I really had hope that this book would improve the system, but somehow it's biggest impact is making it worse.

There is some good to it. Some of the items add cool functionality and character options. Some items fill niches that were sorely missing in the corebook, some are just cool flavour items that are nice to have or just funny jokes to look at. The economics section is cool, though a little short compared to the rest of the book.

However, the good items are mostly overshadowed by what takes up the vast majority of the book, which is mostly pointless items that do nothing but pad the length of the book. The weapons are all exotic weapons that don't interact at all with the existing modularity of the system and most of them don't really add much to the existing options. The vehicles are too pricy for non-nomads and don't do much for nomads beyond allowing them to get more upgrades per moto rank. Some of the cyberware options are fine, but many of them suffer by how poorly designed the max humanity mechanic is. Worst of all, nearly all the fashion items are either terrible, or just simply recreate mechanics that already existed in the core rulebook by just making them needlessly more complicated.

Beyond the options that are useless, even worse are the options that actively make the system worse. Cyberpunk Red already had an existing problem with balance. There are options that simply vastly outperform all other options which have a tendency outside of a very good group to produce the same characters over and over again. As well, the bullet dodging mechanic grinds combat to a halt and makes it much too easy to simply trivialize encounters and turn them into effectively rocket tag. For some reason, this book includes items that make all these options even better or easier to achieve, while doing nothing to improve other possible choices. Where once you had to sacrifice stat points to bullet dodge (Which nearly everyone did), now you simply need to pay an incredibly cheap amount to do it. Linear frames are now not only the most optimal piece of cyberware in the game by far, they now also carry the functionality of other cyberware at no further humanity loss and you can make them immune to EMP. The end result is that the system is an even less balanced one as a result of this book.

Overall, it's incredibly dissapointing. If this shows the direction the system will continue to develop in, I think it will ultimately fail to live up to its potential.

Absolutely amazing for what it offers.

New weapons, new clothes, new chrome, new apps for your agent, new chipware, an entire section on economics, fixers, and Night Markets, and more. Many of these items change some fundemental rules of the game that were sore spots in need of more love.

Want the ability to dodge bullets when below 8 REF or in heavier armor? There's cyberware for that. Want a self repairing subdermal cyberware equivelant for a suit? We've got that too. Better thrown weapons that use the melee skill? Yep. Better cheap starter weapons for players and NPCs? Absolutely. Want a high move hover board option in combat that nearly anyone can use? It's cheaper than a car! Speaking of cars and aircraft there are offerings for Nomads that give them far more bang for their role levels. Now you can get a car, gyro, or AV with an already installed series of upgrades. Your Nomad will thank you when it saves them so many role points!

The PDF layout is wonderful. Everything is linked, and you can quickly jump to the summary table, and back to the full item page with the click of the buy button or page number. Almost every item in the book has unique accompanying art. The writing adds so much flavor and life to each item and what it brings to the setting.

A paired free DLC download from their R. Talsorian's website goes into even further detail about linear frame appearances available in black chrome, details about what you can afford with each lifestyle, and has cheap ammunition for your players that love autofire, or just need a lot of ammo.

Altogether an absolute steal at the PDF or print price. There is something in this book for playstyles of all kinds.

Slick book, fantastic PDF design, great expansion of the core rules. Wish that the internal frame rules were more devastating (can't easily make Smasher with core Red Rules as written)and the HL was catastrophic for balance, but that's a very small gripe in a large sea of amazing content. Thanks R.Talsorian games!

I say this as someone who played this game religiously when it first came out, this system is an example of wasted potential.

When the corebook came out, it was a great example of a modern take on a cyberpunk TTRPG. It was simple, elegant, easy to run and captured the tone of the genre well. However, it was extremely simple, poorly balanced in some areas and had a tendency in practice to produce largely similar characters as players started to realize how unsatisfying many of the game's options are. The effect of is that if you GM for enough players, you tend to see the same character build repeated largely because it simply breaks the game in how powerful it is.

Part and parcel with this simplicity was that some of the game's features were incredibly lacklustre. Certain abilities and options, such as the lawman's backup ability, just didn't really add enough to justify their existence. The netrunning system, while commonly praised for its simplicity, is incredibly limiting to the creativity of GMs and players and by and large feels samey once you've hacked enough turrets.

While these downsides were very clear and understood by much of the playerbase, there always remained the possibility of improvement, and with a few changes the system could have become a masterpiece. Unfortunately, however, the developers' priorities don't seem to lie with this sort of improvement. New content for the game has largely followed two main streams: Joke options that largely add nothing to the game besides the entertainment on initially reading it, and options which, rather than fix these underlying problems, actively make them worse.

The developers have all but rejected any idea that there is aspects of the corebook that could be improved. After 2 years of errata, PDFs and their first major sourcebook, they have leaned into the idea that the best way forward is to accept these flaws and add more items the the system that are by and large either useless, or game-breakingly powerful, simultaneously doing nothing to round out weaker options while making the strongest options in the game even better.

