The Netrun is Just Another Dungeon (and That's a Good Thing)

I'll admit I have very little experience with cyberpunk themed RPGs. My cousin borrowed Shadowrun from a friend back in the early 90s and we looked through the book. Maybe made characters? And that was it. In the 00s, my buddy Steve had some Forge-inspired story-first games he was developing, and we did some cyberpunk themed games with that. Alex tried to get a RIFTS game going around 10 years ago, which had some cyberpunk elements but was really more superheroic/mecha oriented. More recently, at the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con, I got to play in Keith's Cyberpunk RED game, which was a lot of fun. I think that's about it. 

And yet, while cyberpunk is not my go-to sci fi subgenre, I do really enjoy the themes and aesthetics of it. And I've got some (I think) good ideas for my Missions & Mayhem cyberpunk campaign module, which for now I think will be titled Neon & Nihilism. (Unless I can think of something better in the meantime). 

In M&M's base rules, computer hacking is designed to be relatively quick and painless for the group, as most often only one Hero will be hacking while the others wait around. Make a few quick choices, a few quick rolls, and maybe have to deal with some complications before you succeed or fail. 

For N&N, though, the netrun is probably going to be a fairly important aspect of the campaign. And one complaint I've read about with that in other games is exactly what I was trying to avoid with the main game's hacking rules -- one player taking up a large amount of the game session on the hack/netrun, while the other players sit around twiddling their fingers or scrolling on their phones. 

For N&N, I think I've got a good idea to handle this and get everyone involved. Each Hero (PC) will have a net avatar. This is a secondary character that represents the Hero in cyberspace. The Avatar will have its own class (I'm thinking a Fighter/Thief/Wizard style trio). And the Net will be dungeons. In order to hack into a company's system, the Avatar adventuring party will have to brave the dangers of the dungeon to collect the treasure (whatever info or sabotage they have planned for the netrun). 

The Fighter type class (Cyber-Samurai?) is there to battle security modules and sentient programs to protect the other runners. 

The Thief type class (Shadow Slicer?) is there to retrieve (or plant) whatever needs retrieving, as well as outwitting security programs. 

The Wizard type class (Code Mage?) is there to try and rearrange the virtual environment to the runners' advantage, and will have some limited specials (spells) that can help with combat or infiltration/exfiltration. 

A corporate computer system, internet construct, or AI becomes a series of encounter areas with various challenges meant to keep the party OUT, or eliminate them once they get IN. And somewhere in the maze of programs, data files, subroutines, and whatnot is whatever goal the netrunners are after.  

So pretty much like a D&D dungeon crawl. 

The upside is that the netrun becomes its own adventure, and everyone participates. The downside is that the netrun becomes a dungeon that needs to be prepared, and that players will need two separate character sheets for the campaign. 

I'm also not sure yet how advancement of the meatspace Hero will affect the netrunner Avatar, and vice versa.  

Luckily for me, our modern age isn't that far removed from the typical dystopian cyberpunk setting. Late-stage capitalist megacorps, invasive surveillance tech, government controlled by the oligarchs, and the masses mostly sheep willing to stare at their screens all day waiting for the next dopamine hit. So I won't need to add a lot to the meatspace side of the rules (maybe some replicants, a few gene-splice mods, some cyberware, a bit more near-future tech). M&M can already handle a lot of that. Most of the focus of the book can be on the netrun aspect of the campaign. 

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con Was a Success

Last Sunday, November 30, was our first game con. I picked up Justin around 9am, and we arrived at the cafe just a little before 9:30. Richard was already waiting, as well as Jonathan (Kojaq) who I only had interacted with online before this. We got everything set up, and most players, and Peter the other morning GM, made it there by 10am when we were scheduled to start. But Kurt, the cafe owner, didn't show up until around 11 so we had to make due with water or drinks people brought in from outside for a bit. Kurt had given me the door code so we could get in early, if you're wondering. 

In the morning session, I ran Classic D&D, using the same dungeon from the previous Online Summer Con arranged by Amae's Seoul group. This party followed the same route at first, but had a TPK in their first encounter. Four carrion crawlers took out a party of five 6th to 8th level PCs. As they can, especially if the party only has a cleric as a caster. The players got new PCs from the pre-gen pile and set out again in a different route. They didn't have time to make it to the dragon, but they had a great time anyway. 

Just before the thief misses on a backstab and everyone fails their saves (the Dwarf is already down).

Richard's Call of Cthulhu game only had one character death, but that PC died, was brought back, and died again. 

Richard brought his King in Yellow robes.

 

I didn't hear of any PC deaths in Peter's Black Sword Hack game, but everyone said they had a great game. 

Justin's BSH character sheet

We took a lunch break, and more people arrived for the afternoon games. A couple of people also went home (or elsewhere, anyway) after the morning games. I was a player in Keith's Cyberpunk Red game, which was a lot of fun. I got to play the Solo (combat character), which is always nice. But our new player David (who played his first RPG ever in my morning D&D game) was the star of the show. Of course, Richard's PC managed to shoot Peter's PC in the back...twice! None of us died, though several gang-bangers and scumbags died at our hands. 

The start of the game, in our gang's alley base, dealing with druggies

Jonathan's Mothership game was really good, too, from what I heard. There were definitely some PC deaths as well. 

An alien gestated inside one of the PCs. You'll never believe what happened next~!

Both Scott's 5E game and Elyse's Pathfinder game went over time, but this is something they'd planned for, and the players were aware of this. Scott did have one PC death. Elyse runs a more story-forward sort of game, so no PC deaths in her game. She did a think where players started with blank, or nearly blank character sheets, and had to discover who their PCs were as they played. 

