Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a good old fashioned
cowboy just looking to punch deck.
And, and today we're going to be going over Cyberpunk, augmented
for the second time by Emmanuel Melo.
Tabletop RPG where you play as a team of runners, mercs,
criminals and activists living on the edge and running in the
shadows of a gritty ultraviolet world.
Ultraviolent, ultraviolent thin grasslands here.
So, yeah. So we're so we're so so so how's
it, How's we're doing it again? We are doing it again.
For those that don't follow us on Blue Sky, we did this episode
a week ago and the audio, just everything, just technology and
very much of it is dead silent. So we have to, we have to do it
again. But we we've talked about it.
It is a blessing in disguise. This is the first review in our
new format and being able to do it once and then see, well, at
least experience it because we can go back and watch it again
and see kind of what we would do differently.
Now we're kind of more prepared. But yeah, how you doing buddy?
Great. How are you?
You know, just just wonderful, just fantastic.
Actually excited to be doing this again.
A lot of stuff has happened in the last weeks that made this I
guess even more kind of like appropriate of a day to do it
stuff, stuff done, things like that.
Yeah, I I ran this actually this past week.
I ran. I ran mine The Gap, the entry
adventure for my Matt home game. Yeah, yeah.
So that's how we're definitely, we're definitely going to be
talking about that on the show. It was really great time for you
to be able to pump that out. And you said you also read?
Oh, I, I listen to Neuromancer on audiobook.
Actually. I started before we started the
last episode, I think, and I just jogged through it.
A really insane novel. Yeah.
Like truly, truly a very strange, very strange sci-fi
written by an old guy you know? Yeah, when did that book even
come out? That is it.
Isn't it kind of the progenitor of like the whole cyberpunk
thing? Yeah, So Neuromancer by William
Gibson came out in 1984 and it's yeah, it's there definitely is
an existence of cyberpunk previous to this.
But this is definitely, it seems like from my perspective, the
first like major like cyberpunk novel that really kind of
defined the series. Yeah, what is the genre?
To the genre, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's been on my
list forever, but you know, I'm I'm I'm very deep, deep in the
horse Heresy. So yeah, if I take a break, it's
other Warhammer until I finish the horse heresy.
So, but I have I've slowed down every time I run into the brick
wall of of Nick Kime and it slowly filters away my desire to
live and breathe until I finish it.
But but what else have you been up?
What, what, what, what? So, so this segment going
forward is going to be our like about us segment because whether
you people care about it or not, we I don't really care about me
either, but I care about you, buddy.
What else have you been up to this past week?
You know, not a lot. I, I bought a paddle for myself
because I live within like 45 minutes of like 5 lakes and I
like paddle boarding. And also I had some interesting
discussions on our Discord about the game we're trying to talk
about today. Yeah, which also get into at
some point. What about you?
Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I threw some more paint on
some minis. I got some rust effects down on
a on a test model for some Night Lords.
I pushed it pretty far with some villainy ink from Grim Dark
Compendium I. Think I saw that on the discord
as well. Yeah, and some dirty down rust
effects, which is the most insane shit ever because it's I
don't understand how the liquid becomes rust, but it's literally
rust and the different ways you water it down with like the
mineral spirits makes it different kinds of it's the
craziest thing ever. I literally had to it's it's the
most insane shit, dude. Like I can't even it's fucking
magic. Like I don't understand how this
brown liquid gets put on and suddenly everything just like
rusts away. Like it's insane.
But I had painted one of the shoulders red for Night Lords,
mimicking one of the things from the horse airsy books, like the
the tabletop game books, and the rust got a little too orange, so
it blended too much with the red.
So I had to like bring it down a little bit, even though it
looked cool as shit with some of the villainy ink sector rust.
So just learning how to do this week I learned how to do enamel
washes and some rust effects. So very, very cool.
The whole point of that test model was basically to do as
much texture as I could on it to to see how much is too much to
do as much rust as I could to see how much was too much.
And I'm really excited to keep doing that.
I just got to snag some more test models and then I'm going
to work on my my nemesis claw. And then we're going to start.
We're going to start something maybe we'll talk about at the
end of the show, which I kind of have a, a segment name for
already already. But but today, today we are
going to be looking at let's do this.
Today we are going to be looking at Cyberpunk.
Yeah, we're going to look at Cyberpunk Augmented, as I said
before. So why don't we hop into that?
We're going to give you some info about the game.
We're going to unbox a game because as I showed up before,
anyone that hasn't seen Cyberpunk augmented, the box set
that it comes with is incredible.
It's it's insane. So, so let's talk about
Cyberpunk augment a little bit. Cyberpunk in general, because
now there's I think 3 versions, right?
So Cyberpunk runs on a super condensed version of John
Harper's Forged in the Dark system, which trust me, we'll
talk about today. Specially tweaked for
action-packed one shot. In each game you play an entire
new cast of characters making their last run.
Everything you need to play is presented as a series of eight
panel pamphlets. You get the GM's Guide, the
Runner File, and the Framework. Those are the three core
pamphlets. The Augmented gives you more
than that. The original Cyberpunk was
published on Itch on January 5th, 2021.
The V1 original pamphlets aren't listed anymore on the page, but
with the right hyperlink you can find it.
But it looks like the project was originally Itch funded for
150 bucks and that goal was passed in less than two hours.
And then Cyberpunk Augmented, which is the box set we'll unbox
in a second, Launched on Kickstarter with Mythworks,
which I think at the time was called Mythopia on May 14th,
2022 and funded on April 7th, 2022 with 2059 backers for
$52,558 on a $10,000 goal. It was then released on Itch and
Drive Through RPG in May of 2023.
About a year later, which I assume is when the the
distribution was all done for the Kickstarter, it was
nominated for numerous awards in both North and South America.
And at the 2024 Innies, it was nominated for Best Product of
the Year and won the Silver Innie for Best Layout and
Design. And I don't know if you saw
today, but the Innie nominations for 2025 drop today.
Promise myself I wouldn't be a hater on May and the day the
nominations drop, but this episode will not be coming out
so I'll say what I really think. The innies are a fucking joke
and the fact that this game did not win product of the year and
best layout in design of the year and the game that did did
win proves it's a fucking joke. There's not a product in design
in most tabletop games that I like, maybe that I prefer to
play more, you know? Yeah, yeah.
This is this is insane. It is insane.
Yeah, so, so as far as our feelings on the in East, trust
me, you'll never see us on it because we're not that good, but
also because we're never going to nominate ourselves because
once again, I do think they're a fucking joke.
Here's my hottest I've already given my hottest take.
If you were nominated, you already won because from this
point on, once the nominations are out, it's just a popularity
contest, which means the big publishers and people with big
social media followings are going to win.
So congratulations, if you got a nominated, you're a winner in my
book. The awards are now over.
I blocked the word on on on Blue Sky.
And don't even get me started on the AI Credit awards.
So that's it for the innies. Cyberpunk Overload is also out
on Kickstarter right now. This is the first official
expansion for Cyberpunk. I keep saying Cyberpunk it is
cyber plus punk technically. So Cyber plus punk is on
Kickstarter right now. The campaign ends Thursday July
10th which I believe is the like next week.
It's a caption of one shot scenarios, gear catalogs, plug
in Rule sets and complete settings bundled into 3 sleek
thematic packs. Those are Sprawl Overload, Tech
overload, and redacted overload, all of which contain numerous
pamphlets up to six each with stretch goals.
I think the sprawl overload 1 might have like there's like 4-3
and six whatever already. And as the stretch goals are
met, it'll hopefully they'll be able to unlock.
I think it's all 18 packets. Very excited for that.
If you get a chance to peek at it, maybe I'll pull the web
sheet a website up, but it's going to be a similar format.
It's going to have like the slip case box.
It's gorgeous. It looks like all digitized with
some like holographic stuff on it.
It's it's a stunning looking box.
I'm very excited for it and even just to have it because it's
beautiful whether I ever play it or not.
But that is what's going on with Cyberplus Punk.
The next thing we're going to do is show you what's inside this
beautiful, beautiful box. And for that I've set up the
camera. Down case, yeah, let's.
Go here. Oh, it's already set up.
Boom. So for those in podcast land,
again, the segments not for you, I guess.
So the box is it's a Zine box. It's a, it's a gorgeous yellow,
a very, very yellow yellow. If you imagine yellow, this is
what I imagine like a hazard yellow.
