Cy_borg Random Table Roundup

While I still love Dungeons and Dragons, the Borgs have recently infected me with their addictive simplicity and grimdark-saturated tone.

I think my journey into TTRPGs is semi-typical for millennials like myself. As a kid (and in my 30s), I was heavily addicted to Magic: the Gathering, and by association, had a chance to dabble in a couple of sessions of D&D. But during the time period where I would have really been likely to play, D&D was in a weird place with the downfall of TSR and acquisition by WoTC. So it wasn’t really until much later in my life that I really got my first chance to play in a steady game. And unfortunately for me, I missed some of the more unique settings in DnD, like Dark Sun and Planescape. Dark Sun, in particular, really gripped me with its bleak and dire tone.

So, when I stumbled upon Mork Borg a few years back, it really struck a chord with me. This led to a lengthy sales pitch to my regular playgroup to set aside time from their busy schedules to try it. By the time we finally got around to fitting it into the gaming schedule, my attention had drifted to the new offshoot product Cy_borg, which came at a time when I felt a little tired of magic and fantasy tropes. And man, has it been a blast; in our first two sessions, the table was losing it with laughter.

Part of the charm of these rules-light systems is their random nature and letting the dice help take the story in an unexpected direction. So, I have been digging deep online for some additional tables to help add more randomness and humor to our games. One particularly great resource has been the community-spawned tables on the Mork Borg Discord server. I’ve helped create some of these and grabbed a couple to highlight their creativity, but they are constantly being added, so join up to grab some more for yourself!

My favorite random tables

Every game has a bar, but CY offers way more than cheap beer.

Drinks from CY clubs (d8):

1. Infestation on the Beach
   Vodka with (frozen in liquid nitrogen) finger of nanophreak. CY version of russian roulette - if you roll TOUGHNESS 18 you gain nano power, if you fail you get INFESTATION

2. Manhattan Project
   Whiskey, vermouth, and a bit of gunpowder. A party drink heated up for an explosive finish. People with high AGILITY (14) can guzzle one down before it gets too hot.

3. Piña Colossus
   Pineapple. Ice. Coconut. Lime. These four legendary ingredients, in all their divine splendor, combine to create the PINA COLOSUS (dramatic echo)!! PINA COLOSUS is the intoxic arctic inferno that will Get. You. There. And keep you there riding as high as you need to be. So what the hell are you waiting for? Get them sweet buns over to your corner dive and gulp down some of that sweet sweet PINA COLOSUS!! Now served at a bar near you! Test Tuf 10 vs Brainfreeze (+1 Str -2 Prs for d6 mins)

4. Nanoquarium
   Layered shot; cream liqueur with vodka on top. Add a small infected nano cloud that swims around the glass in the vodka layer. Create your own tiny aquarium that's just as lively as CY! A cream liqueur sandy bottom with enough vodka water to let your little infested fishy friend feel at home! Add a pill candy to decorate his tiny kingdom before you throw it down your neck! [CHOAKING HAZARD//DRINK IN SINGLE MOTION] Make a dr10 toughness test. On a pass, gain a nano power and infestation for one day. Fail and just live your life infested.

5. The Perfect Fruit Scrambler.
   2 parts grenadine, 1 part chartreuse, a pinch of nano, and a fresh mint (extremely rare) Fruity, sweet, and surprisingly refreshing. Reroll all of your Apps as you flush your system. 1 in 4 chance you experience a Backlash on reboot.

6. Messy Job
   15ml blood, 1 cup ethanol, 8 tsp. sugar, 1 oz miura (see Drugs) and a sprinkle of dichrome ketacetate. Mix well. The taste depends a lot on the freshness and source of blood. But all around rather sweet, this stuff hits your brain fast and hard. Great before jumping into action, especially if you don't intend to survive Test Pres DR12 or throw the glass against a random target for d4 damage. Passing the test lets you choose the target. You attack with DR10 and defend with DR14 for the next hour, you'll only drop to the floor when reaching negative HP, but until then FUCK SHIT UP

7. The Ochre Eye
   Mixed by various cults and never using anything resembling ingredients, this is rumored to be a one-way ticket to opening all five eyes. Even uniformed onlookers are enticed by the florescent patterns churning within; it contains paint thinner and pond scum, DR 14 Toughness or begin foaming at the mouth, raving about unseeable patterns. (-1 Knowledge) Something in the way its made, though, always imparts (+1 Presence).

8. Old Fashioned
   6 cl Vodka 1 tsp high fructose corn syrup 1 dash "bitters" 1mg "whiskey" essence. Nobody knows what whiskey is anymore but using fragments from old web databases a synthetic essence has been constructed from recycled sewage esters and fuel, the recipe can be bought around the web and used with any standard recsembler. Garnish with a Barcorp®️ Holo-Garnish™️ "Real Orange peel"

Or how about some retro-futurist inspiration to sprinkle in alongside some loot?

Random VHS tapes found on the ground (d6):

1. WM3: Macho vs Steamboat, but the 90k audience in attendance are hooded figures, with red eyes, making rattlesnake noises

2. Cyborgian Gladiators, A low-budget gameshow where humans face off in challenges of might against early gen AI bots. Dismemberment and physical trauma are frequent, the audience cheers are as well.

3. Quantum sit-com, Your favourite episode of your favourite sit-com starts to play. However, it slowly degenerates into the cast murdering each other in cold blood. The last person standing points at you, says your name and runs at the camera. Snow Crash...

