Reading “Cyberpunk 2020” from Talsorian Games

Why did I even start reading a book on a tabletop roleplaying game?

Many years ago I used to play a lot of LARP. There are both positive and negative effects to it, but what LARP is teaching almost all of its participants indiscriminately is the separation between reality and fantasy. This separation is very prominent not just during games, when otherwise normal people assert the roles of characters in a game, but also in the very effect of the LARP “community” being seen from the outside world as a bunch of freaks with wooden swords. “They are dreaming, we are living.”

However, after “The Matrix” (1999)… or “Inception” (2010) and the triumphant march of te Smartphone, things changed. The Smartphone has delivered computing right to each person’s pocket. And computing is very much something like “automatic imagination”, and while imagination used to be mostly reliant on human brainpower in the old world, the Smartphone made sharing imagination easy.

Imagination is a great thing, and we all used to be praising it immensely in the times of old. But it turns out that when imagination becomes a commodity, its value greatly diminishes, because imagining things that are unrealistic is much easier than imagining things which behave close to how real things behave. And it turns out that supplying people with a cheap source of low quality imagination had unintended consequences, namely that it gave people a lot of role model games to inadvertently introduce into their life. Now “games” have always accompanied us even in the classical world, and Eric Berne has even written a book on how playing games destroys human lives. Games/models are very powerful things, they let people analyse phenomena without actually risking life/health/resources on participating in those phenomena. But games can, at the same time, be a devastatingly powerful weapon/drug, when they are being substituted for real things. In Berne’s analysis, neurosis happens when a selfish self-interest is substituted by a model which is easier to play, but which provides a much lower payoff.

Smartphones, however, have provided the people with an infinite supply of low-quality games to play inside their heads. The most prominent example would be religions, people believing in the irrational. And I would like to most emphasize the “new” religions, similar to “New Age”, because “old” religions are too complex phenomena. City dwellers enjoy having those “dreamcatcher” adornments in their flats, because it is, seemingly, giving them all the niceties of having a faith, the feeling of belonging, the feeling of magical, the feeling of filia, without any downsides of having to comply with the moral code of any classical system of beliefs.

Now do not get me wrong, people have always been playing games. However, with the advent of a technological society, that is the society which has become too hard to comprehend and to make straightforward links between good and bad, games started to pervade our lives to a degree previously unimaginable. I have mentioned “New Age religions”, because they are self-evidently games, however the amount of examples is so numerous that it is even hard to describe it meaningfully.

Example 1: “This medicine helps me”.

Antibiotics against common cold are the most famous game in medicine. In more sinister cases it might happen to be “Paracetamol against flu”.

Example 2: “Our company needs an SMM person”.

Nobody really knows why and what for, but it is nice when people can find our name in a WeChat or Telegram directory.

“Bullshit jobs”, “climate activism”, “democracy”, “patriotic activism”, “healthy lifestyle”, “vegetarianism”, “DIY”, and so on, and so on, are often “semi-games”. They do have “some” benefit from the point of view of selfish self-interest, but seemingly way less than we expect them to be.

So why a tabletop game? The issue with LARP is that LARP is (a) limited in scope, usually severely, (b) still has a high degree of connection to reality. Tabletop games are, on the other hand, as detached from reality as is possible, even more than computer games. Computer games at least provide realistic visual effects on your screen, whereas TRPGs are purely inside your head, so they are, in some sense, the best possible implementation of the very idea of modelling.

As a separate, but hopefully equally convincing argument, do you know who plays most of the TTRPGs in the world? The military. They are playing so-called “wargames” all the time as a prudent way of preparing for future contingencies. So why shouldn’t we do the same, but for our civilian contingencies?

Why Cyberpunk 2020? There are many game systems: GURPS, Classic DnD, ADnD, Cyberpunk, Warhammer, and so on, and so forth. Perhaps the most straightforward choice is GURPS, as it is designed to be aa one-fits-all solution, and be capable of modelling everything that can be modelled.

However, I am planning to read a TRPG HOWTO with the aim of modelling “everyday life” of a person in 2024, so it seems that choosing a game system that comes with a pre-designed setting, which is essentially mimicking the life we are living in, is a permissible cheat, allowing one to save time on “designing the universe”, given that attention is paid to throwing away the bits that are intentionally aimed at titillating teenagers.

