Night City Secrets
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Creator: Night City Secrets Team
Synopsis:
Five gaming friends playing Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop RPG from R. Talsorian Games. Antics, teasing, action, role-playing, riddle-solving, and of course usually putting each other in great danger. Anything can happen. We play on the Roll20.net platform.
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Episodes:
Vans & Mannequins & Sheep, Oh My! - Cyberpunk 2020
Mon, 04 May 2020 16:42:50 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 14
Game Session 7, Part 1 – Vans & Mannequins & Sheep, Oh My!
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Günther = (NPC) Fixer. A contact for Hako who gets us black market cyberware and some tech/medtech equipment.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. (“Adam Marshall”) A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos. Works for WorldSat News organization.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who biosculpt themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
Vaxin = (NPC) Fixer. Another black market contact for Hako.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @1:39
Han is at the Petrochem warehouse, trying to gather as much intel as he can before the security team returns.
** Han realizes the security team may have spotted him: @9:40
** Han overhears what sounds to be Genter expressing anger that he’s lost his one and only sample(!): @12:45
** Hako, surprisingly awake, tries to close the deal on the new merchandise with his fixer network: @15:18
** Surány works on understanding why the Petrochem data fortress seems so unique: @21:30
** Antigone asks Chewie for some input: @25:20
** Hako and Chewie head out to pick up the new vans: @30:35
** The team realizes their “fold” problems: @32:45
** Hako picks up the merchandise: @36:40
** Hako calls Günther - not sure he fully trusts Chewie: @39:45
** Antigone reaches out to her contacts to see if there’s any intel on Genter, as well as setting an appointment with Sergei Bratislov of SovOil: @43:10
** We get a promising lead on a restaurant that Genter likes to frequent: @50:00
** End of gaming session: @50:58
** Closing comments: @51:25
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
Tonight we close out session 7. When we left, Eric Genter’s Petrochem Black Ops team had a near miss at our PPC warehouse, thanks to some quick Netrunning by Surány and because we had Han in place to watch them. Antigone’s brother got everyone out and torched the place.
Han is now at the Petrochem warehouse alone, doing what he can to collect more intel. Is Genter really there? How many guards does he really have? How penetrable is the location? All that good spy stuff.
Meantime, Hako is working his contacts trying to secure some practical and some unorthodox supplies that Antigone is asking for, with a few bonuses thrown in for himself.
And Antigone starts the wheels in motion to introduce a major new player -- SovOil, the Russian megacorp who were involved in the Second Corporate War with Petrochem. That war poisoned a large part of the South China Sea and helped serve as the impetus for the creation of our PPC enterprise, in fact, gathering a lot of the refugees from the Pacific Islands.
Let’s see if Han can lay low, or if he is gonna start something.
CLOSING NOTES:
I stopped the recording here, but our conversation went on for another 20 minutes. We got into a long discussion about: is the pacing good? The REF told us he feels like he’s struggling getting everyone equal and ample play time. We all said that we’re quite happy with the pacing - we just enjoy being together.
But we did decide that a lot of our game time the past few sessions has been taken up by activities that we think can be better handled out of game -- using our website forums and with private threads and out-of-game conversations that don’t need to happen here to gum up the action.
So, after this session, we’re going to be utilizing our forum threads more judiciously. Hopefully, that cuts down on some of the administrative stuff that slows down us getting to the more action-oriented sequences the REF has in mind.
If we get an audience, and if any of you want to look at our game threads, just let us know and I can invite you in as a read-only participant. Reach out to us at nightcitysecrets.com and I can get in touch.
We’re ending tonight with the team about to head into the city. Antigone is planning on revealing the details of her plan as well as meeting up with Sergei Bratislov of SovOil - if you want to divert attention from yourself, maybe call in the big dog enemy of my enemy and see if that moves the needle, right? And Hako is headed in to a private meeting with his cop friend Marcella at NCPD Vice.
Hope to see you again!
We're Fixin' to Find Out - Cyberpunk 2020
Mon, 04 May 2020 16:19:21 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 13
Game Session 7, Part 1 – We’re Fixin’ to Find Out
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Günther = (NPC) Fixer. A contact for Hako who gets us black market cyberware and some tech/medtech equipment.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. (“Adam Marshall”) A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos. Works for WorldSat News organization.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who biosculpt themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
Vaxin = (NPC) Fixer. Another black market contact for Hako.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @1:16
The team is in their new crib, and planning how to strike out without getting made.
** Surány starts laying out a web to find any chatter out on the Net regarding our PPC wheat strain: @1:20
** A ray of hope! …??? @4:50
** Antigone calls her brother Mikael: @10:15
** …and we’ve been bugged: @13:55
** Surány diagnoses that it isn’t us… Mikael has been tapped: @18:50
** We switch over to Han, who is staking out the warehouse: @25:10
** Han sees a security detail scramble from the warehouse in an AV-9: @30:00
** The PPC warehouse begins their evacuation: @35:00
** We call back Han and ask if he can verify Eric’s presence: @42:00
** End of gaming session: @48:41
** Closing comments: @48:55
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
Lucky episode 13. We closed last time with a high level of confidence that the “Dark” Black Ops warehouse that Genter planned to take Antigone to is not really as dark as we had heard.
A pressing concern for us is the PPC sample that we stole back from Petrochem. We don’t know how they got their hands on it, and we don’t know if we took their only specimen. Maybe they have reverse-engineered it, or maybe they’ve replicated it on their own.
Either way, that’s a major concern for our home corporation, so Surány gets to work on trying to find more info.
And maybe we haven’t learned how to be as discrete as we thought we were.
CLOSING NOTES:
Well that was a close call. While trying to set up our trap to figure out whether Petrochem really had more samples available, we ended up bringing their security team down onto our PPC site.
Thankfully we got the warning out in time and, though we had to burn the assets there, at least I didn’t cause anyone’s death.
Now we have their security team flying back, and Han is there alone. Hopefully they don’t spot him, too.
But as we all know, Han is a loose canon, and who knows what he might try to do next.
We hope you can come back, and we’d certainly love to hear from you. Night City Secrets@gmail.com!
Thanks for listening, choomba.
Planning to Not Get Burned Again - Cyberpunk 2020
Mon, 04 May 2020 16:10:55 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 12
Game Session 7, Part 1 – Planning to Not Get Burned Again
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Günther = (NPC) Fixer. A contact for Hako who gets us black market cyberware and some tech/medtech equipment.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. (“Adam Marshall”) A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos. Works for WorldSat News organization.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who biosculpt themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
Vaxin = (NPC) Fixer. Another black market contact for Hako.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @1:14
Han is casing out the interview location prior to the rest of the team arriving. Meanwhile, Surány and Chewie are back at the house working on the encryption box.
** Surány takes a short break and gets a surprise: @3:42
** Hako and Antigone arrive to do the interview with Kronk: @10:18
** Interview ends and we wrap up at the studio: @34:45
** We leave the interview location and head back home: @38:45
** Hako and ‘Tig get back to the bolthole and discover Surány’s surprise: @41:30
** We arrive at the new digs: @53:30
** Play Session ends: @1:00:00
** Closing discussion: @1:00:50
** Closing comments: @1:03:40
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
All the way up to episode 12. Still in Season 1, as we’re still following up this Eric Genter rival Petrochem story arc.
Send us a note at nightcitysecrets at GMAIL dot COM, leave us a review, we’d love to hear from you.
We spent our first night in our new home, and no one died yesterday. So, the bar is pretty low.
But the team isn’t exactly feeling warm and fuzzy and tight with each other. There’s still some latent mistrust out there, not to mention some loose ends each of us wants to tie off. Antigone is trying to hatch a plan, while Hako and Surany are trying to close off some business of their own.
Without further ado, let’s see how we try to come back out of our shell.
CLOSING NOTES:
So, not much action this time, but a lot more prep work. But Surány seems to have some decent evidence pointing us to the Petrochem warehouse as the source of our Netrunner nemesis. Han got some more intel on the site and set us up to gather even more. And Hako was able to procure some transportation, some mannequins, an inflatable sheep, and is in the process of getting us more boltholes to run away to.
I wonder how we got so paranoid…
Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8 - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:41:32 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 11
Game Session 6, Part 3 – Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Günther = (NPC) Fixer. A contact for Hako who gets us black market cyberware and some tech/medtech equipment.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. (“Adam Marshall”) A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos. Works for WorldSat News organization.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who biosculpt themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
Vaxin = (NPC) Fixer. Another black market contact for Hako.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @1:14
Han is casing out the interview location prior to the rest of the team arriving. Meanwhile, Surány and Chewie are back at the house working on the encryption box.
** Surány takes a short break and gets a surprise: @3:42
** Hako and Antigone arrive to do the interview with Kronk: @10:18
** Interview ends and we wrap up at the studio: @34:45
** We leave the interview location and head back home: @38:45
** Hako and ‘Tig get back to the bolthole and discover Surány’s surprise: @41:30
** We arrive at the new digs: @53:30
** Play Session ends: @1:00:00
** Closing discussion: @1:00:50
** Closing comments: @1:03:40
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is part three, the final part, of gaming session 6, which means we are on Episode 11.
So we’ve started to turn the tables. Got some gear, some new equipment, walking into an interview to play our story through the media, maybe we’re getting some mojo back.
If things appear to be going well, then you’re probably not watching your six.
Let’s see if we’re on the right track, or if we’re just continuing to dig our own graves.
Also -- send us a note at nightcitysecrets at GMAIL dot COM, leave us a review, we’d love to hear from you. We’d love to hear your criticisms, advice, and your insults. We can handle it!
CLOSING NOTES:
We made it! Everyone is alive. The REF certainly has us all walking on eggshells at this point.
I have never felt so strung along…
Just when we were expecting a storm, we got the eye. I’m not sure if we’re growing as role-players, or if we’re just growing more paranoid. Pretty sure we’re just playthings at this point.
Tune in next time to see how he gets us out of this shell and we start trying to go on the offensive against Petrochem and Eric Genter.
Fricking Genter…
Everybody Loves Shopping! - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:36:36 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 10
Game Session 6, Part 2 – Everybody Loves Shopping!
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Günther = (NPC) Fixer. A contact for Hako who gets us black market cyberware and some tech/medtech equipment.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. (“Adam”) A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos. Works for WorldSat News organization.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
Vaxin = (NPC) Fixer. Another black market contact for Hako.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @2:13
Assessing the situation.
