I'm starting this thread to post reviews of the Cyberpunk games I own.  If you want one reviewed that's not on the list, just leave a reply and I'll see about getting it.  As an aside, I will not be reviewing Shadowrun in this thread.  If I do review it, it will be in another thread.

Here's what I have:
    - Cyberpunk 2020
    - Cyberpunk Red
    - Neon City Overdrive
    - Cities Without Numbers
    - Ultra Modern and NeuroSpasta
    - Zaibatsu
    - DEAL - A Social Combat Roleplaying Game in a Cyberpunk City
    - Reboot the Future
    - Running Out of Time
    - Carbon 2185
    - New World
    - Neon Blood
    - Katana-Ra
    - Blade Runner
    - Altered Carbon

Before I start going through the games individually, I'd like to talk about the genre of Cyberpunk.  I think it's relevant to both the reviews and to those looking to play a Cyberpunk game in general.  It's fairly intertwined with political and social issues but I will try to be as factual and unbiased as I can.  (Of course I have my own opinions and I'm happy to discus them openly but that would be a distraction from what this thread is about.)

First, I will talk about what the "punk" in "cyberpunk" means.  Punk, as it's used to refer to the genre, comes from the British punk counter-culture that started in the 70s.

Today, punk is most remembered for the music style that spawned out if it but of it's time it was more well known for antisocial behavior and generally being offensive.  In the early 70s, the British economy was flagging and a number of young people from working class families saw that they didn't have much of an opportunity and much less of an opportunity than their parents had when they were young.  From their prospective, the political and business elites had very observably squandered resources and mismanaged the economy so poorly that there was almost no growth in the GDP.  Both left leaning and right leaning moral custodians were exposed as hypocrites in public perception.  To top it all off, these young people of these working class communities were getting bombarded with messages about how bad the British Empire was and that they had to repent for it, even though they were too young and too powerless to have done anything about it.  The result was many disaffected rebelled out of frustration, anger, a sense of being betrayed, and resentment towards authority figures.

Much of punk counter-culture was all about explicitly not fitting in with mainstream culture and not submitting to authority.  Punk as a name for this counter-culture comes from the use the term as a pejorative about boys that misbehave. Some punks were just kids looking for a group to belong to when there wasn't place for them in mainstream society.  Some were real iconoclasts and maverick living their own life, and some were outright scumbags that could live and hide in the punk groups and places.  Some punks embraced a nihilistic hedonism with alcohol, sex, drugs, and anything else they could derive pleasure out of.  Some openly engaged in directed anti-authority activities, some merely symbolic activism and some outright criminal (some bordering on terrorism) acts.  Still others channeled their time and energy into artistic endeavors; the music is most famous now but it included painting, fashion, writing, sculpture, etc.  One of the most well known personalities from early punk is Johnny Rotten, the lead from The Sex Pistols.  A little research into Johnny will give you a well informed understanding of punk as a whole.

Many people since then have tried to lay claim to punk pedigree, usually as an ideological base and usually completely wrong.  Marxists saw it as an anti-capitalist movement.  Some ardent atheists saw it as freeing themselves from structured religious beliefs.  It goes on and on.  It wasn't a political movement, it wasn't a social movement, and it wasn't an art movement.  The core tenets were simply ardent individualism and rejecting authority. The closest thing to it I'm aware of is the outlaw motorcycle culture, also a counter-culture that was misunderstood and that others tried to coop into their ideological movements until bikers rebuffed them harshly.  BTW, Johnny Rotten is a US citizen and Trump supporter now.  https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/john-lydon-looks-rotten-pro-13412209  (This article made me laugh so hard I blacked out.)

The first use of the term "cyberpunk" comes from the short story Cyberpunk, written by Bruce Bethke and published in 1983.  In the story, a group of teens are engaged in a series of escapades, mostly digital graffiti, by hacking and pulling pranks.  It ends with one of the teens is recruited by the military to assist with digital warfare.  In this particular usage, "punk" was used more in the pejorative sense as an insult to unruly kids rather than a reference to the punk movement.   

Cyberpunk is a genre of fiction where an over computerized world becomes bleak by depriving many of opportunity and spawning a punk counter-culture in a high tech world.  Johnny Rotten's antics in the 70s and 80s were the inspiration for the archetype of the Rocker Boy in general and specifically the character Johnny Silverhand.  Most people tend to think of cyberpunk in terms of heists, hacking and net running.  If you take a step back and reevaluate it, you'll see it's about punks.  Take 1984 and add bikers and The Sex Pistols and you have cyberpunk.

The background setting of a high tech dystopia wasn't created in the 1980s, it's been around a long time.  George Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949) would have solidly been classified as a cyberpunk novel if it had been written in the late 80s.  Philip K. Dick is seen by many as the proto-cyberpunk author and several of his books have been turned into movies that are held as cyberpunk movies.  (Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly) 

What would be solidly recognized as Cyberpunk today was crystalized by three pieces of media; the movie Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick), Neuromancer by William Gibson, and the RPG Cyberpunk 2013 by Mike Pondsmith.  Nearly all of the imagery and storytelling cliches people associate with cyberpunk com from these sources.  Philip K. Dick, while not expressly a cyberpunk contributor, is the fourth creative recognized for shaping the genre into what it is.

Cyberpunk, like the punk culture before it, gets co-opted by various political and social movements and ideologies.  The four core creatives didn't believe in, and were sometimes openly hostile to, many of these ideologies. 

Mike Pondsmith said in a Q&A session once "What is Cyberpunk?  It's whatever you say it is."  It's a character or characters living their life against the background of a dystopian future and refusing to comply with the oppressive social norms.  It's not bending the knee to authoritarianism.

Cyberpunk 2020 was designed by Mike Pondsmith and is published by R. Talsorian games.  It was first published in 1990, the second edition of Cyberpunk.  (The First was Cyberpunk 2013.)  It's very well known in the RPG community and there are many, many reviews and overviews of the game.

After 30+ years, it's still in print and most of the supplements are available too.  The physical book is available directly from R. Talsorian Games https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/cyberpunk-2020  And PDFs are available through DrivethruRPG  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/50354/Cyberpunk-2020-The-Second-Edition-Version-201?src=hottest_filtered

The reason I am doing a review is two fold; one is to give people who read my reviews a baseline of how I review games and two is to give a reference when reviewing other games in the genre in this thread.  I encourage questions and comments.

Mechanics

While not the most complicated system out there, it is rather meaty.  The core rules system is called interlock and was distributed as a generic RPG system; it's since been replaced by Fuzion.  At it's core it's a D10 + Stat + Skill system.  There's a couple of things that make this game stand out amongst the crowd though.  The first is that both stats and skills can go to 10, making some potential roll results be north of 3x the max value of the die.  This means that a PC that is well endowed for the skill check at hand will automatically pass an easy check and that a low value PC cannot even attempt some more difficult skill checks.  This creates a much wider gap between skilled an unskilled PCs than other games.  Over all, the rules system is more complex than many modern offerings but it's better designed than many as well.

The system allows for a lot of granularity.  There's a lot of numbers to manipulate.  The up side is that this give a lot of room for making unique PCs and a lot of room for PC growth.  The downside is that it's fertile territory for min-maxing.  Oh boy is there potential for serious min-maxing.  If you're going to run this game, you really need to lay out your expectations for players and hold them to it.  For everyone who's ever played this, there's the story of "that guy" coming to the table with a PC that's basically a T-800 killing machine.

Combat is more complex than some skirmish war games I've played.  It also was distributed as a stand alone game product called Friday Night Firefight.  While it is a bit dense, it's not obtuse.  Most players take a few sessions to get it down.  It's fairly smooth running and intuitive once players get the basics down.  It's not perfect, fumbles and crits happen too often for many and are extreme in consequences.  More than one combat in games I was in opened with multiple characters getting hit with a head shots and put out of the game.  Still, with all it's flaws, it's easy to tweak and many have derived many hours of fun just in skirmish sessions alone.

Netrunning, this game's version of hacking, is where a PC uses VR to navigate computer systems.  On paper, it's a cool idea.  In practice, it splits the party and requires the GM to either focus on just one player for a while or to run two different scenarios simultaneously.  This difficulty comes right at a core element of the setting.  Very few like this RAW and various tables have come up with different house rules and whole new hacking systems to deal with it.  Later, a supplement was created to integrate Netrunner, a CCG, as the way to handle this.  It was considered better by many but it was still a bit cumbersome and it's out of print now.  To date, I'm not aware of any truly smooth netrunning solution. 
   
