Rules

Please note: this is in very early alpha, rushed out the door for Adventure April. If something is missing, check out the Forged in the Dark SRD for more info. Thanks and have fun! :D

This work is based on Blades in the Dark (found at http://www.bladesinthedark.com/), product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Blades in the Dark™ is a trademark of One Seven Design. The Forged in the Dark Logo is © One Seven Design, and is used with permission.

Welcome to the greatest city in the world. Good news - we made it! Climate change, war, and plagues didn't stand a chance beneath the crushing boots of unfettered capitalism. It looked close there for a moment, with everything balanced on the edge of extincted, but that was an unacceptable risk to the shareholders. After all, if everyone is dead, how are we going to make money?
The Corporations run the world now, locked in a deadly dance of market-share and machine-gun fire. Democracy died not in darkness, but to the bleating approval of thousands of fearful voices and the latest app's notifaction noise. That's the way things are - and you are late for work, buddy.

Megacorpolis is a light-hearted cyberpunk dystopia that takes all the most absurd elements of corporate thinkery and capitalism, cranking them up to eleven. Here, you'll find blood-thirsty middle-managers and executions-as-entertainment, advertisment agencies that use terrorism as a tool to draw consumers, science unfettered by any moral and driven by the quest for profit.
Megacorpolis in the Dark uses Forged in the Dark license. Players take the role of corporate drones at the bottom of the ladder, stuck with all the worst work with the threat of the pink-slip hanging over their head - or worse. There's always need for guinea pigs in the R&D department. From there, players can run their own little corporate fiefdom, a department or branch, but marketing isn't what it used to be. You have to lie, cheat, steal, and kill to get anywhere in this business, and just a snazzy logo and clever quip won't get you anywhere. Clone some dinosaurs and release them as a marketing stunt, taint your rivals products with nerve-poisons to ruin their reputation, and more. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and one of the dogs has a flamethrower and cybernetic limbs. Getting fired is as good as getting killed.

And if you want to play a sub-culture, revolutionary, or other anti-establishment figure, go right ahead. The rules are the same - the world's a business after all - and new archetypes will be released later to support it.

The Game

Megacorpolis in the Dark is a game about surviving and thriving in a cutthroat cyberpunk world, punctuated by the absurd and the insane. Players will carve out their own niche in the concrete jungle, like a guppy surrounded by sharks in suits.

The Session

During a session of Megacorpolis in the Dark, players plot out what corporate hijinx they'll get up to, make a few rolls to get going, then jump into the action. They'll get into gunfights, sneak around, scheme and lie and manipulate, and hopefully get out with their skin in one piece.
After that, the players have a downtime phase during which they can manage their corporate budget, pursue side-projects or R&D, or indulge in whatever quirks their characters have. Then it's time to get going again - management isn't paying you to sit around.

The Mechanics

Rules are copied from the SRD, with alterations for Megacorpolis and examples, under the license.

Judgment Calls

When you play, you’ll make several key judgment calls. Everyone contributes, but either the players or the GM gets final say for each:

• Which actions are reasonable as a solution to a problem? Can this person be swayed? Must we get out the tools and tinker with this old rusty lock, or could it also be quietly finessed? The players have final say.
• How dangerous and how effective is a given action in this circumstance? How risky is this? Can this person be swayed very little or a whole lot? The GM has final say.
• Which consequences are inflicted to manifest the dangers in a given circumstance? Does the bullet hit its mark? Did you convince the Raffleraptor? The GM has final say.
• Does this situation call for a dice roll, and which one? Is your character in position to make an action roll or must they first make a resistance roll to gain initiative? The GM has final say.
• Which events in the story match the experience triggers for character and crew advancement? Did you express your character’s beliefs, drives, heritage, or background? You tell us. The players have final say.

Rolling Dice

Forged in the Dark uses six-sided dice. You roll several at once and read the single highest result.

• If the highest die is a 6, it’s a full success—things go well. If you roll more than one 6, it’s a critical success—you gain some additional advantage.

Ex. You subdue the guard quietly

• If the highest die is a 4 or 5, that’s a partial success—you do what you were trying to do, but there are consequences: trouble, harm, reduced effect, etc.

Ex. You subdue the guard, but the scuffle attracts attention

• If the highest die is 1-3, it’s a bad outcome. Things go poorly. You probably don’t achieve your goal and you suffer complications, too.

