This is the much anticipated and slightly contentious Cyberpunk Red (2020), the fourth or so iteration of the RPG ballsy enough to take the name of a whole genre for itself.

I think it does a pretty good job of earning that name — just about every facet of every sort of cyberpunk (and a lot of variants have cropped up in forty or so years) has some sort of representation in the world of Night City (and, yea, its a city, but so dense and varied that it may as well be a whole world). The most common complaints I see about the game focus in on the art. I like the art! I think it does a good job of selling the mood and building the world.

The core of the system is fast and simple — roll a D10, add in modifier, beat the GM’s number to succeed. Easy! It doesn’t stay so easy, though. MY main complaint is that the more you dig into the game, the more discrete subsystems you encounter. A lot of it is optional, but some of it isn’t and it leaks into the core experience. It isn’t so pronounced as say, the complexity of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4E, but it feels more complex than it needed to be. The complexity does add depth, which is nice, but I’d be a little daunted bringing this to the table.

Which is a shame, because it fixes one of my biggest reservations about the original iterations of Cyberpunk: the callous live fast die faster ethos. That 80s style-over-substance stuff is in there, but there is also a lot more attention given to taking care of and defending folks in need. The old games didn’t care about people or changing the world, Red does, and lays down lots of suggestions, both explicit and implicit, on how to do it in play. I really dig that.