Classes

Concept: “You were a cog in the massive machine that feeds the city of Cy. Now, for one reason or another, you had to abandon your algae farm. All you have is the clothes on your back, a couple pieces of gear, and whatever the fuck you found out in the emerald muck of the vast algae fields.”

Content: A class for the “rural” outsider who’s ready to make a mockery of the hero’s journey.

Writing: Really engaging, flavorful text pervades the entire document; mechanics information is distinguished by underlined phrases amidst the descriptive core content.

Art/Design: A lo-fi image of an algae farmer, surrounded by imposing stalks of their crop, supports bright green, yellow, and white text content.

Usability: A variety of visual markers–boxes, clearly labeled list items, color choices–very effectively organize the presentation of class information across a two-page spread.

Concept: “The pumping beats of the last Post-Grunge Blitz-Rave still course through your veins.”
Content: A class for the circuit-bending audiophile who’s long wanted to use their love of sick riffs and beats to obliterate the enemy.
Writing: Brief glimpses into a fully-formed lingo for the class detonate idea-bombs about how to live, and not just use, the vividly described mechanics provided here.
Art/Design: Filtered neon cityscapes and a close-up of a soundfiend on the prowl stand out as strongly as the bold, distinct headings for each set of class details/features.
Usability: General organization is quite navigable, although some font choices can make reading tricky; similarly, HP & Glitch calculation details blend into the background image.

Concept: “The fields. Monoculture deserts of genetically enhanced crops like wheat 4.6, ultra-maize, and soykin. Spliced to perfection. All earth is sterile. Killed by an unhallowed mix of unfiltered UV-radiation and the most potent poisons. Only hard fertilization keeps the masses alive and fed. Traveling through the cultivations is not without peril. Chemships puke their concoctions onto the plants; mechanic harvesters that have never seen an animal or human cut down all in their path.”

Content: A treasure trove of rules (miseries, glitches, mutations), gear, location/site summaries and generators, map hexes, random encounters, enemies, classes (“Mutant” and “Elektron Rohre”), job seeds/contracts, and even a dungeon to explore.

Writing: Intense, vivid, and wry descriptions that bring to life the sprawling wastes that surround Cy.

Art/Design: A mix of collage, pixel art, graffiti, graphical user interfaces, print reports, and more to frame each page/spread uniquely but feeling comfortably in line with the official/core Cy_Borg aesthetic. Map hexes provided as additional file.

Usability: Wide variety of layouts, font choices/sizes/colors, and organization can slow down reading and navigation (e.g., class info interspersed among NPCs), but hyperlinked table of contents aids with identifying desired details.

Concept: “You were a senior MedTech with T.G. Labs until you were found trafficking in synthetic organs, controlled stims, illegal mods, and little glass vials. Disgraced, blackballed, alone. You take work where you can find it.”

Content: A class for the mad scientist who wants to turn their side hustle into their main gig. 

Writing: Class features articulated succinctly, with a table of derangements to add intense flavor to a bio hacker PC.

Art/Design: Very colorful mix of pinks, greens, and black, with multiple aesthetics over a partial map of CY, including a notepad being held by a (mostly off-page) hand. Two illustrations of a bio hacker appear–one on a title page and one amid the background collage of the main page.

Usability: Each section for class features appears in its own column/window. However, because of different colors for text and complex background patterns, some text is easier to read than others.

Concept: “They took everything from you. You’re gonna make them pay.”

Content: A class for the vengeful arsonist on a path of destruction.

Writing: Concise, intense text that merges pathos and mechanics into intriguing features.

Art/Design: A stunning illustration of a firestarter in red, framed on either side by a column of class features in white on black.

Usability: Text is easily readable and navigable, with helpful bolding for headers and horizontal rules for separating different class details.

Concept: “Chiphead. Holobob. Eyerot. People talk a lot of shit. Let them. You know something they don’t: the whole world’s a stage, and you’re a motherfucking star. All you gotta do is keep dancing, and let the brain-tape roll.”

Content: A class for the talent, the face, the influencer, the fame addict.

Writing: Intriguing class features that evoke a mix of excitement and outright horror that feels completely appropriate for the streets of Cy.

Art/Design: Two-page spread with a portrait illustration of a brain dancer on the left with class features in creatively organized tables on the right.

Usability: For the most part, each section of content is visually distinct from the others, which makes for easy navigation on the page. However, the file is provided as a PNG, so text is not embedded (no searching or copying/pasting available).

Concept: “Obsessed with chrome and power, one man army, murder machine.”

Content: A class for the cyberware-focused ship of Theseus.

Writing: Brief bursts of evocative flavor and mechanics hint at intriguing possibilities for a unique character.

Art/Design: Bright colors draw attention to the content arranged around the page, with a large skull in the center that stares at the reader. 

Usability: Text is very readable, and several different fonts and colors provide highly visible distinctions in content and purpose.

Concept: “You were just another dreg waiting for death. But then that explosion happened inside your prison transport. Your face is on every city corner, but your more concerned with the electricity shooting from your fingers. You don't hunger but crave the power of energy. You need answers, and you suspect you're not the only one of your kind. Will you blaze an unforgiving war path, or be a paragon of hope?”

Content: A class for the player whose relationship with electronics–or even static–is “complicated.”

Writing: Direct explanations of class features provided to situate the player toward the class and its assorted benefits and detriments.

Art/Design: A spread of class details in two columns beside an expressive image of a conductive convict rendered in chalk.

Usability: Layout facilitates navigation between sections and understanding content. However, the class is provided as an image, so text is not searchable or accessible as a result.

