I agreed to run a cyberpunk red campaign for some buddies as GM in a few days. I have zero experience with Cyberpunk except the video game and some lore videos and zero GM experience in general. I plan to learn as much lore as possible and wing it. Any tips on how to gm would be greatly appreciated.
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Ask it o the cyberpunk general thread moron. Don't make a thread just for this.
I;m a newbie to /tg/ and kinda drunk so I forgot to check before I made the thread. My b.
have a nice day, newbie.
No, don't worry about it, newfriend. The proliferation of generals has been a disaster for humankind.
Kill me yourself coward
>STAY QUARANTINED
>DONT MAKE UNAPPROVED THREADS
1. Pre made adventures are your friend.
2. get your materials ready before hand
3. if players want to do something or if something goes different you will need to improv. sometimes they'll kill an important npc or struggle with low level gangers.
4. dont worry about lore too much as it will bug down your prep time, focus on smaller scale adventure to start. only have lore on what is going to be important for the campaign.
There's a few screamsheets at the back of the CP RED rulebook that are pretty easy to pick up and play.
This poster is otherwise completely right. I am running a CP RED game for the moment for a party that has only ever played 5E and we are having a blast. The rules are very easy to pick up and learn even for people inexperienced to tabletop (one of our players gfs literally understood the game after watching 1 session). Feel free to run very fast and loose with the lore as well. It doesn't matter if the Cyberware or corp you've featured in your game doesn't exist in 2045 yet and only appears in CP 2077. If anyone in your party brings it up call them a gonkbrain and throw a shoe at them.
One thing to increase immersion is definitely coming up with a good music playlist and learning Streetslang and a few terms from the Cyberpunk universe. It'll get your players into the setting much more.
Focus on NPCs, organizations, and what they're trying to do. Then how you're going to get the players stuck into it.
It's not about 'a story,' so much as who's trying to do what and what other people will do about it. Tangible things the players can interact with.
You don't need some big dumb conspiracy web though (unless that's your thing,) it's mostly just tools to keep shit moving when the unexpected happens, which should be often if things are going well.
Step number one: forget everything about the video game. They got pretty much nothing right.
2077 is more faithful sequel to 2020 than RED is.
1 - pick 5 street slang words and memorize them, use them consistently when applicable
2 - know the story youre running and the characters within it
3 - develop a nemesis for the party early on as it will be wonderful for improv, usually i prefer a street gang that hates them
4-lore for cyberpunk can be made to whatever is needed for the session so dont worry too much about the larger picture: usually parties never leave their city
Ignore all the parts from the video game that aren't Johnny's flashbacks, even then almost nothing applies.
The only lore that matters is:
Corpo Plaza is a bombed-out wasteland where you will encounter scavengers plundering the ruins
Arasaka is basically exiled from Night City and is almost non-existent in the setting.
Also Adam Smasher is an Elvis impersonator.
>Arasaka is basically exiled from Night City and is almost non-existent in the setting.
They're still around, just undercover and doing espionage shit. They're just not there legally, no?
basically yeah.
>I have zero experience with Cyberpunk except the video game and some lore videos
I GUARANTEE you neither do your players. Ignore every anon in this thread, I 100% guarantee your players just want to play 2077 on the tabletop.
Including all the advice from other anons, make a random list of first and last names so you have some name to quickly pull up when one of your PCs inevitably tries to speak to the no-name Hobo NPC that is completely irrelevant to their objective.
Also, don't be like me and forget to add a list of female names as well.
this but also include street names rather than just full names to use where appropriate
Have fun with every fricking player taking 8 Reflex. Every. Fricking. Player. Ever. Shit part of the system that will never be fixed. What the frick were they thinking.
Bro? Your coprocessor?
Tbh I still don't understand the way the internet works in RED and why hackers can't just hack into the building from miles away. I understand mechanically, but the fluff is weird to me.
Fluff-wise, the greatest Netrunner in history released a flood of supercancer-like lethal viruses onto the Net to screw with corporations.
RED's Net is basically islands of local city-wide nets connected to other cities via super-VPNs. These allow for inter-city data transfer but are slow and only work periodically instead of 24/7. If you try to connect with the "old Net", you basically invite monsters to fry your brain.
On one hand we have the Citinet which is a big local area network the big cities have and functions a lot like how our current internet does for most users. I could browse a shopping website, upload to youtube, write on my blog, etc.
Then you have NET architectures. NET's are designed with automation in mind and for controlling stuff like turrets, security doors, traps, or cameras. Only a netrunner can access them, although anyone with the security/electronics skill (which is an expensive skill) can spend up to 5 minutes disabling an automated turret or opening an electronically locked door. That would be the extent of a non-netrunner's ability. They just break stuff.
Like
said, the old global NET is still around, and in that version our internet and this super secure virtual NET were one and the same. The party netrunner could be chilling at home in an ice bath while his buddies are getting shot at, and he's sipping mojito's and trying to turn off the turrets. But now we are terrified of the crazy AI and the viruses that Bartmoss (the legendary hacker) created, so we try to make all of our new NET's essentially airgapped from each other.
People above probably gave you some good advice. However, I'll mention you should probably read/listen to Neuromancer and Bladerunner (Do androids dream of electric sheep). Possibly Snowcrash aswell, tho I haven't personally gotten to it yet. They are all relatively short works and you won't spend too much time on them, but will really get into the cyberpunk vibes.
I dont disagree but Hardwired and Count Zero are IMO the two most quintessential books in terms of the vibe and atmosphere of the world of 2020/RED