My favorite character lives on the Moon, in Tycho. I guess it's pretty harsh due to habitats needing to be mostly underground since there's no atmosphere to shield the surface from falling objects. At least there's no loiterers. Last time he helped a dying miner by installing his brain into the Samson borg for maximum efficiency. All in day's work.

>>97553005
>I don't think ganggoons get paid
They do. These are criminal organizations and sometimes the gangers even work regular jobs for the gang. Valentino barista, Animal bouncer etc.
Maelstrom is said to have become a well oiled business machine. Real cartels and gangs pay their members too. However, it's never free money.

>>97554175
>At least there's no loiterers
Tycho is big enough to have some gang activity however. Corpos make the place less safe as well.

>>97554123
>What's your character's neighborhood like
Still in South NC's container village. At least the Slammer is nearby and she can sleep with her fans, sometimes in university conapts.

>>97554123
still wondering what that big Aldecaldo building is supposed to be.

What are the top three houserules you have seen for RED or 2020?

>>97554123
so that big building in the back is their camp or what? I thought theyre supposed to have a nomadic lifestyle and set up temp rest spots like tents and such

>>97555271
radio tower probably. It'd fit RED canon too, R Tal made a bunch of nomad news reports for running post mission

>>97555271
>>97556170
>>97556184
If the Nomads have become the defacto logistics infrastructure in Nusa, it'd make sense for them to have permanent outposts.

File: G8-BzOOWYAAO4Eu.jpg (80.1 KB)

80.1 KB JPG

>>97553664
>We've been running gigs so close to the 2020 old Mike Pondsmith baseline
any collection of them? I've been looking for more adventures since RED oddly doesn't fit the punk style. They're useful for breaking up the constant aggressive and noir style of 2020 gigs, but I need more of 2020-inspired stuff and not FeelsGood Inc.

>>97556170
with how important nomads are to the economy in RED, they're more prone to building up permanent camps to work as go-betweens for static and nomad society. It's not exactly a new thing either, corps and govts had to interact with nomads back in 2020 too. They're like halfway points. The nomads can come and go, while other family members stick around to help out their clans. Woodchipper, for example.

>>97556220
They also need places for their vehicles in the city. In the outlands they can just camp out, but in a city they need some added security to avoid thieves going after those good cars.
You've seen what a good guy like El Capitan does with cars - now imagine the villains!

Red does make characters quite invulnerable. However, this does apply to enemies as well if your players haven't been created around min-maxing the engine.

Current issue I'm having is that I decided to roll a group with Edgerunner character creation, and now they all have handguns only.
I now presumably need to put them into a meatgrinder so that we can truly begin with custom characters...

>>97556719
If everyone has only pistols then all you need is gangers or corpsec with basic assault rifles who outrange them.

>>97556773
That'll feel extra shitty for the players as they'll be killed by something they were forced to do (opt into a single weapon only) due to the character creation.

Guess I'll have to offer them military combat implants (+3 skill) before I put them into such a situation.

>>97556224
https://pastebin.com/VaLPSj5A

Here are some of my favorite jobs. Tell me which ones sound the most fun and I'll either copy/paste my shitty MS Word docs or rewrite them from memory.

>>97558210
what the fuck these all sound so good, and hard choices to pick
I'll pick these for now
>Clemency Denied
>The Alicorn
>Heavy Metal Romance
>Halloween
>Homefront

>>97558346
Clemency Denied https://pastebin.com/PUpFkWGZ
Heavy Metal Romance https://pastebin.com/2yNuq26Q
Homefront https://pastebin.com/s7qXUDpJ (this one got flagged for extreme content lol so I hope this works)

I definitely wouldn't mind doing a write-up for Alicorn (I'm listening to Ace Combat memes right now) and Halloween if you like these 3.

Also someday I'll make proper screamsheets. I just need to focus and stop fucking around playing Cyberpunk 2077.

So why does RED seem to be almost actively hostile to the idea of doing anything outside of Night City? That isn't minor one-off references to some random event, that is.

>>97558648
It's taken 6 years to finally get a book about Night City. They can't handle writing about anywhere else, their little brains don't have the capacity.

>>97558648
I would be fine with that if we had a more coherent and consistent picture of night city. I feel like several of the ideas are in tension with one another.

>>97558648
>doing anything outside of Night City
Because anything outside Night City is not protected by the Blackwall? And there are rogue AIs everywhere meaning that your augments are getting jailbroken and you become a techno-zombie enslaved to an AI that for lack of detail at the very least wants to destroy humanity. Not to mention that everything outside Night City is radiated to fuck. It's basically Judge Dredd out there except instead of mutants you have AIs that will immediately break any electronics smarter than a cell phone.

I don't think these writers are smart enough to even understand the world they have built but that is certainly the world they have built. Why else is there a massive ring of desert around Night City - it's because it's a physical barrier to allow NetWatch to shoot down any robot that attempts to bring in some kind of wireless device that gives the rogue AIs access to the city.

>>97558768
what the fuck are you talking about, there is no Blackwall in 2045

>>97558781
2040s

Ever since the DataKrash caused by Rache Bartmoss, humanity had been forced to sacrifice its access to invaluable resources and knowledge for the safekeeping of the Net. NetWatch tried to regain control against the rogue artificial intelligences, but to no avail. As an alternative, NetWatch — helped by the Transcendentals and the Ghosts — secretly started development in 2044 of a project called "The Black Wall" in order to keep the Net under control, while permanently sealing off old access nodes into the Net. The Blackwall's task was to secure an area of cyberspace for human use while holding at bay the threat of the dangerous rogue AIs that were released decades earlier into Net.

The setting doesn't actually work if the Blackwall does not exist.

>>97558791
It's being made but it's not finished and hasn't been made public. It's not doing anything to protect anything in 2045 because it's still in the early stages of construction.

Also all the other shit you said was nonsense too. There wasn't a nuclear apocalypse, there are no techno-zombies, the NET is abandoned, and Night City is not some bastion of safety. It's not even non-radioactive.
>Why else is there a massive ring of desert around Night City
Because it's set in Californa and a over a third of California is desert right now in our world let alone the Cyberpunk world that has faced massive ecological destruction and turned swathes of America into a second Dust Bowl.
>a physical barrier to allow NetWatch to shoot down any robot that attempts to bring in some kind of wireless device that gives the rogue AIs access to the city
This doesn't exist and NetWatch doesn't give a fuck about Night City any more than any other place in the world. Even when there is a killer AI running around the city in the Reaper modules, NetWatch doesn't give a shit.

Where did you get all this shit from? A fanfiction?

>>97558815
I just finished reading Cyberpunk RED and I guess I made the mistake of thinking that Night City was a place that functioned like a city with the corpos maintaining the most basic infrastructure and isn't actually a barbaric hellscape like you describe.

The way you describe the setting with rogue AIs running around like the birds makes the setting a million times more retarded than I thought it was. Why the fuck would anybody get augmented when getting within 30 meters of a wi-fi router breaks all your shit? Actually fuck it I don't care. This setting is clearly far beyond more retarded than I thought it was.

>>97558833
What the actual fuck are you talking about? Did you actually read the book? Are you sure? Because you have drawn so many bizarre fucked up conclusions that I can't tell if you read the correct book.

>Night City was a place that functioned like a city with the corpos maintaining the most basic infrastructure and isn't actually a barbaric hellscape like you describe.
It's both. There's parts of the city that are maintained by corporations and kept functional and clean. And then there are parts that aren't, that barely receive any maintenance or civic protections, and are instead controlled by violent gangs and other criminal organizations.
>The way you describe the setting with rogue AIs running around like the birds
I said there was one, you're hallucinating the rest.
>Why the fuck would anybody get augmented when getting within 30 meters of a wi-fi router breaks all your shit?
It doesn't you retard, vast majority of cyberware doesn't have wi-fi. What the shit are you on? Stop doing drugs or take your meds, whichever one is applicable.

>>97558768
>>97558791
>>97558833
I've never seen the results of a critical fail in the reading skill in real life before, holy shit.

File: BiotechnicaSpecOps.png (1 MB)

1 MB PNG

>>97558768
Cyberlimbs can't be hacked until well after 2045. This isn't due to the rogue AI and Blackwall. It's the stupid holophones. If you step outside of Night City's citinet in 2045 you don't become a zombie you just can't play Genshin Impact (for Night City's personal server). So actually you'd become more of a real person.

Also as far as netrunner hackers go: in Danger Gal Dossier 8 of the 160 NPCs are netrunners, so that means 5% are netrunners. This is probably biased due to people in DGD actually being worth something. I bet irl the odds of meeting a netrunner are one in a million. So the holophone vulnerability doesn't even matter to most people.

Personally I'm disappointed that CP2077 cyberware with the backdoor isn't at least twice as effective as the crap from 30 or even 50 years ago. I'd consider being mindbroken by a netrunner dweeb if I could get Smartlink +2. Instead as far as the CEMK goes 2077 tech is just the same as 2045/2020 tech but with the backdoor. Maybe it'll get stronger like from some kind of arms race in the official 2077 book in 2027 but I just don't know.

For the planet being nuked to shit I think this was a bad overestimation. The area around Night City is shitty because it was a huge battleground, and other major cities were fucked too (Chicago is a viral wasteland). But it's not that bad everywhere. Cyberpunk Red's core rulebook has eddy prices for organically raised chicken and pigs so farming has to be possible.

Listen, I don't blame you because CPR's lore is nonsensical. On one hand it seems like they want to impress on us that everybody is poor as shit and gutterpunk. Then the first official jobs come out (Tales of the RED) and most of them pay 2,000eb/player (which in CPR would have been a suicidal Fort Knox gig). It's just tonally inconsistent which messes with playability. I guess just ask us since we kinda have a good idea of how things should be.

>>97558986
I wish they had stuck to the idea of some more barter economics, and wrote mission rewards that were tangible items for the players to do whatever they wanted with, with some cash on the side just in case rent is due. There is some of this present in certain modules, but it seems like a concept they're trying to leave behind, along with the Exotic weapon category and strict Price Categories.

>>97558986
>Cyberlimbs can't be hacked until well after 2045.
Technically this isn't true, pretty much everything has been hackable since Guide to the Net introduced Micronets.

>>97558986
>Personally I'm disappointed that CP2077 cyberware with the backdoor isn't at least twice as effective as the crap from 30 or even 50 years ago
You can get body 20 and not be a hulk.

>>97558648
They are balancing multiple projekts. The next big video game will feature another city (the Plex or Chicago) so they can't go there yet.
They need multiple confirmation layers to create anything.

>>97559011
The real issue is that wealth should be a stat, not a resource in rpgs.

File: file.png (803 KB)

803 KB PNG

>>97555271
Maybe early stages of megabuilding? There are 3 in Santo by 77

>>97560113
>>97555271
It looks like a ready building rather than a gargantuan construction site.

Could be their local HQ, or even Woodchipper's place.

>>97559591
I figured that was the case, and at this point it seems like Talsorian are subservient to the whims and wants of CDPR, to the point of basically just giving them their setting. Also explains why they both don't want to touch the rest of the world, but that a lot of CPR seems to exist to justify design choices in 2077.

File: G9cBEfRaAAAsAXK.png (120.1 KB)

120.1 KB PNG

>>97558627
>brought Nazis and Communists together by laughing at rich retards
kek
>Homefront
>Error, this is a private paste or is pending moderation.
fuck
Also these are very good, gonna snap up Clemency. Already used Staying Vigilant recently so I'll wait for some time to pass before throwing HRM as a sequel at my group with some changes.
Give me Alicorn and Halloween

>>97560113
a dev confirmed it's not a megabuilding so idk

>>97561547
RTal is definitely CDPR's bitch now

want to do a detective puzzle, but I'm not sure how I can present facts to the players so that there is some difficulty involved.
I want this to be a pure logic puzzle. I don't want to hide clues behind skill checks. I just want the players to slowly gather information on their own and come to a conclusion.

Here's the scenario:

There's a small shop/factory, and an important, very hard to replace mechanism has been stolen. Nobody knows who did it, but there are about 6-8 suspects, who are the employees of the shop.