** Han heads off to do some recon on the Petrochem warehouse: @6:08
** Surány shares what research he’s uncovered on Eric Genter: @8:06
** Hako calls in to his contacts to find replacement cyberware and other gear: @9:00
** The team tries to get a meeting with the Media, Ravnos: @10:45
** Racktime!: @11:50
** Han returns with his warehouse intel: @14:10
** Intel on Eric Genter: @28:50
** Discussing our new digs & whether Tak is compromised: @30:00
** Scouting out the new place: @38:45
** Pay day!: @43:00
** Surany goes to work on the Petrochem encryption box: @55:00
** Closing of Session: @1:02:00
** Closing Comments: @1:02:28
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
Episode 10, comin’ at you. Can you believe we got 10 episodes out? I can’t… In meat space, we’re actually already up to gaming session number 10, and each gaming sesh is turning in to 2-3 episodes of content after I do the editing. So there’s plenty more of the story to come.
Last time, we got our paychecks, we got a new apartment, we got healed up. So now, we’re going on a shopping trip. Plenty of gear stuff coming up. Plus, we start hatching the rudiments of our plan to get back, get even, get revenge.
CLOSING NOTES:
Still one more part to go for this game session. We spent most of our time so far just trying to recover. So I apologize if the overall pace and intrigue levels are kind of hovering at a low level right now.
Our team is on the lamb, after all. And we learned our lesson about trying to be much more cautious going forward.
But now we’re outfitted, got new cyberware, got new guns, ammo, clothes, and shiny shiny toys, and we’re just about to head out the door.
These boots are made for walkin’.
This is not my Beautiful Life? - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:31:12 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 9
Game Session 6, Part 1 – This is not my beautiful life?
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
Cherub = (NPC) Solo. A bodyguard for Ravnos, known by Surány.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian a SAMOAN, not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Kronk = (NPC) Media. A contact of Hako’s. Not as well known or as well regarded as Ravnos.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Ravnos = (NPC) Media. A freelancer who mostly works for Net News 54. He broke the story of Petrochem and PPC tensions escalating in Night City.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. He has known Hako for many years, and Hako generally trusts him. He provided us with the intel about the Petrochem transport from Reno to Night City which we intercepted in Modesto.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @2:13
Assessing the situation.
** Han heads off to do some recon on the Petrochem warehouse: @6:08
** Surány shares what research he’s uncovered on Eric Genter: @8:06
** Hako calls in to his contacts to find replacement cyberware and other gear: @9:00
** The team tries to get a meeting with the Media, Ravnos: @10:45
** Racktime!: @11:50
** Han returns with his warehouse intel: @14:10
** Intel on Eric Genter: @28:50
** Discussing our new digs & whether Tak is compromised: @30:00
** Scouting out the new place: @38:45
** Pay day!: @43:00
** Surany goes to work on the Petrochem encryption box: @55:00
** Closing of Session: @1:02:00
** Closing Comments: @1:02:28
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
Here we have episode 9, part 1 of our sixth gaming session.
I can’t believe we’re made 9 episodes so far… and I have plenty more in the pipeline. I’m trying to release them one or two at a time, at least once per week. As we have been doing this, we’ve been getting everyone some improved mics, we’re trying to get better about handling the random background noises of kids, spouses, and pets -- sorry about that -- and basically just trying to present a better product. We’re new to this, but we’re actively working on making it better quality all around.
We do have an email account if anyone would like to reach out to us. It is nightcitysecrets@gmail.com. All one word, nightcitysecrets @ gmail dot com. If you give us an email or a review on your podcasting station of choice, we will be happy to give you a shout out on our next recorded session. And we certainly hope you enjoy listening to this distracting and hopefully amusing content.
We left off with the team burned, singed, paranoid, and frantic. Just another evening in Night City, right?
In this episode, we try to assess our situation -- how much damage did we take, how much gear did we lose, how much danger did we introduce to our sponsoring corporation? Should we tuck tail and run? Mostly we just know we’ve been made, and we don’t know how bad it is.
So we try to correct this information asymmetry by conducting a little intel of our own. Maybe we should try to get ahead of this story in the press? Let’s get some repairs done and some new gear, and think up a way to turn this around.
Go, you plucky protagonists, go!
CLOSING NOTES:
So we got our new digs, we got paid, we have some intel on Petrochem’s “Black Ops” warehouse where Eric Genter planned on taking me, and we’re working on cracking into the encryption box that might get us inside their corporate network.
Looks like we bought ourselves a little breathing room. We’ll see how long that lasts…
One loose end that someone may have noticed. In a previous episode, Hako received a call on the phone we took from Stahl which showed a video of Hako assassinating him. We were threatened that this video would go public if we didn’t turn Antigone in to Eric.
But we went back and checked the tape and remembered that when Hako was casing Stahl’s apartment, he rolled a critical success when looking for any surveillance equipment or hidden cameras. So the REF generously allowed us to ret-con that event. Hako did receive a threatening text on Stahl’s phone, but there was no compromising video.
And there was a massive collective sigh of relief.
For how long? I’m guessing not very.
It's Dark In This Hole I've Dug - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 07 Apr 2020 19:41:07 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 8
Game Session 5, Part 3 – It’s Dark In This Hole I’ve Dug
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @1:13
The team is deliberating on what the hell to do next.
** The team decides that Hako should call Tak, to see whether we think he is the one who burned us: @10:04
** Surány tries to see if he can do anything with the Petrochem encryption box: @19.45
** Antigone tries to convince Surány and Chewie that she needs to vanish: @21:34
** The team decides to stick together: @29:00
** They decide what to do next, based on what we know so far: @31:45
** Closing of Session: @37:00
** Post Session discussion: @37:30
** End of discussion: @49:36
** Closing Comments: @50.01
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 8, part three of three of our fifth gaming session.
Antigone is in a pretty dark place - pretty sure she’s brought a corporate war onto the streets of Night City.
The team tries to lift her up and produce a counter-plan.
This episode features a fair bit of discussion, trying to piece together the past and battle-plan the future, as well as some static between the REF and me. In the terms of the Joseph Campbell monomyth, this might be right around the “Death & Rebirth” stage of the Hero’s Journey.
CLOSING NOTES:
So after this game session concluded, the REF actually reached out to me the next day, and he was like, “Dude…. it seems like you took that a little personally. Are you ok?”
If you’ve listened to these episodes from the beginning, you’ll know that I’m the newbie role-player here. Although I always wanted to try it, it wasn’t until we started playing Cyberpunk 2020 together that I really got to experience it.
It was a very interesting experience — I could tell that, upon reflection, I was feeling perhaps too invested in my character. But I tried to explain to the REF that what upset me was I felt that I failed to communicate effectively to the team that I was trying my best to avoid bringing attention on us. And clearly I felt a sense of personal failure that I didn’t lead effectively.
The way I resolved this was when I came to explain this by saying that I let Han loose — and Adrian, who plays Han, is always a loose cannon in our gaming circle – and when Han rolled that critical success in his out-of-game activities, he went hog wild and ended up being so successful that we drew the attention of Petrochem and their Black Ops response team.
So, basically, it was Han’s fault. It is usually Han’s fault. Fricking Adrian….
Unintended Consequences - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 07 Apr 2020 19:35:53 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 7
Game Session 5, Part 2 – Unintended Consequences
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Arianna Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Corporate. Antigone’s older sister, the Executive VP of Marketing for the PPC. They have a good relationship.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Mikael Papadopoulos-Paupau = (NPC) Medtech. Antigone’s younger brother, the Director of Research and Development for the PPC. He admires his older sister.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @ 1:38
The team establishes a rendezvous with Arianna to remove Kat and Rico from Night City.
** Everyone shows up on the rooftop of the Night City Hilton: @6:35
** Mikael reveals what they learned from the “Black Box” heisted from Petrochem: @10:59
** The team tries to find a Bolthole to lay low and recover: @17:15
** Chewie pleas for the team to re-group: @33:05
** Antigone shares the screamsheet with the team: @34:20
** Here’s where the primary schism occurs between the REF and myself: @38:12
** We decide to just roll with it, despite our misunderstandings: @44:12
** Closing of Session: @49:30
** Closing Comments: @49:40
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 7, part two of three of our fifth gaming session.
When last we left, our team had been thrown into a spiral of confusion. Antigone was kidnapped and somehow managed to escape. Han, Hako, and Chewie almost died in the AV explosion, but managed to rally with Surany and get to where Antigone had been abducted.
Up until this point, Antigone had been convinced that the actions against her and her team had been entirely driven by the personal hatred of one Eric Genter, a Senior Director at Petrochem, one of PPC’s chief rivals.
But she slowly came to the realization that this was much deeper — she had implicated her team, her company, and her family into a potentially deadly conflict with one of the world’s largest corporations.
One that could have deadly repercussions not only on herself and her team, but on her entire corporation and her family lineage.
Let us delve into the murk and the intrigue.
CLOSING NOTES:
If you listened to the bonus episode where I interview the REFEREE, you’ll be aware that we created something we call the “Extended Rolls Tasks” system. This was basically a way for the REF to figure out how to include interesting content in the downtime between our gaming sessions so that our characters remained active in game. It is something like the passive AFK skill training in EVE Online or in Black Desert Online or in the yet-to-be-released Crowfall MMORPG.
Basically, we assign tasks for our characters to complete, we make rolls, the REF makes rolls, we figure out the outcomes when we next meet.
Since I’m the Corporate and I’m funding the operations, I ended up putting in the most time on these tasks. And there was some disagreement between the intent of those activities between the REFEREE and myself.
My notes about the intent of these activities was glossed over and the REFEREE took the primary outcome goal to be our activity.
So while I did not intend to roll into Night City dropping bombs, blowing up refineries, and sticking bananas into the tailpipes of Petrochem delivery vehicles, that’s apparently pretty close to what we actually did.
And we were quite successful at it.
So by the end of this episode, I have fully realized that I’ve now drawn the unwelcome attention of the entire Petrochem megacorp omnibus onto us. And they have deployed their most lethal and deadly operations teams to take us out.
Oh happy day. Tune in next time to see how we try to wriggle out of this one.
Antigone is pretty sure her own family has a hit out on her at this point…
Deeper and deeper - Cyberpunk 2020
Mon, 23 Mar 2020 00:00:48 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 6
Game Session 5, Part 1 – Deep and deeper
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @ 1:32
The team is in the hospital getting patched up.
** We catch up with Antigone and her abductors, who planned on going to get some poké: @8:40
** Antigone calls her older sister, Ariana, and realizes she’s made the Net 54 screamsheets: @13:05
** Kat lays down the reality of Eric: @24:02
** Back at the hospital, the team discovers another surprise: @31:02
** Surany fails spectacularly to fix the issue with the phone: @35:59
** Always awkward… the topic of the hospital bill comes up: @41:40
** Han realizes he deleted his gun… : @47:45
** Realization is settling in that Antigone is in much deeper trouble than she thought: @51:42
** The team realizes they boosted a Petrochem encryption box from their heist in Modesto, and now we struggle to see whether we saved it from the blast: @58:28
** Antigone continues interrogating her abductors: @1:02:14
** Closing of Session: @1:05:00
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
Here we have episode 6, which is Part One of our sixth fifth gaming session.
