Skin Men

Omegaton. Home to over sixteen million souls. Pure souls.

After decades of playing with genetic modification and "improvements" to the human genome,
nature struck back, first with rogue mutations, then came the plagues, and finally the creatures,
once familiar, that had adapted to the new evolutionary landscape to prey on the sick, to thrive
and flourish where others fell. As always, mankind eventually found a way to beat back the
horrific results of its own tinkering, carving out strongholds where it could rebuild, and then
finally pulled back into itself.

Yes, we had rebuilt ourselves and our society to its former prominence in the world, but we had
lost so much in the process. To maintain the new order that had arisen, the systems of control
that we instituted to fight back the biological aberrations - viral scourges and twisted creatures
alike - likewise maintained a stranglehold on the humans who survived, as well. Humanity
pressed together in sprawling mega-cities like Omegaton, and they were watched, both for
another outbreak of infection or contagious mutation, and also to be sure that nobody reached
too far for the old ways.

Of course, humans being the naturally curious tinkerers that they are, and science being what
it is, moving ever onward, that carefully controlled state of affairs could last only so long. Where
there is pressure to conform, there is the will to rebel. Where there are eyes and ears tracking
every move, there is a shadow in which to hide. Where there is suppression of knowledge, there
are those whose sole desire is to attain that knowledge, use it, and release it into the world once
again.

The genetic experimentation never ended, not in the Administration facilities, where those
who controlled the populace also yearned to harness the fire that had almost burned out the
world; nor in the clandestine laboratories scattered throughout the cities, where the relentless
pursuit of mastery over nature for its own sake continued unseen. People still desired longer
lives, healthier and younger-looking bodies, and abilities and senses beyond the most perfect
specimen amongst the unmodified population.

Special police and military units were created in response, to root out the secret labs and
the genetically enhanced humans who lived among the general citizenry. Equipped with the
newly developed EDGE (Electronic Detection of Genetic Enhancement) technologies, these
Purity Administration detachments hunt down the "aberrants" and bring them in for study and
reincorporation into the system. Although they are rarely known to use lethal force in the field,
those apprehended by the PA squads are rarely seen or heard from again; captured abberants
are rumored to be held in secret camps within the Zones, and sometimes subjected to the most
awful experiments... but these are only rumors.
 And so, like the body's own immune system, a new line of defense against this institutionalized
abuse of enhanced humans has sprung up - the Skin Men. The enhanced know that they
cannot survive undetected for long within the borders of the great cities, but they also know
that they cannot pretend to live their lives as normal men and women any longer. So their goals
are twofold: to evade detection by the genetic squads of the Administration, and to somehow
escape to the unprotected and unmonitored lands outside the cities. There is talk among the
enhanced of smaller groups of people, banding together to forge a new society beyond the
boundaries of the fearful city-dwellers. However, little or no word from the outside filters through
the walls of the mega-cities, so it is difficult to say if this is merely wishful speculation.

Either way, the Skin Men are there to provide both services: to help the enhanced pass through
the city undetected, and to provide them with the credentials and guidance required to leave
the city, and find their way to a new home. Neither of these tasks are without difficulty. The
PA squads are everywhere, and their eyes and ears - and noses - hide around every corner.
And there are few reasons why a normal person would want to leave the city - everything is
provided, and safety is assured - so those who wish to travel past the walls and watchtowers
are viewed with the utmost suspicion. But the journey is essential to many, and it must be made.

The mission of the Skin Man is not an easy one, but it is the only way forward.
Introduction
Skin Men is a “biopunk” game set in the great mega-city of Omegaton, where players will take
on the roles of the titular “Skin Men”, aiding their genetically enhanced clients in their journey to
relative safety, away from the watchful state that has branded them “abberants” who must be
hunted, captured, and picked apart in Administration laboratories.

The Skin Men players will each control one character who is part of the escort team that will
safely conceal the true nature of their client from the Purity Administration agents until they
arrive at their destination beyond the watchtowers that ring the city. Skins are never enhanced
themselves - they cannot afford to be tagged by the PA - and must rely on their contacts,
personalities, technical skills and determination to complete this assignment. One player will
take the part the Administration (or just “Admin”) and they will be in charge of playing the
rest of the world, providing something for the others to rub up against. The Admin will portray
the players’ client, the general population of Omegaton, the in-fiction Administration and its
cadre of PA agents, the automated systems of Omegaton itself, the team’s personal allies and
adversaries, and so on.

The game feels best with one Admin player and two or three Skin Men, but there’s no reason
that there can’t be a solo Skin working out there, or a larger team taking on more difficult clients.

Before you begin playing, make sure that everyone is on the same page, tone-wise. Some
people prefer to emulate the grim, semi-realistic totalitarianism of THX-1138 or 1984, some
like their social satire a bit lighter, a la Brazil, and others still like more action in their stories,
anywhere from the claustrophobic urbanity of Blade Runner to the kickass gun-fu of Equilibrium.
You’ll also want to take some time to check in on the players’ expectations of the feeling and
technological level of the setting, as well. It’s a given that there will be fairly advanced genetic
modification technology, for starters, but think about the rest. Does the PA use automated
drones, hunter droids, or sniffer dogs? Are the city walls concrete and barbed wire, or energy
grids and monofilament? Do people travel in flying cars, monorails, or pedi-cabs? Is there
ubiquitous networked computing, wireless everywhere or jacks, or are we using morse code and
pneumatic tubes? Is the city gleaming chrome and neon, or cinder block and corrugated steel?
Soaring towers, claustrophobic underground bunkers and tunnels, or a sprawling shantytown of
shacks and tarp-houses? Take a moment or two to quickly assess the mood and inclinations of
the group, and play accordingly.

