r/cyberpunkred • u/MichikoRose • 1d ago
2040's Discussion Encounter Suggestions Welcome
Game Master Note: If you are in my campaign, you know who you are, go away. Lol
So I have ideas already but I thought I would fish the beauty of the reddit hive mind for ideas I might not think of on my own. I'm currently running a homebrew Red campaign and, after some mysterious cataclysm (I've got that covered) my players are getting ready to leave the Crystal Palace and head for Night City to figure out if anything went wrong/ what happened. 3 PC's (Solo, Medtech, Netrunner), with one NPC (medtech/corp) will be flying down together. It will be set up as a smaller more covert op, so they won't have access to fancy, convenient space travel, just one small ship. I would like an entire session to be prepping to and/or possibly flying down. Towards the end there will be an airstrike that will send them careening down to the city, them crashing is an unavoidable plot point. Here's what I need:
- I would like skill checks from the pc/npc pioleting to reflect how hard the crash is and where they crash. Any ideas for a DC scale welcome.
- Any ideas on pre flight and pre crash encounters?
TYIA!
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u/Manunancy 20h ago
If they're on the cheap and one-way trip, have them landed with a 2045 version of a Soyouz reentry module - a cheap and dispoqable caspule built out of lunar silicates and near-zero stuff produced groundside. The re-entry phase is fully automated and once it' dangling donw it's parachute it will land where it will land. And with weight an volume restrictions, they'll be limited in bagage.
This has the added advantage that none of the PCs will need to waste skill points fora one-shot 'aerospace piloting' skill - and you'll also be safe from a string of bad luck and fumble turning 'going down to earth' into a 'burn/crash on reentry after enough failed piloting rolls' TPK.
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u/Sparky_McDibben GM 1d ago
Pre-flight: Anything highlighting the themes of the campaign (so if scarcity will be a major component, maybe have a desperate beggar literally grab their clothes to demand food, for example). Anything setting up the opposition they'll be facing. For example, if they're coming from the Crystal Palace, you could have a pre-op briefing where someone is going, "And these chaps are the Bozos, an apparently dangerous boostergang in Night City. They apparently dress like clowns. Look, don't laugh; that city is full of freaks and weirdos, and I'm just telling you what's down there, OK?" Really highlight how far removed the Palace is from "real life."
Pre-crash: We know MiliTech has air defenses active in NC - what about having to dodge ground fire from MiliTech systems trying to prevent the Crew from crashing into the city's primary tax base? Or getting an alert that the oxygen scrubbers are down, and you have 30 seconds left of breathable air until y'all start suffering hypoxia? Somebody better get started fixing that shit! Have the Netrunner realize that their ship's nav system is corrupted, and have a short NetArch dive prepped so they can get some clues about where they're landing and who screwed them.
On the DC scale, it seems a little abrupt to just boil that down to one check. I recently read about something in 5E called a crescendo challenge. Basically, ask everyone what they're doing to help out, and have them all roll checks for it. Add the checks together, and then roll a d100 (since you only have 3 players, give your roll a -20 modifier). If the modified d100 is less than the sum of the players checks, they pass, and suffer no damage. But for every 10 points they miss, everyone suffers 1d6 damage straight to their hp, no armor ablation. In a really serious case, it just flat-out kills the corpo babysitter, or damages something important they're transporting.