This is a bit of a weird question, but for context, I am playing a fixer who offers out loans to the little guys and working class folks of night city that the big banks would say are too “high risk”. I had the idea that his clientele would be blue-collar workers and his team of Edgerunners. Would Edgerunners count as working class, or would they be criminals? Or somewhere in between?

As the title mentions, I want to get back into running Cyberpunk RED, and am trying to learn from the last time I ran the system. Any and all GM-ing advice would be gladly appreciated, even if it doesnt address some of my specific issues.

My major thing is I am really bad about pacing, how often the party should be landing solid gigs, how long they should get to plan, how to handle down time, etc.

I've found that many players are TERRIBLE at handling free time in TTRPGs. I tried to run my first ever Cyberpunk game very much as a sandbox, where the crew could go anywhere and do anything, but they quickly found that "Uhh I don't know" was their favorite answer, so I shifted the game to be more narrative in focus. They also suck at information gathering and formulating solid plans (though maybe that's just my group of morons friends). I don't want to just say "you're getting 7 days of downtime now, how do you spend it" because that takes away their agency and removes the idea that something surprising might happen in that span, but also I've seen that decision paralysis a million billion times.

The other thing I could use some help with is just eliminating ludo-narrative dissonance. In my head the ideal cyberpunk game has the crew as a team of edgerunner mercenaries in the way of V, Jackie, and Bug (before the tower heist) or Maine/David's crew from Edgerunners. Obviously if my players wanted to do a different type of team I would gladly change it for them. But sometimes I struggle at making them feel like a cohesive whole without being repetitive. I want everyone to get to use their skills (the old "shoot the monk" adage) but it can feel kind of shoehorned in. What if one character just really doesnt add much to a particular type of mission? I don't want to exclude them or make them feel useless. Sometimes 1 character needs therapy but everyone else needs to pay bills, do I have them make a temporary alternate PC who they then have to abandon later? What if the Medtech wants to moonlight for some corp or ripper or something, are there rules for that?

Again, any advice, even unrelated, is appreciated. With 5e I learned from playing, but the 1 time I got to play cyberpunk red was sadly short lived, and while I can find DMs/GMs for other games, I seem to be the only guy I know running RED, so learning as a player is off the table sadly.

For worldbuilding, I find it useful to invent characters that drive narrative developments. In this case, that was Albrecht Kingsley, the mysterious man behind the Oasis Community Loyalty Program. Kingsley is meant to function as something of a cipher for GMs to use during worldbuilding.

Kingsley sets up the idea that there's some sort of sophisticated psychoengineering behind Oasis with a basis in nomadic society, which further ties into Continental Brands' own reliance on nomad nations for labor. It felt natural to me, as nomads no doubt interact with Oasis franchises frequently during their long road trips, possibly even "adopting" certain Oasis communities into their extended family.

Continental Brands

Continental Brands is a breakaway NeoCorp and a top contender in the post-war agribusiness economy. The product of a hostile takeover of the now-defunct Petrochem subsidiary Continental Agricorp, Continental Brands emerged as a leading food supplier in the western hemisphere in the spring of 2043. They boast some of the most aggressive corporate raiders in the biz, and their newfound market dominance in the west is the product of a string of successful acquisitions of struggling agribusiness ventures and targeted corporate espionage.

ConBran is the brainchild of CEO Olivia Forsythe, the so-called Kibble Queen, and Marketing Director Lewis McAllister.

As a NeoCorp, ConBran is only tangentially involved in the rebuilding of Night City

As of 2045, Continental Brands consists of three divisions:

• Continental Procurement Specialists keeps an eye to the food supply. In addition to managing ConBran's own agribusiness portfolio, the Continental Farms subdivision, they contract with independent agribusiness ventures hemisphere-wide and handle shipping and logistics for the corporation's Oasis distribution network.
  • They've contracted with Snake Nation and Thelas Nation for transport services and the Jodes for agricultural labor.
  • Much of CPS was hollowed out of Continental Agricorp and affiliated Petrochem subsidiaries, as well as whichever branch office Consolidated Agriculture happened to write off that year. No love was lost in the process, however; conditions on the ground have markedly improved since Forsythe's hostile takeover, even among the lowliest farm workers.
• Continental Brand Acquisition and Management handles the dazzling array of products offered by ConBran. From Kibble ConWay™ and Forsythe's Own World-Famous Triti-Fizz™ beverage line to the ConBran SmartOven™ and the ConBran Agentic Homestead™, ConBran A&M seeks to provide its loyal customers with all the domestic bliss they can afford and then some.
  • The day to day operation of the A&M division is typically concerned with the management and marketing of existing brands, but the upper eschelons of A&M are far from content to sit on their laurels.
  • The true power of ConBran lies in the offices of the ConBran Corporate Acquisitions Suite, a subdivision of ConBran A&M. Forsythe and her team of execs spend day and night identifying prospective mergers and acquiring targeted companies whenever possible.
  • Dozens of previously retired products (typically due to the collapse of the license-holding companies or the necessary supply lines in the post-war era) have been successfully revived under the ConBran umbrella thanks to the company's aggressive acquisition strategy.
  • Rumors that over 70kg of synthcoke was consumed by the Night City Acquisitions Suite in the last year alone are just that: rumors. It is not appropriate to speculate as to whether or not Olivia Forsythe rails two Hollywoods every morning, or if they're smaller, thinner lines.
• Continental Brands Retail Development runs ConBrand's sprawling Oasis franchise.
  • The division is most famous for running the Oasis Community Loyalty Program, where customer retention meets collective punishment. The result is disquietingly effective: Oasis features some of the best customer retention numbers in the business, and their legion of loyal shoppers have been known to run naysayers and brand traitors out of town.
  • Forsythe herself devised the broad strokes of the OCLP, but the calculated refinement of the program was left to the elusive Australian psychoanalyst Albrecht Kingsley, who based the finalized version of the OCLP off of observations made per his study of the social hierarchy of post-collapse nomad communities in the Australian outback.
  • As an added benefit, Oasis outfits can rely on the volunteer labor of their community to fulfill any vacant roles on a temporary basis; payment in kind is offered only occasionally to these volunteer laborers. This strengthens community investment in the Oasis franchise, as community members have literally contributed to keeping it afloat.
  • Although the Oasis franchise was built from a bevy of Petrochem's CHOOH2-4U stations, many such locations have been repurposed into robust community centers offering everything from digital rental libraries, public meeting spaces, community gardens, rooftop gymnasiums, and more.
  • As ConBran offices are invariably located within or above Oasis franchise locations, it naturally fell to Retail Development to manage ConBran's CorpoNet, Oasis Online.

Continental Brand's current holdings are estimated at €$110 million (€$20 million in CPS, €$55 million in CBA&M, and €$35 million in CBRD). As Continental Brands was built using the infrastructure and human resources of Continental Agricorp, it boasts the labor force of a much larger corporation. ConBran has an employee count of 147k personnel (51k in CPS, 10k in CBA&M, and 86k in CBRD).

Continental Brands contracts with Militech Military Contracting for security services at its Oasis locations (~5k contractors total).

Hi Chooms,

I really like CPR and I found it surpassed D&D as my favourite TTRPG.

The real problem is my damned writer's block.

In fantasy TTRPG I always find something and worked around it, in CPR I can stare at the blank page for hours, say fuck it, and go do somenthing else.

So, Red Chrome Cargo is my favourite Ice breaker for new players, which I really enjoy to place in my custom city, but after, if it's not a pre made module, complete emptiness.

Making it short... what are your process to write new gigs? I usually go with the 5 room dungeon concept to start with, but, in this period of my life, my brain just refuse to elaborate further.

Hey gang, running a session a bit later that will likely have some downtime with my players on a stakeout, I was just thinking it would be fun to spice up the stakeout a bit by giving them something to do while they're waiting. So what are your favorite mini activities you've had your players do? things like push-up contests, maybe a simple card game, anything you might do to waste the time for a few hours hanging out with your crew. Thanks!

tl;dr: How do I play chess with limited time while also reacting to my player's actions within 3 seconds?

If you've seen Dr. Who, there is one episode with Matt Smith's 11th Doctor were he plays a game against some alien to get information. This game is electric chess, which plays just like normal chess except the pieces are electrified and every time you move a piece, the current doubles (which obviously puts at risk the players and allows for strategies based on forcing your opponent to move the same piece often enough for them to be faced with the choice of dying or giving up)

One of my players is a really good chess player and his character has some ties to chess as well, and I thought offering a twist on chess would be more interesting. Besides, corpos probably love watching fodder risk flatlining for some chips. The story reason is I need an NPC to give them some info and gamblers you need to win against always make for good intel sources that are reticent enough for them not to talk immediately but also have a weakness obvious enough for my players not to lose 2 hours debating which sedative they should use to kidnap him.

I think of implementing this as simply damage doubling, first move 0 damage, 2nd 1, then 2, 4, 8, etc. This seems kind of low to be threatening, on the other hand I expect the game to go on long enough for my player to start questioning if the HP cost is worth it. My NPC will play until he looses or is forced to resign (he's a gambler, not suicidal).

My problems are:

- I am not sure my damage numbers are balanced

- I am not sure how to deal with time while other party members do something else. This is supposed to be his moment, but I still want to give the option to the netrunner to jack into the system and cheat, risk getting caught, and needing the rest of the team to look out and potentially defend her in the meatspace. This in turn means I'm going to need to keep track of time and turns while playing the NPC or feeding my player's actions to a chess bot. Other than asking someone to play the NPC for me to allow me to concentrate on the roleplay and hacking, I don't really know what to do

I was dissatisfied with how global the RAW rep system is. Rep is said to be how likely people are to recognize a character for things they have done, but just because you are really well known by the Street Queens due to the events of your campaign, doesn't mean that the Aldecaldos have ever even heard of you. Sure, that whole neighborhood in Rancho Coronado is talking about how you helped them, doesn't mean that Maelstrom will give two shits about you. So I tried to make it more realistic, with individual groups having their own rep levels that affect a character's overall rep.

