Cloak-and-Sword Économiste

Économiste

A cloak-and-sword class. Any early modern French milieu needs its John Law, or its John Blunt, or perhaps an enterprising florist.

Begin with a single suit of fine clothes, a French rapier, a deck of cards, a pair of dice, and 2 Credit (see Credible).

Indebted: Through bad luck and worse impulse control, your family wealth has been spent ten times over. Roll 1d6 to find out why you aren’t in debtor’s prison.

1. A daring escape! If you are ever put on trial again, you will be convicted.
2. A scapegoat. A noble family is sworn to your destruction. They all hold Esprit for you, but you roll 1d6 rather than 2d6 on their Esprit Reactions.
3. A self-imposed exile. If you ever return to your homeland, you will be executed. Your accent and manner of dress mark you indelibly as a foreigner.
4. A convenient marriage. You begin play married to an suitable spouse. If you ever spend a penny of their family’s fortune, the Church will make a special exception to its prohibition on divorce, just so that they can cut you loose.
5. A false confession. You are an enemy of all Angels, though not yet a priority for divine censure. 
6. Conscription and desertion. If you ever go to sea, you will be press-ganged.

Numerate: You always win games of pure chance, though your profits will not exceed the game’s expected value unless you successfully rig it in your favour.

Lucrative: Burghers, merchants, artisans, indebted nobles, and shareholders in your Grand Speculative Enterprise (see Grand Speculative Enterprise) hold Esprit for you. Due to a dizzying multiplicity of ruinous wars, the Crown is always in debt, typically to the Church.

Credible: You understand the flows of money throughout the economy, and as such can access a special stat called Credit. You may use Credit in lieu of specie to purchase items from those whom hold Esprit for you. This does not reduce your Credit, but you incur a Debt to the seller equal to the total monetary value of the items.

Good For It: You may reduce your Credit by 1 to withdraw specie from a bank up to a maximum of 100 silver per point of Credit (before the reduction).

The Invisible Hand: Your words ring with the honeyed promise of lucre. Once per Esprit reaction, you may reduce your Credit by 1 to re-roll either die or both dice. You may re-roll allies’ Esprit rolls this way.

Collections: Whenever you have more Debts than you have Credit, your oldest Debt is immediately converted into a commensurately dangerous force hunting you down. They can only be bought off with a payment equal to that Debt, but they can be killed, or dealt with by more abstruse methods.

Hey, Big Spender: Whenever you Carouse, roll 1d6. On a 2+, gain 1 Credit. On a 1, lose 2 Credit.

Largesse: Whenever you pay off a Debt (not necessarily your own), your Credit may increase by 1. The chance is based on the size of the Debt.

• Bar tabs of everyone in the tavern (1-in-6)
• Gambling debts (2-in-6)
• The fine for a dishonorable murder (3-in-6)
• A season’s tithe to the church (4-in-6)
• The expected profits of a fully-laden cargo ship, lost at sea (5-in-6)

You can pay off debts by using your own Credit, but note that this will incur debts of your own.

A Grand Speculative Enterprise: Once, ever, you may declare a Grand Speculative Enterprise. In order to do this, you must have the following:

1. The backing of either a noble family, many merchant venturers, the Crown, or the Church.
2. A madcap plan that promises heretofore-unimaginable profit.
3. A demonstration, true or falsified, of your venture’s feasibility.

Immediately double your Credit, or triple it if you are backed by the Crown. Your Credit now represents the public valuation of your Grand Speculative Enterprise, rather than merely your personal credibility.

Your Enterprise begins with 3 Shares distributed amongst its most prominent backers, who form the Board. If you would incur a Debt of any amount, you may instead issue the potential creditor a Share in your Grand Speculative Enterprise.

At the beginning of each session, roll 1d100. If the result is less than or equal to the number of Shares there are in your Grand Speculative Enterprise, you must do one of the following or reduce your Credit by 1d6.