The last thing to touch on is the concept of cyberpsychosis.  Getting implants and modifications comes at the cost of humanity in the game.  Loose too many humanity points and you go insane.  It's a strange addition to a game that largely tries to be grounded.  Mechanically, it's a system to keep munchkins from min-maxing too hard but one that feels like a poor fit lore wise.  This is an element that's frequently handles with house rules. 

Over all, it's a solid system and very playable RAW.  It's not baby's first RPG though.  It's more complex than 5e, WEG D6, or Traveller.  It has a somewhat higher learning curve because it is a bit more complex.  Mike Pondsmith has talked more than once how he talked to gun fight professionals in an effort to replicate that reality. Once learned though, it is smooth an intuitive and many players have listed it as their favorite game.  It's also very customizable.  There is a fan created collection of house rules called Interlock Unlimited that smoothly integrates with Interlock and smooths out a lot of things that players over the years found less than desirable.  Interlock Unlimited can be found here http://datafortress2020.com/InterlockUnlimited.html

The Setting

As good as the mechanics are, and they are pretty good, the setting is even better.  This was as much a passion project from Mike Pondsmith as it was a game product and it shows.  World building, locations, factions, and all the little in between bits are well crafted and flow smoothly into each other.

It's a dark future for sure.  The world suffered a series of catastrophes, some natural and some man-made, that's cause social order to collapse.  Major corporations have stepped in to fill the power vacuum left from government receding.  Crime is rampant, life is cheap, and if you have anything nice you either stole it or someone is coming to steal it from you.  Despite how in depth it is, the setting doesn't get in your way.  Instead, it's a cool toy box for GMs to create a nearly limitless variety of adventures and experiences for players.  It draws players in without demanding that they conform to it's standards.  It's not Neuromancer or A Scanner Darkly, but those stories could very well happen here and they would fit perfectly.

One of the best parts of the setting is that there aren't clear cut good guys and bad guys.  It's all shades of gray.  Sure the corps do a lot of things that suck but they are what's keeping the lights on, the water flowing, and delivering food.  It does a good job of asking about moral choices without making you choke on them.

While the core book does a pretty good job of giving you a solid understanding of the setting, the supplements and adventures for Cyberpunk 2020 really fill it out.  Night City is, in my opinion, the best book ever written for an RPG.  Night City details the city both geographically and its denizens to a high degree of detail.  A GM could with the core book and Night City alone could run a multi year campaign without having to resort to much adventure design. 

There's a lot of assumption that game play will be just as the tagline says, high tech and low life.  However, you don't have to be a bunch of antisocial misfits engaged in crimes.  You could easily play this as a detective game or straight up as The Expanse. 

Layout and Presentation

The core book currently available is revision 2.01.  It's a great example of 90s RPG book design.  It's attractive and usable, a balance that RPG publishers still struggle with today.  It has that deep 90s feel with lots of semiprofessional black and white drawings for interior art.  The layout in general makes it easy to follow the material. 

As mentioned before, this is a fairly rules heavy system and a lot of the book is dedicated to presenting them.  It does a good job of laying them out thoughtfully and giving guidance and example on how they are used.  There's very little ambiguity.  Even the more dry rules sections are well written and easy to absorb.  In the end, it is a rules book more than anything though. 

By modern standard, the art can be described as sparse.  It's not an art book.  What art there is, is used well.  More creativity is used in side bars where short one or two paragraph notes flesh out the setting and set the tone. 

Odd and Ends

Many source books and many adventure were officially published for Cyberpunk 2020 and nearly all of it is still available new as soft cover books and PDFs.  The two most outstanding books are Night City as I mentioned above and Black Hand's Street Weapons, a catalogue of nearly every gun that is available for the game.  Chromebooks offer a lot of gear and accessories, Corporation Reports offered detailed information about the business world that ruled over the setting.  There were rules expansions for military equipment and space.  There's an entire book just for NPCs.

Along with the primary setting, three others were available.  Two were single books published by R. Talsorian and one was a high tech vampire setting by Ianus Games.  Almost no one remembers them.  When Gravity Fails was the only one that I ever had interest in and i couldn't get anyone to play it.

One of the books published by R. Talsorian Games for Cyberpunk 2020 was Listen Up, You Primitive Scewheads.  It was the game's version of a GM's handbook.  It's one of the best books on running games I've read.  It's essentially a series of articles written by various people that work for and with R. Talsorian games all talking about different aspect of being a GM.  While not all of the advice lands, over all this book made me a much better GM.  One of my favorite things in it was "You paid your $10, play it your way."

Atlas Games produced a few officially licensed adventures for Cyberpunk 2020.  Two of them really stand out to me, Chrome Berets and Thicker than Blood.  Chrome Berets is a paramilitary sandbox where the PCs are military contractors put in a position to be pivotal in a civil war.  Thicker than Blood is an investigation adventure where the players are trying to recover a kidnapped child.  In both cases, there's a strong effort to keep the game in the realm of tense, high stakes social encounters rather than a series of combat events.  None of these books are still in print but there was enough of them made that they aren't too expensive on the secondary market.  These books were of high enough quality that it gave me a higher than deserved opinion of Atlas Games.  I still think they publish descent stuff but none of it hits the high water mark I had in my head.

Cyberpunk 2020 as a game ended at the beginning of the millennium.  Any material for this game is 20+ years old.  There was an adventure, Firestorm, that up ends a lot of the setting and no after event source books were ever made for the 2020 system.  All support for this game ended in the early 2000s.  In 2005, R. Talsorian Games introduced Cyberpunk V3.0. Fuzion replaced Interlock.  It was a jarring transition and many people just dropped Cyberpunk altogether. 

Final Thoughts

Cyberpunk 2020 dominated the 90s RPG scene and for good reason.  Of all the crunchy RPGs I've been exposed to, this is the best.  It was playable, it offered a very different world to play in, and it offered a lot of different kind of experience.  It has rough edges but if you're a little careful you won't get cut on them.  It's not perfect but it doesn't have to be. 

If you're a GM looking for something new or your a game designer looking for examples of excellent games that are different from D&D, this book is worth your time.  Some of the fluff is dated now and computer stuff is not in line with modern RL tech.  This is a common problem with a lot of older scifi games.  The changes are easy if you have a little imagination though.

In a vacuum, the core book is good, with the other materials to go with it, it's great.  Over all, I give Cyberpunk 2020 a 9/10.  I seriously doubt I'll ever give a higher review score.

Cyberpunk Red is the current version of Cyberpunk being published by R. Talsorian Games.  It's similar to Cyberpunk 2020 in a lot of ways so mostly this review is going to be a compare and contrast.  It can be had at all the same places that 2020 is for sale.

Mechanics

Cyberpunk Red uses a slightly modified version of Fuzion, the same core mechanics as The Witcher RPG.  Fuzion is very similar to Interlock and at 30,00 feet it looks the same.  The best way I know how to describe it is that it's a slightly lightened version of Interlock.  It's a bit easier to use but it's lost some of the granularity of Interlock.  For those familiar with the original, the easiest place to spot the contrast is in the firearms.  Because of the granularity of 2020 there were hundreds of guns with just slightly different stats.  A lot of players loved this.  As per the simplification of RED, the spread of possible gun variants is much smaller.  There's a lot of this kind of change throughout the rules.

One of the things that RED does differently is scaling of NPCs.  It's not a true mechanical difference but it's something that is done differently for RED over 2020.  In 2020 PCs and NPCs were roughly on equal footing and when a fight broke out it was always a fight for your life situation.  Usually, the team with the most guns won and almost always a protracted fight resulted in significant casualties on both sides.  RED basically has three tiers of NPCs to fight; mooks go down easy, veterans are on par with PCs, and elites are boss fights.

The best part of RED is that they greatly reduced the rate and impact of crits and fumbles.  Instakills are now something that is rare, difficult to get, and has to be very intentional.

There's some real effort to make netrunning better for RED but I really don't see it working any differently than it did for 2020.  It's still a separate activity that splits the party.

In the end, I like this system well enough and I'd have no issue if I was at a table that preferred RED over 2020 mechanically.  As it is though, I still prefer 2020, warts and all.

Setting

While 2020 had source books for much of the world, red is exclusively set in Night City.  Mind you, I'm comparing a 2 year old product to a product that was 15 years old when it was dropped in favor of V3.0.  Time will tell where RED goes.

What we have of the setting now is a city rebuilding itself 20 years after the events of Firestorm.  Broadly, it's not a bad idea.  The sticky part for me is that there's a lot of focus on things that players aren't going to be spending a lot of time on.  For instance, there's a whole section dedicated to describing the economic system.  Directly engaging with this would be a very niche game.  I think a brief description and a one page random table would have been sufficient. 

One thing I don't like is that the corps have gone from being selfish and greedy but fulfilling a necessity in society by keeping the infrastructure working to straight up Saturday morning cartoon villains.  In turn, players are expected to be underdog heroes and antiheroes rather than being the more morally neutral characters portrayed in 2020.  This lost nuance is important.   

In the end, the setting is no where near as well developed for RED as it was for 2020.  It's also clear to me that this was a book written by a group of paid contract writers to get a product out rather than the deeply felt passion that Maximum Mike had for 2020.   It's not bad, it's just not focused properly.

Layout and Presentation

This book is clearly a product of the modern RPG industry.  It's a full color, art filled, hardbound.  Over all it's easy to read and the rules are well explained.  It kind of feels like an iPhone.

It's great for giving you a a rules set in a usable format.  In this regard, it's far and away better than many RPG books.  It gives solid examples of rules in use.   It anything, I kind of feel like it hold your hand just a little too long.  Not everyone is a Night City veteran though.

Final Thoughts

i like it.  I don't like it as much as 2020 though.

RED feels like a modern Toyota.  Everything is smooth and rounded and will get you there in easy comfort.  2020 had a lot of rough spots but it was an absolute masterpiece in giving the players that high tension, high risk adventure.  It was like a garage built amateur hot rod with duck tape and pipe insulation foam put on the sharp bits to keep you from loosing an eye.  2020 was an open water dive to see sharks in the wild, RED is a visit to the aquarium.

It's a good game but I don't think it would have seen any traction if it wasn't for the success of 2020 in the 90s and the release of Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red.  Lisa Pondsmith, Mike Pondsmith's daughter in law, is the project lead on RED and it shows that it's not Mike's passion project anymore.  I think the failure of V3.0 in the early 2000s deflated him and he's never fully recovered. 
 
I want this game to succeed but it's gotten off to a rocky start.  Cyberpunk the genre is as popular in entertainment as it's ever been with multiple tv series that are either fully cyber punk in nature or take strong influences from it.  It's a shame that R. Talsorian isn't able to hit it's stride with the flow even with an #1 anime with their name on it and a video game that is seeing solid sales. 

I can't help but compare this to 2020.  Even as I'm reading through the books I have for it, I keep going back to 2020 and I just don't feel that this is the successor it needs to be.  It can be, it's got the potential.

As it is now, I give Cyberpunk RED a 6.5/10.  It's got good bones but you're going to have to do a lot of home brew to really get the most out it.

Edit: typos, was tired when I wrote it and went back to clarify some things

Zaibatsu is a Cyberpunk game by Zozer Games and is available in soft cover from Lulu and as a .pdf from DrivethruRPG.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-elliott/zaibatsu/paperback/product-15vd7nkm.html?q=zaibatsu&page=1&pageSize=4
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234679/Zaibatsu

Mechanics

Zaibatsu uses the Cepheus Engine for it's mechanics. 

For those that don't know, Cepheus Engine is an OGL version of Traveller.  It's mostly based on Mongoose Traveller 1e but has a few minor tweaks to give it an old school Traveller feel.  Zaibatsu makes no changes to the core system, to combat, or any other component except for character creation though it does bolt on a couple of new things.  Like most variants of Traveller, it's a 2d6 + Stat + Skill.  The complexity is on par with D&D and OSR games though it takes a different approach to a lot of things.

The one major change from standard Cepheus Engine is making a character as mentioned before.  After you roll your stats, you pick a starting career and a couple of elective skills and you're done.  It does away with the life path system of most other variants of Traveller use.

PC development is done by gaining skills and getting genetic upgrades.  Most of it is centered on combat and clandestine operative abilities.  It's 100% compatible with Hostile from Zozer games though if you're going to run PCs from both core books, the GM will need to do a little balancing as the Zaibatsu PC will be a little behind in the skills department and OP in combat. 

Like so many other cyberpunk games, this one has a VR hacking system.  Zozer tries to make it simplified and fast but it still suffers the fate of being a side game played one on one with the hacker while the rest of the players at the table just sit a wait for it to be over.

It seems a little obvious to point out but there's no rules in this book for space combat, ship construction, or the like. 

Over all, the system is smooth and functional with a moderate amount of granularity and complexity. 

Setting

Zaibatsu is a Japanese word for the corporate conglomerate families that exist in Japan.  You know of some of them even if you know nothing of Japanese culture; think Honda and Mitsubishi.  Some daimyo and samurai families shifted from military focus to economic focus during the Meiji Reformation in 1868.  This resulted in these traditional families outright owning several corporations and running the entire supply chains for products.  In the early days, they owned the entire industrial and economic structure for a region.  If they had an iron mine, they would build all the foundries and factories necessary to turn their iron into steel and then end product to sell to the consumer.  In turn, they built banks and bought all the land in a region and became quasi independent political and economic entities that completely controlled every meaningful aspect of their region.  They did this while maintaining their family's culture very close to Edo period high society standards and building their position of being powerful plutocrats.  The up side to this was that Japan went from a medieval society to a fully industrial country in a single generation. Post WW2, the zaibatsu families went through a number of major changes, lost a lot of their power, and became less tied to geography.  Some of the old zaibatsu families and some new zaibatsu families that formed post war built themselves up again and refocused on international trade to become the economic power houses we recognize today.

The game is about being the private security and operatives for zaibatsu families set 200 years into the future in the larger Hostile setting.  You are not part of the family, you are a contractor.  You are a valuable asset in that you can do things and reach places that the family cannot be publicly associated with.  Do things well and you'll be rewarded with high payouts and genetic modifications.  Make a mistake and you'll get burned, maybe you're unemployed and hungry or maybe you retire due to acute cranial lead poisoning.  Given enough time, you will make a mistake and you know it.  So make side deals and set aside assets and resources for an escape plan or live the high life and burn out rather than fade away.

This is all in the broader context of the Hostile setting.  You don't need any of the other books but you can certainly add them to your game.  Hostile is Zozer's Cepheus Engine setting inspired by 70s and 80s industrial scifi like Alien, Outland, Blade Runner, and others.  Source books, gear, vehicles, weapons, and various other elements drop right in and fit like a glove.

While the book focuses on the whole zaibatsu experience, it's well rounded enough for you to run any cyberpunk experience you want.  Doing a Blade Runner campaign is very doable as well as a straight police procedural game or a high tech heist game.  It is a full cyberpunk game that's not trying to ride the track in the genre that Neuromancer and Cyberpunk 2020 laid down. 

The one downside to the book is that it's so focused on the zaibatsu corporate wars in Japan that you will need other source book or extensive home brew setting material run this game outside of Japan.  It's a minor issue as there is already a lot of supplements available. 

Layout and Presentation

This book is a hefty 220 pages, it doesn't feel like reading a large core book when using it though.  Zozer is a small publishing company; I think only a couple of people and this feels like a small company product.  The art is sparse but very evocative of the intended setting; there's about 30 full color images that could be photoshopped photos, AI generated, or painted by a talented artist.  There's another 40 black and white and low color images, most of them are maps.  It looks kind of like a 90s RPG book having a similar feel to the older Palladium books.  It trades the extensive production value of so many modern RPGs for the feel of a product of passion. 

In total, the rules are less than 40 pages and very cleanly written.  In my opinion, this is one of the best presentations of the mechanics of the Traveller system in print.  They are spread out a little as it will present the rules for an aspect of the game and then catalogue available options that use that rule; as an example, ranged combat is followed by the firearms catalogue.

The bulk of the book is focused on the setting.  Explanations of the zaibatsu corporate structure, details about yakuza culture, technology and gadgets, daily life in future urban Japan, and the geography of the cities of the setting. 

Near the back of the book there are 6 missions, each about 3 pages long.  They do a good job of getting a GM in the right headspace for running a game in this setting.  They aren't overly complicated and it would be reasonable to expect a table of experienced players to blow through all of them in one or two sessions as written.

In the appendixes is a cheat sheet for PC creation that's useful.  I wish they included one for combat covering conditions, bonuses, and complications for modifying the Dc of a roll.

Final Thoughts

In a vacuum, this is a pretty good single volume RPG that's ready for a table to play.  The over all experience is going to be deep enough and rich enough for any group of players to get years of use out of it in game play.

