Welcome to the Cannibal Halfling Weekend Update! Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week. We have the week’s top sellers, industry news stories, something from the archives, and discussions from elsewhere online.
Continue reading Weekend Update: 3/30/2024Tag Archives: Cyberpunk
System Hack: Cyberpunk RED Minions
Two of the roads with the most traffic to Cyberpunk RED are, naturally, players of Cyberpunk 2077 and players of older tabletop editions like Cyberpunk 2020. However, once arriving at their new carmine destination there are naturally going to be a few disconnects, and one of the biggest is in the nature of combat. The smart Cyberpunk 2020 party wanted to blast their opponents to chunky salsa as fast as possible and often could, and V eventually becomes a cybergod capable of mowing through entire gangs on their own. Cyberpunk RED characters are themselves tougher in turn than their 2020 counterparts, but they simply can’t go through their enemies that fast. Aaron pondered changes to the combat rules but found that, as with anything else, fiddling with the wiring that already exists can pose a lot of challenges. I’m not fiddling with the wires, so much as I’m adding an attachment (much like the Cyberpunk RED Luck Deck from that same article) – and I’m stealing from a galaxy far, far away to do it.
Cyberpunk RED: Black Chrome Review
We don’t review a lot of supplements here at Cannibal Halfling Gaming. From a pragmatic standpoint, there’s a lot less that a review can tell you about a supplement that will affect your purchasing decision than with a full game. For today’s subject, Black Chrome for Cyberpunk Red, that’s certainly true. We all knew Black Chrome would be the ‘stuff’ supplement, and even if there hadn’t been some grumbling about the ‘stuff’ or lack thereof in the core rules the ‘stuff’ supplement in a Cyberpunk game is almost always a must-buy, if only due to the association of the cyberpunk genre with gear porn. On the other hand, in some cases there’s a bit more to say about supplements. Cyberpunk Red is slowly working up to being a full-on RPG ecosystem just like Cyberpunk 2020 was; the earlier game had supplements from gear catalogs to corporate profiles to location gazetteers to big plot books like the Firestorm series. One consequence of this, perhaps an unintended one, is that Cyberpunk 2020 played quite differently when all the supplements were in play than when it was just the core book. While that’s neither unique to Cyberpunk nor particularly unexpected, it had a significant role in the reception of Cyberpunk Red, where the game in its early single book state was being judged against a Cyberpunk 2020 which already had literally dozens of supplements released. It stands to reason, then, that Black Chrome would be the first full-sized rules supplement for Cyberpunk Red. Black Chrome is an homage to the supplements which changed Cyberpunk 2020 the most and the fastest, the Chromebooks.
Continue reading Cyberpunk RED: Black Chrome ReviewWeekend Update: 2/4/2023
Welcome to the Cannibal Halfling Weekend Update! Start your weekend with a chunk of RPG news from the past week. We have the week’s top sellers, industry news stories, and discussions from elsewhere online.
Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Finale
Riding in a Bell Super Huey generously called ‘ancient’, the CabbageCorp team is heading to the Heartland Complex. The five spires of the complex are the jewel of the Hydropolis skyline, and in one of them Dr. William Squires is preparing to unleash a cloud of plant seeds which, when guided by an artificial intelligence, will regreen the entire North American continent. They may also kill anything in their way, which is why CabbageCorp is trying to stop the whole thing.
A whole lot of things happened very quickly since we last checked in on the team. After discovering the severity of the matter, the team gave the OK to their Media Jacob Capone to leak the story to the press. Thanks to Jacob’s credibility, the story took off, and Militech sent a detachment of armored vehicles in the direction of Kansas. CabbageCorp had to stop Squires and his plan before the armored column got there and either kickstarted the apocalypse or started a Fifth Corporate War.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp FinaleAdventure Log: Cyberpunk Red Interlude: The CabbageCorp Warehouse
The CabbageCorp crew has gotten themselves into some trouble in 2045. But they’ve also gotten some nice payoffs. After William Squires made a troubling, cryptic speech at the Future of the Midwest conference in Hydropolis, the team knew they needed to get in gear and figure out what was going on. They also had some real estate transactions to resolve. So when Mason, Philly, Relay, Jacob, TK, Doctor Kong, and Bubbles had to renovate a warehouse, what were they going to do?
More importantly, what was I, their GM, going to do? While Cyberpunk Red has a few options for stationary equipment, the Night City lifestyle isn’t really about property ownership. Giving the party options for their newly acquired warehouse that they actually cared about would require a combination of creativity, player input, and yes, a bit of a System Hack.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red Interlude: The CabbageCorp WarehouseAdventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 9
The big day had come, and Hydropolis was feeling the heat. With the Future of the Midwest conference in full swing, every edgerunner in the city was looking over their shoulder at the corporate operatives and East Coast tourists trying to scope out the action. For CabbageCorp, though, the Future of the Midwest was looking shaky. While local agricorps like Biotechnica, Continental Brands, and Petrochem had been snubbed from the agenda, Jayhawk Agritech got the keynote slot with Dr. William Squires. Or at least that’s what the team thought.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 9Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6
In the dark future, there’s no such thing as an easy decision; you either have the hard part now or you have it later. When we last saw our erstwhile entrepreneurs, they had just tattled on a mobster named Vlad and put him on the receiving end of an Arasaka kill squad. Then they quietly scooped up all the documents that the corporates didn’t stick around to grab. Priceless opportunity, or painting the target on your back by hand? CabbageCorp employees have to find out, of course.
And among all the mob mischief, Biotechnica is still making moves. Mason’s boss is pleased with the dirt the team has found on Jayhawk, and is planning to exercise a stock purchase option soon. Knowing the contract that Biotechnica made them sign, Jayhawk chief technology officer William Squires reached out for a meeting. Not interested in hearing his pleas or complaints, Biotechnica brass kicked the invite down the chain until it hit Mason. Mason accepts, even though his boss says it’ll be seen as an insult and no meeting will be set up. Despite that prediction, he’s invited to take a ride by private car down to the Heartland Complex in downtown Hydropolis.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 6Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 5
In the dark future, everyone is looking out for number one. Sometimes, though, it’s what you do when everything’s gone to hell that really shows people who you are. When we last left our band of eager mercs, a deal had gone sideways with a Russian mobster named Vlad. Vlad tasked the team with acquiring a shipping container full of power armor, but when a motorcycle gang caught wind of the successful heist he withheld payment and took the goods anyway. Nobody in the CabbageCorp family was too pleased at that development.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 5Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 4
Not everything goes according to plan in the dark future. Not every lie will be detected, not every trap will be disarmed. And when things don’t go an edgerunner’s way, there’s no time to get mad…only even.
When we last left our ragtag group of highway robbers, they had been fired upon with some pretty hefty hardware. The hitters responsible? Hired by Jayhawk, and sent home down two and with the remaining two lucky to be alive. Clearly, the information Olga had stumbled onto was not anything Jayhawk wanted getting out. The firepower, though, was an open question. The drone looked an awful lot like the one which was seen getting passed through an Arasaka loading dock. The hitters had the control rig in their van, and they said they rented the thing. …Rented? Bubbles was able to hack the control rig and put a backdoor in the drone. Not enough to control it remotely, but enough to gather some data and maybe tell where it called home.
Continue reading Adventure Log: Cyberpunk Red: CabbageCorp Part 4
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