Ex Machina

[Teflon Billy]

Previous to my receipt of Ex Machina, I received another publisher’s Cyberpunk game and read through it. Upon finishing it, I thought myself “hmmm, yep…that’s a cyberpunk game alright” and set it aside without much more thought.

And that was that.

Cyberpunk, I realized with some astonishment, had become quaint. I remembered the genre fondly for the gaming with which it had provided me (and took a walk down memory lane with my old, incredibly quaint Shadowrun collection), and for its cute literary visions of drugged-up badasses with rat-tail haircuts and bionic arms that seemed so…”true”…back in the day.

But despite all that, I set the product aside because, frankly, it was just not gripping me anymore.

Then at Gen Con, Guardians of Order’s Mark MacKinnon gave me a copy of their new Cyberpunk game; Ex Machina.

It was a whole different story.

Ex Machina convinced me that Cyberpunk is still vital, still current and most importantly still gameable.

The first chapter gives a very nice, very complete breakdown of the Cyberpunk genre and makes reference to some of the more obscure members of the movement (nice to see Paul DiFillipo get his props) as well as the “titans” (Gibson and Sterling)

It’s easy enough to review the mechanics right now: Ex Machina uses Guardians of Order’s flexible Tri-Stat system.

Character “templates” (which are more akin to D20 classes for you D20 afficianados reading) touch most of the bases necessary for the genre, including such cyberpunk stalwarts as the Street Samurai, the Hacker, the Suit and the Tech; as well as less obvious choices such as the Idol (celebrities, like Rick Rickenharp from John Shirley’s Penumbra books), Teleoperator (Neurally connected Vehicle Pilots a’la Cowboy, from Walter John Williams Hard Wired).

One of my favorite facets of the Tri Stat system in it various incarnations is that character generation assumes broad levels of competence, which can be flawed away should the player decide the character is less competent in certain areas. This is retained in this version.

I was worried that, using the same system as Silver Age Sentinels would result in a neutering of firearms lethality—a pretty crucial element to most cyberpunk combat—but the additions of the Shock value and Traumatic Wounds rules nicely ensure that when characters start shooting in this game, characters start dying.

The technology and equipment chapter is impressive in its scope as it provides not only a list of items, but also guidelines for establishing a background technological level for your world. This entire section, though not credited to him specifically, has the fingerprints of David Pulver all over it.

This is a good thing.

Pulver is, pound-for-pound, the reigning king of “Technology in RPG’s”, with previous credits that include GURPS Ultra Tech (which a I got a lot of use from) and GURPS Vehicles (which left me absolutely clueless with it’s attention to detail and complexity). The gadgetry here hews closer to the former example than the latter (whew!)

If the supplement had ended here, it would’ve been slightly better done than the other cyberpunk game I mentioned at the beginning of this review. It would’ve received a 3/5 rating.

It would’ve gone on my shelf and maybe been looked at again.

But the publishers elected to include four (!) sample settings as well, and they hired the right people to do them, and they are brilliant.

Bruce Baugh’s contributed setting is called Heaven Over Mountain,a nd examines the society which springs up around Earth’s first “Beanstalk” space elevator. Here is the blurb used to describe it…

…The Orbital Tower project, or as everyone calls it when not on the job, the beanstalk, draws on the traditions of biotechnology to simultaneously present the largest artefact in the solar system and an ecosystem so distinctive as to be almost an alien world unto itself.

It rises from Earth to orbit, via carbon nanotube, and is reinforced by biotechnology. The elevator is a living thing, governed and groomed by vast networks of humans and artificial intelligence. The city at its base, and those along its length, are focal points for political and economic power – yet only from the elite reaches of Heaven can one gain perspective and a sense of the world below; a huge fraction of the world's trade and manufacturing now depends on this one thing, a 25,000-kilometer-high tree with a mind of its own…

Amongst the four settings presented, Baugh’s comes closest to being “classic” cyberpunk, but the inclusion of all of your standard cyberpunk tropes viewed through the lens of the changes wrought on society by the “Beanstalk” makes this the “everything old is new again” setting. And it is fresh. Moreso than any of the others Heaven over Mountain is a fascinating read, given the amount of care and attention the author gives to making sure that everything makes sense. If there is an underclass, you know why. If there is an oppressive power group, you understand why they are oppressive. In the best traditions of the genre, there is no good or evil. Mostly, there is self-interest.

The sheer amount of material Baugh packs into his allotted 38 pages is substantial, including…

• The history of the Beanstalk, and the beanstalk consortium
• The math and science behind its construction
• The economics behind its day-to-day operation
• The power players behind its construction
• The elevator earth-terminus and its environs (in useable detail)
• The various “neighbourhoods” along its considerable length
• The myriad organizations, management factions, and anti-consortium groups present
• Current events
• Piles of rules additions/options for gameplay.

It’s impressive.

And it’s followed by something just as impressive.

Underworld is my visceral favourite of the settings presented. Its blurb is as follows…

…Underworld is to Cyberpunk what the Third World is to the United States. Where most cyberpunk worlds immediately evoke a futuristic metropolis, Underworld is the hellhole where the cheap labour is found.

Same world, different focus.

This is not the place to find the existential angst of a hard-bitten ex-cop or the messianic fantasy of an awakened uber-hacker. Underworld is a dusty mirror of the world “above” that has created and maintains it. The needs of the wealthy demand the existence of Underworld.

Underworld is a closed community, where drones toil endlessly for the corporate masters. Their lives in the factories an unending hell, yet life on the street is nasty, brutish, and short. Mafia, Yakuza, gangs, and strange societies divvy up the territory, each trying to survive another day…

Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it.

This is a world where America’s gap between haves and have-nots has increased to a degree that would make the top-hatted capitalists of Charles Dickens’ era choke. An undeclared war by the rich upon the poor has trapped most anyone possible into a life of indentured servitude.

As written, the setting is, largely about gang-warfare between groups of organized criminals in the absence of any law or order. Underworld is philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ “war of all against all” made flesh.

