Cyberpunk Red is an important RPG if you’re into the cyberpunk genre - RPG Review

My take on the game after running a weekly play campaign for a year or so and counting, is that it is a fun way to explore the genre. My players like it, it is easy to run, combat is fluid and fast paced, something a lot of games have lost sight of. The positive out of the way, I have a couple of things that REALLY irk me about this game. Some of the skills seems SO specific, as in, why did we set that one off on its own. And other skills are absolutely missing. But the worst feature of the game is the book itself. While the book itself is pretty to look at, it is so poorly edited and organized, I cannot help but feel they did not have any people outside their studio really give it the once over to see if the layout was helpful, useful and well organized. It isn't. It is maybe one of the worst out there from a major rpg publisher. For instance, the main details of individual peices of cyberware are not to be found in the cyberware section, they are found in the Night Market section, which is back amongst the parts of the book my players assumed was the GM section. There were no real clear indicators in the book that this was the case. It works better via PDF, but I have a couple players who love a print book still and it is miserable for them. Over the course of a year of play, they know where everything is in the book now, but only through repetition and not from the layout of the book have they figured it out. There are some helpful edited versions (by players) out there, which make the book much more useful as a compilation, and suggest anyone who has the same issues we did, seek those out.

Hey David thank you so much for including my channel in your description. I’m happy to see that you’re enjoying cyberpunk! I wish you nothing but success and I hope you achieve all your goals with your channel. Much love choom 🙏

I've been playing this system for 3 years now. Its so far the only system to just click with me off the bat. Glad to see other folks enjoying it as well, even with its flaws.

For anyone on the video gaming side who's still sleeping on 2077 due to the bad release, it plays marvelously now. I highly recommend giving it another chance (especially if you have a decent rig to play it on)

I read many RPG rule books, CP Red was one of the least intuitive, for me. But I'm glad it exists.

24:42 Rockerboy is a reference to a character in the universe who was called Rockerboy, it's like "your the Elvis of (genre)" it's a word that's gotten into lingo to the point people have it in there heads like how we'll call someone a geek or a nerd, it's got many meanings but anyone can be a nerd over something

I wanted to point out 2 things about your video. they have cyberpunk red EASY MODE which is the cut down version of the game rules that just makes it easy to play. and they just announced the cyberpunk 2077/edgerunners anime preorder which is like a rules/setting expansion to play in 2077

I've been running a CP - Red campaign since last September, and after the first few sessions I find the combat really fluid. I get what you're saying about 0 damage armor soaking, but once damage begins getting dealt on either side it makes the combat go much faster due to the increased armor ablation. The use of armor-piercing rounds does quick work of this too (some of my players have taken to the gear-head side of this game). Coming from playing Call of Cthulhu right before this the skill list doesn't bother me so much, they are options, and instead of getting caught in analysis-paralysis I either pick one for my players to roll on, or collaborate with my players to see what they think they'd be more likely to use. Long way of saying I'm having a blast with this game.

I find Cyberpunk RED hard to really understand as a game. Ultimately there are few cyberpunk stories that focus on combat and violence to the extent that CPR weights it in the book. Friday Night Firefight is a pretty good combat system that allows for quick gunfights, but as soon as subsystems like cyberware, armor and martial arts are added into the mix it becomes complex to run, with lots of situational effects or constantly adjusting values. The painful thing is that the setting of Cyberpunk wants interactions with crazy people and communities, it wants players to engage with the humanity of its characters through the contrast of this colorful world and the danger of the jobs that a crew is undertaking. And the setting is great (although sometimes bit much honestly and its very easy to paint yourself into a corner through improvising due to how much established lore there is), so you want people to roll play out solutions, or engage with their skills for creative approaches that feel unique rather than just kicking the door in and firing a gun. Cyberpunk games are at their best for me in short stories as this is what lets people throw away a character with reckless abandon. But CPR wants to have a long character progression with skills and leveling up and it just encourages players to behave too conservatively due to investment. For all the advice in the GMs section, the game is caught between gamifying firefights and a ton of legacy rules, with very few that actually support an on-going campaign. The result is a system that's functional in moment-to-moment gameplay, but a lot of work to GM, with episodic scenarios that are by-the-numbers cyberpunk plots that can't really tap into most of the cyberpunk themes other than 'corpos bad' and 'capitalism has valued everything and lives are cheap'.

Awesome review! My group's experience with Cyberpunk RED was frustrating and we felt like we were fighting the rulebook constantly, trying to find rules, mechanics, or item descriptions. I came to the conclusion that Cyberpunk RED has a great system of mechanics in an unintuitive presentation. I think OSR principles to running Cyberpunk make it far more smoother and better as a system, and I feel like there is a great OSR/NSR style sandbox ttrpg underneath the poorly structured rulebook. Try not to think of the skills as skills, and more as hyper specialized saving throws. You don't roll perception unless someone or something is actively trying to trick your vision. A lot of the players fell into the pitfall trap of "DnD-ing" and asking the GM for skill rolls, or running a session like it was DnD. I think Cyberpunk RED thrives when you run far away from that style of TTRPG.

Just wanted to say that i really appreciate the detail in this video, navigating from page to page, showing relevant info every time. This one was specially good man! Thanks!

I'm going to be honest, Dave. CP2020 was a favorite of mine. It was stylishly and concisely written, and I was able to teach myself the rules right from the rulebook. None of the versions since - CP3, Cyber Gen, etc have been as approachable. I've read thru the quick start and the CP Red monster rulebook and... no. I don't see anything really that is an improvement. Maybe this "easy mode" version is for me....

Cyberpunk Red is awesome but my favorite part is not narrative nor mechanics but that cyberware sheet, adding cyberware in the boxes and seeing at a glance how much your character has is great.

Great that you made this. On some of the corny-ness, I have always gotten the vibe that Cyberpunk presents itself a lot like vampire the Masquerade in it being a whole culture and that’s backed into the rules. A rocker boy is someone who uses art to fight against the corpos, so it’s more of a label than literal. Same with music. You are right, future is synth and synth pop, but underground rock is more “punk” so it is exemplified by the names and setting.

Im convinced people are running the game a bit off when they say armor just soaks all damage and takes forever to break down. Theres a simple dichotomy between concealable armor and handguns, and shoulder/heavy weapons for heavy armor. Match the weapons with the situation. Handgun people are better in social stealth situations where people arent wearing combat armor. Of course if you shoot armorjack with pistolds endlessly, you wont get anywhere. But SP11 will get shredded quickly against shotgun slugs doing an average of 18-19 damage a shot. Even with good armor, a low body character will go down to 3-4 shotgun blasts.

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We don't talk about Cyberpunk 3.0 ;)

This was a great review. You're lucky to have a group of friends help you play/run the game.

Looking forward to the Edgerunners kit and 2077 corebook.

Every time I look at my copy of Red I glance at a couple of pages and then I reach back for 2020. Ive been running a 2020 campaign on and off for about 7 years. My players love the setting but what is funny is we rarely get into combat. The Rockerboy usually sways the battle before it starts or other shenanigans happen. I think I shot off the head of one of my players early on in the campaign and they replaced it with a robot head. This pretty much set the tone for why combat should be feared and they do alot to stay on task during missions. Might be my tables all time favorite game. I really should at least read the netrunning section of Red and transfer it over to 2020 if we dont outright change to Red eventually. Thanks for the review!