Flashback Friday: Cyberpunk 2013 Boxed Set, Part Three: Friday Night Firefight

“THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT!!!!!!!!”

Now that I’ve got my inner Willem Defoe out, I can talk about the last book in the 1988 Cyberpunk boxed set, Friday Night Firefight. Previous to playing Cyberpunk, my exposure to RPG combat was D&D, Star Frontiers, and Marvel Super Heroes. Very abstract, very low lethality. FNFF prided itself on its deadliness, its precision, and its dedication to realism. They cite FBI statistics and other sources with plenty of warnings that guns will kill you.

The mechanics of this simple 24-page booklet are simple and pretty clearly explained. Your reflexes determine which phases you act in and you have one action per phase. Attribute plus skill over a Difficulty Chance give you success or failure. It gets a little crunchy when determining wounds and penetration but, compared to other ‘realistic’ modern combat systems, it’s a breeze. Compared to the other books, there isn’t a lot of extrapolating or rabbit holes to go down, so this is actually going to be a pretty quick conclusion to the look at the boxed set.

I decided to try out the system and see how deadly it was. I had a pair of goons try to ambush a lone solos. Within one turn (two phases), the goons were bleeding out. Granted, I didn’t armor the goons up or anything, but they didn’t lay a finger on him. Deadly indeed. Maybe there is a deep dive to be had comparing this combat system with Cyberpunk 2020 using the NPCs and situations from “Never Fade Away.”

In Summary

Looking at this original boxed set, I can see why it grabbed me and why I fell in love with the game. Even though it is dated mechanically, I can think of its contemporary context and remember how mind-blowing some of these innovations were. The source material, however, is where the money is made. The cyberpunk world of 2013 was exciting, prescient, dangerous, and stylish. The combat was gritty and unforgiving. It was a literal game-changer. I’m excited to see the world (and system expand) and I can’t wait to see where it takes me. I’ll have to do a side by side comparison of the combat systems (maybe a Wednesday entry in the future) to see really how they stack up against each other. I have a feeling I’m in a minority here, but I actually think that I prefer the architecture of the Net in 2013 over that of 2020. While I don’t particularly care for the different interface programs, I like that it’s narrower and more reminiscent of how computer networks can be. You can’t just walk until you find it, you have to know what you’re looking for. Ditto the flowchart model of networks over the crossword puzzle model of 2020. That’s probably another Wednesday post in the future.

Next week, we’ll look at the first in the series of magazine-style supplements, Solo of Fortune. 

Maker's Block

The line wrapped around the side of the building as people waited to get inside. Fuck that line. I walked around to the security entrance. Four armored Baruch Security troops stood outside waving people off. I approached and showed them my badge. After a thumb and retina verification, I was in. It was noisy as hell inside. The constant hum of haggling and machinery, the smell of sweat and hot plastic, the air gritty and stale. I walked past a clothing shop, printing clothes on demand in flimsy imitation of vogue, a gunsmith busting out polymer one-shots that the gangers would buy in bulk, and even some shady fucker trying to recruit netrunners to use his homemade cybermodems. That sounds like a goddamned death sentence. I got to Felipe’s door and Rosina was on guard. We exchanged nods and I walked in. A wall of TVs tuned to different channels, A bar with all manner of cheap liquor and mixers. Felipe was watching his wall of information. He nodded to me, then nodded to the bar. I made us two Manhattans and sat down across from him. “My guy, you’re looking for chains?” he asked me incredulously. “Yeah,” I replied. “Thick, the kind you can lift a container with.” “My guy, I’m not sure plastic is gonna cut it,” he said leaning back in his recliner. I exhaled. “You need me to use some higher grade shit or we talking metal?” “Depends on what you’re lifting. I know better than to ask.” “Fuck, where do I get metal?” “My guy, I got you. Margie!” he waved over one of his chromed-up companions. “Take my guy here to the Gremlin.” I sipped my drink and arched an eye. “You’re sending me to a gremlin?” “I got you, my guy,” he leaned forward, “He got you. Don’t doubt me again or you won’t be getting preferential treatment.”

The Baruch House Addition was formerly a tenement for seniors that was part of the Baruch Houses family of apartments. Built in 1977, it has certainly seen better days. Since no housing is subsidized anymore, Baruch House Addition has, in the years since the Collapse, become a manufacturing center for not only the Lower East Side, but for much of the Neo-York shadow economy. Now known as Maker’s Block, the apartments have been replaced by small, independent manufacturing concerns. Using autofac technology and blueprints, usually stolen or backwards engineered, the Maker’s Block provides services to the people who might not otherwise afford the newest gear from the big corporations.

There are 23 floors in the Maker’s Block, jammed with different vendors. The quality of what you can get here varies, although it is usually cheap and disposable. You can come up with a million different vendors, including the aforementioned Engineer Felipe, who specializes in 3-D printing many mundane objects for people. He has a considerably deep database of patterns and his netrunner, Margarita Mayhem, can usually find more with ease. No one messes with Felipe, as his bodyguard, Rosina Razor, is known as a fairly hard case on the streets.