Yeah, absolutely. Hazard Yellow is a good one,
yeah. Yeah, across one side it says
CBR in Gray with cyber written inside with the plus on the
side. Flip it over, it says P&K with
Punk written inside in Gray and light Gray on the yellow.
Got some stuff on the sides, which is nice because when you
set up on the shelf like a book, it says Cyberpunk augmented
Manuel Melo. It's got the Myth Works logo and
and like AD 20 and that's what it is on on both sides there so
beautiful box. It's a slip case.
You slip the top off and, and you're left with the piece
inside, which folds open into two separate pieces all the way
through. Everything is very, it's, it's
got as much like what, what, what, what do you even call
these things like the lines on the side, like the digital
effect, kind of things like. Decoration.
They're like. Decoration, you know, but not
not only that, I don't know if you felt it, but like a lot of
it is raised like acknowledgement, like all of
these stripes on the side, they're a little bit textured
too. So it's more than just than just
the visuals. And here on the front, it says,
we have one last job for you, runner, one last chance to clean
off your debt. Do you accept yes or no?
And the cursor is selected on the Y.
And it says, you better not glitch this up.
Gorgeous. On the back.
It's a cyberpunk, augmented, created, written and designed by
Mino Melo. The Cabinet of Curiosities,
edited by Rachel, Covers by Lewis Melo.
Additional editing. Eric Softgy Additional layouts
Raul Rinaldi Everything in this was written by Emmanuel Mellow,
except for Cyberpunk Hunters, which we'll look at.
It's one of the scenes that was created by Cat Scratcher Studios
and Mona Rise Megalopolis just created and designed by Leonardo
Azevedo. As always, I apologize for
butchering all of your names, but when you flip it open, it's
hard to describe this. There's there's flaps on both
sides and there's a thing at the top says open you open the flaps
and the backgrounds of those flaps have just insane cyberpunk
style artwork. It's like, it's like very techie
like Windows, as in like the Windows on your computer with
things inside Switchblade, Sigma, this.
Age warning models are like, you know, like popping up on your
screen like your. Hacker And then there's four
more flaps, 2 up top, 2 on the bottom, and the two on the left
say slot one left, the two on the right say slot one right,
and then on the left side it says game moderator, Game
moderator, and on the right side it says runner.
If you open up the right side, what you get is the Cyberpunk
Zine, which we'll look at. You get 5 runner files, which is
kind of like the player version, the player edition of the Zine.
And the left side, you get framework, which is the third
part of the core. And framework is basically what
I would actually call the GM guide.
We'll go over that a little bit more.
And then you get 5 scenes. So first one is called Plus
Weird. It is a plugin to install
supernatural elements. So magic, magic in your game and
magic like creatures. What did I say?
What, what, what? What's that awful movie that
could have been good that I said this was like, Bright.
This is like. Bright.
That means bright. Yeah, it's, it's like the, it's
like the shadow run plug in. That's what you said.
That's what you said last time, too.
Yeah. I keep forgetting because I've
never read Shadow Run. The next one is called Predator
PRDTR. This is a setting where runners
must navigate the collapse of a lunar habitat.
It's very much Predator of the movie.
It is the the design and layout of it.
It I'll, I'll flip through that visually when we get to another
part of it. There's Mind the Gap, which is
the starter adventure for the game.
This is you. This is what you ran, right?
Yeah, I ran. I ran it.
Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk.
Genuinely a solid starter adventure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll we'll get into that a
little bit more. There's Cyber, there is several
Hunters which provides pre made elite operatives focused on
taking the players down and rules to quickly build modified
and incorporate them into your runs.
And last but not least is Mona Rise Megalopolis, which allows
you to create runs that reference William Gibson's
Sprawl novel trilogy, which now you are much more familiar with.
Yeah, I'm through book. One, yeah, but every single one
of these is absolutely stunning. They're gorgeous.
Every aspect of this is stunningly, beautifully
gorgeous. I love the way that it is, you
know, 6 scenes in each side and and yeah.
So that is the on that is the unboxing of the cyberpunk
physical slip case, cyberpunk augmented set.
Stunning again, one of the best form factors ever created.
Yeah, one or two I would say. I recently remembered I have
something that that might compete with this for number 1.
So this is a top one or two best form factors in ATTRPGI believe
I've ever seen. And once again, the fact that
this didn't win best. I'm not saying game best product
and best layout and design. And the innies that it came out
really solidified my opinion of the innies, which I gave
already, which you can reference by rewinding, but it's stunning,
it's gorgeous. And and we're going to get into
a little bit. So the next thing we're going to
do as far as how we're going to outline this going forward,
instead of reading the entire fucking thing.
Normally when we would read the book and do the full read
through, I would go through most of the rules.
Hunter would go through most of the character generation.
We're we're still going to do that.
I'm just going to do a quick breakdown of the rules of
mechanics and then Hunter's going to do a quick breakdown of
character generation. And we're going to try to do
that in about 10 minutes instead of two hours.
So let's let's see how that goes.
So I'm just going to hide the down Cam so I can get this out
of my way and and just bring up this this beautiful Zine cover
real quick so you guys can look at that while I talk about the
rules here. So the gist of the game, the
gist of the mechanics of the game is is that it is forged in
the dark. It is very much forged in the
dark. It is based on Blades in the
Dark from John Harper. I have allowed myself 5 minutes
later to talk about that and I will do my best right now to not
talk about Blades and to just talk about this game.
So Cyber Plus Punk is mostly designed for one shots and
revolves around the character's last run, which is the high
stakes operation with a clear objective.
The GM prepares an outline for the run or generates one as they
go. Players file their runners, AKA
they. They make characters which
Hunter's going to go over. The players make an engagement
plan or main course of action and then try to achieve the
objective that is part of the last run.
They go on the run seeking to complete the objective,
eventually running into the last obstacle, the final obstacle,
and then after the mission succeeded or failed, the you
immediately move into the epilogue of the characters and
see how any reward they may have received from the run helps them
leverage their angle or reason why they run.
So it's basically the conclusion of the story.
It is the epilogue. I would hope that everyone knows
what an epilogue is, but once again, America so can't be too
short mechanically. Like I said, this is pure Blades
in the Dark. The primary mechanic of which is
the action role. And basically how that works is
the players describe what they players describe what they want
to accomplish, then choose the approach skill and other factors
like gear that will help them accomplish that.
Those are primary things, Approach on the skill.
I'll go to the end of that more in just a little bit for anyone
that has red blades before this is, again, it's pure blades.
It really does just distill it down for anyone that hasn't.
We'll get into, we'll get into that later too.
So the action role, as I said, the the players choose the
approach and the skill and the gear and all the other stuff.
The GM assesses the risk and tells the players the probable
consequences. And then they set the threat
capital T and affect capital E, which the players can choose to
raise or lower for better or worse consequences.
Which may also be affected by any edges.
All of those are buzzwords we'll get into more than the player
rolls a number of dice equal to the approach and skill ratings.
I think they only go up to Hunter.
Talk about this more. I think they only go up to like
2, two or three each, so the most you're rolling is like 4 or
5D6 at a time, right? Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, and and then any bonus dice you might get from some
other special actions like push or assist and, and you read the
single highest result, kind of unless you roll 2 sixes and that
is a crit, which is a crit. You know what crits are. 6 is a
success, 4 to 5 is a partial success, which is a phrase I
fucking hate. And 1:00 to 3:00 is a failure.
And that is that is the core of that.
So let's break down a little bit of that a little bit more so you
can understand that a bit. The threat, as I said, is the
danger posed in the situation, and that can inform the harm
level takes on a track. Whatever it is, it is the threat
of the situation the players are in.
The effect is how much is accomplished on a success.
And then the harm 100 can go into that a little bit more, I
think, with character generation.
But it's a series of levels that impose penalties.
And at the 4th level you die. So you don't have HP, you just
have these levels of harm that you take up.
And as you take those harm levels up, you you get
reductions to like rolls or stress or things like that.
So that's basically how the action roll works.
As I said, you pick an approach, you pick a skill, you'll grab
any other factors. You roll the number of dice in a
dice pool, you pick the highest one.
And what you're rolling kind of against is the GM's threat and,
and the GM picks a threat and effect level.
