Fancy Role-Playing In The World Of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided? Try SIMPLE’s Digital_Shades
August 23, 2016 by brennon
With Deus Ex: Mankind Divided now out on PC and Consoles there's probably a few of you who are going to be dragged back into the world of Cyberpunk tabletop gaming.
There are plenty of contenders out there for good Cyberpunk RPG systems like Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, and Technoir for example but how about something a little simpler?
What Is Digital_Shades?
If you just want to dip your toe into the world of Cyberpunk role-playing and don't want to be bogged down by masses of rules and complicated tables for Hackers then the SIMPLE system should prove to be an excellent storytelling device.
With no fixed setting Digital_Shades allows you to play your game in any Cyberpunk world that you could think of. Maybe it's the dark streets of Night City from Cyberpunk 2020 or the rain slicked streets of Blade Runner. It could be a bit more clean and futuristic like the world of I,Robot or in the here and now like Mr.Robot. However you want to approach your game world this caters to it.
Effectively filling two sheets of A4 the game takes little to no time to teach and is about as complicated as boiling an egg. But, that doesn't mean that the game suffers from this simplicity.
How Do You Play?
The game works off a simple character creation system that might feel familiar to players of World of Darkness. Assigned points will be added to a broad selection of skills at character creation and when you attempt an action within that remit you roll the number of dice applicable to your skill.
The values on the dice you roll then allow you to pick the result of your action. On a one to three you might fail the action with varying degrees of severity. Four means you pulled off the action but something complicated proceedings. Five or Six is a great success and might lead to further boons.
Similar rules apply to combat and damage is applied based on the weapon. Blunt damage is applied from the likes of baseball bats and fists for example while you also have sharp damage from guns and 'bang' damage from explosives.
As you take damage during combat you will come closer to taking a 'Tough Bastard' role which is there to see whether or not you can stick it out or must act defensively. Finally you can be KO'd. Healing and such is decided by the world itself. Maybe nanotechnology allows the repairing of wounds quickly or things could be decidedly worse.
With this simple system you have a way for people to play out both narrative and combat scenes with an emphasis on storytelling and players bringing their imaginations to the table.
What Makes It Cyberpunk?
Well, the system could very easily just be used for anything but the thing that drops this into the Cyberpunk world is the way Upgrades work. While other games might have you looking through a massive Argos level catalogue of items when you make a character these upgrades in Digital_Shades give simple bonuses and it becomes up to the player to distinguish how their Cybernetics take form within the game world.
All the common items are in there from subdermal body armour, Cybernetic limbs, eyes, brains, all manner of chips and gadgets. You can make yourself feel as 'Human' or 'Augmented' as you like since a lot of your choices can be switched out to fit into other aspects of character creation instead.
Away from the Cyberpunk feel being there for players you can also work together to make your own futuristic city. This is one of the best parts of Digital_Shades and it's wonderful to see them exploring cooperative storytelling.
The Sprawl
Just like with character creation the players come up with the look and feel of their environment too; making the city a character almost in of itself. They will roll for its systems and people, the way the government acts, the kind of rights open to citizens and even come up with key places of interest for them to explore.
This is all handy for a Games Masters and means that everyone involved has a vested interest in making this a living, breathing world they have a stake in.
All of this comes together to create a fascinating Cyberpunk toybox that is ripe for storytelling, fascinating tales and hooks that could lead you towards further adventures.
What's The Appeal?
Not everyone is going to like Digital_Shades. The more intricate systems of other RPGs might draw people in that little bit more and they might desire getting lost within a very cleverly designed and deep hacking system for example. But, Digital_Shades can deliver in a different way.
By stripping away a lot of the complication and giving agency to the players and the Game Master as a combined whole you get a storytelling system where everyone can feel involved and do awesome things as long as they're willing to get invested in the experience.
Allowing this freedom of choice within the system to explain what exactly happened when you fired that shot, or the complications that arises from you trying to hack that system is something I love in role-playing games. It's why World of Darkness appeals so much because the emphasis sits on what YOU say you're going to do.
Just saying 'I shoot the guy' doesn't cut it here. You're pushed towards explaining just how you're going to shoot the guy. Do you aim for his knee to try and take him down and incapacitate him? Do you aim to wing him hoping to make him look down and hesitate as your friend comes in from behind and clubs him round the head?
This isn't going to be for everyone. Some people like more hard and fast rules in their games. But, for those of you who love deep storytelling and narrative experiences, if you've ever played Fiasco even, this could give you the kick you've been looking for in a Cyberpunk world.
