This borough belongs to the teeth in the darkness, the whisperers in the walls and the eyes behind the cracked blinds. The three brothers have possessed the underworld of Brooklyn. Before when the family was in charge-, it wasn’t any better but you knew where not to be; now every dimly lit hall and darkened ally gives you goosebumps. Some nights it feels like if you stab a brick you’ll pull back a bloody edge. But it’s not just those three headed wolf posters, it’s also Rayven. The PMCs that won the Brooklyn Public safety contract. Display screen helmets replacing their faces with psychologically manipulative images, dozens of deep cover officers mixed in with the population and petabytes of spyware making them a force of faceless spectres. Most know Manhattan lights are too bright for shadows, most know their electronics are listening, most know the three headed wolf’s eyes stalk the streets and most should know that no one is who they say they are in the borough of Kings. -Noted- Brooklyn grew from a single image; a rough handmade doll of three wolf heads upon a human body, on the corner of a neatly made ofrenda. Then came the brother’s origin written like a bedtime story, after that it was a steady growth to what it is now. A noir, spy-like horror that pits spookies against spectres. It kind of gives off a cthunic feel; with the people of brooklyn caught between these two faceless groups operating in the dark, trying to slither into their lives in order to get the upper hand on each other. Ethereal & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment
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The Duan of Destruction, Shogun of the silk streets, sterling silver; for his very words hold value. The true successor to the god king he shares a name; Ramesse, The undisputed underworld Emperor of the Bronx, has fallen. His generals, the architects of war have fallen as well but into perpetual infighting. New and old names alike are taking up the title of warlord and have fractured the Bronx beast. In this chaos the Flicher & Welsh Security force(winners of the public safety contract for the Bronx) have taken on a militarized approach to all forms of policing. They shoot first then shoot again and after the smoke has cleared they write the answers that best fits their narrative. The people like the land they inhabit are torn, not just by affiliation but between the blackest grey shades of the past, the possible greener pastures and the flames enveloping the now. Lines have been drawn in the sand and they are showing no signs of fading. -Dev Notes- We built the Bronx to be a Romance of the three kingdoms meets Arthurian tall in a Blackspitation, grindhouse, Double Feature. Here we play with the atmosphere in which you find yourself in. The Bronx previous to this civil war was ruled by a crime boss that saw himself as a king and the people beneath him as His People. Ramesse believed an empire was only as strong as its weakest subject. So began to train and better the people; opening dojos, trade schools, educational lotteries that sent the best and brightest to college and many other things. All these things were available to anyone willing to serve under him. He built a micro government in the Bronx and now he’s gone; leaving behind a people that have been forever changed, whether they followed him or not. Ethereal & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment
Now I know I said I'd talk more about the setting than the system but what if I can do both? The mechanics of some of the items and equipment in the setting. Project Powerpunk takes place in an alternative near future, what we've been referring to as "The day before cyberpunk" but I can hear you ask, what the hell does that even mean ... technologically?! Technologically it means; body modification just below cybernetics, Rudimentary AIs are available on the open market, automated workers if allowed to are only permitted to function under close supervision by a trained professional, energy weapons are now seeing military application. But right now I just want to focus on Computer Hardware, software and the ways people are using them in world Let's start with computers; Computers are advanced enough to be worn as jewelry[Diamonds On my fingers] or travel beside you as a silicone pet, with levels of modification that are mind alluring. Example: You can have ring computers, a computer that is divided amongst several rings themselves being powered by a bracelet battery and all of this is connected together by conductive tattoos! You can have the aforementioned silicone pet resemble a snake that can give you your insulin injections by "biting" you. One of the testers for the game is planning on using a tricked out server and his henchmen's sidekick smartphones as nodes to establish his own private network. It's flipping nuts! That same player wanted to know if it was possible to build a bullet with retractable arms and legs. Then program the bullet to throw itself at targets the player shoots at but misses. Afterwards he wanted that bullet to return to him. Which means if the cops were to investigate the scene of one of his gunfights: they'd find dead people with tiny bloody footprints leading away from the bodies! Long story short, we were able to build them and I am looking forward to the chaos created by them. Those robo bullets wouldn't be possible without Programs, specifically Hard and Fluid H.Is(Heuristic intelligence). Which are Lesser AI programs that can perform tasks and actions separate from the player. You give it a task and it'll complete it to the best of its abilities. Hard H.Is can be programmed to perform certain actions and have a flat result to said action but they can take more time to perform these actions in order to lower the difficulty of the task(anything is possible if given enough time). Fluid H.Is on the other hand can be programmed with traits allowing them to take all actions under that trait. They roll this trait to perform actions but they have the ability to raise the floor of the roll; insuring they cannot roll below a certain number. The private military company Rayven specializes in utilizing remote H.Is in the field. Why H.Is; it's like having a digital A team at your fingertips. Put this A-lgorithmic team on a server that only Rayven agents have access to; you have yourself a digital fireteam that can function autonomously anytime and anywhere with a data-line. Punctuate this with a world where almost