toonpunk-game

[toonpunk-game]

So what happens next?

So.

Toonpunk Second Edition is out. While I have stories to tell in the Saskatoon setting, that part of my endeavor - creating the game and establishing the baseline for what its fiction and gameplay looks like - is, broadly speaking, “behind me”. I’m still going to fund and add more illustrations to fill out some missing spaces - that’s gonna take time, that’s gonna take multiple revisions of the PDF, but it’s all fairly easily done.

So here we arrive at the question: what’s “Next” for Toonpunk? 

Well, at risk of sounding a little like a carnie...you ain’t seen nothin yet. Toonpunk, as you know of it, has only ever been a preamble. The Saskatoon setting is just a foundation. For years I’ve known what I wanted to do next, but I just had to get this right. 

Before I can answer that question in detail, I gotta tell you about a tiny patch of land in central Alabama. 

The bounded area here - that weird little polygon - is where I’m from. I was born here. I’ve lived my entire life here. I’ve spent less than a cumulative two months of my life anywhere else. More than 99% of my life has been spent in this unremarkable subrural sprawl. I’ve watched the city expand and contract; I’ve watched the farmlands get shaved away and I’ve seen the buildings grow tall and then become rubble again. I’ve seen people come here seeking fortune and leave to seek it again. And I’ve come to live it all, as anyone loves their home. I love the long hot nights and the obstreperous Summer storms; I love the strange people and their bizarre customs; I love the rich forests and the undulating hills, where the roads wind so circuitously they at times seem noneuclidean. 

There’s between two and three hundred thousand people in this red polygon.

We, and it, are being erased.

We’re being erased by inches, the same way most people like us are. Year after year the thermometers keep rising and our politicians keep enacting more and more brutality against us. We, a hopeless people, prostrate ourselves before a system that we know hates us. Some of us have families that have been here since the time of our ancestors - when they were dragged here in iron to make some plantation owner rich. The rest of the country pretends not to see us; and when the rest of the world does look at us, it’s with disgust. It is commonly reproduced in everyday conversation that this is a land of hopelessly backwards racists, whose impending annihilation will do the world some measure of good.

And let’s not make any bones about it: there’s some real rotten goddamn people in this place. But no more than anywhere else. Here you find a world of kind souls, who tend a needy neighbor; noble outlaws who bring charity wherever they walk; people of the forest and the swamp, who love every creature under the sun as they love their own family; punk rockers, hopeful artists; a robust queer scene; decent people who were born here, and never gave up the ship. All clapped in irons by the rule of law, as my ancestors were before us, so that we may never take our freedom nor give our kindness.

And one day - one day soon - we will all be erased. Either the heat will go up so high we can’t live here, or the sea will rise and swallow us, or the fascist genocide crusade will liquidate every one of these decent souls. And when this happens, the news will be received in Denver and Sacramento and New York City with indifference; but more than that, with relief. A great many souls will hear that Alabama and Georgia and Louisiana and Mississippi are no more, and they will mutter “good”. And that shall be the end of that.

I don’t really think it’s in my power to change that. But I won’t let it happen quietly.

All of this is to say that my next project is Toonpunk: Hellsouth. A toonpunk expansion, and setting, that takes place in and around my home state of Alabama - a monument to the strange people, beautiful places, and idiosyncratic culture that brought me to this point.

As a game, it’s a near-complete overhaul of the toonpunk core mechanics that turn it into a tense resource-management survival-horror game, where the stakes get even higher and the fights get even uglier. I’ve got some incredible things to show you already: Movie-monster inspired abilities, which players can level up by forging pacts with the creatures of the deep black; a wholly retooled damage model, where even one bullet can be deadly; expanded mechanics built around bluffing and standoffs; weather simulations and long distance travel - all wrapped up in a unique cartoon/cyberpunk setting that didn’t “fall” through the cracks so much as it was “pushed”. This is a great labor of love that I’ve been working on for years; and, regrettably - it won’t be done for a long, long time to come.

Unlike the original Toonpunk, I intend this book to feature many stories from people who live in this part of the country, from many different storytellers. It is in some ways a cairn for my homeland, erected while it’s still mostly-intact. 

I don’t know if this book will really be for everyone. But if you feel like it might be for you, and you have a story about some place in Dixieland that’s near and dear to your heart - shoot me a DM.

Stay tooned. 

#cartoon #cyberpunk #Tabletop RPG #alabama

[toonpunk-game]

Toonpunk capers #1: This Guy

I was browsing, by which I mean namesearching, and I happened to find a marvelously creative account by someone whose name I will not reprint here since it was taken surreptitiously from a dead thread in the forum section of that one wiki. There’s no news or anything in this post, I just really like knowing that someone out there is doing the stuff with my book.

Seriously, this is the biggest hit of dopamine I’ve ever gotten without sticking a needle in my eyeball. 

[PartyWhistleSoundWithFartReverbSlowedDownEightyPercent.mp4]

#cyberpunk #cartoon #Tabletop RPG

[toonpunk-game]

Golly gee whillickers, that sure is a lot of downloads!

Well, take a look-see at this, everyone. Toonpunk: Second Edition is gettin downloaded left-right-and-center. I’m honestly real past thrilled to see it doing so well - and if I’m being frank, I’m a little astonished! Knowing that all you are out there, shocking the world and upsetting the status quo, it’s really a helluva thing. 

But this isn’t my story anymore - it’s yours! And I wanna know what you guys are doing, and how you’re doing it! So, consider this an open invitation: if you send me a screen grab/copypaste of your character sheets, I’ll show them off to everyone here and maybe right some little blurb about how I think they’d fit into the Doublearth setting.

Can’t wait to see em!

#Tabletop RPG #cyberpunk #cartoon #rpg character #original character

[toonpunk-game]

The Toonpunk’s Guide to Saskatoon

But wait just a minute, everybody. There’s one more Toonpunk book that you can read, right now, for absolutely free: the Toonpunk’s Guide to Saskatoon, your one-and-done guide to everything in the Doublearth. With dozens of locations, prompts, NPCs, and special enemy templates, this is the perfect companion volume for anyone who wants to explore the outer fringes of rationality...or just run a Toonpunk game, I suppose!

Within, you’ll find:

The great city of Saskatoon! The marvelous metropolis that keeps the entire first world spinning. See its many districts; from the glittering ethereal heights of the walled city of Nanuen; to the deep and warm shadows of the Covered Market; to the decayed suburban nightmare of The Spaghetti. The city teems with mysteries, and every stone is worth turning.  

The science and history of a strange new world! What are the properties of The Ink? Learn how it has changed nearly every aspect of physics, biology, and theology. Here we record the barbarism of the Second American Civil War, and the era when humanity briefly grasped for a better world. See the strange technologies that have shaped the present day and learn the long, sad history of a world that couldn’t be saved even by a miracle such as this.

The heroes and villains of an extraordinary time. At the dawn of a new century, the wheels of history are turning once more. After an age of oppression, the American people are once again rising up to defy their corporate masters. There are over 20 richly detailed characters to discover. Meet the heroic revolutionaries driving the efforts, who may become your fast friends, friendly rivals, doomed mentors, or tragic enemies. Meet the villains and sickos whose avarice and complacency keep the world in misery. 

Unique and powerful enemies. Meet 12 elite enemies with their own histories, hunting techniques, and unique rules. Duel the enigmatic sniper Chiron and her mechanical lantern; wrestle with the unstoppable cyborg-nutcracker Piotr; fear the irredeemable archvillain Royal Blue, who can kill with a touch. These encounters will push players to the limits, or send them running for safety.

Strange tales from times to come. Across 4 short stories, chart the genesis of the new Onyx Age: a time of heroes and monsters, that is begging for someone just like you. You can’t save the world on your own...but you’re not alone!

So check it out! 

#cyberpunk #cartoon #worldbuilding #scifi writing #cyberpunk writing #Tabletop RPG

[toonpunk-game]

Toonpunk Second Edition: Available Now!

Well, brothers and others, rabbits and robots, the promised day has arrived. And true to my word, now you too - yes, you! - can play TOONPUNK: SECOND EDITION. How? By clicking this link! 

Less amateur, more underground; less prep, more punk-rock - this updated version of the cult cartoon/cyberpunk crime game features over 200 items, augments, doodles, and gags - and more new mechanics than I can shake a stick at! In case you missed the Dev Blogs, this new edition features:

Vehicles - You can drive around in your very own custom car or high-tech plane, customized to your taste. Or, if you like, you can PLAY as one. This is a wacky cartoon world we’re in, after all!

Gags - Complete your repertoire of tricks with a signature gag. Use They Went Thattaway to distract your enemies even when they’re breathing right down your neck; use Anvil Drop to instantly squash the toughest foe; use Costume Cutaway to change your clothes in the blink of an eye.

Legacies - Make a name for yourself in the criminal underworld, and create a reputation that precedes you. Become perennially, unshakably, silly, with the the Clown Shoes legacy; stay beneath the notice of the powerful with the Background Character legacy; spoof your way past any guard with the Pleasing Papers legacy.

Invasive Augments - Go beyond the limits of living bodies by using these rare and esoteric augments that will change your life forever. 

Pure Ink - Put a capstone on your criminal legacy with the grandest prize of all. Redraw yourself in your own perfect image; make a one-of-a-kind living weapon; draw a scion to be better than you ever were.

Some other stuff too - Look, there’s a lot in here! I can’t remember it all! I shoulda kept a list. Guess that’s an important lesson for next time. But you don’t gotta worry about that! All you gotta worry about is getting your friends, getting a copy of the Toonpunk: Second Edition PDF, and getting ready for the heist of the century!

What are you waiting for? The future needs you, toonpunk!

#cyberpunk #cartoon #Tabletop RPG #tabletop gaming

[toonpunk-game]

Second Edition - About to Release!

Hey hey, party people. It’s been a little while and it’s not been for nothin. All it took was one last push, one great moment of resolve - and now I can proudly announce to each and every one of you: Toonpunk 2nd Edition, the complete and final form of the Toonpunk core game, will be coming out soon. How soon is soon? June 15 - just a week from now! 

And it’s coming for the low low price of...absolutely nothing! That’s right: The PDF version of Toonpunk 2nd Edition is going to release for FREE. Not a demo version, not a first look - but the complete, unabridged work, in all its glory, will be absolutely free to everyone, forever.

In this book you’ll find: 

-A cuh-razy new setting where cartoons of all kinds - I’m talkin old-timey gag shorts, comic books, Japanese anime, those mascots that sell cigarettes to children - have come to life, and clash against an oppressive cyberpunk world. It’s the silly against the serious; the fantastic against the fatalistic - and the only way the world is ever gonna get better is with your help!

-A game that’s easy to learn and hard to master: it’ll never take you more than 15 minutes to learn everything you gotta know about how to play your character. You can do anything with the roll of just a few dice.

-Fast paced and cutthroat cartoon combat - use a huge array of weapons, gadgets, and gags to conquer all adversaries. Boil blood, cut off heads, put pies in faces, put ants in pants - direct your unsuspecting enemies off of cliffs, or stun them with a well-time kiss right on the lips. Wield things both real and imaginary and break every law of physics. 