The authors, Chris Gossett and Brad Kayl (apparently a couple of guys the publisher met in Las Vegas who cranked out the mother of all pitches to land the gig) detail the various gangs, cabals, families and clans in great detail, and provide a depressing breakdown of how easy it would be for the rich to pull something like this off (starting, as always, with scapegoating).

They provide new rules/options for creatures living amongst the industrial detritus, behaviour modification chips in the brain, New equipment and some well-realized important NPC’s for the setting.

Mostly what they do is model what a society without law would look like. It ain’t pretty, but it sure seems gameable.

Next up is IOSHI, by Rebecca Borgstrom of Nobilis/Exalted fame.

I’m embarrassed to say this, but I, after several readings of IOSHI, have no idea what the setting is supposed to model, or how it is playable. I’ll admit right now that this is likely a failing on my part (and my attempts to digest the IOSHI setting are largely what delayed this review until now), and I suspect I'm missing something obvious.

I will give you what I have gentle readers, but I urge you to take what I say here with a grain of salt, because I am lost.

Here is the blurb…

…Individually Organised Science and Hobby Index. The development of human knowledge is strictly limited by the sophistication of the techniques used to organise and convey that knowledge. IOSHI (a.k.a. “the well”) conveys knowledge in the traditional fashion: datajacked into a two-level personal library stored on a chip in one’s brain. It serves as a significant boon to anyone who can afford personal or professional access. With a solid grasp of the state of the art, those who have learned from the well are just plain better.

IOSHI is a patented technology. Getting to the state of the art isn't just a matter of money; it's a matter of legal entanglement. By the time you've dragged yourself permanently out of the ghetto, the corporate power structure owns you -- usually a few hundred corporations own very small pieces of you, to be more precise…

Okay. A lot of the fiction included in the setting seems to suggest that there is some similarity of tone to Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix and Shaper/mechanist stories (ie. People fighting tooth and nail over concepts and suchlike, rather than resources). The characters can apparently consciously include themselves in some manner of community or subculture, and program themselves with a variety of “aspects” which alter their personalities and abilities…

Okay, folks. I give up. Anything I say about this setting is just so much naughty word, because I do not understand it.

I’m just going to have to walk away from a critique of it. I will say this: there is very clearly something going on here. It’s complex and it’s high-concept. That’s about as much help as I can be. If you liked Ms Borgstrom’s previous work, I say give this a shot. Nobilis--and unbeleivably respcted and well put-together work-- also lost me.

Email me if you have any insights because I would in all seriousness like to know what I’m missing.

The final of the four settings is Michelle Lyons’ Deadalus, and of them all, it is the most human, causing the characters (and, I will bet, the players) to examine some beliefs that are held as truisms by most of the free world.

Here is the blurb for Daedalus…

…In a sort of 90-minutes-from-reality future, things haven't gone so well. The shadow government set up to free us from the fear of total federal collapse in case of a terrorist strike has instead become the real power in the world. Their think-tank of the brightest minds of the time is Daedalus – now free from the checks and balances that keep more available agencies from overstepping themselves, Daedalus has taken over.

The new government is devoted to the protection and welfare of the political and socio-economic state, no matter the cost.

It’s a happy place, where everyone is chipped and tracked; the watchers are scattered through the community, from local businesses, to church-group leaders, to the Regional Patrols … all the way up to the Department of National Security. But sometimes the programming crashes, and you are left alone in your mind…

This is brilliant stuff. Of the four settings Daedalus is the one I wish my kids would play, it doesn’t ask hard questions; it makes the players ask them.

• Is free will better than happiness and contentment?
• Is it ethically superior?
• What makes false happiness false?
• Should the PC’s be fighting to destabilize a happy and content population?
• Is it our personalities that make us human?

And to its credit, the setting provides no answers to such conundrums.

The setting describes a totalitarianism that, with the chips in place, is making the world better as everyone marches forward in lock-step with the status quo.

It’s shocking to me that I think this, but I suspect that a large number of Americans—post 9/11—would be only too happy to have the Daedalus implants in place if they (as the setting posits) were originally used as a means to combat terrorism, and they were found to ensure that the normal white-bread “Plays in Peoria” culture would remain dominant.

It reminds me of a quote from William Gibson in an interview on Adrienne Clarkson Presents….

He said: “Good science fiction isn’t about the future—that might be where it takes place—but good science fiction is about right now…”

Daedalus is good science fiction.

So in closing, I love this. It has taken a genre on which I felt the sun had set, and made me realize that it’s not only still relevant…it’s about as relevant as it has ever been.

A look at the contributors list is shocking. It’s like looking at the RPG all-stars.

It’s as if they collected the names I would like to see doing each of the appropriate sections, and hired them to do so.

Techno-goodies and their effects on the world? David Pulver

Standard Cyberpunk Setting tuned-up for freshness and performance? Bruce Baugh

Absolutely Opaque Setting that leaves a humble EN World denizen like myself scratching his head and feeling retarded? Rebecca Borgstrom.

Thinking person’s cyberpunk setting? Michelle Lyons.

It’s all good.

Post ENnie awards, I was discussing with another Staff Reviewer/Judge (Hola Senor Gath!) about the sheer quality of RPG products hitting the shelves these days. His response was that if it kept up, we might have to declare a new “Golden Age of RPGS”

Between The Authority, BESM Deluxe, and now Ex Machina, it’s become pretty clear to me that Guardians of Order are definitely in the front ranks of those pushing the golden age forward.

5/5

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Wow, thanks Jeff. While I certainly appreciate your positive review, I am much more impressed that it is a well-written review. I think it provides the right amount of commentary to give others an idea of what the book is all about.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Mark C. MacKinnon
President, Guardians Of Order
http://www.guardiansorder.com

 

[Messageboard Golem]

What exactly is Ex Machina?

A big (300+ pages) corebook that builds on Tri-Stat dX to present a variety of cyberpunk options (ranging from Hard SF to dramatic; subdued and insidious to over the top Matrix-esque action).

