House Rules

Character sheets
Character creation
Mental Stability
Merits/Flaws
Other rules

Character Sheets

Deep Dark involves people uploading and downloading their minds (“faces”) between different bodies (“masks”) and backup storage (“mindstates”, “souls”).

Characters have at least one Face+Mask sheet. The Face+Mask sheet contains the information about the current mind and body of the character. Usually the sheet is the one used for actual game play (unless the character ends up in a virtual environment). When mindstate backups or new scans are made, new Mindstate sheets are filled out. Over time a character might accumulate several mindstate sheets, and possibly several masks. Only one can be used at any time by the player, but besides possible legal and practical limitations it is entirely possible to have multiple mindstates downloaded in other masks at the same time; these are run by the Storyteller or another player if necessary.

When a character’s mindstate is downloaded into a mask, an empty Face+Mask template sheet is filled out with the information from the mindstate. The Face+Mask template may contain bonuses or penalties depending on the kind of mask (e.g. downloading into a dedicated battle-mask might give plenty of physical bonuses and interesting hardware, but also likely some backdoors and built-in limitations). These are added together with the mindstate’s stats to produce the current character.

Experience points is noted on the Face+Mask sheet, they belong to the face running in the biocomputer of the mask.

If the mask is destroyed but a mindstate left stored in a soulchip it can be downloaded into a new mask with little loss of memory or experience (assuming the copying was good); a mindstate is simply created based on the current face part of the sheet and then copied to the new mask. If the entire mask is destroyed, the character might be restored from mindstate backup storage depending on what insurance policies he has. Usually it is the most recent mindstate, but sometimes multiple copies or old copies are (accidentally?) downloaded. All memories or experiences beyond the point where the scan was made will be non-existent.

Note that experience points have to be spent or defined when uploading to a backup mindstate; two copies of the same person will have the same knowledge and skills so it is important to point out that those points represent one’s training on (say) piloting.

Note that possessions, legal status and similar mundane matters are usually tied to the face and transferred as it changes mask, but for characters doing undercover work or running several identities such things might be different between different mindstates, masks and perhaps jurisdictions.

Mask bonuses and penalties

While standard masks have little effect (they are just standard bodies), customized or special-purpose masks can have extra dots in abilities or attributes – they may have enhanced strength or perception, or built in stealth abilities.

Sometimes a mask has drawbacks, like low quality neurocomputers. These remove dots from the total attributes. They are marked using extra empty dots to the left that have to be filled in.

Many masks have flaws, merits and built in equipment of various kinds. These design features do not cost any experience points, but they do tend to cost plenty of money.

Character creation

As normal Storyteller, but use full sheet (Face + Mask) to create the original character before any uploading.

Attributes: 7/5/3
Abilities: 13/9/5
Backgrounds: 5
Starting willpower: 3
15 freebies

(note that freebies can also be spent on Hardening at a cost of 1 per point)

Additional rule: skills may not exceed 1.5 (rounded down) of the attribute they are most dependent on (e.g. firearms dexterity, research intelligence, style appearance). This to ensure that initial characters are somewhat plausible humans. Besides, it is unlikely that a person with so bad qualifications would be able to train himself greatly.

What happens if someone moves into a body with lower attributes or is wounded so that the attribute now is lower than required for the skill? In this case the skill remains, but it cannot be increased with experience until the attribute is good enough (unless, of course, the ST decides that the training still makes sense).

Backgrounds are usually local. Initial characters will have backgrounds denoting their homeworld/home polity, and may acquire new ones in other locations. Note that these differently localized backgrounds will not normally add together (but also have just the local cost when spending experience to increase them).

The exceptions to non-additivity may be Security and Invisibility. Security represents how security-minded the person is and how good he is at avoiding danger in everyday life. Invisibility is partially the ability to stay out of sight of society, but also partially the amount of alternate identity the character has acquired. Hence the “home invisibility” might represent basic hiding ability, and the local invisibility stats how well a character can stay out of sight in a certain place.

Possible Backgrounds: Allies, Contacts, Fame, Influence, Rank, Mentor, Resources, Invisibility/Alternate ID, Staff

Specializations and Specialities

Some skills require a speciality directly, like Area Knowledge or Crafts. They are specific to that speciality and cannot be used for other things. Other skills require a speciality at higher numbers of dots, and only the pre-specialization dots can be used for other fields.

These specialities are limiting; however there are also the normal specialisations (allowing re-rolls of 10’s) characters get for free when they reach level 4. Extra specialities may be bought at a cost of two experience points, once at level 4 and once at level 5 – these may be either of the limiting speciality type or the free specialization type. Attributes may gain extra specialities for 3 points.