Last time, our plucky team somehow managed to survive being blown up. Antigone was kidnapped, but convinced her abductors to set her free with some fast-talking and promises to double their pay. And thanks to Hako’s contact - Marcella - who works in the Night City Police Department, as well as a bit of a yarn stretched by ‘Tig, they avoided a police shoot-out.
Bloodied and humbled, but still alive, the team heads to Night City Medical to get patched up while Antigone tries to make good on her promise to her kidnappers to save them from her antagonist, Eric Genter, a Senior Director at Petrochem in Night City.
The team learned a lot of valuable lessons last time in paying better attention to covering their tracks. But in this session, they are about to realize just how deep into it they really are.
Strap in and hang tight, choomba.
CLOSING NOTES:
So it took us about 6 episodes to start to get to our first real drama. You can see it start to percolate here at the end of part one. But it will boil over in part 2.
Luckily, we’re all good friends and even when we disagree, we can always crack a beer or split a fondue or take a lovely stroll at sunset and work it all out.
It all really starts with some misunderstandings between the REF and myself about the structure of our world and the consequences that are coming to light based off of Antigone’s decisions.
She’s now realizing that the fascination Eric Genter has with her is not some petty schoolkid feud, but instead it looks like she might have ignited a new Corporate War that is going to play out on the streets of Night City.
Tune in next time to see just how bad it gets.
Yes, it gets worse.
It always gets worse…
Betwixt Scylla and Charybdis - Cyberpunk 2020
Sun, 22 Mar 2020 23:51:53 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 5
Game Session 4, Part 2 – Betwixt Scylla and Charybdis
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Eric Genter = (NPC) Corporate. Senior Director for Petrochem in Night City. He absolutely hates Antigone for losing face to her a few years ago. Antigone simply ignores him, but he has it out for her badly. Apparently, he’s now running Petrochem’s Black Ops team.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Marcella Lemieux = (NPC) A cop working on the Night City Police Department. She has known Hako for many years and actively is concerned for his safety, so she is willing to help him out.
Rico = (NPC) A second Solo merc-for-hire who is working with Kat to abduct ‘Tig.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. One of Hako’s contacts, one that he has known for years and trusts implicitly. He originally tipped the team off about Petrochem transporting something special from Reno to Night City. The team intercepted the transport in Modesto and got into a firefight.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC AND TIMESTAMPS
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @ 1:03
Han, Hako, and Chewie were blown out of the AV and are now assessing the situation. Antigone is wrapped up in the back of some car somewhere in Japan Town.
** Antigone, still conscious, tries to persuade her abductors to let her free: @3:45
** Han spots some people creeping up to the blown-up AV: @8:03
** Surány, under attack in the Net, tries some way to help the team: @20:30
** Antigone gets the kidnappers to stop the car with a bribe of doubling their contract: @25:00
** Han has eliminated the threat, and now they are figuring out what next: @35:37
** Hako calls Marcella and tries to figure out if Antigone is safe: @37:12
** Surány, still facing another Netrunner, heads in to try and stave them off: @38:50
** Antigone, freed from the net, tries to save everyone from a firefight with the police: @42:45
** Han, Hako, Surány, and Chewie show up in a cab: @51:43
** Antigone and Hako need to have a little tête-à-tête: @57:10
** The team heads to the hospital while Antigone invites her kidnappers to poké: @1:06:00
** Game session post-mortem and reflection: @1:10:45
** Closing of Session: @1:18:04
** Ending Notes: @1:18:27
INTRODUCTION TEXT
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 5, which is gaming session #4, part 2.
We left off kind of trapped between Scylla and Charybdis there… Antigone is webbed up by her kidnappers in the back of a car, and the rest of the team has been blown out the back of the AV, which had been booby-trapped with explosives.
Thankfully the taser failed to knock out Antigone, and the team survived the blast - barely. We don’t have much going for us now beyond our wits.
Here we go…
CLOSING NOTES
Night City will chew you up and spit you out.
Or maybe our REFEREE just wanted to.
Lessons learned by our team tonight…. somebody is always watching. And anyone can be bought off.
Did you catch the part where Antigone noticed one of her kidnappers was wearing the same kind of glove that Chewie wears? Yeah, I have a feeling this isn’t going to get any better for the crew.
One point of clarification, in case some parts seem a little hard to follow. Sometimes we communicate with one another via text outside the game audio. For example, if you remember when I put my gun to Hako’s head, I had texted the REFEREE beforehand to let him know I had removed any ammo — I didn’t want to critically fumble and accidentally shoot him.
Likewise, after the crew got blown out of the AV and Hako - who is our Fixer, so he has a wide network - knew they weren’t going to be able to get to my location, he texted the REFEREE that he sent out a call to his contact in the NCPD, Marcella, and asked her to save me.
I’m doing my best to make sure this gets captured in the audio or is explained, so no one feels lost. At some point, I’ll actually start getting some screen grabs of our Roll20 game so that you can actually see the rolls we make, and not just hear our reactions to them.
Hope you are able to tune in again sometime,
Signing off from Night City Secrets.
BONUS 1- Interview with the REF - Cyberpunk 2020
Sat, 14 Mar 2020 01:11:47 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets BONUS Episode 1
Interview with the REFEREE
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
TRANSCRIPT
INT So hello, welcome back to Night City Secrets. Today I’m going to interview our illustrious Referee. How would you like me to refer to you.
REF God might be a little pretentious, let’s just go with “Referee.”
INT [laughing] All right Mister Referee.
REF Sir.
INT Sir, that… that’s always good. So how long have you been playing Cyberpunk 2020?
REF Ah, so I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2020 since probably around 1989 or 1990. Now, that’s not consecutive, I mean, there’s been a lot of off and on years, but, again, 89-90 timeframe when we were *really* heavy into role-playing.
I’m sorry, I should probably give a little bit of context, too. I’m 46 years old. So, eh, I was, 18, 19? I was young, right, and we were really heavy into role-playing at the time. We logged hundreds of hours playing Cyberpunk 2020.
INT So you were in High School, I guess, basically, when you started doing this?
REF Yeah. Yeah, high school or right out of it.
INT What is it that you think attracted you all to table-top role-playing?
REF You know, we were always kind of the fringe crowd. We weren’t the jocks, we weren’t preppies, we weren’t stoners, we were always kind of a fringe crowd. We got along with everybody, but we didn’t really belong to any specific genre of friend-group. Uhm, we were all very creative, very imaginative, we liked reading, we liked theatre, we liked music, we liked anything creative. Uhm, Jamie is still an aspiring writer. You’re a writer, right? I mean it’s just the type of people we hung out with.
And back then, video games were… they were starting, I mean, we had them. We had computer games, but they were still pretty new and still pretty remedial. And so, if you wanted an opportunity to explore “strange new worls and seek our new life and new civilization,” your opportunity was role-playing games. So that’s what hooked us.
INT And you guys grew up in a pretty small town, right?
REF Yeah, good point, Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Uh, population at the time I think was about 7 or 8,000. Very small, my entire school, my entire high school was around 400 people. About 100 per class. So yeah, it was small. Didn’t have a lot to do. Your opportunities were: a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, a lot of getting in trouble, and role-playing. [laughing]
INT So did your parents, did everyone know you were doing this role-playing stuff?
REF No, I don’t know that they did. You know, I can’t say it was anything I kept from them, I just, you know, my parents never really took an active interest in what I was doing when I wasn’t at the house. So I never came to them said, like, “He dad, I’m playing D&D, and Cyberpunk,” it was just… I was out of the house and he never really asked.
INT Well, I guess the reason I ask is because, around that time frame, it was maybe a little bit earlier than your time, but there was the whole… I’ve heard people call it the “Satanic Panic.”
REF Yeah, the D&D scare.
INT And so parents were hearing these bad stories and they were not wanting their kids to get involved. That’s what happened to me.
REF OK, and that makes sense. And you know what, funnily enough, now that you mention that, I can… I’m not sure that I can actually recall, but I do know that I was probably fairly adamant about not telling my mom what I did. My mom is very religious and I probably omitted that from her. But my dad just never asked, so…
INT Yeah I, I wanted to play role-playing games, but I didn’t know anyone that really did, and my parents frowned on that activity, they didn’t really want me doing it anyway.
REF We would have been really good friends in high school, dude. [laughing]
INT I was in an even smaller high school than you.
REF No kidding? Oh, that’s right, you were up in Steamboat, weren’t you?
INT Uh-huh, yeah. You want to guess my graduating class?
REF OK, if mine was 100 in Glenwood, I’m gonna guess yours was probably what…. 30?
INT 14.
REF Oh good god! [laughing]
INT And we started the year at 20. We finished at 14.
REF Wow, that’s a pretty high drop out rate…
INT Yes, well, it wasn’t drop out so much as kicked out. Yeah, I was at boarding school, so…Anyway, enough about me. So are there other role-playing games that you played? What else did you dabble in?
REF So I think, probably most people - at least in that age - started with D&D. Somebody said, “What the hell is this game, Dungeons & Dragons?” And so we sat down and played that for a couple years. And then, actually, I think it did evolve into the next game being Cyberpunk. After Cyberpunk, we also played a game called GURPS, a Steve Jackson game: “Generic Universal Role-Playing System.” 93 or 94, probably 94, is when Vampire: The Masquerade first dropped, and, funny enough that was actually the game system we logged the most time with in total. Whereas we played maybe 100s of hours with Cyberpunk, I would guess 1000s of hours with Vampire. It is also the one we played the longest. So where we did a couple years of Cyberpunk, I would say a decade of Vampire.
What else? Trying to think, uh… Teenagers from Outer Space, Cyber Generation - which is kind of another iteration of Cyberpunk, I think those are probably the big ones. And probably a couple other systems I can’t even remember.
But yeah, a lot of games, a lot of different type of games.
INT So you got introduced to this at a pretty young age, and stuck with it for quite a long time, off and on.
REF Yeah yeah yeah, the first D&D game I want to say was something like 15 or 16. And probably the longest gap in my adulthood was maybe 8 or 9 years of not doing any gaming. And I don’t know why, it was just kind of one those things where adulthood, life, took us away from it for awhile, but then we realized, we’re like, you know what, we enjoy this, we love it so much, it is such a large part of who we are, and, here we are again.
