Creating a Cyberpunk Red Character

A little over a year ago, I was pining for a chance to play some Cyberpunk Red, as I just did not have the time to run a game. Here we are, mere weeks away from starting a new CPRed campaign, and I figured I would relate how to make a CPRed character based on what I have seen online. Of course, given enough time and money, I have this idea that I want to convert the fantastic Firestorm campaign from CP2020 to the new Red rules and run my players through it as an intro and then they start playing as their kids/relatives in Red proper (2045-ish). But I do not really have the time to do all the conversion right now, so we are going to start with the Jumpstart Kit's Apartment intro adventure and go from there. Long before  any of that, I always like to find sources and references to see how other people are doing what they do, and see if there are any known pitfalls I can avoid. Pertaining to that, I have joined the Night City Stories (NCS) community on Reddit, if for nothing more than just having a need to create a Red PC and exploring the system a little. 

First, a bit on NCS - it is the Cyberpunk Red equivalent of a West Marches campaign played out over the internet. I will not bore you with yet another explanation of what a West Marches campaign is, you have either heard of them, or you can follow the links and find out for yourself. CPRed lends itself so well to this concept, I am hard pressed to say that, given a choice, whether I would like to run/GM a D&D 5e or a CPRed West Marches campaign in my local area (I am not currently doing either, but it is something I have pondered). So NCS is just that, a bunch of GMs (does anyone else miss "referees" from CP2020?) post up edgeruns, and whoever volunteers for them goes off and plays on the posted date and time. As you can see, if you bothered to go look at their Reddit, NCS does have some rules for character generation, which makes it easier for those of us who have oxidized well since the last time we played Cyberpunk Red or 2020. So I decided to use their rules for character creation, and am even going with the Complete Packages like they do for my soon to be starting CPRed campaign. As an example of what this involves, I am going to create a character and relay my internal monologue and choices I made while making this. If you want simpler, go for a Streetrats template build or a fast and dirty Edgerunners build, but for my example, I am deep diving into the Complete Packages to get more fidelity and choice of making a character. Follow along in your CPRed core rulebook, starting on page 40. Also, if you want an example of what your generic anything should look like (and I am providing these as well to my players to help them choose/create a character), check out RTG's Single Shot Pack, that has pre-gens of every role available.

For me, I was having a hard time settling on one role over the others - traditionally, I have played many Techs/Medtechs (used to be, in CP2020, no distinction between the two), Nomads, Solos, Fixers, and Netrunners. I finally understand Medias these days (read the comic Transmetropolitan, or Seanan Maguire/Mira Grant's Newsflesh novels for some fantastic examples of what a Media is/does), but did not in my early Edgerunning career, and I freely admit to not liking Corpos (I'm sorry, Execs), Cops (Lawmen), or Rockers. Solo is too easy, like "human fighter" in D&D, the default when you are unsure what you want to play. Netrunners are cool, and I like the new rules that keep them in the present with the rest of the party. Techs are also great in this version, less maintenance as in the old version, and more mad scientist/inventor, like in the classic RPG, Deadlands. Medtechs are also more their own breed of beastie in this version, and always very welcome in any party.

But Nomad... Nomads have become less about the Pack (though still important) and more about driving a vehicle (page 161 in the core book). Which I resonated with. You see, recently (okay, a year and a half ago before car and gas prices went insane) I traded in my old reliable commuter, which was becoming less and less reliable and more and more in need of some major repairs, and bought what my wife is referring to as the Mid-Life-Crisis-Mobile - a 2017 Ford Mustang GT (with a 6-speed manual, the Performance Pack, and possibly the loudest aftermarket pipes thanks to a previous owner). Hey, the wife and I are not going to have any more kids, and we are in a financial position that we could splurge a little. Plus, the 'stang is more affordable than most of you realize, especially as mine comes with the Millenial-specific anti-theft device, a transmission you have to row yourself. I needed a car to get to work every day, and this does fit the bill, just a bit excessive about it. To be honest, it is excessive about everything, really.

