William Gibson – Words Deferred

Eco-Terrorism and Generational Trauma

It’s not particularly hard to pick out the bigger themes running through VanderMeer’s work. Ecology is the most obvious. His stories explore the ways humans interact with the world around them, and how social and technological factors intertwine with the natural world. Area X seems to exist in a relatively near future where climate change continues apace and a mysterious section of coastline is hidden behind government claims of a localized ecological catastrophe. The Borne stories describe a far-flung future city where most of what survives is the result of extreme genetic manipulation.

In Hummingbird Salamander, humankind’s fraught relationship with nature is again front and center. The story begins with a note that leads the protagonist, Jane, to a storage unit. The note contains the words “Hummingbird” and “Salamander,” with some mysterious dots in between. The storage unit contains an actual, taxidermied hummingbird of a variety that turns out to be extinct. These clues lead Jane into a deadly mystery that involves poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, as well as eco-terrorism and organized crime.

Jane lives in an America that is on the brink. Extreme weather is normalized. Ecological collapse is commonplace. Pandemics are perpetually imminent. It turns out that society fails in more of a whimper than a bang, and most things in life are getting slowly, steadily worse. But people still have jobs, family, and lives. Jane has all of these things. She’s a private security analyst, a mother, and a wife. She stands out as an unusually tall, strong woman who has excelled at weight lifting and body building, but has an otherwise normal, middle-class existence.

Another common theme among VanderMeer books is generational trauma, and in some ways this is just ecology at an individual level. A family is an environment, and as our current world is shaped by the mistakes made by our forefathers and ancestors, our personal hangups and dysfunctions are shaped by those who raised us, and those who raised them.

Jane’s dysfunctions are revealed slowly in fragments and flashbacks, only becoming fully apparent in the final third of the book. In many ways, this is the story of everything she does wrong, and why.

Where it All Breaks Down

Hummingbird Salamander is a well-written book. It has rich and detailed characters, an interesting setting, and touches on timely topics. And after some consideration, I have to admit that it is the most unenjoyable VanderMeer book I have read. This book and I have irreconcilable differences, and they are, unfortunately, at the very heart of the story.

From the first chapters, Jane is obsessed with the hummingbird and the mystery it represents. And sure, there is a reason for why the two words on the note would be important to her. But even with all the answers that are eventually revealed, I can’t help but feel that her obsession is unreasonable.

I might be able to overlook that questionable motivation if I had some sympathy for Jane. But in spite of her horrible upbringing, I find it hard to root for her. There are a handful of moments in the book where Jane shows affection for her teenage daughter and long-suffering husband, but these seem like afterthoughts. These people are hindrances, distractions from her obsessive pursuit of the central mystery. When it becomes apparent that unraveling the mystery might be dangerous, she barely spares a thought about how that could impact her “loved” ones.

In the end, she makes choices that destroy her family and ruin their lives, but she can barely muster a moment of self-reflection or regret. Her coworkers are caught up in the maelstrom. Strangers are hurt and killed because of her. She simply doesn’t care. She gets tougher and meaner as the book goes on, but she was cold and indifferent to begin with.

I will admit, as a husband and father of a teenage daughter I may be especially well-positioned to dislike Jane and her choices. Other readers with different backgrounds might have an easier time identifying with her and sympathizing. I enjoy flawed characters. I just need them to have enough redeeming qualities to get me on their side.

All Cloud, no Silver Lining

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say VanderMeer’s work shows a positive attitude or hope for the future, but the pessimism has never been as apparent as it is here. A straightforward reading suggests that we might have to hit rock-bottom (as individuals and as a species) before things will get better. And even then, they might not.

Jeff’s other work balances that dark and dismal worldview with genuine strangeness and wonder. There’s a reason he was one of the leading voices of the New Weird/Slipstream movement. His worlds are shadowy and unfamiliar, but also unexpectedly delightful. Nobody loves a tidal pool the way this man loves a tidal pool. He describes coastlines like French poets describe their lovers. Hell, in Borne, the post-apocalyptic city is effectively ruled by a kaiju-sized, magically levitating super-bear, and the scariest villain is a regular-sized (but very menacing) duck.

