Neuroscape Deck Design Part I: Unboxing and Deepnet Hacker Deck

 

I took the plunge. I bought a box of Neuroscape, Genesis set. 

I have not been disappointed.

Neuroscape is a head-to-head cyberpunk themed competitive trading card game that was recently released and initially kickstarted by 1,891 backers.  I am a non-backer recent convert, and I reviewed playing the sample starter decks about a week ago. 

Back to the box. By the numbers, in a box of Neuroscape Genesis boosters packs you get 24 booster packs at 16 cards per pack. And you get one bonus promo card in the box as well. In summary you get 385 cards per box. 

So, what’s in a booster pack? As printed on the side, a booster pack includes: 9-10 common cards, 3-6 uncommons, and 1-3 cards of rare or higher rarity.  The approximate rates of the higher rarities are 1 in 4 packs will have a Quantum Rare, 1 in 342 will have an Art Rare, and 1 in 1526 packs will have a Serialized card.  In addition, you may get a foil version of a card. I do not know the rarity frequency of foil cards.  Also, you may get basic RAM, but very rarely.  In my box I pulled a total of 6 cards of basic RAM, one of which was a foil.   

In order to play a game of Neuroscape you need exactly 25 basic RAM per RAM deck, so to resolve this issue I bought a deck of 100 basic RAM for around $10.  That fulfills the need of RAM for 4 separate decks of Neuroscape.  Which is convenient, because after opening my box and analyzing my cards, I found that I could construct four 50 card decks that have enough synergy to be playable with plenty of cards left over.  I think at least. I’m still learning the systems here. 

Another thing to note, the left-over basic RAM box is the perfect size to carry a 50 card deck, covered in Dragon Shield matte card sleeves, plus 50 RAM cards not covered in sleeves with some room to spare. 

My main concern with buying a box of booster packs (which was available) over premade decks (which were unavailable at the time of my purchase) was the frequence and amount of Mainframe cards in a booster box.  A Mainframe card represents your cyberdeck and is necessary to play a Neuroscape game.  It also sets up at least two synergies with the cards in your deck.   In the Genesis set, there are 20 distinct Mainframe cards of rarities common, uncommon and rare.  To date there are no Quantum Rare Mainframes. 

I should not have worried. There are 12 common Mainframes. In one box, though everyone’s milage will vary, I pulled 17 Mainframe cards, at least one Mainframe from all rarities; and 7 of the Mainframe cards I acquired were duplicates.  Some of the Mainframes were foil cards and are very pleasant to look at.  I did not acquire all Mainframes in the core set, but that is to be expected. I did get both rare Mainframes, Hive Dynamics and Wndrtech, lucky enough though. 

That’s neat and all, but where can you peruse the spectrum of Neuroscape cards and see for yourself?  I have found that the website NeuroDB is your answer. In fact, since I don’t have access to the prebuilt decks available for Neuroscape, I found the website’s deck database to be invaluable to see what the card distribution is for those starter decks. In addition to being able to make your own decks and share a virtual catalogue of your card collection, NeuroDB lets you look at a Meta Overview of what cards users that are making decks are using and at what frequency.  Now at the time of this writing, the Meta Overview is a new feature and was temporarily unavailable, but I had accessed it in the previous day.   I found the website very useful for theorycrafting, looking up potential card synergies and for hosting the two decks I recently constructed with my collection, which I will discuss a bit below. 

Here are some more observations on the cards I pulled from my box. After buying one box I found myself wanting more uncommons to fill out the decks I was attempting to make.  For example, I wanted to put together a Wonderland heavy faction deck with the Wndrtech Mainframe, but I didn’t draw any of the Wonderland uncommons White Knight or Red Knight that would have been useful for that type of deck. 

I also noticed that the non-faction utility cards were relatively rare.  By non-faction utility cards, I mean cards like Antivirus, Short Circuit, Terminate and Delete that have no faction and are useful counters in any deck one makes. Even though those cards mentioned are common, I only drew less than 20 of these types of cards total, which is a small amount relative to the other factions in the box. 

I am going to make a correction on a statement I made in my previous blogpost on Neuroscape. I said deck design is not limited by class restrictions. I am clarifying that statement now that I am more educated in the rules.  Some cards are dependent on other cards being in play in order to use them.  In the rules this is called a Synergy Requirement. For example, if I wanted to play the program script (Tarot) The Fool card, I would need a card from the Mystic faction in play to do so.  Now this doesn’t mean that only Mystic faction cards can be in a Mystic faction deck or with a Mystic faction Mainframe.  In fact, in one of the decks I designed below I added Dustrunner faction cards to a Hacker centric deck with a Hacker Mainframe. Now I don’t know if that deck design strategy will work too well; but I could do it, so we will see what happens when I playtest it. 

At any rate, I decided to construct two 50 cards decks with the cards I obtained from my single box. The first deck is a Hacker focused deck that I made to model the playstyle of the Hacker starter deck I played initially against Leo as I reported in my previous Neuroscape blog post.  In short, this deck focuses on playing Viruses and Trojans on my opponent’s Mainframe that do direct damage to his Mainframe Health (blue health).  This deck is also an experiment in that it only has 4 rare cards, and the rest are uncommons and commons. I am testing the viability of playing a “budget rarity deck”.  The second deck is a Cybernetic and Corpo deck where I slammed together my strongest cards of each of the factions without regard to rarity limitations and I focused on dealing out damage to the opposition’s Bioframe Health (red health).