• Issue Shares. Double the number of Shares. You may choose who receives them (and therefore holds Esprit for you), but this may anger the Board if it contradicts their interests.
• Go Public. From now on, due to the free trade in shares, whenever you encounter an NPC, there is a (Shares)% chance that they hold a Share of your Enterprise. Shares discovered this way are added to the total. You may only do this once, ever.
• Expand the Board. If, by the end of the session, you do not have a new backer from amongst a noble family, many merchant venturers, the Crown, or the Church, your Credit is reduced as above. If you have gained a new backing interest, issue them 3 new shares and they join the Board.
• Pave With Gold. Further Dividends must be paid with gold, rather than silver. If you have already chosen this, choose one of the following in addition to gold.
• Land
• Souls
• Love
• Years
• Noble title
• Divine grace
• Pay Dividends. Pay every shareholder an amount of silver equal to the square of your Credit. The money must be deposited with the Board for disbursement. After you successfully pay a Dividend, increase your Credit by 1d6.

If your Credit is ever reduced to 0 or less while engaged in a Grand Speculative Enterprise, you are Bankrupt and your Enterprise falls to ruin. Every Share is immediately converted into a Debt valued at the share price at the peak of the speculative bubble, and as your Credit is 0, each Debt immediately becomes a collector (see Collections). 

I'm In: Thieflike Hacking

Hacking rules inspired by B/X thief skills.

To hack, choose one of the following Hacker Skills and roll Xd6, where X is your cyberdeck’s Clock Speed. If the value of any die is within the skill’s success chance (1-in-6 by default, improved by programs), the attempt succeeds. On a failure, you alert the system and countermeasures may be dispatched to disconnect you.

You have direct access to any networks that your deck is plugged into, typically through a server or desktop tower. A wireless connection or remote access provides indirect access instead. Direct access provides a +1 bonus to the success chance of hacker skills.

• Penetrate servers (PS): Safely gain access to a system. If the roll fails, the intrusion is detected and countermeasures are automatically deployed. If the hacker has a passcode, they may automatically succeed at this roll.
• Search (SR): Locate a file within a system, or locate specific content within a file. This may also be used for search engine queries (only once per query) or to detect traps on a specific file (only once per file).
• Identify devices (ID): Identify the location and type of all active devices within wireless range of the hacker’s deck, or all devices connected to a network to which the hacker has access.
• Wipe data (WD): Destroy data on a device. A hacker may only destroy specific files or subsystems if they have first located them with Search; otherwise, they must wipe the entire device at once. A hacker may also use this to attack hostile programs and other hackers; a successful Wipe will disconnect their target.
• Move unsurveilled (MU): Prevent oneself from being detected by active surveillance systems. To cloak a group or large object from detection, roll at -1.
• Bypass locks (BL): Access a password-protected device or electronic lock without knowing the passkey. Biometric locks are accessed at -1 for each biometric required. A hacker can only try this skill once per lock.
• Clone credentials (CC): Copy data from a nearby device such as a smartphone, a keyfob, a credit card, or a server. On a failure, the data is not copied, and on a failure by more than 1 the device’s owner will receive a notification that a cloning attempt has occurred.
• Remote control (RC): A hacker may attempt to send a spoofed command to a device on a system to which they have access. More complex commands require multiple RC attempts.
• Decrypt or recover data (DD): Roll this to remove encryption from a device or a file. Some especially secure files require multiple Decryption rolls. After a failure, further attempts require a more powerful deck or program. This skill may also be used to recover lost files (only once per device).
• Cyber defense (CD): Roll this to remain connected to a network during a disconnection attempt. On a failure, you are kicked from the system and your access point is burned. If they had indirect access, they now require direct access to the system. If they had direct access, they need to find a new access point.

A cyberdeck’s Clock Speed determines the number of dice you roll to Hack, and it can host one program at a time for each mB of RAM it has. Program cassettes must be loaded into the cyberdeck before the mission begins. Programs increase the hacker’s success chance on specific hacker skills and may improve those skills’ effects.

Also, a single-level rework of the Hacker class for Deck-and-Blade games (c.f. Phlox's post re. the recent Cloak-and-Sword revival). 