Example: A character reaches 3 in Science and majors in Physics. This character will not be able to use more than 2 dice for solving chemistry or math problems, but the full 3 dice for physical problems. Gaining another dot gives the character the chance to learn a free specialisation like High Energy, allowing him to re-roll 10s when doing high energy physics work. He can also buy another field for 2 points, representing another major (like Chemistry). In this case he would be able to handle physics and chemistry with 4 dice, high energy physics with 4 dice + rerolling, and math with 2 dice. When going to level 5, he has the option to buy another field (like Math), or buy another specialisation (like Uranium, allowing re-rolling 10’s when doing uranium chemistry or physics).

In principle one could build elaborate trees of specialities (Science-Physics-Particle Physics-Mesons), but the game system becomes too cumbersome.

Specializations are parts of the Face and carried over to the mindstate. Attribute specializations gained for ‘free’ at 4 dots while in a mask with high attributes remain set (the person learns certain tricks that tend to carry over; “one is permanently shaped by one’s first combat mask” as the trainers of Web Security warn).

Skills

The Informatics skill replaces Computer: computers are everywhere on civilized planets, organized in advanced networks. People with the Informatics skill can make information systems do new, unexpected or unintended things.

Note that drive/ride/pilot are viewed as secondary abilities for most civilian vehicles (one ability for each kind, like car, boat, airtram or whatever). User interfaces makes most of them easy to use. The exception is specialized vehicles like fighter jets, submarines and jetpacks, which each are a normal skill.

Linguistics

N dots in Linguistics give 2^(N-1) extra languages beyond one’s native tongue(s):

Example secondary skills

Many of these can be taken as specialisations of other skills, representing a speciality of a more general education. The secondary skill represents a more narrow training in only one area, with no extra knowledge of the wider field.

Mental Stability

(Acknowledgment: this system is lifted nearly straight from Unknown Armies, 2^nd Ed. I have adapted it slightly to Storyteller, but the core remains the same. See the Sanity chapter of UA for a more detailed description of the system).

Mental stability represents how well the character holds together. When encountering mental stress – torture, shifting from mask to mask, experiencing truly alien events or just getting a truly nasty surprise the ST may ask for a stability roll. If it fails the character will go berserk (if attacked), flee in panic (if surprised or scared), dither incoherently (if stressed), reveal mental flaws or drawbacks of their nature (in other situations). The general pattern is that behaviour will become incoherent or instinctive if the stability fails, while otherwise the character remains rational.

The character has 5 measures, denoting how hardened or weak they are in respect to challenges:

When challenged, the character resists by rolling (current) Willpower against a target number depending on the situation. If the number of hardened dots +1 is greater than the target no roll is necessary, the character is hardened to this kind of disturbance. If the roll succeeds, add a hardened dot. The character behaves normally and rationally. If it fails, add a failed dot. The character becomes incoherent, and flees, freezes or frenzies irrationally.

Sometimes several aspects might be involved and require separate rolls, such as killing oneself (Violence and Self). A character might lose or succeed on different aspects, making them irrational in one way or another (a character kills himself to escape torture; when awakening in the new mask he might be in a state of violent frenzy but with self-image unharmed, or perhaps dissociated from himself – or both).

If 5 failed dots are accumulated, the character gains a clinical neurosis fitting the situation (equivalent to a 5 point mental flaw). The character will also automatically fail any new checks against that area (but not gain any more failed dots). In general people activate coping mechanisms to deal with their stresses: a researcher stressed by the alienness of the Egoi may retreat to watching soap operas, a soldier might dampen his memories with drugs and a mindstate programmer might handle his sense of self-dissolution by making art. As the number of failed dots increase, these coping behaviours become neuroses: an obsession with soap operas hindering professional life, drug abuse or delusions of artistic genius.

Hardened dots imply a loss of reaction to the challenge; the character acts coolly in danger or with disinterest in the face of alien beings. This also limits social interactions with people who are not hardened enough; for every point of difference beyond 3 in hardening, decrease one dice in social pools. At 10 total points of hardening the character is showing psychopathic traits. At 20 they are clearly sociopathic and increasingly dangerous to others.

Maralayists automatically are 5 dots hardened against Isolation. Mauians are already at 10 hardening in everything humans would react to; there may be things that scare them too, but they are likely too alien to be comprehensible to humans.

Example Challenges

Violence

Alienness

This is relative to the character’s species and culture – a Wubekimon meeting traditional Homo sapiens for the first time is also somewhat disturbed. Most cosmopolitan Web citizens are fairly hardened against alienness, making them somewhat too tolerant.

