Gen Con 2022 Retrospective

Hello, choombas! We’re back and rested after a long and eventful Gen Con 2022! So much happened and we had a great deal of fun! In addition to having our booth on the floor (and thank you to those of you who visited us there!) we also had a room to ourselves for games! All in all, we ran 32 TTRPG sessions. Most were Cyberpunk RED and The Witcher but we also ran 2 sessions of Castle Falkenstein, 2 sessions of Teenagers from Outer Space, and even a throwback session of Cybergeneration! In addition, Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios stopped by and ran 2 sessions of his Ennie-award winning game, Haunted West.

That’s right, Haunted West, which RTG is proud to distribute, won an Ennie for Best Rules! We’re pretty psyched and proud of Chris and his team.

Special thanks go to our partners at Monster Fight Club, who not only ran hourly introductions of Cyberpunk RED: Combat Zone in our room but also ran walkup demonstrations of the game at our booth.

Some News Tidbits

Here’s some of the biggest news from R. Talsorian Games to come out of Gen Con 2022.

• As noted earlier, Haunted West (created and published Darker Hue Studios and distributed by RTG) won a silver Ennie for Best Rules. It was also nominated for the prestigious Diana Jones Award. Congratulations to Chris Spivey and his team! You can buy Haunted West from your local game shop, via our webstore, or digitally at DriveThruRPG.
• Monster Fight Club debuted their miniature line for The Witcher TTRPG, including a classic set featuring Geralt, Dandelion, and Yennifer! You can order the first miniature packs at MFC’s store.
• Many people were excited to meet with Maximum Mike Pondsmith. We want to thank everyone who came to the booth seeking him out but, unfortunately, Mike wasn’t feeling well for much of the convention and had to rest. We want to assure everyone he’s recovered and is back to plotting out new parts of the Dark Future. Special thanks to James Hutt, who filled in for Mike’s traditional “Mike Pondsmith Kills Your Cyberpunk Character”.
• And, of course, we debuted Tales of the RED: Street Stories, our book of 9 full-length missions taking place in Night City! We’re hoping to see the books hit store shelves later this month. The digital version is already available at DriveThruRPG.

Cyberpunk Seminar Summary

Circumstances didn’t let us record this year’s Cyberpunk Q&A but we’re going to provide you with a summary of the juicy bits here. As previously mentioned, Mike Pondsmith wasn’t feeling well so the seminar was run by Cyberpunk RED line manager J Gray and RTG senior game designer James Hutt. They briefly touched on Tales of the RED: Street Stories and the existing Cyberpunk RED DLC and then moved onto what people really wanted to hear: future products! The two they spoke about were Black Chrome and Danger Gal Dossier. We’ll discuss them here in reverse order.

Danger Gal Dossier will be an NPC book in the form of a portfolio of reports prepared by Night City’s premiere detective agency. It will cover various factions in the city, including various gangs (Maelstrom and Tyger Claws were mentioned), corporate operatives (including Trauma Team and Danger Gal itself), and Edgerunners. Each dossier will include a picture of the character, a stat block, and a biography. The NPCs presented in Danger Gal Dossier can be used as allies, enemies, and Lifepath connections. In addition, these NPCs will run the “threat level” range, from Mook and Hardened Mook all the way up to Boss and Hardened Boss. You’ll be able these various NPCs as unique characters but also as the generic baseline for what their faction can present at most levels. Finally, the book will conclude with a guide to creating your own NPCs at each threat level.

Black Chrome is, as been noted, a book of “stuff and how you get it”. It will bring roughly 150 items to Cyberpunk RED. Some are returning favorites from Cyberpunk 2020 but most are entirely new. There will also be six fully described Night Markets, complete with maps and stat blocks for the Fixers who run them. All six Fixers have previously debuted in Cyberpunk RED products. And, as promised, we’ll include articles to give more information about how the economy functions in the Time of the Red. Every item in Black Chrome will be getting full-color art and every company, new and returning, will have a logo.

And perhaps, best of all, James and J previewed a few new items from Black Chrome. We’ll share them here and, as an apology for not recording the session, show off art of one of them (art is not yet final).

1. Cyberfingers will be making a return to Cyberpunk RED in Black Chrome. These special design fingers can be inserted into a Modular Finger Cyberhand or, if you’re really into cybernetic fingers, you can pick up the Dynalar Modular Enthusiast Cyberhand with space for up to 8 cyberfingers! Cyberfinger types mentioned at the seminar included the laser pointer, lockpick, one shot special, and wirecutter/scissors.
2. The Neo-Soviet Cyberarm returns as well, providing big, bulky, ugly cybernetic style at a cheaper price than a regular cyberarm. Just keep in mind, any option you install into the arm will be visible to the naked eye due to an “inefficient and bulging design”.
3. And if you want another cheap cyberware option, you’ll be able to pick up the Sponsored Cybereye. For just 50eb you can get a cybereye with Chyron already installed (and at no additional Humanity Loss!). Of course, up to once per hour, you’ll get a pop-up ad in your field of vision that will cost an Action to close but, hey, that’s still a deal, right?
4. The description of the Gibson Battlegear Shock Armor reads as follows: Gibson Battlegear’s Shock Armor was specifically designed for prison use. A corrections officer wearing the Shock Armor not only has the benefit of a kevlar suit, but the uniform is also lined with microfilaments that when activated generate a powerful shock to anyone touching it. The interior of the armor is rubber lined offering immunity to the outer charge. Shock Armor is widely issued in private prisons across North America as the armor has been shown to reduce the abundance of prison riots by a significant margin.
5. Of course, there will also be new weapons, like the Militech Perseus. With cyberpsychosis on the rise and the occasional need to shoot through an engine block, Militech designed the Perseus as their answer. The weapon is a 11-cylinder revolver with a forearm brace and venting ports on the barrel and body. Proprietary compensators allow for a weapon of this magnitude to be discharged without needing a cyberlimb to handle the recoil. What recoil Militech couldn’t reduce, they decided to make use of, recapturing the excess kinetic energy to prepare the gun to fire again, enabling the weapon to vastly exceed its initial rate of fire when fired continuously.
6. And finally, our vehicle of choice for the Q&A, the Makigai Ebi! The Makigai Ebi is a reliable mini-hatchback for the city. It has great mileage, cargo space, comfortable seating, and great environmental controls. What more could you want? Most Ebi are owned by corporate carpoolers who are too poor for aerodynes, but don’t want a car that makes this obvious. Small families enjoy these hatchbacks as well, especially the new feature, where the car says hello and goodbye as you enter and exit. The Ebi wasn’t designed for speed and the chassis is mostly plastic, so driving it into the Combat Zone would be a bad idea.

We aren’t yet predicting release dates for either Black Chrome or Danger Gal Dossier as both are in progress and issues with the supply chain in general.

---

That’s it for our Gen Con 2022 wrap-up! Again, thanks to everyone who visited our booth or played in our games. For those who didn’t, we hope to see you next year!