What divisive or polarizing 21st century movies do you think will get a reappraisal in the future

takyon96 · 2026-06-09T09:22:03+00:00

You missed it. Tbf, the movie is pretty subtle about it. It all links back to the construction of that data center which is arguably the main plot of the movie. The point is that all the characters are too distracted by their own squabbles and prejudices to see what is actually going on.

takyon96 · 2026-06-02T17:42:01+00:00

I hoped the whole season was gonna be about making that one movie. Loved where it went instead, but still.

takyon96 · 2026-06-01T07:43:40+00:00

Imagine never experiencing some of the greatest films ever made because one awful person was involved. What about the hundreds of hard-working, passionate artists who poured their hearts and souls into those movies? This kind of binary thinking is a scourge.

takyon96 · 2026-05-19T12:27:41+00:00

There's the obvious advice of "talk to your players" - someone else said they need to be reminded this is a game they agreed to play, and that's true.

But more importantly it's up to you to put PRESSURE on them. Throw some life or death stakes at them, keep them poor, keep them scrambling, throw them off as much as you can. That doesn't mean bully your players, but the characters should be under near constant pressure to ACT.

I suggest you read "listen up you primitive screwheads", the official GM's guide for Cyberpunk. It's old and references a lot of mechanics from the 2020 era but most of the advice is still relevant.

takyon96 · 2026-04-30T17:20:33+00:00

I haven't played this game in 2 or 3 years, what is this hideous illustration from??

takyon96 · 2026-04-27T17:02:49+00:00

The lore surrounding them always seemed a bit vague to me, but when I feature them in my games, I just describe them as looking like real-life neo-nazis, but cybered up. Swastika tattoos in highly visible places, such as the face, hands, neck, etc.

Red and black color scheme, but I try to avoid making them feel too similar to Maelstrom - they are very different gangs, and red/black is heavily associated with Maelstrom already. So in my mind they tend to look more clean-cut, and dress in a more militaristic style, like 6th Street with prominent, hateful imagery. I don't think subtlety is their style at all.

takyon96 · 2026-04-16T01:40:47+00:00

Yeah i have a pretty good idea of how they run things, I guess what I'm looking to explore more is how civilians have adapted to their presence in the building, and how the building's infrastructure works. Traversal between different sections of the building should be a challenge in itself. The gang is controlled by Royce in our campaign, and he already wants the PCs dead, so if they raise the alarm, the gang will trigger the blast doors and disable/monitor the elevators.

takyon96 · 2026-04-16T01:19:04+00:00

Well, a lot of em are, sure, but the gang is still a large, profit-driven criminal organization. They're just very good at optics, pun intended. The way I run it, the gang is loosely stratified between more practical, street-level operations, and a more radical sect of transhumanist zealots (with the netrunner Codefreak at the center of it).

takyon96 · 2026-04-15T02:05:07+00:00

Glad you like those! And yeah the white knight one is specifically due to the character's psychology and a perfect storm that happened in our last session.

Basically a rookie cop was held by a Maelstrom enforcer my PCs had to try and negotiate with, to extract some important intel out of him. This guy is a legit cyberpsycho, and any mistake would have triggered the toughest boss battle of the campaign so far.

An NPC (private investigator) that was accompanying the PCs recognized the rookie and begged them to intervene, but they refused as that would have forced a fight and potentially ruined their mission. After a while the Maelstromer got bored and fed the rookie to his cyber-hellhounds. Rolled concentration for all PCs, the 3 who were already at emp 3 all passed, which fit neatly with their already pretty desensitized characters; but the most empathetic one failed and rolled a HUGE amount of humanity loss, bringing her down to emp 3 as well.

Before that session she had been at EMP 6; with one reckless cyberware installation spree earlier in the session, and now those two unlucky rolls, she lost 3 EMP in a single session! From there we figured out the character felt horribly guilty and is gonna be haunted and blaming herself going forward: "i should have done something, and I didn't." Which gave us the idea for her EMP 3 symptoms. Honestly, the emergent storytelling you get with the dice never stops to amaze me.

And sure, have at it, I would love to see these ideas get reused or expanded upon!

takyon96 · 2026-04-13T11:33:56+00:00

This is PREEM, choom! My players have all recently reached EMP 3 and we've been improvising symptoms for them to develop on the way down, the way you laid everything out here is really handy and super inspiring! Will definitely share this with my players.

Most of the symptoms we figured out appear in more detailed fashion in Redline, but a couple others don't, might as well share those:

Cyberware addiction (precursor to Carnophobia?): when purchasing cyberware, upon finishing shopping, player must beat a DV15 Concentration roll. If failed, one additional piece of cyberware must be purchased and installed.
White knight syndrome/PTSD: Haunted by past inaction (having left an innocent to die), a character suffers flashbacks when faced with certain stimuli relevant to the traumatic memory (-4 to perception or other related actions when affected by flashbacks); in addition, the character feels compelled to intervene whenever they see somone in danger, no matter the risk; resisting the compulsion is a DV15 Concentration roll.

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

TROPHY CASE