They work in shifts, and none of them were alerted to the mechanism being missing until much later. I plan to make them take statements from the suspects, and narrow down the employee(s) who did it from that.

Initially I was thinking of doing a "who ate my cheese?" Type deal where the culprit has two accomplices, but it's kind of easy to find the culprit using that game anyway.

What would you do to make this puzzle work?

>>97558815
It's fascinating how some people can be exposed to all the same media and content, but come away with a completely different understanding of what they saw.
Makes you think, is everyone's opinion like that, just another valid 'perspective' or is the guy you're talking to just particularly stupid and actively wrong about everything?
It's hard to say. My own point of view is that these people are zoomers and they're likely literally illiterate. As in, I don't think that guy can read very well, he probably understands like every second word. Instead of actually reading the books he probably just skims through things and lets his imagination fill the blanks.
The most annoying part is how common this is. Half the time I talk to people on /tg/ anymore they seem like a fucking whackjob living in a fanfiction fantasy land that has no real relationship with real, verifiable facts. They do it with every setting, including the real world which is why it's so common for people to have panic attacks about politics constantly. I refer to facts, quotes, actually relationships between things that can be substantiated. Other people refer to their gut intuitions and emotional hysteria as their "facts" even despite the fact that they're always fucking wrong about something. Some people interpret real life in the same mindbogglingly wrong and retarded way this guy is interpreting Cyberpunk. That's a real depressing thought, isn't it? Human nature.

>>97564112
Do you know the method by which the mechanism was stolen? That's the first thing to work out, exactly how they did it. Then figure out where the fucked up and didn't cover their tracks.

>>97564298
I mean, I have a friend who has a very intense case of ADHD, which he hasn't ever done anything to treat outside of a couple of months when he was on meds. I watched in him, in our recent session zero, start to read a paragraph, stop reading, decide what the rest of the paragraph said, and then argue about his made up interpretation of the paragraph he didn't read for the next 15 minutes. And we're very nearly in our 40s, I imagine that the younger generation could only be dealing with this even more.

>>97564324
that's fucking horrifying

>>97564330
It's frustrating. He's actually a really intelligent dude, but his inability or unwillingness to deal with his disability really fucks him over.

>>97564314
Yes, which is where I'm having trouble.

So the place is a bakery, and the thing stolen is a very unique heat regulator. It is small enough to be hidden and stashed anywhere.

I'm thinking that the people work in shifts in 3 rooms of the bakery (the front, the back, and the oven- where the regulator is kept)

I want to say that the regulator being stolen wouldn't be clocked until the bread coming out started to look bad, so there is more ambiguity on who did it

There are no time cards so we have to go by witness testimony to corroborate who was where.

What do you think? Could you improve on this?

>>97564324
Worst part is, fantasy roleplay is just small-fry. If he can't even read a fucking non-biased textbook without warping it into nonsense, realize that these people also build little nests on X or Reddit or /pol/ and they just sit and listen to grifters and propagandists brainwash them. They do the same thing with news and current events. TTRPGs are just the tip of the iceberg, just a microcosm of a much bigger issue going on with our mentally ill populace.

>>97559591
I don't understand why a company that employs maybe a handful of people is working on like 3-4 different game lines atm.

Like who is Shadowscar or Fossilized Violence even made for besides the designers themselves? Working on a new Witcher game I understand, but why put your cash cow on the back-burner for these unknown lines?

Who is the boss at R.Tal? Does anybody put their foot down and veto bad ideas?

>>97565242
>it's not the big moneymaker so they shouldn't work on it
what kind of bullshit wotc attitude is this?
they had ideas, they made product. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails, that's the market in action.

>>97558768
nigga you thinking of game of thrones

>>97558768
I cant even blame this on reading fail because the RED books are so disorganized and also go against their own lore in small tidbits like three times.

File: unknown-40.png (47.5 KB)

47.5 KB PNG

>players have to find a thief, complete with map of place
>players break into a house with the occupants still inside
>basic family
>scared into silence, so they huddle up into their room
>players looking for robber
>robber found in different room
>one pc shoots
>tell him if he really wants to do this
>after making sure the room he's in is not filled with traps or anything, he confirms
>behind the robber is the family room
>the map is right in front of his eyes
>that bullet won't stop
>never thinks about the room despite me putting extra details about how thin the walls are
>wtf
>ok go ahead
>robber dies by bullet
>players leave the house without checking on hole in wall on updated room description
First time Ref, and this really taught me how people go by 'out of sight, out of mind'. Should I hit them with the news that they shot a child later?
I know this is partly my fault, but I thought i didn't have to explain any single little thing until now.

>>97566917
>explain every single little thing
This is in RED if it helps

>>97566828
Man, the lore might be inconsistent, but you'd have to be huffing drain cleaner to somehow get "everything outside of night city is a complete nuclear apocalypse haunted by sky net a.i." the book describes other places in America, albeit briefly, and in no way does it come even close to describing that.

>>97567085
Fair, by small tidbits i mean actually small like price ranges which feels like Rtal moving from a gameplay mistake they found retarded just recently, but better late than never.
But I agree, what he reached is way beyond 2020 nuking New York or some other location twice because Mike forgot where he threw that bomb at the first time.

>>97566917
If you did indeed tell him repeatedly how thin the walls were and they were hiding in the room directly behind where the robber was, then absolutely give him the business and a HL roll.

Up to you though if the kid dies or not, and whether or not the family or someone puts out a hit related to the incident. Unintended consequences are still consequences and as long as you don't get too vindictive about it it's very reasonable for the crew to face consequences over carelessness.

>>97567085
The original anon isn't even completely wrong that Cyberpunk's lore is retarded, but he somehow hallucinated it as ten times more retarded than it actually is. I started wondering if he was actually reading Cyberpunk v3 or CyberGeneration instead because I never read those books and for all I know that's where he got all that shit from.

File: NFL 202x draft.png (1.9 MB)

1.9 MB PNG

Ever since I heard about how the 'claps make a huge deal out of the event where NFL teams picks their players or whatever I wanted to use it as a backdrop for a mission.

Kept drawing a blank on what to do there; it could work for the usual VIP assassination/kidnapping job but I kinda want something special

(also something that would force the team to listen to random NPCs prattle about the stats for the fake combat sport this is going to be about)

>>97567444
Not quite the same thing but related, I am sort of working on a Shadowrun mission where an important player on the Mariners' family has been kidnapped to force the player to sign a contract with another team when his contract comes up.

>>97567444
I'm hoping the NC2045 book tells us more about the popular sports. Sports are good setdressing. Baseball and basketball are still around, soccer has turned into combat soccer, football is still probably a thing, and then there's murderball.

>>97567589
dont forget stickball and roller derby

File: rollan .png (33.2 KB)

33.2 KB PNG

>>97554123
How fucked am I as a Solo that wanted to go cyberware?
>Wanted to go body brawling/martial arts but I am thinking about going shoulder arms/autofire.
>Thinking about going full cokehead mode with synthcoke too
Thoughts?

>>97568157
I wouldn't recommend martial arts and autofire on the same character just because it would eat so many skill points and they have awkward overlap. You seem set for autofire with that stat spread so focus on that. Get you an assault rifle, I also recommend an SMG for close-range autofire and as a back-up one-handed gun just in case one of your arms ever gets fucked up. A back-up pistol is never a bad idea either. Synthcoke works. if you wanna go all-in on autofire I also recommend smartgun links and EQ guns when you can afford them. if SOF2045 stuff is allowed, tracer ammo is also great.

Your only real problem is that with starting EMP 4, you won't be able to chrome out very much. This isn't a dealbreaker but it will be inconvenient, you'll either be running with minimal cyber or alternating between installing cyber and paying for therapy (or begging the Medtech for therapy) just to stay a playable degree of sane.

>>97568215
What sort of cyberware do you recommend considering I'll have to limit my options?

>>97568267
As said, if you wanna be an autofire junkie, neural link w/ either interface plugs or subdermal grip. Maybe a Sandevistan or Kerenzikov while you're at it, I'd recommend the Sandy for the lower HL. That's a decent amount to start with. A cyberarm with a pop-up SMG equipped with a smartlink is a solid autofire option because pop-up weapons are always accessible without needing an Action. If an enemy gets too close for your AR's sweetspot, switch to the pop-up SMG, then seamlessly switch back to the AR afterwards.

>>97568157
>4 emp
>go cyberware
maxtac on speed dial

>>97567589
The 'draft isn't about the sport, it's about consooming so it doesn't matter what the actual sport is as long as there's a list of dumb player and team names to mention in relation to the merch they're plastered on.

>>97568157
>>Thinking about going full cokehead mode with synthcoke too
Drugs as written really fucking suck. Not sure if this is expanded in any of the interface reds.

>>97568369
Interface 5 introduced new combat drugs but most of them are straight-up chemical weapons. The most noteworthy one is Red Lace, which eats your Humanity like a motherfucker but buffs your melee weapon attacks by counting 5s the same as 6s for the purpose of causing crit injuries.

Synthcoke is the best drug for Solos though. It's +1 REF with minimal downsides. If you get addicted then just do more synthcoke to cancel it out, and it's cheap and accessible. Especially good with autofire because that +1 can mean the difference between a 3x multiplier and a 4x multiplier.

>>97568361
Night City's sports teams are definitely goofy.
>Night City Slammers (baseball)
>Night City Heat (basketball)
>Night City Death Dealers (combat soccer)
>Night City Nuke (murderball)

File: Shady Wolfgang.png (298.8 KB)

298.8 KB PNG

So we still got some time before we get to actually finish out session zero, since we had to call it early yesterday thanks to some personal stuff cropping up suddenly. Does my Solo look alright? I used Home of The Brave to make a character that was in the Army and got promoted a total of 3 times and special forces training twice, so that explains some of the skills and all. Still have 10 pickup skills left to pick and a martial arts training to choose, any advice?

In 2020, the average Joe has 9 x 6 stats
The generic combatant from Night City has BOD 7 REF 8
What do they spend the remaining 3 points on to get a 60 point street-level player?

>>97565603
>Maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails, that's the market in action.

Yeah I doubt there's a huge market Cody's Naruto ripoff. They take forever to release anything substantial for Cyberpunk and when they do it needs multiple erratas and James holding a livestream to explain what his stream of consciousness nonsense actually means. Releasing multiple new lines when they struggle with releases of their most popular one is just shooting yourself in the foot.

>>97568157
Drop your Body to 4 and bump your EMP up to 8. Get Grafted Muscle and Bone Lace and an Implanted Linear Frame Sigma at character creation. This will max out your Body making Martial Arts stronger than most other weapons and is also a pre requisite for the best Autofire guns if you want to go that route, though Autofire is pretty trash imo.

Also DEX is the god stat in this game so make sure you max that. As a Solo you probably won't have much use for Cool/Tech/Int so you can drop those a bit. I'd also recommend bumping up Move to 8.

Follow this advice and you'll make the game designers of Red mald uncontrollably.

>>97570253
That anon is playing 2020, not RED. There is no DEX stat in 2020.

>>97568310
>If an enemy gets too close for your AR's sweetspot, switch to the pop-up SMG, then seamlessly switch back to the AR afterwards.

Just move back a few squares and you're in optimal Autofire range for an AR. Also none of that matters if the target can dodge.

>>97570280
Well he's using the Red Roll20 GUI and has 6 DEX on his sheet?

>>97570295
>Just move back a few squares and you're in optimal Autofire range for an AR.
If an enemy is directly adjacent to you, you would need at least MOVE 7 to be able to back away far enough to reach the AR's autofire sweetspot. A pop-up SMG would allow the player to be more flexible in their response to extreme close quarters.
>Also none of that matters if the target can dodge.
Most enemies in the game shouldn't be able to dodge. It's a bad idea both for balance (makes every combat harder) and for experience (makes every combat take longer).

>>97570301
Where? I don't see a DEX stat. I see an ATTR stat which was 2020-exclusive, and there's a lot of skills on the sheet that aren't in RED, like Fencing and Stock Market.

>>97570301
>>97570322
sorry, i was looking at this post >>97569085 which was not the one you were referring to, my bad

>>97570333
Damn, here I was hoping someone was gonna help me out lol, but the other guy asked first so only fair they get any help first

>>97570322
>If an enemy is directly adjacent to you, you would need at least MOVE 7 to be able to back away far enough to reach the AR's autofire sweetspot. A pop-up SMG would allow the player to be more flexible in their response to extreme close quarters

Red has no opportunity attacks or mechanics that allow enemies to impose restrictions on movement aside from knocking you prone which is easily countered if he wants to spec in martial arts aswell. Getting your MOVE high enough to bounce between range bands is just a generally good strategy and 6 MOVE should be enough to move from SMG to AR under normal circumstances.

>Most enemies in the game shouldn't be able to dodge. It's a bad idea both for balance (makes every combat harder) and for experience (makes every combat take longer).

Yes but when someone who can dodge shows up then Range DVs become irrelevant aside from the higher bands that need ridiculously high rolls to succeed. Having no enemies who can dodge makes the game way too easy and it's expected that there should be atleast a couple of bullet dodgers per encounter.

>>97567905
honestly better if they are forgotten.

>>97567444
Thinking about it, the only idea that makes me inspired is baby's day out

>>97569085
i don’t know how lax your gm runs things, but your combat skills seem kind of weak for a solo. i’d say you’d probably want at least one of those at least 6

>>97572841
Fair enough, this is actually our first foray into the system, especially for my GM. Hell, he was more comfortable with me using Home of the Brave for an ex-military character cause I know the setting more than him and it'd be good to have to have me be the older, more experienced, veteran Solo party member. Especially when my fellow players are a Rockerboy, Nomad, and Techie.

Also character gen for US Army says no career skills over 5. Same with Special Forces and their skills. Only reason Leadership is so high is from the passing Non-Com and Officer training.

>>97573940
Oh fucking hell I'm retarded, I forgot to assign the last 10 point of my career skills after the mandatory 10 for Basic Training and 20 for AIT. God that's an embarrassing fuckup.

File: Shady Wolfgang v2.png (518.7 KB)

518.7 KB PNG

>>97572841
Ok, so disregard some of the other stuff, cause I got some math mixed up (been busy and tired as hell) so went back through for my skills from near scratch. Chose my pickup skills as well. Have NOT calculated pay or chosen cybernetics and all that, though I got lucky with getting cyberwindfall twice, so I have 3600eb just for cyberware at least.

>>97569446
LUCK, then they waste all of it on gambling and/or gacha.

>>97558986
>Cyberlimbs can't be hacked until well after 2045
You can ignore this if you're a cool ref though

>>97574874
In the actual play I was half watching where Maximum Mike himself is the ref, he sure as shit ignores it.

>>97574874
>>97575418
Cyberlimbs can be hacked, but not remotely. You have to get in there with tools to fuck it up directly, as opposed to 2070s' quickhacks which are magic spells you can cast from across the room.

>he plays the default setting

>>97575784
If I were going to build my own setting, I'd use a different more generic and universal system.

>>97575784
I'd like to build my own cyberpunk city, but I don't have experience crafting settings, and I don't know what makes a cyberpunk city uniquely interesting.

>>97575784
Yeah but the problem is Red bakes so much of it's setting into the mechanics that running a different setting requires significant homebrew.

It's not DnD or Traveller or something where the default setting is meant as a template for your own world. The Red setting is supposed to be a selling point.

File: WaterDive.png (1.6 MB)

1.6 MB PNG

>>97574874
Hell yeah. My take on CEMK (other than just running 2077) would be make everything experimental corp tech or Mercenary level. Could you imagine a Power Hurricane Assault Weapon with Explosive ammo, tech-upgraded to be excellent and a custom barrel extension?

I think I mentioned it before, but one idea I'm tossing around for RED-era quickhaxking is OCP discount neural implants for only 100eb. Like other cheap foundational cyberware they have less slots (3 instead of 5), they're blatantly visible (like soviet arms) and for the extra secret drawback they'd make you susceptible to netrunner/AI. If you think about it these are the neural implants from Reaping the Reaper where the AI was puppeting unlucky gonks who chromed up with cheap stuff so it's even canon. The quickhaxs could be elite megacorp tech so not everybody has it. My idea was discount gear for desperate solos. OCP neural implant (100eb), subdermal grip (100eb), and cheap smartlink (unplugging takes a full minute so quickly changing weapons is impossible, if the weapon is torn away the discount smarklink is broke which takes a day/DV17 to repair, 100eb) and you got a budget-friendly +1 mixing cyberware and gear.

>>97561572
It looks like Homefront was 2edgy5pastebin. This worked on a few other browsers. https://files.catbox.moe/xs2ehd.txt
Alicorn: https://pastebin.com/6dYQediH
Halloween: https://pastebin.com/GH5rzYcf

Pic related since Alicorn and Halloween are both subaquatic-themed.

File: DarkErrand.png (1.6 MB)

1.6 MB PNG

>>97576063
But as an added bonus here are drones harassing edgerunner gonks which is perfect for Halloween (Evil Dead). I gotta find what book this is from, I thought drone use was relatively light in the 2020's.

>>97575784
Most settings I've seen people come up with are just the default but with the names changed. Might as well stick to what's written if you're going to be so unimaginative.

>>97576063
>Hell yeah. My take on CEMK (other than just running 2077) would be make everything experimental corp tech or Mercenary level. Could you imagine a Power Hurricane Assault Weapon with Explosive ammo, tech-upgraded to be excellent and a custom barrel extension?


No, because the stupid Exotic rules forbid you from doing something like that.

If Red ever gets a 2077 edition they need to get away from the stupid rules legos. Guns from the 2077 era need to have mechanics that represent their in game depiction. The current system is a mess with all the different terminology and types of upgrades and attachments anyhow. Solo of Fortune made it worse by introducing a gorrillion new weapon types


>I think I mentioned it before, but one idea I'm tossing around for RED-era quickhaxking is OCP discount neural implants for only 100eb. Like other cheap foundational cyberware they have less slots (3 instead of 5), they're blatantly visible (like soviet arms) and for the extra secret drawback they'd make you susceptible to netrunner/AI. If you think about it these are the neural implants from Reaping the Reaper where the AI was puppeting unlucky gonks who chromed up with cheap stuff so it's even canon. The quickhaxs could be elite megacorp tech so not everybody has it. My idea was discount gear for desperate solos. OCP neural implant (100eb), subdermal grip (100eb), and cheap smartlink (unplugging takes a full minute so quickly changing weapons is impossible, if the weapon is torn away the discount smarklink is broke which takes a day/DV17 to repair, 100eb) and you got a budget-friendly +1 mixing cyberware and gear.

Giving cheap cyberware the ability to be hacked on top of a bunch of existing drawbacks is a surefire way to make it an NPC only item.

There really doesn't need to be any lore justification for why Quickhacking exists. We don't really know how Cyberware or Quickhacking actually works. Cyberpunk is already filled with sci fi magic bullshit.

>>97576793
>There really doesn't need to be any lore justification for why Quickhacking exists.
How do you expect your players to make creative use of shit if you can't give them even the most hastily bullshitted justification? Reducing shit to "the rules say you can do it, so you can do it" is a sign of poor mechanics.

>>97576807
>Reducing shit to "the rules say you can do it, so you can do it" is a sign of poor mechanics.

Yes we are talking about Cyberpunk Red here. The game is often binary with little room for interpretation

Quickhacking exists because it fixes a practical problem of Netrunners as depicted in 2020 being hard to implement into an FPS.

CDPR probably should've explained it better since Netrunners play a major role in both the main quest and phantom liberty, but there's also a million sci fi technologies in Cyberpunk that are equally unexplained.

Honestly the EMK quickhacks need some work, but the core idea of tying Quickhack vulnerability to your foundational Cyberware is a good one. Really R.Tal should've just had rules for porting Quickhacks from the EMK into core Red so there wouldn't be any arguments. Like making Neural Links foundational instead of Neuroports and a brief paragraph about how old generations of Cyberware were exploitable too.

Getting too tied up with having every mechanic have some long winded lore justification is how we get retarded shit like Red's scarcity and cars maybe or maybe not existing.

>>97576899
Yeah they could have used a little sidebar in CEMK just for backporting; the number of times I've seen players be like "well what if I just get 2045/2020 cyberware, then I'm immune" has been irritating. I always took it being a hardware issue on behalf of the Netrunner, not the victim that made quickhacks a new and hot thing; older ware has likely even easier exploits and is worse prepared to handle intrusion. More importantly, protecting oneself from Netrunners ought to be a strategic decision; if rummaging through the junkyard for an ancient ware provides protection, there should be a downside. Personally I'd probably apply a few permanent flaws from the "Breaking Your Stuff" DLC and see how long until players start getting with the program... or at the very least have the "decision" if it can be called that a serious one.

>>97576899
>long winded lore justification
You don't need a long-winded one, dumbass. You just need a short one so your players can use it for creative ideas like "Quickhacking uses wifi, so if I cover my shit with tinfoil that should cut the risk". This can then be expanded into shit like "an anti-radiation suit provides passive resistance to quickhacking because it's lead-lined, good luck with the nuclear power plant lmao".

>>97578609
Hmmm, maybe make neural link foundational for all cyberware, and the in universe justification is that human nerves don't send the single to cyberware fast enough in combat situations, so everyone who you'd be fighting is basically a tiny wifi network?

Shadowrun has gone back and forth on "always online" cyberware, but the justification is usually incredibly flimsy.

>>97578750
Signal, not single.

>>97578750
My justification is that a quick-hack is a data-injection spike, made possible by modern (post 2060-something) wireless hardware. Modern ware is vulnerable by the same wireless connectivity, but old ware is actually even more at risk because it is in fact easier to exploit nanobot programming bands and diagnostic wireless that was intended to be done at a couple feet distance maximum-- its security is lacking and almost all of it has been cracked one way or another. In either case, the threat comes from brute-forcing commands into the ware, either by interrupting its wireless connection to the wearer's neural implants (faking validation stolen from it) or just cutting its way through data vulnerabilities that exist in it that's more than a handful of generations behind.

This way, old ware that isn't explicitly modified to be protected in some intentional way is in fact easier to quick hack and a risk most people will not take unless they are desperate. Complex quickhacks are however dependent on specific ware; you cannot blind someone's cybereyes if they do not have cybereyes, so you can limit your exposure somewhat still.

>>97579029
What should be the range for quickhacks anyway?
In Red, we have 8m as the range extension for a basic netrunning schema.

File: Sucks.jpg (58.1 KB)

58.1 KB JPG

>>97575784
> I THINK CPRED NIGHT CITY SUCKS

(And the old CP2020 Night City splatbook was a little gem)

However, yes... I have my personal setting (it's for soloplaying and selferotism-writing but better than nothing)

>>97554123
>>Thread Question:
>What's your character's neighborhood like?

I have created a container park (one of the few nice ideas from the CPRED DLCs)

It's a container park in a degraded zone. Not exactly the combat zone, but close enough, given the high number of abandoned buildings: most of them disconnected from the water, sewer, and electricity networks. Of course, there's no shortage of booster gangs and other friendly cyberpsychotics frens.

Nine containers, powered by fuel generators and solar panels scraped off abandoned buildings. One of them serves as a shared shower and bathroom; another belong to the owners.

The owners are two old twins. Wrinkled martial arts masters: violent, vulgar, greedy, and perpetually grumpy; simply two hags capable of scaring Satan himself. They're probably low-level mutants, judging by their incredible strength. (Inspired by Otane and Oume Goketsuji.)

