Beyond the Veil

Game Master MCKhaos

Welcome to the Veil.

Hoi chummers! =)

Congrats for doing this, big MC. Looking forward to it!

Mind you, it's winding up to friday evening here, and my time grows short. I might not have a chance to put a character together until Monday or Tuesday.

What is everyone doing? How familiar is everyone with this sytstem?

Take a look at Elsine's campaign discussion page starting here. It is basically the start of this discussion page.

I am, perhaps, too excited. I'm getting a very Sees-death vibe from this character.

I've gotten pretty invested in the Executive playbook, but I wanna wait for some setting chatter before I polish out the finer details.

A few useful links:

Tons more cybernetics tags: http://ageofravens.blogspot.com/2017/06/cybernetics-and-veil.html?m=1

Playbooks and Reference Sheets: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByoKM_wNIgoCalI2UURQUWVFRDA/view

I’m semi-familiar, I’ll be all the way by the end of the weekend. I’m leaning towards Honorbound

I'm leaning heavily toward the apparatus or the Onomastic.

If you are curious, the current season of the Friends at the Table podcast is running the Veil.

Hey, I've seen Blade Runner and Psycho pass. and played Deus ex (though Deus ex is less this, and more "the sprawl", I beleive). any other recommended media consumption? preferably quicker stuff, as my classes do take more than a bit of my time.

Psycho Pass is prolly the best example I've seen of the actual Veil, like the Akane's appt. Etc...

Apparatus would get influence from Ghost in the Shell... RoboCop... Ergo Proxy if we wanna go dystopic...

What I am loving the most about this ruleset is how strongly it supports reskinning playbooks.

McKhaos, if my meatsack is only receiving contracts, and my telepresence thingy is doing all the wet work, what should I put for cyberware? All of it, or just a link with remote? Depending on the setting, I was thinking of having the telepresence machine as the product my Corp is pushing...

This ad is my primary inspiration. The pinnacle of the genre.

There is both fully integrated augmented reality (through universal brain chips) in the real world and also a Matrix/Ready Player One like purely digital world.

If you have decided on a playbook, go ahead and answer your initial creation questions in this thread, except for Giri questions.

Bastian, I'm a bit confused by your concept still. Can you dumb it down for me?

Also, I haven't decided anything in terms of setting/plot. That will flow from your character choices.

The game's author posted this as an excellent source of inspiration. I agree.

Oh, Transistor. Transistor is great for The Veil. Can't beleive I didn't think of it.

Gods, I still can't decide between an Onomastic, and an Aparatus with only Powerful unlocked.

Bastian, is the idea that you are controlling a remote body, like the ranger elf from Beyond Heaven?

This ad is my primary inspiration. The pinnacle of the genre.

I was... not prepared for how retro that would be.

Bastian, is the idea that you are controlling a remote body, like the ranger elf from Beyond Heaven?

Names below are still being workshopped...

Mz. LaChessa is wealthy/important/sick enough that she doesn't go out anymore. She deals with the Board, usually over a conference call, but occasionally she will be asked to take the elevator to HQ, and meet them in person.

When she works, fulfilling contracts, she uses a robotic avatar who/which looks and acts like a younger woman, and goes by the handle Trophy. Trophy is gold IRL, but her veil is organic. Depending on how common this is in the setting, it's either the latest product from the Corp, or a company car. Either way, getting it totalled would end her career. 90% of screen-time (and in-game time) is spent with this persona.

When she surfs the digispace (usually on personal business) she uses cLOVEr, a still younger sprite-like avatar. LaChessa occasionally looses time, and wakes to find cLOVEr has... Indulged...

A lot of the variables depend on the setting though...

A lot of the setting depends on those variables. That sounds great. Just put all the cybernetics in Trophy.

I opened the gameplay thread so you can dot it and get notifications if you want.

Okay, looking through the Executive's sheet, the questions I need answered/discussed before I can answer these questions are as follows:

Is our world one where the line between human and machine is so blurred that it's people have lost track of who is running whom? How HiFi is our WiFi? Is there a whole class of people who plug in 20 hours a day in robotic bodies all the time, or is this a new and invasive technology that's causing some litigical and cultural issues to come up between humans and a secondary class of household robotics. How Turbo are our Robos? iRobot? Ghost in the Shell? How advanced is Ai? Is android civil rights "over"?

