An Endzeitgeist.com review

This RPG clocks in at 336 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 4 pages character sheet, 4 pages of index, 2 pages of author comments (which are actually fun to read!), leaving us with 320 pages devoted to the game, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a hardcover in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. I have consulted both the hardcover, and the pdf (v.1.2) for the purposes of this review. It was also requested to be released in time for the new Netflix series by one of my patreon supporters, so here we go!

Okay, so before we take a closer look at the mechanics, let us make a few things clear: The timeline of the RPG is set right before the Witcher 3, which makes sense, as it means that the political landscape is at its most volatile; the book btw. does have a detailed “checklist” kind of thing for important decisions that influence the metaplot, so that’s a definite plus. As you can glean from the game artworks, the RPG tends to be closer to the videogames than the books, though, if you’re like me and enjoy them, you’ll be happy to hear that, if you’re like me and prefer certain monsters to be susceptible to meteorite steel, rather than silver, the RPG has you covered.

Speaking of videogames: This is a pretty important notion from the get-go: You don’t play Geralt of Riva; you are not the legendary witcher; you can be a witcher, but you’re no lone wolf; you play as a group. As such, not everybody will be a witcher. This might sound odd, but it is important: This is a team-based RPG, not a solo-player experience, and as such, classes like the Craftsman or Bard are very much important, if perhaps slightly less “sexy” at first glance than the witcher, particularly considering that witchers are REALLY unpopular everywhere. The witcher should, as a general notion, pretty much never do the talking.

Which brings me to a second important note: This is NOT D&D or Pathfinder. This is NOT about high-fantasy. And since you don’t play Geralt or similar superstars of the Witcher world, the focus of the stories told will focus on grittier themes, with politics coming second; combat is NOT the main focus of this game, even though it does have an engine that can allow for pretty tactical altercations.

These two observations are entwined: Witchers are combat monsters, but without Geralt’s improved reputation (bear in mind, he does have renown far and wise and is treated better than his fellows – now picture what less-famous witchers go through!), lone witchers will definitely need help succeeding at their tasks. It is very much possible to play this game without a witcher in the party, and do things other than monster-killing. In short: You have to distance yourself from this idea of the lone witcher than can do everything; in these ways, the RPG hearkens closer to the books, which rather often face Geralt not only with human adversaries that can best him, but also see him rely more often on others – simply courtesy of the genre.

To clarify my position regarding the Witcher franchise: I am a HUGE Witcher fanboy. I have devoured all the books, and Witcher 3 is my favorite video game ever. (Even though I preferred Witcher 2’s more brutal, difficult and skill-based combat, and wish the quality of the DLC bosses had been implemented in the main game as well.) If you need to know, I think that “Deathmarch” is definitely the way to go when experiencing Witcher 3. But I digress. To summarize: This is a game for a group, and it very much is built in a way that emphasizes that; it is not high fantasy, and your adventures should reflect that. The latter point is pretty crucial, considering ho prevalent high fantasy as a RPG-genre is. Okay, are you intrigued? As a huge fan of dark fantasy whose games tend to gravitate in that direction, this theme is right up my alley.

While we’re on the topic of the videogames: The book begins with a recap of the history of the world of The Witcher, including an in-character summary by Rodolf Kazmer (called, hilariously, “Rodolk” in a bookmark); he and Brandon of Oxenfurt are two of the characters that add their own takes as in-character narrators and lighten up the reading experience. And before you ask: Yes, a series of iconic characters are fully statted: Geralt, Yennefer, Dandelion, Zoltan, Triss, Vernon, Iorveth and Letho get full stats as iconic characters – before the game explains its rules. Regarding sequence of presentation, I think that starting off with the world’s history and assumptions of the genre vs. high fantasy, as the game does, was a smart call; however, that out of the way, I think explaining the basics would have been smart. Also, I really hate it when NPC stats are clearly presented in sections that players read – the stats of these NPCs should be in the bestiary in the back.

As far as complexity is concerned, The Witcher RPG is not as complex as Pathfinder, but it is significantly more complex than the more rules-lite old-school systems; as a whole, I’d consider it to be mid-tier in complexity, somewhere adjacent to 5e or DCC, with a less granular magic system, but a more tactical combat engine.

So, what about the mechanics? The Witcher uses two dice – d10s and d6s, with d10s rarely used as d%, but that’s all you need to run the game – I’ll return to that in the combat section. The game uses a heavily-modified iteration of the Interlock system.

Character creation is a 7-step process, and begins with picking your race, with rules for elves, humans, dwarves and witcher provided. However, this section is prefaced with social standing – depending on the territory you’re in, you can be equal, tolerated, feared, or hated, with “feared” being special in that it can be paired with “hated.” A quick glance at the table shows you that the North is actually the least equal land out there; humans are hated in Dol Blathanna and tolerated in Mahakam, Elves are hated in the North, and dwarves are actually equal everywhere, except in the North, where they are only tolerated. Witchers? They are both hated AND feared in both the North and Nildgaard, and only tolerated in Skellige and the non-human realms. Mages are only treated as equals in Dol Blathanna…so yeah, the fact that this is the FIRST thing you see, should give you a good idea how important this factor is.

As for races, these generally have 3 perks (with Witchers being an exception) that are positive; Witchers have a stunted Empathy statistic (the game’s nomenclature for the equivalent of ability scores), capping at 6, minimum 1. These perks generally provide skill bonuses of +1 to +2; dwarves are thick-skinned, with a kind of natural armor of 2 SP (SP = stopping power). While you create the character, skills cap at 6, with a maximum cap of 10 – however, the choices made regarding races do actually allow you to go beyond these caps. Here is a bit of an issue: The game does not state how this works in the context of leveling up: If you, for example, are an aen seidhe, an elf, you gain +2 to Archery. Let’s say, you have an Archery of 7, so 5 +2 race perk. If you now want to increase that by 1, does this cost improvement points equal to the increase to 6, or is the cost required 8? Is the perk bonus added after improvement, or before? I assume the former is true, but the book does not explicitly state this.

This different focus also can be seen by the emphasis on the social context – depending on your race, your lifepath is of serious importance, and after you determine your country of origin (which is contingent on race) and your homeland (which nets you skill boosts), you also have to determine the state of your family, and what may have happened to them – there are tables for this, and it matters, big time. Same goes for determining your status in the society, and your most influential friend. Each of these tables provides a column for the Northern Realms, Nilfgaard, and elderland – so no, skelligers will have to use the northern table. Since death in the Witcher RPG is permanent, the module suggests using the (mostly) large families of particularly humans as good ways of introducing backup characters. For every 10 years of your life, you roll for life events – 1-4 = fortune or misfortune, 5-7 the forming of allies and enemies, and 8-10 deals with romance. Fortunes can have mechanical repercussions, or provide potent roleplaying boons (like a tamed wild animal, etc., a favor with a mage, etc.), while the bad things can include anxiety attacks, being feared or cursed, etc. I was slightly disappointed by the romance-section not having at least a small table for the (very rare!9 happy love affair, but more importantly, why is there no table for whores and debauchery?

Indeed, this may be one of the most puzzling oversights of the system – there are no carousing rules in the RPG, when that is obviously an important component of the narrative fabric of the franchise. That being said, the RPG also has a generator for determining your personal style.

