Vital Signs

How many stats should a TTRPG have? Three, six, ten, more? It's all down to what the game is trying accomplish. Ideally, the answer is: Exactly as many as it needs to accomplish what it is trying to do without overcomplicating the issue.

When I started thinking about Null Protocol (oh yeah, the working title of this thing is Null Protocol by the way) on a conceptual level, I actually felt like there might need to be four stats. After some tinkering and introspection, I realized that two of my original stats (MIND and TECH) were really doing the same job. So this leaves us with three primary stats, known as Vitals:

Defensive Stats

Both Mythic Bastionland and Cairn have the concept of a temporary defensive stat that is drained during fights and restored after a rest. It provides a buffer from just always taking damage straight to you Vitals. This is needed, otherwise we end up with every combat immediately descending into a Death Spiral. Cyberpunk games have an issue though. We have two modes of attack: meatspace and cyberspace. So what do we do? We implement two defenses:

What It Means To Be Human

A key element of the cyberpunk genre is always the toll that technology takes on a person. That slow erosion of personal identity from replacing your body parts, as well as the weight of the dystopian society around you. Sunshine and rainbows! Well, it wouldn't be much of a cyberpunk game if we didn't delve into this in some way. My solution is SELF.