I discovered Cyberpanky NOW while I was searching for OSR cyberpunk games to write my blog article about trans representation. I had never heard of the game or of it author, I did not knew what to think of the title but the cover illustration attracted me as it did not feature hardboiled cyberpunks showing of their guns, instead it showed two people hugging each other near some disaster or wasteland.
The game text is quirky and annoying, it insult the reader and it sometime use ableism language to do so. I understand that the game writer is trying to have fun while writing in-character, but I think that this is just too much, you quickly get tired of this pseudo edgy tone. Sadly there is also an other big roadblock for me in the game that also prevent me from recommending the game: in the background section there is a very unsensitive use of rape as a dramatic background element. I did not notice that at first and later when we rolled that result I was so angry that I said ok this is bad. let play an other game.
This is a shame because the game could have been a fun gonzo cyberpunk game full of interesting quirky features.
REVIEW
The game follow most OSR conventions, it use some variants of the 6 basic attributes, hit dice, hit points, experience points, hirelings, random encounters, etc.
Three character classes are available: samurai, street doc (who also double as a hacker) and shaman. These are fine even if I find the merge of the street doc and the hacker into a single class a bit strange. Samurai are good at fighting, street docs heal people and hack things, shamans receive help from spirits and cast miracles that work like cleric spells.
The characters health is represented by "hit boxes" that work like hit dice that come in three flavors: physical, mental and cool, so characters starts with three HD. It work but the differentiation between physical, mental and cool damages don't seem to bring much to the table and complicate things a bit. What I liked is that you roll your hit points only when you get hit, I like that as it make fights more unpredictable and keep you on edge.
Weapons have different chances to hit different kind of armors, hitting things is not linked to your level (except if you are a samurai).
The game have a bunch of basic cyberwares but since you have to pay to install them, it is hard for starting characters to start with one, except if you roll very well on your starting money.
The ID generator is a collection of random tables that you can use to determine the age, sexual orientation, gender identity and ethnic backgounds of the characters. There is also some tables that determine your family history and your world view. The tables are fun but they generate a bit too much information and it can be hard to make sense or use of all the thing you rolled.
If you use the table to generate your NPCs, your game will have a lot of queer content as characters have 80% chances of being queer and 40% chances of being trans. Characters also only have 20% chances of being white. At first I was like, well ok this is above averages, but I found that interesting and I was looking forward using those tables. That said, the tables are not perfect and could use some more work.
The game describe and provide stats for a lot of "monsters". Most of them are a mix of gonzo and cyberpunk. A lot of them are also inspired by conspiracy, x-files and pop cultures. I quite like them as they break away from the sometime too self serious tone of cyberpunk games. The random encounters gave me somekind of a Tank Girl comics vibes. But this monster manual have some flaws, it only tell you how many "monsters" live in their lair, the stat blocks don't tell you how many individuals to generate when encountering them outside of their lair. Also a very annoying flaw: the encounters are not listed in alphabetical order and this make finding their descriptions a pain.
The game don't care much about cyperspace and it explicitly state that it find cyberspace crawling non functional for group play. The game offer some uninspired rules about spending money to get information from cyberspace. I understand not wanting to have complex cyberspace crawling rules like in Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun but how uninteresting the alternative rules are is a letdown for a cyberpunk game. That said, the street doc can use their hacking ability to glitch or to control electronic devices or cyberware so there is some form of hacking in the game. But clearly the game don't care much about this.
Being a happy mess of features, Cyberpanky have some noteworthy quirky rules like the possibility of uploading your character to a brain bank to avoid to start back at level one when you die and a clunky but fun "grudge" rule that seem inspired from Shadow of Mordor that let the players nickname a random enemy to turn them into a personal recurring rival that award some special bonuses once defeated.
How cyberpunk the game is? The game is cyberpunk in tone and in color but not much in it gameplay. It don't care much about hacking and cyberspace and the game is mostly about getting in trouble in cities, point crawling in the wasteland and raiding corporate facilities.