It's, it's, it's a, it's a lot of stuff, it's a lot of
conversation, It's a lot of meta narrative.
And, and trust me again, we'll talk about that.
Because on top of that, players can resist things in a number of
ways, like having armor to reduce any consequences,
etcetera, etcetera. Because there's lots of
Etcetera's and then there are special actions as well.
Special actions are special actions players can do which
usually cause them to gain ticks on a stress track, like taking a
breather, which is basically the game's version of rest or push
or assist. As I mentioned before, those are
all special actions that can be taken.
There's also a very bladesy special action called the
flashback, which is one of the core aspects of Blades in the
Dark. The part that I one of the parts
that I dislike the most, which basically allows you to
establish that something, the past happened that affects the
present, but it's not supposed to change what's already
currently happening in the present, right?
There is a stress system, which is a limiter for the number of
special actions you can take. If you do too much, you can
overload, which causes one of your approaches to glitch.
But we've talked about we don't believe there's a way to heal
that. And if approach is glitched,
instead of rolling your approach die, you roll glitch die and
that incurs additional consequences based on the role.
So whatever you succeed or don't succeed at, whatever the glitch
die rolls also gives you an additional consequence, the
lower obviously the worst it could possibly get for you, but
regardless, you get an additional consequence no matter
what. If one of your approach is
glitched and you are rolling a glitch die, there are also
augmentations, which again, Hon, I'll talk about that a little
bit more, but obviously it's augmenting your body.
If you saw the cyberpunk anime, which is surprisingly really
good edge runner, you'll understand what we mean by
augmentations. And then you also have a quantum
inventory system where you basically choose the size of the
inventory you want, the size of the load you want and, and as
you go might be 357 something like that.
You can just say, I have this item now and then I have it.
And that's, that's kind of the way the the system works.
There is an angle role at the end, which, as I said before,
it's basically just the role you do to kind of determine the
outcome of your character the post run.
But we'll we'll probably talk about that a little bit more
either, but that is basically the mechanics of the game.
Does that make sense? You you you actually rented?
Did I miss anything? Yeah, no, I think, I think those
are all the good basics. I mean, there's, there's a bunch
of fiddly little parts in all of this, but I think that's like a
a true statement of the basics. Yeah, yeah.
I wish you could scroll through this while I'm talking because
I'm going to scroll through this while you're talking.
That's fine. And but but you can't.
That's not how we get the stream set up.
Yeah, so character generation. So character generation,
honestly a much shorter part and fairly easy characters are
made-up of a few things. Their angle, which we talked
about the reason why they do things are why they're doing the
thing approaches, which are essentially like their stats
skills, which there are several of what they're good at
augmentations, which is going to be their like cybernetics, which
they all start, which was I thought was pretty cool, and
their load slash gear. So you start by picking your
character's handle, which is what they're called, and then
you pick what drives them their angle.
There is a a list of six things they can pick from and a little
note section under for them to expand on those things.
You can roll this D6. That's what my table chose to do
because that's the kind of table I run.
After that you will assigned to die two dice to a an approach
and then one singular die to two other approaches.
The approaches being your stats are aggressive, force,
intimidation, destruction, smart, creative, coming
perception, Empathetic, charisma, and stealthy.
Which for selfie Edge put Yep you know what S is.
After that they can assign 8 dice to whatever skill of their
choice. There is a limit of two per
skill, but if they choose to assign a third die to a skill,
instead of getting that extra die, they have the choice of
instead taking Edge on that skill.
It's called expertise. Not a single one of my players
made this decision at the table and I wonder if it's because
they a little bit didn't understand Edge, which we will
talk about, I'm sure, because they didn't understand it after
that, you know, if you pick your skills and I'm not going to read
through all of them because there's several and they're cool
and there's a blank space where you can write your own.
And one of my players actually made-up his own skill.
After that you were going to they're going to make up an
augmentation and give it a name or model number.
You're there cybernetic augmentation.
They can leverage this on an action or I like to to get a
bonus die for an action or edge on an action or they can use it
to resist a consequence. This will be the marking their
special resistance after they pick their or they make up their
augmentation. There's not really a pick list
for this. They're going to pick their load
out. So there are a few different
loads. Choose from you light, medium,
and heavy. This will give you Light gets
three item slots, medium gets 5 and heavy gets 7.
There is a description for each of these and it implies some
potential narrative consequences for how heavy their loadout is.
So the trade loss is you get more items for your loadout, but
you might appear clunkier or move slower.
As for the actual items that you get within your inventory, it
does work on a completely quantum inventory system,
meaning you just pick your load. So say you go in heavy with
seven, you only pick those items until you want to or you need
to. So it gives you a lot of like,
you know, quantum inventory is a thing.
I think Ryan and they are both fans of, I think it works really
well and, and it works really well for my players.
And that's, that's pretty much it.
You have a, you have a, a stress bar that you fill over time that
makes up your character. It has, I think 7 spaces, which
I am and of the opinion there's too many.
And then you get your levels of harm.
There are technically 4 levels of harm, but three really that
you'll fill. You have two slots in level 1
harm, meaning you can take level 1 harm twice.
There's two slots in level 21, slot in Level 3.
And if you take level 4, you die.
And basically the way harm works is that if you already have
taken level 1 harm twice and you take it again, that level 1 harm
slides down to level 2 harm. Yeah.
And that's, that's pretty much the basics of character creation
and what your character is. It's incredibly basic.
It would, you know, it's very easy to quickly roll up a
character. Yeah.
Crazy. And we did in like 9 minutes
what we usually do in in an hour.
So I also wrote. Notes so.
Yeah. Well, I'll be curious how this
goes when we're doing like a 200 page book now that we can do the
bigger ones. But I'll try to talk a little
bit slower next time. But that's that's kind of what
we're going to do as far as covering books.
So hopefully that segment, because again, that's going to
be a normal segment here on the show, just the rules breakdown
and the the character gin breakdown, that's that we're
going to go through. So that's basically how the game
works. That's how you make your
characters. And then maybe we should have
done, we can talk about a little bit in the in the framework
since you actually ran into Venture and you ran them on the
gap. We'll talk about that a little
bit. But how will all of that work?
So that covers really the GM guide and the runner file.
The next thing that we wanted to talk about, we got a couple of
things that are now popping up in my head.
Like I said, we we, we should talk about Nah, that'll come up
in the in the review. So the next segment, I don't
know what to call this shit, but the plan is we're going to we're
going to each pick something that we really, really like
about the game. And then also something that we
are not as big a fans of. I don't want to say we like it
or we don't or we like and we hate because I don't hate.
I mean I hate a lot. Trust me by.
Default level of hate. Ryan's a consummate hater.
Yeah, I who, boy, I thrive on it.
But just something we like and something that we're not as big
a fans of. I think is is is what we're is
what? This failures.
You know yeah, triumphs and is that is that what you wanna go
with? No so so first I'll go with
something that I really like about cyber plus punk right.
What did I even write here? I really like how modular and
clean it is. We, we haven't really talked
about the all the expansions, but they're fantastic and.
They're very good. They're so good the the way that
you're able to plug them in. I mean, the fact that they're
also called plug insurance is fucking perfect, you know?
So the game is it's very simple. It's very streamlined.
We'll talk about whether it's too streamlined or not.
Eventually we will talk about all the things that we're saying
we will talk about, right. But I think a lot more games
should really look at this style and think about using this
right. If you're creating a a really
big game, ask yourself why does it need that many subsystems to
work and perfect is the enemy of done?
Or would you be able to put off the core of your game and then
add things to the game that you could plug in that you could
slot in? Not something maybe so much as
like Errant or you have an entire game of just procedures,
right? But really, just for example,
Cyberpunk doesn't have magic. Not shipping it with magic is a
great idea and eventually just coming with a plug in for magic
is fucking awesome. If you want to have Jurassic
fucking Park, just have a plug in for that.
I love that idea as a setting. And so much of what they did
with the expansions was exactly that.
Like I love the predator setting and I love plus weird and even
the way that they do the adventure in motorized
Megalopolis. I think they're fantastic
additions because again, you can do a little setting, plug in,
you can do a little mechanics plug in, you can do a little bit
of everything and really, really enjoy that a lot.
