This post and replies to it will be me summarizing my reading of The Veil’s core rulebook.
The basics
- What’s the elevator pitch of this game? Interrogate your concept of cyberpunk by exploring the society and tech you collectively create
- Pages 1-35 are “here’s how to play PBTA”, but well written
- Page 36 introduces us to Advantage/Disadvantage (3d6, take the two highest/lowest dice), which we remember from Fellowship
The world
- You’re here to make change, but you gotta live in the world you want to change
- You’re constantly immersed in a mixed-reality, physical/digital environment: this is “the Veil” or “the digiscape”
- Players are expected to BYOC - Bring Your Own Cyberpunk - and figure out some of the specifics of how the world works, this isn’t Night City
Attributes
- Your core attributes are States, these six labels found on the emotion wheel (Sad, Mad, Scared, Peaceful, Powerful, Joyful)
- A ton of moves will just say “roll” and you figure out how you’re feeling at the moment and you add that State
- Each State has an associated track that fills up when you use it - the more you do stuff with a given feeling, the more intense and dominant that feeling becomes
- There’s a move called Alleviate that triggers when you hit the cap on a State, and you either slowly bleed it off or roll at a penalty
Basic Moves
- There’s two sets of moves: the typical stuff (Risk, Distract, etc.) you’d expect in a game like this, and moves around Obligation, or those social bonds you build with others - sort of mutually agreed Influence
- The basic moves: Risk, Probe, Lift the Veil (for AW fans, this is Open Your Brain), Analyze, Sway, Divert, Ultimatum, Neutralize, and Help/Hinder (again based on States, not some Bond/Hx score, thank god)
- The Obligation moves: String, Lean On, Refute, Leverage, Strategize, Link
- There’s an optional duel mechanic with its own move
Other Shit
- Gear has tags, feels pretty familiar from AW
- Cybernetics is a thing, with tags
- Cred is your money, works as you’d expect
- Harm as you’d expect from AW, with the addition of Humanity Harm (emotional damage) and Stun Harm
Playbooks are next