Mission Driven

Why another cyberpunk game? Unlike other cyberpunk games, Mission Driven takes place in the modern world, not the future. Nor is it based on an alternate history or a retro-futurist imaging of what people in the 1980s thought 2020 would look like. It’s based on our real world.

But isn’t the real world boring? No. The real world is full of violent uprisings, corrupt politicians, creepy cults, corporate conspiracies, and weird technologies. You can get a bitcoin wallet implanted in your hand. You can 3D print a gun. Drug dealers use drones to smuggle drugs into prisons. A washed up game show host was elected President of the United States. The real world is cyberpunk as fuck.

And let’s face it, role playing games are fiction. We’re not playing in the real world, but in dramatic interpretation of it. Think of television shows like Leverage and Scandal, or William Gibson’s “Blue Ant trilogy” for inspiration.

So what do we do in this game? Play video journalists exposing corporate malfeasance, startup employees trying to build alternatives to the status quo, modern day Robin Hoods stealing from the rich to feed the poor, or something else entirely.

What Will I Find In this Document? The basic principles and rules, explanations of the Playbooks and Crewbooks.

For the playtest version, I’m going to assume that you know how to play role playing games in general and are familiar with “Powered by the Apocalypse” games like Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, and Monster of the Week.

For the TTRPG SRD Jam, LibreOffice and Markdown files of the game are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution license for those who want to hack, extend, adapt, or otherwise use the game text. Fonts used in this project include: Norwester, PT Serif, and Alegreya Italic.

Note: at the moment this project is on hold. If you would like me to keep working on it, please email me at klintfinley@gmail.com to let me know you’re interested. Better yet, you can help out by providing feedback, playtesting the game, or even contributing content such as adventure seeds, scenarios, or additional Crewbooks.