Bonus XP 2 - Cyberpunk RED Jumpstart Kit

Welcome to bonus XP a slideshow of the RPG Heroes broadcast in bonus XP. I discuss what I would call heroic legacies something that an RPG Hero has left breast Mortals to use and to learn from much like the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. What did you experience points for finding treasure the show helps improve your game by exploring the best RPG products the very first who wrote Legacy request has uncovered is the cyberpunk Reddit jumpstart kit buy or sell suorin. It is a beautiful box full of role-playing goodness. And I think we should roll a local expert check to see what it's all about.

So the first thing we want to know about any Rogue Legacy is which RPG hero left it behind for us to use. Well cyberpunk is an IP owned by arkells Orion and it all comes from the enormous brain of Mike pondsmith Mr. Bond Smith is responsible for my favorite cyberpunk game of all time so far that which is cyberpunk 2020 before that it worth it was as an earlier version as well. There's been some versions in between but they they didn't really grow as big as the 20/20 and now of course cyberpunk read is about to hit the shelves. I believe digital versions will become available halfway, November and physical and maybe a week later. So several of my guests on the RPG Heroes broadcast. I've already mentioned Mike pondsmith as an RPG hero and they've given very good reasons to do so.

Meijer Mike pondsmith for his creativity his willingness to diverge from the mainstream and his absolute passion for the cyberpunk genre his approach to the business side of role-playing games is also something that I truly admire. His company is kept small like a family company I would say and they do things like supporting your local gaming stores by selling cyberpunk read through the bits and mortars program. If you don't know what that is check the show notes Mike's approach to the community is another one that I really appreciate. He does very thoughtful and good interviews and he make sure that his company reaches out to people through social media quite a lot with a lot of positive messages.

So what exactly is the cyberpunk red jump start kit? Well, it is a set of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PDFs, which is quite a lot when you think about it. I got the digital version clearly tabs PDF send the main to PDF should be the rule book which gives you the quick-and-dirty kind of rules of the cyberpunk red game. So if you could see it as a starter said to her a quick start to typeset and the rules are very easy to read right quick to go through and they get you going into the game as quickly as possible which is wonderful and mini games nowadays do this, right? They bring out some sort of quick start PDF for a quick start rule book with a portion of the rules that is enough to play a few games and and see if you're really interested. However, the jump start kit doesn't just give you that it also gives you a world book which it tells you.

A lot of lore about the cyberpunk world and how it's been updated from 2020 all the way up to the time of the red 2045 which means that time of unread takes place roughly between the previous version of cyberpunk 2020, which is arguably the worst year in history and the computer game which is supposed to come out at some point as well just sticks place in 2077. So we have a rule book and we have a lawyer book, but it doesn't stop there. You can't separate PDF with the maps for an adventure that is included in the book. You get a separate PDF with their pre-generated characters that you can use for that Adventure. It gives you a PDF with standees in other words little printable characters that you could print out fold and put in a little standee to do use as a miniature, which I think is a great idea. There was a few companies doing that nowadays, and I think it's a wonderful way to supply buyers up.

Game with Miniatures that might not be so easy to Source. There's not a lot of cyberpunk Miniatures out there.

Then on top of all that it gives you an easy reference sheet kind of like them the back of a dungeon master or game master screen with a quick overview of what the most important rules and not just that they give you this in the letter N in the Tabloid form. Well, what more could you ask for what I found super helpful is that the world book includes a really cool adventure that you can play and that I have actually run twice now once were friends and once for a convention cold albuq on and I have to say it's pretty quick and easy to understand is the game master but it does take a little bit of work to flush it out of it and if you're interested in doing so I would recommend watching a video by Seth skorkowsky on this topic. He has some really good advice to flush out the Avenger little bit on top of the adventure in the maps in the pre pre generated characters. You also get a few scream sheets, which is a cool term from cyberpunk.

Or I like a newspaper to sort of or news articles and these articles give you extra hooks for new adventures that you yourself can then design. So is this a full game then? Well, yes or no. I mean no. No, it's not the full rules to pull rules are coming out soon halfway November and it doesn't give you character generation or character creation at all. But it does give you enough to play a couple of sessions in and decide whether or not this is the game for you, which I think is just great. It also doesn't have lists of cool equipment that you can use they've just given some generic equipment to eat each character and that's it and all those pieces of equipment especially the weapons have been given very generic names as well, which is one of the things my players noticed. So there's this game only have just heavy pistols and that's it. No, of course not to have the full game. We'll have lots of options actually to to have different kinds of games different Brandon's sort of weapons and also a to cuss

Why is your old weapons which sounds just absolutely awesome to me? So in conclusion, what is it? Well, it's quick start rules. It's a huge amount of lore. It's some standees maps pre-generated characters and easy reference sheet for all the rules plus a cool adventure and some Adventure hooks for future use.