1. Wonderful citations from a game book

1.1. Whether it takes committing dangerous place, filled with people crimes, defying authority or even outright revolution, the quintessential Cyberpunk character is a rebel with a cause.

When you are robbing people for money, you are a robber, when you are requisitioning property, you are a freedom fighter.

1.2. Media Special Ability: Credibility. The ability to have people believe what you are saying while in your on-air persona.

This a hilariously pervasive game. When you are talking to someone, you’re his friend, when you register a Telegram channel, give it a fancy name, and start creating “posts”, you magically attain that “media credibility” which makes people “follow” you, and which is so fiendishly seductive that not even a few of my fiends fell victim to it.

1.3. Technoshock: When technology outstrips people’s ability to comprehend or fit it into their lives. Suddenly, people freak out. They get irrational; violent. Families shatter; relationships tear apart. People feel helpless in the face of the Universe. Eventually, the whole society grinds to a halt, the victim of a mass psychosis. That’s what we now call the Collapse.

Turns out that people around you believe in stuff which is radically different from what you believe in. Partly because your degree of self-reflection is good enough to at least spot a few games people are playing, and they literally take things at face value.

1.5. Sooner or later, a faster program or programmer’s going to catch up; reach out with electronic fingers through your interface plugs, and stop your heart.

1.6. It isn’t easy. They’ve tried to pressure your Mediacorp dozens of times. You’ve had stories suppressed-once, Corporate pressure forced them to cancel your news show. Each time, you went to the top, backed by your news director and your crew, and fought to get the story out.

Hm… also didn’t happen. MSM are producing garbage, and the independent teams are producing the hot stuff. But maybe the independent teams are just the coverage for the MSM? Anyway, this is all much smarter and less straightforward.

1.7. Not a quotation, but it is interesting that Cyberpunk calls hired guns “Solos”.

I mean we do live in a lonely world, but in most military professions the key thing is the concentration of force. Literally the opposite of “soloing”. It does seem extremely seductive to sell to the people the promise of “mighty Solos” being able to achieve goals which can only be achieved by crude collective action, such as mobilising a country to fight a war.

2. Modelling a character and a human life

What constitutes a human life? What makes a human different from a character in a book? In some sense, nothing, except the degree of being thought through.

What the “Cyberpunk 2020” book is giving us all the tinsel thrown away? It is giving us a model of human life, a set of base parameters with respect to which to resolve his traits and his life. So let us read the contents of the book and see which aspects of life it suggests modelling.

Digital (quantitative) modelling:

Role
Built-in traits (such as body constitution and empathy)
Background (pre-history)
Achievable (learnable) skills
Private property
One-to-many social interactions (fashion, media)
Combat
Medicine
Interaction with robots (the Internet, Netrunning, Programming)
Engineering (only drug design)

Narrative (qualitative) modelling:

Many-to-many interactions (megacorporations)
Many-to-all and one-to-all interactions (local, city government)

Things almost not modelled:

Engineering beyond drugs
Research
Commerce
Creativity
1. which is actually very strange, because there actually is a whole Role for art performers, the “rockerboys”

2.1. Character design

When I was a kid, my classmates were binging on filling in “questioners”, like, fill-in forms printed on the back of middle-school copybooks. People LOVE fitting themselves into those tiny square boxes.

Are you a day person or a night person?:

Day
Night
Third-bird

This is how initially Facebook and Vkontakte enthralled us: “We are interested in YOU”.

2.1.1. Stats (built-in traits)

Stats are what Cyberpunk authors consider to be innate, or at least hard to modify traits.

9 to 90 by a dice roll.

Intelligence (generalised “cleverness”)
Reflexes (generalised “dexterity”)
Cool (generalised “resist”)
Technical ability (generalised “skillfullness”) :: while I certainly see why this is not Int, I don’t understand why this is a Stat, not a Skill
Luck :: add these points to the dice roll
Attractiveness (generalised “charisma”)
Movement :: Why is this not the same as “reflexes”?
Empathy
1. Humanity
Body (generalized “strength”)
Body type modifier

To be honest, all this looks like a complete crap. This traits are so ill-defined and not independent, that I am baffled at trying to fit normal people into this skeleton. The body description is particularly stupid and hard to assess even for myself, let alone other people.