The Somali is surprisingly a very pasty and greasy caucasian man, but has a reputation as a data manipulator of middling talent who specializes in chop modification. His work is good enough that some people, particularly those without a regular connection, still come to see him despite his lecherous demeanor and well-worn sex doll that he keeps out in the open in his room. He has been known to do better work for cheaper if you can hook him up with unusual (and usually skeevy as fuck) programs for his doll.

On the top floor is Tblisi George, who is covered in cheap plastic cyberware and has the cold personality of someone on the verge of cyberpsychosis. He is one of the few tech manufacturers in the Maker’s Block and he is especially skilled at audio-visual and optical systems. While not quite at the level of being able to make cyberoptics, he can repair them with halfway decent skill. He will also work with video or audio data recovery and enhancement for a substantial fee.

The only medical professional offering services in the building, Dr. McAvoy is usually a last resort. He doesn’t always do a very good job and has no concept of doctor-patient confidentiality. If you need a medical procedure done cheaply, he’s your man. If you want discretion, run away.

If you are using the Wildside rules for contacts, Nomad Market characters have the following statistics:

Doctor McAvoy (Medtech) Incapable, Reputation 3, often available, unreliable, 8 points

Engineer Felipe (Tech) Capable, Reputation 7, always available, reliable, 45 points

Margarita Mayhem (Netrunner) Capable, Reputation 4, sometimes available, very reliable, 23 points

Rosina Razor (Solo) Very Capable, Reputation 6, sometimes available, very reliable, 56 points

The Somali (Tech) Capable, Reputation 5, always available, reliable, 30 points

Tblisi George (Tech) Very capable, Reputation 7, always available, very reliable, 75 points

Next week, we’ll check out the Grand Street Arcade, an entertainment center that is known for providing a personal touch to your experience!

Media Monday: The Neo-York Playlist, Part 2

Continued from last week’s post that covered the first 13 songs, here is a link to the Spotify playlist:

“Hang On To Your Ego” by Frank Black

I never knew the history of this song until I saw the video and its mention of lyricist Tony Asher. That led me down the Wikipedia rabbit hole surrounding the history of the Beach Boys song “I Know There’ll Be An Answer” off of Pet Sounds, of which this is an alternate version under the original name of the song. Reading about the Beach Boys and the litigation about songwriting credit and rights to perform is required for any campaigns with strong media corp elements. Take the Beach Boys story and add guns—instant cyberpunk classic.

“Two Million Voices” by The Angelic Upstarts

A classic anthem by these Oi! legends, “Two Million Voices” is the song of a movement. Anti-fascist and socialist by nature, the Angelic Upstarts could be the voice against the power structure of the dark future.

“Mathematics” by Mos Def

Yasin Bey (Mos Def) is just so damn good. Whether he’s rapping about police brutality, American exceptionalism, or as in “Mathematics,” the status of African Americans, he combines intelligence with flow in a way very few hip hop artists can. Mathematics is all about an economic system that is built to disenfranchise a whole people, which is about as cyberpunk as you get. Their past and present has been our dark future.

“War All The Time” by Thursday

One of the definitive post-9/11 songs about the Forever Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, “War All The Time” was surprisingly prescient—it was only recorded around the time of the initial invasion of Iraq but rings even truer more than a decade later. It speaks to the anxiety of a nation where war both the norm and out of sight.

“Bandages” by Hot Hot Heat

Another song about dysfunctional relationships. I feel like any edgerunner who tries to have a relationship will be involved in some kind of sadomasochistic power dynamic, whether they realize it or not. It’s hard to do something that puts you in harm’s way and still have the emotional commitment to a marriage. Just ask military couples. Factor in the extralegal nature of edgerunning and it’s even worse. I particularly feel this song applies to a relationship between an edgerunner and someone not in the life, but it could be either one.

“Take ‘Em All” by Cock Sparrer

Cock Sparrer’s classic is an angry, violent indictment of the music industry. In the dark future, it could almost be literal. Bands spurned by record labels might take matters into their own hands. It’s not just a punk rock classic but an adventure seed as well.

“Upgrade (A Baymar College College)” by Deltron 3030

Deltron 3030’s self-titled debut was an afrofuturist hip hop opera about Deltron Zero’s struggle against the corporations that rule the universe. It comes from a very different place than most cyberpunk interpretations, which helped me really understand that the cyberpunk future is going to be very different for people of different backgrounds. In many ways, the genre gets broken down into a corporate bad/cyberpunk good dichotomy, and this reminds me that there is far more nuance in the world.

“Hate Your Leaders” by Hollow Crown

This one should be pretty self-explanatory. Angry, metal, anti-authoritarian, basically what every cyberpunk should be. It’s also more of what I would expect Samurai to sound like, except with less screams vocals—but I’m a child of the 80s, screaming hardcore didn’t get to me until around the time I graduated high school and my vision of Johnny Silverhand had already been crystallized.

“Bleeding” by Ignite

This album came out at the point where I was starting to question my faith in the War on Terror and my place in the military. “Bleeding” is a hardcore ripper targeting the military-industrial complex. If Haliburton started wars, just imagine what Arasaka and Militech could do.

