Blade Runner RPG: Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels Review
This review is a two-in-one for the two first case files for the Blade Runner RPG by Free League, Electric Dreams (included in the Starter Set) and Fiery Angels.
As usual I will start with a spoiler-free, bullet point summary of the reviews, followed by an in-depth discussion of the game and of the two case files.
Spoiler-free summaries of reviews
Electric Dreams
Pros:
Engages with Blade Runner’s core themes, particularly around identity and trauma.
Well-laid mystery that rewards players for investigation and reasoning.
Strong emotional depth, creating personal stakes and moral dilemmas for PCs.
Cons:
Plot is very central to an NPC, which may reduce the emotional impact for players initially.
At first glance it can feel like a rehash of Blade Runner tropes.
Conclusion: Electric Dreams turns out to be a highly rewarding scenario with strong investigative and emotional elements. It delivers a satisfying Blade Runner experience, effectively blending the themes of the movies with engaging gameplay.
Fiery Angels
Pros:
Explores Blade Runner’s deeper themes of identity and existentialism.
The plot has significant long-term consequences and feels like a worthy follow-up.
Provides excellent opportunities for moral dilemmas and character development.
Cons:
Recycles a scene from the movie, which feels too derivative.
Plot inconsistencies undermine the immersion and investigation aspects.
Without a fix, an early reveal can result in heavily reduced impact of a plot point.
Conclusion: Fiery Angels offers an intriguing story with rich thematic material, but its execution is flawed by poor plot logic and pacing issues. With some adjustments, it can shine, but it requires a bit of work
In-Depth Reviews
I love Blade Runner. I’ve watched the movie probably over 20 times (more or less evenly distributed across the different cuts) over the years. I’ve read the novel by Philip K. Dick twice (an excellent sci-fi novel, though this is one of the few cases where I prefer the movie over the book—perhaps because, beneath my sarcastic demeanour, I’ve always been a romantic at heart).
I also enjoyed the sequel, which I find to be a fantastic sci-fi movie in its own right. It explores many of the same questions as the original but with its own unique voice and aesthetic vision (though I’ve only watched it four times so far).
All this is to say that I should be an easy target for a Blade Runner RPG. And yet, I hesitated. Turning these movies into a set of game rules risks stereotyping what was unique about them, potentially reducing the creativity to tropes repeated in every session. It could end up like how Alien: Romulus repeated so many great quotes and scenes from the original films, feeling more like a tribute band than something authentic (even though I enjoyed it).
However, many people whose opinions I respect told me the game was really good, and in a moment of weakness, I bought the Core Book and the Starter Set, which includes a simplified rulebook, dice, cards, pregen characters, and the first Case File (the official name for an adventure/module/scenario in this game): Electric Dreams.
The action in the game takes place some years before the second movie but well after the original. This means Wallace is the big corporation making replicants—now Nexus 9 models with implanted memories. Many of these new replicants are employed as Blade Runners themselves, tasked with hunting down rogue Nexus 8 replicants.
I won’t say much about the rulebook or the system. The rulebook is clear and well-organised and doesn’t suffer as much from the "paper wastage syndrome" of the Alien corebook. The rules aren’t that different from the Year Zero system used in other Free League games but have adaptations that fit Blade Runner’s world well. There’s an emphasis on dramatic chases, the tension between obedience to orders and humanity, violent and lethal combat, and a structure based on shifts (morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, night), which seems restrictive at first but actually works well in practice. It allows for character-driven scenes while maintaining the beats of a police procedural.
But what I really want to talk about are the two Case Files I’ve run: Electric Dreams, which comes with the Starter Set, and the second Case File, Fiery Angels, which I eagerly ordered after finishing the first.
Electric Dreams
When I opened the Electric Dreams box, it felt more like I was opening a board game than an RPG scenario. It comes with many game aids: battle maps for all locations, pictures of locations and camera footage for investigations (players can literally look through the pictures to find clues), NPC mugshot cards, and handouts like documents, a newspaper, and magazine covers.
If you’re like me, too many maps might make you suspicious that the game is going to be a long sequence of tactical battles connected by a thin, railroady plot. However, again intrigued by the positive opinions I’d heard, I persisted.
As I read through the scenario, it felt like a solid rehash of all the Blade Runner ideas and tropes, but I also felt that it lacked a certain grandiosity and originality.
