When most people think of cyberpunk missions they think of slick technothriller heists where the runners duck and weave through corporate intrigue, webs of deceit and fixers just as likely to kill the crew as pay them. The original Tales From The Forlorn Hope is full of jobs like this, thanks to the central bar being a haven for solos who spent a lot of time fighting corporate bush wars. Tales Of The Red: Hope Reborn goes in a different direction. The book from designers Chris Spivey, David Ackerman, Eddy Webb, Frances Stewart, J Gray, James Hutt, Linda M Evans, Melissa Wong, Paris Arrowsmith, Tracie Hearne and Will Moss looks at a single neighborhood within the massive sprawl that is Night City. R. Talsorian Games sent along a copy for this review. Does the book spring eternal? Let’s play to find out.
Tales Of The Red: Hope Reborn details six stories in a campaign centered around a bar called The Forlorn Hope, This place was introduced back in 1992’s Tales From The Forlorn Hope and became a hub for many a Cyberpunk campaign. There’s more than meets the eye here though. At least two adventures contain smaller stories that are played out in shorter session long episodes. The campaign also offers a variety of tales from investigations to heists and home invasion defense. The designers estimate playing the campaign will take anywhere between 38 to 55 hours to finish, clocking in at about 10 to 14 sessions for folks running four hour sessions. These sessions could probably also be pulled apart for single story play but I think they are much stronger when they tell the whole story.
That story, as it happens, is community building. Classic cyberpunk missions have an episodic nature to them featuring slick operatives doing black bag corporate dirty work for big pay days. In this book, the players are looking to build trust within the community in and around The Forlorn Hope by dealing with problems big and small around the neighborhood. It takes on an A-Team feel at times with deadly badasses scaring off go gangs or mobsters with big dreams in return for a grateful neighbor and a payment in service rather than cold, hard eddies. The stories here are a refreshing change from the cold heist that most people think of when they consider the genre. GMs who really miss them can still sprinkle those stories in and let players handle one of these adventures on “the homefront” in between the big money jobs.
Spoilers follow for the adventures in the book. Bottom line: Tales Of The Red: Hope Reborn is my favorite cyberpunk campaign in years. If you want to play a game that contrasts cold, hard Night City with the warmth of the people who live there, I can’t recommend it enough.
The campaign kicks off with “The Angel’s Share” which throws the PCs into the business of the bar by blowing it up. I like that there’s an in media res aspect of the campaign opener where players are suddenly in a firefight and have to figure out who is doing the shooting if they survive. Some Game Masters might want to give the players more investment in the place before smashing it down. Luckily, the original Tales From The Forlorn Hope is available with plenty of adventures to introduce they old players before they go down in this adventure.
Rebuilding the bar starts off with “Real Estate Rumble” with the players doing some favors for a fixer in exchange for him securing a new location for the bar. The adventures included are fairly short and this section seems ripe for adding in some other edgerunner gigs for Game masters who want to extend the run time of the campaign. The main story is more or less a five room dungeon crawl but it does a good job of showing how players can succeed wildly, passably or fail forward while still telling the necessary story.
The five mini quests of “Welcome To The Neighboorhood” are my favorite stories in the book. These all feel like the kind of things you do while you wait for the main quest in a game like Cyberpunk 2077 to load. There’s a wide variety here too, from a hostage situation ro a chance to play cyberpunk roller derby. These missions also seem like a good choice for running when the full group is unavailable but there’s still enough players that people want to play.
Things get a little experimental in “The Devil’s Cut.” On the one hand, it’s the story that’s closest to the usual techno heist format of Cyberpunk. On the other hand, it’s structured more in the Leverage vein where players are targeting people and sneaking into a vault rather than a full frontal assault. Those flashback mechanics will come in handy here as the players conspire to steal back an alcohol collection for the bar’s VIP customers.
The bar reopens in “Hope’s Calling!!!” where the players must help out on the first night in the new location. There are threats without and within as well as silly problems and serious issues. Players have to do everything from pick up a special shipment of cocktail ingredients to rooting out a traitor in the new employees who might give the forces that destroyed the old bar a chance to finish off the new one in its grave. I like the full circle nature of this adventure as an end point to the campaign.
It’s curious to me then, that the book considers “Ripping The Ripper” the true end of the campaign. I don’t think the adventure is bad; it sends players after one of the people responsible for the destruction of the bar. But it could probably get dropped anywhere on the timeline, likely whenever the players need a break from all the small community gigs and want a big, meaty bad guy to pulverize with their cool future weapons. The adventure contains a quiet path and a loud path but the more you learn about the big bad, the less likely it seems the players won’t want to put this guy in the ground on their own.
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