How To Play CY_BORG

How to play CY_BORG. Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for CY_BORG. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own CY_BORG game.

 

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. Game category

2. Combat rules

3. Zero hit points

4. Abilities

5. Apps

6. Nano powers

7. Glitches

8. Building an example character

 

Game category. CY_BORG is a game where you the players are pitted against the corp, the cops, and the capitalist system. There are mechanics for your character to implant cybertech, for you to hack tech using apps, to experience glitches online via your retinal com device that transfer to reality, to use drugs, for your character to become colonized by alien bacteria riding nanobots, or to become infected with the less helpful infestations of alien crabs, gills and tubes. The class you play as will impact your abilities, and include a shunned nanomancer, a burned hacker, an orphaned gearhead, and more. CY_BORG characters have five stat abilities: knowledge, agility, presence, strength, and toughness. Ability modifiers are added to your roll on a twenty sided dice, also called a d20, to determine if you meet to beat the difficulty rating to succeed. The difficulty ratings, or DR, range from 6 for a simple test, to 12 for normal difficulty, to 16 for really hard to accomplish tasks, to 18 for hurdles that are almost impossible to overcome. Roll the dice, add your ability modifier, and see if you meet to beat the difficulty rating to hack your way through the world of CY_BORG.

 

Let’s talk about combat rules in CY_BORG. If you’ve played Pirate Borg or Mork Borg, how to attack and defend will sound familiar. The core combat rules for the Borg games (Pirate Borg, CY_BORG, and Mork Borg) are pretty much the same. Here are the shared combat rules. I’m going to just like, read the summary of these, and then if that doesn’t make sense don’t worry, because I’ll do an actual example.

 

All the dice rolls in the Borg games are made by the players. That includes initiative, when players attack an enemy, and when players are defending against being attacked. The game master doesn’t ever have to roll dice.

 

The word initiative means turn order during combat. Players roll a six sided dice, also called a d6, for initiative. A one, two, or three means the enemies attack first. A four, five, or six means the players attack first. If there are multiple players, they all roll a d6 and add their agility modifiers. Higher rolls can act first.

 

Attacking an enemy goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add either your strength ability modifier for melee attacks or presence ability modifier for ranged attacks. If you get a 12 or higher, you hit. Roll your weapon's damage dice (a d4, d6, etc). Lastly, if the enemy has armor, roll for the armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the damage. CY_BORG adds the aiming and autofiring mechanics. If you spend a round to aim, you can either reduce the difficulty rating by two so that you hit on tens, or you can deal an extra two damage. Hits always deal at least one damage. If your weapon has autofire, written as the letter a after its damage dice in the rule book, that means hitting the first time lets you make a second attack, against either the same target or another one nearby, up to a maximum of three attacks.

Defending when an enemy is trying to hit you goes like this. First, roll a d20. Next, add your agility modifier. If the result is 12 or higher, they missed you. If the result is 11 or lower, they hit you. Roll for their damage (a d4, a d6, etc). If you have armor, roll for your armor (a d2, a d4, or a d6) and subtract the armor roll from the incoming damage. Anyone can take cover, which increases the difficulty rating by two for light cover, and four for heavy cover.

 

Rolling a twenty or a one on the d20 when attacking or defending are special. A twenty on the to-hit dice is a critical hit. When defending, you the player can make a free attack. When attacking, you deal double damage and reduce the enemy’s armor by a tier. Rolling a d20 to get a critical is great. The opposite of a critical is a fumble, a one on the to-hit dice. If you fumble when defending, the player takes double damage and their armor is reduced by a tier. If you fumble when attacking, then roll a d6. On a one, two, or three, you’re out of ammo. You also drop you weapon or otherwise make it unusable until you spend an action fixing things. On a four or a five, your weapon breaks. It has to be repaired outside of combat. On a six, your weapon explodes and hurts you for d6 damage and is beyond repair. Fumbles are rough.

 

After every combat, roll a d8 for each weapon you fired, or a d6 if you used autofire. A one, two, or three means you are out of ammo and have to reload, which costs ten percent of a weapon’s price. Reloading means it’s a good idea to keep some spare change. The last thing you do after a combat is heal a bit. Catch your breath, wipe your brow, and recover d4 hit points. You can restore a d6 of hit points also if you eat, drink, and sleep for a full night’s rest.

