I actually did something very similar. I had a table of five ranks for both combat and non-combat, and my NPC's stat-block might look like this: Booster Ganger Combat 2, Skill 2 HP/SP: 20/7/5 Good at: Petty crime stuff Weapon: 3d6 Heavy Pistol / Melee Weapon Skill: 11 / 7 Name Rating: Fighting, Skills HP, SP Body, SP Head Good At: This is what determines whether they use the higher or lower value when making a skill check Weapons: Duh Skill: When the guy tries something which the concept says he should be good at, use the higher value. When he does something he shouldn't be too good at, use the other. Also, because Combat and Skill ratings are different, you can have a monster combatant who is inept out of a fight, or a highly skilled techie who has no business in combat.
@@jamesblack2187 Not the OP, but I'd assume that since he said he made a table of 5 ranks for combat and non-combat, the Combat X and Skill X are just how he sorts them on the table. So if you quickly needed a mook with just ok combat and skills, you'd go over 2 and down 2 on the table and end up with the stat block he listed above, renamed/reskinned as needed.
Nice, ya I used a similar method when I ran shadowrun often called the rule of 3, or rule of 4 where i just rolled their dicepool based on their difficulty. I actually kept the weapon damage values as is as the NPCs may be unskilled but if they hit they should hit hard. This can let me have weak group of mooks with light pistols and knives weak but weak group of mooks with assault rifles and shotguns should even give edgerunners pause.
New CP:R GM here who just ran Red Chrome Cargo for his newbie players as well. I hand crafted a couple of NPCs that I added in some player character "bookends" (my rockerboy player had an open mic gig at a bar in Heywood, there was an opportunity for a bar fight, and I needed some low level booster gangers. And I added in Fox as Hornet's recruitment coordinator, so I needed stat blocks for her in case my players got too bold/stupid. Having this method certainly makes some of that much easier. Thanks choom.
4:40 the description reminds me of the guy in Fifth Element who stands in front of Bruce Willis's door with a big hat with a picture of an empty hallway on top 🤣 he takes his gun and throws it in a bin with several others.
Just discovered your channel and love it! I'm running my first Cyberpunk game for a group of six friends and I'm definitely going to use this, and your Tally Method in our game. You're a life saver!
Just recently ran my first Cyberpunk Red game as GM and this is almost exactly how I came up with the stats for all my goons. I gave them a simple difficulty check plus a d10 on anything they had to defend against. If it was a specialist such as netrunner goon then he'd be weak in combat checks but strong in netrunning related checks.
Thank you! It is a bit reminded me to the old Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Book with the cannonball enemy system. Thank you for the idea! :) This could also be used in any social encounter, if the GM improves it a bit like "John" the Rockerboy is an Easy Combat character, but an Elite Social character, or a netrunner is an Elite Tech character, but an Easy combatant, if "fighting" is on. :) - really great system
Thank you for all these videos, saved your playlist to my library. Looking forward to listening to your podcast episode with Seth Skorkowsky. He's my favorite rpg youtuber. Just diving into running some CP Red for friends and your videos and those from Tales From Trantor are invaluable.
I've been thinking about doing this for a good week, awesome breakdown. I'm going to have to do 4 tiers though so that I can just use a fast and dirty sheet for quick reference in session.
Jon Jon, thanks a bunch. I have been Gming Warhammer Fantasy Role play and Warhammer 40k, based on new rules from Cubicle 7 for year and a half. Jumping to CP Red is quite a change and your videos have made it considerably easier to prep sessions 0 and 1. Thanks.
Do you find yourself using this still since the Danger Gal Dossier has a npc template/guidelines? Id love a retrospective or an evaluation of their system
Great question, I choose one or two enemies that have a high auto fire. If it’s a final boss battle, everyone’s got auto fire. I make changes depending on how I see fit. 👍
Great method! This'll help a lot and I appreciate that you lowered the enemy health overall since combat felt a bit too long using the book ones. That kinda brings up a question, how many of these enemies do you usually put against the players?
