While Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red may be done with the game after last year's massive Phantom Liberty expansion, the creator of the tabletop RPG that inspired the game still has plans to delve deeper into its lore and world.
Cyberpunk Red is the latest edition of the tabletop role-playing game created by Mike Pondsmith in the late 1980s, which would later evolve into its seminal 1990s edition Cyberpunk 2020 and Red (appropriately released in 2020, following a Jumpstart Kit the previous year), which pushed the setting's timeline forward to the 2040s.
Cyberpunk 2077, as the name suggests, is set several decades after the last tabletop RPG, but still shares its continuity, key characters, and central location of Nighty City as its focus. Meanwhile, Netflix’s acclaimed anime series Cyberpunk Edgerunners is set between the two, roughly a year before the events of 2077, and follows a whole new cast of characters.
Cyberpunk Red will delve deeper into the Edgerunners timeline with its upcoming Mission Kit, a standalone starter set set immediately after the events of Edgerunners that includes both original characters and an expanded story for the anime’s characters written by series writer Bartosz Sztybor. Announced nearly two years ago around the release of Edgerunners, the box set was recently announced by publisher R. Talsorian Games and is finally coming this June.
The tabletop RPG has touched on elements seen in Cyberpunk 2077 through its various supplements and free DLC releases, such as Rocklin Augmentics Neuron, the 2045 predecessor to the 2070s neuroport seen in the video game and anime, detailed in this year’s All About Agents. The Edgerunners Mission Kit also includes rules for playing Red campaigns in the later 2076 timeframe.
While R. Talsorian revealed plans for a full 2077 sourcebook for Cyberpunk Red in 2021, and Pondsmith confirmed in 2022 that it was still in the works, further details of the more comprehensive adaptation of Cyberpunk 2077's world for the tabletop RPG have yet to be announced.
Still, the tabletop RPG's creators still plan to further explore the Cyberpunk 2077 era in Cyberpunk Red, with R. Talsorian's line manager for Cyberpunk, J Gray, recently confirming to Dicebreaker: “We will be exploring the 2070 era further in the future.
“There's still a lot of lore and team from the video game and comics to share with the world,” Gray added, referencing Dark Horse's comics set in 2077.
As for Edgerunners, Gray said there's “nothing specific planned for Edgerunners” currently following the release of the anime-inspired Mission Kit this summer.
Now that it’s been confirmed that Edgerunners has no plans for a second season and that CD Projekt Red is moving forward to develop a full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 after the release of Phantom Liberty, the tabletop RPG’s creators have yet to reveal their own plans for the future of Cyberpunk Red as the series looks toward its next chapter.