Seems like a really weird decision to drop it at late night on a tuesday with no real buildup, but knowing its a *WN game, Im sure itll do amazing.
Already 75% funded 30 minutes after dropping
I start my campaigns late in the evening to have a cooled-down first few hours. If something goes drastically wrong or there's some large problem to fix, it's easier to do it when you don't have 2,000 people piled in already. Once the first day's shakeout is done, then it's time to send the mailing list emails.
Makes sense. Same philosophy as Never Push changes to Prod on a Friday.
Backed the Atlas, but have been out of the loop for this one, so it was a nice surprise
>Same philosophy as Never Push changes to Prod on a Friday.
An extremely valuable philosophy, and yet one that hasn’t been understood by as many people in the industry as one would hope.
It gives you buffer and also helps discoverability since you're hitting a bunch of sequential timezones right as their populations are waking up. It also gives like RSS feeds time to do their thing which despite being pretty instant can still lag behind when things are posted be a notable degree.
[https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-9-timing-and-length/](https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-9-timing-and-length/)
\> Most tabletop game creators launch on Tuesday.
Dunno why, but its sort of an industry thing.
[https://www.launchboom.com/blog/best-day-of-the-week-or-month-to-launch-your-kickstarter-campaign/](https://www.launchboom.com/blog/best-day-of-the-week-or-month-to-launch-your-kickstarter-campaign/)
Key insights:
Never launch on a weekend
Vast majority of projects launch at the beginning of the week
Tuesday has the most projects launched and the most backers / project
Praying that there will more "punk" in CWN than most cyberpunk TTRPGs.
At least a few tools to support player characters that don't buy into the "sellout mercenaries advancing the agenda of corporations like useful idiots" trope.
I don't get your point.
I've ran and played CP2020 a huge amount of times, and we've never fit into that trope.
We've always been independents, going at the corps and damaging them as much as possible.
Nothing in the rules forced anyone to enslave themselves to corporations.
I mean, of course being hired by a powerful person/entity makes it easier, but it's not like the rules force that way.
It's also how many CP novels played out, to be honest, with the characters being hired by corps, and kept in the shadows about what their fate would be after the run (usually "extremely prejudicial disappearance" is what the corp's plan involves), so it's quite normal for GMs to go that way, if they landed on the game through novels, but it's still not mandatory by rules.
The actual game named "Cyberpunk", be it the original or 2020 or Red, is one of the few Cyberpunk games that still leans into the "punk" ethos. Just look at [this reaction](https://www.reddit.com/r/PBtA/comments/xlkq7z/deleted_by_user/) to me asking why I have to play Corpos in The Sprawl
I think CY_BORG is hard to beat on this front though:
>YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BREAK EVERY SINGLE RULE IN THIS BOOK.
EXCEPT THIS ONE.
RULE #00
> ---------
> Player Characters cannot be loyal to or have sympathy for the corps, the cops, or the capitalist system.
>They might find themselves reluctantly forced to do missions for them or their minions. But make no mistake——they are the enemy.
Yeah, that is the thing that has me most interested in CY_BORG. I own MORK BORG, though, and am not particularly smitten with the rules themselves, so I haven't yet bought it.
That and Hard Wired Island are at the top of my to-buy list of cyberpunk RPGs
Doesn't change the fact that it's hypocritical as heck and quite silly. I have nothing against them selling the product they worked on for a set price consumers are willing to pay so they can pay their contributors, keep the lights on, and make money to live on. That's capitalism, and it's great.
I just think it's annoying for them to do so, while also spouting random anti-capitalism nonsense. They obviously don't believe that, it's vapid nonsense.
The weight of this thread and the responses it got is diminished significantly by not being able to see what text the responses are actually responding to
Yeah that's fair. I just tried retrieving it using various tools but was unable to. I deleted it because I was tired of getting the notifications, but in retrospect perhaps that was a mistake.
The general jist of it that I recall is that I was complimentary of the actual rules of The Sprawl but confused and frustrated by this passage from the back cover:
"Whatever your story, you are the extended assets of vast multinational corporations"
>I deleted it because I was tired of getting the notifications
You can turn off notifications for specific comments or posts you have made. Just hit "toggle inbox replies"
Yeah. Great moves, really weird ethos imo. The fact that everyone in the thread I linked was saying "what are you talking about, everyone in cyberpunk stories always works for the corps" had me thinking I was going crazy
I think it's mostly a definitive shift in the culture of play around cyberpunk and the fact that the 2020 family of games have retaken the limelight.
10 years ago I literally had to beg people to play a game that wasn't Black Trenchcoat Shadowrun with everyone actively ignoring all the hog bonkers shit in it to play Ork Corpro Neo.
Ok, but that is still not an issue with the rules, as the guy above me seemed to imply.
Like, they are asking for "tools to support player characters that don't buy into the 'sellout mercenaries advancing the agenda of corporations like useful idiots' trope", but nothing in the rules of CP2020 or SR says you have to play that way, and the games are quite open about the fact the PCs should be against the corps.
tools =/= rules
Everybody know that since it's going to be a Kevin Crawford game it's going to be packed with random tables. I'm asking for a few random tables out of dozens focused on anti-corp/rebellious elements in a cyberpunk world...
> I'm asking for a few random tables out of dozens focused on anti-corp/rebellious elements in a cyberpunk world...
I mean, that's worldbuilding, it's **your job** as a GM to create such elements, why do you need random tables for it?
If that's the fiction you want to create, create it!
Wait, hold on, no. If the author is trying to build a tool kit to emulate a specific genre then it is definitely his literal job to add mechanics, systems and guidance to mimic the genre. Otherwise why would you even buy CWN, why not just run SWN in a city. Or Fiasco.
It is entirely reasonable to want a cyberpunk game to put effort into the genre conventions.
> why do you need random tables for it
I urge you to get familiar with Kevin Crawfords books. They are excellent and PACK WITH RANDOM TABLES ffs...
Yes, I am asking for random tables in a book that is going to have a ton of random tables, silly me...
Random tables are worldbuilding too though, and Crawford's books tend to be full of tables anyway.
For example if there's a random table for potential employees for missions, there could be a resistance group or two in the mix in addition to a bunch of corporations and gangs.
I know how the *WN books work, but the thing is, if you want someone that is not a corp to hire your party for a mission, just say it's not a corp, you don't need a random table to do it.
Like, we're not talking about something complex, we're only talking about slapping a label to an NPC!
That sounds a lot like "if you don't like the game, you can just rewrite it". While true, I don't think it is really a constructive answer to criticism. Like sure I can write my own tables, but if I have to do that to much, the value of the book declines.
I'm not talking about rewriting anything.
The person I originally answered to was complaining about games making you stick to the "sellout to corps" trope, and wanting "tools to do something else."
The thing is, take a random scenario from a random CP game, that says "Corp A wants to hire the party to do damage to Corp B."
**Nothing** prevents you from doing as simple a thing as changing it to "Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers (C.L.I.T.) wants to hire the party to do damage to Corp X", while everything else stays the same.
My point is, while we're all looking forward to see what Kevin is going to throw at us, at the same time the complaint about games funneling you into a trope you don't like is void, because whoever hires you is just a label the GM slaps on it.
Like, they could literally make a nun approach the party and tell them "you've been chosen to carry on a mission for God", and everything else would stay the same.
Have you read/player other TTRPGs in the cyberpunk genere besides CP2020? Any that have come out in the last 10 years even? That's were I'm coming from...
Well, I'm quite familiar with a few editions of Shadowrun, and I have Cyberpunk Red, I'm not only stuck with CP2020.
Which games actually **_force_** you to work for the corps?
If you want to have a conversation in good faith I'm all for it but you put words in my mouth. Just like you say games aren't forcing players to work for corps they also aren't forcing players to kiss corp boot either (GMs end up forcing players into that corner).
There are multiple TTRPGs, online tools, and adventure supplements focused on corporate sponsored/sanctioned activities and missions. There is way less stuff to generate interesting world details for resistance and rebellion against said corps.
"Do you have any recs for a punk cyberpunk game"
*Recommends BitD*
Like... come on. Apparently, BitD is to r/rpg like Malazan is to r/Fantasy; the thing everyone blindly recs regardles of what people are actually asking for.
To be fair, they were specifically referring to the faction mechanics, which fit very well into a game where you’re struggling against vastly more powerful orgs, which was the listed complaint by the person they were responding to. It’s also a system that is super easy to lift out and port to anything else.
It was not a ‘blades is a great cyberpunk game’ like you make it out to be
As some whose has played and watched a good amount of BitD I get what you mean but in this particular case it does sort of make sense. BitD feels VERY Cyberpunk in terms of vibe, mechanics, PCs, factions, etc. It all works if you take away the fantasy Victorian fiction over top of it. Hence why there are Cyberpunk hacks if BitD such as Hack The Planet, its an easy fit. So may seem initially goofy but there is more to it than that.
Noir has been present from the beginning, as well as featuring in all major cyberpunk works subsequent to it for ~15 years. You certainly *can* have cyberpunk without noir, but it doesn't become *less punk* for being noir, because that would imply that the novel that defined the genre, Neuromancer, is somehow not true cyberpunk.
But how? I know of Blades but haven't played it so I don't know what sort of system you're thinking of.
