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Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, like every book released for Cyberpunk over the past three decades, is a collaborative project. It began at the top, with concepts and outlines, then passed onto the writers (introduced in the last dev log) to hang some polymer muscle on the cyberskeleton. To encourage communication, not just between the writers and myself but between the group as a whole, I set up a Discord server for the team.

Then we got to work. Questions flowed in all directions as work continued.

“What if we did X?”

“How do you do Y using the core mechanics?”

“We have rules for Stickball, so what about …”

Each time someone asked a rules question or suggested an idea, RTG senior designer James Hutt and I went hmmm. We realized a few new subsystems could enhance the game by adding variety and depth to the game’s robust core mechanics. As always, when working on new designs, we began with a simple concept: new rules should be fun and optional. No Mission in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn requires new mechanics to complete. GMs and Players are free to give them a pass if they like. Agent hacking can be reduced to a simple Electronics/Security Tech Check. Car chases can run using the existing vehicle combat rules from the Cyberpunk RED core rulebook. You get the idea. Optional and fun were our watchwords.

So, what new rules did we include, and why do so many of them feel familiar? Read on, but beware of spoilers for Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn. I’ll do my best to stay vague, but clever minds can work out some of the book’s contents based on what’s beamed into your eyeballs (or fed into your ears via a screenreader) below.

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Vehicle Chases

When I counted the number of car chases our writers added to Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, I realized we needed a dedicated vehicle chase system – something fast, fluid, and designed to spotlight more than just the (probably nomad) character sitting behind the wheel. I’m not claiming originality here – I was inspired by chase systems from past TTRPGs – but I believe they work well with the existing vehicle combat rules of Cyberpunk RED, creating an exciting subsystem easily plugged into the game. We’ve written four specific chase scenes into Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn for you to play with.

For fun, we released the rules as Hot Pursuit, free to download, back in May 2024. 

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Agent Hacking

The genesis of this ruleset comes courtesy of Dave Ackerman, Cyberpunk veteran and RTG company nudge. Upon reviewing an early draft of the first mission, he sent this as feedback, “I see the punk, but where’s the cyber? Where are the tech-based solutions to the problems presented?” He had a point, so I dusted off notes for the lore and mechanics of Agents I had written a year earlier and worked with the writers to incorporate them into the book. Agents, if you don’t know, are AI-driven smartphone equivalents. They’re ubiquitous during the 2045 period and, like real-world mobile devices, a potential point of failure for operational security. We worked out specific rules for hacking Agents from afar using a device known as a Breacher. We also expanded 2045 Netrunner capabilities, allowing them to add their Interface Role Ability to the task thanks to a cyberdeck hardware option called the Crunch Whistle. The rules add classic “I’ll access his phone from across the room and download his schedule” style hacking to Cyberpunk RED. 

Sound familiar? That’s probably because you’ve already read All About Agents, a DLC offering these rules for free (in addition to expanded lore and new gear!). There are eight specific instances calling out the benefit of Agent hacking in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, but clever Players will find additional opportunities.

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Roller Derby

I have a confession to make. As a Gen Xer, I have a fondness for bad rollersport movies. 1975’s Rollerball. 1986’s Solarbabies. 1990’s Prayer of the Rollerboys. Roller derby is, in my mind, an incredibly punk sport: violent, showy, and locally organized. There is only one instance of playing in a roller derby match in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, but I couldn’t resist working with writer Linda Evans to create a specialized ruleset a cyberpunk twist on the skate-based sport. 

We released the rules, with lore about the history of roller derby in the Cyberpunk universe, in Chasing the Rabbit, our February 2024 DLC.

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Flash of Luck

Any GM who has ever run a heist or a con in a game knows the perils of a planning spiral. “What if they have camera drones?” “Are we prepared if they have mechanical locks instead of electronic locks?” “Do we have a backup for our backup exit strategy?” The desire of Players to account for every possibility when only a fraction of information is available can grind a campaign to a near halt, with the GM sitting and waiting while the Players spend an entire session (or more!) scouring blueprints, making checklists, and asking an endless number of “what if?” questions. Flash of Luck provides a solution by offering Players a backup plan: when their Crew encounters the unexpected during a heist or con, they can spend Luck Points and craft a flashback scene to explain how they did, in fact, plan to overcome this obstacle. There are caveats: First, the more unlikely or complex the flashback, the more Luck Points it costs. Second, the Crew is still responsible for passing any Skill Checks and spending any money required for the flashback to be viable. Most importantly, the GM always has veto power. 

We realize, especially in a game based on gear and economy like Cyberpunk RED, Flash of Luck can be incredibly powerful. That’s why we recommend being cautious when allowing it. The idea works well as a reason to say, “Yes, we did remember to pack a scrambling device to attach to this security camera, even though we forgot to account for it earlier,” but not so much as an explanation for why a Solo has been carrying a rocket launcher slung on their back the entire time, even though they never purchased it and it isn’t on their character sheet.

This is a new ruleset, unique to Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, and I can’t claim originality here. It was inspired heavily by both Blades in the Dark and the Leverage TTRPG.

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Headquarters

Want to build your own Crew HQ, complete with fun bonuses for each unique room? You’ll love the Headquarters rules, then! They don’t come up during play in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, but make for a fun reward when the campaign is done.

I won’t go into detail here, but I will suggest you check out No Place Like Home, the August 2024 DLC, where we shared these rules with you for free.

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Other Mechanics

We incorporated two other interesting mechanics in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn. The first is the Clock. Again, not original – the concept of precise timing when running events in a session has been used for decades – but this is the first time we’ve fully codified the idea ourselves. In several of this book’s Missions, the GM will set a Clock to keep track of time in either realistic increments (hours and minutes) or abstract increments (Combat Rounds). Sometimes, the Clock merely keeps track of time (you have X time units to accomplish your goals, and each task completed shaves units from the Clock). In others, the Clock also acts like a cuckoo clock, spitting out specific occurrences when it reaches a certain time (“at the bottom of Round 3, X happens”). Players will encounter at least four Clocks in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn.

The final new mechanic is a simple method of keeping track of mass combat without rolling for every combatant (or even whole groups of fighters). The spoiler alert is strong with this one, so stop reading if you want to go into the game fresh.

At one point during Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, the Crew will find themselves engaged in a mass combat involving hundreds of allies and enemies. The base mechanic of the giant hullabaloo is simple:

1. Each side is assigned a Combat Number, based in part on previous actions taken by the Crew.
2. Opposed Checks are made each Round. 1d10 + Combat Number vs 1d10 + Combat Number. Actions taken by Edgerunners during the fight can add bonuses or penalties to the Checks. When one side wins, the Combat Number of the other side drops.
3. Random Chaos effects are available, throwing unexpected and potentially dangerous obstacles in the way of one side or another (or sometimes both!). These can change a side’s Combat Number with temporary modifiers or permanent alterations.
4. During the fight, each member of the Crew acts as normal during Combat with Movement Actions and Standard Actions. Depending on their choices, an Edgerunner’s actions on their Turn can change the Combat Number of one side or the other.
5. Victory is achieved when one side reaches a Combat Number of zero, or a specific objective is achieved.

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There’s quite a lot to look forward to in Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn. New action, new adventures, new locations, new factions, new lore, and new rules (though we shared quite a bit, for free, ahead of time!). We hope you enjoy it.

Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn will debut (if all goes well) on October 15, 2024 but we have one more dev log to share with you before then. Join us next Monday when we throw up a thousand spoiler warnings and give you a Gamemaster’s Tour of the book. NO PLAYERS ALLOWED!

See you then and stay safe on The Street

J Gray

Line Manager for Cyberpunk