4. Multiple hours of industrial machines that grind the bones of long pigs. Labelled "Morloch ASMR part 6: Knochenfräse"

5. Leaked failed experimental advertisement video from Kaytell. Flashing lights and buzzing sounds directly affect the impulse control centers of the brain, making the affected person unable to break eye contact and leave, to the point of dying of starvation unless the tv is turned off

6. Hand-recorder footage of a wild rave, which continues through SecOps arriving and gunning down everyone present. A cartoon mascot pops up at the end to remind all you kiddies that noise complaints are serious business, so keep it down!

And finally, some high-tech goodies that may or may not work as intended.

State-of-the-art cybertech prototypes that definitely don't belong in the wrong hands (d12):

1. Spineclaws: Four retractable metal spikes that are implanted into the upper back. They are around 10ft. long when fully extended, flexible or jointed, and accurately controllable. Can be used to run, scale walls, and impale enemies (d6 damage, one attack per spike per round, spike breaks off on a fumble.)

2. "The Off Button" portable EMP device: guaranteed to shut down electronic equipment of all sorts in a quarter-mile distance, requiring hard reboots on affected devices

3. Face-Splitting Maw: Exactly what it sounds like. The reapers break off your old bottom jaw, and insert two chrome-enhanced half-jaws on the left and right sides. It gives you a horrible underbite that's the size of the bottom half of an American football helmet, but the jawsplitting allows you to swallow and crush big things with your new chompers that you really shouldn't be able to. Your choice of razor, spine, or needle-teeth.

4. UCS "Blinders" Perception Enhancer: Auditory cortex reworking, ear augs, nervous system juicing. Replaces natural soundscape with auditory and nerve stimuli proven to quicken response time and narrow officer focus (e.g., footsteps of suspicious persons replaced with gunshots, ambient sound swapped for a driving gorefest beat corresponding to local threat rating, etc.). Quick to notice danger, first to act in a fight - but hair trigger, shooting first, asking never. Increased odds of downing a co-worker who taps your shoulder.

5. ACGS Reins: Latest iteration of common Human Resources tech. Standard miltech rigger neural enhancements, series of jacks for receiving myoelectric and other biochemical data, connected to convenient interface. Aggressively curtails unnecessary cognitive function. Effectively, a way to turn a person into a battery & targeting system, taking advantage of eyes naturally evolved to hunt. They put prisoners in these things to patrol the Borghold. This one has been slapped on a rickshaw.

6. An acorn: Guaranteed to cause law enforcement in a 100-foot radius to empty their clips.

7. AutoRAIL: An implanted system of superconducting magnets that are able to propell the user in any given direction at a moments notice, at roughly four times the speed of sound. Only to be used with musculoskeletal reinforcements of grade 4 or higher. PCs with this tech can test Dexterity DR 16 to perform a super-jump, during which melee attacks deal double damage. Muscle-Ups and Sceleplating give -4 DR each. On a failure the super-jump is still performed, but the landing deals d8 damage with a wet crunching sound.

8. Vaporlung 95: With these breathing enhancers implanted in your chest you'll be able to exhale poison of your choosing, filling a large foyer in an instant. The slot for the poison is a tube in your mouth, so you have to "drink" the poison to load it. (Don't swallow it with your regular tubes though, this tech doesn't make you immune against poison)

9. The Watchmen's Eye: neurological uplink to artificial intelligence managing a small drone swam, which cross-references surroundings with available online data and identifies active targets in order to give the user unparalleled battlespace awareness. The user cannot be ambushed except by extraordinary means. If they aim, they're guaranteed to hit - something. Difficulty of human-machine intelligence interfacing will sometimes result in product misidentifying targets. Be aware that this a prototype for demonstration purposes and should not be used under live fire. ACGS reserves the right to monitor, void warranty of, or decommission the prototype via remote detonation in case of misuse. Side effects include nausea, vertigo, and depersonalization.

10. THE GVN d1: +666 to hit. When you fumble an attack, (d4) 1. you missed the trigger. 2. you never made it to the battle, having caught a stray in the previous room. 3. your father never met your mother, one having taken a fatal bullet from an impossible angle. 4. the gun hits open air. Containing a compendium of technodaemon AIs trained on the living names of dead gods, THE GVN does not miss. During testing, it has been found to hit persons from improbable and impossible angles, spaces, times, and realities. The weapon bears the mark of its creator - a symbol that has never meant anything to anyone, anymore.

11. The Scambler: This chip broadcasts scam links in a wide beam broadcast to every device in a 50m radius. RCDs lag, everyone in range is stunned for 1 round as their systems reboot, all net connected devices cease functioning for 1d4 (roll once for all). Anyone can bypass these above safety measures and go ahead and ignore the stun or use their gear, but they risk clicking on AR spam links clouding their vision. Roll a d6 after any failed roll (or successful defense vs enemies): 1-5 they lose that amount * 100 creds. On a 6 a rogue AI manifests as a nano swarm. It was lurking in the deep web waiting for someone to click it's ritualized release link.

12. Nanoswarm auto-injector: Spinal installation that will automatically deploy reparative nanobots into the body when catastrophic injury is detected (when HP reaches 0 or lower). It can be used d6 times, restoring HP to fill but at the cost of -1 to a random stat per use, as the nano swarm cannibalizes parts of the body to assist overall repair.

Like all homebrew, use/balance with discretion; happy rolling!