For a snapshot, the book will look like this:
Chapter 1: an essay introducing the notions of cyberpunk, and charting its history.
A lengthy bibliography (in the appendix).
Chapters 2-7: detailed character creation suitable for any cyberpunk game.
Chapter 8-9: rules and game mechanics.
Chapter 10: technology and equipment suitable for any cyberpunk game.
Chapter 11: rules on cyberspace.
Chapter 12: advice on running cyberpunk games.
Chapter 13: IOSHI, a campaign world designed by Rebecca Borgstrom.
Chapter 14: Heaven Over Mountain, a campaign world designed by Bruce Baugh.
Chapter 15: Underworld, a campaign world designed by Chris Gossett and Brad Kayl.
Chapter 16: Daedalus, a campaign world designed by Michelle Lyons.

 

[Zoatebix]

[No message]

 

[Zoatebix]

That was strange - I don't seem to be able to edit that first, clumsily aborted comment...

Anyways, this is probably the best review I've read on this site. Something about your writing struck a personal chord with me.

It's weird to gush like this, but it really felt right.
-George Austin

PS - I'm definately purchasing Ex Machina.

 

[Teflon Billy]

wow! thanks man

 

[Crothian]

Damn, that was a good review....

 

[JoeGKushner]

A very good look at the interiors of the book. It's interesting to note how the Tri-Stat system was able to work within the genre here and the added value of the settings.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Did Joe just review my review?

 

[Kichwas]

Note: This is a review of the tri-stat version of Ex Machina and not the upcoming d20 version. If using it to consider the d20 version, pay attention to my analysis of the genre section, the GMing the genre section, and the four settings. The rules part of this review, once again, only applies to the tri-stat version. For that you will need to consider a different review – if I get it, perhaps one written by me.


Ex Machina Review:
Ever look at Cyberpunk games and think, “Oh ma Gosh! Like, gag me with a spoon, like, this is so like yesterday.” Let's face it, the genre is so Big Hair, Culture Club, Japan Inc, Duran Duran, Ramones, and leg warmer'd out it's just sad. I look at Cyberpunk and I think; “why is there an image of Richard Simmons sweating to the Replicants in my mind?”

So why am I looking at a new Cyberpunk game, when I have this bias that the genre is, in essence, a deader horse than the Japanese economy? Largely because this game seems to agree – this is the cyberpunk genre, and you will recognize it fairly quickly upon opening the book, but it is the genre as we see it in today's science fiction, and not trapped in the 80s like older competing games and some of the other new rivals. Nor is it, thankfully, like another current competitor has been described to me; so obscure that you just can't wrap your head around what's going on and how to play it.

The book is split into sections for the genre history, the game rules, running and playing the genre, and finally – four complete and separate settings with entirely different themes. Most of the past Cyberpunk RPGs gave you a single predetermined setting around which the entire game revolved, so this itself is something of a notable step in a new direction.

There may be sixteen chapters to Ex Machina, but I'm going to cover it by the major sections.

The Genre Section:
In the genre section we get a ten page introduction into the history and themes of the Cyberpunk genre, starting in its pre-roots of the seventies, moving into the labeling of the genre around the time of Gibson's Neuromancer, and eventually wrapping up with the modern 'post-Cyberpunk' genre.

There is some coverage of how the genre has been forced to change with times – after all much of what 80s Cyberpunk considered radical is part of the mundane reality of today's world – Wireless, Hand held Computers, Sprawl, the Net, Genetically modified foods, Globalized Mega Corporations, lessoning of nations and nationality – or are experimental but real such as Cloning, optical computers, synthetic but real diamonds, single molecule machines, and Neural interfaces. Modern Cyberpunk still looks to the dark side of tomorrow, but the tomorrow of today is not the tomorrow of yesterday.

From there we get a bit on the dX game engine Guardians of Order uses as one of its two house systems, the usual 'what is roleplaying' commentary, and a brief intro on each of the four settings. These intros wet your taste for what is to come, although the IOSHI entry is so vague as to leave at least me completely confused yet throughly intrigued – seeming to talk about skill chips and split patents rather than the society thus resulting.

Tri-Stat rules for the Cyberpunk genre:
Tri-Stat has managed to solidly establish itself as -the- dominant cinematic rules light RPG. All past Cyberpunk games have been neither of these two factors, which brings us to a natural point of suspicion about this new RPG - are we looking at a bag of apples trying to be oranges?

I'm going to try and show that while it may be the ideal game of apples, it has managed to conquer the realm of oranges as well - that this has ended up as the the best take on a Cyberpunk rules set I've seen to date despite some problems I did end up having with it. As for my ability to compare, I had R. Tal's Cyberpunk 2013 within days of its release, I had a similar jump on for Cyber Hero, Shadowrun, GURPS Cyberpunk, and even ICE's Cyberspace. I went through the 80s, and for Science fictions fans, the Cyberpunk genre was our pet rock and I admit I was there with everyone else.

• Tri-stat has a very simple core - you have three stats, Body, Mind, and Spirit. In any task you roll two dice and hope to get under a number determined by your value in those stats plus whatever skill is relevant. Further rules allow for opposed rolls, degrees of success, and so on. Injury is a hit point system, and damage is always going to be ACV plus 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent of some number - barring critical hits, where ACV is more or less your 'base to-hit' number.
  
• Characters are built on points without classes or levels, and a defects system exists to give you more points by defining weak points in the character.
  
  The skills list is large, and has specializations to give it further focus - if you know law, you could then specialize into a field of law. Guns, a type of gun. Etc.
  
  Characters get their real game mechanical depth from a system of 'attributes' which functions as a combination of perks, powers, special gear, and other unusual abilities. On first glance many of these will seem out of place in the Cyberpunk genre. Attributes such as Mind Control, Healing, and Creation (creates objects) for example, on the surface take leaps of logic to fit in. However note that what you are looking at here is a 'game effects' system – where you take attributes and assign to them a special effect. Mind Control might have limits to be a drug induced effect, while Healing and Creation might represent nanites. Caution should be used by a GM with the attributes section. Tri-stat does not 'game balance' its meta system all that thoroughly and you can easily build game breaking concepts – such as a Special Attack with both Accuracy and Autofire combined with Combat Technique: Accuracy. Taking both types of accuracy thus enables a character to Trick Shot an Autofire attack and possibly do hundreds of points of damage every round reliably if the attack's base damage is high enough (such as being to deliver 10 hits every round of a 20 point attack – the second lowest setting). This may be seen as a system buster by some – a reason to avoid tri-stat – however this lack of strong built in balance also allows you to simulate many more unusual concepts. Provided you have a GM who pays attention and players willing to compromise, the balance issues can be easily governed and you will be able to reap the benefits of so open a game engine.
  
