The Pick Up Pile – Birthday Haul!

So, earlier this week I became even older than I have been before, and was given some cash to celebrate. Of course I did the responsible thing with my money and blew most of it on TTRPG books.

New additions to my collection are Danger Gal Dossier for Cyberpunk Red, Building Better Worlds for the Alien RPG, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide for 4th Edition D&D.

From a quick look through each; Danger Gal Dossier looks to be a useful collection of NPCs, not just stat blocks, but personalities and organisations. I look forward to giving the NPC creation guidelines. bash in my proper look through. Building Better Worlds is for anyone who wants to play Newt’s family. As I got the PDF before the hardcopy arrived I have been messing about with the planet and colony creation tables and they’re a fun mini game, more on that in the longer write up. And the 4e DMG seems to be laid out pretty well and have some decent advice for running the game.

Getting the 4e DMG also means I have one from each edition now. 1st, 2nd (revised), 3.0, 4th, and 5th.

I also grabbed a few Magic the Gathering D&D art cards. i don’t play MTG, but these make great bookmarks and are just the right price to hit the free postage threshold on one site I order from.

The Pick Up Pile. Pondering the Cyberpunk Red Netrunning Deck

Now this is a game accessory I’ve been after for a while, but never seen it at a decent price when I had the cash… until now. The Cyberpunk Red Netrunning Deck from R.Talsorian Games. Physical version, as reviewed here, available from most good game shops and nerd suppliers, digital version is available HERE from Drive Thru RPG.

So, what’s in the box? and will it help you hack the Gibson? There are 52 regular playing card sized cards in here. All nicely cut and of a sturdy cardstock. The cards are typical playing card/CCG size, as shown in the picture below, so you can use standard size sleeves to cover them if you want that protection (which I have done).

The cards are split into four categories, 7 Floors, 3 Daemons, 27 Black ICE, and 15 Programs. Each representing a part of the hacking system from the core rulebook. You get:

The Pick Up Pile. Picked up 17/03/24

Just a quick one. I finally managed to grab a copy of the Netrunning Deck for Cyberpunk Red by R.Talsorian Games. Every time I’ve looked when I’ve had the cash before they’ve been out of stock. in the places I use.

I’ll get an entry up with a few thoughts on these over the next couple of days whilst i continue to work on the next full book review.

The Pick Up Pile. Pondering Interface Red Volume 3 & Cyberpunk Red Data Screen. [UPDATED]

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.

Top left: Interface Red Vol 2. Bottom Left: Vol 1. Right: Vol 3.

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.

The Pick Up Pile. Picked Up – 24/02/24

Yeah choom, another pick up post so soon. I have been waiting for this release so jumped on it when it went live a few minutes ago. I just grabbed Interface Red Volume 3 for Cyberpunk Red. I ordered it in physical and digital versions, and when I was there I grabbed the PDF of the GM screen, whilst it’s still cheap, so I’ve got all the useful charts together.

I’ll probably bump Interface Red 3 up the review queue as being a slim volume it’s going to be a quick read. Especially having read a lot of this in the DLCs that have already com out.. I think I’ll cover it next in PDF, then add anything that stands out from the physical version if applicable in an addendum later.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 27

And the final Cyberpunk Red character for this year’s challenge is Laura Mipsum. Media who reports on stickball matches and codes news of what Night City’s gangs are up to in the scores.

Like the other characters I wanted to tie something from the last year’s DLCs into Laura, so I hit on a Stickball reporter, and also gave her a Sitckball stick as a weapon.

As you can probably tell by the bit of blurb on her Lifepath she is very much influences by the DJ in The Warriors played my Lynne Thigpen. A character I have ripped off homaged in many games over the years.

I adjusted her stats a bit from the starting package to give her more points in Streetslang. Considering who she reports to and about I thought this important, being more of a street broadcaster than one for general audiences.

Not much else to type, especially as insomnia has me feeling all wobbly.

