There have already been some stellar recommendations made here! I'll add a bit of my favorite stuff.

I recommend reading:

"Running Black" and "Shift Tense" by Patrick Todoroff. This guy writes cyberpunk with a couple of interesting Christian characters in the mix. It made me think a bit about ways to shake up the traditional high tech / low life paradigm.

Additionally, "Burning Chrome", "Neuromancer", "Count Zero", and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" by William Gibson. To me, these are sacred foundational texts of the genre. Especially the titular "Burning Chrome" in that anthology book, which is basically a prequel to kick off Neuromancer. "Johnny Mnemonic" is in that anthology also, and while the movie is vastly different, the movie is still fun to watch.

Also try to pick up a copy of R. Talsorian's "Edge of the Sword Vol. 1 - Compendium of Modern Firearms". I found that particularly useful for the weapons, but also to help me theorycraft and extrapolate the evolution of the weapons "20 minutes into the future".

That reminds me. Since you feature Media characters in your game, also check out the old "Max Headroom" TV show from the '80s. Also google-fu for the UK pilot which is better than the US pilot episode IMHO.

If you want to add any Lovecraftian elements, Chaosium's "Eldritch Chrome" anthology has some interesting ideas, and GURPS Cthulhupunk also has you covered there.

Edit to add: Since some folks mentioned "Blade Runner" and "Streets of Fire", you might look at the "A.D. Police", "Bubblegum Crisis" and "Bubblegum Crash" anime works from '87-'91 (not the A.D. Police - Protect and Serve" and "Bubblegum Crisis 2040" reboots from '99 or so, although they aren't terrible). They were heavily inspired by the aforementioned films and contain numerous easter eggs nodding to them. R. Talsorian even made an RPG for those '87-'91 animes with Cyberpunk 2020 / Fuzion system conversion rules so you could mix the two with relative ease.

Happy Cyberpunk gaming!

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on February 16, 2024, 09:14:45 AM
Hell yeah, that's the stuff right there that can kick off another adventure!

Lawman Johnson's player loved it, and as it happens, the connection might just save his life... and the rest of the party. Good thing Anson the Media just released her from the car boot.  Still we'll see if Johnson picks up her phone call, he's a little...distracted... right now (we're doing some PBP between live sessions).

A sandbox cyberpunk game...hmmm...
Now you got me thinking about how awesome that would be.
Dammit! There's so many genres I want to GM/DM, but I'm only one guy....

question: it probably decades since I've played Cyberpunk, but what is the beef against Cyberpunk Red rules? Are they that bad?

Quote from: blackstone on February 16, 2024, 02:11:52 PM
A sandbox cyberpunk game...hmmm...
Now you got me thinking about how awesome that would be.
Dammit! There's so many genres I want to GM/DM, but I'm only one guy....

question: it probably decades since I've played Cyberpunk, but what is the beef against Cyberpunk Red rules? Are they that bad?

Seth Sorkowsky did a very fair critical review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qREqzlz0iDA
Basically, the refined core game engine is great, but the actual published game's presentation verges on terribad. Connected (important) rules are often hundreds of pages apart.

Edit: The worldbuilding is almost laughable, but that was pretty much true of 1e/2013 and 2020 too. I just scrub all that, using it only for inspirations and vague references. The heart of the game is very much the here and now, not nerdy history-building.

Cities Without Number looks pretty good. going to check out the free version.

any thoughts?

Quote from: blackstone on February 16, 2024, 03:19:40 PM
Cities Without Number looks pretty good. going to check out the free version.

any thoughts?

I did a review of it here: https://www.therpgsite.com/reviews/badapple-reviews-cyberpunk-games/msg1267417/#msg1267417

I like the random tables to fill out a setting but I think it's a bit over hyped.  If you want a d20 based cyberpunk game then I strongly recommend taking a look at Neon Blood.

Sandbox Cyberpunk? Is there any other way to do it? LOL. No seriously, I sandbox everything, so it's a given for me...

Who Rules the Streets in South Night City?
Post-2020 it looks like it's a free-for-all. After the events of Arasaka Nuke incident, tens of thousands of survivors flooded into South Night City. What specific gangs are there - TECHNICALLY are up to you. There are a few known locales in CPR that mention a host of gangs that control those specific businesses and locales. They're up to you effectively. Not the zones adjacent to South Night City are Chinatown and the Old Combat Zone. The borders of these zones have moved though many of the points of interest that remain intact, are still there, just in "new zones".

In CP2020 I hade corridors of limited control from the refineries and docks. Think about it - Petrochem is a major player. While they're not interested in policing the edges of the Combat Zone, they're definitely interested in protecting their logistics channels and products. That means they have paid security to guard their shipments to and from the docks/refineries. And they likely are paying local gangs to keep their particular cargo "off limits". Likely, they're also paying these fuckheads to muckup Petrochem enemies. I can see scenarios like:

