Few tabletop roleplaying games have leveraged other forms of licensed media into improved sales of the original material better than R Talsorian Games’ Cyberpunk. No game has popped back into our weekendly noting of bestsellers more times long after initial release than Cyberpunk RED, and while they’re not the only factor the biggest noticeable spikes were in the wake of first Cyberpunk 2077 and then Studio Trigger’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime. For those who played as V and watched David Martinez chrome up and went looking for more, though, RED could be a bit jarring: it’s still Night City, but a very different one, not 1:1 the setting the players and viewers would have been hooked by. Clearly the bait was good enough,  but a certain Fixer got us a look at something that will pull them in ever better ahead of its release: the new Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit. Wake up, samurai. We’ve got a beginner’s game to review.

Let’s cover some brass chrome tacks first, and address what exactly the CEMK isn’t and what it really is. Most importantly, the CEMK is not the harbinger of the 5th 4th edition of Mike Pondsmith’s cyberpunk RPG – while it’s a standalone product, in that you don’t need anything else to play with it, it is essentially a new kind of Jumpstart Kit for Cyberpunk RED. It’s also not a complete Cyberpunk Edgerunners/2077 source or setting book – such a thing may or may not come later. Functionally, the CEMK is two things. First, it’s a mission that goes down in the 2070s of the Cyberpunk setting, a sequel of sorts taking place in the aftermath of Edgerunners with some new protagonists meeting some familiar faces. Second, it’s a mod kit for running Cyberpunk RED not in the eponymous Time of the Red in 2045, but in the same time frame as when David Martinez and V tried to earn their own drinks at the Afterlife.

It’s also, of course, a treat (and bait) for fans of Edgerunners.

Got all that? Alright, now let’s cover the detes.

From the 2040s to the 2070s

Everything I’m about to cover under this header is baked into the CEMK, so if your first run in Night City starts with the Kit then this is just how things are. If you want to play in 2077 outside the bounds of the Kit, however, these are all changes from how Cyberpunk RED usually works.

Resources and Roles

2045 was a rough year to live in Night City. You’ve got the dramatic reasons, like the still-radioactive crater in the middle of the metropolis, or the fact that the Bozos are engaged in a ‘prank’ civil war that nobody but them is laughing at, sure. One of the biggest, though, is scarcity. Cyberpunk RED takes place in the shadow of the 4th Corporate War, and as a result just getting stuff is difficult.

In the 2070s that’s not really the case any more – or, rather, it’s not the case for the haves. The have-nots will still want to go through a Fixer if at all possible, but if they don’t want to or can’t for whatever reason, they can now buy pretty much anything off the shelves – for double the listed price in the book, of course.

This era of restored supply lines and infrastructure means that several roles undergo some adjustments as well to account for their reach and influence. Execs, Medias, and Rockerboys can source Expensive or lower items for themselves at Rank 4. Lawmen can do the same for items related to their job, and Nomads can source pretty much anything vehicle related all the way down at Rank 1. Fixers remain the best in the biz, though: they can start sourcing items from higher ranks earlier – Expensive at Operator 1 instead of 4, Very Expensive at 4 instead of 7, etc.

More Bang for Your Eddy

One of the more notable shifts from 2020 to RED was how the weapons were sharply streamlined, from pages and pages of every type of firearm and melee weapon in the old Chromebooks to a single small table for ranged weapons and a smaller one for melee ones. Black Chrome did a pretty good job of introducing some gear that had quirks, like combo weapons and bonuses to Wardrobe & Style checks and so on, but the base functionality of any given gun remained the same. It was sort of a game design cul-de-sac, a given assault rifle is going to behave like every other assault rifle at the base level. The CEMK both gives you some more interesting choices to make that help enlarge the cul-de-sac and covers the types of weapon tech we saw in Edgerunners/2077.

Smart weapons remain much as they were, granting a small accuracy bonus, but when loaded with the new Improved Smart Ammunition you get the fire-and-forget trajectories that made the weapon type useful in ’77: if an attacker misses their check by a small enough margin, they can roll another check to see if they can hit the target after all. Power weapons double the bonus damage inflicted whenever they deal out a Critical Injury. More dramatically, a wielder can choose to take a penalty to their check (not nearly as much as if it were an Aimed Shot) to outright ricochet a shot around cover, provided they can target a spot from which there is a clean line of sight to the target. Not liking curving bullets or trick shots? Just punch through. Tech weapons can be charged by sacrificing your Move action, and then their next shot both goes right through Light Cover (not doing any damage to it) and treats the target’s personal armor as halved before rolling damage.