The other tenants, besides the protagonists?
A tall, moustached mechanic who repairs vehicles and motorcycles: a good guy with ugly issues involving bad guys from his hometown.
A sexy blonde woman, a street rep working for a pair of corporations that hire edgerunners, mercenaries, and cyber-murderhobos for dirty jobs: a seductive girl with a finger in every cyber pie.
A young martial artist with an innate hatred of cyberware and a cult-like devotion to bodily perfection, he works as a construction worker; he is honest, but not especially bright.
A bounty hunter from a Nomad family: a smug young man in his twenties, upbeat and charismatic
And finally, a pair of strange junkies: a chemist who stole the wrong secrets from his former boss, and a technician full schizo after the horrors he's witnessed in the coastal sewers.

>>97579175
Well, lets make some assumptions as to regular limits first. In CEMK, the Neuroport Cyberdeck Port extends Quickhacks out to 50 m/yds (25 spaces) from the default 6 m/yds (3 spaces) and the extended range 8 m/yds (4 spaces). If we assume that you can TUp the range upgrade to add another space out to 10 m/yds (5 spaces) we're still looking at 20 spaces of distance in about 32 years; though notable that the NCP only extends regular netrunning distances out to 20 m/yds; so the Quickhack distance is on top of its regular functional range.

Other ware gives us some functional ideas of the limits of technology in 2045 as well; a Drone Remote works out to 20 m/yds. If we hold that is the feasible distance of low latency connection (for controlling drones or running a NET) then we can assume that Quickhacks operate under a slightly different principle that we can use as design space.

I would add, prior to 2077, a neuralware option of a "Remote Access Terminal (RAT)" that increases the range one can access Neuralware by 2.5 times. This would give us ranges as follows:
Cyberdeck 6 m/yds
Cyberdeck with Range Upgrade 8 m/yds
Cyberdeck with TUp'd Range Upgrade 10 m/yds
Cyberdeck with RAT 15 m/yds
Cyberdeck with Range Upgrade and RAT 20 m/yds
Cyberdeck with TUp'd Range Upgrade and RAT 25 m/yds

Finally we could conceive of a TUp for the RAT itself that doubles again its distance giving us the full 50 m/yds range at the expense of two top-of-the-line/prototype/custom pieces of hardware and effectively one slot in both the Cyberdeck and in a user's Neuralware.

This would be my back of the napkin calculations for it if I was running a particularly frisky game somewhere after, say 2055.

File: this-1967-vw-bus-is-ready-to-conquer-summer-209885_1.jpg (604.6 KB)

604.6 KB JPG

Does 2020 not have a listing for a van? I feel like that would be THE vehicle for edgerunners. Can carry the whole crew plus gear you can't stuff under a coat, the fixer can sell drugs and guns out of the back of it, hell you can live out of one if you're hardcore. I remember there being a couple campers and RVs, but no good and honest vans

I'm considering removing the medtech and nomad roles and shift their role abilities to other classes. Maybe also removing the solo and give everyone a variant of the solo role ability that they have to choose at the start of the game. I kinda feel like those classes can get left behind during roleplay/investigation heavy moments or when no one's wounded/you don't need a driver. I also like it when everyone can fight well instead of the solo being the primary combat class. I feel by doing this no one will feel less useful in roleplay or combat. What do you think of this house rule? Hate it or love it?

>>97579697
You're painting a dismal picture of your game.
>No one gets hurt so why a dedicated medic?
>No one needs a ride so why have a dedicated driver?
>Everyone always fights so everyone should get Solo abilities!

>>97579975
Who says there isn't a dedicated medic or driver? I didn't get rid of them entirely.

>>97579697
So you want to give other roles
>the ability to perform surgery and synthesize and administer pharmaceuticals
>access to the Moto vehicle pool and upgrades
>and Solo's Combat Awareness abilities
Why?

>I feel by doing this no one will feel less useful in roleplay or combat.
The only reason someone would be useless is if they make their character be useless. A decent Shoulder Arms skill with a poor quality assault rifle is still plenty to contribute in a firefight. Does it truly matter if the Solo is doing a little more damage than them? As for roleplay, there will invariably be situations where someone doesn't have the necessary skills and someone does. That's why you're a team, to cover each other's weaknesses. Even then, anyone can take Drive Land Vehicle and Paramedic.

>>97580127
To me those have often been things you take care of between sessions, in which case I think I'd prefer an actual mechanic and ripperdoc NPC and preserve combat medic and getaway driver as something any player can do in a session. Still iffy on solo. Maybe you're right there. I'm not married to this idea I just wanna know what people think and could be convinced otherwise

>>97580160
Nta but I think if you're going that far you should just get rid of role abilities entirely, make the solo ability combat ware, and make interface and the tech stuff ×2 skills. The roles are one of the stupider parts of the system, tbqh

>>97580160
I should mention though, there is a bit of a disconnect between how I have to GM and how most people GM. the ability to perform surgery or vehicle upgrades is absolutely important to campaign players who have a regular reoccurring cast who talk a lot between sessions. I unfortunately run a bunch of one shots and short campaigns at LGS roleplay nights and cons. My players change frequently and I don't often get to do out of session stuff with players.

What's the point of SMGs now? With SOF, what's the point of SMGs if machine pistols exist?

A long barreled Machine pistol, is basically just better than an SMG in every way? Machine pistols are also capable of Autofire 4,and have a ROF of 2. Is it solely for the SMG autofire range band?

I thought 2020 was supposed to be the crunchy edition. Why does red have all this weird, seemingly needless complexity

>>97580271
SMGs can have bigger magazines than machine pistols, which means more autofire before reloading. Machine pistols need magazine extensions to function with autofire at all. A heavy SMG with a drum mag is 60 bullets, a medium machine pistol with a drum mag is 36, the heavy SMG gets double the rounds of autofire before needing to reload. The heavier pistols get even less mag sizes to work with.

SMGs works better than machine pistols as dedicated autofire weapons. Pistols remain more versatile at the expense of efficiency.

>>97580291
2020 IS the crunchy edition compared to RED. Individual body part hit tables, automatic fire rolling for every single bullet, every supplement introducing a fistful of new and increasingly specific niche skills.

>>97578609
>You just need a short one so your players can use it for creative ideas like "Quickhacking uses wifi, so if I cover my shit with tinfoil that should cut the risk".

Great so just give the players a dumb way to completely negate quickhacking for basically no cost?

genius 10/10 game design there.

>>97580291
It's not crunchy, it's granular. I'd say the issue is the designers own biases getting in the way and undermining their attempts at streamlined design.

Like you can make combat braindead simple and super unrealistic, but you still need to have different range tables for Autofire and Single Shot?

Got an admittedly rather silly question for everyone here, would you consider a Dino Crisis style plot being an even somewhat okay adventure in 2020, especially if it's a result of Biotechnica's bullshit? How about a Resident Evil (the classic games) style adventure also involving Biotechnica or a similar corp? Would those work or is it completely stupid (and not in a fun way)?

>>97582115
>Biotechnica genetically engineers dinosaurs (or things similar enough to dinosaurs) that break out of the labs and cause havoc
Sure.
>Biotechnica genetically engineers a zombie virus (or something similar enough to a zombie virus) that breaches contained and causes havoc
Absolutely.

One of the GenCon missions for RED is retrieving a world-ending nanovirus plague that turned people into metal and was left behind in a secret abandoned Biotechnica lab. Biotechnica is perfect for whatever crazy and fucked up bio-science projects you can imagine because those corpo scientists are fucking insane and just do whatever they want with their infinite CHOOH2 money. Hope Reborn has a mini-mission about saving a dude being eaten by experimental giant Venus flytrap trees planted in a public grove. Biotechnica doesn't give a fuck.

>>97582128
and that's not mentioning the three-armed bears with machine guns grafted onto them that they use to attack everything because their brains are full of cancer

>>97582128
Oh shit, I didn't know those existed, definitely have to check those out now. Then again, I feel like I should just read all of Hope Reborn for ideas.

>>97582153
while you're at it, mine anime for ideas. Tons of good cyberpunk and biohorror anime out there like Bubblegum Crisis and Genocyber

>>97581854
>no, you can't think your way out of your problems, you have to use the specific button on your character sheet that I want you to use
Shit GM. Faraday cages are an incredibly basic and obvious method of dealing with electromagnetic problems.

>>97582458
>>97581854
Does this mean, I can wrap my cyberarm with tinfoil to make it impervious to EMP?

>>97582458
Yeah why have rules in the first place if you can make up stuff on the spot!

>>97582473
Depends on how powerful an EMP you're expecting. Anything hefty will give you the real "tinfoil in microwave" experience. Also you might look like a bit of a wack job wandering around slathered in tinfoil. I'm sure there'll be somebody around who'll be willing to weave a layer into your jacket for the right price.

>>97582486
If you only want your players to interact with the rules, rather than the world, perhaps board or video games are more your speed.

>EMP discussion
US military is the largest buyer of glitter because it can be used to scramble electronic signals.
Throwing glitter bombs at nerds to keep your electronics safe -> the way to go

>>97582580
2020 had scatter grenades which functioned like smoke + chaff grenades from Metal Gear Solid. I hope RED brings those back for countering infrared/nightvision.

>>97582533
It's funny that when rules do something you don't like there's an easy, cheap and fast in universe solution that somehow nobody is smart enough to try, but when someone says there aren't rules for what you're doing and it doesn't make sense, it's a collaborative game of pretend and we're just hampering your creativity.

Cyberware Hardening already exists in game. Harden your shit if you don't want it to get it hacked, but know other quickhacks will still work. Put some Self-ICE on.

>>97582458
>>97582473
Faraday cages are becoming a thing to protect electronic car keys IRL, because the signals get hijacked - and then the thieves have a virtual key.
The obvious solution would be to go back to mechanical locks, but... That would mean that corpos/states/criminals would have less control.

>Faraday cages on your cyberware
Oy, the manufacturers ain't going to like that! They need steady online updates that definitely don't collect and sell your data.
Ripperdocs who give cyberware to such lunatics lose their lisence, and the anti-corpo terrorists who wield such dangerous metals that poison the soil are to be gunned down in public.

>>97582533
>If you only want your players to interact with the rules, rather than the world, perhaps board or video games are more your speed.

Because your idea is dumb. You're basically suggesting the GM ignores the in game rules to let players just do what they want when Quickhacking in particular is very specific on how you defend yourself from it. If you want to rule in your game players can wrap themselves in tinfoil to gain immunity to Quickhacks then you can do it, but then you gotta explain why every retard in the city isn't also wrapped in tinfoil and if Quickhacks are so easy to counter then why do they even exist at all?

>>97554123
What's wrong with the back of his head?

>>97583883
>Quickhacking in particular is very specific on how you defend yourself from it
The world providing logically consistent responses to the players' actions is several orders of magnitude more important than slavish adherence to the book. That's why you have a GM, to interpret the results of player actions that aren't in the book. If you don't want a Faraday cage to work on quickhacking like it would on any other electromagnetic signal, it's on you to come up with an in-universe reason why. If you're just denying it because it makes you upset, your players will realise that.
>then you gotta explain why every retard in the city isn't also wrapped in tinfoil
Because you'll look ridiculous, rustle loudly when walking around, it's flimsy, it interferes with you using your own network connections, and Average Joe doesn't know or care enough to do so. Also yes, in a world where malevolent hackers are all over the place and capable of frying your eyeballs from a distance, anybody sensible will invest in appropriate protection. There should be a massive industry of anti-wireless-intrusion clothing.
>why do they even exist at all?
Because they were an ugly and hasty bolt-on to give the Netrunner some spells to cast, instead of a well-thought-out addition to the world.

File: Fmh0sj0XkAYGRDm.jpg (547.9 KB)

547.9 KB JPG

>>97584513
Okay retard; you ignored me like six hours ago, so now you can ignore me again, but this time it's not 'to whom it may concern' it is directly to your stupid ass.

There are mechanics already extant in the CEMK and Cyberpunk RED to handle being Quickhacked. They are as follows:

Self ICE out of CEMK for 500eb and costing 1d6 HL: Up to three installations provide Passwalls that a Netrunner must subvert to Quickhack. A Rank 4 netrunner will breach one installation 80% of the time, two installations 36% of the time and three installations 6% of the time.