Deepnet Mainframe Hacker Deck

The first starter deck I played with was the Hacker starter deck with the Firestarter Mainframe.  This deck revolved around placing Trojans and such as Power Spike and Memory Leak as well as Viruses like System Error on the opposing Mainframe to do Mainframe Damage to the opponent. This direct damage to the opponent was supported by the Firestarter Mainframe’s synergy, the Script Programs Overload MK. I and Overload MK. II along with other cards in the deck. 

I wanted to see if I could replicate this theme of direct Mainframe damage and Trojans/Viruses while improving upon its design. So, I chose the Mainframe Deepnet (a common card) as the center of this deck.  The first synergy of Deepnet requires two Hacker cards, then upon playing a protocol, Deepnet will deal two Mainframe damage to target player.  So far so good. Now I just needed protocol cards.  So, I then added all the Trojans and Viruses I obtained from my box to my deck.  This consisted of 4 Memory Leaks, 1 Power Spike and one Simulated Solace.  Trojans and Viruses are protocols. 

The Memory Leak Trojan will only do damage to the opponent, if the opponent’s RAM is running or committed.  So, a canny opponent will just not run all of his RAM when a Trojan shows up face down connected to his Mainframe.  To solve this problem, I turned to the Dust Runner faction.  The Dust Runner faction has a number of cards that destroy opponent’s RAM.  These include characters like Badlands Marauder and Coyote Raiders and the script EMP Grenade. Also, the Dust Runner faction has the Virus Growing Unrest, which punishes the opponent with one Mainframe Damage per RAM they install.  Together these Dust Runner cards of RAM destruction and punishment for RAM installation should function well with the Memory Leak Trojan strategy.  

The issue is, the 3 EMP Grenade and Growing Unrest cards require a Dust Runner faction card to be in play before they can be played.  I hope the six Dust Runner character cards I’ve added will be drawn frequently enough to play an EMP Grenade or Growing Unrest card when I need them.  I may have to add more Dust Runner cards to change this ratio in my deck in the future. 

Moving on, Hacker cards such as Anima Proxy and Black Hat, of which I only have one of each, also support this Trojan and Virus deck strategy.  Anima Proxy can be used to damage a player for each program attached to their Mainframe.  Trojans and Virus programs fit that criteria, so Anima Proxy is a damage amplifier.  Black Hat can put Corruption tokens on an opposing Mainframe, and the opponent takes Mainframe damage equal to the number of Corruption tokens every Netcheck.  This is useful because, not only does it do the damage I want to the opponent; if the opponent plays the big counter to my Trojan focused strategy, the Antivirus card, they will have to choose between destroying one of my hidden protocols (Trojans) attached to their Mainframe or the Corruption tokens that are damaging them every turn. 

To get through my cyberdeck quickly and obtain the cards I need, I included 3 Phantom OS characters. I can activate and purge the Phantom OS cards to look through my deck for Virus or Trojans.  Also, I included 2 Hyperclock scripts.  Hyperclock is a rare card that is the exception to the rule that this deck consists of common and uncommon cards.  This 1 RAM cost card (very cheap) allows me to temporarily install more RAM for a health penalty so I can speed up the pace of using cards from my deck. I wanted to see how Hyperclock functioned in play and determine if they were too deleterious or not to my deck’s focus, so I included them as a test.   

Lastly, I included cards that buff Hacker character’s Mainframe damage like Tagger and Binary Blast.  This in general is a good strategy since I’m using a lot of small damage (1/1) Hacker characters in my deck and I will likely need to enhance their capability to make them competent attackers or blockers. 

So now my strategy is laid out, what are the possible problems that could come up with the Deepnet deck? I have already mentioned that I may not be running enough Dust Runner faction cards to justify running Dust Runner dependent cards (EMP Grenade, etc.).  In addition, this deck needs more Trojans like Power Spike and Viruses like Simulated Solace, but I just don’t own more, so that is not a problem I can finesse with more deck design.   The other issue is that I only included 18 character cards out of a 50 card deck.  Most of the starting decks have 25 character cards and 25 other cards in their cyberdeck.  Am I too light on character cards? I don’t know. I know that having the option to draw two cards from my cyberdeck per turn may alleviate this issue, but I need to test it.  Which is one of many reasons I’m playing with this Deepnet deck at Brookhurst Hobbies soon. 

Neuroscape, After Action Report and Review

So, how much time do you have to devote to entertainment?  Seriously, sit with that question for a moment. What if I told you there was a competitive card game with minimal setup, engaging gameplay, interesting tactical decisions, card synergies, and you could get a game done in 10 minutes, 25 if you are learning the game?

It exists. I’ve played it. It’s good. It is called Neuroscape and it is a cyberpunk themed trading card game where decks revolve around card synergies, but do not limit you with arbitrary blockers like color requirements or class restrictions for deck design. This means you can use pretty much any card in your collection to make a deck. The reason why is that every card is fueled by RAM, which is a resource you can accumulate and, in some cases, must devote continually to certain cards in order to play them.

Let’s get into the two games I played with the intro decks at my Friendly Local Game Store, Brookhurst Hobbies, with the excellent advocate for Neuroscape, Leo.

