuff.

Then, the rest of the equipment guide!

Then, a bit about how characters earn rerolls through increasing acceptance of (sub)community theses, including traits for the first few theses!

Let’s finish those off!

                      Criminal Culture

Criminal culture solutions, naturally, include theft and violence and generally unlawful behavior, but also the criminal community principles of charisma, loyalty, and tradition.

Criminal Culture 0 allows a character to respect the legal order of Tartessos and to see it as a social given or a moral order rather than as an organizational structure and a set of enforcement mechanisms.

Criminal Culture 1 inclines a character to feel like maybe security culture’s gone a bit too far.

Criminal Culture 2 gives a character some level of criminal ambition.

Criminal Culture 3 pushes a character to seek status in, and climb the ranks of, a criminal community.

Security culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Criminal Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to criminal solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Criminal Culture 5 makes it increasingly difficult for the character to remember that there are people out there who respect contracts and laws; that they “matter,” that they’re “real,” that the world is not run by the personal charismatic force of the criminal elite.

Criminal Culture 6 attracts notoriety and casual lawlessness, to the point where the character will soon become unable to function for long periods of time outside a criminal community without attracting dangerous levels of attention from security.

         Author’s Note: if the step from 1 to 2 seems a bit much, note that this isn’t a moral slippery slope, it’s a scale that tracks social influence from the actual Tartessian underworld. You’re allowed to question excessive security measures without any criminal culture at all; for that matter, though it’s potentially inefficient, you’re allowed to be a notorious lawbreaker without any!

               High Family Culture

High family solutions, for a servant, involve grim acceptance; dissipating one’s presence; fearful perfection; and deceit.

For a proper member of the high families, they involve glamour, social maneuvering, and ruthless use of power.

High Family Culture 0 allows a character to believe, on some level, in an invulnerable fortress of the soul—in a selfhood, and a set of rights, that can be violated but cannot be taken.

High Family Culture 1 gives the character a bitter awareness of the high families’ ability to distort the mentality and the legal position of their tenants, although they do not necessarily approve.

High Family Culture 2 fills a character with a giddy, starstruck awe of the aristocracy, who take on elements of glamour and magic unto them. Even if the character despises their actions, even if on thinking about it they recognize that the high families are blights upon the world, they still subconsciously buy into the celebrity-like myth that the high families are somehow special, somehow chosen, nevertheless; that their extraordinary quality is more than just a convenient mask over callow, cruel, and pointless fleshly things. A character with high family culture 2 will recoil in disgust from someone who just, like, kills kids and then licks their gun afterwards or something, but if a high family butler informs them of an audience with a scion, they’ll feel a wash of pride and glee as well as (possibly) fear!

High Family Culture 3 pushes a character to accept, to acclimate to, a high family’s control over them—and/or, their own position in such a family, if they have claimed a fief or been brought by marriage or adoption into such a clan.

Street culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

High Family Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to high family culture solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

High Family Culture 5 drowns a character, ever so slowly, in the stifling grey of fear and service (or, more rarely, rank); they begin to forget that they were ever human.

High Family Culture 6 cuts the strands of ego or sensibility that connect the body to the mind, one by one by one; at the end, the character is a servant who identifies as an automaton and will willfully defend their oppressors; or, a member of the families who is possessed by the animus of their throne, whatever humanity and personhood they might once have had merely fragments (one might imagine, screaming) lost behind their mask of a smiling face.

              Author’s Note: the original abuser metaphor tangles awkwardly with historical context here. Likely now that there’s this section, if I ever edit the setting, I’ll just delete them.

           Maenadic Culture

Maenadic solutions involve surrendering to passion, the power of the crowd, social dominance by force of will, and compliance when social dominance has failed. A classic maenadic reroll, on failing to drive a motorcycle, is to lean into their sheer delight and instantaneous flow state as it starts to spin out (to recover, and get another chance); on a stealth roll, to be inspired by the thrill of the hunt; in conversation, to catch others up within their flow.

Maenadic Culture 0 allows a character to be staid and puritanical and unwilling to surrender to any “rush.”

Maenadic Culture 1 makes it harder for the character to resist the occasional party or indulgence.

Maenadic Culture 2 gives a character early hints of maenadic inclination.

Maenadic Culture 3 pushes them to leave Tartessos itself behind and drift off to, or begin, a maenadic carnival.

Floating board culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Maenadic Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to maenadic solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Maenadic Culture 5 roots the character deeply in the maenadic carnival; they ache at every moment they are apart from it.

Maenadic Culture 6 leaves the character unable to truly function in Tartessos; they may be forced to do so, by a higher-rank maenad, or by themselves, perhaps, as proof of will, but they will do so listlessly, dolorously, without any joy or interest.

           Physical Idealist Culture

Physical idealist solutions involve beauty and fitness—celebrity, earning the approval of others, and physical capability through biotech, cybertech, and effort.

Physical Idealist Culture 0 allows a character to think of “physical perfection” as an incoherent idea—at best, a kind of ideology, and not a telos.

Physical Idealist Culture 1 gives the character a sense that an objective ideal of physical perfection is possible.

Physical Idealist Culture 2 makes a character more suited for the fringe of an idealist community—it encourages them to admire physical idealists, and to go farther in their direction than most, but will not of itself push them to dedicate their life to it.

Physical Idealist Culture 3 pushes a character to feel that anything less than a perfect form would be a failing.

