Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality
reality
THE HOLISTIC CITY KIT FOR CYBERPUNK ROLEPLAYING GAMES
PAUL D GALLAGHER
GH1001
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Richard Balmer (Companero) for the
inspiration, help and encouragement
http://vircadesproject.blogspot.co.uk
augmented
Vornheim. Without it, this book would not exist.
reality
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk
gH
Geist Hack Games
BRING THE
CYBERPUNK
AN INTRODUCTION
Over on the Views From The Edge forum ( http://vfte.cyberpunk.co.uk ), I put forward the
idea of group-creating a cyberpunk city kit in the vain of Zak S's seminal Vornheim, which
was made for Old School renaissance (OSr) D&D-alikes. In the excellent Vornheim book,
Zak provides a variety of table-based resources designed to quickly add both detail and
flavour to fantasy cities on the fly. While he wrote it for himself, and to give him the most
utility mid-game, it has proven wildly popular and has become a benchmark for similar
old school elf-game projects.
Being largely based in complex urban sprawls, most cyberpunk games tend to provide
city source material as standard, but are largely based on the pre-Vornheim model of
a mish-mash of detailed locations, leaving large voids and lacking a lot of flavour. like
with Vornheim, what we felt was needed was something more fluid, a kit rather than a
sourcebook, that could be used as the game is in progress, following Zak's philosophy of
'maximum table utility'. We defined it as something that could be used during the game,
was simple to access, sparked ideas with a simple sentence, and both added to the game’s
evolving environment and to play. Also, making the kit system agnostic was essential, as
not everyone plays R.Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020®.
richard Balmer, creator of the Vircades Project and Views From The Edge luminary, said it
best when he summarised the project as "taking things you know and adding layers of
science fictional strangeness to make it new and exciting" and "to add cyberpunk to the
world as it is." With that firmly in mind, some pixels were wrangled and tables started to
form, resulting in the content of this book. Hopefully, we have achieved our aim and the
ideas within will aid struggling cyberpunk gamesmasters in adding futuristic layers to their
campaign worlds, with a minimum of effort.
Whether your players prowl the mean streets of Night City, the Seattle Sprawl, Neo Tokyo,
Cape Town or Budapest in the 2060s, the tables and NPCs of Augmented Reality will enable
you to spice-up any dark future metroplex when you’re caught off guard.
Enjoy.
Paul D Gallager
http://neuralarchive.blogspot.co.uk
04
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
An Introduction............................................................................................................................04
The Downtown Drop Down Grid .................................................................................................06
Expanded Building Features .......................................................................................................08
local Conflict & Events ...............................................................................................................09
Alt-Businesses, Street use & Sickness......................................................................................10
legacy Tech & Nightlife ..............................................................................................................11
Sense & The City - Smells...........................................................................................................12
Sense & The City - Sounds .........................................................................................................13
Sense & The City - Sights ...........................................................................................................14
Big Screens & Infotainment ........................................................................................................15
What’s On The road....................................................................................................................16
More Traffic & Augmented reality .............................................................................................17
The Instacitizen Drop Down Grid ...............................................................................................18
First Impressions ........................................................................................................................19
random Cabbies .........................................................................................................................20
Tattoos & Vice .............................................................................................................................21
Corporate Aristocrats..................................................................................................................22
Boardroom Manoeuvres .............................................................................................................24
urban Tribes: Street Gangs.........................................................................................................26
Armed response .........................................................................................................................29
Fixers & Facemen ........................................................................................................................30
Mr Johnson Job Generator 1: People ........................................................................................32
Mr Johnson Job Generator 2: Things ........................................................................................33
Technical Details.........................................................................................................................34
What’s On The Corpse?...............................................................................................................35
Guns For Hire...............................................................................................................................36
Antisocial Media..........................................................................................................................38
One Man’s Trash .........................................................................................................................39
Strange Encounters.....................................................................................................................40
The Things People Do.................................................................................................................41
Hackable Assets Drop Down Grid ..............................................................................................42
Bugs In The System ....................................................................................................................43
Hackers & Slicers ........................................................................................................................44
05
Auto or
Consumer Art Dealer Storage units legal
Pharmacy robotics
Electronics or Gallery or Warehousing Firm
repair
Elevated
Garage or
rail or Fast Food Police School or Government
Parking
road Franchise Precinct College Building
Block
Overpass
Public
Office Hospital Department
Transport
Block or Clinic Store
Hub
Body New
luxury Security
Augmentation Media Industrial
Apartments Tech
Clinic Company
Apartment Block
leisureplex Nightclub
or Hab Stack
Courier or
3D Print
underpass Hotel ripperdoc Bulk Transport
Fabrication
Company
Weapons
Pocket Suburban Movie Multi-level
Tech or Bank Antiques
Park Housing Theatre Car Park
Sales
THE DOWNTOWN
DROP DOWN GRID
How it works: First, print out that strange looking I decide that the Data Storage building is fine
grid to the left. Then, grab a few D10s, three or with just the four storeys, the Industrial building
four being a good number, and drop them onto stretches up over five floors, I double the 3 to a 6
that grid. Where each of the dice lands will tell for a taller Hotel and I also double the number for
you the type of buildings your players have in the Apartment Block, giving me eighteen storeys.
