Announcing Cybrine Dreams

I run my fingers over the mark of the Cybrine God, feeling the etchings in the metal. The canister hisses in my hand as it does its work.
It goes quiet.
One fluid arc. My arm, my hand, the capsule, the blasphemers. It cuts through the space like a spearhead piercing a sternum.
Thunder.
I grab the haft of my axe and mantle the rubble. My companions look at me with awe, like I was the Cybrine God itself. The sacred draught runs through my veins, but I am a mere man.
The blasphemers have thunder of their own. It fills the space with black smoke.
But the shots cannot drown out the screams of their injured.
The lead rattles against my breastplate. I do not fear. I feel my leg erupt, but I hardly stagger. The Cybrine God knits me together again.
They would run if they had anywhere left to go.

 Announcing Cybrine Dreams

What is Cybrine Dreams? 

Well, besides being a new project for the Better Soulslike Tabletop Jam, the working tagline is that it’s a “future-prim gothic roleplaying” game.

How humanity came to live inside the Cybrine God is a mystery. It isn’t talking, and they don’t remember.

Things have gone a long way down. The Cybrine God demands absolute fealty, but it is an absent ruler. Its attention is focused on the Spectrals, humans so far removed from their blood-brethren that they’re more akin to it in their machined perfection.

But the Spectrals rely on the prims, the humans stuck down in the guts and the warrens of the Cybrine God. They dig through scrap, cultivate the fungal groves, and otherwise muck about in their filth.

The blasphemers are always a threat. Those who reject the Cybrine God’s sovereignty over technology, they ply their arts in unsanctioned and dangerous ways, bringing down the wrath of both Spectrals and the Cybrine God itself.

The Mechanics

Cybrine Dreams uses a card-based system.

The four attributes are linked to suits. Using a card from a different suit doesn’t incur a penalty, but you get a bonus for a card from a matching suit.

The mathematical function is fairly simple: add your Attribute, any Skills you have, and the card value. Get a high enough number, and you succeed.

Tests

When you want to attempt a one-off action, simply draw a card. If your result exceeds the Difficulty, you succeed. Face cards are re-drawn.

Encounters

When actions link together in a scene with a clear opposing force, you have an Encounter.

At the start of an Encounter, players draw a hand of five cards. Any of the numbered cards are kept, while face cards are discarded.

Part of the Soulslike inspiration of Cybrine Dreams is requiring characters to make risk-reward calculations and sacrifices. Deciding how to use the resources in their hand is important.

All Encounters have initiative. NPCs have a fixed Initiative value (though they may have Initiative bonuses in certain Encounter types, such as Combat or Face Challenges). Player characters must put a card down to play for initiative.

Flourishes

As an option, characters may attempt a flourish. These are special effects based on the context of an encounter (e.g. a weapon may grant a combat flourish, while a token from the Cybrine God may permit a social flourish). While a flourish itself has difficulty and doesn’t do the “normal” effect for an Encounter, it is also possible to score a flourish by succeeding on a standard action with a low-value card (the flourish threshold is determined by the object that grants the flourish).