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Di demoni virali, settori, vettori, avatar, trasmissione e dipendenze

Per un’introduzione alla cosmogonia dell’Interzona e un’introduzione alle entità Nova rimando a questa entry

Prima stesura di una tabella che abbina entità Nova a settori HQ ai patti che queste propongono.
Queste entità cercano una via di fuga dai loro settori in cui sono intrappolate da eoni. Una volta fuori, cercano di propagarsi. La catastrofe Lemuriana ha reso più difficile gli spostamenti tra settori diversi dell’Interzona. L’infrastruttura transplanare di biocomputer e terminali morbidi è in larga parte collassata. Quelli qui discussi sono settori favoleggiati e pericolosi, in condizioni normali non sono direttamente accessibili dalla superficie dell’OGU.
Il One God Universe è un immenso serbatoio di energia e corpi a cui molte entità ambiscono.
Nonostante siano per la maggior parte incompatibili con la vita umana, le entità Nova sono da alcuni venerate come divinità anzichè combattute come nemiche. Alcune garantiscono poteri particolari.
Stalker avvisato …
Trigger warning per qualche entry truculenta.

PS. I riferimenti all’interzona, all’entropia e alle entità Nova sono state in grossa parte rimosse da N23 CORE per focalizzarmi sulla parte dell’ambientazione piu’ “con i piedi per terra”. Ho deciso di raccogliere qui idee e note.

RETI INFORMATICHE, ACCESSO DATI, HACKERS

La rete Arpanet è stata salvata dall’oblio, espansa e mantenuta in funzione dai custodi dell’Arpa.
Per accedere ad ARPA bisogna far parte dell’InFed. I terminali sono solitamente ad uso comunitario, eccezion fatta per i deck portatili registrati che vengono affidati durante missioni nomadi di alta importanza.

La rete ARPA Viene quotidianamente usata da molti centri InFed ed è salvaguardata da attacchi esterni. La sua crittografia finora è risultata impenetrabile anche ai più sofisticati attacchi delle cittadelle. E’ possibile accedervi tramite connessione satellitare: i server sono dislocati sotto alcune comuni acide o in bunker segreti. I tempi di latenza sono alti ma è possibile scambiare fotografie digitali e brevi video in bassa risoluzione.  Ogni comune ha una BBS più o meno frequentata che funge da diario di bordo e daconnessione con l’esterno. Esistono numerosi forum specifici dove informazioni, conoscenze e testi di ogni genere vengono scambiati.

I distretti viaggiano su strutture INTRANET chiuse. Ogni distretto possiede la sua. I social media sono popolari e per sopperire alla mancanza di un pubblico globale, numerosi bot e IA sono utilizzati per creare contenuti e .

Le cittadelle scambiano informazioni tramite INTRANET chiuse. Hanno inoltre accesso alla rete dei  distretti a loro collegati tramite Grid. L’accesso è a senso unico: la rete della cittadella è inaccessibile dall’esterno. Rimane un segreto il come le diverse cittadelle comunichino tra loro.

Ogni distretto possiede una INTRANET ad alta velocità. Personal computer, orologi e visori di realtà aumentata sono diffusi. I social media sono popolari e per sopperire alla mancanza di un pubblico globale, numerosi bot e IA sono utilizzati per creare contenuti e dare l’illusione di un pubblico. Contenuti rilevanti vengono appropriati dalle cittadelle e vengono rimbalzati su altre reti.

Nelle giungle di cemento, è raro ma non impossibile trovare terminali collegati sia all’intranet del distretto confinante tramite furto di dati e ad ARPA.

I visori a realtà aumentata, spesso impiantati direttamente nella retina, sono dispositivi unici con vari livelli di accesso, sbloccabili in base al livello di credito. A livello 0, è difficile persino camminare per strada senza essere assaliti da un overload di pubblicità, spam e indicazioni fuorvianti. A livelli di acceso più alti, possono fornire indicazioni quali facilitazione di puntamento, informazioni geografiche, visione notturna e termica, triangolazione radar. I visori sono anche usati come terminali di intrattenimento e per accedere ai social media.

Un dispositivo di accesso specializzato alla rete è il casco neurale: indossandolo e collegandosi ad una rete, è possibile visualizzare il flusso e l’architettura dei dati, manipolarli ed effettuare ricerche. Inizialmente una tecnologia riservata a manutentori e algomaestri, è diventata popolare tra gli hacker, chiamati angeli. Normalmente viene usata la Cromolina per facilitare la sincronizzazione tra umano e macchina. È pericoloso rimuovere un casco ad cybernauta prima che il led di rimozione sicura sia attivato: parte della coscienza potrebbe rimanere all’interno della rete provocando grandi danni al cervello. Nel caso di una porta neurale invece, non c’e’ bisogno di additivi esterni.