A session of Skin Men requires just a few things: printed copies of the Omegaton and Central
District maps, Skin Man character and Client sheets, a handful of tokens for the Admin to use
as Edge counters, a location marker for the maps, at least three regular six-sided dice, writing
implements, and the players themselves. Session length depends on the difficulty of the job,
which will be discussed in the sections below.
Characters
Before play can begin, each Skin Man must create a character for themselves. This should
only take a few minutes, and the players may wish to collaborate with each other to create an
interesting mix of abilities and backgrounds for their team.

Character creation is relatively simple; each player begins by choosing a gender[1] for their Skin
Man, and a name from the following list:

Abbott, Ajax, August, Brown, Calvin, Carter, Coyote, Day, Gage, Green, Hand, Hermann, Hopper, Job, Kale,
Leaf, Low, May, Milton, Owen, Parker, Rip, Ross, Spring, Stack, Still, Trip, Truth, Tuck, Vale, West, Wind, Zero

Next, each Skin Man will rank their four Elements from one to four; the higher the number, the
better. The four Elements that every Skin possesses are Presence, Vigor, Craft, and Support.
They are the basic means used by the characters to overcome the challenges presented by the
Administration, and are defined thusly:

Presence
Force of personality, or ability to make oneself noticed - or not. Presence
is used when a player wishes to convince another character to do
or believe something, to ingratiate themselves with someone, or do
something that requires them to interact socially with another person.
Vigor
Bodily energy and endurance. Vigor is used to fight (with weapons or
without), run, climb, swim, or any other physical activity.
Craft
Craft is the character’s degree of proficiency with the technical tools
of their profession. It is used in challenges involving evasion or
avoiding detection by EDGE technology, masking or modifying genetic
enhancements, and so on.
Support
This represents character’s existing contacts and associates within and
around Omegaton. If a Skin Man is attempting to secure aid or sanctuary
in the city, or if they need to find a guy who knows a guy, or call on an old
friend, that’s Support.

Once the values one, two, three, and four have been assigned to the four elements, each player
will choose and rate an Issue for their character. An issue is something from the Skin’s past that
still haunts them, something unresolved that still deeply affects the character. It could be related
to how they came to be a Skin Man in the first place, something or someone that they lost, a
job gone wrong, an opportunity regretfully missed, a stunning act of poor judgement, anything.
Make sure that the issue is one that is compelling to the player, because it will be something
that comes up repeatedly in the fiction, and will hopefully be resolved one way or another over
the course of play.
Issues have mechanical impact, of course, as well as narrative weight. After writing down
the Skin’s Issue on the character sheet, assign it a rating between one and three. This rating
represents how important the issue is at the beginning of the game; the higher the number
assigned to the Issue, the more significant it will be for the character. This value will change as
the game goes on, going up when it is used to refresh the character’s Element, or as the result
of Complications, and going down as the player resolves or amends their Issue at the end of
each job.

Additionally, when the character is created, for every point the player puts into their Issue, they
may raise one of their Elements by one. Each element may only be raised in this way once,
and clearly, no Element will be raised above five. Keep in mind, however, that the stronger the
Issue, the riskier it will be for the character when they use it to refresh an Element during play,
or if they are forced to roll their Issue because of a Complication.

Example
Andy, Brad, Chris, and Daniel sit down to start up a game of Skin Men. Andy volunteers to
play the Administration, so the others make up their characters. Brad creates a Skin named
Brown with Presence 2, Vigor 1, Craft 3, and Support 4, and chooses “Misidentified” for his
Issue - he was incorrectly tagged as enhanced by an overzealous PA with faulty tech, and spent
some very unpleasant time being poked and prodded in Zone Five. He sets his Issue rating to
two, and uses the points to bump up Presence to 3 and Vigor to 2. Chris names her Skin Man
Carter, and gives her Elements P2 V4 C3 S1. Carter’s Issue is “Enhanced Family” - her parents
took on some enhancements, and were identified and taken away by the PAG when she was a
child. She rates it a one, and increases her Craft up to four. Daniel decides that his Skin Man,
Day, used to work for the Purity Authority, but defected after being forced to execute some
horrible orders; he initially sets his Elements to P4 V2 C1 S3, and takes his Issue at 3, raising
them to P5 V3 C2 S3. Done!

Once all of the Skin Man players have created their characters, you are ready to begin the job.
You’ll be introducing and creating a Client that the team will escort to their destination outside
the city. Before that, however, you will set up and play a brief, intense scene from somewhere
in the middle of the mission, the part where everything has fallen apart, and things look grim for
our protagonists.

[1] Yes, a “Skin Man” can easily be male or female. Totalitarianism and intolerance are not the only societal failings that persist in
this setting. Linguistic sexism is as alive as ever. Gender itself remains an arbitrary social construct, doubly so when the technology
exists to turn your armpit into a vagina or graft six penises onto your ass.
The Pinch
The first scene of any game of Skin Men will be the “Pinch”. This scene takes place at the
crest of the action of the narrative - the plan has probably gone wrong somehow, things have
taken a wrong turn, unexpected obstacles have arisen, the team is under fire, or the characters
are otherwise in deep trouble. This is a flash-forward, to start the story off with a bump of
excitement, and give the players an interesting high point to aim towards, story-wise.

The Admin player will roll on the location table to see where the Pinch scene takes place. This
will probably not be anywhere along the intended path that you will establish for the Client in the
next scene, but that’s how things go sometimes, right? Roll three dice first on the District table
to see what area of Omegaton in which the scene takes place; if the Central District is rolled, roll
three dice again and consult the Central Zones table to pinpoint the specific zone within Central
that the team will be pinned down in. Alternately, if the Administration is inspired or has an idea
for a cool Pinch scene, and the other players agree, they may simply choose the District or
Zone that they want to start in, and go for there.