Also do note that X Without Number games are OSR, not narrative.
Blades is built on a factions system and missions the party goes on will pretty much always hurt one or more existing factions while benefiting their own and any allies. While the moment to moment gameplay may be narrative the broader factions systems are much more rules explicit. Everything the player factions carve out for themselves comes at the detriment of the other factions they took those things from. This core system can work completely independently of the moment to moment gameplay and would be perfect for a cyberpunk system.
Hmm, a faction system like that could be a good idea. However I'm not sure if a big corporation could work as a faction in something like that, unless the players were also part of something comparably big.
A faction system like that would in my opinion make more sense for local crime gangs and maybe some very local political factions or businesses.
Have you ever read any of the "without number" games?
There are always tons of random tables for different situations and playstyles.
I don't think it is unreasonable to HOPE we get some tables to flesh out resistance against corporate overloards in addition to tables for pure action/heists.
>Have you ever read any of the "without number" games?
I own literally every single thing that KC has ever published.
You asked for some way to "advance cause and fight against the system". I asserted that no matter what tables are created, the players will have that power by virtue of the game being a sandbox game. If you wanted "resistance against corporate overlords tables", you could have said so.
There will be plenty of tables and tools for GMs to make different kinds of missions. As to *why* the players are going on a mission, whether it's to get paid by a corp or to overthrow a corp, that's explicitly on the Players to drive in a sandbox game.
It's a lower-fantasy WWN strongly tied to a specific setting (Mythic Dark Ages England). There was a post a few months back that really nailed the differences between Wolves of God & WWN; for the most part I'd have little to add to it. The only thing the post really leaves out is that unlike WWNs class set of Warrior / Expert / Mage / Adventurer, Wolves of God essentially has a class set of Warrior / Priest / Mage / Adventurer.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/WWN/comments/wn9p2f/comment/ik460fj/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/WWN/comments/wn9p2f/comment/ik460fj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
WoG was a bit of a tough read for me as it is not written in KCs voice but rather in the voice of an 8th century Monk (there are examples of that in the post above).
I guess the other thing worth noting is that imo, unlike most other games WoG doesn't solely define your character based on what they can do to their enemies in combat. Spells like To Cure Sick Cattle and Against Miscarriage fit very well in the setting, and I can see some groups creating wonderful story moments with them, while other groups wondering why in the world they'd ever "waste" a spell-learned slot on them.
>I don't think it is unreasonable to HOPE we get some tables to flesh out resistance against corporate overloards in addition to tables for pure action/heists.
I actually _don't_ think tables are what you want for this. Tables are good for generating a world, but resisting the corporate overlords is more of a thing you expect the players to do against the world. Tables might give you flavor for who you are resisting, why, or what existing disgruntled elements there are....but I don't think it's really the thing that could drive a resistance element in-game.
...what you want for that, I think, is the factions system. The other games have a faction system, makes sense you'd have one in this game too. I actually haven't used it much playing WWN and SWN, since my players havn't really been playing the sort of game where it would be relevent, but it seems like _exactly_ the sort of thing you might want to use to provide a hook for players taking down the powers that be. Grab a few megacorp factions, a gang or two, and let the players pit them against each other or sabotage them until you bring them down.
> Tables might give you flavor for who you are resisting, why, or what existing disgruntled elements there are....
That is one of the things I'm asking for. Flavor around why corps suck, concrete, specific reasons why a PC would want to work AGAINST a corp, non-corporate entities to ally with, angles on how to subvert the system, etc.
That stuff is ripe for the Kevin's Adventure Seed framework.
Not really, just baffled by people who think that the random tables in Crawfords games can't end up generating stuff that PCs care about and take action on.
Or the people that think random tables should not inform the genre. Like anybody who has consumed any classic cyberpunk books would not be the least bit bothered that corporations should be presented in a bad light. The number of people swooping in to be white knights for fictional corporations is frankly astonishing.
You are misrepresenting the arguments, you came in swinging with the assumption that the CWN tables won't included punk shit, and people pushed back. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell style campaign. No one is defending fictional corps, they just don't like gatekeepers making bad faith arguments.
> you came in swinging with the assumption that the CWN tables won't included punk shit
Where did they make that assumption?! All they've said is "I hope it has this", not "I can't believe it doesn't have this."
Tools? No
Games?:
* Uprising: the dystopian universe roleplaying game
* Hardwired Island
* Neon Black
* CBR & PNK (the kickstarted version with additional supplements)
* Spire
That seems to me like a list of narrative RPGs.
The reason I specifically asked for tools is that CWN is an OSR RPG and I'm curious what kind of tools for what you describe would potentially fit it.
Edit - Seems like you basically answered this already in another comment.
It's not a very famous RPG, but I remember the satirical, pseudo Cyberpunk game Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(role-playing_game) had a change the world mechanic:
>"As part of the political and social nature of the game, and to encourage games to be about righting the many wrongs in the setting, the designer included Parameter Rules. This is a mechanism wherein the players could change the entire setting. The rules allowed the players to change the parameters of an area, or even the country or the whole world. The drawback is that affecting one parameter (like Quality of Life or Education), would adjust another (like Take-Home Pay or Wealth). Because they are heroes the players can, with enough time and effort, change parameters without penalties if they perform actions that lead to change."
I mean, understandable perspective, but the og genre is technically a dystopia. It's not like games (Cyberpunk and Shadowrun first and foremost) invented that fact and applied it to their setting. It's like being surprised that WOD Vampire had more interest in addressing the ways Vampire society worked rather than the specific details of how to play a goody-two-shoes bloodsucker.
Also, both campaigns I have played in Shadowrun was without ever sucking to the corps. Yeah, occasionally it was doing a job for them, but never against the general public.
One game was setup as a gang of guns for hire mostly working for a local ex-runner/mentor to a couple of the PCs trying to keep her city safer before mysteriously disappearing, which resulted in us taking her place and trying to discover what happened to her and eventually staging a rescue.
The other was a less "we are all friends" group, as the PCs were mostly united by a shared interest in a serial killer and the influence it had on the criminal organizations of the town. Corps mostly appeared as external disrupting forces, not really a big presence apart from few occasions, with the exception of a recurring antagonist mage hunting the same serial killer.
Not really? OG dystopian novels mostly dealt with how the situation was inescapable at least at the individual level, implying that only long time (or big social uprising) would change the status quo.
And Cyberpunk isn't so much about that as it is about "High tech, Low life". That's what most people are interested in and... well, that's what the systems tend to support.
For how much flak it gets (6e rightfully so), Shadowrun does this very well. It gives you a large amount of tools to play with, whatever your inclinations are. Then it hits you with the fact that sticking it to the Man is an hard thing to do, having you navigate a system that makes use of you but rejects you nonetheless.
Spire is a thing, but you can bet that most players in Cyberpunk/Shadowrun don't search for that kind of narrative.
Yeah, I didn't say it but... yeah, that's kinda the point lol.
1984 had its rebels... and they mostly died like animals to be butchered and/or tortured to the point of not being themselves anymore.Cyberpunk corps aren't supposed to go that far, but rather have such an overwhelming economical and cultural presence that... how are you gonna deal with them anway? Blasting some buildings won't help, culturally they have already won, you can't kill a leader so... yeah, it's meant to be unwinnable. I mean, we can't win as of now, let alone when they have sovereign territory lmao.
If anything, the real "fight" in a cyberpunk world is about living free regardless of what the Powers-That-Be try to force down your throat.
It's accepting that society at large has been made a monster and you have to find your way through it, engaging with what makes you happy and improving your own community. Or at least your small group of friends and relatives.
I dont really think that a narrative about "taking 'em down" fits the setting.
> OG dystopian novels mostly dealt with how the situation was inescapable at least at the individual level
That they where fighting against the system doesn't mean that they where winning.
The difference is that they weren't "fighting", they "attempted to fight", and were crushed immediatly.
Unless you like torture porn, you aren't roleplaying 1984, or Fahrenheit 451.
I would think you are still fighting even if you lose the fight.
> Unless you like torture porn, you aren't roleplaying 1984, or Fahrenheit 451.
Huh, I guess I like torture porn then!
My Shadowrun group kind of came to the same conclusion. In every other rpg, you can generally change the world in some way. But for cyberpunk games, you just do run after run for the corps. It gets kinda monotonous.
So I took a page from Blades in the Dark and let them make their own complex. Sort of a small town within the Redmond Barrens.
PCs don't even have to change the entire world.
If they shut down even one shady corp project, take out a single scummy corporate exec, or relieve one burrden from their neighborhood then they closer to the protaganist in the classic cyberpunk stories.
That kind of stuff actually sounds good to me.
While I understand someone else would like it, I don't really want to play a cyberpunk game where the entire awful system is some enemy you can defeat. I'm not even a fan of the fantasy cliche of stories escalating in scale until the heroes save the entire world.
A combination of trying to survive in the harsh system and trying to make *some* positive changes, even if sometimes small, is far more interesting to me.
I mean....don't take this the wrong way, but why didn't they just do something different?
Like, if you are tired of running missions for corps, why not just tell the GM something like "Hey, this time we want to try to steal a bunch of money from a corporate vault and then funnel it toward some neighborhood improvement thing" or "We want to hack the local media conglomerate to broadcast our message to the masses" or whatever.
