SpellbookGaming
Villager
Bite The Hand - a Cyberpunk Panic Engine TTRPG
Bite the Hand is a cyberpunk TTRPG built on Mothership's Panic Engine. In Bite the Hand, one player takes on the role of the Warden, controlling and voicing the world and the non-player characters (NPCs) who inhabit it. All other players create player characters (PCs) and describe their characters’ actions as they fight for survival, vengeance, and justice in a cyberpunk dystopia.
The city is harsh and unforgiving. This isn’t a power fantasy where armies of grunts are cut down with ease. No, it’s a brutal game where victories will be suspenseful, bloody, and not guaranteed.
Like Mothership and other Panic Engine games, Bite the Hand is a lightweight, theater-of-the-mind system. The core rulebook contains all the information both players and game masters will need. It features a big catalogue of cybernetics, weapons, NPCs, downtime mechanics, and all the rules and advice you need to play. There's even a simple one-shot included in the back of the book, ready to run!
So all in all, what's going to be in the final book? The 48-page zine will be jam-packed with:
- 4 player classes, including the new Turncoat, a former corporate employee who has turned on their old masters
- A d100 table of signature styles to personalize your PCs
- A total of 44 types of cybernetics, with an entirely rearranged upgrade tree
- Dozens of items, weapons, armor types, and vehicles
- A full suite of lightweight rules for stat checks and saves, stealth, social manipulation, hacking, environmental hazards, downtime, medical care, and of course high-intensity combat
- A modified version of the Stress and Panic systems you know and love from Mothership, complete with a fully custom Panic table
- A wanted system called Heat and debt mechanics that feed into each other
- Several pages of Warden advice, helpful to both total newbies and Panic Engine veterans
- Cyberpunk genre guidance, including worldbuilding advice and a list of inspirational media
- A full page of house rules and homebrew advice to help you make Bite the Hand your perfect game
- 13 easily modifiable NPCs for Wardens to populate their worlds and challenge their players
- An all-new one-shot module, featuring an open-ended encounter that's sure to play out differently for each party
- A handy quick-reference “cheat sheet” for the most important rules on the back cover
- Refreshed formatting, to improve the overall experience of reading the book
- Around twenty original illustrations by the very talented Manuel “Unam” Lavalle!
