Cyberpunk Red came out at the perfect time for me, after 20 years of not playing table top RPG’s and board games, I got back in with a vengeance. I immediately got back into my old standards like Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, took a look at Shadowrun, but that look was brief, and then saw that Cyberpunk 2020 had a new edition on the horizon, Cyberpunk Red.

I was in my late 30’s with a family, no time for anything super crunchy, and the rules were not only straight-forward, but offered a super action packed, super pulpy game. To say I was excited to play this was an understatement. The core rulebook was MASSIVE, but the rules themselves weren’t intimidating, and the book contained as much in the way of lore and stories from the universe as it did rules themselves. The one thing that was really missing was the gear.

Cyberpunk as a genre from Blade Runner to Ghost in the Shell to the work of William Gibson and beyond is known for all the massively great tech available in the world, and while the core book gave you a glimpse at that (and to be fair you could buy old 2020 books and manually update them), what I wanted to see was a modern Cyberpunk Red Chrome book and that is what I have to review today with the latest R. Talsorian release “Black Chrome”.

However, whereas the old Chrome books were simply catalogs of cool stuff, R. Talsorian seems to have made it’s prerogative with each new release to give players much more with each book. So yeah, you get a huge amount of gear for your gear-head GM and players here everything kick ass Cyberwear, to over the top weapons, and even vehicles (both land and air vehicles are included). However, the crew at R. Talsorian go about 2 steps further, making this a necessary book for all Cyberpunk Red players. First the introduction gives a new rule for Nomad’s known as Nomad Access. I feel like this is seriously important rule that streamlines play for leveling up and getting gear for the nomad in your party.

However, after the sections detailing all the awesome gear you can lay your edgerunning hands on you get a section called “Economics 101”. This is fantastic background detail on the economic situation during the “Time of the Red”. Everything about how the supply chain works, from how a fixer might get their hands on the exact item you might want to get, and how you might be able to get your hands on it. This section details how everything got to this point, and is just fantastic background detail that will help run transactions in your campaign, but also just help deepen the experience.

Beyond that there are 6 Pre-Generated Night Markets at the back of the book each with a character that runs them and details about what kind of items one could possibly find there. Each item in the book is actually assigned to a specific market, though you could just pop them into one of your own. The Night Markets here are given maps as well which are well detailed. Beyond that every item in the book is put into a concluding index with name, company, description and cost alongside the page number. The book itself maintains the quality of the CP – Red line so far with excellent illustrations, graphics design, and ease of information access. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.