The end result of all this is a system that, at first seemed to cleverly balance combat with social gameplay and other forms of storytelling, but now largely focuses on wargaming style combat with very little happening outside of that. This would be ok if Red had a particularly compelling combat system, but instead it is slow, painfully simple and with very few tactical options that actually consistently feel good or work effectively.

It really is unfortunate that this is the case. I was excited to see how this system developed, especially alongside RTG's other current major system The Witcher. After seeing what RTG is putting out to support this system however, I can't really in good conscience recommend it.

Incredible work from R. Talsorian games. The game flies like a bullet fired from a brand new Rhinemetall EMG-86 Railgun. Combat is fluid, detailed enough to be fun and refreshing even after becoming adept at the system but not too detailed to slow the game down. Rules are written clearly and make sense. Lots of useful information about lore, building your own cyberpunk world and preparing a session. My group ported our WoD game into the RED system and I am planning to use it in the future for any modern or sci-fi game I concoct.

This is a lovely poster, but buyers ought to be made aware of the fact that it is bent in the middle and not rolled. I have attempted to get a refund because if I had known it was folded I would not have made the purchase.

Much like The Witcher Easy Mode, this one is a banger. Perhaps a bit more sandbox oriented in it's narrative than The Witcher but still generally pretty servicable for a proper session one. I'd say this is really good for TTRPG newcomers and I love, love, love the fact that this Easy Mode built off of the Jumpstart Kit and made it a homerun by adding in some Netrunning!

Overall an excellent introduction, I highly recommend it. It's free, it provides lore for those who want to check out the universe, the basic rules and ebbs and flows for those who are curious, and a decent sandbox-like starting adventure for those more committed.

Fantastic introduction into my personal favorite fantasy TTRPG. It's quick, to the point, and just as deadly as it needs to be while making a semi-open path for the characters to run on. Definitely great for new TTRPG players, too.

A very helpful collection of the free "DLCs" that R. Talsorian Games puts out, formatted nicely with beautiful artwork and presented beautifully as always. While I do also own the print version, the digital one is just as useful. Having 10 pregenned characters in a folder with an adventure makes this a no-brainer if you're going to be running a one-shot.

My rating is mostly due to Red Chrome Cargo and the additional drone DLC in the back-end. RTG's unique take on drones in the Time of the Red is worthwhile but I've found myself using these cyberbeasties very often as a DM as security measures. Highly recommended just for those.

Fun little starter introduction to the world of Cyberpunk Red set decades before the events of 2077. Pregenerated characters and 2 starter scenarios and some ideas, for a starter nicely aimed at beginning gms. When on sale well worth getting as not enough to justifiy 29.99.

This review is after reading the core rulebook and running some missions based of the Easy Mode mission and the Starter Kit adventure. Overall I like the system, I feel like I still haven't 100% "gotten" it yet.

I'm playing in Foundry VTT, and combat feels like it takes a little long, I'm wondering if I'm missing some tactics to speed things up. But I really really like the Netrunning and the Apartment was a very fun scenario.

I'll try and come back and update this review after running some more sessions.

I used The Apartment Scenario in the Jumpstart Kit to do a second learn to play experience with my friends after running the Easy Mode scenario. We took time to do a session 0 and create characters then I got to build out the apartment and it was A LOT of fun. I like the Cyberpunk system in general, I'm still learning it and getting comfortable with it, but the players overall enjoyed it a lot, very solid scenario.

There is errata in a pdf to update The Apartment per the core rules, but I wish they just updated the Jumpstart Kit as well.

Overall a great introduction into Cyberpunk RED. I think I would have liked more guidance in the stand alone adventure at the end.

Some ways to improve would be:

A read along section for players in the adventure (When the GM asks for this check, here's how it works) I know that information is in the bulk of the rulebook but having it repeated in some bold text would be nice.

More guidance in integrating the lifepath system, it felt superflous in our play session and I wasn't sure how to get the players invested.

A second adventure option using netrunning to have that with an example.

But still Cyberpunk RED was fun and I'm looking forward to trying out the full ruleset with another module soon!

I'll make it short. Is it worth the five dollars? Yes. Can you get any use from the text inside to improve your games? Yes. Does it add more to the cyberpunk world that helps the gm make a more detailed mental image of what cyberpunk 2020 is? Yes. Is it long winded sometimes? Yes. Did Mike Pondsmith go a little to deep into the best ways to tpk making the reader belive Mike Pondsmith has a fetish for slaughtering his player's characters? Yes... very.

If you have the change and need something fresh to increase your creativity this is perfect. If my review was to short then look at the review on this product by Megan R. She wrote a damn research paper and it is beautiful.

Its a solid meh. Some asset flip artwork and a dosen tables that any GM can figure out for them selves or improvise, not realy the little "expansion" i was houping for. Would make for a good reading material to beginner net runners i guess.