-A wild and diverse portfolio of art and ideas: almost 20 artists, all of them some of the most creative people on the entire internet, gave this book their unique visions. There’s things in here that’ll turn your head and have you telling your friends - “Hey, get a load of this!”

All of this in just 214 pages - and all of this again, for absolutely free, just one week from now. Save the date - that’s June 15, 2023: a date that will live in infamy!

#tabletop gaming #cartoon #cyberpunk #Tabletop RPG

[toonpunk-game]

So, I just found this, and reading through a couple of the older lore drops... what was up with beekeepers in the 22nd century?

A fine question.

In the 21st century the climate change of the previous century came home to roost; the extinction of animals became not merely commonplace, but banal. In the 22nd century, most species of bees were in danger of extinction; by that point, the Freeze--the absolute dominion over all possible business ventures by The Company, enshrined through copyright law--had taken full effect. It was illegal to raise animals of any kind without a Company charter. Agricultural interests could make more honey, faster, through Ink Additive Manufacturing (IAM) than they could through traditional beekeeping methods. So the task of revivifying the bee populations fell to a small but determined band of guerilla beekeepers, who constructed their apiaries in the dark corners of the world, and donned carefully crafted suits that were one part protection and one part camouflage.

[toonpunk-game]

Vehicle Overview

WOO! It’s been a minute since my last post here. Well, I can tell ya, it’s because this post was really, really complex to write. We’re talking about some heavy concepts, not just about gameplay. Let me get into it here.

So when I first drafted the vehicle rules, I’d already put the finishing touches on toonpunk first edition. It was my intention, once upon a time, to release these as an expansion pack; but that expansion pack ballooned up into a whole thing, and then there was a few parts of the core book I wanted to change, and now it’s just part of second edition. In a sense I prefer that: releasing it as part of a core book keeps it from being bolted-on. Players won’t have to dip back and forth between books, and there’s (theoretically) not going to be any dangling rules contradictions.

Vehicles have their own statlines and traits, which you guys are already familiar with from the way everything else works. I’ll let the text speak for itself once the book drops, but let’s talk for a moment about the philosophy behind this section. The idea behind this section stemmed out of a gameplay concept for which I’ve gotten a fair bit of flak. That being the idea of the “van guy”. 

For as long as I’ve been developing toonpunk--even longer, actually, because I think this dates back to the first time I started playing roleplaying games--I was fascinated by the idea of the character who helps the crew tick along without being there on the frontlines. When you look at a typical roleplaying game setup everyone is some kind of hacker, gunslinger, ninja, wizard, or whatever. And those are all pretty exciting things to be, sure. 

But you look a little closer at any gang of heroes or outlaws, and who do you see standing just behind them?  You see Simon Pearson, Samwise Gamgee, Alfred Pennywise--someone who keeps the gang moving through their practical knowledge, while the “Heroic” stuff is mostly other people. Most of the time this critical supporting character stays back at the camp, or the lair, or wherever--so, in the case of a roving gang of cyberpunks, they are the “van guy”. 

Everyone seems to agree those characters kick ass. So why don’t more games let you play as them? Well, that’s what brings us to this. Read after the break for more.

The idea of a largely passive and supporting character, who helps the more combat-oriented characters mostly in a logistical and medical capacity, is something that really appealed to me. So the vehicular customization and functionality of Toonpunk grew up out of the idea that this character would have a customizable safe haven, where they help the other characters--being an in the sky, their invisible hand--who would spend most of any given game session watching and waiting, coming in clutch with some obscure skill when they’re needed most. In the book, this role is called “The Founder of the Feast”. 

My old co-conspirator pushed hard back on that character concept, categorically denying that anyone could ever find it fun. Me personally, I’m all about it. I love being kind of an invisible hand. Let me show you some of the tricks they get to play around with using the new vehicle section. On one hand, you’ve got things that let you support your teammates’ abilities, like this:

And then there’s some things that let you take center stage, like this.

But all of this is pretty simple. What made this part so difficult to write about? Well, because, simply put--it wasn’t enough, for me, for players to just drive cars. Toonpunk is a game about being a weird wacky character in an impossibly banal fucked-up world. One of the things I wanted--and this was another thing my old editor pushed back hard against--was for players to be able to play as talking cars and weapons. The hard part wasn’t drafting these rules on how vehicles would work; the hard part was figuring out how to integrate them into character creation. 

Well, I did that part. 

But then I had another, harder thing to do, which I haven’t actually done yet: which is figure out whether or not I actually should include this in the core manual. I like this idea a lot, mind you, there’s some fun stuff in here--we got acidic window-washer fluid, we got unhinging your grille and devouring people whole, we got doing really funny movements to tip-toe yourself through small places--but the core manual is already up to 210 pages and this’ll take on 30 more. So, for the last month and a half, I’ve been drafting, writing, and repeating this process in an attempt to make this thing slim enough to justify including in core but also robust enough to be worth doing.

And so far I’m not really satisfied with what I have. So this devlog ended up being late, and not having as much to show as I really would’ve liked. Sorry about that. But this does have a question, for all you out there in the audience.

Do YOU think this is worth putting into core, even if it beefs up the book? Or do you think this would be better served as a small supplement? I dunno, so...maybe you all do!

#game development #tabletop game #cyberpunk #Cartoons #cars

[toonpunk-game]

Endgame II: The New Augments

So let’s talk about augmentation--you know, that cyberpunk thing where you jam robot parts into your body. This is a big part of the genre, but more importantly it’s always been the big cornerstone of character progression in Toonpunk. Those of you who’ve played the game yourself may recall that there’s really no character reason to not jam yourself full of all the metal you feel like--no cyberpsychosis, no essence loss, nothing like that. This is very much by design. Maybe it’s a transhumanist thing, maybe it’s an autism thing, I dunno; but me personally, I never really felt like I’d have any adverse mental effects from sticking a bunch of cyborg parts in me. I mean, you look at all the tools humans use that are as close to being integrated into your body as they can possibly be--phones, earbuds, watches, even little things like pants pockets--and the worst things those machines really do to us is expose us to too much of other people. 

This isn’t gonna change in 2E. You can, and should, still jam as many fancy parts into your character as you feel like. The only obstacle you’ll ever have to worry about is EMP damage, which hits proportionately harder for every piece of cyberware you have in you. I have, it’s worth noted, added a few more augments which enable a few new playstyles; and a fair bit more which are actually geared to serve more narrative purposes than mechanical ones. Like these:

But these are just the tip of the iceberg. If you wanna see the really apeshit crazy new and game-changing stuff, I gotta tell you about invasive augments (after the break).

Invasive augments are probably the biggest new addition to toonpunk’s meta, eclipsing even living weapons in their importance. The idea is simple. As per the instructions of the game:

Wow! That’s a pretty heavy price to pay. Your immaculately minmaxed character build can be ruined for life by one of these babies. And to really show off just how important and consequential getting one of these installed is, each invasive augment’s stat block is significantly heavier than a regular augment’s, featuring a number of intimidating facts about them...

They’ve all got these weird esoteric names, and backstories rife with concerning implications about the creators, users, and the world around them. What could they possibly do that justifies this extraordinary cost?

Well, take a look.

Yeah, that sorta thing. The kind of things that’ll make their wielder nigh unto a god of the battlefield, able to do things that other people never even imagined possible. And this is just a few of them--aside from these, we got jaw-mounted flamethrowers that give free attack actions; microbomb injectors that let you explode peoples’ bodies into smokescreens; implanted axes that let you get guaranteed decapitations, and grapple to distant enemies; full-body shapeshifting technology; and a few other things besides! 

Is it worth it? Will your character risk it? You tell me. 

And the next time you see me, I’ll tell you about our new vehicle and vehicular combat systems. Stay tooned!

#cyberpunk #cartoon #Tabletop RPG #game development #eldritch

[toonpunk-game]

New in 2E: Endgame

Today I’d like to talk about the endgame that I’m introducing with second edition. 

One of the big problems I had with the first release of Toonpunk was a lack of ways to show you “made it”; when you play dungeons and dragons for example you can say my character is level 30, I’ve finished the game; there’s nothing left for me to do except retire this character, finish their story, and begin again”, but with Toonpunk there were no clearly delineated progress markers that players could tack their story onto. On one hand, this let stories kind of unfurl however people want it, but on the other hand that meant a characters story would often be meandering and aimless, and maybe wouldn’t even ever reach its end. Without a way for players to say “I’ve gotten this far with this character, they are at this point relative to the world they are in, this is what is left for them to achieve as people” there wasn’t a sense of direction that people really glommed onto.

So when I was making these revisions for second edition I thought to myself, “in the world of Toonpunk, what makes someone uniquely dangerous; what makes them a living legend?“ And that was itself a complicated question, because while there was a setting bible for Toonpunk, it wasn’t really integrated into the mechanics of the game. That was my intention at the time; but years of experience later, I’ve come to realize that by trying to make it setting-agnostic, I was hampering not only the game, but the players, with this philosophy. I didn’t realize at first how many people were attracted specifically to the fantasy on the cover of the book — which seems kind of like a silly thing to say now, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

So to answer the question of what makes someone uniquely dangerous IN THE Toonpunk fantasy, I had to look at the Toonpunk setting — and in that setting, there is a very clear open and shot answer: a person who is dangerous is a person with access to black ink and white paper. From that revelation, the new second edition endgame was born. It’s as simple as a simple gets: in second edition, the endgame is stealing pure black ink and using them to draw a new expression of your self onto reality. A character is at their “apex“ when they have taken for themselves the tools and equipment necessary scribble their image all over the world.

So what does that mean in practical terms? In brief: directions for GM’s to create new high stakes missions, and a few totally crazy rewards for finishing them.

Let’s start with some of the problems. Second edition includes a gallery of powerful enemies, collectively referred to as “the all county shit list“. Each of these characters is a fully developed antagonist ready for the GM to pull right out of the box and drop on top of their players. Each one has a powerful ability and unique fighting style guaranteed to make fighting them on one of a kind experience. Here’s some examples:

There’s no art for any of these and there might never be because art is expensive and I am a busboy. 

As of writing, these characters will not be included in the core manual; rather, they will be included in the toonpunk‘s guide to Saskatoon — the companion volume to core addition, which contains a wide variety of settings and characters built specifically for toonpunk. This book will be released simultaneously had no additional charge with toonpunk second edition; but the inclusion of the rogues is subject to change, if all you out there in the gallery would prefer to have them included in the core volume. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Now let’s talk about some of the prizes. What do you get for stealing black ink out from under these creeps’ noses? Well, I’ll let the book speak for itself!

The text that you see here is actually a little bit bare-bones. Looking at it now, I’d like to try and revisit the “Being of mass destruction” option and provide further stipulations for what it can do. Maybe I should add more?

But I’ll tell you what IS fully developed to my tastes: the system for creating a living item is a series of charts and point-buys that allow you to create a piece of gear — armor and weapons primarily — with custom-chosen stats and traits to meet/exceed any other item in the book. They ALSO have a personality, which grants them a unique ability...and a small list of things they’d like you to do, if you want them to perform to their fullest. A living item becomes a bit of a commitment to a certain playstyle in exchange for maximal rewards. Once again, I’ll let the text speak for itself. Here’s a sample of the living weapons’ unique abilities, and some of the personalities they can have.