Trophy's first belief is "The fates see through one eye." They're a cohesive whole, acting under a unified will. They are three masks she puts on to do do her Jam. Shaking that is a thing I want to see done.

I know for sure that the Board is all about acquisition. Trophy's not above destabilizing a company by hand in order to secure a low bid for a newly struggling corp. That's what Mz. LaChessa did for the old Titan Inc. before Olympus Heights broke them. Mz. LaChessa gets her power from being part of the infrastructure, and necessary to the traditional business model. She's the raw skill the old corp was leveraged for. When LaChessa says another corp will meet with misfortune. They know it's as good as fated.

Rache is an enforcer for Kosto Corp., the premiere Giri restitution and management company. The best of the best, Kosto Corp often the ONLY recourse of failures of Giri. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a time where Kosto did not run the system of favors and honor that form the skeleton upon which society is based.

Kosto’s offices are not open to the public, but rumors abound that it’s a cold, unfriendly place, with mirrors on every surface (because one must be able to face oneself), stainless steel and holoscreens. What many don’t know is that deep within the complex, a grove of real trees and a fresh water spring offer Kosto operatives an oasis from the chrome and neon of the outside world.

Rache doesn’t work alone. She’s joined by Tybalt; her comms specialist, Kiki; her hacker and Francis; the librarian.

Giri is the foundation of society. You give Giri to another when they employ you, if you make a mistake that harms another or if someone gives you an item with no cred exchanged. Giri is rarely broken, exile, disfigurement or death is often the punishment for breaking the social contract, and the punishment for not honoring the Giri of a gift is to lose the gift, by force if necessary. Rache is one who collects what’s due, she’s trained since she was a child, as did her mother before her and her mother before her.

Someday, Rache’s mother will die or retire and Rache will become the CEO of Kosto. For now, she is just honor’s right hand.

Is our world one where the line between human and machine is so blurred that it's people have lost track of who is running whom?

Is it?

How HiFi is our WiFi?

I imagine it is ubiquitous broadband.

Is there a whole class of people who plug in 20 hours a day in robotic bodies all the time, or is this a new and invasive technology that's causing some litigical and cultural issues to come up between humans and a secondary class of household robotics.

I think it is new tech. Most of humanity has fully embraced cybernetic body modification. You are one of the first to be able to use a remote robot avatar.

How Turbo are our Robos? iRobot? Ghost in the Shell?

I don't understand the question.

How advanced is Ai? Is android civil rights "over"?

All the great promises of, and warnings about, AI in the first few decades of the 2000's proved to be massively overhyped. True thinking machines have not been achieved (other then the apparatus if we have one), and most corps have decided that the technological hurdles are insurmountable, much like faster than light travel. Some corps are still trying.

Trophy's first belief is "The fates see through one eye." They're a cohesive whole, acting under a unified will. They are three masks she puts on to do do her Jam. Shaking that is a thing I want to see done.

What would shaking that look like?

So, I'm taking the Onomastic. I would love to get into it, but that's not in the cards tonight (I'm doing this from mobile). Moving houses is exhausting.

I was mostly trying to start the conversation about the setting with the group. I may be being impatient. Sorry.

If Trophy is a unique product, then the other option for the Board is: They attempt to bring a new form of tech into the mainstream industry. putting me at a starting total of ±0 Capitol. Everything Trophy does is a tech demo. News reports and ads intermingled in a subversive ad campaign targeted at people in high-risk occupations who might distrust reaction times or the uncanny valley. Trophy's purpose is to get in and out of trouble gracefully.

I was asking if we've got a sea of androids, or mostly faceless automotons, and what side of the Turing test we were on. I think I've got an idea from the other answers.

The belief would be tested by unexplained digirealm charges, disobedient hardware, people recognizing Trophy whom LaChessa has never met... Present situations that should split their best interests. Generally sowing distrust or resentment between the three personas. The belief that they are of one mind is forced overtop a paranoia that LaChessa is losing control of her life since the corp takeover delayed her retirement.

ChLover will be more or less important to the story depending on if we get, like, an Architect or spend a lot of time in digispace.

My other two beliefs are "Telepresence is a safer alternative to Cyberwear." and "Suffering is the source of all evil."

Those were just my initial thoughts. I'm open to whatever, but I would like to be pre-AI as I indicated.

Are we doing fascist cyberpunk (IE, the governemnt has become a fascist-y dictatorship, ala Deus Ex) or anarchy cyberpunk (the govenment is either vestigial or actually gone, and megacorps more or less rule the world, ala Shadowrun)

also, How "Out there" can my onomastic magic/hyperadvanced science/whatever get...

