Homebrew Content Policy

Updated 3.22.2021

Mike Pondsmith’s design career began when he decided to tinker with an older game and we recognize homebrewed content is an essential part of the gaming community. To this end, we’ve put together the following policy for creating and posting homebrew content on the Internet that relates to R. Talsorian Games.

1. Homebrew content must be entirely free. You may not charge money for it nor can you lock it behind a paywall or subscription requirement. If other gamers cannot easily and freely access your content, you have broken this rule. You may not list paid content as “compatible with” or “for use with” any of our games or products. Homebrew content may not be distributed via methods that exist primarily as a retail market such as DriveThruRPG or itch.io. There are exceptions for Virtual Tabletops and apps noted further in the policy.
   • You may subsidize your content via sponsorships, ad revenue, and donations so long as it doesn’t interfere with access to the material. To clarify, we do not consider advertisements run in front of videos or streams to be interfering with access.
   • There is an exception to this rule: if you are running an Actual Play game, you may give subscribers/patrons exclusive access to “behind the scenes” material such as character sheets and campaign notes.
2. Respect our intellectual property.
   • You may not use the titles of our games, books, or trademarks in your own titles. However, you can use them as part of a descriptive subtitle. For example, you cannot call a homebrew PDF “Cyberpunk RED Firearms Locker” but you can call it “Firearms Locker: a Collection of Guns for use with Cyberpunk RED”.
   • You may not reproduce text from our games, books, or products. This includes stat blocks and rulesets. You may reference specific aspects, such as named characters and locations. For example, you might mention that your homebrew Corporation has offices in the Little Europe area of Night City, but you cannot reproduce the descriptive text of Little Europe from the Cyberpunk RED core rulebook. There are exceptions for Virtual Tabletops, apps, and game aids noted further in the document.
   • Snippets or summaries of rules can be shared in audio and visual format, such as when a GM in an Actual Play reads a rule aloud to a player.
   • You can use our game logos (but not our company logo) when making informative videos or advertising/labeling Actual Plays. You may not use our logos or art from our books or products for other projects without prior written permission. Please contact us if you would like to seek such permission.
   • You may not incorporate our colors, stylized fonts, or trade dress (the style and graphic elements of a layout) for your homebrew content with the exception of duplicating the visual format of item, spell, monster, character stat blocks, screamsheets, and character sheets.
   • If your content is provided in any method beyond a forum-style post, you must include the following legal disclaimer in an easily noticeable location such as the end of the document or in the show notes of the podcast: “[Title of your Content] is unofficial content provided under the Homebrew Content Policy of R. Talsorian Games and is not approved or endorsed by RTG. This content references materials that are the property of R. Talsorian Games and its licensees.”
3. Respect other people’s intellectual property. Please do not use anyone’s text, art, or trademarks without permission and proper attribution. There’s plenty of good Creative Commons and public domain art available on the internet.
   • This includes other people’s homebrew content. Do not include their content in your documents or post their content without their permission.
4. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-semitism, sexism, ableism, and intolerance exist in many of the worlds we create, but if you include it in your homebrew content you must be respectful and treat them as the problems they are. Hatred and intolerance can be an aspect of the story you are telling, but the work itself should not be racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-semetic, sexist, ableist, or discriminatory. For example, you can have a racist NPC in your homebrew adventure but you cannot present rules that include a “racial variation” that focuses on a particular real world ethnic or other group. You may not make content under these guidelines that does not meet this requirement.
5. Notwithstanding these rules, R. Talsorian Games reserves the right to request the removal of your homebrew content from any platform for any reason unless specifically approved in writing.

Virtual Tabletops and Apps

Interactive content, such as virtual tabletops and apps, has unique requirements and challenges and we recognize that.

1. When making Virtual Tabletop or app content, you are allowed to create character sheets and “generators” that automate character generation, play aspects such as making Skill Checks and damage rolls, and randomly generated content from our games such as Lifepath, random encounter tables, and Night Markets.
2. Your content can include provisions that automatically populates statistics for weapons, spells, armor, gear, and so forth onto a character sheet.
3. Your content cannot include more than a summary of any material from our games or products and only for the purposes outlined above. For example, a Cyberpunk RED character sheet on a VTT can allow someone to select Techhair as a cyberware option and summarize it as “+2 to Personal Grooming w/ Chemskin (see CPR pg. 359),” but it cannot reproduce the full descriptive text of Techhair.
4. You cannot provide full stat blocks for monsters, NPCs, or defenses/hazards from our games and products in any form.
5. Because distribution options are limited, you may provide access to your content via VTT and app marketplaces so long as your content is free and in compliance with the distribution platforms rules.

Game Aids

Game aids are defined as handouts to be shared, either in person or virtually, to facilitate gameplay. Examples include, but are not limited to: item cards, combat summary “cheat sheets”, and initiative trackers.

1. Your game aid can reproduce information from our games and products but, when possible, cannot include more than a summary of the material, For example, on an item card for Techhair, it can be summarized as “+2 to Personal Grooming w/ Chemskin (see CPR pg. 359),” but it cannot reproduce the full descriptive text of Techhair.
2. Your game aid can reproduce tables and charts from our games and products if needed.
3. Your game aid should not present the rules so completely that it eliminates the need to own the game or product it references.
4. You cannot share game aids that duplicate the function of an existing product produced by RTG or one of our licensees. If you create and share a game aid and, later, an official product is released that performs the same function, we reserve the right to request the homebrew game aid be removed from active circulation. An exception is made for homebrew forms such as character sheets, NPC sheets, vehicle sheets, and so forth. We recognize different people process information differently and encourage the community to create and share forms so players can find the version that best suits their style of play.