So I chose a Nomad, but I did not start in on your typical Nomad, either. Most Nomads have decent Cool stats, as they do a lot of negotiating, but the more I tried to nail down my new guy, the more I heard this utter gearhead nerd talking about the dual-turbo setup he wanted to bolt onto his current ride, and maybe a shot of nitrous, too. Out went the typical Cool stat, hello decent Tech stat, along with the matching skills, mainly in vehicle repair. Oh yeah, I am so dual classing this PC Nomad/Tech (it is legal! page 143 in the core book) - he can drive anything with wheels, and repair/upgrade it as needed. However, starting as a Nomad and using the Complete Package to build the PC, I automatically get a four in the Nomad's Role Ability - Moto.

I had this idea I wanted this character to be related to one of my old characters I played a lot, specifically my old Netrunner, the Wild One. He was the character out of my stable of CP2020 characters that was most like me - me growing up in the CP2020 universe, with just a thin coat of paint. I am by far not the only person out there who has done this, and as long as you can recognize your own flaws in the PC alongside your (possibly inflated) attributes, then your fellow players generally do not find them too egregious. Wild One was a pretty fun character to play, the head of a protection gang in the Kansas City area (big fish in a tiny pond, when talking the Cyberpunk universe - we set our campaign in KC because we were not far away when we played), and being a Netrunner in 2020, with its datafortresses and netrunning rules, he spent a lot more time sitting back and guiding the party than he did going on jobs with them. I figured he did not make it long past the end of the Fourth Corporate War and Bartmoss's unleashing of the RABIDS on the Net. But how, then, to tie this new character back to the Wild One? One night stand before he klepped it in the fall of the Net? Vat clone? I went with something a little less strange - the Wild One's Medtech (Netrunners of the time employed Medtechs to monitor their vitals on 'runs into the Deep Net, as Netrunners were virtually comatose while doing so) had quite a crush on her patient, and when the RABIDS brain burnt him, leaving a comatose vegetable behind, she gathered a "sample" before pulling the plug on the life support and impregnated herself. My new Nomad was the result.

So Lifepath - with the above in mind, I pick everything I need from the Lifepath (starting page 43 in the core rulebook) to get me there. North American as cultural region, I could go with any of the languages as Wild One was mainly an English speaker, but "dad" was not in the picture (he was already dead) when this character was born. What did mom speak? I do not know, but I am thinking Spanish just to spice things up. I was raised in southern New Mexico and speak a bit of Spanish myself, so I could see this character's mother being of Hispanic descent and mainly speaking that language. For personality, Intellectual and Detached - as I typed earlier, this guy is not Cool, he is a gearhead nerd who is most interested in driving fast, and making whatever he is currently driving even faster. I could even go Picky, Fussy and Nervous, but I like Intellectual and Detached, so that is what I am going for. Clothing style, since this character is a new character and part of a Nomad Pack, I'll got with Nomad Leathers (yeah, I know, generic, but you can always change this throughout the life of any PC) and hair... what am I thinking? This character is partly Hispanic, so it can be about any of the options. Not Bald, this PC may be female (have not decided yet), and I do not prefer women without hair. Probably something they can fit under a helmet, but probably not too neat, so I will go with Short and Curly. Affectations I will go with Tattoos. This PC likes to get inked, already has a few (can decide this later or now, not really important quite yet) and always looking to get more to add to the collection. Most Valued - *hmmmm* I will go with Your Word. This PC is a person of their word, builds back into the Intellectual and Detached, I like it. Go easy with the next one - I Like Almost Everyone. Friendly, but detached, so not a total snob asshole. Most Valued Person - dad was non-existent (literally just a sperm donor) and mom was a bit flaky to begin with, so I will say A Teacher or Mentor. Someone in the Nomad Pack who taught young PC how to drive and wrench on vehicles. Most Valued Possession - A Tool (they want to be a Tech so badly...). The last is easiest, when making a Nomad, stick with a Nomad Pack. Oh, you could do other backgrounds that can make sense, but I'm sticking with the Pack for this one. Which Nomad Pack? I always leave this as an open discussion with the rest of the party and the GM - what fits into the game the best? I am not married for this character to belong to any one particular Pack, I can write the background around whatever fits best, even an ocean-going Nomad Pack.