So I think that's the thing I like most about it is that it's
super clean, super. I don't say hackable, modable,
you know, like it's very modular and I really, really enjoy that
about it. You get a core game and a bunch
of stuff that you can add on to if you want, as opposed to
putting it all in one book and saying ignore these parts
because that's not, that's not, that's not.
How people brain work. Yeah, yeah.
Your brain clicks into a mode when you read the book and
you're and it wants you to use everything in the book just
because you say not to a dozen as much, but having it in a
whole separate Zine. I I think really contributes to
that. So that that's my like, what
about you? Oh I thought you were going to
do dislike after your like. I thought you were doing like,
like, just like, just like. Isn't that what we talked about
at? The start No, we didn't.
No, go for it. Do your dislike?
I no because I'm going to rant again.
So are you going to rant? OK, cool.
You do your like. Likes.
I like the idea of the one last job.
I think narratively it really lends itself to like one shots.
And I like that this system has something about it that really
lends itself to one shots because my dislike will be the
thing that doesn't lend itself to one shots.
I also really enjoyed the simplicity of putting a
character there really quickly. It was a really quick process
and it was very easy for my players to understand at least
the putting their character together and they were able to
create these people that they liked or had like weird iconic
parts to them. And and then I also, I did a few
likes. I think I also liked the idea of
like dropping right into the action after picking your
engagement plan, which we didn't talk about, but it is a part of
the character guide, basically how they want to approach each
job. They just kind of talk about
beforehand and then you drop right into the job.
There's not a lot of like downtime prep.
So it's felt when we were playing it, very action-packed,
yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Because you actually got to play the game, which is fantastic.
I'm really excited to talk about that a little bit more.
A little bit more next. So what so all right, So what
don't I like about this is a part where so the first time we
did this. Yeah, the first time, The first
time we did this I, I really, I feel like we talked about blades
more than we talked about cyberpluspunk.
We I talked about I me OK, that's me.
I, I talked about blades more than I talked about cyberplus
punk. So my goal for this episode,
since we're having to redo it is to talk about cyberplus punk,
but allow myself a little bit of the rant about blades.
So the thing that I don't like as much again, we're not saying
the thing we don't like. We're saying this segment is
what we like anything we're not as big a fan of What am I not as
big a fan of? It's just Blades.
I I fully understand and appreciate why people do enjoy
Blades. I don't.
I think John Harper is incredible.
I think that a lot of the stuff that he has made some of my
favorite things. I think World of Dungeons is my
favorite game of all time. And no, that's, I think World of
Games is one of my favorite games.
I think that Laser Feelings is fantastic.
Aegon is good. I like almost everything John
Harper has done. I generally dislike Blades and I
I dislike it as a book. I think objectively, I think
it's a a, a bad book. I think it's poorly put
together. I think it's really difficult to
parse. I think it could be cut.
I think half of it could be cut off and it would be a better
game book. Subjectively, I don't like the
system. I think the thing I dislike
about it the most is that it really it quantifies aspects of
the conversation. Air quotes for people in podcast
land that people say teach RPGs are in a way that I don't like
because I like having a conversation with the GM.
Isn't actually, in my opinion, supposed to be like a
conversation every single time where you have to interact with
the mechanics in a very mechanical way every time?
And I don't understand how a game that is supposed to be
like, really cinematic can stay immersive in cinematic when
you're engaging with the mechanics this much all the
time. And you can speak to that a
little bit more, especially because you had a bunch of
players play for the first time that had never read Blades,
right? So, yeah, so we'll discuss that
a little bit more. But I just don't like the
quantifying things like threat and effect for me as a gym.
I like the improv of, like, coming up with things as we go.
Player says something, you know, just say, all right, you know,
this is a possibility of the things that could happen.
Dope roll. And then the threat in effect is
something that I just don't feel the need to communicate.
Like to me, it it just pulls me out of the immersion to to have
to have that conversation all the time.
And if someone's like, well, you don't need to all the time.
Well, that's that's the rules. Like, if you're not going to use
the rules, then don't don't use the rules, right?
Like, and also can I interject that like threat is how much
damage they'll take, right? The threat levels, you have to,
so they have to, you have to. Yeah, so you maintain like a
meta narrative the entire time as opposed to like staying
immersed in the role-playing, which is just an aspect I don't
like. Again, this is completely
subjective. This is a me thing.
I know a lot of people, the love blades.
It's just a level of scaffolding to a system that I don't want.
Like I don't want to interact with the mechanics of the system
that much that frequently. I would rather have a system
that gets out of my way and you only interact with the mechanics
when you absolutely have to, as opposed to needing to basically
be riding them the entire time. So I would say the thing I
dislike about the thing that that is not that I'm not as big
a fan of is that it's Blades. I think that this game could
easily be had to have the blades Hacked Off of it and it would
for me be a better game. So that is the thing I don't
like as much is, is that it's for it's in the dark.
Yeah, As for me, my notes say also mostly blade stuff, but
like, you know, it is, it is incredibly clunky at the table.
Like it is incredibly metal. Like I, I hate to retread over
what you just said, but like it's your it's it really takes
you out a lot of the time. And I'm sure like if you get
more familiar with Ford's of the dark stuff, like the pacing
picks up. But like you are constantly
interacting with these rules in this very meta way.
And also like it is supposed to be like a like a one shot like
it kind of implies by its form that's fairly minimalist game.
But my players have never played any Forge in the Dark, and so
they didn't understand like several things.
And so it's like a one shot system built for people
specifically familiar with Blades and Forge in the Dark,
which, yeah, it's supposed to. Yeah.
It was just wasn't. If I want to play one shot
system, I want it to feel like a one shot system.
It just wasn't as light and as a one shot system I believe could
be. Yeah, I mean, someone on our
Discord made the point that really.
Yeah, I mean, because Forged is a APBTA child, right?
It is. It is a branch off of that
thing. It is a system that requires
system mastery to make it feel quick and light.
And for people that might be big blades heads, that's fine.
But if you were, like you said, if you were doing a one shot,
you know, it's hard to gain system mastery in that kind of
way, and especially for a game designed for one shots.
It's yeah. So I think for this segment next
time, a really great thing in like communicating with people
is a sandwich method. Do you know what the sandwich
method is? Yeah, absolutely.
Compliment. For those criticism, Compliment.
Yeah. So for those that aren't, yeah,
exactly what you said. If you're talking to someone you
want to and you want to give them constructive criticism,
compliment them, slide in the criticism and then end with a
compliment. When you compliment someone,
it'll make them more receptive. When you give them a critique,
they'll be listening more and when you compliment the end,
they'll leave feeling good. So I think next time maybe we'll
do like, don't, don't, and then like at the end.
So the two don'ts are sandwiched between the two likes so that we
can start and end the segment with the good and kind of put
that in the bad. I like that as opposed to the.
Reverse compliment sandwich, which is where you insult
somebody personally and then you compliment them and then you
insult them again. Yeah.
Just on their toes. This is evil sandwich.
It's the reverse meat on the outside, bread on the inside
type of day. Yeah.
No, I think we'll do that. I think we'll do like, don't.
Maybe we'll do a like and a don't and then a don't and a
like. And then that way we can we can
end the segment on a good note before we go into it.
We'll see we'll keep playing with it.
You let us you know what? Let us know join the discord
like and subscribe even I'm. Using the Discord now, so we're
very kind of stuff. So crazy.
Used it one day and now he's saying he's very active.
Crazy. I use it too.
I'm in it right now. So the the next thing that we
want to do for is, is actually go into our ratings, yes.
When do you want me to talk about my play experience?
So let's do that right now. That's actually let's do that
right now. Yeah.
I meant to slide that in here. So.
So, yeah. So you actually got to not only
play the game, you ran the starter adventure with people
that have never interacted with Blades or Farts in the Dark at
all. Yes.
Tell me how the fuck that went. So I mean, like I said, building
a character was really very effortless.
Yeah, it was definitely. I had more than one comment at
my table about how meta the game was.
And like, we're not a table that's like, oh, you can't do
that. It's like meta knowledge, you
know, like we never have that discussion.
Like obviously like we play a bunch of minimalist games.
I think that discussion for the most part fairly stupid in most
dungeon games. Like obviously you, you and your
character can't always be divorced in in what you know,
But yeah, I mean, my players had a good time, but it definitely
felt very clunky running system, having to like say the threat
and effect level every single time felt clunky for me.
And I could tell for them. It also felt very clunky.