Once the location of the Pinch is determined or chosen, the Admin should look at the lowest
Element scores on the characters’ sheets, perhaps take a look at the tags on the location, and
inspired by those set up a scene where the team of characters is at a low point. You don’t need
to figure out how they got there or what they were doing, just put the Skin Men or their Client
into serious danger somehow, and see what happens. The players should then simply play
out the scene, letting themselves getting deeper and deeper into the situation, until it feels like
things have gotten bad or crazy enough to call for a Challenge roll. Just before actually rolling to
resolve the scene, however, the Admin will cut the action short, and the story will jump back to
the beginning, where the players will meet their Client, and begin their mission in earnest.

Example

Andy rolls 3d6 to set up the Pinch scene, and gets a five - Everest District. He sees that Brown
is weak in Vigor, Carter has a low Support, and Day has a two in Craft. He looks over the tags
for Everest, and gets inspired by “breath”, “frozen”, and “inaccessible”. Andy frames a scene
in which Day and Brown have been locked in the organ-storage freezer in an underground
biotech laboratory, and Carter and the Client are attempting to get them out. Air is running out
- Brown has already passed out from lack of oxygen and hypothermia, and Day pounds on the
door, weakly howling for release. Carter has managed to scrap together a cutting tool, but as
he hits the ignition switch, an alarm sounds, and we hear the sounds of heavy boots quickly
approaching the lab. Armed security personnel swarm into the room, weapons drawn. Andy
calls the end of scene before it erupts into full badness, and the players cut to the scene where
they first make the acquaintance of the client who got them into this mess in the first place...
Client Introduction
As soon as the players cut out of the initial Pinch scene, they will immediately begin setting up
the “real” first scene of the mission, chronologically speaking. This opening scene will introduce
the team’s new Client, and set up the structure and difficulty level of the job.

The first thing to be done is to choose a starting location. This will be where the client is
currently located, whether they’re squirreled away in a safehouse somewhere, or sweating out
the last days at their corporate gig, hoping against hope that they can avoid detection for just a
few more days. The players will decide this as a group, either rolling for it on the location tables
(roll three dice first to determine the District, and if they wind up in Central, roll again to set the
Zone within), or by simply choosing to start in a specific District or Zone that sounds promising
or entertaining to them.

After the starting location is determined, place some kind of marker in the appropriate District or
Zone on the Omegaton map. This will be moved around as the Skin Men travel throughout the
city to denote their position.

That taken care of, figure out who the “face” of the team will be. This will generally be the Skin
with the highest ranking in Support. (If more than one player is tied for highest Support, then use
presence. If that’s still tied, look at the characters’ Craft, then Vigor.) This character will set up
the introduction scene, describing the setting and environment in which the initial meeting takes
place, whether they’re making contact in secret or in a public place, if they’ve taken any special
precautions, and so on. Now, pull out a fresh Client sheet, and start fleshing things out.

To start things off, decide on the client’s name. A good way to start is to pick one of the players’
actual middle name to use for the first name of the client, and take the name of a street that one
of the players has lived on for their last name. If you totally hate that, make it whatever you like.

Begin to play out the scene, with the Administration player taking the part of the client. They will
offer details and particulars of the job as the briefing for the job progresses. Over the course of
the scene, the players must collectively determine a few things about the client:

● Why or how did they become genetically enhanced?

● What has been keeping the client in Omegaton since their enhancement?
● How have they avoided detection by the Purity Administration thus far?
● What happened to make them want to or need to leave the city now?
As the group invents these details about the client, note them down in the relevant areas of
the Client Sheet. The players may break character to discuss these aspects of the client out of
character, but some may wish to remain immersed in the scene, and let the answers to these
questions emerge naturally. Whichever way the group decides to proceed, it is generally best
to make an effort to be sure that everyone, Skins and Admin alike, is excited about, or at least
invested in these details. It’s okay to throw out a bunch of ideas, and run with the ones that
everyone seems to enjoy the most, discarding the rest.

Once those questions about the client are answered, there are still a few more things to take
care of before the journey to the Outlands can begin. The team clearly knows where their
mission is beginning, but the players must also decide where it will end. Again, collectively
choose an area outside the city where the client will conclude their escape from Omegaton, and
note the number of the Pylon nearby. Decide what will happen when they arrive, or who will be
waiting for them when they get out there. This could tie in to the client’s reason for leaving the
mega-city, or they may just be working from hearsay, and hoping that the rumors of help waiting
just outside the urban areas are indeed true.

The players must also come to agreement on how many enhancements the client will possess,
and decide what their nature is. Clients will always have somewhere between one and four
genetic modifications - the more they have allowed themselves to be enhanced, the harder it
will be to avoid detection while traveling, and the more difficult and dangerous the mission will
be. However, it is also possible that the Client may at times be able to step in and use their
special abilities to assist the team in times of dire need, putting their own safety on the line
even further to ensure successful completion of their passage to freedom. The exact type and
extent of the client’s enhancements depends entirely on the players, and the tone that they have
chosen for the setting that they will be playing in. Improved reflexes, endurance, intelligence,
senses or strength are fairly standard; chameleon skin, gills, telepathy or telekinesis, venom
glands, a prehensile tail or protective chitinous plates are a bit further out there; laser eyes,
giant bat wings, fire breath, teleportation or the ability to turn into stone are probably way too
much for this style of fiction. Keeping things closer more grounded and closer to home will
almost certainly result in a more enjoyable game. That said, if the players are dead set on trying
something kind of crazy, go for it.

