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Technoir, or rather, the expansion Mechnoir has been on my radar since Friends at the Table started their second season using this game, before pivoting to The Sprawl. The idea of inflicting Adjectives on opponents was fascinating to me, so I had looked up the core game, Technoir to look it over. I never did a reading beyond the first couple pages though. Let's rectify that by looking for interesting things, and see where it was on the curve in 2011.

These are not in book order, just a sorted order. I wanted to put action resolution up top because it has the trickle down for everything else.

General

• Wait, lmaoooo, this game was made and published in Minnesota. That's a fun fact for me, specifically.
• This is a cyberpunk type game, so expect the usual trappings of Film Noir elements, high tech, synthetic bodies, and shithead corps.

Action Resolution

• Alright, here's where the action resolution lives, and kinda breaks down... unless you have an automated dice roller or everyone at the table is a dice fiend... this may not be an issue I guess.
• There are 3 types of dice in this game, all d6s. Your base competency is the Verb rating, represented by White dice. You have 3 Fight, you roll 3 dice. The Black d6s are your Push dice, which is a pool of dice you have that recharge on your turn and are used to give you a boost by invoking an Adjective or a piece of Equipment. A narrative boost to a situation, to be used for offense or defense. You can then Spend that die (a step up from Use), and give it to the GM, to make an action more effective and have the effects stick more. The Red d6s are your Hurt die. Whatever number that shows up on that nullifies all black or white dice of the same value. Nice 6 you got, too bad there's a 6 on the Hurt die, so you're left with that 3.
• Result is your highest die total. You compare this to the enemy Verb rating, or their opposed roll. Ties go to the defender. If you roll multiple of the same number, you treat that as a total of x.1. Whether it's 2 5s or 4 5s, it's still 5.1, which now beats a Verb rating of 5.
• After you succeed on a roll, you apply an Adjective to the target. If it's an ally, it's usually a positive one, if it's an enemy, it's usually negative. After a single roll, the Adjective is fleeting, a momentary setback, something that can be shaken off with a turn, like dizzy, confused, or tingly. If you give one of your used Push dice to the GM, it becomes Sticky, and will required treatment. Think of these like your Blades in the Dark higher level harms. Two Push Dice? That's a Locked Adjective, baby. Missing arm, cranial damage, ruptured lung... those need SERIOUS training to fix.
• If you use a Push Die to gain an extra D6 on the action, and don't spend it to make the Adjective Sticky, it then is considered Discharged, unable to be used again until your next turn.
• This means you can't use it if someone attacks you. So the Push Dice are like a pool currency you can use for active and reactive things.
• You can also Discharge a die to affect multiple targets, if your tag and action could affect multiple people. If you do this, you don't gain the bonus d6 to roll, it's just the cost of affecting more targets.
• Hurt Dice also uses the "common sense" type stuff that Blades in the Dark uses with harm. If the Hurt or Harm doesn't affect the action you're taking, then you don't take the penalty. Being Humiliated by your rival as they drive away doesn't affect your ability to punch a thug in front of you as much.

Characters

• Verbs are your stats, Adjectives are your traits. Verbs are rated 1-5, and Adjectives can be used to push yourself in action.
• I really like the vibe of the like, Player Protocols. Each of these has a little paragraph, but here's the heading for each of them: Work the Contacts. Shake the tree and see what falls out. Get hurt. Come at them sideways. Play them against each other.
• Create your character by picking 3 Training programs. These each give you a point in 3 different Verbs, as well as a selection of Adjectives you can choose from (a sample, you could make up your own that makes sense for that career). You can also take the same Training program twice. First one represents training, second is "I worked in this career" type stuff.
• Courier, for example, gives you a point in Fight, Move, and Prowl, and the adjectives it suggests are Agile, Fast, and Healthy.
• Adjectives will be helpful for giving yourself bonuses later. Like the gear, these could be simplified to just Character Tags.
• Each player will select different Connections that offer different favors. There are different categories of connection which changes the favors they have.
• After everyone selects their three contacts, they then pick, one at a time as a group in rotation, from the following adjectives to describe that player's relationship with one of their contacts: Affectionate, Dependent, Loyal, Lustful, Obsessive, Protective, Respectful, Sympathetic, and Trusting. You shouldn't use the same adjective unless they've all been used at least once.
• This can lead to an interesting situation where both Sage and Ripcord know Vinny Ventalago, the fence, but Sage is real Trusting of him, because he's never let her down, and Ripcord is will always give him the Sympathetic ear and benefit of the doubt.
• Gear has a base cost, then additional cost for each Tag you put on them. Two people could have Kevlar Vest (base cost 1), but the meat of the party may add Ballistic Armor, Impact Armor, and Condition Monitor, to raise it's cost to 4, and someone else's Vest could just have Retractable Cable and Harness to make it 3. Same base item, but tags customize it.

