“My parents became Cyberpunks and all they left me was this dark future.”

Cybergeneration, R. Talsorian Games’ followup to their highly successful Cyberpunk 2020 line, puts a somewhat unique spin on the Cyberpunk world. The year is 2027, and the Edgerunners have all but vanished; the Corporations have taken America and the world, and arcologies stand where cities once sprawled. Most adults have been assimilated, and spend their days working dull, soulless jobs and their nights dreaming of the days when they had s real future. A deadly plague sweeps the land, killing most people over 20 who encounter it. The adults have only one chance left, one hope of destroying the Megacorps and returning America to a free state.

Their children.

Cybergeneration is a game not for children, but about children. It concentrates heavily on the works and days of the children of the Edgerunners, forming street gangs and rebelling relentlessly against the evils of the Megacorps. The design of the book reflects this, from the almost attention-deficit organization to the scrawled typeface used throughout the book. (Fortunately, it’s used only for headers and page numbers - else, the book would be unreadable.)

Character creation in Cybergeneration is, unfortunately, mixed in with the introductory story. While this might make for an interesting way to introduce new players to the game, it’s frustrating for more experienced players to have to edit out the adventure in order to make a character - and as there are parts of the adventure which should only be read by the GM, it’s difficult to allow a player who’s in the adventure to look through the book in order to create her character. There is a character creation summary, but it almost requires a player to refer constantly to the regular creation rules due to its extreme brevity.

On the other hand, had the adventure been later in the book, and character creation been more cohesive, it would have been a lot of fun. New characters are guided through generation by an Edgerunner named Morgan Blackhand, and creation is treated as though the character were simply giving information about herself. This tends to create more of a connection with the character, more of a sense of /being/ the character.

For the most part, skills and statistics work the same way in Cybergeneration as they do in Cyberpunk, and indeed, rules are provided for converting Edgerunners to the Cybergeneration world. Add Stat to Skill, then roll 1d10 and add that to the total; if your combined total is higher than the target number, you succeed. Thus, there are always a certain set of activities that a character will almost always be able to do. The exception to this is on a total fumble - a 1 on 1d10, which is an automatic failure. On the other hand, the system is also infinitely open-ended - if you roll 10 on your d10, you roll again and add; another 10 means you roll again, and so on, allowing for spectacular successes on a cinematic scale.

The setting and background is what really makes Cybergeneration, though. Regardless of what system you use with the game, the essence remains the same - you are children, rebelling against an oppressive authority. The wonderful thing about this game is that if you’re playing it dark and gritty, with characters who are all guns and sex, you’re missing a lot of the point. Characters in Cybergeneration are no older than 17, and as such are still idealistic, hopeful youths, many of whom have never actually seen someone die and most of whom aren’t yet out of puberty. Cybergeneration allows the player to relive youth, rebelling against anything as long as it’ll look cool.

The Verdict

High Point: background and setting

Low Point: character creation is poorly organized and jumbled in with the first adventure

Looks: 4 (out of 5)

Concept: 5 (out of 5)

Originality: 4 (out of 5)

Playability: 4 (out of 5)

Usagi Yojimbo represents yet another attempt to crossover the comic
books/TV/movie market with RPGs. But don’t let that deter you from buying
this gem of a game: Usagi Yojimbo is a very tight, efficient package. I have
never seen a product do so much with a mere 96 pages.

The Setting

Usagi Yojimbo (UY) is set in a world of samurai, ninjas, and walking,
talking animals. Think of Disney’s “Robin Hood” and you have the idea.
Sprinkle in some colorful, three dimensional characters and realistic,
sympathetic antagonists and you have more than an idea: you have UY in a
nutshell. After a period of turbulent conflict, the Shogun’s Peace has been
declared. Any daimyo (noble) who attacks another is considered to be
attacking the nation as a whole, bringing the wrath of all upon him. As an
uneasy peace settles into place, the aftermath of the previous conflict is
still evident. Many samurai are now masterless ronin, condemned to wander
the land, their masters slain in the previous conflicts. Bandits are common,
and scheming daimyo must now rely on treachery and deceit as they jockey for
power. There is plenty of opportunity for characters to makes names for
themselves in the world of Usagi Yojimbo.