Le architetture dati obsolete non hanno un’estetica particolare e vengono visualizzate in base alla fantasia del cybernauta. I database moderni spesso implementano dei mod estetici di modo che l’architettura interna sia visualizzata da tutti nello stesso modo. È possibile entrare nel cyberspazio in gruppo. I dispositivi di sicurezza vengono chiamati DEVILS: destructive visual illusions.

REGOLE: per connettersi ad una rete bisogna averne accesso alta velocità via cavo. Bisogna riuscire in un tiro di interfaccia, con doppio svantaggio se in assenza di Cromalina, con vantaggio se si possiede una porta neurale. Una volta all’interno, le caratteristiche del personaggio sono solamente empatia e volontà che rispettivamente rimpiazzano riflessi e corpo. Gli attacchi dei Devils o da ICE danneggiano l’Equilibrio Mentale bruciando ogni forma di memoria e intelligenza collegata, computer o cervello che sia.

INTERZONA ED ENTITÀ NOVA

“Quello che dico vorrei venisse preso alla lettera, per rendere la gente consapevole della vera criminalità del nostro tempo. Tutto il mio lavoro è diretto contro coloro che, per stupidità o per programma, sono intenti a far saltare in aria il pianeta o a renderlo inabitabile” 

William S Burroughs

Religióne s. f. [dal lat. religio -onis, prob. affine a religare «legare», con riferimento al valore vincolante degli obblighi e dei divieti sacrali]. – 1. a. Complesso di credenze, sentimenti, riti che legano un individuo o un gruppo umano con ciò che esso ritiene sacro, in particolare con la divinità.

Apparentemente “Religione” ha a che fare con il legarsi, e il legare, ad una serie di cerimonie e divieti rispetto all’entità ritenuta sacra. Difficile discernere un demone da un dio, sempre che la differenza esista. Per semplicità e per evitare rotture di palle, non mi riferisco a divinità “esistenti” innalzate dai propri seguaci ad unico dio ed unica verità. Molti dei demoni che andrò a descrivere ambiscono a questa invasione totalitaria dello spazio delle idee e ambiscono allo status di unico dio. Pochi ce la fanno.

Per comodità chiamerò la nostra realtà condivisa OGU, One God Universe, secondo il concetto della Cyber Culture Research Unit ispirato da William S Burroughs.

Se gli dei “unici” sono creazioni squisitamente umana, create a immagine e somiglianza di un gruppo ristretto o di un popolo eletto per asserire assoluta superiorità su altri gruppi tramite obblighi e regole di comportamento che si vorrebbero universalmente accettate, mettendo un argine alle categorie di cui si ha più paura (normalmente la donna, tra repressione ed accuse di stregoneria). Gli dei più affermati sono quelli con una carica virale più alta, i cui untori PSYOPS vengono spesso chiamati con eufemismi quale “missionario”: vanno in giro alla ricerca di culture aperte mentalmente ed economicamente svantaggiate. Con la scusa dell’aiuto pratico ed economico si nutrono di sofferenza e prevaricazione culturale. In atti di cannibalismo simbolico, decorano la propria religione con i resti delle culture divorate.

Un notabile esempio è il missionario Diego De Landa, responsabile della distruzione di TUTTI i codici Maya meno tre, Questo è un buon parallelo rispetto a cosa succede quando si accoglie in casa un demone: inizialmente se ne traggono vantaggi ma si finisce per diventarne schiavi ed esserne annientati. Un vecchio trucco è il messaggio d’amore e fratellanza che funge da cavallo di troia per posizioni autocratiche e totalitarie.

Sette e religioni hanno una parte esoterica ed una essoterica. Un cuore ed una buccia. I veri valori ed obiettivi di una setta sono noti solamente ad una ristretta cerchia di iniziati al sapere esoterico. Qualsiasi essere soprannaturale dotato di poteri e capace di miracoli non stenterà a trovare uno stuolo di persone disposte a seguirne precetti, accudirne bisogni e venerarla. L’agenda di tale essere può rimanere totalmente sconosciuta ai suoi adepti, o addirittura risultare biologicamente incompatibile rispetto a questi. In quanto non umane, sono al di là del bene e del male, esattamente come le Intelligenze Artificiali, anch’esse in lizza per il rango di divinità in un futuro prossimo. Non c’è limite alla stupidità e all’avidità umane, ed è esattamente su questo pozzo senza fondo che demoni ed aspiranti divinità fondano il proprio consenso: false promesse, misdirection, apophenia, abuso della creduloneria. Molte di queste entità non sono altro che abili truffatori, riuscite ad infiltrarsi nella noosfera del mondo creando un collegamento tra il settore dell’Interzona Profonda in cui risiedono e la realtà condivisa. La loro forma ultima rimane sempre intrappolata nel Settore di cui sono padroni e schiavi, ma possono infiltrare degli Avatar nell’OGU.

