Recap of Take-2 Trail Game!

 

First Mission Take-2!:

As promised, today I am going to present to you the second attempt at our first mission. The reason we ran the first mission twice was so that we could control some of the elements and see how different players would interact and conduct the mission and expose potential additional issues with the system. 

So, for this second round of play, we rallied up a whole new set of players from our friends and acquaintances and went through the process all over again. With this group, however, only a few people knew each other beforehand and a few were largely brand new to TTRPGs altogether. This would help us test accessibility to the systems for those who were brand new. It would also show us how well a group could be put together and function when there were no dynamics outside of the game factoring in, like friendship. 

So, let us meet the cast of characters I created for the players based on their power fantasy ideal.

 

 

Djinn: A Japanese Netdiver proficient in the manipulation of the Overlay. An Eidolon who moves with grace and conducts himself in honor. 

 

Dizzy: A hulking EOD Paladin with heavy cybernetics, an extremely dense shield, and a warhammer. A direct sort of guy who absolutely loves charging around and making a mess.

 

Amon Vect: A Psion who manifests their psychic powers as auric energy, projecting the energy from their hands. A guy with a real skill for naming things, and mercilessly tearing enemies apart with mind bullets.

 

Desht: A dwarf-like man heavily augmented with cybernetics, most importantly his cybernetic vibro claws and the agile leg striders with pivot cleats. A clever, albeit, short man who is never deterred and always ready to fly into a good berzerker's rage.   

 

Nmbl: A Netdiver who has augmented herself for the remote operation of drones. Nmbl is the friend many places at the time as she controls her combat and scouting drones with her mind. 

The Plan:

Like with the first group they were debriefed with the vague information on the contract and left to figure out what to do and how to plan. They reached out to contacts and quickly followed the Arven Nordica lead that the other group had also discovered. This group, however, zeroed in on this angle and discovered the dock location where the Cutters were offloading the syndicate's arms to be smuggled into the city and sold. They commenced with a scouting mission to the docks and discovered that Arven Nordica had been shipping in heavy amounts of military-grade gear through the Cutters, including personal mechs. 

After the docks, the team made their way to scout out the location. They found the underground passage in the neighboring bar but then decided to scout the roof of Vikker’s hangout. There they discovered a point where the scouting drone and possibly the short Desht could enter into the ventilation to quietly gain access to the main bar. 

Upon arriving back at the House of Weeping Gomorrah, the team built their plan. Dizzy, Djinn, and Amon Vect would enter through the underground passage while Nmbl used an ally not far away to deploy her drones and support from the front of the building and also through the ventilation. Desht too, would go through the ventilation and look for a direct route to Vikker.

The stage was set and session 1 concluded. 

Let the Chaos Begin:

It began not so different than the first group. Dizzy, Djinn, and Amon Vect headed for the neighboring bar to shuffle down into the underground tunnels. Nmbl found herself a nice tight ally to bunker down in and deploy her two drones. Slowly moving her assault drone towards the front of the building while her small drone lofted high and moved for the roof. 

 

Desht, likewise found his way over to the side ally of Vikker’s hideout and with his cybernetic limbs scurried on up to cut a hole in the ventilation. After swift work he and the drone began their stealthy approach through the ventilation, Desht heading toward the North end of the bar while the drone split south. Desht, perched above an office-turned bedroom and silently descended to grapple an unsuspecting foe from behind. 

Meanwhile, the small utility drone found the back rooms of the hideout where the underground shaft came up and upon a brief scout made its way back to the roof to keep the front of the building under visual surveillance. 

Dizzy, Djinn, and Vect made a valiant effort to sneak into the basement tunnel but the heavy armor of Dizzy clattered through the hall alerting the gangers down below to their presence. As guns were drawn Dizzy bull-charged in with his shield, flipping the couch and tossing the two gangers from it. Amon Vect followed suit with a salvo of psychic energy blasts tearing one ganger to shreds. Finally, Djinn hacked and locked down the garage door and car to make sure neither could be quickly utilized for a getaway. 

As the other ganger scuffled off towards his mechanic partner who had produced a pistol and began shooting it at Dizzy, Dizzy tossed his frag grenade, exploding one ganger and sending the engineer across the room. The final mechanic opened fire but only landed hits against the concrete wall while Vect’s projected energy ripped off the mechanic's arm. The mechanic who survived the explosion used his direct EMS signal to notify the gangers upstairs even as Dizzy came charging over the car and leaping down with his Warhammer upon the chest of the mechanic, caving it in. With the basement neutralized, they made for the entrance to Vikker’s bar. 

