Saberpunk
From AdamWiki
Contents |
Basics
Saberpunk is a term I coined for cyberpunk recast into a fantasy world, sorta like Shadowrun turned on its head. Where Shadowrun is a future cyberpunk world with fantasy elements (elves and stuff), Saberpunk is a fantasy world with cyberpunk elements (a network to hack, corporate greed, gross urbanization, body modification, etc.) tossed in.
I imagine this as a D&D setting.
What do characters do?
The game strongly supports "mission-based" play. Stuff like:
- Hack into a magical vault to get secrets to blackmail a skin-graft guild.
- Kidnap the chief alchemist of the Demon Gears project from the dwarves and sell him to the dangerous elven ruling families.
- Hire out as bodyguards for a powerful young nobleman who can't stay out of trouble.
- Investigate a corrupt tax collector and expose him on MirrorMirror network.
What's cool about this game?
The game uses lots of familiar fantasy tropes but recasts them with a cyberpunk feel. Many elves are organized into fiercely competitive, vengeful organized crime families where loyalty and honor are supremely important. Dwarves have cornered the market on high magic technology, which "reprograms" demons and spirits to make ordinary objects magical.
The game uses lots of familiar cyberpunk tropes but recasts them into a fantasy world. People communicate using magical mirrors that serve as TVs and network computers. Computers rely on telepathic links among demons and spirits that have been reprogrammed using magic. A good "glasswalker" (hacker, netrunner) actually steps into a parallel plane and uses the interconnected mirror world to travel between places in the "real" world. He can take other people with him, too. Giant corporations exist in the fantasy world as megaguilds. Cyberpunk-style body modification (cyberware) exists as magical body enhancements.
Instead of using guns, people still use D&D style weapons, especially swords. Sword duels break out all the time in taverns over spilt ale. Archers can fire one "virtual" arrow that bursts into a stream of 20 small energy bolts, like a machine gun. Rods, wands, staves can stand in for pretty nasty firearms of a kind, but they're expensive, rare, and no match for a good sword.
Cyberpunk Tropes
There are a variety of ideas and themes present in cyberpunk literature. This tackles a few of them, from a handful of directions, and describes how Saberpunk adopts and changes these ideas.
Post- definition
The definition of cyberpunk on Cyberarts Web draws on three attributes: post-humanism, post-industrialism, and post-nationalism.
Post-Humanism
Magic has allowed everyone to enhance themselves. Rune tattoos offer new abilities and skills. Spirits can be "grafted" onto one's soul for new powers. Leveling up involves spending platinum to enhance oneself with this magic.
To further reflect this general advancement of people, characters start at a higher level than usual (say, 8th or so).
Post-Industrialism
The core D&D setting isn't exactly an industrial one, but this can still work. Post-industrial implies a switch from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, globalization, and mass privatization.
Saberpunk posits a fantasy world where enslaved spirits and demons do all the labor jobs, like robots, and people find work in the service industry. Knowledge is king.
Post-Nationalism
Monarchies and democracies have tumbled, or have caved to the pressures of wealthy agents of power in the world.
The world is controlled by world-wide megaguilds and local government is often a puppet. Land is owned by powerful nobility and guilds and "citizenship" is really about who employs you.
Cyberpunk Review definition
"SFAM" of cyberpunkreview.com has a six-prong definition he uses for analyzing cyberpunk movies.
Negative impact of technology on humanity
In this case, Saberpunk replaces technology with magic, so we look at the negative impact of magic on "humanity," which necessarily includes all of the intelligent races in the D&D world.
First and foremost, magical technology is powered by demons and spirits. Binding these to your well to pump water or grafting them onto your body to make yourself stronger or faster does not come for free. The price is increased dependence on magic to survive plus the inescapable feeling that you're dabbling with evil.
The rules will touch on this a little bit with a new botch rule. If you roll a 1, your magic malfunctions. Maybe one of those spirits goes rogue and starts attacking you or nearby citizens.
Fusion of man and machine
Saberpunk looks at this as the willingness to modify one's body or replace parts of it with something else to achieve new powers. Besides all the spirit grafting and demonic tattoo stuff, there will be opportunities to accept items like Vecna artifacts -- replacing your body parts with other parts made of weird materials. So this is both the fusion of man and magic and the fusion of man and monster.
