Heyyyyyy Night City, welcome to another pondering post here on the Pick Up Pile! Tonight after the body lottery we’ll get right on to covering Interface Red Volume 3 for Cyberpunk Red. Then we’ll take a look at the Data Screen .pdf for the same game.
First up, Interface Red Vol.3 a book I’ve been wanting to get my grubby little mitts on as soon as I heard it had the full body conversion rules for CPRed in it. It’s a 114 page pdf, I’ll update with details of the print version when that arrives.
[UPDATE]
Now my print copy has arrived. It’s a solidly put together softcover colour book with matte finish pages. Due to the page count it feels more substantial than previous interface volumes, as it’s about the size of the previous two put together. It’s the same width and height as Vol.2, so slightly taller than Vol.1.
I did notice large areas of flat colour, such as the red in chart borders and solid black areas are a little lighter than in Vol.2, and more than in the standard print run CPRed books. This isn’t too severe and I think I only noticed it due to a once-professional background in colour matching. Also, oddly this volume has two blank white pages at the end, I guess due to the amount of pages of content being one less than the required paper for the volume.
Neither of the above minor issues really detract from the book in any way. It’s a well put together book, reminiscent of some of the Chrome Books for CP2020, and I’m glad I picked it up.
[END OF UPDATE]
The first chapter is Hardened Mini Bosses, for when your players have optimised their characters so well and you need a ready made ass-kicker to give them some challenge. The Hardened Pyro upgrade to the Pyro from the core book being the easiest to do a direct comparison with, and yeah, this will catch cocky players out. Just make sure your players can take it.
Next up, Digital Dating in the Dark Future, a series of lifepath like tables that simulate dating in your characters downtime. I didn’t think this would be that useful to me at first but I’ve come around on it. the main reason is that whilst the lifepath creates characters for the GM to use from a characters history, this can create someone that’s here and now in the game.
Let’s try it out, let’s roll on the tables to see what kind of date my test character Shatter (a starting level Solo) would be going on if he tried his luck on NC’s dating scene.
- Roll 1 – What two keywords did the match use to describe themselves? Result – 20. Cooking, 59. Loyal. Shatter can’t cook but values loyalty, could work out.
- Roll 2 – Where is your date? Result – Odds, 4, Little China.
- Roll 3 – What is your date? Result – 6. Go to a Night Market together. Shopping it is. Looking at Black Chrome the closest Night Market is Rex Royale’s Casino, so let’s say one of them scored tickets for it.
- Roll 4 – How does your date go? Result – 1. Good date.
- Roll 5 – Good date: Beginning. Result – 6. They are very attractive, possibly bodysculpted.
- Roll 6 – Good date: Middle. Result – 3. They tell you about a previous relationship that ended well. A bit weird, but at least not too awkward.
- Roll 7 – Good date: End. Result – 2. They give you helpful advice of the GM’s choosing. A nice way to feed information to a player.
- Roll 8 – Good Date: One Weird Thing. Result – 5. Their agent went off several times whilst on the date. Oooh, who could that be, this adds a lot of potential background to this character.
- Roll 9 – Do they want another date? Result – Evens. Yes and they say they’ll contact you.
- Roll 10 – Aftermath. Result – 4. Not ghosted, they will be in touch.
So a night out at a casino with a beautiful person who has a bit of mystery going on and will be in touch. Yeah this could springboard into all sorts of stuff. Who was calling? Is their possible bodysculpt to hide from someone? Why did they talk about their ex, even if they didn’t make it weird? Ideal for making plots personal.
After dating we go weapon shopping. Up next is Woodchipper’s Garage. A selection of new exotic heavy weapons presented in character by the Nomad Fixer Woodchipper, who has shown up in a couple of supplements now. Some good gear in here if you’re the big gun type.
After dating and shopping we need to make some of our eddies back. So we have salvaging, a new downtime activity where you go into the Hot Zone and similar locations and see what kind of useful stuff you can find to fix and/or sell.
Let’s give this system a go. Let’s say Shatter has some downtime and could do with making a bit of cash, but the usual jobs have dried up, so he goes salvaging.
Step 1: Decide on a category. I’m gonna go with weapons as that’s what Shatter knows best from being on either end of them
Step 2: Make a check. here you roll Basic Tech to see the value of what you dig up. Specific categories having higher difficulties than just taking anything.