After this, you choose the equivalent of the class – in this RPG, this is called the profession – obviously, if you’re a witcher, this choice is already fixed – witcher doubles as both profession and race. Each of the professions has a defining signature skill, a skill package, and a list of gear to choose from. If you’re playing a magical character, you also get a Vigor rating. The professions are bard, craftsman, criminal, doctor, mage, man at arms, merchant, priest, and witcher. Class-wise, there is one glaring oversight that has been relegated to the mini-expansion for the game that accompanies the GM-screen: The default game has no noble-rules, and makes mages the default courtly folks. That…bothered me more than it should have.

Having chosen this profession, we have to get to the statistics: There are 9 of those, and the game lets you choose the power-level of your characters via point-buy, providing suggestions ranging from average characters to legends. The game also explains what stat-levels mean. The statistics are Intelligence (INT), Reflexes (REF), Dexterity (DEX), Body (BODY), Speed (SPD), Empathy (EMP), Craft (CRA), Will (WILL), Luck (LUCK). Luck is special – before making a skill roll, you can expend any number of luck points, adding +1 per point added. These points refresh at the start of each session.

From these, you derive further statistics: Vigor is a threshold – it’s the total cost in Stamina (STA) of all the spells you can cast/maintain in a given round; exceed that, and you take damage. Stun is a save number – rolling under this number, divided by 10. Nonlethal damage lowers this number. Run is SPD x3; Leap is a tactical movement, and is the Run value divided by 5 – it’s also how far you jump.

HP, STA, REC (how much HP you regain per bed rest), and Stun are determined by adding BODY + WILL, and dividing this by 2, then correlating the value with a table. Body also influences melee damage bonus and hand to hand damage caused.

Now, the most meaty part is the skills: The first 11 skills are taken from the profession’s skill package and you get to split 44 skill points between them; you must put at least 1 point in each of these skills. Beyond this, you get Intelligence + Reflex Pick Up Skills that you have picked up at one point. Some skills are harder to pick up, and have a cost of (2) noted – these require 2 skill points per level. To upgrade, so upgrading Alchemy from 7 to 8 would cost 14 points. It should be noted that archery, crossbows, spears,. Etc. – all are skills. You roll a d10, add the skill’s statistic and the skill, and try to get ABOVE the DC. Meeting the DC does not suffice. Sample DCs are provided, and modifier examples based on circumstances are provided. The attentive reader will notice that this makes characters pretty reliably competent in what they do – this is not a bug, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always considered the “5% of something going horribly wrong”-angle to be a bit weird. However, if you want that type of D&Dish uncertainty, or simply are used to it, you might at first be taken aback by the fact that you sometimes won’t actually have to roll, and that luck isn’t as important. (Funnily enough, the example given for opposed skills illustrates this rather well – so yeah, definitely a feature and not a bug!)

Character advancement is handled via I.P. (Improvement Points) – these are used to learn new skills, improve old ones, and Teaching and book-learning are actually efficient! Raising statistics is btw. costly – 10 times the level of the statistic. Okay, is that the CURRENT level of the statistic, or is that the level of the statistic to which you want to raise it? The book should have specified that. IP is awarded not for monster slaying – but for doing something impressive, something out of the box, for participating often and efficiently, etc. – nice!

Well, Before, I mentioned the signature skills of professions, right? Well, each of these skills has a base ability, and three specialization branches, which present different focuses. These sport progressively better, unique ability, and within each specialization, must be attained in order. The difference between the different specializations is pretty damn pronounced – The surgeon treat of the doctor’s healing hands focuses on diagnosis, analysis, etc., while the anatomist can inflict bleeding wounds, halve wound healing speed with particularly nasty wounds and learn to execute even crippling wounds! These specializations btw. might have different statistics associated with them – for the Criminal, thieves can e.g. memorize locks and tumbler positions, which is based on INT, while an assassin’s eye gouge attack is based on DEX. Man at Arms can become marksmen, reavers or bounty hunters – in essence, these skill trees could be thought of as archetypes or class kits. These are NOT mutually exclusive, though!

After that, it’s just equipment that needs to be sorted out: Witcher knows 4 damage types (Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning, and Elemental), and well-crafted weapons have an optional bonus to hit, denoted by WA (Weapon Accuracy), they also have an availability, and a Reliability rating – this is the number of times you can block before the weapon breaks. Each weapon also notes its ability to be concealed, weight, and cost. Finally, weapons note how many slots for runes they have. These are weird – why does a dagger have none, but a stiletto has one?

Combat is lethal: Damage for swords ranges from 2d6+2 to 6d6, and there are descriptions provided for them all, with descriptors like long reach, ability to focus magic, etc. included. So yeah, gear is important, and good gear is great – however, you need to be careful and regularly maintain it – Craftsmen will be very popular. Armor, as noted before, stops damage, and can theoretically be layered, though this is not an advisable strategy; important: The Witcher differentiates between head, torso and leg armor. Kits, services and the like are covered as well.

Initiative is 1d10 + REF, with ties going to the players. You can improve this via fast draws, +3 to initiative, -3 to atk for the first round, and you MUST attack – so no aiming etc. Combat knows regular wounds, and critical wounds – the latter are potentially deadly, crippling, and will make you really congratulate yourself for sticking at least relatively close to a doctor or mage. Combat assumes 3-second rounds, and you can make fast or slow attacks (ranged weapons are limited), and STA may be spent for an additional attack or defensive action. Since attack rolls are executed with d10s, and so are defensive actions, skills are pretty important. Humanoid and monster damage locations are included, and cover types get their own SP-values.

You can use your action to make 2 fast or one strong attack, cast magic, initiate verbal combat, run (SPDx3), you can actively dodge, you can aim, take a Recovery Action to replenish STA (or HP out of combat), or Aim. Attacks that damage you also deteriorate your armor, and damage explodes – both in a positive and negative way. 1s mean you reroll, and subtract the rerolled number from yours; 10s mean that you get to roll again, and add the result of the reroll. Subsequent 1s and 10s do btw. stack. Critical wounds are incurred by beating the Defense of the target by 7 (simple), 10 (complex), 13 (difficult) or 15 (deadly), and in addition to the specific effects from their own tables, these inflict bonus damage. Yep, not only can damage explode, the nuanced critical wounds system makes serious injuries…well…serious. My one complaint here, is that we’re pretty much left with only humanoid-centric tables; no guidance is provided for creatures with a different anatomy. On the plus side, the game does differentiate between stabilizing and treating wounds.

The game knows a wound threshold, which is contingent on the Max Health – when your HP goes below it, you halve your REF, DEX, INT and WILL. Rules for various critical hits and prosthetics are provided as well – kudos: The book mentions Götz von Berlichingen as an example of a prosthetic-wearing badass. (And yes, the “Ö” is correct here – the book calling the fellow “Gotz” is not), and magical combat follows the same paradigm. The book also comes with optional Adrenaline rules, which nets you adrenaline dice when you score critical hits. As noted before, social interaction is supplemented by a verbal combat engine – the engine is solid, but I’d have preferred it to be a bit more detailed, have more things that can be done with adrenaline.

Mage spells have, as noted before, a Stamina cost, a range, a duration, and are grouped in three categories – novice, journeyman and master spells, and they use the classic 4 elements; Druids and preachers have the same 3-class division for their spells, but there are also arch priest invocations, which are only rarely taught and usually the purview of powerful individuals and/or saints. Rituals follow the same guiding principle, but also require components and DCs to meet to successfully cast them – artifact compression, golem crafting etc. fall under this category. There obviously are the signs, and Hexes are formulaic short-term curses; curses are plot devices. In case you were wondering: novice, journeyman/master determines the I.P. required to learn the magic; this takes time and checks versus a Learning DC.

