Mail Room: Blade Runner

This is another widely-supported Kickstarter game and an attractive RPG setting. I've seen a few reviews lament that you could only play Blade Runner, but what else would this game be about? This is like a game about Sherlock Holmes coming out, and someone faulting the game that you could not play a soldier of the British Commonwealth or Indiana Jones.

At its heart, this is a detective game. You could probably play a private detective with these rules, and if I were to start hacking this game to support more character types, I would likely go the Gangbusters route and hack in:

• Private detectives
• Criminals
• Reporters
• Government Agents

I would crib a little from the excellent B/X Gangbusters game and make these archetypes fit into the Blade Runner universe. In fact, many of the Blade Runner archetypes work in these professions perfectly. Promotions work; you are going up ranks in the criminal underworld or news bureau. The game even says you can build your archetype by picking a key attribute and skill.

Then I wonder if these reviewers played RPGs or if an AI wrote these reviews.

What stops me from creating a replicant soldier archetype, calling my promotions military ranks, and doing battles on Mars? What stops me from building a Gangster archetype and calling my ranks levels in the criminal underworld? What stops me from building a reporter archetype and using my ranks to go from research assistant to national correspondent?

If I need a few new skills? Make them, but you may need to since the skills are loosely defined and broad. Using a camera would be a Tech roll. Invent a few new specialties to cover the edge cases, like Photographer, to give you an advantage when using that camera to capture the action.

Any review that says you must play Blade Runners is seriously missing the point.

This game is beyond trivial to hack into a universal system. Like the Twilight: 2000 system, you could reskin anything in that game for new weapons, vehicles, and gear. You could lift specialties (just make the +1 in TW2000 advantage in BR).

Use the TW2000 vehicle combat system and reskin the M2 Bradley as a flying IFV with a 25mm Gauss cannon, put it on Mars, and blast away. Reskin the M249 SAW as the Mk66a1 Gauss LMG and put some Hollywood armorer flange on it like they did the 0.22 caliber Thompsons in Aliens to make those M-41a Pulse Rifles (with a shotgun underneath as the GL).

And there is a Year Zero SRD.

Hack away.

The whole aesthetic of Blade Runner is putting flange on things, stealing, borrowing, and taking modern junk and making it look like junk in 2049. Hack, steal, borrow, and hack some more! If you aren't hacking and making this game the game you want to play in this universe, then you aren't doing what the filmmakers did. This game isn't Blade Runner; it is a generic system with an open door into one of the incredible all-time cyberpunk worlds.

Stories? Hack, borrow, and steal some more. And most any Blade Runner scenario can be played with my custom hacked archetypes. A mob figure is assassinated:

• The Blade Runners try to find the killer and get justice.
• The Criminals try to find the killer and get revenge.
• The Reporters try to find the killer and break the scoop.
• The Detective is working for the killer's widow and trying to find the killer and something taken.
• The Government Agent is there because the mob figure was wrapped up in secret government business.

Could they all be working together on this one? Sounds like a fun game.

Need help writing mysteries and cases? Search Amazon for advice and books; there are plenty. Or watch old black-and-white Noir films and just crib from them.

Blade Runner is a DIY game. You need to be a fan of the genre and well-versed in Noir mysteries - again, Blade Runner is a lot like those classic films with a cyberpunk veneer. Watch the Maltese Falcon and turn that into a Blade Runner story. The DIY parts make the game your own. They are a joy to craft.  You are like the original artists, model makers, and filmmakers when you hack this game - this is what they did to bring this world to life! Your hacking opens up infinite stories.

Saying this is a game where you can only play future cops misses the point entirely. Yes, this is where the game starts and the door you walk in from, but it isn't the end.