Gear/Items

Concept: "The Drug-Addled Riff Wretch is a specialized class for the tabletop RPG CY_BORG – part street scvm busker, part bardic force multiplier."
Content: A zine-styled set of material surrounding the Drug-Addled Riff Wretch class--not only class specifics but also information on a special weapon (the "plasmaxe"), powers/abilities (songs), relevant NPCs, and more--even a flowchart for using the class's abilities.
Writing: Predominantly conversational and in-universe in voice and tone, with some concise rules-oriented explanations accompanying.
Art/design: Different pages/spreads have unique layouts and aesthetics, although there is an overall cohesiveness thanks to the zine/mixtape-esque organization and conceit of the class supplement overall. Lots of color and font variety, and many images have a mix of digital and hand-drawn illustrations that evoke various approaches to the Drug-Addled Riff Wretch as a character.
Usability: While the variety of layouts across pages can be disorienting at first, there is a generally recognizable visual grammar that facilitates navigation and use of details on each page. Text is also generally in high contrast with background patterns/colors and can overwhelmingly be selected or searched.

Concept: "The Gallery of Punks is a play aid for Cy_Borg by Stockholm Kartell. It is intended to assist the game master in creating NPCs on the fly, equipping them with tools to help make emergent storytelling possible. It has been primarily designed as a reference document intended to be used alongside the rulebook."
Content: A set of tables to generate punks of various classes (stats, quirks, looks, equipment, etc.) to help a GM populate their version of CY more quickly and easily, along with a small number of NPCs with more fully developed backstories and personalities. Also included are some commonly visited NPC types--ripperdoc, bartender, etc.--and their wares.
Writing: Direct, focused information intended to assist a GM in accomplishing their goals and keeping their game moving.
Art/design: White-on-black landscape-oriented pages that emphasize their central table(s). Vendor pages include some graphic embellishments to reflect their purpose (ammo, pharmaceuticals, etc.), and each of the more fully developed NPCs has their own full-color illustration.
Usability: Text is high contrast and consistently formatted across pages, even with specific pages' organizational differences, and locating a particular element and recognizing its aim is easy to accomplish. 

Concept: “Smart Jacks, and Jackies, also known as Pretenders and jarods, are a product of experimental military technology that attempted to cross volatile, creative personalities with advanced neural surgery, brain chemistry manipulation and psychological programming....To breed natural Jacks-of-all-trades.”

Content: A class for the state-of-the-art technodabbler.

Writing: Detailed descriptions set up the class conceptually, with concise background-related tables offering a more direct glimpse into what a Smart Jack(ie) might care about.

Art/Design: Single-column text in distinct color-coded sections, with a description of Smart-Tech and Smart-Chips gear in a skewed/angled text layout.

Usability: Text is mostly readable, with high contrast between text/background and with clear headings and labels provided with different font, color, or bold/italics. Angled Smart-Tech section might pose trouble for screen reader programs.

Concept: “DO YOU WISH TO SEE THE UNKNOWN? A dash of conspiratorial thinking for your next CY_BORG game. Contains a table of weird things to find on the NET, two UFO themed enemies, equipment, and a bunch of references to sci-fi and horror.”

Content: A zine featuring governmental and alien menaces, a table of interesting net discoveries, and several items.

Writing: A balanced mix of unsettling horror and tongue-in-cheek humor presented as a mostly in-universe document.

Art/Design: Dark gray on light yellow/tan scheme (reflecting printed homemade zine aesthetic) with one- and two-column layouts of text, accompanied by cartoon and silhouette illustrations of enemies, items, and more.

Usability: High fore/ground contrast and font choices make for easy reading, with larger headings and handwritten marginal notes consistently applied throughout.

Concept: “Each year, during October, Exeunt Press hosts Mörktober. A 31 day event that encourages creators to make something each day for MÖRK BORG or other BORG games, in this case Cy_Borg, based on a prompt list and then share it with the community. More about Mörktober.

Thirty One Dark Nights is a compilation of the 31 Cy_Borg compatible creations I made for the 2024's Mörktober event.”

Content: A collection of enemies/threats, equipment, locations, drugs, viruses, surgical options, and more with which to make a game of Cy_Borg vividly fucked up in fantastic ways. (Note: individual entries are PWYW, with a paid option for a fully compiled set of the entries.)

Writing: Mörktober’s purposefully morbid and eerie atmosphere is mixed with pitch-black humor, while unique abilities/rules/effects situate each concept for game rulings.

Art/Design: White/gray on black with a different accent color (and heading typeface) and accompanying illustration for each entry/page.

Usability: Consistent body text and label emphasis/decoration allows for navigation to and recognition of desired info elements, while distinctions in entry accent colors and headings orient the reader to the essence of that entry.

Concept: “Thoughts and Prayers is a zine by Stockholm Kartell made for the 2023 convention season. It includes stuff for all our games; MÖRK BORG, CY_BORG, DEATH IN SPACE, SKR and some system-agnostic material. But there are also things like album reviews, essays and short stories, thoughts, ideas and takes. 100% of the benefits are to be donated to Direct Relief.”