As Shatter doesn’t have Basic Tech as a skill it’s just a straight Tech roll of his skill (5) plus a D10. I rolled a 7 for a total of 12. The lowest difficulty to get anything from a specific category is 13. This means he goes home with nothing but the benefits of a walk outside. If he’d gone for taking anything he’d have hit the lowest difficulty level (DV9) and been 10eb worth of scrap better off.
This system is definitely more geared towards Tech skilled characters as shown here. Also the player being able to describe what they get up to the value they find means they can get all kinds of junk equipment that could come in useful later.
Following this we have Midnight with the Upload, a section for Netrunners. Here we have a bunch of new Cyberdecks and Hardware to plug into them, with a variety of offensive and defensive options. This is like Woodchippers section, but for the intellectuals of the group.
Must Have Cyberware Deals is next. I love this kind of section, like the near mundane magic items in fantasy games that add so much flavour this adds everyday useful cyberware to your CPRed game. All of it is low-to-none humanity loss and not really combat usable (unless you get very creative). There’s an expanding pillow you can fit in your arm for naps, and a kibble warmer you can fit in another. Get both and snack whilst you rest. These kind of things add so much flavour to the world, if not the kibble, I’d like to see more of them.
Next is Collecting the Random. A series of short articles that cover ideas that weren’t big enough for a DLC .pdf of their own. There’s reskinning roles to change the flavour such as Lawmen becoming Gangers, Execs becoming Mobsters and more, one for each role. There’s a lot of campaign ideas to inspire you from Guerilla Gardening to Pranking corpporations. Multiclassing ideas cover mixing each role with each other so you can cover more skills the party might need and tweak yout character’s mechanics to the vibe you want. And as for flavouring the game, there is a random kibble flavour table. As a test I rolled a 52, Kiwi flavoured. I think that’s the fruit and not the bird.
Yo dawg, we put a game in your game so you can etc etc. The next chapter covers Elflines Online the TCG, and in game mini game related to the other in game mini game Elflines Online that was in a previous volume. This chapter has full instructions on how to play the game (using a regular deck of cards), maybe do this as a downtime activity as it could be a bit long for mid session. There’s also cheating, for if you don’t believe in playing fair. And buying, selling, and trading cards for all you collectors out there. Or as I did a while back, give your Fixer a niche market.
More leisure related activities next with the SpinningYour Wheels chapter. Here we have bicycles, skates, and skateboards. Bikes get the most attention with details on a bunch of customisation options, from folding frames to save space, to enclosed tricycles for protection from the weather. Great for the Edgerunner who wants exercise and an environmentally friendly transport method.
The 12 days of Cybermas come next, as with the previous volume’s 12 days of Gunmas, this is a bunch of gear from CP2020 updated and re-statted for CPRed. In this chapter there’s such favourites as the Blitzkrieg Arc-Thrower Cyberarm (I still haven’t forgiven one of my CP2020 players for the bullshit he did with this thing), and the Chainrip forearm mounted chainsaw which is used for totally legit lumberjack reasons.
And the grand finale of this book, Going Metal, a chapter dedicated to full body cybernetic conversions. As with a lot of CPRed supplements this section starts with some in character dialogue. This time from Samantha the full body conversion firefighter that featured in the Black Dog story in the core book. This covers things about FBC community, how they help each other, dealing with public perception, and the history of FBCs. A nice bit of flavour to set them in the world, especially coming from an emergency worker, much nicer than Adam Smasher’s rantings of old.
Then we get the mechanics of how they work. the brain and a few associated bits being removed from the meat body and placed in a Biosystem. This Biosystem is then placed into the chrome body of choice. Therapy is recommended before brain removal to maximise humanity score before the inevitable loss from so much metal. It is also possible to get therapy in the Biosystem via braindance, to help offset the HL from this part of the procces.
We then get what FBCs can and can’t do such as disease immunities, not needing food, etc. There’s a bot about switching bodies as the Biosystem can be swapped from one to another. Then there’s the write ups for a bunch of different bodies. Most of the originals from CP2020 are here, from the human appearing Gemini to the walking tank Dragoon, to my favourite the Spyder infiltration model. Each write up lists the cyberware included and the HL for it, the lowest being the Gemini at 14, the Spyder being the highest at a whopping 73, even more than the Dragoon.