  The attributes section also contains a list of tri-stat dX attributes not found in Ex Machina – many of these, such as Teleport and Pocket Dimension are obvious, but others such as Computer Scanning and Owns Big Mecha seem as if they really should have been in the list. Computer Scanning I could understand from looking it up in Silver Age Sentinels – it is something of a short cut to getting data out of machines that runs right past the difficulty of breaking into a secure system. Owns Big Mecha however, seems to me the ideal way of representing vehicles, and without explanation for its cut I was left a bit confused.
  
  An explanation for that does come somewhat in the templates section. Templates are prebuilt packages to shorten the work of character creation, and one of them -The Teleoperator- suggests using Item Of Power to represent vehicles. The templates are used to give us professions, non humans (such as androids, bioroids, AIs, and so on), and cyberware. I'll cover cyberware under gear, as for the other templates each is built as a list of things you apply to the character, a total point cost, and notes on customization. The list includes all of the 'basic assumptions' of the genre as classic Cyberpunk understands it, with more templates in the four settings for less common ideas.
  
  Finally in character generation we have the earlier mentioned defects. GURPS and Hero players will know these as disadvantages. In tri-stat they -usually- each come on a scale of one to three and are bought either for specific attributes or the character in general. Some of them are specific as in GURPS, such as Phobia, and others are more general like in Hero, such as Restriction. The chapter begins with a discussion on their role in the game, and guidelines for the limits of how many of them you can get (normally from 3 to 5). Taking them will normally give your character 1 to 3 more points each, and given that the norm of Ex Machina is a 75-100 point character, they will not be a major part of your point total – viable characters can thus be made without them, much like in Mutants and Masterminds rather than what you see in GURPS or Hero.
  
• Combat – or, is this Video Game Cyberpunk?
  I've heard it said that tri-stat doesn't offer enough tactical options to make for exciting game play in combat. On the list of facts that agree with this the game has only three stats which all play equal importance in combat accuracy and damage, only four stages for damage (25, 50, 75, or 100% of maximum), and movement does not require a play mat – in fact with fast enough characters it can become awkward. Countering the claim however is a list of maneuvers and modifiers about as long as that seen in d20. It is a hit point system, but there are optional rules for tracking impairment from injury. Armor stops damage, and there are no hit locations though called shots can be used to target specifics. On the downside the team attack from Silver Age Sentinels is not in this game, but it really doesn't fit the genre anyway. The system is cinematic and not exactly all that gritty. It's lethality will vary depending on gear and attributes chosen. It is probably not as lethal as R. Tal's Cyberpunk 2013/2020, but more lethal than Shadowrun 1.0 (but not 3.0).
  
  Consider the average character will have around 80 health points [(Body + Soul) x 5], and that the average gun does 13-14 damage per hit [ACV 8 + 62.5% of 8 or 10]. It will take about 7 hits to kill.
  The 62.5 I got from assuming that most hits will do 50% or 75% of max, only every now and then will you get 25% or 100%, and very rarely a crtical (200% once every 64 attacks).
  
  On the other hand, a character with martial arts is likely to do the same damage (massive damage level 1), and if they have a cyberarm, 5 more than that per average hit. A ranged character could in theory also get massive damage to reflect a marksman, and without such melee is more than likely going to be the most lethal option present.
  
  To the rescue on this built in lack of danger to combat comes the shock system – whereby if you take more than a certain amount of damage in a single hit you go into shock for a while and become a sitting duck. Coupled with this is a system whereby the same amount of damage will cause you to start bleeding out and eventually die if you do not get medical attention. On downside of that is once you start bleeding you will ALWAYS need surgery or eventually die.
  
  Even with the variety of maneuvers, the shock system, and the options for injury there are still very few variables to track, so it does play fast, and you will rarely get bogged down in book lookup during combat.
  
  Now consider the classic test from Shadowrun 1.0 – can Mary Joe NPC kill herself? If a typical human takes a light gun, puts it to her head and shoots, what will happen in Ex Machina? In the real world this is usually instant death. In Ex Machina Mary is likely to have a Health of 40 and do 12 damage – assuming she can hit with a total attack aimed called shot (a roll of -4 or less on 2d8 - so she can only shoot her head if she rolls a 2 unless the GM gives her a difficulty modifier or assumes no roll needed). Even with a critical hit she will still be alive. She will however, critical or not, exceed her shock value and thus begin to bleed out - hitting zero in 28 rounds (~ 2minutes 20 seconds). In addition if you use the optional injury rules she will have trouble not going into 'shock' and thus being unable to act for a few rounds while bleeding out. Otherwise if she makes a shock roll she will still be free to take actions during this time – such as drive to a hospital and get patched up. The saving grace on this comes if she has, as suggested on page 84 for henchmen, the "Not so Tough" defect. If she had it at 3 BP, even a non critical could kill her in one shot given the rules for Catastrophic damage. So Mary Joe can commit suicide, but only if she is a henchman will she go down fast.
  
  The choice to use or not use the injury rules will play a large role in how deadly the system plays out. If you want gritty and brutal use them. People won't die instantly, but they will wear down very fast. You could also consider lowering the points given to PCs, or assuming the Massive Damage attribute is common to anyone who makes heavy use of guns. The system at its default is fairly cinematic and non lethal to PCs and major NPCs, but turn on the right options and you can make it deadly.
  
