Comments 28 09 2024

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"See... I can get you what you want, I can. I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me. You can trust me, 'cause I'm your priest, I'm your shrink... I am your main connection to the switchboard of the soul. I'm the magic man... Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it."
- Lenny Nero, Strange Days

[@Nyarlathoteps_Hamster]

You had me doubting myself for a minute there, Grim 😆 Yep, Cyberpunk Red is set in 2045. "Most of you are going to use these rules to play characters (aka Player Characters or PCs), personas you control who exist in this fictional universe of 2045." Cyberpunk Red core p 23.

[@edwardkopp1116]

Though Grim doesn't say so (due to his horrible "Pimpn!" skill ranks) but his consulting rates are very reasonable and worth the effort if your just looking for professional direction in your ttrpg writing/development.

[@troffle]

I'm glad you got the new subscribers, but seeing as it takes dropping to the lowest common denominator, seeing as it takes pandering to the crowds, seeing as it requires - - I have just had to look up what the opposite term was, apparently the word is "gatebreaking" - ... well. It would be great to have lots of new viewers for you. It's just... I spent over 40 years gatebreaking. And it took the last few years to realise just how wrong I was. More power to you. I just hope it's not a One Ring type power. > 2052 Core-Digital v1.25 PDF, p.23: "What is a Character? Most of you are going to use these rules to play Characters (aka Player Characters or PCs), personas you control who exist in this fictional universe of 2045. This book is set up to give you a clear idea of how your Characters think and act and how they work within the rules." pp.239 to 241 outline main events of history from 2020 to 2045; with a separate one-line section for 2045 saying "The Present".

[@docnecrotic]

The "poor" sales for 5.5 don't account for the slop slurping bug creatures renting digital copies on D&D Beyond. I don't think it's a bomb, but it's not a massive success yet.

[@misterprickly]

Silly question... I know that one sexy asian girl was Anri Okita but was that lone asian girl Hitomi Tanaka? If so, you have good taste!👌

[@PostmortemVideo]

These were culled from generic stock video, so I don't know

[@misterprickly]

@@PostmortemVideo Oh I see.

[@rynowatcher]

First comment about how you never noticed the scarcity of resources makes me think you have not even done a full read of the rules. It is not only fundamental to the setting but reflected in several role abilities, the economy section the gm advice for rewards, and the basis for the power curve of the game. This is like someone saying, "I ran several campaigns of D&D, but I never noticed the hp system coming into play." Not doubting you tinkered with it a bit, but it sounds like you cherry picked the rules and heavily home brewed. That does not really give you a good idea of what the game is about. Not criticizing, but I think this is presents a bias as you are not playing the same game.

[@PostmortemVideo]

I do suffer from 'edition bleed' from having learned the same systems multiple times, but to be sure I went and looked through the rulebook to be sure I wasn't going mad. There is a _mention_ on page 334 and 385 of scarcity, but that's flavour text. Shopping trip sessions are boring as hell, so acquiring rare items generally took a Fixer (same as it ever was) if it was something rare or hard to find, and the Fixer is the only role that explicitly interacts with acquisition and cost, and doesnt' address scarcity. The enshittification of weapons and gear in the current rules-set also meant people were a lot less about acquiring or customising gear, so it rarely came up (plus our group were corporates with access to corporate assets). I think you've mistaken a personal fixation on this aspect of the setting with the setting in and of itself. What's there is how I've always run it, how it's always - largely - been presented (save for a couple of lines of flavour text), other than a tedious and long-winded system for night markets, and in the immortal words "Ain't nobody got time fo' that."

[@rynowatcher]

@@PostmortemVideo look under the "Fixer" section. This means no one starts with an assault rifle if one is not in the group at character creation unless it is poor quality. You need one of level 4 or higher to get anything 500eb or higher. Look under "nomad" and see how much they cost and why you need one to improve a car or how long it takes a tech to do it. Read the "economy" section and that about Night Markets; they are more than shopping trips and the scarcaty of goods factors into the power curve. Look at prices recommended for an average job; 300eb is typical with at least a week of healing up after a job, lifestyle costs and housing averaging 800eb a month; do the math. You are ignoring the majority of the rules by saying, "it is just a boring shopping trip." Hence why I say you are not getting the full CP:Red experiance. The "edition bleed" is making you miss out on a lot of mechanical details that make it an interesting setting. This is playing d&d without hp and wondering why people like this game. I feel like you are doing a ctrl+f for "Scarcity" instead of reading the book and missing out of the context.