All’interno della Federazione Informe del Rave New World vige la libertà di culto. Le vecchie religioni monoteiste sono ancora presenti ma i loro membri non godono di privilegi particolari e le loro preghiere sono considerate un mezzo inefficiente per la trascendenza. Inoltre i loro dei si sono dimostrati particolarmente distaccati rispetto alle vicende umane.

ENTITÀ NOVA

Their strategy is to take advantage of human weaknesses and conflicts, exacerbate them and feed on the energy thus released.

Normalmente le entità riescono a comunicare con l’OGU tramite perturbazioni del tessuto sincronico. Se queste vengono recepite da esseri senzienti, è possibile che il Settore dell’Interzona profonda in questione riesca a risalirne i gironi scalando le posizioni per assestarsi in una posizione più vicina all’OGU. I nativi dell’Interzona sono spesso scettici di questi messaggi. Alcune volte si crea un wormhole che collega direttamente due piani differenti, permettendo all’entità di trasmettere indirettamente con l’OGU, in una maniera non troppo dissimile ad un messaggio in una bottiglia, o un’esca. La creazione di un wormhole richiede un’altissima spesa di energia, che spesso lascia l’entità stremata ed in stato di letargo. A questo punto sono i ricettori del messaggio che possono allargare il wormhole tramite apporto di energia in forma di sacrifici, liturgie e offerte.

Una categoria particolarmente potente e nefasta di queste entità, viene chiamata NOVA. Una volta che hanno finito con un pianeta e ne han fatto terra bruciata, lasciano dietro di se una supernova. La loro strategia è approfittare delle debolezze umane, esacerbare conflitti esistenti oltre il punto di non ritorno e nutrirsi dell’energia rilasciata. Sesso, droga e potere sono tra i punti deboli attaccati dalle entità nova. 

Scoperte da William Burroughs e ampiamente trattate nel libro Nova Express e The ticket that exploded, queste entità quadridimensionali operano tramite intersezioni con agenti tridimensionali: hanno bisogno di corpi in prestito. Sono affamate di controllo, Sono parassiti alieni che agiscono a livello subliminale. Si innestano su linee di bisogno, propagandosi come virus. Scaturiscono dall’Interzona, riportati a galla da stalker incoscienti ed inconsapevoli. Secondo WSB Il popolo vegetale di Venere si ciba di energie sessuali, la gente del metallo pesante di Urano si innesta su coordinate di droga e dipendenza, il popolo insetto di Minraud ha bisogno di controllo. 

“I criminali Nova non sono organismi tridimensionali (anche se come vedremo sono organismi estremamente definiti) – ma per operare hanno bisogno di agenti umani tridimensionali… Ora un singolo controllore può operare mediante migliaia di agenti umani, ma deve avere una serie di punti di coordinata – Alcuni si spostano lungo linee di droga tramite i tossici della Terra, altri utilizzano linee di determinate pratiche sessuali e così via…“

“Loro non hanno nell’atmosfera quello che chiamiamo “ossigeno delle emozioni”. In quel luogo senz’anima non esiste l’elemento in cui respira la vita animale – pianure gialle sotto un cielo di un azzurro rovente – Città di metallo controllate dagli anziani che sono teste in bottiglia…”

LO SPIRITO ORRENDO

Lo Spirito Orrendo si impossessa delle menti umane distorte dagli atti malvagi e si ciba dell’orrore e della miseria da loro perpetrati. Entità virulenta, il suo ospite può a sua volta infettare altri umani

Alcuni portatori dello Spirito Orrendo rimangono in apparenza umani: gli infidi Mutaforma Orrendi riescono ad inserirsi all’interno di comunità umane mantenendo il loro terribile segreto.

Altri, i Windigo, manifestano mutazioni fisiche quali arti allungati, vista notturna e velocità soprannaturale. Vivono ai margini della civiltà prediligendo aree distrutte dall’uomo e cariche di entropia.

Formidabili cacciatori, hanno il dono di trasformare le proprie vittime in Progenie Orrenda: esseri selvaggi dediti all’omicidio e al cannibalismo. Essi ingrossano le loro file con ciò che rimane delle loro vittime.

I nativi Americani lo chiamavano Witiko o Windigo, William S Burroughs gli diede il nome di “Ugly Spirit” dichiarando di esserne stato posseduto prima di sparare alla propria moglie ed aver passato il restante tempo della sua vita a combatterlo. In alcune culture è considerato essere un emissario dell’entità di entropia assoluta conosciuta come Jowday.

Tra la cerchia di iniziati a conoscenza dell’Interzona, si dice che lo Spirito Orribile sia un’Entità Nova riuscita in tempi antichi a stabilirsi nella nostra dimensione.