Crafting is easily one of my favorite aspects herein – you need to ascertain you have the diagram, the ingredients, and then can craft the item – this engine covers basic crafting materials, hides and animal parts, alchemical treatments and components, etc. You pay half the item’s price in Investment cost, listed conveniently in the diagrams. These are btw. once more classified as novice, journeyman and master...but here, we also have grandmaster diagrams. Scavenging and repair is pretty darn important if you want to survive in The Witcher, so yeah – elegant, granular, like this one. Alchemy follows a similar angle, with the 9 basic components (Vitriol, Rebis, Aether, Quebrith, Hydragenum, Vermilion, Sol, Caelum, Fulgur) and items/monster parts noted – one look at the vitriol table, for example, nets you the knowledge that they can be found in nekker teeth, barley or troll hide. The game does not only faithfully render the whole crafting/alchemy component, it also emphasizes something I haven’t seen done this well: The loot-game aspect is strong (considering the differences in e.g. sword-damage output), but MAINTAINING the gear is actually not that simple. I love that – it adds grit and a survival aspect to the game. Spending all your gold on a single sword is a BAD idea – what help will it be once it falls apart because you can’t afford to maintain it? Big kudos there.

After this, the book provides an overview of the regions of the world of the witcher, and then proceeds to provide salient GM-advice, which includes advice on encounter scaling, rewards, tables for random possessions, how to handle min-maxers in a non-adversarial manner, as well as campaign advice.

Really annoying: All rules for witchers show up THEN. Not where all the PC information is, oh now – after the GM advice. This is, organization-wise, really, really annoying. That being said, the Hunt-engine should probably be in the GM-section, while the witcher gear section should be in the player part of the supplement. After this somewhat misplaced section, we get runes for magic runes and rune-based item enhancement (which should imho be in the equipment section), and in the same chapter, we have unique magic items, the relics…which are well-placed in the more GM-centric part of the book. After this, we have a short bestiary that includes stats for bandits, commoner knowledge/superstitions, academic and/or witcher knowledge, etc. – vulnerabilities are noted. This section is pretty comprehensive, though the only vampire included, as one of the most potent creatures herein, is the katakana. Cats, horses etc. also get stats.

Finally, there is a brief introductory scenario – “To all a Good Night.” This scaenario deals with vanishing children, has a political angle, and formally, features both read-aloud text, and the adventure establishes themes, difficulty, etc. rather well. The module comes with not necessarily good-looking, but plentiful maps of the entire town – manor, tavern, standard homes, etc. – all covered, and all presented in a player-friendly manner. Kudos.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. While I noticed a few guffaws, the book is fully functional as presented. Layout adheres to a 2-column full-color standard, with each chapter featuring a differently-colored border, and information in sidebars. Artworks are taken mostly from concept art from the video-games: Fans of Gwent will recognize them. The artworks are high quality, though the endrega-artwork is oddly pixilated in my copy. The hardcover is a sturdy book and withstood the rigors of life with me well so far. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Cody and Lisa Pondsmith deliver a surprisingly cool licensed RPG here – licensed RPGs are often not that interesting, but this book not only manages to depict the world of the Witcher in a faithful manner, but does so well. The systems, particularly the alchemy and crafting components, show a dedication to things different from slaying things that is super-refreshing to see. The focus to tell different fantasy stories than in default fantasy games? Great. That being said, as you could see above, there are a couple of instances, where the rules could be a tad clearer.

Same goes for the layout and how it presents information and the sequence of information - sidebars somethings are fluff-commentary, sometimes crucial rules, etc. These should be visually more distinct from each other - I don't know, scrolls, different colors...something. That'd also liven up the comparably muted aesthetics of the book.

The main achievement of the game, though, is that it plays differently from the big fantasy games – neither 5e, nor PFRPG, nor the OSR-games, nor GURPS or WFRPG/Zweihänder, etc. play anything remotely like this game – The Witcher feels like a breath of fresh air in many ways in many of its components.

There is a lot to love about The Witcher; you can try it for FREE via the Demo dubbed “Easy Mode”, and if you’re looking for a change of pace, this certainly delivers. As per the writing of this review, I am hoping that we’ll get a full-blown campaign-book and/or further adventures and monsters – a monster/NPC book with further beasts and stats for Impera brigade etc. would be greatly appreciated – the game’s most significant obstacle right now is that it can’t lean on a wealth of adventures that teach adventure-crafting for the game, when the group-focus (in opposition to the videogame’s single-player experience) as well as the themes diverging from high fantasy could see some less experienced GMs struggle.

As a whole, there is a lot about this game that I love, but there also are more components of it than I’d like to see that could use minimal finetuning. As such, my final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This introduction to the Witcher RPG clocks in at 32 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 30 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested to be moved up in my queue by my patreon supporters.

We begin this book with a brief, boiled down recap of the world of the Witcher, with the sidebar giving further guidance – in case you were wondering, the very first page has the editorial information on the sides.

These basics out of the way (and they are relevant), we learn how to read the character sheet on one page, before we actually do get sample characters: A witcher, a dwarven criminal, a human mage, a human man-at-arms, an elven bard, a dwarven doctor, and a one-page version of the main game’s lifepath engine – easier to digest, as only the northern realms are covered.

You don’t need to understand ANY rules so far – you can just pick a pregen and be done with it – or you’ll have an understanding of what your character sheet means. Didactically, this sequence is smart….and similarly, the module proceeds to explain the basics of the game: You essentially only need d6s and d10s, and basic terms are properly explained. Yes, this includes stating that the “0” of the d10 is actually a “10” and not a “0”. This section is dense, but it is also rather easy to grasp.

To make a skill check, you roll 1d10 and add the Skill Base – which often can become pretty high! Competence is more important than in your average d20-based game, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. The Standard DCs (the pdf probably should note that this stands for “difficulty class”) range from 10 to 30, just fyi. If a character beats the DC, they succeed; if they only roll equal to or less than it, they fail. Opposing checks are opposed rolls, and there are modifiers, which range from mild (+1/-1) to major (+5/-5), and yes, examples are provided. 1s and 10s on skill checks explode: If you roll a 1, you roll again, and subtract the number from the result; if you roll a 10, you get to roll again and add the number – this makes potentially catastrophic failures and legendary luck very much possible, and can make combat etc. rather dangerous. Why? Well, weapons etc. are skills as well!

Saves are handled by rolling 1d10, and trying to roll under the character’s Save value.

The game knows 9 ability scores, called “statistics” in the game’s parlance, which include Intelligence, Reflexes, Dexterity, Body, Speed, Empathy, Craft, Will, and Luck. All statistics and skills are briefly explained.

Combat assumes rounds that take 3 seconds, and you roll 1d10 + Reflex to determine initiative order. You can move up to your Speed statistic per round, and perform a single action – these can be attacks, casting, item, movements or skill uses. Difficult terrain or circumstances instead use the Leap value to determine. Wait, what? Yep, apart from Save, Vigor, Leap, HP, Sta (Stamina) and Rec (Recovery) are derived statistics – if this pdf has a single downside, then it would be that these derived statistics are not explained. That being said, this is probably an intentional decision here.

However, know what this does do? It explains how combat works swiftly and precisely (and yes, you get different attacks (strong/fast), different defensive options, and provides the rules for critical wound healing, as well as a means to do so sans having the doctor pregen in the party. Combat is appropriately gritty, grimy, and lethal – and yes, there are effects, such as burning, bleed, etc.