INT Well what is it for you, if you can elaborate, that makes it so fulfilling for you?
REF Oh absolutely, so, I mean… you’re the neuroscientist here, right? you could talk about the chemical and the biological reactions that are going on, but at a base, right, there’s a fulfillment in playing these games, right? Video games, and don’t get me wrong, I love video games. I do. I love sitting down, I love playing a video game. But to me, the video game’s almost…you know, barring certain unique circumstances… it’s almost kind of a mind numbing, or mindless pursuit, right? You’re following a script, you’re playing the game, you’re learning the system, you’re learning the movements, and then you just let your brain go and you go with it, right?
With table-top games, role-playing games, RPGs, you’re creating a story, and even if you’re not creating a story, you’re immersing yourself in somebody else’s story, and you’re playing a major role in that, right? So, it involves a lot more imagination, it’s a lot more creativity, it’s a lot more action versus reaction. Or interaction, you know? It’s just, it’s stimulating on such a mental and visceral, emotional level for me.
INT So the way you are describing, it sounds like it is cathartic for you, in a way.
REF Yes, absolutely. Not just cathartic, it is therapeutic, it is meditative for me in a lot of ways. You know, my sleep has suffered, I’m not gonna lie. My sleep has suffered a lot since we started doing this, because I will sometimes lay in bad for hours just thinking through the different scenarios and the plot lines and the different character hooks, and the different ways that things could play out, depending on what the characters do, or what the NPCs do in reaction to the characters. It is very cathartic for me.
INT So you’ve been playing a long time, when did you really start getting into being a Dungeon Master or being a Referee, at that level?
REF That is a good question. I don’t… Actually, I do know, ok, I take that back. I do know. I would say that I probably never really ran my own game up until Vampire. Somebody else introduced me to the game of D&D. Somebody else introduced me to the game of Cyberpunk, or GURPS, or… whatever the other systems were, and so I was always just a player. The first time I ever referee’d, or game mastered, or was the storyteller, was Vampire: The Masquerade. And that was because I was kind of the one who found the game.
I was like, wow, vampires! This is fantastic. I always had a kind of fascination with the dark, the arcane, the occult, vampire mythos, and I saw this game on a bookshelf one time and I was super-intrigued by it. So I was the first one to find it, no one else introduced me to the game, so I had to fill that role of storyteller. So when I had the opportunity of sharing my interests and my game, if you will, with a group of friends and a group of players I really enjoyed it. It was just a completely different facet of the role-playing that I enjoyed.
INT Now how big was the circle of friends that would participate?
REF Good question. so the D&D, when we first started, I shit you not it was something like 10 people. It was totally absurd. You experience right now is with the five of us, you can tell how chaotic it can become at times. Imagine doubling that, right? But again, that’s what I was call a different style of game. We weren’t necessarily immersing ourselves in the flavor, we were just hanging out as friends. Very little seriousness, very little actual plot, very little momentum or progression on story.
Then the groups started getting smaller. So D&D was probably 10. We played a game called Rifts, which is kind of a futuristic, science-fiction slash magic game. Also a very fun game, and I forgot to mention that one earlier. But we spent a couple years playing that one as well, and that group was anywhere from six to eight people. And then Cyberpunk slimmed up to four to six, and over the years… I hate to say this, but some people grow up and they become adults. And along with their lives they don’t have the same interest with it. But the core gaming group got smaller and smaller and smaller.
I think when we started doing or really deep, intense, long term games, it was probably a group of four, maybe five maximum.
INT So pretty tight-knit, I imagine.
REF Yes, very tight-knit, exactly.
INT And at what point did this evolve into video games?
REF So that would have been probably… Maybe a decade ago. Actually, I think it might have been even longer, probably 15 years ago now that I think about it. I have to measure everything by my marriage, and by my anniversary.
My wife still laughs to this day that when I told her, “Hey, I’m gonna go hang out with my buddies,” she thought I was actually leaving the house.
She didn’t realize I was taking my beer into my office, putting my headphones on, and logging on to the computer. She said it blew her away. And she remembers that as one of the first conversations we had as a married couple. So year, 15 years ago. We celebrated our 15th anniversary recently, and probably 15 years ago is when my online video game playing fascination started.
INT So you were doing the video games, I guess that was after you were out of your parents’ house?
REF So the video games, ok, so, again, 46, it might have been as early as 29. Our group of friends had a little bit of a falling out. I think all groups of friends do at some point, right? People get bent over something, you get frustrated, you just go in different directions in life, so there was a period of time where we fell out. We weren’t living together anymore, we all started to move on with our lives, we had respective girlfriends or boyfriends or spouses or kids and life, and the tight-knit gaming group we had was no longer available. And so, I’m like… what the hell do I do?
And that was well before we had the opportunity for anything like Roll20, or any other kind of online RPG system, and we didn’t have meetups at that time, we didn’t have Facebook, there wasn’t anything to bring people together with common interests, so, I was like well, I got a computer, I like video games, and that’s where I really started focusing on those types of video games.
INT Like, what kind of games pulled you in to start, and what kind of platforms were you playing on?
REF So I actually like everything. First-person shooters were probably the big ones. I did a lot of Battlefield, Duke Nuke’em when it first came out, Halo, all the kind of standard, well known first person shooters. Beyond that? I dunno, I think my interested back then were pretty narrow.
INT Pretty narrow in what way? The games you sought out to play?
REF Yeah, I mean, I didn’t recognize the breadth and depth of the types of games out there. I never went really really deep into video games. When I started, I played Battlefield: Vietnam, like I said, those first person shooters. And then, when I found a group of friends to play with, we almost immediately went into World of Warcraft. So my whole online gaming experience was really those 4 or 5 first person shooters and then almost a decade or more of World of Warcraft.
INT Did you guys collectively decide to get into World of Warcraft? Did you find that it reinvigorated or filled a kind of need for community and playing with other people?
REF So, sadly, I can barely remember what I did last week, much less what happened 15 years ago. I believe it was probably the latter. I do know that when I first started playing World of Warcraft, it was more reminiscent of everything I love about role-playing games. It was the character creation, the character story, the character advancement, it was the opportunity to play with a group of people. To do quests together, to progress and level together. So it kind of hit all the major checkboxes for an RPG, without the imaginative aspect of creating the world yourself. I think that was the one key piece that was truly missing.
INT That’s a great answer. That’s a great segue into what I wanted to discuss, was, the difference between table-top RPG and online MMORPGS like World of Warcraft.
REF OK, and that’s it, right? I mean that is truly it. So, if you’re playing a MMORPG, or an online RPG game, you’re participating in someone else’s imagination. You’re subscribing to their creative license, their creative intellect, their story. And there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s brilliant, genius intellects out there creating these online games. But at the end of the day, it is still a scripted story. It can only be so iterative, it can only be so reactive, and I don’t want to say imaginative — there’s a lot of imagination that can go into it. But it is still a scripted story.
And your reactions to that are also limited. With a table top game, there’s no limits. I mean it is totally pure imagination. You can make things up on the fly, you can react to situations as they come at you, both as a storyteller and as a player. I mean you can truly do anything, and I think that’s part of the fun of it, right?
I wanna say, it’s not a competition, but it is definitely mental gymnastics with the storytellers and the players, as the players try to figure out where the story is going and how to react to it, and the storyteller of the referee is conversely going, “What the hell are they doing?” and trying to react to that to keep the story going.
It is just a wonderfully, dynamically, evolving creation, that you can’t get from a MMORPG.
INT Right, I think of it as, there’s a lot more negotiation that happens between the players and the referee, right?
REF That’s a good way of looking at it.
INT It’s kind of like, for me, you know, I like movies. But I don’t like movies as much as I like reading. And it’s the same thing for me, if I’m reading, there’s a kind of primacy given to my imaginative engagement with the product. But if I’m watching a movie, I’m kind of on the rails. I’m visually seeing what they want me to see. I find this kind of engagement with the narrative and with the storytelling aspect to be really really fascinating.
REF I agree. That’s what calls me to it, is that aspect of it. It truly calls to me, that part of, the dynamic nature of story creation. It is truly, sky’s the limit.
INT There is a, I’m going to give a quick plug here, there is a great book … you remember watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, yes?
REF Yes.
INT And the holodeck, and what it provided on the show. There was an episode where Data was - you know, he’s always exploring what it is to be human and what it means to be human - and he was fascinated with the Sherlock Holmes stories. And I think it was Geordi La Forge asked the holodeck to come up with a challenging story for Data. And the computer combined different stories about Sherlock Holmes. And Data figured it out right away, right. And then he said, “No no no, it has to be something unique. You can’t just takes bits and pieces of the different stories and mash them together, because Data knows all of the stories and he’ll figure it out. It needs to be something that will challenge his intellect,m challenge his imagination.” And they ended up creating a independently thinking creature. The holodeck created intelligent life, basically, and it became a morality story in the episode, where Captain Piccard had to figure out…. do I shut this guy off? Do I turn him off? Or do I allow him to live?
Anyway…. what I wanted to get at with that line of thinking was there’s a book called “Hamlet on the Holodeck,” I’m forgetting the author. I’ll add it into the show notes later. It was written sometime around the time of Myst. Do you remember the Myst video game? It would have been around, late 1990s, early 2000s. But the author wrote about narrative space in video game and story telling. It’s a really great book, it’s very prescient for its time.
But let’s get to our little clique, because I met you through World of Warcraft. I was brought into that, you guys had a groups of friends and a guild, and I was just playing by myself at the time. And I met one of the people in our group and he brought me in and introduced me to you guys and… so we met virtually for the first time. So do you remember, how long have we been playing together?
REF 15 years. Yeah. I’m trying to think exactly…. because you came in on Battlefield: Vietnam, right? Or were you, did you start with WoW?
INT No I started with WoW.
REF Okay, so again, I measure everything by the anniversary, so, if it’s not 15 years, it’s probably 13 or 14.
INT That sounds about right to me.
REF I know it was shortly after I got married.
INT I’m sure I could… I could place it at the time, I think it was WoW’s first expansion, Because that’s when they introduced blood elves to the Horde and paladins.
REF That’s right, and that’s what you were playing.
INT A blood elf paladin.
REF Yep.
INT And I remember you guys having no idea - you had always played a Horde guild, so you had no idea about the mechanics of a paladin.
REF Exactly! We’re like… What is this? Holy crap, you can tank AND you can heal? That’s invincible! And, yes it was.
INT So we played WoW together for a long time. And I used to refer to it as my poker night.
REF Yes, my wife used to refer to it as date night. “Gonna go hang out with your girlfriends?”