I was playing the Hackers deck (control) while my opponent was playing Cybernetic deck focused on cyberpsychosis (very aggressive). More on that last word later.

In Neuroscape gameplay there are two unique elements of the system that are immediately apparent.  The first is that there are two forms of life points: 20 Mainframe Health and 20 Bioframe Health.  These represent the health of your neural computer or physical body, respectively. If either of these health pools reach zero, you have lost the game.

The Hackers deck I was playing focused on doing Mainframe damage, while my opponent’s deck was pure Bioframe damage execution.  To distinguish them in game, I just thought of them as “digital damage” and “meat damage.”

The other unique element of Neuroscape gameplay is the use of the Mainframe card.  Your Mainframe card is sort of your neural computer and the center of your deck. You only get to use one Mainframe card in a deck.  I mentioned that Neuroscape is foundationally built on card synergies.  Your Mainframe card gives your deck potentially two synergies.  For example, with the Mainframe card Synthetix if you have two Cybernetic Characters, all Characters you control get +1/+1 for each cyberware attached to them. That is the first synergy.  You don’t have to commit any RAM for that particular ability; it just happens.

So, the Mainframe cards function as a force multiplier and increase the pace of the game.  This adds to the tension of play and makes every decision count, because you are not spending a lot of your time slowly building up your forces to eventually make a strike. 

Speaking of strikes, when you put a Character card into play from your hand you may use it immediately to attack or carry out an action if you have the RAM to run to do so.  “Running RAM” is basically the equivalent of tapping lands (in this case RAM) in that venerable five color fantasy card game that we all know and love.      

To add to the pacing discussion, every turn (with the exception of the first turn of the player that goes first) each player may decide to draw 2 RAM cards, 2 cards from their deck, or one RAM card and one card from their deck.  Again, this accelerates the speed of gameplay as a player almost always has a card they can play from their hand or the resources to do so.     

So how did it play?

To summarize, the gameplay was fast, brutal and tactical.  Since I was playing the Hackers control deck, my strategy was to load up my opponent’s Mainframe card with Viruses or Trojan programs.  My Characters on the field had utility abilities, were sometimes offensive like the awesome Digital Spectre that could be unblockable and dealt more damage to a player if it successfully attacked, or were speedbumps to prevent the opponent’s Characters from damaging me.

This begs the question however, what are Trojans and Viruses and how do they play?  Trojans and Viruses are essentially “enchantments” that occupy a slot next to or above the opponent’s Mainframe.  Not only does this take away a Mainframe slot from the opponent, they also function as Trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh.  Virus cards are played face up, but Trojans are played face down so there is an element of bluffing and known unknowns with Trojans.

Specifically, in my Hackers control deck, the Trojans I deployed were cards that could damage my opponent in digital damage for each attacker he declared or annihilate all of his attackers outright.  However, victory was not certain, because my opponent had counters, including a card that could destroy one of my Trojans/Viruses for a certain amount of RAM.

In my first game that is exactly what happened.  I heavily invested in Trojans that would damage my opponent when they attacked and then committed the remainder of my RAM to deploying Characters that would block the opposing attackers. 

Now my opponent had an aggressive Cybernetics focused deck.  He could summon strong Cybernetics Characters that would attack me for meat damage exclusively, had equipment to buff their damage, and had cards that make the Cybernetic Characters even stronger…if he took a chance with Cyberpsychosis. Cyberpsychosis is a risk/reward mechanic. If your attacking Character has a Cyberpsychosis rating, then when attacking there is a chance that your attack fails and you hit yourself instead for your Character’s damage value. To determine if your Character fails an attack and hits you instead, you would have to roll lower than the Cyberpsychosis rating on a d20.  Roll higher than your Cyberpsychosis rating and you successfully attack with your cybered up Cyberpsychosis Character.

The d20 is provided with a basic deck as a marker for Mainframe and Bioframe hit points. It is a really nice die; sharper edged than the plastic ones you normally get from a game store and delightfully denser than normal.

Back to the game. My opponent’s primary Cybernetic Character had a Cyberpsychosis rating of 10. He rolled above 10 several times, crushing the blocking Characters I threw in his way and eventually punching me in the face for 9 damage per attack, ending my existence.  It was an excellent fast match. 

In the second game, I found my footing. The game evolved similarly to the previous one, in that my opponent was building up Cybernetic Characters with Cyberpsychosis, but this time I focused equally on my Characters and Trojans. I played the Singularity Character, which destroyed all of my RAM, but allowed me to play two cards of any value from my hand per turn. I began loading up Trojans on my opponent’s Mainframe again, zapped him a couple times with a Digital Spectre and was hit once in meatspace for damage that brought me down to two Bioframe hit points.  In my opponent’s next turn, he was down to three Mainframe hit points and proceeded to attack me again. However, I revealed that I placed a Trojan that would deal three digital damage to him when he committed an attacker.  That Trojan fired before the Cyberpsycho’s attack could complete, and I won the second game.

First Impressions

Overall, playing the introductory Hackers deck designed for control, gave me a refreshing memory of playing Blue control decks early on in the Revised set for Magic: the Gathering.  More importantly, the experience of playing the game was fun. I can’t stop thinking about it a day later and I want to buy my own cards and play again.  The only thing stopping me is that … well Neuroscape is all sold out where I am, so I have to wait until next week!

