Yep, Shirow's Real Drive is quite interesting (I'm stranded about episode 15 or so, however... damn publishing policies XD). Anyway, here are my thoughts in this: - Teamwork: you get a +10 per member helping (up to a maximun of +30) to almost any skill test. Creative use of technology and gear can expand that to any skill test... - Rolls are made to avoid roleplaying or situations that would impair the development of the game. With this two premises, you can go and turn one or two sessions into a great psychosurgery "adventure" were the characters work together. The only point when things can go strange is iff you have more than 4 players going to dive in, but you can solve that with "we have reserves". Now if you want to make it like Inception, remember only a trained mind would get a subconscious able to protect it (that means, in terms of rules, he should have some Psychosurgery himself). In inception, one makes the "enviroment", while the target populates it. Now, if you want some "hard" rules about this, I'd suggest taking one, some, or all of the following: - The "architect" (the one making the enviroment) takes PART of the role of game master, describing the surroundings and how he wants the place to be. He should make a psychosurgery test when establishing it, and the target opposes with a psychosurgery test of his own each time something happens and when he is first dumped on the enviroment. If the architect wants to make more changes, he has to make new psychosurgery tests, modified by how "credible" those changes are (I suggest something in the lines of the old White Wolf's Mage rules regarding Paradox). For example, "summoning" a medium pistol inside a trunk he was carrying and no one saw open before, he would get a +30 or even more to the roll. - The drugs: these give more time inside the sleep, and if they are good enough they allow for the first contested roll of psychosurgery to be avoided (the target would be automatically inside the dream). Even better drugs will penalize the targert's psychosurgery tests. - The target: calculate his psychosurgery rolls considering all the supporting skills (medicine: psichiatric, knowledge: psicology, knowledge: psychosurgery, psi sleights, etc...). If you want more detail, change the the aptitude that rules the skill to WILlpower for this. Now, the tens numbers will determinate the amount of defenders that will be summoned by the subconscient. - The Mob: If the architect botches a roll, or the target rolls a critical roll and the architect fails, then ALL the people inside the dream will assault the architect (this excludes characters allied to the architect, of course). - Tense situations: if the target rolls a critical success and the architect botches, then some agents of the subconscious will gather around and try to see if they need to kill something. They are not hostile from the beginning, but are trying actively to detect an intrusion. - Advantages: for people without the knowledge, but some training to resist this way of psychosurgery, a new positive trait can be added: "Dream defense training" (Ego only). Cost: 10 (lv1), 20 (lv 2). Effects: you can apply your full WILlpower aptitude to your attempts to resist dream attacks, and you will get +4 defenders. Lv2: double the amount of willpower, and you get +8 defenders. - Related advantages: a morph with implants or traits related to drugs will be harder to get into the dream. Since most morphs have anti-drugs implants or medichines, usually nanotech drugs are used, often disguised as petals (one of the most common tactic used by "Dream thiefs"). If the target ha also anti-nanotech drugs implants, then only waiting for him to sleep will work, meaning 2 or 4 hours to work. Or worst, if the target has the implants and is inside a synthmorph or in infomorph state, then this tactic is not applicable, having to resort to hacking to put the ego to sleep. This are just some quick thoughts, however. I think more stuff can be added, but I also feel it's enough to use as a base.

Azathoth wrote:

Wow Xagroth, that'd some cool home brewing! I find myself hoping that they put out a psychosurgery supplement to the rules that expands on these suggestions! Any thoughts on how you would handle an assault on the players by the target's psyche? I had originally been thinking I would handle all damage as Stress, but psychosomatic responses in your body could conceivably result in physical damage.