I’ll hold onto the others until I’m ready to release Second Edition...if only because this blog post is already getting too long! I didn’t even get to talk about the new kind of augment yet. I think we’ll get to that one next time. Stay tooned!

#cyberpunk #game design #Tabletop RPG #devblog #cartoon

[toonpunk-game]

Excerpts from Tomorrow: I

Below you will find an excerpt from The Toonpunk’s Guide to Saskatoon, Toonpunk’s forthcoming lore book. This is a foundational passage to the Toonpunk mindset, and the world itself. I will let it speak for itself. 

History, Retcons, Copyrights, and Algorithms

Why do we write this down, you ask. We are an encyclopedia for aspiring criminals, why do we here furnish you with such a detailed historical account? The answer is because you have never seen it anywhere else in this country—never will see it anywhere else. If you grew up in this world, went to school and took a history class, you heard a story almost but not quite like this. It could have been one of several: perhaps you heard that I-day brought great rejoicing and bread-breaking, and there was peace on Earth; you may have heard that in a grand democratic order the United States voted to merge with Canada; or that there was some superheroic generalstatesman whose name presently eludes you, that saw the merger to fruition. All wrong, of course—not wrong in the way that history was wrong for most of human civilization, but meticulously wrong, hand-crafted wrong.  

Outside of our sad little archive, reconstructed from accounts of survivors and what scarce records survived, there is no such thing as history or culture; no art or collective unconscious. Each of these things was ground down to less than powder, and sold back to you piecemeal.

It works like this.  

In 2081, the Media Unspeakables solidified their ~six-way merger into Media. The monopoly first imagined by

Saint Walter had at last come to pass: every piece of corporate fiction in North America—books, movies, TV shows, radio plays—was united under an enormous corporate umbrella, overseen by with mechanical precision by a corps of bureaucrats. Then, any independent voice who grew large enough to rival even the most trivial of these programs—any internet shock jock, any vlogger with a cult—would get snapped up the very moment they became notable, with an offer they couldn’t refuse. By 2082 there was not even one pixel of one video game, not one note of music, not one line of dialogue in one viral video, that was not first put through Media’s apparatus. For a brief time, censorship was the most insidious act—a movement snuffed out here or there, a word or sentiment quietly banned in some small text.  

Then came the machine. A learning algorithm greater than any before it, it was a divine eye that surveyed each and every micro-second of Media’s vast empire. But it was only an algorithm—capable of making decisions, yes, but not a true artificial mind which could grasp their ramifications on any level but statistical. It saw all, knew all, but understood nothing—every second, it controlled yottabytes of ideas and sounds which it organized according only to engagement metrics. This machine—codenamed Organza-1—was the first Allahgorithm. By 2097—we cannot say exactly when—Media employed no managers, and producers’ only job was to own and spend money: all decisions on what was made, when it would be made, were optimized to posthuman perfection. For a brief moment there were still artists, actors, and directors; but by the turn of the century they, too, were outmoded: Media’s second Allahgorithm, Walter-1, produced more media at a greater volume than any crew of humans ever could, all of it optimized to generate ideal emotional responses.  

In 2105 there were no more artists, actors, directors, singers, writers, poets, rappers, rockers, no more anything. There were the algorithms and the people who owned them. The concert venues were reserved for holograms; the e-readers were showing you procedurally-generated novels; the video sites were showing you more lifestyles and gameplay footage and funny animals than any person could ever watch, and lifetimes’ worth were being made every moment. But it was of course not enough merely to own—it was necessary to ensure that nothing outside their ownership could ever emerged.  

If an artist tried for even one daring moment to make their name as anything, anywhere, then the very next day lawyers would descend upon them like locusts—for there were still lawyers, who used the byzantine nightmaremachinery of law against their employers, so that neither could be rid of the other despite the most ardent lobbying efforts. And these lawyers would come upon you with a hundred copyright claims, with settlements that would impoverish you for life; and then as the years dragged on they came with punitive damage claims and debt-slavery, then generational slavery, an always this—never death, never exile, never organ repo, only prison and slavery, because they had not yet wrung all the profit out of you that you that they yet might.

And that itself was not so horrible as what came next. For there to truly be nothing outside of Media’s domain, they had to not only lock down their market, but all conceivable markets—to commodify opposition which existed, then to create opposition in its place. It would have been a fool’s game to simply remove the company’s enemies, when they were worth so much more money alive. So the Allahgorithms studied, integrated, and imitated Media’s detractors as effortlessly as they had its sycophants. There could not be raised even one voice of dissent that was not itself a product—generated to make you mad, to make you dimly aware of things you hated (but never tell you what could be done about them), to impress upon you that yours was the one true worldview.  

In those days, though The Company had not yet taken shape, News/Media was already an informal arrangement; so it was not only the narratives of the past that were controlled, but the narratives of present as well. People were asked to pick between a dozen versions of reality, to find one which put them most at ease and agree upon it. This manufactured acceptance and manufactured derision both, competed with each other as rivals, though they were in truth the giant’s left and right hands.

Of course, they were each of them patently untrue—not even distorted or misrepresenting events as they unfolded, but inventing them wholecloth. On the very same day, three news outlets, all serving News/Media, could report wildly different stories on the very same day: to the anti-establishment punks, one paper would report that a senator had been shot and that the revolution was moments away; to the free-market apologists, another would say that the senate was passing a new bill to ban a certain regulation (which had itself been invented for the story’s own sake); to the liberals, safely ensconced in their Just World, a third would say that nothing of note was happening in the senate.  

There was no way to say which one was more true or false than any other: there existed hundreds of man-onthe-street gumshoes, hundreds of fact-checking and truthtelling websites and apps and channels and-and-and, all just as trustworthy as every other, and all invented wholecloth by News/Media’s unimpeachable inscrutable Allahgorithm. A common person had to simply grab one narrative and hold onto it for dear life. For all you knew, there was no senate.

And perhaps even this maelstrom of cultivated fiction could have been navigated by historians, some sort of truth reconstructed piecemeal, if not for News/Media’s last and most brilliant invention: the Retcon.  

If the entire world is digital, then it can be modified digitally. And though an entire empire can be created with nothing but a convulsion of the Allahgorithm, server space is still limited; Media still pays for their electricity; and it took an Allahgorithm a few watts more to create than to modify. Even in an age after artists, there was one last thread to be tightened—and so it was! All News/Media materials, being wholly digital, have been for two centuries now subject to alteration, deletion, and simultaneous versioning. And so certain things are periodically erased or twisted up: synthetic movie stars will have synthetic scandals, get in synthetic arguments and synthetic culture wars; movies will be removed from the internet without a trace, re-released moments later with subtle differences; a movie in Songhai will be cast entirely by black simulactors, a movie in China entirely with Chinese; a simulactor whose image has become unduly associated with an ideology will be blasted off the face of the Earth, and they shallgv in their entirety be replaced.  

Through it all, these changes shall not by a single soul be documented: what loyalist would dare, what rebel would bother, and who from either camp would be so foolish as to admit that they know, when debt-slavery under the yoke of copyright law awaits them?

As the very same day will have multiple conflicting realities, every story told will have a dozen versions or more, tailored to you by Walter-3’s unflinching eye: characters will look how it has predicted you want, say the things it has predicted you want, espoused the values it has predicted you want; and you who have grown up under Walter’s eye will want what it has been told you want, because your existence, your media diet, your worldview, is inextricable from the algorithm. You and your neighbors might watch the very same movie at the very same time and see two wholly different pictures because the algorithm has determined you have two different tastes, and without the man himself you will never be able to see the picture he has seen—you cannot just use a man’s credentials anymore like you once could, because this database of your tastes is the same as the database of your biometric markers; a computer can tell who you are, show only what the Allahgorithm has told it to show you.  

And here and there a crack may form: you, on your skinbook, on your smartphone, at your office, might for a moment find someone whose reality is distinct from yours (though of course, the people and opinions you are shown are curated as much as everything else). And the two of you will argue for a bit, and you might come to the conclusion—well documented, accredited by multiple respectable sources—that his way of thinking is backwards, that people like him are on the way out. Or maybe you will humor him, hear what he has to say, look at the things he’s been shown, at the things he believes, and then…you will change your mind, as you have a dozen times before, and the algorithm will detect your shifted attention, as the spider feels the softest little twinge on its web—and it will correct itself accordingly, to show you your new favorite thing.  

Of course, that’s only for daisies and below—the prolecameras, in the jargon du jour. Above them is the execameras—where you get live news, live stories, all clinging to a single narrative, nominally reflecting a single event. These are expensive; not paywalled, so much as payfortressed. If you can’t drop a cool hundo grand for a monthly sub then you’ll never get your hands on one of these. Here’s where they get real actual meatspace pundits doing actual shows and columns where they pick-apart and debate every aspect of the now. And what do the Execameras show? Peace on Earth and near local space. Poverty is always going down, quality of life is always going up, the war is always justified, Songhai is always dying.  

As if you hadn’t guessed, the execameras are every bit as falsified as the prolecameras—handed down by allahgorithms to pundits and anchormen who comment on the flawless reflections of a wholly imaginary world.

They are no nearer to reality than the most far-fetched prolecameras, but in their unity create that impression. Their true function is to massage the guilty minds of the machines’ highest-ranking stewards.

So there is no culture, no history, no art for any of us to understand—no touchstones with more than a single finger upon them. Each and every person alive in Canada today is not only alienated from “the” truth, but from the very concept of such a thing; it does not dawn on most people that something is deeply wrong, because they have been told from birth that all is well.  

Every now and again a particularly astute person may notice that something is awry. They may trust their memory more than their eyes, or may realize that too many things don’t add up. They may (if they somehow find the time) go searching for the root of the truths to which they subscribe, and stumble upon the byzantine maze of made-up newscasters citing made-up scientists’ made-up papers, and realize that there exists nothing outside of News/Media which attests the reality of News/Media. And they may, if they are well-adjusted for life in this world, dismiss themselves as overly excited—ask for a higher dose of antipsychotics and go back to their lives as easily as one goes back to bed after briefly starting.

And if they are not well-suited for life in this world, they end up just like you.

Toonpunks.

#cartoon #cyberpunk writing #tabletop gaming #game development #rpg

[toonpunk-game]

New in 2E: Character Legacies

Last time I said I’d talk about some of the new character progression stuff. Well, this is that. 

In Toonpunk, character progression is done entirely through inventory items: the more you steal, the stronger you get, simple as. Attributes are decided at character creation. While you can rearrange the way you’ve spent your attribute points, they don’t increase over time. Gameplay-wise this served to simplify progression by getting rid of experience point systems, which I personally find cumbersome and tedious. Narratively, this helped to drive home the idea that you were in a hyper-materialistic society, where a person’s worth depended more or less entirely on what they owned. I liked it.

I was surprised, then, when a lot of my players said the same thing: they wanted the feeling of their characters progressing outside of their inventories. They wanted to feel like there was something innate to them, that wasn’t measured by their equipment. I guess I can understand that in the abstract sense. So, over the last few years, I turned my attention to that. 

