#Metro Otherscape

[literalcatpod]

This Month on the Literal Cat Podcast: (11/24)

SPOOKY MONTH IS OVER!

IT'S NOW NOVEMBER, THE MONTH WHERE WE TRY TO MAKE IT THROUGH NOVEMBER!

We've got 2 upcoming episodes to help with this!

On November 13, we invite on Quinn of @monsterhourpod to make a cat in his newly-completed game, Absurdia, which they played in Season 2!

Then, on November 27, we look at a game that I have been VERY excited about for two whole months, :Otherscape by Son of Oak Game Studio!

[omamervt]

Another fascinating change in :Otherscape over City of Mist regarding character creation is the Essence rating in :Otherscape.

In City of Mist, you HAVE to have at least one Mythos and at least one Logos. if you completely burn all your Mythos or Logos themes, you're only allowed a max of 3 of the remaining type. You run out of Logos? You're an Avatar, a being of pure Mythos. You run out of Mythos? You're a Sleeper, a being of pure Logos who can no longer even comprehend the supernatural around you. These are intended to be TEMPORARY states of play, which you eventually give up when you gain a new identity or reawaken to the supernatural with a new source of power in order to return to having 4 Themes.

:Otherscape not only adds a third type of Theme with the sci-fi tech-based Noise power sources, but it removes the requirement for balance between the theme types, replacing it with Essence. Essence is simply a representation of the balance of your Theme types, and not a judgement call about whether you SHOULD have that balance. You can BE all Noise, all Self/Logos, all Mythos, and it no longer seems to be treated as a state you're not supposed to stay in. There's no REQUIREMENT that you start the game with any specific balance, or that you in any way maintain it.

As much as I think the Sleeper/Avatar states being fun, but ultimately undesirable character states is a GOOD thematic choice for City of Mist, I do really love the freedom of just being allowed to BE in whatever state you want, it's much more supportive of the kind of transhumanist themes you see in good Cyberpunk media.

[ttrpgcafe]

Heya! TTRPG trick or treat, please! 🎃👻

This one's got a backstory, so stick with me.

When I first got into TTRPGs, I learned about the big 6: D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, Cyberpunk, WoD, and Shadowrun. Of those, I've still, to this day, only played 5, and Shadowrun has remained the odd man out, despite having probably my favorite setting of all of them after Pathfinder. Part of this is its reputation for being a really crunchy game, keeping me from getting players, and part of it was that it's a very crunchy game that explains its rules SO POORLY (in recent editions at least, I'm told 3rd is the best in this department) that I couldn't even really convince my friends to get over the hump because it's hard for ME to grok the rules.

For well over a decade, Shadowrun has been my white whale, always on my shelf, never my table. So I did what any other well meaning TTRPG player does when they have a setting they like but a system for that setting they hate: I looked at every hack on the planet for every other system.

So here's your treat: every Shadowrun hack I've found!

Up first, Runners in the Shadows by Mark Cleveland:

This is a Forged in the Dark hack for the Shadowrun setting that is probably one of the better ones for emulating the "crew going on heists and doing cool shit" vibes that Shadowrun tries really hard to say is its core. I'm a sucker for FitD games in general, I think the system is *so* elegant, and I struggle to find a system more suited for the setting (SR's own rules included) than Blades, so this one has to go at the top.

With that said, there are still plenty more!

I'm going to give 2 PbtA games a shout out here, the first I've played, the second I haven't, but have heard plenty about.

Up first: City of Mist!

"But that's not a shadowrun hack!" I hear you saying behind your screen, and you're almost right, it technically isn't, BUT it's asymptote certainly approaches shadowrun, for my math nerds out there. This is a game about the (literal) power of stories, about struggles against an unseen and unknowable force trying desperately to remove every semblance of magic from your life, and about the yearning to keep your mundane life despite, or maybe in spite of, your magical adventures. City of Mist proper is a fantastic gritty noir urban fantasy game that works wonderfully as the framework for an early 6th world setting with minor tweaks, but it's sequel: Metro Otherscape, leans into the Shadowrun of it all, adding a 3rd axis along which your character can struggle, being "noise". In Otherscape, you're balancing a mundane, magical, technological life, and trying not to let any of those three overwhelm your being. A lot of cyberpunk games try to say that cybernetics reduce your humanity in one way or another, but I think Otherscape does the best job at embodying that balance in a way that isn't deeply ableist in its messaging. It's ALSO the only PbtA game I actually LIKE.