Yes, yes, there are more options in Lifepath, but you get the gist of it - some of these decisions can be super important to you as the player, and some can be chosen at random. You decide what is important in making up your character and what is not so important. And the options in the core book are really good, but you can come up with anything you can think of and go with that, even if it is not listed. Like Affectations - I picked Tattoos, but I could easily have said "everything they own is neon pink" and so their catch-phrase suddenly becomes "oooh, that's nice! got it in pink?" to every bit of shiny they run across. Let your imagination run wild. Focus on telling the PC's history, but do not be afraid to be vague now (during character creation) to give you freedom to come up with better ideas during play. Decisions made on the fly, in the middle of a game while at the table with your friends can be more interesting than something you had decided months/years ago. 

Now onto Statistics (page 72) - the Complete Package option uses a point-buy system instead of random generation by dice. As a starting character (yep, you can totally create Major or Minor Heroes, whatever your GM will allow, but for this, we will start with Starting Character, as that is also what I am inflicting on my players) you get 62 points to divide between the ten Statistics - Intelligence (INT), Reflexes (REF), Dexterity (DEX), Technique (TECH), Cool (COOL), Willpower (WILL), Luck (LUCK), Movement (MOVE), Body (BODY), and Empathy (EMP). I am not going into what each of those means, just to say you can take a look at the pre-roll tables for the Streetrats and Quick & Dirty builds to get an idea of what is important, average, and less important for each of the Roles. If it has mostly 5s and 6s, that's average. If it has mostly 3s and 4s, that is less important. And if a Stat has a lot of 8s, that is important. For instance, Nomads - INT is average, REF and DEX are above average, TECH is not important, COOL and WILL are important, MOVE and BODY are average, and EMP is less important. However, I want to multiclass this PC, so I also peek in on the Tech Role, see what they think is important (INT and TECH). INT for a Nomad is of average importance, but for a Tech is very important. Similarly, TECH is also very important to the Tech, but not important at all to a Nomad. So I want to emphasize those two, but I have to give up something in return, as you cannot have everything. I have already decided that this character is not Cool - while friendly, they are just not into talking to other people (Persuasion and Trading are usually high on the Nomad's list of Skills, but not this one) - so COOL will get bumped from "important" to "not important at all". I still want this PC to remain a good driver, so I will keep REF as important, but move DEX down to merely average - they will not be a combat monster, but still be able to drive like Randy Pobst. 

With the 62 points I get as a starting character, I choose INT 7, REF 8, DEX 6, TECH 7, COOL 4, WILL 6, LUCK 7, MOVE 6, BODY 6, and EMP 5. Like I said, not at all a high Cool like you see with most Nomads, but he is going to be more Tech focused in the very near future. Empathy I also find to be the answer to the question "how much cyberware are you wanting to put into this character?" as that is the limiting factor. If I was building a Solo who I wanted to do a near-borg/total-borg transformation with, I would put as many points in EMP as they let me from the start. So here, I want some 'ware, but not a lot. This Nomad is not going to be Inquisitor level of pure, but not totally 'borged out.