In other thoughts, the artwork on the cards is gorgeous. I’ve noticed the occasional nod to foundational cyberpunk media like the Matrix, Edgerunners, and real-world penetration testing techniques.   I’ve mentioned the twenty-sided dice you get in the core sets before, but their quality bears mentioning again.  Everything I saw of Neuroscape’s presentation struck me as designed towards quality.  I’m looking forward to buying my decks. 

I was also impressed by the design of asymmetric themes. Control vs Aggressive were both on display in the introductory decks.  If I had the cards from both decks, I could incorporate both themes into my deck. Choosing the right Mainframe would just help my synergy and focus my play style.

I am also happy with the light bluffing aspect that slotting Trojans (facedown) onto a Mainframe creates. This forces the opponent to deal with a few questions. Which Trojans are you going to destroy, opponent? Are you going to devote your precious RAM to cleaning your Mainframe or use the RAM for something else more aggressive this turn?

On point for a cyberpunk themed tcg, Neuroscape has an app for iOS and Android.  They include access to a Lifepoint counter for both Mainframe and Bioframe  points, the free Rulebook pdf, Learn to Play resources like a Quick Start and Tutorial video, and social media links.

In this writeup, I may have made some mistakes with the specific terminology of Neuroscape’s rules or the mechanics, but I hope my enthusiasm for the game and its exciting designs are clear.

Outstanding Questions

Granted I’m excited, but I did only play two games of Neuroscape with introductory decks. Further questions need to be addressed. What about deck building? How does that feel? What about the mechanics of Instability when you have less RAM than you require for the Characters you have on the field?  That’s a mechanic we didn’t even get into in the example of play.  What about the Dustrunner cards that eat opponent’s RAM? How does that work?

I can only address the question about deck building now because I was able to talk with Leo who has been building decks as soon as he got the cards.  I think you can include any of the cards in the set in your deck (remember, just one Mainframe though).  However, your deck won’t be optimized unless you start building around card synergies.  The Mainframe you choose offers some synergies, but other cards offer opportunities as well.  And then some cards break the system.  Remember The Singularity that I played in my second game? If I relied on synergies with The Singularity then I would lean towards stacking my deck with high RAM cost cards, because The Singularity would allow me to deploy two cards of any RAM cost per turn.

In closing, I had a lot of fun playing Neuroscape. Frankly more fun than I have playing tcgs in years.  It is designed to be fast, brutal and have your decisions matter.  There are still some questions I have in terms of the design space of making decks, but I’ll explore that when I get my cards and start dreaming up my own combinations.

Neuroscape. It got it’s hooks into me.

CRASH//CART After Action Report and Review

 I had the opportunity to play a one shot of the indy game CRASH//CART and I had a blast, even though the group and I had some critiques of the system.  

The Game and Character Creation

CRASH//CART is about a group of paramedics and their flying emergency medical vehicle trying to save patients while working for a for-profit corporation, all in a cyberpunk world. If you are familiar with Cyberpunk 2020, think of Trauma Team International.  If Shadowrun is more of your jam, consider Doc Wagon or CrashCart or one of the other corporate medical services.

CRASH//CART was created by Galen Pejeau and is hosted on itch. 

A Blades in the Dark based game, CRASH//CART uses a modified deck of cards instead of dice to resolve actions taken in game. I’ll get into the mechanics more later. Right now, suffice to say that this was my first exposure to the CRASH//CART mechanics as a player and my first encounter playing with a Blades in the Dark system.  I had read Blades in the Dark in the past, but reading a system and actually playtesting it are two utterly different experiences as you all know. 

Let’s get to how my character, “Action” Jackson (no last name) came to be. I was playing with one other player and a Game Master.  This is significant because CRASH//CART recommends 3-5 players on the itch page. Since we were less than the recommended number of players (page 22 of the pdf recommends four characters), we followed the playbook prioritization of Medic, Pilot, Orderly and Mechanic.  My compatriot chose the Medic and I selected Pilot.    

Summarizing character creation a bit, as a Pilot I started off with one dot each in the Actions Evading and Fraternizing; and I was given four more dots to distribute among my Actions as I saw fit.  Since I didn’t have a full understanding of the system, I chose to put one point in Scuffling (since my character had a Vice of Violence), and a point each into Moving and Hacking. I put the last point in Evading since I assumed that was the “Get the Fuck Out of Dodge” skill.  In retrospect I likely should have put that second point from Evasion into Moving, since Moving was used far more often; but on the other hand, Evading did come into play in a couple of clutch moments. 

Then we got into development of our bird, the flying emergency medical vehicle, which the game refers to as a Ground Effect Vehicle. The game also refers to the vehicle as an EMV at some points in the text, which I’m going to go with and assume it stands for Emergency Medical Vehicle. The important things here were the Crew Upgrades and upgrades to the EMV’s four systems.  We picked the upgrade to the Engines, Smart Gearbox, because it allowed the EMV to take off and land with increased effect. Mechanically, “increased effect” means if a success is pulled from the deck, it will become stronger when resolved.  Ultimately neither of us players wanted issues on takeoff or crashing upon landing so the Smart Gearbox was a solid choice.  We also chose Pathfinder Drones and Smart Gurneys. Smart Gurneys were a no brainer since we didn’t have an Orderly on the team to actually move the gurneys from the EMV to the patient.  Pathfinder Drones were a great decision by my fellow player, since they could scout ahead of the crew, and again we were only two.  Lastly, we chose Skeleton Key under Netlink Upgrades.  Essentially it allows you to have great effect on an intrusive hacking action.  Putting some forethought into our choices was actually very helpful, as we used all four upgrades during our adventure. 