Hot take: I can't stand Moves, they annoy me to no end, and needlessly complicate an otherwise brilliant system. I might make a follow up post if anyone wants to hear my deeply bad take, but for now, just know that I'm a ttrpg heretic, and we can move on.

Otherscape completely does away with moves, and instead just lets the MC and the players decide whatever is most relevant to the action being attempted! It solves almost every problem I've ever had with PbtA games, AND kicks ass as a shadowrun stand-in, so this also deserves a place at or near the top.

Second PbtA game: Shadowrun in The Sprawl. This one is a hack of The Sprawl, a PbtA cyberpunk game in its own right, SRiTS adds the setting and magic of SR to its formula, and that's all I know about either system, due to my aforementioned PbtA-phobia. I've included this one for thoroughness, not because I have any stake in it.

Most of the other hacks I've seen use generic systems like Fate, Savage World, Cypher system, Genesys, and a hero system hack I've heard a bit about but can't find anywhere. All of this is to say that there is a wealth of options for generic systems that try to emulate SR, and most of them are fine. The last game I'm going to talk about though uses its own system, its own setting, and manages to be completely, utterly unique while capturing the vibes of SR so well that I'm still a little in awe at how well it does all of the above. I'm also not 100% certain it's a particularly good game, but the fact that I'm unsure about it should tell you that it's definitely still better than SR proper, because I KNOW that system is bad.

Without further ado: NewEdo

NewEdo is fascinating to me in that it feels like the same jump from Shadowrun that 3rd edition D&D made from 2e, or even the same kind of jump from 3rd to 4th, where you can clearly see the spine of the game it's evolving, but almost every other part of the system has been changed and improved in new, interesting ways that can still be used to tell VERY similar stories, but has its own identity at the same time. I mentioned that City of Mist is Asymptotic to SR earlier, and I stand by that assessment, but I'd say that NewEdo is closer to a parallel line, or a tangent from SR's line, if we're using the same terminology. To get into the nitty gritty, NE uses a system the author describes as "Crunchy lite easily managed", which amounts to a priority system during character creation very similar to the one SR uses, but with each tier you can select having pretty impactful ramifications for your character going forward. The easiest example is the modifications priority, at its top tier, you basically make a mythical creature into robo cop for your character's ancestry, but at its absolute lowest tier, your body actively rejects any and all implants, such that your character will NEVER have implants. On the same note, cyberware is handled REALLY well, with your body only being able to handle so much at a time, but otherwise the only ramification is a "biofeedback" line on your fate card, which I'll get to right now!

Almost every option your character picks gets added to a little personalized random d100 table on your character sheet called the fate card. This includes your character's crit rate, the possibility of a deity intervening on your behalf, or the aforementioned biofeedback line, which briefly fucks you up as you cyberware malfunctions. You get new lines on your fate card through picking certain character options, making impactful decisions during the story, and otherwise fulfilling the express goals of your character. The entire system kind of hinges on the fate card as a mechanic, which is weird, because I don't think I super love it, as it adds additional rolling to an already pretty dice heavy system.

Which brings me to the dice! New edo uses a d10 as its primary die for dice pools when rolling your characteristics like strength, speed, etc, but the rest of the polyhedral family for your skills. (D20 excluded) The skill system is a little funky, but I like it. Basically, each skill has a rank, which indicates how many dice it has, but each rank is assigned a die, each having a different cost associated with it. So my swordsmanship could be rank 4, but what that really means is that I've got 1d6, 2d4, and a d8 that I get to add to my strength rolls every time I attack with a sword. As far as resolution, you total all of your dice together to try and hit a target number. I don't have the table handy, but it's something like 15 for a moderately challenging task, and up to 40 for a nearly impossible task. I dislike addition in this context because math at the table usually slows things down, but it looks like you're probably only rolling 2-5 dice at a time at the beginning, which isn't *that* bad.