I have two other regular GMDMS at my table as well, and both of
them were a little frustrated by the necessity to do that thing.
And for the most part from Mind the Gap.
Mind the Gap's a great starter adventure actually, because it
cuts out a lot of the like you don't pick an approach or stuff,
you really just drop in. And so it allows, allows you to
just focus on really the basic mechanics.
And I think it's where it really shines.
I, I, I will say that it's like you're in car 18 trying to get
to 22, which is only four cars away.
And it does give you some waste like loop stuff back and stuff.
But it feels like, Oh, I really have to start dropping hints
about what's really going on in this scenario before they get to
car 22, because that's actually, I'm not going to say actually,
just in case you want to run it. But yeah, you have to drop a lot
of hints very quickly in a very condensed way.
And they're also in combat. But yeah, I have my players send
me the things that they liked and didn't like in a text
message. And of the five of them, three
of them responded. And for the most part, it's, you
know, they really liked the stats and inventory system,
which makes sense. Quantum inventory fucking slaps
and is always cool, but they really didn't feel like Harm was
super meaningful or and they didn't really ever gather what
Edge meant. I did explain it to them but
it's not in the player guide which we are going to talk about
when we go the race, but it's only in the GM guide.
And I told them to read both. But like obviously I'm like
we're going to run a one shot and we run minimalist game.
So a lot of time for the one shot, they show up the day of,
then we just go over the system real quick and we drop in.
And this is supposed to be a one shot system.
So I we should be able to show up the day of, spend 20 to 30
minutes prepping on the system and making characters and be
able to drop in. And we weren't really super
successful at that. I mean, they did play the game.
They didn't understand. As for yeah, I mean, they they
all loved how the stats worked. They really did.
They liked the Knicks success, which again, I love Knicks
success, although I prefer success with consequences
instead of partial failure. And yeah, they all felt like
harm was fairly like not very meaningful.
And they also Speaking of the other track that you feel
stressed. They all took flashbacks, used
their augmentations and they never filled their stress
neither they net and like they ruled successfully a lot and but
you filling the stress meters not about failure.
It's like things that you do to fill it and it's just like,
well, I mean, it didn't, you know, they didn't feel super
meaningful that they took stress or that they took harm because
they just didn't take a lot. And for the harm, it's like, you
know, some of them would pull up arm, you know, and so it would
lower the the threat level. They're like, yeah, well, I have
heavy armor now. And it's like, well, that lowers
the threat level by a fuck ton, you know, by two or whatever,
so. The question is you ran it.
So again, I don't mind approach. I think the skills are great.
That's kind of how all systems kind of work.
You're just deciding on your on your skills and your stats
basically the threatening effect interaction is a part that
really we have, we have feelings about, right.
Do you think that you could have run the same thing just keeping
threat in effect internally and then getting the result of the
role and then communicating that after this the way that you do
most kind of OSR style games and the game went over on the same
like just just ignore the part about the players being able to
adjust threat in effect, no. Because well, I mean I guess I
could have run it. It would have worked differently
though because them knowing the threat level made like made them
take choices that they might not have done anyway.
Like it is like an integral part of the system and their decision
making with like the meta mechanics of this game.
But is it because they're aware of the threat or because of the
specific number of the level? You know what I mean?
Because even in OSR games, you always make people aware of
potential consequences, right? That's what I'm saying is if you
just said all right, like some like this is something that
could possibly happen and they're like, yeah, that's fine,
let's roll with it. That to me feels like it would
flow more interestingly and less kind of meta wise and being
like, well, that's a threat Level 3 and the effect is that
this and this. So do you want to raise it?
Do you want to lower it? I think I think really scooping
that out yeah, would make this in my opinion, more playable for
me. Someone in chat.
I agree some some meat castle game where individual says blade
stuff does require a more writers room quote UN quote
approach to play. That won't work with some tables
and I honestly can't imagine it as a one shot for folks without
experience. It took my core group about 3
sessions before we understood how the flow of play went in
Blades, which is a common part of Blade, which is common part
of PBTAI mean we've said this over and over again, or I've
said it, or I stole it from Aaron King or something, I don't
remember. There's 1000 PBT as and about
four good ones. And that's because a lot of
people just don't understand it. And the only reason I really
understand it as well as I do is because I read Patrick World
from Aaron King, which is a better explainer of how PBTA
works than the PBTA. Than pretty much any other PBTA
thing, yeah. But, but it, it was awesome that
you got to actually run it though.
And we get more insight into the game.
And what's great about it is, and we've said this over and
over again, like I've never run it.
But we, we've, we've read hundreds and hundreds of games.
Like we can feel for the most part how a game is going to
feel, even if we haven't run it, because I have an imagination
and an understanding of mechanics.
Does it feel like how you thought it would feel?
Yes, it feels. Yeah, it feels clunky.
It is. And we originally said it was
like it's very meta level of interaction.
And I think the riders room thing totally makes sense and
that's how we ran it. And but the problem is that like
half of my table was really into that aspect of the riders room
thing, but the other half wanted didn't want to do that.
That's not how all the other games work and, well, that's.
The thing about Blades and Fords in the dark and PPTA and
everything too, is if that is the style of play you like, It
is if that is the specific level of scaffolding you enjoy in your
mechanics and you have a whole table of people that feel that
way, I bet they fucking sing. You know what I mean?
I bet they're wonderful. I would to just never be that
guy. It's not the way that I enjoy
interacting with mechanics. It's not the way I personally
enjoy interacting with systems. And again, subjective.
This is a me thing, also a hunter thing, but like that is a
for me. That is I want to I want to do a
lot of people on the fucking Internet in this space don't do
and that is to hedge my words a little bit.
That is to put qualifiers in. Yes Sir.
A final thing before we we're out of time for this segment.
We'll move on to the next one. I will say that none of my
players chose to resist any concept consequences.
Yeah, because. Yeah, because they were like,
no, no, no, we're going. We're going to do the function.
Accept the consequences of our actions, Yeah.
Which was, like you said, that they did use armor, though,
which is a form of resistance. I guess that is a form.
Of resistance, but that just gave them edge in situations
though. Like, yeah, because they.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So they still took consequences from the role.
You know, but yeah, there you go.
All right, so the next segment, what we normally do is, as we
said before, we we've read through the entire fucking book.
We're not going to do that anymore.
We already went through the mechanics, we already went
through character generation. We're still going to go through
the metrics. We're still going to give
ratings and scores for the games.
And what we normally do is 5 metrics for books and three for
Zenes. And we've kind of broken that
out into 7 metrics because art, layout and visuals, we usually
separate books and Zenes by art and layout versus visuals.
We're going to go through all 7 metrics rather it's a Zen for
the most part or a book. But then we're just going to
score the five or three metrics for the that specific thing.
So this is obviously going to be a Zen because even if you add up
all of the pamphlets together, you still get like 50 pages.
So it's still, it's still the Zen, but the seven metrics or is
it 6? I can't count.
I think it's 6. The six metrics we're going to
go over are art and layout, slash, visuals, usability, rule
set, originality, value, and vibes.
Yes, because rule set is redundant.
But in books, what we're always going to do for scores is art
and layout, usability, rule set, originality and value.
And for scenes, we're only going to score visuals, rule set, and
vibes. So after we go through all six
of these metrics, we will go to actually scoring those three at
the end, and then that will be the end of the show.
So we're going to kick it off with art and layout, AKA
visuals. Do you want to start?
Do you want me to start or we can converse?
All right, so as I said, as I said, cyber plus punk, best form
factor, one of the top 2 best form factors in tip top RPGs.
I'll give you a little a little hint at what could possibly be
one of the other really great form factors for those that
know, you know, if you're in podcast land, you missed out.
Watch the fucking YouTube and and I don't think anyone can
really argue with it. It's stunning, it's gorgeous.
It as a product, it is insane. The art is incredible, the
layout all the way through is incredible product incredible,
layout incredible could probably be award-winning.
You know, if those matter. It came.
It was. Up to me.
Yeah, and as a like layout wise, getting real pedantic with some
of the stuff I found. One typo, 1 singular typo across
all of them. And now I'm not saying that I'm
fucking perfect, but usually things have typos.
I think the only one I found is a very small one.
It says and specific instead of a specific under the
augmentation. So just throw an extra and in
there, right, That's there. And that is the only typo I
found. But I mean, visually when you
look at it, I mean, we can, we can, we can talk about this too.