Scott's got a lot of style when he runs a game. We could hear lots of laughing and some shouting from them.

Elyse's players were all really intent on the story that unfolded. 

Then it was the dinner break time. Most folks went home (or elsewhere), but a stalwart few soldiered on through into the night. Peter, Richard, Elyse, Jada, Justin, and I were there the whole day. Keith and his partner CC stayed for evening games, too, but they weren't here for the morning session. 
 

Justin had his group (Jada, CC, Elyse) play board games including Whitehall Mysteries. They also played a few smaller games. Justin had planned to play 1775, a tactical wargame of the Revolutionary War, but I guess they never broke that one out. 

London was scoured for clues.

 

My evening game was Gamma World. Richard, Keith and Peter chose their mutants and set off to explore a ruined tower. They dealt with crumbling infrastructure, hungry mutants, friendly mutants, and at the top of the tower androids intent on capturing Richard's mutated ape PC. Keith dropped to negative HP twice, and Peter once. At the end of the game, Richard escaped with his companions' bodies, evading the androids to survive the horrors of Gamma Terra. We had a blast. 

Peter's altered human scout is down thanks to poisonous two-headed bat mutants. The espers are about to meet the androids. 

It was a long day, but very much worth it. And we plan to do it again sometime soon. Scott wants to do the next event in May. I'll be back home for my son's high school graduation that weekend, but I'll probably help with the organizational side of things as best I can. 
 

 

 

Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza

As I start to type this, the Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza is just wrapping up (according to the schedule). I wasn't there today, but yesterday Flynn and I woke up early and drove up to Daegu for some gaming. It started Friday night with one game session slot, then three on Saturday (we were there for two), and then two more game slots today (Sunday). 

We arrived at Cafe Panoplie in central Daegu at around 8:45am, and they let us in at around 8:50. The first game session was scheduled from 9am to 1pm, but of course people were gathering, buying their first drinks, saying hi to old friends, meeting new people, and all of that. We probably didn't actually start to game until after 9:30. 

My first game was my 2nd choice game for that time slot, a whimsical heist adventure (5E D&D). The DM, Tabi, let us roll up some slightly overpowered 3rd level PCs before the game started. I made a Dwarf Fighter (Noble) who was gruff and a bit pompous. Another player, Rachel, had rolled up a Fairy Barbarian (Gladiator), who acted all nice and sweet until she started to kick ass. The third player, Kimberlee, was new to RPGs, but had played in a 5E game on Friday night. So she used her 1st level Halfling Rogue (unknown background) from the night before, and bumped up to 3rd level. The 4th player didn't show up. 

The adventure was to steal a magical gauntlet from the Magistrate. Using our various skills and backgrounds, and coming up with an intricate plan that we botched the most important part (we paid for a counterfeit gauntlet to be made, but forgot to pick it up before infiltrating the Magistrate's mansion), we bumbled through the mission and succeeded, just at the last minute (real time).

Flynn played a Traveller game called Death Station in the morning slot run by a GM named Nicole who I don't know (this was both of our #1 pick for the slot). He said it was a mission to explore a ship that had been wiped out by a contaminant and they had to science their way through the adventure. He enjoyed it, and was wondering if there is a computerized version of Traveller for solo play. I'll have to look that up. [Or someone in the comments, please give us a link!]

We had found an American style Chinese restaurant on the map and wanted to go there for lunch, but it was closed. Korean style Chinese food is very disappointing compared to the American fare (or Japanese style Chinese). Since it took about 15 minutes to walk there, and there was only a 1 hour lunch break, we ended up going to Lotteria (Korean fast food). 

When we got back, I chatted with my friend Scott a little about the organization of the event (he was an organizer), and he said he's willing to pitch in to help Justin and I if we organize something like this in Busan later. Nice. Then we went to our game tables. We were both in our #1 picks for the afternoon slot (2pm to 6pm), thanks to Scott. 

My afternoon game was Dragonbane, run by the GM Amae. I knew Amae online because he's the admin of the TTRPG in Korea Discord group. He had five pregens  for us. I got the Human Magician. Lem was the Wolfkin Warrior. Lexi was an Elf Archer. Abi was a Halfling Thief. And the fifth player, whose name is escaping me at the moment, was a Mallard Knight that we nicknamed Duck Tank. I didn't know any of these players before the game started. 

The adventure was called The Sinking Tower. We were after treasure, and the tower that rises out of the sea once every 20 years was slowly sinking back down. We managed to bumble our way through most of the puzzle/traps, and a couple of combats. We managed to loot a few small treasures and also got one of the great green emeralds from the top of the tower, with a tense last minute scramble by Lexi's archer. It was a blast, and I'd love to get a chance to play Dragonbane again. 

Flynn's afternoon game was Cyberpunk Red, run by a fellow Busan gamer named Keith. Flynn told me they were a low level street gang, running deliveries of drugs and bootleg chips for Razor, their boss. They got into a deal way over their heads, but somehow managed to charm one of the criminal syndicates, who helped them defeat the cyberninja that was pulling the rigged deals. Flynn's character was a street rapper, and Keith had him use ChatGPT to come up with lyrics for his rap songs during the game, which Flynn enjoyed. 

Keith running his game. Flynn is in the NASA shirt. I don't know the other players.

The Cyberpunk game went down to the wire (6pm). We went across the street to Shake Shack for dinner. Even though we had burgers for lunch, my Dragonbane group had gone there and invited me along. I waited for Flynn, so we showed up a little late and had to sit at another table because another gamer had joined them. 

After that, we headed back home. All in all, a really fun day. And we got to meet some cool new people, and play some games we probably never would have gotten a chance to play if we hadn't gone. I definitely want to run something like this here in Busan in the near future.