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!
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!
Nice to see the overall resurgence of cyberpunk, both the game and the genre! I'm holding out until the full release of Red comes out, though I might cave on the jump start if there's a good Cyber-Monday deal or something. It's been way too long since I played.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading what comes next.