So I've been playing E.Y.E. lately...

So I've been playing E.Y.E. lately, and it reminded me of how much I love just being thrown into a setting with really no clue at all as to what is going on, and just figuring it out as I go.

Things like Blame!, Pathologic, Ergo Proxy, the first Matrix film, Deus Ex, most of the retro-futuristic movies and games from the 80s and 90s, they all have this very unique dark, oppressive atmosphere that leaves you feeling half claustrophic, half in awe.

How can we recreate this in tabletop gaming? I get a lot of this feeling when reading most 90s White Wolf rulebooks, but not when I'm playing their actual games. Same thing with Shadowrun: reading the books fills my mind with imagery, but when running or playing a game of Shadowrun I rarely get the same atmospheric vibe that I get reading something like Neuromancer or Dune.

What rulebooks give good tips on running these types of games? How do you guys enhance the atmosphere for these types of games? Which soundtracks would you recommend? What other settings evoke similar feelings to these?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=ECEz3a4GErE
drivethrurpg.com/product/24961/SLA-Industries?it=1
drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BzgFHmX5_Z8xRmdIOGpuT0lWWUU
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

bump

Anything generic where you make your own setting would work with work, but you really want to find something that just has weird rules and a weird setting to go with it.

The problem is that normally with tabletop games, players have access to way too much information prior to the start of the game.

Like, they'll know all about the playable races, the items, the general idea of the setting, etc.

How can we go around this without fucking up game balance? I could just hand them pregens and not tell them anything about the setting, but that's too obvious. Are there any systems out there tailored specifically around this?

> I could just hand them pregens and not tell them anything about the setting, but that's too obvious.
I've been playing like that with my players for multiple campaigns and they never complained. Am I doing something wrong?

To be more precise, I pregenerate a roster of 2*[number of players] characters, and allow the players to choose between them.

Nah, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it's the obvious solution for any system. I'm looking for alternative ways of doing this, since that specific method doesn't take into account game balance/player agency.

I'm working on a cyberpunk homebrew right now. I'm mainly taking inspiration from Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy and Peter Watts' Rifters Trilogy, but I'm also taking bits here and there from stuff like E.Y.E and Armored Core.
Current timeframe is 22nd century and I'm attempting to the science fiction somewhat hard.
I'm designing it mostly for my group of friends, but I might post it on Veeky Forums if it ends up halfway decent. If you've got suggestions, please let me know.

>suggestions

Don't use Powered by the Apocalypse. Thanks.

I'm building this thing from scratch. The system is all new.

Good. We don't need another narrativist cyberpunk game that rehashes all the old cliches.

Also, write a setting for it, don't just do the lazy thing like all those other assholes and "give advice to GMs to make their own world".

What are you taking from EYE?

Factions that totally aren't Culters or Jians in any way.
Cyberlegs and some of the other implants.
Bear Killer.

OP here; I'd love to try it out with my group once you finish a playable build. Are you a regular at any general?

You could take a look at how Unknown Armies handles it. Among other things, powers are set up in three chapters roughly lined up with low, medium, and high level, with setting information that you'd know at that level in the level chapter, and instructions not to read chapters beyond your starting level.

I can recommend Texhnolyze, great anime with just that atmosphere you were talking about.

The game system that came with the anime was just suberb, wasn't it?

Not really, although I'll occasionally pop into /cyoag/. If you'd like to leave an throwaway email or something, I can send you my playable WIPs and eventually finished product as I progress.

Thanks, never heard of it. Will check it out!

Neat! You can send it to [email protected], I'll reply with feedback.

Just completely throw away essence from Shadowrun and you are good to go.

Try to keep your legs okay.

My legs are OK.

Alright. I suspect it'll be a few weeks before I can get a playable version running, so keep an eye out for a doc when it comes through.

Why wouldn't you pick a system that's actually balanced for that? Corporation comes to mind.

Jiangs > Culters

You broken legged jian fuck. You ought to change your tune real quick otherwise you might be in for an accident involving a vat of acid and your moron face being worn as a party mask.