In resume I can't recommend Cyberpanky N.O.W for it use of ableist slurs and use of rape as a random background element. If there was a second edition that get rid of this it could be a low-fi post-apo gonzo cyberpunk game that have fun random tables that offer plenty of queer representation. The game lack polish but if it was not for it game text, with some OSR savvy and some homemade random tables it could be a fun game to play in sandbox mode.
REVIEW
The game follow most OSR conventions, it use some variants of the 6 basic attributes, hit dice, hit points, experience points, hirelings, random encounters, etc.
Three character classes are available: samurai, street doc (who also double as a hacker) and shaman. These are fine even if I find the merge of the street doc and the hacker into a single class a bit strange. Samurai are good at fighting, street docs heal people and hack things, shamans receive help from spirits and cast miracles that work like cleric spells.
The characters health is represented by "hit boxes" that work like hit dice that come in three flavors: physical, mental and cool, so characters starts with three HD. It work but the differentiation between physical, mental and cool damages don't seem to bring much to the table and complicate things a bit. What I liked is that you roll your hit points only when you get hit, I like that as it make fights more unpredictable and keep you on edge.
Weapons have different chances to hit different kind of armors, hitting things is not linked to your level (except if you are a samurai).
The game have a bunch of basic cyberwares but since you have to pay to install them, it is hard for starting characters to start with one, except if you roll very well on your starting money.
The ID generator is a collection of random tables that you can use to determine the age, sexual orientation, gender identity and ethnic backgounds of the characters. There is also some tables that determine your family history and your world view. The tables are fun but they generate a bit too much information and it can be hard to make sense or use of all the thing you rolled.
If you use the table to generate your NPCs, your game will have a lot of queer content as characters have 80% chances of being queer and 40% chances of being trans. Characters also only have 20% chances of being white. At first I was like, well ok this is above averages, but I found that interesting and I was looking forward using those tables. That said, the tables are not perfect and could use some more work.
The game describe and provide stats for a lot of "monsters". Most of them are a mix of gonzo and cyberpunk. A lot of them are also inspired by conspiracy, x-files and pop cultures. I quite like them as they break away from the sometime too self serious tone of cyberpunk games. The random encounters gave me somekind of a Tank Girl comics vibes. But this monster manual have some flaws, it only tell you how many "monsters" live in their lair, the stat blocks don't tell you how many individuals to generate when encountering them outside of their lair. Also a very annoying flaw: the encounters are not listed in alphabetical order and this make finding their descriptions a pain.
The game don't care much about cyperspace and it explicitly state that it find cyberspace crawling non functional for group play. The game offer some uninspired rules about spending money to get information from cyberspace. I understand not wanting to have complex cyberspace crawling rules like in Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun but how uninteresting the alternative rules are is a letdown for a cyberpunk game. That said, the street doc can use their hacking ability to glitch or to control electronic devices or cyberware so there is some form of hacking in the game. But clearly the game don't care much about this.
Being a happy mess of features, Cyberpanky have some noteworthy quirky rules like the possibility of uploading your character to a brain bank to avoid to start back at level one when you die and a clunky but fun "grudge" rule that seem inspired from Shadow of Mordor that let the players nickname a random enemy to turn them into a personal recurring rival that award some special bonuses once defeated.
How cyberpunk the game is? The game is cyberpunk in tone and in color but not much in it gameplay. It don't care much about hacking and cyberspace and the game is mostly about getting in trouble in cities, point crawling in the wasteland and raiding corporate facilities.
In resume I can't recommend Cyberpanky N.O.W for it use of ableist slurs and use of rape as a random background element. If there was a second edition that get rid of this it could be a low-fi post-apo gonzo cyberpunk game that have fun random tables that offer plenty of queer representation. The game lack polish but if it was not for it game text, with some OSR savvy and some homemade random tables it could be a fun game to play in sandbox mode.
ACTUAL PLAY
FIRST SESSION
My friend rolled a nihilistic-good trans man who work as a street doc. Jimmy left the mega city to try to find back his mentor who moved to the free city of New Chicago. He traveled through the wasteland and he encountered a pack of raiders, a lair of giant house cats and a small enclave of native Americans who use custom WiFi towers to access the cyberspace.He traveled with the South Asian lesbian courier that he rescued from the raiders and they scavenged food in a dense OGM forest that grow over a ruined city. He found a way to sneak into New Chicago and got introduced to the local black market by a friendly North-African trans man fixer.