Anthropophobic culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Physical Idealist Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to physical idealist solutions like fitness and attractiveness for rolls and rerolls alike.

Physical Idealist Culture 5 intensifies a character’s desire to please those who look upon and evaluate them, to earn nothing but approval, until it begins to overtake anything like a personal physical ideal; increasingly, perfection itself is no longer enough, but rather behavioral emulation and self-modification to match trends or associates’ tastes becomes the norm.

Physical Idealist Culture 6 creates a character who can bear no harsh judgment; they are likely radiant with fitness and with beauty, but also ever-more willing to go to any length to demonstrate that radiance, and ever-more-easily cracked under the strain of facing anyone who does not acknowledge their perfection.

          Religious Culture

Religious solutions may involve finding community through belief, or accessing repositories of arguably slanted wisdom associated with the faith, or praying for a miracle. Rerolling because the character prays for a miracle, and succeeding where they “would have” failed, does not require that the GM and other players endorse the veracity of the faith, only to recognize that the faithful, even as in our time, regularly have experiences that they do take as evidence of that veracity.

Religious Culture 0 allows a character to deny the value of faith, or, to have none.

Religious Culture 1 gives a character a sense that there may, even must, be something ... numinous, spiritual, beyond the magisterium of science, although they may not be able to name or put a form to it. It allows agnosticism or a sort of troubled, dishonest atheism, but the character is no longer able to truly commit to the idea of a soulless world, even if they mock themselves for the superstition.

Religious Culture 2 imbues a character with a modest faith; at this level, they necessarily believe, and believe that believing matters, but it is still possible for them to isolate their faith from their model of the world, separating it from empiricism and thinking of themselves as not like those believers, you know, over there.

Religious Culture 3 drives the character to faith; it does not rule them but it calls to them, and inclines them to devote their labour and their wealth unto its service.

In most cases, technical culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0). Certain technical and religious communities, however, are cross-compatible—that the theses are directly opposed is a result of pre-existing social tensions rather than because mutual denial is the only way in which they could be framed.

Religious Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to religious solutions, for rolls and rerolls alike.

Religious Culture 5 pushes a character to withdraw from the secular world. It drives them to reject the world in some fashion, or calls them to live a purer, often “simpler” life. If practical, the character will feel an ever-stronger pull to move into a community of their faith; if not, they’ll still feel a growing need to abandon the compromises previously made between their faith and ordinary life.

Religious Culture 6 makes a character’s religious devotion essentially, and ever-more, incompatible with daily Tartessian existence. The nature of this, and what extent the character remains themselves despite it, will depend upon the nature of their faith.

          Secure Communities

Secure community solutions involve some combination of protocols and policies, patrols and fixed emplacements, protected locations, and submission to authority. Note that while a secure community mindset is biased towards trust in and obedience to human security, human security is ultimately considered less reliable than mechanical security, and while police have greater powers in a secure community early in its formation, late in its development they are likely to find themselves curtailed or eliminated by the machinery of the system, unwilling as it will inevitably become to grant them the discretion to which they are accustomed.

Secure Community Culture 0 allows a character to feel generally distrustful towards security measures.

Secure Community Culture 1 comes with a sense that there’s a seething core of lawlessness and danger ... somewhere, not necessarily even where the characters have observed it to be ... and thus strong security measures are fundamentally necessary.

Secure Community Culture 2 encourages a certain willingness to give up some of one’s own liberty and autonomy in the name of that security.

Secure Community Culture 3 imbues a character with a deep-rooted, fundamental fear; life outside their secure bubble will unnerve them.

Criminal culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Secure Community Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to secure community solutions for rolls and rerolls alike.

Secure Community Culture 5 pushes a character strongly to give up or eliminate some of their verminous potential for human error in order to better cooperate with security protocols, whether by wiring themselves into a neighborhood server or pre-programming themselves with superior responsiveness to law.

Secure Community Culture 6 drives a character to surrender their liberty entirely, inevitably turning them into nothing more than a faceless extension of the system in which they participate—or even ensuring it eliminates them.

           Author’s Note: it’s so weird working with stuff I wrote in 2003 sometimes.

         Street (Poor) Culture

Street culture solutions focus on building cheap, robust tech from modern ideas and a mix of mostly-obsolete and a bit of modern technology; having a keen eye for what people actually want and need; supporting one another; and a keen eye for options that others might be too proud or set in their ways to have seen.

Street Culture 0 allows a character to believe that economic justice arises naturally from the fabric of the universe or the Tartessian economy, or, has been won through some nebulous struggles and achievements of the past; or, at any rate, exists, somehow, immanent in the structure of things, already.

Street Culture 1 gives the character the sense that it’s impossible to get anywhere in life with that kind of naïve attitude.

Street Culture 2 gives the character a keen awareness of the fundamental justice of eating the rich, even if they may not personally have the stomach for it.

Street Culture 3 gives the character a keen interest in creating opportunities for others.

High family culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0).

Street Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to street solutions for rolls and rerolls alike—those being, relying on the community, getting their hands dirty, and putting cheap innovation into play.

Street Culture 5 represents accumulated damage; the character is necessarily beginning to break. A character at this level has pushed themselves too hard, lived marginally for too long, or put too much of themselves into helping others who are just as much on the edge; now they’re running out of resources, or out of them entirely, and their bodies or their brains are beginning to crack.

Street Culture 6 burns the character out completely. For NPCs, that often involves a physical collapse, but since PCs are more likely to have intermittent access to windfalls and modern medicine, it’s more likely that they just can’t keep going; their mind and will is breaking, and, then, breaks.

