# VIGOR AND VIM: A Lasers and Feelings hack by Michael Kielstra You are the IT and system administration team for Armstrong Manufacturing, who make better heating coils than anyone outside of Indiana. You keep the servers purring away, the emails coming in and going out, and the CEO's laptop hopefully virus-free. Your fearless leader Cliff Johnson is at a conference in San Francisco, leaving you to solve whatever problems come up. ## Players: Create Characters 1. Choose a style for your character: Greybeard, Newbie, Quiet, Iconoclastic, Suave, or Geek. 2. Choose an expertise for your character: Programming, Cybersecurity, Helpdesk Support, Networking, Hardware, or Paperwork. 3. Choose your number, from 2 to 5. A low number means you're better at VIGOR (people skills, charisma, or just the sheer will to pull consecutive all-nighters). A high number means you're better at VIM (technical ability and creativity). 4. Give your character a boring real name with a badass online handle. Like Anita "KernelPanicRoom" Darcy or something. You have: A hoodie, cargo pants with whatever small tools you need in the pockets, and an Armstrong employee badge on a lanyard. Player goal: Get your character involved in crazy adventures and try to make the best of them. Character goal: Choose one or create your own: Get Promoted, Learn New Tech, Build Something Great, Squash Bugs, Prove Yourself, or Keep Being Awesome. ## Players: Choose an Era System administration looks very different depending on time period. Choose from one of these eras or describe a different one: * 1975-1990: Big Iron. Big companies have big computers. Most of them run some variety of UNIX. They're accessed directly through the command line, and are used for processing orders, managing stock, keeping databases, and, if you're lucky, email. Hardware faults are as common as software. Hard drives peak at ten megabytes, and backups are reel-to-reel tape. * 1990-2005: Boom and Bust. People are buying personal computers and suddenly everybody wants a website. A huge stock market bubble drives investment in "dot-com startups." Microsoft has come up with this new thing called Windows NT. Lots of organizations now run their servers with it, and there's a major turf war going on between UNIX and Windows devotees. Backups are still on tape, but hard drives are bigger. Just make sure you don't get caught out in the March 2000 crash... * 2005-2020: The Agile Cloud. The lines between development, operations, and system administration blur. Silicon Valley makes infrastructure sexy. Suddenly, million-dollar businesses are being run without owning any servers at all. Backups, file storage, even high-performance computing can all be moved to the cloud and managed by someone else -- or kept in-house and combined with a team who really knows their stuff to gain a competitive advantage. Once per session, if you roll to do something that the GM agrees is in the spirit of the era, you may adjust your number up or down by 1 for the purposes of that roll only. ## Players: Create Armstrong Manufacturing As a group, pick two strengths for Armstrong: Large Market Share, Friendly Managers, Comfortable Offices, Nice Benefits, Long History, Strong Hiring Program, Clear Documentation. Also, pick one problem: Bureaucratic Paralysis (everything needs a committee), Fractured Board (none of the shareholders can agree on anything), Budget Cuts (you can't buy new equipment anywhere near as much as you'd like to), Grim Reputation (historically, Armstrong has been a bad place to work). ## Rolling the Dice When you do something risky, roll 1d6. Roll +1d if you're prepared and +1d if you're an expert. (The GM will tell you how many dice to roll.) Roll your dice and compare each die result to your number. * If you're using VIGOR (charisma, passion), you want to roll OVER your number. * If you're using VIM (science, tech), you want to roll UNDER your number. 0. If none of your dice succeed, it goes wrong. The GM says how things get worse somehow. 1. If one die succeeds, you barely manage it. The GM inflicts a complication, harm, or cost. 2. If two dice succeed, you do it well. Great job! 3. If three dice succeed, you get a critical success! The GM tells you some extra effect you get. If you roll your number exactly, you have VIGOR AND VIM. (This roll also counts as a success.) You get a special insight into what's going on. Ask the GM a question and they'll answer you honestly. Some good questions: * What are they really feeling? * Who's behind this? * Is this guy actually legit? * What's the best way to ___? * What's really going on here? If you want to try to help someone else who's rolling, say how you try to help them and make a roll. If you succeed, give them +1d. ## GM: Create a Tech Adventure Roll or choose on the tables below. A THREAT... 1. A VP 4. A Rival Company 2. A New Hire 5. A Tech Startup 3. A Hacker 6. The Government WANTS TO... 1. Destroy 4. Protect 2. Take Control Of 5. Build 3. Repurpose 6. Leak A... 1. Corporate Database 4. Network Server 2. Local Burger Place 5. Backup Set 3. Virus 6. Disaster Plan WHICH WILL... 1. Crash the stock 4. Crash the network 2. Kill our project 5. Be a PR disaster 5. Win a huge bet 6. Fix everything ## GM: Run the Game Play to find out how the players defeat the threat. Introduce the threat by showing evidence of its recent badness. Before a threat does something to the characters, show signs that it's about to happen, then ask them what they do. "The CTO draws in a breath to speak. You notice he has the Wikipedia page for 'Blockchain' open on his laptop. What do you do?" Call for a roll when the situation is uncertain. Don't pre-plan outcomes -- let the chips fall where they may. Use failures to push the action forward. The situation always changes after a roll, for good or ill. Ask questions and build on the answers. "Have any of you worked with outside consultants before? Where? What happened?" ## Lasers and Feelings Vigor and Vim is a hack of John Harper's Lasers & Feelings (http://onesevendesign.com/lasers_and_feelings_rpg.pdf). The game format is open for hacking and remixing under a CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Thanks to Jake Kurlander.