Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[Lokathor]

No one said Reanimator. Shame, I always thought it was super cool.

The Music of Erich Zann is short, and I imagine not the best, but it's bizarre and not over the top. Usually Lovecraft lays it on a little thick.

However, in general, yes, this is the sort of game that will need a very strong glossary and index as part of the final product. Right now the glossary has two whole entries, but we'll end up with quite a number I'm sure.

[hyzmarca]

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is also useful for into about the dreamlands.

[DrPraetor]

So, I want to make characters, which starts with a concept. But while we've got a timeline - and a chapter outline that promises this information! - I don't know what those mean. I'd assume that the concept below is in the top tier of character types, do you start by making at least one of those?

My character concept for Esau is:
• A combination of these people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ka ... hiro_Arima
http://topgunfanfiction.wikia.com/wiki/ ... 2_Kazansky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criss_Angel

• He's (technomagically?) dominant in social and personal-scale combat/raid situations, but he's a robot pilot. As a robot pilot his skills are high but he only plays a supporting role - so I want him to pilot a robot appropriate to that - a robot-scale equivalent to an MMO buffer or controller. He bullies people in the locker room and then has to be grudgingly grateful when they rescue him in the big fight against the aliens.

• He's a transhuman and the elder things are doing hideous experiments on him, which are the source of his superpowers and also his angst, of which he has a lot. His charisma is dark and evil, which is either purely a magical teaparty thing, or it has game-mechanical effect other than having his charisma-based rolls fail.

• He has magical tattoos which need to be exposed for his powers to operate, which is why he's not wearing a shirt to your business meeting. Actually, scratch that, he's shirtless for no reason because he also wants to wear a $5000 suit when he goes clubbing at no penalty.

[Username17]

The top tier is Kaiju Tier. It is an optional tier. There is also a quasi-tier that is also optional, which is High School. The two "non-optional" tiers are Agent Tier and Heroic Tier. Although it is theoretically possible to play the game entirely with Agent level characters, it's assumed that you will not.

If you play a game with both High School and Kaiju unlocked, then your agency would have to have at least one character for each tier budgeted in. Any character who can grow to giant size, control a summoned kaiju, is a giant turtle, use big enough spells to knock over Rodan, or pilot a giant robot is Kaiju Tier but can also be another tier as well. If they are whatever we end up calling the Power Ranger expies, they could plausibly be a character in all four tiers.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

Okay.

• Character/design concept question. If a character is Kaiju Tier, is he automatically Heroic Tier as well? Is he then less Heroic than a character who wasn't-also Kaiju Tier?
Or, are there Agent/Kaiju characters (who aren't so competent outside of their killer robots) and also Heroic/Kaiju characters (who kick ass at all times)?

• How are dramatic situations in which characters are forced to perform out-of-tier handled? If Agent/Heroic characters need to rescue children who in the path of a Kaiju fight, that's pretty obvious (I think). The entire Kaiju tier is basically an environmental effect. Do they have access to rescue shuttles and helicopters and things which are Kaiju tier but numerically weak?

• When you run the "mind-controlled guards are trying to stop us from getting to our robots!" adventure, are the Kaiju Tier characters also ninja, do they show up as baggage/supporting characters while other ninja characters fight the guards, or...?

[Username17]

If a character is Kaiju Tier, is he automatically Heroic Tier as well?

No. Your basic giant robot pilot is Agent Tier (High School) and Kaiju Tier. The Power Ranger Expies (which really really need a name for) have a human form (which is Agent Tier and likely in High School), a powered form (which is Heroic Tier), and a giant form (which is Kaiju Tier). So Shinji is basically SOL in the "there's a Hound of Tindalos loose in the building" adventure even though he can probably step on a Hound of Tindalos (it being just a Yaoguai) if he was inside his Hashmal Battle Robot. On the other hand, Ultraman can power up and have a kung fu fight with a Hound of Tindalos inside a building, and can also grow to giant size to have a car stomping fight with a Dark Young.

How are dramatic situations in which characters are forced to perform out-of-tier handled? If Agent/Heroic characters need to rescue children who in the path of a Kaiju fight, that's pretty obvious (I think). The entire Kaiju tier is basically an environmental effect. Do they have access to rescue shuttles and helicopters and things which are Kaiju tier but numerically weak?

