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Cyberpunk Roleplaying #1
The Veil
The room flickers in front of you for an instant like a PMP losing reception. You hear the hammer snap back on a cheap poly and you can almost smell the ozone as the bullet glides out of the chamber. The window flies apart in shatterproof shards the size of disembodied limbs. Your neurochip feeds you the trajectory of the unequivocal sentence of death speeding your way as your eyes swivel in their machined sockets. Juice crashes through your veins. You've only got a split second to make a move. What do you do?
The Veil is a collaborative storytelling game Powered by the Apocalypse designed to tell cyberpunk stories of your own making. Use world building tools to come up with unique settings that look and feel like the cyberpunk you and your friends have always wanted. Put questions that drive your characters at the heart of heists, mysteries, and conspiracies. Break a near future world and then try to put it back together. Play to find out what happens.
The Veil is a collaborative storytelling game Powered by the Apocalypse designed to tell cyberpunk stories of your own making. Use world building tools to come up with unique settings that look and feel like the cyberpunk you and your friends have always wanted. Put questions that drive your characters at the heart of heists, mysteries, and conspiracies. Break a near future world and then try to put it back together. Play to find out what happens.
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 7, 2018
1 person is currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Fraser Simons
9 books296 followersFraser Simons is a tabletop role-playing game designer. Most notably The Veil, Hack the Planet, and Retropunk. He self publishes his work through Samjoko Publishing and Wrecking Ball Games,
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 3, 2019
This game is inspiring. It really digs deep into the heart of what Cyberpunk is - an exploration of identity, reality, and society.
The roll + stat mechanic of Powered by the Apocalypse games is active here; but the "stats" in this game are actually "States" - Emotions. And the player chooses which State to roll, Mad, Peaceful, Joy, Scared, Powerful, or Sad. Each time they use a State, they mark it. Once they've used it 5 times, that triggers a move "Alleviate", where they either have to keep pushing that emotion, or try to divert and stand down the emotion. It feels like this shift in the PbtA mechanic would drive the fiction in a specific way - more like Monsterhearts than Dungeon World or Apocalypse World.
I liked the playbooks a lot. They don't map necessarily to the protagonist tropes most frequently found in cyberpunk touchstones - although I would say the Catabolist could be a good match for Neuromancer's Molly; and the Architect might align with Hiro Protagonist. Maybe. What the playbooks actually do well is allow players to explore the meta questions that Cyberpunk asks of us all - in an era of hyper-change caused by technology, what does it mean to be human?
In addition, there's a whole section in the GM chapter that discusses exactly what flags are being raised by players who take specific playbooks - and how to hit those flags in play. Really useful.
The examples of play were very helpful, and were frequent throughout the book.
Finally, the quotes and the artwork were so evocative of the genre, I was really amped up to play. Right. Now.
Why didn't I give it 5 stars?
1. No index. RPG books need an index.
2. The playbook sheets are not in the actual book. I have go to an online resource to see the actual playbooks and setting sheet.
3. An Appendix N (ie, a listing of touchstones across various media to help inspire the GM and players to create awesome setting). The followup book - Veil Cascade - remedies this.
The roll + stat mechanic of Powered by the Apocalypse games is active here; but the "stats" in this game are actually "States" - Emotions. And the player chooses which State to roll, Mad, Peaceful, Joy, Scared, Powerful, or Sad. Each time they use a State, they mark it. Once they've used it 5 times, that triggers a move "Alleviate", where they either have to keep pushing that emotion, or try to divert and stand down the emotion. It feels like this shift in the PbtA mechanic would drive the fiction in a specific way - more like Monsterhearts than Dungeon World or Apocalypse World.
I liked the playbooks a lot. They don't map necessarily to the protagonist tropes most frequently found in cyberpunk touchstones - although I would say the Catabolist could be a good match for Neuromancer's Molly; and the Architect might align with Hiro Protagonist. Maybe. What the playbooks actually do well is allow players to explore the meta questions that Cyberpunk asks of us all - in an era of hyper-change caused by technology, what does it mean to be human?
In addition, there's a whole section in the GM chapter that discusses exactly what flags are being raised by players who take specific playbooks - and how to hit those flags in play. Really useful.
The examples of play were very helpful, and were frequent throughout the book.
Finally, the quotes and the artwork were so evocative of the genre, I was really amped up to play. Right. Now.
Why didn't I give it 5 stars?
1. No index. RPG books need an index.
2. The playbook sheets are not in the actual book. I have go to an online resource to see the actual playbooks and setting sheet.
3. An Appendix N (ie, a listing of touchstones across various media to help inspire the GM and players to create awesome setting). The followup book - Veil Cascade - remedies this.
January 8, 2018
A great pbta post-cyberpunk rpg! Focus is on feels more than crazy action.
November 10, 2022
Cyberpunk is always challenged by cliche, and creating original, vigorous player opportunities is always a challenge. This book falls more than a bit flat.
September 20, 2018
This is based on my reading only. I have not played this game... yet. I intend to because it's a great cyberpunk game with elements of transhumanism thrown in. The setting is almost non-existant to allow for group-creation. The game relies heavily on gamemaster (or Master of Ceremonies as is know in PbtA games) and the players. More to come...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews