Carbon 2185 is a cyberpunk RPG based off D&D 5e

Dragon Turtle Games are a British RPG publisher known for the 5e Dragon Drop Adventures series. They’ve brought Klaus Wittmann, a designer who worked on computer games like The Witcher 3, to illustrate the cyberpunk RPG Carbon 2185. The Kickstarter launched today and within hours it was halfway to their £10,000 goal. You can follow progress here.

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How do the pledges work out? £15 for the PDF, £35 for the hardback core rules and £60 for the Kickstarter special edition. There are tiers available with posters and other perks.

The game is based off D&D 5e’s d20 approach but has all the fantasy stripped out. Cybernetics and the trappings of the cyberpunk genre are jacked in as replacement body parts.

The game’s co-designer and Dragon Turtle founding member Robert Marriner-Dodds is quick to highlight Wittmann’s role. He told press;

Getting Klaus on board was a game changer. His art is fantastic, and he knows more about cyberpunk than anyone else I know. The guy is a cyberpunk savant.”

“I was aware of him from when he worked on The Witcher 3, he helped design Ciri in that game, and it was a dream come that our visions aligned on this project.”

The game does use 5e at its core but the adaption to cyberpunk seems pretty significant. There are big changes around character generation. Marriner-Dodds elaborated;

“The way you create characters in Carbon 2185 is unique to our system. We have an organic, fluid, character background generation that determines who your character is, and who they were before you picked up the character sheet” said Robert. “You’re not going to be able to create the same character twice if you use the background generation system, every character is unique.”

Reassuringly, this is not Dragon Turtle Games’ first Kickstarter. Previous projects have brought in over $50,000.

Stretch goals have been announced; £15,000 to increase the art, £20,000 to add pregenerated characters and £30,000 for a free PDF Carbon 2185 adventure.