How I would model inborn characteristics myself?

Okay, first of all, I am tempted to partition the traits into physical and mental. However… However, it is not clear whether psychological traits are really “software” and not “hardware”. And even my favourite Eric Berne was mentioning an (extremely dubious!) hypothesis that people are divided into endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic.

Anyway, I would try to mention the following immutable characteristics:

Hardware

Height
Constitution (bone weight)
IQ
Luck

Software

Openness
Conscientiousness
Introversion
Agreeableness
Emotional stability

Does this look like OCEAN? Well, yes, because I literally took them from there.

And then I would add “first order skills”, which are, in some sense “impossible to forget”.

Muscle weight (STR)
Muscle flexibility (AGI)
Fat percentage (LOAD)
Willpower (WILL)
Memory (MEM)
Empathy/perception (EMP)
Attractiveness (ATT)
Leadership (LEAD)

First order skills would be limited by the immutable characteristics. But even the immutable characteristics are not totally immutable, and are evolving in time. So, in a good model we would have the system adjust them on each turn.

When you are writing your own new Facebook, why don’t you check people on these traits on registration?

2.1.2. Background

Background is both interesting and not very much. It is interesting, because we like to remember things, and it is filling our roster and gives us the sense of our life being fulfilling.

However, for the purposes of modelling roles and scenarios, RPG-style, background is not terribly important, it is essentially a “historicist” misconception.

Nevertheless, when you are writing your own “Facebook” for keeping files on people, this “background” thing indicates a few database columns to prepare for data mining people’s connections.

2.1.3. Skills

So, Cyberpunk’s model of “skills” is that they are added to inborn stats when doing something. They give a lot of skills for teenagers to enjoy, but overall, this surprisingly resembles skills as they are indicated on LinkedIn. I wonder if it is hard to make a crawler for LinkedIn to collect all those skills and find correlations.

I will not list the skills here, it’s not useful, but finding a full list of human skills would be interesting.

2.1.4. Equipment

“You will own nothing and you will be happy.” The game has a simplification here, but “everything you own you have to carry with you” approach is surprisingly similar to what I see around. Having a lot of stuff is inconvenient.

Property does not even appear in the book as something to own. “Nomads” have bikes and caravans. “Normal people” rent something to sleep at “per night”, which is radically different from how we rent flats now.

Regarding body types and inventory. According to the book, a 6-point body “average body type” should be able to carry about 60kg. To me this seems too generous to a person, but this surprisingly mathches the “marching load” of modern soldier. This probably makes my own body type 3-4, and a typical woman even less.

The guns part I am going to skip, because this part of the model is designed for being spectacular, not predicative.

The interesting thing here is “smart goggles”, which are definitely worth exploring.

One more fun thing is that “cybernetic” versions of ordinary stuff seem to cost “more” than old-school ones, whereas nowadays we know that the opposite is going to happen – buying a non-cyber things becomes harder and more expensive.

3. Interactions

Minor interactions

Cyberfashion :: buy a new smartphone
Cyberpsychosis :: love of digital likes and stickers to an greater extent than living people. So far we do not seem to have those. Quite on the opposite, people become excessively social with cybertech, rather than antisocial. Or may be they do, we just don’t see it.
Cyberware :: So far most of the wonderful cyberware implants do not yet exist. We do have dental braces, pacemakers, insuline pumps, tattoos, but that is basically it.
Jobs :: TODO

3.1. Combat and Internet

Can I use combat to model employees doing assignments?

The rules have two kinds of combat, a real-life combat and “internet hacking”. The combat part is worth trying to play once, just to see if it makes any sense, however I did not find it to be a particularly good model for the kind of combat seen in everyday life for me: that is verbal argumentation. Verbal argumentation looks more like a card game, I think.

Their model of the Internet looks just like another offline fight. Again, maybe worth playing once or twice, but in reality this is not what cracking looks like.