INT And we played that together for a long time, you know, I think the peak was like we were doing the raids in Karazhan, and we would have like 10 people on at a time, maybe at our peak. And then we kind of drifted away from that, right? So talk us through that, your perspective on how that kind of evolved into getting us back to Cyberpunk, because you were the one who recommended that game to us.
REF So, like you said, we played WoW for a long time. I know I ended up taking a break for a long time, I just realized how all-consuming it had become for me. And I don’t mean in a good, healthy, creative way. I mean almost in an alcoholism, narcotic addiction-type way. I was spending way, way too much time on World of Warcraft, and I needed to take a break.
And so after a couple years of break, I recognized that I still need this social, creative outlet in my life. And I, don’t remember, I think you might have still been playing, I think Adrian might have been dabbling, and same thing with Jamie, just dabbling. But I was looking to get back into a game, we’d played WoW for awhile, and we enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, I know I had a blast with it where we did another year maybe two years of WoW with the current expansion, leveling up the characters. But there was something that was still missing for me in WoW. And I don’t want to speak for you, but I think you kinda had the same experience in that it was just the same thing over and over again. It was the grind, it was the similar stories, it was watered down plot lines, and it was not holding my attention.
So after about a year of that, maybe two, we ended up trying some other games. We did Guild Wars 2 for, honestly I think it was another year. I spent a lot of time on Guild Wars, too - I know some of the other guys in the troupe were not as excited about it and probably didn’t take to it as quickly or as well as I did. But I probably spent several hundred hours on Guild Wars 2, and really enjoyed the game, but, after a period of time, we kinda burnt on that. I would almost say that the biggest gap, for me, was it was not ever really about the game. It was about the time that I got to spend with you guys.
When were were playing WoW the first time around, when we were leveling characters together, running dungeons together, it wasn’t about the end game content. It was about how stupid and how silly and how much fun we could have. We would laugh and laugh and laugh and do crazy silly stuff. You know, training hundreds of mobs and try to kill the characters off, putting each other on follow and trying to jump people off cliffs. Just the stupid shit that came out of our mouths and the dumb stuff we did and just the absolute fun of the experience.
And that stopped for some reason. I couldn’t even remark on when it happened. We just stopped having fun with WoW and so we tried Guild Wars 2, and we never ever got to that same level of fun or engagement with Guild Wars. And then it was just a matter of trying to find a game that would work for us, you know. We bounced around on Diablo 3, we were looking at one called… I don’t even remember what it was! Some other MMO and I personally was kind oa at my wit’s end, probably everyone in the Group was. Like, What game do we do? We’re done.
And then. I don’t know what inspired me, I just know I was looking for something that would inspire me. Something that we could do together, that would help facilitate that interaction - truly interacting with each other, talking, laughing, having fun, being creative, and I’m like, well, shit… So the best years of my childhood, the best years of my young life, were spend in a group with my buddies role-playing. Why can’t we have that now?
And that was kind of the line of thinking. You know, we have a lot of fun with online gaming, but honestly, I think we can have more fun sitting down playing a role-playing game, a table top game, creating the story together, creating characters together, progressing the storyline together, and laughing our asses off.
INT Now, back then, there wasn’t a platform. You mentioned this before, like, a Roll20, to enable this gameplay to happen remotely and in an online setting. And I wasn’t even familiar with it until you mentioned it. You know, I think there was one time when we all got together, and even the wives and kids were involved and we were doing a D&D session. And I think that was the first time I becamse aware, I think Jamie mentioned something about these online platforms that were available to help us look up information quickly, do the dice rolls, but I didn’t know about roll20.net until you mentioned it to us as a way to play Cyberpunk. So how did you discover it, and what has it meant for us and how we play now?
REF Oh it’s fantastic. I think part of the reason I went such a long time without role-playing was simply because we didn’t have an online platform. I mean, life takes us all indifferent directions. And instead of all living together and being able to play every night from 5pm to midnight, we had to schedule around it. How about Sunday, Monday, Tuesday? Now you have to count in travel time, you have to count in dinner, all this other stuff in a very adult-schedule breakdown way.
So I’d been looking for some kind of online system. I remember finding some early systems that were really immature, didn’t like it, looking a few years later there were some apps you could try, but not very evolved and not very user-friendly. And maybe a year ago, I looked again and found Roll20. But I didn’t have much time to try it out. I didn’t know anyone who might try. Jamie is always interested, you know, but it you just can’t do much when it is only two people. You need a little more diversity in that community to make the game really pop and make it fun. And at the time we just didn’t think there was anyone else who would be interested.
So we had awareness of this platform but never really had the opportunity to try it.
Now about three months ago, I had a buddy of mine move back from California. I’ve known this guy for some 20 years. And he’s been in California for 17 of those 20 years. And he moved back to Colorado, and was kind of the same way, missing that online gaming group, missing that community, decided that he wanted to run a Vampire game. And again, here we are all adults, with lives and children, and adult stuff. And we were like, let’s do this. He tasked me with being a Co-GM in his game and made me in charge of figuring out how it works, learning the intricacies and nuances, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. Because you can create character sheets for all your games, make your rolls directly from your character sheets, you can make maps on the fly, you can make them in advance, it’s truly infinite opportunity. It’s everything that hex maps and sitting down in front of people is… online.
INT I’ve been really happy with it. It feels really engaging and useful. I’ve enjoyed it quite a lot. So, getting more directly into Cyberpunk the game. so you guys played this a long time ago. This is the one you recommended to us, we jumped into it, we started making our characters, and you now had the task of building this environment, creating this narrative, making the gameworld. So walk me through some of your thoughts in weaving this tapestry. I mean most of used just random rolls, we used the fast NPC creator system to come up with a character, and then we rolled whatever our backstories were. So building this world, choosing to put us in Night City versus in Seattle or New York City or somewhere else… walk me through your though process when you were doing this.
REF So, I dunno why I picked this game over any other. I think it is the perfect blend of cinematic, realistic, complicated, and simple. It’s like a perfect balance. I’ve played a lot of games and I know what systems are good for what. And this is a really good system for one, new players, and two, just for a general mix of role-playing and combat. Secondly, I think the storyline itself is great, right. We’re all creative types. We all really enjoy maybe a fantasy genre, and I think had we gone with a fantasy genre we would have enjoyed that just as much, but there’s something about the kind of a dystopic future, the blend of raucous, lawlessness, technology, careless abandon, and societal breakdown that is just a fun world to play in. So that’s probably why I picked the Cyberpunk game.
INT Well I have to imagine that the announcement of Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red was in our minds either consciously or subconsciously. I’d never heard of Cyberpunk until BT had posted something in our group chat about how excited he was that the Cyberpunk video game was coming out.
REF That is true. Now that you mention it, it probably did have something to do with it. I am super-excited for that game. I think it brought back such beautiful memories of the fun times we had playing that game. So it was probably in the back of my mind, too.
INT Subconsciously or metaconscisouly in some way, yeah.
REF Metaconsciously, yeah.
INT So this game world. I mean, there’s a lot of flexibility in building the game world or Cyberpunk. What kinds of things did you, what sources of inspiration did you have in coming up with the world we were going to play in?
REF First of all, Night City is the quintessential Cyberpunk city in all the original source material. So you’re going to find more material on Night City versus Seattle, or Denver, or… we could have picked any city. But there’s the most content on Night City, and it is also what I remember most is… the great thing about Night City is that it is not something anyone is familiar with. So people don’;t have preconceived notions about what Night city is, or where it is, or how it looks like, and you can create it as you want. That was one of the things.
The other thing was in terms of game style of play style, I just kinda defaulted back to what I enjoyed as a player. I really, really liked Cyberpunk 2020, I liked the Night City, I liked some of the stories and color and the flavor of the world as I remember it 20 years ago. So it is a comfortable setting for me. It is an easy setting to fall back into and pick up.
INT Now describe a little bit the characters, the cast we have in this, and how you started to look and them and how you started to craft a story for them.
REF Now that was probably where I have had the most fun. I mean truly most of my fun. You took to it quickly. I just dropped the source material and said, here’s what we’re going to work with. And before I could blink, you had your character figured out. And again, I gotta say I was so unprepared for the direction you went. Corp probably would have been that last character concept I would have picked for you, or for anyone for that matter.
INT It would not have been the one I chose, either, but like I mentioned to you, I just went completely random with it. And I said, ok, I’m going to take whatever the dice roll, and now I’m going to have fun trying to build a story around this character and flesh it out, right?
REF I love it. And that’s what I love about Cyberpunk. That is is exactly. The game system is designed around randomly creating this ridiculously fun and flavorful character. They have dice rolls for everything. They have dice rolls for your style, for how you look,. what your ethnicity is, what your language is, what your family is, who your friends are, everything. It is all random, and it’s all super involved. And so the fact that you did that and had fun with it is exactly what I did with the world.
So we have your character, Antigone the Corporate, the corporate middle manager, slightly maybe senior director, who is trying to take her autonomous independent sovereign state corporation primetime in the Night City area. I mean, that’s just a random dice rolls that we got that, right? We’ve got your giant Greek/Polynesian family, with your four sisters your two brothers, your parents, and everything that came out of that, just with random dice rolls. And once you get those broad strokes then the ability to craft the story beyond that is endless.
INT So what about some of the other characters?
REF So, Jamie knew what he wanted to play. He knows what’s going to be a good fit, what does he wanna do? What’s going to be of benefit to the group. So he is like, ok, fantastic, I’m playing a Netrunner, the futuristic cowboy hacker, straight out of Neuromanver and Johnny Mnemonic, and Ghost in the Machine, the cowboy Netrunner.
And Brian? Fixer, the streetdealer, he knows everybody: the social street dealer, info-broker, weapons dealer, drug dealer, someone who knows everybody. Brian loves this type of character. So he knew exactly what he wanted to play.
Adrian, a little more difficult. Like he didn’t really…I think he’s into it now but I don’t think he really took to the idea at first. And he wasn’t really excited about spending a lot of time or investing a lot of time into looking into the rules or whatever, and he decided he wanted to play a Solo. Like, Han Solo.
And this is a dark future, you can be anything you wanna be. That’s a great fit right there, so he’s Han Solo, the dazzling, charming, charismatic pilot smuggler with a blaster, right?
Now, the characters themselves started out, as do all characters, single dimension. There’s no really depth to them until you start fleshing out that lifepath. And once your start, when you roll what happens to you on a yearly basis, and in one year hey I had this job, I made this money, all right well… who was the job against? How did you make that money? Next year, you made an enemy. What did you do to make that enemy? Oh, I made a friend. Well, how did you make a friend? I mean, you start fleshing out these details and… these characters are young, right? These are supposed to be up and coming edge runners, the up and comers in their field. So they’re, 20 -25. But you start your lifepath at 16, so you have 5,7,8 years of events that you are filling in backstory for. And a lot can happen in those years.