To me, the value is greatly increased due to it being compatible with other material made for Cepheus Engine and Traveller.  Now you can bring in NPCs, equipment, and other setting locations into your game without having to do any conversion work.  It's also a great resource for bringing in PCs and NPCs as assassins, spies, and operatives into your Traveller and Cepheus games. 

Japanese megacorps are a staple of cyberpunk storytelling and a lot of modern near-future scifi.  No other RPG book has done as deep a dive into the internal workings as this has.  Cyberpunk 2020 and Red has Arisaka, Shadowrun has Mitsuhama and Renraku, The Expanse has Protogen.  Even if you're not interested in Zaibatsu as a game to play, this would make a great source book for how it presents the Zaibatsu internally with focus on playable content.

My own Cyberpunk game (currently on hiatus) uses Hostile with some home brew setting material and Zaibatsu is a key component for my game.  If you're interested in a cyberpunk game but are put off by the idea of learning a heavy rules set, this is my recommendation.

I give Zaibatsu a solid 8/10.

New World is a Cyberpunk game by Michael Brown and is available through DriveThruRPG as a soft cover and PDF.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/371727/New-World-2D6-Adventure-in-a-Cyberpunk-America?src=hottest_filtered

Mechanics

New World uses Cepheus Engine.  In contrast to Zaibatsu, where it's a Cepheus Engine derivative, this is Cepheus Engine with the space ship parts taken out and mated up with new careers and setting and then bolted on some new mechanics for hacking.  Many of the mechanics here are cut-and-paste directly from the Cepheus Engine SRD.  This is perfectly acceptable, that's what the SRD is for and Cepheus Engine is a solid game with lots of flexibility.

PC creation is done the traditional Traveller way with a life path format.  New careers specific to cyberpunk are used and skills associated with space travel are removed.   

New World has 6 pages dedicated to hacking and netrunning.  This comprises almost half of the total pages dedicated to rules and mechanics.  The biggest innovation is a network mapping system.  As per other cyberpunk games, this one still has hacking as a side game that goes one-on-one between the GM and the hacker.

As mentioned when reviewing Zaibatsu, Cepheus Engine is at it's core a 2d6 + Stat + Skill game.  PC development progression is done by increasing skills.  It's a system with moderate granularity and moderate complexity.  It's easy to learn, easy to run, and with familiarity it runs quickly and smoothly.  As a core mechanic, it's one of the oldest used by RPGs; Traveller was first published in the late 70s.

Micheal Brown is known for his spartan writing style and New World is no different.  The rules are well presented but there isn't anything in the way of illuminating support for them.  You'll need to go to another source if you're having difficulty understanding or interpreting a rule.

Setting

In a nutshell, the setting revolves around a combination of Jan 6 and COVID-19 causing the US to turn into a right wing dictatorship, partially collapse, and then become a soft vassal of China.  The EU and several countries broke apart or are going through civil war.  The UN has recognized that some megacorps are independent of any single country and their autonomy is formally recognized.

There really isn't much to expound upon as the material is very sparse.  There's a timeline going 50 years into the future, a few brief descriptions of some events, conditions, and organizations.

Aside from a POTUS that's clearly a Trump-as-seen-by-leftist analog, there are no individual personalities here.  There's no personality to it and there's nothing that makes it feel grounded.

Layout and Presentation

This book is a scant 68 pages but does everything it can to pack it full.  This book works well as a quick reference but not great for those trying to learn the game system.  If you're already used to Traveller or Cepheus Engine, you can put this book to use immediately and feel right at home.  If you're not a veteran of the system, you're going to have to do some google searches and probably watch several youtube videos. 

There are several pages of gear for a cyberpunk specific setting ready to use with any Traveller or Cepheus engine game. 

The cover actually won an award for best cover for an RPG.  It's a nice cover.  The rest of the art just looks like stock art.  There's two pictures I think really ad flavor, the rest could be removed and I wouldn't even know they were gone.  On page 15 there's a picture of a woman using a holographic interface; it's a photo that's been touched up.  The model's face has been filtered to the point of being pushing into uncanny valley territory and her shirt reads "I'm allergic to basic."  It just irritates me.

Odds and Ends

The setting clearly has a left leaning political bias and a world view informed by MSNBC.  Unfortunately, this is product that falls into the category of defining Cyberpunk as the socialist struggle against capitalist oppressors.  It even goes so far as to refer to the PCs as the heroes.  I have some of the adventures for this and they feature political resistance actions as heroic endeavors.  If political messaging in your gaming content puts you off, this is not the product for you. 

Final Thoughts

As a stand alone product, it just fails.  It's style and format are hostile towards new players so it's really only useful to those already veterans of the Cepheus Engine game system. 

For it's size, it's expensive.  It's $8 for the PDF and $15 for the soft cover booklet.  It's a poor value for most tables.

Some might find the network mapping system useful but I've been playing Cyberpunk games since the early 90s and never felt like this was something that would add to the quality of play.  YMMV.

The most damning thing about this is the political ideology that's laced in.  It clearly delineates everything into good guys and and bad guys.  You can dump the setting material completely but why buy the book to begin with?  You can just get the Cepheus Engine SRD for free and dump the space travel.

I give New World a 3/10.   

Carbon 2185 is a 5e based cyberpunk game by Dragon Turtle Games.  It's available as a hard cover and a .pdf on their website.
https://dragonturtlegamesstore.com/

Mechanics

The first four games I reviewed are pretty harsh in that they have high lethality and once you're dead, you're dead.  This is more of an anime cyberpunk style of play.  It's still possible to die but you can trade a few more rounds of fire before imminent threat of death.  Also, this is a class and level based PC development game rather than the skills based PC development games previously reviewed.  If you're looking for a game that's a little more forgiving, this might be your speed.

Straight up, this is D&D 5e all the way to the bone.  If you are completely out of the loop on 5e, it's a D20 + Stat with adding a proficiency bonus for skills.  If you are a 5e player, there's nothing in here that you're going to find out for place.  There are a few things that are different though, most of them bolt on.

The Stats are named a little different.  The physical stats are still Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.  The nerd stats are Intelligence, Technology, and People.

5e is well known for PC options and Carbon 2185 is not different.  There's six classes, each with sub classes.  There's eight backgrounds that give various features, you can think of them like the races in vanilla 5e.  Mercifully, this game doesn't have feats but there's a long list of augments that do some of the things that feats do.

Hacker is a class and hacking is a skill in Carbon 2185.  There's no netrunning mini game in Carbon 2185.  If you're trying to access a system, it's just a skill check.  It's a lot like lock picking in vanilla 5e.  The hacker class has a lot of electronic warfare abilities for combat, known as exploits and mostly de-buffing enemies.  These de-buffs are packaged like spells are in vanilla 5e.  Oddly, the hacker is also a party healer along with the Doc class.   

Leveling stops at level 10 rather than level 20.  High level play in 5e is a bit of a slog so it's not really a loss IMO.  There's no mention of multiclassing in the book.  I suppose it would be up to the GM to decide.

An interesting addition to combat is a damage resistance score.  This means that even when it's a good hit, damage can be reduced by a target's DR depending on the type of damage.   This game also ratchets up the punishment with weapon damage with some capable of 30 points of damage before adding bonuses.

Poisons and toxins are something in the game that's handled very differently than vanilla 5e.  There's a whole tracking system similar to exhaustion tracking in vanilla.

There's also a dedicated social status tracking system for tracking your street cred and your business world status. 

Setting

It looks to me that they took a lot of inspiration from the Night City source book.  It's not as fleshed out as Night City but does a good job with the pages it has dedicated; about 40 pages of setting material and another 6 in the services and transport available.

The core book setting is San Fransisco in the future 150 years.  The city is separated in to districts by social class.  Each district then holds it's own challenges for the PC and limitations based on the social scores.  It takes a common video game trope of security sectors and puts it in the games pretty smoothly.  There's a separate book (.pdf only) for other cities; London, Tokyo, and Manhattan.   

There's a description of the mega corps in town, local small businesses, street gangs, organized crime, and other cyberpunk parties.  There's a hand full of developed NPCs as well.  It does that stupid modern thing with Cyberpunk by dividing them into good guys and bad guys but I don't see any layering of ideological slant.  It's more the nihilistic "you're the hero because you're the main character" thing.  This is mildly annoying to me but easily ignored. 

Interstellar travel and off world colonies are discussed but there's no material that even hints at the possibility that this is something the PCs can use.

In the end, it does a pretty good job of doing what I think a good setting should do.  I creates a stage with a nice back drop and some background activity to spur on the the adventures the party partakes in. 