• Gear
  The technology chapter starts with looking at the hard science versus dramatic and technology advancement level of your setting and using this to consider what is likely to be easy or hard to find, if at all. Next we get information on setting up background technologies – power sources, the state of biomedicine, and nanotechnology. Then come the goods. Ex Machina traces gear not with cash, but in an abstraction through the Gadgets attribute. Each rank in Gadgets lets you have a number of gadgets – minor and major. Minor gadgets are things somewhat hard or expensive to get, and major gadgets are things usually illegal, restricted, or otherwise very difficult to acquire. Normal everyday stuff is Mundane, and your character can have as much of that as you can explain away. In Ex Machina, you do not have to track how many pairs of underwear you bought, or even your cellphone / PDA, but you do have to track your gun, your wheels, and your grenade launcher. This is another aspect of the cinematic nature of the tri-stat system and honestly – it is a welcome relief. Most newer modern and future age games are moving on to abstract wealth systems, but players of older Cyberpunk games are all too used to tracking their Japan Inc. dollars for every little toothbrush (more than likely you didn't actually go that far down, but officially you were supposed to)... The gear present in the book is fairly standard stuff for the genre today. If you haven't updated your understanding of Cyberpunk since the 80s, some of it will seem advanced – such as having cellphones so cheap your character can strap a few thousand onto himself as a fashion statement, or having a Net that allows for wireless access. Yeah, its about time the future caught up with 1995. You get a good solid list of toys for your characters here, but you will need several ranks in gadgets to get more than a small selection. A lot of things which are Mundane are simply not listed, so a downside is that you don't have a style and fashion list like many other Cyberpunk RPGs did. The vehicles section, after giving us a list to buy in the normal manner presents an optional system for buying them as 'items of power,' and notes this can be used to for powered armor suits as well – and then gives a few examples of such. That one is is probably most likely to see use among the anime crowd, but it is nice to see the idea handled.
  
  I'll step back for a second and look at Cyberware – unlike other gear cyberware is acquired as if it were a template of attributes. You pay points for each bit of cyberware that has an actual game effect. Biotech works much the same. By contrast Wetware – skills and personas on chips or copied into implanted hard drives are handled using the Gadgets method of other gear. Nothing in the system makes the acquisition of Cybernetics dehumanizing (about time too), nor does anything prevent the adaptation of subtle or minor cyberware. Tri-stat's attributes are something of a meta-system for building powers, and you can thus put in just about anything. The text of the chapter also covers designing new Cyberware, customizing what you have for 'off-brand' goods, the medical process of installing cyberware and biotech, fire sharing your wetware, recording your memories and uploading your mind.
  
• Networking – or, the bane of Cyberpunk gaming
  Nearly every system for handling networks in past proved to be a failure for players. Usually on the end of leaving the group sitting around while the GM handles some video game like abstraction for the one or two members who operate in a cyberspace written by people who've never been online.
  
  Ex Machina does present such a system for those who want it, but it also presents a second system rooted more in researching passwords, doing online research, stealing personal data chips, and doing actual 'hacking.' This can be done at the keys or neurally, and either way it works through skill checks to find and manipulate data while avoiding detection and security. There's no iconic interface, no game of Pac-Man.
  
  The second system is that iconic system created by early Cyberpunk authors who had no computer knowledge, and yet now popular with the public imagination of gamers – even as the rest of the world gets online and finally realizes how silly it was. It works as a massive 3D world laid over the real world where you wander around with your avatar battling other avatars and will seem familiar to fans of the 80s RPGs. Game effects wise it reminds me of the method used in Cyber Hero – you use a dimension hopping power placed into a device and an assume an alternate form with a new set of abilities once there. The system in Cyber Hero was amazingly unpopular with Hero fans of the day, but this system looks to be handled a little better. It still suffers the classic problem of sidelining the other players – unless you run the VR side by side with the real time (as in how it works in the IOSHI setting). Me, I intend to use the first system, the one based on advancing actual real understandings of computer technology into a neural interface.

GMing the Genre:
Chapter 12 of the book discusses GMing Ex Machina, and begins with the usual stuff about being interesting, making campaigns and adventures, handing out experience, and thinking of themes. There's a very activist stance taken here – the book not only suggests you cheat and make house rules, it declares that doing so is the only way to be a good GM; “If you want your players to think you are the best Game Master in the world, you only have one option: cheat, and cheat often. ... there are no rules about 'being fair'” (p. 145). Most of us know better than to say something like that – the world is full of a variety of different styles and some of them fudge the rules, some don't. Whether or not they do is not the best way to judge their success. Beyond that, the other advice is good. If you find yourself liking Ex Machina or any other RPG from Guardians of Order and this statement on rules is a little heavy handed for you this company is probably going to end up being a frustrating experience. Whenever rules are incomplete or fail in some test the usual response is to suggest ignoring them without explaining their normal application or even how best to judge when to do this. Unfortunately the same response tends to follow when the rules -are- working, but you don't understand them... It's a good rules set, and a design group with good ideas, but they have a frustrating way of presenting themselves. If you're a Dramatist GM this is perfect for you – it works great if the goal is an engaging story -above- all else. If you're a Gamist it might work for you if you have a good sense of when to change rules for gaming action / challenges, but can blow up on you if you misjudge it or are inconsistent. The Simulationist GM however, is likely to find this stance very difficult – the perspective would seem to be that modeling a system to accurately simulate the needs of the genre is the wrong approach, that Simulationist gamers are in error in their style choice.

One actual issue I do see with the game is in the advancement system. It is slow, possibly painfully so. Roughly speaking you will get about 1.1 character points every 4 sessions. It will take about a year of weekly play to go up by 1/7 of your character's original points, with that total you will be able to perhaps buy about 3 ranks of attributes assuming the average costing attribute. From a GMs point of view – you should thus make sure starting characters have enough points to completely capture the character concepts from day one, and assume points from experience only work to address how that concept changes, albeit slowly. That, or up the amount of experience you give out – a common solution chosen by GMs of other tri-stat games if the online forums for them are indicative of any real world trends. Most people online give an advancement point or two per session and not every few sessions. I think I've seen as high as five in Silver Age Sentinels threads. As play of Ex Machina spreads the online community will probably come up with a norm for this issue, and I look forward to seeing the readers of this review in those discussions when they do come about (in other words, I'm telling you to get involved).