Of all what is it like 6 or 7 Zenes runner file, which has the
least art and stuff. I assume that we'll just knock
that one out between the GM guy, the runner file and all of the
bonus ones. Which one is your favorite,
favorite scene to look at? 3 in the top for me, but it's
and it's hard to pick from. What do you think?
I'm going to say Mona Rise. Yeah, Mona Rise is definitely in
my top. It's definitely like really cool
to go through and visually looks really good.
There's like little details that like I love that image on that
far right panel of like the city.
I'm like, that's a fucking great visualization, you know?
You know what? It reminds me of a little bit is
in the Troika book. The adventure in the Troika book
has like the tower that they yeah, they go in like all pulled
up. It gives me a little bit of
that. But also I was thinking like
through blood Heartweiler. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That one slaps, I think. I mean, it's easily in my top
three. For me.
It's really a toss up between Predator and Plus Weird, both of
which are are stunning. I love the pinks and Plus Weird.
I love the cover art with this kind of like gargoyle dude on
like a throne just like no fucks at all.
But the the predator 1 as soon as you see that the PRDTR with
like the the heat signal and the little triangle.
I mean I might have to pick predator as my favorite one but
artistically every single one is stunning.
I mean, to the small details, even to the back of like the
credits on the back of the Predator one.
Are they even have like the content warning and it's like
the bottom of a movie poster with the different size fonts
and stuff. I mean, the attention to detail
in the art and layout of this insane.
There's not a single single bit of missed space visually that
isn't absolutely stunning. It might be a tiny bit crowded,
but that doesn't bother me because of the the format,
right? What about you?
What are your what are your thoughts?
No, I'm sure I have some. Yeah.
I mean, obviously, like mine, we're going to retread each
other sometimes, you know? But like, the art's, like, I
think the art's Immaculate. Like, I think it looks great.
I think the layout is really very good.
Although sometimes I do think it can be a little cramped.
It still remains readable. And yeah, I mean opening up the
box, what a treat, you know? We're just stunning.
Just look at it so. Yeah, I mean, yeah.
I mean, I don't know. Actually, I think I'm gonna save
this next part for usability. So that's that's kind of it for
me. I mean, I think visually I think
it's a very evocative game and it really like lends to that
Cyberpunk feel. Yeah.
I mean, like, like we said before, when we open it up, like
every aspect of it has cyber punky bits and lines and, and
hazard lines and, and just the graphic design aspects of it,
there's, there's just not a single missed opportunity to
reinforce the game. And that's what we've always
talked about with art, layout and visuals and all that kind of
stuff is the the you don't need a ton of art, you don't need a
ton of visuals to have a good game.
What's important with the art, the visuals, the layout,
everything is that you reinforce the game, the system that you're
playing in, right? And that's that's what's
important. And this one does in fucking
spades, right? Yeah.
So Next up is is usability. So I think next time when we go
through the notes, we should just put both of our notes in
one section instead of two sections.
Did you get that? Yeah, so because we are going to
retread a little bit, but it's fine.
So. And if I'm talking about
something you're going to talk about, just hop in.
So sometimes the rules are a scattered between the GM guide
and the runner file and that's what am I reading your notes
yet? Because we said the same things
first. First, I will say the GM guide
does not feel like AGM guide. I think it should just be the
core rules of the game, like because there's nothing, there's
nothing in the GM guide that is for the GM kind of vet all like
it. You need to read both as a
player. You need to read both as AGM.
It's almost just like the rules are split across 2 scenes and
you have character generation in one.
But it's still important parts because we've said this before,
there's information that's mixed across both pamphlets.
Resist is nowhere in the GM guide.
It does say nowhere in the GM guide did they say what
resistance is. It's only in the runner file.
Nowhere in the runner file does it say where edge is, right?
And the angle roll, you asked me, you even said, hey, explain
this fucking angle roll to me. And my response to you in the
angle roll was so big. What did I specifically say for
the angle roll? I said.
It was a scavenger hunt. You're like, OK, read page one,
then Page 3, then go to the GM guide, read page 2 and then read
page 5 and then seven. I'm like fuck, dude.
Oh. Here it is, yeah.
Look at runner file page one, then page two number three, then
Page 3, undertake A breather, then GM guide Page 3 #3 then
read page 7, which explains the angle role, and then you'll
actually understand the angle role.
That's a lot to kind of understand the angle role to
kind of parse all the bits and pieces of it.
So that that's a lot of it as far as usability.
I think that the thing that I would say, and I'm sure this was
a balancing act because the original cyberpunk, I'm I'm sure
did not think that it was going to end up being this insane form
factor, right, or this much information.
It is definitely a form over function.
It was the. Original 1 is also a pamphlet.
It is, it is a pamphlet. You know what I mean?
It, it, it's, that's what I'm saying is it's not fucking 7
pamphlets or sort of 12 pamphlets or you know what I
mean? Minus the run of files.
There's numerous of them. What I'm saying is I'm sure
there, there's a limited number of space in each pamphlet.
I'm sure it was a a difficult decision to decide which one
goes in each one, but there was a clear decision for form over
function in each pamphlet because the back of each
pamphlet. I mean, realistically, if you
look at it is a lot of there's a big section and there's not that
big of a section either is of like, you know all of the
information you need on it because there's logos and shit,
right? So it's just a decisions I'm
sure were made to keep some things in one and some things in
the other. And at that point, just say it's
2 pamphlets for the core rules and one for the GM, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I will say that the going
towards a positive for usability other than the fact that like it
is a pamphlet, like inherently it is more usable for finding
stuff. Did you mention the the key
terms being highlighted? No, I didn't.
Yeah. Key terms are highlighted in
this and so while it is scattered, you can, and I did
actively skim the pages on the 2 pamphlets and easily found them
because they are highlighted. They're black, they're blue
highlighted, most of them are blue highlighted I believe.
But it made finding information I needed reference quickly very
easy and something that was physically holding and not
digitally searching. And, you know, I think digitally
searching also would be equally as easy.
I'm just saying, like often with a book I physically have, it's
harder to search for things. Yeah.
And it is and it is 8, it is 8 pages, but I will say it is a
tight, it is a tight, dense 8 pages sometimes with the
language being as simplified as it needs to be, The angle stuff,
for example, you, you were looking at like 4 or five
different pages to get all that information.
And there are a lot of parts where they use iconography to
use that. And I'm torn on that.
I think it's great. I think it's a great space
saver. I mean a good fucking decision
to use. The key on the front page.
Put the key on the front page or.
Across the bed. Of the pages or something,
because if you put on the very back page, I'll tell you right
now, not everyone is going to open it up and look at every
page to see if there's something.
This is very much a case. This is very much a case of so
yeah, this is very much a case of when a teacher gives you that
like, haha, fuck you quiz where it says at the top, make sure
you read it all first and #20 is don't do any of them, just turn
it over. But you do all 19 before you get
to #20 just so they can say you should read the instructions on
number 1. You know what I mean?
That's what this felt like of like, I literally read the
entire thing and kept having to flip back to be like, wait,
what's the T again? What's the E again?
And then on the very back there was like the little, the little
iconography thing. So I agree with you.
Throw it in other places, but super smart for space saving.
I mean, if you're going to do form.
So that I think that's a general take for us overall is that as
far as usability, it's, it's great laid out.
It's easy to flip through. I also do love the way that they
did. Like you open it up and the 2
pages are two and three and then you open it up again and that
spreads out more. But there there are some choices
where they clearly chose or needed to because of the the
form factor, choose form over function, and that's and that's
usability. So for a rule set, So what I
wrote was almost every issue I have with the game rule set wise
is that it's forged in the dark. And I'm not going to go in the
deep in that we we've beat threat in effect to to death,
but I will. Send you this one.
Yeah. Hand up to to not you like
laying about what to play now. But I I do want to say this
other part because I did look up the page numbers for that.
If the entire game can be presented IN28 page pamphlets,
it begs the question why Blades in the Dark is 327 pages long,
209 of which is before setting stuff.
So if I can get Blades in 16 and what amounts to 8 pages because
it's 16 pamphlet pages, why do I have 209 pages in blades?
It doesn't It's, it's, that's, that's what I'll say about that.