Layout and Presentation

This is a hefty tome 293 pages.  It's also a visually pleasing book with the art direction being pretty solid

Anyone that's ever done character creation with the WOTC 5e player's handbook knows the frustration of flipping back and forth, looking for your info, and trying not to miss a step.  I like 5e but the book gets in the way of actually using the system.

Carbon 2185 does a good job with a fairly fiddly character creation system of 5e.  It opens the PC generations section with a step by step bullet point guide and then puts all the chapters and sections in order of the guide.  Well done, Dragon Turtle Games, very well done.

This is followed up with equipment and augments, then the rules (combat first), setting, a set of monster (nemeses? antagonists? targets?) stats, and finally an introductory adventure.

There are 28 pages of things to buy, it's cyberpunk after all.  It's enough to get you really going but it's not exhaustive of the possibilities of a cyberpunk experience.  It's 5e though so you can get a lot of developed 3rd party material and home brewing is easy.

Again, WOTC puts all the rules in different places so you need to look up conditions in one place and cover in another place.  It's enough to drive a player mad.  Carbon 2185 makes a solid attempt to organize all the rules that effect combat next to each other.  That simple act alone makes this book more valuable than the vanilla 5e book.

The art...  How do I talk about the art...  Some of it is just amazing.  I have always loved the Japanese cyberpunk aesthetic and this book just drips with it.  The problem is that some of the art direction kind of gets in the way of the book.  The PDF is already large but every single page has layers of graphic design that taxes a system you're using to read it.  Reading the page with graphics filling the margins and blurred behind the text makes it more effort to read.   

Odds and Ends

As I've mentioned,  there's a handful of supporting books from Dragon Turtle game; a setting expansion, a collection of short adventures, a full volume campaign book, and some maps.  The biggest weak spot with the entire Carbon 2185 line is the adventure.  They run like D&D 5e Adventure League adventures.  It's not bad, it just feels like driving all the way to Las Vegas to eat at a Denny's.

Final Thoughts

If you were looking for an RPG for your Bubblegum Crisis, Akudma Drive, Ghost in the Shell, or Appleseed game, I think this would be an excellent choice.  OTOH, if you're looking to do Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, or A Scanner Darkly, I think you'd be better served with Cyberpunk 2020 or Zaibatsu.

This is also a solid choice for younger player or for those that are stuck of 5e but you want to do a new genre and introduce new elements into your game play style. 

I give Carbon 2185 an 8/10

UltraModern5 Redux, NeuroSpasta, NeuroSpasta: General Assembly are books from Dias Ex Machina Games.  UltraModern is the character classes and features as well as the equipment and vehicles and other options.  NeuroSpasta is the setting.  Both are available from DrivethruRPG in both .pdf and hardbound formats.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/302992/Ultramodern5-REDUX-5th-Edition?manufacturers_id=2363
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/204048/NeuroSpasta-5E?manufacturers_id=2363
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/117916/NeuroSpasta--General-Assembly?manufacturers_id=2363

These books require the core 5e mechanics that are not included but can be had for free.
https://media.wizards.com/2023/downloads/dnd/SRD_CC_v5.1.pdf

Mechanics

As you can probably already tell, it's build upon the foundation of D&D 5e.  If you look at the character sheet, you'll quickly see it is fully compatible with your normal WOTC 5e stuff.  5e is a D20 + Stat with adding a proficiency bonus for skills.

There's a could of bolt-ons for the core rules in Ultramodern and NeuroSpasta adds hacking.  There's 10 classes in Ultramodern and one more in NeuroSpasta for a total of 11 class options.  Rather than sub classes, Ultramodern offers two other ways to customize your PC, ladders and archetypes; both give bonuses and features as you level and any class can have any one ladder and one archetype. 

It's worth pointing out that UltraModern5 is designed to a buffet for the GM to pick and choose what elements to put in his game.  It's kind of a build-your-own-pizza thing.

UltraModern has a short section on alternative rules for amping up the risks of combat.  Neat but optional.

Setting

If Dragon Turtle Games' take on cyberpunk was anime, the Dias Ex Machina's go at it is the underground comics take.  Some of the art actually features a Disposable Assassin droid.  I certainly see influence from Jodorowsky.

UltraModern5 itself is designed to facilitate multiple genres and there are several published settings.  They are all compatible with each other though if you used everything I could only describe it as Heavy Metal Magazine gone Planescape via Rifts after Kevin has a bad LSD trip.  Nobody needs that, put down the shrooms.

Neurospasta is a setting where the entire world had been put under the soft tyranny of a despotic UN.  The UN has build a "perfect" city, Archon, from which to administer the unwashed masses of humanity.  Everything is clean and glossy as if the entire city was built by Apple and Tesla.  The thing is, that's where the money is.  Players are part of the underclass in Archon where they can be part of the underworld, be contractors of the ultra-elite, or find their own way of making it in this dream come nightmare city of power and beauty.

NerouSpasta: General assembly Is a setting expansion that add a little to the over all lore and extends the geography to other parts of the world.

It's a fairly unique take on Cyberpunk in RPGs.  It has a feel of Aeon Flux and The Hunger Games.   

Layout and Presentation

If you told me that these books started out as an art project that got out of hand because of a group of scifi nerds getting tanked on "party favors,"  I'd believe you.  UltraModern5 Redux is a kaleidoscope of gun porn, edgy underground comic villains, and psychedelic sexiness. 

You don't really have to worry about the rules with this product and, because Dias Ex Machina knows how to do a table of contents, you can find what you need.  Well, you could find what you were looking for if you could remember what it was after stopping for 47th time to look at the hot chick with six arms or the mecha being repaired.

The books aren't the most functional but they do work and they really put out the invitation to come play in their world.

Odds and Ends

What the product lacks in total depth it makes up for in just the sheer amount of toys it has to play with.  Gear, set pieces, over-the-top monster robot things to kill, the fun just never stops.

Final Thoughts

If you were running 5e and looking to do your own setting and you needed a lot of help filling it with toys, these are the book for you.  If you're looking for a different kind of cyberpunk experience for your players and you're willing to do a lot of extra work to fill it out, then this offers a good place to start. 

It's fun, it's inviting, it's shallow.

I give UltraModern5 Redux and NeuroSpasta a 7/10

Cities Without Numbers is a cyberpunk game by Kevin Crawford, published by Sine Nomine Publishing, and available through DrivethruRPG as both a hardcover book and a .pdf.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/449079/Cities-Without-Number

This book has both a free version and a deluxe version.  I am reviewing both and will include a section on the difference between the two volumes.

Mechanics

Mechanically, this game can best be described as OSR-like.  It's fully compatible with Stars Without Numbers and Worlds Without Numbers but it's not fully compatible with true OSR products.  It would be easy enough to make slight alterations in some cases and run as-is in others for OSR products.  Along these lines, this is a level based system but with Edges and Foci rather than classes.  More on Edges and Foci in a moment.

The core combat mechanic is D20 + combat bonus + weapon bonus.  Saves are always a d20 vs your own save threshold.  Skill checks are 2d6 + stat + skill, much like Traveller.  There are a lot of subsystems for various types of actions a PC can take during combat, making this game quite a bit more complex.  You're either going to have your book always open to this section or you're going to make a cheat sheet to keep yourself from going insane.

This game is highly lethal, particular to early PCs.  A combat heavy game is likely to result in a number of TPKs.

Character creations is simple enough and the book flows pretty well.  Roll your stats, roll on some tables to flesh out your background, and choose your first Edge and Foci.  An Edge is a strong bonus to something specific like extra HP, a bonus to social attempts, or an extra oomph to your attack.  Foci are a more broad and less intense bonus and they are usually applied to a skill set like driving, martial arts, or leadership.

There is quite a bit of the book dedicated to making weapons and gear customizations. 

Hacking in this game is a blend of VR netrunning and meatspace patching.  There's more effort in this game to try and blend hacking with the activities of the rest of the party but it's still a bit clunky and will still require some GM/hacker one-on-one time. 

Setting

A large portion of this book is dedicated to setting generation tools.  While I don't feel that they are adequate to produce a full setting, they are very good for filling up your setting and for sparking your imagination when you do your world building.

The book does include a setting.  It's got a lot of the main structure built and is ready to have the GM add the flavor.  When I read through the setting, it felt more like a sample of the tables and less like the default setting for a game.

Over all, both the tables and the setting seem like a generic list of 80s and 90s cyberpunk tropes.  There's not anything I recognize as unique or innovative.  It doesn't even have newer cyberpunk elements from newer entries into the genre.  Still, as a tool for filling out a setting, it offers a lot.