The hop from Agent to Heroic is one of numbers rather than scale. As a mundane office worker with a gyrojet pistol, you are not going to put a hole into a Fire Vampire if you shoot it. It has an Eldritch Field and you don't, and you're lucky if your recoilless missile gun can scratch the paint on that thing. On the flip side, its attacks are geared to fighting other Yaoguai, and it can probably cut you in half with a heat ray. But your stealth and larceny and shit still operate the same as that of a Heroic Tier character. It is entirely possible for Sailor Moon to nee Kaji to work the door to the Borean Cult's inner sanctum while she fights it out with the Yeti guarding the outer room. The Yeti can punch Kaji's head off, because it's a Yaoguai and he's an Agent, but his regular skills operate on the same scale and if Sailor Moon (who is a Heroic Tier Sorcerer) can beat the Yeti or at least keep it occupied, then he can use those skills to aid the team.

Agent/Heroic combinations therefore can be expected to happen fairly frequently. Agents in Yaoguai fights are mostly casualties waiting to happen, but in the rest of Heroic Tier adventures they are pretty valuable.

Kaiju Tier is where the scale really changes. The Gugs and Cthonians that are boss monsters in Heroic Tier combats are mooks, and we bust out the hex grid and start doing wanton property damage. Tanks and helicopters have places on the map, but they also get swatted out of the air with tentacles of darkness. We don't even track what part of the street people are in, and Agent Tier skills don't mean a whole lot one way or the other. It's basically the MechWarrior/BattleTech jump. It's actually almost exactly that.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

Yo Frank, why don't you call the Power Rangers expies Senshi? It has the same root at the Japanese term for Power Rangers and shit, sentai.

And I'm assuming skills stay within the same human ranges for both Agent and Heroic Tier, but the attack numbers get bigger?

[DrPraetor]

Okay, let me try another character concept. I think this guy is agent tier, but he might (have to?) be heroic tier.

Dr. Octavio Glenn Arroyo de Swayne
His name would properly be rendered in English as "Octavio Arroyo", but due initially to confusion he goes by Glenn Swayne (actually his Canadian mother's surname.)
• He's a surgeon in one of the facilities where they do unethical experiments on teenagers in an effort to give them superpowers. In addition to his extensive laboratory skills which may-or-may-not cost many character points, he's also a capable field medic which I assume would be pricey.

• If he knows how to build or implant arcanotech devices, is this purely flavor or does it change the resources available to your agency? In Shadowrun, having a maxed-out cyberdoc was a ridonculous power upgrade for the rest of the party, if you had the balls to actually take it. People are going to want to play Q types either way, including especially some Q types who actually spend most of their screen time out of the lab dispensing two-fisted justice.

• Based on the conceits of the genre, he plays a Kaji type role and socializes with his patients - giving them copies of Atlas Shrugged to read, buying them beer and hookers, that sort of thing. If he is officially a physician at the High School, does that also make him HS tier?

• He's quite good in a fight. He really wants to have some Arcanotech devices installed in him - can he? Does that make him heroic tier? Can he be a "combat monster" member of the agent tier, and thus able to at least fight a lesser Yaoguai without dying? What are the trade-offs and how competent an agent-tier character can you make?

Here's his vignette:

"In the 19th century, before the first invasions, there was an order of monks who would create mandalas out of sand." Glenn flicked a few pieces of dust off of the upper surface of the black cube he held in his gloved left hand. The cube was extremely regular, as if it had been machined down to millimeter precision, but at the same time it appeared to be covered in shiny, scaly skin. The lustrous surface was reflecting something, but it wasn't in the room with them, and when Peter and his men tried to focus on it, they found their minds unwilling to make sense of what they saw.

"Put the instrument down, Dr. Arroyo. We have our orders!" Peter and his men inched towards Glenn, who was facing away from them, looking out the window at the street below and idly stroking the cube. The facility security staff were well-trained veterans, crack troops to a man. For some reason, Peter could not shake a stomach-clenching dread. He felt like an unarmed child.

Glenn whirled to face them, extending his left hand so that they might, if they dared, see themselves reflected in one surface of the terrible device. "After many years, a Mandala was judged complete - a many-colored tapestry, painted in sand! The Monks would sweep it all away. Gentleman, they destroyed their own creations not out of hatred, but because they were beautiful."

With a flash of light and a hideous shriek, Glenn squeezed down on the terrible cube.

[Meikle641]

No. Your basic giant robot pilot is Agent Tier (High School) and Kaiju Tier. The Power Ranger Expies (which really really need a name for

Light Brigade? Would that work?