           Technical and Research Community Culture

Technical/research solutions, naturally, involve superior technology; they also involve the study of the same, a general interest in the same and in analysis, the disregard for superstition and any subjective folly not explicitly integrated into their community ideology, and access to the community of science.

Technical/Research Culture 0 allows a character a mild/negative affect towards technological progress.

Technical/Research Culture 1 gives the feeling that a dedication to research, to technology, to science, is necessary, for the world to advance; and that advancing is, somehow, critical.

Technical/Research Culture 2 urges the character to live amongst innovation; to practice engineering or science.

Technical/Research Culture 3 will push a character to give up significant amounts from the rest of their life, in fact, in order to do so.

In most cases, religious culture may no longer be increased, and further increases reduce it by one point each (to a minimum of 0). As noted above, though, certain religious and technical communities may be cross-compatible.

Technical/Research Culture 4 inclines a character strongly to lean in to technical solutions for rolls and rerolls alike—often meaning that they’re using tools slightly better than one might expect.

Technical/Research Culture 5 drives a character to sacrifice even some of their basic humanity to the scientific ideal—to give it up, not because science itself is antihumanitarian or demands they do so, but because the ideology that drives their technical community forward demands that they yield up their ego-identification to the machine.

Technical/Research Culture 6 demands of the character that they sacrifice the notion of the self entirely, replacing it with a matrix produced by some advanced psychological theory or giving themselves over to the machinery at their community’s core. In time, their original self will exist only as a formatted table of data on some server, deep within.

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 15)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

… sharks and techies …

… transcends and, finally, visionaries.

Then, we did the intro to the equipment section.

Then, some cyberware and bioware stuff.

                    Today, let’s finish the equipment stuff off!

(This is mostly what I have brainspace to do without burning too much task-switching power not doing Glitch. Hopefully you’ll be happy enough with the Glitch stuff not to mind no Horizon just yet. ^_^)

**

When we left off, we’d covered the first of Li Po II’s “three triads.” The second is social power:

             The Second Triad

Characters in the IOSHI setting may gain cultural influence in the following ways.

         Organizational Influence

To obtain influence with most core culture Projects, a character must have direct corporate authority over some aspect of the relevant Project’s operations. The Tartessian separation of professional and personal life makes it very difficult — though possible — to control a Project through blackmail and personal manipulation.

Two kinds of Projects are exceptions. First, in the classic tradition of the fraternal benefit societies, a number of Tartessian Projects exist to provide support services for a particular collection of people. Although managed by the Tartessian corporate structure, these Projects have a fundamentally human-oriented goal — advancing the lives and interests of their members. Such Projects range from advocacy groups and standards associations to private security forces that extend greater protection to certain residents than others. Second, certain Projects have an ideological basis, either because a floating board runs them or because a sufficient quantity of Tartessians willingly funds support for the ideologies in question. In both cases, a character can become one of the commodities the Project manages. As a member of the supported group or an important contributor to the advancement of the Project’s ideology, the character receives intrinsic moral authority. His or her happiness is an asset on the Project’s balance sheet.

              Reputation

Talent and the vocational authority that comes with it do not give a character direct power over any core culture Projects or organizations. Instead, it makes the character a data source or practical resource. On the immediate level, this gives much less influence. Data sources are subject to verification and practical resources are expendable. Talent does, however, give long-term access to and input into those Projects where the character’s abilities are useful.

In the same fashion, characters known for reliability, veracity, or the possession of some virtue favoured by an outsider community gain the benefit of long-term access to various sections of society. No one pays them immediate attention on the basis of their reputation, but it does open doors.

In Tartessos, most reputations are inherently local. This clashes with the Tartessian expectation of minimum-consequence mobility. As a result, various software packages known as Status Processors (\speez\) partially globalise human reputations. Tartessians jot down their evaluation of their associates, when it occurs to them to do so, in an efficient menu-driven shorthand. The SP data servers build an abstract profile of the kinds of people that a given user approves of, as well as whose opinions a given user would respect. Later, others can access the SP data servers to determine a statistical expectation for their eventual opinion of a given character, as well as reading any notes on the character from individuals they would likely respect.

This process has certain obvious flaws. First, it relies on accurately tagging a character with their reputation. Software identification can change; cosmetic modification can alter physical identification; and anyone can claim a given pseudonym. High-security SP data servers rely on cooperation with the character being tagged — when someone wishes to take down a note on the character’s reputation, the character must consent, securely encoding the information using his or her own Status Processor’s cryptographic key. Second, the software is vulnerable to subversion, hacking, or a concerted effort to subvert the system. Characters actively concerned about reputation sabotage maintain several reputations and attached cryptographic keys, each with its own biographical data. Characters fearing the falsely inflated reputations of others maintain accounts on various mutually competitive SP systems, giving them a chance to cross-reference the information they receive.

                   Cultural Understanding

Characters who understand the mores of the outsider communities have a major advantage when dealing with them. A basic level of insight keeps cultural barriers from interfering with such interactions. A greater depth of comprehension allows a character to radiate qualities that earn them respect and deference. Sufficient practical understanding of the underlying assumptions of the fringe community lets a character manipulate the community as a whole. This wisdom is the final element of Li Po II’s second triad.

