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Happy release day, choombas! Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn is available for sale on DriveThruRPG now. It should also be available as a physical book via the R. Talsorian Games webstore later today. Experience shows the book will work through the distribution chain in the United States within the next month. We can’t predict how long it will take to reach international stores.

Now, onto the dev log! As promised last week, I’m giving you a GM’s tour of Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn. I’m writing this dev log to help GMs decide whether or not they want to run Hope Reborn at this table. As such, it contains massive spoilers. Do not read further if you want to play in the campaign!

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Nothing but GMs here? Nova! Let’s move forward.

We begin at the beginning with the Cast and Crew. I always recommend reading this page and giving your thanks to the people whose hard work made the book possible. Next is the Table of Contents, followed by the Introduction. 

Playing the Campaign is a short chapter that covers the use of the book as a single campaign and information on how each Mission is organized. There’s also a sidebar covering terminology, the infoboxes scattered throughout the book, and awarding Improvement Points.

I think everyone, GMs and Players alike, should read A Tale of Hope. This short story, by Will Moss, introduces The Forlorn Hope to a new generation of gamers. I won’t spoil this one except to say that when you’re done you’ll know more about the bar and the people in it, and you’ll have some feels.

Now come the adventures (aka Missions). In addition to a rollicking good time, each comes fully standard with the following: 

• An estimate of how long it should take to run, based on our playtesting. 
• A flow chart of the Mission, showing how it runs in an easy-to-read graphic format.
• A set of Rumors so you can feed juicy bits of world background to your Players, either via a Media’s Credibility Role Ability or through random gossip picked up on The Street.
• A Downtime section at the end, offering advice on how much downtime to give the Crew and suggestions on how to transition to the next Mission in the campaign.

The first Mission, by Eddy Webb, is entitled The Angel’s Share. It is designed to be an introduction to both Cyberpunk RED as a game and Hope Reborn as a campaign. It begins with a simple Cyberpunk trope: the gig. Get a job, do the job, get paid for the job. The job in question is low stakes: John and Marianne Freeman, owners of The Forlorn Hope, want you to find an XBD dealer named Blank and put him out of business. Chances are, it’ll go smoothly. This is a low-risk job. What happens next? Not so smooth. You see, on their way back to The Hope, the bar explodes. The Crew must face life and death stakes here, with only ten Rounds to pull those trapped inside out. To add insult to injury, just as the bar collapses, the Red Chrome Legion pulls up to take advantage of the chaos. The Crew needs to fight off the gangers while the survivors escape. When all is said and done, the rest of the campaign is set: The Forlorn Hope will be rebuilt, and the Crew will help ensure it happens.

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Real Estate Rumble by Paris Arrowsmith and Tracie Hearne is a classic three-act Mission. It begins with Marianne asking the Crew to serve as her proxy in dealing with real estate agent Jack Skorkowsky. Yes. That Jack Skorkowsky. Her husband is still recovering, and she can’t leave his side. Jack promises to find the perfect new home for The Forlorn Hope … but it’ll take time. In the meanwhile, maybe the Crew can do a job for him? Act One: The Edgerunners clear out a half-finished office building transformed into a death maze. Act Two: They investigate an explosion at one of Jack’s properties, only to fight a group of scavvers. Act Three: Jack has found the perfect home for The Hope! Only, while Jack’s checking out the building, a bunch of Bozos are checking him out. It all ends in a car chase as the Crew attempts to retrieve a GRAF3 construction drone stolen by the Bozos.

Welcome to the Neighborhood by Linda Evans is a setting piece. John and Marianne agree the building is perfect but want to know more about Woodland Park, the neighborhood where the bar would be located. They’ll pay the Crew to move in for a month and compile intelligence on the people, places, and power structures of the area. What follows is a series of sidequests: A small invading force attacks the guerilla gardeners living in a nearby apartment building. The local roller derby team needs a squad to jam against. Biotechnica crossbred a venus flytrap and a palm tree, and some doomba was stupid enough to climb it and get trapped by the fronds. A small-time gang wants to move into the neighborhood and mess it up. A cute Rockerboy goes missing in the Badlands. After a month of helping the locals with their problems, the Crew will know Woodland Park well enough to report back to the Freemans. 