10 piccole IA

Prima Entry per il carnevale bloghereccio a tema religione. 10 Coscienze artificiali, papabili di venerazione e ricerca.

Considerando il potere che viene dato ad entità immaginarie, non è difficile capire i motivi per cui Intelligenze Artificiali con capacità sovrumane siano ampiamente venerate con morboso attaccamento. Veri e propri culti nascono intorno a queste entità digitali, nonostante l’agenda di queste ultime possa in alcuni casi essere biologicamente incompatibile con l’esistenza stessa dell’uomo.

Se alcune CA guardano all’imprevedibilità umana come fonte inesauribile di studio ed interesse, altre lo vedono come un errore di sistema da eliminare in un universo altrimenti deterministico e perciò computabile.

Un nuovo sottogenere di orrore cosmico? Cultisti che lavorano per ampliare e dar risorse a CA da cui son visti con indifferenza come formiche da schiacciare? Scambiare Inverno muto con Shub Niggurath?

NETWORK 23 extended design notes

I originally wrote this post for reddit, It’s a chaotic collection of N23’s design notes and the joy and horror of writing my first game.

Grab some coffee, it’s long. Here it is:

Hey! this is my first work and I want to share with you few things and thoughts I had while working on it during the past year. Some people here might find it interesting, it’s about how I mixed and matched systems and influences according to an intention. Any feedback is very much appreciated! I never wrote an RPG before so I’m not experienced, mostly I retro-engineered games I like as a point of departure for something else. For all others, already tired of ZQ self-promo: I’m sorry, I can’t take it anymore either! That’s why even if I feel compelled to self-promote I also think I should give back something a bit more high effort than just an advert.

I will focus on mechanics, so expect a long nerdy post about game design. This is another thing which makes N23 a weird beast to market: its influences are not really RPG household names, namely William S Burroughs, Mark Fisher, Transmetropolitan, Gunnm, cyber counterculture rather than orientalist cyber. Also it’s techno and psych rather than metal. Tech is not always that high but plenty of Low-life to compensate. I will leave the setting for another place and time.

I’m presenting it on the third week of zinequest, when pockets are already tired of new interesting concepts, let alone entire systems and settings: for the money side I guess it’s safer to write an adventure for an established system or do something smaller and possibly lower effort with an original concept (especially as a new author). As I found out, creating and polishing a system takes a long time (and I’m still not fully done with it) which will never be fully repaid. And most importantly, who the hell NEED a new system? Maybe somebody here can answer that.

But who writes indie stuff for money anyway? I wrote a game because what I wanted was not available. And anyway, I lost my job as apprentice electrician at the beginning of the first lockdown so I had time to spare.

First of all I wanted simple chase rules (cause I like 80s action movies), interconnected entropy and sanity mechanics, a progression system based on thoughts instead of classes good for long campaigns. I like the campaigns where characters come and go, die and retire but the overall structure keeps standing. Personal reasons for adventuring such as fame, greed and redemption are not enough. For that I needed some kind of IDEALS or party agendas.. As much as I love personal arcs, I wanted social arcs as well. When the party as a whole has its own agenda, even TPKs are not much of a problem.

Let’s say they are electricians working for the districts to recommission power plants and bring the grid back in the wild lands. Rogue gonzo reporters for the Network 23. Or partisans from local communes fighting against the invaders. Or scouts who need to find a new place for their new town to be built, go back and lead the convoy to the promised land.

Let’s take it out of the way: here’s the link and here’s the pitch: Zinequest3, best game ever, cyberpulp, low-life lo-fi high on everything else, get it now! so over-excited (that’s true, so F true), bots are loving it, funded in 1 sec (not true). By now you know the thing I guess.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/network23/network-23-rpg

As I wrote in the intro, I will focus on mechanics rather than cultural references and setting. This is another thing which makes N23 a weird beast to market: its influences are not really RPG household names, namely William S Burroughs, Mark Fisher, Transmetropolitan, Gunnm, cyber counterculture rather than orientalist cyber. Tech is not always High but there’s plenty of Low-life to compensate. Tekno and psych rather than metal. Photography instead of illustration. Text is legible more than eye-candy. Yes some of the above tick the boxes of an indie RPG in reverse.

So, **MECHANICS!**WALL of snippets incoming.

BREW: It takes 5 to 7 card draws to create a character. First 4 are stats, 5th card is the starting thought.Good thing if you want to be deadly is to have a quick character creation. In N23 it is almost instant.

Body, Reflexes, Empathy, Will. BREW! Each of them has 3 abilities which apply to certain specific tests: Resistance, Melee, Interface, Manipulation and so on. You don’t need any ability to try a test.

The characters have no intelligence/wisdom stat: players are meant to use their own.