Ex. You don't subdue the guard at all, and now they're all looking at you

To create a dice pool for a roll, you’ll use a trait (like your Smarts or your Brawn or your department's Tier) and take dice equal to its rating. You’ll usually end up with one to four dice. Even one die is pretty good in this game—a 50% chance of success. The most common traits you’ll use are the action ratings of the player characters. A player might roll dice for their Fighting action rating when they try to hit an enemy, for example.
There are four types of rolls that you’ll use most often in the game:

• Action roll: When a PC attempts an action that’s dangerous or troublesome, you make an action roll to find out how it goes. Action rolls and their effects and consequences drive most of the game.
• Downtime roll: When the PCs are at their leisure after a job, they can perform downtime activities in relative safety. You make downtime rolls to see how much they get done.
• Fortune roll: The GM can make a fortune roll to disclaim decision making and leave something up to chance. How loyal is an NPC? How much does the plague spread? How much evidence is burned before the manager kick in the door?
• Resistance roll: A player can make a resistance roll when their character suffers a consequence they don’t like. The roll tells us how much stress their character suffers to reduce the severity of a consequence.

Failing Forward

Whenever possible, failure should avoid taking the form of something that will stall progress. As a DM, ask yourself: if the consequences of a failed roll is that the plot grinds to a halt, what can I do instead?
Part of this is knowing when to ask for a roll, too. If the only possible outcome of the failed roll is such a screetching stop to the story, it might be better to reframe the roll. Instead of dealing with the lock on the door, perhaps it is the alarm on it that's the real concern, or the hair-triggered automated turret just waiting to pop out.

If you ever need to roll but you have zero (or negative) dice, roll two dice and take the single lowest result. You can’t roll a critical when you have zero dice.

Table Of Content

Corporate Orientation

Want to get up to speed about the MegaCity and what Megacorpolis is all about? Start here:

Introduction

Inside the City

Corporations

Popular Drink

Sub-Culture

Corp-born

Raffleraptors

Outside the City

The Game Structure

Megacorpolis in the Dark has a structure to play, with four parts. By default, the game is in free play—characters talk to each other, they go places, they do things, they make rolls as needed.
When the group is ready, they choose a target for their next operation, then choose a type of plan to employ. This triggers the engagement roll (which establishes the situation as the operation starts) and then the game shifts into the Action phase.
During the Action, the PCs engage the target—they make rolls, overcome obstacles, call for flashbacks, and complete the operation (successfully or not). When the action is finished, the game shifts into the downtime phase.
During the downtime phase, the GM engages the systems to determine all the results from the action, from office politics to budget bumps. Then the PCs each get their downtime activities, such as indulging their quirks to remove stress or working on a long-term project. It is during the downtime phase that players build up their organization and engage in all kinds of long-term corporate shenaniganery. When all the downtime activities are complete, the game returns to free play and the cycle starts over again.

In the current state of the game, the Downtime phase isn't implemented yet. Coming soon! Probably!

The phases are a conceptual model to help you organize the game. They’re not meant to be rigid structures that restrict your options (this is why they’re presented as amorphous blobs of ink without hard edges). Think of the phases as a menu of options to fit whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish in play. Each phase suits a different goal.

by Johny Mnemonic

Actions & Attributes

Actions are the things you can do and how you get things done. They are broken up into three categories called attributes. Sometimes, your attributes will be weakened by Consequences, which affects all Actions underneath them.
They are:

• Smarts - covers the actions Tinker, Computer, Study, Scan, and Operate

• Brawn - covers the actions Chase, Fight, Sneak, Smash, and Finesse

• Charm - covers the actions Consort, Trick, Sway, Command, and Intimidate

Each action has a rating (from zero to 4) that tells you how many dice to roll when you perform that action. Action ratings don’t just represent skill or training—you’re free to describe how your character performs that action based on the type of person they are. Maybe your character is good at Command because they have a scary stillness to them, while another character swaggers like a budding sociopath CEO.
You choose which action to perform to overcome an obstacle, by describing what your character does. Actions that are poorly suited to the situation may be less effective and may put the character in more danger, but they can still be attempted. Usually, when you perform an action, you’ll make an action roll to see how it turns out.
You make an action roll when your character does something potentially dangerous or troublesome. The possible results of the action roll depend on your character’s position. There are three positions: controlled, risky, and desperate. If you’re in a controlled position, the possible consequences are less serious. If you’re in a desperate position, the consequences can be severe. If you’re somewhere in between, it’s risky—usually considered the “default” position for most actions.
If there’s no danger or trouble at hand, you don’t make an action roll. You might make a fortune roll or a downtime roll or the GM will simply say yes—and you accomplish your goal.