Sentai are colourful -> Rainbows -> Light
Rainbows
Sentai (Military Unit)-> Corps Brigade

The last charge against the darkness? Heh. I dunno. Haven't read the topic since early pages.

[Lokathor]

"Light Brigade" can also be taken to mean there is a Heavy Brigade, which might or might not be a desirable property of the name. Probably Kaiju or demi-Kaiju class forces, possibly just agent tier troops with sentai tier weaponry such as gatling guns, rockets, and tanks.

[hyzmarca]

The Light Brigade also carries connotations of suicidal stupidity and pointlessly throwing away lives.

Lord Cardigan sort of ruined the name for everyone.

[Grek]

It seems to me like Agent and Hero aren't real separate game modes. Instead we have: High School, in which a character can either be a Student, a Staff Member, Guardian or Absent; Yaoguai, in which a character can be either an Agent, a Hero, a Summoner or a Civilian; and Kaiju in which a character can either be a Kaiju, a Pilot a Handler or a Liability. Traits useful to an Agency are in italics, and every character has to have at least one to be part of an Agency. Not one per category (High School doesn't have any traits that are useful to Agencies and not everyone is required to be able to fight Kaiju), just one period in any category.

So we have Sailor Moon who is a Student/Hero/Liability; Shinj who is a Student/Civilian/Pilot; a Power Ranger who is a Student/Hero/Pilot; Card Captor Sakura who is a Student/Summoner/Handler and your Grandmother who is Absent/Civilian/Liability. Out of those, only granny doesn't get to be in the Agency.

[DrPraetor]

I think Agent is a distinct game mode.

In Agent mode, you aren't fighting monsters, you're doing standard crime fiction type stuff - breaking and entering, doing social challenges to get people to admit the identities of their co-conspirators, car chases, that sort of thing. 90% of the game play in the original Call of Cthulhu was intended to be agent mode; gun fights with cultists in antique bookstores to prevent them from getting the relic, that sort of thing.

When Kaji is passing data tapes to Misato (and making out with her), and when he's killed by another agent, that is agent mode. I think it it supposed to play a much bigger role (as it does in most of Call of Cthulhu) in this game than it does in Evangelion or, of course, Power Rangers.

[Grek]

The mode where you play as an Agent definitely exists. I just don't think it is different than the mode where you play as a Hero.

The difference between Hero and Agent is simply that a Hero can kill Yaoguai and an Agent can't. Given that this is a modern setting where you work for a government agency devoted to dealing with Yaoguai, the whole "We have to stop the cultists before they summon the monster because we have no way to defeat it once it gets here." plot point is shot. You always have the "Call in for backup" option when it comes to resolving combats in the Agent tier. There's no point to making the mode where you investigate monster summoning cultists be different from the one where you do that and then maybe fight the monsters summoned by the cultists. The majority of game play is going to be investigation either way.

[DrPraetor]

By that token, the agents can go to the High School if there is a gun fight, so why have a High School tier?

The agents will absolutely call in Sailor Moon as backup when the Youguai show up - but Usagi is a teenager, and when you play the "bust down the door to the murder scene, find the dead body and do forensics stuff, but wait the guy from VII is escaping out the back door! Chase him through apartments with your gun!" sub-scenario, Usagi is not there! So that's a different tier.

If I understand hyzmarca and Frank correctly, then a definitive game feature is that high-adult levels of mundane competence are not available to heroes. This is sort-of what I was asking with Glenn.

So the agent tier includes a number of adventures where you are not going to bring children, and heroic tier characters cannot participate.

[Omegonthesane]

By that token, the agents can go to the High School if there is a gun fight, so why have a High School tier?

The agents will absolutely call in Sailor Moon as backup when the Youguai show up - but Usagi is a teenager, and when you play the "bust down the door to the murder scene, find the dead body and do forensics stuff, but wait the guy from VII is escaping out the back door! Chase him through apartments with your gun!" sub-scenario, Usagi is not there! So that's a different tier.

If I understand hyzmarca and Frank correctly, then a definitive game feature is that high-adult levels of mundane competence are not available to heroes. This is sort-of what I was asking with Glenn.

So the agent tier includes a number of adventures where you are not going to bring children, and heroic tier characters cannot participate.

If you are going on missions where running into monsters is a real possibility, why would you not bring someone who can handle that shit when it comes up, even if they're no use in the bit before that where you're playing CSI?