He was later ambushed by street cannibals in the city slums. He visited some cyberware clinics to try find back his old street doc mentor (there was a cute orange cyber cat). He finally found back his mentor, Rosista, a bisexual Hispanic woman good with cyberwares.
She offered him a job about tracking down black market alien tech but he refused because extraterrestrial tech is bad mojo. They talked about providing him with hormones and helping with setting up a new street clinic. I improvised everything by rolling on random tables.
My friend avoided all the fights, there was a lot old school "player skill" fictional positioning and dice rolling and I had a lot of fun improvising with the random tables. Roleplaying wise, I found it interesting to bring up the trans identity of Jimmy in play a few times when he encountered some of the NPCs. Overall I was quite pleased with the game session and the bits of world building we did while playing.
SECOND SESSION
I wanted to try to do some dungeon crawling so Rositsa proposed to Jimmy to organize a run to scavenge a abandoned corporate facility. She gave Jimmy a contact and a budget to hire henchmen. I determined that a heatwave was hitting New Chigago and that there was a blooming street market of water purification and portable air-conditioners. Jimmy explored one of the big street market to try to find some henchmen to hire. We made a coupe of rolls on the henchmen table but finally Jimmy decided to hire the gay samurai sister of a street girl who was selling bottles of water. He also hired a bunch of burned out veterans.
So Jimmy with his contact Mitchel and 4 samurai used a boat to sail on Lake Michigan to reach the abandoned underwater biotech facility. They passed by a bunch of scavengers who were cutting up metal sheets from the ruins of half submerged structures.
At destination they dived in the water to reach the abandoned facility. They had to avoid a flock of brain ducks to reach the entry hatch. Inside there was no power and they explored the facility to hopefully loot some medical gear, drugs and research data. I randomly generated the corporate facility and the loot. They encountered a alien device, a drone made of alien tech cubes. They tried to fight the thing instead of retreating and the alien device cut two henchmen in half with it laser. The fight was deadly but the survivors were able to defeat the alien drone. Jimmy tried to hack it but it alien matrix was too complex for him. They powered back a section of the facility and were able to find more loot. They accidentally activated a security android. Jimmy was tempted to try to hack it but having lost two people they decided to evacuate the facility with their loot.
The second session was ok, but there was less emergent world building and the random corporate facility crawling was not super interesting. Overall I have to admit that near the end I was very bored. The queer content was also less relevant. If I had continued to play the game I would have to craft some random tables and to write some interesting locations and situations to put in the sandbox.
JIMMY
Level: 01 Street Doc
Alignment: nihilist
HD: 1/1/1
POWER 10
AGILITY 12 (+1 ranged)
CONSTITUTION 7
INTELLIGENCE 14
CYNICISM 12
CHARISMA 12
POWER 10
AGILITY 12 (+1 ranged)
CONSTITUTION 7
INTELLIGENCE 14
CYNICISM 12
CHARISMA 12
- 18 year old tansgender male (pre-op)
- Family: homeless parents who dealed with the Illuminati and were killed by the local mafia over debts.
- Sibling: lesbian sister, still alive, actively trying to kill her brother.
- Childhood: drinking and drugs use problems.
- Attitude and outlook: friendly, most important thing is kicking ass, it's all the aliens fault, i resolve problems by doing free trade.
- Mentor: Rositsa M, hispanic bisexual street doc.
- First aid: 1d4 HP
- Medical care: 3d6 HP
- Drug making (AGL)
- Hacking (IQ)
- Languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian
- 1100$
- Medium Armor: -300$
- Shiruken (20) - 200$ (1d6+1)
- Daily Ration Tablets -100$
- Cyber Bedroll -200$
- Dagger -75$ (1d6 / 2d6 backstab)
- GPS
- 8 daily ration tablet
- 1 dagger
- 1 heavy armor
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