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gridloreI've been reading Cyberpunk: RED, the latest version of the groundbreaking RPG. By the way, according to the second edition of the game, we should be living in a cyber-enhanced dystopia right this minute. We got the dystopia, where's my cyber eyes and chipped smartgun?
Anyway, this new version is awesome, taking everything learned from the earlier editions as well as thirty years of RPG evolution. The combat rules, Friday Night Firefight, is as deadly as ever. Guns kill, OK? This is a combat system that rewards sound tactical planning.
But there's one thing. The default setting. I love the history, the larger-scale world-building. It's a great setting that really sets the theme of soaring technological achievement amid global chaos. But there's one sore point.
Night City. I hate it.
First of all, it's supposedly built in the Morro Bay area. That is hell and gone from anything in this state. Even giving the idea that Los Angeles had been devastated by a massive earthquake (learn to swim!) building a massive new city on landfill, no less, when the SF Bay Area is sitting right there makes no sense! As we all learned in 1989, landfill liquifies in big quakes!
So if I run a game, there will be a few changes. "Night City" becomes the San Francisco Bay Neutral Commerce Zone. Commonly just called the NCZ, or Night City by edgerunners. The Arasaka Tower nuke was in Oakland. Biotech firms still dominate Oyster Point in South San Francisco, and the little boxes of Daly City have been swallowed by fog-shrouded corporate megabloc apartments. Atherton and Hillsborough are walled enclaves for the elite. With the loss of the global internet, Silicon Valley has become a ghost town and the place to go for black-market tech.
With the Port of Oakland devastated, San Francisco has once again become a maritime city. What sea trade stills moves comes here. The new Emperor Norton Bridge has a rail deck. Corporate towers have jumped Van Ness and moved into Hayes Valley, but the City by the Bay is still home to rockers, revolutionaries, and rejects. Block by block, apartment blocks are replacing homes in the Sunset.
Marin is a mix of walled towns and deserted subdivisions. Wester Contra Costa county survives as a bedroom ci=omunity, sending those able to afford life outside the corporate stacks into the city on maglev trains. Eastern Contra Costa is home to small farmers who defy the corps and raise food for themselves to sell at exorbitant prices to executive dining rooms. They get some protection for this.
The Tri-Valley area is mostly deserted, except the ultra-exclusive and heavily defending Blackhawk township. Rumors that the workers are kept as chipped slaves abound. Lawerence Livermore National Labs, now run by the Cascadian government, is armored like a fort. The guards shoot to kill at 500 meters.
So, any comments? I can just picture 'runners squatting in the Oakland Exclusionary Zone, riding into SF to meet a Fixer in the neon nightmare of SOMA, and trying to plan an extraction from a Hillsborough mansion.
That's the nice thing about doing this. I know the area, so I can make it live. Hell, I imagine Santa Cruz hasn't changed much, except for the drugs of choice. Can you imagine running into a Lost Boys Poser Gang at the Boardwalk?
Anyway, this new version is awesome, taking everything learned from the earlier editions as well as thirty years of RPG evolution. The combat rules, Friday Night Firefight, is as deadly as ever. Guns kill, OK? This is a combat system that rewards sound tactical planning.
But there's one thing. The default setting. I love the history, the larger-scale world-building. It's a great setting that really sets the theme of soaring technological achievement amid global chaos. But there's one sore point.
Night City. I hate it.
First of all, it's supposedly built in the Morro Bay area. That is hell and gone from anything in this state. Even giving the idea that Los Angeles had been devastated by a massive earthquake (learn to swim!) building a massive new city on landfill, no less, when the SF Bay Area is sitting right there makes no sense! As we all learned in 1989, landfill liquifies in big quakes!
So if I run a game, there will be a few changes. "Night City" becomes the San Francisco Bay Neutral Commerce Zone. Commonly just called the NCZ, or Night City by edgerunners. The Arasaka Tower nuke was in Oakland. Biotech firms still dominate Oyster Point in South San Francisco, and the little boxes of Daly City have been swallowed by fog-shrouded corporate megabloc apartments. Atherton and Hillsborough are walled enclaves for the elite. With the loss of the global internet, Silicon Valley has become a ghost town and the place to go for black-market tech.
With the Port of Oakland devastated, San Francisco has once again become a maritime city. What sea trade stills moves comes here. The new Emperor Norton Bridge has a rail deck. Corporate towers have jumped Van Ness and moved into Hayes Valley, but the City by the Bay is still home to rockers, revolutionaries, and rejects. Block by block, apartment blocks are replacing homes in the Sunset.
Marin is a mix of walled towns and deserted subdivisions. Wester Contra Costa county survives as a bedroom ci=omunity, sending those able to afford life outside the corporate stacks into the city on maglev trains. Eastern Contra Costa is home to small farmers who defy the corps and raise food for themselves to sell at exorbitant prices to executive dining rooms. They get some protection for this.
The Tri-Valley area is mostly deserted, except the ultra-exclusive and heavily defending Blackhawk township. Rumors that the workers are kept as chipped slaves abound. Lawerence Livermore National Labs, now run by the Cascadian government, is armored like a fort. The guards shoot to kill at 500 meters.
So, any comments? I can just picture 'runners squatting in the Oakland Exclusionary Zone, riding into SF to meet a Fixer in the neon nightmare of SOMA, and trying to plan an extraction from a Hillsborough mansion.
That's the nice thing about doing this. I know the area, so I can make it live. Hell, I imagine Santa Cruz hasn't changed much, except for the drugs of choice. Can you imagine running into a Lost Boys Poser Gang at the Boardwalk?
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Date: 17 Nov 2020 01:01 (UTC)Also, why didn't I preorder this damn it.