Their model of writing programs is not completely meaningless. What they call “daemons”, of course, has no resemblance to real programs whatsoever, but I really liked that they have this “complexity” parameter, which increases when you stack program feature on top of a feature, and things become difficult to maintain and operate.

3.2. Medicine

I am trying to think of something innovative that the game made me think of, but most things seem to be well-known so far, and those which could have been implemented, are already implemented.

Cyber body parts
Modified body parts
Implanted devices
Exoskeleton
Self-guiding assistive devices. This is quite fun, imagine a drone flying around you and making videos.

I doubt that we will ever get our medicine good enough to make “ripperdocs” a thing, but it occured to me that it would be worth “trying and testing” oneself once in a while for a “digital medical file”, which would be not just a boring Excel file like those scattered dentistries are, but rather a nicely-looking personal program.

I wonder which body parameters are worth measuring? And which are worth measuring off the employees?

I mean, this is the world of “quantified self”, which is too deep to delve into here.

3.3. Companies

Government
Corporations
Gangs
Stationary Small businesses
Precariates, like rockerboys and hired guns (Roaming small businesses)

An additional chapter on “megacorps” gives a few quantitative characteristics of the megacorps, and they frankly do not impress as much as I expected. They largely model corps in their manpower, total cost, and access to technology.

I think there are many websites which to the same for existing companies in most developed countries.

4. Memos

4.1. Cyberpunk loves martial arts

I won’t even mention it, but it is hard to imagine anything less practical than martial arts in 2024. But they are beautiful, and that is why people are attracted. Do not get me wrong, exercise is good, and when exercise is made less boring that by introducing combative elements, it’s even better, but for all practical purposes, martial arts seem to be completely useless.

4.2. Claws and wildlife

The amount of animals in our life is petering out. Many people still have cats and dogs as pets, and there are wild birds and even stray dogs running around our cities, but compared to the amount of animals in the pre-modern society, it’s a grain of sand.

It is funny how people’s attraction to animals wakes up in unexpected domains.

Cyberpunk loves claws and fangs. (“Scratchers” are augmented fingernails, and “rippers” are the kind of claws growing out of the fist, like the cinematic character Wolverine possesses, and “Slice ’N Dice” is a monowire implant.)

4.3. Quadratic difficulty

In Cyberpunk, getting a new level is quadratic in difficulty. This is interesting, because it sort of feels more natural to have skills progress with exponentially increasing difficulty. Maybe this is just to make games more fun, progress faster?

4.4. A facedown

A facedown is a competition of willpowers before a fight begins. It is an interesting concept. Of course I participated in it, but it is interesting to have it articulated explicitly. A “facedown” is essentially assessing the model of a challenge in your head, with an option of giving up a fight if you can’t win it.

4.5. Combat, Medicing, Equipment

Well… The game is for teenagers, what you expect? The combats might be fun to try a couple of times, but I bet that all the cyber, nano, and genetic stuff that the book lists will be a nuisance rather than a source of excitement.

It is noteworthy that medicine is all over the place in the game.

4.6. Internet

Their model of the internet is not too interesting, but there are a few bits worth mentioning.

That is total visualisation of everything. I am not sure how this can be done, but maybe, just maybe, LLMs could be used for this.

They claim that AIs, if and when they appear, will be only motivated by two things: curiosity and survival.

The book has an interesting “guide” on creating “virtual worlds”, which are really what we call “computer games” nowadays.

4.7. Entourage and background material

Background material for the game is a set of quite boring distills of some classical stereotypes and archetypes, greek, roman, a few medival, and a few modern.

They try to do their best altering the narrative style, and I especially liked the “corporate jargon” piece.

4.8. Screemsheets and theatre

The game is missing theatre, it only has Rockerboys. However, it would be very much in the style of the 21st century to add one more level of abstraction (virtuality, similation) and allege that all of the “dark future” world only exists within a VR system, such as The Matrix. This is why people engage in fighting so much: because it entertains them and keeps them busy with themselves, and not threatening those who wield the real power.

4.9. Organisations

So what Cyberpunk suggest is that the world will have “weak” government and strong corporations, and normal people, in order to survive, will group into improvised gangs and clans.

