The Intelligence Officer for D&D

 I have a deep affection for the brooding, depressing, paranoid world of the spy thriller. While I do enjoy an action-packed James Bond movie, the more realistic and pessimistic version of the genre, particularly from the works of John Le Carré (who actually worked in British Intelligence, and had to get special permission from his bosses to publish The Spy Who Came In From the Cold while still working in that field) inspires me more.

In a lot of ways, you get the grimy back-rooms and shady characters of a Noir-ish crime drama, but with much higher stakes.

Now, D&D is a game about fighting monsters, and so this is not a build that would necessarily work in a one-size-fits-all party. Instead, this would have to be for a campaign that really focused on spycraft and espionage.

When you think of the ultimate spy character in D&D, you probably think of a Rogue. I actually think you'll be a bit disappointed if that's the route you go. Rogues (setting aside their shortcomings as martial warriors) are built to move swiftly and silently, to be assassins and thieves (I mean, those are literally two of their subclasses).

But the way actual Cold War spycraft worked wasn't really how Hollywood portrays it. It wasn't the American CIA officer who snuck into some Soviet research facility to take photos of their new submarine plans. Instead, the officer would recruit someone working at that facility, meet with them in secret, and persuade them to take the extremely high risk in exchange for something - usually money, and perhaps a promise to eventually exfiltrate them to start a new life in the US.

And that's why I think that the ultimate spy in D&D would be an Eloquence Bard.

I'll note here that I think Liam O'Brien had a similar idea in Campaign Four of Critical Role. While his character, Halandil Fang, is more like the William Shakespeare of the setting (a brilliant playwright and head of the city's most prominent theater company,) the tasks set to him at the "Schemer's Table" have been very high-stakes spycraft (a little more of an underground revolution than Cold War spying, but similar "maintain a plausible cover while secretly undermining the powers that be" drama).

First and foremost, the thing that the Eloquence Bard gets right from level 3 is Silver Tongue, which is effectively the Rogue's Reliable Talent, but specifically for Persuasion and Deception checks. Admittedly, at low level, getting no less than a 10 plus your modifier on these rolls might still not cut it in really dire situations. But if we grab Expertise in these skills, and assume we start off with a +3 to Charisma, we'll be rolling no lower than a 17 by level 3.

These skills are going to be really core to what we do as a spy. Persuasion can sometimes be used as a "misleading the target by telling the truth in a certain way," but it's also going to be crucial if you want to persuade assets you meet to do what you need them to do.

Now, I'll allow for the following: you might actually want to start off at 1st level with Rogue, because you will get one more skill proficiency this way. Multiclassing with both will allow you to get more expertise, though I think it's possible we'll want to just stick to Bard for a little bit for spell progression.

Other skills that I think will be very helpful to have are Insight, Perception, Stealth, and possibly Investigation. As a Bard, we're not going to get all of those, but we could pick a species that gets one of them as a bonus (Elves, for instance, can get Perception for free - and the fact that they never technically sleep and can actually keep watch while Trancing could be very helpful).

We'll naturally want to focus on Charisma as our best stat, but I'd say after taking care of enough Con to have some meat on our bones, we probably want to have a bit of Wisdom. It is tough - as a Light Armor class that doesn't actually focus on Dexterity, we'll probably have a terrible AC, so you might instead push Dex, which will help with Stealth.

I'll also say this: there's a case to be made for grabbing a bit of Sorcerer here - primarily for Metamagic, as we'll likely want to have Subtle Spell available to us.

One of the biggest challenges that an intelligence officer has in a hostile place is that their movements are being tracked constantly. It was crucial, of course, to not actually be identified as an intelligence officer, because at best you'd have your diplomatic credentials revoked and be deported, and at worse, they'd capture you and interrogate you (probably under torture,) and maybe kill you (though as I understand it, it was the cultivated assets who tended to be tortured to death).

Thus, any means to be able to do your work without making it clear you're doing your work can be helpful. Still, depending on how your DM rules it, you might be able to get some spells off without Subtle Spell and still go undetected if you, say, break line of sight and maybe are allowed to mutter the verbal components under your breath.

So, what spells might we consider taking?

For cantrips, I think Message feels pretty obvious - if you could arrange for your asset to sit in a public place and do something innocuous (akin to reading a newspaper) while you're in an inn looking down from a window on an upper floor and can just message into their heads, you could get a lot of discussion done without the asset seeming to be speaking at all.