Example
The team decides to name their first client Christopher Park. They choose to begin inside the
Central Administration Zone, and work their way out from there. Brown has Support 4, so he
introduces Park to the team in of an out-of-the-way breakfast counter. They play a bit, and
discover that Park went back-alley to pick up a few enhancements - improved cognition and
endurance for those all-nighters - to get ahead at work. His plan succeeded, and he made
enough to pay for some Skin to stay under the radar for a while. It would have been perfect if
someone wasn’t coming up behind him on the corporate ladder, someone who had the goods
on Park, and was more than willing to turn him over to the PA to get at his job. Fortunately, Park
knew someone who skipped town a couple of years back, and they left him an envelope with
the same instructions that he used himself, about where to rendezvous outside Pylon 39...
Mission Difficulty and Tasks
After the specifics of the client are decided upon, and the Skin Men know where they’re starting
from and where they’re going to, the Admin player can use that information to determine the
difficulty of the job. The farther the team has to travel, the more borders and checkpoints they
have to pass through, and the more obviously enhanced their client is, the tougher it will be to
make it to their destination in one piece.

The Administration will use the following table to calculate the job’s initial Difficulty,
using the shortest path from the team’s starting District or Zone to their destination Pylon.

The difficulty of every job begins at two. Start with 2 Difficulty

Does the job begin in the C.A.Z. or a Numbered Zone? -- Add 3 Difficulty
If the team begins in Central, for each zone passed through to the border: -- Add 1 Difficulty
To cross the border from Central to another District: -- Add 1 Difficulty

Does the team choose to begin in a Numbered Zone in another District? -- Add 3 Difficulty
(Everest, Flint, Lily, Park, Sierra, Sunlight, or Turk Slope)

To leave a Numbered Zone within another District: -- Add 1 Difficulty

For each District passed through to reach Omegaton city limits: -- Add 2 Difficulty

For each Pylon with direct line of sight to the chosen exit Pylon: -- Add 1 Difficulty

For the client’s first enhancement: -- Add 1 Difficulty

Does the client have a second enhancement? -- Add 2 Difficulty

Does the client have a third enhancement? -- Add 3 Difficulty

Does the client have a fourth enhancement? -- Add 4 Difficulty

Example
Now that the team has nailed down their Client, it’s time for Andy to figure out how difficult the
job will be. He starts with the standard two difficulty. Since the players are starting inside the
Central Administration Zone and going to Pylon 39, they’ll probably be moving to the border
of the Central District via Nova, then through Sunlight and Marsh. It looks like there’s only two
other pylons that can see P39, so that bit should be a cakewalk, comparatively. So, for the trek
outward, that’s 2 + 3 (for starting in the C.A.Z.) + 1 (Nova) + 1 (for the border) + 2 (Sunlight) +
2 (Marsh) + 2 (P39). That adds up to thirteen points of Difficulty for the journey. Park, the client,
also has two enhancements, so that’s +1 for the first one, and +2 for the second one, bringing
the total Difficulty of the mission to sixteen.

If the team wished to undertake a much simpler job, they might have chosen to have their initial
meeting with the client in the Lily District. That would just be the standard 2 Difficulty, plus 2 for
P39, and they may as well only give the client one enhancement, for a total Difficulty of five.
Alternately, the players may have decided to give themselves somewhat more of a challenge.
They begin in the thick of things by secretly meeting their client in Zone Eleven, in the Lily
District, and arranging to take them clear across the sprawl to Pylon 19. That’s 2 for starters,
+3 for starting in Zone Eleven, +1 to get out to Lily proper. It looks like the shortest route over
there is through Sunlight (+2), then Flint (+2), Snyder (+2) and finally Everest (+2). They count
six other pylons in line of sight to P19, so that’s another +6, for a grand total of twenty Difficulty
for the journey. They also decide to go all in, and use all four enhancement slots on their client,
which is ten more points (+1 +2 +3 +4), bringing the final Difficulty up to a cool thirty. Yikes.

Once that little display of math and orienteering is complete, and the degree of challenge of the
mission is calculated, the Admin player will write down the final Difficulty score of the job on the
Client Sheet, and take that number of Edge tokens. These can be coins, poker chips, buttons,
or whatever is at hand. These tokens will represent the total amount of danger involved with the
team’s mission, and act as a resource which allows the Administration to present obstacles and
challenges to the Skin Men in the course of play.

Finally, each player must create a Task that must be accomplished or a goal that must be
achieved to successfully complete the job. A task may be something as simple as forging
documentation to get a client through a checkpoint, something more involved like manufacturing
dermal masking sheets or corneal skins to make an EDGE sensor read the genetic profile of
the client incorrectly, or even something challenging like breaking into the Central Archives to
uncover and alter the client’s background files. Again, the tasks should be something that all the
players are enthusiastic about or interested in seeing played out, so feel free to discuss them
out of character and toss ideas around until something that excites everyone is discovered.

Bear in mind that that these tasks don’t necessarily need to be completed by the player that
described them; the players will write down the tasks on the Client Sheet, and they may be
checked off as their requirements are achieved throughout the mission. However, each and
every one of the goals that the players create must be accomplished before the job can be
successfully completed. Once the tasks have been decided upon and noted on the Client Sheet,
the mission setup portion is over! Wrap up the introduction and planning scene, and get ready to
jump into the action.

Notes
A final thing about the Client Introduction scene and Mission Setup: It is customary for a
team of Skin Men to be paid up front for their work, and they will normally be acting out of a
sense of moral duty to begin with. It may be a trope of the genre, but don’t waste time with
the usual “Come on, we don’t really need this job! What do we get out of it?” nonsense, or
fiddle about with haggling over the price or conditions of the mission. Let the characters
enthusiastically accept the gig, and get on with it.
Action Scenes
Now that the Skin Men have gotten to know their client a little better, and have laid out the basic
steps of their plan to spirit them out of Omegaton, play may begin in earnest. The majority of
the rest of the game will consist of a series of scenes framed up by the Administration player, in
which the others will pursue the path and objectives that they have set out for themselves.