By far and large, not an original concept, but I do like the spin and adjustment for Cyberpunk Red, and doing a quick numbers run vs poor rolls, high rolls, your numbers check out. Well done, sir. I will be stealing this.
I will ask you about FBC - Full Body Conversations. Have you covered that topic at all? Or any plans to? Cyberpunk 2020 hit on it with their Chromebooks. Cyberware Red doesn't lend itself to FBC's in its current state outside of special NPC's.
super handy, ive been agonizing over my NPCs and this is a great baseline. i have a question, my players Combat Values are between 10 and 13, will these goon stats be appropriate for them?
Yes your players will be perfect for this. Average goons are going to be a middle-of-the road combatants and that's what you want. Elite combatants will be scary
Great vid, JonJon. Variations of this technique are used everywhere, but I really like what you've done here and I think I'll use this design as well. Much appreciated.
been learning the GM side a tid bit more to GM for a few friends, I couldnt find "stats blocks" in the book but everywhere else I searched for it pointed me to this video, preem stuff, thanks
Just came over from your live stream earlier today at your suggestion and wow you are right this is a very good way to make npcs fast while keeping the game moving.
That's a smart way of doing it. I've took these three Mook Sheets and saved them seperately, so i can always just copy and edit them for more specific purposes (booster gangers, security, cops or whatever) as different faction probably use different equipment and such. Anyway, thanks alot for these! Very helpful!
I've always done something very similar to this ever since I started gming shadowrun about 8 years ago. One massive advantage of doing something digitally, I always like to make templates first for your goons, using a similar kind of tier system, however where my method differs is rather than having a linear system like this, my npcs are more like a chart, different archetypes each with their own tiers within them. I never minded taking the extra work to do this, especially because it was always a goal for me for combat encounters to feel totally different, even if I only changed a couple items, they enemy team composition would be varied, as would their strategy, this way I think my combats were all varied while being fairly efficient when it comes to prep.
I read the book for cyberpunk 2020 before yesterday, but i still don't understand what determines the health Ps: i never played a tabletop RPG before, so your channel is helping me a lot.
I noticed the enemies in the book generally have an Evasion lover than their attacking skill. So maybe by having those be the same you change the balance of melee weapons. Probably not too much but it should be considered
I haven't had any issues with balancing but if you're worried about it, I would add a -2 modifier to your roll to compensate. You can add or remove modifiers on the fly depending on your discretion. That's why this method is so fast.
That is a great advice for when you need to make expendable NPCs on the fly, although after trying it I gotta say they are pretty unbalanced. I had 2 players infiltrate corporate warehouse, guarded by 5 average goons. Players were cautious at first but once they took down 2 of them stealthily in 2 hits, they decided they can take on the rest and collect their guns etc for money. So I rolled up 2 SUVs with 4 more average goons in each, so total it was 11 goons vs 2 lvl4 edgerunners and guess what, they wiped the floor with them and havent lost even a single HP, only scratched their Armor. While im gracious for the method, im gonna buff all 3 types in my games in the future. P.S. also goons having a combat number 11 at all skills is weird. Yes, for combat skills for a corporate guard it make sense but when they hece every perception social and tech skill 11 as well seems a bit broken
But that said, JonJon, don’t take my opinion as invalidation of your experience, just sharing my experience, and I want to say I have watched like 30 of your videos including some actual plays and you are incredible, your content is what made me try RED and play huge role in my RED games. I am very thankful
Yo, loving these vids man, Mega helpful for getting me ready to GM my first oneshot sesh. How do you get stats for enemies tho? Like stuff beyond goons and humans. Where are stats or profiles for like drones, animals, mutants, androids, potential bosses like Adam Smasher etc? Is there a DnD style monster manual? I want the boss of my one shot to be a protype militech combay drone that can hijack players cyberware to turn a player agaisnt the party briefly and they have to figure out how to deal with that.
There’s a new supplement that just came out called “danger gals dossier” also there are some free dlcs at their website that have NPC stat blocks too. Thank you for the support!
Hey JonJon! New to running Cyberpunk and I freakin' love the 3-Goon Method for streamlining games. My question is when do you consider adding Cyberware to goons? Do you have a method for that?
