Tales of the RED Update: Ads!

From the early days of Solo of Fortune and Rockerboy, in-world advertisements have always been a fun way of setting tone, adding lore, and sharing immersion in Night City and the world of Cyberpunk. We’ve continued that tradition with Cyberpunk RED. You’ll find advertisements for Zhirafa, Continental Brands, Danger Gal, and others in the core rulebook and in our DLCs.

For Tales of the RED: Street Stories, we’ve included several new in-world advertisements, all specifically themed to relate to the missions you’ll be undertaking. Let’s take a look at three of them and, as always with these previews, beware minor possible spoilers for the contents of the missions.

Controlling the water supply has always been a hallmark of power in human civilization but in the modern (and near future) era we’ve gone from the powerful controlling “lower case-w” water to the powerful branding and selling “capital-w” Water. In the Time of the Red, one of the dominant designer water brands is Cactus Water marketed as “drawn from succulents and purified via a crystal-driven, homeopathic process to fortify it with life-affirming, health-improving minerals”. And if you’re lucky, choomba, your Crew might just meet the family behind this liquid miracle in Tales of the RED: Street Stories.

Sure, the Time of the Red has supply chain problems, product shortages, and rampant inequity but people still want to go drown their sorrows, forget about their troubles, and dance the night away. Students and others living in the University District have more options than most residents of Night City. One such option is Mindnutz Lover, a new braindance club just across the border in South Night City. Once you’re there, you absolutely can drink cheap almost-alcohol or dance to DJ Frame’s sick beats but chances are you’re going to fork over some eb, crash on one of the couches, plug-in, and turn into a braindance zombie for a few hours as you live someone else’s life to melt the stress away.

Or maybe you’re after a more interactive experience? If that’s the case, why not head to Night City Symphony Hall? Don’t let the name fool you. The Hall isn’t the upper-crust snobfest it used to be. These days, its run by the Philharmonic Vampyres and their production of Dracula promises to be cutting edge, super stylish performance art so intense half the audience might end up naked and bleeding before it ends!

You’ll be visiting both these locations, in one form or another, in Tales of the RED: Street Stories.

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And that’s all for this week, chombas! We’ll be back next week with another preview of Tales of the RED: Street Stories. Remember, we’ll be debuting it physically at Gen Con 2022 (booth 1841) and digitally on DriveThruRPG on August 4th! We’re expecting it to start hitting stores a few weeks after and it’ll be up on Bits and Mortar so if you preorder via your FLGS and they participate, they can give you the PDF then and there!

Until next time, stay safe on The Street!