To begin a scene, the Skin Men will announce their current intentions to the Admin. They
will tell them which District or Zone they are trying to move the client to, what target they are
trying to reach or what task they are trying to complete, or whatever else they might be trying
to accomplish within the fiction of the game. Once the team’s intent is clear, the Admin player
will set the scene, describing their current location and situation, any other characters that
might be present, what the environment is like, what kind of trouble they might be in, and so
forth. The Admin should feel free to be as aggressive as necessary to jump-start the action in
the scene. If the characters want to retrieve a piece of technology from a rival’s workshop, the
Admin may have them begin by sneaking in through a ventilation shaft, or they may start the
scene with the Skin Men dashing out the back door, alarms blaring. If the players think that the
scene framing is completely unfair, they should work it out among themselves, but as a rule of
thumb, more trouble is likely to lead to more exciting scenes, so players should do their best
not to balk at being thrown into the middle of things. Try to accept the situation, and run with it!

If the Admin is stuck, and needs some inspiration for the scene, they should look at the tags for
the Zone or District that the players are in. Tags are designed to be evocative, and need not be
used literally, or in the most obvious sense of the words given. Twist and reinterpret them as
needed to create a compelling scene start. The Admin should also be looking at the Issues of
the players’ characters to inspire scenes, as well as the background information of the client.
Also, if there are any goals or tasks that could be set up or dangled in front of the characters,
feel free to dive right in and throw something obvious out there. What do the players need, and
what might be standing in their way? And most importantly, never forget that the Admin can
simply say, “I’ve got nothing,” and ask the Skin Men players for help in setting up a scene. If
someone has a good idea, lay it out and go for it, and see what happens.

Once the scene has been set up, the Admin should step back for a bit and let the Skin Men
play around with it for a little while. Give them a chance to explore, and if they want to interact
with the client, or with other characters in the scene, or find out more about the world, be there
to respond to them, but allow them a few moments to stretch and breathe before hitting them
with adversity. A good scene involves a fair amount of give and take; if the Skin Men want to
add details to the setting, or describe things happening that the Admin didn’t necessarily have in
mind, be open to them.
When it’s time, the Admin player should introduce some opposing force into the scene as
forcefully as they feel is called for. They should put barriers and obstacles in their way, send
the PAG drones after their client, put their contacts and resources in danger, and just throw all
manner of metaphorical rocks at them in general. The Admin can introduce new elements of
danger into the setting, or, better still, reincorporate elements of jeopardy and hazards that have
already been established in previous scenes. Anything that forces the Skin Men to deal with
whatever the Admin has thrown at them will work brilliantly; the most important thing is to press
the team as hard as necessary to elicit an energetic response from the characters. When the
characters finally decide that it’s time to to give answer the Admin’s moves in the fiction, it’s time
to initiate the Challenge for the scene.

Challenges
There are specific actions that the characters may wish to accomplish within the fiction of the
game that require them to succeed at a challenge to achieve. These include:

● Moving into a new District

● Moving into a new Zone
● Crossing the border into or out of Central District
● Entering or leaving a numbered zone
● Entering or leaving the Central Administration Zone
● Leaving the city limits of Omegaton
● Crossing the Pylon perimeter outside the city
● Checking off one of the tasks or goals required for the job

If the players wish to accomplish any of these things, they should be sure that they have made
it clear to the Admin player before the scene is fully underway, and absolutely clear before they
initiate a Challenge in the scene.

When the scene comes down to a conflict, which it inevitably will, the Admin player will put
forward one (or more, depending on the Edge Track) of the Edge tokens from their stash and
describe exactly what is about to happen if the characters don’t do something. The other players
must choose one Skin Man with which to respond to the challenge; that player will choose one
of their Elements (Presence, Vigor, Craft, or Support) and narrate how they intend to overcome
the obstacle or danger that the Admin has presented them with.

Skin Man Moves

Once the responding player has chosen their Element, they will roll three dice (3d6) and
compare the number showing on each die with the value of that Element. If one or more dice
are equal to or below the Element’s score, those dice count as successes. Normally, only one
success is required to overcome a challenge, but if the Edge Track has reached a high enough
number, the Admin may choose to spend more than one Edge token to make the challenge
more difficult, and narrate accordingly. If the Edge Track is at fourteen or above, the Admin
may use two Edge tokens per challenge; if it is at thirty-five or above, they may use three.
These tougher challenges require two or three successes on the three dice that are rolled,
so eventually, the characters will most likely be required to use a special ability or two to help
themselves out of a sticky challenge.

First, if the players have collected any Opportunity tokens (described below), they may spend
them to re-roll dice. To do this, the player must give an Opportunity token to the Admin player,
who then adds it to their pile of Edge tokens. Then the player picks one of the dice to re-roll, and
does so. A player may spend as many Opportunity tokens as they have available in a challenge.

The players may also choose to employ one of the client’s enhancements to add successes to
their challenge roll. Each enhancement may only be used once during the mission; to use it, just
mark it off on the Client Sheet. When a client uses an enhancement to help during a challenge,
the opposing player must narrate how the enhancement helps in the situation, and adds one
success to their roll. The use of an enhancement during a challenge will always increase the
Edge Track - one point for the first use, two more for the second, three for the third use, and
another four for the fourth time an enhancement is used. Those add up pretty quickly.

Finally, in times of absolute desperation, a player may choose to Sacrifice their character to
avoid losing a challenge. When a Skin Man is sacrificed, the character is marked for death. The
current challenge immediately ends; neither side wins or loses, and there is no housekeeping
phase, no checking off skill boxes or counting up the Complications and Opportunities. The
player must narrate how the challenge is broken off, and the scene continues. The next time a
challenge arises in the scene, the sacrificed character must be the one who steps up, and they
will automatically succeed. After that, however, the character must leave the game permanently.
They are gone for good, and the player must narrate their exit or demise accordingly.

Challenge Results
After the dice are rolled (and re-rolled), and before interpreting the results, look to see if any of
the dice came up ones or sixes. Every die that is showing a one, count that as a Complication
and put it to one side. For every die that came up a six, the player who rolled will take an
Opportunity token. (These tokens may not be used to re-roll dice on the same roll, sorry.) Hang
on to these for the moment.

