Back in the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s I was huge into tabletop roleplaying games, and then I took a break that lasted about 20 years. In the last 3-4 years I’ve gotten back into TTRPG’s pretty hard. I started by buying new editions of games I played back then starting with D&D 5e, then the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu, both of those were surprising successes, and then I got the “Sixth World” edition of Shadowrun.
Ouch.
I loved tabletop roleplaying in a cyberpunk world, and my favorite films of all time include such films as The Road Warrior, Blade Runner, and Akira, so needless to say I needed a new game… so I found another new version of an old game. I had been hearing about Cyberpunk since the 1990’s and people at my FLGS were playing Cyberpunk 2020, but I hadn’t given it a look. With the video game Cyberpunk 2077 re popularizing the property it was apparently back in the public consciousness, and a new edition was crafted that acts a prequel (about 30 years before the video game), and I have to say it is EXACTLY what I’m looking for.
I’ll preface this by saying At this point in time I’ve just read the new Cyberpunk Red Rulebook. My gaming group is running a Pulp Cthulhu campaign, and is ran a Mork Bork one-shot last week, but I might be throwing a Cyberpunk one-shot out there in the next month or so, because this system DEMANDS to be played.
The new rulebook makes it “mostly” easy to jump in and play. The configuration of the book is setup like a magazine, so you get some stories that introduce you the post- Fourth Corporate War, putting users in the “Time of the Red”. Now I’m not familiar with the back stories and characters that are presented here so I did have to hit Google once I realized that some of these duders were classic Cybepunk characters and see how these stories fit into the chronology of this world, but mostly they just help fit the tone of the new settings.
The book then gets into character creation, and gives 3 options to create your character among the 10 available classes. There is a rule that is basically pure template creation, one that is more of a balance between customizing and template, and a full-on point buy. We then geta more rules section that explains how the main body of the Cyberpunk system works. This is essentially Stat+Skill+d10 (+/- mods) against the difficulty value of the objective or in an opposed role the opponent creates a DV similar to the system above. This section is followed up by “Friday Night Firefights” which deals in combat and how that works. It has a similar system in determining DV as mentioned above, but there is a system of movement that is integrated in, and also defense and dodge. There is also rules build in for unusual weapons, damage, armour and so on.
This leads to net-running which from my research created issues in prior versions of the game, and left the “Netrunner” isolated from the rest of the game. This version fixes that by making the Netrunner have to be present at the node they have to hack, but also makes them have the ability to do physical actions while this is occurring. There is also a bit on the cyberpsychosis mechanic which is like a version of Call of Cthulhu’s sanity mechanic, this takes place when a player character either gets implants that take the place of their humanity or see traumatic things. I like this, because it balances out their decisions to get more powered up with implants, and prevents the PC from going superhuman.
The final sections of the book are mostly setting focused, we get a section on history, the current state of the world, Night City itself, which I loved because I wanted to get filled in ASAP on this new setting I have discovered. There is a section on equipment it’s ratings, plus cyberware, and more. Following on from there is a section for GM’s with recommendations to run Cyberpunk the “best way” from Maximum Mike. I dig this, because I’ve never run this and would like all the advice I can get. He gives the ideal structure and tips and tables to structure random encounters. The book ends with a story called Black Dog and some Scream Sheets which setup some possible adventures.
So this is where my main issues come into play. In the final sections of the book we get the Scream Sheets and some example villains. I’ve never run Cyberpunk before, and so a full on example module would have been helpful to see how it would run. I’d also have liked more than a handful of enemies for my PC’s to go against so I can avoid repeating should my game go on for more than a few sessions. I know I can re-skin what’s here, but I’m not sure how long I can last doing that. I am hoping some new books start coming out to fill in these gaps. However, these are very minor and this book is truly a work of art all the way through. It comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!