I settled on two things. One, I came up with some ways for players to transcend their already considerably high ceilings with attribute increases and unique magical abilities--we’ll talk about those later. The other idea I came up with is significantly more understated--but also, if you ask me, way more fun and interesting. This was the idea of legacies: abilities which yield no hard-and-fast mechanical advantage, but which are all extremely useful from a role-playing perspective. I’ll let the book speak for itself here.

“Legacies are skills that your characters acquire with time and experience. They don’t change their stats or abilities in the strictest sense, but do affect the things you roleplay: the way your character interacts with the world, and the way other characters will react to them. A legacy might be a strange bit of knowledge, an unusual habit, or a unique aesthetic. 

Ordinarily you only gain legacies through successful missions. You can choose 1 legacy from this list every time your character’s cumulative money stolen reaches a new hundred-thousand mark, up to your first million—for a total of 10. There is no restriction on which legacies you can choose; they exist purely for your own amusement, as a thing you can point to during roleplay scenarios and say “I can do that, here’s the receipt”.”

The legacies ended up being pretty diverse. I don’t remember how many of these were suggested by other people, but I remember that I came up with most of them myself. I know it’s unprofessional to just drop all of them here in one big list, but unprofessional is how the giraffe do. See the complete list of legacy perks, after the break. These are exactly as they appear in the game; but I have left some special behind-the-scenes notes in parenthesis.

Appetite: It’s true that most food these days is a mixture of paper pulp and cricket meat—but you know where to look to find the places that slip between the cracks of public notice. Places where they use real soy sauce to dress their cricket meal, or sell smack out the back door. You also technically know where you can go for real meat and veg, but—come on, on your budget? You know where to find every good restaurant in town. You also know which ones are fronts for organized crime.

Animal Lover: Do you like wild animals? Do you not particularly like them, but at least understand them? Do you hate them, but respect their simplicity and savagery? Are you one yourself? Then this perk is for you—godspeed to all you fuckers who adopt tarantulas and raccoons and bears or whatever.

Wild animals won't attack you unless you attack them first. You may use your acting or perception skill on wild animals to attempt to direct them away from their present location, or gain safe ingress into their territory.

Australian: No matter how often you cuss, it will never be seen as especially rude or unusual.

Background Character: You were born to be a supporting character. Important people’s eyes just drift over you; you may as well be set dressing.

As long as you are dressed appropriately, anyone who makes more than 600 grand a year just kind of assumes that you work for them.

(IIRC me mate Andrew came up with this one. I can’t be more specific than that because he thinks being associated with this book would be bad for his career.)

Celebrity Impersonator: Maybe you just have one of those faces. Maybe you have a certain gift for makeup. Whether you were born with it or worked for it, either way everyone agrees: you do a killer impression of whoever-it-is. Choose a celebrity from your current game’s setting. You can do a really good impression of that person; you can use your acting skill to convince other people that you are that person. At the GM’s discretion you may be required to spend time (up to 10 minutes in-game) prepping your appearance.

Clown Shoes: Despite conventional wisdom, waving a gun around doesn’t always make people take you seriously. Sometimes it’s just not gonna happen, full stop! Maybe it’s not a literal pair of clown shoes (though it also might be) but something about you keeps people from taking you seriously. Anyone who is not predisposed to react with suspicion towards you will habitually underestimate you, mock you, laugh at you, and otherwise treat you as though you are a goofy guy.

(This represents my favorite part of legacies: the idea that they might not necessarily be “Good” in a vacuum but can help to shore up a character concept, and can even be useful in the right circumstances.) Day Laborer: You’ve had a lot of jobs; you’ve even kept some of them, sometimes even on purpose. In your wide range of experiences you’ve come to realize that most offices of a certain kind are set up a certain way. Now you can navigate them all...nearly equally well.

When you enter a corporate or professional setting for the first time, you can accurately—we’ll say 10% margin of error—guess who the boss is, how many of the staff are on site, where they keep their tools and records, and where the bathrooms are. If you use an industry-specific lingo that the GM does not know, you can at your sole discretion explain it, and hit the dab on them.

(I think Andrew came up with this one too.)

Dring King: Your liver was either made in Heaven, or in a lab. It takes stronger booze than anyone’s ever made to put you down for the count. You can’t get drunk unless you feel like it, no matter how strong the drink is.

Drip King: The art of being a drip king is a difficult one that only a few people will ever truly master. You must have a posture that changes like the wind and a demeanor harder than steel. If you do not have the will and poise to wear the most ostentatious clothing, then your clothing will wear you. Simply being known as a true drip king is as great a reward as being one itself. You can wear any clothes or armor without looking underdressed. This does not exempt you from suspicious person rolls, it just exempts you from lookin like an asshole.

Fanbase: Are you a street preacher with silver pipes? A musician or comedian who does a killer 5 minutes on the redbands? Whoever you are, you put asses in seats—all you gotta do is flash those pearly whites and a gaggle of insufferable motherfuckers will come to do your bidding. During downtime or tension encounters, you may summon 1d3 simps to your location. They take 5 minutes to arrive, are all ugly as fuck, and have no skills, but will carry your stuff.

(”1d3 Simps” is my favorite phrase I’ve written for this game.)

Ferrogenic: Most people with numerous augments begin to look stilted, blocky, and uncomfortable. Not you, though: the more of your body you replace, the more you look like yourself. What can you say? Some people were just born to be reborn. You never wind up looking ugly or off-puttingly artificial no matter how many augments you have or in what combination.

(A lot of cyberpunk media treats augmentation of a person as a bad, dangerous, or otherwise unpleasant thing. Me personally, I don’t buy into that. Maybe I’m just biased like, me and half my gang have some kind of horrible chronic ailment and we’re all autistic, but I’ve always been of a mind that robotic parts are badass. This is one of the very few things that I would say makes the toonpunk setting a nice-ish place to live. As long as you crack the DRM on your parts, obviously.) 

Freakish Drug Tolerance: You don’t tolerate drugs so much as you adore them. Through grueling practice, you’ve learned how to bring yourself up or down through sheer force of will; at this point, you smoke just because you like the taste.

Drugs only cause you to hallucinate, get hyped, or space out, when you feel like it. Drugs which affect you in any other way still take effect as normal.

GangStar: When people ask you’ll probably say it comes naturally. But it took you so many hours, so many bullets, and so much practice to get this right. You can fire a gun while holding it sideways and still hit your target.

Gentle Caller: Most people give hookers a bad rap. You’re not one of those people. Maybe you’re a colleague, a friend, or a relative; but it’s known all around town that you understand them, and they understand you.

Red Light workers can always tell you're not a cop, serial killer, or other sicko. Whether they trust you, per se, is another story; but they can always tell you’re not those specific kinds of predators. The idea that you might actually be one of those things is not something we shall here entertain.

(I don’t like to editorialize much Out-of-character, but this is one of those times. There’s a few hard-and-fast things I will say you, as a player, oughtn’t do; the only other time I remember doing this is in the lorebook, when I tell GMs not to use the disabled rights advocate as a villain.) 

Good Cook: Before you got into the crime game, the odds of you ever getting to work with a real side of beef were vanishingly low. Now that you’ve gotten the chance you sure as hell won’t waste it. Any food you prepare will be better than most people would be able to do with the same facilities and ingredients.

(This one is very popular.)

Good with Kids: In the year 2305, it’s really unusual for people to be good with kids. There’s no way to explain why in just a few sentences; go read the lore book until you can fill in the blanks.

You’re good with kids. If the GM introduces some obnoxious rapscallion youth who insults you, demands some kind of service from you, or otherwise gets in your way, show them where on your character sheet you’ve written this perk; you may then tell them, and their snot-nosed plot device, to fuck off.

Hammerspace: It’s not a “pocket dimension” in the strictest sense of the term; rather, you practically have a whole dimension in your pockets. Some might say that’s good enough. 

You can store a large array of odds and ends on your person. You may carry an arbitrarily vast number of any items which cannot plausibly be considered equipment or weapons: this includes office supplies, snack foods, lint, toiletries, tissues, mixtapes, finger fidgets, etc.

Handyman: It’ll take more than ten guns to save you from a man with a ladder. You may produce an 8-foot-tall ladder with a maximum load of 350 pounds per rung. It does not take up space in your inventory. It may be carried over your shoulders; doing so slows you down as though it were an incapacitated character.

(This is actually the second perk I came up with. The following perk, high roller, is the first one.)

High Roller: Night clubbing is a pretty tight-knit scene; it’s easy to get known as a person of means if you dress the right way, shake the right hands, and roll up with the right tunes.

You can get into any night club in town without paying the cover charge. 

Hipster: You were uncool before it was uncool. Or maybe cool before it was cool. I don't know, but you do. Apparently. 

Anyone who could be considered 'mainstream' finds you difficult to get along with, but you find it easy to blend in with any kind of counter culture movement, and make friends within them with ease.

Hyperfixation: You are in some bizarrely deep and specific fandom. You might be able to recount the entirety of the Rah Rebellion, or tell everyone about how Novashout is actually the hero of the Transmorphers. Whatever the case is, you know too much, and not many people care. 

When you find someone who shares this specific interest, you can forge an instant friendship. All other people may be mildly amused.

Iron Stomach: When you grow up eating Saskatonian street food, you learn pretty quick that there’s worse things in life than gutter oil. While other people might cringe or gag in the face of mystery meat, cardboard salad, or vixen bean dip, you laugh and ask for seconds!

You can eat and enjoy just about anything that isn’t literally poisonous.

(A lot of cyberpunk GMs enjoy describing miserably shitty food in detail. Thought it’d be fun to have players turn that on their head and be like “actually this shit is great.”)

Lackey: Anyone can be a lackey: temps, simps, gimps, or wimps. Whether you bullied, seduced, cajoled, browbeat, or (ha, as if) paid them, your lackey will dutifully follow you on your escapades, carrying your stuff with him for as far as you need—at least, until his band takes off.

You have a lackey who follows you around and carries your stuff for you. He can carry up to 2 duffel bags full of stuff, plus a small, compact, or equipment item in his hands. The lackey has no skills and cannot enter guarded areas. He will die if anyone shoots him and run away if threatened. If your lackey dies or runs away you can get a new one at no further cost.

(You can get a lot out of this one.)

Motherfucker, Bad-ass: Insert Samuel L Jackson reference here.

Nobody doubts your ability when sizing you up for a job. Passers-by and petty crims can tell you are not to be fucked with. Nobody will ever attempt to snatch your wallet unless they literally want to die.

Motherfucker, Sexy-ass: Insert Prince reference here.

You have really good sex. Everyone who lays with you agrees.

Motherfucker, Ugly-ass: Insert Pete Buttigieg reference here.

Most people are visibly repulsed at the sight of you. They end conversations with you as quickly as possible—by giving you what you want if you have a high acting score, and by shunning you if you have a low acting score.

Mystery Species: You might be an anime mecha, but those things on your head make you look sort of like a giraffe…then again, you could just be a human in a costume. Are you very well drawn or very poorly drawn? Nobody but you can tell for certain, and that’s often to your benefit.

People will presume you are whatever species they like most, until told otherwise.

