I messed with Wayfinder a bit in its original MMO form, and I have now messed with it a bit more in its new incarnation as a co-op action RPG. One of my fixations is imagining all the games that could be made with a specific set of assets; I often fantasize about that sort of thing when I'm about done with a game, just trying to think of all the possible creatures it could become or could have been. I've been in the soup of gamedev alongside different designers enough to know that there are points where the game's state - in the sense of material states - is a liquid. Seeing what the same mechanics and the same gameplay arc mean in the absence of a monetization scheme that (functionally) constitutes a genre unto itself is fascinating and I don't know that there are that many precedents for what's happened here. It's gonna be a heavy fucking lift - but I can't look away.
A core element of Tycho lore is that I grew up in a time and in a house where the Satanic Panic was real. We had a copy of this book in my house:
And we didn't think it was whacked out or anything; in our minds, it had the same level of rigor as the three volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica we bought and then stopped buying them because we couldn't afford them anymore. We also had this one:
Would you believe this dick wrote another one in 1989? Jay eff see.
You can't play Dungeons and Dragons in a house like that. It's quite clearly a paean to diablerie and who knows what kind of heinous portals it might generate. Before I started playing D&D in secret, I would discover that I was growing up in something like a Golden Age of roleplaying games, only bested perhaps by the one we are living in now. My mom feels bad about all of it, but I don't. She was literally doing what the creator of the universe told our pastor to tell her. It would be really weird if she didn't do it. But also, the practical result is that I've retained a voracious appetite for novel systems that started back then. I think most people who roleplay start with D&D and also end there. I started with Ninjas and Superspies. Then, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness . Then, Robotech. And then, Cyberpunk.
So it's pretty wild to be announcing that we have a new TTRPG show debuting June 12th, set in that game, and run by its creator: Mike Pondsmith. I remember seeing his name in my book and wondering what that person was like. Cool, probably, was my read. Here is the amazing trailer Dabe made:
You can preorder the new Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit that just went up; I was obsessed with the anime, which felt more or less like I dreamed that world would. It even has an adventure that takes place after the show, which... I mean.. yeah. Lemme at it. We'll see you next Wednesday.
(CW)TB out.