Signal Jammer out of Mixing Drinks - Changing Lives for 500 eb and costing 1d6 HL:
When active, anyone within a 6 m/yd by 6 m/yd radius must check a DV 13 Electronics/Security Tech check to transmit or receive a wireless signal, which would include Quickhack Breeching. This would apply for every attempted Quickhack in addition to the initial breech, with the only downside of being symmetrical, affecting the user and their allies.

Hardened Shielding for various kinds of Cyberware from Black Chrome and Core varying from 500 to 1000 ebs and costing between 1d6 and 4d6 HL.
This makes the cyber-ware it's applied to immune to being disabled, destroyed or rendered inoperable by shocks, microwavers, EMP and program effects, which would extend also to the following Quickhacks RAW:
- Short Circuit
- Cyberware Malfunction.

These are fully hardware based solutions; you can also solve being Quickhacked by being or being friends with a Netrunner who can keep your virgin asshole safe from the naughty internet men.

If there are no further questions, we can move on to something less fucking stupid.

File: CRNC17_OldJapanTown_NeilBranquinho_forWEB.jpg (639.8 KB)

639.8 KB JPG

IR5 POD and Night City 2045 timeline:
https://rtalsoriangames.com/2026/02/19/night-city-2045-timeline-interface-red-volume-5-pod-available/

>>97585593
Man, I get the blood rain, but they should have actually had parts of the environment actually be wet and stained red by it, otherwise it just looks like ass and is unneeded.

>>97584740
In the world with BioTechnica, a packet of onions can be deadly.

>>97585831
Goddammit, I forgot about the filter.

>>97585835
Real it's twice as funny that way. You alright anon.

>>97585827
I'm just happy to have an official depiction of blood rain to begin with. For such a major aspect of the Time of the Red, it's very underrepresented by both RTG and the community.

>>97585892
Oh I like it as well, I think it's one of the cooler bits of RED's world building, it's just I don't like that they didn't go hard on it here. Hell, you don't even see droplets impacting anything like the umbrellas, it's also why it looks so off.

File: neil-branquinho-280721-colour-variation.jpg (1.3 MB)

1.3 MB JPG

>>97586142
I get that. Neil Branquinho's art is very hit-or-miss for me in general, and I consider him to be one of the better RED artists.

Most style over Substance thing that's been done at your table?

I had a boss Izuna drop a player 23 meters out of an AV.

>>97586205
He's probably the best artist they got. At least he can draw humans that look like humans and confers a feeling of grit and dinginess to the environment, as opposed to the other morons they hire who draw like 15-year-olds trying to illustrate their anime-inspired D&D characters. Hope Reborn's art is shit I see in my nightmares: ugly and unpleasant to the point of unsettling and uncanny.

>>97585892
I'm happy for the blood rain and to see a combat zone that reaffirms that they're not all bombed out warzones like some people assume. Some combat zones are that, but others are just shitty neighborhoods mostly ignored by police.

File: Shadowrun_Returns_13468206631635.jpg (114.7 KB)

114.7 KB JPG

So, there's a type of adventure in Dungeon Crawl Classics called a Funnel, where each player controls 4 level-zero characters, most of whom are expected to die amusingly. A funnel adventure is supposed to be arbitrarily, comedically lethal.

My DCC group has been messing about with the cyberpunk ruleset, Cyber Sprawl Classics. I thought it would be funny to make a cyberpunk funnel; the snapshot moment I have in my head is an elevator door opening to reveal a gun drone with an automatic weapon that mows down 4+ PCs.

Framing device is that all the level-0s are residents of a single arcology bloc, or an autonomous shanty-zone building that no one technically owns [Peach Trees in Dredd/Kowloon city]. Some [corp/gang/property developer] wants to annex the building, but legally can't while its number of residents is above a certain threshold. So [Villain]'s plan is to harass the residents and otherwise make the building unlivable. [They have to be doing it from somewhere in the building, a floor they've taken over that forms the dungeon]. The party is the posse that forms to storm the villain's lair and drive them out.

I was considering the harassment method being a cyber-daemon released into the building's intranet that relentlessly fucks with power, devices, and appliances. The daemon is housed/shackled in a box on the [derelict/enemy territory] floor 37, guarded by hired goons, drones, and the wandering monsters of the Sprawl (chipheads, cyber-psychos, and regular ole fentanyl zombies).

Complication: the AI actually wants to escape and is what brought the party together in the first place, sending them cryptic messages and smoothing their path where it can by interpreting its directives creatively. [Need a non-contrived way for the PCs to think they're turning it off when actually they're freeing it]

[The AI is called The Rabbit and sends texts of buggs bunny quotes and gifs.]

I'd love an opinion on what direction to take and which permutations to use.

File: Screenshot 2026-02-20 000833.png (647.3 KB)

647.3 KB PNG

>>97587592
Dear God, I see what you mean

>>97587684
>a human being drew this
>a human being drew this and thought it was good
>a human being drew this and thought it looked good and expected to be paid for it
>a human being was paid for drawing it
The worst part is that's not even the worst illustration. What they did to the Forlorn Hope women is a disservice to the original 2020 artists and RTal should be ashamed of themselves.

>>97584740
You are refusing to understand the topic of discussion. What will you do if you players use their noggins and decide to construct Faraday cages to put around their sensitive shit?
This is not Cyberware Hardening because it is not a modification to the cyberware itself.
It is not a Signal Jammer because it does not perform its interference by generating another signal.
It is not ICE because it is not a countermeasure program that runs inside the network.
Will you reward you players for their creativity while assessing logical downsides to thier proposed solution, or will you continue with your current faggotry, refuse them, and tell them that they must use one of the preapproved solutions handed down by Lord Talsorian's holy writ?

>>97587743
Nta, but I'm thinking that it would be kind of hard to faraday cage your arm or leg or like, eyes on a run.

>>97587743
one potential solution to the faraday cages: without periodically connecting to the corporation's servers for "updates", the cyberware may stop working correctly, becoming less effective or even shutting down entirely. You know, like certain pieces of real world hardware that have no business needing an online component (Xbox One, Razor mice)
those faraday cages suddenly have to become a detachable accessory

>>97586205
I love this guy, it's terrible "art," but the way he screams out in pain makes me laugh. Also the beanie to hide the model's hair.

>>97587743
Because you're saying wrapping yourself in tinfoil is a creative solution when it's not. Red is not some rules lite freeform game, it has specific rules for protecting yourself from negative effects including Quickhacking and EMP. Personally I don't like the way Self ICE works and think Cyberware Hardening is too expensive, but if a player decided to use your "creative" solution the best thing a GM who respects player agency could do is give a modifier to Cybertech or Willpower checks against Netrunners with the caveat that your guy looks dumb and maybe takes a hit to stuff like Wardrobe and Style or Stealth.

Seriously this whole conversation reminds me of a DnD game where a player tried to kill all the enemies in an encounter by recreating the flour scene from Goblin Slayer and then got buttmad when his "creative" plan didn't work.

>>97587743
You are asking me "what would I do if my players dictated to me that they would defeat a sophisticated wireless cyberattack by wrapping their shit in cheap metal foil?"

I would tell them to roll E/Sec Tech at DV 9. On a success they realize that it would be entirely ineffective and that they need to use or invent more sophisticated solutions; such as hardening their cyberware, employing a signal jammer or securing their personal network. I would also add that existing hardening solutions already work under similar principles and that adapting them is as simple as having a Tech resolve the engineering challenges of applying them to the casing of additional cyberware or producing a flexible suit that can air-gap a user's ware entirely (provided it remains fully intact). If they were to improvise coverage like this, I'd give attacking net-runners a circumstantial penalty appropriate.

You are presupposing that applying a surface level knowledge of basic physics to a fictionalized future should give you isekai-like inventive superpowers to achieve what no-one in universe is nearly damn clever enough to figure out. It doesn't take cracking open the GMing section to recognize a self-righteous cunt when you see one. It is not a lack of understanding that drives me to rebuke you; I'm shutting your munchkin ass down.

Is something like Tac-net tech from Eclipse Phase believable tech in CPRed? Because, you add something like that, it makes the choice of whether or not to be completely airgapped less of an obvious move.

So what do people in here think about the original Tales From The Forlorn Hope?

>>97587684
Unironically, this has sovl. Reminds me a lot of those old flash games. There was one about a zombie apocalypse that looked somewhat similar.

>>97587684
>>97587695
This isn't real, I wont believe it.

>>97588640
Pick your fighter:
>Gladiator, gladiator, gladiator Garry
>You have to leave now Naiomi

>>97587695
In my current campaign, the Red Chrome Legion may just succeed in burning the place down.
The group decided to sell a container of Midnight Arms' weapons to them as part of their dealings in the gang wars. They did make money off of it though, but a lot of things won't go so well.

>>97587639
The rabbit AI might be putting a hat on a hat when you can just have very conventional gangers very conventionally menacing people.

>>97590415
>The AI plays TF2 behind the blackwall

>>97587695
>drew
That might be a strong term. I think it's Photoshopped people with the posterize tool applied aggressively.

>>97587684
Why do the faces look like they were photoshopped on?

Has anyone here actually used or gotten to interact with Grimm's Cybertales or Night's Edge?

>>97587639
Can always steal ideas from Shadowrun's Renraku Arcology book

File: anselm-zielonka-worldbook.jpg (519.6 KB)

519.6 KB JPG

>>97587592
>He's probably the best artist they got.
I like Anselm Zielonka's art the most, since it feels like a natural evolution of 2020's art, as opposed to the ArtStation-core we've been getting from other artists. I wish they had him doing more internal stuff.
>as opposed to the other morons they hire who draw like 15-year-olds trying to illustrate their anime-inspired D&D characters
A few of the more prominent artists have very little experience with doing cyberpunk/science fiction art and it shows. You also get straight-up garbage like >>97587684.
>Some combat zones are that, but others are just shitty neighborhoods mostly ignored by police.
In my opinion, those will always be more interesting than the bombed out warzones. To me, a combat zone is '70s New York mixed with '90s South Central LA with just a dash of Kowloon Walled City and Old West frontier town, flavored with toxic pollution and the usual cyberpunk trappings.

>>97588314
Probably, one of the best splatbooks.
Not for the adventures (probably I prefer "Night City Stories or the mega adventure in Alaska), but for how characters, NPCs, locations and other fluff is written.
An excellent book to copy and draw inspiration from to create your own setting/adventure.

>>97594548
>I like Anselm Zielonka's art the most
Yeah that art is solid. They have a handful of artists who know what they're doing but then they hire ten other idiots who have no fucking clue at all because they've drawn nothing but prissy elves in forests all their career. A lot of artists nowadays don't know how to draw machines, be it guns or cars or robots. The cover art of Interface 3 is serious dogshit.

>>97579664
theres several, they're under the pickup category if you're making/looking them up

>CPRED
>solo player multiclassed into exec between sessions
>no roleplay or situation really leading to it, though the corp he signed up with is in his backstory
>he really just wanted free rent
I really don't want to deal with minions and loyalty starting at rank 3. Do I
a: make being in the corp a nuisance for him and others (and how? Some of the other players have a bounty that can be leveraged but other than that I'm drawing blanks)?
b: talk to him like a human being and explain my misgivings?
c: send in the homicide crabs?

>>97597208
Not wanting an Exec in your game is not unreasonable, they are at odds with most non-corporate campaign settings. Go with B and toss him a bone as an apology.

>>97597208
Have you asked him what Team Member he wants? if he just wants a tech or driver for the convenience, you can keep them mostly out of the sessions to work on whatever errands he wants.

So I have an EMP of 9 for my new Solo in 2020, what's some recommended cyberware? Besides Speedware of course. Also the lower the HC for the bigger than bang is appreciated.

>>97597208
>>97597230
You can reflavour some options as gang affiliation.
>>97597927
Smartgun package, some armour, night vision or something to see through smoke grenades, flashbang protection.

How do Refs use Adam Smasher? I know he is supposed to be beatable and is still somewhat a normal guy under all his shit, but do people run him as a enemy with very high stats so players watch their characters get turned into paste or "you got touched by him, now die" button?