A lot of this is based on the vibes and "does it make sense that x amount of people would know this person" so any input is welcome.

There's basically 3 changes to the standard Reputation:

1. Factional Rep: Each group that a player interacts with has a different Rep level based on the player's actions with that group. Any Facedowns with members of these groups use their respective Factional Rep level (unless Street Rep level is higher). The Rep table is scaled down slightly to the group (so 10 would be the whole group knows you very well, instead of the world).

2. Street Rep: Determined by this formula: ([SUM of Factional Rep levels)/5] rounded down. This is used when interacting with anyone in a group your players have not interacted with before (or a random NPC you haven't thought too much about). If your players do something that the whole city would know about, you can of course add points to this value independent of any Factional Rep.

Any negative Factional Rep changes the quality of the Street Rep. So if you have negative Rep with most of the groups you have interacted with, your Street Rep will be negative, but if you have negative Rep with the Red Chrome Legion or something, that may be a good thing if you interact with the Iron Sights later.

3. Role Rep bonuses:

Nomad—For every Moto rank, you gain 1 Factional Rep point in a Nomad nation of your choosing. (This means that a max level Nomad will be recognized by most Nomads and have Street Rep 2, which makes sense to me.)

Exec—For every Teamwork rank, you gain 1 Factional Rep point in the Corp/group you work for. (Of course an Exec 10 would be known by everyone in the company. And this would probably extend beyond to some recognition on the Street.)

Media—For every 2 Credibility ranks, you gain 1 Street Rep point. (It makes sense to me that a media would be more easily recognized, especially since at Rank 10 it says "You are known worldwide.")

Rockerboy—For every 4 Charismatic Impact ranks, you gain 1 Street Rep point. (Less recognizable as a Media-max rank just says "Huge stadiums or international video"-, plus their whole thing is influencing people so I'm not gonna boost it too much)

Lawmen—For every 2 Backup ranks, you gain 1 Factional Rep point in the group you are connected with. (I would consider changing this to be the same as Nomad and Exec, I just don't know of many cops, even high ranking ones, so it felt like it should be weaker)

Fixer—I feel like a fixer should get a Rep bonus... but nothing feels right so far because just because a Fixer knows who to know, doesn't mean that they are recognized at the same level as a Media. Please give me suggestions, but here's my thoughts so far: 1. Same as Rockerboy/Media, 2. For every 5 Ranks, you gain 1 Street Rep point (max Fixer would have Street Rep 2, which feels kinda low), 3. For every 3 Ranks, you gain 1 Street Rep (this will have a max at 3 which is higher than Exec/Nomad/Rockerboy, but lower than Media)

In Game Example

One of my players is a Media, so at Rank 4 he starts out with Street Rep 2. He had an interaction with a group of Tyger Claws who will remember him, but they probably won't talk to anyone else about it which falls under the "Anyone who was there at the time knows" and gives him Tyger Claw Rep 1. He then had an adventure at the Port of Night City shipping Yard where he put on an EL-F4-NT linear frame and brawled a Cyberbear, which I think would fall under "Stories are all over the local area" and gave him Aldecaldo Rep 4. On that same job, he successfully protected a shipment with the Deadwoods who would have talked about it under "Stories have gotten around to immediate friends" and gives him Deadwoods Rep 2.

So the math for that is ([TC1+Alde4+DW2]/5)=Street Rep 1. Add that to his Media Rep and you get a total Street Rep 3.

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to start making my own maps for our campaign, but I'm having a bit of trouble finding the right tools. It seems like most of the map-making software out there is strictly built for fantasy and medieval games, which doesn't really help when I need a gritty neon alleyway or a corporate office.

Where do you all make your maps so they actually fit the cyberpunk aesthetic? I'd love to hear what software you use, and if there are any specific sci-fi or modern asset packs you'd recommend. I don't mind if it's paid or free software, just looking for something that gets the job done.

Thanks in advance!

I'm looking through Drivethru right now, but searching by that specific parameter isn't getting me anywhere :)

Anyone know of something like that? Our main player/organizer really wants to try netrunning and I...sorta...want to GM netrunning. I can absolutely use tables and just random something up if it's just the two of us, but I'd rather have something with a beginnging/middle/end.

AND...yes...I would normally right this up myself, but we're slammed with family and such all week into this weekend.

AND PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO AI. Every single server I join has some. I am new to ttrpg and I love the setting, please help.