“Guerrilla Radio” by Rage Against The Machine

“More for Gore or the son of a drug lord? None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord!” is pretty much the mantra of the Rockerboy. Pirate radio still exists in the world of 2020, since the streaming net didn’t really become a thing. Rage would be on it.

“Stigmata” by Ministry

I remember Ministry ending their Lollapalooza set in 1992 with “Stigmata” and it was the end of a mind-blowing set. The wall of noise and video that crashed into me for those songs was like nothing I ever saw or heard before. From the slopes of Montage Mountain Ski Resort, I saw the churning mosh pit that looked more like a pot boiling over than a concert. That’s what cyberpunk is supposed to look like.

“Never Fade Away” by Refused (playing as Samurai)

I figured that it would be appropriate to end the playlist the way I started it, with Refused’s interpretation of Samurai for the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack. After I posted the first half of this playlist, someone on one of the Discords I’m active on said they couldn’t abide “Chippin’ In” because it reminded them too much of Limp Bizkit. I think if you didn’t listen to bands like Refused when they were current, the pop crap that ripped them off (Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, etc.) definitely would define that sound. It’s a fair cop. “Never Fade Away” feels a little more like a pure Refused song, but it definitely lacks the anthemic stomp of “Chippin’ In.”

I thought I would make Media Monday a regular thing, but I’ve decided against it, at least for the rest of the calendar year. I was only posting actual content one day a week on Wednesdays, with Flashback Fridays being taken up for the foreseeable future with the product line. So Monday means more content!

Flashback Friday: Cyberpunk 2013 Boxed Set, Part Two: Welcome to Night City

The second book from the 1988 Cyberpunk boxed set, Welcome to Night City, A Sourcebook for 2013, might be what actually made me a lifelong fan of the game. Like View from the Edge, the book is really three different sections: an orientation to the world of 2013 and Night City in particular, a short story featuring a few iconic characters embroiled in a plot that will have far-reaching effects on the metaplot of the game, and some slice of life articles illustrating what its like to live in 2013.

The world of 2013 is one of corporate intrigue, rampant consumerism, and unchecked corruption. Yeah, I know. Our present is our past’s cyberpunk future. That’s probably a series of blog posts down the road if someone hasn’t already done it better than I have. One of the things I found interesting is the rapid optimism of technological advances. I’m sure in the 1986-88 timeframe where much of this was being designed and written, many of these technologies seemed just around the corner, but Spaceplanes, CHOOH2, Arcologies, Massdrivers, all within four years of the game’s publishing date. With the possible exception of arcologies (which I definitely plan to tackle in a future post), I don’t think we’re anywhere near any of these. I would for someone with a better skillset for it to go through science fiction and see what kind of predictions are on target or not. I wonder if there is a tendency to over or underestimate certain things and what other factors influence the predictive success rate.

Reading the snapshot of the 2013 world in Welcome to Night City, I noticed that it really feels like the U.S. is one of the few countries that are worse off than they were in the timeframe the game was written. The EU looms large as, arguably, the world’s strongest power. Japan’s predicted ascendency continued without the economic realities that would soon hit it in real life. A Pan-Africa has been created on the back of the burgeoning orbital economy. Even the Soviet Union was coming to terms with itself and a reform movement was on near-equal terms to the Cold War hardliners. Then there is the U.S. The specifics wouldn’t be defined for a few years, but it is definitely made clear that America as we know it was dead by 2013.

The book then details some of the technologies in the future. Again, it’d be easy to jump on what wasn’t predicted accurately, but I want to think more about how these predictions created a game world. The transportation advances discuss tilt-rotor vehicles, maglev trains, and vectored thrust aircraft. This tells me that ground travel is nowhere near as individual and universal as it was and that, particularly in cities, we have started moving vertically rather than horizontally. The communications section is a trip down memory lane. Reading the section on cell phones, with long-distance and local rates and not working 20 miles outside of city limits was a treat. The fax-based scream sheets replacing newspapers are also an interesting artifact of the snapshot of technology in the 80s. I know in Cyberpunk Red, they have introduced Agents which basically assume the role of the smartphone. Phones are not smart in 2013 (or 2020) and it is still possible to recreate that fantastic scene from Neuromancer where the payphones each ring as Case walks by each one individually. I would definitely consider exploring some of the implications of these predictions.

The tips on Getting Cyberpunk offer up some clues on what the world should look like and feel like. These tips would be greatly expanded in Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads in a few years, but this is one of the more extensive “how to run our game” treatises, especially for 1988. With the exception of West End Games’ d6 Star Wars license and TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes, I don’t recall many games telling you how to run from the perspective of referee thought, motive, and environment. White Wolf would take this to the next level and now it seems pretty commonplace.