[@PostmortemVideo]

Yeah no, this is definitely your personal spin on it, which is fine, but you're doing a lot of colouring outside the lines. The Fixer special ability only really gets you discounts, and Reach is only what they can _always_ source. Downtime (or character generation) has time to source materials, it's only in a moment of specialist need or a filler session that night markets etc are going to come into play. The quality level of starting gear isn't really addressed, so it's going to be average. These also aren't really mechanical details - and the removal of granularity makes the mechanics less impactful anyway - they're your individual read on the game, which is fine, but it's not what's present in the book RAW, nor in the characteristics of the supplementary material and adventures, such as I've bothered with. It's just a 'meh' edition, somewhere between 2013 and 2020 in quality, and I stand by my assessment.

[@rynowatcher]

@@PostmortemVideo This is less of a color in the lines thing so much as you are home brewing core rules out. Again, if you are playing d&d without hp or spell slots it kind of becomes another game. More power to you if that is what you like, but you are throwing your home brew into a review of the system, which is not in the books. I would not have even brought it up if you had mentioned it in a context of home brew or game advice, but you are bringing it up in a review of several books in the line, hence RAW kind of is the only thing that matters in a review of the book as written. The scarcity is key to the setting and is reflected in a lot of mechanics through the game. It is why having a tech in the group makes you gang hit way above their weight class as the tech can invent and fabricate items instead of having to buy them. It is why the execs role ability of free insurance and housing is so good. It is why having a nomad is key if you want to do jobs outside your neighbor hood as you would not know where you could buy a car without a high level Fixer or Nomad family. You cannot buy or sell anything 100eb or higher without a night market or a Fixer and even fixers are limited to what they can buy or sell without a night market. It is a core aspect to the setting, which was brought up by another viewer. This is not just my read, check out forums or pages devoted to CP:Red if you doubt both of us. The "economics" section is one of the biggest sections in the book because it is foundational to the setting. Just do the calculations for an average job with time to heal up with monthly living expenses and housing. The criticism of it is that it is a "poverty simulator." Jon Jon the wise has a you tube channel did a series of videos on it with the lead designer if you feel it is just the read of the players. They have hours detailing such things and how it is designed from the horse's mouth. The fact he majored in economics comes up a lot.

[@PostmortemVideo]

@@rynowatcher It's a dull and longwinded optional shopping subsystem that you're weirdly centring as if this were Mallrats: The RPG. The limitations on Fixers are only what they can get _easily_, not what they can get with time/difficulty/money. P159: "Reach is the highest price category of items that a Fixer can *always* source..." So higher value items are not excluded for Fixers, nor for non-Fixers. Unless you're running a 'Cyberstein' this is just awkward timewasting that would only be relevant if you're after a particular but of kit on short notice _during_a_game_. Otherwise, given time, resources and downtime to look, there's nothing to prevent you sourcing what you need - other than the money/trade issue, and that was always the trade off, and the high power goodies were always harder to find. 2020 had an availability rating, Excellent, Common, Poor and Rare (IIRC) which was separated from price - that granularity thing that's reduced in Red. People were also eating kibble and living in shipping containers in the combat zone then too. Characters often start basically homeless, and the starting cash guide provides a vague basis for income, derived from Special Ability, which is still low (though Red is, yes, worse, comedically worse, not worth being an Edgerunner worse). There's no actual rules for what that availability rating even means, just as there isn't in Red, which is a bit of an oversight. IIRC we set Streetwise difficulties to score gear (unless you already had contacts or bought it legit) at around: E: 0 C: 10 P: 20 R: 30 With Fixers rolling Streedeal instead, with a reduced difficulty - when we needed to. Exotic items were a mission to get, but anything else just gets in the way. Sure, there's colour and fic for a very slightly nastier world, but it's just not centred in the game the way you seem to think from your interpretation. Neither when I first read it, cover to cover, nor now revisiting it. We're just not going to agree here. Pax.