Helplessness

Isolation

Self

Alternative Initial Hardening/Failed

Experienced characters may have gained hardening beforehand through their lives. One way of handling it is to make a roll for every dot of skill they learn in

Dodge, Martial Arts, Firearms, Interrogation, Melee, Streetwise, Weapon systems, Medicine (Violence), Stealth, Survival (Isolation), Acting, Intimidation, Subterfuge (Self). Subtract Empathy skill dots from the largest category.

Roll against 4’s (may be shifted up if the character is supposed to have been in a very active and dangerous environment). Botches gives 2 Failed. Finally, halve the number of hardened and failed dots (round down).

Treatment

Back to One's Senses

A person succumbing to a failed challenge can be brought back to rationality through a number of means:

Time: once the stimulus is gone, the character regains his senses after a while (may be a few minutes for a small fright, weeks for a major trauma).

Leadership, Empathy or similar social skills used by others can end the episode if strong enough (more successes than the failed dots, same difficulty as the stress level).

Engaging in coping mechanisms (like the escapism, drugs or art mentioned above, or anything else that fits). This is a great roleplaying opportunity, as the coping can be used to both flesh out the characters and show their mental status. Stress responses and coping is ubiquitous. Characters not played with any coping or plausible stress responses can be assumed to bottle down their emotions; when they reach 5 Failed dots all that suppressed chaos will come boiling out in one big breakdown.

Drugs: Tranquillisers, sedatives or emotion-dampers can bring a panicking or frenzying person back to rationality (if they can be delivered).

Becoming more balanced

Therapy can remove failed and hardened dots. After enough therapeutic trust has been established, the therapist rolls a Psychology skill roll and the character a Willpower roll. The difficulty is 6. If both succeed then any hardened or failed dot can be removed. If just the character succeeds a failed dot can be removed. If the therapist succeeds a hardened dot can be removed. Botches can produce interesting complications (attachments, projections). New rolls can be attempted every month if therapy is progressing at normal speed, or once a week in intensive therapy.

When downloading mindstates that are likely to be traumatized, most clinics add significant amounts of emotion regulation drugs such as tranquillisers or memory blockers to give them the chance to bootstrap mildly. Sometimes a “test download” is done to a virtual environment run on a neurocomputer, allowing the doctors to estimate the psychological problems present. This can lower the target 1-4 depending on how well treated the patient is.

Medication exist that affect some of the mental problems. Advanced psychopharmacology enables fine-tuned modulation of emotions that can increase or reduce hardening or neuroses, at least for some conditions. In most cases the character needs to take their drug chronically to keep their mind in check.

Mental quickfixes: Certain schools of psychotechnology have developed methods of rapidly restoring a mind to working order. Usually they involve a combination of drugs, intense experiences (sex, violence, surprise), operant conditioning and positive emotions to bring a person out of their shell and construct a temporary self-construct that functions. The drawback is that the quickfix has not really solved the underlying problems and traumas, and that they can return during new stress. Roll appropriate specialist skill as if the character was a therapist (the recipient does not usually roll Willpower, since they are not actively participating). Each success enables the temporary removal of a hardened or failed dot. These will remain removed until the next time a check of that stat is failed; then they will return plus the failed dot of the check.

Some of these schools also use the methods for mental sabotage, inducing flaws and neuroses in order to wreck a person, or psyching people into temporary hardening.

New Merits/Flaws

See http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Game/Bulk/Backgrounds.htm for many potential merits flaws.

Physical Flaws

Physical flaws only relate to the mask, and during character creation should be discussed by the player and Storyteller – since masks in most games will be relatively easy to switch they are only worth half the points. One variant is having physical flaws like blindness or paralysis turned into mental flaws: due to a flawed uploading or being born that way the brain cannot process visual information or move certain limbs even when the eyes or limbs are physically functional. 

Flawed Scan (variable: -1/-3/-5)

In the past you have been scanned during less than ideal circumstances. The result is that your neural pattern is flawed, with pieces of memory missing, occasional mis-associations (you never manage to get your name right the first try) and inappropriate emotional responses (you now find your wife’s terrible death as hilarious, despite that you truly loved her and can remember spending a long time in true grief). A character with this flaw does not have any un-flawed original or backup (a destructive upload or being recovered from a damaged heartchip might be the cause), so there is no way of fixing the problem. The effects can range from the mildly curious to the deeply tragic.

Occasional quirks and lapses are worth –1. Persistent problems interfering with normal social life are worth –3. A shattered mind with large amnesic holes, common malapropisms and permanently odd mood is worth –5.

Characters with this flaw get an equivalent number of failed and hardened Self stress points. They are unstable but at the same time used to it.

Past Bad Experiences (variable flaw)

Points of failed stability checks. Each failed dot is worth one freebie.

Past Training/Hardening (variable merit)

Points of hardened stability checks. Each hardened dot costs one freebie.

