There are many different ways to handle cyberpunk settings, and the role-playing game community have seen a lot of interesting takes on this high-tech genre over the years. Shadowrun and Cyberspace RPGs have been the most conspicuous, but other game systems like GURPs and Hero System have taken a swing at the genre made famous by authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
And the genre has grown and developed quite a bit as various media jumped into the the mix. New inspirations from movies like Bladerunner and The Matrix series, as well as Anime like Akira, Armitage III, and (my personal favorite) Ghost in the Shell, made the cyberpunk genre more and more mainstream, while giving game designers, both tabletop and computer, more fantastic ideas to incorporate in their games.
D.E.M. (Dias Ex Machina) has taken the cyberpunk genre and given it a new and quite different setting. Drawing from a number of different inspirations, NeuroSpasta leaves the film noir style behind, and offers a vision of a high-tech near-future with the pacing of an international spy thriller!
NeuroSpasta
NeuroSpasta is a cyber-punk role-playing game setting on a dystopian Earth of the not-too-distant future, utilizing the Pathfinder RPG system for a base – with some minor modifications and additional rules. The NeuroSpasta core book is designed for both players and game masters, containing all information necessary to create characters and referee a campaign in this cyber-setting.
Product Quality
The product quality of NeuroSpasta is quite good, with excellent writing and a very user-friendly format. There were a few typos scattered throughout the 307 pages of the PDF, but none of them disrupt the reading experience. The writing style is engaging, and rule changes/additions are logical and reasonable. However, I could not help but notice that there were some references to D&D 4E rules and mechanics in places, as though the content was lifted from the other game system NeuroSpasta book, and dropped into the Pathfinder RPG version without proper editing.
The rule book comes with both a table of contents and an index for easy navigation. Additionally, the PDF is equipped with substantial bookmarks for quickly speeding to the desired section of the rules.
The artwork in NeuroSpasta is excellent. The full color cover is stunning, and very evocative of the setting of the game. Interior illustrations are black and white with very fine details, and there are plenty of images to bring many facets of the game to life. The cartography for the encounter maps are in full color and can br printed for use at the table. However, I was disappointed to find there was no map of the setting itself – the city of Archon – which would have been helpful in the setting section to plan adventures.
Hack the Planet!
While on the surface, NeuroSpasta is a cyber-punk setting, but it is also a rule book for adapting Pathfinder RPG into a modern/futuristic scifi role-playing game. Some of the rules adopted for NeuroSpasta are adapted from the Ultramodern 4 OGL released last year by D.E.M.
For players, NeuroSpasta contains 4 racial types along with racial traits, 10 character classes, and 11 new skills. There are more than 100 new feats for use in NeuroSpasta, in addition to applicable feats from the Pathfinder RPG core rules. There are 16 new prestige classes, over 100 programs, and gear appropriate to the setting. For game masters, there is content on antagonists and enemies, as well as a complete description of the setting – the city of Archon. There is additional information on creating adventures, including set pieces and maps for various encounters, and a collection of generic plot pieces that can be used to jumpstart or supplement an adventure. There is also a sample adventure called Dreams of Man for starting characters.
In Chapter 1, the author introduces us to a little background about the setting, and a timeline of world events that led up to the current year 2091. The setting is a bit cyberpunk in nature, but not the gritty sprawl locales as found in Shadowrun RPG or Gibson’s Neuromancer trilogy. Instead, we find a setting with similarities to forms of Anime cyberpunk, and the author specifically mentions influences such as Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, and Patlabor later in the book. The city-state of Archon is home to an emerging world government evolved from the United Nations. This self-contained island of shining buildings and high technology is the seat of world power, and full of political dissidents, anarchists, and techno-cults. A very different sort of future dystopia from purported to be ruled by mega-corporations.
Chapter 2 introduces four different races for players to use to create characters. True-borns are humans of any nationality, while Nugenics are a rare type of human who has been tailored genetically to be “perfect” specimens. (Anyone seen GATTACA?) For something a bit more unusual, characters can choose to play a Prosthetic, cyborgs with bodies filled with cybernetic limbs and parts. And then there are Virtuants, who have entirely artificial bodies, with the mind of AI operating a humanoid construct to interact with human society! There are also fifteen race-specific traits designed for NeuroSpasta, many of which also link in some background information as well.