Niche Microcelebrity: The secret to microcelebrity is finding your niche. When you look on the internet, there’s plenty of Asians, crossdressers, dog-lovers, and pop-leftists; but there’s only one crossdressing Asian dog-loving pop-leftist, and that’s the goal.

Name a subculture. Members of that subculture often recognize you for one thing you did online at some point in your past.

(Shoutout to you-know-who.)

Notorious hustler: You have a reputation, deserved or undeserved, as a trickster, cheat, and con artist.

Characters who only know you by reputation will refuse to play games with you, turn their backs on you, loan you money, take food you offer them; and will always assume you are lying.

(This is another “not-good” one that can still be really great if you wanna play like, a Han Solo type.)

Pharmacist: Put your chemistry lessons to good use and you’ll really put the harm in pharmacist!

You know where to get or how to manufacture specific chemicals not listed in the Drug portion of this book. If you are left alone in a pharmacy you can actually make them yourself.

Pleasing Papers: As a responsible member of society, you keep your papers (forged or otherwise) in good order in case you need to go somewhere. Yes, yes, we may be living in a nightmarish police state where the powers that be can stop, frisk, assault, maim, molest, and murder us whenever they want—but think of how much worse it is over there!

You can get through any public security checkpoint without incident. This includes national borders, police dragnets that are not specifically looking for you, and general purpose security checkpoints. This does not allow you to enter locations restricted to the general public.

Preferred Client: Someone considers you preferred clientele: they owe you, or they like you, or you’re just a good tipper. It’s no trouble at all for them to run the odd package from A to B on your behalf. 

Once per day you can enlist some underground couriers to carry a package for you from any public place, to any public place, at no charge.

(This one’s really good for showmen and schemers.)

Press Pass: These days there’s no actual journalists, not even yellow rags—but not many people are wise to that. You can finesse your way past most bouncers with some laminate and a lanyard.

You can get into high-profile social venues such as galas, auctions, and parties so long as nothing flagrantly illegal is taking place. If you are thrown out of a venue, you will not be able to re-admit yourself using your press pass. This does not permit entry into closed affairs: private islands, secret society meetings, slave auctions, gatherings of the church of Moloch, bingo nights, etc.

One of Those Faces: Maybe you were born with it. Maybe you’re, uh...you know, that guy, from, uh—no, no, not that guy, the other guy, from college! No— wait, yes, him, that’s him. That’s you! Wait, no, that’s not you? Not important. Point is you have one of those faces that people know they’ve seen before. The kind that just sort of eases itself into your subconscious and gets mixed up with a hundred others.

People who have never met you can be easily convinced that they once knew you in passing; IE school, an old job, a large church congregation. People who have met you only in passing will struggle to describe you. People who had special occasion to take notice of your face, IE witnessing you committing a crime, will still be able to describe you fairly well.

Really good at accents: When someone tells you “Do a British accent” you have to tell them “Be more specific”. Through osmosis or rigorous study, you have learned the many ways in which your native language sits on foreigners’ tongues. A useful tool for many; a neat party trick for all. Name a country in your game’s current setting. While speaking your mother tongue, you can flawlessly imitate that country’s entire array of regional accents. You may take this perk multiple times, each time naming a different country.

Rock God: It doesn’t take much to be a rock god these days. Most people have never heard a real instrument, and if you rock up with anything like one—a handpan, a harmonica, or god willing a real guitar—you can spellbind half the bodies on the block. Careful you don’t get it confiscated; vagrancy calls are about the only thing the plainclothes answer these days.

You may play an instrument of your choice. If you play it at a public venue it will be at capacity after 1 hour. If you play it on the street you may attract a crowd of 1d10 people to your location for every minute you spend playing, up to a maximum of 40 people. You may busk and generally raise a ruckus, but you may not take paying gigs: selling out is for chumps.

Rock Snob: A good set of ears is about as rare as a good set of hands. With the retcons being what they are, you have to be ready for a redband rodeo every time you want a decent groove—if you can hold onto it, a good library is worth more than pure black.

You know every good song by every cool band, even the recent stuff by obscure indie artists. If there’s a col band in town, you know where they are and how to get there.

Signature Outfit: Everyone who's in the know, knows you. 

Designate a specific piece of armor or clothing. As long as you're wearing it, everyone will recognize you. Anyone who claims to be you and isn't wearing it, or isn't wearing it quite right, will be scoffed at, dismissed, or even met with hostility.

Social Smoker: You have a winning smile and a fancy ribbon on your packet of choice. You might candidly imply—perhaps even truthfully—that your cigarettes contain leaves, if you can imagine it. No red-ish-blooded person can refuse your simple request, when you are so earnest and your need so dire.

You can bum a light from anyone with a lighter, even people who are predisposed to dislike you. 

Solomid: The most impressive skills are the ones that don’t look that impressive until you’ve tried them and failed. Most people who see you strut your stuff will probably sneer and call you names; but the ones who know—oh boy will they know.

You are freakishly good at one video, dice, or card game of your choice. You automatically win any games against ordinary players; against similarly competitive players, you may resolve the contest any way you and the GM agree is fit.

Stank: So maybe you’re a skunk with a nervous heart. Maybe this is actually quite a fetching fragrance on your homepage. Maybe you play Warhammer. However you explain it, whether it’s your fault or not, just about everyone you meet prefers to be well upwind of you.

You smell so bad that people prefer to avoid you altogether. If there is anyone else in your party that an NPC can talk to instead of you, they will do so.

(I dunno how this one is gonna be used but I know it’s gonna be rad.)

Tabletop Game developer: You are ontologically disgusting; a symbol of a declining species. Everyone agrees you should have been aborted. You are worse than a serial rapist made of poop.

You can never gain any money. People will stop in the street to spit on you and recoil in horror if you make eye contact. If you dare to open your mouth in the presence of your betters, they will kill you instantly and no jury will convict them.

(”Serial rapist made of poop” is also one of my favorite phrases I’ve written for this game.)

Truly Unphotogenic: Some people just weren't meant to be photographed, and you suffer just such a curse. It doesn't matter how attractive you are in real life, in every photo you look like a grisly, ghoulish parody of yourself. Maybe you always sneeze, or just don't know how to smile on cue.

When viewing a photo of you, viewers will never immediately recognize you, and must be convinced that truly is you.

Unionist: “Taxi” is a euphemism. “Union” is a euphemism. And “unionist” is a double euphemism. What for? If you have to ask, you’re not meant to know. And if you do know, don’t ask.

You can get a taxi anywhere on short notice, unless you’re like, really out in the sticks.

Where the Bodies are Buried: Ah, they must have you mistaken for someone else. You weren’t at the robbery, you didn’t stack those bodies—you were in you-know-where with mister so-and-so, and not to name any names but you happen to know that he was there with you-know-who—yes, them, and your associate is prepared to divulge that information in the event of your untimely demise. Yes, yes, of course you will overlook their mistake, it’s only fair.

Name a character in a position of authority. They are unwilling to act against you: you know some information that would greatly inconvenience them. Take a moment to explain what information this is, how you came to learn it, who of importance would care, and why. Remember: simply having proof that they committed some atrocity or another isn’t enough. The “anger of common people” is a myth to the powerful. It has to be something that would specifically anger people of comparable status.

___

Alright, that was every legacy in the base game. Do you have a favorite? Do you know how you might use some of the stranger ones to your advantage? Reply below. Next time, I’ll talk about the new endgame mechanics--drawing your own cartoon helpers, and redrawing yourself to be better than you ever were before. If you wanna hear more...stay tooned!

#cyberpunk #cartoon #tabletop gaming #rpg #game dev

[toonpunk-game]

Hey your page is down, not a lot of it is archived in the wayback machine and i liked the lore in them and would like to have the maps that were there, is there any posibility thatyou can get it back up or have the download links for them?

Well the short answer is I’m not sure. The long answer is: I deadass didn’t know anybody was reading all that shit. I figured I’d just put all the lore in a PDF and let it fly one day, and that’s still the plan. The maps--I dunno, maybe I can put them back up. 

[toonpunk-game]

Road to 2nd Edition

Hey everybody. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted something here—because, simply put, there was no more that needed saying. Toonpunk went out the door, it was a very modest success, I posted some lore updates, and then I turned my attention towards other things. I’ve kept myself very busy the last few years in many ways, including a slew of game design projects—some of which already saw publication, and some of which are so ludicrously expensive that a modest success just isn’t gonna pay for em. I didn’t want to go back to kickstarter, so making money for those is most of what I’ve been doing.

Since the debut of the original toonpunk I made a few little content modules for my own use, in line with my original vision for a product line. And, starting about a year ago, I had a pretty shocking realization: as much as I loved it when it came out, the me of 2022, doesn’t like the game I made in 2017. There were a lot of little things that I felt were lacking, or insubstantial, or not very funny, or maybe a little clumsy mechanically. Plus, its politics stank with the naivite of a 21-year-old liberal who hadn’t yet discovered the golden path to Marxism. So, I started work on a simple project: integrate a lot of the modules I’d made for my own amusement, get some more art, rewrite the flavor text, and release the package as Toonpunk 2nd Edition. 2npunk, if you will.

I’ll be keeping a dev diary here to let you all know how it’s coming along. To fill you in on the new stuff. I’ll be posting the whole finished product here one day, and here’s the first piece of news: it’s going to be absolutely free at point of purchase, with a pay-what-you-want option if you just really feel like you gotta gimme some money. Maybe pessimistically—I say realistically—I’ve just given up on the idea that this game is ever gonna make a dime. But I think it can keep a lot of people entertained, so that’s what I’m gonna angle towards. More on that after the break.

So on that note I’d like to talk about one of the smaller changes I made, that’s also turned out to be one of the more expensive and creatively satisfying ones. In the original Toonpunk book, there’s a list of example player characters near the back. These include statlines and gear recommendations for people who want to play specific kinds of characters. It was—to put it generously—done with the resources I had at the time, and it shows.

Look at that. Very humdrum. There’s a fair bit of information there but it all kinds of blends together and it doesn’t really grab the imagination. One of the first things I learned, selling this book store-to-store across America, is that—simply put—people like pictures. For whatever reason I didn’t realize how important illustrations are to making an idea seem tangible in the reader’s imagination. So I knew, going into this,  I wanted to splurge a little bit and make the player character templates really sparkle. I wanted each one to have more space, more items, and most importantly more style. So, without further ado, here are 5 of the 9 that are included in the full game.

Each one is dripping with style and character. With almost all of these — notable exceptions being the field boss and the big guy  — I basically just handed the archetype description and a few notes (needs to be carrying this kind of weapon, needs to have this kind of build) to the artist and told them go apeshit. That’s why there’s all these diverse and exciting styles on display here. The only overriding artistic decision I came down really hard about is that I wanted them all to be in monochrome. I like grayscale art, a whole helluva lot; I think it lets a line artist’s work really shine. Plus, you can color it in however you want.

I’ll be back later to talk about some of the changes to character progression —which now involves managing your character’s growing reputation, to get a bunch of special perks. If you like what you’ve seen so far...stay tooned!