Alright, having done something nearing this a handful of times, I will attempt to enlighten you.

is *nearly* on the mark. The very first step is that you must make your own setting from scratch. You needn't make the paired mechanics from scratch, but they should be *heavily* modified from their origin, enough that they only seem familiar on the surface.

Now, one of the core aspects that I see of the source materials you cite is that while the audience is out of their depth, and most of the characters are, there's always some uncertainty as to whether something is simply a well known phenomenon in setting that is only just now being seen in the narrative, or whether the characters themselves are as baffled as the audience are.

As such, you give the bare minimum setting information, and ask people to chargen, only giving them the rules necessary to chargen *as they have need of them*. If none of them ask to be psychic, not only do they never get to see the rules for psychic powers, they might never even figure out OOC that psychic powers exist in the setting.

You only ever give them stats for things that their characters, as far as they've generated them, might normally have.

Lastly and most importantly, you do this *separately* for everyone, to maximise the blindness and confusion. Sure, they might talk to each other afterwards about stuff that they know, but they'll naturally be cagey since it's a double blind scenario, and they don't even know where to start about what they know that other characters don't.

Encourage them to think of their skillset as standard, so that they don't even make a big deal out of most of the things they can do and instead are more focused on trying to figure out what everyone elses deal is, badly.

Thanks for the tips. How do you deal with situations in which you figure a character WOULD be familiar with but the players aren't?

It actually is based on a tabletop the creators made called A.V.A., but for some reason they won't release it :(

Next, you prepare the 'in - depth' brief of the setting from your campaign notes, wherein you provide a functional knowledge of the setting, its personages and forces. This should be at least 50% different between any two characters. Because all but a handful of players are awful at reading anything more than a half page of setting information, they will mostly just retain a vague impression of what is going on.

A vague impression that is different for everyone. And not just that, but every piece of setting info they manage to wrangle from another player character is *precious*.

The final and finishing touch that I recommend, is to bind them together in a way that obfuscates who is actually 'in charge' or responsible. For instance, I used a mechanic wherein the ship that the PCs travelled on needed to have points invested in certain subsystems at character gen, *from their starting XP*. They could invest as much or as little as they wanted, but if they did they could choose where it went. But *blindly*. Meaning that if only 1 point was invested by anyone in engines, they'd have the slowest ship in the universe. If no points were invested in size, they'd have a space van etc. Whoever invested the most points overall would have the loyalty of the ship's AI.

As a result, noone really knew, starting out, who was even responsible for their situation, on a fairly functional ship with absolutely no shipboard weapons in a setting where that would have been pretty useful.

Lastly, the first combat encounter should be with something that didn't appear in *anyone's* setting brief. But of course, none of them know that.

Hopefully, it is covered by the setting brief if you made it in depth enough. This is a bit of an unfair response since I just posted the part where I mention this, but yeah.

Otherwise, I've never really been sold on note passing as a thing in games, so I tend to explain the situation in terms of things that only their setting brief would allow them to understand.

IE make extensive reference to facts from their setting brief in explaining any other phenomenon, ideally making it sound as labyrinthine and complicated as possible to everyone else who isn't acquainted with their setting brief, like this one guy has *pages* of setting information centered on them. Such that everyone else starts to worry that they are the only one who doesn't have their shit together.

That sounds really cool. I like the idea of characters knowing different things, and then trading/sharing information.

Oh! and I nearly forgot an important component that plays into this!

Your setting brief should contain as many stupid obfuscating names for stuff as possible.

Lets say that your setting is an ark-like vessel that travelled into the afterlife to escape a catastrophe in the real world. It contains an energy field that prevents the reality of death outside the ship from effecting people inside. You make sure to only ever refer to this as I dunno, VIGA or something. This way, if one of your PCs is one of the secret society of engineers "The submariner's guild" that keep the thing running with as vague a brief as "It's necessary for survival on the ship", and one the PCs knows that leaving the ship would instantly rip your soul, or "Oro" from your body but doesn't know what stops this from happening inside the ship, you can plainly talk about VIGA related issues in front of both players without ever revealing anything much of note even to people who are close to the whole truth, like say if they figure out that "The Submariners Guild" are vital agents in regards to maintaining the ship's integrity. Even player 2 realises that the Submariners administer VIGA, they still don't realise what VIGA is, or that it is the answer to their problems.