So far I do not really see any of that happening. The government tries, indeed, to cut expenditure, but not in order to shrink.

4.10. Plot twists

The books suggests a few scenarios to play, most of which are typical crime fiction scenarios. One thing which is binding them together is the presence of a “double bottom”. They all expect that whatever is happening is happening due to some deeper hidden motives, even though there might be normal people believing in the surface motives playing their roles.

Well, this does make sense in a “very complex world”, even without the presence of the Internet or more advanced information technologies.

5. “Never fade away”

There are a lot practical tools to learn from game modelling of real life, but surprisingly little philosophy. It’s like after Wittgenstein we have understood that philosophy is split into analytical and emotional (continental), and what the digital world is doing is that it is trying to solve continental problems with analytic methods, which looks very promising, because analytic methods are very powerful, but ultimately fails, because they are unfit for the purpose.

However, there is one thing magnificently presented there, again, nothing new in it, but it follows nicely from the aesthetics of the book (and all the franchise, including the game Cyberpunk 2077).

You will die, and nothing will remain of you, even though all of your life will be digitized, recorded, and perhaps even simulated according to the excellent model created by collecting all the possible data about your life in a digital cold storage. And everyone will forget about the real “you”, even if they can access all the records about your “digital persona”.

As an emotional illustration, here is the link to the wonderful song by the Cyberpunk 2077 creators, which is promising you the opposite, by actually, between the lines, admitting the above.

