CY_borg and Cinematic Gameplay in OSR games
Disclaimer: I’ve never played Mörk Borg. I barely even skimmed the book. The following might induce a big d’uh from you if you know the game well.
The CY - screenshot from the book, art by Johan Nohr
On of my CY_borg players reflected the other night: “I like this gameplay, you can do cinematic shit but you’re still risking getting one-shotted.” Florian’s character had been using his flashy new opticamo’d quadcopter suit to jump onto a spider drone racing off the side of a megabridge. He managed to force open the access hatch and let the other players hack the drone from a stolen taxi racing through traffic on said megabridge. Fortunately, the highway SecOps were busy searching the rival party’s car when it all happened. (You can play drone hijacking hijinks too!)
As a GM with years of Feng Shui and PbtA games under my brainbelt, I may have had some input in how the session unfolded. I believe however that the main culprit for how epically this scene unfolded is the Stockholm Kartel and their rules engine.
I for one wouldn’t have expected a third wave OSR / NSR game to handle cinematic action like it did this weekend.
D’uh again, probably. Looking at these rules, it’s all in there and I’d probably seen it if I hadn’t been so lovestruck with the book’s setting and general jaw droppingness. Which made me think that old-school doesn’t have to rhyme with blood by the bucketful. You could make most adventure games feel more heroic while keeping them lethal to hotheads and unlucky dice rolles. It might not be what you want for your exploration of the Grimdark Dungeons of Grittiness by a rat-catcher and a one-armed goblin, but if you’d like to make you third level Old-School Essentials party a bit more Record of Lodoss War (let’s call it LodOSE because we’re smrat), there are a few aspects of CY_borg you could consider borrowing:
- Low difficulty rolls
- Ubiquitous equipment
- Powerful yet narrow magic
- Built in immediacy
From Record of Lodoss War by Ryo Mizuno and Yutaka Izubuchi
Relatively easy rolls
Abilities in CY_borg range from -3 to +3 at character creations (and up to +6 with experience and luck). You add one of these to a d20 roll, aiming for a difficulty of 6 (simple) to 18 (almost impossible). In combat, the difficulty to shoot, slash, dodge, or parry is almost always 12 (the GM doesn’t roll). Without running the stats in Anydice, it is kind of obvious player characters are more adept/luckier than your average sarariperson.
This isn’t hard to implement into your LodOSE War game: fiddle with armour class, chances-in-6, and thief skills to give the players an edge. Maybe give them hero points or miracles or something to let players reroll and cancel fumbles or killing blows - CY_borg has glitches for that.
Ubiquitous equipment
In a typical, urban Cyberpunk environment, ressource management shouldn’t be an issue (until of course it’s about hard cash and hit points), and packing the right gadget shouldn’t be a worry. I don’t mind retconning the purchase of an item that could have been handy when prepping the heist. (I might even allow glitches for flashback scenes along the lines of “I’d planned for exactly this.”)
In LodOSE, this is difficult to handle outside of a heist or investigative adventure. Unless you don’t really care about backpacks and strict equipment lists, in which case I’d recommend having either a Gear ressource that gets depleted when naming the item you need/have (I think Five Torches Deep does this, among others), or an Adventurer’s Pack item with the same effect, à la Dungeon World.
I’ll argue that hi-tech equipment is akin to magic in fantasy settings (often enough in OSR games, hyper advanced technology is the explanation for magic). Letting players come up with fun and useful cantrips or running a freeform magic system would also be very helpful.
Powerful yet narrow ‘magic’
CY_borg has several types of ‘magic’: hacker apps, nanomancer powers, and cyberware. Some characters start with one or more, and they can of course be acquired later if you work for it. To me, this is very much like the Vancian spells and magical items in a LodOSE campaign.
If you use rules that let anyone cast spells (or use spell-like items) like Into the Odd and its descendants, you’re golden. Otherwise, just be more generous with spell scrolls and have a few lists of minor magical items to sprinkle your treasure hoards with. And just watch your players do cool one-off, spotlight stealing, life saving actions.
Built in immediacy
This one’s a bonus, because it is world and adventure dependent. The CY, where CY_borg takes place, is an ageless, nigh-infinitely sprawling megacity. The game doesn’t expect you to ever leave the CY. And even if you did, chances are that everywhere else would be exactly the same.
More than any other genre I can think of, cyberpunk settings have in-built immediacy. Whether you need some dirt to blackmail a mobster, the bypass routine to get into their office, or the drug to give you that extra edge when you confront them, it’s a cryptransaction and a drone delivery away.
To get there in LodOSE, the setting’s magic would need to be tweaked (unless I’m misremembering the anime, it’s been a few decades). How much would it look like a boring runepunk setting from the 90s, I don’t know. Maybe leave the bonus out. Or don’t, and let me know how it works out for you.