Prestidigitation actually could be really great - if you need to make a Dead Drop (where you don't actually see your asset, but just leave instructions or equipment for them stashed away somewhere) you could identify the place it's hidden with a secret mark that then, conveniently, disappears after an hour.

Next, for 1st level spells, Charm Person might actually be best used when cultivating an asset - you charm them and then make your case. They will know that you charmed them when the spell ends, but you might find a way to put them into a position where they'll forgive you.

Disguise Self is a great option, though I'll throw this out there: you might instead want to get proficiency with a Disguise Kit. Disguise Self is thwarted by Dispel Magic, or even Detect Magic, and Truesight. A mundane disguise does not set off any pings in any kind of magical detection. I don't think it would even fail under Truesight given that it's not like this isn't your "true form."

Illusory Script - yes, it's tough to justify this on a Bard, as compared to a Wizard - is tailor-made for this kind of thing. You leave a dead drop instruction for your asset, and if someone happens to stumble upon it, the writing might be something innocuous.

Naturally, any kind of illusion spell, from Minor Image to Silent Image to Major Image to Programmed Illusion, could be very useful in myriad ways.

Onto second level spells:

You might consider grabbing Enhance Ability both for your party but also for your assets. The duration isn't super-long, but if you can make contact before they go on a dangerous endeavor, it will make them more likely to succeed.

Detect Thoughts is also pretty obvious: both for finding hidden listeners and also getting better angles to work on people.

Invisibility is obviously pretty helpful.

Suggestion is a pretty powerful one - you can effectively make an asset of someone if they fail a wisdom saving throw. While this probably won't be as reliable as someone you really coach through things, it can work in a pinch.

Now, rather than going through every spell level, I'm going to just talk about a few highlights. Naturally, as a Bard, at level 10 we can start getting any spell from the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list, so the possibilities become very broad.

Nondetection could be helpful, but I think if you have to cast this constantly to avoid being detected, you're probably screwed. It might work if you're sending someone in where they're not supposed to be, but the whole point of cultivating an asset is that they are supposed to be there. Now, it could help your asset avoid getting their mind read via Detect Thoughts, but that's a pretty specific situation.

Mislead, a 5th level spell, is basically built for spycraft. You simultaneously go invisible while an illusory double of you takes your place. It's kind of what Loki does in the Thor movies, and if you're being tailed, you can send the illusion around a corner and have it vanish, or even have it just sit at a cafe doing nothing for an hour while you put some distance between you and the people surveilling you.

Modify Memory feels like a real must-have, the kind of major ripcord you might need to pull if a foe witnesses you.

Rary's Telepathic Bond can give you a really lasting connection with your asset in case they need guidance while they're on a mission for you.

Mind Blank and Glibness can both be really helpful. Frankly, as someone running a campaign with a high-level Bard, I kind of hate glibness because it just says "I succeed on all Charisma checks" (he's got expertise in all four charisma skills,) so when his character needs to do a high-stakes argument, there's very little interactivity to it.

But Mind Blank is one that could really help you if you're coming up against enemy mind-readers.

I will say that I don't know how sustainable a grim Cold War spy campaign will be at higher levels. I think Dark and Gritty in D&D really works best in tier 1, where bad luck or bad decisions can truly put you in a bind. The higher-level players get, the more ripcords they have to pull, and while you might be able to sustain the tension by finding some conceit for you to still need to empower low-CR NPCs to do these tasks, at a certain point, the game really allows a high-level character to have a better chance than any Apprentice Mage or Warrior Veteran.

Still, I think you could have a lot of fun if you played a character like a real spy, if a DM is willing to buy in to that fantasy.

The Paralysis of the Digital RPG

 So, my initial experiences of RPGs were JRPGs, where you're basically playing through a pre-written story. The way things end is the way things end.

I've hit a point in Cyberpunk 2077 where I realize some of the actions I took earlier in the game are having consequences. For example, I was unable to romance Panam because I guess I screwed up some dialogue earlier on.

I really want to just let go and let the actions I've taken as a player allow me to see the story I've built for them, but I get frustrated with this kind of thing because of the knowledge that it could all go differently. I found myself growing paralyzed playing Baldur's Gate III for the same reason.

It's a funny thing, because I love TTRPGs (see this blog) where we have infinite freedom to do as our characters will, but in a sense, because it's all infinite, there's no real sense of what you're missing out on if you choose a different path. The DM might set aside certain stuff they had prepared, but there's no "multiple endings" because there's only the one that you got.