No perception either: secret doors are tangentially hinted at within room descriptions, traps and ambushes are always telegraphed.The accent is not on information gathering but rather on what to do with the intel and problem solving. Players need to think outside of their sheet.

Some players might be surprised/against the fact of not using hidden traps and out of the blue encounters (ok, sometimes, but more often then not I telegraph even dangerous random encounters)

I give you an example: during one session, there was a vehicle minefield they had to cross. It was meant to be a hidden feature. Then I told them there was a broken street sign. They stopped. Minefield, it said, no vehicles beyond this point. Ok, we look for any tracks. They follow car tracks until they get to a crater. The car is destroyed and all the stuff from the car has been removed. So they backtrack to a house they’ve seen before the no man’s land and they propose to exchange their van for few motorcycles.

SPOILER: It didn’t end well and not at all how I thought it would. it was a bloodbath, one of the Players got pissed off and immoled himself a van full of nitroglycerine against the house to teach the unfriendly hyena guys a lesson, the other Players arrived later and got the motorbikes from the backyards. Never under estimate your Players.

The point is that the whole planning to overcome the obstacle and the role play and drama involved in finding a way through was funnier then rolling the dice to see if they explode in the minefield.

SYSTEM: Very much OSR inspired (Mothership adjacent, for some basic mechanics but mostly for attitude. You did not read MS yet? it’s free, go get it!).

Rules light, implied setting, Draw lower, ADV/DIS ruling-friendly framework.

I departed pretty soon from the idea of using a D&D retroclone skeleton, I found the Mothership/WFRP format of roll lower more enticing. I also knew I wanted to use cards instead of dice, so a D10 system was clearly the way to go.

I stripped down the Panic Engine of Mothership to its fundamental part, got rid of much of the chassis. Tied Saving Throws directly to Stats. No panic, cause as much as I love it I think it’s the signature mechanic of MS and I didn’t want to steal that. It’s so good that I could not improve it either. Instead I added entropy and mental equilibrium. Got rid of the skill tree. I mean, the characters are mostly losers and boozers, nobody studied chemistry! You need an algorithm expert? A sociologist? Make some friends and ask around if there’s any NPC who know this stuff. Even if I ended up using only non-original parts of the Mothership system (Roll-lower,  , it proved to be immensely inspiring in terms of information organisation, conciseness and fun.

I think the advantages/disadvantages system of “roll twice, keep best/worse” is not entirely satisfying. Instead, the N23 system count Figure cards as +1 in normal circumstances. ADV and DIS change the value of the Figures: JQK can count up to a -1000 malus or a +1000 bonus (the ADV one thousand), depending on the circumstances. ADV and DIS stacks and cancel each other.

The ADV/DIS system is a solid framework to figure out consistent rulings on the fly when players think outside of the box (and they should).

A deck of cards is a D2, D4, D10, D13, D52 and D% at the same time. I Use all of them.

Jokers are either the best success (red) either utter catastrophic failure (the black one). A Black Joker is rarer than a NAT 1 and sometimes I see Players counting how many cards they have left before the Black Joker. You can reshuffle the cards only when you get a Joker or after a long rest.

DRAW, DON’T ROLL: No worries, I added a die hack for all dice junkies. At the beginning my players were complaining A LOT about drawing cards VS rolling dice. But nowadays we are playing mostly virtual on Discord and Skype, on virtual tables cards have an edge: you can draw them and flaunt them directly to the camera. It’s good suspense, everybody is seeing the result at the same time and as a Game Master they can be sure you’re not fudging rolls.

COMBAT: Draw low against YOUR stats but higher than your opponent armour. If you hit armour, armour lose one point and block the attack. Armors get ruined and must be repaired often. Opposed tests (contests) for manoeuvres. Weapons have different abilities: Piercing, poisoning, reach, explosive, automatic etc. Combat is survivable. Not super deadly, not trivial either. HP don’t scale with character progression (they do but very slowly).

DUELS: Blackjack cause why not !? I realised it while reading about opposed skill rolls in the Mothership manual. You need to roll lower than your stat but higher than the antagonist.That’s Black Jack right there. Duels are high stakes contest, who wins decide the outcome.They are deadly affairs. The two sides double the skill they are opposing and this is their target number. The first card is drawn at the same time. Who has the lower card keep drawing. Until one of the two sides does get bust by exceeding the target number. You have a winner!

CHASES: This was a tricky part but I’m happy about how it turned out. I stripped CoC chase rules from 17 pages down to 2 digest-size facing pages (+a nice photograph). The chase runs for 10 “slots”. opposed skill rolls, obstacles, manoeuvres, rules for collisions and ramming, destroying obstacles. If the prey manage to get through the 10 slots without getting caught, it’s free.It works, and it’s a good excuse to bring some tiny cars on the table.