Clever quick bar stat tracking all. I especially like Na-zo's harm tracker.

I'm fine with either for government style.

to be entirely fair, I litterally ctr-c, ctr-v'ed it from Bastian, and added soem parentheses.

Ha, I totally missed the harm tracking on Trophy's bar.

I think for the "magic", there is a scientific explanation for everything you do, but only your order ever figured it out. To everyone else it is magic. So go wild.

Rache’s beliefs:

Giri is worth killing over
Giri is worth dying over
Society cannot function without giri

I like the idea of corporations replacing governments (tied together with the bonds of Giri).

I think it would be interesting if we framed that in a "of the people by the people" light with the lives and conflicts of "heads" of corporations also playing out in reality TV. Grandiose, stockmarket-based WWE/Soap opera-style media saturation. That's how the corporations fake an appearance of transparency. Their big moves are cartoonishly exaggerated. A corp survives on its ability to keep the individual's attention, and keep them consuming the corp's branded products based on team fanaticism. Clusters of corps play out bitter rivalries, which they depend on for symbiosis. When a corp knocks out its competition by literally rigging their HQ for demolition, it's because it's sweeps week. Everyone assumes they cleared out the workers beforehand, because it's on the feeds, right? The veil allows the common citizen to remain blissfully unaware of how paltry the price of human life has become.

My pillar in this setting is that corporations have lost sight of any purpose beyond staying relevant, because relevancy is currency.

Feeds is short for newsfeeds. All media is news.

That plays into an idea I had for Rache where her mother, Revanche, creates a reality show off of Rache’s work enforcing Giri. Rache appreciates the added free, but worries about commercializing such a key part of daily life. Does it tarnish what she’s doing if she’s getting rich off it?

So, the Onomastic were a group with a broad interest in fringe sciences. Na-Zo was an initiate , stationed at an outpost safehold.

Safeholds were the areas that The order of the onomastics kept their more unstable, controversial, or secret information in. They are a specialized "Second layer" of The Veil, hidden from sight. Theirs is small, a little under a thousand square meters. they used to share it with 4 other researchers, but they... never came back. The only company Na-Zo has is Coil, a composite program one of the other researchers was using for an expiriment. created by compositing hundreds of individual recorded brain-pattersn and thousands of memories (A voice that speaks only to you). Na-Zo has set up dozens of access points for themselves to get into their safehold... or exit (Entry into everyone’s residences, even if they’ve taken pains to secure them.) And they have, should they ever desire it, a way into another safehold, orders of magnitude larger, but compromised, and ravaged by the Iconoclasts (A way into another Safehold, where thousands of your order lay as skeletons.)

The creatures... are they creatures? Whatever they are, the things that hunted the others. Na-Zo has taken to calling them Iconoclasts, "a person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions." seemed appropriate. the order had been studying them for years, strange glitches in The Veil, things that appeared... they look like people, normal people, until you see past the disguise. beneath it, they look like machines, made of unknown and foreign mechanisms, dripping with fresh gore. Na-Zo has not had many opportunities to study them, fortunately.

Still trying to decide on a Jam, Cybernetics, and Beliefs, but I got some of the onomastic-specific world-stuff out of the way.

Also, I love the Reality TV thing. I doubt Na-ZO is a "major character" in any of these, but as they know both Rache and LaCheza, odds are they've been on camera some.

Also, I love the Reality TV thing. I doubt Na-ZO is a "major character" in any of these, but as they know both Rache and LaCheza, odds are they've been on camera some.

Of course not, darling. Escaped experimental weaponry was last season. You're a call-back. Stick around and you may get a spotlight episode.

I am super jazzed about the hidey-holes though. Any excuse to put LaChessa in a vulnerable position.

Na-Zo wrote:

Also, I love the Reality TV thing. I doubt Na-ZO is a "major character" in any of these, but as they know both Rache and LaChessa, odds are they've been on camera some.

Of course not, darling. Escaped experimental weaponry was last season. You're a call-back. Stick around and you may get a spotlight episode.

I am super jazzed about the hidey-holes though. Any excuse to put LaChessa in a vulnerable position.

Escaped what now?

I'm picturing it as him just occasionally wandering out of closets he had no way to get into... and then, when you nail that door shut, he just starts exiting through the pantry

Note that I added a link to a reference sheet on my quickbar.

