DX (DND but Cyber/Future/Punk

I love the setting and idea of Shadowrun but have zero desire to learn that system. In general, every time I’ve got excited about a cyberpunk game, i’ve found it too complex to easily get into – much less convince others to play.

My GM’ing life is basically Dungeon World and DND 5e, and I don’t have a problem with that. Both are easy to learn and give players a lot to work with. As a result, most of my gaming circle knows how to play at least one of them. 

It occurs to me if I can reskin one or both, it should make my life easier. 

(My urge to run Cyberpunk has occasionally asserted itself. If you like this, let me know or buy a copy. If you’d want to play in a game of mine, hit me up.)

Pillars Of Play

• Players can create characters easily using a system they’re accustomed to
• The game feels appropriately sci-fi rather than fantasy
• The game doesn’t take itself too seriously

DX Character Traits

Roll or pick one when creating or significantly changing your character.

1. Your head is a big, square TV screen.
2. You’re decked out in motherboards, old sound cards and other computer parts. (If you find a plug or battery, you can turn the computer on.)
3. You’re almost entirely digital. Behind your neon-blue avatar is a dimly-visible Light Bee that houses your core and projects your appearance, and a pair of floating hands attached by network cable to the bee.
4. As far as anyone else knows, you’re a walking suit of armour. Either you’re a human who never takes their armour off, or an occasionally human-seeming robot. No-one knows but you.
5. Your skin is covered head-to-toe in electric tattoos. They glow a colour of your choice, and you can control the brightness to an extent.
6. If you can tag it with your spray cans, you must tag it. (Dungeon World: If you do this at least once per session, mark experience.)*
7. You’re a mish-mash of yesterday’s models and cutting edge tech, scavenged from here and there. It’s more or less compatible, most of the time.
8. You have a chunky VR visor where your eyes should be. You see the world in sweet, metricolour augment-vision. You have no idea why anyone wouldn’t want this.
9. You can (and frequently do) project a halo of neon light around your head and shoulders. You decide what the projection looks like (skulls, a crescent moon, a sunburst, etc.) Sometimes you do it when you’re angry, stressed or attracted to someone.
10. No hair, just plugs and wires. 
11. Your crude, chunky retro armour has been ‘tattooed’ lovingly in beautiful fleur-de-lis and other geometric designs.
12. Grey eyes, unless you’re hacking, in which case they flare green.
13. You have a combination lip piercing/e-cigarette.
14. One of your body parts was designed for a transforming robot – it folds away into half a jet engine, or 1/5th of a car, or similar.
15. You can change the colour of your hair with a thought.
16. You always wear the latest fashion of trainers (knock-offs if you’ve not got the credit.)
17. People would take you for a robot, if it weren’t for the obviously human head in a bubble of astronaut perspex. (I wonder what happens if the bubble gets cracked?)
18. You’re a robot who’s grafted human (cloned or otherwise) body parts onto yourself.  
19. One aspect of you (a permanent piece of equipment, your manner, your weapon, or something else) is outrageously anachronistic and backward. Maybe it’s your (great-)great-great-grandfather’s samurai sword, or a real paper book, or your insistence on never using emojis in your speech. 
20. Some or more of your armour is sponsored (GM chooses who sponsors it, and it occasionally changes.) The plates display targeted ads designed to appeal to people around you (including your opponents.) You earn ([Level]x[Level])x5 copper (DND 5e standard)** at the end of every session from advertising revenue. If your armour is damaged, you earn nothing.

* If playing DND 5e, then change this to: At the end of the session, if you tag something you’ve never tagged before, you gain +100XP or inspiration (GM’s choice.)

** If playing Dungeon World, change this to [Level] coin.

More Ideas

The rest of this is a little unfinished, but there’s some ideas here I’d like to come back to.

Hacking

Represented by magic. If you describe your magic in such a way that it’s like hacking, you get inspiration.

By the same token, arcana = cyber/hacking awareness.

Race/Class

All races/classes welcome, but bear in mind it’s a future/sci-fi modern setting. If you can’t justify why a class/race should be in the setting, don’t take them.

Money

When choosing your character, make sure you set money to weigh nothing. Everything’s on credit!

Equipment

Don’t worry about taking your Equipment packs. Everyone gets the following:

• Phone (internet access/torch/tools/arcane focus)
• 3 USB cables (one’s never enough)
• Credcard (all your money)
• Energy bar or drink (1 ration)

When you eat, spend 2d4 silver at a bar, cafe or food stall. When you sleep, spend 1d3 gold on a motel, bedsit, or capsule hotel.

Ranged Weapons

Any weapon with the Ammunition property may, at the players’ discretion, be represented by a modern firearm. 

Crossbows are rifles (hand crossbows are magnums.) Bows are machine guns. Slings are pistols. 

Classes 

Druids

Either you’re an urban druid, or a transformer :)

Clerics and Paladins

Replace the word ‘god’ with ‘sponsor’. IE, your gods are a massive mega-corp: Microsoft, Big Pharma, Heretek, etc etc.

Warlocks

Replace ‘patron’ with ‘debtor’. Similar to Clerics, but your source of power is more likely criminal, extra-planar, or truly magical in nature.

Wizards

Hackers, through and through. You’ve earned your abilities through careful study and the sweat of your brow. Others have had their abilities thrust upon them, or fallen in with some third party.

Sorcerers

Like Wizard/Hackers, but the abilities are somehow innate. Perhaps you’re more digital than real; or the subject of some alien/megacorp experiment.

Equipment

Name	Cost	Damage	Properties
Sling/Pistol	1s	1d4	1-hand
Shortbow/AK-84	25g	1d6
[Shotgun]	25g	1d10	¼ range of Light Crossbow
Light Crossbow/Rifle	25g	1d8
Hand Crossbow/Magnum	75g	1d6	1-hand
Heavy Crossbow/Sniper Rifle	50g	1d10
Longbow/HMG	50g	1d8