If you merely call something "The astral plane" or whatever, it allows for players to achieve a familiarity and intuition with other player's components of the setting that is frankly unacceptable.

Nice, I'm definitely trying that out.

REMOVE JIAN

I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE

Alright, that sounds cool.
Goes 180° to the kind of game I usually play and probably need a really good GM to pull it off, but I'd gladly try such a game.

Because, by their admission, it sucks donkey dong and they're ashamed of it.

Eclipse Phase but a little lower tech, maybe right before the Fall.

Reminder that Culters are all faggots with weak legs.

>but when running or playing a game of Shadowrun I rarely get the same atmospheric vibe

I would say this is because Shadowrun includes straight magic, almost out of nowhere. It's not a 'clean' cyberpunk.

But you can make your own using the Shadowrun rules, if you strip out the magic.

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dude what

To be more precise, it's a homebrew system and setting, and they used the name to promote EYE to unsuspecting investors.
So it's clearly not made for release. After all, in its current form it may look like pic.
And they want to keep it in their pocket if they want to commercialize it one day.

It's in the nature of Jians to be filthy liars.
youtube.com/watch?v=ECEz3a4GErE

>that video

bump

Maybe. I like EP's system.

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why are EYE memes so good

the best

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KEK, is that an actual easter egg in the game?

well if we're talking video games, I'd say Bloodborne does a good job of creating that sort of atmosphere

I honestly still wonder if E.Y.E. is even good, or it's just an absolutely insane mess that is somehow appealing for the fact that it's not trying to follow some bullshit.

But overall, I don't think copying it would be a good thing to do for an RPG. Get some newbies together, don't let them look at any of the books too closely, try to keep them on their toes by making some shit up. What you're really asking for is immersion in a world you don't fully understand, not that the system behind it doesn't have to make sense.

>I honestly still wonder if E.Y.E. is even good
>or it's just an absolutely insane mess that is somehow appealing for the fact that it's not trying to follow some bullshit.
It's a successful RPG/FPS hybrid harking to the days of System Shock, with good relayability, a multiple branching "endings", and excellent multiplayer.

At that point, the excellent atmosphere is just a bonus.

>I honestly still wonder if E.Y.E. is even good


WAVE MAKER

>but not when I'm playing their actual games.
Probably because the other players aren't buying in. It's one thing to play SLA Industries with a bunch of Scottish 2000 AD fanboys who are great at playing along with the setting, it's another to play it with a bunch of faggots too busy weebing it up or meming to give a fuck about the setting.

>SLA Industries

That game sounds amazing, how had I never heard of it?

Best part is, they just finished the reprint of the core, and KS'd a skirmish wargame set in the setting.

Is there a PDF out already?

Of the RPG? Yes, and it's Pay What You Want. drivethrurpg.com/product/24961/SLA-Industries?it=1
The scan's not wonderful, though.

Of the wargame? Currently beta test v2.2. drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BzgFHmX5_Z8xRmdIOGpuT0lWWUU

>How can we recreate this in tabletop gaming?
Find the frogs that made the game and steal their homebrew that they based EYE off of.

Seconding this. Excellent atmosphere.

Also Degenesis is good for theme even if you don't want to run it.

Some guy has already tried this. They're not interested in releasing it since they considered it too broken and unpolished to be worth anyone's time.
And putting that statement in juxtaposition to the state of the finished video game itself, I'm inclined to wholeheartedly believe them.
Doubt it'd be anything more interesting than a glorified freeform piggybacking off another system or that they had any intention to make it more solid than that.

Yo user the moment you get this remotely playable please immediately put it up somewhere. Make a thread or something.

I have 4 other people who've wanted to play an EYE pnp for a while and even if it's only vaguely similar, I'll run it for them and see how it goes. And I'll bring you some feedback too.