Magic uses the skill system as well, and magic costs Stamina; additionally, there is the Vigor-threshold – if the total Stamina cost exceeds that number, the mage starts taking serious damage from the destructive magic channeled! The pdf provides the Crafting rules for the items featured by the pregens, and then proceeds to present a page of GM-advice before providing the demo-scenario “Still Waters.” This module takes up a lot of real estate, and justifiably so – it features read-aloud text, has means to solve a lot of issues nonviolently (with the full RPG, you could use the Verbal Combat rules) – it is all about a simple task: Fleeing the Nilfgaardian tide across the Pontar, now that Vizima has fallen. Hah. Simple. Hint: It’s not. Not when scoia’tael and drowner and the massive Ponar are involved. The themes are strong, we get a full-color map (which is 100% player-friendly!!), and better yet, the module actually manages to be nonlinear while indirectly quoting one of the classic Witcher stories. In short: It’s an excellent demo-scenario.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to a two-column full-color standard, with color-coding for chapters and sidebars used to convey further information. The artworks are top tier; the cartography is nice, if slightly less impressive, and the pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks for your convenience.

Cody Pondsmith and J Gray deliver one of the best pen and paper RPG demos I’ve seen so far: The rules herein allow you to dip your toes into The Witcher RPG without leaving anything truly out: This is a thoroughly HONEST, condensed version of the game. It does not include every rule, obviously, but it includes everything you need to run the game. And that is awesome. It also does not try to be something it’s not. Know how, quite often, the free offerings for a game tend to be prestige objects, with the proper games falling behind? That’s not the case here. I have the full RPG-book right here, and the Easy Mode provides a reliable means to determine whether the game is for you and your group. I really, really enjoy that.

Oh, and yes, this is FREE. It costs zilch, zero, nada.

That is not only fair, it is awesome. The Witcher RPG’s Easy Mode is an excellent demo of the surprisingly powerful engine of the game – and for what it is, it gets 5 stars + seal of approval. If the game even remotely interests you, I’d suggest downloading this right now.

Endzeitgeist out.

Really like this, its simple effective combat/skills system which supports; good character growth and back story, the setting is efficient and brutal they marry up well. its very accessible to new players as well. It reminds me of chaosium's Elric and the  various Conan rpgs but its a better system all round. Many of you might recall cyberpunk 2020, this is essentially the same thing adapted for this setting.

Wonderful art and well put together. For a jumpstart "preview" kit of the upcommin RED edition - this is a wonderful product for the price.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

Night City is a 184-page sourcebook, with two pages devoted to interior cover/editorial/TOC, leaving us with a mighty 182 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a print copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. I am going to break my usual format big time in this review, so a few things: The book features b/w-artworks and maps, two-column standard, and the layout is great. The print copy is a softcover, and ridiculously inexpensive for the amount of content provided.

So, first things first – this book is pretty rules-lite: While there are fully statted NPCs herein alongside encounter suggestions/hooks/random encounters, the majority of this book is a sourcebook – one, as you open the pages, chock full with maps. Most of these are isometric, namely the ones for the city blocks; when e.g. maps of other environments are concerned, like Mallplexes etc., we instead have the traditional top-down view. The maps also includes some blank maps sans keys, so you can use those to design your own neighborhoods.

…you don’t care particularly about that, right? Okay, so, Night City is a city that never was (in our world), but something odd has happened in the time since 1991, when this book was released. Let me go on a brief tangent: When I first read 1984, I was but a kid, but even back then, the Orwellian nightmare depicted seemed cartoonish to me, a recipe for a steady flux of revolts and rebellions. When, not long after, I read “Brave New World”, I was utterly horrified by Huxley’s vision; if you’re not familiar with the vision – think about replacing soma, the wonder-drug and control mechanism in the book with media, and you’ll have some frightening. His theory of control for ruling classes requiring the consent of masses, which would need sedation, being divided, crucial information lost in a flood of irrelevant drivel with clever propaganda…whenever I see the sheer amount of adorable puppy/kitten-videos on youtube, something within me quakes and shivers…because I love them as well, and because I very much realize how successful these strategies are. As an aside: There btw. is an informative interview from 1958 with the man on youtube.

What does that have to do with Night City? Well, more than any other RPG-book I’ve read, it feels prophetic. When it was released, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, many of its visions were dystopian…where today, I’d consider the city depicted herein more of an allotopia, an alternate version of our world, that is at once worse and better than ours.

In a way, cyberpunk as a genre is always about the anxiety of being shoehorned into a system; more than in any other literary genre, the “punk” aspect, the anxiety regarding Randian visions and corporate oligarchies very much are central leitmotifs for the genre, whereas aesthetically, cyberpunk often is a kind of retro-science fiction; in the case of the 1980s and early 90s, a genre about the feat of lack of corporate accountability, loss of privacy, dehumanizing technology, a society bursting apart into classes, deeply divided by a stream of electronic diversions that help us cope with a dog-eat-dog world where empathy is a luxury few can afford. All the surveillance via cred-chips and on the respective internet substitutions? Don’t they pale in comparison to what big data companies, facebook, google, etc. can do?

In a way, to modern, 21st century aesthetics, cyberpunk-themes, like its aesthetics, are starker, clearer – neon glow and black trenchcoats, a(n un-) healthy dose of ultraviolence…edgerunners/shadowrunners vs. corporate/”the man”…but is it actually more dystopian that internet lynchmobs driving people to commit suicide based on allegations? Is it more frightening than the decentralized social media-powered mob-rule, the conflict between ideologies and news spun in various ways, obscuring any semblance of a reliable narrative? In many ways, Cyberpunk’s aesthetics have developed from a frightening dystopia to something I genuinely considered to be less frightening than the realities we all face on a daily basis; it now feels like an alternate reality.

And here is the genius of Night City. Many old science-fiction scenarios or cyberpunk books suffer from technological advances outpacing their predictions in many ways we consider to be important, while excessively exaggerating others. In a way, Night City manages to be different, but hits the mark remarkably well – and this is due to clever writing that genuinely deserves being called “prophetic” in many ways, it’s this aspect that keeps this book relevant, that is responsible for the tome aging so ridiculously well.

What do I mean by this? Well, for once, the presentation is actually better than that of most contemporary sourcebooks, regardless of game: From the get-go, a central conceit is maintained that must have been so audacious, so far-out, that it’s a testament to the design-team’s skill and vision that they managed to pull it off: Night City is presented, as a series of dataterm entries, as a kind of online travelling guide/wiki/related series of articles – information that, if you replace dataterms with smartphones, mirrors frighteningly our own realities: We begin with the tourist board of sorts, cheerfully written in a manner that mirrors perfectly the luring and compelling tone that we’ve come to expect from tourist sites “Come visit XYZ!”” Sidebars that state “See also pg. XYZ” also provide an illusion of hyperlinks of sorts that furthermore enhances the ease of use of the book as a physical artifact.

Once you’ve consumed the basics about a region, what do you do? Bingo, you check out the maps of the region – and the supplement predicts in many ways how google maps operates: From state maps to maps of airports with dates of departure and arrival noted, to whole quarters, including ratings and comments on restaurants, bars and similar establishments, the book is utterly uncanny in the precision of its predictions, as well as in the sheer amount of detail presented.

