The Blade Runner RPG is an excellent alternative to games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, but there’s not much content for it, at least compared to its fantasy counterparts. That has now changed with Replicant Rebellion, a new sourcebook that acts as both a rules expansion for characters outside the LAPD, but provides a new campaign made specifically for the Replicant Underground.
In the Blade Runner RPG, the game is much more role-playing focused than similar games, as it’s all about exploration of morality and identity, rather than killing monsters and taking their stuff. The official rules and campaigns released so far have focused on the Blade Runners: special police officers whose job it is to hunt rogue Replicants, the artifical humans that were bred for the express purpose of labor, and whose poor treatment and subsequent rebellion forms the cornerstone of many stories told in the Blade Runner universe.
Replicant Rebellion Fleshes Out The History Of The Underground
Replicant Rebellion opens with a section dedicated to the lore of the Underground, which is the term given to the movement to free Replicants from persecution. The Underground takes on many forms, with public facing politicians among sympathetic humans fighting battles on the headlines, while groups of ragtag Replicants with only a few years left on their artificially shortened lifespans, packing bags full of firearms and explosives, preparing to take on corporations via bloodshed.
The lore section of Replicant Rebellion offers a great look at the history not covered in the other Blade Runner RPG books, dovetailing into the broader themes of running an Underground campaign. While Blade Runners are given some leeway to ignore the law in dangerous moments, a Replicant party is working on the other side at all times, meaning that pretty much everything they do has the potential to get them into trouble.
The lore section is pretty much required reading for players who want to play Replicants, as it lays out clearly why they joined the Underground and the stakes involved. Replicants have endured terrible things in the Blade Runner universe, so it’s also important for the DM to let players know that the game can go in dark places, which the lore section does amazingly well.
Like the other Blade Runner RPG products, the presentation throughout Replicant Rebellion is top-notch. The black pages and yellow text are instantly eye-catching, with tremendous drawings that perfectly capture the franchise’s aesthetic. There are also several double spreads that are gorgeous grafitti/newspaper collages, perfectly encapsulating the Underground movement, and may be the standout pieces of Replicant Rebellion.
The Underground Characters Are Different From The Blade Runners
The Blade Runner RPG Starter Set and core rulebook are all about providing mechanics for playing members of the LAPD, and while they’re technically still an option, the content in Replicant Rebellion is aimed towards characters who work against the law. This means a whole new character sheet that’s made to look like a police profile, as well as new archetypes to go on it.
In the Blade Runner RPG, archetypes act as character classes, but they are nowhere near as important. Archetypes mostly determine the character’s best stats and skills, their starting money, along with suggestions on their Specialty (which is akin to Feats in Dungeons & Dragons). This is a huge flaw with the Blade Runner RPG, as it makes the characters feel similar from a mechanical standpoint, as the trappings mostly exist as flavor.
It made sense for members of the LAPD to have similar skill sets, considering the party consists of detectives and specialist police officers. The archetypes in Replicant Rebellion had the opportunity to differentiate the characters further with special abilities and traits that wouldn’t be available to the LAPD, but what’s here is mostly dressing.
One aspect of Replicant Rebellion characters that is different from the standard Blade Runner rules is Cover. See, each member of the Underground is living a double life, as it’s not like they go around bragging that they’re members of secret terrorist cells: they have to pretend they’re law-abiding citizens.
Players have to engage with their Cover throughout the game, both to obfuscate their illegal activities, and to help ground them. These rules offer a ton of fertile ground for roleplaying, especially if the players co-ordinate their stories, and add an extra layer to the downtime shifts.
There are also rules for designing Handlers (the person in the Underground who acts as the party’s point of contact) and the Hideout that the group uses. The Handler rules are going to be more the DM’s domain, especially if the group runs the Justice for All campaign provided in the book, but designing the Hideout could be a fun activity for players, and could finally give the group an excuse to use the glossy maps featured throughout the Blade Runner RPG.
The Underground Is All About Maintaining A Double Life
The Blade Runners have the might of the LAPD and the mega corporations behind them, which includes a vast network of surveillance cameras, secure communication devices, and enough weapons to level a city block, should the situation call for it.
