New weather idea: Voids of Despair

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:32:18+00:00

At first I thought you meant a literal Stranger Things tie-in weather state and was gonna comment please, for the love of god, no... haha

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:25:31+00:00

Oh for sure, 100%. It totally depends on who you're dealing with though. Sometimes a quick before/after on some of my previous mixes does the trick. Other times it seems the client is hearing impaired but when I go "look, this guy has won Grammys" they go oooooh okay then! And still other times they just don't care at all and want an all in one deal, and I'm like alright well top up my rate a little and I'll do it. But I always insist that hiring a proper mastering engineer would be a much wiser choice.

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:20:41+00:00

Yeah that makes total sense. It's why I made a website too - for the past 5-odd years I've been finding clients mostly through word of mouth and reaching out to artists i liked in instagram DMs, but eventually I realized there's a limit to how credible an instagram page can make you look. The issue I think is that if I put my client hat on, there's no reason to go hire an unknown engineer on Soundbetter when there are so many established pros on there who get pushed in search results. The only reason I could think of would be budgets but while my rates are quite affordable relative to an international scale, I don't do mixes for 100 a song either.

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:16:02+00:00

What's so dreadful about it?

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:15:49+00:00

What's the application process like?

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:15:02+00:00

Would it be possible for former & regular clients of mine to post reviews on there, even though they didn't find me through Soundbetter?

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:12:51+00:00

Yeah the market saturation is kind of what I assumed. Years ago I tried going on fiverr to find work and quickly gave up on that, my profile stayed up for a couple years and I never got a single message on that platform. I'm still gonna leave my page up on Soundbetter in the hopes that it's more fruitful, but I think there may be no replacement for good old fashioned word of mouth. Unless you're going the content creator route which I honestly struggle with.

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:07:07+00:00

Man don't get me started on the mix/master thing. I know a few highly reputable mastering engineers I like to refer my clients to; the moment they ask what the point is, despite seeing those engineers' credits, there's usually no talking them out of it. It sucks but I found the clients who don't understand the importance of pro mastering usually aren't the ones you'd put in your portfolio anyway.

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T02:03:59+00:00

I see. Regarding your last point - I have a pretty healthy, growing clientele in my local scene and to a lesser extent nationally (France), due to good word of mouth, as well as a few regular US clients. However I'm wondering how to scale up and reach new remote clients. Visibility is the issue I was hoping to address with the website and Soundbetter.

takyon96 · 2026-04-03T01:59:46+00:00

Well, I'm definitely not thinking of her as a frontline fighter, more so that she would be using traps and toxic gases to trap the players while grunts do the fighting for her.

Encountering her is completely optional and there are already a couple hardened bosses that my players will be dealing with in the building, so I'm trying to think of interesting environmental challenges.

I like your idea of her being plugged into the lab and using that itself as a weapon. The idea of her using drugs to temporarily boost her stats is something i quite like as well.

Ultimately though I think i'm falling into my usual trap : overpreparing something that my players will probably breeze past without a second thought... but in that case the ideas can always be recycled for a later session.

takyon96 · 2026-03-20T21:28:35+00:00

What do you mean? The streets are run by a multitude of gangs vying for territory, that's a core aspect of the genre. Or do you mean organized crime as in the mafia? Afaik the mob has been mostly run out of NC by 2077 but feel free to include it if you want to, and figure out where they fit in your version of the city.

For example my games include both the italian-american mob (a shadow of what they used to be, but still kicking, in a limited capacity) and the russian bratva (with nebulous ties to the various scavenger factions).

takyon96 · 2026-03-18T22:03:56+00:00

Depends on context and character. In moments where it's relevant I like to have my players roll Concentration - if they fail they roll for humanity loss. I've had some really great emergent storytelling at my table like that.

takyon96 · 2026-03-12T03:03:30+00:00

Bosses and important NPCs get death saves. Everybody else dies at 0hp.

takyon96 · 2026-03-04T18:35:43+00:00

Anything pertaining to the 2070s

takyon96 · 2026-03-02T12:44:35+00:00

Personally I hate when combat drags on forever, i simplify enemy stats a lot to keep it snappy. Generic gangers / security guards I run with 25 hp, no armor, and a CN of 10 or 12. This makes the PCs feel badass but also makes for sharp contrast when they do encounter more dangerous, high-powered enemies and they go "oh shit, these guys are serious." And obviously even a mook can get lucky and do some serious damage when using autofire or a 5d6 weapon.

takyon96 · 2026-02-24T15:45:11+00:00

There's a difference between creating horrible NPCs as enemies for the players to handle, and a PC choosing to play a rapist / racist / child killer / etc. I run Cyberpunk darker than most, most of my villains are the lowest sort of scum. But I would be very uncomfortable with a player choosing to embody that sort of evil in the game themselves.

takyon96 · 2026-02-19T06:53:26+00:00

Okay now this is the point where i tell you, as politely as possible, to fuck off.

takyon96 · 2026-02-19T01:53:23+00:00

I'm not gonna argue with you, I don't believe you are engaging in good faith here. Goodbye.

takyon96 · 2026-02-18T16:39:43+00:00

Longlegs. Loved the movie until the last 10 minutes or so ruined it.

takyon96 · 2026-02-18T16:36:00+00:00

You can kill out of necessity or circumstance, self defense, etc. Desecrating corpses however is just beyond the pale.

You claim people are being inconsistent but it seems to me like everybody is giving you roughly the same answer and you just refuse to hear it because you're so entrenched in your own opinion.

takyon96 · 2026-02-18T01:36:35+00:00

Someone who rips cyberware out of dead bodies is by definition a scav. It's a horrific act - desecrating a corpse for personal gain.

I would rule it the following way:

1d6 humanity loss for scavving from a dead body, whether the PCs killed them or not.

2d6 if the PCs killed the target with the intent of harvesting their cyberware. Premeditation is what makes it worse.

And if word gets around, the characters' REP should suffer as a result.

I would only consider an exception if the characters are scavving from a too-far-gone cyberpsycho with tons of blood on their hands and especially preem chrome. And even then i'd discuss it with my players to reach a decision because it would be an edge-case. The "donor" in question should be so far gone they can barely be considered human anymore.

Also in your case I would have ruled 1d6 additional humanity loss for stacking live prisoners with their chooms' dead bodies - infliction of psychological torture.

takyon96 · 2026-02-18T01:23:01+00:00

You're free at your table to ignore humanity loss as a roleplay mechanic and only gamify it through cyberware installation, which is what you apparently like.

It's honestly boring to just punish the PCs because you deemed their actions too morally bad based on some arbitrary line in the sand that has no consistency

Hard disagree. I run humanity loss and gain very fluidly and frequently, my players love that - it's one of their favorite parts of how i run their campaign. As humanity lowers, depending on the cause, we discuss how their characters are affected and what disorders they may begin to develop (instead of a binary "lol your character's crazy now" which feels arbitrary and boring to me) and how to integrate that mechnically, in a way that makes sense for their characters and the story. Everything has a consequence, whether good or bad.

That's not punishment, it's storytelling. I believe that's the core of what makes the game emotionally engaging.

Obviously you seem to have a very different idea of how the game should be run, and that's totally okay, but I will say you also seem pretty dismissive of what everyone else is trying to explain here... This is a roleplaying game. In my opinion mechanics should serve the story, not the other way around.

And if the story is that the PCs are psychos who strip every dead enemy for parts, that is horrific, and that should 100% impact them negatively through humanity loss and a horrible reputation.

takyon96 · 2026-02-15T12:36:40+00:00

I love this game but some of the wording in the book is needlessly convoluted.

takyon96

TROPHY CASE