Now, if the responding Skin Man character managed to overcome the challenge presented to
them in the scene, then then must narrate how they used the Element that they chose to roll to
succeed in the situation presented by the Admin player. If the players had established one of
the goals enumerated above, then they succeed at that as well; they may move their marker to
the next Zone or District on the map, make the border crossing, or check off one of the tasks
required to complete the mission. Bask in triumph for a moment, then wrap up the current scene
and move on to the next one.

The the character fails the challenge, however, they have one final recourse. Another player
may call for a flashback, in which they attempt to use their own character to show how they
used one of their Elements to arrange things in the past so that the current situation would work
out for the first character. If there are players that are not active in the scene due to the result of
an Issue roll, the flashback must be performed using one of their characters; otherwise, anyone
but the character who initially responded to the challenge may attempt a flashback scene.
To perform a flashback scene, the player simply chooses an Element as if they were attempting
to win a regular challenge, and roll three dice against the target number for the chosen Element
as usual. They may employ Opportunity tokens to re-roll dice, but may not use the client’s
enhancements or sacrifice themselves to make the roll. Any successes that they roll during the
flashback scene are added to the initial player’s successes, so if more than one success was
required to win the challenge, it is entirely possible to do so using successes from both the initial
roll and the flashback. If the flashback scene provides the required number of successes, the
challenge is won as above; narrate the outcome, and complete any stated goals.

If the Skin Men choose not to attempt a flashback, or if the flashback scene also fails to produce
the required number of successes, then the players lose the challenge, and the Admin gets
to do one of two things. First, the Admin player may choose to simply narrate the failure of
whatever action the team was attempting in the fiction. If they choose this option, the Skin
Men do not achieve any of their stated intentions, and the Admin player may end the scene
and frame a new one, escalating the danger or misery that the team finds themselves in
appropriately.

Alternately, the Admin player may choose to still allow the intended actions go through, and
allow the rolling player to narrate their apparent success. However, for each Complication die
that came up in the players roll (including any ones that came up in the flashback roll), the
Admin may roll 3d6 on the Complication table, and apply the results accordingly. Complications
can be pretty bad news for the Skin Men; the team may choose to use any Opportunity tokens
that they’ve collected to block Complication rolls, one for one, by giving them to the Admin
player to be put into their Edge token pile in the same way as when they use them to re-roll. If
the Admin player chooses to not roll for Complications at the end of a challenge, however, the
complication dice just go away - they are not carried over into future challenges.

Post-Challenge Housekeeping
When the challenge has ended, whether the Skin Men succeeded or failed, there are a couple
of things that need to be taken care of before the scene can be narrated to its conclusion.

First, the Admin player will discard the Edge token or tokens that they used to initiate the
challenge, and increase the Edge Track on the Client Sheet by the same number. If any special
conditions are triggered by this increase - complication or issue rolls, or the end or the game
- take care of them now. If the Edge Track has reached forty-two or higher, the Administration
has succeeded in tracking down and capturing the client before the Skin Men could get them
out of Omegaton. Narrate an appropriate ending, and try again next time. Likewise, if the Admin
player has used their last Edge Token, they have run themselves out of adversity, and the Skin
Men may narrate their total success, whether they have successfully completed all of their
required goals or not. In the rare case where both of these occur at the same time... figure it out.

After marking up the Edge Track, make sure that the Skin Men players have collected any
unused Opportunity tokens. Remember, these may be used to re-roll dice in a challenge, or
completely block any Complication rolls, so keep an eye on them.

The player (or players, in the event of a flashback scene) who rolled dice in the conflict must
next mark off one use of that Element on their character sheet, whether the challenge was won
or lost. Each Element may only be used a number of times in any mission equal to its rating.
When the last possible use of an Element is marked, that Element is exhausted, and cannot
be used again until it is refreshed by that character’s player choosing to make an Issue roll, or
the job is completed. Remember that characters that attempt a flashback scene mark off their
Elements just like regular rolls, and their Elements are exhausted likewise.

Note on Challenges
If the Admin decides to call a scene over before initiating a conflict, that’s totally fine. The scene
may simply played for drama, without advancing the team’s mission objectives or throwing
significant obstacles in their way. However, if this happens, the Admin player must discard one
of their Edge tokens, without marking it on the Edge Track on the Client Sheet. This should
inspire the Admin to push to conflict in every scene, because if scenes without a Challenge
happen too often, the Skins will be able to coast to victory much more easily.

Elements, Exhaustion, and Issues

An element can only be used a certain number of times during a mission before it is exhausted.
So, you’ve got Craft at 3, you can use it three times, and then you can’t use it any more.
Every time you answer a challenge with an Element, mark it, whether you succeed or not, even
if it was used in a flashback.

To refresh an Element, a player must make an Issue roll.

Roll a number of dice equal to the Issue number
Any dice that come up a 1 or a 2, that’s how many scenes the character has to sit out

when they leave the action, they may narrate them going off for a while to deal with stuff - and
coming back later - or they could be in-scene, and preoccupied. they’re still part of the story,
and still part of the action, they just can’t use their elements to roll or spend their opportunity or
whatever
Play out the scene - what’s going on with the Issue? how does this work?
Any way it comes out, that Element is refreshed completely, all marks erased, and the rating of
the Issue goes up by one.

Example.