While the basement was being assailed Desht up above threw caution to the wind, charged out onto the main floor of the bar with his hostage and threw him into the table Vikker was sitting at. No sooner had the ganger's head met the edge of the table than Desht charged in, flipping the table along with the poor ganger and sending the whole bar into a frenzy. A dozen guns blasted away clipping his arm and leg but merely blasting off chunks of armor. 

It was then that Desht realized the mech parked in the front started to animate. He jumped behind the couch and prepared for the entire room to get a whole lot messier. 

 

By this point, the crew outside had heard the news of the assault and Vikker had started making his way to the door trying to get away from the berzerking dwarf slashing up his gangers. As the first gangers slipped inside through the front door, Nmbl, piloting her assault drone came around the corning head-shotting a ganger on his way in. The guards out front now turned around to open fire on the assault drone picking them off. Eidolons were coming from every direction with force. 

The Gatling guns of the mech opened fire upon Desht tearing into his right leg, blood spattered across the bar room floor, but the small angry Eidolon remained enraged and ripping apart ganger after ganger. 

As the Cutters from the back room made their way to the chaos out front Dizzy, Djinn, and Vect came up through the underground tunnel. Vect with ruthless psionic attacks blasted apart another ganger as Dizzy charged in to shield bashed two gangers into each other and up against a wall. Djinn moved his way to see the mech and deployed his Hack: Hijack program and took the gun to blast away another ganger in the bar. 

 

 

 

As Prince Vikker backed his way into the corner shooting his gun at the madman Desht, Nmbl brought in her small drone with a utility arm. She had installed an injector full of the drug Konk and without him noticing descended to inject the powerful anesthetic into Vikker. He dropped unconscious and Vect moved to secure him. 

 

 

 

With Vikker going down the mech began to lumber out of the bar, nearly blasting away the assault drone and causing Nmbl to steer it to cover. Djinn, Dizzy, and Vect picked apart the remaining gangers behind the bar while Desht, lost in his berzerker’s rage, ran after the mech, hacking with his vibro claws at the Gatling gun arms and jumping onto its hull to try and tear open the cock-pit. Little did he know that the mech had an electric hull countermeasure for such situations, and soon his body was jacked full of electrical waves frying his already seriously injured leg and sending him to the ground in writhing pain. 

 

Luckily, the mech prioritized getting away over dumping both guns into the prone Desht. Dizzy, made his way out and picked up the broken body of Desht and the team made their way back to the House of Weeping Gomorrah for their reward and a mission accomplished, albeit, very messily and with a ganger body count 3x that of the first group. 

 

Wrapping-Up and Take-Aways:

Desht rolled to figure out what part(s) of his right leg had been destroyed from the electrical damage and luckily only ended up needing to replace his hip with a cybernetic. Lucky for him, he had just got a nice chunk of crypt to patch it up with and would now be just a little bit more machine. 

Like the other group, we asked for feedback and were curious to hear from the new players, who had played little to no TTRPGs. They both felt the game was intuitive enough and after a few rounds felt like they understood how to proceed. Everyone loved how great their character felt and how strong they were. They also enjoyed seeing Desht go down (even Desht laughed about this). It was nice to see that they were not invincible and that decisions had a big impact on how well and long the Eidolons could stay up and fighting. 

Not included in this recap was a brief moment when Djinn jumped into Submersion space and though it was more improved it also revealed that Submersion space continued to be an abstract and difficult space for players to operate in, especially those who did not have much time in TTRPGs. This game created further improvements to the Submersion space and a large-scale update and simplification to programs to make them more intuitive and readily useful.  

It was a great time and really encouraging to see that both groups felt that the rules were concrete, smooth, and intuitive. It was also great seeing yet another crew fall in love with their characters and getting excited for what was to come next and the prospect of gearing out and developing their characters in the future. 

Next Time: 

Next week, I talk more about the classes and customizability of characters from creation and onward. It is a blog you will not want to miss and I think will excite TTRPG players, House of Eidolons is going to deliver unparalleled character options like never before seen in TTRPGs. Stay tuned and follow me and House of Eidolons on our social media for more content!

Recap of Our First Trial Game!

 

The First Mission:

Today, I would like to walk you through our first test game of House of Eidolons. I had completed most of the rules and we gathered some close friends to give it a test drive. 