 

Those were the combat rules. Here is an example round of combat. Kei is getting their wanderlust out going on a Jupiter’s travel, riding his motorcycle down the open road, black clouds and skyscrapers rising behind him. He glances back at the city skyline in the far distance and notices much closer, a speck behind him, eating the distance between them. Kei recognizes a roadrunner following him. That sounds cute, but he isn’t Wile E Coyote, and that isn’t a bird. In the world of CY_BORG, a roadrunner is a motorcycle riding, masked wasteland scavenger rightly feared for their territorial brutality and hyper tuned, weaponized rides. The roadrunner hoists an assault rifle up to their shoulder! Kei’s player rolls a dice for initiative. A two, the enemy goes first. The roadrunner fires the assault rife at Kei. The player rolls a d20 and adds agility to defend, getting a thirteen overall. Whew, the roadrunner missed him. That’s good, because assault rifles have auto fire and if they hit once, they can attack again. It’s now Kei’s turn. He turns around and aims his shotgun at the roadrunner. Kei’s player rolls a d20 and adds their presence, and Kei and pulls the trigger. It’s a fifteen overall, the shotgun sprays the roadrunner! A shotgun deals a d8 of damage, which, rolling for it, is six damage. The roadrunner’s waster’s tux outfit gives them a slight protection from road rash but at a d2 it isn’t very effective against shotguns. Rolling, that’s only one hit point prevented by the armor. Kei’s shotgun still does five damage, depleting all hit points from the roadrunner. The roadrunner’s motorcycle swerves, fishtails, and skids to a stop in a soft shrubbery. Combat is over! Kei checks his shotgun, rolling a d8. A one, two, or three means he would be out of ammo and have to reload, which costs ten percent of a weapon’s price. It’s a four, whew, he still has some ammunition. He wipes his brow and rolls a d4 to recover 1 hit point, which is good, he had been down one from an earlier skirmish. Overall he’s feeling great. He has caught his breath, and breathes deeply of freedom as his motorcycle roars away, red tail lights shining.

 

That worked out pretty well for Kei. For the roadrunner, not so much. What happens when a character has zero hit points in CY_BORG? Having exactly zero hit points is called being battered. When you’re battered, roll an eight sided dice and do whatever the battered table says. The roadrunner is at exactly zero hit points, so they roll an eight sided dice, also called a d8. I will walk you through the eight possible outcomes. On a one and a two, the roadrunner rolls a d4 dice and falls unconscious for that number of rounds, then awakens with a d4 of hit points. On a three or a four, they test their presence. That means the roadrunner rolls a d20 and add their presence modifier. If they fail, they fall into a Cy-rage. Cy-rage means they go berserk, temporarily gaining a d8 of HP and attacking completely random targets twice a round with their strongest weapon. Their attacks are DR10 to hit or DR14 to defend against. They don’t stop until they’re either reduced to zero hit points, sedated, or dead. So that was a three or a four on the d8 dice for having exactly zero hit points. If the roadrunner rolls a five or a six on the d8, they’re critically injured. Roll on the body table to see what body part is destroyed. Maybe one day they can have it regrown and replaced, but for d4 rounds they are unable to act, after which they gain d4 hit points and can act again. If the roadrunner rolls a 7 on the eight sided dice for being battered, they got a hemorrhage, which means if they don’t get treated within two hours they die. Lastly, if they roll an eight, they are dead. Unless the roadrunner has money, and then, well, the medical care for the wealthy is pretty good. They have a fifty percent chance of saving you, if you can get to an emergency room and if you can pay for it.

 

Thus ends the example combat for CY_BORG. Let’s talk about abilities. Abilities in CY_BORG represent your character’s skills. Your character’s numbers for these abilities come from rolling three d6 and converting the roll result to a modifier score. Mechanically, these modifier scores are what you add to or subtract from your d20 dice rolls. To get your modifiers, consult the table on page forty to convert your three d6 roll to the modifier score you’ll use. For example, if you roll a one, two, three, or four, that means that ability has a modifier score of negative three. Any roll you make with that ability, you would subtract three from. Here’s a second example. If you roll a nine, ten, eleven, or twelve on the three d6 dice, that means that ability has a modifier of zero. Whatever you roll on the dice, you add zero to, that’s your result. One last example. If you roll a fifteen or sixteen, your modifier is plus two and you’ll add two to every d20 you roll for that ability.

 

There are five abilities: toughness, strength, presence, knowledge, and agility. The toughness ability modifier score is added to your roll when you try to survive falling, poison, and the elements. Strength is the ability modifier added to rolls that involve striking someone, grappling, lifting, and throwing. You will add your agility modifier to your roll when sneaking, dodging, driving, or autofiring. Your knowledge ability modifier is added to science rolls, when you’re using technology, or using an app. Lastly, the presence ability modifier is added to your sniping and shooting rolls, when using nano, and when charming someone.