their immediate area.
Next I look at the features tables, using two
Now, the numbers shown on each dice can be results from Table 1 and two from Table 2. So,
used in a couple of different ways; to determine my four storey Data Storage company building
the number of floors the building has, and to find is (4) obvious gang turf, the five storey Industrial
if it has any notable features (optional). unit is home to a (5) back room brothel, our six
floor Hotel appears to be (6) obscured by ad
To ascertain the number of floors, just look at the screens and, finally, the eighteen floors of our
number on the top of that particular dice. That’s Apartment block is set up to be (9) self sufficient.
how many floors there are. If you want a bigger
structure, just double the result of that dice. In no time at all, and by just dropping four dice
onto a sheet, I have a clear idea of what buildings
The same numbers can also be checked against are around the PC group and what they may find
the tables below to see what quirks the building inside, as well as continuing to reinforce that
may have, there’s no need to reroll. Dropping essential cyberpunk atmosphere for my players.
a few dice gives you buildings, their height and
any features of note, quickly and easily. Plus, as the campaign progresses, new feature
tables can be created, prior to play, for use with
An example: I drop four ten-sided dice onto the the dice drop grid at the game table. Overleaf,
grid, landing on Data Storage, Industrial, Hotel you will find an expanded D100 table of useful
and Apartment Block and the numbers on the building features, to help add colour to your
dice are 4, 5, 3 and 9. neighborhoods during pre-game prep.
THE STREET FINDS IT’S
OWN USES FOR THINGS Roll 1D10
1 Power plant from main battle tank, used as a generator for a squat or shanty
2 Hydroponics rig from scrapped research ship, used to breed modified food-algae
3 Atmosphere recycling taken from orbital work shack, for a sealed environment
4 Automotive industry robotic arms fitted with tasers, utilised for entrance security
5 Chinese banking servers, used as a fixer’s offline data archive
6 Shipping container homes, mounted on scaffolding with industrial adhesives
7 Aircraft seating used as makeshift furniture, within parachute nylon shelters
8 Downed corporate surveillance drone, reconfigured to enable secure phone calls
9 Salvaged fast food friers and ovens, co-opted for mass drug production
10 Outmoded clinical CAT scanner, jury-rigged into rudimentary security screen
Sense & The City - Smells is a D100 table designed to allow the GM to quickly
generate the most prominent scent in a given city area, or as a PC enters an interior
space such as a room or elevator. roll on it once for a particularly dominant smell,
or several times for a more interesting olfactory experience.
Roll D100
(on a result of 00, roll again twice)
Roll D100
(on a result of 00, roll again twice)
Sense & The City - Sights is a D100 table designed to allow the GM to quickly
generate the most notable things or activities in a given city area. roll on it once to
add focus, or a number of times to create complex, confusing distractions. use it in
conjunction with the Sounds table, to establish overlapping sensory layers.