So, what I did intend to do, I intended to create a story and just you guys evolve that story. But as I started looking at your lifepaths - and you all seemed to be really into it - I started really… you know, if you made an enemy, how did you make it? And I started kinda mapping this out. This is an idea I stole from Vampire 5th edition, which just recently came out, is the idea of a relationship map.
We don’t exist in a vacuum. Every person we touch or who touches us has some sort of significance to us. And, not only that, it is a small world, and things are very interconnected. So as you start mapping out this relationship map and you start seeing, all right, so Surany make an enemy at age 17 and huh, you roll a couple details of that enemy and you realize that this really fit’s well with Hako’s friend that he made at 18 for something similar. So you start to see these relationships map out and this net get woven. And that presents some of those amazing plotlines and storylines in and of itself. That makes my job very simple.
INT This is really my first foray into real roleplaying with a group, but I gotta say that, from my experience, I think you’re doing a fantastic job interwaeving all of the stories that we have. Creating these… you know, in writing, we talk about Goal, Motivation, and Conflict. When you’re making a character, it has to have a goal, a motivation, and a conflict. To be compelling in some way. And I feel like you’re doing a really good job of interweaving those randomly rolled backstories we have to create those relationships.
REF Well thank you, I gotta say, that’s been the most fun for me. Looking and that and going, OK, how can I take that factor from Antigone’s life and interrelate it with Surany, or Hako, or Han. I can’t wait…. we have content that we’re probably not going to get to for another 6 months. But when some of these connections come out, it is going to be absolutely hysterical. A ton of fun.
INT So our group - it is probably not a unique problem - we play once a week. We have a set time that we generally do it. but life happens. And every now and then someone has to be at work, or there’s a family emergency, right? And you came up with this really interesting system that we ended up calling, or you ended up calling it, the Extended Rolls Tasks. Can you describe what that is and why you came up with it and what it does for us?
REF Yeah, actually, it was more… [laughing] You’re gonna laugh. It was more, I think, to satisfy your enthusiasm for this game. Like I said, I would never have picked a Corp for you but, you rolled it, you took it, you embraced it, and I wanted an opportunity of letting you explore what it really meant to be that Corp. So, instead of being a single edge-runner character out there with your own myopic and selfish motivation, your character was part of something bigger. A corporation. Not only is it a corporation, it’s a family corporation. This is what your family does. Your very very deep motivation for this corporation and what the corporation is trying to accomplish in the world. I kept thinking like, how do we do this? There’s going to be the game, and in the game, you’ve gotta have a good mix of plot line, a good mix of character interaction, there’s gotta be a good mix of social aspect. Because characters have to be able to do what they’re good at in game. So like if I throw your character in a situation where all we do is combat, you’re gonna die, first. But even if you don’t die, you’re not gonna have much fun because you’re not very good at it.
We gotta have a good blend of social aspect AND combat AND net-running to keep the characters engaged. But, the aspect of being able to play with your company and your character’s resources, and also be able to further your corporations reach into Night City and to achieve the goals of the company was not something we’re going to be able to play out in character. One, because it would take too long, two, because it would be boring as shit, and I needed to figure out some way of doing it.
Here’s what the team does, and in the down time — mind you we haven’t actually had an opportunity to have any down time yet — but in the between sessions where you guys are not actively blowing shit up or getting blown up, what are you doing to further extend or expand PPC’s goals? So it was really an opportunoity one, give you a budget that is indicative of your company and your personal resources - you’re pull within the company - then take your skillset and the skillset of the team to further expand PPC’s resources or PPC’s overall marketshare… it’s an opportunity to fuck with your competitors, it’s an opportunity to play the game at kind of another level than simply sitting down and rolling dice.
INT Now, what I thought was interesting was that when we were rolling our characters, three of us rolled Pacific Islanders. And thats part of why I… you know, you and I kind of negotiated this Paupau Collective concept, and I was taking inspiration from the Neal Stephenson Snow Crash novel which has this concept of “The Raft” that is kinda of floating around the Pacific islands. And I kind of modified that to think that, well, if we’ve got all these Pacific Islanders, maybe there’s this… after the drug wars, after everything had happened in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe, I can see a very similar type of thing happening. But it’s not core to the Cyberpunk 2020 manuals. So you worked with me to help create this environment to allow it to occur, right?
REF It is always fun to create your own… but it is far more fun when people collaborate with you. I could have easily just said Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do. But the fact that you were so engaged, intrigued, and had created such a beautiful and intriguing backstory — it made it easy.
INT I’m loving it. It is so engaging for me. Are there other sources of inspiration for you? You mentioned Gibson, and you mentioned Johnny Mnemonic. Are there other sources of inspiration for you when you’re trying to create this world?
REF Yeah, so most recently… I loved the Cyberpunk genre, I loved science fiction so I read Heinlen and Orson Scott Card, but most recently Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon. I heard about the series and I heard it is a book series as well, so, I read the series first and then watched the television show. And thoroughly enjoyed both of them. And that also kind of reinvigorated my interest in the Cyberpunk genre, and I am also taking a lot of inspiration from that series.
INT So we’ve covered most of this already in the comments you’ve made, but, just to put it to a more specific question, if anybody is interested in migrated or getting their friends involved in moving from video games to table top role-playing games, any kinds of tips or any kinds of advice you might give to people?
REF Yeah. So, honestly, I don’t think the system matters. Actually, scratch that. go back and edit out what I just said. The second it came out of my mouth I knew it was wrong… the system DOES matter. But only insomuch as it supports the genre and what you are trying to do and who you are as a person.
I think the most important thing is to find a genre that you are interested in, truly, because that will inspire the most creativity, you’re gonna have the most fun with it, you’re gonna have the best stories, because it is going to be of interest to you.
You know, I really, really like Vampire, and that’s kind of where I spent… I cut my teeth on storytelling and that’s where I spent the most time. I thought about doing that, but I didn’t think you guys would enjoy it as much. So I went with my next favorite choice, which was Cyberpunk. And I was comfortable enough with it, I love the genre enough that I was comfortable getting into it.
Beyond that, the next thing is what kind of a system do you want? Are you looking for something with a lot of complexity, a lot of rules, a lot of depth and flexibility, or are you just looking for some kind of generic framework? And there’s no right or wrong answer, but that is what is going to really drive it. A good example is the Vampire game. It has a super deep rich mythos with a lot of content, backstory, flavor, color, but it is a very light rules system. That’s not the focus. For Vampire, the focus is the story. Whereas on the Cyberpunk side, again, very very rich world, lot of culture, flavor, variability, and a lopt of content. But it is a far more rules-intensive system that allows you to perhaps satisfy that more linear rules-mechanics need.
INT Now something interesting I’ve seen on roll20.net, for instance, is there’s almost like a brokerage. There’s a way that you can kind of broadcast that you are looking for a game, or that you’re wanting to host it. So people can advertise that they want to join. Thinking about our group of friends, we met — I met Adrian in person, but I met the rest of you guys online. And it turned out that we were all local, and we all met each other in person. But for — I’ve seen some posts when I was browsing around roll20, there’s some younger people who are out on roll20 who are searching for friends. And they are advertising that they want to find other people that are interested in what they are doing, and interested in joining a game with them. So a little bit different way that when you and I experienced. Do you have thoughts about how younger players, for instance, might be seeking out communities of interest?
REF You know, it was so long ago, I’m trying to remember where I was at that age. It was a completely different world 20 years ago when I was that age. I already had the group. We had a community and it was something we already enjoyed doing. so I don’t think I can put myself in that same frame of mind. But what I do recognize is how much role playing and that online commhnity fills or could fill such a nice in peoples’ lives. It is all those things, it fills all the boxes and it is all those things that perhaps fringe type people like ourselves need. I’m not, I come across as gregarious, but it is still hard to me to make new friends. I’m good at keeping the friends I have, but making new friends and getting out there and meeting new people is socially a very difficult thing for me. I really like that creative aspect, the imaginative aspect of role playing. Akll those things I don’t get in my day to day life. If I didn’t have this kind of a friend group or social base, I think I would be very attracted to the idea of online gaming and RPGs just by virtue of what I think it could fulfill.
I don’t think I was even aware there is a community of younger people out there looking, but it makes sense, and I think it’s brilliant, and I think it’s a wonderful and beautiful thing that some of the younger generation are looking for this kind of interaction, this kind of social community.
INT The resources available to them are so much different than the ones that we had, right?
REF I was thinking about that too, like, holy crap man, what would it look like if 20 years ago we were trying to do this stuff?
INT Right, you might prioritize remote friends over somebody that’s local. And I don’t think there’s anything that’s wrong with that. I think the enabling of that possibility is quite extraordinary.
REF I agree. I mean, we came in kind of on that first crest of that wave, so to speak, and again, I’ve known Jamie and Brian most of my life. But I’ve still known you and Adrian for years. And there’s nothing to make me believe it will not go on for another 20-30 years of friendship. And to think about that, that just came from an online gaming community. The right people finding the right interests at the right time, and those friendships are just as deep and … maybe even more deep, and more powerful than some of the friendships we make in person, in physical space.
INT So it is possible, it is believable, you absolutely can connect with people.
REF This is where we insert the “I love you man’s.”
INT So let’s wrap this up and get a little more personal. If you’re not gaming, what other kind of stuff do you do?
REF Uh… think about gaming.
INT Well I know you do that at work…
REF I have such a hard time with that question! My interests include animals and… veterinarianism…. I, seriously, I couldn’t think of anything… if I’m not gaming right now, my interests include thinking about the gaming. Planning it out, researching, yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m in an interesting phase right now where I used to really enjoy going to breweries. And brewing, and I love, or loved, … love alcohol. But I’m not drinking right now. It was time to take kind of a break, and it was almost like… a lot of what I would do in my spare time is no longer what I’m doing in my spare time. So, I’m looking for other interests. But again, I’m not feeling any loss by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve taken such an awesome interest in running this game, in addition to running the cyberpunk game, I’m also running a Vampire game with my buddies, and as we talked about before, sometimes life takes us in different directions and we have to be able to… as a group, maybe try that Vampire game out with us. I’m hoping we do anyway. There’s a lot of different gaming opportunities that are consuming my time. So that’s what I do when I’m not gaming. I’m thinking about gaming.
INT Well, you do a lot of cooking, too, yes?
REF I do, I do. I suppose to be fair, barbequeing we do a lot of that, and pizza making. We’ll have to have another pizza party soon.