The Adventure

Speaking of adventure, our GM started with an abrupt emergency call for a PLATINUM level client.  We only knew that they were in medical distress. Oh, and also they were a clone. Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk.  The address we were given landed us in an extremely posh estate on the coast with a lavish view of the now-toxic sea. There were floor to ceiling glass doors and one of them had been smashed to pieces. The Medic played it wisely and sent one of our shiny and new Pathfinder Drones into the house through the broken door. The commotion was on the second floor.  Our PLATINUM level client was on his back trying (and failing) to fend off a much hairier and more muscular naked person on him who was trying to gouge his eyes out.  Standing there ineffectually and shouting at the assailant to stop were…two more clones? Yep, something very odd was happening in this house, but that didn’t matter; we had a PLATINUM level client to save! 

Our Pathfinder Drone circled the assailant and yelled at him to stop, as the Medic and I jumped out of the EMV with important gear. The Smart Gurney exited the vehicle autonomously and trundled along behind us. As the Pathfinder Drone got closer to the assailant the hairy man turned around and we got a good look at his face before he backhanded the drone to the floor.  Yes, you guessed it, the muscular naked hairy man was yet another clone, with the same facial features as our PLATINUM level client, who by the way was writhing around in his own blood and screaming as one eye was not so gently removed from his face. Squick. 

As a side note, in CRASH//CART, all playbooks have a list of equipment for each character. The equipment by default is kept in the EMV.  When you exit the vehicle and enter a scene each player may take only two pieces of equipment from their equipment list.  One of the pieces of equipment I took was Fine Buzzknuckles.  They were “impact resistant gauntlet[s] with embedded taser leads and capable of delivering multiple 1,200 volt shocks,” according to the book. When the medic and I raced into the manor and up the stairs, I was smiling. Those Buzzknuckles were just charging up. 

The Medic, professional as ever, quickly introduced himself to the two ineffectual clones (turns out one of them had placed the call for an ambulance) while I dove at the muscular fiend with Buzzknuckles blazing.  I tackled the hairy clone and the electrical discharge sent him slamming into the far wall.  The Medic convinced the two ineffectual clones to help restrain the hairy one (You! Grab an arm. You! Grab the other arm and hold him down!).  I got off our mangled PLATINUM level client’s body and joined the melee to subdue the now angry hairy man. The Medic jumped on our client’s body and immediately began emergency services as he now saw a deep gash along the clone’s stomach, likely caused by a knife or maybe even a shard of glass from the now broken glass door downstairs.  

The mystery of all these bloody shenanigans would have to remain unsolved for us. We had a client that had to get to a hospital, and the sooner we got there, the sooner we got paid. Wrestling with the hairy muscular clone was hard, even with assistance from his two brother clones. Frantically, I looked around for something heavy and expensive. Luck was with me and I found a crystal brandy snifter. Smash! 

The hairy and now alcohol smelling clone slumped to the ground at about the time the Smart Gurney chimed amicably and arrived.  The Medic and I carefully slid the PLATINUM level client’s groaning body onto the gurney and then we turned and ran out of the manor house.  Was there a story the clones were going to relate?  Was this some sort of clone’s twisted homicide/suicide plot against himself? Don’t know; doesn’t matter.  We had our patient secure in the EMV and began flying towards the hospital. That was until we got a call from the Leland.  

      

What the hell is a Leland? You know them. Everybody knows them on an EMT team. A Leland is that person who is a repeat caller to an EMT squad.  They always seem to be in trouble and they are a fixture of the sector where the EMT team works.  The Medic’s player had an interesting twist on the Leland. They suggested that the Leland was an owner of a night owl dive diner who acted as sort of a den mother to people from the street.  She wasn’t calling for herself, she would call for medical services for her patrons repeatedly, thus she got the Leland nickname.  The Medic added additional details by saying his character would go to the Leland’s watering hole after his shift so he had a motivation to keep her happy. 

As the Medic was treating the gut wound of the PLATINUM level clone client, I gently touched down in the middle of the city where the Leland was flagging us down and clearing a path to her diner for the Smart Gurney to trundle along.  Our new patient, “Dennis”, a youngish man, had overdosed on something and was having seizures. At least that is what we were told when we saw Dennis covered in some strange blue goo emanating from his mouth and hardening enough to prevent us from removing him from the floor.   What the hell was this situation? As I chatted up the Leland to gather more information (using the Fraternizing action), the Medic was using his background as a former medical scientist to Diagnose what this hard blue goo was.  A solid success gave the Medic the information that the blue goo was actually experimental medical nanobots that had been given to some soldiers during the last war. Dennis was evidently a war veteran that had taken some drug that caused this adverse reaction, and he needed help now.  The problem was he was stuck to the floor. Fortunately, the Medic had taken a Laser Cutter from his kit on the EMV and while I was telling the Leland “I’m sure your building insurance will cover this, honest”, the Medic cut a Dennis shaped hole in the linoleum.  

