Ventangle
Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 12:20 am
Full Cover
Map of the Fallen Special Ward (JP)
Map of the Fallen Special Ward (EN, interim)
Author's Twitter (JP): https://twitter.com/kamiyaryo
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___Guns, faeries, and computer-gods all in one, Ventangle is about surviving a magic-saturated 24th century dystopia. You take the role of one of many Hunters living contract-to-contract within the depraved, neon underworld of the Fallen Special Ward, a sprawling city built around and within the crashed orbital colony Azrael, located within Osaka bay. Of course, as one of Ryo Kamiya's games, author of Maid RPG and Zettai Reido, it has its fair share of lewdness, but there is a chapter about how to tame the game down by removing the Succubus race origin and the Bitch class adept along with a few other things.
___Hunters, in short, are freelance mercenaries, ranging from the lowly street thug with luck as their only saving grace, to the gene-modified, tank-grown human perfection of an Elf, with countless in-betweens: succubus prostitutes, bloodline exorcists, vampire lords, automaton hackers, faerie-pacted witches, and traditional, one-man-army gunners, among many others. Anyone can call themselves a Hunter, but those without what it takes won't be able to for long, with requests such as detective work and espionage all the way to burglary, sabotage, and assassination.
___Some highlights mechanics-wise, it's a 2d6 roll over system, with most rolls being a simple 2d6 + Level, along with any bonuses from relevant skills & equipment. You can spend Advantage for extra dice on a roll, from which you keep the best two. The game loop is built around a hard, end-of-mission fight, hack, theft, or other big event, which you prepare for by gathering intel and similar to build up Advantage, as well as making allies to help you out. You have a soft time limit in regards to taking on this final encounter in the form of Karma: periodic rolls of what amounts to luck, as to whether someone else beat you to assassinating your mark and claiming the bounty, or the dirty bomb you've been trying to track down blew up, or other mission-failed tier conclusions.
___Another notable feature is the huge variety of gear there is, with so much magic on top of it being cyberpunk. As for body mods, there's traditional cybernetics such as mechanical limbs and guns implanted into your arms, mystical augmentations like runes tattooed onto your skin and crystalline piercings, bio-grafts such as cat ears and tentacles, and a variety of miscellaneous nano-mods that grant faster reflexes, regeneration, your body fluids being aphrodisiacs, all sorts. Getting into weapons, there's the standard array of guns from pistols to sniper rifles, as well as swords, wands magitakts, paper talismans, power armor, and even simply swaying foes to your side with words or lewds, each of these customizable with their own type-specific modifications like swords being made of cold iron or handguns having silencers built in. Outside of these, there's a fair amount of consumables and other equipment, such as optical camo, grenades, magical scrolls, drugs, lotto tickets, so on. All of these can be purchased not only with your earnings, but by going into debt which is an actual mechanic of the game, something I'm surprised not to have seen in any other cyberpunk TRPG before. Skimp on your payments, and your debtholder will be liable to help you find the money, arranging some dangerous jobs or even some modeling and escort work on your behalf.
___Hunters, in short, are freelance mercenaries, ranging from the lowly street thug with luck as their only saving grace, to the gene-modified, tank-grown human perfection of an Elf, with countless in-betweens: succubus prostitutes, bloodline exorcists, vampire lords, automaton hackers, faerie-pacted witches, and traditional, one-man-army gunners, among many others. Anyone can call themselves a Hunter, but those without what it takes won't be able to for long, with requests such as detective work and espionage all the way to burglary, sabotage, and assassination.
___Some highlights mechanics-wise, it's a 2d6 roll over system, with most rolls being a simple 2d6 + Level, along with any bonuses from relevant skills & equipment. You can spend Advantage for extra dice on a roll, from which you keep the best two. The game loop is built around a hard, end-of-mission fight, hack, theft, or other big event, which you prepare for by gathering intel and similar to build up Advantage, as well as making allies to help you out. You have a soft time limit in regards to taking on this final encounter in the form of Karma: periodic rolls of what amounts to luck, as to whether someone else beat you to assassinating your mark and claiming the bounty, or the dirty bomb you've been trying to track down blew up, or other mission-failed tier conclusions.
___Another notable feature is the huge variety of gear there is, with so much magic on top of it being cyberpunk. As for body mods, there's traditional cybernetics such as mechanical limbs and guns implanted into your arms, mystical augmentations like runes tattooed onto your skin and crystalline piercings, bio-grafts such as cat ears and tentacles, and a variety of miscellaneous nano-mods that grant faster reflexes, regeneration, your body fluids being aphrodisiacs, all sorts. Getting into weapons, there's the standard array of guns from pistols to sniper rifles, as well as swords, wands magitakts, paper talismans, power armor, and even simply swaying foes to your side with words or lewds, each of these customizable with their own type-specific modifications like swords being made of cold iron or handguns having silencers built in. Outside of these, there's a fair amount of consumables and other equipment, such as optical camo, grenades, magical scrolls, drugs, lotto tickets, so on. All of these can be purchased not only with your earnings, but by going into debt which is an actual mechanic of the game, something I'm surprised not to have seen in any other cyberpunk TRPG before. Skimp on your payments, and your debtholder will be liable to help you find the money, arranging some dangerous jobs or even some modeling and escort work on your behalf.