#tabletop gaming #game design #Cartoons #cyberpunk

[toonpunk-game]

GMs only 1: Some Basic Characters

Psst! Hey, this post is for GMs only: specifically, it’s a bunch of advice on how to use the characters outlined in my previous post about characters. We’ll be posting these separately, so as not to ruin the surprise for our readers--who definitely exist, there are definitely more than 2 of, and are not at all figments of my imagination brought on by my desperate desire for acknowledgement by someone, literally anyone, who is not one of my parents.

BEING PAPA MALORN

Papa Malorn never wanted to be a mob boss. In fact, he wanted to be a police officer when he was younger. The bombing changed him forever: he spent his youth on a quest for revenge, and when it was over he was a hard man with an empire at his command. He started down the road to infamy on the day his parents’ killer was sentenced: his name was Bartosz Juspeczyk, and he was innocent.

Thomas knew William Hackerschmidt killed his parents: while in the hospital, Hackerschmidt visited him and revealed his affiliation with the Zamboni crime family—who, he claimed, had masterminded the Malorns’ deaths for refusing to enable the Zambonis’ black market shipping. While Hackerschmidt extended an offer of employment, Thomas rebuffed him harshly. Three days later, Juspeczyk was falsely sentenced to death; and Thomas was livid when the District attorney categorically refused to re-examine the case. That was when Thomas resolved to take justice into his own hands—and though it took him decades, he eventually earned it.

The specifics of his career need not be dwelt upon. What must be understood is that to him, crime was only ever a means of revenge: everything he did, he did to hurt the Zamboni family. He attacked their members and burned their businesses; he founded a gang of his own, and steadily grew it into an empire; and he even funded Ariel Levitt’s mayoral campaign.

Now, two years after destroying the family, he looks at his empire as more of a business than anything else. He does not really consider himself a mafioso, even though that is what he is. If asked, he will describe himself as an anarcho-capitalist: he provides services that the government cannot be relied upon for, and does well by doing good. His hatred and distrust of the established system is so great that he truthfully believes this: in his eyes, his augmentation smuggling is a perfectly reasonable alternative to expensive legitimate channels; and his protection rackets ensure safety that the police and fire departments can’t or won’t provide.

AS AN ALLY OF THE PLAYERS

Papa Malorn is a simple man with simple rules: “if you don’t interfere with my business, I don’t kill you.” Players will find him to be amicable and open-minded. While he fiercely defends his employees and those he is paid to protect, he is unusually moralistic for a mob boss—to the point that he has made several non-competitive decisions regarding other criminal organizations in Saskatoon for the sake of keeping his employees out of harm’s way. That being said, he is also a man of ambition—and he fully intends to run the city one day.

He is an ideal source of employment for players who are embroiled in the underworld, but not necessarily wicked people. Malorn might hire them to do something as morally grey as foil an arson attempt by a rival gang, or bust up a drug dealer who has been dealing to children. Perhaps he might even be called upon to provide manpower for the players’ heist, or discretely leverage his connection to Ariel Levitt to make key evidence against the players disappear.

AS AN ENEMY OF THE PLAYERS

As simple as he is to have as an ally, Malorn is even simpler to have as an enemy. There are several behaviors he considers worthy of enmity: specifically stealing from or bringing harm to his friends, employees, or protectorates. If someone interferes with his business then he will, quite simply, try to destroy them. He will not beat around the bush, and he will not take his time: as soon as he learns who has wronged him, and where they can be found, he’ll send a few lads over with pistols and pipes to stove their head in.

If the players should prove better than average at resisting his henchmen, Malorn has several other tricks up his sleeve: he will hire mercenaries or other toonpunks to dispatch them, and if all else fails he’ll show up and do some ass kicking himself.

BEING WALKER STONE

Being Walker Stone is a very simple thing: be hardnosed, be unyielding, and be singularly devoted to the greater good. Despite his past as a villain, he means what he says about his motivations and his intentions: he opposes crime and wrongdoing. Do not mistake him for a Javert, however: his only goal is to ensure the health and well-being of as many people as possible, and he sees the law as the most efficient way to do it. It is nothing but a tool to him, and if it stops being the best way to ensure safety in Saskatoon, he will bend or even break it.

It is this fact that has placed several skeletons deep in his closet for the enterprising player to find. He has broken several major regulations during his time as commissioner, and he keeps these secrets buried deep—though perhaps not deep enough to evade keen-eyed investigators. First and foremost, he has cheated his continuity test: by recording the answers he gives on the test and leaving them as a coded note to himself in his journal, he has been able to successfully create the illusion of being identical between incarnations, regardless of how each one changes over time—an illusion that has allowed him to maintain his office even between deaths.

His second great secret—though this one is far less actionable—is that he has a very low opinion of Mayor Levitt, and considers him a mere pawn in his plans for the city: a smiling face and trustworthy image to which he can affix himself, and nothing more. Unbeknownst to him, Levitt thinks much the same—and is in fact a secret criminal kingpin, who cleverly uses Walker to further his own nefarious designs. A clever GM can leverage this dynamic numerous ways.

As a character, Walker is quiet and thoughtful—he likes to have as much information as possible before committing to any action, no matter how minor. When he speaks, he will be to-the-point and blunt, perhaps even standoffish; he does not like to repeat himself, because he is secretly ashamed of his lilting Southern drawl. Bear this in mind when writing dialogue for the character.

AS A FRIEND OF THE PLAYERS

Walker Stone, even though he is a stubborn police officer, is more likely to be a friend of the players than the Mayor. Despite running on the same anti-crime platform, he is not above cutting corners in the name of justice: he will tolerate vigilantes, spies, or thieves working in the common interest (but never admit so, obviously). If the players are particularly outspoken against organized crime, or even a particularly immoral corporation, Stone might even contract them for work the police cannot legally handle—though he will no doubt insist that the operation remain bloodless, and that the player characters minimize collateral damage.

He might be a valuable asset to player characters who work for justice, even if they use slightly illegal methods. As a GM, you might have him deprioritize ongoing investigations into the players’ capers, or deliberately slow police response times to their crime scenes. However, it is easy to lose his loyalty, and difficult to maintain it: if the players begin killing police officers, Stone will turn on them in a heartbeat; and it is entirely possible that a nefarious enemy might uncover his connection to the players and take measures to have Stone ousted from his position.

AS AN ENEMY OF THE PLAYERS

For murderous or chaotic players, Walker Stone is a dangerous foe. He does not abide killers, anarchists, or rabble-rousers. He does not despise their crimes per se, but rather what they represent: criminals like these are a threat to his vision of a safer Saskatoon. He does not take his work personally, but nevertheless pursues it with the compulsive obsession of a perfectionist. If the players earn his ire, they will find him to be ruthless, and utterly implacable: they can expect the police to shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. No matter how many times they kill him he will keep returning to command, more determined than before. Killing him will prove borderline impossible—removing him from power will be much easier for your players to attempt, in that it will merely be very difficult.

[toonpunk-game]

Fluff Updates 4: Some Core Concepts

Well, it’s time for another one of these. We’re going to do a little housekeeping, first and foremost: we’re going to show you the currency of the world--the rainbow-colored Chromatic Dollar; the inkbloods, whose condition of is spoken of seldomly and somberly; and, rather belatedly, Toonpunks themselves! What is a ‘toonpunk’, how is it different from a ‘cyberpunk’ or a ‘steampunk’, and why would anyone want to be one? Read on and find out!

The Chromatic Dollar

If you’ve been in the open population for any length of time, you’ve probably seen or heard about the Chromatic Dollar—usually called “CDs” or “Hands”. This is the currency of the world today—not the only one, of course, but definitely the most important one. Almost everywhere you’ll ever go, hands are the preferred legal tender: you’re going to get paid in them, and odds are you are going to steal quite a few. So, for those of you who don’t already know, time to get yourselves learnt!

The CD is an asset-backed currency—which means that in theory, each bill represents a fixed quantity of ink. However, it’s not quite so simple as that (get used to that phrase, newcomers). Rather than being directly traded at a depository for ink, most CDs contains ink in themselves: each dollar is woven out of fabric, and tinted by being immersed a watered-down mixture of colored ink. When submerged in cold water, this ink can be drawn out of the bill, leaving it blank. As you may recall, inkish life needs a regular infusion of ink to survive. What this means is that chromatic dollars are, in fact, literal meal tickets: normal civilians can immerse them in cold water to bleed the ink out of them, creating a mixture that is substantial enough to maintain an inkish life form, but is not strong enough to be classified as a hazardous material.

Of course, even that is not quite so simple. Of the 7 CD denominations of CD—White, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Red, and Black—only 5 actually contain ink within them. The white and black CDs do not actually contain any ink at all, due to respectively being worth very little and being worth a really great big bunch. White bills are the “single unit” denomination—they represent precisely one “CD”. They are not actually dyed, and are simply desaturated colored bills. Their value comes from the fact that they can be traded in bulk to the Morbux cartel reclamation facilities in exchange for bills of greater worth. They are often used as a baseline currency for small transactions—specifically as tips in retail or service industries.

Yellow bills are the smallest denomination which actually contain ink. They each contain approximately 1/1000 of a milliliter of ink, and are worth 500 CDs. Other denominations are Green (1000 CDs, or 1/200 of a milliliter); blue (5000 CDs, 1/100); purple (10000 CDs, or .2 milliliters); and red (50000 CDs, or .5 milliliters). Black bills, like white bills, do not contain any ink in themselves; but unlike white bills, are worth such a ridiculously high amount that it is actually impossible to store that much ink in a single bill. Specifically, a black bill is worth an entire liter of ink, or 200,000 green bills—a whopping50 million CDs. Black bills are basically never put into circulation—they were only invented so that governments and mega-corporations would have an easier time arranging bulk ink transfers between each other. Instead of physically procuring and delivering ink en masse, they could simply transfer bills (or credit for a bill, more accurately) and redeem them with their bank of choice.

History of the Chromatic Dollar

The Chromatic dollar was introduced into circulation by Black Sea Banking in 2090, 2 months after the Frontier Development Bill permitted the production and exchange of company-owned currencies. While frontier companies were the primary beneficiaries of this provision (since it allowed them to reestablish the “company store” of bygone eras) BSB was the first major company to introduce private bills for widespread circulation. A limited run of black, red, and (now-defunct) orange bills were distributed to several of BSB’s partners in lieu of liquid ink; and then, after this initial success, BSB allowed its inkish employees to receive a portion of their salary in CDs instead of their normal currencies. The option proved enormously popular, since it allowed inkish persons to sustain themselves without making trips to dedicated ink depositories. Demand steadily grew, until an inordinately successful write-in campaign garnered 16.5 million signatures imploring BSB to introduce the CD into public circulation. After drafting the exchange rates, BSB began printing chromatic dollars for public use in 2092—and it was all uphill from there.