I began by asking each player what sort of Cyberpunk character would they be if they could be or do anything in a Cyberpunk universe. From their descriptions of their ideal character and and how they wanted to interact in the world I went to the origins, classes, and all the equipment, cybernetics, pharma, etc, and made their described characters following the character creation parameters I had set forth. 

The team members were as follows:

 

 

Case: A Gravity Hammer wielding Street Samurai with a golden retriever-like personality, until he got to swinging, then we was not so nice. 

 

Aurora: A heavy armored E.O.D. Paladin with a cybernetic arm mounted with deployable Dura Shielding and an SMG. A deadly serious personality who is always focused on the mission and keeping her allies alive. 

 

Birdie: Also known as Bat-Shit Birdie, a drug-addled Netdiver skilled at 

Submersion space manipulation and Hijacking and Glitching every connected object under the moon. She really likes drugs, especially Hype-C. Real big fan of Hype-C. 

Doc Gip: A Sprawl Doc obsessed with his vision to ascend his faulty mortal frame to cybernetic godhood. A lethally precise melee combatant with a deployable spear tendril stored in his forearm and the capability to deploy poison and Konk to his unfortunate targets. 

 

 

Wrakk: A powerful Psion who wielded his psionic gifts in the way of the Shadow Mind. He uses his power to erase his presence from the active cognition of the foes around him and hijack their senses to perceive through them unsuspectingly.

 

The Contract:

As rookie Eidolons from the House of Weeping Gomorrah, the team was tasked with securing a gang boss of the Cutters gang by the name of Prince Vikker. Intel had pegged him as a rising star within the archology that he helped run but that recently he had left the safety of concentrated gang territory to start an operation out of an abandoned bar in the slums. It was there he was held up. 

The team began by utilizing their Contacts, calling those they knew to try and get more information on Vikker, the place he was held up in, and why he was there. They uncovered that Prince Vikker had been engaging with Arven Nordica, a Northern European syndicate well known for arms dealing, especially in illegal military-grade weaponry. They even tracked down footage of Vikker being accompanied by a real threatening character with Arven Nordica’s logo tattooed on his arm.

Another contact helped a member track down the blueprints to the site location and with a closer review of the work done on the premise realized that an underground corridor had been built to the neighboring bar at some point in the past, likely to smuggle goods through. Now the team had a great option for a covert approach through the underground. Finally, they got more information on the cutters, his entourage guarding him, and further about what sort of arms Vikker might be moving for Arven Nordica. 

With all that figured out, they were itching to get on sight for a quick scout. On site, they found the back entrance and a good place for Birdie to roost while she jumped into submersion space (the lady's bathroom). After a look around and assessment of the small gang army squatting out front of Vikker’s digs, they regrouped at the House to put forth a plan. Case and Aroura would go at it head-on, blasting and smashing their way in through the front, mostly to make a big noise and draw attention. In the meantime, Doc Gip and Wrack would go down into the tunnels and try to stealthily proceed, silently taking out resistance and moving to snag Prince Vikker from, quite literally, under his feet. 

Lastly, with B.S. Birdie firmly squatted on her dingy-bar porcelain throne she would jump into Submersion space and manipulate the Real through Nodes in the abstract matrix space. 

With all of the pre-mission work figured out and the execution plan set we concluded Session 1, the pre-game session. 

Game Day!:

As the mission day rolled around the team arrived on sight, the stale smell of trash lingering in the air alongside the hazy neon glow. Wrakk, Doc Gip, and Birdie made their way into the neighboring bar, the same one they had scouted the night before. The usual crowd lingering around, deadbeats, depressed salary men, and overworked factory workers. No one paid much mind to the newcomers who one-by-one slipped into the back bathroom. 

While Doc Gip and Wrakk slipped down into the tunnels, Birdie posted up on her toilet and locked the door. With a hit of Hype-C and a split-second thought she slumped back and awakened in the neon grid Submersion space, the surface of the prescient mapping algorithm, the framework to it all. Here she now tepidly traversed, weary of I.C.E. that may have been installed. 

Case and Aroura slowly started walking towards the front of Prince Vikker’s boarded-up barroom barracks. The usual crew of gangers loitering outside like flies around shit. With a thought, the group connected via their Elevated Mind System and began coordination of the mission. Doc Gip gave the go-ahead from the dark corridor he stood in and with that Case and Aroura began their approach. 

