Never Fade Book Review

[Kristin Banyas]

Memoriesnever fade is the perfect vacation spot for adults and kids alike! Located at the end of a culdesac, you will feel completely secluded while being in the heart of Hochatown. Kids will be fully entertained by the half basketball court, play ground with 4 swings, rock wall and slide, arcade games, and exploring nature and the creek on the property. Adults will love the large wrap around porch with plenty of places to relax like the porch bed swing and outdoor living area, complete with a fireplace and hot tub. Spend family time around the fire pit or playing horse shoes and corn hole.

The covered grill deck is equipped with a gas grill and pellet smoker allowing you to do everything from grilling burgers to smoking a brisket.

Inside the cabin, you will find an open concept living room, well stocked kitchen with a large island, and dining table for 8. This beautiful cabin has two primary suites and a bunk room with its own full bath. The bunk room has a queen over queen bunk and a twin over twin. Each bunk has its own private TV and wireless headphones. The two primary suites each have a king bed and an en-suite bathroom complete with soaker tub, large walk in shower, and double vanity. The kitchen has a coffee pot and a Keurig.

Goto [ Index ]Cyberpunk RED is a dense, filled-to-the-brim book. (I'd love to say "no page is wasted", but we'll come to that a bit later. It's close though!) 458 pages of which are roughly split 60/40 between crunch and fluff. Its layout and design are clean and easy to read. The PDF copy also takes full advantage of being a PDF and is supremely inter-linked.

Introductory Section (pg. 17-24) and Introductory Story (pg. 5-16)

After hitting us with a vintage 2013 Johnny Silverhand tale called "Never Fade Away" (which will be picked up later through the book to give a narrative insight into what brought about the change between 2013/2020 and 2045 in a story called "The Fall of the Towers".), the book strides into a short, eight page, primer on Cyberpunk [Note: Unless otherwise noted, assume that I'm using the word "Cyberpunk" to refer to CP 2013/2020/RED and not the whole genre.], its in-universe history, roleplaying and some in-universe slang.

It is here that the great design work (A HUGE shoutout to J Gray, Irrgardless (NOT a typo. ;) ) and Adam Jury here!) made me smile for the first time: The four pages that will prime new roleplayers for their dive into Cyberpunk RED boast a sleek looking two-column design in which one column is text, and the other is filled by four "Want to know about X? Skip to Page XX" slides. And all of them are proper hyperlinks. [Technical aside: This will be repeated through the book and made reviewing AND using it to play both easy and a joy. On an iPad Pro 10.7'' with iOS 14.1 and the most recent GoodReader it was a breeze to read, comprehend and reference all across the book!]

The first four pages will generally be sufficient to get most people who have even just a surface-level interest in Cyberpunk-the-genre into the right frame of mind to start playing Cyberpunk RED. As for the short "what are RPGs" section that follows, it's bare bones but serviceable. But the directly following slang dictionary is gold for immersion.

This primer-chapter is capped off by one of my favourite bits in the book: An in-Universe 'net page with a selection of "shows to watch" and a piece of advertisement. Pages like this are strewn through the book and offer a glimpse at the day-to-day reality of the common people living in Night City 2045. They can be useful as bits you can use at the table, and some even are winks at those of us who started with 2013/2020 without being too obvious about it to people who didn't.

This is something that was common inside RPG books of the 90s and which sadly fell out of favour with most publishers as time went on. From WEG's Star Wars RPG to FASA's Battletech sourcebooks, in-universe advertisement inserts brought the settings to live in a very special, direct way. I'm glad to see this return for RED.

Character Creation Section (pg. 27-120)

The book then jumps right into character creation. Before I delve into the various components, let me just say that it is excellent. You could sit someone who never played a Cyberpunk game or even consumed any Cyberpunk-themed media in front of this alone and they'd come out the other end with a fully-fledged edgerunner. It's well laid out, it's well explained and it's easy to follow. And, most importantly, it's filled with flavour.