I got skill... or I should say, I have bought Skills for my character. Pertinent pages in the core book are 81 for a short description of every Skill, page 85 has the Basic Skills, page 90 has how many points a Complete Package character has to spend and how to spend those points, and starting on page 130 is a deeper description of all the Skills. Complete Package characters, which is what I am making, get 90 points to put into Skills. Yes, I know, the book says 86 points, but you get 4 above and beyond that must be spent in a language related to their background. Automatically, our Nomad has Language: Spanish 4 (+7 from INT, for a Base Skill of +11). Related to your 4 free points, you have to automatically put at least two points apiece into the Basic Skills: Athletics, Brawling, Concentration, Conversation, Education, Evasion, First Aid, Human Perception, Language: Streetslang, Local Expert (home turf), Perception, Persuasion, and Stealth. You start with 90, spend four in your language, another 26 in the Basic Skills, and you end up with 60 points you can put anywhere you want (except their Role Ability - it is nominally a skill, but you cannot advance it during character creation, only by spending IP on it). Again looking to the Streetrats builds to see what is important, for Nomads we come up with Brawling, Evasion, First Aid, Stealth, Animal Handling, Drive (Land, Sea or Air) Vehicle, Handgun, Melee Weapon, Tracking, Trading, and Wilderness Survival, with Perception also getting a little bump. However, I have to be different (just like everybody else!) and so we also need to look at Tech - Evasion and First Aid are also important, but everything else is different: Education, Basic Tech, Cybertech, Electronics/Security Tech (x2), Land Vehicle Tech, Shoulder Arms, Science (your choice), and Weaponstech. Getting the balance between the two Roles and getting what I want out of the PC is fairly straightforward - you cannot have everything, pick just a couple of things you want your PC to excel at, and then, if you have anything left over, put them in Skills that you think will be helpful or that no one else will have. 

Here is what I chose, grouped how they have the Skills grouped, by category. In Awareness Skills, I put four points each in Concentration and Perception, and six into Tracking, which is INT based and i just put a lot of points into INT from the Tech side, so it makes sense to emphasize. In Body Skills, I leave the base two points in Athletics but go for six points in Stealth. Stealthy and a good tracker, this Nomad is starting to coalesce, the quiet one who would rather be wrenching, does not make a lot of noise or brag about themself, but gets the job done. Control Skills we have Drive Land Vehicle with six points, and combined with our high REF, this Nomad can drive it like they stole it. In Education Skills we have, oddly enough, Education, which I put four points into. It is not a skill high on the priority list for Nomads, but it is for Techs. I would put more points in if this PC was a Tech from the word go, but this reflects their coming into the Role sideways. Also in this group we see our two Languages, Streetslang at the base two points and Spanish at the base four points. Local Expert (Your Home) stays at the base two points, and I have not decided where "home" is or what part of Night City they call home, but that can always be changed later. Wilderness Survival I do put six points into, but this could go either way - the party never leaves the urban environs of NC and they never need this skill, or they get chased out of town into the wastelands between cities and the Nomad is the only one who keeps the party alive. I like having it as a "just in case" Skill, never know when it might come in handy, and fits with Tracking and Stealth. For Fighting Skills, everyone gets Brawling and Evasion, but I bump both of these up to six points, and also take Melee Weapon at six points. Mechanics have lots of long, heavy wrenches and breakover bars, this felt right. No Performance Skills, and for Ranged Weapons Skills, I put six points into Handguns. In Social Skills, the basic Skills Conversation, Human Perception, and Persuasion get the basic two points. Finally, in Technique Skills, First Aid gets six points, legacy of this character's mother, Land Vehicle Tech also gets six points, and Weapontech gets two points. We gonna put big shooties on our vroom-vroom! 

Now personal gear, or as CPRed calls it, Your Stuff. For Weapons, Armor, Gear and Cyberware, you have 2,550 eurobucks (eddies, EBs, euros... I do find it funny that the original Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2020 predicted the euro of our current reality all the way back in the late 1980s) to spend, and specifically on your Fashion, which is almost as important as the rest to a CPRed PC, you have 800 euros to spend. Most of your gear, specifically short descriptions and prices, can be found starting on page 91, but once you get into game and need the stats for most of these items, you need to go to page 340 and following, in the Night Market section of the Economy chapter, for all of those statistics. For this PC, here is what I picked up, and why on the important stuff. 