Character classes are introduced in Chapter 3, as well as some new rules unique to the setting. In NeuroSpasta, nearly everyone in the world is linked into the Global Internet via a SEED (Synaptic Embedded Electronic Device) and this offers some classes certain advantages and special attacks based upon hacking into an opponent’s mind. For instance, a new range value called GIA allows characters to attack an NPCs Global Internet Address. And new conditions such as Firewalled, apply to the defenses a character has against intrusion into their minds! Rules for hacking and other situations are covered here before the classes are introduced. There are nine classes in Neurospasta, each with unique traits which fit into the setting. Many are classes you’d expect in a future-modern/scifi game, such as Engineer, Gunslinger, and Medic. But the author also includes other interesting options such as Born-leader which bears some similarity to a Pathfinder RPG equivalent of a 4E Warlord, as well as a Freediver – a hacker who can attack and enter other people’s minds through their SEED!
Chapter 4 introduces new skills, including some new rules for high speed vehicular combat, demolitions, and repairing tech items. There are also complimentary feats for these new high tech and modern skills, a big chuck of which deal with firearms, vehicle stunts, and hacking.
Prestige classes can be found in Chapter 5, and there are sixteen widely varying options to choose from. Some of these are military or para-military in nature, such as Field Medic, Machine of War, and Recon Sniper. Others lean more toward Anime and action movie tropes such as Ghost, Dominator, and Cinematic Cliché.
Chapter 6 details the many types of Gear that are available to characters in the setting, and there is well over 60 pages to cover it all. All manner of guns, melee weapons, and armor can be found here, as well as vehicles, aircraft, robots, and cybernetics – the latter includes limb ehnacements, neural implants, and even full body prosthetics. Very detailed descriptions here, along with an assortment over imaginative and cool tech!
NeuroSpasta’s Programs are in some ways analogous to Pathfinder RPG spells, and Chapter 7 details more than 100 of these for characters and NPCs to use in the course of the campaign. SEEDs have different capacities, and can run one or more programs to protect or augment a character. They can also be used to attack an enemy’s SEED, and affect the mind of the target with all manner of maladies, including mental control. All characters can use programs, and are limited only by their skill level in Computer Use and cost of the program itself – some are very expensive!
There is a sort of “monster manual” in Chapter 8, giving Pathfinder style stat blocks for a variety of human threats, combat cyberbodies used by enemy Prosthetics, killer robots, and a few unique NPCs. The author also includes some enemy traits such as Fanatic, Guerilla, and Regimented Unit to make a group of adversaries into a unique encounter.
Chapter 9 covers the setting itself, with particular attention paid to life in Archon, and the history that brought about this man-made high-tech island city-state. Each of the districts of Archon is described in some length, as well as organizations, general society, law enforcement, corporations, and threats to this seat of world governance. While the world beyond Archon has changed considerably, with many countries now formed into unions and bloc powers, the author does not go into too much detail, leaving Archon as the central point of the campaign.
The author gives game masters some setting and adventure building insights in Chapter `10. The recommended group dynamic for a campaign is creating a squad working for the DPS (Division of Public Safety) in Archon, thwarting anarchist plots, political intrigues, and other crimes against Archon. There is also five set pieces, area maps with fully detailed legends which can be used in a pinch or built up to make a scenario. Applications provide pre-made encounters which utilize the set pieces, and a selection of “monsters” from Chapter 8.
Finally, Chapter 11 presents a 1st Level Adventure for 4 to 5 characters. Dreams of Man involves an intricate plot with the pacing of the most recent Bond films (Daniel Craig rocks!), with an ending that hints at an even greater threat which the game master can construct a campaign or adventure series around.
Overall Score: 4.1 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
Overall, I was really excited reading through NeuroSpasta, and found D.E.M.’s vision of a cyberpunk near-future setting to be a refreshing change from the urban decay and sprawls that are the common tropes. The Archon setting presents the world in small, a single locale where the countries and political blocs of the entire world can be found, and where spy-thriller style intrigues, politics, and high-tech cyber adventures can all coexist together. I think the author adapted the setting well to the Pathfinder RPG system, with great new races and character classes that fit the genre well.
I was a bit disappointed by the typos and editing issues, however, although none of were so bad as to make it a deal-breaker. And I’d have really liked to see some kind of map of Archon in the setting. It felt a little odd not having one in a setting book.
But the price point is amazing for a book so stuffed with so much great content. It definitely takes the Pathfinder RPG to an exciting new setting for a very tempting price!
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received complimentary copy of the product discussed, which were used in the writing of this review.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
And the genre has grown and developed quite a bit as various media jumped into the the mix. New inspirations from movies like Bladerunner and The Matrix series, as well as Anime like Akira, Armitage III, and (my personal favorite) Ghost in the Shell, made the cyberpunk genre more and more mainstream, while giving game designers, both tabletop and computer, more fantastic ideas to incorporate in their games.