In fact, and this may be construed to be a peculiar irony, it is the punk aspect that feels most fantastic – regarding the breakdowns of the gangs, for example, the augmentation-heavy gangs bordering on cyberpsychosis are the more fantastic, whereas the ones that follow more subdued themes can be considered to, once again, be uncanny: What about, for example, the gang called “bozos”, who are essentially Jokers from Batman beyond – or more violent antecedents of the phenomena of the Insane Clown Posse or the relatively recent horrorclown-hysteria? What about the Philharmonic Vampyres, a prankster gang/social activists that blend randomness and activism? They sound a lot like the Anonymous movement to me. Or, if you recall the 80s and 90s, what about the voodoo boys, an academic gang of essentially drug-selling posers? Their write-up reads like a delightfully scathing commentary on cultural appropriation running rampant during that age, with gang membership so hilariously over the top (bone through septum, for example…) in their ridiculousness, it’s hard not to chuckle.

Regarding ecology, Cyberpunk’s world may be less bad off than ours, or worse, depending on whether you believe that we’ve already doomed our planet with men-wrought climate change, or still have a chance to save it. We might not have the more garish and punk acid rain and poisonous smog (at least not in the same extent), but yeah – in that manner, the game is more extreme in its predictions…or is it? If you e.g. look up the issues in Ulan Bator, for example, one can’t help but wonder…It may not be as flashy as in Cyberpunk…but are we perhaps worse off than this dystopia?

So yeah, there is this whole angle where the book gets things right very often – but that alone would not suffice to make for a compelling sourcebook. You see, beyond the uncanny accuracy regarding themes, the book excels in how consequently it is devoted to even the most minute detail of its conceit. A sober guide to travelling to the US is included “telling it as it is”, in a voice less unreliable than the “Come to Night City”-propaganda. See how the whole Brave New World comparison comes full circle? We get threat levels and codes, reminiscent of police information; we get information on where and how people atop a certain social strata live; how Movers live a life inside the corporate hamster-wheel, not unlike the hollow existence of a certain Mr. Bateman, minus the murder. In most cases.

Then again, this is a gaming supplement, and gaming supplements, in one way or another, as supposed to generate a sense of fun, correct? Night City is not a dry reading experience – indeed, while I can’t ascertain this, I wholeheartedly believe that the over the top aspects of the “punk”-component, have, even back n the day, been consciously written that way, for the book ften dives into the at times scathing, at times hilarious territory of satire (hence the American Psycho reference above).

There are generally two types of satire; those in the tradition of Juvenal are supposed to break the individual, ideally make them (or aspects of their persona) cease to exist, while those of Horaz generally seek to redeem the target; Juvenal is scathing and destructive, and one could argue that e.g. the verbal duels in contemporary battle rap could be seen as the heirs of Juvenal, this book is more indebted to Horaz (Horace for English native speakers) in didactic strategies. For example, many of the more exaggerated aspects can easily be read as deliberately extreme forms of hyperbole. I mean, think about it: Combat taxis where you, as the ad in the book proposes, “leave the fighting to us” may exist in Cyberpunk, but what about really bad neighborhoods where no taxis drive? You’ll find that grizzled Uber/Lyft-driver who won’t flinch going there, probably with a handgun or a bigger caliber in the trunk. Are the two worlds really so different? Did I mention the right for disabled people to destroy vehicles parking in their designated spaces, including a signpost showing a person in a wheelchair with a big gun?

If your IQ is in the triple-digits, and I assume that to be the case, courtesy of you reading roleplaying games supplements, you’ll be gently nudged towards plenty of thoughts like this while reading this book. In a way, Night City has transformed over the years and, odd as that may seem, gained layers of meaning instead of losing them. Night City never is just a misery-filled, grimdark cultural pessimism; I was trying to watch “The Purge” while reading this book (I need multiple media to keep my mind busy and focused – overstimulated much? Guilty as charged. That, or I have some sort of neurological anomaly…), and I failed to derive any enjoyment from its ham-fisted attempts at social commentary. It is quite remarkable, then, that a humble RPG-book from the early 90s managed to present a more plausible and nuanced allotopia than basically a contemporary production with a budget infinitely beyond this book. Night City never becomes an exercise in Weltschmerz, it never becomes depressing, and remains nuanced, and plausible to a ridiculous extent.

Case in point: While writing this review, I was researching cities and routes in the US for a little journey…and in the aftermath, there was an uncanny effect – I almost thought I’d find Night City somewhere on the Californian map; not consciously, mind you, but I caught my eyes glancing towards the region where the NorCal/SoCal border is in Cyberpunk. In a way, the book’s structure and almost obsessive attention to even small details in a given city’s block generates an experience not unlike the one I had researching e.g. San Francisco or Seattle, the feeling of loading up on information before getting somewhere, and the sense that you can feel the character of a place before getting there.

In a way, Night City is many things – a ridiculously and lavishly detailed sourcebook full of handy maps; a great satire that manages to get its points across without coming off as talking down to the reader, an allotopia – and it’s a great piece of literature. In fact, it’s one of the few RPG-supplements that I’d genuinely recommend to get just for the sheer joy of reading it. Yes, that compelling.

Mike Pondsmith, Ed Bolme, Sam Shirley, Anders Swensen, Colin Fisk, Will Moss, John Smith, Mike Mac Donald and Lisa Pondsmith have penned an all time classic, a book that is at once educational and entertaining, that does not jam an ideology down your throat, but that can and will prompt contemplation on a wide variety of topics. In a way, it is a book we might well need in these times, where plenty of individuals and institutions benefit from generating divisions instead of emphasizing things we have in common. In a way, this is a book that may well be more relevant today than when it was originally released. How many books can claim that? 5 stars + seal of approval. This also gets my “Best of”-tag and should be considered to be an EZG Essential. If you’re a roleplayer living in these troubling times, consider picking this up. Sit down with your beverage of choice, put on some synthwave (I am partial to Keygen Chrurch, GosT and Perturbator, myself) and read. Think. And then think about how even the exaggerated behavior patterns in Cyberpunk are influencing us. You might well come out as a happier and more open-minded person. And even if you don’t, you’ll have read one of the most detailed, lavish sourcebooks ever penned for the cyberpunk genre, not only the Cyberpunk 2020-game.

Endzeitgeist out.

https://www.teilzeithelden.de/2019/09/09/rezension-lords-and-lands-a-witcher-trpg-expansion-cody-pondsmith/

Ein Jahr nach Erscheinen des Grundregelwerks veröffentlicht Talsorian Games die erste Erweiterung zum Hexer-Rollenspiel: Lords and Lands enthält neben einem Spielleiterschirm auch ein Regelheft, in dem der Name Programm ist: Der Adel und seine Ländereien kommen ins Spiel – außerdem Halblinge als neue Charakter-Option, ein NPC-Baukasten und neue Ausrüstung.

Am 29. Juli erschien das Grundregelwerk zu The Witcher Tabletop RPG aus dem Hause R. Talsorian Games und CD Projekt Red. Ein Jahr später, pünktlich zur diesjährigen GenCon in Indianapolis, hat R. Talsorian Games die erste Erweiterung zu seinem offiziellen Hexer-Rollenspiel herausgebracht. Die PDF-Version erschien am 1. August auf DriveThruRPG.com. Das Erweiterungspaket Lords and Lands ist das erste von mehreren angekündigten Erweiterungen und enthält einen Spielleiterschirm sowie ein Booklet mit neuen Spielinhalten: Eine Heldenklasse, eine spielbare Spezies, ein System zur Erschaffung von Alltags-NPC, ein Regelsystem zur Verwaltung von Ländereien und ein Kapitel mit Ausrüstung. Autor ist The Witcher TRPG-Chefentwickler Cody Pondsmith.