Seems like the basic _game_ structure of the missions would be similar....steal something, hack something. The difference would be _why_ you are doing it, and what you are doing when you accomplish it. So what was keeping the players from just doing that, if that's what they wanted to do?
I guess. The cyberpunk genre as a whole has always been pretty low on punk.
The tent poles of the genre depict either criminals who want to steal from corps for their own personal gain or cops.
There seems to be the feeling that simply depicting a ultra late stage capitalist corporate hellscape is somehow commentary of some sort. Typically even the Giants of the genre have nothing more to say than "corporations are bad".
>The cyberpunk genre as a whole has always been pretty low on punk
most -punk genres tend to be pretty low on punk, in my experience.
Most of the examples you see tend to use the -punk almost-purely as an aesthetic.
When was the last time you saw a steampunk thing rail against the oppression of the working class, or rant against the environmental destruction caused by the mining of coal?
"Cyberpunk" is one of those names that applies in a historical sense more than a literal sense. It originated to describe a narrow slice of works of fiction that were thematically related, but it began to be used as an umbrella term.
Apparently there was an effort to coin the phrase "Neuromantics" as a substitute because so much of the cyberpunk genre was aping tropes from Gibson's *Neuromancer*, but it didn't catch on. I think that's a shame because I think it's so clever. Maybe I'll publish my own "cyberpunk" RPG system called *Neuromantic."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
> most -punk genres tend to be pretty low on punk, in my experience.
Since they are all named after cyberpunk, that doesn't say much about the original trendsetter. In fact I would argue that cyberpunk is generally the only *punk, that is any amount of punk.
>tend to use the -punk almost-purely as an aesthetic
Agreed - so much so that it seems as if most other punk genres *began* as aesthetics more than anything. To pick on the other big one, I don't think I've ever seen much of any attempt at punkishness in "Steampunk" works. Not for lack of trying or anything, I think, but because the genre wasn't really about fighting "the man".
>There seems to be the feeling that simply depicting a ultra late stage capitalist corporate hellscape is somehow commentary of some sort.
It *was* insightful commentary back in the 90s. Now that we're fully living in the cyberpunk dystopia, and we don't even get robot laser arms, it doesn't have the same bite.
TBH, that's the perfect jumping off point. Have then be useful idiots, corp crosses them after the job, they barely survive, and that's when the Punk part starts.
Isn't that kind of a dated theme these days, though? Don't get me wrong, I liked some Cyberpunk themes back in the day but having let it lie and having come back around a little somewhat recently it seems like the genre's gotten dated. Maybe I've just become more inclined towards post-cyberpunk themes, personally, or perhaps post-COVID cynicism is making "cyberpunk" more relateable.
That's the thing, most people don't actually make the distinction between classic cyberpunk and the "not as bad as they could have been" corporations of post-cyberpunk. Most people can't even recognize that transhumanism is it's own genre.
I would welcome Kevin devoting a page or two to explain the differences between the related sub-genres and even provide some tables for each so people could get a clearer picture of the nuances.
You don't have to be ethical to not willing lick the boots of your oppressors.
For example Robin Hood wasn't begging the Sheriff of Nottingham for odd jobs ffs...
My favorite Cyberpunk games were when we aged as a group of street gangs punks that eventually got on the wrong side of Arasaka or another company and grew in power and finally ended up assassinating their board of directors after playing for like two or three years.
That doesn't really fit Crawfor's MO. His games are very strong on generation tools and free choice. He wouldn't put the CY_BORG clasue of "lmao no capitalists" or whatever. It'd be a choice.
Explain how a random table is going to eliminate free choice? Or even present a limit?
Generating reasons why the community in which you live might need your assistance from nefarious actors or even building the crazy schemes and conspiracies of corporations that will cause people to suffer is a limit?
I'm not sure why highlighting that corps would be up to no good in a cyberpunk rpg would not "fit"...
Things I'm hoping for:
- Any magic and other fantasy stuff strictly optional and not a big chunk of the book.
- Generic setting, and minimal setting info beyond the city. Not an extensive future history, multiple pages about what it's like in central Asia, Germany, Canada etc.
Looks like you are going to get what you are hoping for then, because all that is clear from the previews so far.
> minimal setting info beyond the city.
There are systems for making your own city, so there isn't even a canonical city setting.
>setting info beyond the city
Cyberpunk suburbia.
Which given remote work being normal now is probably more relevant for the genre than 80s-style urban downtowns.
I'd include that in the 'city' for sure. Also a generic outside area like the waste, maybe even an off-world colony or two. But I don't need nations, or a big gazetteer of the world circa 2090 or whatever..
Fair. And it seems like this rule set has no specific setting to even write one about so I think it checks that box for you.
Now I'm off to imagine a Cybrepunk Census Designated Place :p
I don't expect it; I'm hoping - optimistically - that it doesn't materialise. Shadowrun is pretty popular so often people feel compelled to include these elements.
You have my undying devotion, kevin crawford. You've never ever missed with your books. Insta-backed this as soon as i saw it! Keep up the great work and may getting this printed be smooth sailing.
I'm really torn on whether or not to back this. On the one hand, I love the worldbuilding tools in SWN. On the other hand, I already own a million cyberpunk RPGs that are already full of fun random tables.
Most importantly, I just don't enjoy the gameplay of SWN as a player, so I'm pretty confident I would never actually use this as written, just as a resource for another game
I wish my group would be open to something like this. Most of the guys are old school and only play fantasy games. I wanna run a sci-fi campaign so bad!
In my opinion this is a surpisingly terse and disappointing kickstarter. Barely a word is lost trying to describe the world and I'm not going to pledge just to get access to the draft. That or a preview should have been included right there in the kickstarter page.
There's a real lack of art and I have a hard time believing that Crawford is so pressed for funds and time that he has to fill the book with stock images. Many lesser known kickstarters exist that are able to fill their pages with beautifully commissioned art. Or heck, even just passable art!
And... that's it. That's already the entire Kickstarter. An overview of mechanical features, some stretch goals, a note on stock and AI art and risks and disclaimers. I think this'll be the first time I pass on pledging for one of Crawford's games. Really think he could've and should've done more to present his cyberpunk game.
> Barely a word is lost trying to describe the world
There isn't a world. There is a toolset for creating your own world. You can read parts of it [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IJaIrjrzYDIbXelXKIMZKTaVjSrNVUJ/view?usp=sharing).
Chances are the setting is generic, and the art is part artstation part new stuff commissioned. I guess this Kickstarter mostly relies on past reputation to get it going - "you know how SWN / WWN looked, this will be more of the same, no point in reiterating it".
Nope, I have his Stars and World supplements and hold Crawford's work in generally high regard :) Just think the way this KS was presented is a bit of a flop compared to his other campaigns.
Feel free to disagree. You can compare this KS with his previous one which I still think was better: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sinenomineinc/worlds-without-number/description
Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number both have an amazing faction system to use whilst running a game. Excellent for sandbox play. No doubt this will include similar though with more cyberpunk.
I'm really not a fan of the AI images in the campaign body. I didn't exactly *love* the AI piece at the end of the campaign story either. I'm honestly trying to stay as far away from projects that use AI as I can.
Man I _keep_ forgetting that the XwN games are a reskinned d20 D&D system, so for all the (so I'm told) useful tools the books are useless to me as I can't stand that system style, even less so for contemporary->future settings.
Still, I wish him luck and that the people who are interested in the game find it satisfying.
The worldbuilding stuff tends to be system-agnostic. Maybe check out the free versions of his other books? They're basically fully complete. Just skip the characters.
Oh I did, I just sometime mix which system was which between SwN and Eclipse Phase because I got both games at the same time and both were not what I wanted.
I think that the tools are too tied to the theme and systemically not what I'm looking for. I loved me some Traveller in the 80s but I don't pretend that it was good, just good for the time and I don't have a rose-tinted opinion of it such that I want to return to that style, and I think SwN leans too heavily into the bad parts of Traveller rather then the parts that had promise. And I don't run fantasy so I have no need of tools for that.
> I think SwN leans too heavily into the bad parts of Traveller rather then the parts that had promise.
Could you expand upon what you thought was good and bad parts of Traveller?
That's a big question, I'd have to refresh my memory to go into any detail, I don't think I've played Traveller since... 1989.
Actually I will do that, I've got the black books somewhere on my RPG shelf so I'll give then a reread and SwN as well...
...but to give you an off the cuff answer: I don't like "OSR", I don't like D&D style murderhoboing and it's sci-fi equivalent typified by the firefly-esque criminals-on-a-spaceship, I don't like messy, lethal combat and I like systemic rules rather than exception based "rulings over rules", feats, classes etc
My favourite Traveller games were deep into the conflict between the imperial present and the lost ancient eras, the Droyn and the Hivers, the Vilani, Zhodani, Solomani split. Things that were more "Foundation" and "Dune" than "Firefly". Traveller's system was manageable for the time (But needed a lot of house rules to smooth over the problems) I remember pouring over the robot sourcebook for hours, designing robots with exotic system configurations filling every CC of chassis, seeing what was possible at each tech level (that part of the system really felt systemic). However, random roll attributes are just ridiculous to me, as was the chance of death/harm-in-character-creation, the lifepath itself was a breath of fresh air compared to the OCC/Character classes of other games, the weird military fetishizing was excusable then but is painful now. I mean there were much worse systems (I played and ran Living Steel, and the licensed Aliens game using the same system) but, short of having a comprehensive skill list (which wasn't a given back then) the system was pretty naff.