Hacker

Start with an outdated cyberdeck (2 mB RAM, Clock Speed 1), two random program cassettes (+1 to a random Hacker Skill), a big pleather coat, a cortical datajack, a stack of blank CD-ROMs, Python for Dummies (18th Edition), and a pair of mirrorshades.

h4xx0r.sk111z: You can use Hacker Skills. The first time you would alert a system, you may Scoff and choose not to alert it instead.

Author's Note: I know a lot of the original Cloak-and-Sword fanbase scoffed at the complexity of Scoffing mechanics, but I think it was very flavorfully integrated into Deck-and-Blade. The real issue with Deck-and-Blade's original Decker class was, as always, the ludicrously-complex hacking rules. Cyberpunk RPGs really never change.

jack_in;zone_out: You may use your cortical datajack to connect your brain to your cyberdeck, allowing your deck to use your neural clock cycles as additional processing power. Increase your Clock Speed by 1 when connected this way, as you are digitally incarnated in the cyber-space of the network you’re hacking. During this process, your meat body falls insensate, and if you are forcibly disconnected you must save vs. unconsciousness.

Rumor on the Deep Net has it that some next-generation intrusion countermeasures can access, rewire, and wipe a jacked brain as if it was nothing more than a file system.

l33t5p34k3r: You can always cloak your words in gibberish that non-hackers find unintelligible. When you do this, older generations will either pity or fear you.

www.honoram.ong/thieves: Hackers see themselves as console cowboys and cyber-samurai, a round_table() of digital knights serving corporate lords, living and dying on the bleeding edge of a bloody age. Other hackers have e-Sprit for you. This functions as Esprit, but is only prioritized over reaction rolls online, in cyberspace, and at LAN cafes, comic conventions, or hacker bars.

scriptKiddy: You are a proficient programmer. As long as you have no criminal record, you can always abandon the hacker’s lifestyle and take a job as a chipped and burned-out corporate drone. If you do, retire your character.

GLAUGUST: Esprit

I’m reproducing the rules for Esprit here as I remember them because I lost my PDF of the original Cloak-and-Sword ruleset. It always felt quite gameable, as it fills a social function that traditional reaction rolls often lack. I think the GLOG could make good use of it.

Esprit

The social relation of Esprit is considered by sophists to be the opposite of neutrality, and by playwrights to be the motive force of all drama. It insists upon itself and moves the body it inhabits to action.

When the party encounters a character that holds Esprit for one of their members, if a Reaction Roll is warranted, use the Esprit Reaction table instead of any other. If other characters are present, the Esprit must be resolved first, and afterwards the reactions of any other non-player characters will be clear.

The player whose character for whom Esprit is held rolls 2d6 and adds their Charisma. The Espirited character reacts in the corresponding manner.

Esprit Reaction Roll (2d6+Charisma)
2 or less: Demands allegiance.
3-5: Demands a service.
6-8: Makes a request.
9-11: Offers a service.
12 or more: Pledges service.

If refused out of hand or ignored, the Espirited character will escalate the confrontation until they receive satisfaction or are rendered insensate.

GLAUGUST: Full Life Consequences

GLÅUGUST is upon us. I saw that one of the the prompts was "Full Life Consequences". So, really, this is Walfalcon's fault.

Free Man

Aliens and monsters are attacking your brother’s place! It’s time for you to live up to your family name and face… FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES

Qualifications
Normal +3 or -3

Saves
Weapons +3, Trauma -3, Explosions -3, Contaminants -3, Anomalies -3

Expertise
Wepons

Uniform
Motorcycle, normal people clothes

So you went there to where there was fighting!
You must show up at least an hour late to the session. When you (the player) arrive, you must loudly declare that you are experiencing FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES. You (the character) arrives on the scene, even and especially if it would be improbable for you to be there.

It’s a good day to do what has to be done by you.
Attacks made in your presence always hit. In combat, you always go first.

“Because you are headcrab zombie!”
Once per session, you may declare that an NPC in your presence is under the influence of an artefact. They are, but the GM chooses which artefact.