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.

Jumpstart for Cyberpunk RED

Everything old is new again. The marketing machine for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 video game is revving up, which is good news for us TTRPGers -- because it means a new Cyberpunk game from R. Talsorian.

I picked up the first Cyberpunk RPG when it first came up (this one was the boxed set with the 3 books, including Friday Night Firefight), and I continued collecting well into the Cyberpunk 2020 setting as well.

My preference was always for straight Cyberpunk with occasional forays into dark fantasy elements somehow interwoven into the techno-freakish future of Night City. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing Shadowrun a lot. However, the cyberpunk feel was always strongest for me in the world of Arasaka, Militech, and Trauma Team.

Also, I'm also tickled to see what's happened to some of the characters featured in the various iterations of the setting (Johnny Silverhand, Alt, Rache Bartmoss, etc.) as they've aged into this future.

Still reading through the Jumpstart Kit, but it's definitely bringing back that initial excitement of the first set of Cyberpunk.

UPDATE: Unboxing Video

Want to see what comes in the Jumpstart Kit? Check out the video below, from R. Talsorian:

Inspiration: Body Bags

Body Bags is a sporadic comic book series that spotlights two characters: the knife-wielding Mack and his 14 year old daughter Panda. They are body baggers, paid bounty hunters / assassins in a futuristic U.S.A. where cybernetic body modifications are available but not necessarily mainstream.

The comic book series was controversial for numerous reason, including -- a main character who seems to have no compunctions about killing others regardless of age, a main character who is underage (14 and a half according to the comic) and is depicted as volumptuous, and gratuitous amounts of (at the time) violence and swearing in a comic book.

Did I like it? I liked it enough to collect the entire initial series, but there was something about the cold-blooded murder by Mack in the opening sequence that really turned me off him. In fact, in order to enjoy the rest of the series I realize now that I deliberately ignored it. Even now, I find that scene extremely distasteful despite the two rationalizations in the comic book concerning the matter.

Anyway, what can we extract from the series for games?




Characters

Distaste over character morality aside, the two main characters are interesting for different reasons.

Meet Mack and one of his knives.

Mack is a huge, hulking man who wears an armored T-shirt and armored zippermask with a yellow clown face on it. He also uses two massive knives in combat that seem indestructible and cable of cutting through almost anything and -- it's not really clear how -- he seems strong enough to throw these knives hard enough to match the concussive force of a howitzer.

He's a killing machine, and for powergamers or GMs looking for an interesting recurring villain or on-and-off criminal ally, he certainly fits the bill as dangerous, cruel, and distinctive.

Not just a tough girl, Panda obviously has a certain way with words.

It's Panda who steals the show however. Despite the criticisms of her overtly sexual visual representation, I felt that her personality and attitude overpowered her look and appearance. She doesn't have any outward doubts about her capabilities or her self-image, she pushes constantly to get what she wants, and (thankfully) doesn't ever once resort to the stereotypical 'feminine wiles' to achieve her goals.

Like her father, she's quite capable in combat. She apparently has mad skills with guns, and something called "The Eye". There is some pseudo-scientific rationale to this ability, likening it to "the Zone" in sports. It sounds suspiciously like Taskmaster's ability, only less powerful (perhaps because there aren't any true-blue superheroes to copy) but still dangerous enough to supposedly rationalize taking a teenager into combat. Hey, some folks believe that being a circus acrobat from a young age and training them in the martial arts is enough, right?

Pop culture reference, anyone?

Furthermore, she reminded me a lot of a foul-mouthed madcap superhero in the vein of Spiderman, Daredevil, the classic Robin, and maybe even the Creeper during her escapades. The only softer side to her is her intent on joining her father in his chosen profession -- and we're smackdab in the middle of controversy again.

Rather than earn a living some other way, her mom -- an officer of the law who died from breast cancer -- sent Panda to live with her dad rather than any other options. At least that's the story Panda tells. Being a body bagger isn't really the best profession for anyone, especially a 14 year old girl.

Because bullets have a tendency to hurt people.

Attitude and skill don't make you bulletproof, kids.

Together, Panda and Mack work like Comedian and Straight man in a comedy duo. Mack's always dead serious, while Panda almost never says a line without attitude, a put-down, or a zinger. Their first meeting set the tone for all their future interactions.

That ain't no way to talk to yer daddy.

Genre

I'd call it a different take on the cyberpunk genre merged with low-level metahuman abilities. People with money get to become full conversion borgs, while folks like Mack's pre-Panda partner Pops have to get by with low-tech cybernetics just to stave off impending death. And there are folks like Mack who are ridiculously strong and tough, and people like Panda who have "The Eye" (photographic reflexes but not at the level of certain Marvel super-villains).


At the same time, it's firmly in the action genre with a dash of noir -- the difficulties of staying alive and taking care of family when living a criminal lifestyle, the stress of shifting from the grey areas to the black areas of the law, and so on.

And no matter who you are, there's a definite respect for the power of guns and explosions.

GURPS and HERO can handle the rules. I'd think that guns and cybernetics and low-level superpowers would be also managed by a number of other cyberpunk settings in the pool now. Actually, now that I think about it, something like Ghost in the Shell would work as well, just with a lower cybernetics budget.