• Stun Baton, medium melee weapon. It is easy to kill someone after you stun them, but hard to bring a dead target back to life, never know when you need to capture instead of kill.
• Heavy Pistol with 100 rounds. Nothing fancy, this PC has the Handgun Skill and these are pretty good at the balance of ROF and Damage.
• Light Armorjack, leather jacket and bandana (this fits in with their fashion choices of earlier, and note you have to purchase these again in Fashionware below)
• Agent. In the grimdark future, everyone needs a pocket cell phone/computer.
• Carryall. Where you carry your stuff, this could be saddle bags on your motorcycle to a duffle bag to a military surplus extra-large field pack.
• Duct tape. This PC is part Tech, they do not leave home without this item.
• Flashlight. Even if everyone in the party has upgraded to Smart Goggles or Cybereyes with low light, IR/UV, whatever, these are a good idea as you still need a flashlight to read things written in regular ink or printed in non-IR/UV reflective inks (which is 90% of the time), or otherwise discern details in the dark. Too easy to just also bring a flashlight with you.
• Inflatable bed and sleeping bag. PC is part Tech, but also part Nomad, so sleeping on the road or wherever you can cop some floor space is the order of the day.
• Radio communicator. Until everyone in the party upgrades to the appropriate cyberware, this is too necessary for a well-oiled team.
• Radio scanner/music player. For those long trips across the Wastelands, got to have your entertainment and also be on the lookout for rival Packs that could be setting up ambushes in your path.
• Road flares (x3). Signaling source and a source of fire, lots of uses for magnesium road flares.
• Rope (10m). Never know when you will need some of this.
• Tent and camping equipment. See the inflatable bed and sleeping bag above, never know where you are going to have to make camp out in the Wasteland.
• Anti-smog breathing mask. This is the time of the Red, best to protect your lungs until you can afford cyber replacements.
• Medtech bag. This PC is good at the Medtech skill, which is a base Skill so everyone has some knowledge in it. Also, being as I personally am a former US Army Soldier, we were trained you always carry at least one bandage (and the deeper we got into the Global War on Terror, we began carrying IFAC kits, which had a tourniquet, an Israeli bandage, and clotting factor), because whenever you are wounded, your battle buddies will use your bandage on you. Their bandage is so if they are wounded, that bandage will be used on them. This is one piece of gear that I think all PCs should spend some eddies on.
• Tech bag. Yep, this PC is not officially a Tech, but already purchased their basic Tech bag so they can use those TECH skills (Land Vehicle Tech and Weapontech) from the start.
• Smart glasses with Image Enhance. This is far cheaper than true cyberware and not quite as useful, but I think it fits with the character concept. They can use these as a scout for their Pack, as well as use the magnification capabilities when working on vehicles and weapons. Less a combat useful bit of gear, but still, if you can spot the enemy before they spot you, that may not be useful inside combat but always a bonus as it allows you to either bypass the ambush or decide how you are going to deal with it. If you do not know the ambush is there, that is the worst possible option.

Fashionware is all personal choice - how important is flashy clothes to your character? For this PC, what with the low COOL score and all, fashion is not all that important. I grabbed a bunch of basic, sturdy clothes, and multiples of each. No, edgerunners never get shot, stabbed, blown up, burned, electrocuted, acid thrown or sprayed on them, tied to the bumper of a fast vehicle and dragged a mile down the road... (end sarcasm tag) One thing I will note, I love looking through the classic CP2020 books, particularly the core book and the Chrome books, when it comes to fashion choices. In fact, I am going to put those books out for the players in my upcoming Session Zero. As for housing, like the Nomad Pack earlier, I like to leave this as an open discussion between myself, the other players, and the GM. Definitely not a Corpo Conapt, but I do like to also choose a living accommodations goal at this point, as it is not quite so important where they are living at the beginning of the campaign, but where they want to end up, that helps define the PC's motivations. As for the Running Out of Cash? options (page 118 in the core book), I try to build my PCs without any kind of entanglements like this. Now if the GM and I have had a conversation where they need someone in the party to do this to provide plot hooks for the upcoming campaign, I am an experienced enough of a player that I am willing to take this on and help out.

And there you have it, what I think about when I am creating a character for Cyberpunk Red. Hopefully this helps you with your own character creation and de-mystifies the high fidelity character creation option. It is really not all that hard, and the way CPRed is built, the rules part of it, it is really hard to make a "useless" character (I like to think "less useful" or "non-maximized" rather than "useless"), so if you have any reservations, just dive in and see what works for you and your group. Remember, life is cheap in this grimdark alternate reality, and even maximally balanced PCs die at an alarming rate. Have fun, stay safe, go roll some dice with your friends.