Also pretty commonplace nowadays is the piece of setting fiction that helps orient you to the game. Someone with a better grasp of history might be able to answer this, but I don’t recall having this in a game before. The story “Never Fade Away”, along with Sam Liu’s artwork, formed who I thought Johnny Silverhand and Alt were (As breathtaking as Keanu is, he’s still not quite my Johnny Silverhand yet…) and what the world of Cyberpunk felt like. I enjoyed the story then and still do. It’d be interesting to see how it would realize in a movie. What was interesting to me as a teen was the statistics alongside. You could play out the events of the game. It was a nice way to show how to implement all of this lore that the book contains.

The corporate profiles set the stage for the future of the game, with many of these players showing up in the metaplot. It is interesting to see which of them get further development and which ones are simply afterthoughts. And, to my knowledge, no other corps achieve the level of prominence that these ones do.

The last section is a series of articles that illustrate the character and flavor of life in 2013 Night City. This method of conveying information will be used on a larger scale in Solo of Fortune and Rockerboy. It’s a nice way of getting a handle on how the world feels. Getting to know it in your heart and stomach, as opposed to your brain. I think it’s a nice choice.

Overall, Welcome to Night City is an amazing lore book that holds up (outside of some technology) very well and really hasn’t changed much over the years. I am very curious about how Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Red will move things forward and what they will keep. It’s a world felt lived-in and a world I have been, in a sense, living in for well over 30 years. You could still use this book as a sourcebook today.

Next week, I’ll wrap up the original box set with Friday Night Firefight and my thoughts on the boxed set as a whole.

The Nomad Market

Chain link fences surround a ramshackle collection of box trailers, tents, and people. The sound of weapons being test fired punctuate the crowd noise. The visual overload is augmented by a full assault on your nose, with the most delicious smells making way for who the fuck knows what that was. Here you can get whatever you need—food, medicine, guns, clothing—and at a reasonable price or fair barter. It is The Nomad Market and the Arsenaults run a tight ship.

The Nomads Families are the only people who can really move product across the country. This chokehold on trade led to the death of the big box department store. Trade became in what was produced locally or moved in small batches. As the Families began to reclaim more of the shipping lanes, they realized that they could also turn their transportation monopoly into trading companies. The Arsenault Family took this one step further, eliminating the lower sales prices of wholesale by selling directly to consumers. They had enough guns to clear off an old playground and to keep it secure. They had enough trucks with enough diversity of goods to establish a market for out-of-town goods. Weapons, electronics, cybernetics, and more can be found here.

If you are using the clothing rules from Chromebook 4, clothing found at the Nomad Market will tend to be in the style of Generic Chic or Edgerunner, with a dash of Urban Flash. The quality of clothing ranges is mostly average, with the occasional good quality offsetting the occasional below-average quality clothes. Reacti-mesh clothes are regularly seen, but the polylog/polychromic options are rare. A lot of what comes in tends to be armored, since Neo-York is not a safe place to be unarmored in.

Where the Nomad Market makes its money is on objects that are not or cannot be produced locally. So, while autofacs provide many basic materials, the more well-crafted and machined items need to be imported from outside of the city. For most residents of Neo-York, the Nomad Market is the only source of medical supplies, electronics, computers, and cybernetics. There is also a strong business in small arms. Assault rifles, pistols, submachine guns, and the sort are readily available. Explosives and military grade weaponry will need to be found elsewhere. In addition to what the Arsenaults are selling, there is are often many other deals being made at the Nomad Market. While outside goods are never directly exchanged here, it is a public and safe location to broker such arrangements. 

Derek Arsenault (“Deebo”) is the local face of the Nomad Market. He mills through the crowds checking in on folks, helping them find where they can buy specific things, and making sure they are having a pleasant experience. His main purpose of this is not customer service, but intelligence gathering. He records much of what he sees and hears through his cyberware, sending the data to Magdelen Arsenault (“Madonna”), their netrunner, who has written a complex algorithm that will separate the different conversations and sweeps it for keywords. As many of the staff have similar cyberware, Madonna is very busy analyzing the data. They use it to determine what goods to bring in, who the main players are in the area, and who are potential threats. Donelle Arsenault (“Nails”) is the head of security for the Market. Her people watch the market from the tops of the trailers, as well as posting sentries at the entrances. Nails strictly enforces the Nomad Market’s neutrality. Woe be to the poor bastard who shoots something outside of a test fire.

In addition to the Arsenaults, there are a couple regulars at the market. Jimmy Fuckface is an incredibly shady hustler who occasionally has good leads that aren’t setups. Farley Funk is a talented street musician who lacks ambition and the ability to keep it in his pants. Gloria Gold appears to be far too high-class for the Nomad Market, but is frequently available for hire. She is considered one of the best bodyguards in the Lower East Side.

If you are using the Wildside rules for contacts, Nomad Market characters have the following statistics:

Deebo (Fixer) Very capable, Reputation 7, sometimes available, very reliable, 56 points

Farley Funk (Rockerboy) Capable, Reputation 5, sometimes available, reliable, 15 points

Gloria Gold (Solo) Capable, Reputation 4, sometimes available, very reliable, 23 points

Jimmy Fuckface (Fixer), Snitch, Reputation 2, always available, unreliable, 3 points

Madonna (Netrunner) Very capable, Reputation 8, seldom available, super reliable, 50 points

Nails (Solo) Very capable, Reputation 5, seldom available, very reliable, 19 points

Next week, we will explore the Maker’s Block, an old apartment building that has transformed itself into the manufacturing heart of the Lower East Side.