Inhaltsverzeichnis [zeigen]

Inhalt Der Spielleiterschirm Der vierteilige Spielleiterschirm entspricht weitgehend der Norm: außen bebildert, auf der Innenseite mit Tabellen für die wichtigsten spielrelevanten Regeln und Informationen bedruckt. Die Tabellen sind thematisch nach Farben sortiert, ihre Anordnung wirkt aber ziemlich willkürlich – zusammengehörige Regeln sind unzusammenhängend über den Schirm verteilt. Leider sind bei den Tabellen keine Seitenverweise zum Grundregelwerk angegeben.

Geht man davon aus, dass ein Spielleiterschirm vor allem das enthalten sollte, was man braucht, wenn es schnell gehen muss, erscheint die inhaltliche Auswahl mancher Tabellen befremdlich – genauso wie das Fehlen von einigen anderen. So haben es beispielsweise die recht wichtigen Regeln zu Wortgefechten („verbal combat“) nicht auf den Schirm geschafft, dafür aber beispielsweise allgemeine Tipps zum Spielleiten, die eher nicht spontan zum Einsatz kommen werden.

Davon abgesehen stellt sich auch die Frage, ob wirklich auf jeder der vier Innenseiten des Schirms eine größere Illustration hätte eingebaut werden müssen. Natürlich sind Dekoration und Ambiente am Tisch auch für den SL wichtig – hier allerdings wird dann doch viel Platz verschenkt, auf dem man noch die eine oder andere hilfreiche Spielregel hätte unterbringen können. Das ist vor allem ärgerlich, wenn man bedenkt, dass es in diesem Bereich zum Witcher-RPG längst brauchbare und gut strukturierte Fan-Produkte im Internet gibt, beispielsweise diese Spielleiterschirm-Einlage auf GM-Binder.

Das Booklet Das beigelegte Heft zum Spielleiterschirm enthält die eigentliche Erweiterung, in der es um die namensgebenden Lords und Lands geht. Das Cover ziert, thematisch passend, ein Bild von Königin Meve von Lyrien und Rivien, bekannt aus dem Videospiel Thronebreaker: A Witcher Tale.

In aller Knappheit: Allerwelts-NSC Das erste Kapitel widmet sich auf vier Seiten der Erschaffung von Allerwelts-NPC für die eigene Witcher-Kampagne. Dazu wird im Grunde das normale Charaktererschaffungs-System aus dem Grundregelwerk verwendet, allerdings mit stark eingeschränkten Optionen und deutlich weniger Punkten. Die Anleitung zur Erstellung solcher Charaktere beansprucht mit reichlich Fülltext eine Seite, weitere drei Seiten liefern insgesamt sechs beispielhaft ausgearbeitete Allerwelts-NPC, darunter Handwerker, Gelehrte und Künstler. Wer hier spielfertige Kontrahenten für seine Gruppe, wie etwa Stadtwachen oder Ähnliches, erwartet hat, wird enttäuscht.

Kurz und gut: Halblinge Eine weitere Buchseite beschäftigt sich mit der neuen spielbaren Spezies, den Halblingen, und liefert eine allgemeine Beschreibung, die spielmechanischen Eigenschaften, einen Einblick in die Halbling-Gesellschaft und als Ergänzung ein paar Tipps zum Lebenslauf-Modul für Halbling-Charaktere sowie eine Übersicht zum sozialen Status der Halblinge in verschiedenen Ländern. Das Ganze ist kompakt und übersichtlich, wie bei den anderen Spezies im Grundregelwerk, und liefert alle wesentlichen Informationen. Im Spiel bieten die Halblinge mit ihrer angeborenen Magieresistenz sicherlich einige neue und reizvolle Möglichkeiten. Dass allerdings die komplette vorausgehende Seite für eine nichtssagende Füll-Illustration verwendet wird, der Halbling dafür aber ohne Bebilderung auskommt, ist nur schwer nachvollziehbar.

Skilltree der neuen Charakterklasse Adel verpflichtet: Die neue Charakterklasse Mit dem Noble, also dem Adligen, bringt Talsorian eine neue spielbare Charakterklasse an den Start – komplett mit eigener Klassen-Fähigkeit und Spezialfertigkeiten-Baum. Spielmechanisch macht der Adlige einen Spagat zwischen sozialen und kämpferischen Eigenschaften: Als Dilettant wird er zum Alleskönner und außerdem zum geschickten Blender. Als Ritter ist er im berittenen Kampf besonders gefährlich, kann seine Gruppe moralisch unterstützen und seine Rüstung aktiv einsetzen, um Schaden zu negieren. Als Anführer schließlich kann der Adlige Kommandos geben und so Verbündete unterstützen. Er kann sich außerdem ein Gefolge aus NPC-Dienern aufbauen und am Ende sogar sein eigenes Anwesen verschaffen.

Kurztrip in die Immobilienwelt Witcher-Fans kennen die Erweiterung Blood&Wine zu The Witcher 3, in der Geralt sein eigenes kleines Weingut nach seinen Vorlieben gestalten kann. Ganz in diesem Sinne funktioniert auch das Anwesen-System von Lords and Lands. Als Spielercharakter würde Geralt dabei aber in die Röhre gucken, denn Estate ist eine exklusive Fähigkeit der neuen Adligen-Klasse und steht anderen Charakterklassen nicht zur Verfügung.

Aber auch für einen frisch erstellten Adligen-Charakter bleibt die eigene Burg mit ausgedehnten Ländereien, einer großen Anzahl Gefolgsleute und Einkünften, die einen adligen Lebensstil tragen würden, ein Luftschloss – selbst voll aufgewertet verschafft die Estate-Fertigkeit ihrem Besitzer bestenfalls ein mittelgroßes Landgut. Das zugehörige Ausbau-System umfasst eine Buchseite und ermöglicht dem Adligen, sein Anwesen um bestimmte Gebäude, spezielles Personal oder andere Ausstattung zu erweitern, die jeweils mit wenigen Sätzen beschrieben werden – beispielsweise eine Folterkammer, ein Arzt, ein Gewächshaus oder Werkstätten. Ist der Adlige daheim, kann er diese Einrichtungen nutzen – auf Reisen fern der Heimat hingegen hat er aber nichts davon. Das Anwesen erwirtschaftet für den Adligen außerdem kein Geld und er kann sein Gefolge (das ohnehin nur aus Allerwelts-NPC besteht) auch nicht ohne weiteres für Unternehmungen außerhalb seiner Ländereien einsetzen.

Durch alle diese Limitierungen stellt die Anwesen-Option insgesamt kaum mehr als ein nettes Gimmick dar und wird wohl in den meisten etablierten Gruppen ungenutzt bleiben – sofern der Spielleiter die Option nicht per Hausregel auch anderen Klassen verfügbar machen will.

Ausrüstungs-Update: Dies und das Die letzten beiden Seiten des Booklets enthalten das zweite Ausrüstungs-Update der Reihe Rodolf‘s Wagon – die erste Ausgabe gibt es auf der Homepage von R. Talsorian Games. Das bunt gemischte Sammelsurium an neuer Ausrüstung umfasst fünf eher exotische Waffen, vier alchemistische Rezepturen und acht ganz verschiedene allgemeine Ausrüstungsgegenstände, darunter gefälschte Münzen, Vergoldung für Ausrüstungsgegenstände und eine Pestmaske. Alles in allem eine ziemlich willkürlich zusammengewürfelt wirkende Auswahl von „nice to haves“ und nichts, was den meisten Gruppen sonderlich gefehlt haben dürfte.