Otherwise, for me, for the rules as they Forged in the Dark game,
if I set aside my subjective brain and put on my objective
brain. I think if you, if you enjoy
blades and understand the blade system, I think this is
incredible. I think it's fantastic.
And then and then on top of that, the modularity, the plug
insurance, the plug in settings, all of that fantastic rule set
wise again with it it setting aside my issues with force in
the dark, I think this is clean. I think it's it's smart.
I think it's really, really well done.
I think it's really well put together.
I think the parts that they do add to make it cyberpunk, make
it for me a better game than blades for what it does.
The final run aspect in Cyberpunk versus like the heist
aspect in like the weird steampunk magic thing that is
Blades, I think to me is a much more successful rule set and
does what it wants to do better than Blades does what it wants
to do in that setting. What are your thoughts on the
rules? I personally have wiped blades
from my memory almost completely.
So I, you know, yeah. So like, you know, I'll, I'll
pick up things and they obviously they're fortunate dark
things, but you know, the dice pool make success is great.
I love it. I think it's a fantastic aspect.
My players loved it and I realized I've not been doing
enough mixed success games with them, so we'll do more because
they really enjoyed that part and I was like, Oh yeah, I love
that. I should run more.
Success with consequence. Consequences that that.
Which is what I would do in another game.
But yeah, the the loadout in Quantum Inventory I thought was
great and it works really well. I think maybe for not mind the
gap, it work better because there's less like moving around.
Mind the gap, you're really just dropping.
So it doesn't really matter if you're like conspicuous or
whatever, it doesn't matter if you're slow.
But yeah, I thought it was really cool.
I do think that this game suffers from like buzzword
syndrome, where it's a little more confusing maybe than it
needs to be because it needs to use its own individual buzzwords
instead of just calling a thing a thing, which, yeah, some games
do. And As for the stress and Harm I
put, I don't, I put, I think the stress bar in these is about two
points too long. And I think Harm suffers from a
similar issue and qualifying that maybe that the condensed
nature of Mind the Gap influenced how I feel about
that. It'll be interesting because I
actually am probably going to run this some other time for the
same group again, and we'll see how it goes from there.
Not Mind the Gap again for an adventure but yeah I I think
maybe those could be shortened to make it feel a little bit
more meaningful and harm to hit a little harder because if they
succeed in a bunch of roles they're not taking harm, which
in other systems where it's not mixed success like even if they
succeed a lot they'll take damage.
But in this one, like, if they're succeeding, they're not
going to. Yeah.
I mean, I, I think over overall, it's feels a little dense and
clunky, but I think there's some, there's great parts in it
that my players really latched to, you know, and I enjoy.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you know the, it's just that the best parts of this are
things we do see in other systems.
Yes, right. Consequence, Things like that.
Here. It's just the most bladesy part
of the parts that we were less of a fan of and we felt.
But again, it's it's buzzworded because it uses the buzzwords
from blades. You know what I mean?
Like I think one thing you put in here that I don't think you
mentioned was edge, when like advantage works just fucking
fine. Oh yeah.
Like, it's not cool fight advantage because you're not
rolling the extra dice, but it does give you, yeah, it is an
advantage in the situation, you know?
Right, right, right, right. So so originality is is the next
bit. We don't need 5 minutes for
this. It's it's hard to give a lot of
originality to this. It is Blades in the Dark and it
is Cyberpunk 2 things that have been beat to fucking death.
So I think the form factor is is is very original.
I think that's absolutely stunning.
Yeah. That's fair.
Yeah, cuz I mean, show me another.
I mean, I have some pamphlet box, I can pull out some other
pamphlet box sets, but I would not want to put them to shame
compared to this. You know what?
I mean, yeah, I have a terror of the cosmos or whatever for
mothership. I'm like, that's a really great
one. But this is like on another
level, frankly. It's on another level.
It's it's on another level in every fucking aspect, not just
specifically for that, but I mean just in in a form factor in
general. And that's about it for that.
So value wise, value, as we've said before, value is I didn't
really explain what these are. I'm going to do that next time.
I usually say how we quantify our terrible opinions with
metrics. I can put that at the end
though. So value is bang for your
pockets, not just the cost of a thing.
That's what you get for the thing, right.
So value wise, cost wise from myth works on their website
which is. Myth dot works
www.myth.worksyoucan snag this for 2999.
Digital files included, which is a fucking.
Steel it's. Insane fucking steel considering
there are some owners out there that are trying to charge like
you know, 30 bucks for A50 page Zine and then another 15 for the
fucking PDF, $30.00 for this is insane.
It's a fucking steal. Even if you never play this
game, just physically give it. Every time I see this on the
shelf I'm excited to just open it up and look at how fucking
cool it is for $30. That's crazy.
And I know that we were critical of it, you know, because this is
just not the type of game that Ryan and I really gravitate to.
It does do the thing it does in that style well.
But this is potential hours of gameplay.
This is I want to run a one shot tonight gameplay.
And you can make a one shot so easily if you were into forge in
the dark stuff. This is so much play time for
$30, and it's cool. It's so cool.
Yeah, you know. If you're yeah, if you're in a
hours, hours, this is months of play.
If you're into Forged in the Dark, you run.
Motorized of play, you know? Yeah.
Mona Lisa Rise We didn't even get into how fucking cool Mona
Lisa Rise is but not Lisa the fuck off fuck off whoever wrote
that to. And if it's William Gibson, fuck
you too. Motorized megalopolis.
How cool that is and how it's basically just like a series of
I think 6 or 7 tables. You roll on all of them and you
have an adventure and a fucking cool one on top of of everything
else that you can throw in this, including the Predator
adventure. I mean potentially months of
play for $30 is insane. And if you just want the PDF,
the digital bundle on Itch, which is from the Cabinet of
curiosities, it's page which is, we'll make sure the links are
down below too. It is E it's Emmanuel
EMANOELMELO dot itch dot IO, the cabinet of curiosities that is
the creator. You can find it on their on
their itch page for 1990. So it's about 10 bucks less if
you just want the digital. So for $10 more.
And also let's talk about how much you charge for your PDFs
and fucking prints real quick. Give me 10 seconds.
The PDF is the fucking game. Charge the price for the PDF and
then just charge how much it costs for the print for the book
and give the PDF to. I don't understand how that's
hard. If it costs you $5 to print the
game right, charge 20 bucks for the PDF and $5 for the book so
it's $25. Like this isn't hard.
Charge more for your PDFs and less for your fucking books and
just give. I'm superior of that opinion as
well. Charge fuck your price if.
People under charge for the PDFs like that is in fact the the the
media. Game you're doing, you know, you
think somehow the PDF and the book are different and you
should charge the same amount for both.
If you want $30.00 for APDF and $30.00 for a book, there's not a
fucking hardback book out there that costs $30.00 for print.
Go fuck yourself. Anyway, So I would say best
deal, obviously, just get the physical.
My God, for $30, it's, it's incredible.
It's incredible vibes for me. I mean, we've said this on a
number of things. I'm not really a cyberpunk guy.
I'm not really a Ford sit in the dark guy.
If you were like, hey, I ran mind the Gap for my buddies, let
me run it for you too. I would say fuck yeah, let's do
it. We run something else, so yeah.
But would I run this? Yeah, yeah.
I would not, I would not. I would play this.
I would not run it. Whereas I'm like, you know, I'm
still fairly open to to running something else in this.
I am not going to interact with threatened consequence out loud
again. I will do the the classic thing
where I'm like, hey, like this is a bad situation.
You know, if you try to do this in this bad situation, like it
might go badly, you know, I'll do the classic thing.
And, and let me then amend my thing.
If I played it like I would run a game, I would play the hell
out of this. Like I want to play Predator so
fucking bad, dude. Like I genuinely would.
And you know what? Maybe Michael Elliott shout out
Michael Elliot. It's been on the show before.
I love the work. Probably the first force in the
dark we ever talked about was the forge in the dark solo game.
Merger. Fuck merger.
Incredible. They they have offered to run
blades for us many, many, many times.
I wonder if he'd be willing to run cyberpunk for us.
I know it's not it might not be actual quote UN quote blades in
the dark, but I wonder if he would run this because if if he
would run cyberpunk for us and I could shut the fuck up and not
like, you know, talk about threat in effect the entire
time. That would be great.
But but I would play this specifically this just scooping
out threat in effect in a heartbeat.
