Table-Tested Review of Cyberpunk Red’s “Hope Reborn” Campaign
I recently finished my Tales from the Red: Hope Reborn campaign after almost exactly one year and 22 sessions (16 of which were spent on the content in the book, the others were one-shots when we were a player down) and it’s time for a review! It’s a street-level campaign set in Night City 2045 so there will be a great focus on the Forlorn Hope bar and the struggles of the people around it. This is not the first time I’m reviewing Cyberpunk Red content, and I’ve had my issues with the system, but this was actually my favourite book so far.
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Before we dive in, some quick info about the book.
- Game Designer: Chris Spivey, David Ackerman, Eddy Webb, Frances Stewart, J Gray, James Hutt, Linda M Evans, Melissa Wong, Paris Arrowsmith, Tracie Hearne & Will Moss
- Publisher: R. Talsorian Games, Inc.
- System: Cyberpunk Red (d10 roll over, stat-based)
- Publication Year: 2024
- Page Count: 191
This review contains heavy spoilers for the campaign and thus should only be read by those who are sure not to play in it.
Starting the Campaign
The intro of the book is well done (including a short story as well as the history of the Forlorn Hope) and gives GMs as well as players enough info about the Forlorn Hope as a setting to create characters that fit in the setting.
When creating characters, I’d recommend that at least one player put some points into Drive Land Vehicle. Also, Cyberpunk Red isn’t a system that encourages defining relationships between characters from the get-go, so I also recommend every table to at least think about things like why they would be working together and what their individual relationships are with each other.
You could also run “Red Chrome Cargo” (found in Interface Red Vol. 1) beforehand, as it provides some extra information about the Forlorn Hope’s relationship with the Red Chrome Legion, one of the antagonist gangs (a neo-nazi gang). I used it as a tryout one-shot to see if people vibed with eachother, the system and the story before jumping into the campaign proper, and it worked well. I used the premades provided in Interface Red Vol. 1 and slapped the names of some regulars from the Forlorn Hope on them, which had the nice side effect of players already knowing some of the NPCs when we started the campaign. It’s “just” a screamsheet though (short, not many choices), so you might want to flesh it out a little before running.
Chapter 1: The Angel’s Share
Content Warnings: drugs, neo-nazis
The first part of the first chapter is a bit disconnected from the rest of the story (getting a dangerous dealer off the streets), but it sets up the Red Chrome Legion well, which will feature more in future chapters.
When they want to cash in the end of the session, they will find the Forlorn Hope in flames. There are some clock mechanics to add urgency to rescuing everyone in the building, which were implemented decently well and will also find some more use in later chapters. The chapter ends with them at the hospital and the Forlorn Hope is lost. For now.
The chapter introduces the Red Chrome Legion well, which means the previously mentioned “Red Chrome Cargo” one-shot isn’t strictly necessary for the campaign.
The book’s time estimation of 4-6 hours is about right.
Chapter 2: Real Estate Rumble
Content Warnings: involuntary human experiments, bodily autonomy, clowns
The Forlorn Hope is not about to give up, so the edgerunners are being sent to scout new locations and soon they’ll find themselves embroiled in the real estate agent’s (unwilling) feud with the Bozos (a gang of cybered up clowns).
There’s a dungeon crawl-y section that’s very flavourful (baby GRAF-3!), but it doesn’t encourage meaningful decisions very much. As a result, players tend to be reactive, rather than being able to actively make the decisions in the first part of the adventure.
The chapter also introduces Destiny, a reporter, as an NPC. She isn’t used in the rest of the campaign, but chances are good the edgerunners will befriend her and you can use her to dispense some rumours in the future.
“Real Estate Rumble” gives Netrunners and people who have put points into Demolitions (or in my table’s case - who are good at tanking grenade damage) their time to shine.
The time estimation of 6-8 hours was a bit underestimated for us; we took around 10 hours.
Chapter 3: Welcome to the Neighbourhood
Content Warnings: alcohol, drugs, funerals
More of a selection of multiple missions, this is a major part of the campaign. The characters are being paid to live in Woodland Park for a month, where the new Hope is supposed to move in. These missions range from single scenes to multi-part missions that can span a session or more:
- Rescuing a drunk guy from a flesh-eating palm tree
- Resolving a hostage situation in a local apartment building
- Defending the neighbourhood from an invading gang
- Finding some missing persons
- Filling in for a roller derby team that hasn’t been able to make the game
Playing roller derby gets its own rules which has every participant (including NPCs) assuming different roles which each have their own goals and rules. While fun, these rules are not super easy to grasp at first and I wished that at least NPCs would have had simplified rules to not bog the GM down into juggling all roles at the same time while each player only had their one role to play. I recommend giving players some kind of cheat sheet and/or having them read the rules beforehand.
