10 LET Stats = 0
20 Stats = Stats + 1
30 PRINT "Current Stats:"; Stats

Let’s Talk About Character

At the heart of any ttrpg is the character that the player embodies. Sometimes these are sharply drawn creations, with depth and history, and sometimes they are Goblin With a Knife – both ‘right’ within the game they are part of.

So, leaning into the grit I want for NeoCyber, as well as the DIY punk ethos, this is what I’m working with:

Everything in the game is purchasable using the same mechanic

so, to get to the nuts and bolts of this, when I say ‘everything’, I’m meaning every thing. So, as a working title that needs changing, I’m going with this mechanic being called Character Points – and you can use those Points to as much purchase a gun or a car or a hack, as you could to get a increase to a stat or a skill.

So, if you wanted play a more traditional charater, with balanced points in all your abilities, you can. But if you want to play the guy who just has the sickest ride, or piles of credits, or just a big ol’ bag of guns, the system allows for it.

There will need to be some testing around the amount of Character Points to be assigned, and also how that interacts with in-game currencies, and level ups (would players do missions for Character Points? unlikely)

Stats-a-go-go

And now further into the gritty, what are the actual stats we’re talking about? It is important to me that the game has as rich as ‘digital’ world as it does a ‘real’ world. If the cyberpunk genre is built on an proposed extension of today, many undersell the digital world – be that VR, AR, cybercrime/security, social media, digital communities, etc. I want to make sure we front the digital world as much as possible.

One of the initial ideas was to almost have two characters per character, a real world one and a digital avatar, but that was one idea that failed in the playtest, so instead we’re looking at splitting the stats instead

Real World Stats:

Body: fight, run, climb, stamina, health
Flex: acrobatics, driving, stealing, hiding

Digital Stats:

Hack: breaking in, defence, digital creations, data searching, phishing
Twitch: swords, guns, combat, reactions

Shared Stats:

Credits: moola, cash, readies, dead presidents
Mind: lore, tech, lies, charm

Next week, skills…