Zoopunk - Session 1 - A Cat, a Rat & a Rhino walk into a bar...

This weekend, we played the first session of my new thing, Zoopunk.
It's a cyberpunk setting with uplifted animals in the style of Albedo, Usagi Yojimbo or Blacksad with a mix of seriousness and silliness akin to the Metal Gear Solid series. I will post about it here in future posts as the campaign grows. Also I'm using OD&D, details at the bottom of this post.


Characters
• Jack as Jürgen Popper - a Rat Hacker from Berlin, ATA
• Lu' as Xiang Shuei - a Siamese Cat Soldier from Thailand, CPA
• A. as "Salman Rushdie" - a Rhino Shabiya from Yemen, HK


Introduction
Both Xiang Shuei and "Salman Rushdie" have worked in intelligence agencies before, and Jürgen is well-known in the right circles. All three were recruited by Steppenwolf, an international intelligence agency and independent contractors management company located on the Zürich-Orbital Space Station. As they were waited in a monochrome white 17th century baroque salon under the watchful eyes of a Magpie secretary, they introduced themselves to each others - although Salman noted that Xiang and he had already met in the past, under different names. The Cat raised an eyebrow.

Soon, they were invited to meet Mr. Johnson, their handler for this initial assessment of their skills and first contract with Steppenwolf. He offered them drinks and gauged them behind his fur-covered eyes before giving them the rundown on their mission.

Also Mr. Johnson is a Hamster.

Briefing
Andreï Boscovitch is a Siberian Wolf and an ex-Spetsnaz involved in black ops in the Pacific Wars involving terror acts on civilian populations. He disappeared under the radars after his desertion but is now believed to have resurfaced as an arms dealer for the Dolgoprudnenskaya (a russian mob) and to be operating in CPA waters around Shanghai under the nom de guerre of Kochtcheï.
He recently stole a cargo of prototype laser weaponry from the Japanese and they are willing to pay a good sum to get it back. Capturing him and/or the buyer in Shanghai means a bonus (and a chance to show Steppenwolf what the party can do). They are to go to Shanghai immediately through ballistic missile transportation and meet with an informant named Filou - a Chow Chow Dog - tomorrow who has more intel.

Legwork
After a lot of failed Shadowrun and Cyberpunk operations, my players know to do their homework. In Shanghai, everyone buys burner phones and splits. Jürgen decides to ask a french toad that dabbles in arms "procuration" himself for advice, and gets not only the location of Kochtcheï's ship - the Balalaïka - but also an occasion to make more money "on the side" for the toad. At the same time, Xiang meets with her old friend from the services, a Hacker named Butternut, who tells her that he's been keeping an eye on the siberian wolf for a while now and that the cops are going to make a move soon, so if they want to steal back the cargo, they better do it soon.

Butternut. A hacker for the Chinese Secret Services in Shanghai.

The Docks

After some sneaking around and using Charm Person on a guard, the party got access to the ship's manifest and logs, which tells them a little more about their foe: there's about thirty men onboard, including a dozen heavily-armed military types protecting the cargo, which still hasn't been unloaded - it's highly likely the deal will be done inside the ship. 

Where is Filou?

The next day, the party gathers at the Echaffaud, an old bunker repurposed into a bar by a cyborg white rhino. While waiting for Filou, things get heated up and after a bit of "friendly banter", a brawl erupts and is immediately crushed as our trio neutralizes the panda patrons and interrogates the barman - he knows Filou, he's not supposed to be late, something's probably wrong, he lives in a squat at X adress and his girlfriend Cassandra Law works at the Beehive. 

Our group of violent thugs decides to go ask some more questions to Cassandra before going to Filou's place, learn that she's a cocained addict and a stripper, and that her employer is an asshole - Salman lets her know he can deal with that, and she gladly tells them where Filou is, perhaps unwise, but hey, friendly faces are far and between in the mean streets of Shanghai.

At the squat, the party finds a bunch of stoned lizards and rats, and the corpse of Filou with his tongu and eyes missing, left to drain in his bathtub.

Post-Scriptum: I tried giving more "story details" as the setting is different than what I'm used to, but in retrospect the result might be too verbose. Please let me know in the comments if it's too heavy, I'll get back to writing more succint beats focused on players actions.

Rules Stuff
I'm using OD&D (Men & Magic only so far, first printing as always) with the following changes:

• Wisdom is called Education
• Magic-Users are called Psion, Magic is called Psi Powers, some spells (Light) are removed.
• Clerics are called Hackers and don't get spells. Turn Undead table used for Complex Hacking.
• Elves are called Shabiya - Spiritual Psi Warriors akin to Dune's Bene Gesserit.
• Hobbits and Dwarves are removed (to be re-introduced later as alternative classes).
• Using Paul Elliott's Zaibatsu (the free online version) for Gear & Prices, except:
• Added "Kinetic Shields" that render firearms useless and kept all the weapons from Men & Magic.
• Natural 20s inflict maximum damage, Natural 7s hit the head (crit if unprotected).
• Jeff Rient's Table for Starting XP based on XP Modifiers (makes PC start at level 3-6~).
• XP for Money and Murder of Worthy Opponents. 

Some Notes
• Cyberpunk is my second go-to play environnement after medfan stuff. My main inspirations aren't actually science-fiction: Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino movies, Metal Gear Solid and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six videogames. I did read and loved Gibson's Burning Chrome and Neuromancer. None of my players have read Gibson, but most are "fluent" in the Cyberpunk genre through the more recent Deus Ex videogames and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell. The point is: it's sufficiently vague that the modernity doesn't become restrictive, yet sufficiently familiar that player-skill still matters more than character skills.

• While Into the Odd will be missed, it feels good to use OD&D. It just *clicks* for me, probably because I started with AD&D-without-reading-the-book, which means 90% rulings and a few d20 rolls here and there. Special rules don't feel needed with the high degree of abstraction of the original rules, and that means I can have a setting with as many races as IRL animalia reign, psychic powers, cybernetics, hacking that doesn't suck, robots, androids, mutants, and a lot of guns, without actually needing to remember a ton of complicated rules (I'm looking at you, Shadowrun 1E! You were supposed to be way simpler to run than your younger sisters and it took one session to run a three minutes fight!).