Everything and Everyone has a digital Silhouette and you get "Manes ex Machina" ghosts from the machine or ghosts in the machine. Rayven likes to put a large number of their agents into deep cover; with this they can, have access to their companies tools from any data device. They now have the power to spin up a new life online, take the digital form of an inactive person, have the H.Is deepfake themselves into different forms of media(photos, videos, documents and audio) to better sale their alias'. Oh did I mention that Rayven won the PMC Contract to police the borough of Brooklyn? Is that new barista really into Future Islands, did your friend from Junior High always have Hazel hair, where in Tampa did Mailroom Bob say he was from and How long has your aunt been dating this person with anisocoria. This equipment has turned Rayven agents into cyberspace skinwalkers, true spectres. Did I slide that last setting detail in at the end because I forgot this was supposed to be more setting focused?! No, not entirely because "In spite of mechanics" should be a foreign saying to GMs and players alike. In my view good Mechanics should help settings be more immersive and characters reach greater agency. Ethereal & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment
In the world of Powerpunk, science and technology occupy a funny space. During the Cold War, technology was viewed as a necessary median; “the only true measuring stick for a nation’s greatness” necessity. It was a grand love affair, with the known limits of science being reestablished almost quarterly and the great nations treating scientists like rock stars. The East and West both took to collecting doctors, professors and engineers, like children collecting trading cards. Giving them larger budgets than many of them had ever dared to imagine, these scientific minds were tasked with finding and cultivating any potential advantage against the opposing bloc. It was amidst this age of political desperation that all avenues of science, including the fringe sciences, were being treated with open minds and open wallets. This was a glorious time for scientists who started signing up with grant after grant and put real effort into experiments and inventions that they hadn’t ever thought they could complete. This was the age of “hypertech”. Super-science tools capable of bending terrestrial and celestial energies into fuel for weapons and vehicles, bending minds, transforming the body of a person into a walking arsenal of bio-weaponry. These tools that pushed through the established limits of the scientific field and into storied fiction appeared in every field. All the while the tensions of the Cold War grew closer and closer to the brink of open conflict. The era came to a screeching halt as prolific communist agents like “Soviet Supreme” and other frequent criminal collaborators from soviet nations were caught time and again by the U.S Government’s special forces, D.A.N.G.E.R. These communist agents seemed to favor the use of hypertech knockoffs from the Eastern bloc that never seemed to quite work as intended under pressure. They favored it so much that although the USSR was pretty far behind the U.S in production of hypertech in both number and quality it became, in the eyes of the public, communist or”pinko” tech. This stigma brought an end to free and unchecked scientific experimentation and discovery and saw the rise of tighter restrictions on independent laboratories. Hypertech faded into obscurity, a technological oddity known for being highly unreliable for some to marvel at while the wider world passed it by. However, the turn of the millennium saw a drastic slowdown in hardware innovations across all markets. The early 21st century, as the short lived Russo-American alliance went to war against extremists in the middle east, was perhaps the last time new hardware was released. Very quickly companies had to turn to releasing re-packaged versions of the same model already on the market over and over as programs grew in complexity to sell the illusion of breakthroughs. Cracking into the hypertech market had made anything less seem paltry by comparison. A generation of people grew up with the knowledge that advancement was out there and being kept just outside their reach and so some turned to expensive, custom goods that could grow as they needed. Still a few companies have re-discovered the idea of Hypertech and with clever re-branding are eagerly rushing to market determined to ride at the forefront of an inevitable tech-boom. This is where characters in Powerpunk find themselves currently; mostly recycled tech that has inched on slowly for more than two decades. Programming has grown at a reasonable pace but has seemingly caught up to hardware now and both are growing at a controlled, predictable pace. All the while, visible on the horizon, is the dreaded return of hypertech. Dev-X & Ethereal | Stock & Bull Entertainment
I ran my first D&D game at the age of 12. It was a pre-made adventure from a magazine and had a redemption arc for a villain who forgot they were a villain, emphasizing that compassion begets compassion and “hurt people hurt people”. I loved the idea and couldn’t wait to see it all play out around my living room table. It was a disaster. The players were all older and more experienced than I was. They convinced me to let them bring their “usual” characters from another DM’s game with all their gear and within ten minutes the game was laying in broken pieces while they cheered one another on, whooping and hollering with sadistic glee at having broken the adventure so thoroughly. I was mortified and never wanted to run another game again. I was GM for my group until I was about 32. The near collapse of this project made this more of a priority, then there was the mental toll that our dissolving partnership inflicted, the thousand cuts of everyday responsibilities etc. I found that there was nothing in the GM tank. I figured that with time and mental recuperation things would come back to me. Twenty years of running not only D&D but a variety of other ttrpgs had shown I had a depth of ideas for story seeds and though the games rarely saw a storybook conclusion, I was sure I would be ok. Then something happened. We reached a point in the development that someone had to run playtests and since there are only two of us now and I have all this GM experience it was decided that I would be the GM. I thought, “No big deal. Hell! This is just the