D.E.M. (Dias Ex Machina) has taken the cyberpunk genre and given it a new and quite different setting. Drawing from a number of different inspirations, NeuroSpasta leaves the film noir style behind, and offers a vision of a high-tech near-future with the pacing of an international spy thriller!NeuroSpasta
- Designers: Chris Tavares Dias; Christopher Stilson; Conan Veitch
- Illustrators: Nick Greenwood (cover & interior); Wayne Miller (interior); Jeremy Simmons (cartography)
- Publisher: Dias Ex Machina
- Year: 2013
- Media: PDF (307 pages)
- Cost: $17.99 (PDF from RPGNow – Hardcover B&W+PDF on sale for $33.96)
NeuroSpasta is a cyber-punk role-playing game setting on a dystopian Earth of the not-too-distant future, utilizing the Pathfinder RPG system for a base – with some minor modifications and additional rules. The NeuroSpasta core book is designed for both players and game masters, containing all information necessary to create characters and referee a campaign in this cyber-setting.
Product Quality
The product quality of NeuroSpasta is quite good, with excellent writing and a very user-friendly format. There were a few typos scattered throughout the 307 pages of the PDF, but none of them disrupt the reading experience. The writing style is engaging, and rule changes/additions are logical and reasonable. However, I could not help but notice that there were some references to D&D 4E rules and mechanics in places, as though the content was lifted from the other game system NeuroSpasta book, and dropped into the Pathfinder RPG version without proper editing.
The rule book comes with both a table of contents and an index for easy navigation. Additionally, the PDF is equipped with substantial bookmarks for quickly speeding to the desired section of the rules.
The artwork in NeuroSpasta is excellent. The full color cover is stunning, and very evocative of the setting of the game. Interior illustrations are black and white with very fine details, and there are plenty of images to bring many facets of the game to life. The cartography for the encounter maps are in full color and can br printed for use at the table. However, I was disappointed to find there was no map of the setting itself – the city of Archon – which would have been helpful in the setting section to plan adventures.
Hack the Planet!
While on the surface, NeuroSpasta is a cyber-punk setting, but it is also a rule book for adapting Pathfinder RPG into a modern/futuristic scifi role-playing game. Some of the rules adopted for NeuroSpasta are adapted from the Ultramodern 4 OGL released last year by D.E.M.
For players, NeuroSpasta contains 4 racial types along with racial traits, 10 character classes, and 11 new skills. There are more than 100 new feats for use in NeuroSpasta, in addition to applicable feats from the Pathfinder RPG core rules. There are 16 new prestige classes, over 100 programs, and gear appropriate to the setting. For game masters, there is content on antagonists and enemies, as well as a complete description of the setting – the city of Archon. There is additional information on creating adventures, including set pieces and maps for various encounters, and a collection of generic plot pieces that can be used to jumpstart or supplement an adventure. There is also a sample adventure called Dreams of Man for starting characters.
In Chapter 1, the author introduces us to a little background about the setting, and a timeline of world events that led up to the current year 2091. The setting is a bit cyberpunk in nature, but not the gritty sprawl locales as found in Shadowrun RPG or Gibson’s Neuromancer trilogy. Instead, we find a setting with similarities to forms of Anime cyberpunk, and the author specifically mentions influences such as Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, and Patlabor later in the book. The city-state of Archon is home to an emerging world government evolved from the United Nations. This self-contained island of shining buildings and high technology is the seat of world power, and full of political dissidents, anarchists, and techno-cults. A very different sort of future dystopia from purported to be ruled by mega-corporations.
Chapter 2 introduces four different races for players to use to create characters. True-borns are humans of any nationality, while Nugenics are a rare type of human who has been tailored genetically to be “perfect” specimens. (Anyone seen GATTACA?) For something a bit more unusual, characters can choose to play a Prosthetic, cyborgs with bodies filled with cybernetic limbs and parts. And then there are Virtuants, who have entirely artificial bodies, with the mind of AI operating a humanoid construct to interact with human society! There are also fifteen race-specific traits designed for NeuroSpasta, many of which also link in some background information as well.
Character classes are introduced in Chapter 3, as well as some new rules unique to the setting. In NeuroSpasta, nearly everyone in the world is linked into the Global Internet via a SEED (Synaptic Embedded Electronic Device) and this offers some classes certain advantages and special attacks based upon hacking into an opponent’s mind. For instance, a new range value called GIA allows characters to attack an NPCs Global Internet Address. And new conditions such as Firewalled, apply to the defenses a character has against intrusion into their minds! Rules for hacking and other situations are covered here before the classes are introduced. There are nine classes in Neurospasta, each with unique traits which fit into the setting. Many are classes you’d expect in a future-modern/scifi game, such as Engineer, Gunslinger, and Medic. But the author also includes other interesting options such as Born-leader which bears some similarity to a Pathfinder RPG equivalent of a 4E Warlord, as well as a Freediver – a hacker who can attack and enter other people’s minds through their SEED!
