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Hard Wired Island: Second Gig now on Kickstarter

The retrofuture cyberpunk TTRPG returns

Paul Matijevic

Paul Matijevic

— 3 min read
Hard Wired Island: Second Gig now on Kickstarter
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Weird Age Games’ retrofuture cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game Hard Wired Island will soon fuel new and existing campaigns alike with a new sourcebook, titled Hard Wired Island: Second Gig, live now on Kickstarter.

Second Gig's cover. Five cyberpunk characters - a heavily augmented cloaked woman, a man in a nice suit, a young woman with a baseball bat, a woman with a varsity jacket and an amp, and an android in emo fashion - cross a busy city street in an O'Neill cylinder.

In 2019, Weird Age Games released the successfully crowdfunded Hard Wired Island to rave reviews, pulling in diehard cyberpunk fans and newcomers to the genre alike. Inspired by 90s anime, the game is set on the city-sized space station in orbit around earth, Grand Cross. Two years later saw the release of Tales From L5, a book of scenarios that opened up new opportunities with the setting.

In 2026, roleplayers and gamemasters have the opportunity to get in early with their support for Second Gig, expanding the game by adding more accessible entry paths and material for veteran players in a long-running campaign. Four new occupations join the original seven, along with new character options, rules and mechanics (like chase scenes), as well as pre-made characters for one-shots and convention play.

A blue-haired android woman and a white-haired human woman, with linked arms and matching dresses, walk down a street in a nightlife area.
I'm hyped to write more rules for Hard Wired Island and offer players and GMs more options for fun times being burdened by the oppression of capitalism. In particular, I'm excited to see how people react to the new Occupations, like the Enforcer's violent attitude and the Warlock's unique and twisted take on transhumanism. — Freyja Erlingsdottir, rules writer

Not only are new factions coming to Grand Cross, but so are new settings. Second Gig advances Grand Cross half a decade into the future, in addition to new regions of the city, from the beautiful nightlife of Cassiopeia Ward to the sprawling network of basements that form Otherside.

In Hard Wired Island I aimed to make its cyberpunk city setting feel like a real, living place, one not that far from our own. My goal in Second Gig is to create people and places that take the setting in new directions, expanding the range of stories it can tell. One big change we're doing is the new factions, which go into a lot more depth into potential allies and new types of guy to get mad at. — Paul "Ettin" Matijevic, setting writer

The Kickstarter hit its funding goal within 24 hours, with the tabletop community rallying behind the game to hit its various stretch goals, such as a hardcover print run and a series of microgames titled NEO CROSS.

Find the Kickstarter with in-depth information about the book and the full team behind it here!
Find more Weird Age games here!
Androids Yes, AI No: Second Gig will not use any genAI slop because I'm not a fucking hack.

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