I'm putting together a list of street games that are commonly played in my cyberpunk setting. They're typically unregulated and illicit - like street racing or playing tag on rollerblades wielding tasers. These games are likely to be encountered, if not actively participated in, by the players if they spend any time enjoying Neo Tokyo's nightlife.

As a consumer, how much would you need (rules, stats, applicable data) for any given street game? Should I leave the game up to the DM's interpretation or provide more structure? Some games - like a thematic variation of basketball called "Glitchball" commonly played by augments - might actually be played out on a grid just like combat; some racing games might use chase mechanics; others may need an entirely different treatment (like "Tag" which is basically just cat-and-mouse on hoverboards wielding tasers).

I'm just trying to get a good feel for how much information is too much or not enough. Right now, I have it limited to a bullet-point list. Y'alls design philosophy here would be helpful.

Just my $0.02 worth, but go into as much detail as possible about cyberpunk street gangs. List their leaders (with stats and cyberware), average members (with stats and typical cyberware), typical motivations for joining, the turf that they control, any affiliations with other groups in the city (are they used as disposable troops by the yakuza, or the cops?). initiations they must pass to get in, etc.

In short, go a little bit more than the gang info and listings that were in Cyberpunk 2020's Night City sourcebook. It will pay off because the gangs and their activities are the background radiation of a cyberpunk city from which allof the other action and business gets built upon.

Anecdote Time - My players never knew what hit them when they encountered the Bozos. I never would have thought of them, but someone at RTG did. None of my players expected them. By the end of that first Bozo encounter, the players changed the main thrust of the campaign from corporate espionage to wiping out every last Bozo in existence. The Bozo Pogram was on!

I'm hoping that you give your players the same kind of experience.

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 16, 2023, 10:38:24 PM
Anecdote Time - My players never knew what hit them when they encountered the Bozos. I never would have thought of them, but someone at RTG did. None of my players expected them. By the end of that first Bozo encounter, the players changed the main thrust of the campaign from corporate espionage to wiping out every last Bozo in existence. The Bozo Pogram was on!

My interest, it's piqued. Care to elaborate on what happened with these Bozos and why it had such a significant impact?

I don't enjoy complex sub-games within an RPG game (Paizo in particular seem to love this and do it really badly), but some notes on eg what skills to use to resolve a game would be good. If the game is basically non-lethal combat then notes on using the combat system to resolve it if desired.

From a GM-standpoint, it's pathological for me. *I* will never be completely satisfied. I'm always looking for elements to suss out and put into the game *contextually* to the genre and "feel" I'm trying to evoke. Most of my players don't realize it until they're playing in other people's games, or after the campaign they'll see/hear from my campaign notes how much "stuff" we never even got to.

Asking the question of how "flavorful" you like your setting, to me, is like "how good do you want your food to taste?"

I want my players to be immersed so fully they dream about it. They pester me with questions between game-sessions, they fret over bad situations, they feel awesome in their triumphs and their food tastes better.

Cyberpunk - Have secret locales in neighborhoods that are unique for those hoods, Augmented sports? Absolutely! Unique foods, tech etc. Humans are resourceful, make jank-tech that have surprising uses. New drugs made from unlikely easily obtainable sources (with horrible/awesome effects). The point is you don't need to create subsystems necessarily, you need only to create flavor consistently in the form of things that you use. Neighborhoods in cyberpunk genre are often insular where they exist, so they should be unique in some of their expressions. This cuts across class too. Those folks living in the tops of skyscrapers, whose feet never touch the filthy ground, also have their own customs and consumables. Who do you think pays for the augmented sports that may/may not exist among the streetfolks? What about more decadent varieties that are... higher stakes?

There is no limit to this stuff - you don't need mechanics. You need to create flavor for your setting with conviction.

I like a lot of details in my settings. I don't like a lot of detail in setting products.  What I want out of setting products is quality, well-considered details, that I can then merge into my setting.

Granted, that's difficult to do, because part of what gives the detail its quality is how it fits into the larger picture.  So it might be better to say that I want the setting product to be well-edited.  Make it as tight as you want, but edit out the weak parts.

That's in general.  I have zero interest in Cyber-Punk in any form.

Stats - unnecessary.

Rules - a brief rundown would be good, a little more detail where it isn't self-explanatory.

Flavor Text - give me some current competitors (good and bad), some rumors, some current events, some locations.

Quote from: Thornhammer on March 17, 2023, 11:12:32 AM
Stats - unnecessary.

Rules - a brief rundown would be good, a little more detail where it isn't self-explanatory.

Flavor Text - give me some current competitors (good and bad), some rumors, some current events, some locations.

Well put. I concur. If players want to participate superficially I would improvise. If they wanted to form a team and have contests it would be helpful to have more info to build from, but I could probably wing it. I don't really need to pay for sub-game rules when I'd rather have more useful material in the supplement.

As an aside, both Grav-Ball and Rollerball exist in my Traveller campaign. I even own the Grav-Ball game from FASA. But my players have never done more than have conversations with a few of the athletes.

Quote from: FF_Ninja on March 16, 2023, 11:04:50 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 16, 2023, 10:38:24 PM
Anecdote Time - My players never knew what hit them when they encountered the Bozos. I never would have thought of them, but someone at RTG did. None of my players expected them. By the end of that first Bozo encounter, the players changed the main thrust of the campaign from corporate espionage to wiping out every last Bozo in existence. The Bozo Pogram was on!

My interest, it's piqued. Care to elaborate on what happened with these Bozos and why it had such a significant impact?

The Bozos specialize in psychological horror, they enjoy scaring their targets to death. Imagine a gang where each individual has the psychotic personality of The Joker and has biosculpted themselves to look like circus clowns - that level of mentality.

The players first got the Bozos attention by shoving one out of the way when walking on the sidewalk. The Bozos responded with squirt guns and cream pies, the squirt guns were loaded with acid and the cream pies had a binary explosive in them. Right after the firefight, the players were wanted by the Night City PD for murder of a corporate family, conveniently framed by the Bozos. While hiding in their high rise apartment, they found an inflatable sex doll in clown makeup outside of their window - when they shot it, they found out that it was filled with hydrogen when it exploded. Every job they went on, they saw at least one Bozo with a bright red balloon watching them, even during a netrun.

After an in game month of this, the players went on the offensive. See a Bozo, kill a Bozo. Several other gangs and neighborhood citizens helped out while a media corp backed video team was against them (the team would trade cyberware and money for the opportunity to videotape the Bozos scaring the crap out of people for entertainment).

We didn't finish the campaign because Real Life got in the way, but goddamn that was some fun I will never forget.