You are presented with three options with which to build characters: Full template, customizable template and full on point-buy. And this goes for the whole character: Stats, Skills, Equipment and even Cyberware. This is helpful in various situations: New players, pick-up games, quickly creating a rules-legal NPC. (In my test, I was able to guide three Cyberpunk RPG newbies through char-gen without any problems or consternation on either part.)

Before you get to the Stats, though, you're faced by two sets of Lifepaths: Personal and Role based. They're short, but mostly fall on the "short and sweet" side, not on the "too short" side. And they allow you to create a character that truly "slots in" the world of Cyberpunk RED.

Cyberpunk RED features 10 Roles (Rockerboys, Solos, Netrunners, Techs, Medtechs, Medias, Execs, Lawmen, Fixers and Nomads) with each Role having their very own Lifepath and Role Ability. And all of them are fun to play with. From the directly active Solo Combat Awareness to the supporting Exec Teamwork, they run the gamut of "almost their own minigame" to "let me set up things to benefit our group" and so can fit a wide range of playing styles. And yes, there's also rules for "multi-classing", which was another unexpected but positive surprise.

I have basically three gripes with this section, of varying severity. First, the Rockerboys. ... Why? Every other Role is gender neutral. It couldn't have been too hard to come up with a gender neutral term for the role. From "Rockers" to "Idols" there's a lot of room of cool and evocative terms.

Then, Charismatic Impact (the Rockerboy ability) and Maker (the Tech ability) both could have used a bit more love, writing and editing wise. Charismatic Impact is probably the most open-ended and hardest to play and to GM of the ten. And Maker was just confusing. It took me and my player a few times reading through it to fully grok how it works.

Lastly, there's the repetition. The character creation section includes slightly abridged tables of weapons, equipment and cyberware. Which are then repeated later in the book. I understand the intent, but it's a decision that made me give the book the side-eye. It's well-intentioned, but instead of having several tables duplicated inside the book, I would have preferred to excise the tables from the character creation section and use the freed up space for more lifepath content and a bit more wordcount on the Role Abilities.

The worst offender is the Fashion price table. It takes up a full page on page 102. A side-bar tells you to find out more about it on page 327. There you find about four and a half paragraphs talking about what capabilities clothing has in 2045. Then there's a side-bar telling you to find the prices of Fashion on page 356. On which you find the very same table as on page 102. ... Just, why?

I really hope that one of the first supplements will have two nice chapters on both Rockerboys and Fashion, as both are cool concepts. They're just a bit lacklustre in terms of mechanical heft and good descriptions right now.

But as I said: Those are my three major gripes. Apart from that, creating a Cyberpunk RED character is easy and fun. And can be as quick or as involved as you want it to be, depending on which of the three methods you chose.

Rules Section (pg. 125-232) and Johnny Silverhand story continuation (pg. 121-124)

"The Fall of the Towers" continues on from "Never Fade Away", and setting the scene for how Cyberpunk 2020 fell face-first into shattered glass and came out in 2045. It's followed by the main rules chapters: Skills, Combat, Netrunning and Damage/Healing.

The basic resolution system is Stat+Skill+d10(+/-Modifiers) vs. Difficulty Value. Most of the time, the DV is static, but in opposed actions your opponent creates a DV by rolling their own Stat+Skill+d10(+/-Modifiers).

There are rules for critical successes and critical failures as well as guidelines for modifiers. They even included a bit about how other skills might help the skill you intend to use. It's a solid system that doesn't take long to explain and is quick and easy to use (and fudge, if desired.).

As one nod to modern game design, characters have a Luck stat, which acts as a session-refilled pool of skill modifying points. This, too, is easy to keep track of and easy to use, as it doesn't do the myriad other things many other narrative pool points (Fate, Edge, whatever...) tend to do.

The skill list is wide and varies, allowing a wide range of character concepts to find their mechanical niche. And each skill comes with a helpful entry detailing its scope and use cases, as well as giving examples about what various stat+skill levels in a skill mean for the expertise/experience level of the characters fielding it. This is also the section that gives the detailed rules for the Role Abilities.