• Petrochem Corps trying to move up the company ladder interfacing with the Blood Razors (top booster gang in NC) to poach from competitors. Of course the Blood Razors might just kill the guy for fun. Razorball is the sport of kings in the Combat Zone after all.
• Organized Crime from China town introduces a smuggling operation on the backs of small import/exporters in the Docks. This runs afoul of Petrochem, gangs and all sorts of shit. PC's could make a name/fortune playing the different sides of an escalating conflict.
• The Golden Knights start to clean-up this side of the CZ. Do the PC's help? Maybe one of the PC's is ex-military and knows someone in the GK's?
• Let get Weird! A mutant animal (Petrochem baby!)/science experiment has gotten loose in the sewers below South NC. It's randomly killing the shit out of people - dangerous people, innocent people. If you do it slow, it'll get all the different gangs, corps, normies riled up. The OBVIOUS conclusion is it's a Cyberpsycho Serial Killer... right? Wait till they find out what it *really* is. Go crazy.
• Escape from CZ! A VIP from a foreign nation is trying to smuggle themselves into NoCal. A boostergang attacks the smugglers and now has the VIP hostage... The PC's are hired by <X> to find them and bring them in alive. OR they're hired to eliminate the VIP by government agents of the host country the VIP was fleeing from. The possibilities *after* this are endless. Contacts/enemies to be made!
• Home Shit Home - One of more PC's grew up in one of the shitty apartment buildings in SNC. Boostergang <X> has taken up residence there on the bottom floor. They're doing 1-3 Cooking/selling Drugs, 4-5 starting a prostitution ring, 6-7 using it as a staging area to bring the pain on their rivals, 8-9 operating a body-bank, 10 - something *really* fucking weird: Communing with a rogue AI who is starting their own cult, Discovering God and trying to turn over a new leaf... but the leader is a cyberpscyho and wants to do it with medieval methods, gang is in over their heads they have a Macguffin That Should Not Be and the fucking Angels are after them (from Orbit).
• Tales of the Forlorn Hope! -South NC is the home of the Forlorn Hope. Go pick up a copy and run those adventures and make up new ones. Introduce the Forlorn Hope to your PC's and make it their hangout.

I could go on and on.

BOOKREADING -  Go read Burning Chrome! I also recommend anything from Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, and Stephen Barne's Streetlethal series!

I was talking to Lisa and Mike Pondsmith to do a book for CPRed (before the rules were codified) about what's outside of NC. I wanted to do a book which would emphasize Nomad Culture and give me an excuse to create "Road Warrior" rules for vehicles and adventures along shipping routes from CA to TX, including outlines for major Nomad families and gangs in the "Wasteland"...

It fell through when they decided to let Cody do CPR. /shrug. Maybe someday.

Or maybe I'll just make my own Autoduel/Cyberpunk inspired game.

I particularly like the Mutant Animal (probably a Biotechnica creation in RED) and Home Shit Home ideas. HSH reminds me of my years on the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel working to clean up the Hazelhurst Estate!

Mutant Animal - you can GO WILD with this concept. Biotechnica science experiment: maybe a predatory animal for overseas conflict? Mutant attack dog? They've recoded its DNA at the seed-level. Pump that fucker full of nanotech AND make it so that it passes those nanites on to its children. So it's going around killing all other male dogs and impregnating female dogs in the CZ. If you slow-cook the killings, it'll look like a serial killer/cannibal is on the loose. Let the PC's find the carcasses of dogs and cats all over the place. They'll notice all the dogs are males on an Awareness check. The cats? Red Herring, the mutant is killing the cats and eating them (and any other varmint) as targets of opportunity.

Meanwhile you dot your sessions with constant odd tales of people getting killed horribly. You can use all of these deaths as Red Herrings - maybe they're all from the same gang... at first. Then a local. Then a prostitute. Then a drug-dealer. Then another random gang-member. You can create the logic of the dog as you see fit (Maybe it remembers people by scent, or behavior and it targets people of that kind of behavior. Remember it's a science-experiment, so Biotechnica might have it encoded to be sensitive to a type of gun oil, which coincidentally might be the same kind as shipment of Chinese FN-RAL knockoffs that fell into the hands of the local gangs. And the Dog, acting on instincts, is hunting them down. All the other targets are targets of opportunity or "bugs" in the system.

To ramp this up - CSWAT gets called in to hunt a potential Cyberpsycho which should make everyone nervous... especially when CSWAT operatives start dying too.

The REAL nasty shit comes when you've breadcrumbed these odd "things" for some time in your game, and the pregnant female dogs of the neighborhood start giving birth...

A side-subplot might be the team of Biotechnica employees struggling with the situation because it's gotten out of their control and now THEY are trying to hide the truth while trying to kill/capture the dog. Maybe people on their own team have different agendas?

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2024, 04:23:31 PM
Or maybe I'll just make my own Autoduel/Cyberpunk inspired game.

Yes! A day-one buy for me.

Ref mutant critters, I recommend watching the movie "Mimic" by Guillermo Del Toro. I prefer the theatrical release to the director's cut.

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2024, 04:58:18 PM

To ramp this up - CSWAT gets called in to hunt a potential Cyberpsycho which should make everyone nervous... especially when CSWAT operatives start dying too.

Dammit, you had me at CSWAT.

A couple of mange recommendations:
Restore World
Saturn Apartments
Blame

Quote from: BadApple on February 16, 2024, 08:05:45 PM
A couple of mange recommendations:
Restore World
Saturn Apartments
Blame

Blame was pretty intense.

Quote from: blackstone on February 16, 2024, 03:19:40 PM
Cities Without Number looks pretty good. going to check out the free version.

any thoughts?

CWN is pretty decent; I'm a Shadowrun guy, so take that into consideration, but Kevin Crawford always does a good job overall. It's at least an excellent resource, and his system is dead-ass easy as fuck to understand and use, which is a major plus.

I can also see tenbones posted, and he's like the cyberpunk guru, but I will say this.. Autoduel/Car Wars is probably the more realistic inevitability. As someone who watched Road Warrior five hundred times as a kid, I certainly hope so.