_end.exe
To sum up this system harks back to what we've been talking about here on Beasts of War about simplicity and accessibility. Allowing someone to do what they want and impressing on them that whatever they say might pay off means that SIMPLE is fun, mad, unexpected and will give you moments worth talking about.
When it comes to Cyberpunk role-playing I can't think of a system I'd rather dive into more than this one right now. I love Cyberpunk 2020 but with storytelling and narrative development at the forefront Digital_Shades opens things up to explore social interactions in different ways not governed by numbers, and more working together between players taking the focus away from gunfight after gunfight.
As a fan of Android: Netrunner I think Digital_Shades hits a similar nerve. When playing this game I FEEL like I'm sitting there in a neon lit universe of Androids and Cybernetics where social groups and radicals are rebelling against Mega Corporations and each other due to the storybook nature of how characters and the world are created.
It's a real hit with me and my group and I reckon if you're interested in a different tabletop experience free of miniatures (I know, heresy!) this could get you that fix.
Now, time to plug back into Deus Ex and see if it inspires anymore Digital_Shades adventures!
Helpful Links
Do you reckon you'll give this a go?
"Effectively filling two sheets of A4 the game takes little to no time to teach and is about as complicated as boiling an egg..."
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"By stripping away a lot of the complication and giving agency to the players and the Game Master as a combined whole you get a storytelling system where everyone can feel involved and do awesome thing..."
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I don’t think there’s a genre for which the rpg experience differs so vastly to the source material. I’m sure there are groups out there who truly get their cyberpunk on when they rpg it, but every one I’ve been involved in was just gun porn with cyber-enhancements.
then again … the average D&D/Fantasy rpg is the mystical equivalent of that for a lot of people too.
Raiding dungeons for more treasure and better gear isn’t that much different.
Nothing wrong with either approach.
D&D does exactly what it was designed to do. The Cyberpunk rpg and all its derivatives in theory do what they were designed to do, but in practice my experience is they do something different, the aforementioned gun porn with cyber-enhancements. There may be nothing wrong with gun porn with cyber-enhancements, but it isn’t cyberpunk, and hence the experience differs from the source material to a greater degree than any other genre I’ve rp-ed in.
I guess that more than any other genre the setting speaks to the inner gadget geek in all of us. That and the hacking (or at least attempts at simulating that part) is what tends to make me want to look at source material from this genre. Then again … maybe it’s because ‘cyberpunk’ itself isn’t as easy to define as an ‘experience’ that is *eh* ‘cyberpunk’ ? Both CP2020 and Shadowrun do appear to amount to simply doing dirty jobs for ‘Mr Johnson’ (who may or may not try to doublecross you). So maybe the question ought to be… Read more »
probably too big and too disctracting to discuss here so I made this topic in the forum :
http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/sci-fi-gamer-town-square/forum/topic/what-makes-cyberpunk-something-other-than-gun-porn-with-cyber-enhancements
I can see where you’re coming from here, I think. In D&D part of the goal is to become a sort of champion, the higher your level the more famous and potentially wealthy you become. Sometimes you might end with property and followers and they’re all part of that journey to greatness. Cyberpunk is the opposite to that. It’s not about a journey to greatness it’s about surviving; it’s about making ends meet doing off the books work for corporations who would just as soon stab you in the back as pay you. There’s no journey to greatness in the… Read more »
I can devolve into that but I think it’s about the stories you tell. Interestingly this worked with two players very well and they got a nice condensed storytelling experience from it.
thanks for this ben , I like the simple mechanic sandbox thing it has going on. gives lots of freedom for story tellers who don’t want to get too bogged down. it could be a good way to get people involved who love the style of the setting but who would not go near a rules heavy traditional rpg. their are plenty of people who like to read who would get a kick out of rpg if they gave it a go and this would be a perfect I think. gives you an opportunity to run in some of your… Read more »
Aye it’s good for new folks and while it’s very dangerous it does encourage good storytelling
Interesting article @brennon
Never really been into cyberpunk apart from watching bladerunner
I do remember playing a game on the Amiga or C64 called Syndicate early/mid 80s which was good controlling 4 cyborg units to beat/takeover rival company’s, the closest to this now would probably be netrunner I think
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate_%28video_game%29
“Never really been into cyberpunk apart from watching bladerunner” I highly recommend reading Neuromancer, which is probably the quintessential cyberpunk book, and also one of the finest novels of any genre ever written in my humble opinion. It was written at the same time that Scott was filming Blade Runner and the two were completely independent of each other, but it was a vision whose time had come. It has dated a bit, as its concerns are the concerns of the 1980s in increasing globalisation, corporate culture, the increasing wealth gap, and the rise of digital technology, but it still… Read more »
I may in the future I do have the android sheep dream something book that bladerunner was based on somewhere’s
and most of neil stephensons stuff, cryptonomicon is a favourite of mine, combining alternate timeline WW2, crypto and believable near time cyberpunk (there is even a perl script implementation of one of the algorithms in the appendix 😀 )
To some degree you could include the Matrix – it’s not true cyberpunk but has some very common themes, especially the style over substance.