We already have the proposal that players have multiple characters each, it's not like Usagi wouldn't be pulled out of school to help with possible Mythos infestations just because Usagi's player has to in fact play a detective until the battle music starts.

[DSMatticus]

It is probably more helpful to think of things in terms of challenges than tiers. There are basically four categories of challenges, and any given adventure will require characters who can solve specific problems from at least one but possibly several of those categories:
1) Solving non-combat problems both mundane and magical.
2) Murdering cultists.
3) Murdering the thing in the basement.
4) Murdering the thing tearing apart main street.

When the adventure is "investigate a murder scene potentially related to a yaoguai attack," then the forensics specialist with no firearms training and no magical abilities gets to come along. And so does any magical girl with the ability to "sense" anything that might be useful ("yes, I know you're only a little girl, but that corpse isn't going to ask itself what murdered it"). Those characters have wildly different combat power, but they can both contribute to this particular adventure so they get to go; tiers don't really come into it. Because it's a crime scene, you've probably also got some generic dudes with guns whose job is to keep order. Because there's a magical girl, you've almost certainly got an adult handler nearby whose job is "carry a gun" and "make sure that kid doesn't do anything stupid."

If a bunch of cultists show up at the crime scene to destroy evidence, then all the people who have guns get to start shooting them and the magical girl gets to incinerate them and feel angsty about it later. The forensics dude gets to huddle in the corner and hope he doesn't catch a stray bullet. If the yaoguai shows up, then everyone except the magical girl gets to run for their lives and call for backup.

When the adventure is "we've found the yaoguai and need to kill it," the forensics training dude doesn't get to go, but a couple of magical girls (or equivalents) do. Their handlers are probably on scene but at a safe distance, and there are also probably a bunch of generic dudes with guns whose job is to keep civilians out of the crossfire.

When the adventure is "raid and secure a cultist compound with multiple yaoguai," then you can have a SWAT team, some important named agents, and a couple of magical girls (or equivalents) go on that adventure together. Because that compound is also full of cultists who can be murdered by guns and evidence that needs to be secured before it's destroyed or someone escapes with it. And if cultists pose a non-trivial threat to magical girls (or equivalents), then it's even easier to justify that sort of mixed combat.

The only really important thing is making sure all these different characters are assigned to the players in a way that guarantees each player can bring something to every adventure (particularly to any combat). I honestly can't remember everything that's been said over these twenty-some pages, so I'm not sure if any specifics were suggested, but I am curious what everyone thinks about how agency composition and character generation/assignment should work.

[Artless]

I dunno, is just calling the Sentai expies Rangers too on the nose?

I'm assuming we generally want English titles for the different archetypes since the others are referred to in English, so Knights, Raptors (in reference to Gatchaman), Saints, Braves or Champions would be my suggestions. Otherwise I'd second Senshi.

Are they primarily going to be the color-coded Arcanotech users for the Heroic tier, with the opportunity to personally appear in both the Agent tier as their civilian identity and the Kaiju tier through their combination super-mecha? I know that earlier there was a separate Super Soldier archetype that were going to be the arcanotech users; is their conceptual space different from the kind of Sentai-styled "special forces" the Union would end up having?

[hyzmarca]

If I understand hyzmarca and Frank correctly, then a definitive game feature is that high-adult levels of mundane competence are not available to heroes. This is sort-of what I was asking with Glenn.

So the agent tier includes a number of adventures where you are not going to bring children, and heroic tier characters cannot participate.

I wouldn't call it a definitive game feature exactly.
The idea is that if you're doing to Nanoha (or whatever) thing and literally recruiting child soldiers, then there is a definitive advantage to that that you can't get with adults. Thus there are hero tier classes that just aren't available to people who are old enough to legally drink.

Shinju Ikari is a viable character concept because you can't just give Tom Cruise some training and have him pilot the giant cyborg.

But that's a matter of world-building rather than game balance. We want teenage progtgonsits to be viable, thus there needs to be world-building to support that without annihilating suspension of disbelief.


That being said, there is room for hero-tier adults. From a world-building perspective the reason you recruit child soldiers instead of relying on hero-tier adults is a matter of numbers first of all. That is, you can't produce hero-tier adults in sufficient quantities to fill up your rosters, not that they can't exist at all.

The idea, I think, is to support a wide variety of character concepts, and to shore up those concepts that don't work in every mission by using multiple characters.