INT Right, that house you moved into recently has that pizza oven in the back.
REF Oh yeah, we have a blast with that.
INT And you guys came up with that gluten-free crust that just tastes delicious.
REF Yes, thank you, good stuff.
INT And you definiteley do brewing. And you have… video game devices, you have an X-box, is that right?
REF Yeah, I notice that I’m not playing that as much. I’m enjoying the intellectual and the creative processes of the RPGs right now. But I do, I have an X-box and in fact I just finished a couple weeks back, Red Dead Redemption 2.
INT Oh yeah, I bought that at an end of the year sale for cheap, but haven’t done it yet.
REF If you haven’t played it yet, play it.
INT That was one I thought we could actually play together, because there is an online multiplayer version of that.
REF Well if our characters die and we need a another game. As soon as we stopped doing the WoW and the Guild Wars, I haven’t been playing on my laptop any more.
INT So here’s an interesting story for you. When I was in grad school, for this degree I was doing computer science. So Microsoft used to come every year, you know, to recruit people for new hires. They came one year showing off their new Visual Studio development platform, their IDE. And they had a raffle, and I won the raffle, which was for a Sega Dreamcast. It was game-changing at the time. So I heard a story, I don’t know, this might be apocryphal, but they had a football game, an American football game that was so good that EA came and bought it out and basically buried the tech because they wanted to procuce their own NFL Madden franchise program. So I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but that’s what I heard. It was a very very good game. But I won that at the raffle, and that must have been year, 2000 or so. And it had a sticker on it that said powered by Windows ME. Do you remember Windows Millennium?
REF I do. We all try to forget that one, don’t we?
INT And I was like… I know this device is not actually running on Windows. This is a completely different operating system. But it was interesting to see that at that time there was a strategic interest at Microsoft of getting into games, and they were initially going to try to work with this partnership program, and they were gonna try to work with Sega and it was shortly, not too long after that they came out with the X-Box. Which if you remember, it was originally on the IBM PowerPC chip. The only chips that were running PowerPC were the Apple’s back then. So there were some famous pictures back then of Microsoft loading docks, they were bringing in hundred… maybe dozens…. of Apple PowerMacs because they needed that chipset to develop games to run on the X-Box.
REF That was the start of the actually corporate wars, right?
INT So this question is an homage to one of my favorite podcasters named Sam Harris, he runs a podcast called Making Sense, and it is focused a lot on meditation and neuroscience, political philosophy and current politics, economics, anyway, he always asks this question. “If we could bring back the Tyrannosaurus Rex, should we do it?”
REF Yes.
INT Unequivocally, yes?
REF Unequivocally yes.
INT You’re not worried about any of the consequences?
REF Oh no I’m terrified of the consequences, but I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it. There’s that fine line between can you do something and should you do something. But I’m of the mind that if you can do something then you should do something. I feel that sometimes not taking the risk and not trying things out is a recipe for stagnancy.
INT So, same answer for things like the wooly mammoth or the blue-footed boobie?
REF Yeah. I think I would. I don’t know that it is the right answer, but it is my answer. This is kind of our family motto: “Let’s see what happens.” Sometimes you have to take risks and do crazy things.
INT Any final thoughts?
REF Thank you? That’s my final thought. I don’t know if I remember it, but when you initially proposed the idea of recording our gaming session, I was a little nervous. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction. But then I started actually listening to it… and it took me awhile. You put out the first one and it was like two weeks before I even thought about listening to it. And my wife said, “He’s putting actually time and effort into this, you owe it to him to at least listen.” And I was like, all right…
And from the get go, I was hooked. I’m like, I sound stupid, I hate the sound of my voice on recording. But even that wasn’t enough to deter me. You do a great job of wrapping the whole thing in a very digestible, presentable bow, making it intriguing and exciting, even though I know it’s going to happen, I’m still sitting on the edge of my seat going, “What’s going to happen!?” I appreciate the time and energy, I appreciate the output, I appreciate you sitting and asking these questions.
INT Well thank you so much for answering these questions, and I really hope someone has fun with this, because we’re having a blast.
REF Shit’s just gonna get bigger and badder and funner and hold onto your shorts.
The Honeymoon is Over - Cyberpunk 2020
Sat, 14 Mar 2020 01:04:07 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 4
Game Session 4, Part 1 – The Honeymoon is Over
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
“Kat” Katrina = (NPC) A Solo merc-for-hire contracted by Eric Genter to kidnap Antigone and take her to a Petrochem warehouse.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tak = (NPC) Fixer. One of Hako’s contacts, one that he has known for years and trusts implicitly. He originally tipped the team off about Petrochem transporting something special from Reno to Night City. The team intercepted the transport in Modesto and got into a firefight.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC AND TIMESTAMPS
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @ 1:14
The team arrives at the AV landing pad at the Bodukkan Center for the Performing Arts (“Night City Sourcebook,” (CP3501) pg 146.)
** Antigone and Surány are eating dim sum with the Solo Tatiana: @3:18
** Han picks up ‘Tig and Surány in his AV: @5:35
** Hako showers, ‘Tig and Surány go shopping, Han tries to apologize to Chewie: @8:25
** Back at the hospital, the team discovers another surprise: @31:02
** ‘Tig and Surány return with beer and clothes, and ‘Tig has a surprise for Hako: @14:23
** The team brainstorms what their current threats are, and what next steps to take: @20.45
** The team wakes up the next morning, and Surány leaves to pick up coffee: @28.54
** Antigone leaves the Arasaka “coffin” building and runs into some kidnappers: @29.25
** Surány hears over his cyberaudio radio link to Antigone that she’s been nabbed: @34:04
** Surány, sitting in the Food Court, tries various measures to locate Antigone: @48:55
** Han, Hako, and Chewie roll up to the AV-9 and Han’s Combat Sense goes “berserk”: @53:40
** Closing of Session: @1:06:29
** Ending Notes: @1:06:50
INTRODUCTION TEXT
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 4, which is part 1 of our gaming session #4.
Soon everything will start aligning… don’t worry about the numbers for now.
We can call this episode, “The Honeymoon is Over,” or perhaps, “The Gloves are Off.”
Things start to get a bit more gritty and cyberpunky here.
Our “quote unquote” heroes have just assassinated – execution-syle – Stahl, the pilot who betrayed them on their Petrochem reconnaissance mission.
They appear to have turned a threat into an asset, and perhaps are feeling a bit too high on their high horses.
Here we go.
CLOSING NOTES
Ouch town, population us… Apparently the REFEREE thought things were going a bit too easy.
This is about halfway through the gaming session, and we’ll close here today.
Antigone is wrapped up in an electrified net and has been tazed twice, unceremoniously dumped in the backseat of a car and being taken to who knows where. But it probably ain’t good.
Surany managed to escape any major damage thanks to his addiction to croissants and coffee. But the rest of the team has been blown out of the AV, much of their equipment disabled or destroyed in the blast.
I’m actually rather surprised that someone didn’t die.
Tune in next time to see if we manage to survive on Night City Secrets.
I hope someone out there is having as much fun with this as we are.
Back to the Beginning - Cyberpunk 2020
Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:56:14 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets Episode 3
Game Session 3, Part 1 – Back to the Beginning
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (PPC in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
“Chewie”= (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Han = Solo. Full name is “Hanakahi Lonoehu.” The team Solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, half-Polynesian, cousin to Antigone.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han. Frequently hired by Petrochem.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program: he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johansen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction @00:26
** Play begins: @5:11
The team assembles…
** REF gives a quick synopsis of the last session: @9:09
** The team flies into Night City in their AV, trying to figure out how to find Stahl: @10:52
** The team flies into a secret rendezvous location to hand off the goods to PPC: @21:45
** The team heads to Club Atlantis: @23: 32
** They discover that Stahl is at the club with Tatiana: @28:45
** Han pontificates on Tatiana: @33.00
** Chewie tries to break it downL @34:20
** Surány and Antigone enter Club Atlantis: @37:20
** Stahl and Tatiana discuss the night: @48:45
** The team tries to figure out what to do: @52:20
** Surány tries to break into Stahl’s AV: @1:00:00
** Tatiana realizes Stahl can contact Han: @1:02:05
** Closing of Session: @1:05:00
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets.
The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 3, which is actually part one of our third gaming session.
If you’ve listened thus far, you know that I started our first show in the middle of the game.
This episode takes us back to the beginning of Game Night #3. When I watched the reboot of the Battlestar Galactica TV series that aired in 2005, I was blown away by the season one, episode one show called “33.” The creators Glen Larson and Ronald Moore threw us right into the harried ragtag escape of the human fleet. It was extremely disorienting, and yet I found it riveting. It really forced us to engage our imaginations to suss out what the heck was happening.
At the same time, I know there are people who hated it. I think part of that taste discrepancy is simply how we neurally process narratives, and when our expectations are not being met, we can shut out experiences that are too unexpected or too unnerving.
I’m currently listening to a podcast series called “Dark Future Dice.” It is run by three artists who walk through playing their first table-top role-playing game. It is filed under the handle “Rocket Adrift” on youtube. They start from the very beginning of character creation and walking you through the gameworld. This episode will be more akin to that style.
It was by listening to their show that I got the idea to start recording our game nights, so… thanks to Dark Future Dice for putting out that content!
There is less action in this episode, but more time spent on set-up. I’m releasing this footage in case there are people who want some of the holes filled in if you felt unsatisfied not having enough background information in the first two shows. In the future, I’ll continue to release short content snippets that dive into the worldbuilding and the specific characters by doing interviews with the other players, and that will serve as brief filler content.
If you’re happy to continue on with the story and what happens to Antigone, Hako, Han, and Surany, the next show will be coming very soon.
But if you want a little clarity…
Antigone is a Corporate in a family-based business we call the Paupau Collective, or PPC. This is an autonomous, sovereign non-governmental entity floating out in the Pacific Ocean. It is somewhat akin to “The Raft” from the cyperpunk novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
PPC was founded by her grandfather, Matareka “Frankie” Paupau. He is a world-renowned botanist/biochemist who helped create the strain of grains used in the manufacture of CHOOH2, the biofuel that everything runs on in the world of Cyberpunk. He did that while working at Biotechnica Corporation, described in the Cyberpunk 2020 2nd edition book, page 212. His daughter married a Greek scientist, so Antigone and her brothers and sisters are all half-Greek, half-Polynesians with various roles in the PPC structure.
Frankie disagreed with Biotechnica’s decision to license out the formula to other agribusiness and petro- and hydrocarbon corporations, so he left the company, returned to his native Polynesian Islands, and took to the water with a congregation of fellow Islanders and refugees of the South American Drug Wars.
