How do you make downtime interesting in Cyberpunk RED? Downtime is a period between RP sessions where players can heal, repair their stuff, and use their role abilities to fabricate new items.
For characters that don’t need to do those things, there are hustle charts, where they roll a d6 and role-specific events happen, stuff like: “Something goes wrong, and you need to lay low - 0eb” or “One of your songs goes viral - 500 eb”. Usually the character ends up making a bit of cash, but not too much.
How do you make those hustles interesting?
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As a GM, I get players to explain their hustle. For example:
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Tech got a “You sabotaged some equipment - 200eb” so I asked the Tech what they sabotaged and who it was for. The player threw out some fun stuff about sabotaging a DJ’s deck so they lose a DJ competition in a rave. I wrote down the DJ’s name for a future plot hook.
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Rockerboy got the “your song went viral - 500eb” so I asked him about the song. There’s a rival band that he has bad blood with, so they’re probably going to rip it off in future.
The idea is to keep players awake and get them to flesh out their characters a bit. Maybe I can use it later, or maybe it just ties them a little tighter to the world.
If their song went viral, it would be funny to make a running gag that the random fans you encounter for the next week who like the song are not the usual target audience of the band at all and only know that one song.
Example: A local hardcore band releases a song criticizing the NCPD, and the song becomes viral. Suddenly, all the police officers they encounter are listening to that song and singing along.
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