Introduction QUICK DEFINITION TABLE About Atomik Vortex Attribute: Any one of a character's primary defining qualities sometimes called The Atomik Vortex Add-Ons are a series of generic roleplaying game supplements that Stat, Ability, Characteristic, or enhance, modify, and expand upon any roleplaying game. Unlike other RPG supplements similar. There can be as few and rule books, which are specifically tailored for one RPG, Atomik Vortex Add-Ons can be as three or four main used with any game system. If you play "Wizards and Towers", but then decide to switch to Attributes, and some games "Knights and Castles", you don't have to discard any Atomik Vortex Add-On book that you may have twelve or more. have purchased. No matter what system your game is based on, the Atomik Vortex Add- Bruise Damage Level: Ons will never be obsolete. Same as Damage Level, but "non-lethal". BL: See Bruise Damage. Using Atomik Add-Ons Damage Level: Damage is subjective in the Atomik Add- The Atomik Add-Ons are designed to be interoperable with your game system of choice, Ons and DLs are used to without the need for conversion rules or system porting. The Atomik Add-Ons were created represent degrees of damage under the basic assumption that gaming is 90% imagination and 10% rules. All RPGs have or armor protection. How you treat Damage Levels three common, universal features: characters with attributes and skills, Success Checks of depends on your game. See one sort or another, and some means of resolving conflict. Knowing this, it is possible to the Atomik Add-On Notes. create game Add-Ons that appeal to these universal concepts and to design flexible rules DL: See Damage Level. that do not rely on a particular game system, yet can be applied to all. Margin of Failure: The number by which a Success However, in order to understand how to incorporate the Atomik Add-Ons and use them to Check failed. their full and intended effect, please refer to the notes in the back of this book. This short insert explains the terms used in this and all other Atomik Add-Ons (such as the meaning of Margin of Success: The number by which a Success VL, DL, ATT\/, and so forth) and offers advice on how to get the most from the Atomik Add- Check succeeded. Ons. The Atomik Add-On Notes are essential to using and understanding this and other Add-Ons. Sample file Modifier: Any sort of bonus or penalty applied to a Success Check. Atomik CyberTek Skill: An area of knowledge or ability that a character has access. Often rated in levels The dreams of yesteryear have become reality. Technology has made possible the lame to (though not necessarily). walk, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. Cloning and genetic engineering are themes of Special Trait: Any sort of science-fiction no longer and today makes headlines with every new discovery. And yet, we character advantage, are but children standing at the gates of Tomorrow's Playground. What wonders the new disadvantage, super-power, millennium shall bring we cannot hope to fathom. Yet, it is with inevitable certainty that the psychic power, or ability. fruits of the human genome project, advanced biotechnology, and development of molecular Success Check: A check (\/) engineering will open such realms of possibility that this new millennium will be more to see if a particular task was wondrous and terrifying than our greatest dreamers have dared to imagine. a success or failure. The Atomik Add-Ons utilize 8 And so it is that Atomik CyberTek is but a glimpse of the shape of things to come. This different Checks. See the Atomik Add-On Notes. book is designed to serve as a general reference and catalog of cybernetics and biotechnology which can be integrated into any roleplaying game setting - from the cutting- Value Level: The relative edge city-scapes of the dark future, to galaxy-spanning campaigns of war and discovery, to value of a Special Trait. The GM must decide exactly how alternate realities where the Victorian science leapt the boundaries of the fantastic. With 250 this should be translated for cybernetic and biotech enhancements, Atomik CyberTek will let you expand any existing his game system (x3, x5, etc). sci-fi or dark future campaign, add cyber-heroes to your "supers" universe, or bring cyborgs VL: See Value Level. to life in your own home-brewed game system. ATOMIK CYBERTEK 4 Cyborgs, Genies, and Beyond All the ills that flesh is heir to, need no more be our final due Metal Tech was most clearly defined by William Gibson's Tomorrow's Dawn masterpiece, Neuromancer, as well as the stories of Bruce Sterling, Philip K. Dick, Neal Stephenson, and many others. We have seen the dark future come alive in movies such as Whether your campaign is set