You'll notice that the two major mechanics I've mentioned so far have received pretty luke-warm responses from me, and that sounds like I hate the system, but those aren't that makes me like (\love?) this system is the back end, the choices that happen during character creation, and the things that those choices let you do. Every skill is attached to feats that unlock at different skills, magic is a skill, and its feats unlock better relationships with the Kami in your repertoire (magic is up next, I promise) and your class (path, they call it) doubles as a way to tie your character to the world, with each being associated with an in world faction which gives your character an immediate stake in the world and their community. It's a lot, but it all comes together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.

The last thing I want to talk about is the magic system, because I found it deeply interesting, as it's one of the very few skill based magic systems I've interacted with, and one of my favorites on a narrative level. Instead of spells or spell schools, your character instead develops relationships with Kami, and each new "order" or "type" of Kami your character gets access to represents them finding out how to supplicate, make an offering, or otherwise convince a given Kami to do a certain effect. If you have a relationship with the fire Kami (that's plural, not singular), then your character has learned that their local fire Kami really like a certain type of hot bun, so they offer them that hot bun after a scene where they invoked those kami, to maintain their relationship. Mechanically, this works instantaneously, you simply make a roll on your "Shinpi" skill, invoke whatever "rote" you want to use, and the relationship building is left for the GM and player to work out at the table.

(That's the last I have to say on the game itself, but I would ask anyone who has read the game and is more intimately familiar with Japanese culture to tell me if the game feels respectful to that culture, because I truly don't know, and the book doesn't list any sensitivity consultants. The author is Canadian, but spent many years sailing to and from Japan as a professional sailor, so idk. )

I guess the moral to this post, if there is one, is to acknowledge when a system or setting has faults, but learn from them, and don't ignore the good or cool stuff that's there! It might inspire you to make some amazing shit like City of Mist, Metro Otherscape, or New Edo, all of which, their relationship to Shadowrun aside, are fantastic games in their own right! (NewEdo is still up in the air, but it has its teeth in me, and that has to count for something)

That ends my trick or treat, thanks for asking!

[theneoncaster]

Portfolio Day AND Non-Binary Awareness Week?! I feel so POWERFUL

If ya didn't already know, I'm your Androgynous Android Gameshow Host, Nathan Blades, joined by my AI Assistant Alter-Ego, Caster!

And oh my gosh I do so many things:

Writing TTRPG systems!

Writing Scenarios, NPCs and character content for other systems and publications!

Streams covering miniature painting and kitbashing!

Voice acting and Actual Play performances!

And I'll do all those things for your projects and the folks you care about! I have previously published work for Rowan Rook & Deckard (Spire: Shadow Operations, One Page RPGs Collection 5), James D'Amato (The Ultimate One Page RPG Book), Son of Oak (Metro: Otherscape)...

In the VA and Actual Play world, you'll have heard me on We Fix Space Junk, Re: Dracula, Y2K Audio Drama, Superidols! RPG and, of course, Campaign: Skyjacks (to name a few).

If you know anyone who needs this vibe on their project, send 'em my Carrd page or just pop over to my Itchio! Your time and interest is always appreciated.

[dieoffaterp]

Who am I and what is this place?

I guess it would be best too start by introducing myself. My name is Desmond and I’m an artist born in Brooklyn New York and raised in Georgia. I’m 29 and I’ve been role playing for 7 or 8 years now. As both a player and GM. Though this is a solo role playing blog I’m apart of a traditional weekly group as well. My favorite game system too run for my traditional group is Metro Otherscape currently.

I started role playing as a way too make new friends and I genuinely believe I wouldn’t be who I am today if I never decided too join a group. As far as solo role playing goes I started out using it as a way too test out new game systems without giving my friends whiplash from my constant system switching. My favorite systems for solo sessions currently is Basic Rollplay using Mythic GME 2 as my oracle though I’m still learning both. For the past few months I’ve been working on an animated solo rp log too keep myself busy. I originally had hopes of creating a Youtube series out of it. While it’s possible that I might still release this series or something like it in the future, I thought it might be better too start out with something a bit more manageable in the form of this blog.

