Like Tears in Rain? Not This Time - The Rebellion Refuses to Fade

It’s time to choose sides, and that means joining the Underground and fighting against Replicant oppression and the hypocrisies of the justice machine in the Replicant Rebellion expansion for Free League Publishing’s Blade Runner RPG, which is hitting retailers this May.

Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner was a masterpiece that has grown more popular and cemented itself as a cult movie as the years have gone by. The movie, which was set in a near-future dystopian Los Angeles, had so many memorable scenes and pieces of dialogue, but none possibly more so than that of Rutger Hauer, who played Roy Batty - a Nexus-6 combat model replicant - when he improvised his characters final monologue.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Replicants are now front and centre of Free League’s latest hardcover book, Replicant Rebellion. The book flips the setting on its head and allows players to take on roles of Replicants and humans fighting back against those who exploit, abuse, and kill Replicants. The book includes a deep dive into the underground world of Blade Runner in the year 2037, and offers several new character archetypes, rules for Covers and Heat, playing and creating Operations, as well as providing several ready to play Operations.

The streets are teeming with Blade Runners, attacking from every angle, even from within. Wallace Corp has LA under its private microscope, scalpel at the ready. The city is reeling from the return of the Replicants just a year ago, and one controversy could spark an anti-Replicant brushfire, rallying the seething mobs into an outright civil war with humans and Nexus on both sides.

You are a member of the Replicant Underground, a decentralized network of independent rebels dismantling the machine one cog at a time. The Underground is everyone and no one. Human and Replicant, Soldiers, smugglers, street rats, senators, and saboteurs. Grizzled vets, off-grid ghosts, even a few born yesterday. Quite literally.

So get ready to maintain your cover story as you conspire, reconnoiter, and sabotage throughout the city, unheard and unseen. Grapple with the cops, courts, and megacorps while keeping your record clean, so you can hit them where it hurts, then disappear without a trace. All in pursuit of miracles and a better future you’ll likely never see. Few ever know if they even made a dent in the grand scheme of things. But then, who does?

Also due out at the same time is the Blade Runner Asset Pack, a boxed set that includes a host of physical handouts - location maps, crime scene photos, NPC mugshots, data sheets, and more - as well as Solo Mode rules that is playable with both Replicant Rebellion and the core game.

Images courtesy of Free League Publishing.