Is anyone interested in growing a Cyberpunk RED TTRPG community?

I really appreciate some of the the posts on the CP:R subreddit, and I'd love to build something like that here.

I've got a bit of content (like my Cyberpunk RED cheat sheet for D&D players), and I enjoy putting together session reviews like this one.

Are you playing Cyberpunk RED? Are you into the Interlock meta? Do you want to try and build an active game-based community here?

If you're a Cyberpunk RED player, please skip this post - it contains spoilers for Tales of the Red: Reaping the Reaper.

I GM'd the Drone Fight scene in Reaping the Reaper (Tales of the Red, p94) last session. Here's my set up and thoughts on the module:

Background

The players are picking up a mcguffin for their Johnson in a container port. The opposition is an evil AI called the Reaper. It is aware of the pickup and attacks the party with a handful of drones. The drones are fragile but very mobile.

The module doesn't state the reason for the scene, but I'm guessing it's to show off the Reaper's green skull symbol.

As written, the scene happens after the players pick up the mcguffin, but I moved it to before. Why? I'm not sure - I think I prefer a reward at the end of a fight.

Setup

For a battlemap I used New Atami Container Port - it's large, and I wanted to be able to have some strategic play from the drones. Here's a free alternative, but it's tiny.

The drones only have 15 or 20 HP, and no SP, so I added another Drone Swarm. For the tokens, I used PeaPu's Cyberpunk vehicles. The three drone swarms only have a melee attack, while the heavy air drone has a ranged attack.

I added a friendly security guard that was taking the crew to the mcguffin. He was mostly there for colour.

Rules Adjustment

I allowed players to hop onto containers with a DV 12 Athletics check. Success got them onto the box at the cost of one movement, failure left them on the ground and cost two movement.

Play

I played the drones carefully: the drones have a MOV of 8, so they used the containers as cover and swung around to try and catch the players when they came out of cover. The lack of range weapons on the drone swarms sucked: they couldn't hit a player and get back under cover.

Halfway through the encounter, I ended up giving the drone swarms a light handgun (2d6 damage, ROF2) to present more of a challenge.

The players were able to mostly stay under cover. One of them screwed up and stayed out of cover, taking a few hits.

Analysis of Play

Good:

• the map was great for the ranged drone: it was able to (mostly) stay under cover and land a couple of shots.

• the mechanics of jumping up onto the boxes was nice - it gave the players a way to extend their vision, while jumping off got them into cover. The combat optimized character essentially got the jumps for free (they could only fail on a critical failure), while the other characters failed once, so that added some nice differentiation.

• the friendly security guard presented some colour

Analysis of Module

• The drones don't have enough HP/SP to challenge the players. If I hadn't buffed them, the scene would have been over in a round or two.
• There isn't a plot reason for this encounter: it presents the Reaper's green skull, and uses some of their HP/SP/ammo, but it doesn't move the story forward. It feels like a D&D attrition fight.
• There's a NetArch in the ranged drone. But with a MOV of 8 it's not clear how a Netrunner would maintain contact.

If I ran it again

The scene needs a reason to exist. I'd give it three reasons:

1. The drones are trying to kill the friendly security guard, since he knows where the mcguffin is. They focus him in the fight. If the friendly dies, then the players face a complication to find the mcguffin.

2. The drones should be a threat. I'd have one drone per PC. When they can't hit the friendly, they fire on the players. I'd make each drone a heavy air drone and give it 7 SP on top of 20 HP. Alternatively, buffing the MOV on the swarm from 8 to 12 could give them enough range for melee attacks.

3. Introduce the Reaper (beyond the green skull): give it some dialog from the drones. Troll the players. The Reaper seems like it would troll its victims.

I'd been planning on the Reaper possessing a couple of cranes in the terminal and using them as an environmental weapon. Something like a single attack on the players per round, with a DV 15 Evasion check to avoid 2d6 damage as the magnetic hook drops on them (players can disable the cranes with an aimed shot on the crane's camera that's 25 meters away). But I got carried away and forgot.

Conclusion

This is a poorly designed encounter: it has no reason to exist, the opposition doesn't challenge the players, and there isn't a player goal beyond kill all the ~~goblins~~ drones.

I didn't put much effort into rewriting this encounter, because I'm coming off of Agents of Desire (also Tales of the Red) which is great and needed no extra GM work. I just assumed this one would be good.

A few weeks ago I have found a very nice jam on itch.io called Road Trip Game Jam 2025 which was really inspiring and chill. At the time there were already a lot of really good little video games. I decided to hop on and try to submit something physical instead and ~~many coffees later~~ my solo TTRPG Focus on the Road was born.

It's a chill game about driving across a big country, meeting interesting people and visiting some cool landmarks. You will take some pictures of your new friends and visited places using an instant camera and try to continue your trip before the gas tank is empty. As many solo RPGs it's not really a game you can win or lose, it is mostly a tool to narrate a cool story while listening to some old rock music. The main mechanic is interacting with any hitchhikers you might take with you, trying to find a good discussion topic, listening to the radio together, etc. It's absolutely non-violent, features no cigarettes, drugs or booze and has been designed to be as chill as I was when designing it. Oh, and it's free and features only creative common art. Hope you might enjoy it!