Chapter 4 introduces new skills, including some new rules for high speed vehicular combat, demolitions, and repairing tech items. There are also complimentary feats for these new high tech and modern skills, a big chuck of which deal with firearms, vehicle stunts, and hacking.
Prestige classes can be found in Chapter 5, and there are sixteen widely varying options to choose from. Some of these are military or para-military in nature, such as Field Medic, Machine of War, and Recon Sniper. Others lean more toward Anime and action movie tropes such as Ghost, Dominator, and Cinematic Cliché.
Chapter 6 details the many types of Gear that are available to characters in the setting, and there is well over 60 pages to cover it all. All manner of guns, melee weapons, and armor can be found here, as well as vehicles, aircraft, robots, and cybernetics – the latter includes limb ehnacements, neural implants, and even full body prosthetics. Very detailed descriptions here, along with an assortment over imaginative and cool tech!
NeuroSpasta’s Programs are in some ways analogous to Pathfinder RPG spells, and Chapter 7 details more than 100 of these for characters and NPCs to use in the course of the campaign. SEEDs have different capacities, and can run one or more programs to protect or augment a character. They can also be used to attack an enemy’s SEED, and affect the mind of the target with all manner of maladies, including mental control. All characters can use programs, and are limited only by their skill level in Computer Use and cost of the program itself – some are very expensive!
There is a sort of “monster manual” in Chapter 8, giving Pathfinder style stat blocks for a variety of human threats, combat cyberbodies used by enemy Prosthetics, killer robots, and a few unique NPCs. The author also includes some enemy traits such as Fanatic, Guerilla, and Regimented Unit to make a group of adversaries into a unique encounter.
Chapter 9 covers the setting itself, with particular attention paid to life in Archon, and the history that brought about this man-made high-tech island city-state. Each of the districts of Archon is described in some length, as well as organizations, general society, law enforcement, corporations, and threats to this seat of world governance. While the world beyond Archon has changed considerably, with many countries now formed into unions and bloc powers, the author does not go into too much detail, leaving Archon as the central point of the campaign.
The author gives game masters some setting and adventure building insights in Chapter `10. The recommended group dynamic for a campaign is creating a squad working for the DPS (Division of Public Safety) in Archon, thwarting anarchist plots, political intrigues, and other crimes against Archon. There is also five set pieces, area maps with fully detailed legends which can be used in a pinch or built up to make a scenario. Applications provide pre-made encounters which utilize the set pieces, and a selection of “monsters” from Chapter 8.
Finally, Chapter 11 presents a 1st Level Adventure for 4 to 5 characters. Dreams of Man involves an intricate plot with the pacing of the most recent Bond films (Daniel Craig rocks!), with an ending that hints at an even greater threat which the game master can construct a campaign or adventure series around.
Overall Score: 4.1 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
Overall, I was really excited reading through NeuroSpasta, and found D.E.M.’s vision of a cyberpunk near-future setting to be a refreshing change from the urban decay and sprawls that are the common tropes. The Archon setting presents the world in small, a single locale where the countries and political blocs of the entire world can be found, and where spy-thriller style intrigues, politics, and high-tech cyber adventures can all coexist together. I think the author adapted the setting well to the Pathfinder RPG system, with great new races and character classes that fit the genre well.
I was a bit disappointed by the typos and editing issues, however, although none of were so bad as to make it a deal-breaker. And I’d have really liked to see some kind of map of Archon in the setting. It felt a little odd not having one in a setting book.
But the price point is amazing for a book so stuffed with so much great content. It definitely takes the Pathfinder RPG to an exciting new setting for a very tempting price!
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received complimentary copy of the product discussed, which were used in the writing of this review.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.75
- - Design: 3.5 (Very solid design; great writing and presentation; typos and editing errors disappointing)
- - Illustrations: 4.0 (Great cover art; cool interior illustrations throughout the book)
- Content: 4.0
- - Crunch: 4.0 (Massive crunch; cool character building content; great new rules for modern/scifi genres)
- - Fluff: 4.0 (Amazing fluff; fascinating vision for a near future cyberpunk campaign)
- Value: 4.5 (Spectacular price for the a ton of player and game master content! Very complete!)