Edge Tokens and Track

edge tokens are spent by the admin to issue challenges
one token spent is one success needed
edge tokens are gained by initial difficulty, and players spending opportunity to cancel
complications or re-roll dice
if the Admin runs out of edge tokens, it’s game over, and the players win!
there are forty-two bubbles on the edge track of the client sheet
that is your danger level. if it gains up to 42, it’s game over, players lose.

every seventh one triggers an effect

@ 7 - Admin rolls one Complication +/-1, chooses target player
@ 14 - Admin may choose to use up to two Edge tokens when setting up a challenge
@ 21 - Each player must make an Issue roll, without refreshing
@ 28 - Each player must make a Complication roll
@ 35 - Admin may choose to use up to three Edge tokens when setting up a challenge
@ 42 - The hammer comes down, the mission is failed
these complication rolls may not be blocked with opportunity tokens
if all players are out of a scene due to Issues, increase Edge Track by one per empty scene

Finishing the Job

text needed here

Advancement
at the end of a mission, do advancement checks
if an element has been exhausted through marking off use (not by complications), it may be
increased by one
only one element may be increased per job

if there are any elements that may be advanced over five - that is, if any element with a rating of
five was marked for use five times without being refreshed, then that character’s story is over
they leave the game with a “good ending”, if they like, but they’re done.

Make an Issue roll.

Roll dice equal to Issue, and for every 1 or 2, the rating goes down by one
play out the scene!
if issue goes to zero, player may choose to resolve it for good, take a new one at 1-3 and
advance an element (not over 5)
if it remains at zero, it may be brought back up by complications or whatever next job

If the players succeed and client escapes, add one Freedom

if the players fail the mission, add one Authority
if the players sacrifice or client is captured/killed in public, add one Sympathy
if the players kill in public or client uses enhancements for badness, add one Horror
if the players win by running out the Admin’s Edge tokens, add one Evasion
if the players lose by marking forty-two Edge, add one Detection

if one or more of these reach six, narrate an appropriate end to the campaign.
District / Zone Tags and Connections
Districts
Canton
Account | Bells | Corner | Creation | Flag | Heat | Record | Sight | Slug | Spice | Tight | Transport
[ Glen | Sierra | Turk Slope | Pylons 10 - 12 ]

Central
See Central Zones table
[ Snyder | Flint | Sunlight | Reading | Park | Sierra | Zone Four | Zone Six |
Zone Seven | Zone Nine | Central Administration Zone ]

Everest
Approach | Blind | Breath | Fierce | Frozen | Hold | Huddled | Inaccessible | Lofty | Rare | Rigid | Soar
[ Glen | Sierra | Snyder | Garden | Zone Two | Pylons 19 - 28 ]

Flint
Barter | Clot | Design | Elder | Grapple | Incision | Mix | Past | Sharp | Stitch | Stock | Vapor
[ Snyder | Garden | Marsh | Sunlight | Central | Zone Ten ]

Garden
Accent | Card | Chalk | Crest | Given | Green | Lake | Private | Spirit | Tooth | View | Watch
[ Everest | Snyder | Flint | Marsh | Pylons 28 - 33 ]

Glen
Capsule | Draft | Groove | Hood | Mirror | Neck | Pack | Pipe | Root | Shade | Toll | Weed
[ Everest | Sierra | Canton | Pylons 13 - 18 ]

Hays
Barrel | Cooler | Crowd | Dawn | Encode | Flicker | Grant | Jolt | Needle | Pen | Sweat | Wake
[ Turk Slope | Reading | Sunlight | Lily | Pylons 1 - 5 ]

Lily
Cargo | Crank | Disguise | Fat | Lift | Lost | Rope | Sliver | Smooth | Tablet | Vapor | Vessel
[ Hays | Sunlight | Marsh | Zone Eleven | Pylons 39 - 42 ]

Marsh
Bend | Cable | Dream | Floating | Keen | Lump | Muffle | Pellet | Sick | Smack | Tack | Tune
[ Garden | Flint | Sunlight | Lily | Pylons 34 - 39 ]

Park
Compact | Fortune | Locust | Line | Pass | Reach | Sign | Slip | Square | Stick | Turf | Whisper
[ Sierra | Central | Reading | Zone One ]

Reading
Advantage | Barrier | Cart | Counsel | Gesture | Lure | Perch | Plastic | Score | Stiff | Tracks | Weight
[ Sierra | Park | Central | Sunlight | Hays | Turk Slope | Canton ]

Sierra
Bag | Cook | Fog | Heave | Hide | Honey | Identity | Mark | Pocket | Spider | Spin | Tunnel
[ Glen | Everest | Snyder | Central | Park | Canton | Zone Eight ]
 Snyder
Bolt | Butcher | Clear | Display | Flight | Meat | Pitch | Stalk | Stash | Step | Tool | Tribe
[ Everest | Garden | Flint | Central | Sierra ]

Sunlight
Bean | Check | Copy | Cover | Deep | Drum | Force | Glare | Puncture | Ripe | Tap | Wave
[ Central | Flint | Marsh | Lily | Hays | Reading | Zone Three ]

Turk Slope
Catch | Course | Creep | Detail | Exact | Knot | Mesh | Mill | Moon | Pod | Set | Sweet
[ Canton | Reading | Hays | Zone Five | Pylons 6 - 9 ]

Zone Twelve
Bill | Caked | Clock | Deal | Isolation | Measure | Probe | Screen | Spoil | Strike | Traffic | Wire
[ Lily | Pylons 40 - 42 ]

Central Zones
Blue Rose
Bond | Drift | Firm | Glow | Index | Palm | Ritual | Rub | Spark | Spike | Stamp | Tone
[ Colton | Metro South | Restoration | Reading ]

Central Administration Zone

Agenda | Bridge | Choke | Control | Driven | Deliver | Lines | Magnet | Serial | Sight | Whistle | Wrap
[ Eclipse | Metro North | Nova | Metro South | Zone Nine ]

Colton
Cross, Dark, Cheap, Jacket, Stranger, Cave, Barrel, Ash, Rail, Mask, Religion, Credit
[ Expansion | Eclipse | Greenway | Metro South | Blue Rose | Park | Reading ]

Eclipse
Logic, Toll, Discrete, Blood, Sword, Notes, Music, Community, Enemy,
Decision
Sly | Dark
[ Langton | Metro North | C.A.Z. | Zone Nine | Greenway | Colton | Expansion | Snyder ]