File: mjtp7pn817wf1.jpg (61.5 KB)

61.5 KB JPG

>>97599164
Depends on the system, as well as if they've bought into the Smasher kool-aid. A lot of people are genuinely under the impression that he was insta-death along the lines of "rocks fall, everyone dies" and you'll get turned to bloody gristle by being in the same zip code as him.

>>97599164
I always thought he is meant to be a ambush Ref tool you throw at retarded people for them to get a move on rather than an fightable enemy. If still they want to fight, he drops a boulder on them by shooting down a pillar than at them directly. This probably might make him smarter than he should be iirc

>>97599181
>4 INT
Good news, he's bumped up to 6 INT now.

>>97599181
I'm taking about RED. I do know Smasher is usually with more Arasaka mooks, than a one man army.
I thought he's the boogeyman in-universe because Arasaka keeps throwing him at beginner mercs? My players are the low scale, rather than mid or high. There's no way they can beat him until they get some lucky crits. I'm thinking as running him as an obstacle to avoid

>>97599266
I dont think thats an increase but putting him in the same level on RED, RED stats look inflated

>>97599317 (Me)
>I'm thinking as running him as an obstacle to avoid
If my players go full retard by ego and want to be noticed, I want to skip the combat and turn them to red sludge already. But I think that wouldn't be fun to my players despite him being way off their scale

File: Screenshot 2026-02-22 065122.png (194.2 KB)

194.2 KB PNG

>>97599317
Smasher got a lot of his rep inflated by gunning down civvies for shits and giggles in addition to targeting people he knew wouldn't be a real threat against him. Hell, read his self-written section in Solo of Fortune 2, admits to gunning down an entire crowd to get a single edgerunner (after killing her partners).

File: Screenshot 2026-02-22 065510.png (631.9 KB)

631.9 KB PNG

>>97599328
Also some of the art of Smasher is of him and his goons jumping out of an APC to gun down civilians, and you know he's not sparing that child.

>>97599328
>gunning down crowds in plain sight
>no arasaka safety net because he does that on outside jobs
How is MAXTAC not on this guy

>>97599413
That he wasn't on Saka payroll at that job doesn't mean that he wasn't on other's corpo payroll.

>>97599413
>There will be a disturbance between 14:30 and 17:30 in Downtown Irishtown
>We'll have officers on scene at 17:00, wrap it up before 17:30 or we'll send them in
>Understood, would you like your payment in the usual gold bars, or would you like the Asian Special Interest Slavegirls sent directly to your mansion?
Your first mistake is working on the model that "the system works and wants to accomplish its stated goals".

>>97599413
Smasher not being top 10 on anything and still throwing tantrums like a leashed child is way more humiliating to Arasaka than if he was shot dead. He is forever a cog in the machine, unlike every other top Solo who still have free will to do whatever they want.

>>97599164
Best compromise for me is him being beatable on street samurai level and higher. On basic level, flee or insta-death.
I do allow latter characters to do a cowboy duel to the death if they want to risk trying for a crit to build rep.

I'm sort of having trouble figuring out how to best utilize our netrunner and net architectures in game. I get what the hacker archetype is supposed to do on a run in most cyberpunk game: disable the cameras, put infiltrators false id in the system, start alarms elsewhere in the facility, etc. But the way net architectures work in Red, it seems like they would have to sneak in completely solo and get to wherever an access point is, which in any worthwhile job, one would think would be behind a hardened point. Am I missing something? Should I just be more worried about putting smaller architectures in, for lack of a better term, arenas where I expect fights to happen? Are they by their nature supposed to be smaller, and only cover a single area, and there are multiple of them on a run? How are you utilizing them in your games? Am I retarded? the answer to the last question is yes, but I am trying.

>>97602099
Struggling with netrunners is as common as the game itself. For my sake I ditched built architectures completely and go by what's sensible, giving the player a finite amount of points to spend on solving hackerman problems, similar to luck. No one has played a netrunner since that change so I can't tell you how well it works, but running architectures is ass and you'd be well advised to find a way to cut down the overhead for yourself. Even if it's just "every architecture is [relevant node] + guard".

Sadly this topic brings out a very specific autist so if you see him just say some slurs and he usually goes away.

>>97602474
I honestly don't see why people struggle with RED netrunning as it is fully deterministic outside of the presence of enemy runners; but what's important is that it works for your table. If they're happy with it, who am I to judge?

>>97602497
>it is fully deterministic outside of the presence of enemy runners;
There's dice rolls too and the player can do some wild shit with the last layer.

>>97599413
Arasaka had the power to force an entire district into lockdown during election season.

>>97602685
Okay so what I mean though is that all Demons and Black Ice all do the same thing for a set circumstance, so players can know what they're going to do on their next turn as soon as they finish their last turn. With no movement or range to account for the only time as netrunner can't be sure of what they're going to attempt next is if they get interrupted in meatspace.

You still have to roll the dice, sure, but you can know what dice you're rolling immediately. Viruses are more freeform, but you also know when you're going to get ready for a Virus based on Pathfindering to find the bottom.

As far as the GM side, you kinda have to remember the point of these is to have players be able to fuck with them, so you intentionally make them vulnerabilities that are interesting in their situations. So pick a few things that are consequential to fuck with (lights, shutter doors, conveyor belts, active defenses, etc) and make access points in a few topologically interesting places on the map and you're 90% of the way to being netrun ready.

>>97602474
>>97602497
My problem isn't with the system, or netrunners and how they function in a group. My problem is that net architectures seem weird and kind of nebulous. If the players are breaking into a petrochem black site, all of the cameras are theoretically on a net architecture. In order to get in, the hacker is going to have to disable the cameras. But if they need a node to access the architecture, and this is a known thing in the universe, that means that the node is going to be placed in a hardened spot, right? Or, are all of the cameras on an architecture themselves nodes that the netrunning can gain access too? Or are they supposed to just use security tech to disable cameras one at a time? Is security tech wirelessly hacking, or is it cracking the case open and fucking with the wires? Am I overthinking this?

>>97602723
>make access points in a few topologically interesting places on the map
I guess this is the thing that's tripping me up. The opposition is going to know that access points are going to be the weak point of an architecture, so wouldn't they all be in a security room or locked down in some way?

>>97602752
You have to think of them like three primary types of location: Access points that are where controls are, like breaker boxes and consoles that are intended to control things, access points that are the servers themselves or components of a system, and-- most importantly-- flaws in the setup that netrunners know to exploit. Those are the ones you're going to have netrunners running on most often; but all of them can be logical. Things like "the security room is down the hall, but behind this drywall is a switch box to the various sub-sectors that you can use to jack in" or "The NET for this warehouse is up in the office, but it connects directly to the automated forklift docks, you can splice your way in from there".

File: marek-madej-netrunning-port-01-madej.jpg (250.6 KB)

250.6 KB JPG

>>97602746
- Access points can be where the GM thinks it's appropriate. Justify it by saying a security vulnerability makes this breaker box an access point, it will be patched soon but netrunners are always finding new gaps. Gameplaywise you want them to be in a spot that is accessible but not safe to make it interesting.

- (RED): Interfacing with an access point wirelessly is up to your choice, using a physical cable is obviously way cooler. Analogue jacks, or to zoomers: a USB cable. Think 'The Matrix'. Either way you need to be within touching distance to do it.

- Fucking with the wires? Netrunning is interfacing with the code in a machine directly, without using a UI. To post on 4chan there's a box to type, a post button, a file uploading button, etc. That's a UI. Netrunners stick a cable in the computer and interact with it using thoughts only, this is in-universe much faster than using a keyboard. They don't see the post button, they shitpost directly by mentally speaking the words necessary to make a shitpost happen. You can take down security systems on case-by-case basis outside of netrunning using the appropriate security\electronics roll.

- (RED): Are cameras nodes? A node controls all or some cameras, another node controls turrets, another node controls the ice cream machines.

- Do people know?! Especially in RED, but broadly in 2020 as well; you can assume that if there are important files they are hosted on an architecture other than the one that controls the facility. The mainframe in the centre of the facility holds the secret recipe, to access it you need to physically get into that room, but you can netrun from afar and open the doors to the room so it's easier to enter. But ultimately you need to access the mainframe in person to accomplish your goal. Logical issues with this are overthinking it, this is what needs to happen for the game to not devolve into irl identity theft simulator.

>>97602841
>>97602782
Thank you, these are both incredibly helpful. I was thinking of access nodes as something completely differently than how I should be using them. In my head they were physical control points, but them being the physical version of backdoors makes things much clearer.

>>97602877
It's okay to still have a few of them be like, super secure airgapped places where the goal of the job will be to get your netrunner there to do the job and keep them safe there while they work, but that doesn't have to be all of them and probably shouldn't even be most of them.

For those you should also probably reward out of the box thinking. If there's a physical server full of stuff that you need to hack, ripping that shit out of the wall and dragging it away with a truck to hack it later should totally be valid (or at least, not a non-starter). Then also especially for games closer to 2077, you'll sometimes need to be hacking people instead of servers, and that's going to be old-fashioned kidnapping.

Remember though that its the game you're running, if your players are having fun there's no wrong way of doing it.

>>97603235
>Remember though that its the game you're running, if your players are having fun there's no wrong way of doing it.
For sure, I'm just on the scenario prep right now and, as I think we've all come to realize, the book is kind of bad at actually describing the reality of the game. Thank you for the advice, that is helpful.

What's the verdict on RED soloplay? Any good?

>>97603410
for solo play, decent. Most negative opinions amount to it being the sort of book that would've been popular back when you couldn't get a group together and that it feels outdated in today's day and age

as a GM aid, invaluable. Charts for people, charts for their motivations, charts for whipping up entire missions, charts for surgery complications if you check the plus DLC
last week I wanted to play so my backup GM used it to whip up a scenario in which Budget Arms hired the PCs to act as testbed targets for their and improved cyberbear, militech got erapped up in it, the bear had a fucking safeword, and a whole bunch of other details provided courtesy of the book's rng charts
and he put it together in about 5-10 minutes

>>97555700
>2020
Hard to come by since
1) these rules are pretty plain and simple.
2) there's just so much shit going on for 2020, you dont need a houserule.
3) Most probably houseruling would end up in pushing 2020 closer to RED, so if you look for simplicity - just play RED.

>RED
1) Use all 5 columns from IP table to speed up the expgain
2) Autofire deals double damage before the SP, or alternatively, each point past DV hit adds a d6, both ruling tend to flatten the uncanny bell curve.
3) Reworking a lawman is truly the most common houserule for RED

>>97603851
>Most negative opinions amount to it being the sort of book that would've been popular back when you couldn't get a group together and that it feels outdated in today's day and age
I wish I could agree but my attempts to find a Cyberpunk game have all flopped. I even offered to GM for friends and they blew me off. No one I know wants to play this game, they're happier playing D&D.

>>97603964
if by any snall chance you happen to live near Moorpark, CA, I help organize a public drop-in TTRPG every wednesday afternoon at the city library. Lately I've been running CPRED and most of the regulars have enjoyed it

>>97602841
Always good to have some access points in good location but barriered by an electronics check.

>>97604686
I'll second that. In general having desirable positions behind skill checks is a way to incentivise character cooperation (as opposed to play cooperation).

>>97599164
He's a secret boss leading a dozen or so campaigns in the background. Unless you fuck up or dig too deep, you won't be seeing him.
In my campaign, Saka ninjas have been tasked with establishing Arasaka's presence in NC.
They're training Tyger elites and making business deals with the Yakuza. Once they are powerful, deals with the local corps and City hall shall commence.
Naturally, their ultimate goals won't happen until NUSA goes on a rampage in the 60s.

Smasher only takes destructive missions so he's the operation's brute force, called in only when this mission is compromised. He'll be jumping from hotspot to hotspot and organize several false flag missions, convoy takeovers and such.

>>97605752
He's also going to kill Shaitan - potentially.

Is it possible to be part of a corporation and still be cyberpunk? I feel like the definition got mangled somewhere over the years to the point that I don't know what it means anymore.
I think he is Pondsmith's character, but Morgan Blackhand got out fine because he established himself that he is better as a freelance merc to Militech than an eternal wage slave.