There’s almost none of that here. The drones have gotten a little fancier and the world’s gone to shit. No impossible sci-fi. No crazy weirdness. Just a mysterious note in a grim world that eventually leads to violence and heartbreak.

The Missed Twist

I don’t want to be too down on this book, and I’ve already gotten more negative than I really like. The fact is, I plowed through it, and I did want to know the answer to the mystery. I wanted to know how it all turned out. But the entire time I was reading, I kept waiting for the twist that would help me finally understand Jane and why she was doing all this.

That twist never came.

I received CBR+PNK (“cyber plus punk”) as a holiday gift, and while I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, half the fun of TTRPGs is in leafing through the materials, enjoying the art, and trying to figure out how the rules fit together and how it will actually play.

CBR+PNK bills itself as “Cyberpunk one-shots forged in the dark.” It gets its story DNA from its namesake, Cyberpunk, the gritty dystopic future setting that has recently found fresh life in the popular Cyberpunk 2077 video game and Cyberpunk RED core rules update. However, its rules are based on a stripped-down version of Blades in the Dark, a fiction-first, fast and simple ruleset with a core mechanic of rolling d6 pools.

The Package

CBR+PNK is clearly broadcasting its goal of being a light, low-prep, pick-up-and-go game. The form factor is less than half the bulk of a typical core rule book; a slick little fold-out box filled with laminated pamphlets, all held together by a sturdy sleeve.

The lamination means these should stand up well to the typical abuses of game nights, including spilled drinks. It also allows players and GM to mark up their pamphlets with whiteboard markers and reuse them across sessions.

The left fold of the packet contains includes a “GM protocols” pamphlet and 5x player “runner files”—a combination character sheet and mini instruction manual. The right half contains a variety of odds and ends: optional mechanics, settings and runs.

The Framework

The players play as criminal or semi-criminal agents, mercenaries with specialized skill sets who might come together for assassinations, heists, sabotage, or other high-stakes operations at the behest of shadowy contacts promising huge payouts.

Unlike games that cater more to long campaigns where player characters can grow over months or years, the characters in CBR+PNK are veterans on their last mission, hoping to finish the run and get out of the game alive.

There are some optional rules for running CBR+PNK campaigns over multiple sessions (and supplements to that effect on Itch.io), but it’s tailored for one-shots, and I suspect the rules might feel thin in places for a long story across many missions.

As part of initial setup, each character has an “angle.” Are they out for revenge? Trying to buy a luxury flat to get their family out of the slums? Paying off a bookie? Searching for a missing friend?

At the end of the run, each player decides how they will leverage the results of the mission to try to satisfy this broader character goal, then rolls a special skill check with various bonuses. This is the final payoff or disaster.

Setup

The game is designed to be low-stress for the GM. That’s achieved in three ways—few rules, spreading some load to players, and minimizing prep.

It’s suggested that the GM figure out the mission objective, a couple locations and assets (people, data, vehicles, etc.), and 3-6 obstacles that players may have to overcome.

Players come up with their character’s name, look and “angle,” then assign points to the four “approaches” (broad attributes like Aggressive and Smart) and the 11 “skills” (narrow attributes like Close Combat and Coding). All of these attributes max out at 2, keeping bookkeeping simple.

Players also pick a cybernetic augmentation and a Load of Small (3), Medium (5), or Heavy (7), which impacts how much they can carry, but also how fast, conspicuous, and stealthy they are.

That’s about all that’s needed to start the game.

Play

Play revolves around three primary mechanics: Action Rolls, Stress, and Harm.

When a player tries to do something risky or difficult, they make an action roll. The GM decides the threat (risk) level, consequences of failure, and effect of success. Players can try to shift this equation to their advantage with gear or tactics, and the GM can increase the difficulty by doing the same for the bad guys. The player can also choose to simultaneously boost both risk and reward.

