# CBR+PNK: Weird tags: #game/rpg/cbr-pnk ![[CBR-PNK - Weird (cover).jpg]] **CBR+PNK: Weird** is where the lean cyberpunk one-shot grows horns on purpose. A **/plugin setting** rather than a standalone game, it layers the paranormal on top of the [[CBR+PNK]] core brochures: two centuries after the Incident, a dimension-rupturing surge has rearranged reality, and now your Runners are dodging bound **Spirits** and trading in **Meta-Talents** alongside the usual corporate hit. If the base game is the anti-prep argument, *Weird* is that argument discovering an occult department. ## Setting It starts with the **Incident**. An unknown energy surged out of **Ground Zero** and kept spreading, slowly changing landscapes, animals, and people from the inside out — they call it the **Weird**, "reality refracting upon itself." Sensors eventually learned to detect and measure it, but never to contain it. The first panic bred quarantined districts and **meta-talented messiahs** who were promptly co-opted by shadowy organizations; then the megacorps arrived with "humanitarian aid," rebuilt, and secured a future to profit from. Two centuries on, the Weird has dispersed but not died — every now and then the sensors catch faint pulses from the source, and the hypothesis is that they signal a new surge. Against that backdrop, reality thins. **Spirits** from realities very different from this one drift in — erratic, intangible beings who can't sustain their presence here without proper **binding rituals**, so the wicked ones lurk near conjurers looking to trick them into doing their bidding. When given a body, they take the form the conjurer wishes: elementals of fire, wind, or electricity, animals, or artifacts of human culture. Out in the margins live the **Fringes**, stranger realities only marginally accessible to those daring enough to **Attune**. And the Weird leaves its marks on the world: **Meta-Humans**, descendants of the first mutations, and the **Meta-Talented**, who can exert their will on reality through supernatural abilities — both still shadowed by stigma. Everywhere the ordinary can't cope. Merely seeing a Fringe- or Weird-touched entity fills most people with paralytic dread. Organizations scramble for leverage, recruiting the Meta-Talented and hoarding **Meta-Artifacts** — precog analysts, spirit-warded servers, "Magic Vaults™," productivity enhancers, and arcane data encryption. Down in the megagullys prowl the **Weird creatures**: **Gremlins** (stray blocks of AI code that possess and glitch devices), **Fusers** (droids and synths gone haywire as fighting spirits war over the vessel), **Barghexes** (overgrown, glow-eyed rodents), **Jinki Lichen** (a growth that puppeteers decomposing bodies), and **Harpies** (person-sized bats with razor talons). ## Mechanics *Weird* plugs straight into the [[CBR+PNK]] core rather than rewriting it. Play begins by collectively answering the **Incident follow-up questions** — what most people believe caused the surge (the book offers *Mad Science*, *Otherworldly Intrusion*, or *Ancient Prophecy* as directions), what Ground Zero used to be and how it changed — so the table adds its own outlandish answers onto the usual cyberpunk frame. From there you create Runners normally, returning to this brochure whenever the supernatural comes stalking. What it adds: - **Meta-Talents** — a new type of *Augment* for the Meta-Talented: supernatural abilities that let you exert your will on reality, built and upgraded the same way cyber wear is in the base game. - **Spirits & conjuring** — rules for binding, summoning, and banishing Spirits; they're incorporeal most of the time, suffer limited harm from mundane sources, and only manifest physically to perform a task (at a shape the conjurer chooses). The **Attune** skill (marked △ in the core) is the seam between tech and the Weird. - **Weird creatures & artifacts** — the Gremlins, Fusers, Barghexes, Jinki Lichen, and Harpies, plus dual-natured cyber-supernatural artifacts that demand a **Technomancer**'s touch. - **Factions & stakes** — the shadowy organizations, their Meta-Talent arms race, and the escalating arms-length war over who controls the supernatural edge. The risk asymmetry of the core carries over intact: dealing with the Weird is always risky and usually comes with unpredictable consequences — the game's own text is unblinking about that trade. ## Editions & supplements - **CBR+PNK: Weird** (2022) — the /plugin setting; *in the library.* - Part of the wider [[CBR+PNK]] line, which the core note lists in full (core brochures, **CYBERPUNK HUNTERS**, the runs **Mona Rise Megalopolis**, **MIND THE GAP**, **PRDTR**, **Kaguya Protocol**, **Rookie**, and the **Augmented Edition**). ## References - [CBR+PNK Core — itchio (official)](https://emanoelmelo.itch.io/cbrpnk-core) - [CBR+PNK — myth.works (physical boxed set)](https://www.myth.works/pages/cbr-pnk) - [CBR+PNK Plain-Text Core Rules (English)](https://cbrpnk.cabinetofcuriosities.games/docs/en/index)