The next 5 pages of this 12 page plus 2 page art spread chapter cover GMing the Cyberpunk genre in particular as opposed to GMing in general. How to handle a genre has always been a strong point of tri-stat games – with long and detailed essays on the topic – and this book is no exception. We begin with an essay on what it means to be marginalized, to face prejudice, to refuse the system or try to reform it, and how protagonists become empowered. A very common complaint about Cyberpunk gaming is that it captures the Cyber and the Punk, but misses everything the two words combined stand for. This essay is where Ex Machina seeks to help you run a Cyberpunk game and not a Cybered Punks game. After this we get essays on overcoming human limits, getting style down, and examining core elements of the genre. You get to look at grunge, the value of an information culture, branding, corporate power, the lack of clear evil, shifting cultures, lost data (I read a New York Times article on this just the other day in fact – a prediction that the information age will actually lose mass amounts of data from conflicting storage standards and decaying media – but the note in Ex Machina is more about the ease of digital secrets getting around when you do something as foolish as drop your keychain drive by accident – as any resident of the Silicon Valley can attest, the plot that begins with “you find a memory chip sitting left on the table in the cafe by the last guy...” is not all that absurd, in fact that chip is sitting on my desk right now), and the general ubiquitous nature of tech. A sidebar covers organized crime and the section ends in a short inspiration list.

Finally we get 3 pages on new ways to handle your gaming fix. Here the book covers setting up a website, using email, running a game in email or chat, lan-party gaming (have the players bring their laptops), convention gaming, keeping things simple, sharing Gming, and even going freeform. This is all handled with a series of short essays that more wet your tastes than give you the full tools to do what they suggest. It is still a very handy section though – and the information it imparts should lead you in the right direction for whatever fix you choose.

The Four Settings:
The book jumps right in, with the next four chapters each giving us one setting. Now don't think you're being shortchanged a complete setting here – this stuff starts on page 158 and the book goes out to page 343 before it finishes with the settings. At two columns and a small typeface you're getting more out of each of these than most Cyberpunk games gave in their core rules for their one single setting. Each of these settings comes from a different author and thus has a different writing style – from not only each other but the main book as well. This can at times be a good thing or a bad thing depending on which writer you find clearest or most organized to your way of thinking.

• Heaven Over Mountain
  The premise here is a giant biotech beanstalk going from ground to orbit, with cities all along the way. The Tower of Babel made real in Columbia. We start with a history of the project which at times reads like a Libertarian manifesto – but this is fiction, and in fiction we make an assumption and go with it – such as the idea that corporate openness would end oppression and corruption. Aside from that little cheap shot from the political scientist in me the premise is really novel and I found myself really liking this setting. It isn't very dystopian however, unless you consider the presence of Chinese, still under what looks like the same government, to itself be a nightmare. After the history we get a layout of the elevator, from the basic manner in which it works to a guide to the cities along it – each with its own distinct theme, and then a little bit about space beyond and the problems society has faced in making use of it. From there we get notes on major players in the setting and how they work together or against each other's interests, a little bit on the nature of living in an artificial world, and some current events you can use. After that we get a look at campaign themes from the point of view of being visitors, residents, specialists on hire, or drifters (people living on the outside of elevator). Finally we have some game elements specific to this setting – a chart on the status of different technologies, some elements of biotech, a few near space vehicles, and optional rules for culture shock and stress
  
  Heaven Over Mountain is likely to be more of a social game of intrigue and culture themes than an action game. You can stage action along the elevator, particularly with specialists and drifters, but it is not the focus of the setting. This one is the setting for exploring the idea of alienation in a future perhaps outpacing the people occupying it. It lacks much of the dystopian character of Cyberpunk, there's no great failing in the society, mankind has not been forced to give up its soul to a dark future, in fact it looks as if the elevator is going to eventually lead to a capitalist's paradise. That said, shake it up a bit and you can find a campaign in there. After all, not telling us the horrible truth and injustice behind it all doesn't mean it isn't there – just that you won't have players coming in and meta gaming a foreknowledge of it.
  
  
• Underground
  Underworld is entirely the 'dys' side of dystopia – this isn't paradise lost, its hell found. The idea is that a US acting on a fear of terrorism has taken over every 'rogue state' it could find and orbitally blasted anyone complicit in aiding those states (read as: anyone who asked questions). Then in the guise of democratization they moved in American megacorps for reconstruction and put the locals under their thumbs. Special economic zones were created to promote capitalism (Wait, weren't we talking about democracy? What does capitalism have to do with that? - or so the European might ask... before the US bombed his cities out of existence for raising the question). Left to their own devices, the corps have turned these special walled off cities into 'workers paradises' (read: life is cheap, and you're cheaper). In many ways what this gives you on the inside is something like what 80s Cyberpunk gaming often delivered – roving street gangs, remote corps, nameless scenery people, and PCs as bottom feeders in a game of survival.
  
  The Underworld is essentially a corporate run prison labor camp, and if you think that idea is absurd you have not been paying attention to how the prison system already works in the USA and how we already structure some of our overseas worker camps (particularly in Latin America at present). Underworld simply takes that and couples it to our current idea of security over freedom and extends the two out to their logical end point.
  
  The whole world is not this way, in fact outside of these 'secure economic zones' the world might be a paradise of luxury for any ally of the US (or not), and soon to be occupied and converted over or bombed out of existence for anyone else.
  
  The setting presents this basic picture, then moves on to a number of people living within it at different levels – showing us first the type and then a sample or two. We get worker drones, drifters, corps, security, media, organized crime, gangs and so on.
  
  The biggest complaint I have over this setting deals with timeline issues. The Underworlds have been in place for decades, six to be exact, one note even mentions great grandparents of current adults having been born in them – but the power corps used to make them was put into law by the current president. He head of security in Underworld 9 (the location we focus on, built over a city in occupied / liberated Thailand) has held his position for four years, during which time he put down a major revolt that happened seven years ago... There's a lot of this sort of thing in Underworld, and it jars at times even if none of it is actually major or relevant to the likely PCs.
  
  Outside of the that the setting is novel in its utter desperation and hopelessness. There is no way out of Underworld – not even in a body bag (in fact you're more likely to be eaten than recycled). This is a setting about pure survival on the margins.
  