              Cred

Characters in the IOSHI setting have a trait called Cred. This rolls up some combination of the second triad’s elements under a single header. More precisely, each purchase rates the character’s influence with a specific group: a local community, a core culture Project, or a large social group taken as a whole.

Cred is absolute: a character can sometimes fake higher Cred with a trait roll, but at its base, Cred simply defines one’s relationship with the community; all other reactions, interactions, and trait checks start from there. Unlike most traits, which are on a 0-5 scale, Cred ranges from 1-10+,with the GM filling in any values not occurring on the chart below:

Level 1: The character has a positive reputation with the group, or has qualities making him or her mildly appealing to the group in question. The character can reasonably expect polite and considerate treatment from the group in question, although in sufficiently tense circumstances this may simply earn them civil disinterest or a merciful execution.

Level 2: The character has qualities or influence that directly earns them the group’s respect; the group treats the character as one of their own.

Level 4: The group treats the character as an important and valuable member; a minor community leader.

Level 6: The character has meaningful power over the group. Members of the group may question or refuse the character’s demands, but not their right to make them.

Level 8: The character has vast sway—equivalent to a Project’s CEO or a religious community’s prophets. The character may be overruled but otherwise has free rein.

Level 10: The character has, essentially, free rein with any local communities or Projects that fall under the definition of the Cred.

                  Cred with an individual local community or core culture Project costs ‡1.0 per Level. In the first case, the character has influence with community leaders and average residents. In the second, the character can impress the Project’s employees and influence the Project’s decisions. If changes in the game setting make this Cred literally or effectively useless, the player can trade in this Cred for Cred with another group at ‡1.0 per week.

Cred with an outsider community type costs ‡3.0 per Level. The character has the qualities and reputation necessary to influence members of that fringe regardless of the specific community in question.

Characters with significant rank in Tartessos’s structure of interlocking corporations have “shark Cred.” This costs ‡5.0 per Level, and the character can apply his or her Cred in dealing with any Project.

Cred always trumps Cred of four or more Levels lower. A character with Level Two Cred straight-up cannot oppose the manipulations of a character with Level Six Cred. When multiple player characters or major NPCs attempt to influence an organization or community in incompatible ways, and their Cred is no more than three Levels apart, the Game Master should either allow simple opposed Sell rolls or play out the conflict in whole or part.

             Other Forms of Influence

In some cases, organizational influence can also be purchased using the sharks’ Employees power—‡5.0 per level for a roll to pawn a task off successfully on miscellaneous agents—or in a restricted version, costing ‡3.0 per level, with some restrictions on acceptable tasks.

Characters may have employees, adjutants, or—in some cases—minions. For the most part, these rules are meant to cover personalized software assistants, but characters can have human sidekicks, private short-term or long-term contracts with human NPCs, or persistent human allies that the player chooses or (in character creation) defines.

The base rate for a flunky or assistant is ‡1-2; this suffices to obtain an extended contract for low-end services from an agency or Project, to buy a single permanent software assistant, or to obtain a long-term contract with an individual directly. This sum can be interpreted as around four years’ worth of rent, meaning that it’s definitely not enough to actually support a human employee forever or to earn their undying loyalty, but it is enough—if one assumes that they’re also spending time on their own business, earning the tabs they need to survive—to have them be available for specific services, or to hang out in one’s social circle being generally helpful, for a very long time. Full-time employment of a flunky or assistant is around ‡0.03 to ‡0.15 a month, with ‡0.06 for simple work and ‡0.12 for dangerous or specialized work being “fair;” there may be a markup for employers living fringe lifestyles, or they may simply be limited to working with flunkies in similar lives.

Flunkies and minions of this sort aren’t generally built as full characters; or rather, anyone competent enough to build as a full character is operating at a slightly higher tier, generally costing about ‡1 (or ‡0.05 to ‡0.08 per month) for each ‡4.8 in traits. A ‡5 lieutenant is generally considered competent enough to matter, while anything over ‡15 may make one look like a bit of a Wooster. SNAIs tend to cap out around ‡12.5.

The cheapest minions of all—low-end or untrained software agents and “my dead friend asked me to hire this utter disaster of a relative, and, well, my friend’s dead, so I have to?”-level humans—run between ‡.07 and ‡.72, the same level as a random but interesting gadget. However, one tends to get what one pays for.

             The Third Triad

Characters in the IOSHI setting can obtain miscellaneous advantages in the following ways.

        Money

Once play begins, the conversion between character wealth and Character Point totals ceases to be strict; similarly, costs in general become less precise, and more things will be found for sale for unsystematised price tags like ‡.0008 or ‡2.17. The default costs listed in the next section assume that the character does reasonable research and finds the right place to buy. If the character uses a shopping agent, this creates a record of his or her interests. If the character hunts for bargains personally, this takes time. If the character does neither, quick and dirty purchases are often available at an increased cost.

         Possessions (The Basics)

The technology market of the 21st century makes manipulating the potential customer a priority. The ideal citizen, from the perspective of the corporate shamans and sharks, defers his or her primary purchasing decisions to software and augments this with impulse buys. Most Tartessians think it wise to hand off their daily shopping to online agents that scout the net for potentially interesting products. Both of the leading agents, Steward XT and 7th Scout, give their users a hassle-free shopping experience that stays within their budget. It also opens them up to the machinations of anyone who makes a deal with the current owner of the Steward or 7th Scout intellectual property or writes an “advirus” that subverts them.

