Fortune Favors the Phreaks

Fortune Favors the Phreaks is a hack of the Fortune Favors games by Sadie Oakleaf. This game can be used as a standalone game, or as a hacking mini-game. In Fortune Favors the Phreaks, you play as hackers of some kind, trying to gain access to information. Hacking is done in a virtual reality world, though the physics does not need to mimic our own. Consequences of failure can be as low as losing access and failing the job, to your location data being compromised, all the way up to your consciousness being severed from your body. Decide what works best for your group and the story you want to tell together.

Characters

Characters in Fortune Favors the Phreaks have 3 stats. Exploit, Firewall, and Scan. Exploit is used when a character wants to push forward, or approach a problem directly. Firewall is used when a character wants to hold back, protect themselves, or stop things from changing in an unwanted way. Scan is used when a character wants to shift the paradigm, and gain a new perspective.

Assign a d6 to one stat, a d8 to another, and a d10 to the last stat. Lower die ratings are better.

Taking Action

When you confront a challenge in Fortune Favors the Phreaks, you roll the die associated with the stat that you are using. You can roll this die as many times as you want, adding the results each time. If your end result is between 15 and 18 then you are successful. With a 15 being barely scraping by, and an 18 being incredibly successful. A result lower than a 15 would be a failure. A result higher than an 18 is a datastrophic failure. On a datastrophic failure, things go incredibly wrong, but you are granted a mercy for future use.

Difficulty

Different tasks will be of a different difficulty, and can change the size of the die used.

• Very Easy: Decrease the die size by 2. If this would decrease the die to be smaller than a d4, it is an automatic success
• Easy: Decrease the die size by 1
• Challenging: The die size stays the same
• Very Challenging: Increase the die size by 1
• Nearly Impossible: Increase the die size by 2

Mercies

Mercies are gained through datastrophic failure, or as the GM allows. Mercies can be spent to reroll a die as long as you are not currently over 18.

Laying it all on the line

Laying it all on the line is a high risk and high reward maneuver. To do this, you select the amount of dice you wish to roll, and roll them all at once. No dice can be added after this point, no mercies can be spent. The result has to be accepted no matter what. The benefit is that any success is considered a profound success. Greater than what an 18 would grant on a normal roll. Any failure is considered a datastrophic failure.