I'd also would love to incorporate so much of this into
other games. I think plus weird is incredible
and I think the entire way that Mona rise megalopolis is put
together is incredible. They they all are.
All of the bonus pamphlets are fantastic.
And we didn't even talk about framework, which is also a
really incredible like GM's guide to creating adventures and
stuff like that in short and long form.
But but yeah, as far as vibes go, if I remove the forwards and
the dark aspects from my brain, my vibes are much higher on this
as is it's just my subjective opinion on just liking that
system less. So the next thing that we're
going to do, that's all of our, that's all of our metrics.
That is, that is it. So the next thing we're going to
hop into is these scores we're giving for the metrics, as I
said before, or as I normally say, we, we quantify our
terrible opinions with these metrics.
We score them on a on a one to 10 basis for Zenes, which we're
calling this a Zen, there's only three visuals, rule set and
vibes up to 10 points for each for a Max of 30 points based on
everything that we just talked about.
We've already discussed in depth the visuals.
It's fucking beautiful. The form factors are credible.
What what do you think for visuals?
What What score are you throwing down for this?
10 Easy 10 Easy 10 It's an. Unbelievable 10.
It's not like a number that we rarely give out in visuals was
it's an effortless 10 here. I think we've given it to Zenes
more, but that was the point of making it not art and layout,
but as a whole encompassing thing was to give a little bit
more wiggle room and a little bit more for that.
So easy, easy, easy. I think it's one of the easiest
10s I've ever given for visuals. Yeah.
Rule set. My I'm curious because you've
actually run it. You have a much different
opinion. I'm curious.
I don't know if you remember what we did last time.
Don't guess if you don't know. So I'm curious what your number
specifically is compared to what it was last time before you
actually ran the game. Objectively, I think this is a
solid Forged in the Dark game. Right.
Objectively. Subjectively.
Objectively. Objectively, I don't really care
for that. I think I dislike it less than
you do, but it's still not like my like modus operandi, like
still not like the the operation that I want to do in my game did
it. Wind you over to to to blades.
No, but I think it's still solid and I think it might be even
more solid than Blades because it's shorter and it's easier to
understand. And there's some little tweaks I
did actually. I've been joking.
I did actually go through Blades last night and skimmed it and
like looked at little tweaks and there are a couple little tweaks
I think do work better. Especially cause flashbacks
always cost something and they're never free.
That's stupid. Why would they be free?
Blades, yes. So I think for the that I'm
feeling like a, a solid 7, you know, maybe maybe an 8 if I
liked it more, but it's just really not.
I don't know what do. You say 7 seven is what we gave
it last time and that's about how I feel.
I think. I think we were like six to
seven last time and this time more like 7 to I think it was.
Blade seven, I think it was. It was clarified more if the
like, you know, if I didn't have to search through like if it
didn't feel so scattered, if it was a little more.
Formal function. Formal function, I think.
There is room for it to go up, and I think if you like Blades
and you play this like this is a fucking 9 to me, you're probably
right for you, you know? Yeah, for you.
This is one of the ones I feel like I feel like we do a pretty
good job most of the time of, of hitting objective and subjective
together on those things. This again, it's just not our
game. But again, that's it's OK to go
over something that's not your game as long as you clarify over
and over again. This is definitely subjective,
right? This is not objective, right?
I think the game is incredible. It's just not necessarily for
me. I think it's a solid 7 and I do
think that it does blades better than Blades.
I agree. I think it has a more focus.
I think it has a better focus and I think it tweaks things
better, which I would love instead of whatever just came
out the new blades book with 150 more pages.
I would love to see a Blades 2E where instead of giving me 150
pages, you just chop 150 pages out of the original book,
reorganize it, clarify it a little bit better, and give me
something that I love as much as I love all of the rest of John
Harper's stuff. For rule set though, I think 7
for this is solid vibes. I think this is 1 where I think
I'm not sure what the score is. I'll click on it in a second.
For me, I think my vibes are actually up a little bit.
I I generally think that hearing your critique of the game after
you've ran it, after your players thought about it and how
it could be adjusted a little bit raises my vibes a tiny bit.
I'm not sure what to what, but what do you think?
As someone who ran it? As someone whose players have
given you their feedback? So I want to run it again so at
least that, you know, I'm not like bouncing off the walls to
run it again, like I'm bouncing off the walls to like run like
Varn, you know, So, but I think this for me again is like
another solid like 7, you know, I think like, I like, I am
looking forward to running this game.
I am looking forward to using motorized megalopolis like I'm
looking forward to like engaging with this more.
Yeah. Well, that actually we gave us
six last time and now that you've run it and and want to
engage with a little bit more, we're going to give it a seven.
I mean, I'm definitely going to be conceding to you on these
because once again, you ran it like like in three days ago.
So so that is that is for a total of 24 out of 30, which is
still a pretty darn freaking good score.
A10 on visuals got if it could get a fucking 12.
You know, crazy A7 for rule set, A7 for vibes for a total score
of 24 for cyber plus punk from cabin of curiosities, Emmanuel
Melo and mythworks. Once again, I'm going to try to
have this episode out by the end of the weekend, which will give
you until July 10th to go back Cyber plus punk overload, which
is a mat the 1st and a massive expansion for this game.
And here's the thing. And I'm going to be completely
honest, even if I never run or play this game, I backed that
shit the fucking hilt like in a heartbeat, even just so I can
look at how beautiful it is and be excited once again to pull it
out. I I just, I want to write a
blades hack that just takes out all the blade stuff so that
people can run their blade stuff in the way that in a more, I
guess, quote UN quote OSR style. And then I would play, I would
play the hell out of this. But if you want to run a
predator for me or or Mona. Ryze Megalopolis.
There we go. Maybe we'll get.
Mona Lisa smiles. You know, like.
That's exactly what I fucking keep wanting to say is Mona Lisa
smile. I don't.
Yeah, but I don't remember what it's about.
It is. It's not like Vicky Christina
Barcelona is. Starring Julia Roberts.
Yeah, I've never seen it. I've never seen it.
So that is that is the episode. We did it in less than an hour
and a half, which is fucking awesome.
I think this is about what we're going to shoot for every time.
Let's cut over to this real quick on what the plan is for
next week. No fucking clue, but but
tomorrow we may or may not stream.
And if you're watching this in VOD form, you're not going to
see this I guess, but so you know what might happen next
time. This is my my thought for it's
called not weekly war games and me and Hunter have a things kind
of set up where every Saturday ish we try to hop into.
Some VTT. Yeah, Foundry or what?
What's the one I'm trying to think of?
Tabletop Simulator. TTS Tabletop Simulator.
My break kept going. VTTVTT that's not right.
We try to hop into Tabletop Simulator or something and play.
Play a war game, play a skirmish game, play something.
Or Chris P Wolf has been playing.
Me and him have been playing a bunch.
We've been playing my game that I might put out soon.
Which I thought was great. I played Ryan, I played the two
weeks ago and I I shot him full of bullets so.
Yeah, fucking wrecked the shit out of me in my own game in two
rounds. It was perfect.
I loved it. It was great.
And then we've also been playing some some work cocks, some
wanted, and then a bunch of other stuff from Tanner Simpson,
which is fantastic. Me and Chris P Wolf has but
tomorrow you and I or you because you read it more.
But I've read it and I don't know if you saw what I picked
dead souls surprised. I don't want.
To see what you picked. I saw him pick.
There's like 3 armies, then like which one of the three?
There's only like 4 but. We we are going to be testing
out Malagast from Tom Bloom, who's one of the creators of
Lancer who has done Kane, which is the TTRBG that we're going to
talk about the last time, the only other time that we have an
episode that didn't come out and and we're going to check that
out. We might stream that, but if we
do, it's not going to it's almost guaranteed not to go to
pod or YouTube. It'll just be here on the show,
which is something that we want to start doing a little bit
more. We want to start doing some
hobby time on the show, painting, hanging out video
games, saying war game stuff. Yeah, making out through the
phone, you know. The phone.
Yeah, but we're we're going to start doing that.
So catch us maybe on some Saturdays for not weekly war
games. And tomorrow, as I said, whether
we're streaming or not, we're going to be checking out
Malagast. We'll let you know next week
during the intro session how Malagast went.
That's all I got. How about you?
That's it. All right, have a good one,
everybody. Bye.