Tomorrow’s D&D 5e character is “Professor” Montgomery Fitzwilliam, A Changeling, Haunted One, College of the Spirits Bard, Cartomancer.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 20

Day 20, how is the month so far through? Anyway, as before, Saturday’s are for Cyberpunk Red which brings us today’s character Jeff Benzos, a Medtech and drug dealer.

A characte born into a gang background where he is stuck, due to a gang leader’s threats against hie remaining family. Jeff is a gifted medical technician, and a reasonably competent trader.

The core book says you can only make pharmaceuticals with his role ability, not street drugs. I say they count as street drugs if that’s where you sell them.

With my plan to use add ons that were new to me in the last year I went for the cyberhand and fingers for Jeff here. It builds some important parts of a medical kit directly into him. And makes him reigning rock-paper-scissors champion.

Skills were based on the recommended package, but a few were rediced by a few points so I could add Trading at a reasonable enough level to enable him to make a modest profit on selling the meds he can produce.

Next week’s Cyberpunk Red character is the Media Laura Mipsum.

Tomorrow’s D&D5e character is Githyanki Gate Warden Eldritch Knight Vryn’a’ath.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 13

Day 13 beings us back round to Cyberpunk Red. Today’s character is Wei Liang, a former gang member turned corporate executive who works for a small international robotics company.

I thought of him as the kind of person who sees that there’s little to no difference in the way gangs fight and the way corporations do, other than scale and legality. So he’s bringing his experience from growing up in a harsh environment to the kind of place where it can make him a lot of money. Destined to be an apex predator of the board room, if he lives long enough.

Mechanically I went with slightly tweaked versions of the recommended packages again. They cover most things you’d want for a specific role.

Gear wise I added a voice stress analyser and a bug detector to his cyberware for an edge in meetings. Then I spent the rest on a burner agent with the City Database app on it so he can stay informed, and a drug purity detector to make sure his synth coke’s clean.

Speaking of drugs, next week’s Cyberpunk Red character will be Medtech and drug dealer Jeff Benzos. Tomorrow’s D&D5e character is Verity, the Planar Philosopher Wizard.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 6

Saturday;s this yea are for Cyberpunk Red. Of as I’ve got it written down in my planing notes for this challenge “Saturday Night’s all right for a Friday Night Firefight.”

For this year’s Cyberpunk characters I decided to go with roles that I rarely play, and don’t come up in my games much, starting with a cop. Also I intend to have a few things in there from either the Black Chrome gear book or one of the last year’s DLC PDFs.

Today’s character is Amrit “Crash” Chakravarty, an NCPD SWAT officer.

“Dammit, Crash, you’re a loose cannon” is something I’d expect to hear around this character a lot.

As usual, I rolled for backstory with maybe a couple of re-rolls and got an interesting somewhat intense character. More interested in personal honour (though how this stack up to anyone else’s is anyone’s guess) than law. Not a friendly person either from looking at those results, but effective at his job.

For stats and skills I went with a tweaked version of the suggested characteristics for quick characters. As this is a class I’ve not built much, and not for a long time I stuck with a simple build. Mainly moving a few points from conversation into Human Perception and Persuasion. This was to help with the idea that he’s less friendly and chatty and more interested in reading and manipulating people.

Cyberware, I took the basic holster and pocket suggested and added a few pieces of medical related kit. This struck me as the kind of thing the first person through the door at a SWAT situation would have to protect them from gas weapons.

As for the new gear, I just added a couple of apps to his Agent. Digital Gladiator to play on when half listening to a briefing, Trauma Team for aid if things go wrong.

Next week’s Cyberpunk Red character is Wei Liang, an Exec who works in Mergers and Acquisitions.

Tomorrow’s character is Hrarrank the Barbarian for D&D5e.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Post Mortem

Yep, I know this is late, I know I said I’d do it in the first few days of the month. It was delayed for several reasons;

1. I’m Lazy.
2. Hitman 3 just added Freelancer mode and it’s addictive as hell.
3. I’m lazy

Thoughts presented in no real order, other than how they occurred to me when I was putting together the bullet point draft of this post.