Content: A smörgåsbord of content for Cy_Borg–some specifically for the game, some that could be used for it or others–that ranges from a location/adventure (Sprawling Car Park) to tables/generators (e.g., “Who else is in the pub when the brawl starts?”) to NPCs (emergency response teams) to medieval weapons to injuries/afflictions to short fiction about living as a corp drone. There’s a lot more than that, too.

Writing: Every page oozes the Stockholm Kartell house style(s) that makes a reader want to use all that they can in their next game.

Art/Design: Black-on-white color scheme in a printed zine format with illustrations throughout. 

Usability: Available only in print format. Table of contents at the beginning of the zine makes it easy to locate info throughout, with a consistent header/footer with page content credits and page numbering to help clarify not only where a reader is in the zine but also whose work they’re looking at.

Concept: “Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die is a rules expansion for CY_BORG giving you the chance to drive fast and wreak carnage hanging out the passenger side window (or just crash headlong into it, your mileage may vary). These rules are light-weight, but robust, and will add a ton of flavor to your chase scenes as you bolt down narrow streets in attempt to escape the piggies or track down a corpo shit-bag. Hell, you don't even need to catch 'em, just have a firefight between vehicles - we got rules for that!”

Content: An impressive cornucopia of content: rules for vehicle chases/races and driving hazards, classes for the “Got-Away Driver” and “High Speed Vigilante," stats for vehicles that are purchaseable (or not), enemies to encounter on the streets of CY, and an entire revenge-themed mission.

Writing: A focus on thematic details/voices to breathe life into included elements that are supported by succinct, direct rules and guidance for GMs to implement assorted features into a game.

Art/Design: A mix of layouts and aesthetics throughout the supplement. Some pages are laid out landscape-wise, and at least one two-page spread has text broken across its pages. Number and variety of illustrations and themes, along with their execution, are inspiring.

Usability: Body text font is pretty consistent throughout, and despite the range of page/spread layouts it’s easy to identify headings/labels and how they relate to nearby content. However, the text is not embedded, so searching/selecting and screen reader use is not possible.

Concept: “‘Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.’ - Marcus Aurelius

Welcome to the gas-guzzling, high octane post-apocalyptic hack of Cy_Borg, about miserable, radiated scum struggling to survive in tomorrow's unforgiving carcass!”

Content: A Mad Max-style take on Cy_Borg rules, with some new and different systems while others very closely resemble those of the base game. (Note: At the time of writing, the "Jumper Cable Edition" version of the game has been released. A fuller version of the game is set to be published in the future.)

Writing: A balanced amount of thematic description and mechanical explanation of effects/features that situate players and GMs to the game’s focus (especially in comparison to that of Cy_Borg).

Art/Design: Aesthetics of the core rulebook with some occasional pages/spreads and illustrations that break out in a different direction (such as in the more comic book-like “The world has ended” spread early in the book, or the Vast Grimm-style “lagunasuga” monster spread created by VG creator Brian Colin).

Usability: The fore/ground contrast varies significantly from page to page, as do fonts/typefaces, either of which can make some text quite difficult to read.

Concept: "Wiggly Dorpher introduces new game options for CYBORG hyperlinked to DRUGS.

Content: Sets of equipment, nano powers, a class (Wiggly Dorpher), a location, an enemy, and more--all relating to drugs in some way.
 Writing: Potently and concisely atmospheric, with rules/mechanics explanations complementing the descriptive aims.
Art/design: A mix of page/spread aesthetics and organizations that reflects the core Cy_Borg design variety.
Usability: While most pages have significant text/background contrast to facilitate reading, much of the text content is not embedded and thus cannot be searched or selected.

Concept: “Hello Operator! The X-Ware Repository for Techno-Anarchists is a collection of random tables that offers some extra 'ware to spice up your game.”

Content: A set of ten apps, ten cybertech, and ten nano options that offer intriguing variety to GMs and players looking to expand their gear.

Writing: Brief descriptions of fascinating and creative mechanics, often with references to material found in the official rulebook.

Art/Design: Two pages dedicated to each category, and each pair of pages has a distinct color scheme, with a high-contrast color choice and set of fonts for the single column of text laid over the background image/pattern.

Usability: Headings/labels are provided as a distinct font from the main body content in each section to help readability. Background image in the ‘Apps’ section might slow down reading for some (there’s just a bit of noise working against contrast), but text is easily searchable/selectable.

Concept: “Hello Operator! This second volume of the X­Ware Repository for Techno­Anarchistsis brings more random tables of new content for your game.”

Content: A set of six weapons, six booster mods, six drugs, six gangs, and six nano-phreaks to bring even more variety and danger to a Cy_Borg table.

Writing: Bite-sized bullet points and descriptions indicate mechanical effects, flavorful qualities, and other quirks that might spur a GM or player to innovative integration of a subject into their game.

Art/Design: Single-column organization of text, with distinct layout features and color scheme for each category’s page(s), complemented by thematically appropriate illustrations and background images.

Usability: Despite a variety of headings/labels across category layouts, text throughout is easy to read thanks to high contrast on background and size/color choices to assist with recognizing characters and kinds of content.