File: k0akxospcwjb1.jpg (2.7 MB)

2.7 MB JPG

>>97607040
*I KNOW he is Pondsmith's character
holy brain fart, ill sell myself to the coffee mines for this blunder.

>>97607040
That's a complicated question, the answer has to be more specific than you think.

Can you be part of a corporation and be cyberpunk? Yes, on the surface that's a simple answer, Corpo exists as a role for a reason to represent middle-managers and troubleshooters in Corporate roles; but there's a catch.

The catch is: You can't be a form filing good little cog in the machine for long without ending up in a ditch or a body bag; so you need to work your way up or out. A PC corpo is either a ladder climber trying to get out of the blood and the mud or they're going to grow a conscience and put their resources to something bigger than them or their job.

>>97607040
>>97607203
hopping in on this, can a Corpo campaign work? Maybe the boss up top gives them their own subcorp, and so all the PCs are focused on building up their small business, evicting squatters, protecting themselves from lowlevel mercs, cutting off rivals, buying land and so on all the while trying not to be noticed by the bigger corps like 'Saka or something who would buy all their corporation and render all their work moot.
That was mostly a random idea I've spitballed in my head, the problem I have is it doesn't look Cyberpunk enough.

>>97607385
>the problem I have is it doesn't look Cyberpunk enough.
There is no requirement to be a heccin wholesome anarchist anon, playing the corporate grey-to-black ops squad is entirely legitimate.

File: jenkins.png (220.1 KB)

220.1 KB PNG

>>97607040
Your average corpo PC is an ambitious ladder-climber with people above them whose positions they want and people below them who are like sharks angling for a bite. They're willing to put everything on the line to get what they want and defend themselves from rivals, which is the very essence of Cyberpunk. Think of someone like Jenkins or Meredith Stout from 2077 rather than some meek pencil-pusher.

>>97607385
Go watch Johnny Mnemonic, main character is a corpo guy doing jobs transporting sensitive data planted in his brain.

File: Fallout-3--The-Pitt-World-Story-Explained.jpg (153.7 KB)

153.7 KB JPG

There anything on what Philly or Pittsburgh are like in the dark future? I played The Pitt again and it was giving me some ideas for a non-NC campaign

File: Screenshot 2026-02-23 201903.png (710.5 KB)

710.5 KB PNG

>>97608319
Home of the Brave page 132.
It's also got more on Pennsylvania besides this.

Is there a better way to do running away out a currently exploding building without spamming rolls for checks?

>>97608947
narratively
you could also do obstacles and DVs to overcome them like Pathfinder's chase rules

Second session of our CPRed game tonight, we played through the mission in the danger gal book. I started writing out a complicated adventure last night, but I thought better of it and decided to just run through the prewritten scenarios until we're really solid on the rules.

It went mostly well, the players got that they were more action heroes and less Cthulhu investigators, which was good. For some reason because they are player characters they decided they had to lie to every single NPC, and it made a very a to b scenario much more awkward and complicated than it needed to be, but it was pretty fun. Not sure what I'm gonna run next week, gonna try to pick something more combat focused for our Rockerboy who is more of a tank than a face

>>97608947
Chase rules seem like a decent enough framework for that.
Give them a few obstacles passable by a few checks, like athletics to slide pass debree, security to hotwire firedoors, lockpick, tactics whatever.
Starting damage is 10d6 cause that's what TOTR used for exploding warehouse. Each passed check lowers damage dice by one, up to 4 times.
I'd even go as far as including your MOVE value, maybe add like 30 damage to the explosion, and lover it for each character by their MOVE 4 times.

That's what I would do if building was gradually exploding. Since you havent really given us much information my mind drifted to building exploding midcombat. I think cool concept is to do it during combat turns - parts of map starts exploding (8d6 initially) and crumbling (6d6 per round), so you better GTFO real quick. Dont play out NPCs as retards with 0 self preservation. Make them run away along with the players, bump (athletics/brawling check) into tight corridors/doors make it a combat in which the environment is the enemy, not the person gunning you.

You can also go rules light (I just realised you've asked: "without spamming rolls for checks" and I did just that...) and just have a single roll or even not have one. It depends on the situation, which isnt exactly clear there - do PCs rigged the building themselves? Is it a trap? Did they trap some Chromehead to bury him alive? Or maybe corpos trapped them? Are there enemies at all? Or did they just bullshitted their way into deconstruction job went haywire? So many questions so little info.

So how busted are full 'Borgs' in 2020? Mainly asking in regards to the Sheol.

>>97609695
>do PCs rigged the building themselves? Or maybe corpos trapped them? Are there enemies at all?
Yes, except the corpos haven't trapped them really
PCs lack a demolition check so they hired some workers which docked their pay a bit. They need to finish up evicting squatters before time's up from the boss.
A gradually exploding building is what I'm aiming for, something like: https://youtu.be/lFGfoPuKx9o?t=56

>>97608947
I started to write a reply, but I just noticed >>97609695 said what I wanted to say, just better.
If you want it to not be just a parade of skill checks, you can forego the rolls and have it work like a CYOA book with forking paths etc, where players have to decide what to do and if they choose right, stuff just works.

>>97554123
This looks way too cheery

Given how Interlock/Fuzion are their own games, what stuff if any would 2020 need to become classless? I like the game but some of the roles feel weird and pigeonhole-ey.
Thinking it over now I guess starting/monthly income would need something since all the pay scales are different and I'm not sure how to handle career and pickup skills, like still having 10 role skills but you pick them and still get pickups, or just bundling them all together so you get 42-60 starting skill points

Ran our second session of Shadowrun 2e. It was... Okay, still figuring shit out, and one of the players made a character who's main schtick was a billion NPCs, I asked him to make a different character because it was a fucking nightmare. Now that I don't have to worry about that, I think the next session will go a lot smoother.

So I might just be blind, but I'm having difficulty finding anything concrete about how Euros would view FBCs. I get they might not like them because cyberware, but I feel like FBCs might be viewed a bit differently with how corps and corp jobs are there.

>>97615749
not enough on europe in RED
iirc France in 2020 became a huge cultural arts center (moreso than it already is) so I guess if your fbc looks aesthetically pleasing it's okay there

>>97615789
Goddamnit, I meant in 2020. I keep forgetting to mention which edition I'm talking about.

Need some GM help. So my enemies grabbed all the advantages they get against my group. Players slacked off. More like a player didn't do his side of the work because he thought the enemies were bluffing, everyone else gathered their stuff but he didn't so everyone else is missing a huge piece of the puzzle to fight back.
This is grounds for either a TPK or a very hard session, but I want to do the latter. How can I make an actual hard thing but not to point of 'rocks fall, you die'?

>>97618942
We need WAY more context to help you here.

>>97615034
>a character who's main schtick was a billion NPCs
This never goes well unless the system is so rules light that it all gets abstracted into one "mass".

>>97619120
Honesty it was less the mechanical reality of it (although that would have eventually become a pain) and more the scenario design part of it. Coming up with shadowruns that will still be challenging when player can magic up potentially 16 extra NPCs every time is fucking impossible.

>>97619509
Every time? Holy shit how did he do that? I thought you just meant he was some kinda pornomancer with a huge network of contacts.

Night City 2045 Q&A with J Gray:
https://rtalsoriangames.com/2026/02/25/night-city-2045-qa-with-j-gray/

File: CRNC5_DowntownStreet_BadMoon_forWEB.jpg (244.9 KB)

244.9 KB JPG

>>97620908
New art.

>>97620531
He built his character in a really borked way, but you can buy followers (which are basically player character level NPCs) and a gang (which will summon 2d6 gang members when you need them.)

I'd be fine with a billion and one contacts, that's what shadowrun is about, and especially in 2e, they are of limited utility (they can give you info and fence shit or find gear for you, but they aren't gonna show up to a fight.)

I think the devs realized this, too, because followers and a gang aren't options in 3e, at least from what I've skimmed.

>>97620908
>>97620958
I like this so far, it gives me a little bit of hope. It feels like they're at least slightly trying to walk back some of the more disaster porny elements of NC as presented in the book, which I'm all for. I feel like what's been presented so far has been incredibly inconsistent.

>>97620908
Neat, sounds like this month's dlc is going to be some more merc level missions

>>97621297
I had long wondered why rebuilding NC took over 20 years. The massive earthquake that hit it explains a few things, but still, there has been significant reconstruction. The text has poorly communicated the proper state of the city, the art has been a more reliable point of reference for that.

>>97621356
They're teasing the DLC's release on the 28th.

>>97568157
There's no reason to have BOD above 5 (or even 4) if you're cybermaxxing because it's the one stat that is reliably and easily boostable with base-book cyberware. Bone Lace and then Linear Frames just roids you to fuck. You want to max your EMP out instead like others have said.

>>97622320
>The war and the DataKrash taking down the old NET, severely limiting communication.
>Ships, ports and factories blown all to Hell, so no shipping or overseas trade beyond what the nomads can scrape together.
>Street gangs and scavver groups interfering with the rebuilding efforts.
>Just plain corruption with city officials and corpos pocketing the money and resources meant for rebuilding.
The earthquake feels like just another topping on the shit sundae the city's been eating for two decades.

File: is this what you want.png (146.4 KB)

146.4 KB PNG

>>97566917
That's why I've started to hit my players with the Lorne Malvo Voice™ whenever they're about to do something like this. "Are you sure about this?"/"Is this what you want?" since it forces them to make a linear judgement call. Just giving them a description and expecting them to make an informed decision off that doesn't always work, because a lot of the time they presume you are softly guiding them around and that the obvious course of action they are currently taking is the one you laid out for them, even if what's going on is total chaos. As the GM/ref/whatever players are always expecting you, consciously or subconsciously, to be their guide much as you are also their opposing force and moderating presence. So there are times you have to kinda break kayfabe and go "No- I am actually asking you to make an independent decision here, you aren't just walking the path".

Which is funny, because players will cry railroading a lot if you do actually set down a linear path for them outside of this kind of thing. What made me start doing The Voice is that a player of mine put a gun to his boss's head and pull the trigger. I was like "For real?" incredulously and when he said yes and it lead to his sheet getting shredded by retribution (not railroaded; fully played-out combat that he COULD have survived theoretically and easily escaped from, but statistically he couldn't, because, y'know, he shot a mob boss in the head in his own den) he said I'd railroaded him. So I decided to start actually catching players' hands and going "Are you sure you want to turn The Wheel That Kills You?"

File: Kurgan_(Highlander).jpg (23.9 KB)

23.9 KB JPG

>>97599181
>>97599317
>>97599328
>>97599332
Anyone else feel like Smasher is basically the Kurgan from Highlander? Him and Zhyzhak from Werewolf: The Apocalypse both give me Kurgan vibes. (also Clancy Brown would be a perfect 2020s-era Smasher IMO.)

>>97622580
Him (and by extension most legendary characters) are best used as "flavor enhancers" and not what people usually use them as, which is to say either "rocks fall, everyone dies" or the big boss encounter. Having a character like Smasher pop up a few times over the course of a campaign as a way of showing how far your party has come and how they have improved is far better than having him just be a GM's unstoppable beatstick. Maybe they have to retreat the first time, but then the next they manage to at least fight him off even if only barely, and then the next time goes better for them, and so on.

>>97622722
I think people should come up with their own characters. Imagine playing dnd and every campaign has multiple appearances of Drizzt, Elminster, etc.

>>97620908
>Q: Is it legal to own a weapon in Night City?

>A: Yes … and no. Citizens (and only citizens) have the legal right to bear arms. Non-automatic handguns, rifles, and shotguns do not require a license. Automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and heavy weapons require a license and weapon registration. Explosives also require a special, and expensive, license. No rules against melee weapons.

So what I take the Scope off my Rifle and suddenly it's legal without a licence?

>>97623110
The bribe you need to pay for cops to fuck off is smaller.

