The Culture: The Cyberstein Post-Mortem Show

Last night was another appearance on This Is Dunder Moose, this time talking Cyberpunk 2020.

All of us had our pieces of the overall puzzle and it takes a panel discussion like this to put them together in a format friendly to outside observers, especially those that are curious about Braunstein but has not gone for it themselves.

Through podcast episodes like this, you too can see how incredible Braunstein is as a tool--a missing part of the overall machine of gameplay--and with nothing more than a meme and a dream just one player can kick off months or years of gaming excitement as I (and a few others) did this time around.

I want to point out that our Referee for this, Dorrinal, made clear that it was the release of BROZER that got him to finish up his scenario and take the plunge into running one himself. Get it (it's free in PDF), read it, comprehend it, and them implement it.

The stereotype--shared with Shadowrun--is that everyone cybers to the gills (sans magic-users in SR). That was not true; my man had no cyberware, no high-powered gadgets, and no combat ability at all. Yet there he was, making things happen, influencing if not directing the flow of events; were he more established in Night City, he would have made up some work for others to take on.

The other stereotype is that everyone effective has some bullshit IWIN card. That also was not true; my man did nothing that his real world counterparts have not done, and a lot of the things I did as Tomino were things I witnessed first-hand, heard at one remove, or read about in a history book somewhere. In this instance, it was maintaining a strict segregation between Public and Private such that Tomino did nothing sketchy on his personal devices. Deniability is paramount as a Corporate, and maintaining it is itself a Best Practice. Sketchy shit happened privately.

You can do this too. Find the game that you want to play, then do Braunstein with it. Memes and dreams- you can use the latter to make the former real, or you can stay in the Soup Aisle.