 

Here is an example of testing your ability in CY_BORG. Gul is trying to sneak. She rolls a twenty sided dice and adds her agility modifier, which is plus two. If she gets a six she will succeed at a simple test of sneaking, like if the guard was asleep. If she gets a 12 she can succeed at normal difficulty sneaking, like a guard in the next room over. If she gets 16 she can do really hard to accomplish tasks, and with an 18 she can succeed at a stealth operation that would be almost impossible to overcome.

 

Let’s talk about apps. You character can use apps, which are cassettes with the ability to hack tech and physically affect their surroundings when inserted into a cyberdeck. Some of the apps a character can use are, for example, Nok_Nok, which opens a nearby locked door, >eRase, which cuts or copies the latest ten minutes of stored information from any type of recording or surveillance device, PathMapper, which uses nearby sensors and cameras to create a 3D map of the surrounding one hundred meters, and beaconworm, which places a tracker into any device or cybertech, enabling you to track its movements in real time for the upcoming d4 weeks. To use an app, first connect to the app, which is called jacking into the deck. When connected, all non-app actions have a plus two difficulty rating. The test to see if you use the app successfully is a DR 12 knowledge roll. If you do successfully use an app, each use adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using apps until the next day. A fumble burns that app for the day and triggers a backlash.

 

Here is an example of using an app. Nur is jacked into the deck and has the app loaded in one of its slots. They want to use app number 4, the false flagger, which fakes an alarm or the location of a triggered alarm. Any response to a real alarm is delayed by 2 d6 minutes. To see if this works, Nur’s player rolls a d20 and adds their knowledge modifier. That’s nine plus three is twelve, which meets a normal difficulty rating of twelve to beat it. Success. An alarm blares on the opposite entrance to the building, which keeps the guards occupied for, rolling 2 d6 for it, eight minutes. Write it down somewhere that you successfully used an app. Each use adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using apps until the next day, which I interpret to mean that not only a one but also a two fumbles if you’ve used an app once. If you’ve used apps two times, then a one, two, and three on the dice would all be fumbles.

 

App fumbles. Nur is jacked into the deck and has the app loaded in one of its slots. They want to use app number ten, CTech Attack. If this succeeds, the nearby corrupt corpos will lose a total of 4 d10 HP. Nur’s really excited for this. To see if this works, Nur’s player rolls a d20 and adds their knowledge modifier. That’s a one on the dice plus three knowledge modifier is four, oh no, which fails to meet a normal difficulty rating of twelve. But even worse, a one on the dice is a fumble. A fumble burns the app for the day and triggers a backlash. Let’s roll a d20 to see what backlash Nur gets. That’s a ten. Nur is ID’d by a hacker collective. They ask for d10 credits in 72 hours of they will post real or fabricated incriminating data of Nur and Nur’s friends for everyone to see.

 

Nano powers are strange powers that are rumored to be an infection of alien bacteria riding nanobots. If you are a host for this parasite, you are granted curious powers. These can vary and are listed on page 75. For example cosmic dust bots cover an area of up to twenty meters in diameter in dust and darkness for ten rounds. They taste like stained, rusted metal. Another example is remote control. A target within spitting range must obey a single command. You will forever hear their wordless voice faintly echo in your mind. Those are some example nano powers. To see if you succeed, roll a d20, add your presence modifier, and if it’s a twelve or higher, you activate the power. A failure hurts you for d2 damage. A fumble triggers the infestation linked to that power. Each nano adds plus one to the risk of fumbling when using nano powers until the next day, which I interpret to mean that not only a one but also a two fumbles if you’ve used it once. If you’ve used it two times, then a one, two, and three on the dice would all be fumbles.

 

Glitches are similar to Devil’s Luck in Pirate Borg. You begin with d2 glitches, so that’s either one or two of them. You class might give you a larger dice. After resting, if you used up all your glitches the previous day, you can roll your dice for more. You can spend a glitch to do one of five things. Either deal maximum damage with one attack, or reroll anyone’s dice roll, or lower the damage you are receiving by a d6, or neutralize a critical or a fumble, or, before rolling, reduce the difficulty rating of one test by four.

 

When you build a character in CY_BORG, you will either choose or randomly roll for a class, abilities, features, stuff, debt, glitches and hit points. I’ll build a character as an example. First I’ll roll for a name on the table on the first page of the book, so I have a word to call this character I’m building. The dice results are: first name Clock, last name Fu. Let’s follow the steps on page 38 for character creation. Clock Fu starts with two d6 times ten money credits on an anonymous credstick, which rolling for it is 60. They start with some cheap clothes and a retinal com device, which is a headset that augments reality. Every character in this game wears one and it lets you access the internet. Like everything, it can be hacked. We roll a d8, a d12, and another d12 to give Clock some starting gear. Clock has mirrorshades, a bio ID scanner that can track a person within fifty meters, and a fake ID.