People still do their own shopping. Most of the outsider communities deride shopping agents as a means to hand over personal desires to the trends of the masses. Even core culture Tartessians usually accept that software cannot find everything they might want. For those who hunt down their own bargains, dealers rely on a bewildering array of products and options to create customer insecurity. Uncertain shoppers find themselves buying blind or yielding to merchant pressure. Cheap and reliable products must exist, to account for those whose budgets would otherwise prohibit them from buying a given service or good at all. Except for those poor customers, however, merchants prefer that no one leave the store with such a product in his or her hands.

                  Character Advancement

Characters can improve their own abilities by spending money. Purchasing the rarer powers usually involves IOSHI training, finding unusual items on the market, or installing biotech and cyberware in the character’s body and brain. For prospective increases to base traits like Research or Sell, the Game Master and player decide how the character can spend tabs to achieve his or her goal. The Game Master can also give out trait increases—generally limited to Cred or merchandise, but rarely other things as well—as the natural result of game events

         Cool Stuff

During the game, characters can purchase miscellaneous cool things; the base cost is generally ‡.07 for something small or useless and ‡0.72 for something heavy-duty, restricted, or rare. For instance, software to automatically rewrite your emails into a selected public domain 19th or 20th century authorial voice would generally cost ‡.07; a universal key that only works in lowest-security and street culture areas, ‡.72. The costs may change based on circumstances and the gadget’s utility.

       Sharpware

Sharpware is software that speculates intelligently about its user’s intentions and desires. When written for a suitably limited domain, sharpware can save its users time and mental effort. As long as the designers’ ambition falls within the programmers’ abilities, sharpware makes accurate guesses most of the time and adequate, correctable guesses the rest. Attempts to make sharpware beyond the capability of modern software technology or simply beyond the skills of the programmers in question usually fail horribly, producing a program that flounders intelligently more often than it helps. This does not necessarily prevent its distribution by the Project responsible or its widespread adoption by Tartessian users.

                Subware

If a program cannot pretend to intelligence, most users turn their noses up at it and call it “subware.” Few Tartessians want a thermostat that does not memorize their preferences and adjust to their level of activity. Typical users reject phone software that insists on clear identification and cannot reliably call “um, you know, that guy, from last week, you know, with the moustache.”

Techies, deckers, hunters, and other technical characters consider subware their bread and butter. While the path of software evolution leads towards ever-greater understanding of the requests users make of it, programs that guess at their user’s intentions make mistakes. While software developers endlessly strive for flashier, more flexible code, flashy and flexible programs open the way for intruders. They have more things they can do. That means that each testing hour evaluates fewer of the software’s possible failures. A technical character prefers programs that do exactly what he or she tells them to do, nothing more and nothing less. Some of the extremists still use text-based interfaces for non-textual tasks.

Typical subware has limited applications. The core functionality of an oven is subware — a low-level interface for turning the heat up and down and making requests of the refrigerator. It never makes mistakes, nor does it correct the user’s mistakes. It is as secure as a rock. The high-end interface built on top of it has none of these features.

                Table: Standard Costs

Toy            ‡0.07

Cool Thing            ‡0.72

Cooler Thing         ‡1.44

Really Cool Thing ‡2.16 or ‡2.88

Familiarity with a Skill     ‡0.3

Rough Competence          ‡0.72

Professional Competence ‡1

Expertise   ‡1.44

Software, Sharpware         ‡0.01 to ‡0.07 (rarely, ‡0.08 to ‡0.72)

Software, Subware            ‡0.01 or free

              Possessions (Extras)

Certain features modify the market value of an item. Others may affect a character’s interest in a given product.

Access

A product with Star Access produces its own signal and can connect to the net from almost anywhere. Class A Access products produce a weaker signal and can lose contact with the net when isolated or underground. Class B Access products can talk to the net, but depend on the local environment for power. They can only transmit from net-enabled regions. Class C Access products depend both on ambient communication and on a local account; for example, a Class C coffee mug can only talk to the net in a building that has specifically given it an account.

                  Amptemin

Amptemin sheathing helps prevent unusual immune and systematic reactions to biotech and cybernetic implants. Some studies suggest that amptemin is teratogenic.

            Appearance Enhancing

Cyberware and biotech labelled as appearance enhancing make obvious, visible changes in the subject’s physical structure. The result is not necessarily aesthetic, although many such products try to be.

          Biotech

Biotech enhancements include surgical modifications to body structure and primarily organic implants. The term also covers products with a biological source, such as goat silk, and bioengineered foods like Convem’s Cow on a Stick.

                     Low Visibility

A low visibility body modification is ostensibly hard for others to notice. Noticing a modification requires a Perceive check. Low visibility modifications should — by legal standards — impose a level 3 Obstacle on these rolls; most such products impose a level 1 or level 2.

           MMD

Implants and surgical procedures advertising Minimal Measurable Degradation should provide less than a .5% reduction in overall dexterity, speed, strength, or cognitive efficiency for 95% of all users. Characters are assumed to purchase MMD implants and procedures if available.

         Natural / Organic

The technology used to produce a natural product is at least 5 years old. For example, a bioengineered strain of corn must exist for at least 5 years before it can claim status as a natural or organic product.