Music Monday: The Official Neo-York Playlist, Part One

I love making playlists. Especially when it vibes. I was working on one and it just wasn’t getting there. The songs didn’t feel connected and that lack of flow meant that it couldn’t rip from one song to another. So it hit me, why not make a playlist that captures the emotions and feelings I am going after with Neo-York? It wouldn’t be a soundtrack, per se. I wouldn’t expect to hear “London is Burning” in a Neo-York movie, but the deterioration of a beloved city to violence and confusion is right up the campaign’s alley.

So here is a link to the playlist, with some commentary on the songs. This will be a multi-week process to get through all of them.

“Chippin’ In” by Refused (playing as Samurai):

I remember one of the Cyberpunk 2077 ads had this song playing and I was like, “they RECORDED this?!?!?!” and then I came to find that CD Projekt Red brought Swedish punk legends Refused to do the work. The lyrics are different than what was put out in the books and I always felt like Samurai would have a faster, more desperate sound to them, like a heavier Bad Brains. That said, I think this song rips. It’s quintessential Refused, with a pounding rhythm and heartfelt vocals. I hope CDPR has more on this level in the back of the game.

“Trash City” by Transvision Vamp

The modulated spoken word at the beginning is delightful 80s futurism cheese. The song sounds like a bunch of catch phrases thrown together to sound hip and edgy. Wendy James was an amazing sugar-pop front woman. It’s stylish, it’s upbeat, and unfettered with serious emotion. It makes you feel cool and modern, but there’s not much there, really. It’s a perfect metaphor for the Cyberpunk world.

“Kids of the Black Hole” by the Adolescents

Yeah, Neo-York is a Beast Coast city and the Adolescents are pure west coast punk energy, this song is a slow build to a climax that captures a lost generation of homeless punks. “House of the filthy, house not a home; House of destruction where the lurkers roam,” is every night in the combat zone among the street scum who are de facto refugees in their own city.

“London is Burning” by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

Joe Strummer’s work with the Mescaleros has a groovy cool that I have loved since Rock Art and the X-Ray Style came out. The lyrics “Too many guns in this damn town; baby flak jackets on the merry go round” were as earnest and pained as they were angry and defiant. New York was once the capital of the world. There are some in Neo-York who remember those days and have no idea what happened.

“Reagan” by Killer Mike

Another slow build of a song. Killer Mike catches the beloved Great Communicator in his lies and discusses the policies enacted that have shattered the African-American community. I honestly don’t know what kind of role race will play in my game, but I am keen to touch upon how the government will take on certain actions that play to a base of support and destabilize a potential threat. The War on Drugs, like the War on Terror, is a ruse to ensure that potential threats to the status quo are demonized and disrupted to a point where the government can do as it pleases. That is pretty fucking cyberpunk if you ask me.

“The Press Corpse” by Anti-Flag

When the United States invaded Iraq, I didn’t really watch the news coverage. Well, I couldn’t because I was busy doing the invading. When I got home, people asked me a lot of questions about things they saw on TV that I had no answer for. It felt like they were watching something very different than what I was experiencing. Despite the fact that the Media role is designed to be a heroic Edison Carter breaking the truth through a wall of lies, the overwhelming majority of media in the Dark Future are complicit in perpetuating the myths of happiness and prosperity promoted by corporate and government interests. Aaaaaaaand there’s one more bit of evidence we’re living in a Cyberpunk Present.

“Maharishi Manalishi” by the James Clarke Five

I have no idea how to describe the James Clarke Five, further illustrating that I have no future in rock journalism. This is a neat little jangly tune that has this interesting sitar-backed sound that sounds really sweet. Then you listen to the lyrics. As best as I can tell it’s about some grifter who packaged up some spirituality (probably co-opting some semi-Hindu/Buddhist  style) and shammed a lot of people out of money. Cyberpunk never shied away from talking about religion (I know Night City and Home of the Brave go into it a little bit), but I’m not sure if there have been any scam religions in any of the releases. The Dark Future is desperate as fuck and there are definitely Maharishi Manalishis out there taking advantage.

“Once and Never Again” by The Long Blondes

This song is one that is mostly an artifact of when I started the playlist without the express intent of making it the spiritual soundtrack to Neo-York. It’s a tune that has me conflicted the more I think about it, which is probably why I kept it as the playlist evolved. On one hand, it’s an upbeat nostalgic song warning the youth that they have plenty of time to worry about shit when they’re older. On the other, there’s this weird sense of impropriety that I can’t shake. It started when I was thinking about how it would sound if a man was the singer. It would sound creepy as hell, that’s for goddamn sure. Maybe that creepiness infected how I feel the narrator is looking at the nineteen-year old woman that the song is about, because now I feel like there is this desperate, clinginess of the narrator. It feels like an unhealthy relationship. Unhealthy relationships are cyberpunk as fuck, so the song stayed.

