Today I've been playing Utopia by David Markiwsky, a game that's been floating around the top of my Play Me pile for a while now. It's a Cyberpunk game with a native solo mode, and though there are suggestions for co-op and GM run, the core mechanics are definitely more comfortable with solo. The system itself is clearly inspired by Ironsworn, but is not a simple hack, and does some smart things with mechanics and genre.

You use Ironwsworn-style world truths to create your cyberpunk city (with three pre-genned ones, which help a lot), create a character and then play through their life a week at a time, setting short and long-term goals. The Resources system forces you to take jobs and pay expenses without counting too many numbers, and a News Feed system makes the events of the city take a central part in your game. Over the course of a morning I got my character out of the slums, avoided a sinister pogrom against the poor and made an enemy of a cybernetic cat, and now genuinely feel like I have a lot of choices without being overwhelmed.

The book is well laid-out, with a clear contents page and logical order meaning I never had to look hard to find things. It definitely puts a lot of creative burden on the player, and though the core mechanics run themselves, many players will find themselves wanting to add a basic Yes/No oracle as well as other tables - I used the Key Word charts from Mythic 2e and the incomparable Augmented Reality - so they're not just making stuff up themselves. Probably not an ideal first solo experience, but great for Ironsworn/Starforge players who want something different.

Utopia is a game and open ended setting for solo, GM-less play or GM’d play. This review is for solo play using the actual book. For 238 pages you get a pretty good bit - character creation and rules, setting and worked examples of cities, oracle/newsfeed for events.

The book is pretty with what I consider wide margins, lots of art (some of which is reused) through out that gives a pretty good feel for what the world will be like. Also, it’s a post-apocalyptic setting - asteroid strike - but feel free to use what you want.

Character creation starts with your character’s basics (name, pronouns, description), 2 personality traits (no real game effect), origin/social level (non-human (artificial human, clone, AI, datawave (aka uploads), murkblood, lowborn, riser or highborn), specialization (aka class), assign 2 extra skill points and picking a long term and short term goal for your character.

The rules are pretty compact, taking only 31 pages from skill rolls (2d10 + d6 for each point of relevant skill, + d6 for each relevant knowledge) to combat. Players can roll with advantage (3d10, planning ahead, ambushes, doing the homework) or disadvantage (1d10, being ambushed, someone else planned ahead, etc.). Any of the d10’s come up a 10, that’s a critical which can give Bravado, do extra damage or a bigger pay out. Rolling a 1 on any of the d10’s means a complication or fumble to the contest. A player can choose to succeed with a complication (failing forward effectively) if they need to succeed but it ramps up the danger level of the setting. Players may also choose to spend Bravado (the meta-currency of the game) which adds an additional d6 for each Bravado point spent. And there are no limits on the number of Bravado points that can be spent at one time. In my experience, this system is a bit more generous than other ones I’ve dealt with and great for playing big damn heroes. Equipment can make a huge difference - just an electrified stun stick that did an extra wound of damage made a big difference in a fight for my tanker (a hand to hand heavy specialization).

Each interval of the game is a week, which works pretty well for setting the pace and getting your character into trouble (and detailed combats and other messes). And each specialization has a special ability that can be used 3 times a week, or for certain specific effects. In my experience, this works out pretty well, and there are ways the number of uses per week for technological based abilities can be increased (see the machinist specialization).

Actions are part of the way skills can be used - getting a job, assembling resources, adding new people to the character’s circle, laying low, etc., etc. Basically, they’re worked examples of how to use the skills to do specific things.

There are 16 skills (Athletics, Bartering, Deception, Dodge, Engineering, Hacking, Investigation, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Persuasion, Ranged Weapons, Science, Sneak, Software Programming, Tough, Unarmed Combat). One thing - Investigation is a sort of über skill - it’s used for so many actions (Find Another Way, Gather Information, Meet Someone New, Search), so I really suggest characters get a dot in Investigation no matter what.

Equipment covers weapons, cybernetics, a few drugs, some technology, hacking programs and drones. No vehicles though, but I think a large drone could easily be tweaked around to cover a motorcycle sized vehicle and that the table could be extended to include larger drones (Cybertanks and autonomous killer aircraft anyone? Or how about just self driving cars?) for those that want to include such things in their games. I also think the equipment misses some options (vehicles, some cybernetic and implant options (more stealth, less shooty & stabby), primitive weapons), but that’s more of a personal thing.

The city building can be a neat mini-game, randomly generating a place for the adventures to take place. I’ll also say it’s a bit weak because the tables don’t include some more science fictional options like a gerontocracy of datawaves, or an AI dictator and so on. I’ll admit I have my finger on the scales for cities that are more solarpunk than cyberpunk, but that’s a personal preference. The table for generating the cities goes for the wastelands outside your city is also kind of limited - some of the “neater” options like a poison jungle of genetically modified plants and animals aren’t there, but you can plug them right in if you want. I’ll also admit to hacking around on developing a 6x6 table for governments and wasteland environments. Also, I found I could plug in cities from Uprising, fiction and even Shelter One from Hack the Planet without much trouble at all.

Finally, some things that can be very useful for the game are Hack The Planet (particularly the reference sheets, pages 24-30), Dystopia (plus supplements), Augmented Reality the Holistic City Kit, Remote Control (drones, drones and more drones), 13 Things: Gene Spliced Dogs, Shadowrun's Paranormal Animals of North America and Europe.

Overall, Utopia needs more and better organization. The newsfeed needs to be up in the front of the book near where the rules for using it are. Same goes for the NPC generation tables.

There is support with 3 free dossiers with 3 NPCs and adventures available on DriveThruRpg.

But overall, 4 out of 5 stars. Yes, it needs better organization, but that’s not a deal breaker. It can be played as is without much trouble.

This review relates to the solo experience of playing Utopia. I haven't played in other modes.

Utopia is a fantastic solo experience, with a solid core system and an intriguing setting that leaves space for worldbuilding within individual games. The News Feed is a great idea (though it took me a while to get the hang of it) and the weekly structure gives the game a good pace, which is often hard to achieve with solo games. I kept convincing myself I could fit in one more job, because who needs sleep anyway! I really enjoyed NPC creation and started making extra random roll tables for things like NPC Specialization. I very quickly filled my first Spheres sheet and had to print more! I've had a great experience playing Utopia and would definitely recommend trying it if you're looking for a solo RPG game.

(I forgot to mention initially, but the fantastic art and write-ups of the example characters for the Specializations is really helpful in coming up with NPCs and new characters)