The Smart Gurney chimed and cheerily trafficked Dennis into the EMV where I hurriedly prepared for takeoff.  Because there was a problem. Our PLATINUM level client was groaning because his stomach was expanding with the gut wound, and I’m not a doctor I’m just a pilot but I knew we had to get our patients to the hospital fast.  The EMV was careening through the wild blue yonder when we got two signatures on our radar.  The Medic was using his Microsurgical Rig (designed for brain surgery but it should work on a gut wound in a pinch, right?) on our clone patient when over the radio came the demand “Turn over the criminal to us or we open fire”.  Two corporate black helicopters were on our tail. 

Mere minutes away from the hospital landing pad I turned on the radio, said “No” not knowing or caring who was the criminal; and immediately took evasive action, jinking and swerving the EMV to avoid their missiles from locking on (keep in mind I had two points in Evasion).  Well, these daredevil antics made my compatriot the Medic less happy as he struggled with using his brain surgery rig to try to close the worsening gut wound.  The GM ruled that my shenanigans, though successful in shaking off the weapons lock, banged the patients around in the interior of the EMV and they both took a point of damage as a result.  Not even bothering to say “sorry” I managed to land on the hospital landing zone (thanks to our trusty Smart Gearbox) and the corporate helicopters decided to peel off.  Now the patients were the hospitals’ problem.  We cheered and momentarily celebrated another shift completed in the absolute chaos of the CRASH//CART world. 

Now I do want to point out I usually play characters more empathetic to NPCs, however the world and the design of the game really focuses the players on the EMT job and getting the patients to medical care as quickly as possible. So, I would have loved to delve into the mystery of the clones or been more careful with the patients that I frantically flew to the hospital, but the message from the game was clear. That simply wasn’t our job. Look at the omnipresent Dispatch, Patient, Destination tracker under the EMV schematic.  Our objective was to deliver as many patients to the hospital as possible while being under budget.  And yes, that is gritty and horrific the way cyberpunk can be at times.   

During Downtime for the shift (which I will explain in more detail later), I decided to indulge in my vice of Violence and go pick a fight at a bar a decent walk away from the EMV’s refueling area to Blow Off Some Steam. Fortunately, this action reduced my 8 stress to 2.  Feeling chipper, if a bit sore and bruised, I got back to the corporate canteen where the Medic was just waking up (as he had spent both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s).   We were ready to go for another run. 

 

The Medic and I suited up, locked in to the EMV, and received a distress call from a GOLD level client.  The client had made the call from her motorbike, screaming down the Interstate-10 with a biker gang in close pursuit. There was only one tiny little problem. The client was legally dead. 

Normally I didn’t think our policies covered dead people, but based on the call and context of the situation I was rapidly coming to a disquieting conclusion. Our client was likely a Shadowrunner, fleeing a botched job.  I brought our EMV to a position above the client’s motorbike, matching her speed as she tore down the highway.  The bikers behind her were shooting and occasionally hitting their target.  Unable to directly talk with the fleeing client for technical reasons, our Medic had the bright idea of using one of our Pathfinder Drones to hover around our client and announce the fact that we were here to help. 

The drone flew down and circled our client’s head, beeping and booping happily.  Watching the video feed, we caught a disturbing bit of audio.  Our client was speaking with two voices. Uncertain of what to do or what state our client was in, things suddenly became clear.  We heard the client yelling in one unmistakably blended voice, “Get them off of me!” 

Then I said something you never want to hear from your Pilot, let alone your EMT. “I’m going to try something stupid,” I said to the GM, grinning. I pulled two black face cards. A critical success. What I had done was to use my two points in Evasion to fly dangerously low between the bikers and the client and to kick up dust with my rotors to give the client time and distance away from the pursuers.  It worked like a charm.  The bikers shot their guns up in the air and booed unhappily as they peeled off. Then we saw the second wave of antagonists. Three police vehicles.   

Disheartened but not exactly surprised (after all, this was cyberpunk), I attempted another risky maneuver; but this time everything hinged on our Medic. I flew radically low to the ground so the Medic could hop out of the EMV and grab the Shadowrunner client as she came to a screeching stop with the motorbike and nearly passed out into his arms. Still flying, the EMV was hovering off the highway by inches when the Medic, our hero, fireman-carried the bleeding client and jumped into the back of the EMV where the Smart Gurney was waiting, chirping invitingly.  

But it didn’t stop the police from pursuing us. The Medic was screaming at me from inside the medbay that the client was bleeding out due to bullet holes.  To complicate things, some asshole had coated the bullets in some form of acid so they were melting through the Medic’s metal tools.  Our client was none too happy with the fact that she was dying, and was very vocal about it.  

In the eye of this shit-maelstrom, the police were demanding that I land and hand over the “criminal”. They punctuated this by shooting some glue ball into one of the rotors, gunking up the works and forcing me to compensate for the EMV pulling to the side. Things were going to shit and fast.  I sat down for a hot second and tried to strategize with my Medic.  His suggestion was just to stall for time, to comply with the police request while he patched up the patient, and then spring a little trick on the cops.  