The chapter works great to gradually introduce NPCs from the Hope, so the bar will actually feel like home. It’s also the perfect opportunity to add some more backstory-related content for the characters (or adjust the missions from the book to connect to them).
We spent considerably more time in this chapter (about 15-20 hours) than is approximated by the book (8-10 hours).
Chapter 4: The Devil’s Cut
Content Warnings: alcohol
The bar reopens and the one thing they still need is some nice bottles of alcohol. Unfortunately there has been a series of misfortunes to many booze collections recently which soon turns out to be less of a coincidence and more of a series of concealed thefts. Time to steal them back!
This was my favourite chapter to run, but my least favourite chapter to prep for. Information is all over the place and presented in a very linear way, while this is a very much non-linear plot. I prepared all information in a very different format than presented in the book which made running it considerably easier.
I have some experience running heists in other games (mostly Blades in the Dark and other Forged in the Dark games) so pacing the session was not much of a challenge, although it could be for those unfamiliar with the genre. There’s a long list of things the book wants the players to check out before they go in and it absolutely made the actual heist run smooth to actually nudge them into doing most of it. This preparation part of the adventure could run longer than some players experienced with Forged in the Dark games are used to.
> What are Forged in the Dark Games? Games based on Blades in the Dark are called Forged in the Dark games. Blades in the Dark focuses on heists with the mechanics enabling quick planning by streamlining inventory into on-the-go choices and preparation into flashback-based setups. Your characters have planned for everything, so the players don’t need to beforehand.
Hope Reborn introduces a similar ability to Blades in the Dark’s flashbacks: Flash of Luck. The character’s Luck points (usually used to increase a roll’s chances) can be used to make a flashback with the worth of item acquired setting the point cost. We also used Flash of Luck for flashbacks without monetary value, with much success, as Luck points are scarce enough to allow for some leeway when they want to use them.
We finished the heist in a single session (as opposed to the book’s estimation of 6-8 hours) and it went extremely well, apart from our Netrunner biting their teeth out at the net architecture's Kraken and having to play the Exec’s employees for the rest of the session. There were some extremely close calls with a series of bad rolls only mitigated by a series of really good ones while they tried to crack and empy the safe with the rockerboy fooling the guards long enough to not come down to investigate. They pulled off a perfect heist and I couldn't have been happier at the end of the session.
This could easily be played as a one-shot on its own.
Chapter 5: Hope’s Calling!!!
Content Warnings: alcohol, feces, suicide, frozen bodies, being dropped from a building
Opening Night is here and there are just a few last things that need to be done last minute. Luckily the characters can jump in! They’ll be retrieving some fresh fruits and chilies for the cocktails, make sure that the band is ready (would be a shame if someone went missing!) and make sure that the house electronics are not acting up. If they do well, they might even uncover that the Red Chrome Legion is planning to attack with 200 people. Today. But backing down is not an option for the Forlorn Hope. The doors will open.
The fight against the Red Chrome Legion took a full session and was highly enjoyable. I was hesitant at first that the numbers don’t really add up (the Forlorn Hope rolls against the Red Chrome Legion at the end of each round and it’s indeed more or less impossible for the Forlorn Hope to lose because of these rolls, assuming the players did decently well before). Considering that these rolls can end the campaign prematurely, it’s fine that the odds are stacked in favour of them. And of course there’s a whole fight - or three - happening alongside that roll, so there’s plenty to keep them on their toes! Mass combat is done really well here and it was an awesome fight with the party split between the levels of the Hope. Player feedback was that it really felt like a gang war was happening.
There is also an actual drink recipe provided! It’s highly alcoholic and spicy which wasn’t to everyone’s taste but I actually quite enjoyed it.
It’s one of the few adventures that took us on the shorter side of the estimation (8-12 hours).