A Ganger with too much moose on his slicked hair and a tacky face tattoo brandished his SMG and threatened the approaching pair, “That's far enough! Best be turning around if you know what's f**cking good for ya!”. He yelled, and with that Case charged in with a puppy dog smile on his face and a gravity hammer humming with energy, ready to swing. As the gangers drew their weapons, the hammer found the chest of the first ganger, bursting his body open like a ripe tomato and sending it through the boarded-up window of the bar, knock-knock mother f**ckers! Aurora followed suit with a hot potato toss of a frag grenade, sending the SMG ass-whole off the overpass to the hard pavement below and his shotgun compatriot smashing against the building wall. 

The five other gangers open-fired, largely smacking into crates and Aroura’s dura shield arm. A few shots zipped past Case but none managed to land and now the bear was a bit more angry. 

Meanwhile, Wrakk and Doc Gip silently moved through the underground corridor to discover a garage room with a fancy sports car ready and waiting to make an escape. The guards lounged on a nearby couch watching garbage TV on the Overlay while another couple of mechanics were busy working on their tasks. Wrakk, with a swift focused hand movement, wrapped himself in shadow, even Doc Gip could hardly make sense of his whereabouts as the two silently approached the lounging thugs. In simultaneous fluidity they Coup De Graced the sitting foes. Wrakk with his silenced pistol and Doc Gip with a swift thrust of his tendril spear. Without a word, the two split around either end of the car and made their way to the two oblivious mechanics. 

Birdie, jacked on Hype-C and jittery as all-get-out found herself face-to-face with a Beholder I.C.E. program after taking a corner. Lucky for her, the I.C.E. was non-lethal but would build up Trace on her fast if she didn’t dispatch it quickly, too much Trace building up on a netdiver would alert the local law enforcement frogs or worse, Talos Judicial. With a couple executions of her Power: Slate program the Beholder shattered into digital debris, but not before calling its other I.C.E. friends, another Beholder, and a larger Binder. 

Though panicked, Birdie quickly executed her Decoy: Mirage program to make a double of herself and draw the attention of the incoming I.C.E. while she split for the regional Node to assist her allies above. 

Case and Araura up above continued their frontal assault as several more gangers filed out of the bar and blasted away from the windows. Case broke left to splatter a few heads while Araura took up a covered position on the overpass, blasting away with her SMG and boosting Case with her Boost: Optimize program. If Case was hard to deal with before, he was now a terror as his elevated mind system (EMS) ramped up from the program. 

Though the gangers were child's-play to these far superior Eidolon they both were given pause when they heard the sounds of mechanization coming to life just inside the bar. Turned out that Arven Nordica had been moving a personal-sized mech through the Cutters and that the large syndicate agent with Prince Vikker in the video feeds was its pilot. With twin Gatling gun arms the bar doors were blasted away and Araura was driven to her knees as bullets tore into her shield and obliterated the crate she was behind. 

Below the bar Wrakk and Doc Gip, in the same fashion as before, silently killed the mechanics. Wrakk studied the manifest on the screen of the mechanic he had dispatched while Doc Gip worked his way to the tunnel entrance leading into Prince Vikker’s layer. He could hear hurried footsteps and the muffled voice of Vikker yelling for one of his gangers. Knowing that Vikker was moving for an escape route, scared by the frontal assault up above, Doc Gip dipped his spear tip into a vial of lethal poison and prepared to meet the yet-unaware Vikker. 

Birdie finally arriving at the Omni-N node congruent with the region outfront of the bar began to survey the situation. Over her EMS she could hear her teammates yelling for assistance with the military mech. Finding the mech’s connectivity she deployed her Hack: Hijack program to take control of the left Gatling gun arm and with a swift motion rotated it to the gangers confidently standing next to the mech. In an instant, the two gangers were smeared across the pavement in a spray of red. 

The confidence and taunting of the gangers alongside the mech quickly turned to confusion and panic as they witnessed their friends turn to a fine red mist by what they thought was their ally. No sooner had this happened than Prince Vikker reached the bottom of the ladder leading into the tunnels and the poison damp tip of Doc’s spear gently pressed to the side of his neck, “Vel Mr. Vikker, I tink its time ve go for a little drive, yes?” With a sigh of defeat, Prince Vikker told his guard not to come down the shaft and Wrakk, Doc Gip, and Prince Vikker slipped into Vikker’s sports car and drove off with their objective secured. 

