Immunoblockers - Instant Power, Eventual Doom
I just had a Cyberpunk Red session end in a great piece of emergent story. We’re going to dissect the item that made it tick, and then extract a general principle for folks who don’t even play Cyberpunk Red. The item in question? Immunoblockers. It might just be the best damn drug in Cyberpunk Red. For those not in the know, immunoblockers were introduced to the game in the Edgerunners Mission Kit1 and provide players with an instant humanity2 boost. The downside is that on the comedown if you fail the secondary effect check, your humanity dips even lower than before unless you dose up again.
The upsides are easy to sell your players on. Any character who wants to last more than a few sessions will need a decent amount of cyberware, and often float near cyberpsychosis. So players either need to go to therapy, an expensive and dull prospect, or go get a couple of doses of immunoblockers from a Vendit, which is cool—because drugs are cool. There’s also a chance that the humanity boost associated is consequence free if they make the Resist Torture/Drugs check. Just keep the financial pressure up and its only a matter of time before they make the easy choice…
Then comes the prestige. Once they start, they’re dependant. They either need to keep dosing themselves or risk that comedown check. Failing that check means they have to take another two doses, or risk losing an additional 4d6 humanity (which is a lot) and, very likely, cyberpsychosis. Now in every mission the crew’s lives are in their hands. That’s all without mentioning that this comedown check doesn’t just happen at the end of the drugs duration, but whenever the GM sees fit. This makes it a great tool to kick the PCs when they’re down, and remind them that the world of Cyberpunk is out to get them.
Maine in the throws of cyberpsychosis
Picture this: the crew has finally exacted their bloody revenge on an exec by turning his head into sashimi and now they want to twist the knife. They’ve taken his phone and plan to use the city-wide chaos they started to drain his bank account. Setting up their hired hand netrunner, the crew now needs to hold of the hordes of corpo goons long enough to extract the money in a series of untraceable transactions.
After a long and bloody fight with some early comers, they’ve manage to secure 40000 eurodollars, a life changing amount of money on the streets. More enemies are closing in; corpo soldiers, NCPD, Max Tac, the works. To continue on would be suicide, but the crew’s immunoblocker using solo wants more. As the solo presses the netrunner to keep going, the blockers wear off—and they fail the check…
Now a simple double or nothing choice of risk versus reward has turned into a campaign-ending disaster of their own making. From the plan to cause a massive riot as cover for their assassination attempt, to the need to take a bit of money away from it all, to the crews subconscious reliance on the solo to carry combat, they paved the road to their own damnation. All the immunoblockers did was light the fuse, and make the already pending consequences of their actions so much worse.
The principle here is clear; give the players Faustian bargains. Offer them easy instant power with a distant looming consequence. Maybe your players outright reject it, making this a story of moral fortitude, or maybe your players are like mine. Now they are scrambling to deal with the consequences of their choices, or better yet they decide to dedicate the rest of their efforts to eliminating the catch that comes with their new power. Either you get a big ol’ story nuke to drop on your players down the line or their selfish choices drive the campaign—making your job easier.
You’d thing a guy called Faust would know better than to take a Faustian bargain. Cringe.
A little PS here at the end: None of this would have been possible without the Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit’s fantastic updates to the humanity rules. If you are a CP:R GM do yourself a favour and pick up CEMK. It turns a system that was originally just a way to restrict the amount of cyberware a player can have into a constant pressure on the whole crew.
Buy it on DTRPG. The module is a sequel to the anime and a source kit for playing in 2077. Very cool. ↩︎
Humanity is a measure of a characters empathy and is reduced by installing cyberware. As they reach 0, PCs go cyberpsycho and the GM gets to take their sheet and start murdering. ↩︎