Table: Additional Charges

Access, *   ‡.05

Access, Class A    ‡.03

Access, Class B    ‡.01

Amptemin Sheathing        ‡.02

Low Visibility       ‡.07

Natural/Organic    +5% (max ‡.01)

             Possessions (Toys)

The following table lists typical costs for a few other standard purchases. The IOSHI setting focuses on enhanced characters rather than high-end tools — the weaponry, armour, and vehicles of the late 21st century use the same game rules as modern equipment. This does not mean that no progress has taken place; rather, humans have kept up, proportionally, with advances in these technologies. Players can assume that their characters’ toys have various showy but unimportant features that make them cooler and higher-tech than modern equipment.

Unless the player wishes otherwise, characters automatically begin the game with a datajack and a filter. This does not require the allocation of tabs.

        Table: Miscellaneous Equipment

Clothing, Armour              ‡0.07

Clothing, Business                        ‡0.005 to ‡0.2

Clothing, High-Class                    ‡0.01 to ‡0.4

Clothing, Standard                       minimal

Computer, Low-End                     minimal

Eyewear, Network Access                        Clothing cost plus Access cost          

Computer, High-End                    ‡0.07

Datajack    ‡0.07

Filter                      ‡0.07

Home, Comfortable                      ‡0.07/month or more

Home, Luxury                   ‡0.2/month or more

Home, Palatial                   ‡0.5/month or more

Home, Tartessian              ‡0.02/month or more

Land                      ‡2.0 or more per 1,000 sq. ft.

Medical License                ‡1.0

Vehicle, Combat               ‡2.16 or ‡2.88

Vehicle, Special Feature               ‡0.07

Vehicle, Scooter   ‡0.07

Vehicle, Standard ‡0.72

        53LF

to be continued ...

[jennamoran]

IOSHI (Part 12)

Hi!

Today we’re sharing a bit more of the cyberpunk setting I wrote in, I dunno, 2003?

So far,

we’ve had a basic introduction to what’s going on.

we talked about the core culture and a few subcommunities.

and a few more!

and another few!

and the last of them.

Then, we discussed some system stuff and the first character type: deckers.

Then, two more types: fires and hunters.

Then, another two: jockeys and knife edges.

… librarians and medics …

… shamans and riggers …

... sharks and techies ...

              And today, let’s finish the archetypes off!

Transcend

Mission Statement: “I escape the limits of the human mind.”

                Summary

Transcends accept the ultimate metamorphosis, learning from the well how to rebuild their own minds. A potential transcend studies information organization, computer programming, psychology, and optimisation theory. After deciding the principles he or she wishes to exemplify and the goals he or she wishes to achieve, a potential transcend uses this knowledge to construct a new and perfect self from scratch. The resulting creature was never a child. The linear progression of personal history begins anew at the moment of transcendence.

Most transcends have a natural talent for self-reconstruction. Their training realizes it in full. They create and dissolve identities on a whim, build complex internal spaces, and optimise their performance from the inside. If they lack a talent, they create it in themselves. If they do not understand something, they give themselves the ability to understand. If they find themselves torn between irreconcilable imperatives, they delete one of those drives and find happiness with the other. They think a dozen things at once, or more.

                Identifiers

Transcends do not really identify with the humans around them, and often show minor anthropophobic influence. Some style themselves after the maenads. Others build their minds into fortresses and identify with the secure communities. A few mix religious and technical symbolism in their apparel, if they wish to make their nature obvious — who but a transcend can accept the fundamental thesis of the religious and the technical communities simultaneously? Transcends tend to refer to themselves in the plural when speaking to the people they care about, occasionally slipping into that tense in public. One can sometimes observe sharp changes in a transcend’s demeanour when changing “forward” identities — assigning a new persona or personality to interact with the world. The self previously forward, at the same time, retreats to the world inside. Transcends often prefer avatars that mildly abstract their physical appearance, as by re-rendering it in 8-bit colour or as an Impressionist image.

                Role

Transcends think of their condition as an improved mentality. Given the high correspondence between skill and effectiveness in a technologically advanced civilization, it provides them with physical and social advantages as well. A transcend can fill any role left unoccupied in the group and serve as a practical bridge between the diverse talents therein. Transcends also have paramount flexibility in adapting to the circumstances of a given story arc. Not only can they double as a knife edge or librarian in a pinch, but they can become the group’s entomologist, veterinary doctor, or pearl diving expert at need.

In the larger context of the game, transcends embody the concept of humanity unbound from the general truths of human nature. Their existence defies generalizations, making misanthropy harder to acquire or sustain. This does not typically improve group morale, but does stabilise it against dehumanising influences.

Suggested starting traits for a transcend are:

Action 1 — what you use in action scenes.

Connect 2 — what you use to understand people, trust people, connect to them.

Endure 3 — what you use to endure suffering, manage in harsh circumstances.

Perceive 3 — what you use to sense things, be alert to them.

Research 2 — what you use to look things up.

Sell 1 — what you use to sell people on things.

Stealth 2 — what you use to avoid notice.

Tactics 2 — what you use for infiltration, combat, etc. plans. Also functions as Luck OOC.

                One points of improved appearance is normal, for a total of 49‡.

                Cred

Transcends have significant cred with anthropophobic communities and the floating boards. Some have cred with a local community or two as well.

A suggested starting  point is one point of level 1 Cred, one point of level 2 Cred, and one point of level 4 Cred.

                Talents

The core Transcend Talent, for 2‡, lets the transcend reduce the Obstacles that one trait faces by one. They can change the trait in question with a day of concentrated study. This talent can be taken up to twice more — once to reduce that time to an hour, and once to reduce Obstacles by two points instead of by one. These enhancements can be taken in either order. Only the first point of reduction stacks with other Obstacle-reduction abilities such as Steady.