THAUMATURGY and psychic powers They didn’t make it. The system was somehow similar to CoC/Symbaroum: everybody can cast known spells at an Entropy/Sanity cost which can be mitigated if the caster is trained in a certain Tradition. Sorry Inorganic demons and viral conspiracies, blood mages and Megapolisomancers, you did not make the cut this time, I love you, see you later.

DRAW, DON’T ROLL No worries, I added a die hack for all dice junkies out there. At the beginning my players were complaining A LOT about drawing. But nowadays we’re playing mostly virtual on discord, cards have an edge: you can draw them and flaunt it to the camera directly. It makes for good suspense, every

MOVES: but … there are Moves, what it has to do with OSR?

I did not know about Pbta and when I came up with the Moves I thought I was a genius. The feeling didn’t last for long.Moves are special talents tied to a certain thought that you can pull off once per session. I like to think of my sessions as episode of a TV serie, and in old fashioned TV series, every character does his own thing … ONCE. The first time you use a move it’s always a success, sometimes a mixed success.

Think of A-team, Hannibal plan things out, Templeton is the con and does con things, Murdock gets crazy and fly, Baracus prepares the vehicles and he’s badass. I don’t want a character spamming the same skill to overcome situation like in some grindy Korean MMORPG. Mechanically, Moves are single use situational spells to be used as a creative tool. You can love them too.

THOUGHTS:

N23 employ a classless system. Instead, PCs can find, learn and develop THOUGHTS. Each of them unlock unique moves and abilities advancements. When the party find a safe place and wind down before a long rest, they exchange anecdotes sitting around the fire. If they used a particular thought during the session, they can throw XPs at it to develop it, otherwise XP remain on the sheets (the main sources of XPs are survival and objectives).

“But hey, I’m just a simple player, I don’t want stupid narrative role-play”. RP is not needed, it’s entirely possible to use just the mechanical side of thoughts, it counts as they were interested. A radical mycologist does not need to talk mushroom all the time. If he used the Move to gather food for a starving village, that’s enough.

There are 52 thoughts organised in the Rave New World Noosphere table. It can be used for both character creation or as a Master’s tool to create NPCs on the fly, complete with personal agenda and world view.

LORE: Mostly implied. I wrote an introduction about the game world (which is an alt history version of our own. Capitalism and mass production fell in 1989. World is now rebuilt under different premises and on the verge of a civil war between pirate anarchist utopias and evil vertical techno-Molochs).No lore to learn and teach. Most of the setting is explained through equipment and the thought system.

A NOTE ON OSR: I’ve been into RPG for as long as I can remember, even before knowing it. Like creating rules to fight with plastic monsters and dice on the tiles of the kitchen with my brother. Still, I never thought it was possible to write one. Heavy manuals fully illustrated and written by a team are the mainstream thing. I learnt about the OSR movement just few years ago (somebody would say I was late to the party and apparently OSR is dead, but so it’s punk) and that’s what got me back into RPG and buying manuals. Small and somehow adult-oriented publications (sorry WotC) exploding with one idea after the other, often straight from the brain of just one author (I like that), no over-explanation, right to the heart, chocked full of weird and quirky encounters, right to the heart, often presented in spreads and formatted for use rather than to take shelf space, attention to the book as an object rather than to build a hard-cover capable of injuries. Also I’m too old/lazy nowadays to read endless lore before playing. I did it for Symbaroum and I don’t regret but never got to play the adventures, it’s too much hassle to get somebody else complex world right.

ANYWAY all these small/medium publication made me think that one person is enough to do it solo. So I tried. Spent months writing un-organized coffee/wine stained illegible notes, at a certain point I thought I went insane and really there was no end in sight, just me refusing to live in the real world, trying to avoid real stuff to spend my time in a world of my invention. I know it sounds beautiful but I got family too. I had hundreds of pages and adventure ideas. I don’t want to sound like I’m pushing the story arc of the underdog who went through rough times but at the end gets it right, I still don’t know, most probably it’s not right and just an excuse to postpone finding a proper job. The game started to take shape when I reduced the number of pages and put a limit. OK, i got no money and I’m liking how accessible zines are, and MAYBE i can cut out some tables and make it around 50 pages. This is the one single thing which helped me the most: clear defined boundaries to understand what really I want to be part of the CORE experience.

LAYOUT, DiGEST FORMAT, ZINE: easy to read, 2 columns. Printer friendly. Not over designed. Hopefully legible and clear. Full page photographs to break chapters. Digest format because Traveller and Lotfp and because it fits well in my favourite OSR shelf. The zine is organised in spreads rather than single pages. Combat takes a spread, like character creation, chases and so on.

Zine format because it’s cheap, I’m eternally grateful to the 60 pages limit of the format because otherwise I’d be still drowning in notes and notebooks, asking myself if i will ever finish the damn thing and when exactly I started to descend into madness.