GM Tip: Know When To Roll 'Em
It can be tempting to ask for a roll whenever the player states they do something - check that instinct. Ask yourself; what are the potential consequences for succes or failure? Can the player fail forward here, or would the story stop? That's not to say the players can't fail, far from it, just make sure you know what you're getting yourself into when they invariably mess up that supposed-to-be-trivial roll.

Resistance Roll

When your PC or someone nearby suffers a consequence that you don't like, you can chose to resist it. Resistance is always effective - the GM will tell you if the consequence is reduced in severity or eliminated entirely. Then, you make a resistance roll to see how much stress your character suffers. You chose an action that fits your narration to determine how your character is resisting and roll for it. It isn't a action roll, and you can't suffer further consequences for failing it. The resistance roll only determines how much stress you suffer.

Resistance and Severity

Failure: You spend 3 stress and partially resist the consequences.
Mixed: You spend 2 stress and partially resist the consequences.

Ex. you reduce your damage, you're not fully spotted snooping around but they're onto you.

Success: You spend 1stress and fully resist the consequences.
Critical: You clear 1stress and fully resist the consequences.

Ex. You completely avoid damage, you duck down and avoid detection entirely.

Armor

Armor represents something that lets you avoid a type of Consequences. A kevlar vest might let you resist the consequences of getting shot, and an anti-virus program might give you protection against some malicious malware. Whatever it is, all Armor have a certain number of uses, represented by a number of checkboxes. When you decide to use your Armor, you check one of the boxes. When they are all marked, it can't be used again until it is restored.
All of your armor is restored when you prepare for an Operation.

Character Creation

To make a character, fill out this brief corporate survey.

Step 0: High Concept

Who is your character? What are they like?

Step 1: Choose a Office Role

The corporate world falls into a few different types, and the Office Role determines yours. Your Office Role determines:

• Innate Ability: An ability intrinsic to your Role and unique to it.
• Role Abilities: Lets you do cool stuff, like repair the printer or calm an angry raffleraptor.
• Flashbacks: Lets you perform flashback actions related to your role

Step 3: Choose your Quirk

Try as they might, Corporations haven't managed to stamp out all individuality and make us all cogs in the machine. Not yet, anyway. Quirks are those special little things about someone; something you like to do to blow off steam after a long day of being micromanaged. These are narrative traits, used both to earn XP and clear stress. They might be things like

• Sub Culture: You're part of one of Megacorpolis's many, strange subcultures. Maybe you're part of the Doomies or a DIYbernetic
• Javamaniac: There's nothing like a hot cup of Java, or the slow decline into coffee-mutated madness is brings. You're afflicted with Javamania.
• Obsessed: There's something you like, and you really like it. It might be a franchise, a hobby, or even object, but your life revolves around it to an unhealthy degree.
• Stupor: With so many vices to chose from, where to start? Your answer: all of them! You like to party, with drugs, drink, and VR-thrills all on the menu.
• Obligation: You are devoted to something, and your corp would really like it to be them, but it could be anything. Family, a cause, an organization,
• Gambling: Nothing like the roll of throwing away your kid's college fund. Just kidding, you couldn't afford that to begin with. You like to gamble, on anything from dice to blackjack to raptor-racing.

If you can think of anything else that fits with Megacorpolis, talk to your GM. Don't make it too dark, but embrace the absurdity of the dystopia.

Step 2: Choose your Action Scores

You get to start with 8 dots, spread across your Actions in the following ways:

Put one dot in 4 Actions that you feel reflects your Role

Put one dot in 2 actions that you feel reflect your personality

Put one dot in 2 actions that you feel reflect your Quirk

At the start of the game, no action rating may be higher than 2, unless a special ability tells you otherwise.

Step 3: Choose your Equipment

Every role starts with a small selection of equipment. Pick the ones you like.

Step 4: Spark of Life

Record your characters name, appearance, and any other fun details.

Office Roles

Each office role comes with an innate ability, a suite of role abilities, and a small selection of items.

Drone

One of the countless, faceless cogs in the corporate machine. Everywhere, doing everything.

Drones are corporate workers who are just sort of there. We've all been there, toiling away in obscurity for the bottom line of a company who couldn't care less, just hoping to cash a check so we can get home and enjoy what little free time we get. Drones are the workhorse of any operation, able to perform a variety of tasks to help things go smoothly. They are flexible, support other roles, and their unassuming nature makes it easy to get away with (sometimes literal) murder.