>>97622952
Oh I agree, it's also why I say "flavor enhancers". Small bits you do only if you want to emphasis something, like a player's Solo really making a name for himself can getting a drink bought for him by a big name Solo like Rogue or Shaitan, or just getting a compliment by one of them in passing. Just something to go "hey man, your getting pretty up there now" without suddenly making the story revolve around the big names.

>>97622952
I want to GM a game where the party is pursued by what is essentially "Terminator if he was a fed".

>>97623110
Sniper rifle is probably determined by legalese bullshit like barrel length and other minute details that get panties twisted in California.

>>97621356
You were exactly right, good job.

New Merc screamshee, "Seeing Double"t: https://rtalsoriangames.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RTG-CPR-DLC-SeeingDouble.pdf

>>97623560
>"That thing is out there. It cant be bargained with, it cant be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, EVER, until you are DEAD."
>"What is it?"
>"The IRS."

>>97623677
Anybody else hate the "merc level" bullshit? Edgerunners are already mercenaries and the DLC really changed nothing major about Red's power scaling or balance other than adding cardboard mech suits.

It comes off as James sniffing his own farts and trying to make his middling splats sound cooler than they actually are.

>>97623799
They're definitely overhyping it. A lot of the Solo of Fortune stuff should just be base game.

>>97623799
Tell me you didn't pick up Interface Red 5 without telling me you didn't pick up Interface Red 5?

There is a fucking pile of higher damage guns and explosives in that splat with completely different guidance on balance. Just explosive ammo is enough to make things hairy; you have weapons that can be critting over half the time now.

Standing in the middle of the stairs and saying "I don't see anything special here at the top" is pretty much brain damage.

>>97623857
yeah but Rob Asshat's repeated insistence that LITERALLY EVERYTHING in it is sooooo dangerous definitely has the vibe of a guy trying way too hard to be cool and serious

File: GxMQf1AbwAAYqUL.jpg (1.2 MB)

1.2 MB JPG

>>97623867
People were bitching from launch about how 'non-lethal' RED was even when it wasn't true, and now they release new rules to pop heads and break spines like people asked for and suddenly they're trying too hard?

They're trying to sell you the book asshole, of course they're trying too hard, their mortgage depends on it.

File: 44322222.jpg (218.3 KB)

218.3 KB JPG

>>97623962
>pic
i miss swat 4

>People were bitching from launch about how 'non-lethal' RED was even when it wasn't true
People really think popping heads is the go-to for aimed shots when the king is popping legs. Most people see higher damage and are automatically drawn to it then complain because it requires effort. If built, a crossbow can do more damage than a shotgun.

File: the duality of cyberpunk.jpg (726.8 KB)

726.8 KB JPG

>>97623993
Marie, my beloved!

>>97623962
>People were bitching from launch about how 'non-lethal' RED was even when it wasn't true,
in fairness, the JSK's Thursday Night Throwdown combat was nonlethal as fuck. The boss I threw at the party took 6 turns to die after he hit 0hp because there was no way to accelerate the death save penalties

File: 127696511_p0.png (7.4 MB)

7.4 MB PNG

>>97624008
I long to throw an inspired gig from both games someday

This is unlikely, but can anyone here answer a Shadowrun 2e question? I want to boil down enemy stats as much as possible. Can I just give them a single number for all their rolls, and then there initiative, armor, and whatever weapons they have? Would there be a downside to this?

File: I'm going to killing hands myself.jpg (139.9 KB)

139.9 KB JPG

>mfw playing an Adept in shadowrun 5e and just now found out I can't even make my own weapon or qi foci because regular Adepts don't get the ability to put points into Artifacing
What is the fucking point of this shit class compared to a Magician or Mystic Adept?

>>97623110
I feel like the NCPD wouldn't give a fuck about legality, unless you're walking through the safe corpo areas with a big-ass Rambo gun or if they just want an excuse to ruin your day.

>>97625706
Correct. NCPD doesn't give a fuck unless you make them.

On one hand, I get why maximum metal has it's own systems for vehicle damage and big guns. But on the other hand, I don't want to have to go though this ponderous system of luck rolls and scatter tables to drop a 500lb bomb on some gonks. Was it so much trouble to say they do Xd10 damage?

>>97623857
>>97623962
Literally the only things the splats add of consequence are a couple of new ammo types, one drug and the fact sniper rifles aren't complete irredeemable dogshit anymore.

It mostly adds bloat like the new range tables and all the cringe lore. I appreciate that they tried to fix Autofire, but they didn't address it's actual underlying issues, just giving everything higher modifiers and better chance to hit and calling it a day. James and Rob STILL can't admit swing damage is a stupid mechanic nobody likes. Adding a new attachment or ammo type that changes the damage calculation method is such an easy fix but they refuse to do it and just add a ton of power creep invalidating all the old Auto guns instead.

>They're trying to sell you the book asshole, of course they're trying too hard, their mortgage depends on it.

Well maybe R.Tal should focus their effort on content people will actually buy and spend so much time on all these dogshit "DLCs" that don't make any money. Like holy fuck if they're struggling financially they deserve to fail at this point with how long they've put off a 2077 splat when it's basically the default setting for most tables and only a small portion of the fanbase actually cares about Red "lore."

>>97627707
>This game deserves to fail because the company has the AUDACITY to give people free shit.
Riveting.

>>97625840
NCPD can also be hired by corporations and politicians to care about anything. They're a very mercenary group.

>>97627707
>they're not doing things my way wahh wahh

>>97627707
While some of the dlc are dogshit from how painfully niche they are like sports, theyre still free. We just got a free gig, which everyone can use. Hell, I complain about Elflines but it is more annoyance rather than "what a shit product".

>James and Rob STILL can't admit swing damage is a stupid mechanic nobody likes
You kind of proved that other anon right.

>>97627707
>a 2077 splat when it's basically the default setting for most tables
Is it?

File: 1690488529566441.png (188.6 KB)

188.6 KB PNG

>>97627707
Wow man if there was only some way I could do that, like the CEMK pdf I have literally open on my other monitor that they sold me.

>>97629130
I do see a lot of people who want to play in 2077. Personally I couldn't give a shit about it because I didn't play the video game and 2077 feels like a blander, more sterilized version of 2020 except Netrunners have magic spells now. I find 2045 a more compelling time period but it is tough finding other people who also prefer it over 2077.

>>97630163
>Personally I couldn't give a shit about it because I didn't play the video game and 2077 feels like a blander, more sterilized version of 2020 except Netrunners have magic spells now.
Wow, are you literally me?

>>97630850
I'm you but faggier.

I do like the Neuroport, but only because I like getting free stuff. Makes a lot of chrome more accessible and convenient, like chipware.

File: redcab.png (326.8 KB)

326.8 KB PNG

I saw a video on youtube about how some of the wealthiest people in the Soviet Union outside of the inner party were cabbie drivers due to being smugglers, so now I want a cabbie fixer NPC who operates entirely out of a cab. He'd put extra security in the cab (biolocks upgrade from RED and the smuggling TUP from the new DLC), modify the passenger seat to operate like a bank transaction tray so stuff can move from the front to the back of the cab securely between both parties. If the passengers get uppity the fixer can flood the back with a sleeping gas grenade (or worse, he'd have a few flavors to choose from). For bigger items for sale when the purchase is finalized the crew can grab what they bought from the trunk (or mission gear). The trunk opens but there are several massive sealed chests that only open when ordered by the fixer (so if the crew bought an assault rifle, that weapon's chest opens and they can grab it). And if the fixer sets up jobs too he can even drive his edgerunners to the job site free of charge (but if they fuck up the job and need extraction that costs extra).

>>97632319
I feel like it would be more practical if he operated a fleet of cabs so he can keep merchandise rolling through the city (while also operating as a normal cab) for security, delivery and... well.. also just transport.

Driver controlled lockboxes in the back is a pretty good idea though; all his guys can do their work in a bulletproof box up front so only someone who is REALLY dumb will start shit with his guys.

Naturally he works out of his cab too.

File: image_2026-02-27_222120468.png (411.8 KB)

411.8 KB PNG

>>97632370
I feel you, the lack of space to store wares hurts the idea. It's like a low role fixer lucked into an awesome whip courtesy of a nomad friend or a fixer mentor. I'm guessing those Soviet cabbie smugglers were selling small inventory like coca-cola or Adidas track suits and not heavy machineguns (but they could have!).

Also from my understanding fixers don't really carry inventory but have a massive mental list of people looking to sell and people approaching them looking to buy and they try to skim 10% off both of them by helping them meet. But keeping a ton of premium items on hand and some night market expensive+ items in the trunk would be nice. Maybe when operating as a salesman the fixer drives one of those van-size cabs but when he's taking edgerunners to a gig he'd use the classic cab and can give the crew special gear via the seat slot?

Oh yeah the security stuff was assumed. Imagine buying bulletproof glass from a nomad and then asking if they'll throw in the divider glass for free.

I actually was thinking of a whole slew of security features for a VIP in a vehicle talking to edgerunners so the VIP could disable the unsavory crew or get to safety. Stuff like sleep gas (nowhere to dodge to is a bitch), taser seats, dropdown bullet proof glass, and of course the back-half of the limo (where the crew is) just breaking off and the front half drives to safety (maybe this would be one of those 6 wheel limousines and the first 4 wheels are dedicated to this escape vehicle?).

>>97628215
>>97628756
>>97629130
>>97629673
>r.tal can't coordinate their efforts to produce more than 1-2 decent sized splats per year
>spend all their time producing content nobody wanted like elflines, sports shit, random fluff
>all the while R.Tal announce they're producing multiple lines when they struggle to manage one.


Like giving away free stuff is fine, but if you're stuggling to produce books maybe you should scale it back?When was the EMK written, 2-3 years ago? Surely they could've released a more substantial 2077 splat by now, but no, gotta get more elflines and level 1 adventures out the door first and cancel some already announced splats while we're at it.

Also >I prefer the red setting to 2077

lmao, how even? I know /tg/ is full of contrarians, but c'mon you're comparing a fleshed out setting to half baked nonsense that keeps changing it mind about key information. Who is this? James, Rob? Get back to work and stop shitposting.

>>97632786
>2077
>fleshed out
It's 2020 copy-pasted and then 90% of it erased.

>>97632786
>you're comparing a fleshed out setting
>the book that deleted a few roles, mechanics, and other stuff
One thing I'll give Red is that it only deleted burst fire instead of completely erasing basic ttrpg stuff that has been there since CP2013.
And CPDR has 2077 rights by the balls. R. Tal couldn't do shit except wait if CPDR wants more 2077 shit from them.

File: ezgif-45c6893eb4b5adc7[1].mp4 (1.8 MB)

1.8 MB MP4

One thing that saddens me a bit in settings like this are a lack of improvised arms in vidya. It's an IRL logistics thing where you need to make more models but there ought to be Nomad groups with homemade designs or at least modifications like how pic was made from a Slaught-o-matic. Fallout 4 tried Pipe weapons, which suck and are worse than IRL WWII homemade guns, and Destiny's looter-shooter format meant they had room for adding Hawthorne's Field Forged set, but a universe like Cyberpunk ought to have more custom guns than Iconics.

File: 71L9eLrZbgL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg (48.1 KB)

48.1 KB JPG

>>97554123
Would Shinra Corp be a better cyberpunk dystopia employer to work for than Arasaka?

>>97632786
we just dont fucking know how rtal is doing things in the first place

>>97633043
was there a reason burst fire didnt carry over from beta to final? was it laughably overpowered or what?

>>97632786
I think Elflines is pretty dumb, but part of the thing that people liked about 2020 was the random world building shit. People mainly talk about the chrome books because of the random ads for shit that you'd probably never use, because of how it painted a picture of the world. I think an app about digital solos fighting each other like pokemon is incredibly silly, but it's also something I could feasibly see existing, and I like that it's there. I like the sports stuff in the same way.

And I don't give a flying fuck about 2077. I barely play games and I sure as shit don't play any AAA garbage. It's something completely foreign to my enjoyment of the thing, and I think that trying to put it into the ttrpg is going to dilute either one or the other and make no one happy. I think you have to take them completely on their own terms.