So what can we learn from the jump start kit? Well, I think one thing that I've certainly learned from it is that when you are presented with an adventure in any kind of game reference book, it is up to you to make that Adventure your own and presented to your players in a way that suits your group and your style of running a game and that it's perfectly fine for an adventure to not chew out every tiny little detail for you. In fact in my experience. It kind of made the game better that because it gave me the feeling that I have space and I have an opportunity to move around the way that I want to

Another thing that I've learned from the adventure specifically is that the way they've structured the adventure is very much nonlinear. So there are several options that you can choose from as a Gamemaster depending on the makeup of your group and the type of players that you have at your table, which I think is as a great thing the adventure also taught me that if you want to run a One-Shot especially for something like a convention. It's a smart idea to very quickly can find the player characters to a specific space so that there's not too many variables going on and then you can control things like time to trim much more easily and that this adventure combines you to a building and that works perfectly and because the building belongs to one of the player characters, I guess that's not really a spoiler because belongs to one of the player characters. You also immediately have a reason to care as a player and I thought that was very very powerful aside from the adventure what I think we can learn from the jump.

Dark it is that just because it's quick start doesn't mean it has to be free or it has to be very basic or very devoid of detail. In fact, the world itself. Is it just a treasure Trove of detail? I'll get into that the moment later and also the rules give you plenty of detail to play lots of games. In fact, I think if you have to jump start getting lots of the imagination and maybe some old cyberpunk 2020 books, you could probably get away with playing just jump start kit for quite a while and one thing that I have always loved about the cyberpunk books that I've seen and read and used quite a lot is that these books they really breathe the atmosphere that the game is trying to create so there's spring since quotes from people and that the book is kind of told at were written in a way that you can you can almost hear Mike pondsmith voice telling you about it. There's a certain humor a certain style of language does Jose

3D reflects the year that the game that you're about to play and on top of that you get to see things from the eyes of people that live in that world so that there's their parts of the texts that are written from the eyes of somebody who lives in night City there the city that sell a lot of these games take place in and I guess that's the last thing that I've learned from the jump start kit is that you do not necessarily need long lists of very specific equipment to have a good time and it was a game like this at first I was a little bit disappointed with the lack of flavor in the weapons in the other equipment frequency. I found that because we didn't have to focus on the my new details of exactly which gun that who everybody has that we had a lot more time to actually focus on the characters and what they wanted and how they experience things and I gave me freedom to kind of make things up as I went along which was a lot of fun.

Show them how can you use the jump start kit? Well, I used it to run the convention game for Alva, and the day before I ran the the same adventure for my friends as a trial run and I used the adventure that I've talked about before on this episode to the apartment. It's called and that that's about what I did with it. But if there's anything else that you could do with this well, like I said, you can easily I think play a few more Adventures after the initial one, especially given the the screen sheets or the adventure hooks that's artos Orion has given you in the jump start kit and I think especially the world book is incredibly useful if you wants to play a cyberpunk type game and you need lure you need information you need background stuff and I think the world book aside from whether or not you want to play cyberpunk red or cyberpunk 2020, even if you want to play let Sadie

Be with a cyberpunk flavor or you want to play any other kind of game that has a cyberpunk thing going on. I think the world book is incredibly valuable because it gives you a great overview of the dark future of Earth Circa 2045. And even if you don't want to do that just reading the world book and reading how the vision of Mike pondsmith going to tells you what led up to now and what all the events that are taking place across the world that can have come to this point where we now start the game. I think it's also a if you analyze that you read that you can give you tons of inspiration for playing a game earlier in the timeline or later in the timeline or perhaps for crafting your own kind of world lure for your own game and it doesn't even have to be a cyberpunk world. It could be fantasy. It could be anything. But it if you look at the way that he has structured this story and how we go from real his

Free stuff that we know to making it more and more fictional. I think that's a very clever thing. Of course the PDF with the stand. These can be used in any kind of cyberpunk or sci-fi games. So it gives you some asset to play around with either on the tabletop when you print them out or perhaps on any kind of virtual tabletop if you just took and you know, if you know how to crop a picture you can basically use them the books all the PDS are full of really great art that you can use for any sci-fi or cyberpunk related game if you want to cannibalize the books of it and I think its intended purpose and I think it's great for that as well as you can use it to introduce people to a whole new game + whole new type of world and maybe even two role-playing games in general because it keeps the rules nice and neat and and simple and easy to to remember it gives you this this easy reference sheet which helps to keep things flowing and give you some characters so you don't have to worry about you. No spending lots of time to create them.

And and it even Gives You Adventure hooks. So basically it set you up for possibly a long-term gaming group. Would that can play cyberpunk red ones that comes out?

Well, that's it for bonus XP. I hope you got something out of it and that you like the format. Let me know. Once you keep up with the latest news about my podcast then hop on over to Twitter at RPG Heroes one check out the full show notes with all the Links at RBG Heroes. Bus route. Com.

What is about the show enjoying other supporters of my disco Channel? And then I would be honored if you check out my patreon page at patreon.com / RPG Heroes.

You can also buy RPG products with my affiliate code or purchase some cool RPG hero Shirts Mugs Etc. Let me know what other cool RPG products you would like me to review in this fashion until next time stay who wrote.