And, like, actually the kind of sweet turning-down of V by Panam worked fine, genre-wise. Cyberpunk is very indebted to noir, and the hero not getting the girl in the end is a totally valid way for a story to go. It's just that I sort of feel like this kind of "miss this thing early on and you miss out on something later" style of gameplay doesn't make me feel freer.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here. And I don't know, maybe it says something about me that I want a very clear path laid before me.

But it does kind of make me appreciate that Remedy has said that Control Resonant won't have multiple endings. They are, after all, making a big interconnected world where continuity between games has to make sense (though at least for now it's only between two game franchises). But I also appreciate that I'll be able to play Dylan's journey across Warped Manhattan without worrying that I'll, I don't know, screw up and get the ending where he gets re-corrupted by the Hiss and kills Jesse (assuming that's not... you know... the actual ending. Which would be a hell of a downer).

More annoying was that my first attempt at the final mission with Panam, I tripped the alarm and we wound up getting chased by bad guys, in a fight that as far as I could tell was utterly unwinnable because I couldn't Quickhack the people in the cars chasing us and so I had to rely on my not-very-good smart weapons, and the van we were in kept getting destroyed. I wound up re-loading (the "continue from last checkpoint was already at this unwinnable stage) so I could get the thing done with perfect stealth, quicksaving a few times.

It's funny, because a lot of what I really like about this game is that it doesn't really penalize you a ton in its core mechanics. Healing items and grenades regenerate, and ammo is plentiful, so a rough fight that you make it through is fine. Your car can get super-damaged, but the next time you call it, it's fine.

I guess I like games that allow you to just go with your own flow. And I suppose for some people, these alternate endings and relationship options are fun rewards for doing things a certain way, but to me they feel like punishments for not doing things a certain way.

Finally Really Figuring Out the Systems of Cyberpunk 2077

 Ah, ok!

So apparently the various bits of Cyberware you can get installed will often scale with a given attribute. I'm super-invested in Intelligence, so I've been going through and making sure that I get all pieces that scale with that, though there are some slots that don't seem to have any pieces that work with it.

My general sense is that a character will want to kind of mix their traits, but to largely focus on just two or maybe three. I've been racing to what I assume is the cap for Intelligence at 20 (I assume it's the cap for everything - not unlike stats in D&D) and then will probably go for Technical Ability next.

I'm not really champing at the bit to start a new V, though I have thought that a kind of corpo cyborg samurai would be fun, maybe going Body/Reflex and Cool?

Anyway, I am having the usual open world issue where part of me just wants to race through the main story missions while part of me doesn't want to get ahead of myself and ensure I'm doing enough side quests to keep all my gear as top-grade as possible.

I've now done a story chapter outside the city, which is a nice bit of scenery change, and I've met some of the Nomads, one of the three backgrounds you can pick, including one character I assume is going to be a major figure in the game moving forward.

The weird irony of my build is that I don't really care that much about weapons. I basically only fire when my hacking RAM is on cooldown. And I've gotten pretty good at hacking into cameras in a location and then using those to do quickhacks on the foes inside. Ideally, they're all down before I even step into the building. I did a side-gig where I had to rescue a doctor who had been held against her will by Maelstrom (a real psychotic and evil gang) and more or less wiped out all the enforcers there while sitting up on some ducts outside the building.

The risk here is that they can often trace your location when you do this, but ideally you take them all out before that becomes a problem. I can't recall if I have some perks that help me mitigate that.

Anyway, I now have all the cyberware slots filled (except the extra ones you unlock with perks in the Technical Ability tree) including an Intelligence-scaling Monowire, which has proven a pretty effective melee weapon.

Also, the Cyberpsychos don't seem so impossible to deal with now. You're generally supposed to take them down nonlethally (the overall goal of these missions is to try to find a way to rehabilitate them,) and luckily the game seems to assume that's what you're trying to do, so I think when they hit 1% they go down and turn off any Damage-over-time effects you have. (Contagion, a quickhack that does poison damage over time and spreads between foes, has proven a very efficient way to deal with big groups of enemies - though it doesn't work on robots and drones).

Anyway, I find myself flooded with various Fixers and people calling me with jobs, which I think is a measure of my Street Cred - basically, as you do more missions and jobs, you earn a reputation. Mine must be as a terrifying Netrunner who can wipe out a building without being seen. Indeed, given the things I've pulled off, I do think that it makes sense I'm making a name for myself.