Consider that those rules would need to be optional, after all, we could end having the group divided into hackers, "psychohackers", and soldiers, all together but never playing at the same time (so the players would have to wait a lot between turns, or have the action all fragmented). This rules I brewed here are just for detailed use of the skill when all the players are together ^^. As to how to manage the "battle", I'd say that the players would be mostly egos (they could "build" their morphs using rolls of psychosurgery skill, or you can let them have their way and go with their "real morph" capacities). I'd keep armor and damage as the same level that the real world, just that instead of dying when reaching 0 durability you would wake up. However, I'd say that you would take 1 stress point per wound suffered during the dream, plus another stress point for waking up after "dying" (consider that there are certain "automatic deaths", like huge falls... or being expelled from the habitat into space, if the habitat is the terrain). Of course, if you want to play the "dream inside a dream" option of Inception, then I would use the number of layers as a multiplier of the Stress points. So Saito would have taken about 2-3 wounds, plus dying... that is 12 or 16 Stress Points. Plus the "30 years" or so he stayed on limbo, that would add more Stress. While in the movie we see them shruggin off those effects, I'd say that Stress taken from dreamhacking would always cause long-term traumas and psychosis. Consider most dreamhackers are unable to have normal dreams of their own, so they are quite prone to acquire the Addiction (petals), Addiction (shared dreams) or Addiction (sleeping pills) negative traits. Unless they are infomorphs, of course. Which would make the most efficient dreamhackers people able to sleeve without penalty into infomorph state and one morph (preferably with a cyberbrain, for going in and out quickly), and some of them use psychosurgery onto themselves precisely for that. Now about the target, I'd say that he gets the same rules for the stress points. That means that killing his defenders won't harm him (ok, seeing gruesome scenes of carnage CAN produce stress tests, but those are normal rules), and killing him would only produce small damage. Oh, regarding the defending units of the target's subconscious... Consider that, while only a limited number of them will "spawn" at any given time, they have reserves. Endless reserves. And there is the Mob. This means that dreamhackers (and their helpers) have to be very subtle and inconspicous. So it's a bad idea to go around "sleeved" into a Reaper morph when trying to hack the accountat of one of Luna's banks... Now the different options for the PC's characteristics: - Characters as Infomorphs: the durability would be the amount of sanity left, and the Stress Threshold would equate the Wound threshold. However, damage taken in this state won't transmit to the characterin any way (or it would become quite a good way of killing a target...). - Characters using Morphs: Would they get aptitude bonuses? I'd say yes, if for nothing more, because it makes things more in line with everything else (and that means the defenders will also have morph's bonuses, so it's as balanced as "real life"). - Gear: I think I already said it, but any character can make a Psychosurgery test to "summon" a piece of equipment... or implant, once inside the dream. As for the starting gear, things that can be seen shouldn't be out of line with everything else in the dream, but implants will need to be limited (or everybody will go around with everything installed). To keep things balanced, a player character can have as many implants as tens he has on the psychosurgery skill (aptitude added) plus the ones in the basic version of his most usual morph (that means, the one he is sleeved into... or the one he can sleeve without making integration or alienation tests). Of course, if the GM prefers things to be "vanilla", he can give the implants he seems fit and get done with it, whatever hinders less the game. Implants "summoned" inside the dream, however, are not limited by this rule... but won't last more turns that the tens in the Psychosurgery skill. For example, the defenders of an ego are looking for an intruder, without being sure if there is one or not. The intruder can then risk detection and summon a pheromones implant testing his psychosurgery of 72 to boost his lies, but the implant will last only 7 turns (or the remainings of the scene). The target, however, cannot summon any gear on himslef, and will be using the morph he is currently sleeved on, or the one he doesn't need to make integration tests for... Or in certain cases, one at the discretion of the GM. The target will get the fanatic protection of his guards, who will NEVER shoot him (even by mistake, they will hold their fire if, for example, all the intruders look like the target. But the next group will know which ones were real...), and will have the gear and morphs the target is more familiar with IN THE ROLE OF SECURITY FORCES. That means an induntured infomorph of the Ultimates will have people in Remades... or even Reapers, with lots of guns, gear, and nastyness. Now remember: there are risks involved in dreamhacking, among them the need of injecting drugs into the target (and take them too), being physically near him, and that there is no way of communicating between dream layers but "the kick" (that is, a fall that will affect the inner ear's sense of equlibrium), which makes hard for AGIs to do the trick (-10 to the roll involved to "wake up"). And for communicating "inside the same layer", I'd say that only face to face works, no electronic signals work (AR works fine, however). Ah, one more thing. Whatever you do, if you dreamhack a veteran gatecrasher NEVER make him cross a Pandora Gate. Crazyness tend to happen. The kind of crazyness that involves backup restoration for everybody, and has been remotely discovered after the dissection of several AGIs broken egos...