Erscheinungsbild Der Gesamtumfang von Lords and Lands ist nicht üppig. Im Paket enthalten sind der Spielleiterschirm mit vier Paneelen im A4-Format und das Booklet mit 16 Seiten – von denen nach Abzug von Deckblatt, Impressum, Index, zwei ganzseitigen Innenillustrationen und dem Rückencover aber nur 10 Seiten tatsächlicher Inhalt übrig bleiben. Da wir zur Rezension die digitale Download-Version der Erweiterung benutzt haben, können wir über die Qualität des gedruckten Produkts leider keine Aussagen machen.

Was die Gestaltung betrifft, ist der Spielleiterschirm dekorativ gemacht. Er ist von beiden Seiten vollfarbig gestaltet, auf der den Spielern am Tisch zugewandten Außenseite werden vierzehn bunte Artworks aus dem Witcher-Videospiel-Franchise gezeigt. Die Bilder sind durchgängig von guter Qualität. Dazu kommt das Booklet, ebenfalls im A4-Format und in Vollfarbe. Layout und Bebilderungen entsprechen dem Grundregelwerk und wirken professionell – auch hier wurden durchgängig farbige und hochwertige Concept Arts und Illustrationen aus den Witcher– und Gwent-Videospielen verwendet – darunter allerdings auch einige, die man schon aus dem Grundregelwerk kennt. Größere Fehler in Text und Layout sind keine aufgefallen.

Fazit Lords and Lands kann sich irgendwie nicht recht entscheiden, ob es nun lieber Fisch oder Fleisch sein möchte. Der Spielleiterschirm ohne das Booklet hätte kaum den Namen Erweiterung verdient, aber für eine ernstzunehmende Erweiterung ist das Booklet einfach zu dünn. Viele Inhalte sind so knapp und oberflächlich angerissen, dass ein nennenswerter Zugewinn am Spieltisch fraglich ist. Das Ländereien-System ist nur für eine sehr kleine Zielgruppe relevant und auch der neue NSC-Generator ist zwar nett, aber absolut nichts, was ein findiger Spielleiter sich nicht auch selbst schnell zusammenbasteln könnte. Immerhin, mit den Halblingen und Adligen wird das Angebot an spielbaren Charakterkonzepten etwas vielfältiger und auch über ein paar Ausrüstungs-Optionen dürften sich einige Spieler und Spielleiter freuen.

Beim Kosten-Nutzen-Verhältnis macht Lords and Lands leider keine gute Figur. Mit 25 US-Dollar ist der Preis, verglichen mit dem mehr als 300-seitigen Witcher TRPG-Grundregelwerk für 25 (als PDF) beziehungsweise 50 (gedruckt) US-Dollar ziemlich happig. Was die Druckversion angeht, lässt sich der Preis vielleicht noch durch die Produktionskosten rechtfertigen – bei der digitalen Ausgabe ist das freilich kein Argument. Letztere gibt es momentan zwar zum halben Preis – wie lange diese Aktion dauern soll, ist aber unbekannt.

Insgesamt ist Lords and Lands deshalb eher ein Produkt für Sammler und diejenigen Spieler, die unbedingt alle offiziellen Regelwerks-Optionen zur Verfügung haben wollen. Natürlich kommen Hardcore-Halbling-Fans und alle, die unbedingt schon mal einen aufgeblasenen Chevaliér aus Toussaint spielen wollten, kaum um die Erweiterung herum. Alle anderen werden, wenn sie beim Grundregelwerk bleiben, allerdings kaum etwas verpassen. Entsprechend mittelmäßig fällt deshalb auch unsere Wertung aus.

Cyberpunk Red promises to be a return to 2020 form after less successful iterations of the setting, and improves upon a lot of what went before.

Style High points: The graphics and artwork surpass any previous version of the game, while still being evocative. The layout is a stark red and black outline around the page, with a few callouts rendered as grafitti. The artwork is full-color, competently rendered art, depicting Edgerunners and their equipment in dismal environments. No Nagel knock-offs or Prepper Barbies to be found.

Low Points: The physical version of the books are in a square format, and the PDF version suffers. While the body of the text is in a two-column format, each chapter header uses a page-width column instead, forcing to you to pan or squint. The Screamsheets at the back of the World Book look like they're out of the 2020 edition, with no nod to the 25 years of page layout software evolution in or out of the game.

Substance The setting has advanced 25 years, to 2045. Night City has been destroyed and rebuilt, and no one's in control any more. Corporations, gangs, and Nomad packs are the powers that be, seizing territory and keeping what little peace is to be had. The NET is broken, and its treasures are now hidden in off-grid systems Runners essentially have to walk to. Cyberware has stalled, at least locally, and Night Citizens are keeping up with a DIY aesthetic.

High points: It's cool to see the setting take a hammer to its sacred cows. Corps aren't the enemy they used to be, and come off as more human than monolithic. The NET has had a functional revision that, while a little contrived, makes running fast and puts it directly in combat time, and is easily going to be the most significant change to gameplay.

Low points: It's a jumpstart, there's not a lot of crunch for a crunch-heavy system. All the toys are listed on the pregens, and that's all you get, despite about four adventure's worth of GM material. Notably missing is what makes each Role unique: only the Netrunner gets any Role-specific rules provided. Setting-wise, there's been almost 3 decades' worth of technosocial change in the real world that makes a once edgy setting feel like retro-futurism. This is probably unavoidable, and difficult to balance between a new edition, a videogame license that takes things ahead another 30 years, and 30 years' divergence from the real world.

Attitude is Everything It's a promising update, though I'm going to recommend buying the physical box over digital. It doesn't yet feel new. I'm hoping, in particular, for changes to the rules that recognize queerness, disability, and mental health have dimensions that older rulesets were not respectful of. Won't know until we get closer to the release date.

I was gifted this product for review purposes.

That out of the way, I went into this with absolutely no idea what to expect. I'd read shadowrun 5e and a bit of other stuff that could possibly relate, but this was my first foray into the world of cyberpunk. And what I saw did a lot to separate itself out from the rest of the crowd in its worldbuilding. But I'm getting ahead of myself; I'd like to start with the mechanics.

The first thing I'd like to touch on is the new combat system (which is as the book labels it "Thursday Night Throwdown", or TNTD), which is very player friendly. There's no attempt to make a completely realistic combat system which completely grinds the game to a halt in order to make for a slower experience. Instead, the gunplay is presented in a way that can be gotten across quick and easily, making for a more frantic and fun experience. Combat allows both offensive and defensive contributions, and while the base system may feel a bit too basic for those wanting a tactical masterpiece, I believe that the flow of combat is enhanced by what's being done here. Efforts were made to make melee combat viable despite the prevelance of guns, something I appreciate (something that's a bad option isn't an option to me), although there are patches here that I think could be abused by a savvy team (such as suppressing fire). Regardless, you won't be leafing through 500+ pages to find out how to shoot your gun, leading to more time getting to feel like a free wheeling badass.

The social mechanics as well as the stat system also follows this rule of simplicity, with 10 stats you can have along with very clear ways of determining success and failue through simple checks with reasonable levels of ease. Doing anything in Cyberpunk RED should be quite easy, which is nice as there could have been a lot of needless complication. I'm sure the finished product will add more complexity, but for a demo, this is quite nice and will help a lot in getting me into the vibe of setting up a proper game for even the newest of players.