Firstly this has been a fun way to engage with the TTRPG hobby whilst I’m still without a gaming group. Going through the rules, creating a character, learning the ins and outs beats looking at the books on my bookshelf.

I am noticeably better at character creation in systems that I carried over from last year. This year’s D&D and CoC characters didn’t take anywhere near as much time as last year.

Also I improved at character creation on games that were new this time as the weeks progressed. Week 4 characters taking a fraction of the time week 1’s did. Dune was the noticeable example here as the looser more narrative system threw me at first, but was more comfortable by the end. I think I’m now at a stage where I’d be comfortable playing Dune, but not running it,I don’t think I have quite enough of a handle on the game system or style just yet.

Free League’s Year Zero system continues to impress. It’s quite something that the system in Twilight:2000 and Blade Runner from this year, and Alien from last year’s challenge, is so similar across games enabling fairly quick character generation if you’re familiar with another system in the family. Yet the tweaks made for each game really tune it in for the required flavour. Twilight:2000 feel desperate and like they’re trying to survive against the odds, Blade Runner characters feel like noir detectives with better gear and a shitty job.

D&D 5e remains familiar. it was my route back into the hobby and possibly where I’ve made the most characters. This year I took the characters up to 3rd level as that’s where subclasses and more interesting features kick in. This didn’t take much longer if at all than last year’s 1st level characters.

Tiny Dungeon was a last minute addition to the roster after my copy of Blade Runner was delayed. I picked this up last year sometime on offer and it was well worth it. The light pick a few options and done character generation was a breeze and would enable you to get into the game quickly. The rest of the game looking as light makes it seem ideal for quick pick up games.

Speaking of quick, Mörk Borg, quick and very dirty, in a grimy way. This was only made possible by the release of the plain text version of the rules last year. I tried with the normal release and can’t look the the page for too long without a basilisk sized headache developing. Character generation for this was fun and quick, ideal for a game that seems to see characters as disposable. The flavour dripped, almost literally, from some of the descriptions too. As I said in one entry, I think this would be fun for one shots or short campaigns with being so over the top. I don’t think I could face a several month long campaign with this much grimness though.

Cyberpunk Red was very straightforward, it’s an update of an older game so you know what you get; skills, stats, gear, and a lifepath character history. The skill list maybe a bit too long, things like accounting, business, and bureaucracy could all be rolled into business maybe. I guess it depends on how specific you want your character’s skills to be.

The free DLC add ons from R.Talsorian’s site were fun. They really help add a bit more flavour to each character, be it a skateboard and no brains, a bunch of TCG cards, older gear for a more mature character or custom netrunner gear. I hope these continue for as long as possible.

Call of Cthulhu was fun, after making mercenaries and soldiers and spellcasters coming up with normal people with normal jobs is a nice change. Though they’re lives are about to be very not normal.

I think I noted it last year, but the charts for background information really spark my imagination and help flesh out who each character is. This is a common thing across games now but I think CoC‘s is one of the best.

However I would like to see some careers that don’t use EDU for career skill points. Whilst I will always say there’s no suck thing as unskilled work, some careers just don’t use your education that much. I guess true to HPL’s characters this does lead to creating weird intellectual nerds though.

Also I’m not keep on Appearance going down and Education increasing as you age, I’ve only got handsomer and stupider as I’ve aged. More seriously, I’m just not fond of APP as a stat. Maybe it’s just my personal dislike of superficial people.

Overall I’ve been quite pleased with this year’s entries. It’s shown the range of possible characters in hobby, even with these pretty mainstream games. From bartender and professional soldier to insect person druid and minotaur ports hero.

Also this year I learned shortcut keys for ü and Å, this will probably only come in useful in next year’s challenge, as we don’t use those characters in English. Maybe we should though, we need more letters with bits on them.