Some days, my "do a character for every edition of a game" policy comes back to bite me.
The Game: Interface Zero 1.0
The Publisher: Gun Metal Games
Degree of Familiarity: Not much
Books Required: The IF0 book and some edition of Savage Worlds; I think it's written for the Explorer's Edition
See, now, this is an instance in which the phrase "dog's breakfast" would not apply because it's not a confused mess. There's just a lot in this game and I think some darlings probably could have been killed at some point. But, then again, there are also at least three editions of this game in this rules set alone, so maybe it gets tighter later on?
Anyway, Interface Zero is a cyberpunk game and it follows most of the usual tropes you find in such games. If anything it leans a little more on the 'punk side of things, because there's a great deal of attention paid to the quality of your cyberware and what that means for you as the poor schmuck that had it implanted. And that's cool. But you can also play a robot, or a simulacrum (different thing!) or a person with animal DNA spliced in (a "hybrid"), or an AI, I think? (I mean, technically a robot is an AI.)
Unlike a lot of Savage Worlds games, which are into the whole brevity thing, IF0 has twenty pages of history, a full chapter of rules changes and additions from standard SW, and then later another twenty pages of "this is the world we live in." It's a lot. It feels like a lot to read. Like any RPG that deals with geopolitics on any level and was written pre-Trump years, it's amusing to read the history, although in this game the USA succumbs to a second Civil War and fractures into five nations, which, um. You guys better not have gotten this right.
Anyway, I think we made characters for this game as part of a playtest once upon a time and then for whatever reason didn't wind up playing. I also seem to recall that none of us were terribly enthused by the idea, but I don't remember why exactly. It's by no means the worst cyberpunk game I've ever seen, it just doesn't do much to excite me, but it looks perfectly playable. Ah, well, let's do a character.
Chargen is a lot more involved that most SW games, despite IF0's insistence that they kept things "lightning fast." We start off with race, which is basically "human or robot" but there are some variations to both. I want to make a Simulacrum, because I read the races yesterday and that's the one that stuck in my brain. Simulacra are vat-grown humans, but (here's the weird bit), they're implanted with fake memories and histories. My question is why. Like, if you can implant a human being with a fake history and therefore the memories and the experiences that come with it, then why not be up front about what the sim is and avoid the trauma of it discovering that later? My guess is because it makes better stories this way (and it's undoubtedly more in-genre).
Well, I'm gonna say my sim was a laborer, working off-planet on a mine (oh, add "solar system colonization" to the shit this setting includes - like I said, it all fits but it all feels very busy), and somewhere along the way discovered he was a sim. He quit the job and got back planetside, and has kind of slid into a downward spiral of depression and existential dread. You know, a real fun guy to be around.
So, anyway, as a simulacrum made for labor, I start with a d6 in Vigor but I also start with the Loyal Edge (since labor sims are made to be steady workers). Otherwise I'm just human. Groovy! On we go.
Attributes! The usual deal, 5 points and a d4 in everything (except Vigor, in my case). Given his history, we're gonna put a d8 in Strength, a d6 in Agility, a d8 in Vigor, and a d6 in Smarts. The d4 in Spirit is, perhaps, due to the recent soul-crushing discovery that everything he knew was a lie.
Skills! I get 15, and this being an old edition I don't get the "base" Skills. I do get a free d4 in Hacking, however.
Climbing d4
Fighting d6
Guts d4
Knowledge (Mining) d4
Notice d6
Piloting d4
Repair d6
Shooting d6
Streetwise d6
That's 15, damn I'm good. I speak three languages plus English, so I'll say he speaks Hindi, Mandarin, and Portuguese (the three most common languages in this brave new world). No place to write that, however, so I'll just have to remember it.
Aaaaaand now the book wants us to do derived traits, even though that's like icing a cake while it's still baking. Yes, I am gonna bitch about this every time I do an SW character. Skipping for now.
Edges! I get a free one for being "human," of course. Oh, but I like to take Hindrances first, actually. Let's do that. I'll take the Glitched (Major) Hindrance; cyberware is more likely to fuck up with me. I think that's probably something my whole batch had in common, hey GM, there's your plot hook. I'll take Death Wish and say that he wants to die after he figures out where he was created and meets whoever it was that programmed his memories. And, one more Minor. Hmm. Let's take Poverty, why not.
OK, on to Edge(s). Oh, wait, hang on, I forgot I have to pick an occupation. My guy isn't really skilled for much of it, but I'll be a Sanitation Worker, how 'bout. Normally that would give me 10,000 credits, but as I'm poor, I only get half. Also, I think I get the shit end of the stick (lol) because I'm a sim, and the union isn't sure whether I count as an android or not.
Right, back to Edges. None of the new ones in the IF0 book enthuse me, so we'll stick with SW classic (that is, Explorer's Edition). Well, let's take Quick (I throw back anything lower than a 5 in initiative draws). Figure that he's got good reflexes built in. That one's free, though, and I don't see any other Edges that intrigue me, so I think I'll boost Agility to d8 and bump Piloting to d6 and Fighting to d8.
So now can I do derived traits. Parry and Toughness are 6, Pace is 6, Charisma is usually 0 but -2 if I'm acting outside my function as a laborer, which is...weird. I mean, that simulacra are meant to stay in their lane, sure, but how often would I apply a Charisma mod? I guess if I were doing social stuff, but I'd be shit at that anyway.
I could go shopping, but eh. I don't have enough money for cyberware, really, and it'd be glitchy with me, so I'll stick with the standard TAP array that all characters get. I do need a name, though. I'll say his name is Ashvin Patel. He's named for the seventh month in the Bengali calendar, and lately he's begun to wonder if he's got 11 more siblings...
Ashvin is has brown skin, black hair, and a kind of surprised expression a lot of the time. Not "surprised" like "here's a puppy!" but more "your boss wants a word with you." I picture him as morose, but not angry, and he keeps to himself. He obsesses over his origins and his implanted memories, and he's picked apart everything that he can remember for clues as to where he was created, but he's afraid to actually do any real digging because what if he's defective and they render him down for parts?
I think that'll do it. Whenever I get around to doing 2.0, I'll made a character that's cyber'd all to fuck, for a change.
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