Monist -3 Mental Flaw

The character does not accept mindstate transfer as continuation of the person. It may be just a bizarre form of suicide that produces convincing impostors, or just a profound unease about the process. A monist will not willingly undergo a mindstate transfer (although taking a non-destructive scan may be acceptable as long as the mindstate is not activated). If awakening after a transfer the realization that one now is an impostor/soulless clone/dead will cause a serious shock and re-evaluation of personal philosophy – the flaw has to be bought off with 3 experience points spent in mental agony, spiritual questioning or nervous breakdown.

Gravity Adaptable +2

The character easily adapts to different gravities, and will not get any dice pool penalties after having spent a few hours in the new environment. Maybe the character regularly commuted as a kid between orbit, habitats and ground, or it is just a natural or engineered quirk.

Maralayist –2 Mental Flaw

The character has a Maralaya symbiont, making them unageing. The character’s body will not age, but all social drives and emotions are blocked.

Maralayists cannot have Natures related to social drives (like Caregiver); they are motivated purely by their own emotions and thinking. They do not fall in love, react to the cuteness of a baby, seek recognition, become jealous or feel alone. They understand social emotions on a purely intellectual level or as grey memories, not finding them worthwhile or fulfilling. Note that they can still become happy, angry, curious or enraptured, but the causes are never other people, just random shifts in mood, direct events or their own worldviews. Many Maralayists are spectacularly passionate people, but they are seldom passionate about anything concerning others.

A Maralayist has a five dice penalty to social dice pools when related to social emotions, such as Empathy or Leadership. They can use social abilities normally when it is just a matter of formalism (like Etiquette or singing a love song with the right voice) or non-social emotions (intimidating someone, judging whether they lie or not).

If a Maralayist is uploaded, the resulting mindstate will retain the lack of social drives unless special care is taken during scanning to edit it out. When downloaded in a new mask the face will still lack social emotions but also lack the symbiont. Over time (weeks to years, depending on mental age) the emotions return, often at troublesome intensities.

Vulnerable to maralaya virus –3 Flaw (extra flaw for Maralayists)

Old-fashioned symbionts can succumb to the MA-13-14-16 virus, which can be transmitted either digitally or as a bionano agent. While banned on most worlds and extinct in the wild, it remains in some old repositories and samples. If infected, the symbiont will break down over the next few days, and may cause serious damage.

Roll 1D10: On 1-6 the character loses one point of each mental attribute per day up to a limit of 1D10 points. If one or more attributes reach zero the character is completely unable to take care of hirself; if all mental attributes vanish the result is brain death. On 7-10 the character gains 1D10 points of mental derangements such as psychoses, schizophrenia or depression.

Tweak –3 Flaw

The Tweak symbiont is similar to the Maralaya symbiont, but instead creates compulsive social bonds between the members of a tweak ménage. Characters belonging to the ménage need to be in personal contact with each other regularly (at least once a week, but preferably daily). They are literally dependent on each other: when they are away from each other they begin to age, and they also suffer psychological dependency on each other like an addiction. Tweak ménage members feel intense social bonds; they are to all extent super-families. That doesn’t mean they have to like each other, some ménage are filled with conflicts and trouble.

Tweak characters should describe the ménage and its members (usually 3-10), perhaps taking them as allies. Having a conflict filled ménage might be a social flaw – the character cannot escape the conflicts.

Mindstate transfer of a Tweak will still transfer the psychological addiction to the ménage (but not the anti-ageing effect of the symbiont).

Other Rules

Plasticity Treatment

Plasticity treatments rejuvenate the body and mind (they can be dissociated, but most people take them together during a “youth retreat” at an antiagathic clinic/spa). The treatment removes the effect of ageing (up to 5d10 years physical ageing per treatment), but has the side effect of making personality and outlook plastic. Over the next few years the character will tend to change; unused skills and memories will dissolve, and for all practical purposes a new person emerge.

Demeanour and Nature can freely change depending on experiences. Ability dots can be redistributed. Skills that are regularly used will likely retain their levels, while unused skills may be replaced with new ones during this period of mental youth. Similarly many virtues and flaws can be changed – obsessions may dissolve or develop, old opinions change. In essence, the character becomes a new person.

Gravity Rules

Characters are assumed to be adapted mentally to the gravitation of their homeworld. When arriving on a planet differing in gravity, all dexterity dice pools will be reduced by 1 for each 0.25 G difference. The character miscalculates the speed things falls, how much force must be exerted to move something or the natural movement rate of their body. These penalties decrease by 1 per week in the new environment.

Note that microgravity reduces dice pools by 4, but also poses many other complications in terms of action-reaction and rotation.