What is Gangs of Titan City? Plutogia, the Titan City, is a massive hive-city a far future Sci-Fi setting remincent of 40k's Necromunda or Judge Dread's Mega-City One. Your players will play Gutters, members of an upstart gang vying for conrol of your corner of this impossibly vast city. You will fight rival gangs over territory and the assets they contain, managing your character's Desperation and your gang's Debt while trying to deal with the inevitable consequences of your illicit deeds. Ancient, arcane technology mixes with more mundane machinery on this corroding industrial behemoth. Gutters will use high tech guns, low tech melee weapons, pharma-serums, cybernetics and gene-mods to find whatever edge they can. Some will even use Psionics, if they can stay one step ahead of the Psi Squads that hunts them.

What Do You Get? Two PDFs, the GOTC Quickstart Rules (a third of the full book, specifically rules of play for the personal and orginizational scale) which is the primary focus of my review, and Gangs Playtest which provide the materials necessary to play a short campaign (pregenerated characters, rival factions, and city sectors to fight over). The full book will allow you to create your own PC gangs, procedurally generate city sectors, and fill your Titan City with rivals factions from a list of dozens.

What is the Game Like? The core dice mechanic uses 2d6 plus modifiers (1-6 Fails, 7-9 Partial Success, 10+ Full Success) in a player facing system (players roll all dice in conflicts, attacking and resisting). The bulk of the rules you'll see here are the tools the Narrator needs to run a campaign. These tools are needed becuase the game is largely Player directed. The Narrator places the world at the Players feet, and the Players roam their greedy eyes over the world picking targets and formulating grand plans. The Narrator will then keep track of the inevitable trouble this will cause, as everything the Players take belonged to someone else, and they will not be happy. They can ignore these problems or take them head on, make new contacts or burn old ones, play it safe or devil-may-care. The books says you play to find out; the campaign system mechanics will push your game forward in response to player choices. This isn't a game for auteur gamemasters to tell sweeping epics of their own design, rather its an ingenius machine for gamemasters to input player choices and churn out drama and consequences to great effect. This machine can be a lot for the Narrator to keep track of, so you'll be thankful for the core mechanics being as simple and player facing as they are. The players will feel empowered to make big choices, and the Narrator will have lots of tools at their desposal to make those choices have meaning.

Should I Get It? Absolutely. The grim dark world is evocative, the dice mechanics are intuitive, and the campaign mechanics are very robust. My players and I are extremely excited to see the full product. Check out the Kickstarter, as of writing this the full PDF is ready and will be released soon after funding is reached.

EDIT 8/12/21 Errata fixes and rule clarifications are now in the latest version!

Orbital Blues is a narrative focused OSR Space Western with a rock ‘n roll / retro kitsch aesthetic. It’s a game of “sad space cowboys” drawing inspiration from the likes of Cowboy Bebop and Firefly/Serenity. You play as a motely crew of outlaws aboard an independent space ship looking for whatever work that can keep the debt collectors at bay. Each player character is haunted by something from their past or present that forms the primary focus of their development as the game progresses. If you have players who love to make tragic backstories, this game mechanically rewards those kinds of characters.

Game mechanics are based on Soul Muppet’s OSR horror fantasy RPG Best Left Buried, which itself owes much to Questing Beast’s Maze Rats. Most rolls use 2d6 + Stat to hit an 8+ while individual rolls can gain advantage or disadvantage (roll 3d6, take highest or lowest two rolls respectively). Characters gain experience by acquiring Blues points, gained by enduring traumatic events and roleplaying their character’s hinderances (known as Troubles). Credit and Debt loom large over the crew, as they scramble to stay in business in a system designed to keep them broke and desperate.

Despite the narrative focus of this game, it is still very much an OSR RPG. Combat, both personal and vehicular, can turn deadly in short order. Combat feels tense, and space combat has plenty for the non-pilot crew to do without bogging things down too much. I especially like the “Swansong” mechanic for PCs certain to die: this is their last scene of the game, crank up the music, roll with advantage and ignore injury until a suitably epic moment when they breathe their last.