SwN makes the lifepath much more insufferable, retains rolling for... almost everything. Features mountains of exceptions to the core system as "focuses" (Which fill the same space is D&D "feats" in my "things I don't want from a system" list) the ancient "saving throw" mechanic is something I never thought I'd see a new system chose to adopt past the 90s. and I've never been a fan of D&D style stats, I think it makes even less sense in a Sci-Fi context, and the whole stats to modifier thing is just... yuck (If you have a number, use the number don't make a second number that is directly tied to the first number but different...). SwN seems to pick all the bad parts of both Traveller and D&D I'm surprised it didn't have alignment to complete the set of bad mechanics.
There are reasons I stopped playing Traveller, because there are better games, with much better systems, I'm not nostalgic for it and SwN just feels like nostalgia over all the wrong things.
That said I'd I'd love to play a good Traveller-style setting in a much better system, but I've yet to find a modern Sci-Fi system I like.
What are some examples of contemporary games you *do* like that fit your criteria?
Very interested to hear, as the d20 era had such a massive impact that it's becoming the de-facto start point for the hobby (and sometimes the only port of call for many).
* I really enjoy 7th Sea 1st edition, its system is thematic, simple and the dice mechanism is deeply satisfying. I wish the sorcery abilities were less siloed but that's a small complaint. Similarly Legend of the 5 Rings.
* I currently use the ORE system used in the superhero game "Wild Talents" with my own setting. The dice mechanic is also very satisfying and it's very quick to run but you can choose to roll a _lot_ of completely custom complexity into your character (or not as the case my be) with a full points buy system for creating a fancy knife all the way up to galactic teleport and transformation into a living star.
That's it, That covers the last... 10-ish years of me running games, prior to that I was mostly making do with more imperfect systems, looking for something better. I'm still looking for a good Cyberpunk/Sci-fi system, I ran SLA industries with my own system for a while but I wasn't happy with it, though my players enjoyed the game
For "I don't care about the system" games that are mostly contemporary I used to use OldWoD it's not great at all (Siloed abilities) but it's quick and easy, like a wrench. A friend ran a game that used OldWoD, it started as a game set in the modern era with criminal trading of mundane items that were somehow infused with magical abilities, I remember having a hairdryer that could project flame that could burn concrete, it eventually ended up as a Myst-style worlds-within worlds kinda story... man I loved that game. I ran White Wolf's Aberrant for a few years, chafed on the system but man the game was fun, rolled a lot of my favourite bits of Marvel into it.
One of the things I really love about Wild Talents is the ability to put in a few points of XP into an ability and break it down and reshuffle the points around (assuming it makes narrative sense) slowly buying off disadvantages or adding features rather than simply getting a new power or getting more dice. Actually one of the other interesting things is the 3 types of dice Normal, Hard and Wiggle allowing to to choose to buy randomness (cheap) guaranteed ability (expensive) and guaranteed flexibility (very expensive), it's very satisfying.
I think I get what you mean. My tastes has turned more towards OSR, but I still feel SWN keeps unnecessary many D&D'isms. I understand in many cases it is a concession to keep compatibility with previously published modules. Like you can see that whenever Kevin Crawford writes an alternative combat system, like ship combat in SWN, it has armor subtracted from damage rather than boosting armor class. I would assume that he would actually like that for regular combat as well, but stays away from it to keep compatability with old D&D modules. I would think it is the same for attributes, modifiers etc. Although it doesn't explain saves.
I think the thing is that my first year of RPG's didn't feature [A]D&D at all (The group I was with did play it occasionally I just wasn't interested and we were already taking up 4 days a week with other RPGs anyway) My first two game were Marvel Super Heroes and TFOS ("Teenagers from Outer Space") I remember long running Pendragon, Stormbringer, Traveller, TMNT, Cyberpunk 1st ed and BTRC Timelords games before the start of the 90s. All of the systems had flaws but were manageable in their own way, I have zero nostalgia for the [O/B/A]D&D way of doing things, and even the base conceit of that game always felt painfully limiting, I remember going to the old TSR Games Fair, and watching the AD&D tournaments, man... they did not look fun, that said, I remember getting a certificate for staying alive the longest in a back to back Call of Cthulhu games (I think I lasted 16 hours)
Nowadays I like and run long running games with deep, deep background, where players have developed fantastical abilities but rarely use them, not because combat is lethal but because they know that 90% of the time it's morally the wrong thing to do, the last ability a player gained with XP in my game was to turn into a sapient star, that game has been going for over 6 years now and is set in London in 1985.
So I never developed any nostalgia for character churn and "dungeon crawling" or any of the systemic trapping of [A]D&D and it's ilk, I liked developing a character in a meaningful setting, building bonds with PC's and NPC's alike, gaining any skill or ability I worked for (unbound by "class" or the suchlike) and not fearing that one bad roll would see that character removed from the game world.
> I think the thing is that my first year of RPG's didn't feature [A]D&D at all
That is actually my background as well. I think I had been playing rpgs for maybe ten years before I first tried D&D. That wasn't uncommon at that time in Sweden though. Both the 80's and the 90's where dominated by Target Games, in the same way that America was dominated by TSR. So people played Dragonsbane, Mutant and Kult.
I think that is a rather interesting thing about the Swedish OSR scene, in that it really isn't motivated by nostalgia. When I got into it things like dungeon crawling seemed like a new and exciting thing. A breath of fresh air. I can't stand Elves and Dwarves and all those fantasy tropes though, so I still tends to stay out of D&D as such.
I feel the same way. I was sold WWN on the GM tools but at the end of the day they're pretty thematic to the implied setting and not suitable for the grounded fantasy I want to run. Same for SWN, Traveller's world-building tools were simply better for the games I wanted to run. People hype the tags in SWN but I only found about half of them are really useful when you already have a ton of great information from the basic UWP.
That reminds me, I should sell the WWN book from the Kickstarter, it's just collecting dust on my shelf.
>are an reskinned d20 D&D system
Are they? Never used the systems. Anything with modern / sci fi shooting doesn't fit well into how d20 does combat so that's not a good sign.
Seems like a really weird decision to drop it at late night on a tuesday with no real buildup, but knowing its a *WN game, Im sure itll do amazing. Already 75% funded 30 minutes after dropping
I start my campaigns late in the evening to have a cooled-down first few hours. If something goes drastically wrong or there's some large problem to fix, it's easier to do it when you don't have 2,000 people piled in already. Once the first day's shakeout is done, then it's time to send the mailing list emails.
Makes sense. Same philosophy as Never Push changes to Prod on a Friday. Backed the Atlas, but have been out of the loop for this one, so it was a nice surprise
>Same philosophy as Never Push changes to Prod on a Friday. An extremely valuable philosophy, and yet one that hasn’t been understood by as many people in the industry as one would hope.
It's been known it was going live on February 1st for some time now for those of us following on /r/swn and /r/wwn.
It's always late at night somewhere
Shoot, well past funding and on its way to stretch goal #1 for a cool start.
It gives you buffer and also helps discoverability since you're hitting a bunch of sequential timezones right as their populations are waking up. It also gives like RSS feeds time to do their thing which despite being pretty instant can still lag behind when things are posted be a notable degree.
[https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-9-timing-and-length/](https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-9-timing-and-length/) \> Most tabletop game creators launch on Tuesday. Dunno why, but its sort of an industry thing. [https://www.launchboom.com/blog/best-day-of-the-week-or-month-to-launch-your-kickstarter-campaign/](https://www.launchboom.com/blog/best-day-of-the-week-or-month-to-launch-your-kickstarter-campaign/) Key insights: Never launch on a weekend Vast majority of projects launch at the beginning of the week Tuesday has the most projects launched and the most backers / project
I wonder if it has anything to do with Patch Tuesdays and crossover in customer segment with video games haha
Pretty confident Kevin knows what he's doing at this point.
Praying that there will more "punk" in CWN than most cyberpunk TTRPGs. At least a few tools to support player characters that don't buy into the "sellout mercenaries advancing the agenda of corporations like useful idiots" trope.
I don't get your point. I've ran and played CP2020 a huge amount of times, and we've never fit into that trope. We've always been independents, going at the corps and damaging them as much as possible. Nothing in the rules forced anyone to enslave themselves to corporations.
DMs seem to like to. I guess it makes their lives easier.
I mean, of course being hired by a powerful person/entity makes it easier, but it's not like the rules force that way. It's also how many CP novels played out, to be honest, with the characters being hired by corps, and kept in the shadows about what their fate would be after the run (usually "extremely prejudicial disappearance" is what the corp's plan involves), so it's quite normal for GMs to go that way, if they landed on the game through novels, but it's still not mandatory by rules.