I am super curious to see what the game's story is like for the other two backgrounds. It makes total sense that my Street Kid character would get mixed up in all of these dangerous jobs, but I'm really curious to see how a Corpo gets dragged into it. I could imagine a world in which it's a totally different story, or at least the route to getting involved in the biochip heist is a different one, but I don't know.

I Want Scarier Celestials in D&D

 So, I was browsing YouTube, as is my wont, and the Richaadeb cover of The Promised Consort showed up. His cover, and of course, the original, really sell the majesty of that boss fight. While my main memory of the fight in-game is beating my head against a wall until I finally just barely managed it on my most overpowered character (I've gotten to the fight on a couple other characters, but haven't beaten it a second time,) if you take a step back and really consider the context of the fight, it's profoundly epic: a fight against both a demigod and a newly-crowned actual god.

Much like our fight against the Elden Beast in the base game, I interpret the music that plays as essentially being an ethereal choir singing the praises of the divine power that we're in the middle of fighting, exhorting them to best us (though I sort of feel like maybe the choir in the Elden Beast fight starts to kind of sing instead of the fulfillment of fate as we gain the upper hand).

Demons (or fiends in general, if we're talking D&D) make for great monsters to fight because they're definitionally evil (well, depending on the setting and game, I suppose). Their capabilities make them terrifying, but there's a moral clarity that slaying demons is an automatically correct thing to do.

It's very rare in D&D that we fight Celestials. Largely, that's because player characters tend to be good guys, and Celestials are often also good guys. This isn't strictly always true - Celestials cover beings of the good-aligned upper planes, yes, but also the neutral planes, like the Rilmani of the Outlands, or Sphinxes (who were monstrosities in 5.0,) who aren't really tied to any specific plane.

In D&D's cosmos, Fiends and Celestials really play quite similar roles, being the denizens of the outer planes, and typically the servants of the gods.

I... sort of like the idea of a different distinction, though:

D&D's alignment system is iconic, of course, and it's also the organizing principle behind the Outer Planes, which I love. But it's also something that's been downplayed in recent years (I don't even remember if the 2024 Player's Handbook even suggests you declare an alignment).

I think it's notable that Devils are the Lawful Evil variety of fiends (ok, sure, Rakshasas are as well - and I do think it's kind of fascinating that they're also from the Nine Hells but exist outside of the diabolic hierarchy). Devils, though, are all kind of linked to one another as a single hierarchy that ultimately answers to Asmodeus. And while Asmodeus is a god, he is also, at least in older Planescape content, considered a lesser god because he's not in the Nine Hells by his own will. In a lot of ways, he's really just the most powerful archdevil, and figures like Mephistopheles or Mammon aren't gods at all, even if they might be extremely powerful.

While not unified like devils, demons are their equal and opposite numbers, inhabiting the Abyss and typically serving one demon lord or another. But similarly, these demon lords, even the mightiest among them, Demogorgon, aren't gods either.

It's almost like fiends sort of occupy this odd environmental niche within the Lower Planes.

Now, in fairness, it's specifically angels, and not Celestials in general, who I believe are described as directly serving gods. I can't recall if Guardinals or Archons are described as playing those roles.

But I do think there's a real opportunity here: that Celestials could be the creature type that serves gods - any gods.

In the 5.5 Monster Manual, they changed Empyreans in the following way: in 5.0, they were always Celestials, whereas in 5.5, they're described as being either Celestials or Fiends, depending on their alignment.

I actually don't love this. I think that a being that is so directly tied to the gods, maybe a minor deity in its own right, should be a Celestial. Again, that's a matter of taste and vibes, not an argument based on the canon lore.

The Celestial servant of an evil god would then make for a potentially epic encounter.

Let me tell you about some of the lore in my homebrew setting:

The broad pantheon is a little complex: the gods are not all the same kind of deity, with some that are ascended mortals, some that are from other settings (I caved and had a few canon deities show up in the world, though I think their worship is pretty rare) and there's one deity that some people consider to be the only true god of the setting while others think that it's just another deity that hasn't been accounted for in most religious traditions (they're both kind of right). One is even secretly a Great Old One (though a friendly one).