Art and layout are gorgeous. Route 66 Americana, rock and roll, 70s magazine ads, retrofuture rocket ships all come together beautifully. Text remains legible throughout, which is more than I can say about some other art focused OSR RPGs that have come out lately.

There’s an excellent GM section with advice on running the game, as well as a star system full of intrigue and adventure for the players to explore out of the box. There’s a specific melancholy vibe the authors are going for here: they want to tell tales of hungry desperados struggling to make ends meat while trying to keep their souls intact. The “sad space cowboy” theme suffuses the whole book. These are your character’s Orbital Blues.

Lovely Troika setting for bug-sized adventures! Beautiful art walking a tightrope between cute and terrifying, extremly evocitive of the creepy crawly setting.

A quintessentially Numenera five part dungeon for DnD 5e. Arcana of the Ancients is a must have to run this adventure for monsters and treasures (handy page numbers are included in the margins). The location of the "Grave of the Machines" is deliberately vague so as to easily fit into your existing game world, and there are optional links to "The Hills of Crooked Sleep" adventure found in Ancana of the Ancients.

I'd say this is a must buy for DMs who already own AotA, and I'd recomend players stay away so as to not spoil it for themselves. Cypher system GMs can use this book with the help of an apendix in the back, but it'll add a lot of page turning to your prepwork.

System: Modified Black Hack Contents: 72 pages, roughly 60% Rules and Advice, 40% Random Tables Art: Troika meets Cyberpunk (wimsical dream logic doodles, Mobius-inspired techno detail, garish colors, isometic wireframe maps)

Weird Cyberpunk action awaits in DWBUANS. Emphasis on the weird, a bizzare retrofuture lovingly filled with genre cleches and tropes. Lots of great random tables for ideas for adventures, antagonists, locations, vendors and the like.

Some interesting modifications to base Black Hack rules make it its own beast. I just wish there was tighter explanations for certain rules (how to stat NPCs, how leveling works, are players meant to start without weapons they don't purchase, etc). A sentence or two here and there could fix this without the need for a radical rewrite. Its easy enough for a GM to make a snap judgemnt call or lean on other Black Hack game knoweldge and keep the game going, just feels like a few more eyes in playtesting would have helped.

Pregenerated form fillable (you can change any part of the text, such as names) characters at level 1 and level 3. Great for jumpstarting an adventure or campaign or ideas for NPCs.

For owners of Numenera 1st edition or Numenera Discovery looking to play in DnD 5e: The majority of this book is reprinted setting and gazetteer with a few new pieces of art. Arcana of the Ancients is basicly mandatory to play effectivly in 5e. The only crunch to be found in this book is:

• Ninth world mundane weapons/armor/gear with a note about converting DnD gold into shins
• Creatures mentioned in the gazeteer but not included in Arcana of the Ancients book
• A medium sized list of NPCs covering the CR scale from low, mid and high tier
• 5e stats for playing Varjellan and Lattimore characters
• 5e stats for being members of the core orginations

Other than that if you already own the 1st edition core book or Discovery you have everything else printed in this book. Arcana of the Ancients is a must have for playing Numenera in 5e but unless you have a visitant player or desperately need the stats for an abykos you can manage without this book. 3/5 Stars

For Numenera Cypher System players and GMs There is nothing new here for you at all. 0/5 Stars

For DnD 5e players and GMs looking to play in the Numenera universe Welcome to the Ninth World! This book is mostly setting fluff, but it does a decent job introducing new players to the world of Numenera. Please note that the Arcana of the Ancients book is almost mandatory to get the most out of this book. 2 new playable races, some adventuring gear, and few monsters and NPCs are included. 4/5 Stars

Electric Bastionland is an OSR (or Old School Renaissance) RPG set in a bizarre dystopian alternate universe that mirrors our early 20th century. The players are the flotsam of society, impoverished desperados and hapless heroes. They failed at whatever career they had before and now they are forced to find their fortunes in the most dangerous and ignoble way: Adventuring. Your party of treasure hunters start out thousands of pounds in debt. With barely any petty cash on hand, a few assorted weapons of varying quality, some basic adventuring provisions, and whatever odd knickknacks you managed to take from your tragic past, your expedition begins.