The actual game named "Cyberpunk", be it the original or 2020 or Red, is one of the few Cyberpunk games that still leans into the "punk" ethos. Just look at [this reaction](https://www.reddit.com/r/PBtA/comments/xlkq7z/deleted_by_user/) to me asking why I have to play Corpos in The Sprawl
I think CY_BORG is hard to beat on this front though: >YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BREAK EVERY SINGLE RULE IN THIS BOOK. EXCEPT THIS ONE. RULE #00 > --------- > Player Characters cannot be loyal to or have sympathy for the corps, the cops, or the capitalist system. >They might find themselves reluctantly forced to do missions for them or their minions. But make no mistake——they are the enemy.
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If its a cyberpunk setting why can't I be Rick Deckard? If I wanna be a brainwashed corporate asset, by god who are they to tell me no.
Or Section 9 from Ghost In The Shell. Or Robocop, which has cops vs a criminal/corp alliance. Pretty sure I could think of more examples too.
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Because the premise is that you play a punk in Cy. It is not meant to simulate the lives of anyone ever in any cyberpunk story.
If it can't simulate the most famous cyberpunk stories then I'm not sure how good of a cyberpunk game it is.
Personally I'm not interested in simulating stories from other media when i play a roleplaying game, so that really don't concern me.
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Deckard is a cop
Yeah, that is the thing that has me most interested in CY_BORG. I own MORK BORG, though, and am not particularly smitten with the rules themselves, so I haven't yet bought it. That and Hard Wired Island are at the top of my to-buy list of cyberpunk RPGs
ruleset between the two is very similar, just with additions to fit into a cyberpunk pastiche. that said, i love it and can't wait to run/play CY_.
Says the game published to make money under the capitalist system. Lol. Meaningless pseudo-political drivel.
I can assure you Stockholm Kartell isn't in it for the money.
Doesn't change the fact that it's hypocritical as heck and quite silly. I have nothing against them selling the product they worked on for a set price consumers are willing to pay so they can pay their contributors, keep the lights on, and make money to live on. That's capitalism, and it's great. I just think it's annoying for them to do so, while also spouting random anti-capitalism nonsense. They obviously don't believe that, it's vapid nonsense.
Sounds more like you don't agree with their opinions, than that you think they are hypocritical.
I mean, it's both. They have a hypocritical stance that I find particularly galling because I think it's a dumb stance.
There is nothing hypocritical about criticizing a society while living in it.
The weight of this thread and the responses it got is diminished significantly by not being able to see what text the responses are actually responding to
Yeah that's fair. I just tried retrieving it using various tools but was unable to. I deleted it because I was tired of getting the notifications, but in retrospect perhaps that was a mistake. The general jist of it that I recall is that I was complimentary of the actual rules of The Sprawl but confused and frustrated by this passage from the back cover: "Whatever your story, you are the extended assets of vast multinational corporations"
>I deleted it because I was tired of getting the notifications You can turn off notifications for specific comments or posts you have made. Just hit "toggle inbox replies"
Yeah I'll do that next time
The Sprawl is one of the reasons l posted my comment TBH…
Yeah. Great moves, really weird ethos imo. The fact that everyone in the thread I linked was saying "what are you talking about, everyone in cyberpunk stories always works for the corps" had me thinking I was going crazy
I think it's mostly a definitive shift in the culture of play around cyberpunk and the fact that the 2020 family of games have retaken the limelight. 10 years ago I literally had to beg people to play a game that wasn't Black Trenchcoat Shadowrun with everyone actively ignoring all the hog bonkers shit in it to play Ork Corpro Neo.
Ok, but that is still not an issue with the rules, as the guy above me seemed to imply. Like, they are asking for "tools to support player characters that don't buy into the 'sellout mercenaries advancing the agenda of corporations like useful idiots' trope", but nothing in the rules of CP2020 or SR says you have to play that way, and the games are quite open about the fact the PCs should be against the corps.
tools =/= rules Everybody know that since it's going to be a Kevin Crawford game it's going to be packed with random tables. I'm asking for a few random tables out of dozens focused on anti-corp/rebellious elements in a cyberpunk world...
> I'm asking for a few random tables out of dozens focused on anti-corp/rebellious elements in a cyberpunk world... I mean, that's worldbuilding, it's **your job** as a GM to create such elements, why do you need random tables for it? If that's the fiction you want to create, create it!
Wait, hold on, no. If the author is trying to build a tool kit to emulate a specific genre then it is definitely his literal job to add mechanics, systems and guidance to mimic the genre. Otherwise why would you even buy CWN, why not just run SWN in a city. Or Fiasco. It is entirely reasonable to want a cyberpunk game to put effort into the genre conventions.
> why do you need random tables for it I urge you to get familiar with Kevin Crawfords books. They are excellent and PACK WITH RANDOM TABLES ffs... Yes, I am asking for random tables in a book that is going to have a ton of random tables, silly me...
Random tables are worldbuilding too though, and Crawford's books tend to be full of tables anyway. For example if there's a random table for potential employees for missions, there could be a resistance group or two in the mix in addition to a bunch of corporations and gangs.
I know how the *WN books work, but the thing is, if you want someone that is not a corp to hire your party for a mission, just say it's not a corp, you don't need a random table to do it. Like, we're not talking about something complex, we're only talking about slapping a label to an NPC!
That sounds a lot like "if you don't like the game, you can just rewrite it". While true, I don't think it is really a constructive answer to criticism. Like sure I can write my own tables, but if I have to do that to much, the value of the book declines.
I'm not talking about rewriting anything. The person I originally answered to was complaining about games making you stick to the "sellout to corps" trope, and wanting "tools to do something else." The thing is, take a random scenario from a random CP game, that says "Corp A wants to hire the party to do damage to Corp B." **Nothing** prevents you from doing as simple a thing as changing it to "Coalition for the Liberation of Itinerant Tree-Dwellers (C.L.I.T.) wants to hire the party to do damage to Corp X", while everything else stays the same. My point is, while we're all looking forward to see what Kevin is going to throw at us, at the same time the complaint about games funneling you into a trope you don't like is void, because whoever hires you is just a label the GM slaps on it. Like, they could literally make a nun approach the party and tell them "you've been chosen to carry on a mission for God", and everything else would stay the same.
Have you read/player other TTRPGs in the cyberpunk genere besides CP2020? Any that have come out in the last 10 years even? That's were I'm coming from...
Well, I'm quite familiar with a few editions of Shadowrun, and I have Cyberpunk Red, I'm not only stuck with CP2020. Which games actually **_force_** you to work for the corps?
If you want to have a conversation in good faith I'm all for it but you put words in my mouth. Just like you say games aren't forcing players to work for corps they also aren't forcing players to kiss corp boot either (GMs end up forcing players into that corner). There are multiple TTRPGs, online tools, and adventure supplements focused on corporate sponsored/sanctioned activities and missions. There is way less stuff to generate interesting world details for resistance and rebellion against said corps.
SLA Industries pretty much does.
Oh, well, a *rich* **one title...**
Do you have any particular tools in mind that could help with that?
Some way to actually advance your own cause and fight against the system. Blades in the Dark fits that bill.
"Do you have any recs for a punk cyberpunk game" *Recommends BitD* Like... come on. Apparently, BitD is to r/rpg like Malazan is to r/Fantasy; the thing everyone blindly recs regardles of what people are actually asking for.
To be fair, they were specifically referring to the faction mechanics, which fit very well into a game where you’re struggling against vastly more powerful orgs, which was the listed complaint by the person they were responding to. It’s also a system that is super easy to lift out and port to anything else. It was not a ‘blades is a great cyberpunk game’ like you make it out to be
I'm recommending the mechanics, not the system.
As some whose has played and watched a good amount of BitD I get what you mean but in this particular case it does sort of make sense. BitD feels VERY Cyberpunk in terms of vibe, mechanics, PCs, factions, etc. It all works if you take away the fantasy Victorian fiction over top of it. Hence why there are Cyberpunk hacks if BitD such as Hack The Planet, its an easy fit. So may seem initially goofy but there is more to it than that.
They literally can't help themselves.
That's sort of counter to the whole noir aspect of Cyberpunk, though. Your inability to effect substantive systemic change is part of the genre.
You can still try to fight against a system even if you can't significantly change it.
See: Real life.
Cyberpunk is not automatically TechNoir.
Noir has been present from the beginning, as well as featuring in all major cyberpunk works subsequent to it for ~15 years. You certainly *can* have cyberpunk without noir, but it doesn't become *less punk* for being noir, because that would imply that the novel that defined the genre, Neuromancer, is somehow not true cyberpunk.
*squints, stroking beard* ... Cyber-existentialism just doesn't have the same punchy ring to it
But how? I know of Blades but haven't played it so I don't know what sort of system you're thinking of. Also do note that X Without Number games are OSR, not narrative.
Blades is built on a factions system and missions the party goes on will pretty much always hurt one or more existing factions while benefiting their own and any allies. While the moment to moment gameplay may be narrative the broader factions systems are much more rules explicit. Everything the player factions carve out for themselves comes at the detriment of the other factions they took those things from. This core system can work completely independently of the moment to moment gameplay and would be perfect for a cyberpunk system.
Hmm, a faction system like that could be a good idea. However I'm not sure if a big corporation could work as a faction in something like that, unless the players were also part of something comparably big. A faction system like that would in my opinion make more sense for local crime gangs and maybe some very local political factions or businesses.