But the most commonly worshipped deities are at least depicted by mortals as a classical polytheistic pantheon akin to the Greek gods. And among these, there are gods of light and gods of dark. Generally, light and dark correspond with good and evil, but I really like there to be just a little bit of ambiguity there. Deities can choose which Outer Plane they reside in (or even if they want to live in a different part of the multiverse) so the fact that the goddess of the hunt resides in the Beastlands doesn't necessarily mean she's all that nice - but she does count as a Goddess of Light as a result.

The Gods of Darkness reside in the lower planes, but they have at least one powerful angel that serves them. None of the angels look remotely "normal" in their true forms (Magon, who's the supremely heroic and benevolent servant of Doros, the God of Sunlight and Justice, has a head like a blazing sun around which four floating masks orbit to just barely shield those who see him from his blinding glory - naturally, he takes on a more classically humanoid shape when interacting with mortals) but the Angels of Darkness are quite unnerving.

As an example, Valthatria is the Angel of Pain, and serves Vyssar, the Goddess of Murder, Torture, and Cruelty. Valthatria's most distinguishing feature is that her head is detached from her body, but held to her shoulders by six sculpted, iron hands that appear riveted in place to both her shoulders and her face.

There are a couple reasons I like making these Celestials instead of fiends.

The first is just an aesthetic one: I'll concede that the variety of fiends in the Monster Manual actually gives you a ton of flexibility in how one might look, from the classic fallen angel Erinyes to the weird rotting vulture-thing that is the Vrok, I just kind of think that I like calling these celestials.

The second is a mechanical distinction with lore implications: while it's not super-common, there are things that are more effective against Fiends, probably most famously Divine Smite. As elite servants of evil gods, I like the idea that a Paladin is no longer at any sort of advantage when fighting the Angel of Pain. Righteousness and just "being the good guy" aren't enough to help you against these beings.

I also like that it just kind of muddies the waters a bit: you can't be totally sure where you stand.

I'll note that I think Brennan Lee Mulligan and I are on a similar wavelength here, as the lore of Araman, the setting for Critical Role's fourth campaign, makes a major distinction. We haven't fully plumbed the depths, but with Tyranny, a player character who is explicitly a demon (and not in the way that Draw Steel Devils are basically just people who come from the Seven Cities of Hell, but truly an ancient being of pure concept only recently given flesh - though I suspect she uses Tiefling stats) we get a sense of what fiends are like (and it's actually a bit goofy) while Celestials, in this world where mortals felled the gods (who are way more petty like Greek, or even Norse, gods,) may have once been majestic, but are now basically eldritch horrors (not sure what aberrations are in that setting, or if they'll even use them).

I've never read or seen Berserk, the manga (and anime adaptation) that was a major influence on FromSoft's Soulsborne games, like Elden Ring, but I'm given to understand that "angels" and "gods" in that are truly horrifying things (and that the main villain is a former mortal and ally of the main character who betrayed everyone to achieve apotheosis - likely a major inspiration for Miquella, the ascendant god whose "promised consort" we fight). Indeed, I think a lot of Japanese media depicts angels as horrifying monsters (I know that's a big part of Neon Genesis Evangelion,) the cultural underpinnings of which I'm not super qualified to analyze.

I also think there are some interesting themes you could play with regarding Gnostic ideas: there's a concept in Gnosticism (though I sometimes conflate this with Manicheanism, so bear with me) where the physical world is a falsehood and prison created by the Demiurge, a being who thinks itself to be God, but is not - whether this is out of malice or out of misguided ignorance is open to debate. But the acts of this demiurge and the world created by them are blamed for the suffering and evils of the world. You could imagine that antagonistic Celestials are there to enforce the will of the Demiurge, and thus play an antagonistic role toward the heroic player characters.

The 2025 Monster Manual has 17 Celestials, which is way more than the 2014 one, due in large part to the changes to Sphinxes (and there are more of them) and the re-classification of many Beasts to now be Celestials (screwing over Moon Druids and anyone with the Polymorph spell). But that's compared to 54 Fiends found there - it's clear which type they expect players to fight more often.

But I guess what I'd look for is some really solid high-level Celestials. Angels are actually already there - the least powerful is CR 10. But I'd love to see plenty of CR 20+ Celestials to truly present epic encounters. Radahn from Elden Ring would probably have been a CR 10 Legendary creature in his first fight out in Caelid (where he's lost his mind with the Scarlet Rot) but is, like, maybe CR 30 when we fight him as the Promised Consort (being the hardest boss in all of Elden Ring and essentially the true final boss given that his defeat finishes the DLC).

