Category: The Veil: Cyberpunk Roleplaying: FAQ

A few questions:

1) Apparatus’ Within Cyberbrain – does that only trigger when the PC is asking the MC questions, or does that also trigger when the MC has to ask the PC questions, aka through Rise?

2) With Improvements, you can only take as much Improvements from a given category as there are tickboxes, right? So Apparatus can only unlock a new playbook move twice?

3) When picking moves from other playbooks, you can’t choose playbooks that rely on the playbook’s signature thing, right? A Dying can’t get Attached’s It Speaks, because the Dying doesn’t have an Object, correct?

4) Can you take moves without checkmarks next to them from other playbooks? Say, can an Apparatus take Honed’s Potential?

5) The Dying’s special – does having hold make your Symptoms not progress, or can the hold only be spent to prevent the Trigger move from happening after using The Gift, or both?

6) Catabolist’s Junkware move creates cybernetic implant as an optional thing to choose. Does that mean if the roll fails or it’s a weak hit, the cybernetic is still incorporated even though it doesn’t get a tag, or what happens? Say, when you try replacing your arm with some cybernetic with Junkware, you roll a 7, can you choose not to use that cybernetic, are you forced to choose the first option on Junkware, or can you try to mitigate bad things by choosing not to get negative tags but still replacing your arm with cybernetic that has no positive tags and so on?

7) If you want to take a cybernetic weapon during character creation, do you need to spend your initial tags for range, etc? We have a character that wanted to get a built-in laser, but the only place that would fit something with Far, +Harm would be their eyeball…

8) Do cybernetic weapons, like Apparatus’ Gear get any default Harm, or do they have to take Harm as a tag in order to do anything?

9) If a Catabolist wants to expand their Junkware Cybernetics, they have to spend one Tag of the new Cybernetic to be Integrated, correct? Otherwise they would be replacing the old part with a new part?

We recently started playing The Veil and we ran into a few mechanics we didn’t know how to handle:

– Negative tags – when should they come into play? I understand that for Cybernetics they probably come into play when the thing is used, but how about the tags for weapons? How to treat Catabolist’s Reload tag on a gun? Does that mean they have to spend turns reloading during a Duel, or what?

– How should the various weapon tags be handled in general? I’m guessing whoever has the better gear in a Duel gets that +1 forward?

– During Duels, there is an option to force a change of location, which gives +1 hold for the next bout. As any other choice, it still costs 1 hold, so that means you’re not getting any bonus in the end? Or do the holds not transfer over between bouts? Or should that be +1 forward?

– We were looking into how to get information from The Veil. Unfortunately, the game itself is called The Veil, so it’s hard to tell where one can find information on The Veil in The Veil. I’m guessing page 312 is the proper page for that part of the setting? The book also talks about Lifting the Veil while talking both about disconnecting from the Veil to look at the real world and going deeper into the Veil to find some information there… So at any rate – what are the mechanics for finding the needed information from the Veil? Roll the move, GM asks you some esoteric questions, then you may get the answer based on the roll?

– How lax should the rules for invoking “moment of intimacy” be? A lot of the playbooks seem to benefit a lot thematically from them taking place on regular basis, but they can fail the roll and get nothing (for example, I’m playing Apparatus and have failed about 4 out of 4 attempts at invoking its special)

– If a Belief is reaffirmed, should the character get an XP from it? Say – “Humanity is a disease; only through the integration of cybernetics might we live.” – would that give XP if the character succeeds only due to their cybernetics, or do the believes need to be tested in a way that may make the characters change their ways?