For the next party, I will use Neon City Overdrive, in the words of the developer a “fast-playing RPG of cyberpunk action. With a focus on story and action, character creation is fast and the rules are intuitive.” Let’s see what that is all about. As a setting, I will use Tangier in 2064, which I made a few months back to try out the setting generation tables of Cities Without Number. The rules turned out to be great, though I did not like the system itself too much in play. Maybe NCO will be a better fit.
For orientation, the basic way to roll in NCU is to grab a bunch of Action Dice and Danger Dice, both D6 and roll. Each time a Danger Die matches an Action Die, the Action Die is eliminated. The highest remaining die is the result. A 6 means success, 4 & 5 partial success, 3 or less failure, and if all Action Dice are gone or show 1s, the roll is a botch. Each roll starts with 1 Action Die, and then dice are added based on dis-/advantages like abilities, etc. the PC might have. Simple enough. The game is also fully player-facing, so no rolling for the GM.
A few more thoughts on the party within the setting, then let’s go make characters. Tangier 2064 was based on predictions about climate change; Morocco will be far less affected than many other areas in Africa, leading to a large accumulation of refugees in Tangier. This is further pushed by the EU giving in to xenophobia in combination with demographic problems, locking their borders down with the Frontiers program, making it far more difficult for people to flee there. Tangier becomes interesting for international corporations to pick up cheap labor, even as a testing ground for various products, all the while dangling the possibility of escape to other areas of the world in front of people. General problems elsewhere have also led to the destabilization of other countries, with China and India on the rise as new important powers that still suffer from a variety of their own issues. This has led to Tangier also becoming an important area for reasons of diplomacy/espionage. The city itself has increased in size, swallowing surrounding villages/cities, with a giant slum in the south-east. Several districts in the city are separated by walls, depicting a direct stratification of society in the geography. Still, the city is a massive melting pot of people from around the world, with police/military mostly interested in keeping the ‘peace’ (read: protect the rich while reinforcing the status quo), and corporations wielding enough influence to keep the whole city corrupt and willful. In short, fertile grounds for shady criminal/freelance work.
Now on to our party. Made up of a mix of people of various backgrounds, they are lower-level operators working together as a patchwork group. More during generation. And with that let’s look at Gehan "Sahara Ghost" Hajji. Gehan is silent and resilient, with a presence that's both commanding and elusive. She has a sleek, athletic build, her skin adorned with digital tattoos that shimmer with holographic patterns reminiscent of traditional Moroccan designs. She was born in the city, growing up in the lower middle class in the Hadiqa Gueznaida district, which is named after the small town it is built around. It is an area where lower-wage workers toil in industrial mass production. Gehan wanted a different future and joined the military. Now, kicked out for reasons she won’t talk about, she is a street mercenary. Her specialty is scouting and physical infiltration, utilizing advanced tech in combination with specialized training. She is motivated by the will to be independent; she sees the cost, and the suffering caused by corporation rule, and wants none of that. Her path is that of burning bright, in the hope of being able to get out and retire early. Let’s stat her up.
First, each character gets three Trademarks, which define things like the character's past, occupation, unique talents, or special equipment. These are the core features of the character. Trademarks come with triggers, which include flaws and are used to fine-tune what they are.
Let’s go with Background: Soldier (Military contacts, Controlled, Dishonourable discharge), Role: Infiltrator (Stealthy, Awareness, Trusts no one), Cyberwear: Scout package (Notice, Hack Security, Jittery). Mechanically, these can be (and two of them are) freeform, and triggers can be changed and adapted in the game in agreement with the GM. The last trigger listed in each case is a flaw.
Next, each character receives four Edges, which are based on the Trademarks and represent further specialization and abilities. For Gehan, I will go with Silent Killer for Soldier, Ghost-like and Silenced Needle-gun for Infiltrator, and Camouflage for Scout Package. Similarly, each character has two Flaws, which are the inverse - essentially especially bad flaws. I am going with PTSD and Unreliable Cyberware for Gehan.
Her Drive will be ‘Retire in old Tangier’, which is where the upper-class people live. Not the actual movers and shakers, but the people with comfortable lives in higher management positions and the like. This will be a track in the game that is used to manage her progress towards that goal.
Next up is gear - there is basic gear, which gives permission to do things but no additional advantage, like a gun allowing you to shoot people. Gehan gets an assault rifle, a motorcycle, leather clothing, and mirror shades. Each character can also have up to four items of specialized gear, which get tags that provide mechanical benefits. However, they need to acquire this gear using a roll. They roll up to four times and need to exceed the number of tags on a D6. If they do, they get the item. Otherwise, the roll is lost. She has Infiltration gear (Concealed, Quiet), an Armoured jacket (bulletproof, stealth, lightweight), and Wired Reflexes (Agile, Fast). She lost one roll on Wired Reflexes, so that will be it.
Finally, she needs an operator callsign. Let’s look at a name generator, and we end up with "Sahara Ghost".
And that is Gehan.