Roll D100
1-2 Armoured cops bundle violently reluctant vagrant into ErA-plated squad car
3-4 A bus shelter made entirely of screens showing flashy commercials (see below)
5-6 Searchlights playing across the cloud cover and projecting branding (see below)
7-8 A brightly lit aerocab taking off in a cloud of exhaust fumes, rainwater and trash
9-10 AC vents in the sidewalk emitting a thick cloud of vapour
10-11 A heavy rainwater cascade falls from damaged guttering
11-12 Every underlit face on the street is concentrating solely on their phone
13-14 An ancient looking geriatric lopes past strapped into a linear assistance frame
15-16 A vid-blogger in full, wearable array, blatantly recording the scene
17-18 The nearest building has an intermittently flickering security light
19-20 Your view is blocked by a lumbering hi-vis recycling collection truck
21-22 A cluster of kids vaping, lED-lit clouds from under designer pollution hoods
23-24 A pair of bicycle couriers race one another through crawling traffic
25-26 Gritty, chemical infused sediment sloughing off a nearby rooftop
27-28 A large building-mounted flatscreen showing… (see table top right)
29-30 unattended roadworks, the area coned off and lit for safety for no good reason
31-32 An automated noodle vending truck, jingle playing, folds open and deploys nearby
33-34 A flock of scabrous-looking pigeons suddenly taking flight
35-36 A busy metro platform, full to capacity with disgruntled, rain-soaked commuters
37-38 An abandoned cybernetic limb lies forlornly by the kerb
39-40 Animated street art that twists and turns across two adjoining walls
41-42 Frantic homeless people, washing vehicle windscreens before the lights change
43-44 The flashing orange lights of a fat, dirty-yellow street sweeping remote
45-46 A nearby dataterm is missing it’s screen and is stuffed with trash
47-48 Your way is barred by a precarious heap of obsolete electronics
49-50 The rainbow incandescence of oil on a large puddle of dirty water
51-52 The substandard cheapcrete is pockmarked by years of corrosive rains
53-54 A loaded pizza delivery drone hovering about three meters above the ground
55-56 A wage-slave arguing with her phone’s onboard AI, before breaking down crying
57-58 An orange, multi-limbed, window cleaning remote clambers up the building facade
59-60 A long, silent queue for a blocky, exhaust stained, kerb-side Euthanasia Booth™
61-62 All the nearby street signs are gang-tagged over to the point of being useless
63-64 Filthy red and white plastic Jersey barriers block most of the sidewalk
14
WHAT’S ON
THAT BIG
1 Video gaming event
SCREEN?
3 System error message/connection failure
4 The time and date
5 The latest news headlines and lottery result
6 Infomercial/Advertainment (see below)
roll a D10 to see what the 7 The weather forecast/air quality statistics
mediocracy are piping to the 8 Pornography (hacked and then squirtcast?)
masses. roll more dice for
9 Music videos or movie trailers
split screen content.
10 Traffic information
uber or
Street Gambler or Fixer
limo Designer
Kid(s) Con Artist (see P30)
Driver
Sex Worker
Corporate City Beat Company
Pimp or Puppet Celeb
Worker Cop Exec
(see P21)
Street
City
Cabbie Homeless Gang Syndicate
Drug Dealer Inspector
(see P20) Person Boss Boss
or Auditor
(see P26)
unemployed Corporate
Techie
(Increased leisure Citizen) Soldier
How it works: First, print out that strange looking each dice can be used in different ways; to
grid to the left. Then, grab a few D10s, four or ascertain the number of people in a group, as the
five being a good number, and drop them onto NPC’s prime stat for their role, and to determine
that grid. Where each of the dice lands will tell if the citizens have any quirks or notable features
you the type of people your players have in their on the First Impressions tables (optional; choose
immediate area. Now, the numbers shown on a table for each NPC generated). Decide gender.
Roll D100
(on a result of 00, roll again twice)
24
33 Department Merger 66 Faking Own Death 99 Will Destroy Company
WAYS
AND MEANS
BOARDROOM MANOEUVRES
Company Resources is a simple D100 table designed to compliment the Boardroom
Manoeuvres table, adding information regarding the sorts of unconventional tools
a corporate aristocrat can bring to the table, to get the job done. It is up to the GM
to rationalise (or re-roll) unusual results.