The rules are stripped down to the bone (2 pages cover everything the players need to know), combat is quick and deadly, and I’m confident I could teach anyone how to play in 10 minutes. Character creation is incredibly quick, a few quick die rolls and your loveable loser of an adventurer springs to life with more personality than any starting OSR D&D character can hope to have. You can have this game up and running in less than thirty minutes. Look for "Prison of the Worm Queen" on the bastionland dot com site for an excellent starting adventure.

The majority of this book’s page count is dedicated to the Failed Careers your characters could have. At first GMs may think this highly idiosyncratic setting has very little actual information about its world. But then you realize that the Failed Career section contains vast inspiration for the people, places, treasures and terrors your players will find in the world of Electric Bastionland. The art is evocative and engrossing, the career descriptions and backgrounds are irresistible. The author has a clear design philosophy and plainly explains what it is and what he hopes to accomplish with it. It may not be for everyone (fans of intricate game systems and complex meta-builds may balk at its simplicity) but it is a game that anyone can learn and play, which I think is awesome. I don’t consider myself an OSR hipster or an old school grognard, but I fell in love with the setting and the super easy teach.

5 Stars. Check out the free version if you are not sure; it contains the rules of play and a sampling of the Failed Careers.

A dystopian transhumanist cyberpunk thrasher of a setting. The world is centuries past its last golden age, a planet covered in massive neglected megalopolis and barren radioactive wastelands. But dispite the degeneration and decay, the writers encourage players to fight for the future. While the fingerprints of past cyberpunk settings are all over this, this is very much its own beast.

Requires Index Card RPG to play. Puts enough extra rules and crunch into the rules lite system that it scratches my itch. I recommend.

(Disclaimer: I'm a kickstarter backer.) This is an extremely useful tool to print out reference cards for the various "hacks" (read 5E D&D spells in this biopunk universe) available to players and NPCs.

Excellent refinement of a beloved setting and rock solid SWADE rules for cyberpunk. I'll revise this review when I get a chance to write in depth, but sufice to say that if you're group plays Savage Worlds Adventure Edition and has even a passing interest in sci-fi, this is an incredible value.

(Disclaimer: Kickstarter Backer) Excellent, high quality character tokens suitable for PCs and NPCs on Roll20 or other online RPG platforms. Designed for the excellect Genefunk 2090 game, but useful for any sci-fi setting.

Full Disclosure: I have helped fund this product on Kickstarter and have been given a "Creative Consultant" credit for helping during the playtesting period. I do not financially benefit from the sale this product.

GeneFunk 2090 is a "biopunk" (think cyberpunk with an emphasis on genetic engineering and its consequences) TTRPG using a modified form of the D&D 5th Edition rules set (all rules are included in this book, no need to own any D&D rulebooks).

What's the Setting? You play as a group of deniable asset mercenaries known as a "cadre" doing dubiously legal tasks for the various corporate and criminal syndicates that form the power structures of this cyberpunk future. Your reputation and pay scale is mediated by "Mosaic", a social media app / job board connecting cadre mercs to clients who need dirty deeds done discreetly. Nine megacorporations own nearly everything in this world, and the "Second Corporate War" is well under way as covert and not-so-covert warfare is the only way for these syndicates to gain superiority over each other.

What's the Technology?

