It is my extreme pleasure to announce the Hypercorps 2099 Kickstarter coming at the end of August!
This fantastic game and universe have captivated me since their inception late last year and after more than half a year of playtesting and tweaking, I’m overwhelmingly excited to work with Legendary Games and share it with the world!
WHAT IS IT
Hypercorps 2099 is a rules template that operates much like Mythic Adventures. While that’s a fun system (and compatible with this one for truly epic games) and I enjoyed it, there’s a predication to survival that made my character feel too powerful. What I’m doing with Hypercorps 2099 is headed in a slightly different direction: everything is deadlier, things happen more quickly, and then of course there’s the matter of theme.
WHEN
The Hypercorps 2099 Kickstarter launches on August 31st, but there’ll be little reveals and leaks before the final day at www.hypercorps.com.
HOLD ON I HAVE FREE STUFF
Like the Veranthea Codex (which I’ll be finishing delivering physical rewards for before the launch of this next project :D), the Hypercorps 2099 Kickstarter has four free PDFs:The Hyper Score System Demo, Hacker Base Class, The Hypernet, and one adventure PDF (though backers can get access to another two after the project funding period ends).
As an added bonus this time folks that pledge at the right levels will get two adventure PDFs immediately after the funding period ends. This way any group will be able to get some cyberpunk superhero Pathfinder hyper-fun going on long before the full book comes out!
WHY
I am a big fan of cyberpunk and superheroes (Shadowrun and Mutants & Masterminds [and Black Crusade, and D&D 5th, and The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen…]) but most of what ends up hitting my game table is Pathfinder. It’s what folks are most comfortable with, everyone is familiar with the rules (and my casual players aren’t always keen on absorbing entirely new rule sets all the time), and there’s a veritable metric ton of support for it through apps and Paizo’s PRD (as well as d20pfsrd.com).
Also Paizo is great and I’m always keen to support both their company and products (and as a rules template, Hypercorps 2099 offers a new opportunity to use Pathfinder material you already have). We’ve also got stretch goals lined up that cover compatibility for D&D 5th, Mutants & Masterminds, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, and W.O.I.N. so even if Pathfinder isn’t your preferred system, we got you covered.
HOW
From the get go your character has a tragic event that triggers their hyper-nature (making them alter sapiens) and granting access to abilities that set them above and beyond your regular adventurer (or monster). Telepathy, flight, teleportation—these are all within reach of a 1st level character with a hyper score of 1. The implementation of these effects can be as simple as spell-like abilities or much more comprehensive (tailoring the Words of Power system from Ultimate Magic, until we hit the Spheres of Power stretch goal[s] anyway), but are the primary mechanical elements that make the game super cyberpunk as well as fantasy.
There are also hyper flaws, hyper attributes, hyper traits, hyper feats, and other choices for what route your build takes, but the end result is an injection of drama into the actual numbers of what’s going on at the table (to stupendously entertaining effect). Then there’s the infusion and modification of hero points and their use as cinematic crescendo, and the new attributes—but we’ll save that for next month.
WHO (Boomered)
The first person I approached about making a world that meshes the two genres I’ve got a constant hankering for was Clinton J. Boomer. If you’re not familiar with Clinton I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend reading his material (chances are good that if you play Pathfinder that you already have and are maybe not aware of it). Clinton’s also got a hankering for superheroes in Pathfinder (his tumblr has a whole slew of them!) and in a meeting after I got the very first bits of framework down for the setting (originally planning on being a Mutants & Masterminds product) he asked the question: why can’t we do this in Pathfinder?
I didn’t have any particularly good reason for why it couldn’t be done, so I hit the books and tried out a few different approaches then ran a few playtests.
Hands down the best games I have played in years (maybe ever).
Every session has been a dramatic joy filled with bits and pieces of hilarity from start to finish and Clinton is owed my deepest appreciation for seeding the idea.
While we intended to work on this together, his current situation (in a new place, at a new regular job, with his first baby!) made him drop the project, which was definitely a bummer.
Hypercorps 2099 is too good for me to allow dust to gather on it, however, and I’ve got three amazing designers and writers to fill his shoes: Savannah Broadway, Luis Loza, and Michael McCarthy (Paizo veterans one and all). The ideas they’ve brought to the table are just blindingly brilliant and even thinking about what’s coming in the next few months fills me with adrenaline!
We are in for an amazing ride.
Plug in your hyperjack and save up some bytecoins.
8.31.2015
