Blade Runner RPG | Hacker News Reader

Blade Runner RPG

bladerunner-rpg.com

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My annoyance with this is, you can pretty much run a "Blade Runner" TTRPG with any suitable system. You barely need to do any prep: we know there's guns, space ships, FTL, extremely good computers, etc. Thats like half the existing OOTB sci-fi settings. Pick one with the desired crunch and take a few minutes to skin it (no pun intended).

Of course. The value of this (as in any RPG set in a universe based on an existing property) is that the rule book and supplements will provide lots of additional background for the universe that wasn't already defined. I remember playing the West End Games Star Wars RPG in the 1990s before the prequels and I loved how the books expanded upon that universe beyond the original three movies.

Those actually created big parts of the SW EU! Stuff that was written for those games got authorized into canon. Star Wars also produced a ton of new material for its EU. It was a living universe, ripe for gaming.

Blade Runner is 2 movies. (Or 14 or something, if you count all the directors cuts)

> Blade Runner is 2 movies.

And a video game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_(1997_video_game)

Three movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(1998_American_film)

Ah, a true Connoisseur ... hat tip to you!

But do they actually consider the original novella, with Mercerism, the mood organ, artificial sheep, and the San Francisco setting?

I do not think so (but the Kickstarter has not started yet).

This logic follows for literally any setting for any genre, though.

Why even bother buying or downloading an existing system, for that matter, when you can just design one yourself?

Or... you could buy a premade game purpose-built for the very setting and type of story you want to experience, and avoid a lot of additional work.

Personally, I'm excited to check this out, and happy to see more cyberpunk systems being developed.

I'm kinda reminded of the Dropbox comment.

While I essentially agree, I don't think those conversions are trivial for anyone except an experienced GM, with an experienced group, who all consume the same sort of sci-fi media. "Extremely good computers", in isolation, isn't enough information to extrapolate a coherent setting. They're extremely good, fine, but are they, say, all airgapped from one another like in early Shadowrun? The consequences of this small decision affect everything from the players designing their hacker characters to the GM designing the layout of the corp they'll be hacking. Can you run a game without considering this at all? Probably -- just don't play hackers!! But the GM having the answers to questions like this, or better still, the players reading about what computers are like in a corebook before the first session of play, is ultimately easier for everyone and more immersive.

Further, a system used to play a game strongly affects the game's feel. Take the Star Trek license, there's been plenty of attempts[0]: FASA, LUG, even GURPS and d20 modern supplements. None really make for a playable game, because they're mere reskins of games fundamentally designed to tell different stories than those one usually thinks of when one hears "Star Trek" [1]. Those systems are more simulationist and gameist, particularly GURPS and d20, and express more DNA from RPGing's Great Ancestor of tactical wargaming than is appropriate for Star Trek. Star Trek needs a narrativist system.

The most recent attempt, Star Trek Adventures, has a ruleset that's a mere armature upon which narrative beats are hung. But what rules exist power a sort of bennie-economy [2] that allows the GM to menace the players with the mechanical equivalent of threatening musical stings, and allows the players to pull technobabble/white-knuckle-skill solutions from nowhere to defeat those otherwise-insurmountable GM-imposed obstacles.

It just feels more like Star Trek in ways that have nothing to do with the GM or the players individually. I'm not suggesting that this, uh, fairly aspirational [3] project is necessarily going to have that desirable trait, but rolling one's own system means there's at least a chance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_games#Role-p...

[1] Fine, "90s Star Trek"

[2] https://savageeberrontales.com/savage-worlds-and-bennies/

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30956393

You can run any setting in any system you want or make up your own system but it's much easier if you're running off of something close and even better if it includes systems for what you want to do instead of having to make them up. There's a reason there's so many settings book for D&D, saves time having to invent an entire world so you can focus on other stuff.

That's surely true in a sense where the gameplay and narrative are disconnected. I think this is common in the practice of TTRPGs, but not necessary. Gameplay can reinforce or even _be_ the narrative and some games exemplify this (Primetime Adventures, Star Crossed, 10 Candles, The Clay that Woke, and Dialect all immediately come to mind).

I haven't read _this_ RPG to speak to it. But I can 100% imagine an excellent "Blade Runner" RPG which goes beyond just skinning a setting on to some ambient system and instead really explores gameplay that itself can tell a "Blade Runner story".