Or, for a really good, gritty corporate dystopia just watch the news
For a modern variant : ‘Satellite Reign’ on Steam :
http://store.steampowered.com/app/268870/
that looks good but I don’t think my PC would play it.
I loved Cyberpunk 2020, my first foray into the RPG as I came from Manga and Anime. For those looking for some old school inspiration maybe check out things like Oedo 808 from the Cyberpunk collection of anime. @redben we did have some of that element but as a GM my players soon learned subtlety in form but still with good cybernetics and a couple of good hackers got you a lot further than huge piston crushing arms and no real hacking ability. I do love the dark grittiness of the game which encapsulated a really interesting world. I think… Read more »
I started rp-ing it with the original Cyberpunk rpg set in 2013. To give an idea of how long ago that was, I bought it from my local Games Workshop! lol. It was still in the old D&D-style box with three books and some dice, and the print quality was so poor the ink rubbed off as you read it.
That’s a while ago I think I picked it up on a car boot in my mid teens and shortly after grabbed Battle tech as well a little 20 years ago.
I like the way the genre has evolved as are view of the flesh of the near future changes, while keeping the bones of the still relevant issues it raised in the 80’s like redben pointed out.
I have been looking for a Cyberpunk RPG for a while that is more storytelling than accounting , and this looks like it. As for the Genre , yes the stories start out as doing a job for johnson , but look at Firestorm , where you end up in corp wars , or Into the shadows where you deter major Yakuza from firebombing cities …..its where the story should go after the initial runs , look how Bladrunner turned out , go with Johnny to Beijing , become a technomancer and rescue Bartmoss , its up to your storytelling… Read more »
the only change I would make , is ‘pick a result’ , I would make it use the highest rolled value….I cant see anyone sayng oh I have rolled a six , but I will choose the 2 value.
Though choosing the 2 would make a better storytelling choice , I would still like a bit of randomness in the roll of a dice.
Effectively that mechanic simply helps to mitigate bad luck. It also allows the Storyteller to do something a bit quirky maybe too. But I get what you’re saying, you could tweak it easily
Really interesting, thanks.
I only played in a single Cyberpunk 2020 campaign back in the day, but had a great time.
I also ran a cyberpunk, post-Apocalypse game of Werewolf, in which the corporations had taken over and basically destroyed the world. We sort of used the storyteller system from White Wolf, but I simplified it even more.
I love collaborative world-building mechanics so I should really look into this.
We ran this and ended up making a Soviet block city where Androids had full rights and never committed crimes….and there were robot bears out in thd woods from a failed experiment
there is a well known phrase about bears and woods…..wonder if its true for robot bears ?
Brennon , is there anywhere we can promote an online game of this , would anyone be interested , we could use roll20 and skype?
Cheers
I’m planning to run a couple of campaigns in the next future (on top my classic D&D one)
one space opera
and
one cyberpunk
for the former i’m pretty tempted to use fragged empire
for the latter i’m waiting to receive my kickstartered infinity manuals and see if i can use them
I’ll take a look at this system but I’m a little skeptical about a generic cyberpunk setting. I’ve read some cyberpunk games recently (Remember Tomorrow, Technoir and The Sprawl). I really love the fact that all these games focus on an aspect of cyberpunk stories. As an example, Technoir is centered on the characters himself making the game really Noir. On the other side, The Sprawl is totally mission driven, with mechanics specially designed for that. I think that this kind of approach (designing mechanics that truly shape the kind of stories you’ll play with it) is the key to… Read more »
I suppose the counter-argument to that is that it relies on the GM and the group to work out what aspect of cyberpunk they want to emphasise, and then use the flexibility in the system to enable them to make stories focussed on that.
I do sort of agree that game mechanics can help promote theme and a certain style of game, but it’s also true that a consistent vision can do the same.