The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime was so popular it's invading the tabletop RPG next

Image for The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime was so popular it's invading the tabletop RPG next
(Image credit: Netflix)

Studio Trigger's anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners seems to have revitalized a lot of people's interest in Night City as a setting, with mods based on it taking over Cyberpunk 2077's mod scene and now publisher R. Talsorian announcing a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit for the tabletop RPG.

R. Talsorian says the kit will be "Made in conjunction with CD PROJEKT RED using the Cyberpunk RED tabletop roleplaying game engine". It sounds like the kind of introductory set aimed at players who are new to the pen-and-paper RPG, like the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit was. "The Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit will guide fans of the series new to tabletop roleplaying through the process of telling their own stories in Night City", the announcement says. "At the same time, existing players of Cyberpunk RED will get their first glimpse into the cyberware, firepower, and netrunning skills of the 2077 era."

While Cyberpunk Red is set in the year 2045, with the nuclear fallout of the Fourth Corporate War still staining the sky, R. Talsorian has said it plans to publish a book detailing the setting in the videogame's timeline too. "There will be a full 2077 sourcebook down the line as well", the publisher said on Twitter.

Our senior editor Wes Fenlon enjoyed Edgerunners, saying the anime series made him want to give Cyberpunk 2077 another shot. "I was surprised by how much its little snapshots of life in Night City pulled me in", he wrote. "Early on David saunters through his block on the way to school with the precision of someone who's stepped over the same drunk, dodged the same pile of puke, and taken the same shortcut a thousand times; it immediately reminded me of leaving V's apartment in Cyberpunk 2077, but it's so much more effective to watch than to play."

No release date for the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit was announced. It's "currently in development and more information will be forthcoming in the near future", R. Talsorian says.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.