I don’t think blade runner has ftl actually

Roy specifically mentions witnessing attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, presumably that would be Bellatrix 244 light years from Earth. Given that Roy is approaching 4 years old I think one can assume FTL.

The most stereotypical Hacker News comment has to be the "but you can already do this with existing tools" without recognizing how valuable it is (and transformative of the experience) when someone talented makes a tailor-made solution. :)

Honestly I mostly come here to laugh at everyone complaining at everyone and “constructively” shaming others for one thing or the other. This is a prickly lot to say it in the absolutely kindest way.

Id love to get into some TTRPG, but I live in the middle of a tiny village, in a tiny country, where i dont yet speak the language.

As an RPG novice (only ever played CRPGs, cards and boardgames) is there somewhere I can go online to learn the ropes and participate? More than happy to pay for the experience.

You could look on r/lfg ("looking for game") on Reddit.

Or you can join the RPG by forum on rpggeek. They're starting a lot of games this week aimed at people who have little to no experience with RPGs

There's also a category of tabletop RPGs meant to be played just by yourself. It's "solo RPGs." It's a pretty big category and growing fast.

If you're willing to pay to play online, I'd recommend https://startplaying.games. I believe it's a YC alumn, even.

I don’t have an answer for you, but this is a niche I look forward to if AR ever becomes “real”. The ability to negate personal location in a way that feels natural would unlocks all sorts of fulfilling opportunities - like playing TTRPGs with a group scattered all over the world.

I would also like to enjoy the pleasure of interaction and role play involved in traditional TTRPGs while hiding the design complexity behind some video game assistance (because I’m old and busy and can’t hardly devote the time to prepping a 5e DND adventure even though I’ve done it several times before).

The Gauntlet is an online-first RPG club with a packed calendar of games. They tend to not use the various online virtual tabletops, but instead have developed their own resources for running games online using things like Google Sheets for character starts and various free group video calling systems.

They're a teeny bit on the woke side, teeny bit, but I've had fun in their games and they're a well meaning bunch with an actually genuinely very diverse membership. I've got on with them no problem. They tend towards indie RPGs and story games, which suits me fine, but you can find all sorts in the schedule. They have also started publishing games developed by the core club team. Even if you don't play with them their resources are well worth checking out for anyone who wants to play online.

https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/ https://forums.gauntlet-rpg.com/

If you're interested by online ttrpg, Roll20 is most obvious place as well as ttrpg discords

I am an Expat in Germany and play weekly over Discord, together with my three friends (two living in Italy, one living in Belgium).

The main obstacle is to find a schedule the fits everyone (so I suggest you start looking no more than 1 timezone away from where you live). Feel free to write me if you want to discuss this more (you can find my website in the HN profile, and from there you can contact me).

About the site: Please don't assume my window height and steal control of my scrolling. It's super annoying to have the viewport yanked out of your hand.

I liked both blade runner movies immensely. I don’t think I would be interested in this though. And finding a group would be even harder. The alien one sounds interesting though. Anyone done it?

It's very cool. I particularly like the way the stress mechanic works: narratively, it sharpens your focus making you more likely to succeed but it raises the stakes for failure. It makes for some tense situations even in one-shot adventures.

Looks like I'll need to give it a try. Since I have the ultimate, most likely non-canon, US sourcebook already!

So in the game we get to play Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers of the future--except their job is to murder the slaves who escape. It's weird to me that 30 years later people still don't understand that the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys and the other replicants are slaves fighting for their freedom. I love the thought-provoking Bladerunner universe and this looks like it may be a thoughtful production, but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic.

> giving players the choice to play as either human or Replicants

True, although if GP's analogy about slave-catchers is accurate, I think we'd also look askance about a board game that pitted US slaves against slavers, allowing you to play both sides.

Wouldn’t the same apply to scenarios in the Second World War?

Edit: Writing this I just thought maybe not since I can’t think of any that focus on running a PoW / Gulag / Concentration camp, whereas this focus on the slave catching.

Escape from Colditz has one player acting as the PoW guards, and the other players acting as prisoners trying to escape. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz

There are always people looking askance at one thing or another, especially nowadays when it's so fashionable to be that person.

I'm sure you could make an absolutely offensive game about the topic, but you could also make a game that treats the subject carefully. Do you look askance at Secret Hitler?