Healing and Advancement

• Characters with the Adjective dying or dead are not out of the game yet.
• At the end of a mission, you roll hurt dice for every negative Adjective you have. If 1 comes up 6, you get the Sticky Adjective dying, if 2 or more, you get the Locked Adjective dead. Both can be fixed, but if the healing roll fails on dying you move to dead and if it fails on dead you're donezo.
• Fleeting Adjectives heal after a scene or after a moment is taken to shake it off, Sticky ones require some treatment (Treat, Hack, or Operate if it's a person, software, or object, respectively) and time, and Locked Adjectives need some serious downtime work, maybe a Favor from a contact. Usually this may require purchasing some sort of cyberware (which is why Dead doesn't always stick)
• End of a mission, if you, the GM, still have some Push Dice, you can have players get back to their default 3 by playing out a scene with a contact, one that exemplifies their relationship Adjective.
• If a character fails a roll during play, the Verb they use is now considered Primed. They can advance it during downtime if they try to heal themselves or someone else. Let's say Sage has an awful Fight score, she doesn't scrap it up. So her Fight is 1. She had to try to hurt someone but failed with her only die. It's now Primed. During downtime, she's using Hack to get rid of the Sticky Adjective Traced, and states she wants to advance her primed Fight. If any of the Hurt dice she rolls on the test exceed her current rating, it advances by 1.
• This means players need to get hurt to advance.

Adventure Setup

• The book also explains proper Vectors, i.e. you can't hack something that isn't connected to the network, can't punch something out of reach, etc etc. But there may be vectors to hack a Derma-Linked gun, if the player has net access through a different piece of gear.
• The book gives some sample adventures, called Transmissions, filled with contacts, characters, locations and tables for you to roll from.
• Love the point that the book makes about leading with impact. The first scene of a new plot is the best time you have to make an impression. This is when people will be most focused, especially if you start a new plot at the start of a session. Use your strongest descriptors.
• Hard to get into, but the book does give some clear, concise advice for how to lean on player Connections to try to hook the players. Do they go to this Location? Are they a member with this Faction? Did the connection piss off this Threat? And so on.
• OH! It's EVEN BETTER! So that table, with the six different things of Connections, Events, Factions, etc etc... It gives a way for you to connect one of them with each other category type! Like, Event -- Event is like "Does one event cause the other, is it a chain reaction or a push back against the first?", and Event -- Faction is like "Is this event sanctioned by a faction? Is this a scheme by a faction? Is this action directly against them?"
• Need to say it again, fully sick.

Running the Game

• • The early GM instructions seem, on their face, a bit more confrontational than modern games, but also has some of the stuff we expect now. For "You need to deal out pain. Hurt the Protaganists every chance you get. They're built to take and and get stronger for it", there's "While the world is uncaring, the antagonists are not. Make them care about something, even if it's themselves, everyone has a name, everyone has a family, everyone has an agenda".
• This game tells you, pretty specifically, to make a web graph of your game. The protaganists, fanning out to their contacts, and then their connection to various things in the world that you don't need to know until it comes up. At the star, the surgeon Sage knows is just a Doctor who is willing to install come cyberware for the right price, but after calling on them a couple times, now they owe to the Westwood Syndicate that's been turning up periodically in the game, and they want to collect.
• They also have a suggestion for you to make a 6x6 grid. The columns are listed just 1-6, but the rows are labelled Connection, Events, Factions, Locations, Objects, Threats. By using 2d6, you can quickly figure out what the focus of this upcoming mission will be. Quick and dirty, and I might steal it for Shadowrun.
• Important: Players start with 3 Push Die, GM starts with 0. This means the players control the pace of escalation. The GM can't raise stakes (targeting multiple people at once, making harder Adjectives stick, etc) until the players do.
• Game advises to spend push dice as the GM quickly, to get the ball back in the players court. Players are tough and can take a beating, so don't worry too much about the Adjectives. It recommends using grunts to force them into action, then sending Heavies/Elite units once you have dice, to indicate the escalated threat now that you have the dice.

Very cool, very messy system. I like a lot of it, and some of the planning tools seem useful even outside of the game. The 3 dice types is cumbersome, but having an economy of action between the players and GM is fascinating.