The plot revolves around a replicant Blade Runner who goes rogue after killing another replicant Blade Runner to save the life of a Nexus 8 who had been helping her cope with traumatic flashbacks of a daughter she never had. These flashbacks are based on implanted memories, meant to make her more obedient by reminding her that disobedience led to the daughter’s death. The scenario is about uncovering why she went rogue and where she is. The climax involves confronting the person who created her memories, with the Wallace Corporation attempting to cover up the fact that one of their Nexus 9 replicants went rogue. While this sounded like a good premise for a novel, the fact that this Blade Runner is an NPC (Non-player Character) meant that the depth of her character wasn’t felt firsthand by the players.
That said, the story was fun, and I decided to run it anyway. The experience was much better than expected.
Some of the pregen characters were also replicants with bad memories implanted for the same purpose—teaching them obedience through remembered trauma. This meant that after the first part of the scenario, which involved following clues to uncover what happened (a well-laid-out mystery with rewarding investigative elements), the second half became personal for the players. They began relating their own experiences to the rogue Blade Runner’s suffering, creating emotional stakes. Several times, they faced moral dilemmas between doing their duty and doing what they believed was right. Arresting a rogue replicant they’d befriended was no easy choice, knowing they’d be "retired" if caught.
These tensions ran throughout the scenario, and the ending was incredibly satisfying. I can confidently say Electric Dreams is a gem of an RPG scenario that works seamlessly within the setting. The rules system enhances the experience by highlighting the core themes without overcomplicating things and delivering a gritty, lethal combat system reminiscent of the movies.
Fiery Angels
Fiery Angels feels significantly different from the first scenario, though it continues to explore Blade Runner's central themes of identity and existentialism.
The plot has potentially more long-term consequences and feels like a worthy successor to Electric Dreams, and it is designed to happen some months after the previous scenario in the same continuity.
The gist is that a clandestine rival of the Wallace Corporation is creating their own replicants. However, they lack two crucial technologies: the ability to implant memories and the means to make replicants last indefinitely (ie, not having a short lifespan). The rival’s plan is to still the technological secrets of Wallace by creating five replicants and using them to infiltrate Wallace Corporation: two are copies of Blade Runners - a PC (Player Character) and an NPC, one is a copy of a blue collar worker at Wallace, and the other two are copies of Mr. Wallace himself and his secretary.
The scenario begins with the worker copy being captured trying to steal data from Wallace. One of the PCs is tasked with performing the Voight-Kampff test on this worker. This opening scene is almost an exact repetition of the first scene from the original movie, which should have set off alarm bells. There’s a fine line between homage and plagiarism, and this scene crosses it in the wrong direction.
Still, I was too enamoured with the first scenario to be as critical as I should have been.
I did notice some plot inconsistencies, like the rival’s plan involving a “test attack” the day before the real infiltration, which actually alerts the authorities. It’s as if they wanted Wallace to be ready for them. And why would all the conspirators show up together to replace a low-level worker, getting caught on camera in the process? It’s as if they’re asking to be found out. Furthermore, with some of the infiltrators being copies of existing people, like Wallace and the Blade Runners, it’s odd that they don’t hide or at least disguise their faces, leading to the PCs realising very early in the scenario that they have a doppelgänger on the loose.
Another unnecessary blunder involves the conspirators stealing an owl from a shop the day before their infiltration—an impulsive move that just draws more attention to them.
What’s frustrating is that the exploration of identity and existence is actually very well done, but the poor plot execution bogs it down. Fortunately, a GM willing to tweak the scenario can easily fix these problems. For example, don’t have all the conspirators go to the worker’s house. Also, the replicants’ impulsive, child-like personalities (due to their lack of memory implants and short lifespans) can justify some of their irrational actions—but this should be portrayed as individual flaws, not a systemic problem of the conspiracy, given that the leader is not a replicant, and is supposed to be extremely clever.
Additionally, revealing early on that one or two Blade Runners have been replicated kills the surprise factor, so that should be adjusted as well.
Unfortunately, I was too blinded by the success of Electric Dreams and short on prep time to be as critical as I should have been with Fiery Angels. I also didn’t want to waste the excellent player handouts, which would have been necessary to revise.
In Summary:
I like the Blade Runner RPG a lot more than I thought I would. The first Case File, Electric Dreams, is fantastic. The second, Fiery Angels, has weak points in the plot, but these can be fixed if you’re willing to sacrifice some of the excellent player handouts.
The quality and scope of these Case Files set a high bar for GMs designing their own. This is particularly concerning given that no other Case Files have been published or announced, and there’s no community program for third-party content.
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