Mostly because a PbtA cyberpunk game already exists.

Otherwise, it's not a bad system for it.

This is probably one of the greatest setting and playstyle ideas I have *ever* read

JIANS GET OUT

Please! Culter, Jian, we're on the same side. Let's put our differences aside and fight our common enemy.

Will do. Just be warned that the first "playable" draft is going to be rough.
It won't be clear. It won't be pretty. Right now, what I've got is a 40 page long Google doc of assorted tables, rules, and background info.

I'm not liking my names right now for the Culter, Jian, and Secreta ripoffs. Anyone have some ideas?

How much did other people actually play with options for customizing stats and weapons? I spent a lot of my time grinding for a rad-looking bullpup.

EYE had randomized weapon stats?
I never noticed that.

For this to work, I'd say make chargen relatively easy so you don't have to provide a book. Granted, players may get red flags from that, but hopefully your hypothetical group would be on board with what you have.

Savage Worlds has characters start with a d4 in each of the 5 Attributes, and you have 5 points to increase them how you like. The Difficulty for skill checks and the like is 4, and the roll result is modified negatively/positively by how hard/easy the check is. So a character with d4 Agility trying to make a jump with a -1 to his roll, wouldn't be able to make it.

There's a bit more to it--skills and a few derived stats, but you could just use this for a minimalist game.

Funny enough, I was also thinking of a setting and system that backs up the whole "dropped into the world without any knowledge" to it. I got inspired by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the Soulsborne games, learning about the world as you explore.

If only.

>the studio that made EYE and Syndicate Black Ops
>refusing to release something because it's unpolished
If Streum On is saying something's unpolished, I don't even want to think about what kind of a mess it actually is.

You didn't have to do that if you started with 3 metastreum genes and kept rolling until you got good stats.

Veeky Forums co-op game when?

>32 4channers on EYE
Please stream the session.

Let's do it.

/v/ can literally never get a server together.

Make it a regular event.
The first freyeday of jianuary or something.

>E.Y.E is inspired by 40K
>Streum finally gets to make a proper 40K game, staring the Dark Angels chapter.

>Meanwhile, in the books, Dark Angels have gotten more and more like Secreta Secretorum

That makes me chuckle.

Would anyone like to hear all the similarities I have found? Because there's so many things that just seem straight out of the game, like Cypher.

Specially Cypher

Yes, please do.

Also, what's up with all the dubs in here?

Okay, prepare in for the spoilers if you haven't finished the game or the books.

Let's start with Cypher, weird guy, not much is know about him. It's HEAVILY implied Cypher is Zahariel after Caliban went to shit, but nobody really knows who he is and he seems to be as much of a Loyalist as a Traitor

In one of the novels, Cypher starts messing with Time Travel and to be able to use this specific method of time travel, he needs 3 different devices/entities. (Tuchulcha Engine, Ouroboros and whatever Typhus had on him.)

When theses 3 entities are together, they create a time portal, shit hits the fan and Cypher surfs the time-rift back to when Calliban was destroyed, back to the start of the Dark Angels hunt for the Fallen.

Now, here is the E.Y.E similarities.

Theses who played the game know that you're trapped in an endless circle, when you finish the game once Stranger makes an allusion to the concept of Ouroboros and you time travel back to the start of the game.


To break this Cycle, you must gather 3 Artifacts, which require you to side with all 3 different factions.

Cypher might just have broken his Cycles of Guilty

Theses are the stronger points/similarities I can remember, if I can remember something else I will post it, but everything I have for now is just lesser similarities, coincidences and stretches. I just find it funny DA ended a little like E.Y.E and Streum is working in a DA's Game now

It is true that these are dubs, but we are not their posters

user who was working in the homebrew here.

I was thinking about putting a research system similar to E.Y.E's or SS2's in the game. Has anyone here tried this or done similarly?

Also still looking for some good Culter/Jian equivalant names.

Need to get back into it again and get my legs up to scratch. Got up to where I have to kill Rinamah.

you're going to need to do it two more times

Paranoia, maybe?

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