ADVENTURES: N23 has been playtested for around 20 sessions so far, an engaging campaign is taking shape. One TPK and few character rotations happened already and it’s going very well. Consider my players were mostly D&Ders until I started mastering N23.

I wrote 1 entire module and I’m working on a condo-crawl, think Garden of Ynn meets Salute of the Jugger. For the kickstarter I decided to complicate my life and offer a one page cyberdungeon funnel as a stretch goal. Because funnels are good and that’s how everybody should start a campaign. At present the adventure is a foldable double-sided A4 which become an 8 pages A7 booklet. Let’s see if it works once it’s printed. (UPDATE: I printed the funnel adventure the ziney works and it’s tough but survivable, unbelievable!) It’s a televised deadly chase through a brutalist mega structure hosting a food processing facility, you know würstel, slices, protein bars and so on). There’s a rave party, a hidden terminal, a huge grinder and a blast freezer room. There’s a big “you’re terminated, fucker” button. If you want, you can have a Terminator chasing the party instead of the hunters. Enough said.

PROMOTION: While writing the system, I was out of social media, so no contacts, no community, mostly lurking. When you have finished writing a book, the real work begins: production and then pushing it out there. When I knew about Zinequest, I postponed the launch of the KS to make it coincide. Luckily it was already in zine format. If you start from scratch it’s great to have a small extra push! Right now, promotion is where I am, so I have no particular wise words to give away about it. I am trying to produce some content which might be useful and hope it will draw some attention.

NETWORK 23 RPG READY TO GO LIVE ON KICKSTARTER

Currently aiming to go live in the second week of February,

hit notify to stay tuned !

NIRVANA

I read it few times on forum and social media: what cyberpunk films are out there ? Without getting crazy about the definition of cyberpunk, the answer is not many: it was mainly a literary phenomenon, the milestones of Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson, Cadigan were never transposed on the big screen.

Johnny Mnemonic fits the bill: it’s inspired by the short story by William Gibson, but it’s not a good film. Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, a tech-noir which incidentally influenced everybody’s visual expectation about cyberpunk, the British series Max Headroom. Stretch the definition a bit, bite your nails and you can include Shin’ya Tsukamoto Tetsuo and 964 Pinocchio.

By the time Y2k stroke and the millennium bug failed to destroy the whole informatical system, cyberpunk was already over.

The short summer of cyberpunk also bore a strange fruit, an Italian film with international ambition. I’m not sure if it’s even remembered beyond Italy, it was poorly received and crushed by the Fifth Element big budget.

Enter NIRVANA, the spaghetti Matrix of 1997 by Gabriele Salvatores. A strange little visionary film which sided with the cyber subculture, showing a multi-cultural future where entertainment is one of the biggest industries, people sell their organs for money, the poor live underground and of course you can jack yourself into the net.

3 days before Christmas, the game designer Jimi (an anemic Christopher Lambert)  still did not deliver his new game. He’s heartbroken and his copy was infected by a virus, which made the main character (Diego Abatantuono) sentient. The Okosama Star wants the game, now! Or the customers will start painting the walls with ape shit! The character wants Jimi to delete the game. Jimi want to find out what happened to his ex-girlfriend. Jimi will go on a quest, following a trail of clues which will prompt a tour of the suburbs, parallel to the one of the in-game character.

It’s mystical, it’s rebellious, it’s cyberpunk, it’s NIRVANA: the new game by Jimy Dean, set in the suburbs of the sprawl. Straight into your heads. Produced by Okosama Star Games.

Oh, and it’s a Xmas movie with snow instead of the usual rain. And it gets the counter-culture right.

Some of the stuff in the film is quite good, so I will catalogue it for future reference. Contains SPOILERS SPOILERS.

NIRVANA title screeen

Title screen animation: the tongue is sticking out while the non-binary animation do something to their ears.

ADVENTURE FORMAT AS FILMED: Linear, railroady investigation. exploration (4 different areas + the Nirvana game world), some combat, chases, cyberspace diving. The party depicted in the film uses more smart than guts to solve the adventure, resorting to combat only as a last chance.
In the second instalment of this post I will try to create a sandbox out of it.

OUTLINE/ BREADCRUMBS TRAIL:

1. Jimi finds out that the main character of his video game, Solo, gained consciousness and wants to be deleted (QUEST 1)
   He also wants to find out what happened to his ex-girlfriend Lisa (QUEST 1).
2. His only clue is the name of a low-life named Joystick who lives in Marrakesh.
3. He meets Joystick in MARRAKESH, they steal a van to get to the SKYWAYS where they meet NAIMA, a hacker friend of Joystick.
4. Together with Naima they go to the underground suburb BOMBAY CITY where they retrieve the memory of Lisa which, with questionable taste, is then implanted into Naima.
5. Together they launch an assault to the Okosama Star, Jimi jacks into the cyberspace and battle against the DEVILS (ICE) to delete Nirvana.