Expansion
Tile, Wind, Horizon, Tax, Election, Patch, Control, History, Family, Landfill, Giant, Map
[ Zone Six | Eclipse | Colton | Park | Sierra | Snyder ]

Greenway
Belt, Safe, Award, Landslide, Season, Remote, Borrowed, Wax, Sleep, Clutter, Collision, Bank
[ Eclipse | Metro North | Zone Nine | Metro South | Colton ]

Langton
Publish, Genealogy, Shaft, Chip, Scarf, Roof, Alias, Descend, Taste, Smoke, Credit, Pierce
[ Eclipse | Metro North | Presence | Snyder | Flint ]
Metro North
Frozen, Buried, Brain, Bruise, Chair, Limit, Lift, Yard, Surprise, Tackle, Turn, Light
[ Langton | Presence | Zone Seven | C.A.Z. | Eclipse ]

Metro South
Spice, Thick, Style, Draw, Saddle, Sweat, Hair, Stick, Politics, Exhibit, Layer, Grave
[ C.A.Z. | Nova | Zone Four | Blue Rose | Greenway | Zone Nine ]

Nova
House, Navy, Stuck, Information, Museum, Space, Crater, Kilt, Knife, Birth, Metal, Patrol
[ Metro North | Zone Seven | Presence | Restoration | Metro South | C.A.Z. | Sunlight ]

Presence
Score, Scam, Write, Whip, Fill, Announce, Threat, Science, Gift, Document, Float, Skill
[ Metro North | Langton | Nova | Zone Seven | Flint | Sunlight ]

Restoration
Fraud, Blink, Gut, Miniature, Crank, Specialized, Carve, Heal, Connect, Peg, Rhyme, Glass
[ Nova | Blue Rose | Metro South | Zone Four | Sunlight | Reading ]

Zone Four
Award, Gallop, Deck, Direction, Block, Game, Forget, Finger, Mature, Flavor, Element,
Protection
[ Metro South | Nova | Restoration ]

Zone Six
Freak, Sister, Medicine, Bend, Platform, Earth, Speed, Climb, Plead, Stitch, Slate, Spill
[ Expansion | Snyder ]

Zone Seven
Destruction, Sin, Type, Flow, Command, Challenge, Return, Luck, Principle, Trigger, Tone | Space
[ Metro North | Presence | Nova ]

Zone Nine
Claw, Dismember, Obsess, Web, Witness | Blacken | Lead | Mantle | Spite | Wheel
[ Eclipse | C.A.Z | Metro South | Greenway ]
Glossary
Administration/Admin -
CAZ - Central Administration Zone
Challenge -
Client -
Complication -
Craft -
District -
Element - One of the four defining traits of a Skin Man; see Craft, Presence, Support, and Vigor
Enhanced -
Enhancement -
Issue -
Numbered Zone -
Omegaton - Approximately 2500 km^2, over sixteen million residents. Official enhanced citizens: zero.
Opportunity -
Outlands -
PA - Purity Administration; the department in charge of keeping Omegaton safe and pure
PAG - Purity Administration, Genetics division; the PA division specifically tasked with tracking,
capturing, and dealing with enhanced humans in the population
Presence -
Pylon -
Skin - Techniques and technologies to avoid detection by the PAG; also, short for Skin Man
Skin Man/Men -
Support -
Tag -
Vigor -
Zone -
Inspiration and Notes
Movies
1984
Blade Runner
Brazil
Equilibrium
Existenz
GATTACA
THX-1138

Fiction
The Golden Man

Games
Apocalypse World
Blowback
Danger Patrol
Fiasco
How We Came To Live Here
Perfect
Remember Tomorrow

Etcetera
The Ribofunk Manifesto: [Link]
“Biopunk”: [Link]
Full size map images and PDF: [Link]
District, Zone, and Complication tables

3d6 # District Central Zones Complication

3 Lily Zone Nine all players make issue roll

4 Turk Slope Eclipse player exhausts lowest element

5 Everest Expansion add new location to travel to required

6 Sierra Nova move exit location

7 Sunlight Presence increase edge track by 2

8 Snyder Restoration increase edge track by 1

9 Flint Metro North client bolts - need success to regain

10 Central C.A.Z. player makes issue roll

11 Hays Metro South player chooses an element to ding 1pt

12 Reading Colton admin gets 1 edge chip

13 Glen Langton admin gets 2 edge chips

14 Canton Blue Rose increase issue by 1

15 Park Greenway client reveals new enhancement

16 Garden Zone Six add new required task for client

17 Marsh Zone Four add new issue at 1

18 Zone Twelve Zone Seven player exhausts highest element

Skin Man Sheet
Name: ____________________________
Presence: ____ [] [] [] [] []
Vigor: ____ [] [] [] [] []
Craft: ____ [] [] [] [] []
Support: ____ [] [] [] [] []
Issue: ___________________________________ [ ___ ]

Client / Mission Sheet

Name: ____________________________
Starting District / Zone: ___________________________
Exit Pylon: _________
Starting Difficulty: __________

Enhancement [+1]: ______________________________

Enhancement [+2]: ______________________________
Enhancement [+3]: ______________________________
Enhancement [+4]: ______________________________

Why/How did you become enhanced?

What has been keeping you here?

How have you avoided detection this long?

Why do you have to leave now?

Tasks to successfully complete the job:

[] ____________________________________________
[] ____________________________________________
[] ____________________________________________
[] ____________________________________________
[] ____________________________________________

Edge Used: o o o o o o O [Complication Roll +/-]

o o o o o o O [Use Two Edge]
o o o o o o O [Roll Issues]
o o o o o o O [Complication Rolls]
o o o o o o O [Use Three Edge]
o o o o o o O [Mission Failure]