Another thing to think about is how tactical enemies will be during firefights. I’d imagine elite enemies will be more likely to coordinate fire on the biggest battlefield threats while treating medtechs and the like with high priority (I.e. they see a medtech administer a speedheal to a hurt player and decide medtech has to go first). On the topic of scaring players with npcs that have similar/same stats as them, another good thing to note is to give them the same, if not a larger budget. The enemy on their level skill-wise becomes something to haunt their dreams if they can afford subdermal armor, implanted melee and/or ranged weapons and a pop up shield (this should be saved for a boss-level encounter or planned npc as opposed to a regular elite though imo)
Great overview, makes writing up mook sheets (if you decide to go that detailed) way easier, and easier to come up with quick combats and conflicts on the fly. The game has so much crunch, it's nice to have quick ways to give your players something to deal with.
I recently worked on fleshing these goons out more so stay tuned. Also remember that 2d6 weapons are meant to be low powered. But they could be troublesome in large numbers.
@@JonJonTheWise indeed! It's just.... To a new DM on cpred i would point out that with armor 11 2d6 are just numbers unless you plan a scene to make the players stand out as badasses
@@StreamingDragons You are correct, sp11 and 2d6 are laughable together. But remember that two 6's means 12 damage, and a critical injury. Something that is statistically a low chance of happening and that's what makes it special! Imagine a gonk with a small weapon doing a critical injury
2D6 is fine with me as I'm usually running games for new players who don't yet know how to optimize. These are good weapons to give to henchmen who are supposed to soak up bullets and mitigate what weapons the PCs get from looting the bodies. It has its place in the narrative if not strictly in game balance. Also, I'm playtesting a tweak of the armor ablation rules which gives low power weapons some validity, so this isn't really a problem I run into currently.
Yo! Thanks for all your hard work Jonjon. Seen your net tab in the rulebook haha! 3goon method has really streamlined my games but held onto the depth of NPC without flipping through pages and breaking immersion. Big love
Thank you so much for the support and I’m so happy to be able to help Choom. Head over here for updated rules for the three goon method. rtalsoriangames.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RTG-CPR-DLC-ListenUpJonJon.pdf
Do you think the Combat Numbers work equally well for non-combat skills, I know you mention it but not every NPC is necessarily going to be good at combat but could be experts in other fields. I guess you could use them as guides for non-combat skills as well, but say up them a level for stuff you expect them to be good at, and down one for stuff they shouldn't necessarily know about.
Thank you. That certainly helps a lot. I didn't know about combat numbers. Cyberpunk red looks great. I'll be stuck with the cp2020 for a while but, other than the HP value, I think everything else will work perfectly, right? Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a physical copy of CP red rulebook and switch to it eventually.
One thing that I do, especially for easy goons, is that for skills they would not be proficient in (like concentration), I divide their base modifier by 2. So they would use a 1d10+8 for shooting, but only a 1d10+4 for, say resisting a sleep grenade, or having a conversation. It gives a bit of flavor to the goon and is also really useful if he has to interact with players outside combat .
No problem choom. Google “listen up to jonjonthewise” and download the pdf from R Talsorians website. The latest rules for the 3 goon method are there!
I don't know if you read comments from older videos but what should I assign to move stat to these? What's the average. Or body that, should they choke someone etc?
Luckily I’m not big enough (yet 😂) to be overwhelmed by comments. So I’m happy to answer any of them. I would say: Move - 6, 7, 8 Body 6, 7, 9 Hope that helps
@@JonJonTheWise Awesome, thanks for the quick answer. I find these preset goon stats very helpful, I don't know why should I spend hours making intricate npcs, most of the work that players would not ever see or know about. I can use these and modify them as need be. Game after game I learn new stuff about the Red system. Its so cool and intricate. Eagerly waiting for new expansions and such like Black Chrome. Never stop being cool and Punk Jon.
Thank you so much for the support and kind words. I’m happy to help with any advice I can offer. I agree with you. I’ve used the 3 goon method in my games and it has led to many hours of great gaming. I’m glad it’s helping you out too