Innate Ability: Cog In the Machine Always doing the grunt work; Drones can spend 2 stress to allow another player to reroll a failure. What vital but horribly tedius, menial labor did you perform to help?

Being a drone is unrelated to what you actually do. It's more where you fit into the corporate machine. Some examples might be:

• A low-ranking security guard
• A research assistant
• An office worker

Or any number of low-to-middle positions where you drown in the sea of humanity and indifference around you.

Drone Abilities

Jack of All Trades

Take 2 stress to roll your best action rating while performing a different action. How do you improvise and adapt? What tools and tricks from the office grind do you put into use?

Faceless

When the Drone is in any sort of corporate environment, they get +1d on any rolls to blend in or deflect suspicion. They also get one Special Armor against being discovered. Nobody pays attention to someone in worker overalls - how do you fit in?

Overtime

You get one additional Downtime Action you can spend on anything, and can apply 1 free tick to any long-term project. What does your overtime life look like? How do you get through it?

Helper

If an ally you are Assisting scores a success, clear 1 stress. On a critical, clear 2. How are you helping? How have the corp manipulated you into thinking that productivity equals self-worth?

Grunt Work

You can use Assist 2 times per Operation without paying the cost in Stress. What tricks have you learned to put just the right amount of work in and not more?

Used To It

You get +2 Stress boxes. How have they hardened you with propaganda, motivational posters, and consistent overwork?

Office Supplies

You get +1d when you use improvised weapons in combat. On a critical success, you also (choose one): Disarm your opponent - break something important - Knock them prone.

Crunch-Mode

You can get +1d on Desperate Actions, but suffer -1d on resisting any consequences. In addition, you get one Special Armor against exhaustion or distraction. Just how many nights have you slept under your desk, only to get right back to work as soon as you can?

Corper

Born and bred in corporate colors.

Corpers are families who have been with their corporations for generations, and work there has become the family tradition. The corp, the work, the franchise they cherish, are their all, and they have a familial duty to carry on the legacy. In particularly large corporations, Corpers even revolve around a single aspect or franchise owned by the corp. They are willing to fight and die for it, while the Corps are significantly less loyal in turn. It isn't unknown for an entire family of corpers to respond with mass-suicide when their brand is cancelled.

Innate Ability: Franchise Friendship Corpers lives, breathes, and bleeds their brand. Decide what your Corper's brand or franchise is - when you interact with any fans or followers of it, you have +1d on all action rolls against them.

Like with Drones, a Corper can be in any number of positions within the corporation, and obsess over it. Security guard corpers become militant knight-like families, while office workers wield staplers like swords. Surprising no one, they're often marked out for middle management, where their enthusiasm will hopefully spread to the rest of their team.

Corper Abilities

Franchise Wars

Get +1d when attacking competitors, rivals, or haters of your Franchise. On critical successes, clear 1 stress. In addition, you get one Special Armor against attacks from these rivals. Were those security guards just posers, unlike your family? Is that guy an infamous troll or critic of your brand?

Die for the Corp

When you Push yourself, you can choose to get an additional +1d, and reduce the stress cost to 1 - but you can't resist the consequences. How do you display your corpo-patriotic fervor?

Looming Deadline

During the Downtime Phase, you an extoll others to work harder by expanding one of your downtime actions. Every other ally in your group gets +1d on their downtime rolls, but you start the next operation with 1 stress. How do you lead, coerce, or blackmail the workers to give it their all to make the deadline?

Corper Expertise

Choose one of your action ratings. When you lead a group action using that action, you can suffer only 1 stress at most, regardless of the number of failed rolls. What kind of tricks have your family passed down as secrets to getting this stuff done?

Motivational Poster

You can enable an ally to Push themselves for no stress. Instead, you take 1 stress. How do you motivate them? Posters? The promise of bonuses and this is the last overtime guys honest promise? Drugs and java?

Franchise Secrets

Take 1 stress to establish some fact about your franchise. Get +1d when you act on this fact. Is the fact common or obscure? Is it a family secret, or something everyone in the brand drills relentlessly? What is it?

Rivalry

Start a special Progress Clock. Apply 1 tick to it every time you thwart a rival franchise or forward the cause of your brand. When the Progress Clock fills, you are rewarded by your family superiors with a piece of equipment, +2 Budget, or can clear 2 stress. Then the clock starts over.

Fanservice

You can take 2 stress when interacting with a fan or supporter to compel them to some sort of action, even one that would be against their interest. They don't die for you (not until the sequal), but will betray their employers, join you in combat, or anything else that would usully get them into trouble. How do you stoke the flames of fandom? Do you make a promise to introduce them to someone, to get them swag, or just bond over your mutual love for the Brand?

