Rules

Concept: “Deep in the Net, a daemon inhabits a bridge. A deal is a deal. The Goatman is an ancient AI of unknown origin - an entity designed solely to make deals. The purpose of the Goatman's deals are ultimately unknown, lost to time or purposeful obfuscation.”

Content: A scenario/set of rules for a deal-making daemon.

Writing: A mix of straightforward rules/mechanics explanations and an in-universe vignette framed as file contents about an unsuspecting punk’s encounters with the Goatman.

Art/Design: Two pages of three major columns/panels (potential trifold configuration). White, red, and green text on black, accompanied by two glitch-art illustrations of daemons.

Usability: Text is easy to read and navigate, with distinct visual markers for different kinds and sections of content (font choices, colors, sizes, etc.). Font selections also immediately make apparent which text describes the scenario and which serve as the vignette.

Concept: “Night. The aquaculture cage maze. A chorus of motors rises against the sludgy lap of the waters. Light pierces the gloom, searching, calibrating, until it falls on a racing skiff. Painted in neon green, the craft banks around a submerged tangle of steel and plastic, cutting the turn slightly too wide. Gunfire hammers the silence. Punctured, the pilot falls from the bow. The boat spins out, catches the edge of another submerged structure, and turns into a spray of splinters that float atop the waves. Three more racing skiffs charge past the wreckage, drivers whooping as they go. The Cy Regatta has begun again.”

Content: Rules for participating in the Cy Regatta, a set of deadly boat races, along with a sea creature that might torment the racers.

Writing: Focused, specific details to explain the rules at play for the regatta, presented directly and concisely. 

Art/Design: Lots of bright color combinations, full-page illustrations, and silhouette backgrounds of text pages/spreads. 

Usability: Single-column text format with large headings facilitates reading and navigating, although some color combinations might strain some eyes, while others may have difficulty reading text overlaying more complex background illustrations.

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: “In the not so distant future… Out of the unholy marriage of Super A.I. and alchemy of flesh, a new type of being came into existence. In the year 20X9, the machines rule every aspect of daily life, forever looking to further optimize culling the ‘dregs’ of society, ensuring any threat to its existence is either exterminated with the extreme prejudice of nu-capitalism, or by force. But the final battle for humanity will not be fought in the future. It will be fought here, it present day CY. Tonight…”

Content: A mission to save the future by terminating a CEO. Additional classes ("Time Target," "Veteran of the Future War," and "Reprogrammed Hunter Killer"), supplemental glitch rules, and a murderous NPC are also included.

Writing: Creativity permeates every page/spread, offering plenty of details to flesh out each encounter with a clear sense of in-game urgency for the stakes involved.

Art/Design: Distinct full-color layouts for each page/spread that manage to share a dark-themed aesthetic for a sense of consistency throughout. Numerous illustrations provide visuals for the landscape, significant NPCs, and maps.

Usability: Visually, most pages provide high-contrast text/background for easy reading, with immediately apparent headings/labels and distinct content sections (whether via whitespace, borders, etc.). However, the text is not embedded, so no searching or selecting is possible. A ToC is provided at the end of the supplement.

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: “Tribute — a 48-page triple-threat zine with content for Mörk Borg, CY_BORG, Death in Space. Whatever sick or sad ideas came to my mind, I banished into this cursed little booklet. [...] CY_BORG. Go dumpster diving (in CY), visit the REAKTOR, die in horrible car accidents, and play as a revolutionist chemist!
By day, you mix and cook in the corps’ polluted factories; the ¤ ¤ ¤ are much needed. Reaction kinetics are on your mind. By night, you burn the palaces. You poison the organism that feeds you. Your concoctions are august.”

Content: A zine whose focus is partially on several Cy_Borg-related supplements: a class (Revolutionist Chemist); a mini-game (Dumpster-diving) with random encounters and loot tables; and a club location (Reaktor) with related tables for drinks, NPCs, trouble, and music genres. 

Writing: An overall balance of general and atmospheric description, in-universe text (such as instant messages/social media posts), and mechanical/rules-based explanation. 