Any one of these traits can be added to an existing RED gun, but all of the weapons listed in the CEMK come with one of them – after all, they’re the guns from the video game and show. R Tal also shows off how these weapon types provide more design space, on top of an overall willingness to make some tweaks. For the latter, there are several SMGs and ARs that while still mechanically using Single Shot mode are functionally firing a three-round burst, a middle ground between normal Single Shot and Autofire that adds a damage die. For some examples of the former there’s a Tech sniper rifle that can also shoot (and see) through Thick cover and then a Tech pistol that doesn’t require the sacrifice of a  Move action to charge.

There is also some new cyberware in the CEMK, some of it quite dramatic. The Gorilla Arms, Monowire, Berserk Implant, Projectile Launch System, and iconic Mantis Blades all make an appearance with some interesting tricks. There is also an Experimental Sandevistan made famous by a certain edgerunner from Santo Domingo.

When I was talking to Rob and J at PAX Unplugged ’23 they let me know this was coming but asked me to keep it under wraps, and in that spirit I’ll still let you discover the particulars on your own. Rest assured, though, it’s as dramatically powerful – and as dangerous to its user – as you would expect.

That being said, it’s not the piece of chrome that’s making the most dramatic changes to the game overall.

Any ‘port In An Edgerunner

The Neuroport is so ubiquitous in the 2070s that characters who start off in that time period can just choose to get one for free at character creation: no cash cost, no Humanity cost, no maximum Humanity reduction. Everyone is going to want one, because the benefits are so many and so obvious: a brain-controlled holophone, a biomonitor, a HUD, a personal link to plug into computers with, the ability to experience virtual media, and the room for shard slots (‘chipware sockets’ in RED parlance) and five slots worth of other Neuralware. That last one would be my favorite, since it bypasses the pesky prerequisite  chrome for using Neuralware and chipware in the base game. I say ‘would’ though, because when everyone has a computer in their head it means that everyone can be hacked. The existence of Neuroports means that Netrunners can use Quickhacks to lay the digital smackdown on people outside of the Net.

Any Netrunner can use their Interface role ability to Quickhack someone, although those who use a Neuroport-based cyberdeck are going to have a much longer range. Thing is, if you played V as a Netrunner in 2077, they were basically a cybergod, able to smite entire hordes of foes without even being seen. All well and good for a single player video game, a bit over the top for a collaborative tabletop roleplaying game. So, there are some rules.

As usual, a Netrunner can take three Net actions instead of a real-world one. For quickhacking purposes, said actions are Jack In, Jack Out (safely), Breach, and Perform A Quickhack. Unless you’re a wee baby Netrunner with an Interface of 1 or 2 (so, in other words, not someone who started as a Netrunner in character creation) you’ll be able to Jack In without making a check. The trick is whether or not you can do so without the target noticing, an Interface check version the target’s Will check. If the target notices, they’re going to be able to make Concentration checks to try and force you to Jack Out – unsafely, to boot. Breach is simply about bypassing additional security that a target may have had installed, a rename of the Backdoor Net action from the core. Once you’re Jacked In and you’ve Breached any security, you can start with the Quickhacks.

Quickhacks are divided into Simple, Standard, Difficult, and Advanced, with each tier having a higher difficulty but offering more powerful options.  Impair Movement, Overheat, Cyberware Malfunction, and Puppet are some in-order examples. You can only use one Quickhack per a single target in a turn, though. So, a wise Netrunner will spend some time setting up, Jacking In to multiple (hopefully unaware) targets, and then cut loose on them all at once.

There are a lot of neat tricks, here, giving Netrunners an option to be on the frontlines without needing to lean into being a Solo as well. No cybergods breaking the game, either!

Becoming Human (Again)

Losing Humanity because of cybernetic implants is an old and odd duck in Cyberpunk, and how it’s treated changes both from edition from edition and media to media. 2077 treated it with a lot more nuance, with many of the cyberpsychos V encountered often having a lot of reasons for going off the deep end that had nothing to do with the chrome, and V themselves couldn’t suffer from cyberpsychosis (at least when the game first came out). Several characters in Edgerunners suffered from it greatly, and it directly or indirectly doomed most of them (although even there you can see some ’77 nuance – nobody can argue David’s life wasn’t extremely messed up). RED made it a good bit more forgiving, but it was still largely ‘insert chrome, go crazier’. There’s also some mention about other things that can cause Humanity loss, but they’re not codified.

The CEMK introduces new rules for both losing and gaining Humanity through both Incidents and Environmental Effects. Being treated unjustly by a justice system is an incident that would reduce Humanity, while saving a life would help you gain some.  Environmental Effects are calculated at the start of every month for both Loss and Gain. Stuck on a Kibble lifestyle for the month of May? Loss. Hey, that also makes the Lifestyles have a tangible mechanical effect, that’s pretty neat! Stayed in touch with family and loved ones throughout the month? That’s a Gain. You might qualify for multiple types of Effect for both Gain and Loss at the same time, roll for both, and see how it all shakes out.

I still find myself agreeing with 2020 Aaron that Humanity could’ve done with a much better name, especially  considering these changes. Maybe Stability, or Connection given how the nastiest chrome and incidents/effects can be quite othering – things really start to go downhill for characters in Edgerunners when they stop communicating with one another or refuse to take time away from the edge. A ship sailed, I suppose. Still, as a current Cyberpunk RED GM I think I’m going to be tapping these rules pretty immediately. They simply make it more interesting, and provide a huge impetus for characters to engage with things like the Lifestyle system, NPC attachments, and roleplaying downtime moments.

Oh, and the anti-psychotic immunoblockers from Edgerunners are an option as well, offering a quick hit of Humanity recovery. However, they are a drug with a secondary effect like any other, and if you fail the roll against it you have to take more doses just to stay steady or risk losing more in the crash than you regained. While they’re not actually addictive, you can see how you can quickly burn through eddies trying to stay ahead of it – and the GM has leeway to say you need heavier doses if your Humanity drops low enough.

Good for emergencies, they’ll pull you out of a cyberpsychotic episode, but maybe get some therapy and hug your friends more regularly as your primary self-care method, gonk.

The Jacket

Just to be clear: this section of this review is going to have spoilers for Edgerunners The Anime, so if you somehow found yourself getting this far without watching it you might want to go do that first.

Last chance, choom.

David Martinez roared out of Santo Domingo with his dead mom’s yellow jacket on his back, a  piece of experimental speedware ripped from a cyberpsycho wired into his spine, and a burning drive to see his loved ones’ dreams come true.  A little while ago his meteoric rise to living legend came crashing down to leave quite the crater in Corpo Plaza. Exactly what happened isn’t public knowledge, but in the end the kill count included  a sizeable number of people from Militech, Arasaka, MAX-TAC, and the edgerunners David ran with – including David himself. David got a drink named for him at the Afterlife, and the world kept turning.

Not all of David’s crew died with him, though. Falco, the group’s wheelman, fulfilled David’s last request and then headed out into the badlands to come to terms with what happened. He’s ready to move on, and gets a bit closer to Night City to pick up some mementos – only to find someone robbing his stash. Some gunfire and one racing motorbike later, and the items Falco came to retrieve are lost in the night: weapons wielded by fallen friends, as well as a certain jacket.

Falco can’t go after them himself – returning to Night City proper would be a death sentence as various factions are still smarting from David’s last run. So, he reaches out to nomad fixer Dakota Smith for some hired help. That’s going to be you and yours. It’s going to be a lot more difficult than tracking down a single thief, though – it turns out David was wearing a few extra gizmos on his back the whole time without knowing it, making the jacket a big target for some big players.

The Jacket is built using Cyberpunk RED’s Beat system, so once you get past the opening, you have a series of set pieces that might come together in an entirely different order every time you run the mission. Development Beats do exactly that, advancing the plot in some way. Cliffhanger Beats will make or break the story, since they’re often ones where someone is going to be trying to flatline you. A final Climax Beat will (hopefully) close things out successfully. Tracking the thief will bring you all over and in and out of Night City, and it’ll be something of a grand tour. You’ll visit familiar spots like El Coyote Cojo and Lizzie’s, meet some faces that V would actually recognize, and tangle with everything from nomads to gangoons, NCPD to corporate agents, and young lovers trying to escape to aggressively greedy paramedics.