Expert

There's only one right way to do it: my way.

Experts are specialists. If Drones are the anvil upon which the corporation strikes its hammer, Experts are more like a scalpel. They do one thing, they do it well, and they're not afraid to let you know. Experts typically congregate in their own little sub-cultures around the office with like-minded and "equal" experts, looking down on the rest. Due to their skill and percieved importance, they imagine themselves irreplacable to the corporation they serve: they are not. No one is safe from the consuming maws of the machine.

Innate Ability: Know-it-all
Decide what your area of expertise is. You can spend 1 stress to establish a fact about something within this expertise, and you get +1d when acting on it.

Experts often belong to some specific group, with a particular skillset and subculture. The IT department is a good example of the most common form of Expert subculture.

Expert Abilities

Efficiency

You get one additional Downtime Action related to your area of expertise. How does your expertise translate into getting more stuff done?

Master Of One Trade

Take 2 stress and add +1 result level for a roll within your area of expertise. What jargon and techno-babble do you use to make your superiority clear? What obscure tricks do you use?

Showing Off

You get an additional +1d when Pushing yourself on a roll within your area of expertise. What kind of flair do you put into the task, now that you're showing off?

"Actually..."

Chose an Action within your area of expertise. When you successfully resist a Consequence with this Action, you may pay one stress less (to a minimum of 1). If your follow this up with a roll using that Action, you get +1d on that roll. How do you correct the situation? Exactly how insufferable are you about it?

Clique

Cohorts in the department controlled by the expert are always loyal, and recieve Armor 1 and +1d. What kind of cronies have you accumulated, and how do you interact with them?

Always Right

If you fail a Resistance roll with an Action relating to your area of expertise, roll 1d6. If you roll a success, it counts as a critical success. How do you turn the tables on certain failure?

Tools of the Trade

Your load limits are higher. Light: 5. Normal: 7. Heavy: 8. You make sure you always have the things you need to do your job, but where do you keep them?

Machine-Whisperer

You are not affected by the quality or tier of security measures, programs, or other devices related to your field of expertise. How do you interact with the machines or programs? Do you bang on the computer, hot-wire vehicles, or sweet-talk that Javamat?

Intern

You're being paid in experience!

Interns exist as a second-class citizen of workers. They are labled as untrained, fresh from school, new in the market, or whatever other excuse that can be found to not pay them as much (or at all). Most Corps run their own schools or internship projects, giving citizen a way into the job market through the soul-crushing path of the intern. No one is more expendable than the intern, and everybody knows it.

Innate Ability: Legion
Interns aren't actually one person, but five people with similar-ish names. But since they are interns, nobody really cares to set them apart. While the Intern still only plays as one character at a time, they have 5 warm bodies to expend throughout an operation. New interns are hired at the start of an Operation, refilling the ranks of the fallen.

Intern Abilities

Expendable

You get +1d on your resistance roll when you protect an Ally from harm in combat. If you follow it up with an attack on whoever attacked them, you get +1d on that roll. How do you fling yourself into the way of danger for some measure of recognition you're almost certain to never get?

Gloat

When you fail a Resistance Roll, you can take 1 Stress to make the enemy stop and gloat about the intern who so foolishly tried to oppose them. Any ally who takes advantage of this distraction gets +1d on their roll. What about you is especially pitiful in these situations?

Wheat from the Chaff

Clear 2 stress whenever one of your Interns dies. Why is the death of that intern celebrated by the others? Jealousy, spite, or were they just a jerk to the rest?

Personal Assistant

You can distribute 2 free Ticks among progress clocks started by any of your allies. How do you play goofer around the office? Are you bringing people Java, fetching tools, fixing the copier, or what?

Witness Me, Mentors

Take 2 Stress to apply +Effect to a successful roll, but one Intern dies. How does the intern sacrifice themselves for corporate profit? Did the other interns push them?

Throw Interns At It

When making your engagement rolls, you can chose to sacrifice one Intern's life to get +1 on the result roll. You monster. How did they die, and how was that a useful thing? Did they clog up the security checkpoint with their own dismembered body? Did the guard Cybiders get sick after eating them?

Eager To Please

You get +1d when acting right after an ally fails a resistance roll. What kind of puppy-like enthusiasm do you show when given this kind of opportunity?

Payback

Whenever you fail a resistance roll and retaliate, you get an additional +1d if you Push yourself. How do you snap? What did they do to finally, finally push you too far?