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I know only the starter box is out so far but I figured I'd see if anyone here tried it and what the opinions are. I have zero experience with the R. Talsorian games prior to this iteration but am considering using it for a different setting. I'm a long time on and off Shadowrun player so I'm not new to the genre but obviously there are key differences between the two. I'm hoping to frankly use it for Shadowrun by adding magic and other races if possible since the more I look into SR6e the worse it looks. Have they previously published any psionics expansions for prior editions?

 warboss wrote:
I know only the starter box is out so far but I figured I'd see if anyone here tried it and what the opinions are. I have zero experience with the R. Talsorian games prior to this iteration but am considering using it for a different setting. I'm a long time on and off Shadowrun player so I'm not new to the genre but obviously there are key differences between the two. I'm hoping to frankly use it for Shadowrun by adding magic and other races if possible since the more I look into SR6e the worse it looks. Have they previously published any psionics expansions for prior editions?

From what we can see on the box, the game seems to be basically the same, so you could take a look at DP9's old Night's Edge books, which had stuff for supernatural creatures and the like.

Also, don't touch SR6, it will be bad for you

Too late! And, yeah, it's radioactively bad in some ways and I have no idea what they were thinking. I do like the new action economy though. I took a look at the Cyberpunk Red starter set reviews and rules and it really swings the other way and is very simplified. It's hard to say how much of that is by virtue of it being a starter/intro set and how much is just inherent to the preferences of the author/owner Mike Pondsmith. There are a few head scratchers for me like why reinforced cyberknuckle implants don't use the hand to hand brawling skill and why pistols don't have a range niche of their own (like hitting on 10 at the closest range bracket where you would actually prefer to use a pistol) but nothing as WTF??!? as reducing all armor's effects to just a modifer on one single d6 in your bucket'o'dice pool in Shadowrun 6e. I'm really feeling like Goldilocks right now.

Did Dp9 do Cyberpunk supplements like they did way back with Palladium's Macross 2?

 warboss wrote:
Too late! And, yeah, it's radioactively bad in some ways and I have no idea what they were thinking. I do like the new action economy though. I took a look at the Cyberpunk Red starter set reviews and rules and it really swings the other way and is very simplified. It's hard to say how much of that is by virtue of it being a starter/intro set and how much is just inherent to the preferences of the author/owner Mike Pondsmith. There are a few head scratchers for me like why reinforced cyberknuckle implants don't use the hand to hand brawling skill and why pistols don't have a range niche of their own (like hitting on 10 at the closest range bracket where you would actually prefer to use a pistol) but nothing as WTF??!? as reducing all armor's effects to just a modifer on one single d6 in your bucket'o'dice pool in Shadowrun 6e. I'm really feeling like Goldilocks right now.

It is... something, alright.

Nowadays I've kinda moved to things like Eclipse Phase, The Sprawl and The Veil, but at least CP202's core is more workable.

Did Dp9 do Cyberpunk supplements like they did way back with Palladium's Macross 2?

They did a whole load of them, yeah. The "core" is the Night's Edge supplement, which has a lot of new rules for a lot of stuff, including psychic powers, but on the whole it kinda has a WoD vibe. They also had a load of really interesting adventures:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/19/Dream-Pod-9/subcategory/73_123/Alternate-Reality-Cyberpunk

Interesting... I have to say this is the first time I learned something new about DP9 (under their old Ianus name) in many years that wasn't purely dirty laundry and/or unnecessary drama. How different are the old cyberpunk rules to the current red demo? (assuming you're familiar with either).

I haven't heard of the Sprawl or Veil but I'll look them up. Obviously Eclipse Phase I've heard of (also thanks to you!).

I took a look last night at the two systems and it looks like they're both variants of a narrative ruleset called Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA). I have no play experience with narrative rulesets as my entire 30 year RPG history has been with more traditional simulationist ones. The Sprawl sounds a bit more focused and to my liking moreso than the Veil so I might take a closer look at that one.

For those that have played both Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, does the former tend to use less actual cybernetics? I'm used to heavily cybered characters in SR 2e-5e having a dozen or more different pieces installed whereas at least the pregen Red characters have only a handful that have lesser relative effects as well. It might work very well (and there is a good argument as to whether unaugmented mundane characters in SR are balanced/worth it) but I don't have any actual experience to base an opinion off of.

CP2020 had a mechanic where cyberbits reduced your Empathy stat, so whilst there was a lot available a fair few classes needed that stat so left heavy upgrades to the combat classes

Shadowrun has the same, only there is called Essence.