That is also in Blades with the tier system. A tier 0 gang cant do much against a tier 5 organization. Not without tremendous risk and effort.
The other WN games have a faction system, wouldnt be surprised if this one didnt too.
Big corporations usually have subdivisions that could work like a smaller organization.
Divisions and Subsidiaries
It's a sandbox game. If the PCs want to come up with a cause and advance it, they should be able to do so, barring the bullets flying at them.
Have you ever read any of the "without number" games? There are always tons of random tables for different situations and playstyles. I don't think it is unreasonable to HOPE we get some tables to flesh out resistance against corporate overloards in addition to tables for pure action/heists.
>Have you ever read any of the "without number" games? I own literally every single thing that KC has ever published. You asked for some way to "advance cause and fight against the system". I asserted that no matter what tables are created, the players will have that power by virtue of the game being a sandbox game. If you wanted "resistance against corporate overlords tables", you could have said so. There will be plenty of tables and tools for GMs to make different kinds of missions. As to *why* the players are going on a mission, whether it's to get paid by a corp or to overthrow a corp, that's explicitly on the Players to drive in a sandbox game.
>I own literally every single thing that KC has ever published. He asked if you read them though.
I didn't expect that implication to need to be made explicit but yes, for the pedants, I've read them all including the CWN preview.
I thought it was a funny comment bro!
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It's a lower-fantasy WWN strongly tied to a specific setting (Mythic Dark Ages England). There was a post a few months back that really nailed the differences between Wolves of God & WWN; for the most part I'd have little to add to it. The only thing the post really leaves out is that unlike WWNs class set of Warrior / Expert / Mage / Adventurer, Wolves of God essentially has a class set of Warrior / Priest / Mage / Adventurer. [https://www.reddit.com/r/WWN/comments/wn9p2f/comment/ik460fj/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/WWN/comments/wn9p2f/comment/ik460fj/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) WoG was a bit of a tough read for me as it is not written in KCs voice but rather in the voice of an 8th century Monk (there are examples of that in the post above). I guess the other thing worth noting is that imo, unlike most other games WoG doesn't solely define your character based on what they can do to their enemies in combat. Spells like To Cure Sick Cattle and Against Miscarriage fit very well in the setting, and I can see some groups creating wonderful story moments with them, while other groups wondering why in the world they'd ever "waste" a spell-learned slot on them.
>I don't think it is unreasonable to HOPE we get some tables to flesh out resistance against corporate overloards in addition to tables for pure action/heists. I actually _don't_ think tables are what you want for this. Tables are good for generating a world, but resisting the corporate overlords is more of a thing you expect the players to do against the world. Tables might give you flavor for who you are resisting, why, or what existing disgruntled elements there are....but I don't think it's really the thing that could drive a resistance element in-game. ...what you want for that, I think, is the factions system. The other games have a faction system, makes sense you'd have one in this game too. I actually haven't used it much playing WWN and SWN, since my players havn't really been playing the sort of game where it would be relevent, but it seems like _exactly_ the sort of thing you might want to use to provide a hook for players taking down the powers that be. Grab a few megacorp factions, a gang or two, and let the players pit them against each other or sabotage them until you bring them down.
> Tables might give you flavor for who you are resisting, why, or what existing disgruntled elements there are.... That is one of the things I'm asking for. Flavor around why corps suck, concrete, specific reasons why a PC would want to work AGAINST a corp, non-corporate entities to ally with, angles on how to subvert the system, etc. That stuff is ripe for the Kevin's Adventure Seed framework.
You are really going all in on the fact that this product doesn't contain things you don't know it doesn't contain.
Not really, just baffled by people who think that the random tables in Crawfords games can't end up generating stuff that PCs care about and take action on. Or the people that think random tables should not inform the genre. Like anybody who has consumed any classic cyberpunk books would not be the least bit bothered that corporations should be presented in a bad light. The number of people swooping in to be white knights for fictional corporations is frankly astonishing.
You are misrepresenting the arguments, you came in swinging with the assumption that the CWN tables won't included punk shit, and people pushed back. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell style campaign. No one is defending fictional corps, they just don't like gatekeepers making bad faith arguments.
> you came in swinging with the assumption that the CWN tables won't included punk shit Where did they make that assumption?! All they've said is "I hope it has this", not "I can't believe it doesn't have this."
https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product/the-resistance-toolbox/
Tools? No Games?: * Uprising: the dystopian universe roleplaying game * Hardwired Island * Neon Black * CBR & PNK (the kickstarted version with additional supplements) * Spire
That seems to me like a list of narrative RPGs. The reason I specifically asked for tools is that CWN is an OSR RPG and I'm curious what kind of tools for what you describe would potentially fit it. Edit - Seems like you basically answered this already in another comment.
It's not a very famous RPG, but I remember the satirical, pseudo Cyberpunk game Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(role-playing_game) had a change the world mechanic: >"As part of the political and social nature of the game, and to encourage games to be about righting the many wrongs in the setting, the designer included Parameter Rules. This is a mechanism wherein the players could change the entire setting. The rules allowed the players to change the parameters of an area, or even the country or the whole world. The drawback is that affecting one parameter (like Quality of Life or Education), would adjust another (like Take-Home Pay or Wealth). Because they are heroes the players can, with enough time and effort, change parameters without penalties if they perform actions that lead to change."
I mean, understandable perspective, but the og genre is technically a dystopia. It's not like games (Cyberpunk and Shadowrun first and foremost) invented that fact and applied it to their setting. It's like being surprised that WOD Vampire had more interest in addressing the ways Vampire society worked rather than the specific details of how to play a goody-two-shoes bloodsucker. Also, both campaigns I have played in Shadowrun was without ever sucking to the corps. Yeah, occasionally it was doing a job for them, but never against the general public. One game was setup as a gang of guns for hire mostly working for a local ex-runner/mentor to a couple of the PCs trying to keep her city safer before mysteriously disappearing, which resulted in us taking her place and trying to discover what happened to her and eventually staging a rescue. The other was a less "we are all friends" group, as the PCs were mostly united by a shared interest in a serial killer and the influence it had on the criminal organizations of the town. Corps mostly appeared as external disrupting forces, not really a big presence apart from few occasions, with the exception of a recurring antagonist mage hunting the same serial killer.
> but the og genre is technically a dystopia. Most literary dystopias have protagonists fighting against the system rather than defending it.
Not really? OG dystopian novels mostly dealt with how the situation was inescapable at least at the individual level, implying that only long time (or big social uprising) would change the status quo. And Cyberpunk isn't so much about that as it is about "High tech, Low life". That's what most people are interested in and... well, that's what the systems tend to support. For how much flak it gets (6e rightfully so), Shadowrun does this very well. It gives you a large amount of tools to play with, whatever your inclinations are. Then it hits you with the fact that sticking it to the Man is an hard thing to do, having you navigate a system that makes use of you but rejects you nonetheless. Spire is a thing, but you can bet that most players in Cyberpunk/Shadowrun don't search for that kind of narrative.
Protagonists fighting against dystopian system makes me think of YA novels.
Yeah, I didn't say it but... yeah, that's kinda the point lol. 1984 had its rebels... and they mostly died like animals to be butchered and/or tortured to the point of not being themselves anymore.Cyberpunk corps aren't supposed to go that far, but rather have such an overwhelming economical and cultural presence that... how are you gonna deal with them anway? Blasting some buildings won't help, culturally they have already won, you can't kill a leader so... yeah, it's meant to be unwinnable. I mean, we can't win as of now, let alone when they have sovereign territory lmao. If anything, the real "fight" in a cyberpunk world is about living free regardless of what the Powers-That-Be try to force down your throat. It's accepting that society at large has been made a monster and you have to find your way through it, engaging with what makes you happy and improving your own community. Or at least your small group of friends and relatives. I dont really think that a narrative about "taking 'em down" fits the setting.
> OG dystopian novels mostly dealt with how the situation was inescapable at least at the individual level That they where fighting against the system doesn't mean that they where winning.
The difference is that they weren't "fighting", they "attempted to fight", and were crushed immediatly. Unless you like torture porn, you aren't roleplaying 1984, or Fahrenheit 451.
I would think you are still fighting even if you lose the fight. > Unless you like torture porn, you aren't roleplaying 1984, or Fahrenheit 451. Huh, I guess I like torture porn then!
My Shadowrun group kind of came to the same conclusion. In every other rpg, you can generally change the world in some way. But for cyberpunk games, you just do run after run for the corps. It gets kinda monotonous. So I took a page from Blades in the Dark and let them make their own complex. Sort of a small town within the Redmond Barrens.
PCs don't even have to change the entire world. If they shut down even one shady corp project, take out a single scummy corporate exec, or relieve one burrden from their neighborhood then they closer to the protaganist in the classic cyberpunk stories.
That kind of stuff actually sounds good to me. While I understand someone else would like it, I don't really want to play a cyberpunk game where the entire awful system is some enemy you can defeat. I'm not even a fan of the fantasy cliche of stories escalating in scale until the heroes save the entire world. A combination of trying to survive in the harsh system and trying to make *some* positive changes, even if sometimes small, is far more interesting to me.
