Tabletop Roleplaying Games
CY_BORG
Beginner-friendly
Rules-light
Sci-fi
CY_BORG is a cyberpunk tabletop RPG created by Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr of Stockholm Kartell, published by Free League Publishing in 2022 following a November 2021 Kickstarter. It's a direct spin-off of MÖRK BORG, Pelle Nilsson and Nohr's doom-metal-flavored apocalyptic fantasy game from 2020, swapping that game's black-metal dark fantasy for a noise, industrial, and underground-hip-hop-inspired vision of cyberpunk - and it's fully compatible with MÖRK BORG's own rules and content.
Where MÖRK BORG is often pitched as a doom metal album in RPG form, CY_BORG plays the same trick with a different genre, trading gothic dread for corporate-hellscape rage.
Description
Playing CY_BORG means playing one of six ready-made classes - the Forsaken Gang-Goon, Shunned Nanomancer, Renegade Cyberslasher, Burned Hacker, Orphaned Gearhead, or Discharged Corp Killer - dropped into the sprawling megacity of Cy, a world of warring corporations, gangs, cults, and an alien nanotech infestation that keeps mutating everything it touches.
Character creation is quick and dirty, mostly determined by dice rolls across tables for abilities, gear, quirks, and even who a character owes money to, staying true to MÖRK BORG's rules-light, rulings-before-rules design philosophy. Sessions tend to run as short, dangerous jobs - the included introductory heist, Lucky Flight Takedown, has players scope out and hit a casino - rather than long-form dungeon delving, and death comes easily enough that a fresh, disposable punk is always just a few dice rolls away.