CP2020 characters varied a lot, but usually cybered up characters tended to be combat-oriented ones because it killed Empathy.

As to PbtA, is not as much an actual system, more a design phylosophy, designed to make the game line up as much as possible with the fiction of the story.

Yeah, the whole essence loss thing is largely just a hard min/max metagame limit rather than a gradual constant effect. I may be mixing editions together but the only consistent effect I recall it having was a penalty on healing. There may have been some optional splat book social modifiers for being almost a cyberzombie but nothing that I recall as serious as a penalty to charisma which empathy sounds equivalent to.

yep Empathy is the people skills stat central to at least 3 classes and fairly handy for a fair few other as best I recall it was stat+skill+dice against target number, and if it got too low there was a chance to go cyber hulk and smash puny meatbags till the artillery toting cyberpolice rocked up

 warboss wrote:
Yeah, the whole essence loss thing is largely just a hard min/max metagame limit rather than a gradual constant effect. I may be mixing editions together but the only consistent effect I recall it having was a penalty on healing. There may have been some optional splat book social modifiers for being almost a cyberzombie but nothing that I recall as serious as a penalty to charisma which empathy sounds equivalent to.

In 5th edition Shadowrun they finally got around to making the rules match the fluff. Essence loss didn't reduce your charisma at all, but it did lower the maximum number of successes you could roll on any charisma-based skill test. It was (IMHO) a good mechanic for showing how a high amount of cyber in your body could make you a little off-putting to people around you. I had a face character who had a hard lock on their Essence at 4. If I took it any lower I'd bork my chances of winning an opposed charisma test. It doesn't matter that I have 16 dice to roll if the highest number of successes I can get is 4.

Of course, I have no idea how they handle it in 6th.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
yep Empathy is the people skills stat central to at least 3 classes and fairly handy for a fair few other as best I recall it was stat+skill+dice against target number, and if it got too low there was a chance to go cyber hulk and smash puny meatbags till the artillery toting cyberpolice rocked up

EMP 2 was the cutoff.
Below this, the GM was encouraged to take the pc off the player and run them through zerker hulk phase until they died.
(unless the player was capable of dealing with it themselves).

squidhills wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Yeah, the whole essence loss thing is largely just a hard min/max metagame limit rather than a gradual constant effect. I may be mixing editions together but the only consistent effect I recall it having was a penalty on healing. There may have been some optional splat book social modifiers for being almost a cyberzombie but nothing that I recall as serious as a penalty to charisma which empathy sounds equivalent to.

In 5th edition Shadowrun they finally got around to making the rules match the fluff. Essence loss didn't reduce your charisma at all, but it did lower the maximum number of successes you could roll on any charisma-based skill test. It was (IMHO) a good mechanic for showing how a high amount of cyber in your body could make you a little off-putting to people around you. I had a face character who had a hard lock on their Essence at 4. If I took it any lower I'd bork my chances of winning an opposed charisma test. It doesn't matter that I have 16 dice to roll if the highest number of successes I can get is 4.

Of course, I have no idea how they handle it in 6th.

Thanks. I thought there was some sort of penalty but wasn't sure of the details. I didn't see a penalty for essence in 6e but admittedly I only read through the rules once and might have missed it. Limits are in general gone though in 6e except for copypaste errors where the typical Catalyst crappy editing left references in.


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 chromedog wrote:

EMP 2 was the cutoff.
Below this, the GM was encouraged to take the pc off the player and run them through zerker hulk phase until they died.
(unless the player was capable of dealing with it themselves).

Was this just an automatic thing like you install your next piece of cyberware that drops you to EMP2 and then instantly cyberroid rage out? Or did it have to be triggered by an in game situation involving a resistance tests of sorts?

My bad. According to the pdf copy of the rulebook (3rd printing, incorporating errata, some rule changes and different artwork) I have, it was 0 that was the cutoff - my hardcopy first printing is currently in storage.

It was emp2 in the 2013 days that was the cutoff, though and I guess I just continued with that part (since in my area, I was mostly doing the GMing anyway - I played maybe 4-5 games in 20-odd years, GM'd for the remainder about 10 games per year over a couple of decades. Also, I dislike murderhobos in my games, so they don't get that opportunity, period.).

At EMP2, the characters are distinctly unpleasant to be around. At 1, they are constantly having to fight to stop going over the edge and slaughtering everything (GM imposes "rage tests" or makes everything a trigger). At 0, they go NPC murdermachine.