After not reaching it's crowdfunding goal late last year, Bite the Hand version 0.9 is now available on itch.io! Bite the Hand is a standalone cyberpunk TTRPG built on the Panic Engine made famous by Tuesday Knight Games’ Mothership. This version has all of the bells and whistles originally promised in the crowdfunding campaign (plus some extra stuff), minus the professional copy editing. Once it sells enough copies to cover that cost, the game will be edited and go to print! If you buy now, you won't have to buy it again to get the final version; it'll just be an update!

In Bite the Hand, one player takes the role of the Warden, controlling and voicing the world and the non-player characters (NPCs) who inhabit it. All other players create player characters (PCs) and describe their character’s actions as they fight for survival, vengeance, and justice in a cyberpunk dystopia. The city is harsh and unforgiving. This is not a power fantasy where armies of grunts can be cut down with ease. No, it is a brutal game where victories will be suspenseful, bloody, and not guaranteed.

Like Mothership and other Panic Engine games, Bite the Hand is a lightweight, theater of the mind system. The Core Rulebook contains all the information both players and game masters will need. It features a big catalogue of cybernetics, weapons, NPCs, downtime mechanics, and all the rules and advice you need to play. There's even a simple one-shot already made for you to run in the back of the book!

Who is the target audience? 

Besides fans of cyberpunk in general, there are four specific groups I’m trying to reach. If any of these sound like you, give Bite the Hand a try!

• Mothership and Panic Engine game players who enjoy those mechanics and would like to explore another genre with that engine.
• Players of classic cyberpunk TTRPGs such as capital-C Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, who enjoy the genre but would be interested in switching to a lighter set of rules. 
• People who enjoyed recent mainstream successes such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Edgerunners, who looked at the aforementioned classic rulebooks and didn’t even try to play them because they found their length and mechanical depth intimidating.
• People who (correctly) think that the uber-wealthy are the source of most of the world's problems.

Can I run Mothership modules using BTH's rules?

RAW, no, but there is a free simple conversion guide available on the Itch page. Space horror and cyberpunk are thankfully both under the same umbrella of sci-fi, so most gameplay concepts translate easily. With just a little bit of prep, you'll be able to run something from your pile of Mothership zines and pamphlets in BTH! 

Who is the author?

Me, Alex Vigna! Some people may already know me from my actual play series Roll for Distraction, over on the Spellbook Gaming YouTube channel, where we've played campaigns in several systems. I'm not great at autobiographies, but trust me when I say that I wrote a pretty damn good game, actually. I'm just a guy who used to make D&D homebrews who really liked playing Mothership and Cyberpunk 2077 at the same time, and had an idea that I hope people like.