Black Chrome is Cyberpunk RED's first big gear book, and it does a lot to not only expand play, but also the world at large.
The start of the book does a good job of both explaining the concepts of night markets (A concept touched upon in the core rules) along with explaining the ease of use that this book provides in making your own. There's a helpful display showing what information is being displayed, the explanation of new key words, and even a new mechanic that we'll get into later. Before I go into anything else, of particular note with this book is the layout. Most Cyberpunk books have a similar layout, but the way that the information is provided in Black Chrome is a stand out, and really helps sell the vibe. I really can't say enough nice things about it.
The start of the book isn't the strongest, as it's the apps section. A new mechanic and something to give one's agent more use, the majority of these apps lack useful mechanics aside from a few (the trauma team one is a personal favorite). It's easy to take these as a proof of concept, but I don't see most players getting a lot of use out of these on both a flavor or mechanical level.
Cyberware is next, and we now have a whole slew of budget options for players who don't want to shell out the money or GMs who don't want to turn NPCs into loot crates. In both situations, these budget items are great additions with some fun flavor implications to the world at large. There's also some neat new additions which allow you to determine your hit points in universe through some clever workaround. There's also a little something to make bullet dodging easier for players or a nice sidestep to GMs who want to make such actions harder.
One of the larger features of the cyberware section is cyberfingers, with most of them being generally useful tools. None of them pass the mildly interesting tier for me, but for some people, that's enough. But there's no new functionality that you're missing out on if you give them a pass, and a hand full of them is a dangerous way to drain your humanity quick (something that's hard enough to hang onto with all the cool stuff above).
Fashion and Armor is one of the highlights of the book to me, both for the creativity of the gear and the art showing it off. The descriptions are all lovely, and there's quite a few new pieces of gear in here which are both mechanically interesting as well as fitting to the greater lore of the world. This book would be worth the price alone for the mimic kit and mechaman smartglove, but unique effects like shocking grapplers, being fireproof, and even holographic clothing keep everything here incredibly interesting and great for player expression.
While I don't think the general gear section lives up to fashion, that's a high bar, and the items here include some very fun new things like a 3d printer, a portable gear repair station, and even a new net arch-less drone. There's a strong mix of utility and fun items here, and while some might never see play at your tables in the hands of players, they make great items for NPCs to really help with world building.
New linear frames are next, and for most of these, I just can't validate the cost. Most are based off of the Sigma Frame's increase to 12 body, with almost all of them able to be made into internal frames. But at the cost of a beta frame, the added utility they give doesn't feel worth it to me, as each one is running 5,000 EB and doesn't feel like their additions are adding 4,000 EB worth of value. This might be the area of the book that was the most of a letdown to me, but I think it's also because there's no middle ground between 1,000 EB and 5,000 EB in value, so any improvements to a sigma frame were going to push the cost up a lot.
Vehicles are our next stop, and this is another area in which the book shines. We don't even just get cars, there's a great selection of flying vehicles here too, and this is where the new mechanic I mentioned before comes into play, nomad access. While some vehicles may not be worth the listed nomad access levels, others are more than worth it, and the art for each vehicle presents them in a fashion that makes them all seem so cool. I don't want to pick out favorites here, but let's just say a lot of starting nomads are going to be looking at the Grundy. Also a hoverboard?!
And you knew we'd eventually land here, the weapons. These are more of a mixed bag than I would have liked, but at the same time, I can also say there's more hits than misses, including items to actually use the demolitions skill (which was tragically underlooked in value in the core rulebook). For being a weapon's section, there's a ton of tricky items in here that would be more at home in a spy kit than in a holster. Melee weapons start with a few new flavors of ignoring armor (but none topping the kendachi mono three), and quite a few new fist weapons with some neat tricks to them. Thrown weapons actually get some love here too, with boomerangs and tomahawks designed specifcally for throwing.
I think the sheer variety of guns is impressive here, all of them carving out unique niches for themselves. If I'm going to be honest though, my favorite are the purposefully bad ones, the guns that are given to street level doombas who won't stand a chance again a properly armed crew. Sure, things like the pepper shaker are great for autofire, but give me an overlord handcanon any day of the week. Combination weapons are a large theme of the book, with various combinations being displayed within. None of them would outdo a focused version of one of their components though.
But we're out of gear now, and into mechanics and flavor with an explanation of the economy of the system. This right here is great for people who aren't completely up on the lore, giving a snapshot of how to play out matters of finding or creating gear. It's all just amazing as a learning tool, and a great use of pages in a book like this.
It's hard to say what my favorite part of this book is, but the night markets are absolutely top three. Fun descriptions and ideas for unique night markets along with fixers (and stats to run them) make for what shines as a culmination of everything that we've seen in this book. The fixers are fun and unique, with their personalities being given for players along with the gear they'd normally carry and even advice on how to be invited to or join their night market for asipring fixers. Another one of those 'the book is worth it for this alone' moments in a book that's full of them.
So there's plenty of gear in this book that I wouldn ever touch, and yet I'm still 100% satisfied with what was contained within. Black Chrome fits the style of Cyberpunk along with providing way more worldbuilding than I'd have expected from a gear book. This is a book for players and GMs alike, and I can't suggest it enough.
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