  
• IOSHI
  The name of this setting is likely to result in it being claimed by the Sailor Moon meets Akira crowd, but with luck the rest of us will be able to stake a hold on it as well – because at least to me, this one looks to be the diamond in a pack of gems for those who can wrap their heads around it.
  
  The introduction to IOSHI is perhaps the most confusing bit of text in the entire book; “The development of human knowledge is strictly limited by the sophistication of the techniques used to organize and convey that knowledge. Thus, oral tradition gives way to writing, private collections to libraries, digital libraries to the web, and finally the worm to IOSHI ('the well')” (p. 247). My response to that amounts to ¿Que? It is not helped by the intro blurb at the beginning of the book; “IOSHI conveys knowledge in the traditional fashion: datajacked into a two-level personal library stored on a chip in one's brain. It serves as a significant boon to anyone who can afford personal or professional access. ... IOSHI is a patented technology. Getting to the state of art isn't just a matter of money; it's a matter of legal entanglement... usually a few hundred corporations own very small pieces of you” (p. 11). This all very nice and interesting in a confusing sort of way, but it still doesn't tell me what the setting is about. This one will take reading in depth, and I will try to give you the theme in plain terms.
  
  The basic premise seems to be a post-national world defined by interest groups and mobile workforces rather than nations and loyal wage slaves. The philosophy, or discourse behind this is a socio-economic construct called 'Sparta.' A person might move thirty times in a month, work for dozens of different corporations and never seem ill at ease about any of it. Life is online in every sense, with an iconic net (IOSHI) overlaying the physical world and itself seeming more real that reality – the apartment next to you might be a foreign place listed as far away on any map or guide that takes you to it while the noodle shop on the other side of the globe might be considered your next door neighbor. Everywhere you go you might see the world in terms of IOSHI icons or a mix of partial icons mapping additional detail over the physical reality. Stand in a place you go every day and pull yourself fully offline – severing your connection and renouncing Sparta and you may not recognize a single thing you see as the world around you suddenly maps you out of existence or into a mass of mobile foreignness far far away from the person who seconds before thought they were standing right next to you. The book does mention using a virtual cyberspace rather than iconic as an option for game simplicity – and speed of play frankly makes me prefer that even it looks like it might be harder to work it in at the outset.
  
  IOSHI is a complex creature of a setting because at its core is a fundamental shift in the discourse of human behavior. If Foucault had been a fan of Cyberpunk he would have had a field day with this one. It hits to the heart of the 'post Cyberpunk' literary movement's question of 'what does it mean to be human?' There are no governments and social reality is not concerned with geography or vertical arrangements – it is all about shifting influences as this or that model of how to live gains discourse dominance within a community. You have the core culture – Sparta – which sees the world in terms of economic value, and has largely shaped the way everyone else must deal with it and each other. Other groups might consist of those obsessed with the search for a post human biology, with rational thought, religion, art, the thrill of the moment, physical perfection, and a number of other 'paradigms' around which they form their lives. Getting yourself and your players to wrap their heads around this might prove rather difficult – to play this one out properly your characters should be acting using a 'decision tree' very different from the one you yourself know. They simply will not judge the exact same events the same as you, nor even the same as anyone you have likely ever met. The concept of IOSHI is absolutely fascinating, but it might be one of those things that works in fiction but fails in gaming. Despite that I desperately want to try it out, and want to see if anyone else out there can get it to work without losing sight of its core themes.
  
  To simulate the complexity of culture and influence interactions in IOSHI the book gives a new optional rule set called 'Cred' to represent credibility. This works as a an attribute you buy separately for each cultural group you have influence in, and to the level for which you have influence. It replaces and looks a lot like Organizational Ties. The two are -very- similar, and I'm not quite sure why we need one instead of the other. When in my mind I work to see them as different I end up in a place where I could see them both being used – one for contacts and the other for reputation. As is one is contacts and pull in a group, the other is reputation and influence in a subculture.
  
  On the character end, IOSHI ends up building people who are almost superhuman. If you put an IOSHI character up against one of the other Ex Machina setting characters it would be like putting a pit bull in a fight with a toy poodle. Higher end IOSHI gives as much points for your character as low end Silver Age Sentinels – at this scale you might end up with PCs who when rolling the dice need to roll things like a 16 or less on 2d8 – something usually rather easy to achieve. Though not how the book suggests it, I would almost want to try a two set point scheme – give the characters only perhaps 50 points to build a base character and then let them tack on a certain amount of IOSHI training package(s). That however, is a much lower power scale than the setting normally implies. On the other hand if a GM makes a -lot- of use of Cred they can pull down the effective point totals of IOSHI characters and make them in power more like other Ex Machina characters. IOSHI suggests to this end that PCs spend about 10-30 points on Cred, and I recommend pushing this to its upper ends or even double that.
  
  Those who remember concepts like empathy, humanity, and so on from past 80s Cyberpunk will like Data Taint in IOSHI – this is a corruption in the chips that make everything work that slowly eats away at certain people. Unlike those concepts this one can be fought against and even overcome. It also lies behind one of the core struggles in IOSHI – that something is out there driving all of this innovation in human culture and it is not benevolent.
  
  There is a major stumbling block with acquiring IOSHI training in play. In the setting this can happen as easily as downloading the software from a handy victim's brain, but it then says you need to spent points on it. If you remember what I said about advancement you will realize that unless you as GM ignore the rules here your players will have to wait about one or two -real world- years before their characters have enough advancement points to use the IOSHI gear they ripped from the dead guy in that early session. The rule in the book here is one that in essence needs to -always- be ignored as even in normal use as it was intended it will fail to handle the need it was made for. It is one thing to ignore a rule when it fails in a given abnormal situation, but this goes beyond that.
  
  Coming back to the difficulties I mentioned earlier with getting a handle on this setting, the end of the chapter helps somewhat with this by outlining a likely path for an IOSHI storyline – even if you don't quite ever understand how to think like your character, you will have an outline on what happens to her.
  
• Daedalus
  Daedalus describes itself as the world ninety minutes from now, and another way to look at that is that it is about a world you live in and think you know, where everything is just fine, until something happens and you realize nothing is what it seemed to be.
  
