Mail Room: New World

I love these 2d6 Cepheus systems. Where B/X requires some adherence to the dungeon tropes, the Cepheus base 2d6 engine is a blank framework from which anyone can quickly take and create a complete roleplaying game. I feel the 2d6 game engine is more of a publishing platform than B/X since the framework is more open, and you do not have a default set of dungeon assumptions you need to explain away, handle, or work with (retainers, travel, combat, surprise, exploration, saving throws, etc.).

And 2d6 systems are typically not level-based. They follow the career and lifepath model where you age and pick up skills and abilities. They keep skill levels and ability scores in a tight range, so they feel more based on realism than inflating hit point pools and abstract concepts such as armor class. When you create a character, you play a character creation minigame and see what happens.

And these games are fast - just as quick and straightforward as B/X, and they do not require a ton of mental gymnastics, resource pools, story systems, card support, narrative mechanics, table reference, or understanding of abstract wounding and other game systems that require a game vocabulary to be loaded into your head.

I love Savage Worlds for just about everything, but there are times when explaining what "shaken" means and how it stacks, along with raises, soak rolls, bennies, wounds, and the other systems in the game, to new players, feels like I am teaching them a new language. Sometimes I want to say, "roll 8 or higher, add skill to do it," and the player grasps that immediately, and the game does not stop if something extraordinary happens, and I need to explain what just happened. If everyone has "Savage Worlds" game drivers installed in their head, things fly, and the game is entertaining.

Other times, I want something simple based on 2d6 without a complete set of polyhedral dice. I can play a Cepheus game with just a book or PDF and a 2d6 collection I pick up in an airport gift shop or Walmart. These games also mesh well with many wargames, giving me an instant RPG to play with classic Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles, Battletech, Warhammer, and you can even toss anime or a lot of videogames into this category. 2d6 with skills that add to rolls is just about a basic and generic universal system as you can create.

And the 2d6 Cepheus engine is floating out there in the nether, and people are coming up with all sorts of cool games that use the system.

New World

These types of games started with Traveller and sci-fi, and they are branching out to fantasy, modern military, historical, and all sorts of fantastic genres. And we can add cyberpunk to the list with New World.

The fantastic game transposes many familiar Cepheus concepts into a cyberpunk game and does a few things I have never seen before. A sci-fi hex-map subsector map? No, in this game, it is used as a map of cyberspace. Rads and health damage from radiation? No, in this game, it is how much mental damage you suffer from exposure to online propaganda and conspiracy theories - and it could drive you crazy.

Damn, this is cool stuff, and slap you in the face social commentary.

Exactly what cyberpunk should be.

I don't want to just ride around and front cool cyber-wear and a chrome arm like a poser with my neon shades; I want to have the dirty and grimy parts of this world rubbed in my face. If an evil corporation captures you, they could Clockwork Orange you with a constant stream of online conspiracy theories, break you, and let you go. You would be this toxic, babbling fool instantly discredited and looked down on.

What the hell?

Where did this game come from?

This is the most cyberpunk I have seen since I picked up the original Cyberpunk black box set in the 90s. And it is disturbingly modern social commentary.

Whoa, as Neo says.

These are the types of games written when roleplaying systems exist as publishing platforms, much like Linux - free and there for anyone to use. We get these ideas and concepts in people's heads, and they escape to the free world and change my thinking on a genre. This is a game with ideas that reboots cyberpunk into the new world we live in, and instead of existing as a fashion style, it takes the genre back to its roots as socio-political commentary. Even these ideas, if you play cyberpunk with another system, are worth thinking about and using.

Game changer.