The Underground isn’t so well-equipped. While there are some high-ranking politicians, business people, and even law enforcement officers that are sympathetic to the cause, they can’t be shown openly supporting the movement. This means the party is not only lacking in resources, but everything they do has to be hidden from the ever-watchful eyes of the law.
Replicant Rebellion outlines the different ways members of the Undeground need to act, such as using discreet communication methods, like codes and dead drops. They have to use homemade tech and stolen weaponry to stay one step ahead of the enemy, as well as maintaining a network of allies and informants to stay abreast of what’s happening in the city.
There are new rules for Heat, which reflect the police and public’s readiness following a large-scale incident. If the players go around acting like Grand Theft Auto characters, then they can expect swift and armed responses the next time they cause trouble. These rules are great way to deter players from acting like the standard adventuring party, and forcing them to rethink their approach to problems.
Replicant Rebellion also outlines several potential allies for the players, though people familiar with the other Blade Runner RPG adventures will recognize most of the faces on display. If the group had already run Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels, they likely already encountered these characters, and depending on what happened, they might have been killed during those cases.
Replicant Rebellion Features The Five-Part Justice For All Campaign
The second half of Replicant Rebellion consists of Justice for All, a five-part adventure anthology that can be strung together into a single campaign, or at least, that’s how it’s promoted. The fourth and fifth adventures lose most of their impact if they’re not played as the finale of a long-running campaign, though the first three work fine enough on their own.
Compared to Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels, the existing campaigns for the Blade Runner RPG, Justice for All has a much grander scale, potentially taking place over a larger span of time than a few days. The downside to this approach is that the adventures are less focused, especially as the story can diverge in so many different ways, and the book has to account for them all.
One of the best aspects of Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels is the physical items that come with the campaigns: photos, newspaper clippings, torn scraps of paper, police profiles. They add a tremendous amount to the roleplaying experience, making the player feel like cops working on crime scenes.
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Unfortunately, Justice for All lacks these awesome additions, relying solely on character pictures and maps. Perhaps the biggest failing is leaving the creation of a key NPC to the DM, who won’t be named here for spoiler reasons. The developers missed a huge opportunity by not fleshing out this specific character and weaving in clues about their plans throughout the adventures.
Justice for All requires far more work on the part of the DM than Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels, and those expecting the tight, well-paced content from those campaigns will be left disappointed. There is a great story here that builds up to an epic conclusion, but the DM with little free time on their hands, is going to find themselves with a lot of homework to do.
There’s More To Blade Runner Than The Hunt For Replicants
Blade Runner: Replicant Rebellion is a fantastic expansion to the game, one that drastically adds to the kinds of stories that the game can tell. The new rules and lore offer fresh ways to tell stories in the Blade Runner RPG universe, especially for a group that tries mixing concepts together from the standard rules, with Blade Runners working side-by-side with criminals, in an effort to save Los Angeles.
The darker content in Replicant Rebellion is dealt with in a mature fashion, not dwelling on the horrors that Replicants endure in the setting, while letting the players know just exactly why they’re fighting. The cause is never presented as black and white, especially in Justice for All, and there’s plenty of blood to cover everyone’s hands, and working for the Underground doesn’t necessarily make the party heroes. Blade Runner is far too morally ambiguous of a setting to allow for babyfaces, as the Underground has plenty of crooks, killers, and anarchists, who use the organization as a cover for their base desires.
Justice for All is the weakest part of the book, but that’s more to do with how it’s inferior to the previous campaigns released for the game, which are among some of the best in tabletop RPG history. A shorter one-shot with tighter pacing would have been a better fit for Replicant Rebellion than the large-scale story presented in the text.
Replicant Rebellion is a vital expansion to the Blade Runner RPG, especially for people hungry for new content after completing Fiery Angels. There are tons of resources for expanding the game, both in terms of player mechanics and taking the lore in new directions, with those taking on the role of rebels learning very quickly that they can’t act with the same impunity as the Blade Runners.
Blade Runner: Replicant Rebellion is available to purchase now from Free League Publishing or DriveThruRPG. CBR was provided with a physical copy of the book for the purposes of this review.