Concept: “Unlike some people, you actually have a job. Wake up, shower, force feed, commute, grind, commute, wind down, brush teeth, sleep. Repeat until put out to pasture.”

Content: A class for the everyman who’s working hard but yearns to be hardly working.

Writing: Succinct descriptions and class features to situate a player amid tedious labor conditions.

Art/Design: Black-on-white two-column spread layout with touches of static, glitch, and photocopied aesthetics.

Usability: High-contrast text in distinctly organized blocks of content make for easy identification and navigation throughout spread.

Concept: “While the VIPs were doing drugs and having sex in Ports You studied the blade. And when Your parents kicked you out You put your skills to use.”

Content: A class for the inner edgelord who wants to viciously dual-wield the tropes of anime and anime fan.

Writing: Helpfully clear mechanics drenched in the flavor of this class concept.

Art/Design: Clean illustration of archetype complements a minimalist layout.

Usability: Readable, navigable text with visually clear distinctions between types of class features/details.

Concept: “What are you looking for? There isn’t anything here. Nothing. At all. Stop searching. Certainly not a digital ghost. A flicker on each camera, closer and closer to the penthouse suite. A single vital minute’s disruption in security. The scanner bleep you simply overlooked. A shadow in your programs. A knife in the neck in the time it takes to hit refresh. No, nothing like that at all. Probably just a glitch. You can probably ignore it.”

Content: A class for the player who lives and breathes stealth and evasion. 

Writing: Colorful descriptions of class features provided mostly in engaging, full-sentence format addressing the player rather than as stat blocks or succinct phrases.

Art/Design: Two versions provided: a white-on-dark background version, which is overlaid on glitch art of a hooded figure and uses some yellow highlighting for emphasis and key terms, and a simple printer-friendly black-on-white version whose only embellishment is bolded text for emphasis and key terms.

Usability: Consistently readable visually (and as embedded text) and accessible in language. The calculation of SHADOW (as part of the “Haunting” feature/mechanic) might temporarily trip up some at first.

Concept: “They said they would make you beautiful. They lied. You were a model. A false beacon of hope and aspiration. In the shadowy boardrooms they made you a deal to stay young forever. It was only in the glint of the scalpel that you figured out too late you were sold, slush for a tax write off. An experiment in how badly you can fuck someone up. Now you are madness and steel.”

Content: A class for the highly motivated survivor spirit of vengeance and wrath.

Writing: Intense descriptions of class abilities and unfinished business can inspire tons of compelling roleplay opportunities.

Art/Design: A black and white illustration of a triumphant cybergorgon stands between columns of text describing class features and mechanics, with light green background accents throughout.

Usability: Class details are laid out in easily recognizable and navigable blocks with consistent presentation of headers, list item numbers, and so on.

Concept: “Reaperdoc [REDACTED] says //TRANS-RIGHTS // CANT AFFORD Over-the-Counter Estrogen // Testosterone ?? SICK OF WAITING 300+ years for HRT// Tiddy Skittles/Boy-Barcue Sauce// ??? Doc [REDACTED] has an EXPERIMENTAL Cy-Tech for YOU: VMP-F4NG Transfer SYSTEM Be a Vampire // Steal Hormones // you need ‘em more than most// - ReaperDoc [REDACTED] Reply [Y/N] to Accept”

Content: A class through which to explore the very essence of CY_BORG through augmentations and a “ferocity” resource.

Writing: Flavor and exigence for the class explode across the page, and the “ferocity” mechanic (which increases in combat until a threshold is reached to rage).

Art/Design: Trans flag colors draw attention to important class features and stand out against the white-on-black aesthetic. The accompanying image hints at the class’s possibilities, with the pop-up error message “Gender not found” juxtaposed well against the edited/remixed statues behind it. 

Usability: Mechanics explained well; details/features organized in a manner to make navigation easy.

Concept: “You are one of the last b-ball players alive in the post-cyberpocalypse. Though you might be playing "iso" nowadays, your indomitable spirit blazes brighter than the Larry O'Brien trophy itself, and you remain committed to playing the game the right way, as Saint Naismith intended.”

Content: A self-described “meme” class, for the player who understands ball is life.

Writing: Terse class feature labels and mechanics to keep the focus on core basketball elements.

Art/Design: Two-page spread with a pixelated image of Charles Barkley on the left and a cluttered ‘game plan’ arrangement of text boxes on the right, over a diagram of a basketball half-court. Text is mostly white on black/maroon and white on blue.

Usability: Visually, most text is high-contrast, with large bolded numbers to help distinguish each content item. However, text is not embedded, so no searching/selecting is possible. Also, one of the class ‘background’ tables is numbered in a potentially confusing manner for the reader scanning left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

Concept: “Probably more metal than person by now. Your skin has the sheen of circuits, the smell of ozone. You’ve devoted your life to a cause. You fight, you pray, you train, you mod. You scream. You rage. But at what?”

Content: A class for the techno-paladin who’s on a mission, even if no one else can understand it.

Writing: Numerous options are concisely described, especially to suggest different armor/weapon upgrades with straightforward mechanical effects & explanations.

Art/Design: An illustration of a neon-highlighted, heavily armored cyknight surrounded by different tables/lists of class features/options. Mostly white text on a black background with neon-colored headings. 

Usability: High-contrast text/ground color options increase readability, although sheer amount of text and its arrangement around the cyknight illustration might be confusing for some. Some lines are provided as borders between tables, and text color distinctions help as well, but text indentation can be inconsistent and affect navigation across page.