• For over 50 years genetically engineered humans have been created, designed for a myriad of purposes. As of the year 2090, a quarter of the worlds population were born with transgenic traits.
• The overwhelming majority of the population have a nanotechnological colony in their bodies called a "daemon", an internal computer and medical nanobot system revolutionizing nearly every aspect of life.
• Cybernetic, biological and daemon software upgrades are available to those who can afford them to push far past the limits of what is humanly possible.
• One of the major corporations has developed "Phoenix Unlimited", a system that creates backup copies of a client's consciousness so that in the event of their death, that copy can be given a new body and a kind of functional immortality can be achieved.
• Despite all the incredible things daemon technology can do, there is a hidden price. It is possible for criminals and government agents to hack into someone's daemon and affect their target's brain and body. Memories can be altered or erased and bodies can be puppeteered. Codehackers are essentially techno-psychics in this world, and the havoc they can wreak is terrifying.
• Ranged weapon technology is primarily projectile based with specialized ammunition available. Melee weapons can be enhanced with electrical charges or especially sharp nanoblades. Armor can grant physical damage reduction on top of the normal AC boost. No laser pistols or energy shields, flying cars exist with turbofan VTOL, and there's a permanent base on the moon.

How's Character Creation? You have a choice of over 18 different "Genomes" (think D&D races), each very powerful in their own right (a level 1 GF2090 character will be equivalent to a level 3 D&D character). You also have the option to create your own custom genome (GM willing), or play a "Mutt" who rolls completely randomly what traits they inherited from their transgenically engineered parents. There are 11 prewritten Backgrounds to choose from, with the option to write you own. There are 8 classes, ranging from your standard D&D analogues (Fighter, Rogue and Monk players will recognize archetypes) to the Suit (an agent of a corporation/government/mafia who wields money and influence as their weapon) and hackers.

What's this about Hackers? There is no magic or psionics in this world; but bioengineering, nanotechnology and daemons can be used to create effects normally reserved for spell casters in other games. Simply: Hackers are spellcasters, using D&D-like spells as "Hacks". BioHackers can use hacks to affect biological bodies, either to harm or heal. Codehackers can use hacks to affect computers and brains (remember daemons can be hacked), making them truly terrifying techno-psychics. Engineers are masters of machines, their hacks either being crafting blueprints or representing the exact gadget you needed amd just happened to be carrying with you. If you like playing a spell caster in other 5E games and are worried there's nothing for you in this SciFi game, trust me, this game has got you covered.

Is it Good? As stated in the beginning, I am clearly biased. I love this game. The book is gorgeous, the character build options endless, and the setting is perfect for cyberpunk skullduggery. And at this price ($19 US from where I sit) for a 314 page rules complete TTRPG this well made, I think its a steal.

A "BioPunk" (or modern cyberpunk in the post CRISPR age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR) setting. With real designer babies just around the corner, this take on the cyberpunk dystopia feels closer at hand than its 1980s inspired ancestors. That said, if you are at all familiar with Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, Interface Zero or any other cyberpunk game settings, you know the drill. You are deniable assets for megacorps, with the added wrinkle that all "cardre" (mercenary band meets limited liability corperation) are linked into a single social media app "Mosaic" with reputaion tracking.

What will you get in this free download? All the fluff text and art of the unreleased core book with brief blurbs where the 5e crunch will be post-kickstarter. This is an increadibly generous preview for the future release, but not a playable game.

What will they do differently with 5e?
Instead of magic or psionics in this setting, all spell-like effects are tech-based hacks. 99% of all PCs and NPCs have integrated nanotech computers with legions of nanobots swimming in their veins so hacking into the bodies and brains of friend or foe mimics spells easily. Biohackers heal & harm bodies, codehackers dominate minds & computers while engineers engage in good old mechanical techno-wizardry.
Other classes mimic your fighters and rogues, but the "Suit" class seems like an interesting choice: You wield powerful 'favors' with governments and megacorps. Make one phone call and an orbital ion cannon strike takes out a target or a drone delivers exactly the ordinance you need.

Is it good? The fluff and concepts for the various genotypes and classes are very intriguing, but as this has no stat crunch I can't tell you much about the actual game design. The art is outstanding and I have yet to find any typographical errors or word salad gibberish commonly found in kickstarter PDFs. These folks have done the right thing and worked hard on the project BEFORE going to Kickstarter and asking for money. Based on this preview, come May 1st I plan to be among the first 100 backers.