(This is maybe a whole other post, but we could maybe also get some high-level, legendary humanoids as well. I kind of love that Draw Steel's "biggest, scariest monster" is just the greatest human soldier who has ever lived.)

Cyberpunk 2077 is Making Me Curious to Try the TTRPG

 I think I'm starting to get into the groove of Cyberpunk 2077. I think the game could do a little better job at tutorializing things, but I think I've more or less gotten the sense of how to upgrade my character. I still sometimes run into a Cyberpsycho that tears me apart super-quick, but I had a moment where I truly felt like I had "gotten" my character.

Focusing largely on Intelligence (though I'm not sure if I should be spreading my stats more widely or actually refunding everything to just go straight to the top with Int) my primary combat strategy is Quickhacks. Now that I've managed to purchase and upgrade some of these hacks (and upgrade my operating system, which is a piece of cybernetics that requires you to see a Ripperdoc) I've been able to pull off some super nasty things.

When on a mission to rescue a friend/associate from a place that makes "XBDs" (think the movie Strange Days, in which people make recordings of individuals' experiences to be able to live through them - normally this is something like fun sexy times. These are called "Braindances," or "BDs," but the black-market, real horrifying shit is referred to as either Black BDs or XBDs, which is stuff like snuff films and the like... kind of like in that movie, whose mere trailer gave me nightmares as a kid) I hopped up into a damaged building across from the one where the friend was being held, and took out the single guard sitting watching TV next to a computer console. Taking that guy out silently from behind, I hacked into the security system via the console, which gave me access to the security cameras. And from the vantage of the cameras, I was able to hack various other objects around the facility, drawing guards to various explosive objects with "Distract Enemies" and then detonating them with another quickhack. Those who weren't near any such objects, I simply hacked their cyberware directly, taking them down with Overheat and Short Circuit. With, I think, a single exception, none of this was with my own eyes, simply doing it via the cameras. Once the place was cleared out, I simply walked around and looted everyone.

It really made me feel like a legendary hacker, and while things were a bit messier down in the basement, it was one of those really satisfying times when everything felt like it was working as my character build was meant to.

I have an admittedly weird aversion to Cyberpunk as a genre. Maybe it's that the world it portrays is too much like the one that I live in. I mean, we're in a world where megacorp tech companies have absurd degrees of power and influence. I find it less fun that the genre depicts a world in which corporations and gangs are the biggest powers, with governments kind of hanging on as weak vestigial structures. The latter element in particular feels darkly relevant today, with the cheapening of America's government under the helm of the most unabashedly corrupt president in the country's history.

I guess when I think about stories built around betrayal and mistrust in a dark and grimy world, I gravitate more toward Cold War-era spy stories, where the big powers are the governments, and a lot of the darkness comes from the fact that both sides are so in the weeds about the tactical game of spycraft that they lose sight of the ideals that brought them into conflict in the first place.

Another thing that's kind of odd is that the characterization of the high-ranking "Corpos" is built very much around this kind of stoic Japanese honor, and also a focus on legacy. The real world's corporate overlords don't seem to be interested in building lasting institutions so much as getting while the getting's good. They're also much more strangely ideological, believing in weird science-fiction-y ideas without seeming to grasp that they'd be the villains in such stories.

Anyway, I'm curious to see how the game maps to the TTRPG system. Naturally, we've had plenty of games that are based on or at least inspired by TTRPGs. Baldur's Gate III works remarkably similarly to D&D 5E (with a few tweaks here and there). I believe the most recent edition of Cyberpunk is Cyberpunk RED, which is set between the eras of 2020 (the version from the 80s) and 2077 (not sure if there's a tabletop version of that or if it's just this game).

Funnily enough, having run a Ravnica-based D&D campaign for over six years now, I could for sure see a reimagining of the setting as a Cyberpunk one - just turn the Guilds into Megacorps and you're about 90% there. And hey, there's even precedent for Cyberpunk fantasy with Shadowrun. House Dimir is now an information technology corporation, the Orzhov Syndicate focuses on "corporate solutions." The Simic Combine is full-on biotech.

WoW/D&D Crossover Possibly Going to be Announced?

 According to this post on EN World, there was an accidental leak of an announcement for what appears to be a World of Warcraft sourcebook for D&D. Naturally, I'd be curious about that given that these two games are (I'd assume) the two that I have posted about the most on this blog (I do still play WoW, but I've felt like I have less to say about it in recent times).

