Hej folx! I was part of a TTRPG-Secret Santa for my local gaming club where people volunteer to run oneshots. Being a Secret Santa-type of thing, people who play the game don’t know what they will play and who the GM is before they play. I volunteered to GM some Altered State because that has been on my pile of shame of games I bought but really haven’t played. I am not a big Cyberpunk-guy having only played Shadowrun years ago (which I really don’t like). So this was kind of hard for me. How to do an engaging, fast-moving cool oneshot?
When I write this, all the anxiety is gone of course. I have already GMed the session and people really enjoyed it. This post is only for the community to share my notes with you and talk about something that I was worried about: I started the oneshot in medias res with the PCs running from drones because their heist had failed.
Then I did a flashback scene which established what the heist was about. Cutting back to the failed heist, I let every player come up with a reason why the heist failed and took it from there. Thanks again for @s5photog and FeelinGood Louis from the discord server for giving me some advice.
Anyway, here’s my notes if you want to do some crazy meta-level shit yourself (I put VURT by Jeff Noons and Altered Carbon into a blender):
FAILED HEIST
- security bot crashes into house wall
- several bots of the protectorate are on your heels
- van drives so fast, it’s about to fall apart
- one of your NPC-companions is hit in the chest, falls out of the van, somersaults and stops moving
DON SCABIES OFFICE
- Don Scabies (Thomas Noon), chihuahua-cyborg smoking a cigarette
- four cyberdogs guard him
- Mission: break into oneirovault inside of a high security feather to steal something for Don Scabies*
- Hoggert’s law of equivalence of waking world and dream world**
- Don scbaies gives the PCs a blobfish-like dream being
ESCAPING THE PROCTETORATE
- PCs establish how the heist failed and where they are in the van (driver, co-driver, gunner)
- Van has three CHUNKS
- Security Bots are a weaker version of the yellow drones in Altered State
- PCs have to survive for d6 ROUNDS to be able to escape
- reaching warehouse were Don Scabies and cyber dogs hold the line
- (optional: d12 ROUNDS to get the thing out of the oneirovault)
ONEIROVAULT
- man with mask stands in front of open and empty vault
- he is Jeffrey, Thomas’ husband and asks the PCs what they are doing here
- he will tell the players that Thomas wants the PCs to get him back into the real world
- he refuses and vomits out some cyber spiders that attack the players
- Jeffrey’s first form: , +4 to all checks and BASIC
- Jeffrey’s second form: , +6 to all checks, AUGMENTED
- Jeffrey’s third form: , +8 to all checks and AUGMENTED, tentacles: CON or assimilated in 1 ROUND.
WAKING UP
- if the players either die fighting Jeffrey or defeat him, they awake strapped to a couch in a surgery room
- Cyborg surgeon and tired-looking police men greet them
- PCs get coffee in styrofoam cups and thanks for participating in the experiment
- outside the laboratory rain drizzles, neon lights glare, headache
What does the GM need to know to run this oneshot:
Spoiler
The oneshot plays with the ideas of multiple levels of reality. The players think that they are trying to steal something for Don Scabies and that the reality they are in is the actual world, while in reality they are in a simulation as part of an experiment to improve the security AI of the oneirovault. Introducing the oneirovault in the simulation focuses the player’s attention on the oneirovault being part of some high-technology dream world, when in reality the oneirovault is a dream world within a simulation the players take to be real world.
*this is the “lore dump”-part of the oneshot. It doesn’t matter if the players are a bit confused as long as they understand the main point, which is: there is a technology that makes it possible to store dream worlds on feathers. Some of these feathers can be consumed like drugs and make it possible to dream of whatever is stored on the feather (if you know VURT, you know what I mean. If you don’t, you should read it). Other feathers are used to store separate dream worlds that function as security vaults for information that should not be accessible to the public.
**Hoggert’s law is basically Hobart’s law from VURT: if something is taken out of a dream world, something of equal value has to be left behind, which is why Don Scabies gives a dream being to the players