I did notice that the Burroughs and Wingman models from CP2020 don’t return, but this isn’t much of a problem as you could probably build them as these things are now modular. Yep, want to put Gemini like skin or Dragon level armour plating on a different model, well you can. Well apart from putting skin on a Dragoon, that would just look fucked up… On second thoughts, I’d house rule you can do that.
Ok, so how would this go down on our test case. Let’s say Shatter got on the wrong side of someone, maybe that date’s ex, and needs his everything replaced.
His starting stat block is as below, mainly centred around physical stats as you’d expect for a solo.
So first we remove the chrome that causes HL from this body and give him therapy to get back to his max. Using average dice rolls to regain the 29 he’s lost would take 2 weeks of extreme therapy (average 14 points per week from 4D6 for a total of 28) and one week of regular (the remaining 1 point) assuming progress is made each week. So 3 weeks minimum and 2500eb. This puts him up to his max Humanity of 60
Then we take his brain and put it in a Biosystem (10,000eb), where he loses 14 points, brining his Humanity down to 46. Another round of intensive braindance therapy (1,000eb 1 week) can bring him up to 56. (The Biosystem is Borgware so means his max humanity is depressed by 4 from this)
Then we can put him in a body. At 56 Hum some of the more extreme conversions would be too psychologically dangerous to put him in. So I’d go for an Alpha Class (9,900eb), the starter model for a lot of ‘borgs. This has a loss of 21, bringing him to 35, mentally healthier than he was before, but without his old cyberware.
So mental stats stay the same and the others are adjusted from the body the character is placed in. The Linear Fram in the alpha class increases Shatter’s body to 12, increasing his HP and Death Saves. Reflex, Dex and move may change depending on the cyberware installation. As the Alpha has no components that affect these his scores in them remain unaltered. This gives the new stat block below.
So after major surgery, four weeks of therapy and a total of 23,400eb in parts he has his new shiny body. Ready to get shot stabbed and blown up all over again. Though this one has much more room for upgrades including some exclusive for FBCs.
Overall, after working through it, this is a neat system. Obviously the costs involved make it suitable more for characters that have had a few successful jobs, or someone willing to bankroll them. Also the time involved for therapy alone means either a time-skip to when the character’s up and about again, or playing a temp character whilst this one’s in the shop.
In all a damn good collection of supplemental material for CPRed. You can go on a date, buy guns, play cards, ride a bike and get your body replaced just from this volume. I got my copy from Drive Thru RPG HERE as I wanted the physical copy, and this is the only way to get the FBC rules. However if you don’t want the ‘borg section but want the others and don’t mind them only being in .pdf, the rest of the chapters are available at the free DLC section on R.Talsorian’s website at the link HERE .
The Data Screen collects the tables that you’d most likely need for in game use into a single document. In the package there’s a preview sheet showing the layout, a massive .jpeg of the front artwork, the artwork again spread across a 4 page .pdf, and the inside of the screen itself in two 6 page pdfs. The 6 page pdfs have a front and back cover and 4 pages of tables, which would be the 4 panels of the inside of the physical screen.
The two versions of the screen are light and dark mode. I really appreciate this. A lot of people use dark mode on screens to avoid eye strain from the glare. However, people with astigmatisms, like me, can often get ghosting on text on dark modes. So this way there’s an option for each camp.
The first panel coves skill checks, difficulties, modifiers, and critical rolls. Also there is a list of what counts as an “action” for purposes of combat. The second panel covers combat with initiative, movement, range DVs, fire modes, typical damage etc. Pretty much everything you need for a Friday Night Firefight. Third is melee combat, explosives, armour values and cover protection. Finally the fourth panel covers wound states, and critical injuries. A very combat focused screen, but that is going to be when you need a lot of tables you can consult quickly. Other in game situations tend to move slower so you can look things up at a more relaxed pace.
if you want all the tables you’re likely to need quickly in one place, or like me have the first printing of the core book with a couple of errors in the tables and don’t want to dig through the errata this is perfect, specially at the current price ($1.00/£0.79 as of writing) on DriveThruRPG HERE. As a cyberpunk film classic says “I’d buy that for a dollar!”
Three Kobolds With A Trench Gun 