“Give It All” by Rise Against

There were many songs off this album I could have chosen, but this one captures the desperate, back-to-the-wall rebellion that marks the edgerunner spirit. Still, as desperate as the song is, there is a glimmer of hope when they sing “A sacrifice is not what we had in our minds. I’m coming home tonight,” that it’s not just a valiant struggle that we are born to lose. The fight is going to be fought and won.

“Shake Your Coconuts” by Junior Senior

I have had a soft spot for Junior Senior ever since I saw that 8-bit squirrel video on Fuse back in like 2002 or 3. We may or may not have had dance parties to them shortly before going on missions in Iraq. What I love about “Shake Your Coconuts” is that it is one of the latest entries in the subversive pop genre alongside Frankie Goes to Hollywood and The Village People. An upbeat, happy song that encourages the listener to come to their party, get wild, and fuck. I could see songs like this all over corporate radio, with the artists who sold their souls to DMS and the like sneaking in messages that are different than the consumer party line they’re supposed to spout.

“Rise Above” by Black Flag

A punk rock classic, this is another anthem for the revolution. In a lot of ways, Henry Rollins (love him or hate him) is a great example of a Rockerboy. Starting as a musician perfectly capturing the angst of a generation and transitioning into a multi-media talking head and entertainer, Rollins provides a template for how Rockerboys can be used in the game. A song like “Rise Above” is what would have broken Samurai out from obscurity. In fact, I think Black Flag is a great substitute for Samurai in the sense that other members of the band have stayed in the music scene and played with some great bands, but really Rollins/Silverhand is the only one that transcended the band into pure celebrity.

“bury a friend” by Billie Eilish

I think Billie Eilish is punk as fuck, I have coworkers who say she is gangsta as fuck, but I think we’re actually saying the same thing. She makes this infectious, moody, danceable, and amazing pop music. Her attitude towards her sexuality definitely goes against the grain of pop music, further cementing her iconoclast status. “bury a friend” has this nihilistic push-pull that I feel characterizes how humanity and relationships struggle to cope with the strains of modern, post-modern, and Dark Future life. The dangerous, violent, and disloyal future makes it hard to trust someone. Betrayal is a standard trope in the genre. That doesn’t stop that human need to be loved and supported. Our social nature, combined with a shattered social support network, creates this schism and once again, we’re living in the Cyberpunk Future already.

“Romeo” by Chairlift

The last song I’ll talk about this week, “Romeo” is the singer’s challenge to a suitor to catch her and win her over. It doesn’t sound like she wants to be caught, but there is this resignation that if her suitor pulls out all of the stops, she will be theirs. I feel like this is the same kind of push-pull denial of emotional needs that would be typical of Cyberpunk relationships. I don’t think any of them, even the happy ones, are that emotionally healthy. For that matter, I don’t think many people in the world would be emotionally healthy at all and it would definitely show through romance. And it’s a nice, fun, and catchy tune.

On the next Media Monday, we’ll finish off the playlist.

Flashback Friday: Cyberpunk 2013 Boxed Set, Part One: View From the Edge

The original Cyberpunk boxed set was released in 1988, which puts it right around 8th grade for me. I don’t remember if I bought it in 8th or 9th grade, but I remember it was a game that immediately and completely grabbed me in a way that few others did. The Sam Liu pseudo-Nagel art on the black box had a style that really felt fresh and modern to me at the time, despite how dated it feels now. I was growing up in Northeast PA and my only exposure to glamour was MTV. So when this box came in with these Duran Duran-looking pictures and discussions of attitude and the vibe of Cyberpunk, I knew this was something I wanted to be part of. Keeping in mind that I was a nerd whose dad brought a computer into the house years before and was active on the local bulletin board scenes, it really was a no brainer that I’d fall in love with it.

What did I fall in love with? Cyberpunk came with three black books (although these were full-sized booklets, not the tiny digests of Dungeons and Dragons or Traveller) One for overall rules and characters, one for combat, and one for the world of Cyberpunk. They were written in a sarcastic and conversational tone with plenty of under-the-hood sidebars explaining how you did things from an aesthetic standpoint as much as a mechanical one. I can’t say enough about how the style of these books seduced me. I never wanted to be a dungeon explorer or an agent for the Pan-Galactic Corporation, but I damn well wanted to be cyberpunk.

The first book, View from the Edge: The Cyberpunk Handbook, contained the rules for making characters, cybering them up, and running the net. On the sidebars, you could find a background on the cyberpunk genre and slang. SLANG. It seems so commonplace now, especially in science fiction gaming, to have a glossary of words to give the world its own feel, but I really don’t remember owning a game that had that before. The characters were diverse and did things I wasn’t used to. It leads with the Rockerboy. I’ll talk about Rockerboys in a few weeks when I go over the Rockerboy supplement and the Music Monday posts, but DUDE. I was used to shooting aliens, slashing orcs, and clobbering super-villains. The fact that I could have a viable character who struts his stuff onstage, inspiring the world to revolution, blew my mind. The Lifepath system even more so. I know Traveller had been doing lifepaths since the 70s, but this is one that had a lot more meat on it, specifying the events that happened to you. While I don’t know if it was the first real event-based lifepath generator, it was certainly my first exposure to one. And all of a sudden, there were these randomly generated backstories to go with your 28-year old character’s stats. The actual lifepaths would not change very much until some of the career/culture-specific ones are published. While I went through a phase where I wanted more meat on the lifepath tables, I’ve come to appreciate their elegance. If you are making a lot of characters, you will certainly see many of the same results over and over again, but I’d be curious how many characters someone is making in a regular gameplay setting. I have definitely DREAMED about playing Cyberpunk more than I have actually played it, so I’ve made plenty of characters, but I wonder if the table doesn’t get old as fast when you’re focused on session after session.

