Welcome to the future: The world is ruled by corporations headed by invincible tech billionaires with an iron grip over our political processes, our lives are driven by mindless work with precious little economic mobility, and mysterious AI programs threaten our very way of life. These also happen to be things that are happening in Cyberpunk 2077, which had its recent 2.2 update released earlier this month, and as it turns out, there's a free gift in it. Yippee!
As noticed by Polygon CD Projekt, seemingly seized by the holiday spirit, has tucked a little gift into your program files with the latest update—a set of quickstart rules for Cyberpunk RED, a new version of the system that was released in 2020. This is not to be confused with the Cyberpunk 2020, which was originally released in 1990, yet came packaged as bonus content with Cyberpunk 2077 in the actual year 2020. Cyberpunk RED, which was released in 2020 (my head hurts) is the latest version of the TTRPG.
The rules—dubbed Cyberpunk RED: Easy Mode—can be compared to D&D's starter set. The PDF includes a lore introduction to Night City, the basic rules for the game, five premade characters, and the introductory mission "Getting Paid". These rules have actually been free on DrivethruRPG for a while now—though to download those, you need to make an account on the site—but it's nice to just have them there waiting for you.
And I mean, hey—if you're passingly interested, and have the game's bonus content downloaded on Steam? It's already on your computer, so you might as well check the PDF out—if only to coo at the pretty pictures. To access the PDF, make sure you have "Cyberpunk 2077 bonus content" downloaded on Steam. You can then head to your library and click the "browse local files" button under the album art to be taken directly there in your file explorer.
Alternatively, you can head to your Steam\steamapps\music\Cyberpunk 2077 Bonus Content\Guides manually. If you've downloaded the bonus content onto a secondary SSD, it might be located under SteamLibrary instead. As a late-comer to the game itself, I wasn't actually aware of the other goodies tucked into this section of my computer, either. There's posters, a short story, some wallpapers, avatars, and—of course—the Cyberpunk 2020 core rulebook. Which, again, released in 2014—unlike Cyberpunk RED, which released in 2020. There will be a test.