Roll D100
(on a result of 00, roll again twice)
ARMED RESPONSE
Roll 1D10
1-2 Plainclothes Detectives Clearly marked POlICE vests, flashing their ID badges
3-8 uniformed Officers Basic cops (odd numbers: they’re wearing riot gear)
9-10 Tactical response unit Special operations/SWAT team - milspec load out
1-4 City/Corporate Police Same thing, only difference is who’s paying them
5-6 Corporate Security Protecting company property, area or personnel
7-8 Private Security Company Commercial law enforcement contractors
9 Special Police Agency Immigration/Bomb Squad/Customs/Traffic etc.
10 National Police Agency FBI/FSB or Militarized Police (eg: Guardia Civil/MPs)
1-6 There are enough officers and support present to handle the current situation
7-9 looks like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, requesting support
10 The officers are way out of their depth, pinned down, need immediate back up
1 Hot/Cold Beverages Coffee, tea, cocoa, sodas, water, juice, shakes, energy drinks
2 Hot/Cold Food Burritos, noodles, burgers, fries, SCOP, sandwiches, ‘sushi’
3 Stimulants Cigarettes, cigars, e-cig fluid, patches, caffeine tabs, alcohol
4 Travel Packs Toiletries, travel guides, cosmetics, sanitaries, sunglasses
5 Electronics Headphones, batteries, phones, torches, cameras, radios
6 Personal Defense Tasers, pepper spray, telescoping batons, polymer oneshots
7 Clothing rainwear, underclothes, thermals, hats, t-shirts, socks
8 Media Newsprint, digital music, games, films, simstim, e-books
9 Pharmaceuticals Medicines, contraceptives, first aid, sensory aids, vitamins
10 Snacks Gum, candy, chips/crisps, popcorn, nuts, cryo-dried fruits
38
Roll D100
THE THINGS PEOPLE DO
Roll 1D10
1 Ghengis Klang Muscle grafts and body plating, hydraulic hands crush skulls
2 The Gene Witch Experimental bioware, double-jointed, wild hair, utterly insane
3 Hannah Stazi Bald, scarred and lithe, wears slashed leathers, knife fighter
4 Shanky Bartella Glo-tattooed skinhead, shiny black cyberarms, razor claws
5 The White Ape Augmented albino baboon, parasite infested, goes for the face
6 Indigo Wilde Wirey muscle, sambo expert, innumerable chrome piercings
7 Gary Savage Tattooed, 16 year old half-wit, no arms, extremely sharp teeth
8 Jezebel Twist Petite and calm, mixed martial arts, enhanced muscle matrix
9 ultimate Hobo Hairy meth addict, relieved of his hands, replaced with flails
10 lazarus rapide Showy and stylish, fast, will strangle you into submission
Members of the crowd are invited to challenge the winner of the Freak Fight bout.
Anti-
Construction
TV Synthetic’s Wireless Nanite
remote or 3D Printer(s)
Console Neural Net Smart Gun Immune
Concrete Printer
System
Acoustic Infant
Neural Wearable Meds HuD Visor
Weapon Monitoring
Processor Dispenser or Goggles
Sensor System
Self-Serve
Saleable Smart
utilities Monitoring recharging Public
Ar Tagged Morph-
System or refueling Vid-Phone
Consumables wear
Point
HACKABLE ASSETS DROP DOWN GRID
The Hackable Assets Drop Down Grid has been created to enable the unprepared
or improvising cyberpunk GM to generate net-linked assets in the PC’s vicinity,
quickly and easily, simply by dropping some dice and checking where they land.
How it works: First, print out that strange looking system’s ‘intelligence’ level, how many other
grid to the left. Then, grab a few D10s, four or linked systems are connected to the first, or how
five being a good number, and drop them onto many rounds before a sysadmin notices any
that grid. Where each of the dice lands will tell spurious activity on their network.
you the type of systems your players have in
their proximity. Now, the numbers shown on To ascertain if nearby the system has any quirks
each dice can be used in different ways; to or notable features, roll D100 on the Bugs In The
determine the relative security levels on a scale System table below.
of 1 (no security) to 10 (killer ICE), as the target
With this book, you can add layers of detail to any cyberpunk
cityscape, and make use of over 250 NPCs, including fixers,
street samurai, corporate players and insane hackers, along with
easy to roll cabbies, cops, gang members and street fighters.
Missions, motivations and methods can be generated, along with
the immediate urban environment, all painted with a broad brush,
to enable gamesmasters to let their twisted imaginations shine
through, without slowing down the action.
Your players may use the real world as a reference, but YOU can
use these tables to bring them the bleeding-edge future. So, jack
in now and augment your reality…
vfte.cyberpunk.co.uk
gH
Geist Hack Games