 

Next, I’ll roll for a class, which will tell me instructions for gear, abilities, hit points, debt, and glitches. Rolling a six, that’s a forsaken gang goon class. Clock ran with the only gang to have their back and treat them like more than slum trash. They were Clocks’ family, and Clock bled, stole, and fought for them. They’re gone now, but Clock still has to keep their edge. Classes like the forsaken gang goon have a few ability numbers they start with, and then you roll 3d6 for the rest of their abilities. Because they’re small, which is a key word, it says here that Clock the forsaken gang goon starts with three d6 minus two strength so that’s eight minus two is six. Getting six on the roll means a score of -2 for strength, ouch. The forsaken gang goon doesn’t list any other impacts to the rest of the ability rolls, so let’s roll three d6 for each of them using the table on page forty. Agility is a nine across three d6, that roll translates to a +0 agility score. Knowledge is off, I rolled low, a three, a one, and a one, so that five roll becomes a -2 knowledge score. Presence is, rolling three d6 here, eight, so that’s a -1 presence ability score. Wow Clock’s stats are below average. We’ve got one more ability to roll, toughness, let’s roll three d6 dice here. The result is a two, a five, and a six for thirteen on the roll, which translates to a +1 for Clock’s toughness. Wow that was a bit rough, Clock’s not got the best stats. But hey, that’s a real example of rolling for a character’s abilities in CY_BORG.

 

Let’s continue with this goon class. Because of their stealth, all of Clock the forsaken gang goon’s presence and agility tests are two difficulty rating easier. Goons roll a d6 for their weapon, so that’s a one, a broken bottle that deals a d3 of damage. You can calculate a d3 by rolling a d6 and dividing the result in half. Goons also roll a d2 for armor, which is a two on the dice, for a styleguard on the table. This is tier one armor, which reduces incoming damage by a d2. It looks just like clothes. Clock starts with debt on page sixty one, so, rolling for it, that’s nine thousand credits owed to a small but extremely violent corporation, and they badly want their cash back. Rolling to find out what happened to their gang family, it looks like Clock’s friends were hauled off by the cops. When the cops came they found Clock there too, but thought they were just a punk kid. Loyal to each other, nobody in your gang ratted Clock out, and that’s why they’re still free. Let’s roll for Clock’s specialty using a d6 dice. That’s a six, which means Clock’s specialty is assaults. Clock always liked it old school; both hands raised running straight at the enemy. Whatever weapon you begin with, start with one for each hand. Nice, two broken bottles. You can use it to make a second attack each round at a difficulty rating of fourteen. That’s great. Lastly, gang goons have their toughness number of hit points plus a d6, and have d3 glitches. That’s one plus one is 2 hit points, wow that’s low, and, rolling a d3 which is a d6 divided by two, that’s two glitches.

 

Characters also get features, style, and obsession on pages 54 to 58. Let’s roll a d100 for a feature. Forty nine. Using the table on page 55, that’s an interesting perfume. I’ll do a quick search for perfumes on google to flesh this out a bit and hmm, it looks like oak is the first strange perfume to come up. Clock smells like an oak tree. Next let’s roll a d100 for style. Thirty six. That’s something called glitchmode. I’m imagining that instead of normal black eye outline makeup, Clock has a line of red on one side of the black, and a line of blue on the other side of the black, and it looks a bit like a glitch. That’s Clock’s style. Rolling a d20 for their wants, Clock wants a six, fame. Clock wants to be famous. Rolling a d20 for a quirk, that’s a ten, Clock always wears a hat or a hood and shades, always. Ooh, so the mirrorshades are back. Rolling for a current obsession on a d100, that’s a seventy, Clock is obsessed with slacklining, which I have to actually look up, one second. Oh that looks a lot like what I’d call tightrope walking, except the line is sagging instead of straight, and they don’t carry a balance pole. Ooh, that’s an interesting hobby. It’s nice that CY_BORG comes with all these randomization tables to flesh out your character. I doubt I could have come up with this slackline walking, hood and mirrorshade wearing, glitchmode styled, oak tree smelling character on my own, but now that the puzzle pieces are in front of me I’m already imagining how they go together. Neat. Thus ends character creation, and this how to play guide.

 

For players in the upcoming game session I will be GMing, you can double your starting money credits so you can afford to buy a few things. We’re at five percent of maximum power level at this time in the year, so that amount of money won’t be able to afford much. Don’t advance or level up at all. Simply follow the instructions for how to create a character, and then double your starting money credits, and spend it on whatever you can afford and want to buy.

 

Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing CY_BORG in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of CY_BORG in action. We encourage you to find the CY_BORG rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.