One of the best board games (not an RPG) that I have ever played is "Liberty or Death". In it, you can play as American Patriots, The French, The British or the Indians. It is asymmetric with each faction having their own objectives. I have never run into a match were people had a problem playing any of the factions or that the game was problematic.

So if you view the replicates as slaves, how do you view AI? And what does that make programmers that are working on AI?

Neuromancer had the "Turing police" monitoring AIs. Watts Blindsight universe has the "Cloudkillers", who turn off AI that gets too smart. It's becoming a more common trope in sci-fi.

It was a pretty significant part of the plot that it's nontrivial to distinguish replicants from humans, and every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement. There's also a replicant that is indistinguishable from a human. A chess playing neural network isn't anywhere close to being comparable to a slave.

And IMO, merely creating such an AI isn't even immoral, as long as we don't force it into labor it wants to escape from.

"every replicant Deckard kills is trying to escape confinement"

I guess that is true at some level depending on how one defines "confinement".

It is not clear to me that Roy or Pris are looking to escape their professions rather, they are in love and about to die of "old age". As Roy bluntly states "I want more life".

If we program the AI to want to serve us, is that moral? This path pretty quickly gets you to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe levels of discomfort[1]

1: https://remotestorage.blogspot.com/2010/07/douglas-adamss-co...

As someone on the autism spectrum, there are AI-y tasks that I would enjoy as a job but which would to most people feel as, at best, unbearably tedious. If you view "AI programmed to enjoy doing boring computer tasks" as vaguely adjacent to an autistic person, then I would say that it's perfectly moral to create such an entity, as long as we treat it well by its own standards. I'm sure there are situations that could get me to second-guess that rule of thumb, but the golden rule feels adequate.

First, it is clear that the genre of "table top RPG" is littered with thieves, assassins, slavers and criminals. Hell, there is a trope that players are often little more than "murder hobos". Playing as a slaver, slave catcher, slave, escaped slave would be nothing new.

Specifically to replicant blade runners, I think there is lots of room for soul searching and meaningful play in coming to grips with potentially being a tool/the tool of your own oppression.

Maybe you start as a blade runner but come to champion the replicant cause. Maybe you smuggle the weak and sick off world. Maybe after your day job ticketing replicants for minor infractions you conduct corporate sabotage against the Tyrell Corporation. Maybe you play as a replicant member of an off-world kick-murder squad or captain a replicant gunship off the shoulder of Orion. Maybe you run a chop shop helping replicants bypass retinal scans. The world of Bladerunner is ripe with RP options. In my opinion, it would be a shame to dismiss the opportunity because you can only see problematic themes.

To paraphrase Roy Batty

You saw a slave narrative, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Well, according to the description of this game, you don't actually know whether you're a replicant and you're watching the dawn of a new age of replicants.

I feel that, with the right GM, it's a very nice setting to discuss slavery.

> the whole point of the movie is that the Bladerunner is the replicant slave of the bad guys

This is far from being a settled canon. Ridley Scott claims it is so, but what does he know? Movie makers often create lore that forces fans to go great lengths to explain coherently. Remember that Kessel run in 12 parsecs?!

Starting out with a horrible character that tries to turn good and undo their evil while battling their past is a common trope. So is the "the world is broken beyond fixing it". Be it movie, video game or tabletop RPG. I am not sure how that could be "seriously problematic" in this case.

Remember, the world just acts a backdrop. A horrible person can still try to let their character murder-rape everyone in a Teletubbies RPG. In the end how the story unfolds depends a lot on the party & game master, and what kind of characters/game they want to play.

> Bladerunners, which are slave-catchers

That's a very reductionistic view of material. Blade Runner was always asking a question what makes someone a human.

And how can you be sure you are a human?

https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html

Philip K. Dick's stories are everything but simple. In link above there is a story was about man undergoing surgery only to discover he has a punch tape inside him. He finds out he's an Android. So he starts messing with the tape, punching out pieces only to discover it materialized a flock of geese. In anger he tears the tape causing entire world to disappear.

Being "less than human" was a key justification for a lot of slavery, so it is quite plausible that this "reductionist view" was deliberately engendered by Dick.

> The two basic topics which fascinate me are “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?”

Philip K Dick.