Hi everyone, just wanted to announce our upcoming Modular Map Tiles—a solution to the limitations of static, one-size-fits-all battlemaps.

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I want to start a stream with some of my friends and other players trying to play these games. So I wanted to get a list of them before starting the stream. And they don’t even have to be good.

Welcome back to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible!

*New: For 2025, I'm updating all my old work to be more accessible for the Visually Impaired! Check out the link below, which contains improved notes with larger font, better contrast, color-blind features, and more!

The Delian Tomb is a Level 1 Introductory One-Shot based on Matt Colville's first episode of his Running the Game series on YouTube.

This adventure begins in the backwaters of a small kingdom; It's a quiet place...most of the time. Recently, there has been an influx of goblins in the region, and some of the foul creatures have even begun attacking the farms on the outskirts of the village. Your players are all friends, just traveling through, in search of adventure. It isn't long before they find themselves mixed up in the business of Goblins and pursuing a kidnapped child into the depths of a long-forgotten tomb. This is their opportunity to prove themselves and to rescue someone in need...if they can survive the perils of The Delian Tomb!

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for The Delian Tomb (Nyx): DM Notes
• (New) Link to: DM Notes for the Visually Impaired
• Link to: The Delian Tomb Playlist (Nyx)
• Link to The Delian Tomb PDF: Version 1
• Link to: The AAA Collection + Original and Second place versions

Included in The AAA Collection is:

• Downloadable copy of DM Notes, including links to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDF for all encounters. This includes the enemy stat blocks organized neatly, along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP
• Spellsheet Handout for the Goblin Shaman
• Custom Maps

As always, if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc., please let me know. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

Saw a discussion on reddit today and thought it might be interesting. Name the system, media influences, and basic plot ideas. Mine is: Over The Edge, Film Noir: Four friends in 1935 are involved in a plane crash in the desert and end up in Al Amarja. Stuck without papers or passports, the group is forced to take piece work from the criminal element to survive. A cross between The Maltese Falcon, Naked Lunch, The Lost Weekend, and Sullivan's Travels.

Upcoming Print-on-Demand Book Price Changes – Effective April 1, 2025

We always want to keep print costs as low as possible, and it has been years since we passed any price increases through to our publishing partners.

However, our print supplier, Lightning Source/Ingram, has announced a price adjustment starting April 1, 2025, that will be reflected on DriveThru sites.

Key Changes

• Due to increasing supply costs in the US, Black & White print costs in the US will increase significantly, from around 20% for low-pagecount hardcover titles up to about 50% or slightly more for large hardcover books, and with softcover titles seeing an even greater increase.

• UK print costs for Black & White books will also increase, but generally only by 3-4%.

• Standard Color print costs will increase, by roughly 12-13% for US printing but only around 3% for UK printing.

• On the whole, Premium Color print costs will decrease slightly for US printing but increase slightly for UK printing.

Example 1: A 180-page large premium hardcover currently costs $32.10 to print in the US; after April 1, that same title will drop to $27.80.

Example 2: In the UK, the same 180-page book currently costs £20.23, which will increase to £20.93 starting in April.

I’m watching Common Side Effects, personally I don’t find that good but anyway it makes me think

I’m in Eclipse Phase phase and I was wondering how I could use the premise of the show into the setting of EP

For those that don’t know EP is a d100 roll under, hard sci-fi techno horror rpg. There’s a intelligent nano-virus (exurgent virus) that create psycher like character in one of it’s less malignant form.

I was thinking that a scum (communal partying drug loving faction, live life at her fullest, living in cycler spaceship) DrugDJ found old strain of magic mushroom and try to grow it like a pet project. Ultimately the shroom got infected with a brand of the exurgent nanoviri, maybe the DrugDj got infected and choose to use the mushroom to infect other and it’s back fire.

After that the blank page appears and it’s here that I ask for your help

We are almost at the end of our campaign. Thank you to everyone who helped us along the way and supported our game, we couldn’t be happier. It’s crazy that we’re at 200% of our goal. Check out the game, you might like it. It’s crazy, wacky, and worth a look!

Was wondering about this and how it might not be the same as ones first system played. (let's not count general dice or battle maps etc. this time)

For me it might be either Mouse Guard 2e boxed set or DnD 5e Tomb of Annihilation book.

I made a web page where you can simulate a complex dice roll sequence with conditionals (e.g. re-roll when roll is a 1) using a Python-like syntax. (Click the "Toggle Syntax" button to view examples)

It needs a second to load because it has to load a Python interpreter in the background (I'm not good at web development) but once that's done, it works really well.

It's still very barebones and I still have to work out some problems.

Maybe some of you could use it, though.

There's also just the Python version available to run locally here

Everything is GPLv3, enjoy!

Do you have a favorite system to run each genre? And if so, what do you like about them?

For example:

• Sci-Fi: Stars Without Number
• Horror: Call of Cthulhu

Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.

All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game

As the title says. I eventually want to run an impostor scenario/murder mystery in my World of Darkness game at some point, and would like some pointers.

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