Cyberpunk Game

I've got a bit on the go at the moment, and there are a few gaming projects that I'm working on intermittantly. I tend to work in fits and starts on various things, getting really excited about one thing and doing some work, and then leaving it fallow for a while while I pursue other things.

The project that I'm spending the most time on at the moment is a Cyberpunk-styled game that uses otherkind dice, the bare bones of my "say yes or face the dungeon" concept, and an initiative system from an old wargame I wrote. The idea is trying to recreate the fun of an old cyberpunk styled game I used to play, that was constantly stymied by sucky rules. The main goals are "heist movie" storylines, Cyberpunk colour (and to some extent cyperpunk themes), "players versus environment", lots of player planning and scheming, and functional GM prep.

I haven't put anything up at my other site about this yet, because it still doesn't really have a playtestable shape. What I've got is a bunch of skills, and rules for using them, a bunch of equipstuff, and rules for shooting at people.

The playtest I ran was pretty painful, with lots of false starts and moments of disconnect, with a few really fun moments. Here's what's working:

Skills (kinda): It's reliably fun to roll the dice for your skills, assign them to some categories, and succeed or fail, usually with some complications. I'm pretty sure that the basic concept of the skill system works, but it may well see some major revision.

Aaaaand, that's about it. Here's what's not working:

Character Creation: I threw character creation togwther at the last minute, and it really doesn't work. Characters need a range of skills to achieve anything in the game, and it's too easy to create a character with no skills, or skills that don't compliment the group. The system's also pretty restrictive in terms of not giving you a lot of scope to create the character you want. I possibly need more skills, or skills with broader scope. I'm still at sea about this.

Missions: The idea is that you fit your mission around what the GM has prepped, so that if your mission is to take out some corporation, and the GM has prepped some anarchist gang, you work out how interacting with that gang will help your mission, and you do that. That little scrap of it is working, but the problem is that the missions seem arbitrary, and when a particular character isn't involved, there's nothing for them to do. The system falls apart a little when the action isn't intiated by the players, and that's a problem. Malcolm suggested I try importing something of the mission structure from Duty and Honour, and I think that's an awesome idea.

There's a lot more stuff that still needs work, but those are the two things I'll try to fix before playtesting the game again. I'll also try to make a few more skills, especially interesting skills, because I think seeing skills on the list that aren't in any other games will be part of the fun of the game. That's a bunch of work, but I think it's doable.