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Thanks for linking to my newsletter, Alexi. And for the discussion about stats! Loved your insights and the stat array for Knight-Aspirants is truly lovely. :D

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Hi Alexi!

Your observation about cyberpunk in FitD is interesting! I think it's a delicate balance to strike -- the scoundrels (or runners in this case) feeling competent but the world feeling suitably dangerous that competence isn't all that matters -- luck also matters, a lot, and so does positioning. I wonder if possibly you weren't going hard enough on the runners? I found that when I first started running FitD games, I felt reluctant to push too hard -- I would mostly make soft moves. And this works okay, but I think the system, particularly thanks to the ability to resist, sort of calls for All Hard Moves All the Time (or at least mostly). I also think that if you look at the GM actions in Blades or another FitD game (not sure if CBR+PNK has these; I know it's pretty light weight), they function more or less identically to GM moves in PbtA, and don't have to happen only on a miss or weak hit. Things should essentially get more complicated for them all the time. My favorite way this gets mechanized is the devil's bargain, and if the players aren't taking those, I'd be curious just why. I should be clear that I haven't played CBR+PNK, just read the pamphlet version quite a while ago, so there might be differences at the game level. I have run Neon Black, though, which is a really cool take on cyberpunk in FitD (and legitimately anticapitalist in a way that cyberpunk games rarely are), and in that game I didn't find myself having too much trouble finding that balance of letting the PCs be competent but also being ground down under the heels of the corps. Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully they're useful!

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Hi Alexi!

Your observation about cyberpunk in FitD is interesting! I think it's a delicate balance to strike -- the scoundrels (or runners in this case) feeling competent but the world feeling suitably dangerous that competence isn't all that matters -- luck also matters, a lot, and so does positioning. I wonder if possibly you weren't going hard enough on the runners? I found that when I first started running FitD games, I felt reluctant to push too hard -- I would mostly make soft moves. And this works okay, but I think the system, particularly thanks to the ability to resist, sort of calls for All Hard Moves All the Time (or at least mostly). I also think that if you look at the GM actions in Blades or another FitD game (not sure if CBR+PNK has these; I know it's pretty light weight), they function more or less identically to GM moves in PbtA, and don't have to happen only on a miss or weak hit. Things should essentially get more complicated for them all the time. My favorite way this gets mechanized is the devil's bargain, and if the players aren't taking those, I'd be curious just why. I should be clear that I haven't played CBR+PNK, just read the pamphlet version quite a while ago, so there might be differences at the game level. I have run Neon Black, though, which is a really cool take on cyberpunk in FitD (and legitimately anticapitalist in a way that cyberpunk games rarely are), and in that game I didn't find myself having too much trouble finding that balance of letting the PCs be competent but also being ground down under the heels of the corps. Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully they're useful!

Expand full comment