There is an issue here with the netrunning system. It's comprehensive, but that's the problem. Of anything presented here, it has the most options by far, and tries to cram a lot of information into the same amount of space that similar concepts that are less complex are given. The ideas behind it feel more scattered in how they're presented, and I find it difficult to recommend including netrunners in a first run of this. Where everything else just feels like a teaser, the netrunner rules feel like a fully fleshed out subsystem. Let me say though that the netrunning does NOT take the player out of combat and cause a party split, but it will cause the GM to have to have different encounters set up for both netrunners and 'meatspace' players, so those who want to incude netrunning may want to consider having more players who can interact with this aspect of the game to validate the effort of including it in their game more properly unless you're okay prepping what amounts to a second encounter for situations where players want to involve themselves in this subsystem.

Enough about the mechanics though, it's time to talk about the worldbuilding. And let me tell you, I was not expecting nearly this much detail about the world in this product. There's about 40 pages given to this topic, which helps give you a sense of what's going on. From what I can tell, it's 25 years past CP2020, and there's been quite a few changes. It feels as though there's been a scaling down of widespread tech in a way that I wasn't expecting, with communication and conflict being on a smaller scale. This isn't a bad thing, and personally I think it helps push things into a new direction that's different from what one would expect. The world feels even more gritty than I would have expected, with permanance being a rarity in all facets of life.

A lot of the worldbuilding took me by surprise, and while a solid amount of the book is dedicated to the well known location known as Night City, there's plenty that's just about the world surrounding it. While there's enough detail to be daunting here, I think that it hits the high points of the world well enough where you have a strong understanding of the setting, even if you wanted to run the game in other places. The book itself is interspersed with quotes from what I assume to be important NPCs from the world which help to give a bit more color to things, mostly setting the mood and letting you know that things are going to be bad. And might I add that the line about what does and doesn't apply to cyber psychosis was well appreciated by quite a few friends of mine.

As a small aside, the slang that typically comes from books like this feels very natural. I have an issue when RPGs have their own slang to include while playing that makes it feel very stiff and robotic and breaks immersion, but the CPR slang has a very natural feel to it which makes it seem like something that you could reasonably say without feeling silly. It's a small but important detail to worldbuilding that I think helps the strength of the overall product, and something that definitely makes me feel like I could integrate it into my games and lexicon.

The sample adventure as well as a lot of other things made sure that you'll have groups who are prepared to 'rock out' properly once the dice hit the table, and while the gear and other such things are quite barebones (especially compared to the comprehensive netrunning section), this is absolutely enough to give people a taste of things to come before the full release is at our doorstep. Any issues I have can easily be chalked up to 'it's just a demo', and if I kept saying "I wish it had X thing in it", by the end of it I'd be complaining that a demo kit wasn't the full CRB. The only thing I'd like to see in the full release is for netrunning to be portrayed in a cleaner fashion, but that's something editing could clear up, and isn't a big fear of mine for this product

For my first foray into the gritty world of cyberwear and circuitry, I would say I'm definitely intrigued. There's a real style to the book that feels like there's more to come, that I've only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as this system is concerned, and it's got me hooked.

I am a longtime Cyberpunk fan, starting with CP2013. I ran a 7 year campaign in the 90s. I was...disappointed with CPv3 for many reasons not least of which that it seemed to be a completely unrelated take on the genre and ignored what was great about the game. Cyberpunk Red seems to be the sequel to CP2020 that I had wished for. I cannot wait to see the full game.

Long time Shadowrun fan. The 'new' holder of the IP - Catalyst Game Lab is doing a horrid job in the new 6th Edition of Shadowrun. The Starterbox was full of errors, and just poorly produced. Cyberware is worthless, and there is no punk feel felt anywhere in the universe anymore. Magicrun it has truthfully become.

I jumped ship to Cyberpunk RED. Opening up the Jumpstart Kit I was amazed at the production value and well editied information that grabbed my love for Cyberpunk. The art, the feel of the world. Dripping cyberpunk style with some Mad Max tossed in. I can't wait until the core book comes out.

As a Cyberpunk 2020 aficionado, I can safely say I will only be using the Cyberpunk Red rules from now on. The importance of having streamlined rules cannot be underestimated, particularly for those with a busy work schedule. As a product, the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit from R. Talsorian Games, delivers on its goal to introduce new people to the hobby and the Cyberpunk universe, so it is worth giving it a try. I also believe veteran players will benefit from using the updated ruleset in their 2020 games. For a more indepth look: Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit Review

I have to say that I am a bit disappointed in this. I know it's considered basically a GM screen, but the Lords and Lands made it sound like we'd get some concrete information regarding management of lands and raising private militias or armies.

I'm also a bit perplexed by some of the Noble skills. Most notably the one regarding raising skills.

In short, I think it's a bit overpriced for what we got. Then again, it's 12 ish bucks as of the time I write this. I certainly would be hollering louder if was the "full price" of 25.

I got a hold of my phyical copy of the JumpStart Kit while at GenCon this year, and I was pleasently surprised how nice this set was. RTalsorian has REALLY upped their production on the box set and on the interior art, with the entire two book set being full color with tabletop maps, standees The artwork is really top notch. While I haven't played this new iternation of Cyberpunk yet, the rules seem really smooth with some much needed modern tweeking. It is also clear there is much more to come when the full version of Cyberpunk RED is eventually released. It's especially nice to have RTalsorian putting so much effort into this new generation of CP RPGing.

Great to have Cyberpunk back!

~O

The GM Screen contains useful quick reference tables that, as most games do, have tables that are more scattered than one would like for quick reference. Most importantly (to me) it doesn't commit the cardinal sin of having a weapons/armor table on the GM screen.

The GM Screen includes:

• Social Standing
• Bonus Melee Damage & Unarmed
• Weapon Effects
• Effect Table
• Actions
• Fast Draw
• Extra Attacks & Defense
• Diffuclty Checks
• Example Modifiers
• Light Level modifiers
• Ranges & Target DC
• Human Damage Location
• Common Cover Table
• Falling
• Critical Wounds Table
• Death Saves
• Stabilization
• Stabilizing Criticals
• Healing Over Time
• Healing Critical Wounds
• Healing Hands or Healing Spells
• Viggor
• Magic Fumble Table
• Elemental Fumble Effects
• Learning Magic
• Fixing Broken Weapons & Armor
• Encounters
• Number of Monsters = Players + 2
• Curses: Penance & Suffering
• I.P. Rewards
• Currency
• Selling Goods
• Lodging
• Food & Drink
• Services

The Booklet itself contains:

• People of the Contenint (Quick Reference NPCs)
• • Artisan
• • Criminal
• • Entertainer
• • Laborer
• • Merchant
• • Scholar
• Hafling Race (Playable)
• Noble Profession (Playable)
• • Noble Skill Tree
• • Estate Rules
• Rodwolf's Wagon (New Tiems)
• • Item Descriptions

Some people are complaining about the price, honestly with myself I bought the physical good and got a coupon at a convention making it $5. It's a four star reveiw because I think if I buy a physical good I should just get the PDF.

This is a great GM Screen for the Witcher TRPG!

It also has Lords and Lands an additional and small expansion to the original book.

Good material to have in your game!

Do I wish it was longer? Absolutly, but the GM screen is a must!