The cyberware and gear section is pretty basic. There’s some talk about how much gear you can carry and such, but the actual gear options are not that robust here. It’s interesting to me to look back on this thirty years later understanding just how gear-oriented Cyberpunk will become. I’ll definitely have some opinions about that when I get around to the Chromebook series. Many of the options here are basic, offering a flat bonus to an ability or skill. With the exception of cyberweapons and options for the audio-visual replacements, there is usually just one type of replacement, with little nuance. I don’t think I’ll ever have the time to do it, but it might be interesting to trace the evolution of gear in Cyberpunk over the years, looking at how detailed and specialized the different replacements are.

The last key section in here is the Netrunning rules. These didn’t last too long, quickly replaced by a dramatically new system in Cyberpunk 2020 (which, itself, was replaced in the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit). The theory behind this is very firmly rooted in the computer communications architecture of the 1980s. In many ways, that architecture is still there but is much more robust and diverse and the front end and back end look very different. As someone who was an avid participant in BBS culture, back then you had much more exposure to the back end, so this doesn’t seem as wonky to me as it might look to someone who didn’t have that context. There are clear nodes and connections that need to be traversed to operate in the Net. Only certain cities were connected to each other, meaning you had to be somewhere near the action to take part in it. It’s interesting to see the U.S. Net Architecture and what cities were included and which ones weren’t. I’m sure part of it had to do with how ARPANET-focused the Internet was back then, with Fairbanks and Albuquerque as major nodes, but Denver and Atlanta are absent.

Unique to the 2013 era is the concept of Interface Software—how you perceive the Net when you’re jacked in. The ‘Tronnic interface most closely resembles the cyberspace of The Sprawl Trilogy or Tron and would be the last man standing after the major Net upgrades in the next edition of the game. The other two almost make me think that the best way to conceptualize Interface Programs are as holodeck scenarios from Star Trek that are actually interfacing with the real world. Dungeon lets you experience the net through the lens of a fantasy role-playing game (I’m sure it’s photorealistic, but part of me kind of wants it to look like Ultima or Bard’s Tale) and Mega City dresses up like a 1920s pulp detective novel. It was really easy for me to dismiss these other two programs at the time and to think of them pretty derisively when Cyberpunk 2020 was released, but I think there could have been more room for these concepts if the cyberpunk genre didn’t crystallize certain aspects so quickly. The actual hacking takes place in data architectures set up as pointcrawls. The maps of the systems reminded me of the different text-based games I played growing up, from the Scott Adams cartridges I played on my VIC-20 through the Infocom games like Zork. Again, I’m curious what the different context someone 10-20 years younger than me would think of these. There are a lot of different software options, with several strengths within multiple categories. It is all very basic and, like cyberwear and weapons, would bloat considerably as the game got older.

Cyberpunk, in all of its iterations, has had a complicated relationship with netrunning. The netrunner is almost playing a completely different game than the rest of the party. I understand many referees made netrunners an NPC-only role and I can understand why. I am sure as I continue my deep dive into the game, I’ll start to develop more thoughts on netrunning and maybe explore some of the fan-based solutions.

Rereading View from the Edge, I can definitely say it’s a very rough game. Unlike Cyberpunk 2020, I’m not sure I would whip it out and play it out of nostalgia. I would say that about most games of that era, to be honest. With the exception of D&D, Traveller, or maybe Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, I’m not sure there are many games where I’d willingly go back to earlier editions. The things that really appeal to me were retained in future editions of the game, while the things I dislike were pretty much all abandoned.

Next week, I will discuss the second book in the boxed set, Welcome to Night City, the book of lore that immersed me into a world like no other game did before.

The Situation on the Ground

New York in 2020 is a shattered city. While the initial recovery efforts after The Bomb looked promising, The Collapse of the United States in 1996 erased that promise, as well as any support from any level of government. New York City government held it together until 2000 when Staten Island announced they were no longer part of New York City and reached out to New Jersey for support. Queens withdrew shortly thereafter and almost immediately splintered into a number of smaller, neighborhood-based governments. Brooklyn stopped listening to City Hall around 2003 and the Bronx had been written off when it took the print of the fallout from The Bomb.