excuse I need to get back into this. I’ve had a long hiatus, it’ll be great.” I had an anxiety attack and had to cancel my session 0. I was embarrassed, no, not strong enough a word…mortified might be better. I may not be confident in a lot of things but storytelling? I tell stories like Spider-Man swings web! I kept telling myself “You got this! You pull together games and improv entire sessions! You’ve made your players sit in awe, you’ve made them shake with frustration and explode with elation. This is your wheelhouse.” but it didn’t ring true in my own head so how could I believe myself? I pushed for another session 0 but getting players this time was harder and scheduling was near impossible. The demand of being parents, unreliable work schedules, self-imposed medical quarantines and the thousand cuts of life that everyday imposes brought that endeavor to a quiet implosion. Recently however an old friend came around and had an itch to play. He was so insistent that I reached out to those that I could from our old group and one by one worked with them to find a suitable day until a new game day was born and with it a new story. I was to be the GM though and the idea scared me. I felt nauseous and inadequate. I hadn’t run game in more than 2 years, I couldn’t even run a session for the game that I have dedicated so much of my life and time to. How was I going to do this? I had, for a time, convinced myself that in truth I could NOT run this game, or any other, anymore. It hurt to think that I was no longer a gamemaster, worse, that I was no longer a storyteller. In a flash of optimistic nihilism, I figured it doesn’t matter if the game sucks. If they hated it, if I hated the system we were playing. None of that mattered in the grand scheme of things. If the game was perfect, the world and my life would still be what it is and if the game was the worst thing I had ever run, the world and my life would still be what it is. With a cold lump of fear in my chest, sweat rolling down my overly hot skin and my old, overinflated collection of dice; I sat down and began to unfold my tale for my group. I noted their reactions to certain things and did not shy away from impressing on them the feeling of helplessness that they were facing in this small jungle hamlet. When the session was done, I looked into the faces of these grown men and saw them lighting up with excitement. They turned to one another making plans, asking questions, engaging with one another and my story. But I have been a walking wound for some time now and though this was nice it did not dispel my idea that I was no longer a “real storyteller”. Perhaps, I thought in a self-destructive manner, that this was merely a fluke. They were so eager to play that any story would have made them excited or maybe this was all just the last wisps of storytelling ability burning up in a grand hurrah but I kept writing down notes for other sessions and places where the adventure could go because the players seemed to like the story but all agreed that the game itself wasn’t exactly landing well. It took one session to save me from the feeling of being dragged down like Joukahainen into the mire. The players had managed to convince our friend, my partner here, to join us. He was destructive and his out of the box thinking made his encounters run differently but the others sat there mostly in silence as we went back and forth. They were enthralled and so invested in the tale we told that they did not mind that the whole of the session went to just one player. The only concern from the table was why we were playing a game that no one seemed to be mechanically enjoying. They asked about the game that we have worked on and if they could try that out instead. I won’t say all anxiety is gone. I am still very scared. The fears I face now though are what any creator feels for their art. When I look over the notes for the sessions and adventures I was planning to run, I can see that at their core they were always going to be for a Powerpunk game and I am looking forward to what they do in, around and to the story and world that I build for them. In time, I hope to share it with all of you. Dev-X & Ethereal | Stock & Bull Entertainment
I am a child of the arcade stick, raised to put my quarter on the screen, trained to detest cheese and never take chip(Damage) for granted. All of that was to explain that our combat mechanics are greatly inspired by arcade fighting games. The idea that advanced moves sacrifice something from the character in order to gain a different effect. Not being able to for a time in order to pull off a ranged melee attack, taking more time to recover from for throwing a powerful blow, the move itself will have a cool down of it’s own or it uses up some form of energy. There are a number of core ideas/ ideals of combat. The three that I’m partial to are; one, you are going to get hurt. Whether you get hit or you hit them so hard that you hurt your hand; pain is coming your way, it might not even be physical pain. Two; the victor is usually the person willing to sacrifice the most, just remember your all is not equal to another’s all. And last; it’s best not to even get into a fight, you have no idea what the other person is capable of. Powerpunk has adopted these lessons; damage can come fast and heavy if you’re not prepared for it. Combat styles give a bonus or an advantage in certain situations, for a price. Last, a good player can always find a way to victory even without throwing a single punch. Fights in PowerPunk can be as simple as spamming kick or advanced as using your environment to box your opponent in. Style augments and strategy are just as fulfilling as comboing an opponent into a Ethereal Deep Diver & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment
We’ve been quiet for a minute; don’t worry we haven’t just been playing FFXIV … . We’ve been cleaning up Project Powerpunk; the wording of the system and making sure all the rules are running off of the same 0.98 rules. Now we’re solidifying the story threads and Npcs in the setting. When that’s done it’s all going into our first Beta core book. While we’re doing that in the background, we’ll be posting bits of the setting. Why setting? Because we said we would. We’ll be covering the book’s main location; an archipelago city in the northeast of America(New York City). Made up of three islands and a peninsula and has become a proxy battleground for a number larger world encapsulating problems.
