If you hadn’t heard the news yet Monte Cook Games has recently announced a Cypher System Open License is coming. And in that announcement, they also announced three forthcoming Kickstarters including Marlowe House’s Blood & Chrome.
Blood & Chrome will be a new Cyberpunk companion setting and rules supplement for the Cypher System. Originally, we began publishing installments under MCG’s Creator Fan License as a line we imagined as “Cypher Bursts” short inexpensive glimpses into settings we’d like to build. Cyberpunk has long been one of my favorite science fiction subgenres. Whether it was Blade Runner, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neuromancer, Never Deal with a Dragon, Catspaw, or countless other books and movies, I was obsessed. Cyberpunk 2013, 2020, and Shadowrun filled a lot of my gaming space between my AD&D and D&D 3.0 years, so it felt like an ideal place to start our Cypher Burst Line. It felt like being young again.
As 2021 drew to a close and we’d seen solid success with the Cypher Bursts we decided to begin putting work into a full-setting and rules companion. Monica and I not only began work on additional rules material but questions of setting, theme, and how do you get this produced in print. Because of all the things we’ve ever worked on together, this is the first one I felt NEEDED to be on my shelves when we finished.
So our Kickstarter release uses the first three volumes of our Cypher Bursts as a starting point and greatly expands from there. We are assembling a crew of talented creators to put their mark on this new cyberpunk setting. As we finalize the exact who’s and what’s we’ll start revealing that but I’m very excited, especially since as a stretch goal somewhere along the line we’ll be talking in world fiction and I’m stoked by some of the names we’re lining up for that. Really, I just want to spill all the secrets, I’m so excited but I can’t yet.
What I can preview today is a little about our first Iconic Character.
Sawyer Is a Bleeding Edge Technophile who Has a Silver Arm
Translation: Sawyer is into technology, no I mean LIKE REALLY into technology and she’s rocking a bad-ass cyber-arm.
Outside of her trademark cherry red cyber-arm, Sawyer sports one of my favorite new cybernetic abilities: “Skill Softs.” Introduced in the original releases Skill Softs creates a small new design space that I had a lot of fun with.
Skill Softs
You have a chip socket that allows you to dock new skills you can purchase off the shelf. It takes an action to add or remove a chip from the socket and anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 hours for a new trained skill set to boot up and fully install. A basic skill package boots up quickly while more complex skill sets can take from 1 hour to 10 hours depending on the complexity of the skill and the quality of the program. You gain the benefits of the skill until the skill soft chip is undocked.
Skill softs do not stack with your own skills. You must choose which to use. Enabler.
Cypher Burst 1.2
This ability allows players to purchase new skill sets for money and even personalities for money. It doesn’t get much more cyberpunk than that. What makes these cool from a design and play aspect is that most skill softs come with some bit fourish from the designer, an interesting flaw, a little world-building, or another easter egg. Let’s take a look at the skill softs our friend Sawyer is packing.
Basic Fire Arms Protocol: A moderately expensive basic personal protection skill soft. You become practiced with light and medium firearms. Load time 1 hour.
This is the skill soft she has docked most of the time. It’s basic clear-cut and while useful it’s not flashy. It simply eliminates the penalty for her using a firearm she isn’t practiced with.
On the other hand, this next one was one of my favorites from the original release.
UDasher Protocols: A moderately expensive personal shopper skill application set. The user becomes trained in driving, navigation within the selected city, speed defense, and basic firearms attacks while picking up and transporting a customer’s order. Load time 10 hours.
The world has changed a lot since the seventies, eighties, and nineties when Cyberpunk was new or at least relatively new. This skill soft updates some of the earliest concepts to include the modern personal shopper apps with a dark cyberpunk spin. It also says something about what Sawyer does in her *real-life* outside of her shadow work for megacorps, fixers, and the various other street hustlers.
She works for a future version of Doordash or Uber and this UDasher chip helps her get where she’s going safely it even gives her training in firearms…which is better than the basic firearms protocol, but only in her city, and while she’s on a delivery.
And that brings us to her last skill soft.
Gentle Johnny: An exorbitantly expensive black market multi-purpose skill soft. You become trained in the following skills: Stealth, basic demolitions, lockpicking, safe cracking, and electronic security. it also modifies your personality subtly. Users adopt a two-part code: First, if there is another option, leave no teammate behind. Second, bring no innocents to harm. All actions that would or could put an innocent in danger are hindered. The software never regards an on-duty megacorporate employee as innocent. Load time 10 hours.
Gentle Johnny is a historical thief and war hero. I imagine a future where some historical action movie or sim was made about Johnny Ramensky and some black market programmer latched onto the character while they programmed this gem. Right down to the two rather major shifts in the user’s personality.
Next Update: We’ll show you the finished and full-color Sawyer image then we’ll delve a little into her backstory and more.
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Finally, I ran a little Blood & Chrome for the Cypher Unlimited guys, and one of their fans. The game is archived on YouTube. Enjoy!
GAM3 g33k 
So are you guys hiring writers? I grew up playing Shadowrun and have been getting into Cypher and looking at ways to put together a Cypher/Cyberpunk setting. I have some gaming contributor experience in the roguelike video game space and love writing, designing game mechanics, and educating the masses about colonial capitalism.
Anyway, heard about you on Cypher Unlimited discord just now. And you all are already working on the project I’ve been kicking around in my head. So, email me if you’re interested in talking more (wykoffem at gmail). In the meantime, I’ll be reading your pdfs.
thanks
Sorry, I missed this post. At the moment, I’m not looking to hire any additional designers, but when we get deeper into the project, that could change particularly if the kickstarter takes off. Drop me an email reminder at marlowehousegames at gmail and if a slot opens up we can talk.