Layout and Presentation

The book layout is clearly dedicated to usability.  Over all, everything is well organized and easy to search. 

The art direction is good and the art pieces that are chosen flow together well.  It's obvious to me that the art itself was purchased from a catalogue of stock art; several pieces in this book are in other games as well as other media.  The PDFs have a light version that are sans art of any kind for easier viewing on low resource machines.  That said, even the full art versions are lighter than some of the 5e products that are over produced and load pretty well on a tablet.

There's a chapter dedicated to using Cities Without Numbers with the other games by Mr. Crawford.  As those use classes and Cities without numbers uses Edges and Foci, there needs to be some clarification for those players looking to blend PCs. 

One of the things I think this book desperately needs is an appendix with a series of cheat sheets for quick referencing on various parts of the system.

Deluxe vs Free versions

The deluxe version of the book has 34 more pages than the free version in a chapter titled Supplemental Material.  This includes rules for genetically modified PCs, some variant rules for cyberware, and a section on magic.  The magic part in this is a bit more restrained than what's found in Worlds Without Numbers and is clearly an attempt to give this game a Shadowrun feel.

Odds and Ends

This is the product of one man working mostly solo.  There's a focus that comes from that and this clearly is a great example.  Mr. Crawford has made a solid entry into the genre of cyberpunk role playing.

The level of customization of everything in this game is astounding.  On the front of making a game where both GMs and players can tinker with things, it's sure to satisfy.  Even then, the customization system isn't bloated and is easy to use.  In this aspect, Mr. Crawford earns the gold.

Final Thoughts

If you're playing Stars Without Numbers already, this book is a must.  It will add a lot to your game.  If you're an OSR player and you have to have an OSR style game for a cyberpunk campaign, then you should give this book a look.

If a friend wanted to run this game, I'd join as a player.  If a table really had their heart set on it, I'd run it.  I don't think this will ever be my go to for cyberpunk gaming though.  Between having two different mechanics for resolving challenges and having a bunch of subsystems rather than just giving skills for actions in combat, it's too cumbersome.  However, I think this makes a great companion volume for running a cyberpunk game for a GM.

I give Cities Without Numbers a 7/10

Altered Carbon is an RPG by Hunters Entertainment and distributed by Renegade Game Studios  It is available as a hard cover book from Renegade Games Studios and other book seller and PDF vie DrivethruRPG.
https://renegadegamestudios.com/the-altered-carbon-rpg/
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/321246/Altered-Carbon-The-Role-Playing-Game--Core-Rules

It is a licensed product based on the novel and TV series of the same name.  Skydance Television owns the rights to the IP.

Mechanics

The core mechanic is a roll under dice pool building systems where you select dice based on PC attributes, equipment, and circumstances.  The better the value, the smaller the die that's rolled.  The player selects the lowest result to use against the challenge.  There are some dice that can be rolled in some circumstances to then modify this result.

Combat is done by rolling a number of dice to determine how many actions you get that turn and then rolling each action as described for the core mechanics.  It's also run in zones rather than a grid.

PC creation is a point buy system.  Points put into primary stats give you points to buy skills and traits.  There is a lot of options for PC creation with many branching traits and skill trees. 

Over all, the system plays and feels a lot like Modiphius' 2d20 system.

There's a number of fiddly elements to the system.  I'd strongly recommend that anyone trying to play this game make up a cheat sheet for all the special conditions and exceptions.

There's one serious flaw with the system and unfortunately it's systemic; the better the dice pool is for success, the more likely a fumble is to happen.  A fumble is every time two or more dice are rolled to their max value.  Two d4s have a better chance at a low result but has a 1 in 16 chance to max out compared to two d12s that have a 1 in 144 chance.  I can't help but think that this is an indicator of an over all poorly designed game.

When I am reviewing a game, I get out my dice and I do a lot of Danger Room testing to see how the game works and flows.  Some games take longer than others to get to the point where I can play intuitively but I never got there with Altered Carbon.  I consistently needed to look up things in the book.  Both 2d20 and interlock got to a place where I could feel confident  with the rules in running a skirmish on the table.  This honestly feels more like a complicated Euro board game than an RPG.

Setting

Altered Carbon RPG is set in the setting of the TV series.  If you've seen it, you're in the know.

Altered Carbon is a novel published in 2000 and the first in a series that follows the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs, an orphan turned soldier turned revolutionary and now in the hire of an ultra wealthy man to solve a murder.

The TV series stays loosely true to the books but takes a lot of liberties with the giving some of the characters more prominent roles.  The first season is very compelling and engaging with a strong sense of a 1940s nior film with lots of amoral characters, backstabbing, and sudden and shocking violence.

Humans have colonized other planets and interstellar travel is a real part of life.  The technology to decouple the human mind from the body has developed through a series of discoveries and innovations.  Now, if you have the money, you can be moved to a better body or travel to another planet by having your mind digitally broadcast via cerebral implants.  Both cloning and synthetic bodies are available for those with the means to buy them.

This has resulted in a super upper class that is, for all intents and purposes, immortal.  Through their vast monetary resources and their long lives, these upper class people called "meths" are controlling almost everything and seeking ways to get to those few places still outside their grasp.  For the bulk of humanity, this has resulted in absolute poverty.  For a lucky few, there is a middle class that allows them decent living conditions but often at the cost of having to do the heartless bidding of the meths.

There's lot of neat tech and concepts floated by the series and it's a rich playground for cyberpunk play.

The setting offers a lot of things to explore.  What makes a human?  Where are the lines between the mind and the brain?  How do you handle an extremely limited resource in a moral way? 

Layout and Presentation

All in all, this book is cumbersome to use.  Give that it's a hefty 330 pages, that's a real problem.

This book does a poor job of helping a new player get ready to play.  There's a lot of sections you'll have to go over a few times to understand while flipping pages to reference other parts of the book to ensure you really got it.

Somewhere, the poor decision was made to use symbols as stand ins for aspects of the PC and then use these symbols rather than words in text for explanations of the rules.  Until you memorize these symbols, you'll need to constantly reference the key to follow along what you're reading.  These symbols aren't used on dice, cards, on maps, or anything else.  All that really does is make it that much harder to read and understand the material.

At no point is there any decent quick reference charts for stats, traits, gear, or vehicles.  You have to constantly go to the detailed entry for everything when all you need is a quick number. 

The art direction of this book is ok.  Most of the art in the book is stills from the first season of the TV show.  Many times they have that hazy filter that makes it look like a water color.  There's a few generic stock art pieces used as filler as well.  The pages themselves have that background artifact thing that too many modern RPGs have as well as several margin lines and doodles that just makes it that much harder to read the book.  The pages should have cleaner and the art sharper, IMO.

Odds and Ends

One of the biggest parts of the setting is the ability to change bodies like a suit of clothes.  There are aspects of the setting description and the game design that lean into that heavily and I think they do a good job in that aspect.

The overall setting description and the guidance for how to run all kinds of adventures in the setting is done very well.  This part of the book drew me in very well so that I really had high hopes for the function of the game.

As I'm finalizing my write up for this game, I noticed that the hard cover book went on sale for less than half price and is now out of stock.  This is a strong indication that this game, or at least this iteration of it, is dead.

Final Thoughts

This is a really good idea for a game attached to a bad game system.  You could probably homebrew the system until you got it working well but with that effort you could just take the ideas here and use them for a better system.  I would think a 2d20 or Cepheus Engine conversion would work really well.  Then again, you could also just get the novels by Richard K. Morgan, enjoy them, and have all the material for your setting.

My biggest fear with this game going forward would be the development team over correcting and turning this into some form of Powered by the Apocalypse game. 

I bought this book in hard cover when it first came out because I was excited for it.  I wanted this game to be the new Cyberpunk 2020 for my table.  I didn't want to write a bad review for a game, I wanted to love it.

I give Altered Carbon a 2 out of 10.

Blade Runner The Role Playing Game is a RPG by Free League Publishing and is available as a hard cover and as a .pdf from the publisher and several distributors.
https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/store/?collection_id=405939749122

Blade Runner is an IP licensed from Alcon Entertainment.

Mechanics

The game mechanics are based on the Year Zero Engine first used in the phenomenal game Mutant: Year Zero.  With some variations, this same system is used for Forbidden Lands, Coriolis, Twilight 2000, and the Alien RPG.  The basics are that you roll a dice pool based on stats, skills, and equipment suitable for the challenge at hand with the goal of getting a certain amount of successes to come up on the faces.  A player need a certain number of successes to pass a particular skill check at certain levels of difficulty.  Blade Runner differs from the original YZE in that you roll a successively larger die rather than adding more d6s to the pool.  This keeps the total pool size down while still allowing for growth. 