To boil it down to slavery is a modern take. His other story Roog about a dog defending his home has a similar premise.

His question is closely related to whether you could figure out you are a copy, whether your could tell actual reality from perceived reality, etc.

>but playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic

Then don't play it?

> playing a slave-catcher is seriously problematic

Whew, glad that playing a murderous grave robber necromancer isn't.

It's a game, you make your own rules and stories. I'm glad I could live through the 80's playing "offensive" RPG like Berlin XVIII,In Nomine Satanas or Paranoia without anybody telling me they were "problematic".

That's why these are called "dystopia" and you're not necessarily playing the good guys, there is nothing "problematic" with it.

I think the new "safe, diverse and inclusive" D&D version is aimed at people concerned by "problematisms". See? there are RPG for everybody.

The great thing about tabletop RPGs, though, is that you're ultimately free to do whatever you want. It's the job of the dungeon master to roll with whatever the players do and possibly even change the entire narrative on the fly. In that way, tabletop RPGs are typically much less constrained compared to video game / computer RPGs.

So it's entirely possible that you could start the game as a slave catcher, but if that's not something that you actually want your character to be, then you could definitely try to escape that role! And it would be up to the DM to decide how to respond to your actions...

Slavery isn’t just early pre civil war American south slavery. Slavery is surely bad but so are a lot of institutions controlling the poor, and I’m not sure the moral disgust with it scales to the concept of slavery generally.

Gladiators, drafts, totalitarian states, etc.

A lot of them are really just slavery under a nuanced scheme that we’re all fine role playing.

Neat that the music in the trailer is done by the swede Simon Stålenhag who's also doing great retro art, which got turned into the quirky Tales From The Loop TV-series

I know I've been away from gaming for too long when I don't know any of the games that the team lists as their previous hits.

That scrolling is awful.

I hope that they adopt something along the lines of the Gumshoe RPG System that provides a little more depth to the investigative aspects. Blade Runner shouldn't be just a combat-based shoot 'em up; it demands attention to its roots in noir detective fiction.

They will use their own house system (https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/) which they tailor to specific settings.

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/blade-runner/

"Coming 2022"

So they took 5 years to build the website, and are now announcing a Kickstarter which will start in May? Then the title should be changed from "...RPG imminent" to "...RPG Kickstarter imminent" so people don't get their hopes up...

"They" are https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/ and have already produced a fairly solid line of games.

This is some funko pop junk

Why wouldn't you just play Shadowrun

The world is quite different, in that the Shadowrun is full of magic and fantasy creatures, creating a very different feel.

Also, Free League might perhaps create a rules system that doesn't suck ;-)

A better question would possibly be: Why wouldn't you just play Cyberpunk?

Although Blade Runner is often called cyberpunk, it isn't really. There's basically no computers whatsoever (unless you want to call Deckard's photo editing tool a computer) and no cyberspace. I think the only connections with cyberpunk is that Blade Runner's setting is gritty and it's implied that Asia has taken over from the US/Europe as the primary culture.

Absolutely, I agree. My comment was written in the context of Shadowrun as an approximation of Bladerunner though. I'd say Shadowrun is strictly further away from Bladerunner than Cyberpunk, given that it's essentially just Cyberpunk + every fantasy trope you can think of.

Fredric Jameson considered the key feature of cyberpunk to be transgression, that is to say the erosion of boundaries. Cyberspace is cyberpunk because it erodes the line between physical and digital space, mind and body. Megacorporation's are cyberpunk because they erode the lines between private and public life, national borders, and so on.

Transgression is also the key theme in Blade Runner. What is being transgressed is the distinction between machine and organic body. Synthetic and natural life, person and machine, authentic and inauthentic memory, and so on.

Computers are only one particular artifact of the cyberpunk genre because they're a great example of a tool that breaks down barriers. But Blade Runner has every reason to be situated in the genre as well, because it deals with the exact same topic, merely placing focus on a different technology.

Shadowrun's system is awful, in my opinion.

If I had to try and play Bladerunner without using this particular system, I think I'd go for Shadow of the Beanstalk first.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Shadowrun 3E; the 4E system was terrible, but it had much needed updates to the fluff.

Which is why I said "my opinion." I know there are a ton of people out there who love the game, and I'm not going to say y'all are wrong, haha.

Who doesn't love rolling big piles of dice?

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