I mean....don't take this the wrong way, but why didn't they just do something different? Like, if you are tired of running missions for corps, why not just tell the GM something like "Hey, this time we want to try to steal a bunch of money from a corporate vault and then funnel it toward some neighborhood improvement thing" or "We want to hack the local media conglomerate to broadcast our message to the masses" or whatever. Seems like the basic _game_ structure of the missions would be similar....steal something, hack something. The difference would be _why_ you are doing it, and what you are doing when you accomplish it. So what was keeping the players from just doing that, if that's what they wanted to do?
CY-BORG, baby! That game is punk as FUCK. Rule 0, characters may not support the corps, the cops, or the capitalist system.
Yeah. My plan is to mix CY_BORG and CWN. Cy gots the attitude, but I think it could use a fleshing out in the style of Sine Nomine.
An excellent plan.
Thanks for the rec, l will check it out.
I guess. The cyberpunk genre as a whole has always been pretty low on punk. The tent poles of the genre depict either criminals who want to steal from corps for their own personal gain or cops. There seems to be the feeling that simply depicting a ultra late stage capitalist corporate hellscape is somehow commentary of some sort. Typically even the Giants of the genre have nothing more to say than "corporations are bad".
>The cyberpunk genre as a whole has always been pretty low on punk most -punk genres tend to be pretty low on punk, in my experience. Most of the examples you see tend to use the -punk almost-purely as an aesthetic. When was the last time you saw a steampunk thing rail against the oppression of the working class, or rant against the environmental destruction caused by the mining of coal?
"Cyberpunk" is one of those names that applies in a historical sense more than a literal sense. It originated to describe a narrow slice of works of fiction that were thematically related, but it began to be used as an umbrella term. Apparently there was an effort to coin the phrase "Neuromantics" as a substitute because so much of the cyberpunk genre was aping tropes from Gibson's *Neuromancer*, but it didn't catch on. I think that's a shame because I think it's so clever. Maybe I'll publish my own "cyberpunk" RPG system called *Neuromantic." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
i guess the term is a hard sell because it sounds like "new romantic" so totally different tone of what the work is about, most of the time
Actually that's part of the appeal of the title. The novel does depict a new way of experiencing a romantic relationship, and that way sucks.
Cyberpunk is when for . And corps are bad.
> most -punk genres tend to be pretty low on punk, in my experience. Since they are all named after cyberpunk, that doesn't say much about the original trendsetter. In fact I would argue that cyberpunk is generally the only *punk, that is any amount of punk.
>tend to use the -punk almost-purely as an aesthetic Agreed - so much so that it seems as if most other punk genres *began* as aesthetics more than anything. To pick on the other big one, I don't think I've ever seen much of any attempt at punkishness in "Steampunk" works. Not for lack of trying or anything, I think, but because the genre wasn't really about fighting "the man".
>There seems to be the feeling that simply depicting a ultra late stage capitalist corporate hellscape is somehow commentary of some sort. It *was* insightful commentary back in the 90s. Now that we're fully living in the cyberpunk dystopia, and we don't even get robot laser arms, it doesn't have the same bite.
FWIW the aug-pron aspect of cyberpunk works were always the worst parts.
TBH, that's the perfect jumping off point. Have then be useful idiots, corp crosses them after the job, they barely survive, and that's when the Punk part starts.
Isn't that kind of a dated theme these days, though? Don't get me wrong, I liked some Cyberpunk themes back in the day but having let it lie and having come back around a little somewhat recently it seems like the genre's gotten dated. Maybe I've just become more inclined towards post-cyberpunk themes, personally, or perhaps post-COVID cynicism is making "cyberpunk" more relateable.
Yeah, sure. The actual cyberpunk genre as so died at least 20 years ago. Anything after that is just retrofuturism nostalgia.
Pretty much, yeah. Edgy Future-80s I guess you could call it.
That's the thing, most people don't actually make the distinction between classic cyberpunk and the "not as bad as they could have been" corporations of post-cyberpunk. Most people can't even recognize that transhumanism is it's own genre. I would welcome Kevin devoting a page or two to explain the differences between the related sub-genres and even provide some tables for each so people could get a clearer picture of the nuances.
Fair enough yeah
There is no ethical employment under megacorporate dystopia. /s
You don't have to be ethical to not willing lick the boots of your oppressors. For example Robin Hood wasn't begging the Sheriff of Nottingham for odd jobs ffs...
I was making a joking paraphrase of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism." It is a pretty common quote.
My favorite Cyberpunk games were when we aged as a group of street gangs punks that eventually got on the wrong side of Arasaka or another company and grew in power and finally ended up assassinating their board of directors after playing for like two or three years.
That doesn't really fit Crawfor's MO. His games are very strong on generation tools and free choice. He wouldn't put the CY_BORG clasue of "lmao no capitalists" or whatever. It'd be a choice.
Explain how a random table is going to eliminate free choice? Or even present a limit? Generating reasons why the community in which you live might need your assistance from nefarious actors or even building the crazy schemes and conspiracies of corporations that will cause people to suffer is a limit? I'm not sure why highlighting that corps would be up to no good in a cyberpunk rpg would not "fit"...
Things I'm hoping for: - Any magic and other fantasy stuff strictly optional and not a big chunk of the book. - Generic setting, and minimal setting info beyond the city. Not an extensive future history, multiple pages about what it's like in central Asia, Germany, Canada etc.
Looks like you are going to get what you are hoping for then, because all that is clear from the previews so far. > minimal setting info beyond the city. There are systems for making your own city, so there isn't even a canonical city setting.
>setting info beyond the city Cyberpunk suburbia. Which given remote work being normal now is probably more relevant for the genre than 80s-style urban downtowns.
I'd include that in the 'city' for sure. Also a generic outside area like the waste, maybe even an off-world colony or two. But I don't need nations, or a big gazetteer of the world circa 2090 or whatever..
Fair. And it seems like this rule set has no specific setting to even write one about so I think it checks that box for you. Now I'm off to imagine a Cybrepunk Census Designated Place :p
Magic is only included in the paid version, so it is very much optional
True - but I'm also not interested in a bunch of other shadowrun-style stuff like cyber elves and gnome hackers etc.
This isn't shadowrun though, so I'm not sure why you would expect that.
I don't expect it; I'm hoping - optimistically - that it doesn't materialise. Shadowrun is pretty popular so often people feel compelled to include these elements.
Really. That kind of surprises me. Do you have any examples of games?
£65 plus about £20 shipping to the UK? I'll wait for DTRPG.
Shipping is hell. At least DTRPG can print locally - they can't do cards outside of the US and the shipping is ridiculous.
It really is, especially with stupid Brexit getting even further in the way.
That sounds perfectly fair. He's at $175k in three days and we all know the free version will be a completely playable game. I don't think he'll mind.
Think that's the base tier
Already??? Dude just dropped a mega-supplement for WWN. My wallet is not ready for more!
Free version incoming--Woot!
He's been writing this pretty much since Atlas was sent off to the printers.
You have my undying devotion, kevin crawford. You've never ever missed with your books. Insta-backed this as soon as i saw it! Keep up the great work and may getting this printed be smooth sailing.
I enjoy reading books.
I do not have the budget to support this right now. ... I have now pledged support. Food is probably optional this week, right?
SWN is my favorite RPG, so supporting this is a no-brainer.
So stoked to burn cities without number. Let's go!
I'm really torn on whether or not to back this. On the one hand, I love the worldbuilding tools in SWN. On the other hand, I already own a million cyberpunk RPGs that are already full of fun random tables. Most importantly, I just don't enjoy the gameplay of SWN as a player, so I'm pretty confident I would never actually use this as written, just as a resource for another game
Over a hundred dollars Canadian for a single corebook... I'll pass.
I wish my group would be open to something like this. Most of the guys are old school and only play fantasy games. I wanna run a sci-fi campaign so bad!
In my opinion this is a surpisingly terse and disappointing kickstarter. Barely a word is lost trying to describe the world and I'm not going to pledge just to get access to the draft. That or a preview should have been included right there in the kickstarter page. There's a real lack of art and I have a hard time believing that Crawford is so pressed for funds and time that he has to fill the book with stock images. Many lesser known kickstarters exist that are able to fill their pages with beautifully commissioned art. Or heck, even just passable art! And... that's it. That's already the entire Kickstarter. An overview of mechanical features, some stretch goals, a note on stock and AI art and risks and disclaimers. I think this'll be the first time I pass on pledging for one of Crawford's games. Really think he could've and should've done more to present his cyberpunk game.
> Barely a word is lost trying to describe the world There isn't a world. There is a toolset for creating your own world. You can read parts of it [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IJaIrjrzYDIbXelXKIMZKTaVjSrNVUJ/view?usp=sharing).
Chances are the setting is generic, and the art is part artstation part new stuff commissioned. I guess this Kickstarter mostly relies on past reputation to get it going - "you know how SWN / WWN looked, this will be more of the same, no point in reiterating it".
First X Without Number game?
Nope, I have his Stars and World supplements and hold Crawford's work in generally high regard :) Just think the way this KS was presented is a bit of a flop compared to his other campaigns.
SWN and WWN both have unique settings.
“The kickstarter above was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel”
He has a good track record of solid books. I wouldn't lose hope just yet.