Even the climax can vary wildly – like V before them, the edgerunners in The Jacket could end things a number of different ways depending on the decisions they make and how they react to what they learn about the thief. You can get something as close to happy as you come in Night City, do what you have to do to survive at a grim cost to others, or even catch the attention of the worst kind of living legend depending on your choices and results.

Overall The Jacket does a lot of what you want an intro game to do. It starts off by throwing you right into the action with premade characters to give you a little stress test to learn the mechanics with. It gives you an immediate problem to solve, so there’s no large scale dithering over what you’re supposed to be doing in this theoretically new-to-you setting and system. The chase all over Night City does a good job at introducing newcomers to the setting, or giving returning players a chance revisit it in a new way.

It might not be a mission you can do in one sitting. There are enough Beats that I think this is more of a mini campaign, especially since at least one Climax beat might very well resolve in ways that make it no longer the climax, leading instead to more Developments. Usually I count not being able to complete a beginner game in one go as a negative, although given the tour-of-2077-Night-City aspect of The Jacket I think I’ll give it a pass.

Also, because of the nature of the mission’s design, it’s not something you can just plop down on the table and run start to finish. The GM has to read the entire thing before sitting down to run it – good advice in any case for any premade scenario, but completely mandatory here. You need to know all of the ways you could end up at a certain Beat and where you might be heading next from there.

Bonus Eddies

Aside from the Rule Book and The Jacket itself which I just covered, the CEMK also has tokens and maps for running the mission with, although many are generic enough you could also use them elsewhere (including a map of Night City itself circa the 2070s). It also includes an Edgerunners Handbook, which is essentially a setting guide that does a good job of bringing the uninitiated up to speed. It also covers changes between 2045 and the 2070s, like why certain neighborhoods moved and the rise of new groups and locations.

Remember how I mentioned that the CEMK is specifically a treat for fans of the anime? First, all of the premade characters include art from the show’s director, Hiroyuki Imaishi.

Second, the Handbook includes new character details for the nominal heroes and even one of the villains from Cyberpunk Edgerunners, written by show writer Bartosz Sztybor. These pages don’t do anything for the Mission Kit itself, there’s no practical purpose to them – but they’re really, really neat, the kind of details we didn’t get to see in Edgerunners’ extremely frantic plot. So, if you’re a diehard fan who wants to know how different characters came to join Maine’s crew, the incident that made sure people in his local ‘hood left David alone, and who Lucy really was before getting sent into the Old Net? Here’s a treat for you.

There’s also a QR code in the CEMK that will lead to another free mission for people to play through after they’ve finished The Jacket, although since this is an advance review it doesn’t currently lead to anything and probably won’t for another week. Anybody know a Netrunner I could hire?

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Overall, the Cybperunk Edgerunners Mission Kit is a multi-faceted product that gets an awful lot done over the course of three 42-page booklets and some accessories. It capitalizes on Cyberpunk’s licensed media to provide a great way to introduce new players to the game.  It also offers some genuine improvement to base mechanics from RED like with Humanity, and flexes R Tal’s creative design chops to introduce new ones for the ‘modern’ version of Night City without causing a needless edition change. Cyberpunk RED isn’t the most flexible system, so in some ways what they’ve done in the CEMK is a more impressive display of creativity since it didn’t break anything!

Probably the highest praise I can give it is that there is nobody interested in Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk- video game players and anime fans hitting the tabletop for the first time, 2020 veterans and RED ‘runners looking to visit the streets of the 2070s, forever players and forever GMs – that I wouldn’t recommend getting this to. Like the drinks at the Afterlife, there’s something for everyone.

You can preorder the Cyberpunk Edgrunners Mission Kit right now at DriveThruRPG, Roll20, and the R Talsorian store ahead of its full release on June 21st. The digital versions are ~$15, and the physical one is $35 – note that you’ll have to get the physical version from a local Bits & Mortar-participating game store in order to get the digital version bundled with it for free.

Alright chooms, welcome back to Night City – it’s a new era. Queue up a quickhack, charge your Tech weapons, and lets get moving. That Jacket’s got a tracer on it, and we’ve gotten another ping. Stay safe on The Street – unless you want to end up on the drink menu next to Martinez.

Thanks to Rob Barefoot, R Talsorian Media Ambassador Fixer, for getting us an advance review copy of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit’s digital version!