PPC lashed together a flotilla, or more likely a flotsam, of tankers, yachts, sailboats, cruise liners, aircraft carriers, container vessels, barges…. anything that could float - and declared themselves an independent “country” not subject to the laws or taxes of any nation-state. On those re-purposed boats they built aquaponic facilities to grow fresh fish, food, and bioengineered wheat. They turn this into a better and cheaper version of CHOOH2 that Frankie Paupau continued to improve. He also developed a new strain of cocaine that is resistant to the virus introduced by the US government that blighted the original plant. They call this “New Coke,” and smuggle it into various cities around the Pacific Rim.
Antigone is the Director of Public Relations in Night City for the PPC, looking to expand operations by selling the improved CHOOH2 as well as fresh, clean vegetables and fish. And also, of course, smuggling in New Coke. So they have some natural enemies in Petrochem corporation (manual page 213), the world’s largest producer of CHOOH2.
The crew is her cousin Han, the team Solo, his girlfriend “Chewie,” a medtech. Aohako, “Hako” the Hawaiian Night City Native and Fixer, and finally Surany, a nerdy Czech Netrunner who is trying to grow a Gandalf Beard and names all his programs after things from J.R.R. Tokein’s Middle-Earth mythos.
And…. scene.
One Night at Club Atlantis - Cyberpunk 2020
Tue, 03 Mar 2020 18:41:42 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets episode 2
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (“PPC”) in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Han = Solo. The team solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, cousing to Antigone.
“Chewie” = (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program — he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johannsen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction: @00:28
** Play begins: @2:45
Han and Hako, who is covered in blood, are aboard the AV of the mercenary pilot Stahl.
** Chewie resuscitates Stahl(!): @3:30
** ‘Tig crafts a narrative to try and convince Tatiana and the Willow Sisterhood to pull a job for her: @5:50
** Surány tries to figure out what to do now that Antigone has left the bar with Tatiana: @8:50
** ‘Tig gets on the elevator with Tatiana: @10:00
** Surány tries to figure out what to do to help Antigone out of a tight spot: @14:30
** CRITICAL FUMBLE… Surány disengages the brakes on the elevator… : @15:45
** Hako, Han, and Chewie confer on what to do about “Shipwreck” Stahl: @26:45
** Hako interrogates Stahl: @33:42
** Hako closes the book: @43:22
** Hako debriefs with Antigone: @49:13
** Antigone and Surány close out with Tatiana: @1:00:30
** Epilogue - figuring out the budget: @1:03:28
** Closing Comments: @1:11:28
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Welcome back to Night City Secrets, Choombas! The podcast of five gaming friends playing the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
This is episode 2, which is actually part three of our third gaming session.
So, where we left off. Our team was in Club Atlantis, which is described in the “Night City Sourcebook,” page 154 like so:
“The entire top three floors of [the Piper Memorial Sports Arena] is the home of Club Atlantis, a favorite hangout for upwardly-mobile corpzoners and street ronin between assignments. This expensive establishment is decorated in a disorienting style reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s ‘House of Stairs’: a series of cantilevered stairs, angled mirrors, special effects lighting and robotic mannequins placed strategically on walls and ceilings create the optical illusion of bar patrons moving against the laws of physics and gravity. The bar itself serves a complete selection of liquors, beers, and cocktails. It also has a multilevel dance floor and a small performance stage.”
The team was looking out for Stahl, a mercenary pilot who they hired for their previous job, but who it turns out had betrayed them. They found him at the club chatting it up with Tatiana, a former employee of the Solo, Han.
Yes, team member Han is a Solo. More on that later.
Tatiana not only was fired by Han after he came onto her and she refused, but she once tried to kill him. She is a Solo as well, now a member of the Willow Sisterhood, a poser gang of women who bodysculpt themselves to look like famous celebrities from film and pop culture who are known for kicking ass and taking names. She currently sports the look of Scarlet Johansen from the “Ghost in the Shell” adaptation.
Antigone, the team Corporate, intercepted Tatiana and managed to separate her from Stahl with the promise of employment for the Sisterhood.
Han, in the meantime, snuck onto Stahl’s AV-4 ship with the help of a little remote-hacking by Surany, the Netrunner. When Stahl arrived, he was ambushed, and though Han intended to interrogate him, things didn’t quite go as planned and he ended up red misting the pilot — he happened to do this as Hako, the team’s Fixer, arrived only to be bathed in an arterial tidal spray of blood.
And now, the continuation…
CLOSING NOTES:
So there we end our Session 3 with Cyberpunk 2020.
Stahl has been offed of this mortal coil, and in this unweeded garden that grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature possess it absolutely.
In case you don’t get it by the context, Han is a Solo who is actually biosculpted to look like Harrison Ford. He won an AV-4 in a poker game, and of course calls it the Falcon. His girlfriend is a Costa Rican Med Tech who he calls “Chewie,” so… she is basically a Non-Player Character or an NPC who our REFEREE plays for us from time to time. Hopefully that explains why he jumps in to role play with us every now and again.
Until next time, stay chilly, Choombas.
"In Medias Res" - Cyberpunk 2020 RPG
Mon, 02 Mar 2020 18:25:41 +0000
Show notes, Night City Secrets episode 1: "In Medias Res"
Welcome to Night City Secrets.
This will be a podcast about a handful of friends playing the tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020. Our inaugural episode takes us straight into the action.
(We are adults, and we do curse a little - not like sailors, and we don't use words we wouldn't use in front of our own kids, but there is some colorful commentary -- usually in character.)
Cover Art for the podcast from “Cyberpunk madness,” by the artist Eddie Del Rio.
Intro and closing music is from Amoebacrew, called simply "Cyberpunk royalty free music.” It is available on Youtube:
Background ambient music is from RoyaltyFreeSounds, called “Soundscape Ambient, Cyberpunk Music. Royalty Free.”
It is on Youtube:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
REF = The Referee
Antigone = Corporate. Director of Public Relations for the Paupau Collective (“PPC”) in Night City. PPC is a family autonomous corporation floating out on ships in the Pacific Ocean. Half-Greek half-Polynesian.
Han = Solo. The team solo and pilot, bioscultped to look like Harrison Ford, though he also has spiky short hair. Native Hawaiian, cousin to Antigone.
“Chewie” = (NPC) Medtech. Officially, Consuela Jarillo, a Costa Rican doctor currently dating Han. She is played by the REF. She’s also a pilot.
Hako = Fixer. Aohako is also Hawaiian, but not related to Han or Antigone. He grew up in Night City and has connections all over the city. He and Antigone met through their common mentor, Derek Trammel, a former Night City Police Department detective, now a private investigator.
Surány = Netrunner. A young and nerdy Czech fame-seeker. Raised in Night City, and went to high school with Chewie. Attained some fame for his “March of the Ents” program — he names all his programs after people, places, and events in the Tolkien Mythos, and has been trying to grow a Gandalf beard.
Stahl = (NPC) A pilot for hire, short but very capable Japanese Solo and former fighter pilot. Used to do odd jobs with Han.
Tatiana = (NPC) A former employee of Han, a dangerous Solo currently working for the Willow Sisterhood - a Poser Gang who bioscult themselves to look like famous women from media and pop culture who played the roles of bad-asses. Tatiana is currently sporting the look of Scarlet Johannsen from the Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation. Tried to kill Han once when he tried to come onto her.
TOC and Timestamps:
** Introduction: @00:28
** Play begins: @1:51
The crew is in Club Atlantis (page 154 of “Night City Sourcebook,” CP3501).
** Antigone separates Tatiana from Stahl: @3:06
** Han tries to sneak into Stahl’s AV, Surány hangs out at the bar: @8:05
** Hako leaves to give Han backup: @8:55
** ‘Tig is trying to bribe Tatiana and the Willow Sisterhood: @9:25
** Han arrives at the AV: @12:40
** Surány deals with the triggered security system on the AV: @19:53
** Stahl arrives at the AV: @20:50
** Hako arrives at the AV: @30:15
** ‘Tig tries stalling Tatiana with a job offer: @38:26
** Closing Comments: @47:55
INTRODUCTION TEXT:
Hello, and welcome to Night City Secrets.
This will be a podcast about a handful of friends playing the tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020.
We have played a variety of games together from World of Warcraft to Guild Wars 2 to Settlers of Cataan… many different games. We recently decided to try out the Roll20 platform - at Roll20.net - and go back to some of our roots.
There’s 5 of us, one serving as the Referee. This is a game that three of our group played together in their childhood, but it is a new experience for two of us. So I’m pretty much the newbie here.
As I was preparing to get into this game, I was doing a variety of research into how to play, and I came across the series on playing Cyberpunk 2020 called “Dark Future Dice” - you can find them on youtube and other media sites - and I really enjoyed listening to it.
We have a lot of fun playing and joking around with each other, and I thought…. why not record it? Maybe someone out there will get a laugh out of it, too.
Rather than giving a lot of backstory, however, I’m going to start this “en media res.” “En media res” is a term that literary geeks use to describe a narrative or a story that begins “in the middle of things.” It is a technique meant to put you right into the action and let you deduct things and piece them together as it happens.
So without further ado, this is game night three of our new venture into Cyberpunk 2020.
CLOSING NOTES:
Here I’ll end the first part of our podcast.
That ends the middle part of our third session. If that was too disorienting… Han has hijacked the AV-4 of Stahl, a pilot he hired who betrayed us on our last mission.
The AV-4 is the McDonnell-Douglas AV-4 Tactical Urban Assault Vehicle, described on page 182 of the Cyberpunk 2020 2nd edition manual. It is the quote “nearest thing to a science fiction jet car…Short, bulbous, and equipeed with only rudimentary maneuver wings” unquote.
While taking down Stahl, he “red-misted” Hako, our Fixer, as he entered the vehicle. Hako had some unconciliatory feelings about the incident, to say the least.
In the meantime, Surany the Netrunner, remotely infiltrating the security systems to Stahl’s AV-4, and Antigone, the Corporate funding this operation, were attempting to isolate Tatiana. Tatiana is a former disgrunatled and… violent… employee of Han… which is why they are trying to keep her separated from the encounter with Stahl and Han. She is a member of the Poser Gang “Willow Sisterhood,” a collection of mercenaries who hire themselves out for odd jobs. Their signature poser identity is to bodysculpt themselves as attractive women from feature films and pop culture known to be absolute bad-asses.
Next time, we’ll wind back the clock and take you to where our characters tried to piece together the clues that would lead them to trying to find their betrayer, Stahl.
Until then, peace be with you, Choombatta!