It's followed by "Friday Night Firefight", the combat rules chapter. And just as the general rules, the combat rules are also straightforward, well explained, filled with examples and devoid of needless clutter and complexity. You get a move action. You get another action besides that. Rolls follow the Stat+skill+d10(+/- modifiers) vs. DV (or active defence/dodge for high-skill opponents) formula in both ranged and melee combat.

You also get rules for unusual damage sources, armour, cover and even vehicle combat.

Placed a bit oddly but still welcome is the inclusion of Reputation and a quick and dirty "social combat" system that allows high-rep characters to stare down their opposition. It's barely two pages, yet it's something that feels thematically right and satisfying.

Then we come to Netrunning. Probably the most complex and rules intensive part of the book. (As many of you probably already expected.) But, while this is true, it's still not actually complicated. Cyberpunk 2020 already had the genius idea of using crossword puzzles as nodes, and RED takes this one step further: You have floors. Each floor has a door. Behind those doors are your files, passwords, ICE and other surprises. Go down floor, open door, deal with things behind door. Repeat.

And due to lore reasons, Netrunners MUST be physically present when hacking into a node. But are also able to hack and do physical actions in tandem.

While I see the clear and obvious advantages of doing it like this, it almost feels a bit too reductive to me. I expect (and hope) that a Netrunner dedicated sourcebook or even a chapter or two in a Tech related sourcebook might bring back more involved options. But, in a second reversal, this might actually get players to WANT to play a Netrunner, so ignore my "I LIKE cool and involved hacking rules!"-grognard-grumpiness.

Now, for this sections weirdness: Drones. They're here. But they're neither called that, nor are they anywhere to be found in the index. Instead, look for "Active Defenses" at the end of the Netrunning chapter (pg. 213ff). I admit, I feel a bit miffed that they're getting shafted like this. You get two swarms, two ground drones, two air drones and two types of "turrets". Basically, all their rules are two and a half paragraphs and whatever text fit into two tables. I really hope that a future sourcebook will flesh this out a bit. Both in quantity as well as in mechanical intricacy. (Having the Tech and Nomad both be able to do something with them as opposed them being just a Netrunner appendix might have been a cool idea.)

Capping this section of the book is the chapter on damage, healing, drugs, therapy and Cyberpsychosis; called "Trauma Team". Following the trend set by the chapters before: Well and concisely written, easy to understand and easy to use. And please don't mistake missing "frills" as being somehow "lesser". Both these rules and the ones coming before have benefited from the way they were written: They're all clear and concise and understandable and well supported by examples where needed.

It was one of the very few RPGs where a night of concentrated reading before game-day allowed me to run a session without having to reference the book at all during play.

Full marks and bonus credit for this feat!

Section on History, Current State, Night City and Everyday Life (pg. 233-332)

Cyberpunk RED neatly slots into the final Corporate War campaign for Cyberpunk 2020. It takes this campaign and continues to define itself out of those events. There are no speed-bumps in the way.

And while this is my favourite section, this will be the shortest part of this review, because if I were to start going through all that happened and is happening and might/will continue to happen in the world surrounding Night City, I'll be here next month.

Cyberpunk RED does not retcon its own 1980s and 1990s. It fully embraces that it's an Alternate Universe to our world, and for me this is a good thing. I had feared that in a misguided sense of "staying relevant" RTal might try to redefine the past of their universe to contain more of our real history. But they didn't. They stayed true to the stories and characters that came before.

And it doesn't take away from Cyberpunk's political message and underlying social commentary. It actually helps to accentuate it. Without involving real-life socio-political groups, it can use in-universe proxies to hammer home points without invoking any reflexive defensive mechanisms in people. Rather like the Klingon Empire allowed Star Trek TOS, Movie and early TNG Era writers to comment on the state of relations between NATO and Warsaw Pact nations.