  Much like Underworld Daedalus kicks off with an overreaction to a perceived threat and the implementation of the Republican idea that freedom holds no value in the face of the need for safety. In Daedalus, as in Underworld, everyone is forced to have a computer chip in them. It is suggested as a national ID system and within a few generations has become ubiquitous to everyone over the age of two. The chips tell them who you are and where you are, as well as your medical information and current condition. They adjust the world around you to your tastes as you enter it – much as new model luxury cars do today when they sense their keys approaching. Additionally, the chips can regulate hormones and other chemicals in the body – curing Alzheimer's and other similar diseases such as depression or perhaps even... disloyalty.
  
  As a result, it's a world of wonderful shiny happy people smiling in the park and living their “Leave it to Beaver” lifestyles complete with housewives, bible study, perfect kids, and the whole glossy package. Everything is lovely and wonderful and nothing ever, ever, ever goes wrong. Until you...
  
  Your chip isn't working right.
  
  You've woken up, your rose colored glasses have become chipped, and -they- are about to find out.
  
  The setting presents its history, the seemingly idyllic nature of life within the chipped world, and then tears it down showing life outside the authority of Daedalus, life within for those outside of its control, and the struggle between the various actors.
  
  You then get a series of potential character archetypes, and some possible ideas for developing your storyline. This ending section also presents some of the core technology and what is or is not lacking from the setting – such as its lack of an overarching cyberspace.
  
  One minor thing about this setting that at first nagged at me – the use of the word ministry for so many governmental agencies perhaps betrays the Canadian influence of the publisher of Ex Machina. For me, when I think government I think of bureaus and agencies. This was akin to noticing a grain of sand at the bottom of a glass of water every time you take a sip. Now if my players noticed that grain of sand as well, it would serve to help with the constant sense of slight alienation the setting -should- impart as a Cyberpunk setting. If ministry of this or that sounds natural to you where you come from, perhaps change it to agency for this or that to get that same sense of nearly subconscious alienation. A trick like this could also be used with any other Cyberpunk setting you come up with – find something just slightly off in how it is referred to that is so subtle as to probably never come up in conversation, but be constantly felt on some level.

Thoughts on Ex Machina:
This is a very intriguing entry into the field of Cyberpunk gaming. It is also, in some ways, only the second actual Cyberpunk RPG to ever be published, with GURPS Transhuman Space as the the first. The rest of the entries – what gamers have grown to think of as Cyberpunk, are really in my opinion just action adventure games about Cybered Punks. Ex Machina's settings all capture the mind games that make up the genre. Even in Heaven over Mountain the way a person thinks will be notably different from how a person in the modern world thinks, whereas a Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2013/2020 character is often not much different from an action hero or villain in any other genre.

The chapters covering the genre's history and how to run it are very welcome items. When you really do sit down to do actual Cyberpunk gaming you will find yourself dealing with a thinking person's genre that can really fall into some serious traps of disassociation from what your character is experiencing. You need to learn to think like a future person, and the text here really helps you do that. It helps you in that, but not just from an intellectual perspective, it helps you understand how to game it, which is what we're all here hoping to do. That, in my opinion, is what pushes this game above its real main competitor – GURPS Transhuman. While it puts you into an alien world, it also does everything it can to help you occupy that world.

The game does come out on the cinematic end of things – which in my opinion is not where the genre lies. As I noted in looking at combat major characters can take a lot more than they can normally dish out, whereas in the genre, when it even has any action (and it often doesn't) that action is usually, to quote Hobbes “nasty, brutish, and short.” Outside of this however the ruleset's open nature really works to let you do so much more than past attempts have.

On first glance the stats seem be a bit problematic – a typical PC will need an 8 to get roughly 50/50 odds in any task and this might seem to indicate that you need an 8 in all your stats. That assumption however misses that you add in skills – including with combat rolls. A normal average person has 4 across the board in stats. Give that normal a 4 in a key skill area and they then have 50/50 odds in a stress situation. Under more mundane conditions they either do not need to roll dice, or if they do, the less stressful nature of the moment stacks difficulty modifiers in their favor – making the odds way better than 50/50. So, on that analysis, the stat benchmarks work better than they at first appear. Many of the sample characters however, were not built using the logic I have just outlined. Rather they were built with stats that do not need skill bonuses – making their stats close to superhuman according to the benchmarks, and even worse when skills are added in.

Judging the game:

Style: Ex Machina comes in a hardcover book with the kind of cover that keeps drawing you in. Cheesecake works, especially when it is genre appropriate. The interior layout is very easy to follow and uses a small enough typeface as to be able to get a lot of information in there – a lot more than is usual for its page count, which is itself rather high. The page layout and borders serve to keep you in the Cyberpunk mood, and the art is top notch throughout. It was this visual impact that made me pull this book off the shelf, and helped push me over the line in buying it. It will be this visual look that will instantly bring my mood back into Cyberpunk every time I open the pages in future. In style, they made no mistakes and I give the book a five.

Substance: In so many ways this is the best Cyberpunk entry I've seen to date. The book is very flush with information allowing you to do so much with the genre – much of it formally out of reach for gamers. If this review had been short and based on a surface read I would have given a substance rating of five. However, on a deeper analysis I did find problems, be they the timeline issue in Underground, the advancement points issue and its impact on IOSHI, the too high of point totals for characters making the game far from lethal, or other glitches here and there. Overall, these errors are minor and the game is still a very good investment and playable 'off the shelf.' They are however, imperfections that could have been looked at further, so I give the game a four in substance, but it is a high four – a nine if this was a one to ten scale.

Combined Rating:
Given the above, for the combined rating system I would give the book a single five out of five. While it has some flaws, on so rough a scale it is still so far above the pack that it earns such a score easily.

Final Word:
If Cyberpunk as a genre appeals to you, if only even Science Fiction appeals to you, buy this game. This deserves to be the top game of the year, it deserves to spread out rapidly in popularity. Cyberpunk as a genre however may be dead in the imagination of the many people who have not realized it has moved beyond the format of the 80s – and that the literary genre was never like the gaming genre. Ex Machina is what Cyberpunk is today, and it deserves notice.