Got some wares for you, choom. Well, I don’t. I’m just some media working a PC gaming screamsheet, but the deckheads over at Humble Bundle do. They’ve compiled the Cyberpunk RED and Classics Bundle, a 23-item library of books and materials for the Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game.
That’d be the very same one that Cyberpunk 2077 is based on, but with less Keanu (unless you can get him round for a game). Although Humble calls it a pay-what-you-want bundle, it works the same way as any of the company’s other collections. That means you’ll need to spend over $18 (£14.13) for the whole lot, $10 (£7.85) for half of it, or a mere $1 (£0.78) if you only want to pick up the Rough Guide to the UK and Tales of Forlorn Hope, which sounds like two names for the same thing to me.
The full-fat bundle includes both Cyberpunk RED—the latest version of the TTRPG—and Cyberpunk 2020, the series’ second edition and probably its most famous, which envisioned what life would be like in the far-flung future of the year 2020 all the way back in 1990. It’s worth noting that you already have 2020 if you own Cyberpunk 2077, as you get a free digital copy of it for linking your GOG account.
On top of the core books you’ll also get a rippling digi-library of sourcebooks containing all kinds of new items to spice up your games and little bits and pieces of lore. One of them is Interface RED Volume 3, which is appearing for the first time anywhere in this bundle, and which contains new mini-bosses, weapons, cyberdecks, and something which—for the life of me—seems to be some kind of Cyberpunk Tinder? What a world.
Is Johnny Silverhand in there? I haven’t read anything in the bundle, so I can’t say, but I have to imagine yes. Just be prepared for him to be a young-looking blond boy in the artwork instead of the grizzled John Wick we all know and love.
These are classic RPGs for a reason, and did a lot to codify and solidify many of the cyberpunk tropes that we take for granted today. Not that it invented all of them, mind you: the tabletop game purloined liberally from William Gibson books and other cyberpunk literary fare back when Mike Pondsmith and company were drawing it up. The street finds its own use for things, after all. Nothing more cyberpunk than that.
