talsorian – Page 8 – cyberpunk2020.de

The Humble Smartlink Revisited

[This article deals with the benefits and problems of directly plugging a gun into your nervous system – what probably every cyberpunk PC everywhere does all the time.]

Author: Chris Lupton.
Taken without permission from his site at (now dead). It pains me to violate his copyright, but the article is just to good to let it be forgotten. I’m sorry Chris and hope you approve what I do here.

The History of and Information about Smartguns

Origins
Operation
Advanced Systems

Origins

The first smartgun systems were developed independently by the US and German militaries in the 1990s. By 2001, smartguns had been adopted by several corporations and were beginning to appear on the street. The US military created the Milspec Smartgun Standard (MSS1) in 2003, after disastrous compatibility problems amongst the smartguns used in central America caused embarrassing problems and several fatalities. Today, almost every smartsystem in the world conforms to this standard. To ignore it means ignoring the large profits to be made selling smartlinks to the US military. In 2013 an improved standard (MSS2) was released, though it has yet to be universally adopted. The army considered it too expensive for its benefits and has yet to make compliance a requirement in weapons trials.The MSS1 standard was essentially very simple. It defined the data protocol between the smartgun and the neuralware smartlink, in terms of required and optional information/functions. This meant that one smartgun link mounted in a neuralware processor or smartgoggles could interpret the data from any smartlinked weapon. Continue reading “The Humble Smartlink Revisited”

Cyberpunk Tech 7

human brain / computer interface In my little series of Cybepunk tech allready available today: The brain-computer interface. The very core of every cyberpunk book – the ability to plug yourself into the matrix.

Well, today you can use it to surf Second Life. Second life is NOT the virtual reality I imagined reading Neuromancer, but some like it there:

All a user has to do to control his/her avatar is imagine performing various movements. The activity monitored by the headpiece is read and plotted by an electroencephalogram, which relays it to a computer running a brain wave analysis algorithm that interprets the imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then translates the data into signals which can be used to control the movements of the user’s on-screen avatar in real-time.

As usual, boing-boing has the details (including a link to a video)

Craphound von Cory Doctorow übersetzt

“Craphound”, eine Geschichte von Cory Doctorow (den man u.a. als Autor von boing-boing kennt) steht unter einer cc-Lizenz. Das erlaubt es z.B. auch, die Geschichte ohne rechtliche Probleme zu übersetzen. Christian Spließ hat das gemacht, jetzt steht die Geschichte auf deutsch zur Verfügung. Danke!!! Auch die Übersetzung steht unter der cc-Lizenz. Bedeutet also, dass man die Geschichte auch umarbeiten darf, etwa ihr ein anderes Ende geben – wenn man mag. Großartig!!! Ich zitiere aus dem Anfang der Geschichte, um euch den Mund wässrig zu machen:

Craphound hatte für einen verfluchten dreckigen Alien-Bastard ein abgefahrenes Garagenflohmarkt-Karma. Er war einfach zu gut darin aus einem rasenden Fluss der Nutzlosigkeit das einzige Körnchen Gold herauszuwaschen als dass ich ihn nicht hätte mögen können – oder jedenfalls respektieren. Aber dann fand er die Cowboy-Truhe. Für mich waren das zwei Monatsmieten und für Craphound nichts als ein verrückter Alien-Kitsch-Fetisch. Also tat ich das Undenkbare. Ich verletzte den Code. Ich geriet in einen Bietkrieg mit einem Kumpel. Lasst euch nicht erzählen Frauen würde Freundschaften vergiften; laut meiner Erfahrung heilen die Wunden von Auseinandersetzungen über Frauen recht schnell; Auseinandersetzungen über Schrott hinterlassen nichts als verbrannte Erde.

Die ganze Geschichte gibt es auf deutsch hier, auf englisch dort.

Zombie Drug

I found an article about Scopolamine on boing-boing. It’s a really scary drug, taking your free will away and allready available. Criminals love it – they can force the victim to give them all its money or use them sexually. Its also very likely to kill the user right away. That makes it instant cyberpunk 2020 game material for me. I figured I would need some hard game rules for the drug, so my first stop was Ocelots Drug Lab 101 and the wonderfully helpful Javascript Tool Night-flyer provided.

