DataGoblins: A Cyberpunk Heist · Oğuzhan Açıkalın

DataGoblins: A Cyberpunk Heist uses FATE Condensed with custom rules. It is written for four players, one of them remote.

Hudson & Co. leases the minds of life-sentence convicts to corporations. On the net they appear as green avatars, so people call them Data Goblins. Hollow-Veyl rents four of them to break into the Nyxcorp tower and steal the source code of Virgil-7, its security AI.

One encounter, three screens

I designed the interface around who knows what. The GM keeps the room text and clues. The table sees the revealed room. The remote player receives a separate panel and a written channel.

GM view: entrance floor map beside the reception read-aloud, room drawing and private clues. — GM: the floor plan, room text and private clues stay together.

The table view and the remote player

Table view: a close-up of reception with numbered objects and no GM notes. — Table tablet: a room and its interactable objects, without the GM's private notes.

NotSoIntegral view: a hexadecimal hacking grid and target sequence beside a written message channel. — Remote player: a timed hacking panel and a written channel. The rest of the table receives different information.

The panels also include an elevator keypad, a sonar map for the dark floor and the vault controls. I tested the screens on the devices we will use. The code was written with Claude.

The rules

Rule	How it works
Flaw and ability	Each goblin has one flaw and one ability that comes from it. The flaw gives −3 to one kind of roll and the ability gives +3 to another.
Prosthetics	A prosthetic is fitted to one organ. It reduces the penalty by 1 and the bonus by 1.
Prosthetic Malfunction	Every prosthetic adds to a trouble that grows 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. As game master I can bring it into any scene.
Team leader	When a teammate fails, the leader rolls four fate dice against my list of events and takes the trouble that comes up.
Three clues	Every conclusion the players need has at least three clues, and every stage has at least two ways through.
Setbacks	A wrong entry never closes a route. It causes a setback and the panel can be tried again.

I started with ±5. Four fate dice roll +4 about once in eighty tries, so a −5 flaw meant the character could never succeed. I set the base to ±3.

Four goblins

Goblin	Flaw	What it gives
Kospan, the team leader	A cataract in his left eye	He hears better than anyone else in the team.
Sasamet	Facial paralysis, so he lisps	His face shows no expression, and face scanners cannot read him.
NotSoIntegral	He is deaf	He reads data streams. He is played remotely, and the table can only reach him in writing.
Uwutch	His hacking knowledge is years out of date	He is the only one who understands old systems.

The flaws make information pass from player to player. NotSoIntegral sees a door code in the data and has to write it down. Kospan cannot read it. Sasamet reads it aloud with a lisp, and Kospan has to keep what he heard.

Five sequences

BriefingFour goblins wake in clinic chairs. A Hollow-Veyl official gives them the job and does not care if they die.
Entrance floorThey need an employee card for the elevator. There are three ways to get one.
B1The elevator needs two keys in two wings, so the team has to split.
B2A dark floor. Kospan’s hearing draws the map, and a hunter follows the sound.
B3The vault has four stages, one for each goblin. Then Hollow-Veyl turns on them.

Striking employees have put a check on every floor of the elevator to keep Virgil out. Each floor asks the team to work together more than the last one did.