Having played WoW for nearly 20 years (about twice the time I've been playing D&D,) I've often thought about how it would make a fantastic D&D setting. Notably, I'm not the first to think that, as there were official WoW products that came out in I believe the 3.5e era, and possible 4e.

Obviously, WoW is built on a similar structure to D&D, where players create characters who are members of certain races and classes and go on adventures, quests, and delve into dungeons. Warcraft's world is a deep and rich one, with lore that has really grown out from its very simple "orcs versus humans" origins.

While Warcraft began as an RTS series, its third entry added some RPG-like elements, paving the way for the MMO that, for the last 22 years, has been dominant or at least profoundly prominent within the medium (I think FFXIV did overtake it as the biggest subscription-based MMORPG, and of course there are tons of Free-to-Play MMOs that have more players. Not actually sure if FFXIV is still ahead of it or not). It's been in those 22 years of WoW that the story and lore of Warcraft has expanded profoundly, and you'd have far, far more than enough material to get you through a 20-level D&D campaign just by taking some of the stories of its now 11 expansions, before you even consider just coming up with your own original stories.

There's no way that a single sourcebook will be able to cover the entire game as it exists now, with its thirteen classes and 26 playable races.

My best friend and I are both D&D obsessives and longtime WoW players (both of us technically started during vanilla, though I only at the tail end of it and he stopped playing for a bit, picking it up again shortly before Wrath came out) and we've often talked about how to handle various things, re-skinning elements of the game.

Naturally, for classes, there are a lot of clear equivalents. Paladins, Rogues, Druids, Monks, and Warlocks are all in both games. Likewise, Priests are basically Clerics, Mages are basically Wizards, Hunters are basically Rangers, and Warriors are basically Fighters (though you could argue that one of their three specs/subclasses is really more Barbarians). However, it's less obvious how to handle things like Shamans, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Evokers (maybe the last one is Draconic Sorcerers?)

I'm not going to hold my breath for a sourcebook like this to add a new class.

However, for species/races, there are a fair number of options. From the get-go, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, and Orcs are there. Night Elves are basically Wood Elves, Blood Elves are basically High Elves. Then, you can get to re-skinning a bit. I think that the Draenei could use the statistics of the Aasimar without too much trouble (oddly, they sometimes look more like Tieflings - I honestly think Jester from Critical Role's 2nd campaign really looks a lot like a Draenei, and even sounds like one with her vaguely-Greek-ish accent). Reborn can stand in pretty easily for the Undead, and Tauren are really just Warcraft's Minotaurs (if Minotaurs were really chill and nice). The new Lupin from Ravenloft basically gives us the Worgen (which are more specifically just Warcraft's version of werewolves). I think the Duergar could give us our Dark Iron Dwarves. Among the original 8 vanilla races, the only one I might struggle with is the Troll, which doesn't have a very obvious D&D equivalent.

In the Battle For Azeroth expansion (from 2018,) WoW added a huge number of "Allied Races" (including the aforementioned Dark Iron Dwarf) that are mechanically their own thing, but clearly meant as a "variant" on existing options. Some have pretty convenient options existing already in 5E (I think you could do Shadar-Kai as the Void Elves). But I doubt that they're going to work all of these in.

More core, though, are the handful of neutral races - Pandaren were the first (neutral meaning that they can belong to either faction,) and have no clear D&D equivalent. Dracthyr were introduced in 2022's Dragonflight expansion, and are clearly the equivalent of the Dragonborn (though less bulky, and with permanent wings).

One thing the book would maybe need to address is factions: In WoW, each character belongs to one of the two big factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Storywise, the two sides were at war with one another (the Alliance was actually formed to counter the Horde,) but there were ebbs and flows of conflict, often pushing the two to set aside their difference to face a greater threat. In recent years, that conflict has mostly died down, to the point that the current expansion, Midnight, has both factions operating out of one of the Horde's main cities (Silvermoon, home of the Blood Elves).

The restrictions have even lifted to the point where you can actually run dungeons and other content in parties that are mixed between members of the different factions (though "outdoor" content doesn't allow cooperation).

Thus, while I think that the Alliance/Horde division is very important to the lore of the world, I don't think there needs to be any built-in restriction in the rules to prevent you from having parties with, say, Goblins and Dwarves fighting alongside one another.