All of this background is drawn from the UY comic book, which follows the
adventures of the title character, a masterless rabbit samurai. I have to
admit that while I have never read an Usagi Yojimbo comic book, I found the
setting, as presented in the RPG, very accessible and well explained.
Outside of Akira Kurosawa films, I also have little to no knowledge of
feudal Japan. Yet Greg Stolze manages to hit all of the key points of the
setting in a manner that is thorough and readable. A complete timeline of
the UY story, plus descriptions of the major characters from the comic book,
give the prospective GM plenty of inspiration for stories and adventures.
Stolze also does a very good job of getting to the heart of what makes an
effective story. Culling examples from the UY comic, he shows GMs what makes
a good story and how to translate that into a good RPG adventure.

The Rules

Character creation is straightforward in UY. Players choose one of 11 races
(rabbit, rhino, bull, amongst others) and one of 9 jobs. Race gives the
character special abilities. Pigs have a heightened sense of smell, get +1
to their physical stat, and can take more damage than other races. Jobs work
much the same way. They give the character a stat or skill bonus plus a
funky free ability. Monks, for example, can give advice to players, even if
their characters are not together. Finally, there are options for players
who do not want to use one of the pregenerated jobs, but no rules for
creating new races. Overall, I found the system easy to use. The choices
given run a wide range of possibilities. Given the length of the book and
its target audience (beginners), a truly freeform system would have been out
of place. Though I am a strong proponent of rules light, free form character
generation, I did not feel hemmed in by UY’s options. Rather, they gave me a
lot of ideas for characters, the mark of a successful rules set. The sample
character I made was a pig monk trying to follow a life of self denial with
less than stellar success, a concept I probably would not have thought of
without the rules as written. Overall, character generation guides you along
without suffocating your creativity.

Characters have four stats, Physical, Mental, Combat, and Move. I like the
idea of making a character’s combat ability a stat and then adding weapon
skills on top of that. Skills cover the usual gamut of RPG topics, from
combat to the arts. Skills and stats are added to die rolls.

UY uses the Instant Fuzion system, a slimmed down version of R. Talsorian’s
house system. The system is simple to use. To make a skill check, roll 3d6,
add any appropriate attribute and skill, and compare the result to a GM
chosen target number. Combat (as usual) requires a few more rules. Each
combatant choose one of three options, total attack, cautious attack, and
total defense. Depending on the two combatant’s choices, there may be
modifiers to damage, or it may even be impossible for one side to do damage.
I’m not a complete fan of this system. It adds some extra complications to
combat, though it does give players more options. It does, however, makes
things much more complex for the GM. I’d prefer making this rule optional or
using it only for major NPCs. UY uses hits to keep track of a character’s
health. Damage is determined by rolling a number of d6 equal to the
character’s Physical score or the weapon’s damage rating. This system is a
little too random for my tastes, allowing for a wide range of values without
accounting for the skill of the attacker.

My one complaint about the rules lies with the jujutsu (that’s jujitsu to
you foreign devils). Stolze takes the time to warn us that the rules for
jujutsu are quite complex, and then suddenly, poof, no rules for jujutsu. I
eventually found them on the combat summary page, but it was quite
disconcerting to get a big old “Complex Rules Ahead!” warning only to find
no rules in the main text.

The Adventures

UY comes with two adventures, The Haunted Temple, the tale of a young monk
who attracts attention from beyond the grave, and The Butterfly, a rescue
mission that gets messy, fast. Stolze has less than 10 pages for these two
scenarios, and does a very good job of establishing characters and plots
with limited space. Both adventures serve as good examples for newbie GMs,
showing them how to make interesting characters and how to draw out
repercussions from an adventure rather than letting them exist in a vacuum.

The Verdict

For $16, you cannot find a better bargain in the industry. The writing is
superb, the UY setting ripe with adventure. Fan of the comic or not, UY is
an unqualified success. Buy it to play it, or to simply cull this very
fertile ground for ideas. The setting is compelling enough that I have set
out on a personal crusade to find and buy as many UY comics as possible.
What better recommendation can I give you?