This is the result:

Scopolamine (Zombie Drug)

Drug Effects:
HypnoticUntimed Side Effects:
Death

Drug Features:
Longer DurationTimed Side Effects:
Loss of Inhibition
Memory Loss

Totals:
Strength: +5
Difficulty: 21
Duration: Long
(1d10 hours)
Legality: Type A Illegal
Drug Form: Powdered/Snorted
Time to Effect: 1d2 Min
Purchase Price: 0 (50eb)

Since Ocelots Rules are mainly aimed at creating game balancing rules, the drug ist without a purchase price – who would willingly take the drug? So I assigned a price tag of 50eb – seems reasonable to me.

[Scopolamine] is as close to pure evil as it gets, a tiny amount of the powder administered to the victim causes one of two effects, a) death, or b) complete loss of free will. Criminals are usually hoping for the latter, as it enables them to tell victims to empty their bank accounts, give away their car, perform sex acts, basically whatever the criminal dictates.

This is where Scopolamine has got its reputation as the “zombie drug”, victims appear completely sober and rational, but they’re really just automatons. (Source for the description: boing-boing)

Using CyberEvolution in CP2020

Author: Dan Bailey
Author’s Note: This is a way to adapt the Carbon Plague (from CyberGeneration) for use in a normal CP2020 campaign. Just in case you don’t like the idea of a 13-year old edgerunner.In 2020, three AIs that had gone rogue, banded together to create Aitech Incorporated, the first corporation headed by AIs and not humans. Their goal was to create nanotech that would bring humanity to a higher level, and hopefully, in the process make them realize the potential of Artificial Intelligences, and thereby grant them the rights they felt they deserved. After nearly two years, they introduced their CyberEvolution line of nanotechnology, which is very difficult to find, and very costly.
To acquire a Major Evolution involves making contact with an Aitech representative, which is a Near Impossible task. To get a Minor Evolution is easier, requiring the Continue reading “Using CyberEvolution in CP2020”

Human Shields in Cyberpunk 2020

Author: sparky.

The asshole attacked me with a back hand. I swung my right arm and connected with his kidney. He promptly buckled with a scream. That was when I saw his partner with the Assault Rifle. ‘Shit. This is going to be a bad day.’ I thought. As his partner raised the muzzle of the weapon to point it at me I acted. I reached and grabbed the punk I’d just nailed by the back of the shirt and held him in front of me just as his parter opened with a three round burst. The bullets made wet smacks as they pummeled the body in front of me. After the guy fired I pulled out my AMT and blew his fool head off, and left the shield to die in a pool of blood.
Johnny Walker – Militech

Some times you are looking down a barrel with no where to go. So what do you do? You attempt to find cover. And in some close range fire fights the best cover around can be the bodies of living or dead people. I know, it harks back to memories of Arnold riding the escalator up and using a human shield against fully automatic weapons. Pretty cool, a little messy, but pretty cool.

Well, guess what. I was CC’d with a message for Rajeen Nabid and the message had a direct quote for RTG on how this would be done! So here it is a little more fleshed out and taking armor into account. (Which believe it or not, is actually easy.)
Here we go!

Human Shield

SP = Body Type Modifier (BTM)

SDP = 4xBody (i.e. Body of 7 = 28 (7×4=28)

These are estimates from RTG (pretty good ones too). An unarmored shield would have these types of values. And for all intents and purposes this would be treated as cover. Damage that penetrates the SP of the Shield will be passed on to the SDP of the body (4xBODY). So if the person has a high body there is a lot of damage that can be stopped. But, once the Shields SDP are reduced to zero the shield ins no longer effective and you are also wearing a large portion of the shield as there won’t be much left.

Now, “Great!” you’re saying. “Next time I get my self into a fire fight… I’ll just grab the first person I see and use them as cover!” Well, it does work that easily for dead or unconscious shields. But, it’s a different story when that shield is still conscious and alive! If the person you wish to hide behind is not incapacitated you must first make a grapple roll to grab the person. Once you have grappled the person you may hold him in front of you. You must also roll a grapple roll every turn you wish to use him/her so long as they are alive and awake.

Armored Shields

Now What do you do if you have armor on the shield. I use the RTG armor Layering rules for the body only! The shield does not count towards armor layering because it is actually treated as cover and not armor! This is what I came up with.Now, the first step is to figure the total SP of the Human Shield. This can be done by using the rules for armor laying (Which can be found on www.cyberpunk2020.de (At least….That’s where I found them on the net)).

The way this works is first find the SP of the armor that the shield is wearing and the SP of the body (BTM). Subtract the lower of the SP from the larger and cross reference the table. Add the number of the bonus to the LARGER of the SPs. Chances are the low SP of a human body is not going to make much of a difference.

Difference in SPs	Bonus Number
0-4	5
5-8	4
9-14	3
15-20	2
21-26	1
27+	0

Once you have figured the SP of the Shield you are ready. Let the mayhem begin. Here’s an example to illustrate the point.

