Crow’s Corner

Table-Tested Review of "Cyberpunk Red"

It’s 2045 — the Time of the Red. In the wake of the 4th Corporate War, crimson skies and rain slowly give way to orange as Night City rebuilds. Cyberpunk RED picks up after Cyberpunk 2020, advancing both the timeline and the game itself into a new era.

Some quick facts about the game:

I’ve run about two dozen sessions of Cyberpunk Red, so I think it’s about time for a table-tested review! I wouldn’t count myself as a veteran, but I’ve seen my fair share of the game.

Cyberpunk Red Core Book

The Vibe

The gameplay loop is getting a job, shooting something up or talking to people to get what you need, getting paid and doing downtime before you start from the top. Downtime can usually be filled with activities specific to the character’s role, so it’s often a good moment for some character development as well as using role specific abilities.

Tone can vary, depending on the adventure you’re playing. There are some goofy adventures (like getting some real organic food for a film star) and some with heavy themes that really drive home the violent nature of Night City. It can also capture the corporate dystopia very well. When playing a campaign, players will discuss how to pay rent and how disgusting and unhealthy their food has to be, to make ends meet at the end of the month. They will spend the rest of their money on all kinds of weapons, tech, cyberware or the newest fashion (or just really tasty food, for once).

Generally, the game is fairly punishing and combats feel exciting, until someone suddenly goes down and all goes to shit very fast. So don’t get shot. I like that about the game, but players should be made aware beforehand, that combat is potentially very lethal.

Structure of the Book

Broadly speaking, you will find the following information in the core book:

Overall the book is a bit disorganized and the index doesn’t always have the thing listed that you’re looking for. More often than not, I needed the pdf’s search capabilities to look things up, instead of being able to rely on my physical copy.

The Rules

The rules are medium crunchy. They are less complicated than they are in a certain popular fantasy game, but not by very much. They are simpler than in similar games like Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun. There is some mechanical depth to the game in regard to character builds, but it's not as nuanced as it could be in regards to tactics that players can employ. A lot of the rules are as heavily featured on the GM’s side of the screen as they are for the players, so it’s a game where you will be juggling numbers as GM. The game uses stat blocks, so you’ll need to prep those too (if you’re not using premade modules).

Players choose a role to play, comparable to classes as they are called in other games. These are very flavourful and make different types of gameplay possible. Having a Netrunner makes Netrunning (basically hacking, in augmented reality) possible, having an Exec brings interactions with a corporation and people who work for you, a Media can influence the rumour mill, and so on. Other roles are the Rockerboy, Solo, Tech, Medtech, Lawmen, Fixer and Nomad. Levelling up is fairly slow and even slower as you progress further into the game, as upgrades to skills and abilities get more expensive.

Netrunners have their own hacking minigame that can be run alongside combat. Hacking outside combat can often lead to the Netrunner getting the spotlight for longer stretches of time, but can often also just be done as a skill roll, unless the net architecture is truly important to the plot.

Characters can install cyberware, limited by their decreasing humanity, as they install more and more tech into their bodies. You can go to therapy about that humanity loss, but at some point you will go cyberpsycho, if you keep installing upgrades. Cyberware gives you the upper hand in many situations (and is also really fucking cool).

The game uses a d10 roll above system with exploding/imploding dice (add/subtract another roll when rolling a 10/1). Higher degrees of success don’t give better result, so the exploding dice don’t always add much, except being really important when trying to roll for something that is very hard to achieve. The only way to influence a die roll is to spend from a limited luck pool before you roll, so players don’t get much influence for getting cool moments when they want to.

Rolls are adjusted by stat-based skills, of which there are a lot. Expect long lists of skills (something around 60 and 70) in eleven categories. The standard character sheet is three pages long.

Damage is often reduced heavily by armour (as long as the armour isn’t ablated), but critical hits can incapacitate quickly. This means combat usually starts slow, with everyone whittling away on each other’s armour, but is over fast, as soon as armour is gone or a few good rolls are rolled. Characters can fight with guns or melee weapons and there are rules for martial arts, too. Combat is designed for tactical maps, often run on a grid.

There are rules for various situations in the core book (driving a car, crashing a car, installing ejecting seats in a car, varying types of healing, going to the hospital, haggling prices, drowning, drugs, … the list goes on), which are even further expanded in the dozens of free DLCs R. Talsorian Games has put out over the years (hacking phones, playing a MMORPG, playing roller derby, dating, cyberchairs, drones, weather, …).

Conclusion

For me the game sits in a weird spot. The hardcore Cyberpunk fans from earlier editions and Shadowrun are calling it narrative and simple, while people coming from storytelling games will definitely call the game rules-crunchy and combat-focused (as do I).

For me the game does its job, if you want to have a typical cyberpunk experience with a combat and gear focus, without delving deep into highly complex systems. If you want the focus on the narrative and not the mechanical side of combat, more narrative cyberpunk systems might be better suited for you.

Where it truly shines is the setting. The game has been around in different shapes and forms for decades now, so it is steeped deep in lore and it shows.

Personally, I enjoy the game occasionally, but like truly narrative games too much, to stay with the game for longer than a single campaign and the occasional one-shot.

Similar Games

Below you will find a collection of other games in the Cyberpunk genre, in no particular order.