Cyberpunk’s new equipment book is smart satire on the future of American gun culture

polygon.com:

Cyberpunk Red, the tabletop prequel to Cyberpunk 2077, knows a thing or two about ranged combat. Set along the ruined, smoking edge of the West Coast in the year of our lord 2045, it’s an atavistic American hellscape polluted with nuclear fallout, a city-state crippled by late-stage capitalism, and a literal battleground for the most high-tech class warfare ever conceived by humankind. So yeah, there’s guns — plenty of guns — and a ruleset that deals with them expertly.

But, like the makers of any truly great tabletop role-playing game, developers at R. Talsorian Games know that seeding its world with potential narrative hooks and secret backstories is their primary function. Its latest offering, Black Chrome, accomplishes that in spades. It’s much more than just a “tech and style guide”for Cyberpunk Red. At its core, this equipment book is actually a stunning rebuke of our country’s ascendant gun culture, among other things. It’s also an excellent starting point for new players looking for a fun, thematic romp through a neon-soaked near future that does not have their best interests in mind.

So what does a satirical firearm look like on the page? The weapons in this book are more than just a pile of stats. Like the Eye and the Hand of Vecna in Dungeons & Dragons, each of the guns in this book has a backstory, or the potential for a backstory, that should easily provide fuel for clever game masters and eager players. Here are just a few examples:

Imagine kitting out a group of first-level players with nothing but these kinds of subtly cursed weapons. Rather than looking forward to going in guns blazing, game masters are likely to have a much more cautious group of players thanks to Black Chrome. But they’ll also have