Night City for Dungeon Crawlers
You know parties, quests and the moment a fight goes wrong. This page translates that to Night City.
The world
- It's 2045, the Time of the Red. Night City sits on the coast of Northern California. The 4th Corporate War wrecked trade and infrastructure, and in 2023 a nuke flattened the old corporate center. The city is still rebuilding.
- No magic, no monsters. Everyone is human. The danger comes from people, corporations, guns and the chrome (cyberware) people put in their bodies.
- You're edgerunners: freelancers who take risky jobs at the edges of society. Your crew lives in Little Europe.
The dice: it's a d10, not a d20
- To do something hard, roll STAT + Skill + 1d10 and beat a Difficulty Value (DV) set by the GM, or the other side's roll. A tie fails.
- Natural 10: a Critical Success. Roll one more d10 and add it. It only happens once per roll.
- Natural 1: a Critical Failure. Roll one more d10 and subtract it.
- Initiative is REF + 1d10. On your turn, you get one Move Action and one other Action.
No classes, no levels
- Instead of a class you pick a Role, such as Solo, Netrunner, Medtech, Fixer or Rockerboy. Each Role has a Role Ability, and new characters start it at Rank 4. Your Role doesn't limit which ordinary skills you learn.
- There are no levels. You earn Improvement Points and spend them to raise your skills and your Role Ability.
- Hit points come from your BODY and WILL, and experience doesn't raise them. A veteran dies to the same bullet as a rookie.
No Armor Class
- Ranged attacks roll REF + weapon skill + 1d10 against a DV based on the weapon and the range. A target with REF 8 or more can try to dodge.
- Melee attacks are opposed: your DEX + melee skill + 1d10 against the defender's DEX + Evasion + 1d10.
- Armor doesn't make you harder to hit. Its Stopping Power (SP) is subtracted from the damage. When an attack gets through, the armor where you were hit loses 1 SP.
- Use cover. Anything that blocks the shooter's view and can stop a bullet takes the hits for you until its own hit points run out.
Getting hurt
- Drop below half your HP and you're Seriously Wounded (-2 to your actions). At 0 HP you're Mortally Wounded, and at the start of each of your turns you make a Death Save: roll a d10 and get under your BODY. A natural 10 always fails, each save gets harder, and one failure means death.
- Rolling two or more 6s on damage dice causes a Critical Injury, such as a broken arm or a lost eye, plus 5 extra damage, even through armor. Injuries need their own treatment.
- There's no healing magic. First Aid or Paramedic skill stabilizes you. Once stable, natural healing restores your BODY in HP for each full day of rest, and a Medtech can do more.
- Fights are short and deadly. A plan, good cover and a way out are worth more than toughing it out.
Dungeon crawler → Night City, roughly
| You know it as | Closest thing here |
|---|---|
| The party | The crew |
| Class | Role |
| Level | No real match: you raise skills and your Role Ability one at a time |
| Fighter | Solo |
| Wizard | Netrunner, loosely. A technical specialist with programs and a cyberdeck |
| Cleric, healer | Medtech |
| Bard | Rockerboy. Influence and a following; music is optional |
| Quest giver | A client or a Fixer (Fixer is also a Role you can play) |
| Tavern | Bar (try Greta's or Fiddler's Green) |
| Gold | Eurobucks, "eb" or "eddies" |
| Healing potion | No quick fix: stabilizing, treatment and time |
| Magic items | Cyberware and good gear |
| Dungeon | A corporate building, the Hot Zone ruins, or a NET Architecture |
These are loose matches. Each one works a little differently here.
The NET is a dungeon
Netrunning happens inside a NET Architecture, a local computer system laid out as a stack of virtual floors. Its defenses can include Black ICE, programs that attack the Netrunner. The Netrunner has to be within 6 m/yds of an access point to jack in and stay connected, and walls block the signal. So the Netrunner goes on the job with the crew, and the crew keeps them alive. Not every device has a NET Architecture to run.
Chrome and Humanity
Cyberware usually costs Humanity, which wears down your Empathy. Lose too much and you risk cyberpsychosis. Some implants, such as medical-grade replacements, cost none, and therapy can win some Humanity back.
A few useful words
choomba: friend. corpo: a corporate type. chrome: cyberware. eb or eddies: eurobucks.
Rules questions
Ask DataTerm in #cpr-planning. It answers from the Cyberpunk RED books and gives the page. Ready to play? See Getting Started.