Now, just over 200 years later, the CD is the most common currency in local space. It’s traded on all civilized worlds, and a number of the uncivil ones as well. Wherever electronic infrastructure exists, the CD will soon follow—even to places as remote as Pluto. The only place it has not found purchase is on the frontier worlds, where efforts at civilization are often bowled over by six-pack wars, or other even more unpleasant things…

Inkbloods

In most materials, elemental ink is sparse—less than 0.002% of the total composition.  In the Saskatoon municipal area, this number can go as high as 0.006. In human beings, this number skyrockets to 0.65%—the highest concentration outside of ink-based life forms. While this might not sound like much at a glance, it must be understood that even a small amount of ink carries enormous potential: differences of as little as .05% blood-ink-concentration have been shown to increase life span, muscle growth, and cognitive capacity by tremendous amounts—upwards of 20%, in many cases.  Naturally, there is a tremendous temptation to use it as a performance enhancer—and it is here that inkbloods enter the equation.

An “inkblood” is any meatman who has a BIC of 2% or higher; and has maintained such for longer than 24 hours. The human liver can filter out small quantities of ink, much as it can filter out alcohol or other substances; but there are some people who deliberately maintain a high BIC for an extended period of time, for several reasons: at a glance, inkbloods are more physically able than most humans—the ink within their bodies swells their muscle mass to considerable proportions, and they often enjoy sharpened senses and longer lives. Furthermore, they often display an enhanced aptitude for illustration and inktek. However, there is a damning dark side to this: all inkbloods will, with time, invariably descend into utter raving insanity.

First among the inkblood degenerations, both in severity and in order of onset, is an immutable compulsion towards self-flagellation. Over the course of their derangement this will increase from such relatively benign things as discomfort with their hairstyle, to the wholesale removal of fingers, limbs, and eyes. While these compulsions never drive the inkblood to suicide, they will leave them hideously disfigured: while the ink will regenerate small portions of their bodies over time, any limbs or large internal organs removed will usually have to be replaced.

As of writing, no medical consensus explaining this phenomenon has yet been reached. Potential explanations range from acute derangement resulting from over-acuity of the senses, to a form of cognitive decline no more remarkable than mercury poisoning; but there are others on the fringe of the medical community, who whisper of a spiritual dimension to the ink--one which reacts poorly to prolonged observation...

Toonpunks

What is a “Toonpunk”?  Most of you reading this will already know—but those of you from very isolated areas, or those of you who have just incarnated, may be unfamiliar.  The word shows up often enough to return billions of search engine results; and it’s such a common talking point that a whole 3.5% of all current news articles feature it as their primary subject (according to Billiun analytics from 2302). It is a recognized word in over 500 languages as disparate as Russian, Urdu, Japanese, Quenya, and English.

Vernon Vernacular’s Living Dictionary defines Toonpunk thusly: 1. Noun. A person, most commonly young and/or of inky description, who commits criminal actions including theft, assault, vandalism, arson, murder, and jaywalking, as a form of protest or self-expression. 2.Adj. Slang.  Of or referring to anger or disdain towards large corporations, incumbent governments, The Inkquisition, capitalism, or functioning society as a whole.

“Toonpunk” is a stylistic movement that began in the year 2045, though its roots trace back to a year earlier.  During The Rabbit’s I-day gag spree, billions of people were astonished to learn just how much devastation had been wrought by one animal in the name of slapstick. Among them were numerous working-class meatmen, many of whom were disillusioned with the dehumanizing day-to-day existence of a late-stage capitalist world.  Knowing that the single greatest act of vandalism and destruction in history was committed “because I wanted to” captured the imaginations of people who had very little power of their own.

As Bloody March carried on, the tension very rapidly became unmanageable.  Nearly every country on Earth was struggling under the weight of an unprecedented refugee crisis, and a slew of freak environmental disasters.  Many governments employed violent and reactionary measures  which often only compounded the issues—most famously during the P-K massacre in Russia.  By the end of the month, wide-scale riots were commonplace throughout most of the civilized world, and would not simmer down again for almost 3 years.  

It was during this period that the first Toonpunks began appearing. Shortly after The Rabbit disappeared, a number of disparate gangs began emulating his unique brand of terrorism: prioritizing vandalism, property destruction, and public visibility over material gain.  This form of high-risk-low-reward crime was described by many of its practitioners as a form of rebellion or self-expression against an increasingly bizarre and stifling world.  This was most notably espoused by High Noon and the Longcoat Gang on April 1, when they defaced the side of the Thunder Tower Office Plaza and publicly lynched Thomas Thunder’s 2 youngest sons.

Toonpunk didn’t become a popular movement for almost 3 decades.  After the Thunder Tower incident, it was generally regarded as a form of neo-terrorism; and it did not receive its Robin-Hood-Style grassroots support until 2084, when the new meatman generation spawned a vocal anti-Inkquisition counterculture.  Nostalgic for their forefathers’ liberty of expression, the Confederacy of Classic Culture lead a brief but eventful series of public demonstrations.  When the Ministry forcibly disbanded them three months later, its supporters were forced to adopt a more unconventional and direct form of protest—and so the modern Toonpunk mythos was born.

Today, Toonpunks are often regarded in the same way that hacktivists were in the 21st century, and beekeepers were in the 22nd—as a small minority working outside the law for the good of the people; and they are often romanticized in movies, television, and music.  In the common parlance, “Toonpunk” is often mistakenly used to refer to any inkman criminal or gang, regardless of their ideology—much to the chagrin of its devoted supporters.

That’s enough about the philosophy side of things, though—how does this affect you? If you’re reading this, you are most likely a Toonpunk—or one of your friends is, or you stole this from one. Judging by the company you keep, we here at Electric Eye can tell a few things about you:

-You’re probably broke. According to our own research from 2300, 65% of self-identified Toonpunks and Toonpunk sympathizers exist within or just above the poverty band—with the remainder primarily coming from middle-class arcology families. 25% of those polled reportedly spent between 1500 and 2700 hands a month on food, with most of the rest going towards rent; and 70% reportedly have no form of personal motorized transportation. A small but notable minority of toonpunks exist within the upper strata of society—most having identified their lifestyle as a “gilded cage”.  

-Your job is probably terrible. Most lower or middle class toonpunks in our poll were working temporary or menial jobs—usually as factory hands, miners, construction workers, data entry clerks, personal assistants, or retail employees. 60% were working part-time, while another 34% were working as day laborers; and 43% were additionally pursuing higher education on top of their job and illegal enterprises. Many from the upper salary bands described themselves as “not in employment, education, or training”—which has by itself lead to the stereotyping of upper-class toonpunks as either spoiled, bored sociopaths; or misguided activists.

-You could be doing this for basically any reason. When we asked our subjects what originally drew them to the toonpunk lifestyle, we received numerous different answers. Most of these fell into one of a few categories. 24% of those polled stated that they had been laid off or fired from their legitimate employment during a time of financial stress—commonly cited reasons were mortgage, children, or medical care. 22% did it for themselves, stating they liked it, they were good at it, and they truly felt alive. 16% stated that it was simply the way of life they had always known; and a further 16% maintained that they had no additional attraction to the toonpunk life, and were merely lashing out at a corrupt and unjust world.  

8% were pursuing some form of revenge against an estranged friend, family member, or co-worker; and 7% took it on as a “one-time-thing” needed to pay a debt of gratitude, blood, or actual debt.  6% cited an intense criminal compulsion due to mental illness, or that they were simply drawn that way. 3.7% maintained that they were victims of one or more shadowy and malevolent conspiracies with city/world/solar-system-changing implications; and finally, 1.3% stated the belief that they were the pawns of extra-dimensional beings, for whom the whole of our universe is a work of simulated misery they created for their own twisted entertainment.

#cyberpunk writing #Cartoons #cyberpunk #worldbuilding #scifi writing

[toonpunk-game]

Fluff Updates 3: Some characters

And finally for today, a few default setting NPCs for use by bored GMs. 

High Noon

Accent:  Hardened cowboy

Likes: Poems,  ballads, whiskey, big hats

Prop: Cigar, revolver,  journal/sketchbook

Dislikes: Society,  civility, cities, government

Demeanor: Sullen,  bitter, fits of manic energy

Hobby: Whittling,  Guitar, Card games

Vocabulary: Folksy  anarchist revolutionary

During the late 30s to mid 50s, one of the most popular adventure magazines in the comics industry was Wild West Adventures—a bi-weekly anthology devoted to Westerns of all varieties.  The series featured several recurring characters based on existing folk tales, such as Daniel Boone or Paul Bunion; as well as new characters like Running Bull the Indian Brave, “Black” Jack Jackson the abolitionist, the enigmatic sorceress Billie Fish, and the mystical gunfighter, High Noon. Originally conceived as “the spirit of the wild west”, High Noon appeared in supernatural stories, frequently opposing notorious outlaws such as Black Bart, Jesse James, or John Wesley Hardin. While WWA was originally published by American Comics Co., the company’s bankruptcy in 1938 lead to their acquisition by the New England Press, which would become AC Comics just one year later.  After this, WWA was re-launched as a monthly series.  

In the 1940s, High Noon’s popularity with the GIs fighting in Europe lead to the book abandoning its anthology roots, and instead began focusing entirely on the serial adventures of High Noon and “the Longcoats”, a vigilante gang consisting of Running bull, Billie Fish, and several other characters.  During this period, he often faced horror characters like vampires, werewolves, or Satanists; and simultaneously, his own supernatural abilities were downplayed in favor of more traditional gunfighting adventure material. By the time the war ended, though, superhero comics had begun to come into their own; and the introduction of the Comics Code Authority in 1954 made High Noon’s adventures entirely unsuitable for publication.  WWA was unceremoniously cancelled 2 months after the CCA was installed; and High Noon would remain out of print for 30 years.  

In 1987, fledgling writer Morris Allen produced The Dreamers, the legendary Eisner-winning graphic novel.  In The Dreamers, High Noon received his first print appearance since the CCA’s founding, this time as an antagonistic figure. During the events of the comic, High Noon is shown to be immortal due to his status as a “spirit of the West”; however, he has grown disillusioned with America after serving in the Vietnam War, and carries out a string of elaborate bank robberies and assassinations to further a radical anarchist agenda.  Ultimately, he is shot to death by his former companion—the superhero Captain Hope—following the assassination of Richard Nixon.  His homepage comes from here, a scant few panels before his death.  

High Noon was one of the first people to contextualize The Rabbit’s crime spree as a philosophical statement.  He was also the first person to emulate it successfully, to the point that historians often remark him as the first “proper” toonpunk; even though he has never identified as such, and has actually expressed his distaste for the term at least once. Since I-day, High Noon has been more or less constantly active as a criminal element, with the average rest period between crimes being between three and nine months. The sole exception to this was a 20-year period during which he vanished entirely from the public eye; to date, he has never commented on this.

Usually, High Noon works with The New Longcoats: a group of similarly-motivated and similarly-skilled meat and inkmen, several of whom were originally parodies of or homages to him. These include High Moon the talking cow; Witching Hour, a horror-themed tongue-in-cheek send-up from Visage Comics’ Old Souls series; Chester Lillibridge, the psychotic antagonist from Darkness Over Deadwood; and the Illegitimate Lovechild of Calamity Jane and A Bear, who is usually just called “Lovely Jane”.  The group is notorious for their politically-motivated crimes; rather than simply smash and grab, their crimes are often flashy and showboaty affairs, punctuated with the inclusion of pre-recorded messages or the on-site production of particularly outlandish graffiti.  Most of these are meant to bring across a message—examples so far include “the fundamental immorality of late-stage capitalism”, “the self-defeating nature of society and law”, and “rock’s not dead”. Because of their ideological slant, they are often considered terrorists more than mere criminals.