Corporate control over society
Replace "corporate" with "guild." These guilds -- almost always run by nobility -- hold all the power in the world. They control society through such unsubtle means as guild police, mandatory guild uniforms, guild passports, and so on. They're a sort of communist party run by guildmasters.
Story focuses on the underground
Players don't play characters who run things. They play street punks and guild rebels trying to survive in a hostile world.
There is a literal "underground," too. The Dungeon is a section of the main city that has been buried by ongoing development. Some of it has literally been pushed under the ground. Some of it is tunnel complexes used by criminals and the poor.
Ubiquitous access to information
Mirrors are the fantasy analog of modern computers. They're treated by the populace like simple information devices (think: web browser that talks and shows pictures and movies). They're all over the place.
Glasswalkers are the hackers of this world. They can pull themselves and their friends into the mirror world, which is the Saberpunk equivalent of The Matrix. The mirror world looks like an enormous dungeon complex. Anyone who enters the mirror world chooses a character class, race, and starts at level 1. Their mirror level advances three times faster than their real-world level (spending 1 XP on mirror classes earns them 3 XP of advancement). Players can switch mirror characters as they like!
Cyberpunk visuals and style
The Saberpunk world is gritty and dark. It rains all the time. People live in hovels. Cities sprawl for leagues. The richest people live in floating castles away from the urban decay.
Other Common Elements
Cyberpunk has some elements that appear over and over in the literature and movies. This section addresses those.
Virtual reality
The mirror world takes the place of VR in this setting. It's a totally immersive plane of existence. However, like virtual reality, the mirror world requires that you leave your real body behind in the real world. It's more like astral travel of the old D&D days than planar travel of the new D&D days.
Because mirrors are ubiquitous, a glasswalker (hacker) can use his own mirror to hack into other mirrors and see the rooms beyond (but not enter them). The connections between mirrors are defined by magical protocols and are guarded by spirits and other magical constructs. It's like the cyberspace of the literature, full of people traveling around, talking, and doing business, but some use it for shadier purposes.
It's "realer than real." Characters have avatars (essentially new characters) in the mirror world, and those avatars gain XP much faster than their "real" selves do, and powers come automatically and don't require weird spirit grafts and stuff.
Artificial intelligence
The deities of this world are dead, imprisoned, or locked away from sight. There are still very powerful beings but they're created by people by summoning demons and spirits and combining their power while binding them to mirrors. These are called god-kings, but they're really usually enslaved to people. These are the AI's of the mirror world. They perform all kinds of useful functions and only occasionally try to rebel and kill their makers.
All divine classes "worship" one of these god-kings, or a group of them in the case of "polytheists." They gain their magical powers through their AI god-kings, who require them to perform tasks in their service. Of course, god-kings belong to powerful guilds, so the divine characters are really just doing the bidding of powerful businessmen and criminals.
Mind as software
People are upgradeable via spirit grafts and enchantments. People can be duplicated physically and mentally. Brains and memories are just information that can be scribed into thick books of magical runes. People can buy backups of their minds and purchase insurance policies that etch the runes from the book onto the mind of some convenient body. People are essentially immortal. The elves perfected this process thousands of years ago and refuse to share its secrets, though they sell the service.
Design Notes
Revisited August 3, 2009.
Special Roles
The normal character classes have their place in the Saberpunk world, but the game encourages a few new roles.
- The Way of Mirrors (Glasswalker) -- people who "hack" the mirror world (network)
- The Way of Demons (Cogbinder) -- people who bind demons to blacksmithing to create magically powered devices (hardware)
- The Way of the Dead (Necrosage) -- people who "reprogram" spirits, sorta like a modern person programs a computer (software)
- The Way of the Coin (Silvertongue) -- people who make deals and move goods (fixer)
Mirror World
Mirrors and reflective pools can be turned into magical portals and communication devices. The magical technology is pretty well understood. These mirrors can function as televisions and conference devices (like webcams). Even cooler, a Glasswalker can step into any empowered mirror and explore the pathways of the network, realized as a sort of dungeon. The Glasswalker can bring friends, too. This becomes a dungeon crawl of sorts, as there are all kinds of protections in the mirror world to keep people from abusing the network to spy and steal.