[toxinfrog]

My daily driver is the PBTA-like system that City of Mist and Metro: Otherscape both use. It has the simplicity of PBTA with some extra customizability in character creation.

My go-to one shot is Dread: A fun game to play and a fun game to GM. Surprisingly fun when you're improvising.

I am not sure if I have an experience game yet, but I really like the mood that Dialect can bring to a table, so maybe that?

My first contact is also Dread: It's a good game for getting people familiar with the idea of playing a character while also playing a game that most people are familiar with in Jenga.

"The difference between an RPG fleet and an RPG collection is that the fleet is a specific subset of games that you keep going back to again and again." - @LevelOneWonk

[omamervt]

I know I can't stop gushing about :Otherscape by Amit Moshe/Son of Oak but another interesting shift from City of Mist is the way they've altered the Mystery/Identity stuff to shift away from plot hooks for your character to follow and more of a focus on roleplay directives!

While you could still easily USE them as plot hooks, the specific wording on how to make them seems to suggest more of a "when I do x, it strengthens my connection to this Theme" and less of a "When I pursue x agenda" which is subtle, but still results in a shift in focus for the player!

You'll hear all about this in the upcoming :Otherscape LiteralCatPod episode later this month, but most of our cat's theme identities are MUCH more focused on having us do stuff during the main action, rather than goals to pursue on our own time.

And while you still COULD easily pursue those goals on your own time, in fact I think it'd be to your benefit to do so sometimes, it's much easier to display your motivations, and also then, potentially much easier for a GM to put you in a situation where you have to work against those motives!

[omamervt]

It may not be a perfect fit for what you're talking about, but the Status and Weakness systems of City of Mist - and by extension Queerz and Metro: Otherscape - might help you get there.

Long story short weaknesses are things that come with every character that you can either activate voluntarily as the player to take a -1 on a roll in exchange for XP, or the Game Master can activate to give you either a -1 to a roll or add a complication to the scene, where you also then get XP.

So if you wanted to be a magician and have a limit on how many times you can cast a spell per day, the weakness tied to your magic powers could be that if you use them too much, they're more likely to blow up in your face.

Alternatively, the Status cards employ a tier system of 1-6. A positive status gives you + tier to your roll, and a negative status gives - tier.

But the reason I thought of this after reading what you wrote is because of what happens after tier 4. Tier 6 status means your character is "Dead." Or at the very least, control of the character's fate is handed over to the GM and depending on the exact nature of the status your character could die or otherwise be lost for good, or maybe they just strip away one of your 4 major character aspects and make you pick a new one.

At tier 5, the status is bad enough it prevents you from even trying to roll certain actions. Importantly, it doesn't matter if a tier 5 status started as a positive or negative. Once the effect gets that strong, it turns negative. So if you were, say, casting a buff on yourself or an ally, and you let it get out of control, the Swole Muscles buff makes you so Swole you can't even move your arms, preventing the player from taking any action where they'd need to move their arms.

tbh as a way of limiting magic I'm much more interested in risk management than resource management

not how much can you do before you run out of steam

but how far can you push it before it blows up in your face

I think this first occurred to me reading the Shadowdark quickstart a while back

(I don't mean to bash the system, Shadowdark seems well-liked and successful, it's just not to my tastes)

it has an alright magic system, largely roll-to-cast, you can keep casting a spell until you fail to cast that spell, miscast on a natural 1

I had problems with this, at least from my perspective

miscasts are fine, good even, but only happening on a natural 1, that's a flat 5% chance at all times

and IMO this is kinda dull

I won't spell failure to vary based on the situation, how many times has the spellcaster cast today, how many times has a spellcaster cast in this scene, has the spellcaster had a spell failure recently, are there any antimagic entities or objects present, is there something big and magical going on, what is the general health of the caster, and so on