While there’s naturally been a lot of attention devoted to Dungeons & Dragons this year because of the 50th Anniversary, it’s also good to see other classic games return to the public consciousness. Cyberpunk 2077 has a shaky launch but has not just survived but thrived since then thanks to a constant stream of updates and a full DLC with a slick techno thriller storyline. Cyberpunk RED held down the fort on the tabletop side by introducing a new generation of fans to the chills and thrills of Night City using a slightly updated version of the classic Cyberpunk rules. The wider world got a dose of what makes the game so resilient through the hit anime series Cyberpunk Edgerunners on Netflix. It’s this tie-in media that brings things a bit full circle with R. Talsorian’s big release at Gen Con. Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit offers a chance for tabletop fans to throw down in the latest iteration of Night City with characters designed by the studio that created the anime. Designers Mike Pondsmith, James Hutt and J Gray put together a bright package that still highlights the dark corners of the Cyberpunk world. The company sent me home with a box for this review. Did the box make my brain dance? Let’s play to find out.
The first of three booklets, Edgerunner’s Handbook looks at the state of play in Night City in the year 2077. The handbook includes a brief setting overview of Night City in 2077. It includes elements from the original video game, the Phantom Liberty DLC and the anime. While it doesn’t officially call out when it’s set, based on the included adventure and the potential for different endings in the video game, the boxed set comes in between the TV show and the video game. I don’t know that worrying about canon matters in this setting because everything seems fairly static. Arasaka and Militech are the big corporate bads with everyone circling around them as pawns in their corporate intrigues. That doesn’t make the setting less fun, since corporations always coming out on top is a recurring theme in the game.
The biggest change in the setting from Red is the ubiquity of neuroports. Nearly everyone gets one of these installed in 2077 allowing them to make phone calls, monitor their health conditions, slot data shards and physically link to computers. Not having one is the rough equivalent of not having a smartphone in our society. It also allows netrunners to do a bit more during a job than just hacking virtual dungeons.
The rules book covers this big change where people can be affected through quickhacks. A netrunner can now short circuit enemy cyberware, impair their movement and even reboot their cyberbrain during combat. This gives netrunners even more of a reason to get out of the van during a job and the simple cyberpunk rules handles this stuff elegantly. There’s also more discussion of humanity and turning it into more of a sliding scale similar to what you see in Vampire:The Masquerade. I liked how the Edgerunners anime made Humanity more than just a number to see how much stuff you can install into your character. I’m not sure if I like the particular change for something else for players to track, but it looks to offer some interesting roleplay possibilities for groups that want them.
The boxed set also contains pre-generated characters, battlemaps and dice. The designers made the interesting choice to let players personalize the pre-gens by running them through a short version of the Cyberpunk lifepath. This is my favorite part of making Cyberpunk characters and I think it’s a great way to get new players hooked. My players don’t care that much about big guns or cool cyberware; they want to know about ex-lovers and embattled allies that bring the city to life. For fans of Cyberpunk RED, all of this stuff is 100% compatible with the older game. Even if you have no interest in the setting update, there’s still plenty of rules bits, persons, places and things that can easily fit back in 2045. Game Masters could easily write up an adventure around picking up a prototype of one the common place bits of gear in 2077 and this time, let the players keep the gadget.
The last booklet is The Jacket which is the main adventure for the set. The company asked that I don’t spoil details about the story. But I will say that it is an excellent example of Cyberpunk’s beat system, including a flowchart on the back cover showing new Game Masters where the story should flow next. It puts the players on the hunt for a McGuffin and it gives the other parties interested in it a wide variety of motivations that will made deciding who gets it a hard choice to make. For some it’s personal, for some it’s professional and for some it’s profit. Figuring out which of these motives are most important to your Edgerunners is a great way to kick off a new campaign.
Bottom Line: Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit is a great gateway for fans of the video game or the anime to see what all the tabletop fuss is about. It’s also full of bits and pieces veteran tabletop players can use for their Cyberpunk game regardless of the era.
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