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Neon City Overdrive by Nathan Russell
4.0

Neon City Overdrive is pretty much exactly what it says on the cover, a light and fast cyberpunk RPG. Make up a crew of runners and hit the dangerous streets. There's a basic d6 mechanic, where positive tags from traits and gear ("I'm an outlaw biker on a magdrive Ninja x7, so I'm going to evade these cops by driving straight up a building for +3d6) are balanced out by negative dice from the danger. Rolls on the danger dice cancel out matching positive rolls, and then it's a 6 for a clear success, 4-5 for a complication, 3 or less for a fail, and the potential for a botch. Players are pretty tough, able to spend Stunt metacurrency to avoid damage. The setting is mashup of cyberpunk tropes, with handy tables to help quickly reference. There's a nod towards long-term play with rules for Drives, a chance to either get out clean or never escape the mean streets, but I think the lightness of this system tilts NCO more towards one-shots or short campaigns, rather than epic marathons.

Neon City Overdrive doesn't really break new ground as a game or setting, and it expects familiarity with the tropes rather than having a full setting, but the presentation is great, and I think I could genuinely run a game with maybe 20 minutes of prep. Even compared to my favorite BitD style games, it's fast. I got a copy as part of a freebie day, but if you've got $10, a hankering to run some cyberpunk missions, and don't want to wade through Shadowrun or deal with the more focused ptbA games like The Sprawl, NCO is a solid choice.