Art/Design: Distinct spreads/pages for each entry, with a variety of aesthetics and graphics (photo collage, hand-drawn illustration, simple icons, etc.). 

Usability: While spreads do vary aesthetically, each has an identifiable organization and layout that consistently presents information throughout for ease of navigation and use. 

Concept: “This zine contains a table for Animals and plants altered genetically, mechanically or both, some stat blocks and body modifications.”

Content: A collection of biological and technological creatures, parts, and modifications to bring more animalistic variety to a game.

Writing: Descriptions make use of a casual and conversational voice that makes even the more mundane entries engaging and humorous.

Art/Design: Three pages of red and blue text on a light gray hex-pattern background. Two pages use single-column text layouts, while the page of stat blocks has different NPCs’ info scattered around the page.

Usability: Each page provides a consistent visual grammar to indicate how to navigate its content. Center-aligned lists of creatures and modifications may slow down some reading of entries that span multiple lines of text.

Concept: “A small collection of optional rules for Cy_Borg. Includes variations on Experience, Dice-few Combat (with revisions to how armor, weapons and initiative work), a biological alternative to Cybertech and doing away with Cy-Rage.”

Content: A set of rule proposals to affect characters in assorted ways that can provide some intriguing variety to a game of Cy_Borg.

Writing: Text is direct and focused on explaining the mechanical differences between these rules and those in the official rulebook. No fluff, all function.

Art/Design: Single-column text with a simple heading organization. Black-and-white with one heading level provided in red/pink. Background is a light noise/speckle pattern.

Usability: Font choices are easily readable, and the page background pattern shouldn’t cause much disruption of engagement with text. A few key terms and phrases are bolded and italicized for quick identification.

Concept: "D66 Adaptions, reflavours or substitutions of Unheroic Feats for CY_Borg

BONUS:

D66 Never seen before advantages for undiscerning scum"

Content:  A set of tables providing new options for improvement (some with downsides!) that can help a punk feel like a more exceptional character.
Writing:  Balanced mix of thematic description and mechanics explanation to help a player understand what a given feat does rule-wise and how to interpret that within the game and character headspace.
Art/design:  Light-on-black two-column text organization, with some pages including a small hand-drawn illustration in a bottom corner.
Usability:  Text is consistently color-coded to indicate the aim of each text block, and each table entry is distinguished from the others with consistent numbering and horizontal rule usage. 

Concept: “Embedded in ads, lurking in the top search result, loaded as a hacker’s dead hand, coursing through a derelict net node. Viruses are everywhere, infecting everyone, stealing a portion of everything. Most of them are unnoticeable, lurking in your RCD, implants, accounts, everything. These? Less so. Bisecting your consciousness. Hijacking your implants. This is the result of someone else’s malice or misconduct. It will break you down until you get rid of it.”

Content: A set of tables to make a player’s life living hell through the power of compromised technology.

Writing: Concise and powerfully thematic explanations of relevant variables, including how the virus spreads, how it affects a player mechanically, who developed it, how to get rid of it.

Art/Design: A visual overload of colors, fonts, graphics, and stylistic clashes that feels entirely appropriate given the rules’ purpose.

Usability: While overall consistency is out the window, it is possible to understand and navigate each table/element while focusing on that section.

Concept: “Meatspace decays. AR sputters. VR goes black. There are perilous chambers for those descending too deep in the THE NET. Nothing in them but shimmering entropy. Fractal pits. Voidpoints.”

Content: A set of rules for when a player fumbles an app roll while in the net, along with a set of locations to explore when doing so.

Writing: Brief, evocative descriptions of sensory experiences that can cause a punk to question their reality, even as digital dangers risk their annihilation.

Art/Design: Organized as a trifold pamphlet basic rules and title/credit info are provided on outer panels (in white-on-black color scheme), while voidpoint locations and a map are provided across the inner panels (in black-on-white color scheme). 

Usability: Headings and labels are visually distinct from body text and consistent in appearance. Map locations are numbered and correspond to descriptions surrounding the map image. Text is not embedded, so searching/selecting is not possible.