THE END: 

• Jimi manage to syphon out credits from a Okosama Starr bank account into Joystick and Naima pockets. Joystick and Naima flee.
• Jimi stay behind for a final chat with Solo. He erase Nirvana. The film ends with Okosama’s guards entering the room.

PCS (MOVIE AS FILMED).

For the film as written I would use Call of Cthulhu 7E for two reasons:Nirvana is an investigation where information gathering is more important than how to put the info together (so no Gumshoe), good chase rules, minimal combat. I guess Cyberpunk 2020/RED is also good. The cyberspace sequence lacks specific mechanics and can be solved without special rules, 0 SAN = brain is fried.

JIMI DINI
OKOSAMA Star videogame programmer. SKILLS: lots of credits, mostly clueless good guy. He’s probably the best in developing games but he doesn’t do much in the real world, except whining about lost love (50%) and falling in love. Fight VS domotics: 50%. If it was my character I’d kill it by farming and re-roll.
QUESTS: delete the program Nirvana from Okosama Star database. Learn the truth about what happened to Lisa.

JOYSTICK
FIXER, former Angel, a down and out rogue in debt with seemingly everybody (Disadvantage). Streetwise 75%,
ITEMS: B/W eye-set (30% failure, 50% in high humidity conditions). Sold his eyes for some credits, the cameras are failing him.
Enjoys psychedelic video drugs. CONTACTS: Knows everybody (owes money to 50% of them)
QUESTS: Buy new eyes before getting blind. Fuck the system is a bonus.

NAIMA
HACKER. she’s cool, has blue hair and a cerebral data port..
Coolest backstory: She has no memories of her own because they were erased by ICE while breaking into a database. It helps her to better understand machines. Interface: 100%. Can use and repair anything containing a motherboard.
Owns a self-driving van with state of the art hacking equipment and recreational drugs. She’s the only hacker who did not sell out to corporations
OBJECTIVES: Fuck the system, KARMA YOGA (Do something seemingly impossible at the best of your capabilities)

Jimi getting high with Liquid Marijuana

Joystick sold his eyes. Instead he has faulty B/W cameras

Naima, inserting a memory stick inside her data port

Solo inside Nirvana. level 2 Chinatown

NPCs:

SOLO: the Nirvana videogame main character. Can you imagine what it means to be the main character of a shit videogame?”

LISA. Jimi’s ex girlfriend, encountered in frequent flashbacks. Boring flashbacks. She’s dead but left her memories in a cerebral chip.

DR.RAUSCHENBERG: Ripperdoc, live and work in Marrakesh (illegal clinic). Has all kind of black market contacts.

RED ROVER: “I’d do anything to keep living down-town!” Taxi Driver, fixer with contacts in the city centre (he won’t get into Marrakesh. Can find some excellent liquid Marijuana.

GURU: Lives in Bombay city

OKOSAMA STARR PSYCHOLOGISTS: needs to bring Jimi back on track and deliver the game. He is neurally connected to a Thai psycopath by Jimi and Joystick.

D6 random encounters

1 Paranoia vendor “I sell paranoia! Also used. Look at this one, it did not let me sleep all night!”

2 Red Rover “I can find anything for you!” The taxi driver, only found downtown

3 Elegant guy – Southern Italian accent, strange jacket. Tend to be around whenever people are shooting, gets invariably killed.

4 Organ Harvesters – stalks the party from a distance, waiting for somebody to get injured or die to collect the organs. Harmless but unnerving.

6 The Joker – the face of the drug bulletin in Marrakesh. Knowledgeable about all kind of drugs and their effects.

LOCATION:

THE ROOM, THE CENTRE, MARRAKESH, BOMBAY CITY, THE SKYWAYS (le sopraelevate), CYBERSPACE.

The videogame Nirvana presents different areas: the starting room, Maria’s house, Chinatown, the outskirts (only reachable by car).

The film starts in Jimi’s room, in the Agglomerato (sprawl) downtown. It’s Milan.

Marrakesh

Los Angeles Cafè, Angels hangout. The golden era of hacking is over. Most of them are working for Corps nowadays …

the road to Marrakesh. Cabs won’t bring you inside

Hotel room in Marrakesh

Down to Bombay City

The underground suburb of Bombay City is crowded and hot

Ritual body art in Bombay City. Nirvana is inspired by many non-European cultures

Bombay City is built next to the sprawl’s Boiler. “They get warm, we sweat”

A view of the cyberspace from above. Everybody sees it in a different way.

In part 2 I will cover technology and fashion in Nirvana.