in the gritty streets of Chiba Blade Runner, RoboCop, and Johnny Mnemonic. But most City or a bustling starport near Tannhäuser Gate, frightening of all, we have witnessed this reality unfolding cybernetics and biotechnology will permeate every facet of before us - information warfare, crippling viruses, cyber- future civilization. Some settings emphasize this as their terrorism, and super-cryptography are no longer fiction. central theme, while other genres mute such technology to They are fact. a mere watermark in the background. But no matter how overt or subdued the emphasis on cybertechnology may By definition, Cyberpunk is a violent blending of two seem, it is always there. Cybertech is ever-present, infused opposing worlds - high-tech gadgetry with low-life angst. It is within the bodies and minds of the faceless masses; it this unhallowed marriage that brings about conflict, mingling glitters in the misty light of hovering billboards, echoes on 20th century anxieties with 21st century technology. the screens of a million holovids, and brews in the ebb and Similarly, there is an intrusive amalgamation of metal and flow of the electric-blue sea of binary information. flesh, man and machine, the natural and the artificial. As we mangle the Earth with machines, so too does humanity The following sections will describe a number of potential mangle itself. This is the central theme of a Metal Tech settings that have cybernetics and biotechnology as either setting. Cyberpunk without punk is just gadgetry, and central or peripheral themes. Though these are not the only without gadgetry it is nothing more than punk. settings where such technology may exist, the categories are broad and should not only cover the setting that you In a Metal Tech campaign hardwired cybernetics are desire for your campaign, but may lead you to discover new pervasive, even necessary, but biotechnology has lagged ideas and new possibilities beyond the limits of what has behind. In whatever Tech Level the campaign is set (see come before. Tech Levels on page 9) biotech should be one Tech Level behind, if it is available at all. What's more, because of its Samplewide file spread use and availability, the VL cost of cybernetics Metal Tech Settings is half (cost of biotech is as listed), but the Humanity Cost is at +1 level on the HC Table (see Humanity Cost). Metal Tech is classic cyberpunk. Generally set in the mid- 21st century, this setting owes its popularity to our fear of Metal Tech Campaign Adjustments: unbridled technological growth. Industry and progress have Cybertech Level: TL 6 or 7 outstripped society's ability to adapt, drowning the world in Biotech Level: TL 6, if at all an ocean of information and rampant commercialization. VL Cost: Half listed cost for cybertech Polluted beyond all hope of repair, the ecosystem has Humanity Cost: +1 level on the HC Table for cybertech collapsed leaving nothing but the plague of Man to swarm and multiply like an infection upon the Earth. Global warming has melted the polar caps flooding coastal cities Bio Tech Settings and filling the skies with unceasing rain. Between the snaking tendrils of vast urban sprawls are sullen ghettos While Cyberpunk was one of the defining sci-fi genres of the growing into themselves like waste buried upon waste. 80s, biopunk was a defining genre of the 90s - and may Government and politics exist for the sole benefit of mega- continue to be into the 00s. Biopunk may or may not share corporations whose narcissistic executives live in the the same dark future as cyberpunk. The genre arose from opulent sanctuary of their towering arcologies. On the the basic theme that the human body is itself a machine - streets below, guns are cheap but life is cheaper. Anything DNA is the code and biology is the key to a new and more can be bought and everyone is on the take. What cannot be perfect form of molecular engineering. Instead of cyber- purchased is stolen, and what cannot be stolen is limbs, cyber-eyes, and neural interfaces, biotech is rife with counterfeited. This is world of technology gone mad. the latest biotech wonders, from cloning to genetic ATOMIK CYBERTEK 5 engineering, from designer drugs to biological weapons and nanotechnology. As a result, biopunk fiction generally shies Noir Tech Settings away from "punk" and strives to create a world with a more organic feel. Tech Noir (from the term Film Noir) was best exemplified by May of the old school cyberpunk writers are also biopunk the movies Blade Runner, Dark City, and The City of Lost writers including Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson, in Children (which was actually a Steam Tech Noir). Tech Noir addition to Greg Bear and Paul Di Filippo.