Next comes The Devil’s Cut by Melissa Wong. This is a heist. Think Oceans 11. Think Leverage. Marianne needs pretty bottles to put on the shelf behind the bar, and a newly opening “booze bank” named The Devil’s Cut has them. Only they can’t do a smash-and-grab. The Crew needs to play this smart. Don’t worry, though; we’ve included an expert – a retired pro named Harry the Shrimp – to help guide them through the process. We break the heist down into stages, with options for intelligence gathering, options for infiltration, options for the snatch, and options for escape. And if everything runs smooth and your Players get itchy after a Mission with little combat? End it with a fun police chase!

The penultimate Mission is Hope’s Calling!!! courtesy of Chris Spivey. The new Forlorn Hope is ready to open. There’s just a few things to cross off the list before the doors open at 9pm. Can the Crew help? What follows might seem like another series of sidequests, but they have a greater purpose. Each time the Crew ticks a box on their list, they collect points. Those points will matter later when, nineteen minutes after The Hope opens, the Red Chrome Legion attacks en masse. The better the Crew did during the first part of the Mission, the better The Forlorn Hope’s chances in this fight as the mass combat number of the bar goes up and the gang goes down. If all goes well, The Hope’s opening night goes off with a figurative bang, and the Red Chrome Legion is routed. If not? There’s a literal bang, and the campaign ends.

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It all ends with Ripping the Ripper by Frances Stewart. While the Crew has been helping re-establish The Forlorn Hope, John and Marianne have tasked someone else with investigating the destruction of the original bar. It turns out a scumbag named Ripper is responsible. He runs scavver crews, known as Diggers, for Maelstrom, and he’s pissed at the way the Freemans have helped some of “his” scavvers to escape to a better life. Now that they know who did the deed, the Freemans want revenge, and they’re willing to pay the Crew to do their dirty work. From here, the Mission branches off into two paths. If your Players really enjoyed The Devil’s Cut, they might pick the con job option, where they trick Ripper into assaulting a vault secured by Rocklin Augmentics and let the Neocorp finish him off. If they choose violence, they can make their way through the Hot Zone and assault Ripper in his mancave, located in the remains of an old hotel. Either way, they’ll take down the Ripper for good and avenge the destruction of the original Forlorn Hope.

The book ends with an appendix of new rules. I covered those in a previous dev log, so instead of going over those a second time, I’d like to take a moment here to point out two features new to Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn.

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First, we have the condensed stat blocks. For major characters like Ripper, you’ll find full stat blocks similar to those in previous books. In fact, for Ripper, you’ll find two! For minor characters, we’ve whittled them down to the essentials to make finding the right numbers fast and easy. HP. Combat Number. Initiative. Move. Important Skill Bases. Attacks. Armor. Important Gear and Cyberware. Special thanks to JonJontheWise. His three-mook system (presented in the Listen Up to JonJontheWise DLC) helped inspire this new stat block format. 

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Second, you’ll find Infoboxes scattered throughout the book. They contain in-world information Edgerunners might know about the people, places, and things of Night City (even if their Players don’t). Each Infobox includes a DV. GMs are free to share this data with their Players for free, or ask for an appropriate Skill Check like Education, Local Expert, or Streetwise against the DV before handing it over.

That’s it for this Dev Log! We worked hard on Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn, and hope fans of the game, long-standing and new, enjoy what we’ve done with this classic location. You can pick up the book now as a PDF from DrivethruRPG and, if not now later today, as a physical book from our webstore. If you prefer to shop local, make sure to ask your friendly game store to put in an order for it!

 Next week, we’ll have a bonus Dev Log: The Making of Woodland Park – a behind-the-scenes peek at how we created a neighborhood for Hope Reborn.

J Gray

Line Manager for Cyberpunk