Running Cyberpunk RED (Dual GM)

 

This year, a friend and I have been more or less alternating the reins on a Cyberpunk Red campaign.

We've been marinating in the various videos online and the wealth of official and homebrew source material out there, and each sharing our own take on the genre and the setting.

Admittedly, I'm more enamored with the glitz and the chrome and the high-octane nature of the setting, while he's been more of the grit and corporate backstabbing aspects. But it's come out as a great sort of shared setting between us two, with the players enjoying a semi-episodic campaign with some short story arcs that we coordinate on.

Plus, each of us gets to play as well.

The Cyberpunk 2020 perspective

Now, the thing is -- we've actually done this before! Decades ago, I was the primary GM of our group's Cyberpunk 2020 campaign and I absolutely devoured all the books that R. Talsorian released on the setting and the game proper. I ran week after week, and then he also started running games with the same player characters when I wasn't there.

The roles are reversed now, with me handling much less of the absorption of the setting and rules. He's primary GM now, and when I run my games, I lean on him more some of the rules. And of course, since we're both learning about it still, we quickly check the rules while the other one is running to help keep things flowing.

But it's still a bit of a jump for me to run in the setting because:

• the setting timeline has advanced to 2045 and the old big players have changed
• mega-corporations are still powerful, but they're balanced out now by the backlash of nations after the 4th Corporate War
• the semi post-holocaust feel allows for a nice mix of Mad Max-ish games in the badlands while still having the comforts of a civilization in the cities
• the economy is a bit different -- mass production and mass consumption are not as much of the norm with the international supply chains devastated by that aforementioned war

In the end, we're both having our own type of fun as well -- playing and running -- as we figure out how the new setting allows us to tell a dark future storyline with a different spin from the Cyberpunk we knew before.

DriveThruRPG Top 12 Review (17 Apr 2021)

 

There are a number of items here that catch my attention, while others -- well, my gaze & attention just slides off them.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In the Number 01 spot, as expected, we see Dune: Adventures in the Imperium published by Modiphius. I have been eagerly awaiting this, though I'd probably have to dive into the novels once more to get back up to speed on the setting feel. Have picked it up and will review it when done reading.

In the Number 02 and Number 06 spots are Sine Nomine's offerings Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number respectively. I already own Stars Without Number and started creating characters until I realized that did not actually have a gaming crew who'd play it. It's on the backburner while I wait for my current GM duties to slide back to a Neo-Clone (OSR) area of interest.

Speaking of current GM duties, that would by Cyberpunk RED by R. Talsorian. A former top of the lister, it has slid down to a respectable Number 04 on this list. Setting, Art, and overall rules are excellent -- streamlined for speed of play in this modern gaming culture. Though, tactically, it does raise eyebrows to this veteran of the Interlock & Hero Systems, including their mad, forgotten love child Fuzion.

Whitehack 3rd Edition is in the Number 09 spot, and I've also picked this one up -- and immediately afterwards I realized that this was a completionist impluse buy from my days of collecting these types of rulesets. Still, when I finish it, I'll see how it fares against the other F20 rulesets (modern & neo-clones) as I try to find my preferred one to run a Mystara campaign.

Number 11 is The Company of the Dragon for RuneQuest (Community Content) which hooks my interest only because I have yet to finish reading and creating a character for the latest edition. Someday, RuneQuest, someday!

Number 12 is Arc Dream Publishing's Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes. Which I am tempted to pick up once I pick up the new Delta Green set of rules and either choose to run it myself or find / convince a gaming group that wants to run it.

That's it for this week! Which ones caught your interest?

2021 Gaming Plans

Happy New Year to all. May this year be better for everyone!

So, this year -- what's gaming going to be like?

When we last left off (last year when the pandemic had yielded strange combination of free time and cabin fever that drove me to reconnect with friends online interested in gaming), I was going to work on a Star Hero Tactics series of posts. Still working on that one after some detours -- it's just that a science fiction setting has many, many, many attractions that can detract from your focus.

However, I'm also now running a PBTA game called Monster of the Week. Great for working on a sort of evolving meta-setting for a bunch of monster hunter adventures. I'll post some of my session reports for this one as we get a few more done.

Lastly, I'm also co-GMing a Cyberpunk RED campaign with a friend. As we are liberally using screencaps from the much-maligned but fantastically realized computer game Cyberpunk 2077, it should make for a great cyberpunk game with a very distinct visual and musical identity as we push their edgerunners to their limits.