Never Fade Away commissioned by Cyberpunk 2077 development team

6. Unknown words

sporting :: “debutante is satin sporting” Clearly some kind of clothing, but I failed to find a decent example on DuckDuckGo images.
panache :: literally feathers on a helmet, metaphorically pomp and showing-off
swagger into :: behave in a pompous, superior, fashionable manner
find a cause and go to the wall with it :: to make an all-out effort, work strenuously
pitch off :: some baseball-related thing
get into a dustdown :: become involved in a heated argument, dispute, or fight
“have a knack for” :: to be exceptionally proficient at (doing) something
garden variety :: very common
fisticuffs :: hand-to-hand fight
blimp :: non-rigid airship
put the lean on :: rely upon
jimmy :: open a lock using a lockpick or a crowbar
chaff :: straw or hay, cut up finely as food for cattle
kibble :: coarsely ground oats
paltry :: (usually ironically) of little monetary worth
frack :: fracturing, usually mental
cut loose :: behave in an uncontrolled, wild way
hors de combat :: out of action
distaff side :: women only, comes from a “spinning and weaving” skill
iai-jutsu :: skill of quickly pulling a sword out of its sheath
door gunner jacket :: US army specific jacket, for guys shooting out of a helicopter machinegun
pull his weight :: do your share of work
dregs :: sediment at the bottom of a liquid, metaphorically something very low status or quality
hurtle :: throw something or yourself violently
freewheeling :: unbound, unrestrained
maim :: wound seriously, mutilate
maggot :: larva of an insect, extremely revolting
shroud :: a dress for the dead, especially when not well-fitting, metaphorically everything that covers
lunge :: a sudden move forward, russian “ринуться”, “сделать выпад”
hissing :: sound as if produced by a snake, unvoiced fricative
fez :: a turkish cut conic hat, russian феска
sibilant :: speaking using a lot of “s” sounds
phreaking (phreeking) :: a neo-logism from the 80s, means hacking telephones
honcho :: boss, squad leader
hulking :: looking big and massive
lash out :: make a sudden violent attack, as if with a lash/whip
hole up :: go into a hole, shelter into a hole
outback :: remote and desolated areas, usually in Australia
shaggy :: having long, thick, uncombed hair
brick-a-brack (brickabrack,bricabrac) :: miscelaneous collection of small articles, ornamental or sentimental
curio (usually plural curios) :: a strange and interesting object, a curiosity
decrepit :: worn-out from old age
squalid :: extremely dirty and unpleasant
robber baron :: derogatory term used to describe unethical working practices of the 19th century
pen :: not a writing tool, no. a small corral for sheep or cattle, metaphorically prison
con :: shorthand for “convict” (in a prison)
inner city :: not “city centre” or “downtown” – bad districts located where “city centre” really should be
nacelle :: gondola, especially of an aircraft
grunginess :: being dirty, shabby, in disrepair
dingy :: shabby, squalid, uncared-for
stagger :: move forward in unsteady steps, tilting left-right, comes from a horse illness
clutch :: grip or grasp tightly
mugger :: robber, especially in a public place
sludge :: solids separated from a suspension, using a filter, usually dirty and messy goo
play for keeps :: play with intention to win
to mug :: to rob
spring-board :: a bendy piece of wood or plastic, used in sports to jump higher and further, not “trampoline”
harried (pp of harry) :: stressed, rushed, overly busy and preoccupied
temporize :: act evasively, prolong a discussion intentionally,
snick :: sharp clicking sound
come to :: come back to one’s senses
blot out :: to obscure, cover, hide
smug :: irritatingly pleased with oneself
shimmer :: shine tremulously or gleam faintly
actinic :: a type of light glow characteristic to radioactive objects, emitting Cherenkov radiation, or just abnormal colour, what Russians would call acidic
stretcher :: a litter for carrying wounded
din :: loud noise, cacophony
waldo :: a telefactor, a remote manipulation system, for surgery or working in hot zones
reedy :: tall and thin
to rend :: to tear in two
to tousle :: to put into disorder, to muss
lopsided :: not even, not the same on one side as on the other
burly :: large, well-built, and muscular
scowl :: wrinkle the brows, frowning in displeasure
crummy :: bad, poor
straddle :: mount, sit with legs on both sides, like a horse or a motorcycle
swarthy :: dark-skinned, but not very much. like Middle-Asian
smolder :: show signs of repressed anger
bunched :: collected in a bunch (about fingers)
prone :: lying face down
whimper :: low intermittent sob
edge out :: push someone (possibly yourself) further and further into the margins, until it is out
draw a bead on :: aim a gun at
bell out :: bend in the shape of a bell
seared :: burned as if with an instrument
shatter :: break into pieces, like glass
ragged :: harsh-sounding, having unpleasant noise
bolthole :: a hole in the wall, a backpassage
to redline :: to tweak a device to its maximum setting
perch :: a stick, such as a tree branch, which birds sit on, to perch=to sit like a bird
combining :: (not “composing”) trawling for something, searching for something
stuff it :: “shut up”
hem in :: surround and enclose in a way that restricts movement
contour couch :: ?
hinge :: the thing that a door rotates around, those metallic bits which are connected to the door and the frame
to snoop :: to peep, to sniff, to follow someone
sundown :: sunset
exude :: to flow out through the pores
bid :: to give a command
trickle :: very thin flow of water, tears, other liquid
bozo :: a stupid, foolish, ridiculous person
hosed :: ruined, messed up
back beat :: even beat, as opposed to odd beats (outbeat) https://youtube.com/watch?v=ixc8G6cwJyk