Last thing; we’ve finally come up with a cover idea for the core book, we’ll be shopping the idea around to see if it's a hit or miss. Oh and if you want to keep up with what we’re up to join our mailing list and follow us on the society destroying social media sites. Ethereal Deep Diver & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment Been working really hard while trapped in our apartments. We're trying!
Ethereal Deep Diver & Dev-X Amalgams are not like the rest of the listed exim both in their catalogs of powers and how their powers function. First, Their catalog of powers won’t be listed due to their innate affinity to learning the powers of the other classifications. It is rumored that some have exhibited powers from less known or uncategorized Exim. Second; unlike other Exims who can activate a power at different ranks up to their current maximum or even, in a number of cases, push themselves farther; Amalgams can not. Everytime their power activates it's at their current maximum, no more and no less. This post will explore the options that are open to the versatile Amalgams: True Flight & Mind Blast: While most are unsure if this combination is wielded by someone the absence of evidence is not “the evidence of absence”. Think of it, a person flying about untethered from the earth and able to wipe the memories of any that might catch sight of them. They could be out of sight and out of mind, quite LITERALLY! Natural Weaponry & Density Manipulation: This power mix is horror incarnate. Strands of living hair riggling through the pores of solid matter, taking the shape of lethal weapons and striking out at all in it’s reach. Worse, cutting the hair is near impossible, it’s like trying to cut animated tar. Radiation Control & Mind Control: When CJ agents mistook an Amalgam for an improperly released Kin asset, the agents had their minds warped by “Psychic” energies and their bodies warped, as well, by waves of unnatural radiation. They were then made to act out fan written Super Sentai episodes by their Amalgam puppet master! We will stop here because part of the fun is seeing these combinations that no other Exim can play with and how you can implement them in your game. Ethereal Deep Diver & Dev-X | Stock & Bull Entertainment Image by Joel Robison
Possible variants or an evolution of the Quarks, the Kin do not wield the forces of earthly energy but instead embrace their role as dominators of cosmic powers. With skin flushed by the radiation of solar flares, muscles pulled taut with gravitational pull and a mind rippling with magnetic waves from out in the void. Gravity, Kinetic, Magnetic, Radiation, Temperature and Vibration are the celestial toolkit of these exim. Not more than but certainly not less than their Quark contemporaries, the Kin are the other face to a powerful coin. Absorption: Turn a cell phone into an anabolic steroid, a microwave into a lifeline, the l000 degree temp from a fire into a zero calorie snack to stave off starvation, or a howitzer shell to the face to rude, albeit, harmless tap from metal. Density Manipulation: This is actually two powers that combine to become one greater than the sum of its parts. On one hand, you can increase your density till your skin is like steel and the city of towering steel and concrete feels like cardboard and paste. Or increase the density of your favorite item till it rivals some dwarven crafted alloy of adamantium and mithril. On the other hand, you can reduce density to the point where the space between molecules serves as a new doorway to you and a molecular cage to others. The body can flow like water, is as malleable as clay, and deadly attacks can harmlessly pass through. But What if we combine them…? Super Speed: As noted before, move like a blur, strike like a flash, escape like lightning greased in the blood of a cheetah...that was...struck by lightning. That’s SPEED-CEPTION! Native Element Control: Back at it again, this scoundrel two-timing power has been described before but instead of Fire, Electricity, water etc, you harness the harness of gravity, master magnetism, redirect radiation, drumbeat the world with vibration, temper heat and frost and even control kinetic output (I can’t make a kinetic pun or witticism) like a punch, a bullet or the freight train at the end of the tunnel coming your way. Dev-X & Ethereal Deep Diver | Stock & Bull Entertainment
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