What’s left of New York City is technically all of Manhattan, but when The Bomb sheared the city in half, the northern half was either irradiated by fallout or ignored by the government. What is realistically left of New York City is really just Manhattan from 14th street and under. The Upper West Side, Harlem, Inwood, and Washington Heights alternate between tightly-bound neighborhood coalitions and anarchic war zones, individual blocks alternating between the two. The Upper East Side is still a contaminated fallout zone and Central Park is a blighted space that most fear to tread. So, from here on out, when I say Neo-York, I am referring to the area still under nominal city government control, from 14th Street down through the Financial District.

Neo-York is not the hub of international trade and finance the way New York was. It is still reeling from the trauma of The Bomb and has not yet determined what its identity will be moving forward. The Megacorps might not use New York as a headquarters location anymore, but they are active in the city, many seeing the diversity in the neighborhoods as an opportunity to conduct product and brand research in a relatively unobserved market before taking it national. Arasaka and Militech shake down much of their new military equipment in the combat zones of New York City.

One of the themes of the campaign is the bitterness New York has for the rest of the United States. There is a palpable tension between the government and corporate agents who ignored the city in the decade or so after the Collapse. When they show up to operate within New York, the foreign agents are viewed with distrust and anger.

The Outer Boroughs are happy with their independence, having recovered from the Collapse a little better than Manhattan. Queens has become a giant in the “unofficial” manufacturing market, with farms of autofactories pumping out replicas and knockoffs at an alarming rate. Brooklyn has a fierce independent streak and a thriving economy of crafts and specialized labor export. Staten Island is a sterile Beaverville, with executives in their Aerodynes coming and going to either New Jersey or New York.

There is a lot to work with in Lower Manhattan. Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown and Little Italy alongside commercial zones like Wall Street allow for a wide variety of stories. I plan on fleshing out the part of the Lower East Side between Houston and Grand Streets as the “strip” where the player characters will likely live and base their operations. Other locations will be fleshed out on a more as-needed basis.

Next week, we will start our tour of the Lower East Side with The Nomad Market!

Neo-York: Welcome to the Neo-York Chronicles

I have been a fan of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk role-playing game since it came out. It is probably one of the only classic RPGs out there that I can say I got in at the ground floor on. I love it. Despite moving all over the world, losing a lot of gaming stuff to a parental purge (no, they didn’t throw it out when I went to college, they threw it out when I was in Iraq), adulting, and life in general, I still have the lion’s share of stuff I had as a kid. When Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Red were announced, I was over the moon.

For years I had been bouncing around an idea of a cyberpunk game set in New York City. I love Night City and everything Pondsmith and company have done with it, but New York City is as close to my city as any city could be. Its world prominence, its history, everything about it just screamed for me to bring it into the dark future. I will say that R. Talsorian Games gave NYC pretty short shrift, but back in the 80s, they weren’t the only ones. This was New York not ten years from the Bronx on fire during the World Series and currently in the throes of the crack cocaine epidemic. No one in the 80s predicted that Giuliani and Disney would get the porn out of Times Square and no one could have possibly known how New York would react to a catastrophic terrorist attack. So New York as it exists today would be impossible in the world of Cyberpunk, but I still resisted thinking it would turn into the anarchic wasteland depicted in Home of the Brave.

When I decided I was going to set Neo-York in the world of Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk, I knew I had to start at the beginning and that beginning was The Bomb. It was canon that Colombian narcoterrorists would destroy Rockefeller Center with a nuke. Using the terrifyingly thorough NUKEMAP website, I calculated the damage to the city based upon a 10 kiloton groundburst. The 15,000 killed in the game’s history was a gross underestimate, probably by an order of magnitude or two. The damage caused by the blast itself was pretty catastrophic, and I am sure the resultant fires and overall humanitarian crisis would result in the deaths of well over a million. Looking at the map and the damage caused, Manhattan would be hard-pressed to have recovered if things went well. And, as we all know from the history of Cyberpunk, it didn’t. Three years after the bomb, the U.S. collapsed under the weight of the Central American wars, rampant government corruption, and economic strife. Please excuse me while I look at headlines and then get nervous.

So, here I was with a New York City in crisis. Manhattan was functionally cut in half with its heart torn out, The Bronx was hit with a devastating amount of fallout, so who knows how the rest of the city would respond. There is a part of me that would love to sit down and map the entire city, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to focus on one part—The Lower East Side. Players will no doubt be performing ops in the Financial District, heading off to Brooklyn or Queens, exploring the ruins of Ground Zero or the Bronx Wasteland, or even venturing into New Jersey… No, we won’t be going into New Jersey.

Anyway, this blog will explore my journey into this Neo-York experience. I will certainly be trying to differentiate its feel from that of Night City. I plan on getting some players together in the next few weeks to start playing, so you’ll see play reports here as well. I’ll discuss some of my thoughts on how I want to run the game, sometimes just rambling about theory, sometimes sharing some actually gameable tables and charts. I’ll explore my influences, be they musical, visual, literary, or even in the realm of gaming. Finally, and something I am kind of excited about, I will conduct a deep dive into the run of Cyberpunk from the 2013 black boxed set of 1988 through the 2045 Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit that came out earlier this year.

So, thanks for getting on the bus! I hope it’s a fun ride for everyone!