Internal World, for 1‡, gives the character a complete, consistent, and separate internal world. Transcends with this talent can retreat any portion of themselves entirely from the world,  making them functionally immune to interrogation. Characters with the Shaman talent may still be able to reach them, but do not benefit from that talent’s Edge. In addition, characters with an internal world can memorize events or images in exact detail with a Perceive roll, capturing them as virtual objects or playable movies inside their internal worlds.

                Combat Style

Transcends typically construct an implacable guardian persona to fight on their behalf. Other portions of the transcend monitor the transcend’s sensory feed for any opportunities and threats the guardian does not notice. Common combat abilities include:

Assess (‡1.0 for a rough sense of the competence of any opposition, or +2 Edge on a Perceive roll to pick that up if someone is concealing or inflating it.)

Evasive (‡1.0 per level for an Obstacle to enemy Action rolls in direct combat.)

Eyes in the Back of Your Head (‡1.0 for 2 Edge and reroll to spot immediate danger, above).

Fighting Blind (‡3.0, removes the need to sense one’s opponent)

Impact (‡1.5 per level, each level usable once per scenario to pump the IC effect of an Action success to a triple.)

Steady (‡1.5 per level to waive Obstacles up to that level on Action rolls.) and

Weapons Expert (‡1.0 for a +4 Tool bonus to Research rolls to know or look up information on a given weapon or combat-focused technology; the character automatically knows generally public or semi-public information on weapons, combat-focused technology, and military and security organizations.)

                Attributes

This section lists common transcend abilities and how a character can purchase them in the IOSHI setting.

Transcends often have the Technical Mastery ability, the fire’s Inhuman Thought ability, or the shaman’s Grounded Soul.

Normally, IOSHI training adapts the data to the user. Transcends who install a sufficiently large database of information can reconfigure themselves, instead, giving themselves IOSHI-style abilities on the fly. Self-Training costs ‡5.5 per level, up to the transcend’s Research; takes roughly ten minutes to use; and allows the transcend to shift around ‡2 per level in training. While only the strongest transcends can use this to approach the other archetypes’ core competencies, a single level of Self-Training is enough to shuffle through just about any minor ability.

In the space inside their mind, transcends can shape daydream images into living artefacts. Some of these carry out their tasks rigorously and without any sense of context. If the transcend reorganizes his or her memories, the messenger artefact that fetches those memories for active mental agents that use them cannot recognize the change — the transcend must redirect it manually to the new location. Other internal creatures have a more complex intellectual structure and can respond intelligently to circumstances. When assigned a bit of ego from the transcend’s supply, giving them a touch of selfhood, these become “golems.” Golems have no physical presence, but can perform intellectual tasks. Golems can also manifest on the net via the transcend’s datajack. Golems cost ‡3 per level, and — other than their lack of physical existence — function much like a shark’s Employees.

Transcends usually give consciousness to the portion of themselves that manages the body. The associated conceptual structure can then improve blood flow, cellular regeneration, fat allocation, healing, and bone and muscle development. In addition, he or she can communicate with the other portions of the transcend to optimise diet and rest for the body’s needs. Superb Health is a free upgrade to the basic transcend talent that allows the transcend to buy the Retrometabolism bioware as training, instead.

Swarm, at ‡1.5 per level, gives the transcend the ability to manifest all of their personae, golems, and internal artefacts simultaneously on the net. The effort involved clogs their mind and their datajack, keeping them from being effective as a collective of human-level individuals — but a swarm-form transcend can still overwhelm hostile software and trash the local virtual reality. This functions as a very limited form of decking specialized in denial-of-service attacks plus the ability to completely violate the expectations of any software, sharpware, or AI that’s expecting to interface with a normative human or software identity.

                              Sample Transcend

A sample, narrowly focused transcend might spend:

48‡ on base traits,

1‡ on appearance,    

7‡ on cred,

4‡ on the transcend talent,

1‡ on an internal world,

1‡ for eyes in the back of their head,

1.5‡ for a point of Steady, and

16.5‡ on self-training.

                Visionary

Mission Statement: “I see the shape of things to come.”

                Summary

Visionaries see tomorrow before it happens. They watch the future as it uncoils from the uncountable influences that surround them in the present. They witness the first vague hints of possibility and later the solid shapes of impending events. They meddle in the pattern of these potential futures’ blossoming, pruning those destinies not to their taste away from the garden of fate.

The core talent of a visionary is trend analysis. Given training at the well, their talent for understanding bulk data and patterns deepens. Their ability to understand the world around them increases. They develop a solid grasp on the progression of history, and sense the patterns of the world.

                Identifiers

Visionaries typically find themselves identifying with corporate culture, technical culture, or both. A few show some influence from the mores of the secure communities. Visionaries often give their nature away with small habits like stepping out of the way just before something spills or gesundheiting someone just before they sneeze. Most visionary avatars involve oracular symbolism, including shielded eyes, religious trappings, or the presence of snakes.

                Role

Visionaries specialise in investigation. Their insight gives them an enormous advantage when attempting to outmanoeuvre any person or security system whose reaction time compares to their own. In such cases, they are always one step ahead — moving away before an opponent strikes, addressing a target’s doubts before they arise, and walking through a monitored room just before the guard next checks it. Faster opposition may prove difficult. Intelligent and adaptive computer security or a physically superior combatant can respond to a visionary’s actions before the visionary can process the new future those actions create.