Cyberpunk RED has its own history. Its own language. Its own voice. Its own look. And when you start reading, you will be deep inside Night City before long, because it's engaging. You want to dive in and experience live in this world of mohawks, mirrorshades and post-holocaust survival under gleaming starscrapers and neon advertisements.

Equipment Section (pg. 333-386)

Not too much to say about this section. There's guns (with a fun twist on the "poor", "normal" and "good" quality side of things!), armour, fashion, cyberware...

Oh, yeah. Cyberware.

It's cool. It's chrome. It's fun. It's detrimental to your psyche. It's part of everyday life for the everyday citizen.

There's been a few welcome tweaks: 'Ware that simply replaces lost limbs and/or is cosmetic only doesn't cost you any of your Humanity. It's a nice touch that people with prosthetics aren't made less human any more. (Even though there are still some few weird edge cases: Implanted colour changing lenses don't cost you any humanity. But buying an option that makes your cybereyes change colour DOES.)

And for the rest, this book offers a really nice selection of cyberware for various applications. From the mundane like combat to the more specialized like a Deus Ex:HR/MD style Voice Stress Analyzer.

I also really like how far they went with the "Base 'ware" + "Slots" idea, so that for stuff that goes into your Neural Link, Eyes, Ears, Hands, Feet, Arms and Legs you can't just go full swiss-army knife but have to choose what to prioritize.

Gearheads and people itching to chip in will be happy here.

GM Section (pg. 387-424)

First of: I'm not on-board with Maximum Mike's puritanical approach as to what's the "best" way to run Cyberpunk. It fell flat for me in the 90s and it continues to fall flat for me nowadays. Your mind may very much vary.

But... But!

Here's a section on how to construct Cyberpunk adventures by constructing a skeleton made out of "beats". And it's amazing. I'm a Gm with way too many years of experience, and a deep connection to both Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. And I still found this an amazing idea that I'll be mining and expanding upon for many years to come.

This is something that's a great resource for both new and old GMs and can help with creating both short one-shots as well as campaign arcs.

There's also a really good section on antagonists, a wide array of easy to use NPCs and a cool set of random encounter tables. As well as the section for character improvement. Another weird choice of placement. I'd have put that at the end of the character creation section, to be frank. A reason why it might be hiding here, at the tail end of the book, is because it's paired with an optional, player-centric XP-handling system I haven't encountered in this form before: Let the player determine if they fall in one of four archetypes and use this as a guide to how many Improvement Points they receive.

I'm not sure if I'll be using it, but it does sound intriguing. So, I might tinker with it on my own time.

Scream Sheets, "Black Dog" Story and Index (425-458)

Three Scream Sheets that are both cool hand-outs as well as one-page adventures cap the book.

They are followed by a short story called "Black Dog", which is almost an example of play and which introduces us to a set of six characters that were inspired by real life people who inspired the RTal crew and who are a cool, diverse bunch of bad-asses.

The story shows how a group of punks lives, acts and survives in the "here and now" of 2045. And is a good source for a set of NPCs with their own stories and backgrounds.

We then get a Character Sheet, a Lifepath Sheet and a Cyberware Sheet followed by the (comprehensive) Index.

Final Thoughts

2020, the current RL year, made me temper my expectations. But Cyberpunk RED overachieved in almost every way. It's not a trendy new game that toys with a new form of game theory, but it's a super-solid, fun, well-written, well-edited, well-designed game that scratches the itch for Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying perfectly.

I highly recommend Cyberpunk RED.

Product SummaryName: Cyberpunk RED

Publisher: R. Talsorian Games

System: Cyberpunk (4e)

Setting: Cyberpunk / Main Timeline

Author: Mike Pondsmith, James Hutt, Cody Pondsmith, Jay Parker, J Gray, David Ackerman, Jaye Kovach

Category: RPG (virtual)

Cost: $30

Pages: 456

Year: 2020

SKU: 3001

ISBN: 978-1-950911-06-6

Cyberpunk

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November 13, 2020

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