Example

John Doe is using a human shield. The BTM of the shield is +2 so the SP of the shield is 2. The shield is wearing a Kevlar T-Shirt (SP-10). Subtract 2 from 10 to get 8. Cross referencing the table we see that he gets a bonus of +4. This number is added to the LARGER of the two SPs to give 14SP. The target must take over 14 points of damage for the SDP of the target to take any damage. Makes for a pretty good shield huh? John Doe is being shot at by Punk Boy. Punk Boy is using a heavy SMG. He fires and hits the Human shield. He rolls for his damage and gets 17 points. The armor of the Shield stops 14 of it the other three go through to the SDP of the shield. The shield has a body of 8 so the shield can take 32 points of damage before being reduced to so much chopped liver. John Doe has a good thing going. Unless Punk Boy pulls out the big guns.

So, as you can see there are a lot of good benefits to having a human shield. Thanks for the idea!
-sparky

Panzerungstabelle aus dem englischen Regelwerk Cyberpunk 2020

Author: Mike Pondsmith.
Übersetzung: Blechpirat

Aus dem englischsprachigen Regelwerk (2. Version, überarbeitete 2. Auflage, die mit den Bildern aus Italien) ergibt sich eine Regel zu dem übereinander tragen von gepanzerten Kleidungsstücken. Sie lautet:

Vergleiche die unterste Panzerung mit der darüber. Nimm den höheren Panzerungswert, und ziehe den niedrigeren davon ab. Vergleiche die Differenz auf dieser Tabelle:

Differenz	Bonus
0-4	5
5-8	4
9-14	3
15-20	2
21-26	1
27+	0

Zähle den Bonus zu dem höheren Panzerungswert hinzu. Wenn noch eine dritte Schicht Panzerung da ist, wird der berechnete Panzerungswert mit der dritten Schicht verglichen, die Tabelle dazu befragt, und der Bonus wird wieder zum höheren Panzerungswert hinzugezählt. Mehr als drei Lagen Panzerung ist unmöglich. Dieser Vorgang wird für jede Trefferzone des PCs wiederholt.

Außerdem wird (zusätzlich zu der Behinderung, den die Panzerung etwa schon mitbringt (Mittlere Panzerjacke = -1) ein weiter Punkt für die zweite Lage, und dann noch 2 Punkte für die dritte Lage von den Reflexen abgezogen. Skinweave (Hautverstärker) wird dabei nicht mitberechnet.

Beispiel:

Ripperjack hat Reflexe von 8 und trägt ein Kevlar T-Shirt (10 SP), eine Leichte Panzerjacke (14 SP) und eine Schwere Panzerjacke (20 SP).

Am Torso:: Die Differenz zwischen den beiden unteren Panzerungen (14 und 10) ist 4. Das ergibt nach der Tabelle einen Bonus von 5. Der wird zur höheren Panzerung dazugezählt: 14 + 5 = 19 SP. Darüber kommt noch die Schwere Panzerjacke mit 20 SP. Wieder die Differenz zwischen 20 und 19 (der berechnete Panzerungswert für die beiden unteren Lagen gemeinsam) bilden: 1. Bonus beträgt also 5. Höherer Wert + Bonus: 20+5 = 25. Am Torso hat Rippejack als 25 Punkte Panzerung. (Nach dem alten System hätte er 34 Punkte gehabt.)
An den Armen:: Das T-Shirt wirkt hier nicht, daher 20-14= 6, Bonus also 4. 20+4 = 24…

Sein Reflexverlust beträgt: 2 für die Schwere Jacke, +1 für eine zweite Lage, +2 für eine dritte Lage = 5. Kein Spaß. Ripperjack hat jetzt nur noch 3 Reflexpunkte.

Nelly ist cleverer. Sie hat auch Reflexe 8, hat Hautverstärker mit 10 Punkten (damit sie nicht riskiert, Attraktivität zu verlieren) und trägt eine leichte Panzerjacke.

Die Differenz zwischen den Panzerungen ist (14-10) 4, der Bonus daher 5. Der höhere Panzerungswert ist 14 + den Bonus von 5 ergibt 19, Reflexverlust beträgt 0.

Falls es noch Fragen dazu gibt, meldet euch in den Kommentaren!

Vielen Dank an Dreamdealer, der mir die Tabelle zugemailt hat und Yw376, der sie nicht kannte.

Die Rückstoßregeln aus Morgan Blackhand’s Street Weapons.