Shadowrun was my great first love as a game designer. It’s one of the best examples of the kitchen sink games that came out of the late 80s and early 90s that wildly mashed up genre favors like unsupervised kids at a soda fountain. It’s a concept that appeals to the kid in many of us; who wouldn’t want to shoot at a dragon with a machine gun? Or drive a cool motorcycle with your brain? Or be an immortal elf wielding a laser katana? It combines just the right amount of silliness and seriousness that these games we love need to fire up the imagination. :Otherscape, from designers Amít Moshe, Kelly Black, Eran Aviram, Colin Wilson, Tony Pi, Kend’or Wilson, Kevin Carpenter, Kristoff Alejo, Lexi Antoku and Yiftach Raphael Govreen stands in the shadow of a giant but like so many suits in so many back rooms of neon lit bars poses a tempting question to players. How would you remix fantasy and cyberpunk? Son of Oak Game Studios sent me a copy of :Otherscape Metro for this review. Does it bring home the paydata? Let’s play to find out.
:Otherscape Metro is the core book for the game which uses a variation on the system first seen in Son of Oak’s City of Mist. The Powered By The Apocalypse trappings of the earlier title have been shaved down and simplified even further. There are no longer specific moves. Rather players roll 2d6 against the same success/complicated success/failure spread of results and add Power to this roll. Power acts as both a modifier to the roll and as a number gaining progress on tracks to do things like defeat enemies or hack systems. Power comes from the traits that players have in the game which are represented by Fate aspect-like phrases such as ‘cyber eyes’ or ‘hacked slush fund’. Negative traits lower power but players using them advance their character by playing into flaws.
Characters are built through a collection of themes. These are broad concepts and skill sets that reflect different parts of the character like their personality traits, backgrounds, skill sets and cool powers. Each theme has positive traits, a negative trait, a special ability that can be unlocked by advancement as well as a central question or belief that the player needs to play into if they want to keep that part of their character around. If a character has “corporate connections” as a theme, they are going to have to feed their masters some juicy secrets every now and again otherwise their fixer is going to stop answering their cyberphone. If a character doesn’t satisfy these needs, that theme goes away and the player will have to choose a new one as a replacement.
There are three big categories of theme to choose from. Self themes focus on the human aspect of cyberpunk life like connections and skills. Noise themes are heavy tech themes like running the net with a cyberdeck or having drones at your beck and call. Mythoi themes are where the fantasy comes in with magic artifacts, transformations into mythical creatures and other sources of power. There’s some game effects that factor in on how each character is balanced between these three but honestly, a Game Master could probably run a straight up cyberpunk game without magic if they really wanted to by disallowing mythoi themes.
:Otherscape Metro has an interesting take on how magic returned to the world. Rather than a secret conspiracy keeping it out of the public eye, it suggests that most of humanity has become too burdened with technology to accept the idea that magic has returned. We’re all too busy doomscrolling to look up and see the dragon flying overhead. When presented with a real live ogre, we immediately start wondering what Playstation game this is some sort of advertisement for. The megacorporations, however, understand what’s happening and, just like any other limited resource, are going to war for all those magic swords and hidden wizard towers.
If :Otherscape Metro sounds like a lot, it is. It’s a big, heavy full color tome full of gorgeous art and pages upon pages of discussion on how to build your version of the game. Then, on top of that there are two other books that include even more examples. :Otherspace Tokyo details a full city full of oni, yakusa and corporate intrigue in a huge book that’s just as big and bright as the core rules. The Action Database shows dozens of examples on how to build rolls from power traits, what add-on successes could happen and what potential complications could offset success. It’s very enthusiastic and at times a little overwhelming. This game is best suited for players that have likely already cut their teeth on cyberpunk RPGs or who might love the source material and haven’t had a satisfying experience yet.
Here are the two things I found most exciting. The first is, as a toolkit that encourages ables to build their own cyberpunk cities, it gives Game Masters a chance to add fresh elements to these concepts. Shadowrun is 35 years old and while the timeline has advanced, there’s some value in taking a new look at those concepts with how we know things have gone during that time. We’re already living in some degree of cyberpunk dystopia so why not make a game with now as a starting point to see what wonders and horrors are coming in our future?
The second is that while cyberpunk fiction is often about identity and humanity, the games tend to focus on the slick techno-thriller heists rather than the “tears in rain” speeches. :Otherscape Metro puts that at the center of the game as players must fight to maintain their identities as their characters hack servers and cast spells. It’s a dramatic character moment when one of these themes shifts that carves out time from the neon soaked action for a scene or two of reflection.
Bottom Line: :Otherscape Metro looms like a corporate monolith but rewards groups who take the time to get to know it with a chance to make their own future full of darkness and magic.
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