[hyzmarca]

Okay, how's this for a vignette? The dialogue needs work:

Esau loved to watch his aunties eat. They consumed food with both economy and sensual grace, and without recourse to the crude orifices or mastication of a bipedal worm. Each of Aunt Pusidaapzen's minor tentacles had an absorptive surface, exposed when she relaxed her pericarp, that would both secrete and reabsorb digestive enzymes, and through which she tasted his cooking. She held a half-melted masala-coated sauteed parsnip in each minor tentacle. Ordinarily, while she ate her pericarps would curl underneath her food, to prevent spillage. However, the protective organs were not entirely under voluntary control, and they twitched and fluttered, which Esau instictively interpreted as a sign of distress.

Pusidaapzen talked by rubbing one or another of her many cuticles together; she had no trouble talking and eating at the same time, but ordinarily avoiding doing so around humans. This was another sign of her anger and anxiety.

"How do they say we hate humanity?", she sang and whistled, like a choir of crickets and dragonflies taught to speak in a human voice. "Because you are the heirs of our civilization, and we acknowledge it? Because we not only wish the best for you, but work to bring it about?"

Esau was sensitive to her subtleties, and heard the notes of fear beneath the outrage. "Finish your dinner, auntie, I did not mean to upset you. Because they cannot put forth a rational argument for their antipathy, they whisper it behind your back and marshal their venom in the shadows. They have a reactionary view of the human psyche, and change is abhorrent to them. That is the truth of it, whatever they say in public."

Her pericalps shivered in unison, like the trailing fringe of five many-colored shawls, damp with iridescent fluids. She extended a major tentacle and ruffled Esau's hair. "You were right to tell me, and I will hold my anger and counsel you. The truth is to be confronted squarely, if we leave you any legacy let it be intellectual integrity. These are men and women of education, of power and influence. Swallow the bitter pill of falsehood and mollify them. You see that I am afraid? I wear my dorsal tubes on my sleeves, but you must be subtle. They may despise us, but their reactionary envy makes them hate you, whose birthright is the stars."

"I must be honest, also." Esau said. "If I had the intellectual reserves to reassure them, I would have."

Pusidaapzen hissed and whistled in thought. "Another treatment, so soon? Are you sure you are prepared?"

The treatments expanded Esau's mental faculties so that he could appreciate - increasingly, mimic - the cultural and scientific achievements of the ancients. Each treatment was exquisitely painful, physical recovery took months, and in the aftermath Esau was increasingly repulsed by the callow banality of the so-called human condition.

"Survival is a moral imperative. I endure what I must." He said.

Well, it's interesting. It does lack context, though. I'm not sure what it's actually about.

[DrPraetor]

Are the old ones doing X-files style unethical experiments on their super-powered teenagers?

That is what it is meant to be about - if that is not happening I will revise as needed .

No rush, though. When there is more material I will either churn out new fanfic or revised what I have. It's like 3% as much work as actually writing the rules, except in so far as it needs to be tailored to explicate the setting.

[Username17]

So let's add "CthulhuPunk" to the list of things Sentai Fh'tagn could support.

I mean, it sounds like it'd just be an alternate setting for the system/rules--one without the Kaiju class, and you play at Agent level.

There does seem to be a desire to have augmented humans and deep ones at the Agent level. People who are way less powerful than a Super Soldier or Hard Trooper and don't have their own eldritch fields, but who nonetheless are like "pretty strong" and have augmented vision that lets them see orthogonal colors and such. For simplicity, Agent Tier augmentations should come in the same chakras as Super Soldier Augmentations. And Super Soldiers could have the stepped down augmentations in some of their slots to save resources.

The real distinction of CthulhuPunk is that it would be structured more like a "standard" RPG in which people have one character who is an Agent Tier character that is presumed to be an investigator not directly part of one of the alphabet soup agencies that defend the union. In this setup, the players have a 1:1 correspondence with a character and a single Yaoguai is a boss monster. Most of the game at that level would be Earthbound but futuristic Scooby Doo investigations. Enemies would normally be cultists or cultist-level creatures like Bolgani soldiers, Yithian time agents, and Tcho Tcho sorcerers.

Anyway, the existence of Agent level characters running around with guns (whether they are the only characters in the game as in an investigators game, or whether they are simply the agency characters in the current rotation) necessitates a diverse array of agent tier weaponry, sorcery, augmentations, vehicles, and hacking options. Of those, pretty much all of those can just be Heroic tier stuff that isn't turned up to 11. You can have a gyrojet pistol instead of the heavy plasma gun that a Hard Trooper might have. A Heroic tier Witch can probably throw down the Dread Curse of Azathoth, but an agent tier sorcerer can probably just grab things with shadowy tendrils or something.