Noon is an active fixer, planner, and perpetrator who works all around the world.  In addition to the Longcoat gang, he frequently works with other gangs on a case-by-case basis—most commonly, he makes his services available to people with whom he shares ideological ground; and has been known to support or arrange multiple operations in a month, with several gangs at a time. Most commonly, he gravitates towards people who target governmental or megacorporate interests—which means that all you anarchists out there might just find a friend in him.

Alexxi ‘The Abattoir’ Penderghast

Alexxi is the most annoying kind of cop: a crazy one. The saying goes that Iron Man is the one you don’t want working your case, but Abattoir is the one you don’t even wanna meet. It is, to put it simply, a miracle that she is still employed: during her 220-year long career she has bounced around like a ping-pong ball between different cities, organizations, and planets: she’s worked on Earth, second Earth, Mars, Iarn, and the Chinese Ring—and she’s always left a long trail of bodies. With over 340 justified killings in the line of duty, 147 brutality complaints, and 134 miscellaneous internal affairs investigations, she has an underworld-spanning reputation as the dirtiest cop to never get caught…and worst of all, she does it just because she likes the work.

Penderghast began her life as the lead character in Delta Borealis, a promotional tie-in comic for an obscure line of novelty miniatures. As a “wyrd hunter”, she was responsible for hunting the distant corners of space for the servants of the Outer Gods—but in true antihero fashion, had forged a pact with each of those outer gods in order to use their own power against them. More shockingly still, despite affecting the air of a femme fatale, she was actually biologically male. In 1991, when DB was published, such a thing was more or less unheard of in the comics industry—and this move was daring enough to earn DB a small but devoted following. Either way, Alexxi’s characterization was simple enough to fit on a postcard: she does not like bad guys, but she does like performing gut-wrenching acts of violence upon them.

The comic also incorporated the excessive sex and gore which would come to be characteristic of poorly-made 90s comic books—but it so often appeared to be self-aware that contemporary critics were undecided on whether the comic was a work of clever parody or a truly brain-dead show of excess. Famously, Alexxi had highlight quotes from two different reviews of DB#3 tattooed on her shoulder blades: on her left, “a truly genius work of deconstruction, highlighting the absurdities and inherent folly of its source material” (att. Harold Green); and on her right, “a frankly appalling celebration of adolescent sexual repression, implying grotesquely stunted growth in both reader and writer” (att. Andrew Black).

Alexxi first incarnated in the Cork Inkish Incident, where she rapidly earned the gratitude of the Irish government by serving with the Thunderers. In the days after Bloody March, she continued to serve alongside the Irish Army—only leaving the country in 2048, after lasting peace was declared. As a courtesy, she—along with the other Thunderers—received an Irish/EU citizenship and an honorary BA in criminal justice from the UCC. Thus armed, she embarked upon a globetrotting tour of duty across Europe, Asia, and Africa…and a pattern soon emerged. When picking a new job, Penderghast didn’t seek out higher pay or greater prestige…she went specifically for high-crime low-income areas with underdeveloped government infrastructure. To put it simply, she went wherever she was going to be able to beat up a lot of people; and her track record meant she was more or less a shoo-in for any posting she wanted.

In 2298 she found her way to Saskatoon, on the tail end of two decades’ tour in Cob Country. She introduced herself in a suitably graphic way: her first ever beat walk ended with an octuple-arrest over a brawl in Lilliput, during which she reportedly “descended on the crowd like a bat out of hell”—breaking 2 peoples’ arms and concussing 4 others. She became a talking point among the locals after an incident in which she interrupted a rape in progress: the Saskatoon Tribune reported that she “disemboweled the perpetrator with her bare hands”; but an internal affairs investigation ultimately revealed that this was highly sensationalized: all of the perpetrator’s organs were still technically inside his body.

Outside of the field, Alexxi is known to be personable, polite, high-spirited, and ultimately a rather pleasant person. She is, however, distinctly unwilling to talk about her personal life before or after her homepage. Fate has afforded her a fair deal of privacy: due to a copyright dispute over the text of DB, it was cancelled after issue 3. The inventory of the last 2 issues was largely destroyed before publication, and only survived in extremely limited quantities. For now, only she knows what motivates her bloodlust…and you ought to be more concerned with avoiding her than with finding out what drives her.

Accent:  Boarding School Received Pronunciation

Likes: Tea,  stage magic, her 3rd ex, fashion

Prop: Various  icons of nondenominational faith

Dislikes: Her  first 2 exes, Welshmen, criminals

Demeanor: Posh,  bubbly, outgoing

Hobby: Miniature  soldier collecting/painting

Vocabulary: floral  and colorful, many idioms

Criminal  Record: Numerous IA investigations

 Commissioner Walker Stone

Accent: Deep  Southern Gentry

Likes: 1980s  Arena Rock, his dog Skipper

Prop:  Comically outdated service revolver

Dislikes: High  society, weak-willed persons

Demeanor: Suspicious,  intimidating, intense

Hobby: amateur  war historian

Vocabulary: Folksy,  modestly well-educated

Favorite TV  Detective: Joe Friday

 If Mayor Levitt is a hand stabbing at the throat of our industry, Walker Stone is the knife he’s using to do it. He is a driven, charismatic, and capable man: under his leadership, the SPD has reached record-high recruitment and conviction rates, with record low civilian casualties. His crowning achievement is undoubtedly the wholesale disassembly of the Gambino crime empire; though his ongoing prosecution of the Rasputins may one day supplant it. Perhaps most important of all is his incredible devotion to duty: despite being successfully assassinated 3 separate times, Stone has served an unbroken tenure as commissioner for the last 36 years. In fact, he aced the Bendis-Bagley Continuity Test all 3 times—making him the only certified static personality to hold public office in the city of Saskatoon.

Not everything about him is smiles and sunshine, however. Stone rose to office amidst controversy about his origins and character—controversy which persists to this day, and puts him under near-constant scrutiny: on his homepage Stone was a villain, and a particular nasty one at that. In Kings of America, Walker Stone was a corrupt county sheriff whose actions were often amoral or even cruel. In the series, the county police force is overstretched and underfunded, with violent crime spiraling out of control. Over time, Walker comes to believe that the limited order imposed by the area’s crime cartels was better than the lack of order presented by the civil government; and so allows several organized crime groups to reach prominence.

In the climactic act of the story, Ariel Levitt—the main character—discovers that Walker is secretly the King of Land, and has the power to telekinetically manipulate stone and rock. The two briefly engage in a super-powered duel, before the more experienced Stone overpowers and kills Levitt by impaling him through the heart with a spear of solid rock. In the series finale, Stone falsely eulogizes Levitt as a victim of gang violence, and uses his death to rally the people of Levitt’s hometown in support of increased police funding.  In the closing monologue of issue #6, Stone remarks that “the real tragedy is that the world will always need more dead dreamers.”

Many people were understandably nervous at the prospect of this man being put in charge of the police force. However, despite being the antagonist of the picture, Walker Stone was never portrayed as villainous—only as pragmatic and impersonal, almost to the point of inhumanity. Prior to I-day, the efficacy of his system raised frequent debate among fans of the series about whether he was truly a villain or merely an anti-hero.

After I-day, he leveraged his reputation to his advantage during several civilian careers as a lecturer, security consultant, and talk show panelist—all of which were cut short by his deaths. His fourth incarnation briefly entertained returning to the talk show circuit, before ultimately partnering with Ariel Levitt during Levitt’s mayoral bid.  During the campaign, he repeatedly stressed that his actions in Kings of America were the result of extreme duress; and the size of the Saskatoon PD would allow him to work fully within the confines of the law. As a show of good faith, he regularly submits to and cooperates with the RMBI; and his approach to internal misconduct is notoriously strict—often relying on punitive measures that far exceed other cities’.

As a person, Stone is known to be stern and pensive. He prefers to listen rather than speak, and he does not like to waste words. Despite being known as a pragmatist and a tight ship-runner, those subordinates of his who remain faithful to the law say that he is understanding and reasonable, if not necessarily kind. The phrase “firm but fair” is often applied to him—though a number of less charitable things are said by those who find his single-minded devotion to the law tiresome or inconvenient. Either way, he has done a fine job of getting results—he did more than his fair share to bring Saskatoon’s Onyx age to a screeching halt, and shows no sign of stopping.

 Papa Malorn

Accent:  Big-city Midwest Canadian

Likes:  Whiskey, darts, decent people

Prop: Cigar,  his robot hand

Dislikes: Wealthy  people, cowards, Germans

Demeanor:  Street tough, occasional kindness

Hobby: Antique film buff

Vocabulary: Meticulously  articulate

Thomas Malorn, heir to the Malorn Shipping company, was born to respectable means. Beatrice and Thomas Sr. were, respectively, the majority shareholder and CEO; and under their leadership it had grown to be a major name in rail and air freight across North America. Thomas enjoyed a privileged childhood, wanting for nothing; but this abruptly ended on his fifteenth birthday, when the three of them were caught in a car bombing (which is now widely believed to have been an assassination attempt by Hackerschmidt Shipping). Thomas’s parents were killed in the blast, while he himself was badly burnt and paralyzed from the waist down.

As the son of a wealthy couple, Thomas was admitted to high-grade urgent care at Saint Josephine’s of Saskatoon, where he was outfitted with a set of quality-of-life augmentations which restored his ambulatory function and much of his appearance. He soon learned, however, that his parents had willed their entire fortune to rival shipping magnate William Hackerschmidt, which left Thomas penniless. Hackerschmidt confessed to the murders some 20 years later, but died in prison while awaiting trial.

Thomas spent the next few years moving through a series of temporary labor jobs, where he often put his augments to good use. When he was 19, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for home invasion, though he was released after only 5. From then up to his 30s, he was arrested and fined over a dozen more times on charges of public brawling. During this time he began associating with Francis Flanagan, Alex Grimaldi, and Jimmy the Corpse. The four of them would come to be known as the Malorn gang, and soon came under suspicion for all manner of crimes.

Fast forward 20 years. Thomas “Papa” Malorn is known around town for many things: his generous donations to the churches and universities of Saskatoon; his work with the city ink asylum and poorhouses; and for being the leader of a wickedly successful crime family. Like any good mobster, the accusations against him are so far insufficient for conviction; but he has been questioned in connection with over 200 counts of racketeering, arson, battery, and murder. Among the night life of Saskatoon he is known for being kind to his allies and merciless to his enemies; and many crime analysts have named him the heir apparent to organized crime in Saskatoon after the dissolution of the Gambino crime family in 2303.

So far, he has been content to keep his business to the waterfront districts. He is even known to tolerate the presence of Toonpunks in his territory, so long as they respect his properties and protectorates. He has survived thus far by keeping his head low, and cooperating with the police to a point…but there are rumors in the shadows of a full-fledged gang war on the horizon; and those who know Malorn expect him to be prepared, and ready to bring his rivals down in flames…

#cyberpunk writing #crime fiction