I'll be curious to see, though, if we get some cool legendary stat blocks for big Warcraft villains. While he's been deader-than-dead for a long time now (with a storyline that really emphasized they would never bring him back,) Arthas Menethil is probably the franchise's most iconic villain, a prince and paladin who allowed his obsession with vengeance to transform him into a death knight and ultimately saw him becoming the Lich King overseeing the undead Scourge that he once fought.

Getting stats for Faceless Ones (n'raqi) and C'thraxxi, the aberrant servants of the evil Old Gods, as well as some of the cool high-tech space demons of the Burning Legion would be really fun.

But I also think it'd be fun to just run lower-level adventures in places like Duskwood or Thousand Needles at the slower, more deliberate pace of D&D.

Anyway, we'll see if and when this book is actually announced.

Cyberpunk 2077

 Yeah, I'm late to the party.

But I guess my algorithm started showing me videos of Mike Pondsmith talking about the process of turning his TTRPG into a video game.

I've always felt a strange kind of disconnect from Cyberpunk as a genre. I've never read Neuromancer or Snow Crash, and I think the aesthetics of the genre aren't really my go-to vision of the future, even a dystopian one.

Futuristic sci-fi does, of course, often comment on the present, and the fact that Cyberpunk as a genre came out in an era in which American leadership grinningly dismantled the New Deal welfare state to empower massive corporations is not, you know, coincidental. Technology was also on a stratospheric rise, and people didn't really know where things would go.

It's a strange thing, because I feel like Cyberpunk got some things really spot-on (the growing power of corporations, the unsustainable privatization and commercialization of everything leading to profound wealth inequality and unaffordability) and some things quite off (Japan entrenching itself as the dominant global cultural force, everyone and their mother getting cybernetic implants).

There's a sequence in Cyberpunk 2077 that gives us a glimpse of 2023, but it's an alternate history version of it (to be fair, the game came out in 2022, so it was technically the "near future" at the time) that conforms to the established lore of the TTRPG - back in the 80s, 2023 seemed like a really long time off. This game, as the name implies, takes place 54 years later. Now, if I play my cards right and manage my health well, I could pretty plausibly live to see 2077. I doubt it'll look like this game does, but then, it's staying true to the genre more than trying to accurately depict the future.

I've just made it to "Act Two" of the game's main story, with Act One's conclusion leading to a real series of twists and turns. The game is an open-world, but the main story still impacts pretty hard. What I don't know is if I've failed to explore some of the game systems, or if they've been holding out on really pushing me toward them until we get a bit of that story underway.

Going pretty hard into Intelligence as a stat, my most powerful weapon is hacking, which I've been using to overheat foes I'm fighting. My stealth abilities aren't amazing, and I'm not sure if that's a skill issue or a matter of stats and character builds. But combat, at least so far (I'm on the normal/standard difficulty) is forgiving enough that I haven't had too many problems (I struggled a bit with a Cyberpsycho, who I kind of wound up cheesing, but I think those are supposed to be the optional, super-difficulty foes).

I'm curious to see to what extent different backgrounds make for different experiences. I've gone Street Rat, as that seems the most classic protagonist archetype for the genre.

I appreciate the ways in which the game doesn't seem to need you to micromanage things. You have a healing item that recharges over time, and your health regenerates out of combat. This isn't a game about carefully managing long-term damage, letting you be a bit more reckless in combat.

Anyway, I finally have enough money (Eddies, or "Eurodollars," the imagined merged currency) to buy some new gear, but I don't yet really know what I should get. I think probably I'll want to invest in cybernetics (and whatever gear governs my hacking abilities). But so far, I haven't really gotten any tutorials on crafting, so I think I wasted some resources making a gun that I thought I'd be able to deconstruct to get said resources.

As a note, I've also been checking out The Ghost in the Shell, a new anime adaptation of, you know, Ghost in the Shell. When I was in college, I watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (probably first seeing it on Adult Swim.) This show, and the 1995 movie, were very serious in tone, but evidently the new show is more in keeping with the manga it's based on, with moments of real cartoony silliness, a staple of anime/manga that was always kind of startling to me when watching such things (like Trigun, which can be deadly serious and then have Vash the Stampede have a cat face when he's acting cute).

Like Cyberpunk, I'm not really an "anime guy," but I do enjoy the occasional work of the medium. I liked how deeply philosophical Ghost in the Shell got, and I think that's there in the new show, but with a lot of that weird silliness in there as well.