The Hacking issue is, as always, a big one. Many of the enemies are explicitly from other worlds and times and simply do not have any expectation to have computer systems that plug into those of the Union. A Mi Go space ship does not have a connection to the "world wide web," it is a fucking spaceship. And the data files on board are on non-terrestrial hardware that is encrypting High Yuggothian that you couldn't read even if it was unencrypted. Clearly, characters do not jack in to the matrix from their basement in order to brute force their way into a Yuggothian archive. Such an action doesn't even make conceptual sense. What is wanted instead is something that works pretty much like... sigh... Independence Day. You break into an alien ship and then hack into it and gain intel from doing that.

So what's needed is a hacking metaphor that explains and justifies getting real information from alien computers that have data files in languages you don't know and are created millions of years ago by an advanced race of starfish creatures that never invented the USB port. My suggestion would be that first of all there is Green Hacking. This operates symbolically and through dreamspace, so it's actually totally irrelevant that you can't structurally interface with the computer and wouldn't be able to read the files if you could. It's all based on concepts and meaning. You don't hack the literal files out of things, you hack into the akashic record of the conscious understanding that the files in the computers contain.

The secondary system would probably be Yellow Hacking. That is about sending quantum information without going through intervening space. So it's a way to send messages that can only be intercepted at either end, and it's also a way to scramble drones and autonomous systems by tunneling static into them. So Yellow hacking lets you disable devices and open locks and shit by looking at them (and is independent of electromagnetic shielding), while Green Hacking allows you to get information out of systems (and is language and techbase independent). Yellow Hacking can hack open a maglock in a fucking Faraday Cage, and Green Hacking can "Hack" information out of a biological computer or even a fucking handwritten book in Xothan.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Summarizing the six kinds of tech/magic in Sentai Fhtagn

Orange Commontech
"Normal" Physics

Used by real-world people.

Uses:

• Computers
• Guns
• Cars

Red Arcanotech
"Curved Spacetime"

Used by the nomadic Shaggai and the subterranean Cthonians

Uses:

• Portals
• Warp-drives
• Gravity control

Yellow Arcanotech
Quantum Bullshit

Used by the Mi-Go of Yuggoth

Uses:

• Entanglement-based voodoo (law of contagion?)
• Unbreakable codes
• Oracle computing
• Teleportation-with-a-chance-of-blenderizing
• Jamming systems and fucking with tech

Green Arcanotech
Dream Magic[/b]

Used by Cthulhu of R'lyeh, who got it from the Xoth, as well as the Moon Beast resistance.

Uses:

• Dream travel
• Decryption
• ???

Blue Arcanotech
"Angular Spacetime"

Used by the Great Race of Yith

• intangibility
• ???

Purple Arcanotech
"Organic" Technology; Chemistry and Biology

Used by Shub-Niggurath of The Abyss, as well as the Tcho-Tcho and Yeti

Uses:

• Emotion manipulation
• Shapeshifting and polymorphing
• "Things which don't even exist but are merely the defined absence of something else.", e.g. cold and darkness

[hyzmarca]

The secondary system would probably be Yellow Hacking. That is about sending quantum information without going through intervening space. So it's a way to send messages that can only be intercepted at either end, and it's also a way to scramble drones and autonomous systems by tunneling static into them. So Yellow hacking lets you disable devices and open locks and shit by looking at them (and is independent of electromagnetic shielding), while Green Hacking allows you to get information out of systems (and is language and techbase independent). Yellow Hacking can hack open a maglock in a fucking Faraday Cage, and Green Hacking can "Hack" information out of a biological computer or even a fucking handwritten book in Xothan.

-Username17

I'd very much suggest making yellow hacking short range. Being able to unlock a door by looking at it is cool. Being about to unlock a door in China from your basement in New Jersey just means that no one you care about hacking would ever use electronic locks, ever.

[name_here]

Agreed. It doesn't make much logical sense for it to have a pure range limitation, since it's explicitly about not going through the intervening space, so it should run on something else. Maybe connecting to something that isn't a Yellow communications receiver requires establishing the location of the target relative to the source with too much precision to relay it by camera over a long distance because of cumulative measurement error?