Won over by my Medic’s argument, I terminated evasive action and ever so slowly brought the EMV down for a landing on the interstate.  Why is that you Officer Bob? I recognize your voice from this cop bar I frequent … I began attempting to Fraternize with the enemy.  The Medic got the patient stable to some degree, or at least to a less leaking state.  But bullshit can only last so long.  The cops came to a full stop, surrounding our EMV on the highway and slowly started to wander up to our vehicle.  Hey, only half of the cops had guns drawn on us when they approached. I consider that a success! 

As I slowly got out of the cockpit and went to meet and greet our pursuers, I asked for the Warrant for our patient while our Medic was in the back, furiously hacking the computer.  Why? Do you remember the fourth upgrade, the Skeleton Key? As I was talking to the head police officer in charge, our Medic deployed the Skeleton Key to back hack the channel the cops opened to send us the Warrant so we could scramble the cop’s connection to the Warrant database.  “Are you sure your Warrant is up to date officer?” I said. “It’s all blank…”  Just as the cops were decrying their computer glitch, something happened that invalidated CrashCart’s warranty. 

The client, on some very good happy drugs, had had enough of this bullshit, jumped out of the gurney, ran into an unoccupied cop vehicle and hightailed it out of there before we could all blink. “Well, I think that’s the end of the shift,” I mused, smoking an illegal cigarette and looking at our once-client fly off into the yellow-red Pacific coast sunset. Another police vehicle tried to lift off and ended up crashing into a local Wendys.  The smoke enhanced that beautiful reddening sunset between the palm trees.  Synthwave was pounding from the EMV’s speakers as the dejected police officer threw his cap on the ground and said that that was yet another toll runner that they’d never be able to catch. 

Roll credits.   

System Description

Before we get into a description of the CRASH//CART system, let me describe the software we used for our game’s online setup.  Character sheets were hosted for players on the Fari App.  Our GM had generously provided a character sheet for CRASH//CART in a json format that we updated and edited with information from the playbooks.  The gameplay space with the deck of cards and tokens, which you can see in the pictures above, was provided by PlayingCards.io.  PlayingCards.io was very intuitive to use as a player.  We could draw cards from the deck, flip the cards, shuffle and keep cards apart from the deck in our hand in the bar below the graphic of the EMV.  

The basic system of CRASH//CART is based on Forged in the Dark mechanics. However, a major difference is that you pull from a preconstructed deck of cards to resolve actions rather than rolling dice.  The preconstructed deck is created as follows:  Add a black ace through six plus the face cards of both the clubs and the spades to the deck. Next, add the ace through nine for both red suits. Finally, include one joker. Aces are not considered face cards in this game. They count as a draw of “one”. 

To summarize a bit, when you are carrying out an Action, your GM tells you your Position (Cautious, Risky or Desperate) and you draw a number of cards governed by the number of dots you have in a particular action. A mixed success is drawing at least one black card. A black face card gives you a full success and drawing multiple black face cards is considered a critical success. Now here is the trick. If you drew a black face card you may put it in your Cache.  All other black cards (mixed successes) end up in your Trash.  Red cards drawn go into the Discard pile.  When the Joker is drawn, you set it aside and draw another card.  A drawn Joker adds a complication to the story. Also, all cards remaining in the deck and in the Discard pile (only red cards) are shuffled into a new deck.  

Since each player puts successes (black cards) that they drew from the deck into either the Cache or Trash, as play progresses, successes (black cards) become more and more rare to draw.  Also the rate of drawing a Joker increases. All of this is by design. As the author says on page 2 of the book, “The deck runs down as the players take actions, gradually diminishing their future odds of success. The players have opportunities to partially refill the deck during their downtime, but each successive run on a shift will get more and more difficult.”  This “diminishing successes” mechanic ensures that the pressure is kept on the Crash Cart players throughout the game (as the author says the GM should do on page 39). 

There are several mechanisms to enhance a player’s odds of success (if there are any successes left in the deck).  First, the player may push themselves at the cost of two stress to draw an extra card. Also, the player not acting may acquire two stress if they have at least “one dot in the relevant action” to allow the acting player to draw one card. A note about stress, if you ever reach the maximum of 10 stress, you are essentially out of the game as you can no longer interact with the deck in a given scene.  

In the game we played, our GM ruled that if you could justify using a skill you had as contributing to the primary player’s task, regardless of the skill name, then you could obtain two stress and allow the primary player to draw an extra card. I thought this was a flexible interpretation of the rules that made the game as a whole flow faster.     

In addition, in order to draw an additional card, any player may ask the GM for a Devil’s Bargain. A Devil’s Bargain is an exchange; the player will lose something concrete or suffer some narratively interesting disadvantage in exchange for the opportunity to draw one more card. 

So, as you can see, the maximum number of cards you can draw on any one action is 3 (Push self, Help from another player, Devil’s Bargain) plus the number of dots you have in a particular action. 

System Criticism

The trouble our group found with the rules came near the end of the second shift.  Specifically, when we ran into the diminishing successes mechanic for the final few Action Draws in the game; the fact that the players were able to estimate that there were only one or two successes (black cards) in the deck, and that we had about the same chance to draw one of the black cards as to draw the Joker, killed any sense of anticipation as to what was going to happen for those final rounds.  For us at the table, the forgone conclusion of failure made the last bit of the game boring. 