In the broader context of the game, visionaries recapture the notion that the future can change. Tartessian events tend to unfold from the random seeds that create them with furious speed and force. In a matter of hours, driven by factors as chaotic as a butterfly’s wings, the collapse of a Tartessian neighbourhood into a maenadic community can go from “inconceivable” to “accomplished.” For this reason, astute citizens see the future as a runaway train. By the time they see it coming, their options narrow to diving for cover, throwing themselves on the tracks, or closing their eyes and hoping for the best. Conversely, faced with things they personally find unpleasant, painful, or wrong, visionaries can take action. They know — where many others do not — that such things need not continue forever. A visionary drives the group towards effective action.

Suggested starting traits for a visionary are:

Action 0 — what you use in action scenes.

Connect 1 — what you use to understand people, trust people, connect to them.

Endure 2 — what you use to endure suffering, manage in harsh circumstances.

Perceive 4 — what you use to sense things, be alert to them.

Research 4 — what you use to look things up.

Sell 0 — what you use to sell people on things.

Stealth 1 — what you use to avoid notice.

Tactics 4 — what you use for infiltration, combat, etc. plans. Also functions as Luck OOC.

                The total is 48‡.

                Cred

Visionaries tend to have natural cred with secure and technical communities. Many have ties with one or two core culture corporate institutions.

A suggested starting point is two points of level 1 Cred and one point of level 2 Cred.

                Talents

The basic Visionary Talent, for 1‡, allows a character to judge the odds of a given event reliably. For example, the character can make a solid guess at the probability of successfully shoplifting from a given store, of a given warrior winning a pit fight, or of an enemy sniper choosing a ground-level rather than a roof-level position. For events not yet written into the plot, the GM should give the visionary a ballpark estimate of the event’s likelihood. If the Game Master has already determined whether the event will take place, barring the intervention of the player characters, the GM should instead note that the outcome is already fixed. It is not necessary to tell the visionary what that outcome actually is unless the visionary can see all the influences that determine it. Otherwise, by elimination, the visionary knows that forces he or she is unaware of strongly influence the situation, preventing an adequate assessment of probability.

Fair Fortune, for 1‡, is a +1 Tool bonus on Tactics-based luck rolls that may be used three times per day.

                Combat Style

Visionaries know exactly what they are doing in combat situations. This does not necessarily give them the raw technical and physical skill to handle themselves in a fight — their default Action is 0 — but it does mean that high levels of the following abilities are common, either as a substitute or adjunct to buying Action up higher.

Action Hero (‡1.0 for a +2 Tool bonus to have adequate ammunition on hand or loaded.)

Arms Dealer (‡1.5 for a +4 Tool bonus on Research rolls to find sources for combat hardware and a +2 Tool bonus on Connect rolls with the merchants and purveyors of the same.)

Assess (‡1.0 for a rough sense of the competence of any opposition, or +2 Edge on a Perceive roll to pick that up if someone is concealing or inflating it.)

Evasive (‡1.0 per level for an Obstacle to enemy Action rolls in direct combat.)

Eyes in the Back of Your Head (‡1.0 for 2 Edge and a reroll to spot immediate danger to the visionary.)

Fighting Blind (‡3.0, removes the need to sense one’s opponent)

Hidden Weapons (‡1.0, +2 Tool bonus to concealing weapons on one’s person. If the opponent doesn’t know the visionary’s methodology, critical success/failure is necessary to see through it.)

Impact (‡1.5 per level, each level usable once per scenario to pump the IC effect of an Action success to a triple.)

Steady (‡1.5 per level to waive Obstacles up to that level on Action rolls.)

Tenacity (‡3.0 per level to turn a failed combat roll against an NPC into success 1/scenario).

Weapons Expert (‡1.0 for a +4 Tool bonus to Research rolls to know or look up information on a given weapon or combat-focused technology; the character automatically knows generally public or semi-public information on weapons, combat-focused technology, and military and security organizations.)

                Attributes

This section lists common visionary abilities and how a character can purchase them in the IOSHI setting.

Like hunters, visionaries are exceptionally alert. Many have additional senses bought through bioware and software. Others have a Sixth Sense, bought for ‡2.0 per level and capped at their Perceive, that makes them aware of the kinds of things a visionary with their specialty — the player can define this in more detail — ought to know at all times about the world around them.

Visionaries can sense probable future events. They usually sense an incoming possibility at around the point it becomes 90% certain barring the visionary’s interference. The GM and player should work together to decide what kinds of futures a visionary can sense — typically, significant events in the visionary’s own life; things related to a data analysis specialty of some sort; and one or two events the visionary is specifically watching for at any given time. Unlike the Visionary Talent, this precognition can discern events that the Game Master has already decided upon.  Anticipation, being simply another form of Sixth Sense, costs ‡2.0 per level and is capped at the Visionary’s Perceive.

                Sample Visionary

A sample, narrowly focused visionary might spend:

48‡ on base traits,

4‡ on cred,

1‡ on the visionary talent,

1‡ on Fair Fortune,

1‡ for eyes in the back of their head,

12‡ on Tenacity,

3‡ on Impact,

8‡ on Anticipation, and

2‡ on Sixth Sense.

               Botanists (etc.)

Mission Statement: “I didn’t sign up for this!”

              IOSHI training in fringe activities is generally purchased at 1‡ for something comparable to an occupation talent and 3-5‡ for something mundane skill can’t achieve.

              Equipment and Power

to be continued ...