Concept: “War makes money, at the end of the day, and the corps of CY are interested in anything that makes money, no matter how many cadavers will be piled up alongside those heaps of cash. “

Content: An arsenal of material–enemies, squad makeups, potential job seeds, environmental tables, and more–with which to make corps even more terrifying, overwhelming, omnipresent, and all-around dangerous.

Writing: A mix of informative mechanics and in-universe flavorful commentary on each entry that balances black humor on the edge of bleakness.

Art/Design: Simple black-on-white single-column layout over fourteen pages.

Usability: Visually distinct and consistent font and text decoration choices, along with helpful whitespace use, result in an easily navigable document.

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: “
[recruiter77@mandela ~]$ sudo project-mandela  --help
#################—BEGIN TRANSMISSION—#################
<<<<<<< Project Mandela is a collaborative effort, a beacon of hope in the ever changing face of uncertainty. Our mission is to unveil the truth behind and expose the Doppels, who silently infiltrate our lives. With your assistance, we can protect ourselves and our loved ones from the horrors of being ‘replaced’. Join now.
########################—END—########################
[recruiter77@mandela ~]$ _
“

Content: A set of rules for a secret organization that tracks down “doppels” and its secret/coded message system. 

Writing: “In-world” content speaks directly to PCks while also providing GMs and players with the details needed to work the Project Mandela organization into a given game.

Art/Design: Pages are laid out as “in-world” printed flyers (complete with tear-off tags at the bottom of one page). Three versions are provided: one spread layout and two single-page layouts, with one of these optimized for printer-friendliness.

Usability: Text is mostly quite readable, with distinct sections of content clearly identifiable visually, with consistent font choices to indicate relationships between different text blocks.

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: “There's a sickness in the streets of CY. Rain drips like a broken IV. Dying adverts flicker in sallow shades. They say the world is ending. Has ended. Will end. They say the howls at night are Cy-Ragers. NanoPhreaks. Nothing to worry about. Nothing abnormal. The water is poison, but it always has been. The air is poison, but how bad can it be? It churns through your lungs all day and hasn't killed you yet. There's nanites in the trash, nanites growing like mold on the walls, nanites in the blood and bones of regular citizens, but all of this is familiar misery. Last night you stared blearily at your face in the bathroom mirror, watching it change. Watching it become something new. As you did, your cybernetics clicked like beetle legs, like teeth shuffling in the mouth of a cannibal. They squirmed and contorted to match your new flesh. You vomited your whole stomach lining into the sink, then washed it out with a swig of cheap ethanol. But the disinfectant didn't purify you. It just made you worse. Tonight, the glitching moon hangs low over the skyline and your body is wrong. Wrong for the city. Wrong for the life that clings to it. Wrong for the alien gods that have touched its streets. You hate them all, and that hate pours out of you in a howl.”

Content: A set of rules to incorporate werewolves into CY.

Writing: Matter-of-fact explanations and descriptions of a variety of factors pertinent to affected characters (transformation rules, clothing options that survive transformation, a “Festering Wolfborg” class, etc.) as well as several lycanthropic foes and their stats.

Art/Design: A mix of black-and-white splash images with brightly colored sections of content, each with its own bold color scheme. 

Usability: Single-page, single-column layouts make for quick perusal and identification of desired content, assisted by a hyperlinked table of contents.

Concept: “You Died, Dumbass is a profile for another shitty subscription company, some rules for near death organ transplant (inspired by https://zordvil.itch.io/horrible-wounds) and related headlines made for the new-times-dumbass game jam.”

Content: A set of rules to complicate life when a punk at the table comes back from near death with a biosynthetic organ–complete with 4d4 additional relevant headlines to roll when a miserable headline is rolled. 

Writing: A focus on the bleakly absurd atmosphere of a world where biosynthetic organs (and the late capitalist approach to their supply) is common, with brief mechanical features/effects supporting that focus.

Art/Design: Mix of black-on-white and white-on-black spreads/pages, using different layouts and aesthetics, with consistent appearance of red accents and highlights throughout. Several illustrations of NPCs and a location appear along with a silhouette to underscore our equally bleakly absurd reality

Usability: High-contrast text is consistently provided and page/spread layouts offer visually recognizable organizations of similarly presented and distinctly marked content.