THE WORLD IS FUCKED. THE 80s ARE BACK.
It is 2080, and the planet is on the verge of climatic collapse. Relentless droughts, devastating storms, rising sea levels, massive floods and tsunamis have killed hundreds of millions all over the planet, governments have lost control, and corporations and criminal organisations now run pretty much everything. Money, greed and survival of the fittest are the law. But that's not the worst part; the worst part is that in 2080, the 80s are back!! In all their full, glorious tackiness and crazy wackiness.
This is a dangerous, gaudy, high-tech, crazy, highly fucked up world where players play a bunch of tacky-looking mercenaries trying to make a living by taking risky (and sometimes seriously crazy) jobs.
So that's you: a tacky-looking merc taking risky, and quite often seriously stupid, jobs for money. You are not a hero and nobody is going to pretend otherwise. You take the job because it pays well, and it pays well because it will probably kill you.
PLAY IT STRAIGHT. LET THE CHAOS COME TO YOU.
2080 is not a serious game, but it should be played very seriously. That sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. With non-serious games, players usually feel they have to do fun things and be hilarious all the time, and that is impossible, quite tiring, and eventually quite frustrating for everybody.
Think of old school film comedies, especially something like the Naked Gun series, where the protagonist is super mega serious about everything even though the story is absolutely bonkers. 2080 is meant to be played the same way. Play your merc seriously, like their life depends on it, because it does, and let the mechanics do the rest; they are deliberately swingy and dramatic, so the fun emerges on its own.
Don't force the fun; let it happen. But if something bonkers happens, then absofuckinglutely go for it.
ONE ROLL. THAT'S THE WHOLE GAME.
The whole game runs on one single core mechanic. Grab a D12, add your modifier, and that's it:
Ability Roll = Natural Roll + Modifier
Your modifier comes from one of the six Attributes (Fortitude, Agility, Finesse, Grit, Awareness and Intellect), plus a Proficiency bonus if the job happens to be something your merc actually knows how to do. There are no lookup tables, no subsystems, and no forty-page combat chapter that plays like a completely different game. One roll, everywhere.
Difficulty doesn't change the target number; it changes the dice. Every situation gets a DC from [+3] to [-3], and that is how many extra D12s you throw. If it's positive you keep the highest, and if it's negative you keep the lowest. The full scale, in the game's own words:
So it's raining, the rock is wet, you're in a hurry, but you have climbed this thing before? The GM stacks the modifiers, they cancel each other out, and you roll. It takes about four seconds, and it means every circumstance at the table actually matters mechanically without anybody having to look at a single chart.
AND 2080 IS DELIBERATELY, UNAPOLOGETICALLY SWINGY.
This is deliberate, not an accident. A D12 with modifiers that top out at around +5 means the dice always get the final word. The competent get humiliated, the useless get their moment, and nobody at the table can maths their way into a predictable, boring evening. The swinginess is basically the engine that generates the chaos, which is exactly why you never have to force it.
SUCCESS ISN'T A YES OR A NO
Results are counted in Hits, in multiples of four, and each tier tells a different story:
The Glitch tier is where 2080 really lives. You picked the lock, but you snapped your last pick doing it. You made the jump, but something in your ankle didn't. The story keeps moving forward and it keeps getting worse at the same time, which is pretty much what you want from a game about people who take stupid jobs for money.
And when you do roll an ASS, you don't have to stop there. Every PC has the Spank It talent:
Add 1 extra Hit to an ASS (3 Hits) or Boost a Manoeuvre.
Spend a Wacky and your Amazing Screaming Success gets even louder. And since a Crit gives you a Juice that you can convert straight into a Wacky, a good roll can end up paying for its own upgrade. You can keep spanking it for as long as you can afford it.
The other talent everybody gets is Risk It, and it is pure 2080: throw all your careful modifiers out of the window and roll a D20 instead. Get 10 or higher and your Natural Roll becomes a 12, an automatic Crit. Get 9 or lower and it becomes a 1, an automatic Flop. So it's roughly a coin flip between the best and the worst thing that could possibly happen, and you can even do it after a disappointing roll by spending a Wacky. Nothing on your character sheet helps you here, and that is entirely on purpose.
CRITS THAT ESCALATE INTO ABSURDITY
Roll a Natural 12 and you Crit. Roll a few of them at once, which the DC system makes perfectly possible, and things escalate quite quickly:
A Crit is a clean kill. A Badass Crit sprays the room and rattles every enemy in it. A Fuck Off Crit turns a man into neat cubes of flesh while his mates run away screaming. And the Mother of all Crits?
If someone rolls a Mother of all Crits… fuck reality; the imagination is the limit.
Roll a Natural 1 instead and you Flop, which is an automatic failure that no modifier can save you from, and the GM gets to decide how much it costs you.
THREE CURRENCIES, ONE ARMS RACE
2080 runs on three metacurrencies that push against each other all session long.
Juice is your morale and energy. Burn through it and your merc slides from Stressed to Exhausted to Burn Out to Broken, and at that point you don't heal at all. Combat drains it, grief drains it, and a good meal plus a proper night's sleep bring it back.
Wackies are pure adrenaline, and they buy the good stuff: your Talents, and Wacky Moves, which are stunts that flatly ignore what the rules allow. Throwing a chair at a man mid-leap from a helicopter, on somebody else's turn, isn't a roll. It's a price. You pay it and it just happens:
Once they happen, Wacky Moves are absolute. They can't be countered, avoided or minimised; the desired outcome or effects happen fully.
And then there is the other side of the table. Shit Points are the GM's mirror currency, earned every round of combat and every time your luck turns, and spent on Shit Moves, which are complications you don't get to roll against. Because:
The world of 2080 is a harsh and unfair world where shit happens all the time.
HOLLYWOOD'S CHEAP DEATH TRICK
Death is real in 2080, but it is also negotiable. Every PC has 3 Death Points, and as long as whatever killed you wasn't an Absolute Death, you can spend one to pull off the most 80s mechanic in the entire book, the HCDT:
The PC appears lifeless; no breath, no pulse, very pale. After their colleagues exhaust their desperate attempts to resurrect the PC and everyone gives up, convinced of its complete demise, tears are shed, and words to honour the PC are spoken. It is only at this moment, when everyone totally believes undoubtedly that the character is absolutely, completely and definitely dead, that they miraculously come back to life.
Yes, it is the cheapest trick in cinema. Yes, it is a real rule with a real cost; you come back with a serious XP penalty and in a pretty bad state (this has changed in the new version). And yes, everybody at the table has to genuinely grieve you first.
ENEMIES BUILT FOR SLAUGHTER
Minions don't track damage. They have a Damage Threshold of 1 or 2, and any spare damage rolls over into the next one, so a good hit doesn't defeat an enemy, it clears a room. Above them you have Goons for a proper fight, and Bosses for when the job goes seriously wrong.
Minions are cheap to deploy, easy to manage, and deeply satisfying to murder.
WHERE IT'S AT
This is an Alpha version of the game, so everything is subject to change and nothing is final. If you play it, please tell me what broke.