In my A Game Per Year project, my goal has been to read one roleplaying game corebook for every year they’ve been published. However, I soon started to feel that it was hard to decipher how the games were really meant to be played. For this reason, I decided to start a parallel project, An Adventure Per Year, to read one roleplaying adventure for each year they’ve been published.
Given how big Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. is in the history of roleplaying, I was surprised to notice that only a handful of adventures or campaigns had ever been published for it. Eurotour is one of them, a short campaign where the characters work security at the European tour of the rocker Jack Entropy.
The campaign’s core concept is a stroke of genius, providing the characters with a clear schedule of action, motivations, a colorful supporting cast and a reason to move to a new city practically every session. We understand what a tour is so it requires little explanation.
What’s funny in the campaign is that it takes American characters into the strange and exotic lands of Europe. You can marvel at the desolation of the U.K., witness the riches of France and Belgium and sneer at the economic depression of Sweden. The near future history of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. was always been a bit of a problem because reality caught up so fast. In this campaign, the finale is set in the crumbling Czechoslovakia, while in reality Czechoslovakia broke apart quite a bit faster than 2020.
(Another game famous for near-future predictions is of course Twilight 2000.)
Because Eurotour is set on a tour, media plays an important role. The campaign is broken into mini-adventures, each happening in its own city. After each of them is over, there’s a spread of news clippings showing a variety of reactions to the events of the tour, some factual and others less so. It feels like the campaign occurs in a living world much more than usual in roleplaying games.
As per the usual preoccupations of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., there’s a strong emphasis on guns and cyberware. We might not know anything else about Italian cops or French solos but we will absolutely learn the specific make and model of their cyber eye. Still, the campaign implies alternating between different modes of play: Combat, investigation, social scenes and even romance (!!!). Although the latter is relegated to a few mentions of possible hookups, those hookups may end up having real story significance as events progress.
Eurotour is a solid campaign. While some aspects are a result of early Nineties design, it’s basic idea holds up.