Dying Under Glass Skies
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Content warnings: body horror¸ poverty¸ disability¸ and being betrayed by your own body
Dying Under Glass Skies is a nanopunk role-playing game in which you play Glitches-cyberpunks¸ edgerunners¸ and outcasts infected with a colony of wild nanite Dust. The infection is slowly killing you by turning you into a mindless body horror abomination¸ but it also gives you more power than any standard cyberware implants.
Reshape your infected cyberlimbs like liquid metal.
Sweat shiny mirror chrome armor out of your pores to coat your body.
See infrared¸ ultraviolet¸ millimeter wave radar or sense the electrical impulses of a human nervous system.
Unspool a long chain nanocarbon filament from your wrists to use as a grappling line or garotte-or use it to direct a powerful electrical discharge to throw lightning.
You can delay the inevitable¸ but there is no cure. You are going to die¸ but you will go down fighting.
The System lit you on fire. Now you have the power to burn it down.
The world is stacked against the PCs¸ but the game is centered on them. To make your Glitch¸ you answer a set of questions that determine who you are¸ your place in the world¸ and the goals you're going to struggle to reach with your newfound powers before you succumb to them. A set of random charts and prompts are included to get your creative juices flowing. Are you out for revenge on a corporation that destroyed your home or are you trying to build a new home outside the domes for the community you'll leave behind?
In addition to the questions that spotlight the Glitches and drive the story forward¸ you've also got a pool of dice for resolving conflicts. Players have three stats that contribute dice that they can roll against the System in conflicts:
Edge dice: Your skills¸ honed by a lifetime of surviving on the edge. Can you keep the situation from spiraling out of control? Shock dice: Built up stress and adrenaline that pushes you to peak performance until you push too far and break. How long can you keep this up before you burn out? Nano dice: You have a million microscopic robotic frenemies waiting under your skin that you can attempt to activate for awesome power. But if you let the genie out of the bottle¸ can you get it back in?
You also have two main powers called Hacks. Your Shock Hack makes you hypercompetent at one of your skills while the adrenaline is surging and your brain is in overdrive-humanly possible¸ but something few humans could ever do. Your Nano Hack lets you control your dust nanites to unlock the superhuman power they offer-something no human can do because human bodies lack the necessary hardware to shoot lasers from their eyes or induce vomiting with an ultrasonic scream.
A vaguely defined setting called Neon City is included for you to tweak to your group's tastes¸ but you could also use Dying Under Glass Skies to play out the stories of Glitches in your favorite sci-fi or cyberpunk setting.