poised :: ready, prepared
teetering :: precarious motion or situation, risking a fall or collapse
dazzle :: blinding by overpowering the sensor
skid :: the uncontrolled movement of a car when its wheels lock up due to overenthusiastic braking
duck out :: depart quickly without attracting attention
to pant :: breathe heavily, quickly
hotwire :: start something (usually a car’s engine) without a key
husk :: the outer shell of certain fruits, such as coconuts, metaphorically any remaining shells
flail :: to extract grain from an ear
festering :: having ulcers and being infected
commandeer :: conscript and subjugate, but informally
dabble :: to participate in an activity in a casual way
to be on the take :: to take bribes
fern bar :: bar aiming at single office workers, decorated with green stuff
take in :: arrest
hew :: cut town
rough-hewn :: fixed expression for a brutal haircut
flack jacket :: jacket from a reinforced fabric, used in the military for the protection from minor damage
hassle :: (not minor annoyance one) make an argument with
to lug :: to be pulled or dragged (now you you know where the word “luggage” comes from)
altercation :: angry, heated dispute
tag along :: join, accompany, follow (slang)
to bust :: to arrest
bouncer :: a person whose job is to throw away people from a bar if they misbehave
to have a hit out on X :: be displeased with
octogenarian :: a person aged 80 to 89, also the person born between 80 and 89
speakeasy :: illegal, underground bar
in a pinch :: in a difficult situation, when things go wrong
no holds barred :: “holds” are actions, rabs, in greco-roman wrestling, so “no holds barred” means that all moves are permitted (in a debate, war or something)
set somebody up :: to make it seem as if someone is guilty of something as a way of blackmail or punishment
burlap bag :: large woven bag from burlap, a coarse cloth (дерюга)
blare :: make a loud sound lacking human feeling, usually used as blare out, about a radio or a speaker box
household word :: a renown person or brand, a celebrity name
rip-roaring :: exciting, energetic, enthusiastic, loud and proud
slog :: long, tedious walk or march, and by extension, labourious work
withered :: shrunken, dried out, due to lack of interior and water
roving :: wantering, travelling
wacked out :: deranged
cookie cutter :: metallic forms/shapes, to cut out cookies from dough, metaphorically fake smiles (shape of the moon crescent)
his kick :: his hobby (slang)
congeal :: become a gel, jelly, coagulate, metaphorically find likeminded people to hang out together
crud :: dirt
gunmetal :: bronze, but usually used as colour
gutter :: sewer, especially on a road
cool one’s jets :: restrain oneself, calm down intentionally
hail :: like snow, but with ice, weather phenomenon,
meld :: combine two smelt metals to produce a compound
“the fold” :: the flock of sheep, often used as a group of fans
teenybopper :: a child who squeezes out of her parents following the recent trends, such as fashion and music (winx, pokemon, barbie, lego-bla-bla)
blow over :: pass naturally, be forgotten, disappear from consciousness
turnpike :: turnstile, but in U.S. means a toll road
zero/zero ejection :: what Russians would call a “pilot catapult” in an aircraft, to avoid a crash
winch :: a simple tool for lifting heavy things, like you would see in a village well, a drum with a crank handle, and a rope which is winding around it. often seen on Jeep cars
red fuming nitric acid :: красная дымящая азотная кислота
CB radio :: Citizen-Band radio, radio installed in cars
cutout :: middle-man in espionage
shaft :: cause harm via deceit or treachery, a “shaft” is a tool similar to a man’s genital
drop the ball :: screw up at doing something, often about government or contractors
penalty box :: literally a place on a rink in hockey, but used as an euphemism for prison
small time :: local or small, but official achievement, such as a district trophey
go down :: to be recorded officially, such as strike a business deal
preternatural :: paranormal
tweak someone’s nose :: tease someone, provoke, usually someone stronger
wild and wooly :: uncultured and without laws
pal around :: hang out together, by extension, make a secret society
kluge :: (not to be confused with kludge) a messy improvised device which should not work, but does, because it is done creatively, with inventiveness and skill
warren :: (not Buffet and not Elizabeth) literally rabbit hole, set of tunnels and burrows, by extension a mazelike thing, a Labyrinth
round out :: augment, improve something by adducing, usually a report or a dataset
bunkhouse :: sleeping quarters, place with bunk beds
caseload :: backlog for a person which works on cases, such as an attorney or a prosecutor
mufti :: nominally a Muslim scholar, used metaphorically as “dressed in civilian clothing, not uniformed”
a dive :: seedy bar, night club, or hideout
hookup :: a connection, not necessarily with a hook, particularly used for illegal connections to someone’s phone line, Internet line, or power line. A booty call is not this meaning of the word.
fink :: informer, teacher’s pet who tells everything to the teacher, dobber
whip out :: pull something out with a sudden jerk, quickly draw
down and dirty :: hands-on, very involved (to get dirty)
topsoil :: upper level of soil, typically the best
patsy :: fall guy, a person who is innocent but blamed for something
slimeball :: literally a ball of slime, but figuratively somebody unpleasant and undesirable
lean on :: rely upon, depend, but also with a feeling of coercion
fence the metal :: ??? something robbery-related
turboshaft :: gas-turbine engine for a helicopter
gurney :: a stretcher having legs and wheels, used in hospitals