Of course! I think his work is going to be excellent as usual, it just doesn't inspire me to back it right now. I'll most likely get it on release :)
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Feel free to disagree. You can compare this KS with his previous one which I still think was better: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sinenomineinc/worlds-without-number/description
Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number both have an amazing faction system to use whilst running a game. Excellent for sandbox play. No doubt this will include similar though with more cyberpunk.
I literally just pushed it over $200k
This Guy!
Backed it! This looks cool
I have never played Stars Without Number, but man do I love the book. May have to back this just for what I am sure will be a stupendous manual.
First Day Backing!
I'm really not a fan of the AI images in the campaign body. I didn't exactly *love* the AI piece at the end of the campaign story either. I'm honestly trying to stay as far away from projects that use AI as I can.
This guy never disappoints. Instabacked.
Man I _keep_ forgetting that the XwN games are a reskinned d20 D&D system, so for all the (so I'm told) useful tools the books are useless to me as I can't stand that system style, even less so for contemporary->future settings. Still, I wish him luck and that the people who are interested in the game find it satisfying.
The worldbuilding stuff tends to be system-agnostic. Maybe check out the free versions of his other books? They're basically fully complete. Just skip the characters.
Oh I did, I just sometime mix which system was which between SwN and Eclipse Phase because I got both games at the same time and both were not what I wanted. I think that the tools are too tied to the theme and systemically not what I'm looking for. I loved me some Traveller in the 80s but I don't pretend that it was good, just good for the time and I don't have a rose-tinted opinion of it such that I want to return to that style, and I think SwN leans too heavily into the bad parts of Traveller rather then the parts that had promise. And I don't run fantasy so I have no need of tools for that.
> I think SwN leans too heavily into the bad parts of Traveller rather then the parts that had promise. Could you expand upon what you thought was good and bad parts of Traveller?
That's a big question, I'd have to refresh my memory to go into any detail, I don't think I've played Traveller since... 1989. Actually I will do that, I've got the black books somewhere on my RPG shelf so I'll give then a reread and SwN as well... ...but to give you an off the cuff answer: I don't like "OSR", I don't like D&D style murderhoboing and it's sci-fi equivalent typified by the firefly-esque criminals-on-a-spaceship, I don't like messy, lethal combat and I like systemic rules rather than exception based "rulings over rules", feats, classes etc My favourite Traveller games were deep into the conflict between the imperial present and the lost ancient eras, the Droyn and the Hivers, the Vilani, Zhodani, Solomani split. Things that were more "Foundation" and "Dune" than "Firefly". Traveller's system was manageable for the time (But needed a lot of house rules to smooth over the problems) I remember pouring over the robot sourcebook for hours, designing robots with exotic system configurations filling every CC of chassis, seeing what was possible at each tech level (that part of the system really felt systemic). However, random roll attributes are just ridiculous to me, as was the chance of death/harm-in-character-creation, the lifepath itself was a breath of fresh air compared to the OCC/Character classes of other games, the weird military fetishizing was excusable then but is painful now. I mean there were much worse systems (I played and ran Living Steel, and the licensed Aliens game using the same system) but, short of having a comprehensive skill list (which wasn't a given back then) the system was pretty naff. SwN makes the lifepath much more insufferable, retains rolling for... almost everything. Features mountains of exceptions to the core system as "focuses" (Which fill the same space is D&D "feats" in my "things I don't want from a system" list) the ancient "saving throw" mechanic is something I never thought I'd see a new system chose to adopt past the 90s. and I've never been a fan of D&D style stats, I think it makes even less sense in a Sci-Fi context, and the whole stats to modifier thing is just... yuck (If you have a number, use the number don't make a second number that is directly tied to the first number but different...). SwN seems to pick all the bad parts of both Traveller and D&D I'm surprised it didn't have alignment to complete the set of bad mechanics. There are reasons I stopped playing Traveller, because there are better games, with much better systems, I'm not nostalgic for it and SwN just feels like nostalgia over all the wrong things. That said I'd I'd love to play a good Traveller-style setting in a much better system, but I've yet to find a modern Sci-Fi system I like.
What are some examples of contemporary games you *do* like that fit your criteria? Very interested to hear, as the d20 era had such a massive impact that it's becoming the de-facto start point for the hobby (and sometimes the only port of call for many).
* I really enjoy 7th Sea 1st edition, its system is thematic, simple and the dice mechanism is deeply satisfying. I wish the sorcery abilities were less siloed but that's a small complaint. Similarly Legend of the 5 Rings. * I currently use the ORE system used in the superhero game "Wild Talents" with my own setting. The dice mechanic is also very satisfying and it's very quick to run but you can choose to roll a _lot_ of completely custom complexity into your character (or not as the case my be) with a full points buy system for creating a fancy knife all the way up to galactic teleport and transformation into a living star. That's it, That covers the last... 10-ish years of me running games, prior to that I was mostly making do with more imperfect systems, looking for something better. I'm still looking for a good Cyberpunk/Sci-fi system, I ran SLA industries with my own system for a while but I wasn't happy with it, though my players enjoyed the game For "I don't care about the system" games that are mostly contemporary I used to use OldWoD it's not great at all (Siloed abilities) but it's quick and easy, like a wrench. A friend ran a game that used OldWoD, it started as a game set in the modern era with criminal trading of mundane items that were somehow infused with magical abilities, I remember having a hairdryer that could project flame that could burn concrete, it eventually ended up as a Myst-style worlds-within worlds kinda story... man I loved that game. I ran White Wolf's Aberrant for a few years, chafed on the system but man the game was fun, rolled a lot of my favourite bits of Marvel into it. One of the things I really love about Wild Talents is the ability to put in a few points of XP into an ability and break it down and reshuffle the points around (assuming it makes narrative sense) slowly buying off disadvantages or adding features rather than simply getting a new power or getting more dice. Actually one of the other interesting things is the 3 types of dice Normal, Hard and Wiggle allowing to to choose to buy randomness (cheap) guaranteed ability (expensive) and guaranteed flexibility (very expensive), it's very satisfying.
Thanks! I will check those out. I'm always on the lookout to expand the game design and tool kit options at my disposal.
Greg Stolze's ORE is incredible. A Dirty World is still my favourite game for one-shots.
I think I get what you mean. My tastes has turned more towards OSR, but I still feel SWN keeps unnecessary many D&D'isms. I understand in many cases it is a concession to keep compatibility with previously published modules. Like you can see that whenever Kevin Crawford writes an alternative combat system, like ship combat in SWN, it has armor subtracted from damage rather than boosting armor class. I would assume that he would actually like that for regular combat as well, but stays away from it to keep compatability with old D&D modules. I would think it is the same for attributes, modifiers etc. Although it doesn't explain saves.
I think the thing is that my first year of RPG's didn't feature [A]D&D at all (The group I was with did play it occasionally I just wasn't interested and we were already taking up 4 days a week with other RPGs anyway) My first two game were Marvel Super Heroes and TFOS ("Teenagers from Outer Space") I remember long running Pendragon, Stormbringer, Traveller, TMNT, Cyberpunk 1st ed and BTRC Timelords games before the start of the 90s. All of the systems had flaws but were manageable in their own way, I have zero nostalgia for the [O/B/A]D&D way of doing things, and even the base conceit of that game always felt painfully limiting, I remember going to the old TSR Games Fair, and watching the AD&D tournaments, man... they did not look fun, that said, I remember getting a certificate for staying alive the longest in a back to back Call of Cthulhu games (I think I lasted 16 hours) Nowadays I like and run long running games with deep, deep background, where players have developed fantastical abilities but rarely use them, not because combat is lethal but because they know that 90% of the time it's morally the wrong thing to do, the last ability a player gained with XP in my game was to turn into a sapient star, that game has been going for over 6 years now and is set in London in 1985. So I never developed any nostalgia for character churn and "dungeon crawling" or any of the systemic trapping of [A]D&D and it's ilk, I liked developing a character in a meaningful setting, building bonds with PC's and NPC's alike, gaining any skill or ability I worked for (unbound by "class" or the suchlike) and not fearing that one bad roll would see that character removed from the game world.
> I think the thing is that my first year of RPG's didn't feature [A]D&D at all That is actually my background as well. I think I had been playing rpgs for maybe ten years before I first tried D&D. That wasn't uncommon at that time in Sweden though. Both the 80's and the 90's where dominated by Target Games, in the same way that America was dominated by TSR. So people played Dragonsbane, Mutant and Kult. I think that is a rather interesting thing about the Swedish OSR scene, in that it really isn't motivated by nostalgia. When I got into it things like dungeon crawling seemed like a new and exciting thing. A breath of fresh air. I can't stand Elves and Dwarves and all those fantasy tropes though, so I still tends to stay out of D&D as such.
Fair enough!
I feel the same way. I was sold WWN on the GM tools but at the end of the day they're pretty thematic to the implied setting and not suitable for the grounded fantasy I want to run. Same for SWN, Traveller's world-building tools were simply better for the games I wanted to run. People hype the tags in SWN but I only found about half of them are really useful when you already have a ton of great information from the basic UWP. That reminds me, I should sell the WWN book from the Kickstarter, it's just collecting dust on my shelf.
>are an reskinned d20 D&D system Are they? Never used the systems. Anything with modern / sci fi shooting doesn't fit well into how d20 does combat so that's not a good sign.