One of the big features of the mechanics is that if you don't initially pass a check, you can push your luck by re-rolling some or all of your dice with the risk of causing yourself problems like self inflicted injuries and equipment damage.  Skill checks are hard to pass and pushing your roll is common for trying to get a success.  When you push a roll, you risk your own stat points.  As such, the game is quite dangerous and really stresses good planning and good decision making over being aggressive.

Another key feature of the mechanics is that all of your stats are hit points for different kinds of damage.  While one kind of attack may not physically kill a PC, if can render him without the will to live and neutralizing him as effectively as if he'd been killed.

Combat makes use of zones rather than a grid as is becoming more common with modern games.  Other than that, combat simply uses skill checks like any other part of the game, though some are opposed rather than against a set difficulty.

Everything about the game is tightly around LAPD hunting rogue androids and having existential crises and the rules are well build for this.  There isn't a lot of room for doing any other kind of game play with this as written.

Setting

The setting in the book is largely based on the movie Blade Runner 2049.  There's a little fleshed out by using the 1982 film and a few things generated by the game developers to round out the game.

The earth is damaged and anyone that can, has fled for another world.  There's a few ultra wealthy that live gilded lives while the rest of humanity breaths poison and despair.

Androids, called replicants, are used to fill the labor shortages to keep things going.  Replicants are very sophisticated synthetic humans that are nearly identical to the real thing, so much so that specialized equipment is needed to tell the difference.   

The players take the roles LAPD officers tasked with handling replicants that go rogue called Blade Runners.  Blade Runners usually handle replicants by destroying them, ie. killing them.  It's brutal and bloody work to keep things working as they are.

Layout and Presentation

Free League YZE team really does a good job with it's products.  (Fee League is a collection of dev teams that work together for publishing and sharing distribution resources.  They are not a monolithic organization under top down leadership like a lot of corporations.)  For being the 240 page tome that it is, it feels very approachable. 

The lay out for the rules is linear so it's easy to follow the progression of how things fit together.  That said, this is a product that's been translated.  It's a perfect translation but there are some idiosyncrasies that are peculiar to a different mindset of game design.  It's barely noticeable to most people and it won't interfere with your ability to use the book,  There will just be some moments where the game concepts will approach you differently, almost like listening to an unfamiliar piece of music. 

Like so many modern books from AAA publishers, the book is overproduced with full margins and background artifacts on the page.  It's less taxing than other books so the book is easier to read than something like some of the modern D&D books.  There's a reason why black letters on white pages in the norm, it improves the reader's ability to absorb the written word.

I like the art.  It's clearly Blade Runner art but it's not screen shots or promotional material that's been recycled.  I just wish they made it a bit crisper.

Odds and Ends

So I know a lot about firearms.  A lot.  Deckard's blaster from the first film is called a PK-D 5223 in the book and a LAPD 2019 Blaster, a PKD, or a Steyr Pflager Katsumata Series-D Blaster by a lot of other sources.  The original prop was made by combining a Charter Arms Bulldog and a receiver from a Steyr Mannlicher Model SL.  The book says this gun is a .44Spl 5 shot with a single shot .222Rem.  There's no way in hell this frame is fitting all of this and no way that a .222 is going to be useful in any meaningful way when shot from essentially a ¼ inch barrel.  In the original movie, it appeared to be some form of energy weapon.  I don't know, I just know that it isn't this in the book.  Either call it a .357 (that the Bulldog is) or call it a space gun, but don't tell me you shoved 5 .44 rounds into that poor cylinder.  Believe me, .357Magnum is plenty powerful enough to kill replicants. 

With this book, you're either playing LAPD Blade Runners or you're doing so much home brew that you're making a whole new game.  It's a good premise and there's enough meat on the bones for a lot of adventure but it may be too constricting for some players.

Final Thoughts

Over all, I like this game.  I love how the YZE system does a good job of ramping up the pressure as things get hard.  I love the fact that every roll is a hard gamble the player is making.  Add that to the format of trying to find a synthetic among a crowd of people while dealing with the gray morality of it all, makes this a game where every aspect keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Because of some necessary design choices, it's limited in scope as far as the breadth of game styles you can do with Blade Runner.  Add to that, it's a licensed product so there's very little room for expansion on the setting.  I feel that this is a one-two punch that will keep this game from being a #1 choice for any table.

Over all, I give Blade Runner a 7/10.

CY_BORG is a psychedelic cyberpunk RPG from Free League Publishing and is available as a hard back on Amazon and a .pdf from DrivethruRPG.  It may be available through other retailers soon if not now.
https://www.amazon.com/Free-League-Publishing-CY_Borg-Rulebook/dp/9189143701
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/393473/CYBORG-Core-Rules

Mechanics

Cy_Borg is a straight forward d20 + stat + bonuses game for core rules.  It is very much like a stripped down 5e.

Character creation is a pretty easy and clean process.  Roll 3d6 x 4 and reference you stats on the appropriate chart.  Then pick a class.  Then roll on a couple of random tables to gear up and flesh out your PC.  PCs have 4 rather than 6 stats, making this the biggest departure from a more traditional D&D type games.

This game seems to avoid anything resembling an exotic mechanic.  This makes it extremely easy to teach and run quickly.

Setting

Cy_Borg takes the generic 90s style cyberpunk setting and dials the noise up to 11.  The basic premise of the game is that nanites that were intended to be an environmental repair have started infesting humans and are slowly killing everyone while at the same time giving some people enhanced abilities while it burns them out.

PCs are social outcasts trying to pay off their debts and maybe find some solace from the pain before they are overtaken by any one of several issues they are trying to out run.  It's the end of days for the PCs and they are looking for a way out.

At least that's the overt setting.  It seems to me that the entire setting should be viewed through the lens that the PCs are nearing the end of a horrific drug addiction and are suffering a psychotic episode full of hallucinations and paranoia.  They are too amped up and burned out to see things as they are so everything is a psychedelic nightmare that has them struggling for some sanity while they wreck havoc on the rest of humanity around them.  Oh, and blaming Capitalism for all their problems on their way to the grave they dug themselves.

Layout and Presentation

This book looks like a 90s skater magazine or a heavy metal music fan magazine.  It's visually striking but it makes it a lot of work to read the book under the art project.  Had this been cleaned up and reformatted, the book could probably shed about 30 or more pages.

Once you get past the fact that all the text is also part of the art, it's pretty well written.  The bulk of the book is a collection of random tables for all kinds of things to fill out PCs, NPCs, the setting, and adventures.

The writing style is to give as much style and flavor as possible.  This pads out the text in the book, sometimes at the expense of ease of reading for clear information.

Odds and Ends

Cyberpunk is style over substance but I think this book takes it too far.  There is so much hot art to just stab you in the eye that the game kind of gets lost. 

Whether it's supposed to bet earnest or tongue-in-cheak, there is a clear layer of communist revolution against the capitalist pigs.  It's a sad departure from what makes cyberpunk work.

Final Thoughts

If you want a rules light Cyberpunk that leans into the darker and more fatalistic aspects, then this may be the right game for you.

There's multiple layers of openings for a creative individual to build off of this game.  The system is easy enough to understand so that it doesn't take much effort to home brew for it.  There's some solid seeds for plots and campaigns.  You just got to get past the dirty needles to get to it.

I give Cy_Borg a 6/10.

Running Out of Time is a Cyberpunk game by Old Skull Publishing and distributed by Exalted Funeral.  Is available as a soft cover and .pdf on Exalted Funeral's website.
https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/running-out-of-time?_pos=1&_sid=d0ccfe77b&_ss=r

Mechanics

The crux of Running Out of Time is that the economy is based around time.  You're paid in time (hours,days, months) and you spend time to buy things.  Your balance of time remaining is the amount of time your PC has to live.  When your time run out of time, your PC dies.

The core mechanic for resolving challenges is a d20 + stat + bonus.  You have three stats, strength, dexterity, and will power.

PC creation is rolling up stats and then rolling on a list of tables to flesh your character out.  PC development is mostly at the discretion of the players to spend time that they have on upgrades and gear.

There's not much more to it than that, this is a pretty light weight rules system.

Setting

Aside from the core concept of using time as a currency, there isn't one.  There's a lot of tables to roll up aspects of a setting but it really comes down to the GM having a solid idea and doing some world building.