Chapter 6: Ripping The Ripper
Content Warnings: involuntary human experiments, harm to animals, malnourishment, torture, drugs, blood sports
With the Red Chrome Legion defeated, the edgerunners had a little time to lick their wounds and celebrate. The ending doesn’t feel that satisfying yet though - why did the Red Chrome Legion really do it - and were they alone behind the first attack on the Hope? Apparently not!
This chapter feels a little tacked on, as Maelstrom and Ripper have barely been hinted at in the previous chapters. Seeding the information that the Red Chrome Legion aren’t working alone or have a sponsor shouldn’t be too hard to add in earlier parts of the campaign, though.
Ripper is an easy to hate end boss and they can choose if they want to con him or end him with violence. The book presents two completely different ways to resolve the last mission. It can definitely happen that the GM needs to prep both and then ends up only running one. Which can be a bummer.
The con way, the “busan backdoor”, is kind of just telling the players exactly what to do and say, instead of giving the players freedom to make their own plan. There is a little blurb about letting the players do their thing, though, and reuse whatever is already there if in any way possible. Is it good adventure design that makes running the game easy on the GM? Maybe not. Is there an easy solution within the constraints of this being Cyberpunk Red? Also maybe not.
We did the violence way, where the edgerunners go into the Hot Zone to end things right there. Walking through the Hot Zone with some ambiance sounds in the background and the mini events from the book was one of the highlights in our campaign and had us wishing for more moments that really showed off Night City as good as this. Ripper’s hideout is a proper dungeon crawl, and it was done well, with meaningful choices to make and multiple possible endings.
One minor gripe I had was that it tells you to do an ambush in a certain situation, but the only ambush rules are in the Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit (and it also doesn’t tell you that it can be found there), so if you don’t own that, you’re out of luck. But that part is easily ignored.
The time estimation of 6-8 hours is about right.
What Went Well
We ended the campaign with descriptions of the afterparty and epilogues to the next 5 years and 10 years in the edgerunner’s lives. These were somewhat hopeful at first and got bittersweet and downright depressing real quick for the 10 year look into the future. The only one alive after the 10 years epilogue was the Exec, who became the exact thing she had fought against. So totally in genre! I love well done endings in campaigns and these are the things I run games for.
I very much enjoyed running Hope Reborn and most of the issues we ran into were with the system itself, not the campaign. The time approximations were sometimes a bit off by session, but overall it took us about as long as the higher bound said it would (the official approximations are 38-53 hours). Having read many Cyberpunk Red books, it’s clear they have learnt from their previous publications and compared to Street Stories and some screamsheets this has superior quality in many ways: skill checks are more guided, NPC interactions are more clearly laid out, there’s flowcharts and there is generally more freedom for player decisions.
It has fun new mechanics (like Flash of Luck, which I will definitely keep using in my Cyberpunk Red campaigns and basebuilding rules that sadly don’t become relevant during the campaign itself), intriguing places to check out (the Hot Zone being our favourite) and NPCs to fall in love with.
Player feedback tended to be positive.
Some Difficulties
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though.
The intros to the adventures were often a bit uninteractive as written, with multiple long “read-aloud” parts that are just way too much GM monologue instead of being modular and easy to reference, depending on the player’s inputs to the conversation. In “The Devil’s Cut” what should be a single dialogue is even split over multiple of their “beats”/subchapters. This is something Cyberpunk Red often suffers from and I was often just wishing for a simple question/answer format.
Some special events had countdowns and special things to track, occasionally even more than one thing at once - for better or worse. These added interesting mechanics, but it also piled onto the workload of the GM.
The adventure has abbreviated stat blocks for less important enemies. While quicker to read, they also brought their difficulties, due to missing stats and some number-weirdness that using their combat-number for everything brought.
And while this book got considerably better at not railroading players into certain things than some previous publications, there still were places where the book tended to tell finished stories, instead of problems for the players to solve on their own.
It’s also quite combat heavy. While there surely are a lot of places you can place some non-combat interactions, they often aren’t explicitly written in and it usually falls to the GM to facilitate a good mix of combat and roleplaying interactions depending on the table’s preferences.
Conclusion
Overall, there weren’t any unsolvable problems and I can recommend picking up the book if you’re looking for a Cyberpunk Red campaign and don’t mind a bit of combat focus. For me the length of the campaign is in a sweet spot of long enough to create meaningful character arcs and short enough to finish before burning out or life getting in the way. As written it’s a decent experience and with some extra work it can be something really great.
