Re: [HOE] NEVER buy cyberware from a junker! [Shane]

["David L. Hoff" <dlhoff1@charter.net>]

Theo McGuckin wrote:

>Ok, tell me if I'm missing something here:
>

You're not missing anything. Junker tech is, if you go 100% by the book, 
inherently unstable and no one in their right mind would ever use it for 
something as critical as a  piece of cyberware. In my campaign however, 
I have modified things a bit to make it useable. Here's some of the 
stuff I do:

 I don't have the characters make bunches of rolls for game time that 
occurs in "chunks". For example, if the characters are in Junkyard, and 
I want a week to go by while they just hang out in town, I do not make 
the people with junker stuff roll for each day, I might make them roll 
just once for the whole week. Same thing if time passes between 
sessions; if I want to move the group forward a month from the last time 
we ended a session, they don't have to roll 30 times, maybe just 2 times.

The second thing is that I go by the idea that critical failures only 
occur in critical moments. In other words, if I am having a character 
roll for a week that went by while they weren't up to anything, even if 
the item malfunctions, I will modify what happens so it isn't anything 
catastrophic. The character may have to shell out some money or trade 
goods to pay for some work done on a piece of equipment, but I won't 
have their cyberarm just explode or anything that drastic. Even during 
sessions, I wont have anything truly bad happen until a critical moment. 
For example, if  a character had a cyberarm, and during the session, a 
day passed, I would have him roll for malfunction. If he rolled poorly 
and a malfunction was supposed to happen, I wouldn't neccessarily have 
it happen right then. I would wait till a critical part of the session, 
then roll to see what sort of malfunction occurs. You should see the 
looks on my players faces when they know that something bad is supposed 
to happen and they have to wait for it. *evil grin*

I look at it like this: The Reckoners wouldn't want junker stuff to be 
so unreliable that no one uses it. They would want it to be reliable 
enough so that people will feel fairly comfortable using it, but have it 
be dangerous enough so that when something does go wrong, it has the 
potential to go wrong in a truly terrible way.

--David L. Hoff
dlhoff1@charter.net