

Enjoy hackers, cyborgs and rock-and-rollers in our Cyberpunk Red RPG playthrough

The future is bad.

Warning: Swears, blood and nasty augmentations feature in this video series!

The Dicebreaker team played a session of Cyberpunk Red using the Jumpstart Kit, the latest edition of the pitch-black sci-fi RPG created by designer Mike Pondsmith back in 1982, which draws from the likes of Blade Runner and Neuromancer. (See how earlier edition Cyberpunk 2020's futuristic predictions stack up against the real world!)

Cyberpunk Red co-designer - and son of the original's creator - Cody Pondsmith was our trusty game master, leading us on a merry jaunt through a lurid diorama of futuristic horrors.

As part of this Let's Play double bill, we visited a shady night market packed with illegal goods, punched a train from the top down and attempted to pop out a bullet slug with bladed fingers - among other things.

Matt played a Netrunner named Redeye - essentially an “awesome hacker” in it for the thrills. A risky choice, too, given the character class’ creative brain augmentations can cause certain death following too many bad rolls.

Alex Lolies played Forty, a super charismatic Rocker Boy: a class which can use music to cast influence over the, erm, presumably very augmenented masses. In our playthrough, she tried to recruit fans, sang a song and also beat someone up.

Johnny “Killodini” took the role of Mover, a veteran of the Corporate Wars who didn’t make it back quite intact. That said, he did have plentiful metal bits attached, plus a trusty gun rifle named Lucille. His flesh to metal ratio definitely favoured steel.

Last of all, Wheels was Torch the Tech, who couldn’t stop disassembling machinery - and at one point jumped onto a train with a surprisingly graceful running punch.

The team's character ‘bond’ was being apartment buddies, rooming nearby in an especially dangerous part of the city. The need to pay rent together apparently reduced the odds of us murdering each other.

Together, Dicebreaker went in search for the mysterious Hornet - someone who may have had a hand in developing some pretty ghastly bio-weapons.

Find out more about what happened to us in the seedy world of gruesome technology and corporate filth that make up Cyberpunk with our two-part Let's Play. Find the first part above and the finale below. Have you ever played the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG - Red or otherwise - and what did you think?

Sara Elsam avatar

Sara Elsam

Staff Writer