What's next? Introductions? Giri questions?

Among the figureheads of Olympus Heights, Trophy is a character the public loves to hate. Ruthless, conceited, demanding, shrewd, destructive, Trophy doesn't just start drama, she ends fights. You're considered lucky if she'll meet with you over the boardroom table, as she is a fan of the overwhelming use of force.

Giri
If someone else knows something of your past that could put your status at the corp in jeopardy and they keep it secret for you, they have 1 Giri on you.

If someone knows you’ve skimmed off the top to further your own agenda and they kept it secret for you, they have 1 Giri on you.

If you use someone as an exclusive asset for your own paying contracts, you have 1 Giri on them.

Rache could fill in for either of the first two, but I don’t see her as being the third.

Na-Zo has relatively few cybernetics. They have augmented retinal display/feeds (recording, enhancing, HUD, eyecatching) and an interface (responsive, encrypted, Twitchy)

Na-Zo is a courier, they maintain absolute corp-neutrality. As such, they appear on most of the shows, a bit character, really, but notable enough to have their own thread on the "Minor characters" subforum.

People think they don't know they've been nicknamed Ragamuffin, for the shitty coat they wear (half a size too large, and a decade old.)

They are, for better or for worse, a people watcher, leading some on the thread (yes, they did google themselves) to speculate that they work as an informant for one of the companies (no one can agree on which one).

Giri:

• If someone saved you from the Iconoclasts asking for nothing in return, they have 1 Giri on you.
• If you’ve allowed someone entry to your sanctuary in order to shelter them from danger, you have 1 Giri on them.
• If someone has disclosed major life events to you, thereby increasing your components on them, they have 1 Giri on you for each component.

Tropy's a piece of work, cobbled together with standard cyberware parts and topped with a state-of-the-art Satelite Relay, Responsive interface, that's Slaved to a sim-chair.

Her arms fire Censor Bars, a common-enough corp weapon that does little damage, but jams streaming tech. The black blades extend and fire from between her knuckles. Her chest is a shielded container, which should pass most scans, but will choke up all of the accessory throughput on her battery. Her eyes and ears are factory standard for an executive: Telescoping and Biometric eyes, Isolating and Analyzing ears, both Recording, both Sponsored. Her legs are Stuttgarte MkIV Dance equipment, rated for room-temperature use only.

I see my #1 and #2 as being too similar, and 1 being the more interesting of the two. I'm not sure about the details, but I think we can work on that in play. Rache knows a secret about LaChessa's work for Titan Inc. Something Olympus Heights would ruin her for.

Na-Zo's #1 sounds like something Trophy would do. She doesn't like seeing valuable human resources get 86'ed over corp negligence when that same resource might work with her (or become a paying mark) in the future. It also implies Trophy was at least marginally involved in the Iconoclast raid. LaChessa's probably under an NDA, and Trophy's A/V records are OH property. ChLover would have checked in soon after to make sure Na-Zo was okay.

Looking at the Honorbound, I'm not sure what fits best for Trophy. Maybe the reduced sentence, #2.

~~~

I've lost track, is there a fourth player we're waiting on?

I believe Atlas2112 will be joining, but couldn't get to character creation until today.

Remind me, which persona is CHLover?

ChLover is LaChessa's incognito browser tab, her personal Digiscape avatar, and the ID of the Ego/Superego/ID trio. LaChessa gets techno-tipsy and commits acts of anti-corp mischief.

Na-Zo likes CHLover a lot more. Trophy creeps them out.

Trophy's network isn't Disney or HBO, they're more like YouTube Red. The cultural majority doesn't understand their business model, but they make headlines from time to time in other media. They're also seeing huge growth since they were acquired. LaChessa only recently achieved stardom-levels of followers, like Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption, she got Trophy, and she got an entire label. Inherited a startup, more like.

Her nemesis is Peabody, head of a line of exosuits. Their parent corps aren't competitors, and some might say they're under the same umbrella Corp. He does like to pull the rug out on her dealings, or low-bid security on her latest mark.

I see Rache's eyes are sponsored and broadcast. How is your footage monetized? B-reel? Do you have a fan? Are you credited for your work? Is your footage just used for data mining by a security branch? Are you part of a network? Does your rig support third-person-over-the-shoulder? -or are all these stupid questions to Rache? Is Rache so far from that world that you don't even see it?