It’s October 13th and a month ago I set this as my deadline for Signal Zero. Unfortunately, the game isn’t ready to debut in any fashion. The original goal was to have character creation completed along with the basic mechanic but the nature of the game has required me to focus on different areas to make sure the system is coherent across the board.

There is also the matter of other projects stealing time away from this game design. The weekly role-playing game I run requires prep time, the podcast, and recent developments that lead to my friends and I playtesting a game have eaten away time I’d normally spend on Signal Zero.

Still, it’s the 13th and I want to give you something. All two of you who read this. Instead of presenting the first portion of a project, I’m going to talk about my design goals and what, exactly, Signal Zero is meant to be.

Signal Zero is a cyberpunk game in the loosest of terms. The words cyber and punk are never seen within the text, but the genre classification gets you close to what I’m going for. Signal Zero takes place in a future version of Earth where corporations have superseded governments and the gap between rich and poor has become more pronounced. It is a world where dystopian horrors and utopian bliss live side-by-side, sort of.

Society has grown and cities have sprawled out and up. Skyways connect buildings to the point where people can live their entire lives without seeing the actual street level. The lower you go and the further away from a city’s center you get the worse the conditions are. When you’re living on street levels, you’re literally living on the streets. Buildings are topped with bio-domes that have re-created hundreds of thousands of paradises.

When it comes to the actual game, it’s all about making decisions. The basic mechanics presents the outcome of the dice not as a static success\failure but as a choice over how you want your success & failure to look. The example I give is that looking for someone has the Aspects of Distance and Speed. While there is a chance you can succeed on both Aspects, it’s more likely you’ll need to choose if you find your target quickly but a good distance away or your target is close to home but it takes you a long time to find that out.

I’m trying to design a game about the characters. The choices they make and what that means to the world. “Cyberpunk” is just my chosen backdrop. A world of stark contrasts meant to bring out the best and worst in people. Really, the goal of Signal Zero is to ask the character, “What do you do with your life?”

When designing the game I wrote a short concept sentence to fall back on whenever I hit a rut.

“Make Decisions, Get Augments, and Manage Reputations.”

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the Augments and Reputation systems have seen numerous re-writes over the last month. I’ve got the decision-making down and I’ve figured out how Augments fit into the game. I’m still hammering on Reputations to make sure the feel right but in the mean time I’ve stumbled into other game elements.

How you do something is as important as Why you do something.

When playing Smallville I loved the idea of asking Why. It doesn’t matter how your character does it, but why is he doing it. The problem I ran into is that sometimes, people do things because their good at it. With Signal Zero characters have two main traits, Attributes and Behaviors. I call this the AB Trait system and it represents the How and Why. Attributes explain how the character gets the job done while Behaviors explain why he chooses to do things.

Characters are Flawed, Players Aren’t Penalized.

I’ve shown the Baggage system in its entirety already but it wasn’t something I originally set out to design for this game. I knew that I didn’t want the characters to be Mary Sue but I also didn’t want to penalized my players. I hate negative modifiers because they de-enabled the player. John Wick said it best in 7th Sea, and I’m going to paraphrase it here. In Dungeons and Dragons if you want to slide down the banister, catch the chandelier, swing across the room, land in-front of the bad guy and have an epic sword duel… you’re going to be penalized the whole time. Like in 7th Sea, I wanted to tell players “FUCK YEAH! That’s awesome! Do that!”

Resource Management with Unlimited Resources

I knew I wanted an element similar to Style from Houses of the Blooded. A tangible reward I can give the players and that they can spend to fuel the system. The problem I ran into was that in Houses, running out of Style sucks. Now, it’s mostly a GM problem if enough Style isn’t being rewarded but it can still happen. I wanted a back-up for my Style. But I wanted it to be costly. I designed the Currency\Credit system in Signal Zero to have that function. If you ever run out of Currency and you just really need\want some, you can use Credit. There is a downside, but it’s always there for you.

Organic Advancement is awesome but cumbersome

I’m still grappling with this monster but I love the idea of being rewarded for using what character elements you chose to have. Tying it back to decision-making, I’ve set it up that you can gather Advancement Points off of any roll you make, and apply those points to any elements you used in that roll. While I like the idea, I’m hoping it doesn’t become too difficult to manage. Playtesting will sort that one out for me. Also, I hate the idea of pure-organic advancement. Sometimes things happen off-screen and I’ve developed a system for advancement points to be earned outside of your die rolls.

Hacking in Cyberpunk games sucks ass

Everyone who’s played Shadowrun knows that when the Hacker opens his mouth you can grab your phone and play Angry Birds for a while. Last week I posted the Hacking mini-game I designed for Signal Zero. The idea is that the Hacker can go play a little game by himself and then report in on the results. I’ve also realized that there is no reason you can’t just use the basic mechanics to solve the riddle of hacking. Earlier I talked about the Aspects of a die roll and the same principle could be applied here. In one roll we can figure out how quickly a hacker works, how much data he pulls back, if he gets his line traced, and any number of other questions we might have about his work. All in a single roll.

Game Masters need more definition and less fiat

When I designed Danger Close I put strict limits on what the Game Master can do. I like this style of game, where the GM actually has a set of rules to follow. With Signal Zero I’m trying to take that the next step by giving the Game Master a World Sheet. Similar to the Character Sheet, the GM gets to design the elements at play. Even in Danger Close the GM needed a little bit of fiat power and that won’t change for Signal Zero. The goal is to reduce the NEED for fiat though. To give the GM a set of rules so he can play a game too. Not just referee his players.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. Hopefully you have a better idea for what I’m trying to do here.