The roll uses a pool of d6s based on the sum of the Approach and Skill used and takes the highest roll(s). Rolling multiple 6s is a critical success, a single 6 is regular success, 4-5 is partial success with negative consequences, and 1-3 is outright failure. This basic system should feel very familiar to anyone who has played Forged in the Dark or Powered by the Apocalypse games.

Stress is a penalty pool that players can fill (up to 7) to get a variety of benefits. They can Push their own action or Assist another player’s action to add dice for an action or improve the effect. They can activate a cybernetic augmentation. Or they can perform a Flashback.

Flashbacks are a fun mechanism for coming up with new fiction on the spot. The player gets to describe something that happened before the mission that impacts the current action or predicament (and presumably helps them). The GM decides the Stress cost based on how outlandish this gamified retcon is.

Gear works similarly, but without the stress cost. Players decide they packed an item when they need it. The only caveat is that you can’t produce more gear from your pack than your Load number allows.

Harm is what often (but not always) happens when the characters fail an action, and it’s a replacement for more common hit point systems in other games. It’s a three-level system where L1 is superficial damage, L2 is serious injury, and L3 is severe. Stacking multiple lower-level harms results in an injury the next level up. L4 kills the character.

The Extras

The FRAMEWORK pamphlet is an odd combination of rules clarifications, quick lists for GMs, and rules for an odd campaign mode built around a series of session-long flashbacks. It feels like this really wanted to be part of the GM pamphlet and ran into the limitations of the form factor.

The HUNTERS pamphlet provides optional mechanics for what amounts to boss enemies, and seems like a pretty cool thing to add to a run once you’ve got the hang of the basics.

The +WEIRD pamphlet is a build-your-own Shadowrun, adding some light fiction to bring magic into the world, meta-human backgrounds, and magical abilities that slot into the character sheet just like cybernetic augments. It’s another set of optional rules, but trying to do a lot more than HUNTERS. It feels a little slim for what it’s trying to do, which is a lot.

The PRDTR pamphlet provides a setting—a base on Ganymede where a worker insurgency fights against corporate overlords. The colony is falling apart, infested with out-of-control mutant jungle and an engineered living weapon (definitely not the trademarked alien from Predator). It includes several starting points and missions, NPCs, a simple graph-map of locations on the base, and random events. All in all, a nice selection of components to build a mission from. A team synergy mechanic is also included, but this didn’t seem to add much, and I’d consider not bothering if I was running it.

The Mona Rise Megalopolis pamphlet is a very different take on a setting, with random tables for just about everything randomizable in this simple game, packed with what I assume are references to characters and locations from William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. Unfortunately I haven’t read those books, and this falls pretty flat as a stand-alone artifact without that context.

Finally, the Mind the Gap pamphlet is a complete example run, with a fun bubble-story setting, a simple three-act structure, and a twist. My biggest pet peeve for TTRPGs is when they don’t provide examples of play to help understand the game flow and rules, and this goes a long way in that regard.

Final Thoughts

This package is cool and slick, but also limiting. They’ve crammed every millimeter of these quad-fold pamphlets with text, and in some cases it feels like another page or two would have been beneficial.

As a prospective GM, I had to jump between all the pamphlets and do some internet searching to understand threat/effect and harm. Harm is the one case where the game makes a choice that I think adds significant complexity over other common mechanics like HP and well-defined status effects.

Like many, I cut my teeth on D&D. These days, I really like the FitD/PbtA style of fast, low-rules, fiction-first play. It’s so much less intimidating than running something like a D&D campaign whether that be from a book or homebrew.

That said, they also have limitations. I haven’t run a longer campaign in one of these systems, but I expect it would feel very different from something crunchier.

I’ve been looking for something relatively easy to play with the kids, so I expect I’ll find time to play this sometime in 2026. I’ll post a follow-up when I do.

Tag: William Gibson

Hummingbird Salamander — Read Report