Now given that our opinion is that the diminishing successes mechanic leads to a boring conclusion, were there mechanics in game that could have mitigated the diminishing successes mechanic, for example replenishing the deck with successes (black cards)?  The answer is yes. Let’s look at each of these success replenishment mechanics in turn. 

First of all, let’s look at Downtime. During Downtime after a shift, you have two downtime actions.  If you want the opportunity to replenish the deck with some successes (black cards), you can spend both downtime actions to Catch Some Z’s, which allows you to return half of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.  However, since Catch Some Z’s takes both downtime actions, this prevents you from doing anything else in this phase.  

During our Downtime, in between getting the clone and overdosing patient to the hospital and before encountering the fleeing Shadowrunner, my character had acquired 8 stress. As previously stated, a player that gets to 10 stress cannot interact with the deck, so it was imperative that I reduce the stress with whatever downtime actions I could. Fortunately, there was the downtime action Blow Off Some Steam, which takes one downtime action, essentially allowing a player to potentially reduce their stress.    

The problem is that I only could carry out the Blow Off Some Steam action to make myself potentially useful in the next coming shift, or ignore my character’s issues and return half of the successes I drew to the deck and hope that my fellow player could capitalize off of them without me, assuming I would take another two stress hit somewhere in the new shift.  

I think a more workable option for Downtime, would be for the Catch Some Z’s action to cost one downtime action and recycle maybe one-fourth or one-third of a player’s combined trash and cache to the deck.   

In addition to downtime actions, if players choose a particular ability from their ability list during character creation, they may have the opportunity to replenish the deck with successes during the game. The Abilities Shortcut Queen (Pilot), Queen of Borrowed Time (Medic), Hustle Queen (Orderly) and Queen of the Grid (Mechanic) all allow a player to discard a Queen from their Cache to allow another player to recycle their Trash (non-face black cards) into the deck, thus increasing the chances of success for successive action pulls.  My fellow player and I did not choose any of these starting abilities because we had limited exposure to the system when we started playing and didn’t quite have the system mastery of CRASH//CART under our belts at the time.  

Another factor that the GM brought up was that he could have massaged the card economy by calling for more Fortune Draws during the game.  Fortune Draws are used to establish the condition of some situation in game. Mechanically someone, maybe a player, draws a number of cards equal to the dots in their relevant action, plus and minus a number of cards depending on the circumstances of the situation the GM gives you. An example in the book is that a player is trying to establish the nature of a landing zone as the EMV approaches.  This could be a Moving Action, so prepare to draw a number of cards equal to the dots you have in Moving. If this is a milk run for the players, add a card.  If the opponent has the Edge or they have had no briefing whatsoever, subtract a card.  Then draw the final number of cards.  As per normal, a black card will give you a partial success and a black face card gives a full effect or success.  

Now this is different. After the draw and the result has been determined, you get to shuffle the deck.  This means that Fortune Draws do not hinder future successes, unlike normal Action draws, and therefore do not change the balance of the deck. If the intention of Fortune Draws is to have the player keep success cards in their Cache or Trash, this is not indicated.  Thus, we are assuming that all pulled cards get to be recycled into the deck.  

Suggestions for New Players/GMs and Final Thoughts

Upon discussion with my GM, we recommend the following suggestions for players and GMs new to CRASH//CART:

• (Players) At least one player should take one Ability at character creation that restocks the deck with black cards.
• (GM) Be mindful of the length of clocks. You'll always have at least three clocks: retrieving the patient, delivering the patient, and dealing with their primary aliment. Keep most clocks at 4 or 6 segments.
• (GM) Understand that Clocks aren't necessarily advanced by card draws. Actions in the fiction can just cause Clocks to advance.
• (GM) Be mindful about the distinction between Action draws and Fortune draws. Many Action draws can justifiably be Fortune draws.
• (GM) Helping Other Players. Allow any other player to justify using a skill, and taking two stress to give the acting player the option to draw one more card during an Action. 

Ultimately, I did enjoy the game of CRASH//CART, but there are issues with some of the systems. If you don’t enjoy the fact that at some point before your shift ending there may be a high or total rate of failure given any action you attempt, you are going to have a bad time. Granted, our group was one to two members below the recommended minimum, but I don’t see how that could have affected our main issues with the mechanics.  I bought CRASH//CART after our game, and though we definitely feel another editing pass to the pdf would be very much appreciated and we had our quibbles with the rules, we had fun.  

Special thanks to Staggered Amusement Machine for introducing me to CRASH//CART, being the GM, revisions, additions and discussions. Additional thanks to Anonymous who played the Medic and for discussions about the system. 

Resources

Here is a link to the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet designed and hosted by Staggered Amusement Machine.

How to use the CRASH__CART.fari.json character sheet:

Download the CRASH__CART.fari.json file from the link.

Goto the fari.app website

On the fari.app website, click on My Binder on the upper left

Click on the Characters folder

Import the CRASH__CART.fari.json file  

Click on the CRASH//CART Template

To modify the character sheet, make sure the “Advanced” button is toggled to the right 

Enjoy

Edit: The CRASH//CART character sheets are publicly available on the Fari.App now.

Go to My Binder -> Characters -> New, then on the character sheet click the Templates dropdown and search for "CRASH CART" or find Nightjar games.

All character playbooks and the EMV sheet can be found there.