It does remind me of an old scifi short story I ready years ago, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktock Man.  The core concept of time as a currency is one element but I get the feeling that it was an influence in other aspects.

Layout and Presentation

The book is a very tight 44 pages.  As such, they get right to the point.  Old Skull is very good at being able to spell out the way things work without wasting a letter and this book displays that skill very well.

In the back, Running Out of Time has a one page rules summery cheat sheet.  I am such a strong believer in this that I make one for every game I run as part of the player packet.  One or two pages to look over for what a GM and the players need to know without flipping furiously through the book is a great way to keep the game flowing.

The bulk of the book is random tables for the GM encompassing tables for settings, factions, jobs, etc.  It's a good mix and has some depth to keep things interesting. 

Every page is soaked in magenta, hot blue, and neon green in patters that are evocative of circuit card foil runs and city skylines.  There's a few photos of people wearing the obligatory 80s style cyberpunk clothes and accessories.  I find it fun, but a little tiring for reading. 

Final Thoughts

I think the time as a currency gimmick is neat but a bit too niche for most tables.  It's a cool idea for an adventure or a short campaign but at some point I think it is going to wear thin.

This would make a great game to run between major campaigns.  Running a game one to six sessions long with this would be perfect.

It's a bit too rules light for me.  I think that a long running campaign will see PC development come to a stand still very quickly.  Bumping up to 6 stats and giving a bit more depth to PC development would have moved this from a neat little game I bought on a whim to making it a real contender for prominence in the genre. 

I love the random tables, they really have a lot of things that can come up and add flavor to your game.

Over all I think that Running Out of Time has some good stuff in it but not enough to make much of a recommendation on.  I give it a 5/10.

One final caveat, I have occasion to run games for groups of kids with learning disabilities.  One of the hardest challenges to on-boarding new players is getting them on the rules.  These rules are clean, intuitive even for those never have RPed before, and already condensed to a single page.  This game is on my short list when running for tables that need a game to be easy to digest. 

Deal – A Social Combat Game in a Cyberpunk City is a Cyberpunk game from Farsight Games and is available as a .pdf at DriveThruRPG.
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/442030/deal-a-social-combat-roleplaying-game-in-a-cyberpunk-city

Mechanics

I'll just come right out and say it.  This is a game in the alpha stage of development and isn't ready for prim time.

The core resolution mechanic is 2d10 + stat.  Any bonus or complication is applied to the target number.

Player characters have four stats and start with 9 points in each stat.  A player can move up to 5 points to around any way they like.

The book then says that the PC needs a career and hobbies but doesn't expound on that much nor gives them any mechanical effect.

There's rules for vehicles and vehicle combat.  They are extremely sparse and the formulae for vehicles results in a four door car that performs significantly worse than a modern Honda Civic. 

Setting

The setting is The City of Perfection.  It's dangerous and bad things happen here.  Guns are now illegal and everyone is forced to work through negotiators.

Yes, this is the setting.  Honestly, this is a cartoon premise.  Even if we look at a RL situation like the Yakuza, we could smooth this out and make it flow better.

Layout and Presentation

This document is 19 pages long.  Every page has margins a mile wide, everything is over sized font and double spaced, and it's all white letters on a black background.  (Screw your printer, I guess.)  It's easy to read but the whole thing feels like a cheap attempt to get page count.

There is some low res digital art that looks like it could have been pulled from the cinematics of a  mid 90s video game.  It's not splashed all over everything and looks to be unique originals.  I like it.  It does give the feel of a high stakes encounter.

There's references to equipment and locations that there is no details on at all that are apparently part of game play.  There is a couple of random tables to generate a conflict to be negotiated but it's pretty thin.  There's no equipment tables, vehicle tables, or any list of things that could be used to mechanically customize the PC in any way.

Odds and Ends

The idea of playing as a bag man, a consigliere, or a crooked lawyer is a great premise for a game.  The idea of walking into a gunfight with nothing more than a pin striped suit and a silver tongue to try and get a positive resolution is compelling.  I wish that was the game I had purchased.

There's comments on the sale page that leads me to believe that there may be some further development.  If it's done and goes in the right direction, I'm down to take another look.

Final Thoughts

Flat out, this is a really interesting proposal for a game.  It looks like the pitch for a project to be developed rather than the final product to the consumer.   As it is, I cannot recommend this to anyone.

Jonathan Hicks, if you're reading this, I'm not trying to be mean.  I'm just trying to let consumers know what they are getting.

I give Deal – A Social Combat Game in a Cyberpunk City a 0/10.

Neon City Overdrive is a Cyberpunk game by Peril Planet game studio and is available as a hard cover, a soft cover, and a .pdf at DriveThruRPG.
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/307995/Neon-City-Overdrive

Mechanics

Neon City Overdrive is a d6 system where a pool of d6 dice are rolled in an attempt to get a 6 on the face for a success or a 4 or 5 for a partial success.  You always get at least one die for your roll but the pool will build with boons and banes.  For each boon you get an additional die to help with your roll and banes give one that will negate a corresponding boon die.  If after all the other dice are matched and cleared you are left with a 1, then you have a critical failure.

The PC doesn't get stats.  Instead, they get various attributes and gear that add boons and banes.  Some will be broad and cover a lot of types of challenges and some will more narrowly focused.

It's a simpler system that is about middle of the road for granularity and moderately lethal.  It's also got a few things that are a bit loose, giving in to a little too much GM fiat IMO.  It's pretty good over all and does have a decent amount of PC development and customization to keep a campaign going for a while.

There's no rules for net running in the core book but there's a supplement called The Grid that covers various aspects of hacking and net running.   The one thing I really like about his is that net running is set up to be a whole party activity rather than splitting the party like so many other systems.

Setting

There really isn't much of a fleshed out setting but what is here hints at the "generic" cyberpunk setting.  There's almost nothing in the main book or the supplements that's not geared directly to game play.  The seems to be a lot of implied suggestion hat the GM make his own setting.

There is a four page frame of a setting called Tokyo Shields on the Peril Planet website that's a free download.  It's clearly a 90s anime cyberpunk setting and even references  a handful of specific ones as a source of inspiration.  It's a good premise but there's not much meat here.

Layout and Presentation

The core book is 77 pages long.  It's pretty well written though I think a little more clarity explaining the core mechanics would go a long way.  It's not obtuse or hostile like some other RPG books but I had to read through a couple of times to really make sure I understood.

It has several random tables to fill in for making a setting, npcs, and events though I feel that this is pretty weak and a GM would do well to either have a setting and adventures prepackaged, DIY, or find another source of random tables.

It's dripping with the obligatory magenta, blue, and purple artwork of indie cyberpunk games.  Peril Planet did a good job of keeping the art from making the book hard to read.   There's a few pictures in the books that set an appropriate mood.  This is one more book that's buying stock art from the same image clearing house as I recognize art from other products

Supplements  

Neon City Overdrive has three supplements I feel should have been included as part of the core book.

The first, Psions, adds psionic powers as an option for both PCs and NPCs.  It keeps it a bit more restrained than some of the full on superhero stuff I see in other games and well clear of magic.  It offers a few different ways to introduce psionics into the game and even provides a bit of a framework for a setting that reminds me of the movie Push.  Not bad and it stretches the cyberpunk genre in a new direction.

Second is Skinjobs and this covers biosynthetic androids (think Bladerunner), trans-humanism and remote consciousness (think Altered Carbon), trans-human transference (think Ghost in the Shell).  It covers things well and does a good job of integrating the concepts into the core game. 

And finally, there's The Grid, as I mentioned before.  It covers AI, AR overlay, and various forms of hacking.  I feel this is the best of the bunch by really looking at Cyberpunk tropes of the internet in a way that hasn't really been explored by other RPGs.

Odds and Ends

At the beginning of the book there's a section on game safety and the use of the X card.  Given the book was published in 2020, it doesn't really surprise me but it is disappointing that yet another product sees the need to preach at gamers for being mean.

There's a little bit of language in the body of the work that hints at a somewhat left leaning viewpoint politically but only the most astute or politically sensitive will notice it.

Final Thoughts

Over all it's a good product.  It's easy to play, easy to understand, and easy to reference quickly.  The system is versatile enough that you can quickly adapt it to all kinds of gameplay.

It has a few quirks that GMs and players will quickly pick up on and adapt to.  It's a bit lighter on the rules side but not like a One Page rules set.  I'd put it on par with Black Star or ICRPG for complexity.

For an indie product, it's really good for a small developer team.  It's clear here that the author loves games and has tested this system.

I give Neon City Overdrive a 7.5/10