With gangers running for their lives, Case caught up to the mech that had turned its guns upon Araura once more. Even as her shield was about to give to the onslaught, Case lifted his gravity hammer ready to drive it into the cock-pit. Then a call from the Mech-pilot hit Case’s EMS, amused, he answered, “Listen Eidolon, I’m looking to deliver this mech for sale to an interested client, let me leave and I’ll owe you one. Wouldn’t hurt to have a favor with Arven Nordica, ya?” 

Case pondered the offer and then took it, letting the mech lumber off and gaining a new contact within the Arven Nordica syndicate. 

Aurora and Case went to fetch Bridie and the three reunited with their comrades back at the House of Weeping Gomorrah, mission accomplished and crypt-wired to their accounts from a happy client. 

Our Takeaways:

It was a successful first mission, one that everyone really enjoyed. I could tell straight away that everyone felt like a badass, like they were the heroes of the story. They got to dive immediately into their power fantasy. That was a huge win for me and I believe it is one of the strongest qualities that House of Eidolons will have to offer to the TTRPG community. 

We learned a lot from this test run game:

• We learned we needed to update and reimagine submersion space. It had been too abstract, especially for new players, and needed some TLC to get it to be a bit more intuitive. 

• We learned that our game would often have the team dividing up to solve problems from multiple fronts and that it was important that others could watch their other teammate's actions to stay engaged. 

• We learned several other things that we could make changes to and with this info we began to refine our system to make it more accessible and engaging for everyone. 

• Most of all though, we learned that everyone really enjoyed it and felt like it was a fresh and fun experience and that they couldn’t wait to play more! 

Special Thanks:

Roll20 was the online platform we used for our first game. My friends and I all live rather distant from one another so it made sense to play online. I want to thank the platform for being a good option, and though we played future games on VTT (for reasons I will talk about in a future post) it is still a great platform, and I encourage you to consider it for your future online TTRPG games! 

I also want to thank and direct your attention to Many Maps on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/manymaps/posts. All of the tilesets and many of the tokens are from Max of Many Maps and have been some of the best Cyberpunk tilesets I have been able to find. Please go support them and take a look at the assets they have created, the assets have been great to work with and help set the mood for immersive gameplay! 

What’s Next for the Blog?:

Next blog, I am going to regale you with the same mission but played by a totally different group. None of the parameters or mission objectives change but only the players and the choices they make and the experience is so very different! 

Stay tuned and keep an eye out for a lot more social media coming your way about the game! 

House of Eidolons: Cyberpunk Power Fantasy

An Introduction

 

As I wrap up the final chapter of the core rule book, I find myself reflecting on the journey to this point. But before I regale you with my journey thus far, let me introduce myself. 

 

My name is Angelo Andrighetti and my pen-name is Penburrow. I am one of two authors of House of Eidolons and the one who created the written material of the book; the systems, the lore, and the GM guide. Alongside my partner and childhood friend Gunvald, aka Josh Hall, we undertook this project about a year ago, born out of my many years of GM experience with multiple systems and Gunvald's professional game development and art schooling we wanted to create a new kind of TTRPG experience. Inspired by the works of William Gibson (https://williamgibsonbooks.com/) and the many movies and games that explored the concepts of Cyberpunk, we decided to undertake the task of providing an unparalleled cyberpunk experience in the TTRPG space. 

I know many kinds of TTRPGs are out there, many of which I have never had the chance to play. I also know that there are a few that tackle a Cyberpunk universe but in my experience with them I have found myself wanting. So, Gunvald and I created House of Eidolons, a 14-chapter beast of a book that we hope provides all the elements of Cyberpunk in the most extensive and immersive way to date. 

What is House of Eidolons?

House of Eidolons has the players executing contracts as a squad of Eidolons (elite mercenaries) for one of the many Houses of Eidolons. Together with your team, you will scout, research, and plan each contractual job and then execute the mission according to the pre-mission work and plan you have come up with. The success or failure of the contract and any secondary objectives is dependent upon the research, planning, and execution of that plan by the Eidolon squad.

House of Eidolons is a Power Fantasy opera where the power fantasy is untethered from the outcome, allowing the players all the glory of feeling like bad-ass cyberpunk heroes and yet requiring a great deal of teamwork, critical thinking, and immersive problem-solving. It is a system that integrates player agency with Game Master controls, balancing the two for optimal co-authorship of unforgettable Cyberpunk epics. And we are so F**king pumped to release it to you all and explore this creation together. 

In future posts, we will explore not only the contents of the book but also the design philosophies, stories and lore, and so much more!