ALTERED STATE - SISTM combat

question
#1

Hello everyone,
I’m in the middle of my second full Altered State campaign. I can’t stop coming back to this book whenever I get the urge to run something with a Cyberpunk vibe. I have a question about how you solved the network fights in your sessions? After reading the book over and over again, I feel that the fight scenes are mechanically the consequences of Decker’s failed throws to accomplish his task (eg. Failed ATTEMPT results in 1k6 DMG).
I am curious about your solutions, especially those used by @Alex . Thank you for your help!

#2

I love that you are enjoying Altered State! But I am not sure I am following your question. Can you give me an example to help? Are you talking about decking in general? To me, it’s just an INT roll in the moment, maybe coupled with effort if the hacking will take time or the item being hacked has military grade encryption or some other complication.

#3

Thank you for your response.
I am rushing with an example from my last session: Decker is trying to rip data from an isolated supercomputer whose data is defended by a “guard” - defense program.
In order to rip the data Decker needs to burn 30 HP EFFORT. At some point, the player did not roll TARGET, which for me meant activating the “guard” that is actively trying to fry Decker.
What was your solution in this situation?

  • A fight played by normal rules?
  • Opposing test with a timer on each side?
  • Every failed deckers test from now on means receiving dmg for him?
#4

To me, I think you have to determine, as the DM, what the consequences of failure are, and I think they can vary depending on the circumstances (ie, there is no one single hard and fast rule).

So, in that scenario, if the decker fails, then here are some possibilities:

  • the people who own the computer get an alert and dispatch a gunship and/or a troop carrier to the decker’s location.
  • the people notify the protectorate, who send a police like response force to that location.
  • the “guard” program does 1d6 damage to the decker’s decking equipment. Now, it’s a race to grab the data before the deck is fried
  • the decker himself takes damage
  • a firewall clamps down and now the data is scrambled or deleted from that computer
  • the decker and the guard program now make opposing rolls each round, with maybe one of the above consequences (the authorities arrive in 1d4 rounds).

The key for me is to keep the consequences QUICK and rooted in the real world, so that other players don’t have to sit around while the decker does his or her virtual thing. To me, 90% of the decking challenges will be a simple pass/fail roll. Otherwise, if you require effort, I wouldn’t go much beyond two hearts (protectorate military encryption), so the game doesn’t get bogged down. Like everything in AS, decking should be fast and sleek. And in those situations where the decker has to do some effort (trying to take control of a powerful mech robot, for example), the decker chips away and makes progress or doesn’t (maybe while a timer indicates some enemies are responding). Again, don’t let the decker hog the spotlight in the game. Keep his turns fast and quick, the same as other players. Like a mage casting a fireball to everyone’s delight, the decker should be pulling off cool stuff for the party in the moment: turning off the AC handlers, stopping the elevators on the floor, looping the security feed, taking control of a sentry turret or drone, or locking and unlocking doors.

#5

Thank you for the clarification Alex!

#6

Anytime! Again, really glad you are enjoying Altered State! It really is the ruleset I always wanted for cyberpunk gaming.

#7

Then you’ll be happy to know that my players (Cyberpunk veterans) unanimously say that your setting & rules are much better than Cyberpunk Red :slight_smile:

#8

OMG. That’s one of the best compliments I have ever gotten!! Thank you for telling me, and please pass along my appreciation to your players. I couldn’t have done it without Hank, though, and he did a ton of lift on fleshing out the setting.

#9

I’m crushed… my “it’s not my take on cyberpunk, but if going for an anime style of cyberpunk it’s spot on” was not your best compliment???

Really, Alex, I’ve stolen as much from this as I’ve stolen from ICRPG. Timers, surge dice, and effort is something I carry regardless of the game I’m running, and surge usage is my mesure of if the game is the right difficulty.

It’s not as many things, but it’s more intrinsic to my mesure of difficulty than any of the others. A well calibrated medium combat session is 1 or 2 surge left. High combat is 0. And 3 or 4 down at some point.

I was kind of disappointed it wasn’t in master edition…but understand why.

I don’t always use it the same way, but surge makes the heroic genre point for me.

#10

Hahahaha. Well, not sure if being pigeon-holed in anime-style exclusively what was I was going for. My hope is that the rules could be used for lots of different universes and games: syndicate, altered carbon, blade runner, the matrix, deus ex, strange days, aeon flux, paycheck, etc., as well as your alita, akira, and ghost in the shell worlds. Like all of ICRPG, my hope is that it is flexible enough to be adapted to any and all of those settings.

Glad you’re digging on surge dice. To me, they solve a whole host of issues and provide players so much extra flexibility.